Professional Documents
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Impact Turn 2013
Impact Turn 2013
Corruption = Growth
Corruption leads to growth in 3rd world countries
Heckelman & Powell 2008 Heckelman is a professor of economics at Wake
Forest University. Powell was an Associate Professor of Economics at Suffolk
University and an Assistant Professor of Economics at San Jos State University.
[Jac C. Heckelman & Benjamin Powell, Corruption and the Institutional Environment
for Growth Department of Economics Suffolk University, August 2008,
http://192.138.214.118/RePEc/docs/wpaper/2008-6.pdf pg 1]
Despite these widely held beliefs, some economists going back to at least Leff
(1964) and Huntington (1968) believe that corruption can enhance growth by
allowing individuals to pay bribes in order to circumvent inefficient rules and
bureaucratic delays. Simply put, in much of the third world, corruption is needed to
get things done. If corruption is reduced without corresponding changes to eliminate
inefficient rules, business activity and economic growth may slow. If a first best
solution of good rules is unavailable then corruption that avoids some of the
restrictions created by bad rules becomes a second best solution and an alternative
path to growth.
First of all, the size. A 3% drain on the economy is not the same as a 25% one. But
size is far from the only thing that matters. The structure is also important. Good
corruption is often a way to grease the wheels of cumbersome regulations, where
officials speed up the decision-making process, helping business. Often that means
forced political support for regimes that are undertaking painful economic
modernization. One of the important signs of good corruption is that the money
stays in the country, allowing for economic growth. The American political scientist
John Nye even calls this the "Switzerland factor." The less that corrupt money leaves
the country (often going to Swiss bank accounts), and the more it is reinvested in
the home countrys economy, the less damaging the corruption. The aim of good
corruption is to create a good investment climate and improve growth in private
business. One of the best examples of this good corruption was 20th century South
Korea under dictator Park Chung-hee. He often forced large companies to take care
of his partys needs, and rewarded those companies loyalty with low-interest loans
and business preferences. He used the money to secure his partys hold on power
rather than just for his own personal gain, and nearly all of the money stayed in the
country. At the same time, he cracked down on middle-level corruption
investigating large numbers of mid-level officials and thus creating a good
investment climate that forced the government to color inside the lines. Although
he ruled as a dictator, Park held his government to strict standards, and didnt use
the corruption strictly for personal enrichment.
as
professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Edgar Duez of Harvard University found that power and
corruption may play a role in maintaining overall societal cooperation. Using game theory, Ubeda and Duez
looked at what causes individuals in society to cooperate even though those in charge display some level of
corruption. They developed a model that allows individuals who are responsible for punishing noncooperators (e.g.,
law enforcers and government officials) to fail to cooperate themselves by acting in a corrupt manner. They also
considered the possibility that these law enforcers, by virtue of their positions, are able to sidestep punishment
when they are caught failing to cooperate. What they found is that the bulk of society cooperates because there
are law enforcers forcing them to stay in line. People tend to cooperate because they do not want to get punished.
Even if the law enforcers consider themselves above the law and behave in a corrupt way, overall societal
cooperation is maintained as long as there is a small amount of power and corruption. However, if the law
enforcers have too much power and corruption runs rampant, overall societal cooperation breaks down. Ubeda
explained how it works: "Law enforcers often enjoy privileges that allow them to avoid the full force of the law
when they breach it. Law enforcing results in the general public abiding by the law. Thus law enforcers enjoy the
benefits of a lawful society and are compensated for their law enforcing by being able to dodge the law," he said.
behaviors in social insects. In economics, the findings may aid in formulating policies by providing insights on how
to harness corruption to benefit society. In the field of psychology, the findings provide a justification to the
correlation between power and corruption observed in humans.
Venezuela from 1976-79, was president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida, and was
the Venezuelan representative to Transparency International from 1996 to 2000.
[By Gustavo Coronel, The Corruption of Democracy in Venezuela USA Today
Magazine, March 2008, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/corruptiondemocracy-venezuela]
Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in December 1998 on the strength
of three main promises: convening a Constituent Assembly to write a new
constitution and improve the state, fighting poverty and social exclusion, and
eliminating corruption. Nine years later, it has become evident that the Constituent
Assembly primarily was a vehicle to destroy all existing political institutions and
replace them with a bureaucracy beholden to his wishes. Poverty and social
exclusion remain as prominent as before, while the levels of government corruption
are higher than ever.
Most investors would agree that less corruption and more transparency in
financial markets are good things. But in a contrarian way, a high degree of
corruption in foreign markets can actually be beneficial. And that may provide an
interesting counterargument to recent enforcement actions. The fact that large-scale corruption exists is not in
dispute; in many foreign markets it is clearly caveat emptor. Actions by the Justice Department and the Securities
and Exchange Commission under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States are making front-page
headlines almost on a weekly basis in recent years. The Justice Department and the S.E.C. recently released
guidance on the corrupt practices act, a law that has become problematic for many global companies. And many
other countries around the world are also following suit with newly empowered regulatory agencies. In April 2011,
Britain passed the Bribery Act, a major compliance regulation, to go after corruption. Under this backdrop,
Professors Pankaj K. Jain of the University of Memphis, Emre Kuvvet of Texas A&M and I set out to analyze just what
effects corruption had on investment, cost of capital and market liquidity for institutional investors. We examined
corruption and its effect on financial markets at the national level using data from 49 countries. Our finding that
investing conditions are extremely favorable in Denmark, one of the most transparent countries, makes logical
in charge and how to play the game. Corruption is a result of several factors, including the increased pressure on
investors and companies to compete for lucrative international business opportunities. As noted in a 2011 working
paper, the benefits obtained by bribing officials or engaging in corrupt behavior can be quite tempting; it is
estimated that the average return is 10 to 11 times the original bribe amount for 166 prominent cases in 20
countries. We used several tools to help us quantify some of the effects of corruption on stock prices. Some of
those included the corruption perceptions index data from Transparency International; data from Ancerno that gives
company transaction costs for foreign stocks traded by more than 700 institutions in the home markets of 49
countries; and I.M.F. data on foreign portfolio investment flows in all 49 countries. Based on these data, it was clear
that corruption in the 49 countries that were studied directly affected their financial markets. Corruption directly
affected stock liquidity (making it hard to quickly buy or sell a particular stock or bond), the cost of buying and
selling stocks and the trading costs of stocks. Corruption also affects the amount of foreign investment in a country
as a percentage of gross domestic product, and the cost of financing corporate operations within a certain country.
We discovered that, on average, corruption can reduce foreign equity investments by 70 percent, raise trading
costs by 0.8 percentage points (that is, 80 basis points) and increase the cost of capital by up to 8.63 percentage
points. The presence of corruption also makes it hard for outsiders to value a security properly. Higher levels of
corruption typically lead to greater investor uncertainty and a wider gulf between what insiders and outsiders
know about the value of a markets stocks and bonds. An answer to the problem, however, may lie in investing in
education rather than in regulation. Our study also found that corruption was inversely related to the level of
education in a country. So, more education typically relates to less corruption, and a country that wants to reduce
corruption over the long run should promote and invest in education. In the meantime, what is an investor to do?
corruption, however. Our study also examined 27 publicly traded companies that ran afoul of the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act, including I.B.M., Chevron and Siemens. We discovered that after each company was fined, its
average trading costs and cost of capital were higher. These higher costs translate into a lower stock price for those
firms that have been penalized under anticorruption laws. So should investors ask for more regulatory enforcement
of corrupt foreign exchanges? Of course, but the incentives for doing what is morally right and for what actually
might make a profit may not be so clearly aligned. Maybe governments role in promoting education might be
another, more effective way to realign these incentives so that the world can be more
transparent and less corrupt in the long run.
Squo Solves
Corruption has dropped in Latin America and will continue to
Winter 2012 Winter is Chief Correspondent, Reuters Brazil from Sao Paulo and
was previously the foreign editor for USA Today
[Brian Winter, Corruption drops slightly in Latin America survey Reuters, Thu Jun
14, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/14/latinamerica-corruptionsurvey-idUSL1E8HD2PF20120614]
BRASILIA, June 14 (Reuters) - While corruption remains a severe problem in Latin
America, regional executives believe it has abated slightly, thanks to more stringent
corporate ethics rules and enforcement of anti-graft laws, according to a survey
released on Thursday. About 51 percent of respondents believed they had recently
lost business to competitors who made illicit payments, the survey of 402 business
leaders in Latin America found. That's down from 57 percent in a previous survey in
2008. About 25 percent of respondents said anti-graft laws in their country were
effective, up from 15 percent in 2008. Chile and Uruguay were perceived to be the
least corrupt of Latin American countries. Venezuela was seen as the most corrupt,
followed by Bolivia, Argentina and Mexico. Brazil, the region's biggest economy, was
roughly in the middle of the pack. "These results indicate a general view that people
are less likely to get away with these crimes now," said James Tillen of Miller &
Chevalier, one of two U.S.-based law firms that coordinated the survey. Threequarters of respondents said they were aware of an offender being prosecuted for
making or receiving illicit payments, up from 69 percent in the previous survey. The
survey said more companies in the region are taking internal steps to prevent
corruption - 85 percent of respondents said theirs were, compared with 76 percent
in 2008. Tillen said increased enforcement in recent years of the U.S. Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for U.S. companies to pay bribes
abroad, may have had a "snowball effect" by leading multinational companies in
Latin America to adopt tougher standards. Several high-profile corruption cases
have rocked the region recently. Wal-Mart Stores Inc is investigating bribery
allegations at its Mexican unit and has initiated a global review of its anti-corruption
compliance program. Latin Americans are also demanding cleaner government from
their leaders. A wave of prosperity has pulled tens of millions of people into the
middle class over the past decade, and polls show that corruption has become a
more important issue to them as poverty and unemployment decline.
Corruption bad
Mexican Economy
Government corruption in Mexico is common and costing
billions
Zabludovsky, 2013-24 Horas Anchor---[Karla Zabludovsky, Starting to Come to Light, New York
Times, 6-23-13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/americas/official-corruption-in-mexico-once-rarelyexposed-is-starting-to-come-to-light.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]
MEXICO CITY Andrs Granier has a sumptuous wardrobe and lifestyle. He has bragged about owning 400 pairs
of shoes, 300 suits and 1,000 shirts, collected from luxury stores in New York and Los Angeles. His purchases barely
fit in his several properties, scattered throughout Mexico and abroad. Enlarge This Image Bernardo
Montoya/Reuters Tapes of Andrs Granier, center, the former governor of Tabasco State, boasting of his lifestyle
were leaked to a radio station. America Rocio/Associated Press Cash that was found on a property linked to Jos
Manuel Saiz, Mr. Graniers treasurer. Mr. Saiz was arrested this month. A tape recording of Mr. Graniers boasts,
making him sound like a highflying corporate executive, was leaked to a local radio station last month. But his job
title, until December, was governor of a midsize southeastern Mexican state, a position that currently pays about
$92,000 a year after taxes. We go to Fifth Avenue and buy a pair of shoes; $600, Mr. Granier is heard saying
about one of his trips abroad. I took clothes to Miami, I took clothes to Cancn, I took clothes to my house, and I
have leftovers, he added, saying, Im going to auction them off. (The day after the recording was made public,
he said that he had been inebriated while making those statements in October.) But just as eye-opening as the
Graniers successor
discovered that about $190 million in state funds was unaccounted for , the
state government said this month is that they came to light at all in a country where state and local
corruption, a serious drag on Mexicos development, run deep and are rarely
extravagances of a public official now under investigation after Mr.
exposed. The case of Mr. Granier, who was taken into custody on June 14 at a Mexico City hospital where he is
being treated for a heart ailment, is just the latest among several former governors and public officials who have
recently found themselves under investigation or facing public scorn. Watchdog groups are gaining strength,
opposition parties are challenging and exposing the faults of the status quo, and social and traditional news media
organizations are increasingly seeking to hold officials accountable. There will be more of these because the
issue has taken off, said Ricardo Corona, a public finance expert at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a
research group in Mexico City. There is encouragement on the issues of transparency, accountability, access to
information. Mr. Graniers case is one of the more closely followed political spectacles here in recent years. By
January, when the new government in his state, Tabasco, found holes in the budget, Mr. Granier, 65, had retreated
into obscurity. This month, after public shock and outrage over the recording reached a fever pitch, he suddenly
resurfaced on television, saying he was in Miami. Im going back to Mexico, he declared in an interview on one
of Mexicos most-watched morning shows, Primero Noticias. I dont owe absolutely anything. Upon his arrival at
the airport in the capital the following day, a chaotic news media swarm engulfed Mr. Granier at one point he
stumbled before the cameras before he was whisked away in a white S.U.V., with camera crews on motorcycles
giving chase. Three days later, the Tabasco state attorneys office issued an arraignment order for Mr. Granier on
His treasurer, Jos Manuel Saiz,
already had been arrested this month on suspicion of embezzlement as he tried to
cross the border into the United States, after boxes containing nearly $7 million in unexplained cash were
discovered on a property linked to him. A decade ago, such suspicious accounting would have most likely been
kept under wraps, as Mexican officials tended to protect one another and the public took their malfeasance for
granted. During the uninterrupted 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, governors, who often
secured their appointments based on friendly ties with the autocratic presidents, were almost expected to pillage
state treasuries. When the party lost the 2000 presidential election, it left a political vacuum across the states.
Governors around the country acquired unprecedented autonomy and almost no oversight, said Alfonso Zrate, the
State debt rose to
$30 billion in 2012 from about $15 billion in 2008 , according to the Ministry of Finance
and Public Credit. Accounting for inflation, that was a 70.4 percent increase, according to an
article in the online publication Animal Poltico by Marco Cancino, a political analyst in Mexico City. Governments
have reported scant details of how they have spent the money from these loans. But with governors from
opposing political parties succeeding one another and doing away with the unspoken pact of the PRI years, in which
incoming leaders protected departing ones, a system of checks and balances some have called it political
retribution is emerging. Freedom of information laws, recent legislative overhauls demanding more
accountability from state governments and an increasingly technologically engaged society have been more
successful at preventing murky finances from going unquestioned. As a result, tales of disgraced former
governors are becoming a staple of the news here, and are part of what Mr. Zrate calls an incipient democracy.
In 2011, the federal attorney generals office opened an investigation into a $3 billion debt in the state of
Coahuila, acquired mostly during the administration of Humberto Moreira, a former president of the PRI, which
recovered the presidency in December. The former governor of the state of Aguascalientes, Luis Armando
Most investors would agree that less corruption and more transparency in
financial markets are good things. But in a contrarian way, a high degree of
corruption in foreign markets can actually be beneficial. And that may provide an
interesting counterargument to recent enforcement actions. The fact that large-scale corruption exists is not in
dispute; in many foreign markets it is clearly caveat emptor. Actions by the Justice Department and the Securities
and Exchange Commission under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States are making front-page
headlines almost on a weekly basis in recent years. The Justice Department and the S.E.C. recently released
guidance on the corrupt practices act, a law that has become problematic for many global companies. And many
other countries around the world are also following suit with newly empowered regulatory agencies. In April 2011,
Britain passed the Bribery Act, a major compliance regulation, to go after corruption. Under this backdrop,
Professors Pankaj K. Jain of the University of Memphis, Emre Kuvvet of Texas A&M and I set out to analyze just what
effects corruption had on investment, cost of capital and market liquidity for institutional investors. We examined
corruption and its effect on financial markets at the national level using data from 49 countries. Our finding that
investing conditions are extremely favorable in Denmark, one of the most transparent countries, makes logical
field where potential investors in these extremely corrupt countries know who is in charge and can thereby
increased pressure on investors and companies to compete for lucrative international business opportunities. As
noted in a 2011 working paper, the benefits obtained by bribing officials or engaging in corrupt behavior can be
quite tempting; it is estimated that the average return is 10 to 11 times the original bribe amount for 166
prominent cases in 20 countries. We used several tools to help us quantify some of the effects of corruption on
stock prices. Some of those included the corruption perceptions index data from Transparency International; data
from Ancerno that gives company transaction costs for foreign stocks traded by more than 700 institutions in the
home markets of 49 countries; and I.M.F. data on foreign portfolio investment flows in all 49 countries. Based on
these data, it was clear that corruption in the 49 countries that were studied directly affected their financial
markets. Corruption directly affected stock liquidity (making it hard to quickly buy or sell a particular stock or bond),
the cost of buying and selling stocks and the trading costs of stocks. Corruption also affects the amount of foreign
investment in a country as a percentage of gross domestic product, and the cost of financing corporate operations
within a certain country. We discovered that, on average, corruption can reduce foreign equity investments by 70
percent, raise trading costs by 0.8 percentage points (that is, 80 basis points) and increase the cost of capital by up
to 8.63 percentage points. The presence of corruption also makes it hard for outsiders to value a security properly.
Higher levels of corruption typically lead to greater investor uncertainty and a wider gulf between what insiders
and outsiders know about the value of a markets stocks and bonds. An answer to the problem, however, may lie in
investing in education rather than in regulation. Our study also found that corruption was inversely related to the
level of education in a country. So, more education typically relates to less corruption, and a country that wants to
reduce corruption over the long run should promote and invest in education. In the meantime, what is an investor
corporate costs to engaging in corruption, however. Our study also examined 27 publicly traded companies that ran
afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, including I.B.M., Chevron and Siemens. We discovered that after each
company was fined, its average trading costs and cost of capital were higher. These higher costs translate into a
lower stock price for those firms that have been penalized under anticorruption laws. So should investors ask for
more regulatory enforcement of corrupt foreign exchanges? Of course, but the incentives for doing what is morally
right and for what actually might make a profit may not be so clearly aligned. Maybe governments role in
promoting education might be another, more effective way to realign these incentives so that the world can be
more
transparent and less corrupt in the long run.
Venezuela Oil
Oil revenues are high but government corruption takes away
Coronel, 2008-President of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida, Venezuelan representative to Transparency
International from 1996-2000. Member of the board of directors of Petroleos de Venezuela from 1976-79
[Gustavo Coronel, The Corruption of Democracy in Venezuela, Cato Institute, March 2008,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/corruption-democracy-venezuela]
In the nine years since Chavez came to power, an estimated $300,000,000,000 of oil
income has entered the national treasury. The exact number is uncertain due to the poor
transparency of the government accounts, and because the national petroleum company no longer presents
financial results to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission or to the Venezuelan people. In parallel, during
Chavezs tenure, national debt has increased from $22,000,000,000 to about $70,000,000,000. Together with
income tax revenues, the total income of Venezuela during Chavezs presidency has been approximately
$700,000,000,000. This formidable amount of money is nowhere to be seen in terms of public works or effective
health and education programs. Three parallel budgets existedtotaling more than $80,000,000,000in 2007: the
formal one, for some $55,000,000,000 (including additional amounts), approved without discussion by the
submissive National Assembly; a second one, amounting to $10,000,000,000, derived from the international
monetary reserves taken from the Venezuelan Central Bank, in violation of the laws of the country; and a third, in
the amount of $15,000,000,000, built from the funds siphoned out of Petroleos de Venezuela, monies which were
required for investment and maintenance of the petroleum industry. None of these budgets are discussed publicly
more than
$22,500,000,000 in dollar transfers have been made to foreign accounts ,
maintains the Venezuelan Central Bank, and at least half of that money remains
unaccounted for. Jose Guerra, a former Central Bank executive, indicates that some of this money
has been used by Chavez to buy political loyalties in the region and some
or subject to accountability. Irregularities abound in the management of public funds:
has been donated to Cuba and Bolivia, among other countries. According to a Jan. 31, 2006, story in the Financial
Times, a select group of Venezuelan bankers, including those at Banco Occidental de Descuento and Fondo Comun,
has profited from the acquisition of Argentinean bonds by the Venezuelan government, at the expense of the
national treasury. The bonds are bought at the official rate of exchange and sold at black market rates, at
considerable profit. Venezuelan journalist Carlos Ball estimates that bankers loyal to the government could have
profited by up to $600,000,000 as a result of the differential between the official and the black market rates. Former
Chavez Minister of Finance Jose Rojas has predicted that the loss of autonomy of the Venezuelan Central Bank and
the disorder in the management of the financial resources on the part of the government will lead to a significant
the record oil income obtained by the nation, money going directly into Chavezs pockets; a mediocre management
team working without transparency or accountability; the ideological predilections of Chavez, which have led him to
try to play a messianic role in Latin America, and even world affairs; and the policies of handouts put in place by
Chavez to keep the Venezuelan masses politically loyal.
President for Exploration and Production, admitted giving an oil well drilling contract for some $20,000,000 to a
company with only three employees and no rigs.
Cuban Growth
Corruption inhibit Cubas economic activity
Index of Economic Freedom, 2013
Cubas economic freedom score is 28.5, making its economy one of the worlds
least free. Its overall score is 0.2 point higher than last year, with a notable decline in monetary freedom
counterbalanced by gains in freedom from corruption and fiscal freedom. Cuba is ranked least free of 29 countries
in the South and Central America/Caribbean region, and its overall score is significantly lower than the regional
average. Cuba scores far below world averages in most areas of economic freedom, and its economy remains one
source of employment, the public sector accounts for more than 80 percent of all jobs. A watered-down reform
package endorsed by the Cuban Communist Party in April 2011 promised to trim the number of state workers and
allow restricted self-employment in the non-public sector, but many details of the reform are obscure and little
progress has been observed. The private sector is severely constrained by heavy regulations and tight state
controls. Open-market policies are not in place to spur growth in trade and investment, and the lack of competition
stifles productivity growth.
Heg Bad
In encountering new and old competitors on disparate fronts, free traders will
respond to these external pressures by pushing the government to cooperate with
liberal contenders and perhaps even imperial contenders. The domestic outcome of
cooperation will ratchet-up the strength of efficient industry, the financial sector,
consumers, and fiscal conservatives. Cooperation entails reduced protectionism,
elimination of exchange controls, participation in NGOs and IGOs, territorial
concessions, membership in collective security arrangements, and the negotiation
of arms limitation agreements. Economy-minded free traders will favor aiding in the
rise of liberal contenders, thereby expediting the hegemons cost-saving retreat
from the locale. In doing so, the hegemon will retain access to its traditional
interests in the locale without bearing any of the economic, political, or military
costs associated with regional hegemony. Free traders will resist punishing states,
even imperial competitors, because that will bolster the political clout of
economic nationalists who will push for a more hard-line grand strategy.
Punishing liberal contenders (even in a vital or strategic locale) will create the
false illusion of incompatibility that can intensify into a self-defeating hostility
spiral that disrupts trade, results in protectionism and beggar-thy-neighbor
economic policies, and contributes to an arms race.
The trajectories of U.S. hegemony and the modern world system in the coming
decades should be understood in terms of these three long-run tendencies. I
would argue that the expansion phase of a new Kondratieff cycle has been
developing in the United States since 1994. This expansion will lack the brilliance
of the phase that developed in the postwar period. It will be shorter and will
promote lower rates of growth, since it will be affected by two downward trends:
civilizational crisis and the B-phase of the systemic cycle. Within this new phase of
expansion, the financial and ideological foundations of U.S. hegemony will
deteriorate, and the United States will lose the leadership position that it
exercised in the world economy from 1980 to 1990, when it was surpassed in
dynamism only by East Asia. The world will enter a new phase of systemic chaos,
and no nation-state will be able to reconstruct the world-system on new hegemonic
bases. A bifurcation will occur: on one hand, there will be forces attempting to
restore historical capitalism to U.S. imperialism via the cohesion of the principal
centers of global wealth, and, on the other hand, there will be forces seeking to
Heg = War
U.S hegemony will create conflict and war
Monteiro 12 ( Nuno P., Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Exerpt from "Why Unipolarity is not
Peaceful". Published by International Security, Winter 2011/2012. PROJECT MUSE) JA
In this article, I provide a theory of unipolarity that focuses on the issue of unipolar
peacefulness rather than durability. I argue that unipolarity creates significant
conflict-producing mechanisms that are likely to involve the unipole itself.
Rather than assess the relative peacefulness of unipolarity vis--vis bipolar or
multipolar systems, I identify causal pathways to war that are characteristic of
a unipolar system and that have not been developed in the extant literature. To
be sure, I do not question the impossibility of great power war in a unipolar world.
Instead, I show how unipolar systems provide incentives for two other types of
war: those pitting the sole great power against another state and those involving
exclusively other states. In addition, I show that the type of conflict that occurs in a
unipolar world depends on the strategy of the sole great power, of which there are
three. The first twodefensive and offensive dominancewill lead to conflicts
pitting the sole great power against other states. The thirddisengagement
will lead to conflicts among other states. Furthermore, whereas the unipole is
likely to enter unipolarity implementing a dominance strategy, over time it is
possible that it will shift to disengagement.
All great powers and their relative declines/transitions can be compared only
with careful qualifications. Some powers are more important than others,
and because they are more important, their transitions have been
considerably less peaceful in the past. [End Page 196] Yet perhaps that is the
problem. These conflicts were in the past, and something may have changed
fundamentally.
One possibility is that Europe harbored a string of territorially expansive politicalmilitary actors that no longer exist. Europe has played itself out as a cockpit of
political-military bids for regional hegemony, but then Asia offers some
prospects for both regional type III hegemony struggles (China-India and
China and Russia) and a type I conflict (China-United States).
A&M University and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security. Excerpt from "This Time Its Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax
Americana". Published by International Studies Quarterly, March 2012. wiley online library) JA
Great power politics is about power. Rules and institutions do not exist in
vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In
international politics, who rules makes the rules. The post-World War II
international order is an American order that privileges the United States
interests. Even the discourse of liberal order cannot conceal this fact. This is why
the notion that China can be constrained by integrating into the post-1945
international order lacks credulity. For US scholars and policymakers alike, Chinas
successful integration hinges on Beijings willingness to accept the Pax Americanas
institutions, rules, and norms. In other words, China must accept playing second
fiddle to the United States. Revealingly, Ikenberry makes clear this expectation
when he says that the deal the United States should propose to China is for
Washington to accommodate a rising China by offering it status and position within
the regional order in return for Beijings acceptance and accommodation of
Washingtons core interests, which include remaining a dominant security provider
within East Asia (Ikenberry 2011:356). It is easy to see why the United States
would want to cut such a deal but it is hard to see whats in it for China. American
hegemony is waning and China is ascending, and there is zero reason for
China to accept this bargain because it aims to be the hegemon in its own region.
The unfolding Sino-American rivalry in East Asia can be seen as an example
of Dodge City syndrome (in American Western movies, one gunslinger says to the
other: This town aint big enough for both of us) or as a geopolitical example
of Newtonian physics (two hegemons cannot occupy the same region at the same
time). From either perspective, the dangers should be obvious: unless the
United States is willing to accept Chinas ascendancy in East (and Southeast)
Asia, Washington and Beijing are on a collision course.
Texas A&M University and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security. Excerpt from "China's Challenge to U.S Hegemony". Published
by Current History January 2008.
http://acme.highpoint.edu/~msetzler/IR/IRreadingsbank/chinauscontain.ch08.6.pdf )
Chinas rise affects the United States because of what international relations
scholars call the power transition effect: Throughout the history of the modern
international state system, ascending powers have always challenged the
position of the dominant (hegemonic) power in the international systemand
these challenges have usually culminated in war. Notwithstanding Beijings
talk about a peaceful rise, an ascending China inevitably will challenge the
geopolitical equilibrium in East Asia. The doctrine of peaceful rise thus is a
reassurance strategy employed by Beijing in an attempt to allay others fears of
growing Chinese power and to forestall the United States from acting preventively
during the dangerous transition period when China is catching up to the United
States. Does this mean that the United States and China are on a collision course
that will lead to a war in the next decade or two? Not necessarily. What happens in
Sino-American relations largely depends on what strategy Washington chooses to
adopt toward China. If the United States tries to maintain its current
dominance in East Asia, Sino-American conflict is virtually certain, because
U.S. grand strategy has incorporated the logic of anticipatory violence as
an instrument for maintaining American primacy. For a declining hegemon,
strangling the baby in the crib by attacking a rising challenger preventively
that is, while the hegemon still holds the upper hand militarilyhas always been
a tempting strategic option.
Relations at George Washingotn University. Excerpt from his article "Preparing to Go to War with China". Publihsed by the Huffington
Post on July 2, 2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/preparing-to-go-to-war-wi_b_3533398.html ) JA
Officials emphasize that ASB is not directed at any one nation. However, no
country has invested nearly as much in A2/AD as China and few international
environments are more contested -- than the waters of the Asia-Pacific. Hence,
while in the past the U.S. could send in a couple aircraft carriers as a
credible display of force, as it did in 1996 when the Chinese conducted a series
of missile tests and military exercises in the Strait of Taiwan, in the not-so-distant
future Chinese anti-ship missiles could deny U.S. access to the region.
Thus, it is not surprising that one senior Navy official overseeing modernization
efforts stated that, "Air-Sea Battle is all about convincing the Chinese that
we will win this competition." Although much of the ASB remains classified, in
May of this year the Navy released an unclassified summary that illuminates how
the concept is beginning to shape the military's plans and acquisitions. In 2011, the
Pentagon set up the Air-Sea Battle Office to coordinate investments, organize war
games, and incorporate the ASB concept in training and education across all four
Services. A Congressional Research Service report notes that "the Air-Sea Battle
concept has prompted Navy officials to make significant shifts in the service's
FY2014-FY2018 budget plan, including new investments in ASW, electronic attack
and electronic warfare, cyber warfare, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the P-8A
maritime patrol aircraft, and the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) UAV
[Unmanned Aerial Vehicle]." Critics of Air-Sea Battle warn that it is inherently
escalatory and could even precipitate a nuclear war. Not only will the U.S.'s
development of ASB likely accelerate China's expansion of its nuclear, cyber,
and space weapons programs, but according to Joshua Rovner of the U.S. Naval
War College, the early and deep inland strikes on enemy territory envisioned by the
concept could be mistakenly perceived by the Chinese as preemptive attempts to
take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into "a terrible use-it-or-lose-it
dilemma." Hence, some call for "merely" imposing a blockade on China along the
first island chain (which stretches from Japan to Taiwan and through the Philippines)
in order to defeat an aggressive China without risking a nuclear war.
Heg = Terrorism
U.S hegemony causes Muslims to backlash against the United
States (a lil shady)
Blaydes and Linzer 12 ( Lisa Blaydes and Drew A. Linzer. Blaydes is an assistant professor of political science
at Stanford University. Linzer is an assistant professor of political science at Emory University, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at
the Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Excerpt from " Elite Competition, Religiosity, and
Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World". Published by The American Political Science Review in May of 2012. Proquest) JA
Heg = Genocide
Massacres and loss of autonomy define U.S hegemony,
empirics prove
Taylor 12 ( Lucy Taylor, VP of the Society for Latin American Studies, lecturer and professor at Prifysgol Aberystwyth
University. Excerpt from "Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America". Published by International Studies
Review in September 2012. wiley) JA
Heg = Racism/Sexism
American hegemony is intertwined with racism and sexism
Katzenstein et al 10 (Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Leila Mohsen Ibrahim and Katherine D. Rubin. Katzenstein is a
Professor of American Studies and professor of Government at Cornell University. Ibrahim and Rubin are PhD candiates at Cornell
university. This paper "The Dark Side of American Liberalism and Felony Disenfranchisement" won the Heinz I. Eulau Award for the
best journal article of the calendar year published by Perspectives on Politics December 2010. Proquest) JA
Pemex Bad
Ensuring that PEMEX has adequate funds to re-invest in infrastructure each year
seems obvious from a business perspective, but as discussed this has not occurred .
With almost two thirds of its annual revenues going toward taxes (representing nearly
roughly 40% of the federal budget), PEMEX has been essentially bled dry and lacks the funds
and inhouse ability to address all its woes.41 While the accumulated damage from
decades of undercapitalization cannot be undone overnight, taking the first step back should
not be put off any longer. The Mexican government needs to work with the leadership within PEMEX to identify and
establish annual funding for re-investment that is in line with commercial industry norms. While this will mean
reduced government revenue from PEMEX in the short term, it promises to bring significant increases in overall
revenue in the future, both from PEMEX and from the economic growth that a healthy natural gas operation will
bring
Pemex is bankrupt
Melgar 12 (The Future of PEMEX, Americas Quarterly, Vol. 6, Issue 3, Summer 2012. LOURDES MELGAR,
http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3781) //EY
The decline in production is particularly worrisome, since oil revenues are critical to
the financial solvency of the government, accounting for 35 percent of government
income. The sustained high level in oil prices has masked the net decline in crude exports, but a significant
shift in the international oil market could result in a severe financial crisis. That fear, and
the perceived need to increase oil income, drove the 2008 Energy Reform.
The presidential election cycle in Mexico brought a host of policy proposals and
election-year debates over critical elements of national policy. But key among them is energy.
Indeed, during his candidacy Enrique Pea Nieto spoke often and forcefully about how his government would take
on the energy challenges in Mexico.
Within the broad expanse of energy issues, there is an overarching topic of great
importance for Mexico and all of North America: the role of natural gas and
development of shale gas reserves.
Natural gas sales in Mexico have risen 70 percent in the last decade while production increased but 46 percent and
imports from the United States hit record highs in 2012. Pipeline infrastructure has become increasingly jammed
and further complicated by the Reynosa plant accident. Cuts by Pemex of natural gas supplies to industrial
consumers underscore the challenge.
Mexico's increasing appetite for natural gas particularly for power generation bears
mentioning. Indeed, natural gas is increasingly replacing oil as a feedstock for
electric generation in Mexico. Estimates indicate that almost 50 percent of electric capacity additions in
Mexico over the next decade will be gas-fired, combined cycle generation.
But all is not lost. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), Mexico
has the second largest shale gas potential in Latin America and the fourth largest in
the world. Mexico counts around 16 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas reserves
but a 2011 Energy Information Administration (EIA) report indicated that Mexico has
the second largest shale gas potential in Latin America, second only to Argentina
and the fourth largest in the world. The EIA report places Mexico's shale gas potential at 680 TCF.
The potential associated with the EIA figures for shale gas in Mexico has not gone
unnoticed by Mexican energy officials. Indeed, some have increasingly advocated
for a "Shale Revolution" of their own and the possibility for shale gas to jumpstart a
lagging petrochemical industry. To wit, some senior government officials have
argued that Pemex should create a new subsidiary focused exclusively on natural
gas to spur nascent shale exploration and production, particularly given that shale
gas technology and expertise differ from that of conventional fields.
Figures from Mexico's Energy Ministry indicate that ramping up a shale gas industry could mean investment
between $7 billion and $10 billion a year. And many cite the possibility to jumpstart the petrochemical industry.
Moreover, without shale, natural gas production in Mexico will not keep up with
demand. But with shale gas development, Mexico could position itself to transition
from its current status as a natural gas importer to a huge international player when
it comes to natural gas.
There are issues that policy makers in Mexico, especially in the incoming government, must take into account as
they endeavor to seize its shale gas potential.
Technology stands out as a key element for the successful development of shale gas
in Mexico. Gaining access to the technology and know-how necessary to extract the gas in a cost-effective and
environmentally secure manner is critical.
Pemex also plays a role. In mid-2011 Pemex completed its first shale gas well,
tapping into the Eagle Ford formation near the Texas border. More recently, Pemex
has indicated that it will drill more than 150 wells through 2016 in an effort to better
assess Mexico's shale gas potential. By the end of 2012, three more shale gas wells
should be completed by Pemex.
Bailey 3/5 (Shale and Beyond: The Next Phase of Latin American Energy Integration, Jed Bailey, Cambridge
Energy Research Associates, 05 Mar 2013, World Politics Review,
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12761/shale-and-beyond-the-next-phase-of-latin-american-energyintegration) //EY
Thus it would appear that the prospects for further regional energy integration in Latin America are now at an
plants can also backstop hydro units in case of drought, removing the need for hydro-dominated systems to link
with neighbors with greater thermal capacity, since countries can now just build their own. Not building major hydro
projects also means fewer projects that require cross-border linkages to justify their construction.
March 1, 2013. The Mexican Government expected that natural gas will
become the primary fuel for the energy transition from this year,
according to the National Energy Strategy, presented to the Senate .
The document prepared by the Secretariat of Energy notes that the use of
this fuel will benefit in the development of the country's energy matrix .
Among benefits are observed that associated processing costs are
cheaper, and the estimated potential for exploitation is high. It adds that
this fuel has environmental advantages as compared with other fossil
fuels, greater thermal efficiency and the potential to detonate the national
petrochemical industry.
It also notes that changes in the long-term strategy is based on three
factors, including the discovery and exploitation of natural gas reserves at
low cost, mainly associated with the shale gas deposits in the North.
The diagnosis indicates serious problems and challenges in the energy sector, which has reduced oil
production in recent decades, although investments in this sector increased from 77.860 million pesos
(USD 6.130 million) in 2000 to 251.900 million pesos (USD 19.834 million) in 2011.
Mexico currently generates 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels, 17 percent from renewable and
hydroelectric resources, and 3 percent from nuclear power plants.
Among the goals of the National Energy Strategy, the document recalls
the official commitment to produce 35% of non-fossil fuel energy in 2024,
so it insists on the growing use of alternative energies.
Pemex Sucks
Pemex doesnt have experience supercharges our turn
Johnson 12 (Mexican plan for Gulf deepwater wells sparks new worries,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/03/144004/mexican-plan-for-gulf-deepwater.html#storylink=cpy, Tuesday,
April 3, 2012, Tim Johnson, Tim Johnson is a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, based in Mexico City.
He covers Mexico with occasional forays further into Latin America, McClatchy Newspapers) //EY
No experience
Malkin 12 (In a Change, Mexico Reins In Its Oil Monopoly,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/business/energy-environment/mexico-reins-in-oil-monopoly.html?
pagewanted=all&_r=0, ELISABETH MALKIN, Masters in international affairs from Columbia University, April 23,
2012) //EY
The government relies on the companys oil revenue for as much as 40 percent of the national budget,
taxing it so heavily that last year the company lost $6.5 billion on sales of $111.5 billion.
As long as oil gushed from Pemexs giant offshore fields, there seemed
little reason for anyone to challenge the status quo. But production has declined
since 2004, and the companys ability to find and exploit new sources of oil has been cast into doubt.
The memory
of the BP disaster there in 2010 is still fresh, and Mr. Zepeda is concerned
that Pemex does not have enough experience to drill three new
exploratory wells at depths of almost 10,000 feet more than twice the
average depths it has been drilling in the region.
Mr. Zepeda is also scrutinizing Pemexs plans to push deeper into the Gulf of Mexico.
Pemex = Spills
Pemex spills are frequent also empirically proven that they
dont respond to spills
Oil Spill Intelligence Report 12 (Mexico's Pemex Plagued With Problems
Anonymous. Oil Spill Intelligence Report 35.40 (Sep 20, 2012): 3-4.
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/docview/1160549450)
From the outset, Pemex has been criticized for its poor response to the
spill. Mexico's federal environmental protection agency (Procuradura
Federal de Proteccin al Ambiente, or PROFEPA) said that the company
failed to report the spill until 10 days after it started, which "complicated
the capacity to react to the accident on the part of agencies at all levels of
government." In addition to failing to report the spill, Pemex apparently
lacked the resources and/or training to respond appropriately. As a result,
more than 19 kilometers (12 miles) of beach were tarred.
Moar evidence
Oil Spill Intelligence Report 12 (Pemex Pipeline Spills Oil Into River Anonymous.
Oil Spill Intelligence Report 35.5 (Jan 19, 2012): 2. Proquest) //EY
Pemex
Authorities
believe that two-thirds of the spilled oil has been recovered. Profepa, the Mexican environmental
Pemex says that the pipeline breach was caused by vandalism, a rampant
problem in Mexico, where thieves tap into pipelines to steal oil and
natural gas to sell on the black market. The dangerous practice often
results in oil spills. In December 2010, 28 people were killed and more than four
dozen people were injured when crude oil spilled from a pipeline near
Mexico City, Mexico as the result of such vandalism, and then exploded
and caught fire (see OSIR, 23 December 2010).
No one knows if the deadly PEMEX explosion that damaged the lower
floors of the building was an accident, negligence or sabotage by PEMEX
workers, organized crime or leftist rebels. But the PEMEX explosion is not the first of
its kind.
PEMEX has a long history of corruption and accidents due to lack of maintenance
and oversight. A natural gas plant exploded in 1984 killing 300 people; in 1992
a series of explosions in Guadalajara killed 200 people, and in 2012 an
ocean rig exploded killing 30. In 2010 an oil pipeline explosion in Puebla that killed 28 was
blamed on criminal gangs, while a 2012 explosion at a natural gas facility near the border in
Tamaulipas was said to have been an accident. In 2007 several PEMEX oil and gas pipelines in various
states were sabotaged by leftist rebels with the EPR, or Ejercito Popular Revolucionario.
Pemex Corrupt
Pemex is known for its corruption
Serra 11 (Why is Pemex so Hard to Modernize? An Analytical Framework Based on Congressional
Politics, Gilles Serra, August 27, 2011, Prepared forthe seminar Poltica y Gobierno at CIDE, September
8, 2011, http://www.cide.edu/programas/PyG_2.3_Serra-Politics_of_energy_reform_in_Mexico.pdf) //EY
includes: inflating multimillion dollar contracts, giving contracts in exchange for favours, and giving
contracts without a license to friends (El Diario de Coahuila 10 July 2011). Agencia EFE also reports
that contracts were given to unqualified firms (3 Feb. 2011). Other media sources indicate that
Pemex employees have helped criminal groups to steal fuel (Reuters 25 July
2011; LA Times 6 Sept. 2010).
According to Agencia EFE, the government has attempted to combat corruption at Pemex by bringing
in more specialized and skilled workers (5 July 2011) to strengthen the "organs of control" (4 July
2011).
Payments between Pemex management and the STPRM
During 2008 and 2009, Pemex gave STPRM approximately 493 million
pesos (38,083,018 Canadian Dollars (CAD) [XE.com 13 Sept. 2011]) as [translation] "help" for
the union (El Universal 9 Feb. 2011; Exclsior 10 Feb. 2011). The national newspaper El Universal
(El Universal n.d.) reports that according to Pemex, this money was used for expenses
for celebrations such as the anniversary of petroleum expropriation and
two first of May parades, economic support for the general executive
committee, and contract costs associated with annual revisions to the
collective agreement (9 Feb. 2011). According to a daily newspaper from Mexico City, Exclsior,
the money that Pemex sent to STPRM was used for travel expenses, financial support to the executive
committee, and the promotion of cultural and sporting activities (10 Feb. 2011).
Corruption in the STPRM and employee reactions
Maana 18 July 2010; El Siglo de Torren 19 July 2010). According to El Siglo de Torren, a news source
operating in Torren (ABYZ News Links n.d.), Pemex workers have asked authorities to investigate
Deschamps' wealth (El Siglo de Torren 19 July 2010). El Siglo de Torren reports that according to the
coordinator of the group who requested the investigation, [translation] " workers
that have
questioned the financial situation of the leader have faced threats and
harassment at their workplaces" (ibid.). Similarly, La Jornada, a newspaper based in
Mexico City, indicates that there is [translation] "constant repression against workers who oppose
Romero Deschamps" (16 Aug. 2008c). The Energy Workers Front (Frente de Trabajadores de la Energa,
FTE) of Mexico, a labour organization affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions (FTE n.d.),
states that due to the [translation] "disproportionate economic and political power of the union
leaders, many workers are submissive and powerless and do not act on injustices against them and
their families" (ibid. 2008). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted
by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.
On 16 August 2008, several armed Pemex workers occupied Deschamps' office (FTE 2008; La Jornada
16 Aug. 2008a) to protest the [translation] "fraudulent" re-election of Deschamps, who was already
the leader of the STPRM for 17 years (ibid.). Armed Deschamps supporters arrived and beat the
protestors, forcing them out of the office (ibid.; FTE 2008). La Jornada states that Omar Toledo Aburto,
the leader of the group that occupied Deschamps' office (16 Aug. 2008a), submitted a penal complaint
against Deschamps for ordering that the protesters be "brutally beaten" (La Jornada 16 Aug. 2008b).
Information on the status of the penal complaint could not be found among the sources consulted by
the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to La Jornada, before
the occupation, Toledo conducted a 19-day sit-in to revoke the leadership title from Deschamps (ibid.).
But in recent times, Pemex, which this year marks its 75th anniversary,
has become better known for inefficiency, corruption and, above all,
monumental losses. Add to that sharp production declines and Februarys
tragic explosion at the companys headquarters, which killed 37, and
visible cracks have appeared in the once-unchallenged idea that the
behemoth cannot or should not be reformed.
the Oil Spill Commissions recommendation to develop an independent safety organization modeled on
the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO).300 Like its nuclear counterpart, such an
organization might help the industry improve its overall safety record, promote a stronger safety
Nor
has the industry responded to the Commissions concern about decreased
industry support for internal and external academic research, which has,
among other things, decreased the availability of experienced personnel
who can grasp the complexity of offshore operations and make quick and
correct decisions.302
culture within the industry, and develop performance objectives for individual companies.301
1NC economy DA
New drilling collapses economy two reasons:
Causes blowouts and cant stop them from spreading
Boesch 12 (Deep-water drilling remains a risky business, Donald Boesch, Donald Boesch is president of
the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge,17 April 2012,
http://www.nature.com/news/deep-water-drilling-remains-a-risky-business-1.10464) //EY
The 2010 accident showed that no operating company in the world had the
capacity to rapidly contain a deep-water blowout. It took months of seat-of-thepants engineering to build and deploy a capping stack that provided effective containment.
Confusion reigned over the fate of the oil and gas released 1,500 metres
below the surface, largely because of a lack of understanding of the
operating environment, including the direction and speed of water
currents, and the behaviour of hydrocarbons released at depth.
But this spill destroysat least for the near termthe notion
that the oil industry has conquered the technological challenges posed by
deepwater drilling. And as history shows, all it takes is one big disaster to
alter the future of an entire industry. This could be the equivalent of Three Mile Island
for offshore oil, says Rubin, referring to the nuclear plant meltdown in 1979 that essentially halted
the nuclear industrys growth for 30 years.
At the very least, the cost of operating in the Gulf of Mexico will likely go up.
Stiffer regulation from the Minerals Management Services will make sure of that. So will higher
insurance premiums. The spill will likely cost BP several hundred million dollars, and tarnish its safety
reputation. In 2005, 15 workers died in a Texas refinery explosion. BP will surely face fines for the
Future; Vanderbilt University - Strategy and Business Economics; Vanderbilt University - Law School; Ian W. H. Parry,
Resources for the Future, January 12, 2011, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1744203) //EY
municipalities, industry, and agriculture), 16.5 percent was reported to have an effect on birds, and 0.7 percent on
Based on these data and estimates of the cost per gallon of each type of
impact, Cohen (1986) estimated the average natural resource and economic
damages of an oil spill to be $3.00 per gallon spilled in 1981, or $7.50 in 2010 dollars. This
average value, however, tells us little about worst-case damages from a
catastrophic spill.
Helton and Penn (1999) examined 30 large spills between 1984 and 1997 for which
they could obtain natural resource damage payments as well as other measures of
financial costs, including recovery costs, federal and state trustee costs, scientific
assessment, litigation costs, third-party claims, and other costs such as salvage
and repair costs, delay and additional operating costs, and lost or damaged cargo
costs (Helton and Penn 1999). Although their measure of total financial costs is different from the definition of
social damages used here (since many of these costs are private and internal to the responsible party), they
report a range of costs from $1 to as much as $937 per gallon in 1990. They further
report an average cost of $278 in 1990, or about $465 in 2009 dollars . The average
natural resource damage payments for the 28 spills for which data on both spill size
and natural resource damage payments were available was $40.36 per gallon in
1990 (with a range of $0.07 to $375), or about $66.20 in 2009 dollars. 31 These costs are not representative of all
recreation.
spills and instead represent a highly selected group based on the availability of natural resource damages (which
Helton and Penn note are calculated in less than 1 percent of all spills).
survey done shortly after the spill (Carson et al. 2003) found that public willingness to pay to avoid a similar
incident in the future was $2.8 billion to $7.2 billion in 1990, or $4.6 billion to $11.8 billion in 2009 dollars. Adding
an estimated $600 million in economic damages paid to private parties (Cohen 2010a), or about $984 million in
2009 dollars, the externalities imposed by the Exxon Valdez are estimated to range from $5.6 billion to $12.8 billion,
or $509 to $1,163 per gallon, in 2009 dollars. This would make the Exxon Valdez the most costly in terms of
damage caused per gallon for a large spill off U.S. waters to date.
Based on Cohens (1986) average spill damage figure, the natural resource
damages from the 205.8 million gallons of oil spilled by the Deepwater
Horizon would exceed $1.5 billion, but based on Helton and Penn (1999)
would be $13.6 billion. These figures do not include cleanup costs or
compensation to private parties that have incurred economic losses.
Scaling the Exxon Valdez per gallon estimates to the Deepwater Horizon
spill would give a damage estimate ranging from $105 billion to $239
billiona figure that includes both natural resource damages and
economic damages to private parties. This is considered a worst-case estimate of the
damages caused by a catastrophic spill when we analyze the potential costs and benefits of deepwater
drilling in Section 5.
1NC Oceans DA
Blowout causes rigs to capsize, and causes oil spills turns the
aff
Stren 07 (Offshore Blow-out Accidents - An Analysis of Causes of Vulnerability
There are known detrimental impacts upon the marine environment for all phases of offshore E&P
hydrocarbons and other toxins tend to persist in the sediments where eggs and young often begin life.
However, the severity and effects of oil exposure vary by concentration, season, and life stage. The oil
spill from the Ixtoc 1 blowout threatened a rare nesting site of the Kemps Ridley sea turtle, an
endangered species. Field and laboratory data on the nests of turtle eggs found a significant decrease
in survival of hatchlings, and some hatchlings had developmental deformities(Milton, Lutz &
Shigenaka, 2003).
Extinction
Kraig 3 Robert Kraig, Prof Law @ Indiana Univ., McGeorge Law Review Vol. 34,
states with the highest number of environmental emergencies occurred in Mexico are Veracruz,
Campeche and Tabasco, representing 78.7% of the events related to PEMEX activities mainly because
of its deteriorated pipelines, clandestine oil valves, corrosion and mechanical impacts (PEMEX, 2003;
Olivera-Villaseor & Rodrguez-Castellanos, 2005).
The water bodies and the coastal zone are also affected by wastes derived
from oil exploring, offshore production, sea and submarine transportation,
shipment and storage operations, accidents during operations such as
submarine oil pipes cracks, tankers accidents, spill outs and explosions at
oil rigs (Garca-Cullar et al., 2004; Mei & Yin, 2009). During the seventies, Mexico developed oil
exploitation technology and intensified its crude oil production and transportation via underwater
pipelines to cargo floating buoys to storage ports located at Tabasco, as well as the oils
transformation and refining at Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and Salina Cruz. As a consequence, this
created industrial networks all over the country that raised pollution issues at coastal zones, thus
impacting the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific southeast coast (Carbajal & Chavira,
Nevertheless,
conscience was not made until the IXTOC-I accident regarding the
potential risks of the industrys activities (Jernelv, 2010). Currently the main oil and
1985; Botello, 1996; Gonzlez-Lozano et al., 2006; Salazar-Coria et al., 2007).
gas production zone is located at the Gulf of Mexico, in the Campeche maritime zone where there are
severely affected ecosystems after more than three decades of oil exploitation (Garca-Cullar et al.,
2004). The last Gulf of Mexico disaster was estimated three times that of the Valdez spill (Trevors &
Saier, 2010).
On the other hand, in Mexico was installed the first and largest oil refinery (until 2004) in Latin
America, dating from 1908; the environmental deterioration is evident after more than one hundred
years of oil exploitation.
Hoz. & Carranza-Edwards, 1998; Cruz-Orea et al, 2004; Ruelas-Inzunza et al, 2009; Ruelas-Inzunza et
al., 2011).
Additionally, huge amounts of materials were dredged in order to build the artificial dock of Pajaritos.
The industrial plants operation, the numerous transportation networks (petrochemical ducts and
pipelines) and the linking earth systems built at the lower areas caused other activities with an
Another environmental
effect of the intensity of the oil exploitation has been the loss of swamps,
mangroves, and other elements of the water coastal systems that must be
attended given its importance for the environmental services (Gutirrez &
environmental impact for the zone (Toledo, 1995; Adams et al., 2008).
The Deepwater Horizon accident lasted for 152 days and spilled nearly five
million barrels of oil into the Gulf before the well was finally plugged in Septembertwo
months after BP capped the well.70 The oil spread to the eastern Gulf and
Pensacola, Florida (as well as to other areas of Floridas western
shoreline), and occasional tar balls floated as far west as Texas
coastline.71 The spills immediate impact on the marine environment was devastating; as of
November 1, 2010, wildlife responders had collected 8,183 oiled birds, 1,444 endangered sea turtles,
and 109 marine mammals.72 Some of these animals were dead,73 and others will likely have
shortened life spans.74 Nesting areas for birds75 and sea turtles76 were likely destroyed, as were
food sources for many of the affected species.77 Oyster beds were damaged and closed, and the longterm impact on oysters (a keystone species),78 blue crabs, and other shellfish, as well as their
larvae, has yet to be determined.79 Several large estuarine-dependent fish species, including a wide
variety of sharks, game fish, such as swordfish, marlin, and tuna, and many important Gulf fish, such
as red snapper, grouper, black drum, and mahi-mahi, may have been affected by the spill.80 The spill
also blanketed approximately forty percent of the offshore waters used by larvae of the northern
Gulfestuarine dependent species,81 and may have affected twenty percent of bluefin tuna larvae in
2010, further placing at risk an already severely overfished species.82
Many wetland areas and beaches remained oiled long after the well was
capped.83 Nearly eight months after the spill, a centimeterthick residue of
oil still covered large areas of the deep-sea floor in the vicinity of the
blowout, continuing to kill bottom-dwelling creatures like worms.84
Although the actual amount of oil remaining in the water was disputed in
the days following the accident,85 there was no dispute about the
underwater plume of hydrocarbons in the vicinity of the spill, which the
Presidents Oil Spill Commission calculated to be 35 kilometers long, 200 kilometers high, and 2
remained in the water column and spots of oil could be observed on the sea floor as late as August
2011, even though little surface evidence of the spill could be seen in the Gulf and the immediate
shoreline appeared cleaner.88
The closing of vast areas of the Gulf to fishing, the pall that remained over the safety of Gulf fish and
shellfish after fishing, crabbing, and shrimping resumed, and the effect on tourism in an area that
heavily depends on it89 devastated the regions economy.90 The social and psychological toll on
families, especially children, who had only recently recovered from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, is also
the impact of the oil spill will outlast the cleanup efforts and other visible reminders of the accident;
as one professor of oceanography stated: These
quantity depletion. During the drilling/development phase, water would be required for dust control,
making concrete, consumptive use by the construction crew, and in drilling of wells. Depending on
availability, it may be trucked in from off-site or obtained from local groundwater (glossary term)
wells or nearby surface water bodies. Where surface waters are used to meet drilling and
Drilling activities may affect surface and groundwater flows. If a well is completed improperly such
that subsurface formations are not sealed off by the well casing (glossary term) and cement, aquifers
can be impacted by other non-potable formation waters. The interaction between surface water and
groundwater may also be affected if the two are hydrologically connected, potentially resulting in
unwanted dewatering (glossary term) or recharging (glossary term) . Soils compacted on existing
roads, new access roads, and well pads generate more runoff than undisturbed sites. The increased
runoff could lead to slightly higher peak storm flows into streams, potentially increasing erosion of the
channel banks. The increased runoff could also lead to more efficient sediment (glossary term)
Primary waste during production is produced water, which can comprise 98% of material brought to
the surface.
Drilling wastes include hydraulic fluids, pipe dope, used oils and oil filters,
rigwash, spilled fuel, drill cuttings, drums and containers, spent and
unused solvents, paint and paint washes, sandblast media, scrap metal,
solid waste, and garbage. Wastes associated with drilling fluids (glossary
term) include oil derivatives (e.g., such as polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs) (glossary term) , spilled chemicals, suspended and
dissolved solids (glossary term) , phenols, cadmium, chromium, copper,
lead, mercury, nickel, and drilling mud (glossary term) additives (including
potentially harmful contaminants such as chromate and barite). Adverse
impacts could result if hazardous wastes (glossary term) are not properly
handled and are released to the environment.
Produced water (glossary term) (water that coexists with oil and gas in
the formation and is recovered during well development) generation can
be an issue during the drilling/development phase, although it usually
becomes a greater waste management concern over the long-term
operation of an oil or gas field because water production typically
increases with the age of the production well. One exception to this is the drilling and
development of coalbed methane (glossary term) reserves; produced water is generated at high
volumes during the initial completion and development of coalbed methane wells and then declines
considerably as methane (glossary term) production increases. Regulations govern the disposal of
injected into a producing formation in order to increase formation pressure and production).
Drilling in deep water(>1,000 ft) uses rotary bits that chip through
thousands of feet of rock to access oil and gas deposits. Diesel-powered
engines provide the power to operate the drilling rig and drive the drill . As
paraphrased from Continental Shelf Associates,Inc.(2007),the general sequence of events entails
initial open hole drilling where a drill bit positioned within a drill pipe chips away at the ocean floor.
Asthe drill bit spins, mud (WBM) and water are forced at high velocity
around the drill bit to force rock chips(cuttings) up and outto the seabed .
After a known distance, the drill bit and pipe are removed and a wellhead
isinstalled.WBM is typically discharged and replaced with SBM. Additionally, a
marine riser system is connected to the wellhead to return fluids, muds, and cuttingsto the drill rig
where they are separated. Cuttings are discharged in a plume from the platform, and mud is recycled
back to the drill bit(Figure 1).
The oil toxicity in the marine environment is very complex due to the great
diversity of factors intervening during an environmental risk event. When
oil is spilled or introduced to the marine ecosystem (Mercer & Trevors,
2011), it becomes weathered (Fig. 6), during which several processes take place, such as
the evaporation of the volatile compounds, dispersion by means of waves, winds and turbulences
(Chang et al., 2011), emulsification, which constitutes the main cause of the persistence of light and
medium crude oils on the sea surface, dilution depending of the crude oil type, temperature,
turbulence and dispersion, sedimentation or sinking of the particles by adhesion to the sediments or
organic matter, and biodegradation (Botello, 1995; Nikolopoulou & Kalogerakis, 2010; Prince, 2010). In
Mexico, the Tonal River in Veracruz and the Laguna de Trminos in Campeche have shown the highest
levels of dissolved hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico (Botello et al., 1996).
consequence, it is not possible to measure the magnitude of the oil industry in the marine seaway.
Additionally, it has not been possible to determine the chronic effects of pollution over the ecosystems
since the data available is very precise in a given time and determined concentrations (Garca-Cullar
et al., 2004). Currently, there are studies proving the existence of considerable disturbances in the
environment (Scarlett et al., 2007; Denoyelle et al., 2012); however, it is important to highlight that
pollutants bioaccumulate in water organisms destined to human consumption (Webb, 2011).
1NC Whales DA
Specifically causes whales to beach and get stranded
NRDC 09 (Protecting Our Ocean and Coastal Economies: Avoid Unnecessary Risks from Offshore Drilling,
September 2009, Natural Resources Defense Council, http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/offshore/files/offshore.pdf) //EY
Marine mammals,
sea birds, fish, shellfish, and other sea life are extremely vulnerable to oil pollution
and the long-term toxic effects can impair reproductive success for generations .
continuing to harm threatened and endangered species and undermine their recovery.10
Studies have shown that tiny amounts of oilas little as one part per billioncan harm pink salmon and cause their
eggs to fail.11
Offshore drilling requires the construction of significant onshore infrastructure such as new roads, pipelines, and
processing facilities, which are often built on formerly pristine beaches .
categories of uniqueness. First, whales are biologically special. Whales include by far the largest
animals on earth, growing to be over 30 metres in length - the blue whale (Balenoptera musculus).
Whales include the possessors of by far the largest brain of any creature ever to have lived on our
planet, weighing four or five times as much as the human brain - the sperm whale (Physeter
macrocephalus). Whales include the creators of the most complex, long - lasting, repetitive sound
patterns of any non - human animal - the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). And whales
include species (Tursiops truncatus and some other odontocetes) which exceed humans and all other
groups as well in convolutedness or fissurisation of the cerebral cortex. Marine mammal veterinarian
Sam Ridgway, of the U.S. Naval Ocean Systems Centre in San Diego, has reported findings that the
bottlenose dolphin, in particular, by a variety of measurements (encephalisation quotient, volume of
cortex, ratio of brain weight to spinal cord weight, etc.) ranks just below humans and considerably
above other higher primates, including gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. In all these ways
whales are truly unique biologically! Second, whales are ecologically special. Whales have evolved as
marine mammals over millions of years, with both baleen and toothed whales probably appearing up
to 25 million years ago, long before the development of human beings and the latter's intrusion in the
Whales are at the top of the vast food chain of the sea.
Baleen whales consume the largest amount of zooplankton, and the killer whale
(Orcinus orca) is the world's greatest non- human predator. Whales affect the ocean
ecosystem in a uniquely global manner, and any exploitation of other marine resources,
whether krill or fish, must uniquely take into account cetaceans. Human life depends upon a
proper balance in the amount of oxygen in earth's atmosphere produced
from the plankton that is kept in check most critically by whale
consumption.
ocean ecosystem.
Salazars watch, the Department of the Interior has treated the Gulf of
Mexico as a sacrifice zone where laws are disregarded and wildlife protection takes
a backseat to oil-company profits, said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center. Even after
the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the feds are still violating the laws intended to protect the Gulfs wildlife in
their rush to approve offshore oil activities.
Seismic exploration surveys, used by oil companies to search for oil, generate
sounds loud enough to cause hearing loss in marine mammals, can disturb essential
behaviors such as feeding and breeding, and mask communications between
individual whales and dolphins. Seismic surveys are nearly as loud as explosives, and
can displace whales from important feeding areas. Several types of marine
mammals are at risk in the Gulf of Mexico, including endangered sperm whales,
manatees and bottlenose dolphins.
Sperm whales, which can weigh up to 60 tons and reach 60 feet in length, reside
year-round in the Gulf of Mexico. Their strong attraction to specific areas for
breeding and feeding may override any tendency for them to avoid noxious oil, and
several whales have already been spotted swimming through oily, contaminated waters. Inhalation of oil
droplets, vapors and fumes is only one of the serious risks posed to sperm whales
by oil spills. With a population already depleted from a long-history of being hunted for their oil, this
leviathan cant afford losses from the oil that continues to gush into Gulf waters.
Due to their diving habits, sperm whales are vulnerable to disturbance from oil
exploration, industrial development and associated shipping. Direct oil exposure
also poses hazards to these animals . Contrary to some reports, whales do not necessarily
avoid oil slicks or contaminated habitats. Whales have been seen swimming and feeding in or near
oil. The animals strong attraction to specific areas for breeding or feeding may
override any tendency for them to avoid the noxious oil. Weathered or tar-like oil
residues also pose long-term risks to whales.
Research indicate that inhalation of oil droplets and vapor; gastrointestinal
ulceration and hemorrhaging due to ingestion of oil during feeding; eye and skin
lesions from continuous exposure to oil; weight loss due to restricted diet and stress
from oil exposure; and behavioral changes.
Indirect effects
Oil development is often associated with the release of a wide variety of other contaminants into the environment.
In the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, additional contaminant risk is posed by dispersants used to break up the oil. By
BPs own account, it has mobilized a third of the worlds supply of dispersants, including Corexit, to treat this spill.
Dispersants can cause genetic mutations and cancer, further adding to the
cumulative effects of oil toxicity. Levels of mercury, cadmium and other marine
contaminants are already high enough in sperm whale tissue to raise concerns
about reproductive impairment in this species .
Sperm whales are a keystone species in many deep ocean ecosystems. Hunted
almost to extinction (in 1964, 29,255 sperm whales were killed), there has been a significant
disruption to the male-to-female ratio and a heavily reduced birth rate. In recent
years, the increased number of strandings, thought to be due to the use of drift nets and military
sonar, is causing grave concern within the conservation community. Developed by fishermen out of a desire to
secure ever-increasing profit margins, drift nets have proved to be one of the most destructive fishing practices of
all time. Drift nets (often referred to as "the wall of death") catch everything in their path, playing havoc with the
ocean's ecology and natural harmony.
Extinction
Diner 1994
(Judge Advocates Generals Corps of US Army, David N., Military Law Review, Winter, 143 Mil.
L. Rev. 161,)
No species has ever dominated its fellow species as man has. In most cases, people have assumed the God-like
power of life and death -- extinction or survival -- over the plants and animals of the world. For most of history,
mankind pursued this domination with a single-minded determination to master the world, tame the wilderness,
direct and indirect benefits to mankind. n68 2. Ecological Value. -- Ecological value is the value that species have in
maintaining the environment. Pest, n69 erosion, and flood control are prime benefits certain species provide to
man. Plants and animals also provide additional ecological services -- pollution control, n70 oxygen production,
sewage treatment, and biodegradation. n71 3. Scientific and Utilitarian Value. -- Scientific value is the use of
species for research into the physical processes of the world. n72 Without plants and animals, a large portion of
basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is the direct utility humans draw from plants and
animals. n73 Only a fraction of the [*172] earth's species have been examined, and mankind may someday
desperately need the species that it is exterminating today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal
Swamp southeastern shrew n74 could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are
useless to man in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their
extirpations could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a
species affects other species dependent on it. n75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each
new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. n76 4. Biological Diversity. -- The main premise of
species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. n77 As the current mass extinction has progressed,
the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the
number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future
strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere
human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a
mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, [hu]mankind
may be edging closer to the abyss
Environmental Justice
If significant impacts were to occur in any of the resource areas and these
were to disproportionately affect minority or low-income populations,
there could be an environmental justice (glossary term) impact . It is
anticipated that the development could benefit low-income, minority, and tribal populations by
creating job opportunities and stimulating local economic growth via project revenues and increased
is a pathway and litmus test of our progress toward a peaceful and sustainable world order. From the
periphery of political, economic and social power, they are moving to the center of world attention.
not be easy, nor will it be accomplished overnight, but this is the time to act Indian organizations are
stronger and better organized than ever,
This, however, has caused some authors and policy makers to lose
sight of the fact that genocide is a fluid and complex social phenomenon,
not a static term. This process perspective is crucial to the detection and
standardization of early warning indicators for the prevention of genocide ,
culpability.
a goal which many genocide scholars seek to pursue.6 As Bloxham and Moses argue, the focus on
specific types of outcomes that qualify as genocide is analogous to studying the peaks of mountains
from above a cloud-line that only particularly tall mountains penetrate, when a glimpse beneath the
provides lawyers and jurists with a lens through which to interpret the 1948 UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG). This approach aids in the interpretation
of the UNCGs dual goals of prevention and punishment.
Voting aff means you are complicit with genocide you have
a moral obligation to vote neg
Vetleson, 2k (Arne Johan, Department of Philosophy University of Oslo, , "Genocide: A Case for
the Responsibility of the Bystander", Journal of Peace Research, July, p. 520-522)
Most often, in cases of genocide, for every person directly victimized and
killed there will be hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions, who are
neither directly targeted as victims nor directly participating as
perpetrators. The moral issues raised by genocide, taken as the illegal act
par excellence, are not confined to the nexus of agent and victim. Those
directly involved in a given instance of genocide will always form a minority, so to speak. The
majority to the event will be formed by the contemporary bystanders . Such
bystanders are individuals; in their private and professional lives, they will belong to a vast score of
groups and collectives, some informal and closely knit, others formal and detached as far as personal
every
contemporary citizen cognizant of a specific ongoing instance of genocide,
regardless of where in the world, counts as a bystander. Bystanders in this loose
and emotional involvement are concerned. In the loose sense intended here,
sense are cognizant, through TV, radio, newspapers, and other publicly available sources of
information, of ongoing genocide somewhere in the world, but they are not - by profession or formal
appointment involved in it. Theirs is a passive role, that of onlookers, although what starts out as a
passive stance may, upon decision, convert into active engagement in the events at hand. I shall label
this category passive bystanders. This group should be distinguished from bystanders by formal
appointment: the latter bystanders have been professionally Engaged as a third party to the
(Vetlesen, 1998). A case in point would be UN personnel deployed to monitor a ceasefire between
warring parties, or (as was their task in Bosnia) to see to it that the civilians within a UN declared safe
area are effectively guaranteed peace and security, as set down in the mandate to establish such
the bystander - but from the two viewpoints provided by the parties directly involved in the event. To
put it as simply as possible: From the viewpoint of an agent of genocide, bystanders are persons
possessing a potential (one needing to be estimated in every concrete case) to halt his ongoing
actions. The perpetrator will fear the bystander to the extent that he [or she] has reason to believe
that the bystander will intervene to halt the action already under way, and thereby frustrate the
perpetrators goal of eliminating the targeted group, that said, we immediately need to differentiate
among the different categories of bystanders introduced above. It is obvious that the more
knowledgeable and other wise resourceful the bystander, the more the perpetrator will have reason to
fear that the potential for such resistance will translate into action, meaning a more or less direct
intervention by military or other means. Deemed efficient to reach the objectives of halting the
incipient genocide. Of course, one should distinguish between bystanders who remain inactive and
those who become actively engaged. Nonetheless, the point to be stressed is that, in principle ,
even
the most initially passive and remote bystander possesses a potential to
cease being a mere onlooker to the events unfolding. Outrage at what
comes to pass may prompt the judgement that this simply must be
stopped and translate into action promoting that aim . But is not halting genocide
first and foremost a task, indeed a duty, for the victims themselves? The answer is simple: The
sheer fact that genocide is happening shows that the targeted group has
not proved itself able to prevent it. This being so, responsibility for halting what is now
unfolding cannot rest with the victims alone, it must also be seen to rest with the party not itself
affected but which is knowledgeable about -which is more or less literally witnessing the genocide that
is taking place. So whereas for the agent, bystanders represent the potential of resistance, for the
of genocide may be caught more or less in delicto flagrante. But in the age of television - with CNN
being able to film and even interview doers as well as victims on the spot, and broadcast live to the
entire television-watching world (such as was the case in the concentration camp Omarska in Bosnia in
August 1992) (see Gutman, 1993) physical co-presence to the event at hand is almost rendered
superfluous. One need not have been there in order to have known what happened, The same holds
for the impact of the day-to-day reporting From the ground by newspaper journalists of indisputable
reputation. In order to be knowledgeable about ongoing genocide, it suffices to watch the television
news or read the front pages of a daily newspaper. But, to be more precise, what exactly does it mean
to act? What is to count as an action? We need to look briefly at the philosophical literature on the
notion of action as well as the notion of agent responsibility following from it - in order to gel a better
grasp of the moral issues involved in being a bystander to genocide, whether passive or active. I never
forget', says Paul Ricoeur in Oneself as Another, 'to speak of humans as acting and suffering, The
moral problem', he continues, is grafted onto the recognition of this essential dissymmetry between
the one who acts and the one who undergoes, culminating in the violence of the powerful agent.' To be
the 'sufferer' of a given action in Ricoeur's sense need not be negative; either 'the sufferer appears as
the beneficiary of esteem or as the victim of disesteem, depending on whether the agent proves to be
besides our attributing it to a particular agent, as her property and no one else s. But, as for the
repercussions, they evade being traced in any definite manner, to any final and definitive endpoint.
Air Quality
Emissions generated during the drilling/development phase include
vehicle emissions; diesel emissions from large construction equipment and
generators (glossary term) , storage/dispensing of fuels, and, if installed
at this stage, flare (glossary term) stacks; small amounts of carbon
monoxide (glossary term) , nitrogen oxides (glossary term) , and
particulates (glossary term) from blasting activities; and dust from many sources, such as
disturbing and moving soils (clearing, grading, excavating, trenching (glossary term) , backfilling,
Extinction
Driesen 2003 (David Driesen, Associate Professor at Syracuse University Law, 10 Buffalo
Environmental Law Journal, Fall/Spring, Lexis)
Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon
which all life depends and harming the health of both future and present
generations. The Rio Declaration articulates six key principles that are relevant to air pollution.
These principles can also be understood as goals, because they describe a state of affairs [*27] that is
worth achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between
The first
principle is that "human beings. . . are entitled to a healthy and
productive life in harmony with nature", because they are "at the center of
concerns for sustainable development." n3 While the Rio Declaration refers
to human health, its reference to life "in harmony with nature" also
reflects a concern about the natural environment. n4 Since air pollution
damages both human health and the environment, air quality implicates
both of these concerns. n5
them, they aid understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality.
Air emissions associated with oil and gas production can significantly
impact air quality and impair visibility. Concerns regarding these impacts
have expanded in recent years as oil and gas production in Region 8 has
grown. Air emissions generated during oil and gas production, along with
emissions from other sources, are regulated by the Clean Air Act (CAA) and can be
grouped into three categories:
Criteria air pollutants (ozone, CO, SO2, PM, and their precursors,
including NOx and VOCs);
Hazardous air pollutants21 (HAPs, primarily fugitive VOC emissions from
oil and gas production);
Haze precursors (which include ozone, NOx, SO2, and particulates); and
In addition, greenhouse gases (GHGs, which include CO2 and CH4) are
generated during oil and gas development. EPA issued an advance notice of proposed
rulemaking (ANPRM) in July 2008 considering possible GHG emission regulation under the Clean Air
Act. Several Rocky Mountain states have developed or are considering mandatory GHG emission limits.
1NC Warming DA
Drilling results in warming
EPA 08 (An Assessment of the Environmental Implications of Oil and Gas Production: A Regional
Case Study, September 2008, http://www.epa.gov/sectors/pdf/oil-gas-report.pdf, p 2-7) //EY
Air emissions associated with oil and gas production can significantly
impact air quality and impair visibility. Concerns regarding these impacts
have expanded in recent years as oil and gas production in Region 8 has
grown. Air emissions generated during oil and gas production, along with
emissions from other sources, are regulated by the Clean Air Act (CAA) and can be
grouped into three categories:
Criteria air pollutants (ozone, CO, SO2, PM, and their precursors,
including NOx and VOCs);
Hazardous air pollutants21 (HAPs, primarily fugitive VOC emissions from
oil and gas production);
Haze precursors (which include ozone, NOx, SO2, and particulates); and
In addition, greenhouse gases (GHGs, which include CO2 and CH4) are
generated during oil and gas development. EPA issued an advance notice of proposed
rulemaking (ANPRM) in July 2008 considering possible GHG emission regulation under the Clean Air
Act. Several Rocky Mountain states have developed or are considering mandatory GHG emission limits.
remaining deniers have coalesced to defend their Alamo that human emissions arent the cause of recent climate
change and therefore that reducing those emissions is pointless. Last year, longtime Nation columnist Alexander
Cockburn wrote, There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any
measurable contribution to the worlds present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on
unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankinds sinful contribution. In fact, the evidence is
amazingly strong. Moreover, if the relatively complex climate models are oversimplified in any respect, it is by
omitting amplifying feedbacks and other factors that suggest human-caused climate change will be worse than is
widely realized. The IPCC concluded last year: Greenhouse
human-made) explain
most of the changes in our climate and temperature both in recent decades and over the
past millions of years. The primary human-made forcings are the heat-trapping
greenhouse gases we generate, particularly carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil
and natural gas. The natural forcings include fluctuations in the intensity of sunlight (which can increase or
decrease warming), and major volcanoes that inject huge volumes of gases and aerosol particles into the
stratosphere (which tend to block sunlight and cause cooling). Over and over again, scientists have demonstrated
that observed changes in the climate in recent decades can only be explained by taking into account the observed
combination of human and natural forcings. Natural forcings alone just dont explain what is happening to this
planet. For instance, in April 2005, one of the nations top climate scientists, NASAs James Hansen, led a team of
scientists that made precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years, which
revealed that the Earth is absorbing far more heat than it is emitting to space, confirming what earlier computer
models had shown about warming. Hansen called this energy imbalance the smoking gun of climate change, and
said, There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed
warming. Another 2005 study, led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, compared actual ocean temperature
data from the surface down to hundreds of meters (in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans) with climate models
and concluded: A warming signal has penetrated into the worlds oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is
complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate
variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically [human-caused] forced
climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model
differences. Such studies are also done for many other observations: land-based temperature rise, atmospheric
temperature rise, sea level rise, arctic ice melt, inland glacier melt, Greeland and Antarctic ice sheet melt,
expansion of the tropics (desertification) and changes in precipitation. Studies compare every testable prediction
from climate change theory and models (and suggested by paleoclimate research) to actual observations. How
many studies? Well, the IPCCs definitive treatment of the subject, Understanding and Attributing Climate Change,
has 11 full pages of references, some 500 peer-reviewed studies. This is not a consensus of opinion. It is what
scientific research and actual observations reveal. And the science behind human attribution has gotten much
stronger in the past 2 years (see a recent literature review by the Met Office here). That brings us to another
problem with the word consensus. It can mean unanimity or the judgment arrived at by most of those
concerned. Many, if not most, people hear the second meaning: consensus as majority opinion. The scientific
consensus most people are familiar with is the IPCCs Summary for Policymakers reports. But those arent a
majority opinion. Government representatives participate in a line-by-line review and revision of these summaries.
So China, Saudi Arabia and that hotbed of denialism the Bush administration get to veto anything they dont
like. The deniers call this politicized science, suggesting the process turns the IPCC summaries into some sort of
unscientific exaggeration. In fact, the reverse is true. The net result is unanimous agreement on a conservative or
watered-down document. You could argue that rather than majority rules, this is minority rules. Last April, in an
article titled Conservative Climate, Scientific American noted that objections by Saudi Arabia and China led the
discuss the evidence we had even back in 2008 that the IPCC was underestimating key climate impacts, a point I
The bottom line is that recent observations and research make clear the
planet almost certainly faces a greater and more imminent threat than is laid out in the
IPCC reports. Thats why climate scientists are so desperate . Thats why they keep
begging for immediate action. And thats why the consensus on global warming is a phrase that should
update here.
be forever retired from the climate debate. The leading scientific organizations in this country and around the world,
including all the major national academies of science, arent buying into some sort of consensus of opinion. They
The study, exploring naturally acidic waters near volcanic vents in the Mediterranean Ocean off Italy, suggests that
"The background, low-grade stress caused by ocean acidification can cause a whole
shift in the ecosystem so that everything is dominated by the same plants, which
tend to be turf algae," said lead author Kristy Kroeker, a postdoctoral researcher at the Bodega Marine
Laboratory at the University of California, Davis.
Extinction
Diner 1994
(Judge Advocates Generals Corps of US Army, David N., Military Law Review, Winter, 143 Mil.
L. Rev. 161,)
No species has ever dominated its fellow species as man has. In most cases, people have assumed the God-like
power of life and death -- extinction or survival -- over the plants and animals of the world. For most of history,
mankind pursued this domination with a single-minded determination to master the world, tame the wilderness,
other species. At some point, the number of species could decline to the point at
which the ecosystem fails, and then humans also would become extinct. No one knows
how many [*171] species the world needs to support human life, and to find out -- by allowing certain
species to become extinct -- would not be sound policy. In addition to food, species offer many
direct and indirect benefits to mankind. n68 2. Ecological Value. -- Ecological value is the value that species have in
maintaining the environment. Pest, n69 erosion, and flood control are prime benefits certain species provide to
man. Plants and animals also provide additional ecological services -- pollution control, n70 oxygen production,
sewage treatment, and biodegradation. n71 3. Scientific and Utilitarian Value. -- Scientific value is the use of
species for research into the physical processes of the world. n72 Without plants and animals, a large portion of
basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is the direct utility humans draw from plants and
animals. n73 Only a fraction of the [*172] earth's species have been examined, and mankind may someday
desperately need the species that it is exterminating today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal
Swamp southeastern shrew n74 could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are
useless to man in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their
extirpations could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a
species affects other species dependent on it. n75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each
new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. n76 4. Biological Diversity. -- The main premise of
species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. n77 As the current mass extinction has progressed,
the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the
number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future
strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere
A Canadian-led team of scientists may have solved the biggest whodunit in Earth
history in a study showing that the all-time greatest mass extinction on the planet which wiped out about 90% of all species 250 million years ago - appears to have
been linked to rising levels of ocean acidity . Researchers have long believed that massive volcanic
eruptions in present-day Siberia - or possibly a huge meteorite strike - triggered the so-called PermianTriassic
extinction. But the precise mechanism of death for so many species remains a subject of debate, with some
scientists convinced it was a resulting lack of oxygen in the Earth's oceans or a greenhouse-gas nightmare that
recreate conditions on the planet at the time, Montenegro and his five colleagues from Canada and Australia found
it unlikely that oxygen-starved oceans led to the mass extinction. Instead, their models pointed to a new prime
time of the P-T extinction were most of the ammonites - large, snail-shaped marine creatures that are known today
from the beautifully iridescent, multi-coloured fossils of their spiral shells, found in places such as southern Alberta.
The relatively few ammonite species that survived the mass extinction 250 million years ago were later killed off by
the meteorite-linked extinction at the end of the dinosaur age 65 million years ago.
1NC Narco-Terrorism DA
Los Zetas control the pipelines now
Lunhow 11 (Mexican Crime Gangs Expand Fuel Thefts, Anthony Harrup and David Luhnow,
WSJ writer and The Wall Street Journal Latin American Bureau Chief, June 18, 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303635604576391910225256264.html) //EY
MEXICO CITYMexican
Already more than 40,000 people have died in Mexico since December 2006 in
drug-related violence, most of it between rival gangs seeking to expand their
territory, according to government and newspaper estimates.
The total amount of fuel, including crude oil and gasoline, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gastaken during
the first four months of the year is slightly greater than the total amount stolen all of last
year, Chief Executive of Petrleos Mexicanos Juan Jos Surez Coppel said this week.
During the first four months of this year, these groups stole an estimated $250 million worth of fuel at market
prices, Mr. Surez Coppel said. That translates to nearly one million barrels of fuel, according to Pemex, as it's
known. Mexico relies on oil sales for about a third of its revenue.
"The
increase in theft...is due to the fact that the pipeline system has been virtually
taken over by groups associated with organized crime," Pemex says on its website.
Unless Pemex can slow the thefts, these criminal groups stand to make an estimated $750 million on stolen fuel this
year. Pemex reported a first-quarter profit of $353 million.
Suspicion for the thefts has largely fallen on Los Zetas, a gang that has branched
out to other types of organized crime and expanded its territorial control along
swaths of Mexico's eastern Gulf coast, the site of much of Pemex's operations.
President Felipe Caldern this week urged Mexican lawmakers to pass tougher laws against fuel thefts, while giving
authorities greater power to prosecute by also focusing on buyers of the stolen fuel. Those could be gasoline
stations, or factories that use diesel or bunker fuel, Mr. Surez Coppel said.
The gangs use the stolen fuel, or they sell it to other companies , sometimes across the
But the gangs are becoming more sophisticated, injecting water back into the
pipeline in some cases to avoid a drop in pressure .
Experts say Pemex bears part of the blame, too. As a monopoly, the company has long lacked a
culture of maintenance and upkeep at its facilities, including pipelines , says George
Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary who has written extensively
on both Pemex and Mexican drug gangs.
Pemex has also long tolerated theft of oil from unionized workers , Mr. Grayson said,
suggesting some union workers are probably colluding with criminal gangs to steal fuel. "I would be shocked if there
wasn't also connivance by members of the Pemex union," said Mr. Grayson.
Drug cartels are using money from oil to buy weapons and
fund battles
Hawley 10 (Stolen oil fueling Mexico's drug war Thefts used to launder cash, hike cartel
profits, Republic Mexico City Bureau, Chris Hawley, May. 30, 2010,
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/20100530mexico-oil-drug-war.html) //EY
They sell the fuel through their own gasoline stations; sell it to unscrupulous manufacturers or
trucking firms in Mexico; use it to pump up profits at front companies owned by the cartels; or sell it
to foreign refiners on the international black market.
from 102 then to 462 last year, despite renewed anti-theft efforts by Petroleos Mexicanos, the stateowned oil monopoly better known as Pemex. In 2008 alone, authorities arrested 528 people and seized
517 vehicles, Pemex said. Losses that year were $715 million; it has not released an estimate for
2009.
"It's
a big problem and a continual thorn in their side," said David Shields,
editor of Energia a Debate, an oil-industry magazine. "And the states that
have drug trafficking have more problems with their pipelines."
The thieves use powerful drills and sophisticated valves to prevent any
drop in pipeline pressure that might be detected by Pemex. They use hoses to
fill fuel trucks with the stolen liquids. Sometimes they even take a more direct approach: hijacking
tanker trucks full of fuel.
Since October, five American businessmen have pleaded guilty to importing stolen petroleum
condensate, a raw ingredient for fuels.
In the early hours of a frosty February morning,
It represents a
significant loss of government income at a time when revolution in the
Middle East has pushed crude oil prices to nearly $100 a barrel . (The Amozoc
haul would be the equivalent of about 120 barrels or roughly $12,000.) Adding to the alarm,
detectives working on several cases have traced the thefts to drug cartels,
such as the Zetas, an indication that the country's overlords of crime have
branched out into yet another line of business.
such pipeline taps a fivefold increase compared to the 136 spotted in 2005.
As with the narcotics business, the clandestine nature of Mexico's illegal oil market makes it
impossible to know exactly how much it is worth. Pemex is one of the world's leading oil companies
with revenues of $104 billion in 2010. That alone provides some 40% of Mexico's federal budget.
However,
energy analyst David Shields believes that figure is an underestimate; he
calculates that the fuel black market is now worth $2 billion to $4 billion
annually. "The government is so involved in other matters such as assassinations and whole towns
Company officials insist they are losing less than 1% of their black gold to the bandits.
being controlled by drug cartels, that the illicit fuel market doesn't seem such a big deal," Shields
says. "So the government has failed to see that it has to act more strenuously on this."
Oil thieves sometimes hawk stolen gasoline on the side of highways. But
other times it is actually sold by middlemen to Pemex franchise gas
stations and ends up in the cars of unknowing consumers. Meanwhile, stolen
crude is sold off to brick makers who use the fuel to fire their ovens; or it is smuggled across the
border and peddled to oil tycoons in the United States. Following a bi-national probe, U.S. police
charged five Houston-based oil brokers with receiving stolen Mexican fuel (in this case, petroleum
condesate), including the president of Continental Fuels who was given probation by a Houston
federal court in January.
As the fuel is stolen it can be sold for less than half the market price at a time of record highs. But
bloodshed there: the assassination of the leading gubernatorial candidate last June; the slaughter of
an entire village that had been fleeing gangsters in December; and the killing of 18 people in a single
gunfight on March 7. Stolen oil ends up low on the list of crimes for police to deal with.
Services committee. The Mexican drug cartels violence accounted for more than 6,000 deaths last year, and in
recent months it has begun spilling over into the districts of lawmakers from the southwest region, even as far north
as Phoenix, Ariz. -- which has become, Franks noted, the kidnap capital of the U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas),
have the routes, they can very easily smuggle in other things. If I was a bad guy in another country, I would go into
for drug smugglers, moved his family to El Paso, Texas, after receiving threats against his and their lives. The move
corresponded with the resignation of the citys police chief after a drug cartel promised to kill a police officer every
48 hours if he did not step down. The citys police director of operations, a police officer and a prison guard were
killed by the cartels in days prior. That was a mistake in my judgment, Franks said of the chiefs resignation. The
federal government should have come in and said listen, were going to put a Marine division there to help you out
Added U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operations chief Michael Braun: "It is not in our interest to let that
potpourri of scum to come together."
Extinction
Corsi, 5 [Jerome. PhD in Poli Sci from Harvard, Expert in Politically-Motivated Violence. Atomic Iran, Pg 1768//JVOSS]
The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will
demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage
done by the attack. The problem will be that the president will not
immediately know how to respond or against whom. The perpetrators will have been
incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the
attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers
were radical Islamic extremists. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated
until the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the
list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped
the Islamic world more than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations would
feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the
United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us. [CONTINUES} Or the
off the map,
president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be the most rational
option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add
retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would
feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For
In the first four months of 2013, Mexican state oil company Pemex
recorded 730 illegal siphons, in comparison to 377 last year, reported La
Jornada. Of those siphons, 666 targeted pipelines operated by Pemex's oil refining arm, 40 its gas
and petro-chemicals arm and 24 from Pemex Exploration and Production.
The worst hit states were Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Sinaloa, the state of Mexico and Jalisco. Authorities
have arrested 48 people for siphoning, and 180 more for transporting illegal fuel, so far this year.
Between 2011 and 2012, the number of illegal siphons detected jumped
23.2 percent, from 1,416 to 1,744. Pemex attributed the rise predominantly to a
growing interest in oil and gas theft among Mexico's organized crime
groups, but also to advances in detecting siphons.
In recent year, oil theft has gone from being characterized by petty theft
and corruption within Pemex, to a large scale criminal operation carried
out by major organized crime players, in particular the Zetas.
Since the drug cartels got involved in the trade, recorded theft has been
rising quickly, and appears to be still accelerating, suggesting the multimillion dollar trade is an increasingly important source of revenue for the
groups involved.
The idea that this acceleration is being fuelled by organized crime groups
is supported by the geography of the trade. Of the states identified by
Pemex, all but the State of Mexico have heavy drug cartel presence and
the Zetas, who are behind much of the trade are believed to be present in
all of them.
DRUGS, extortion, kidnapping, people-smuggling: Mexicos organisedcrime multinationals have a keen eye for diversification. A growing
sideline is stolen oil. In 2011 outlaws made off with 3.35m barrels of fuel
belonging to Pemex, the state-run oil monopoly, up from 2.16m in 2010. The thefts are
reckoned to deprive the company of more than $1 billion per year. Pemexs profits pay for a third of
the federal governments budget.
Stealing the fuel, which includes gas condensate and refined oil as well as
crude, is not hard. Some goes missing from lorries that are held up in
lonely stretches of desert. More is siphoned out of lengthy exposed
pipelines. Tapping the high-pressure pipes is dangerous: in 2010 a suspected attempt to puncture
one produced an explosion that caused 28 deaths.
Despite such accidents, ever more people are taking the risk. Last year Pemex
detected 1,324 taps, over twice as many as in 2010. The increase was partly down to better detection,
exploration and production arm, said on the sidelines of an oil conference in the resort city of Cancun.
"The
thefts target gasoline, diesel and crude ... they vary all the time but
without a doubt they have a major impact on the (Pemex) budget. Each
year fuel theft in Mexico has increased 30 percent," he added.
Criminals have targeted oil pipelines around the country and Pemex says
that company workers are often complicit.
Mexico is currently producing just over 2.5 million bpd, well down from a peak of 3.4 million bpd in
2004.
Despite the millions of dollars spent trying to battle theft of oil, petrol, and diesel by
Mexican criminal gangs, Pemex, the Mexican governments hydrocarbon monopoly,
has reported that the pilfering has actually continued to rise.
The amount of petroleum products stolen in the first half of this year is up 18
percent compared to 2011, totalling more than 1.8 million barrels.
Most of the criminal operations are coordinated by the Zetas , one of the largest and most
violent gangs in Mexico. It is thought that they steal the hydrocarbons from places such as Mexicos Burgos Basin
natural gas field in the north east of the country, and then sell it to Houston-based refineries.
Pemex is currently trying to take a number of Houston companies to court for either knowingly or unknowingly
trading in stolen petroleum products that have been smuggled out of Mexico since 2006.
Using sophisticated measuring systems which can detect drops in pipeline pressure ,
officials at Pemex discovered nearly 800 illegal taps during the first six months of
2012. In the whole of 2011 1,300 such taps were detected.
George Baker, a Houston-based expert on Mexicos energy industry, explained that this is not just small gangs
national treasury, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.
The widespread theft of Mexico's most vital national resource by criminal organizations represents a costly new
front in President Felipe Caldern's war against the drug cartels, and it shows how the traffickers are rapidly
evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling to activities as diverse as oil theft, transport and sales.
Oil theft has been a persistent problem for the state-run Petroleos Mexicanos, or
Pemex, but the robbery increased sharply after Caldern launched his war against
the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006 . The drug war has claimed more than
16,000 lives and has led the cartels, which rely on drug trafficking for most of their revenue, to branch out into
other illegal activities.
Authorities said they have traced much of the oil rustling to the Zetas, a criminal
organization founded by former military commandos. Although the Zetas initially
served as a protection arm of the powerful Gulf cartel, they now call their own shots
and dominate criminal enterprise in the oil-rich states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.
"The Zetas are a parallel government," said Eduardo Mendoza Arellano, a federal lawmaker who heads
a national committee on energy. "They practically own vast stretches of the pipelines, from
the highway to the very door of the oil companies."
The Zetas earn millions of dollars by "taxing" the oil pipelines -- organizing the theft
themselves or taking a cut from anyone who does the stealing , according to Mexican
authorities. The U.S. Treasury Department this summer designated two Zeta commanders as narcotics "kingpins,"
which allows authorities to seize assets.
The Zetas often work with former Pemex employees, according to Ramn Pequeo Garca, chief
of anti-drug operations at Mexico's Public Security Ministry. The former employees "are highly skilled people who
have the technical knowledge to extract oil from the pipelines. They are now under the control of the Zetas,"
Pequeo said.
Pemex, which is Mexico's largest income earner, pulling in nearly a third of the national budget,
once staked great hopes on the area and its prospects for yielding gas, abundant thanks
to the sandy soil and porous rock that make for ideal production and exploration conditions.
After dedicating nearly half a century to testing and exploration in the basin, Pemex in 2002 took the unusual step
of opening it up to foreign investment, in contrast to Mexico's historic protectionist attitude toward natural
resources. Pemex officials anticipated an injection upward of $8 billion.
Employees of Pemex and a handful of foreign-owned firms were earning well in the
basin, living good lives and working in relative safety.
Then convoys of mysterious gunmen started plying the roadways, followed by
shows of force, intimidation, beatings and, finally, the abductions. Pleas for help and
better protection, union leaders and workers say, went unheeded. The exact
motives behind the May kidnappings remain unclear.
Ramirez, the senator, said the cartel responsible, probably the Zetas, may be after
technical information to elude the measures Pemex is taking to guard against the
rampant thefts of gas and oil.
Whatever the motive, the effect has been to cripple operations in some areas of the basin.
"In the Burgos project, there are areas we cannot access," Carlos Morales Gil, director of exploration and production
for Pemex, said during a news conference in the Tabasco city of Villahermosa in July. It was a startling admission.
and experts, the Drug barons are winning. In Washington, where policy debates involving Mexico
have been confined mostly to trade and immigration for the past two decades, sudden awareness of the Drug war
has produced some alarming assessments. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was the Drug czar in the Clinton
President Obamas response to the chaos in Mexico has so far been to continue some George W. Bush
administration policies while beginning a search for others. He is expected to focus on possible regional approaches
when he attends a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago next month. Experts on the region, though, say
the magnitude of the Drug war in Mexico and its danger to the United
States far exceed the reach of existing federal policies, perhaps even the
policies the new administration is considering, such as stepped-up military
aid and regional cooperation. Uncontrolled Drug violence in Mexico, these
experts say, might result in tens of thousands of refugees surging across the
border, adding to the estimated 12 million immigrants already in the country illegally. U.S. Drug officials say that
a narco-state in Mexico could turn the ungoverned territory along the
border into a permanent springboard for Mexican Drug traffickers
smuggling their goods north into California, Arizona, New Mexico and
Texas. And economic analysts say that should the Mexican government completely
collapse, it would jeopardize oil exports from Mexico, from which the
United States receives a third of its supply. Any descent by Mexico into chaos, the
Pentagons Joint Forces Command wrote in November, would demand an American response based on the serious
implications for homeland security alone.
violent extremists, and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons. That perfect storm of
uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity
and danger with no guarantee they could gain control of the weapons and with the real possibility that a nuclear
weapon might be used.
The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its
politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained
assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict
turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any
descent by the Mexico into chaos would demand an American response
based on the serious implications for homeland security alone . Yes, the
rapid collapse of Mexico would change everything with respect to the
global security environment. Such a collapse would have enormous
humanitarian, constitutional, economic, cultural, and security implications
for the U.S. It would seem the U.S. federal government, indeed American society at large,
would have little ability to focus serious attention on much else in the
world. The hypothetical collapse of Pakistan is a scenario that has already been well discussed. In the worst
case, the U.S. would be able to isolate itself from most effects emanating from south Asia. However,
there would be no running from a Mexican collapse .
Unless the violence can be reversed, the U.S. can anticipate that the flow across the
border will continue . To his credit, Mexico's President Felipe Caldern has deployed 45,000 members of
his military and 5,000 federal police to fight drug traffickers. This suggests that he is taking the violence and the
threat to civil government seriously. But the path forward will be a difficult one . Not only
must Mexico fight its drug lords, it must do so while putting its institutional house in order. That means firing
government employees who are either corrupt or not willing to do the job required to root out corruption. It will also
interaction of the DTOs with local and national governments has also changed with the liberalization of politics in
the country and the entry of multiple political actors and several parties, making more complex the operation of the
business. Finally, the intense policies of President Caldern to combat and contain organized crime have
As a result of profound
domestic and structural changes, the number of people involved in drug
trafficking has grown. However, unlike the market of other products that operate in a legal arena,
drug cartels do not compete for prices but instead compete directly to
monopolize the means of distribution into the United States through the
use of force. The growing rivalries between drug trafficking factions have resulted in an unprecedented
increase in the levels of violence in the country. To estimate the impact of the increasing
levels of violence on economic activity is a complex activity because the drug related
fragmented the cohesion and organization of the narco-trafficking groups.
violence is different in nature than common crime. Most killings correspond to strategic assassinations of members
of rival organizations or clashes with authorities. Besides being focused, the drug-related violence is sporadic and
has a higher volatility than common criminal violence. Moreover, there is an identification problem as this type of
violence is not seen in all municipalities with drug production, distribution, or trafficking ties. This makes it difficult
to isolate the economic effect of increased levels of violence on the business activities of drug trafficking
use the analogy of Olson (2001) to imagine the cartels as stationary or roving bandits depending on how they
decide to integrate themselves into society. Stationary bandits, or benefactors, have the ability to maintain
control over their territories over the long term and therefore have incentives to reduce predatory behavior as they
look towards greater long-term gains. Roving bandits have temporary or uncertain control over their territory,
which induces them to extract rents and resources from the community at the highest rate possible through
the
war between cartels for control over certain trafficking routes has been
matched by a substantial increase in violence and petty crime, including
theft, extortion, and kidnapping. Faced with increased competition, cartels
have incentives to turn against society due to the need for greater resources to maintain their
extortion, robbery, and other crimes, to maximize short-term gain. The main argument of this study is that
armed conflicts, and because of a need to intimidate or punish members of rival organizations, as well as to exploit
new opportunities for opportunistic crime. Following the above argument, and due to the nature of drug-related
and companies can internalize any increased costs resulting from the need for
enhanced security and protection depending on their economic size and capacity. However, said
adjustments have effects on the labor market, both in the supply and
demand, and we can expect to find a marginal effect of violence on this area. Once the violence
levels have passed into the war threshold, companies and individuals
begin to change their actions in both the medium and long term, including their
location, investments, and production, in the case of commercial enterprises, and their participation in the labor
adequately captured with a linear relationship model between economic activity and violence. In our study we used
two empirical strategies to estimate both the marginal effects and the threshold effects of violence on economic
activity and labor. To estimate the marginal effects, we did an instrumental variable regression utilizing exogenous
variation of cocaine seizures in Colombia to instrument for violence. This variable was interacted with the distance
economy, we made use of synthetic control group methodology consisting of building counterfactual scenarios by
effect, rather than a linear effect of violence on economic activity, the present study provides a baseline for future
research to model and estimate in a more sophisticated way the relationship between violence and economic
performance, in particular when we study drug-related violence
generally considered the darling of Latin American foreign investment ranks 53 out of 142 countries. Violence
related to Mexicos drug trade increased dramatically after President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and
More than
47,000 people have been killed in drug violence since the start of the war on drugs
through September 2011, the last time the government released official figures. Calderon leaves
office in December after his six-year term is complete. This month he acknowledged crime is a
deterrent to foreign direct investment .
launched a war on the cartels.Almost immediately, killings in Mexico rose as the cartels fought back.
Spills defense
Ecosystems resilient
Dicks 98 (THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF MARINE OIL SPILLS Effects, Recovery and Compensation,Dr.
Brian Dicks, Technical Team Manager, International Tankers Owners Pollution Federation Ltd Paper presented at the
International Seminar on Tanker Safety Pollution Prevention, Spill Response and Compensation, 601 November
1998, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) //EY
The short-term effects of oil spills on marine species and communities are well
known and predictable. However, concems are often raised about possible longerterrn ('sub-lethal') population effects through , for example, low levels of residual oil affecting the
ability of certain species to breed successfully. In fact, extensive research and detailed post-spill
studies have shown that many components of the marine environment are highly
resilient to short-term adverse changes in the environment in which they live and that, as a
consequence, a major oil spill will rarely cause permanent effects .
A veteran of the Exxon Valdez spill and the head of the Blue
Ocean Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on marine health Safina
wanted to see the Gulf oil spill up close, to document something he was
sure would be an environmental catastrophe. Researching what would become the
20, 2010.
book A Sea in Flames which goes on sale April 19 Safina spent time with Gulf fishermen and
ecologists, toured oiled beaches and spoke to people involved in the cleanup. As long as the oil kept
spilling, just about everyone had the same opinion: the spill would be truly catastrophic for the Gulf
and its coast. "We didn't know how it would stop or when it would stop," says Safina. "Gulf fishermen
who'd invested their lives in the industry were convinced they'd never fish again."
Yet nearly a year after the spill began, it seems clear that the worst-case
scenario never came true. It's not that the oil spill had no lasting effects
far from it but the ecological doomsday many predicted clearly hasn't
taken place. There is recovery where once there was only fear. "A lot of questions remain, but
where we are now is ahead of where people thought we'd be," Safina says. "Most people expected it
would be much worse."
As we approach the anniversary of the spill, Safina's judgment is becoming the accepted wisdom: it
could have been worse. That isn't to minimize what did happen in the Gulf of Mexico. Roughly 4.9
million barrels of oil blew out of BP's broken well and bled into the water, with a portion of that crude
making landfall along the coastline. Add in the unknown effect of 1.84 million gallons (7 million L) of
chemical dispersants, much of which were applied directly to the well deep below the surface of the
ocean something that had never been done before.
Yet the damage does seem so far to have been less than feared. Take the
oil itself: scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration estimated last August that much of the oil had remained in
the Gulf, where it had dispersed or dissolved. Many environmentalists attacked the
report for underplaying the threat of large underwater oil plumes still active in the Gulf, yet later
independent scientific studies indeed found that oil had largely
disappeared from the water. Turns out we can thank bacteria. Scientists from Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory; University of California, Santa Barbara; and Texas A&M University
traveled to the site of the blown well and found that microbes had digested much of the oil and
Whales
Alt cause dragnet fishing and vessel strike
Care2 12 (Why Are Whales Dying? Because of Us, Kristina Chew, October 10, 2012,
http://www.care2.com/causes/why-are-whales-dying-because-of-us.html#ixzz2ZcVVnBZZ
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, while an environmental tragedy in so many
respects, also could not have come at a worse time for advocates of drilling off of
America's coasts. The image of hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil daily spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is
a far more eloquent and powerful rebuttal to those who want to "drill baby, drill" than any words could have been.
However, if the primary lesson which we take from this oil spill is that we should not drill for oil off of our shores,
than we have missed the point.
To a substantial extent the "drill baby, drill" slogan from 2008 was not so much a serious policy proposal as an
emphatic verbal jab aimed at the environmental movement and the other alleged elites who recognized the
seriousness of climate change and the need to change our behavior accordingly. It was a way for Sarah Palin and
her supporters to all but shout down the knowledge and environmental realities that threatened their way of life.
"Drill
baby, drill" was not so much an energy policy but a statement about one's
views towards science, the environment and a complex and changing world . It also
succeeded in precluding a serious national discussion about energy policy
The ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is, therefore, a stark reminder not only of
the perils of offshore oil drilling, but of the inevitable consequences of continuing
dependence of fossil fuels. Determining whether, when and where to drill is a difficult question, made
more difficult because we are currently staring at what can go wrong with offshore drilling. However, these are not
stand alone questions, but can only be answered in the context of a broader energy policy which includes incentives
backlash and enthusiasm from Palin and her followers. Recent events only
underscore that these ideas, which are not new, are even more relevant now. President
Obama understood this two years ago, and it was reflected in his campaign rhetoric during the election. The slow
leak of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the expanding oil slick on top of the Gulf are more reminders of the urgency of
this problem.
More
importantly, the offshore Alaska and deepwater Gulf of Mexico are the most
prospective petroleum provinces for expanding domestic supply of crude oil.
Leaving these resources in the ground will not prevent equivalent quantities of oil
and gas from being consumed; instead, unrealized production of oil and gas will
largely be replaced by imports. Although there is considerable debate over the size of the domestic
domestic offshore production will shift to imports by tanker (a more risky transport mechanism).
offshore resource, estimates of recoverable reserves continue to climband the value of the resource is substantial.
EPRINC estimates that a failure to develop these important domestic reserves could reduce prospective federal
revenues between 20-40 billion dollars per year. Large employment losses and revenues to the Gulf states are also
at risk. According to a recent estimate from Minerals Management Service offshore operations in Americaprovide
150,000 directjobs. 8 The same operations support anadditional 285,000 indirect jobs, bringing total offshore
employment (direct and indirect) to roughly 435,000 jobs. 9
Manufacturing
Latin American manufacturing is declining due to China
Oxford Analytica 10
(LATIN AMERICA/CHINA: Global crisis boosted trade ties, Oxford Analytica Daily Brief
Service, 9/15/10, ABI/INFORM)//Jax
China has contributed to the recovery of the rate of growth in Latin America. GDP in
the region is expected to expand at 5.2% in 2010 thanks, in large part, to high world
demand for raw materials, oil and gas (see LATIN AMERICA: Trade rebound again
commodity-dependent - September 14, 2010). Nevertheless, China's impact in
Latin America has also created some problems: Primary products
specialisation. In the last two years, Latin America has intensified its
specialisation in natural resources. In 2008-09, exports of raw materials and
primary-based manufactures amounted to 59% of all Latin American
exports compared to 55% in 2005-06 and 44% in 2001-02. Four-fifths of
Chinese imports from Latin America are primary goods, while a majority of
Chinese exports to the region are manufacturing goods with increasing
technological content. Expansion of Chinese manufacturing exports. Chinese
products in sectors like clothing, toys, furniture and electronics have
flooded Latin American countries and small and medium-sized firms are
finding it increasingly difficult to survive. In 2008, 22% of Chinese imports
of Latin America were basic manufacturing goods, 25% were
manufacturing goods with medium technology and 35% were high
technology products. Chinese competition in the US market. For example, in the
apparel sector Central American countries have failed to compete with
Chinese producers due to higher labour costs and lower productivity. In the
first seven months of 2010, the share of DR-CAFTA countries in US imports of
apparel was only 7.7% compared to 8.2% in 2008. Meanwhile, China's
market share has increased from 35% to 41% in the same period.
been the most widely studied of the economic effects of China's rise. Most
of the early studies were optimistic, concluding that, apart from Mexico, the
countries of the region were less threatened by Chinese exports to third markets
than were the Asian economies or the transition economies of Eastern Europe, and
that the effects were confined to a few manufacturing industries. 24 It was also
argued that over time, 'LAC's trade specialization pattern is becoming more
complementary to the specialization pattern of China'.25 However, other
authors, using more recent data and different methods, have argued that
the impact of China on Latin American exports has been both more severe,
in the case of Mexico, and more widespread, in terms of the countries that
have been affected, than this optimistic view suggests. 26 These studies
suggest that China's accession to the WTO in 2001 and the elimination of
import quotas for textiles and garments under the WTO Agreement on
Textiles and Clothing in 2005 were followed by a significant increase in
competition from China in developed country markets. Using a
methodology based on constant market share analysis developed by a
Brazilian economist, Jorge Chami Batista, the loss of exports in the US
market as a result of the increase in China's market share was estimated
for 18 Latin American countries for two periods, 1996-2001 and 2001-6 (see
Table 3). 27 The results shows clearly that while the impact of China on the
region's exports was very limited up to China's accession to the WTO in
2001, after 2001 exports to the United States from the 18 countries were
9 per cent lower than they would have been if China had not increased its
share of US imports. 28 Table 3 shows the countries most affected by Chinese
competition in the US market in the period between 2001 and 2006. Mexico is third
after the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. Other Central American countries are
also among the most severely impacted, while even the countries of Mercosur have
lost market share to China in the United States. Countries not listed, such as the
Andean countries, have been relatively unaffected, reflecting the fact that the bulk
of their exports to the United States are of primary products and resource-based
manufactures, which do not compete with Chinese exports of manufactured goods.
Table 3. Latin American Countries Most Affected by Loss of Exports to China in the
US Market, 1996-2001, 2001-6 (% of Country's Exports to the US) Source: Own
elaboration from United States International Trade Commission data available at
dataweb.usitc.gov. Thus the competitive threat from China, far from being
restricted to a few countries and diminishing over time, is both
widespread and increasingly significant. This is certainly more in line with the
perceptions of the private sector in the region than with the optimistic views put
forward by the international institutions. 29 The debate over the impacts of China
on Latin American exports takes nation-states as the key units for analysis and
regards the 'threats' as being at the country level. It should be noted, however, that
changing trade patterns often result from the strategies of multinational
corporations over the allocation of production and do not reflect the outcome of
competition between firms based in different countries. The case of the 'threat'
posed by China to personal computer (PC) exports from Mexico to the
United States illustrates this very clearly. Between 2001 and 2006 China's
share of US imports of PCs, peripherals and parts more than trebled from
14.2 per cent to 45.5 per cent, while Mexico's fell by almost half, from 13.9
per cent to 7.5 per cent. 30 This was, to a large extent, the result of several
multinational firms, such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Selectron,
The Deterrence Effect on the United States: Electricity Grids and an Airbase
Cyber capabilities have a real deterrent effect when a state shows its
capabilities to the world. This happened when the United States became
aware that its electricity network had been hacked into in 2009 and that
parts of the network allegedly could be shut down whenever the hacker
wished to do so.51 Other sources, even though a little more skeptical about the
scope of such intrusions, indicate that although these foreign intruders did
not cause immediate damage, they left behind software programs that
could be used in the future to disrupt this critical infrastructure.52 This
attack was traced to China, and the chief of counterintelligence in the
United States at the time stated that "[w]e have seen Chinese network
operations inside certain of our electricity grids."53 The fact that
Americans were not able to protect their electricity network is one critical aspect,
but another is that this shows that the United States could have a serious problem
in meeting the challenge of an ambitious Chinese cyber program.54 U.S. security
experts have previously expressed their concerns. After the April 2007 cyber
attacks on Estonia, following a surge of nationalism from Russia that caused a
severe breakdown and paralyzed the heavily IT-based Estonian infrastructure,
Pentagon cyber security expert Sami Saydjari told the U.S. Congress that
"a similar mass cyber attack could leave the United States without
power for six monthssufficient time to allow China to occupy Taiwan, or
Russia to 'liberate' Georgia."55 Such statements pinpoint the vulnerability of
U.S. critical infrastructure. At present, the United States is also behind China with
regard to the training of engineers who can be used in cyber-related functions.56
In 2009, there was a forced electronic entry into the Joint Strike Fighter
program and large amounts of data were copied.59 According to present
and former employees at the Pentagon, the attack can be traced to
China.60 This could mean that it would be easy for China to defend itself
against the aircraft (which many western countries expect to acquire) and,
assuming the attackers have acquired enough data, they may even be able to
copy parts of it.61 The American chief of counterintelligence has been
reported as saying that "our networks are being mapped" with reference
to American flight traffic control, and also as having warned about a
situation in which "a fighter pilot can't trust his radar."62
Hegemony stuff
PLA is incapable of projecting military power in the squo, and
while the PLA has made no public announcement of
establishing a Latin American base now, longterm it would be
consistent with PLA ideology. This would pose significant
threat to you US security in its backyard
Ellis 11 - Assistant Professor of National Security Studies in the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at
the National Defense University
(R. Evan, CHINA-LATIN AMERICA MILITARY ENGAGEMENT: GOOD WILL, GOOD BUSINESS., AND STRATEGIC
POSITION, Strategic Studies Institute, Aug. 2011, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?
Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA548685) //Jax
previously, the PRC has had military police in Haiti as part of the
MINUSTAH peacekeeping force since September 2004.133 Such
participation has arguably provided a valuable learning experience and
engagement opportunity for them. While far more benign than other forms
of presence, such as military bases, its activities in Haiti allows the PRC to
gain experience and develop contacts in the region, while fostering good
will among Latin American militaries that could facilitate its military
access to the region in the future. In Cuba, the PRC reportedly has a
physical presence at three or more Soviet-era monitoring facilities:
Lourdes, Bejucal,134 and Santiago de Cuba.135 With their proximity to the United
States, the bases are reportedly used by the Chinese for the collection of signals
intelligence, such as intercepting radio and cellphone transmissions, and also for
the operation of a cyber espionage and training facility in the country. In addition
to their explicitly military presence in Haiti and Cuba, the PRC also has a series
of government-operated scientific bases in Antarctica, since establishing its
first base there, Great Wall, in 1985.136 Although the sites are not of a military
character, they are supported by the PLA Navy, with the 1st Task Group
established in 2004 for the specific purpose of supporting the base and
conducting operations in the southern ocean.137 Although the frigid
temperatures and remoteness of its Antarctic facilities from the majority
of Latin American states limit their military utility, as with Haiti they have
provided opportunities to interact with the Argentine and Chilean
militaries. The Chilean base in Antarctica, for example, is located in close physical
proximity to that of the Chinese, providing opportunities for communication
and collaboration. In addition, some have speculated that the PRC presence in
Antarctica may strengthen its claim to exploit mineral deposits there,138
particularly when the current international treaty banning mining in Antarctica
expires in 2048.139 Beyond Haiti, Cuba, and Antarctica, the presence of
Chinese logistics companies in major ports of the region arguably has
some strategic military value, presenting a platform from which the PRC
could smuggle people or material into the region under the cover of
commercial operations, in the event that relations between the United
States and the PRC significantly worsen in the coming decades. Indeed,
there is a precedent for the use of Chinese commercial shipping for
military purposes. In 1991, the PRC enlisted the help of the commercial
cargo ship Yongmen, owned by China Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO), to
evacuate Chinese embassy personnel from Somalia.140 While it is important
to acknowledge the long-term strategic military value of the PRC physical presence
in Latin America, it is also necessary to put it in proper context. It would be very
difficult for the PLA to employ this commercial presence to support its
own projection of military power in the region, since com- mercial facilities
cannot be readily transformed into military bases. Moreover, the proximity to the
United States of any improvised military facilities would make them highly
vulnerable to military action in the event of overt hostilities. Nonetheless, in
such a worst case scenario, such a presence would arguably allow the
PRC to more easily deny the use of those facilities in the future by U.S.
and allied warships, or to disrupt commercial flows that support the
United States. The possibility that the firm Hutchison-Whampoa could
use its port operations at Cristobal and Balboa in the Panama Canal Zone
to close the canal to U.S. warships is illustrative.141
With communism dead, the Chinese administration has relied very heavily and successfully on
nationalism as an ideological support for its rule. The problem is that if clashes erupt over these
islands, Beijing may find itself in a position where it cannot compromise without severe damage to its domestic legitimacy very much the position
of the European great powers in 1914. In these disputes, Chinese nationalism collides with other nationalisms
particularly that of Vietnam, which embodies strong historical resentments. The hostility to China of Vietnam and most of
the other regional states is at once Americas greatest asset and greatest danger. It means that most
of Chinas neighbors want the United States to remain militarily present in the region. As White argues, even if
the United States were to withdraw, it is highly unlikely that these countries would submit meekly to Chinese hegemony. But if the United
States were to commit itself to a military alliance with these countries against China,
Washington would risk embroiling America in their territorial disputes. In the event of a military clash between Vietnam
and China, Washington would be faced with the choice of either holding aloof and seeing its credibility as an ally destroyed, or fighting China.
Neither the United States nor China would win the resulting war outright, but they would certainly
inflict catastrophic damage on each other and on the world economy. If the conflict escalated
into a nuclear exchange, modern civilization would be wrecked. Even a prolonged period of
military and strategic rivalry with an economically mighty China will gravely weaken Americas
global position. Indeed, U.S. overstretch is already apparent for example in Washingtons neglect of the crumbling
states of Central America.
assume that the U.S. military is so vastly superior to everyone else that no other nation
would ever dream of fighting a full-scale war against us. Unfortunately, that assumption is dead wrong. In recent years, the
once mammoth technological gap between the U.S. military and the Chinese military has been closing
at a frightening pace. China has been accomplishing this by brazenly stealing our technology and
hacking into our computer systems. The Pentagon and the Obama administration know all about this, but they dont do anything
about it. Perhaps the fact that China owns about a trillion dollars of our national debt has something to
do with that. In any event, today China has the largest military in the world and the second largest
military budget in the world. They have stolen plans for our most advanced jets, helicopters,
ships and missile systems. It is estimated that stealing our technology has saved China about 25 years of research and development. In
addition, China is rapidly developing a new generation of strategic weapons that could potentially
enable it to actually win a future war against the United States. At one time such a notion would have been
unthinkable, but as you will see below, the next war with China could go very badly for the United States.
In contrast to liberals, most realists are pessimists . Where liberals see progressive
forces leading the world ineluctably to ever-higher levels of prosperity and peace , realists see
inescapable laws of nature compelling a recurrent struggle for power and
survival. For liberals, history is a smoothly ascending curve; for realists, it
is a vicious circle. The reason, most contemporary realists claim, is the persistence
of international anarchy. In the absence of any higher authority to resolve disputes and
impose order, peace has usually proved fleeting and conflict has been the norm. Under conditions of
anarchy, it is the material power and, in particular, the military strength of the various units in an
international system that has typically been decisive in shaping the patterns of relations among
them.25
chinas power: rising
For realist pessimists, the single most important feature of the PRC today
is its rising power. Everything else, including the likely character of the
U.S.-China relationship, follows from this fact. Taking aggregate economic capacity as
a rough surrogate for overall national power, it is apparent that Chinas growth has
been extraordinarily rapid. Since the start of economic reforms in 1978,
the PRCs gross national product (GNP) is thought to have increased by a
factor of four and, according to some estimates, it could double again by the
middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century .26 What is especially
impressive about the Chinese economy is not only the speed with which it appears to be expanding
but its growing mass and enormous potential. Given the sheer size of its population and the rising
productivity of its workers, China may one day regain its historic position as the worlds largest
economy. Although such projections are fraught with difficulties and uncertainties, some experts have
calculated that Chinas economy could overtake that of the United States as early as 2015.27 The
combination of the speed and the magnitude of Chinas growth in recent decades appears to be
unprecedented. The closest analogy is probably the emergence of the United States as the worlds
preponderant economy
over the course of the nineteenth century.
As was true of the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, so too is Chinas rapidly growing economy bringing expanding
military capabilities in its train. A fast-growing GNP has made it comparatively easy for the
PRC to sustain a large and expanding military effort and, in recent years, Chinas spending on arms
the picture is mixed, and the PRC continues to lag in many areas, these expectations too are borne out
There are
good reasons to expect that China will be able to build and deploy more
increasingly capable military systems in the years ahead.30
by the general pattern of Chinese military development over the last several decades.
regardless of regime type; it was as true of a rising, democratic United States as it was of a rising,
autocratic Germany. As Samuel Huntington has pointed out, The external expansion of the UK and
France, Germany and Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States coincided with phases of intense
industrialization and economic development.31
them, taking steps to ensure access to markets, materials, and transportation routes; to protect their
citizens far from home, defend their foreign friends and allies, and promulgate their values; and, in
general, to have what they consider to be their legitimate say in the affairs of their region and of the
wider world. This correlation between growing power and expanding interests has been succinctly
summarized by Robert Gilpin:
The collision between the expanding interests of a rising power and those
of its more established counterparts can be dealt with in a number of
ways, but the resulting disputes are seldom resolved peacefully . Recognizing
the growing threat to its position, a dominant power (or coalition of status quo powers) may attempt
to use force preventively to destroy a rising state before it can achieve its full potential. Less
bellicose, established powers have also at times sought to appease emerging states, looking for ways
to satisfy their demands and ambitions without conflict and to engage them and incorporate them
peacefully into an existing international order. However sincere and well intentioned these efforts may
be, they have usually failed. Sometimes the reason is clearly the character of the demands of the
Even when the demands being made of them are less extensive, the status quo powers may be too
reluctant to make reasonable concessions, thereby fueling the frustrations and resentments of the
rising power, or too eager to do so, feeding its ambitions and leading to escalating demands.
Chinese strategists may be even more eager than they might otherwise be
to establish a sphere of influence or zone of control that would prevent
such threats from reemerging in the future.38
Reaching even further back into the past, other observers point to the fact that, before its decline and
domination by outside powers, China was for many centuries the preponderant force in Asia and the
hub of a Sinocentric Asian international system. As they adapt to the reality of their growing power
the
leadership in Beijing could hearken back to this earlier era of glory and
seek to reestablish China as East Asias preponderant power.39
Some U.S. government agencies have concluded that Chinas current
leaders aim to maximize [Chinas] influence within East Asia relative to
the U.S. or, more bluntly, to become the preeminent power in Asia.40 If
and look for models to guide their behavior under increasingly favorable conditions,
this is true, and assuming that the United States continues to adhere to its century-old policy of
Liberal Pessimists
Just as there can be optimistic realists, so also it is possible to be
pessimistic on what are essentially liberal groundsthat is, with reference
primarily to the internal structures and domestic political dynamics of the
United States and Chinaand to the interactions between them that may
arise as a result of their very different regimes.57
China: an authoritarian regime in transition?
Whatever it may eventually become, most observers would agree that
China today is neither a totalitarian state nor a democracy, but rather an
authoritarian regime of dubious legitimacy with an uncertain grip on
power. Its leaders are the inheritors of an ideology that has lost most of
its appeal and, far from being able to rely on the freely given support of
their people, they are heavily dependent on the military and domestic
security services for the preservation of domestic order. The Beijing
government now bases its claim to rule less on communist principles than
on the promise of continued increases in prosperity (and the avoidance of
social chaos), combined with appeals to nationalism. This is a dangerous
and unstable mixture. If economic progress falters, the present
government will have little choice but to lean even more heavily on
nationalist appeals as its sole remaining source of support. It may also be
inclined to resort to assertive external policies as a way of rallying the
Chinese people and turning their energies and frustrations outward, most
likely toward Taiwan or Japan or the United States, rather than inward,
toward Beijing. Indeed, many analysts believe that Chinas rulers have
already shown an increased inclination to behave in this way over the
course of the past decade.58
These tendencies toward hypernationalist rhetoric and action may actually
be made worse by movement toward a more open and competitive
Even though the domestic structures of the Chinese and U.S. regimes are
obviously profoundly different, their internal workings may be similar in
certain respects. Some liberal pessimists would argue that, just as there
are groups in China whose narrow political or bureaucratic interests may
be served by a competitive relationship with the United States, so also
there may be groups in the United States whose members believe they
will gain from U.S.-China tension. Such groups will naturally be inclined to
favor more confrontational policies, and they will point to each others
utterances as evidence of the need for such policies. In short, there may
exist a tacit, mutually reinforcing alliance of hawks that will make it
much harder to achieve better, more stable relations. Assessments that
overlook the existence of such factors will overstate the prospects for
harmony between the United States and the PRC.65
In announcing cuts to the defence budget over the next decade, President
Obama seemed keen to dispel the notion that this would make the US a
lesser military power. He said, The world must know the US is going to
maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible
and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats.
The USs continued military superiority has a catch though, which is that
the US will be adjusting its long-standing doctrine of being able to wage
two wars simultaneously. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta maintains that
the US military would still be able to confront more than one threat at a
time by being more flexible and adaptable than in the past.
Be that as it may, the increased focus on Asia-Pacific has upset China. Its
hope of making the region into its own strategic backyard, with the US
distracted in the Middle East and its economy in the doldrums, might not
be that easy with the new US strategic doctrine prioritising Asia-Pacific.
Not surprisingly, the Chinese media has not reacted kindly to it. According
to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, the US should abstain from flexing
its muscles, as this will not help solve regional disputes. It added, If the
US indiscreetly applies militarism in the region, it will be like a bull in a
china shop [literally and figuratively], and endanger peace instead of
enhancing regional stability.
The Global Times called on the Chinese government to develop more longrange strike weapons to deter the US Navy.
Australia, the USs closet regional ally, fears that Chinas rising economic
and military power has the potential of destabilising the region. Foreign
Minister Kevin Rudd hopes though (as he told the Asia Society in New
York) that there was nothing inevitable about a future war between the
US and China, emphasising the need to craft a regional architecture that
recognised the coexistence of both countries, and the acceptance of US
alliances in the region. He also saw hope (as a counterpoint to China) in
the collective economic might of Japan, India, Korea, Indonesia and
Australia, which means that, hopefully, Chinas perceived threat might be
balanced and contained with the USs enhanced commitment to the
region, and the rising clout of a cluster of regional countries.
There are any number of issues that could become a flashpoint for future
conflict, like Taiwan, Korea, the South China Sea and its islands, the
maritime dispute with Japan and so on. With China determined to uphold
its core national interests, and the US and others equally committed to,
for instance, freedom of navigation through the South China Sea, it only
needs a spark to ignite a prairie fire.
As it is, neither China nor the US wants military conflict between their two
countries. Chinas official position was expounded the other day in Beijing
by its Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is also the countrys president-inwaiting. Xi, who is expected to visit the US next month, hoped that the
US can view Chinas strategic intentionsin a sensible and objective way,
and be committed to develop a cooperative partnership. And he
emphasised that: Ultimate caution should be given to major and sensitive
issues that concern each countrys core interests to avoid any distraction
and setbacks in China-US relations.
The problem, though, is that when it comes to core interests, objectivity
is generally the first casualty. For instance, the US complains that Chinas
and other foreign policy outcomes in China since the end of the Cold War strengthens the plausibility of the argument in this article.
Throughout the 1990s, for example, China compromised in numerous territorial disputes to
enhance regime security, especially within its large ethnic minority frontier regions. 104 Similarly, one of the key goals in the
2006 Foreign Affairs Work Conference was to ensure that foreign policy would serve Chinas domestic priorities linked with growth and
stability. 105 Because the CCPs legitimacy depends heavily on continued economic growth, concerns about political instability among
Chinas leaders are likely to persist and should continue to influence Chinas military strategy. Whether Chinas rise will continue to be
operations are manpower intensive and, moreover, require specialized training and organization. Although they may enhance the ability to
rise" can be seen as a quintessentially political processthrough which the ruling Communist
shore up its legitimacy after the Cultural Revolution irreversibly changed the nation and caused three
crises of ideological belief, faith in the CPC, and confidence in the future. As the Party realized that the
performance-based legitimacy was the only hope for prolonging its rule, economic
development became the highest politics. Consequentially, the success of economic development would have to
Party has sought to
cause political implicationsthe external ones are carefully monitored and evaluated by China's neighbors and the only superpower of the
conservatives in the Bush Administration, the mere factor that China still sticks to communism makes view it adversely. Samuel Huntington
has added a cultural factor: in the clash of civilizations, the "unholy alliance between Islamic and Confucian civilizations" is the most
fundamental threat to the West. For people using this logic, the sensible response from the U.S. is, in the short run, a containment policy,
Second,
geopolitical and geoeconomic factors. For many realists, even China has shed off its ideological
straitjacket, as a great power in size (territory, population, and economy), China has to pursue its own interest
and respect. Nationalism may still drive China into a course of clash with the United
States, if the latter refuses to accommodate or share the leadership with China as a rising power. Some scholars fear that
democracy can unleash strong nationalism and popular nationalism can make China
even more aggressive toward the United States. Third, the collapse of China. Opposed to the
previous two perspectives, some people are concerned that if China suffers a Soviet-style suddendeath syndrome and spins out of control, it can create an even worse scenario. The sheer size
of the population makes refuge problem, the failed state and the followed crises
(warlordism, civil war, crime, proliferation of nuclear weapons, etc) impossible for the
world to deal with. Due to these three different considerations, the United States often oscillates from demonization to
romaticization of China, from containment to engagement. The U.S.-China relationship has shifted from
conflict, to confrontation, to competition and back to conflict, but so rarely features with
cooperation. One American China specialist characterizes the bilateral relationship as "the sweet-and-sour Sino-American
and confrontation is possible if needed; in the long run, the promotion of a peaceful transformation within China.
relationship."
Democracy Good
Democracy creates world stability
Lagon 11
[Mark P. Lagon =Adjunct Senior Fellow for Human Rights at the council for forging relations, Promoting Democracy: The Whys and Hows for the
United States and the International Community, February 2011 http://www.cfr.org/democratization/promoting-democracy-whys-hows-united-statesinternational-community/p24090]
Furthering democracy is often dismissed as moralism distinct from U.S. interests or mere lip service to build support for strategic policies. Yet
there
are tangible stakes for the United States and indeed the world in the spread of democracynamely,
greater peace, prosperity, and pluralism. Controversial means for promoting democracy and frequent mismatches between
deeds and words have clouded appreciation of this truth. Democracies often have conflicting priorities, and democracy promotion is not a panacea.
Yet one of the few truly robust findings in international relations is that established democracies
never go to war with one another. Foreign policy realists advocate working with other
governments on the basis of interests, irrespective of character, and suggest that this approach
best preserves stability in the world. However, durable stability flows from a domestic politics built on
consensus and peaceful competition, which more often than not promotes similar international conduct for governments. There
has long been controversy about whether democracy enhances economic development. The dramatic growth of China certainly challenges this notion.
Still, history will likely show that democracy yields the most prosperity. Notwithstanding the global financial turbulence of the past three years,
democracys elements facilitate long-term economic growth. These elements include above all
freedom of expression and learning to promote innovation, and rule of law to foster predictability
for investors and stop corruption from stunting growth. It is for that reason that the UN
Development Programme (UNDP) and the 2002 UN Financing for Development Conference in Monterey, Mexico, embraced
good governance as the enabler of development. These elements have unleashed new
emerging powers such as India and Brazil and raised the quality of life for impoverished
peoples. Those who argue that economic development will eventually yield political freedoms
may be reversing the order of influencesor at least discounting the reciprocal relationship between political and
economic liberalization. Finally, democracy affords all groups equal access to justiceand equal
opportunity to shine as assets in a countrys economy. Democracys support for pluralism
prevents human assetsincluding religious and ethnic minorities, women, and migrants from being squandered. Indeed,
a shortage of economic opportunities and outlets for grievances has contributed significantly to
the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East. Pluralism is also precisely what is needed to stop
violent extremism from wreaking havoc on the world.
Democracy bad
Middle east democracy promotion leads to instabilityempirics
Hamid 11 [Shadi Hamid= Director of Research, Brookings Doha Center, The Struggle for Middle East Democracy, April 26,
2011, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2011/04/26-middle-east-hamid]
It always seemed as if Arab countries were on the brink. It turns out that they were. And those who assured us that Arab autocracies would
last for decades, if not longer, were wrong. In the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, academics, analysts and certainly Western
latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of
America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American
War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from
Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war
against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and
subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinleys
military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure Americas
economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the open door policy. But over the next
four decades Americas aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the Pacific
would ineluctably pave the way for Japans attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus Americas
there remains anywhere a possible object of dominationa politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges
the conquerors lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to
conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind It is the
Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign
policy. The
factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War
and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads
of all humanity.
The evidence presented here supports the argument that the possession of greater military
capability has made American decision makers more likely to use force. The possession of a very sharp sword
indeed appears to have been a source of temptation. This relationship is not an accident of a single measure of
military capability but rather one that holds across several indicators. There is little evidence that
this relationship stems from policy makers' endogenous anticipation of their choices about the
use of force when procuring military capabilities. The use of force-capabilities relationship does not run entirely in one
direction, however. Although policy makers' ability to predict the future is limited, they can and do consider past experience when constructing future
capabilities. An important caveat on these results is that the military spending is not equivalent to military capabilities in contributing to more frequent
uses of force. The force structure that has prevailed since the 1980s-with a relatively smaller number of high value weapons and well-paid personnel-does not appear to promote the use of force as much as the force structure that characterized the first 30 years of the cold war, in spite of higher levels
of peacetime spending. That
fewer units are available limits the number of contingencies in which a use
of force can be undertaken. For those who worry that greater spending will encourage unwise or unnecessary uses of force, this is
good news. On the other hand, the results are consistent with the complaints of those who favor an interventionist foreign policy that the military is
force more often yet not become involved in more serious military conflicts with other states. "Uses of force" are not the same as "militarized interstate
disputes," either conceptually or operationally in the data sets usually used to examine them (Fordham and Sarver 2001). This distinction stems from
the familiar levels of analysis problem (Singer 1961; Waltz 1959). International conflict is a systemic outcome, whereas the foreign policy decisions of
particular states are unit-level events. In previous research, "arms races" are generally defined as a simultaneous buildup of military capabilities by two
or more states, something that can only be observed at the dyadic or systemic level (e.g., Diehl and Crescenzi 1998; Sample 1997, 1998; Wallace
1998). Variation in military capabilities, like the decisions it helps explain, is a unit-level phenomenon. Many uses of force, such as those undertaken
against nonstate actors or with the permission of the target state, do not result in disputes with other states. Although this evidence that greater military
capabilities increase the propensity to use force will not settle the debate over whether arms races lead to war, it nevertheless supports a claim implied
The
notion that military capabilities, including those ostensibly acquired for defense, make a state
more aggressive suggests that the security dilemma may be rooted in more than the
misperception of other states' intentions. Greater military capability might itself lead a state to
resort to force more often. Normatively, if military force should be used only for defense, or at least only as a last resort-the outlook
but not tested in a substantial body of international relations research. It also illuminates an important feature of the policy-making process.
behind Colin Powell's response to Madeleine Albright-then that being prepared to use force lowers the threshold for doing so is troubling. Analogously,
many of those who own a gun to guard their home would find it disturbing to imagine that they might be tempted to use it for other purposes, such as
making a point in an argument with the neighbors. Just as Colin Powell and Caspar Weinberger sought to establish guidelines to limit the use of
American military forces, the National Rifle Association promulgates strict rules about gun safety and for many of the same reasons. Additional military
capabilities are usually thought to provide a margin of safety against potential threats. From this perspective, other things being equal, greater military
diplomatic approaches will come to be seen as failures in dealing with North Koreas nuclear weapons program, (and there are some in the
problem, advocates of an attack may well argue, is not so much with North Koreas nuclear weapons program itself, but with the regime
likely course of events. The chance of such an attack being ordered in the next few years is perhaps something between 10% and 30%. But a
one in three chance, or even a one in ten chance, is worth taking very seriously indeed in light of what is at stake. After five decades of
stalemate on the Korean peninsula and in light of the potential consequences of the deliberate use of force, it is all too easy for analysts to
needs therefore to prepare for the possibility of a deliberate and very major attack on North Korea.
director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Clinton administration, said that previous and current administrations have appeased North Korea
rather than halt its nuclear weapons program. He said that even the George W. Bush administration ignored advice given in 2008 by now deputy
risk from a North Korean EMP attack. He said that North Korea may have developed a nuclear weapon to make what other
analysts call a super-EMP weapon to produce more gamma rays while giving off a low explosive and
radiation yield. North Korean nuclear devices are assessed to be in the kiloton rather than megaton range. However, if it is designed to emit
more gamma rays to produce a powerful EMP effect, it would have a more debilitating impact on unprotected
electronics, including the vulnerable U.S. national grid system. Gamma rays are a form of electromagnetic energy
that emits a high-intensity burst caused by the rapid acceleration of charged particles. They can be so
powerful and supercharged that they can knock out or completely fry any unprotected electronics, or
electrical systems, depending on its intensity. An EMP from a nuclear explosion is rated as the most powerful of three classes E1 being nuclear, E2
being lightning and E3 from a direct sun flare impact on electrical and electronic components. The effect of a North Korean EMP nuclear attack would
space launch vehicles resemble a secret weapon developed by the then Soviet Union called a Fractional Orbital Bombardment Systems, or FOBS. The
FOBS is designed to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the U.S. by using one of its intercontinental ballistic missiles disguised as a space launch
vehicle.
Proliferation Good
Proliferation deters conflict
Drake 11 [Bennett Drake=staff writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, GIVE NUKES A CHANCE ; CAN THE SPREAD OF
NUCLEAR WEAPONS MAKE US SAFER?, Boston Globe, original publication date 3/20/05 Last updated 8/31/11, PAIS International]hw
KENNETH N. WALTZ, adjunct professor of political science at Columbia University, doesn't like the phrase "nuclear proliferation." "The term
'proliferation' is a great misnomer," he said in a recent interview. "It refers to things that spread like wildfire. But we've had nuclear military
capabilities extant in the world for 50 years and now, even counting North Korea, we only have nine nuclear countries." Strictly speaking,
then, Waltz is as against the proliferation of nuclear weapons as the next sane human being. After all, he argues, "most countries don't need
them." But the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by those few countries that see fit to pursue them, that he's for. As he sees it,
nuclear weapons prevent wars. "The only thing a country can do with nuclear weapons is
use them for a deterrent," Waltz told me. "And that makes for internal stability, that makes for
peace, and that makes for cautious behavior." Especially in a unipolar world, argues Waltz, the
possession of nuclear deterrents by smaller nations can check the disruptive ambitions
of a reckless superpower. As a result, in words Waltz wrote 10 years ago and has been reiterating ever since, " The
gradual spread of nuclear weapons is more to be welcomed than feared." Waltz is not a crank. He
is not a member of an apocalyptic death cult. He is perhaps the leading living theorist of the foreign policy realists, a school that sees world
politics as an unending, amoral contest between states driven by the will to power. His 1959 book, "Man, the State, and War," remains one of
the most influential 20th-century works on international relations. In recent weeks, however, the spread of nuclear weapons has taken on
what might appear to be a wildfire- like quality. North Korea has just declared itself a nuclear power. Iran is in negotiations with the United
States and Europe over what is widely suspected to be a secret weapons program of its own. Each could kick off a regional arms race. And
Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, the backbone of nonproliferation efforts for the past 35 years ,
comes up for review this May, there's an increasing sense that it is failing. In such a context, Waltz's
argument may seem a Panglossian rationalization of the inevitable. Still, although heads of state,
North Korea in the past has sold nuclear technology to Libya and Pakistan, while Iran sponsors Hezbollah and Hamas. As the
legislators, intelligence officials, and opinion columnists are nearly united in their deep concern over the world's nuclearization, the
scholars who spend their time thinking about the issue are in fact deeply divided over the consequences of the spread of nuclear weapons,
even to so-called "states of concern" like Iran and North Korea. Few among Waltz's colleagues share his unwavering confidence in the
pacifying power of nuclear weapons. But plenty among them see at least some merit in the picture he paints. In part, the disagreement
between Waltz and his critics is over the meaning and value of nuclear deterrence in a post-Cold War world. But it's also an argument over
the motives that drive some countries to pursue nuclear weapons and others to want to keep the nuclear genie to themselves. . . . Waltz
spells out his theory most thoroughly in the 1995 book "The Spread of Nuclear Weapons," co-written with the Stanford political scientist
Scott D. Sagan in the form of an extended debate. Updated and republished two years ago to take into account the nuclearization of India
School of Government and one of the country's most visible nonproliferation crusaders, concedes some of Waltz's argument. "There's
something known in the literature as a 'crystal ball effect,'" Allison says. "With a nuclear war, probably most of the people living in the
capital are going to be killed, including the leader and his family, so it brings it home. You have a positive effect, and you can certainly see
that in the India-Pakistan relationship" since both countries acquired their nuclear arsenals. Yet Allison - whose latest book, the widely
noted "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe," was published last August - dismisses Waltz's larger linkage between
proliferation and security as "perverse, but nonetheless interesting." In particular, Allison argues, the time period just after a country goes
nuclear - in the case of North Korea, the present moment - is the most dangerous. This is partly because nascent nuclear nations don't have
the best command and control systems for their weapons. More troubling is that historically, in every so-called nuclear "conflict dyad" - US/
USSR, USSR/China, India/Pakistan - the first of the two to go nuclear came close to launching a preemptive attack to profit from its nuclear
advantage. And the precarious hold on power of the government in a nuclear nation like Pakistan only adds to the volatile mix. Even today's
long-established nuclear powers, Allison points out, may owe their continued survival as much to luck as logic. John F. Kennedy himself put
the chance of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis at one in three - odds, Allison notes, that are twice as high as those in Russian
Roulette. To share Waltz's faith in the pacifying effects of proliferation, says David Goldfischer of Denver University's Graduate School of
International affairs, is to subscribe to a sort of "nuclear theology." (Goldfischer is himself a proponent of what he calls Mutual Defense
Emphasis - a proposed treaty regime in which nuclear arsenals would be sharply reduced and mutually acceptable missile defenses
installed by opposing nuclear powers.) Waltz, Goldfischer charges, "is utterly convinced that there's a rational core in every brain similar to
his own, which will act somehow at the critical moment, and that no one will be able to reach a leadership position in any society who will
make the potentially suicidal decision to launch when a massive retaliation is a certainty." And that doesn't begin to account for the
possibility of an accidental launch or an attack by an Al Qaeda operative whose effective statelessness and hunger for martyrdom make him
undeterrable. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and another preeminent realist thinker, describes
Whatever its sympathies, Mearsheimer argues, "Iran is highly unlikely to give nuclear
weapons to terrorists, in large part because they would be putting weapons into the
hands of people who they ultimately did not control, and there's a reasonably good
chance that they would get Iran incinerated" if the weapon was traced back to the regime in Tehran. "Any country
that gave [nuclear weapons] to terrorists who would use them against the US," Mearsheimer adds, "would disappear from the face of the
earth." . . . The problem of "loose nukes" - in particular, Russia's inability in the years since the Cold War to keep track of all its nuclear
materials - shows that even a country's strong interest in maintaining control of its nuclear weapons is no guarantee that some won't fall
into the wrong hands, raising the threat of nuclear terrorism. Nevertheless, thinkers like Waltz and Mearsheimer, with their dogged focus on
the calculus of national advantage and interest, raise a question that tends to get lost in much of the news coverage of proliferation: Do
nuclear states like the United States oppose proliferation simply out of concern for their citizens' safety, or is there something more
strategic at work? In Waltz's formulation, nations acquire nuclear weapons not to menace their neighbors but to protect themselves. And to
the governments of North Korea and Iran, the primary threat is the United States. "If you were making decisions for North Korea or Iran,"
Waltz asks, "wouldn't you be deadly determined to get nuclear weapons, given American capability and American policy?" Seen this way,
the near- term proliferation threat is less to our homeland - neither North Korea or Iran, for example, has
the missile technology to deliver a warhead to the continental US - than to our ability to project power and shape
world affairs. The United States, in other words, worries as much about being deterred as
being attacked. "The truth is that countries that have nuclear weapons will be off-limits,"
says Mearsheimer, "which is why [those countries] want them." The more nuclear nations, then, the less
leverage America has. According to political scientist Robert Jervis, Waltz's colleague at Columbia, " We can't threaten to
invade them. We even will have less ability to launch really heavy covert operations." Even
our allies, should they go nuclear, will start to distance themselves, Jervis predicts. "If proliferation were to spread to Japan, South Korea,
and Saudi Arabia - they will obviously still need us, but not as much, and it reduces our leverage in that way as well." By this logic, one
Washington's deep
and vocal concern over proliferation only enhances the perceived value of such
weapons. "But we have overwhelming conventional superiority," says Jervis, "and we'd be much better off if [nuclear weapons] were
option for the United States would be to play down the importance of nuclear weapons. As Jervis notes,
abolished. We should be saying they're not such a big deal. What has France gotten from its nuclear weapons?" Ultimately, however, no
amount of military might allows a country to wish away the Bomb. Whether or not nuclear weapons make the world a more dangerous place,
they certainly make it a more humbling one, and their spread only narrows the options of the world's sole superpower.
the long run, proliferation will decrease and eventually eliminate the probability
of nuclear war. Often these writers admit that, in the best of worlds, nuclear weapons would not exist. But they go on to argue that,
because nuclear technology has been discovered and widely promulgated, nuclear
disarmament is impossible. Therefore, they conclude, the best feasible goal is to proliferate
nuclear weapons selectively, but steadily. One of the earliest proponents of this argument was the retired French Air
Force General Pierre Gallois (1961). More recently, the argument has been formalized and elaborated by such scholars as Intriligator and
Brito (1981), Waltz (1982), and Bueno de Mesquita and Riker (1982). The argument of these writers is as follows: Any nuclear power can
nuclear powers
cannot attack other nuclear powers (at least not with nuclear weapons), because any
such attack will be returned in kind. These theorists admit that proliferation 1. ." in its early stages may raise the
launch a nuclear attack against any nonnuclear power, because there is no threat of retaliation. However,
probability of nuclear war, because an increasing number of nuclear powers would be poised to attack a fairly large number of nonnuclear
powers. But, they say, in its later stages proliferation will lower the probability of nuclear war because most states would then have the
tended to choose between the two classical arguments pragmatically, the rule for policy being that "where you stand depends on where you
sit." Supporters of the anti-proliferation argument tend to be states that already possess nuclear weapons (or that have firm alliances with
nuclear powers), states that have little hope of developing nuclear weapons, and states that either have no need for nuclear weapons or that
have rejected them on moral grounds. Supporters of the pro-proliferation argument tend to be states that have some real prospects for
developing nuclear weapons in the near future (e.g., Argentina and Brazil), and especially the subset of these states that face unfriendly
neighbors that have either a nuclear force of their own or conventional forces so large that
Proliferation Bad
Proliferation leads to nuclear warpast deterrence theory fails
Walton 06 [Dale C. Walton= Associate Professor of International Relations at Lindenwood University, Navigating the Second Nuclear
Age: Proliferation and Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century, Global Dialogue, winter 2006, PAIS International]hw
The simple - indeed the perfect - answer to these uncertainties is to deny nuclear arsenals to "roguish", or potentially roguish, states.
Unfortunately, however, there is every reason to believe that it will be impossible to do so consistently. Rather, we should expect the number
of nuclear states to increase over time. This is not to say that there will be no non-proliferation victories. Some states seeking nuclear
weapons will be dissuaded from acquiring them (as Libya apparently was), and on rare occasions a nuclear state may even denuclearise (as
South Africa did). However, it would be naive to assume that this means that the spread of nuclear weapons can be reversed overall.
Knowledge about any technology can be expected to spread over time and nuclear weapons are an old invention: they were first built six
decades ago. Unsurprisingly, there are increasing numbers of individuals from (currently) non-nuclear countries who are knowledgeable
about nuclear technology. Moreover, given ongoing advances and concerns about the price of fossil fuels, it is quite likely that nuclear
power is about to enjoy a worldwide revival in popularity, a development that would in tum make it all the more difficult to control the spread
of fissile material. Although well-designed counter-proliferation efforts can slow the spread of nuclear weapons, further proliferation should
be regarded as a certainty. This means that there
US-Soviet nuclear war may have been only narrowly avoided. Such a conflict could
well have spelled the end of modern civilisation, at least in the northern hemisphere. Today, there appears to be
little immediate danger of a civilisation-shattering nuclear conflict. It is far more likely that the next nuclear conflict will involve, at most, a
few dozen warheads rather than the tens of thousands that might have been used in a US-Soviet war. That may be cold comfort when one
contemplates the horrors that even a "small" nuclear war would entail, but the fact that today there is little danger that the modern world will
be wiped out in an afternoon is important nonetheless.
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at CU-Boulder , Alan Robock=Distinguished Professor of climatology in the Department of Environmental
Sciences at Rutgers University, Richard P. Turco=Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Director of the UCLA, Charles Bardeen= is a graduate
student in PAOS, with interests in the observation and modeling of stratospheric aerosols, Luke Oman= Research Physical Scientist NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center Earth Sciences Division Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Laboratory, and Georgiy L. Stenchikov=Research Professor
Department of Environmental Sciences Rutgers, Science,New Series, Vol. 315, No. 5816 Mar. 2, 2007, pp. 1224-1225 Published by: American
Association for the Advancement of Science, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20035690] hw
acquiring
nuclear weapons has been considered a potent political, military, and social tool (1-3).
The world may no longer face a serious threat of global nuclear warfare, but regional conflicts continue. Within this milieu,
ended by several treaties in the 1990s (6). We can hope that these agreements will hold and will serve as a model for other regions, despite
and are now thought to have between 109 and 172 weapons of unknown yield (9). Fatalities were estimated by means of a standard
such an
exchange between India and Pakistan (10) could produce about 21 million fatalities about
half as many as occurred globally during World War II. The direct effects of thermal radiation and nuclear
blasts, as well as gamma-ray and neutron radiation within the first few minutes of the
blast, would cause most casual ties. Extensive damage to infrastructure, contamination
by long-lived radionuclides, and psychological trauma would likely result in the indefinite
abandonment of large areas leading to severe economic and social repercussions. Fires
ignited by nuclear bursts would release copious amounts of light-absorbing smoke into the
upper atmosphere. If 100 small nuclear weapons were detonated within cities, they could generate 1 to 5
million tons of carbonaceous smoke particles (4), darkening the sky and affecting the
atmosphere more than major volcanic eruptions like Mt. Pinatubo (1991) or Tambora
(1815) (5). Carbonaceous smoke particles are transported by winds throughout the atmosphere but also induce circulations in response
to solar heating. Simulations (5) predict that such radiative dynamical interactions would loft
and stabilize the smoke aerosol, which would allow it to persist in the middle and upper
atmosphere for a decade. Smoke emissions of 100 low yield urban explosions in a regional nuclear conflict
would generate substantial global scale climate anomalies, although not as large as in previous "nuclear
winter" scenarios for a full-scale war (11,12). However, indirect effects on surface land temperatures,
precipitation rates, and growing season lengths (see figure, page 1225) would be likely to
degrade agricultural productivity to an extent that historically has led to famines in
Africa, India, and Japan after the 1783-1784 Laki eruption (13) or in the northeastern
United States and Europe after the Tambora eruption of 1815 (5). Climatic anomalies could
persist for a decade or more because of smoke stabilization, far longer than in previous
nuclear winter calculations or after volcanic eruptions. Studies of the consequences of full-scale
1224 nuclear war show that indirect effects of the war could cause more casualties than
direct ones, perhaps eliminating the majority of the world's population (77, 72). Indirect effects such as damage
population database for a number of countries that might be targeted in a regional conflict (see figure, above). For instance,
to transportation, energy, medical, political, and social infrastructure could be limited to the combatant nations in a regional war. However,
climate anomalies would threaten the world outside the combat zone. The
per kiloton of explosive yield are roughly 100 times those expected from estimates for
full-scale nuclear attacks with high-yield weapons (4). Unfortunately, the Treaty on Non
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons has failed to prevent the expansion of nuclear states. A
bipartisan group including two former U.S. secretaries of state, a former secretary of defense, and a
former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee has recently pointed out that
nuclear deterrence is no longer effective and may become dangerous (3). Terrorists, for
instance, are outside the bounds of deterrence strategies. Mutually assured destruction may
not function in a world with large numbers of nuclear states with widely varying political
goals and philosophies. New nuclear states may not have well-developed safeguards and
controls to prevent nuclear accidents or unauthorized launches. This bipartisan group detailed
numerous steps to inhibit or prevent the spread of nuclear weapons (3). Its list, with which we concur, includes removing nuclear weapons
from alert status to reduce the danger of an accidental or unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon; reducing the size of nuclear forces in all
states; eliminating tactical nuclear weapons; ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty worldwide; securing all stocks of weapons,
weapons usable plutonium, and highly enriched uranium everywhere in the world; controlling uranium enrichment along with guaranteeing
that uranium for nuclear power reactors could be obtained from controlled international reserves; safeguarding spent fuel from reactors
producing electricity; halting the production of fissile material for weapons globally; phasing out the use of highly enriched uranium in civil
commerce and research facilities and rendering the materials safe; and resolving regional confrontations and conflicts that give rise to new
nuclear powers. The analysis summarized here shows that the world has reached a crossroads. Having survived the threat of global nuclear
war between the superpowers so far, the
Against a nuclear-armed
Tehran, however, Washingtons military freedom of action is greatly constrained,
undermining the U.S.s strategic position in the region. On the other side of the debate, proliferation
pessimists argue that a nuclear Iran threatens the United States primarily because an
unstable Iranian regime and loose government control over the Iranian security services could lead to
some kind of nuclear accident. A nuclear accident may one concern of U.S. strategists, but if so, it is at the bottom of the
list. As we saw above, it is likely that the United States fears nuclear proliferation in Iran for the same
reasons that it has been threatened by nuclear proliferation to other states in the past. A
nuclear Iran could: deter the United States from using military force in the Middle East,
reduce the effectiveness of American coercive diplomacy against Iran , trigger instability
in the region that could require U.S. intervention, undermine U.S. alliance relationships in
the region and beyond, and lead to further nuclear proliferation in the region
compounding these strategic costs.
United States has the option to use military power to its advantage in its relationship with Iran.
Terrorism bad
Terrorism leads to supply chain disruption--piracy
Boles 04 [Tracey Boles, Global Economy's Reliance on China Shipping Lanes An Easy Target for Terrorists, Sunday Business, London,
March 14 2004, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/463722116?accountid=14667]
Mar. 14--One
pirates would, but went to the bridge to steer the tanker and replace its communications system with one of their own. After checking the
system worked, they disembarked the ship. Armstrong said: " The
Terrorist use of a nuclear explosive could take two forms. First, the terrorist group could
seize and detonate an intact nuclear weapon originating from a military arsenal. Second
the group could acquire enough weapons-usable fissile material - highly enriched
uranium (HEU) or plutonium - to make and explode a crude nuclear bomb, termed an
"improvised nuclear device". Radiological attacks could involve the sabotage of, or an attack on, nuclear facilities such as
nuclear power plants and spent-nuclear-fuel storage pools, or the use of radiation dispersal devices, one type of which is popularly known
as a "dirty bomb". Many people would probably lump all of these attacks together as nuclear terrorism because each type involves a
"nuclear asset". However, the likelihood of these acts varies considerably. Experts have reached consensus that terrorist detonation of
nuclear explosives is far less likely to occur than terrorist use of a dirty bomb or terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant. In particular,
making even a crude nuclear explosive is much harder to do than building a dirty bomb. Fissile materials to power nuclear weapons are far
less available than potent radioactive sources to fuel dirty bombs. Intact nuclear weapons are less prevalent and usually much more secure
than either weapons-usable fissile material or radioactive sources. Building even a crude nuclear explosive demands technical skills that
to cause a release of radiation by such means because of the strong security typically surrounding commercial nuclear sites and because of
the safety systems that can mitigate the effects of an attack. Nonetheless, compared to the multiple challenges in acquiring or making a
nuclear weapon, a terrorist attack against a nuclear power plant appears less daunting. Nuclear and radiological terrorism also differ
markedly in their consequences. Although dirty bombs could cause dozens of fatalities from the conventional blast, they would typically kill
few, if any, people in the near term from exposure to ionising radiation. Over a period of several years, however, many people might develop
Diseases have a significant negative impact on agricultural productivity The burden on agriculture of endemic
and naturally imported epidemic disease is high, confirming the capacity of animal and plant diseases to cause economic harm. The United States is
free of many globally significant livestock diseases because of effective surveillance of herds and imports and aggressive eradication campaigns. Even
reduced bushels per acre) and quality (e.g., blemished fruit, toxins in grain) of yield; short-term costs of control (e.g., cost of purchasing and applying
pesticides) and long-term costs (e.g., development of resistant varieties of crops through breeding and development of new pesticides);extra costs of
harvesting and grading diseased agricultural products (e.g., separating diseased from disease-free fruit);costs of replanting blighted fields; costs of
or very low incidence level through a range of management techniques (Fry 1982).The exception is when a disease has a very narrow geographic
distribution (as would a newly introduced exotic disease),spores are not dispersed great distances, and disease incidence is low. In such a situation,
eradication may be feasible. Despite
Department of Plant Pathology at the Ohio State University, Attack on Agriculture: Low-Tech, High-Impact Bioterrorism., July 2002, American Institute
of Biological Sciences, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1641/0006-3568%282002%29052%5B0569%3ABAOALT%5D2.0.CO%3B2, Vol. 52, No. 7 pp.
569-576]hw
Agricultural bioterrorist attack can have severe economic consequences Even a massive
outbreak of plant or animal disease in the United States would not cause famine; the agricultural sector is
too diverse, too productive, and too closely regulated for that to be a realistic possibility. However, a successful attack could have
severe economic consequences. The most substantial impact would be the loss of
international markets for animal or plant materials. Member nations of the World Trade Organization
are entitled to ban imports of plant or animal materials that may introduce exotic
diseases into their territories (Wheelis 1999b, FAS 2001). Thus, importing countries that are
themselves free of a particular highly contagious animal or plant disease will routinely impose
sanitary or phytosanitary restrictions on trade with countries in which that disease
breaks out. This can result in billions of dollars of lost trade. For instance, as soon as the first case
of FMD was reported in the United Kingdom last year, the European Union (and other
countries) immediately blocked imports of British beef, sheep, and swine and products derived from them. The total sum
of lost revenues from contracted international markets has not yet been determined, but it will certainly be billions of dollars. For the
United States, with $41 billion of beef, $19 billion of diary, and $14 billion in pork sales
annually (USDA 1997), the trade consequences of an outbreak of FMD could be much
larger. A recent study of the impact that an outbreak of FMD would have on California agriculture concluded that losses, using
conservative estimates, would be $6 billion to $13 billion even if the outbreak were contained within California and eradicated within 5 to 12
weeks (Ekboir 1999). Karnal bunt of wheat, caused by the fungus Tilletiaindica, provides another example of severe economic
the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) immediately mobilized efforts to contain
the outbreak within the original small area and to eradicate the disease. From 1996 to 1998, APHIS spent over $60 million on the effort, and
growers in this small affected area lost well over $100 million from lost sales and increases in production costs (Bandyopadhyay and
Frederiksen 1999; John Neesen [APHIS], personal communication, 2 April 2002). In this case, the localized nature of the outbreak allowed
the United States to convince its trading partners that none of the contaminated wheat was entering the market, and wheat exports
continued from the rest of the country. Unfortunately, karnal bunt was recently discovered again, this time in Texas (AgNet 2001), and a new
These diseases of animals and crops are highly contagious and spread effectively from a
point source, as the recent FMD outbreak in the United Kingdom dramatically confirms. Moreover, humans can safely handle the
causative organisms, with no risk of becoming infected. None of the plant pathogens of concern, nor most of the animal pathogens, cause
disease in humans. Thus, there is no need for vaccination, prophylactic antibiotic use, or special precautions to prevent infection of the
perpetrators. Although a small outbreak may not produce a large psychological impact (relative to a single person dying of anthrax or
smallpox), several of these pathogens owe much of
imposed in response to a few cases; thus, even small outbreaks can have very large
economic effects. A few cases of FMD scattered around the country could interrupt much of US animal product exports for several
months, even if the outbreaks were promptly contained (importing countries would want to
wait several weeks or months to verify that the outbreak was truly contained before resuming
imports). Obviously it is technically easier to cause a few scattered cases of disease than to prepare a kilogram-sized stockpile of
the terrorists are sufficiently patient to allow a crop disease to develop over several months by transmission from individual to individual.
And the
the
economic damage and disruption caused would be out of all proportion. The
psychological impact of 3 such an outrage, mass hysteria and uncertainty amongst the population of
the longer term effects of exposure to radiation, could outweigh the impact of the
September 2001 attacks. Offices in affected areas would have to be evacuated and employees would refuse to return to work
take months, depending upon the degree of contamination. Fatalities would not compare with the attacks in September 2001; however
because of fears of radioactive contamination meaning some key offices could not remain open. Whilst the IRA attacks on the City of
London in 1992 (Baltic Exchange), 1993 (Bishopsgate) and 1996 (Canary Wharf) were conventional attacks resulting in relatively few
casualties, the economic cost of these attacks came to an estimated 2000 million Pounds Sterling. The financial and psychological impact of
An accident in Goainia,
Brazil in 1987 illustrates the impact of a radiological attack. In this case workers dismantling a
laboratory unknowingly exposed 100 g. of Caesium-137. As a result, 112.000 persons had to be examined for signs of
exposure, a process which took months to conduct. Exposure to radiation resulted in 4 deaths and 260
persons showed signs of exposure, of which 49 required hospital treatment. Furthermore,
even non affected persons showed signs of stress induced symptoms of radiation
poisoning including vomiting and blistering. Goainia is an agricultural centre and all
deliveries of produce to other regions were suspended until the clean up was concluded
resulting in economic hardship and closure of factories. The international sign for radioactive hazard is
a dirty bomb attack on any one of the three locations would by far exceed the damage done by the IRA.
today integrated in the flag of the province, a clear indication of the impact this accident had on the region.
Terrorism good
Terror not an existential risk but that rhetoric has sustained US
heg
Marcopoulos 09 [Alexander J. Marcopoulos, J.D. from Tulane, BA in Economics and Philosophy Terrorizing Rhetoric: The
Advancement of U.S. Hegemony Through the Lack of a Definition of Terror, January 13 2009, SSRN,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1327155]hw
In summary, an examination of U.S.
rhetoric during the Cold War provides useful insight into the
ways in which U.S. rhetoric regarding terrorism has been exploited as a vehicle for
maintaining U.S. hegemony. Because of its ability to shape conceptions of truth and cater
to human emotions such as fear, language can be an effective tool in a nations quest to
project power. Specifically, because the U.S. has (perhaps strategically) failed to provide a static definition for the word terror, it
has been able to invoke that word to construct threats, to inspire fear, and to plot a particular strategic foreign policy course. It is thus
submitted that not
since the red scare rhetoric of the Cold War has a single word been able
to affect such tremendous policy change in the world. Having established that the lack of a definition of the
word terror has allowed the U.S. to exploit it as a vehicle for hegemonic power
projection, this Paper will conclude by inquiring whether in doing so, the U.S. has engaged in a sustainable enterprise. In terms
of the U.S. being able to invoke the word terror to justify throwing its weight around in
the international community, it appears as though the Bush Administrations War on
Terror strategy successfully preserved U.S. hegemony in some ways. However, this Paper will
attempt to prove that the current approach is growing increasingly untenable and will force the incoming Obama Administration to plot a
new foreign policy course with regard to terrorism. As previously discussed, the U.S. has done many things to exploit the lack of a static
definition of terror. It is here that the dots should be connected to paint a picture of the mechanics of the U.S.s hegemonic strategy
regarding the use of the word terror. The U.S. has taken a word traditionally used to describe a certain type of criminal act.166 It has
international community in motion at the drop of a hat (or bomb), as evidenced by the quickness with which the U.S. has been able to use it
War on Terror. However, as time goes by and the shock of the September 11 attacks has subsided, the international community has become
less and less sympathetic to the demands of the U.S. regarding terrorism.177 That fact is underscored by the decline of support for the
Bush Administrations policies domestically and the failure of the Republican Party to retain its control of the executive and legislative
branches of the federal government. Perhaps the U.S. is unable to sustain this form of hegemony after all. There was a time immediately
following the September 11 terror attacks when the U.S. was able to capitalize on the sympathy of the rest of the world regarding the
When the attacks were still fresh in the minds of people all
over the world, it seemed as though the U.S. could garner support for almost any
shocking blow that it had just been dealt.178
Congress has already approved $40 billion in spending to rebuild and fight
terrorism after last weeks attacks, and theres a good chance that many more billions
will be ladled for tasks such as rescuing the beleaguered airline industry and upgrading
national security. Economists are hoping that the burst of wartime spending will counteract not only the financial fallout from last
weeks attacks, but also the long decline of the economy over the last year. The bottom line is that, in a sufficiently
aggressive military posture, you could actually have a positive economic effect from
this, says Robert Litan, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, in a briefing. Just look, for example,
at the postwar prosperity resulting from the United States involvement in World War II.
Such government spending acts as a stimulus, because those funds would have otherwise
been languishing in the so-called Social Security lock box. Otherwise that money would have been sitting
flagging finances?
in T-bills [Treasury bonds] with an IOU to the Social Security trust fund, said Ross DeVol, an economist at the Milken Institute. The
Ten years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. security infrastructure has
changed dramatically. Sen. Slade Gorton, the first permanent appointment to the 9/11 Commission, tells NBR that much has
improved. Intelligence-sharing and cooperation within the government have drastically
increased. Meanwhile, the United States has fallen short of the commissions recommendations for allocating intelligence funding and
reforming congressional oversight. Ahead of the 9/11 Conference that NBRs Slade Gorton International Policy Center will host on
September 9, Sen. Gorton reviewed the last decade of security policy and previewed the challenges to come. What has the United States
have budgetary authority over the other intelligence agencies, and Congress did not give the DNI that authority. Nonetheless, our gathering,
our sharing, and our use of counterterrorism intelligence have been greatly improved. They ought to be;
billion a year now, double the amount that we were spending before 9/11. I think weve
tripled the amount that were spending on the CIA, though much of that is for technical
equipment and infrastructure. I think the number of people working for the CIA has only increased by about a third.
coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats and attacks.
Among its functions was the coordination of efforts to protect the United States and its
critical infrastructure from the consequences of terrorist attacks. This included
strengthening measures for protecting energy production, transmission, and
distribution; telecommunications; public and privately owned information systems;
transportation systems; and, the provision of food and water for human use. Another
function of the Office was to coordinate efforts to ensure rapid restoration of these
critical infrastructures after a disruption by a terrorist threat or attack. Many of the functions of the
Office of Homeland Security were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security when the latter was established (see below). 20 The
EO also established the Homeland Security Council . The Council is made up of the President, Vice-President, Secretaries of Treasury,
Defense, Health and Human Services, and Transportation, the Attorney General, the Directors of FEMA, FBI, and CIA and the Assistant to the
President for Homeland Security. The EO was later amended to add the Secretary of Homeland Security. Other White House and
departmental officials can be invited to attend Council meetings. 21 The Council advises and assists the President with respect to all
aspects of homeland security. The agenda for those meetings shall be set by the Assistant to President for Homeland Security, at the
direction of the President. The Assistant is also the official recorder of Council actions and Presidential decisions. 22 In January and
February 2003, this E.O. was amended (by Executive Orders 13284 and 13286, respectively). The Office of Homeland Security, the Assistant
to the President, and the Homeland Security Council were all retained. However, the Secretary of Homeland Security was added to the
Council. The duties of the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security remained the same, recognizing the statutory duties assigned to
Board. The Board was chaired by a Special Advisor to the President for Cyberspace Security . 24 The Special Advisor reported to both the
Assistant to the President for National Security and the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. Besides presiding over Board
meetings, the Special Advisor, in consultation with the Board, was to propose policies and programs to appropriate officials to ensure
protection of the nations information infrastructure and to coordinate with the Director of OMB on issues relating to budgets and the
position of Special Advisor. The Advisory Council was retained, but now reports to the President through the Secretary of Homeland
Security. In July 2002, the Office of Homeland
It also
introduced a new class of assets, called key assets, which was defined as potential targets whose
of Homeland Security lead agency for a number of sectorspostal and shipping services, and the defense industrial base.
destruction may not endanger vital systems, but could create a local disaster or profoundly affect national morale. Such assets were defined
later to
include national monuments and other historic attractions, dams, nuclear facilities,
and large commercial centers, including office buildings and sport stadiums, where large
numbers of people congregate to conduct business, personal transactions, or enjoy
recreational activities. 25
The 2001 terrorist attacks underscored the importance of the minor investments made in
public health preparedness in the last decades of the 20th century. These investments were
made largely in response to a growing awareness of the emergence and re-emergence of
infectious diseases and to reports of an extensive Soviet bioweapons programme. 3,4 New funding resources for
infectious diseases led to improvements in epidemiological capacity at the state and
local levels, a core national stockpile of medical assets, and a novel laboratory diagnostic network for bioterrorism agents. Since
9/11, the US public health system has received unprecedented national investments in
recognition of its importance to the national security. These investments have resulted in increased capacity that is most evident in well
departments, and emergency medical services. These interactions are supported by the incorporation of public health components into the
programme 5 ). The mission of the Laboratory Response Network has expanded from biological and chemical agents to include emerging
Act of 2001 6 and the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, 7 which substantially strengthened the ability of the USA to oversee select agents and toxins
that could pose public health threats. A recent Presidential Executive Order 8 stipulated that the list of select agents will be adjusted to
focus on agents of greatest concern. Several US Government programmes (eg, CDCs Global Disease Detection,
Department of Defenses Biological Threat Reduction Program, Department of States Global Threat Reduction Programs, and USAIDs
Although preparedness and response capabilities for public health emergencies have been difficult to define and measure 10 (a task that
CDC continues to address 11 ), reports from CDC and organisations such as the Trust for Americas Health have documented substantial
improvements. 12,13 These reports show that public health departments are now better equipped to identify health threats rapidly and have
improved their abilities to respond effectively to and communicate emergencies. For example, 48 of 50 states (96%) have shown their ability
to activate staff and their emergency operations centres. Similarly, the medical response to a public health emergency has been
strengthened. 14 Progress in preparedness made in the past decade has benefited routine and large scale or unexpected responses,
therefore saving lives and preventing illness and injuries. 15 Annual investments through CDCs Public Health Emergency Preparedness
cooperative agreement with states support crucial everyday systems. These investments support more than 5000 front-line public health
workers who routinely assist local and regional responses for incidents 24 h per day 7 days per week, such as outbreaks of foodborne and
infectious diseases, and regional environmental disasters, such as wildfires, floods, and ice storms.
analysts believing that Beijing somehow triumphed over Washingtons implicit resistance. Given the stakes involved, it would be imprudent to allow
The key here is not merely assuring Beijing that the U.S. does
not support Taiwanese independence, as both the Clinton and Bush administrations have done. This is an essential part of the
task, to be sure, but it is not enough. Instead, American representatives must also stress that the U.S. is
prepared to accept unification if it is reached peacefully and consensually.
Chinas overly pessimistic perceptions to persist.
destruction isn't big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at
least some increase in business spending." Krugman is committing the brokenwindow fallacy on a massive scale. Since the World Trade Towers were small as a
percent of our economy, and their destruction will lead to a small amount of
increased business investment, and this is good for our economy, all we need to do
to really improve our economy is encourage lots of business investment by this
method.
Warming Bad
Global warming is real, the brink is now and will lead to
extinction.
Hansen et. al 12
[James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice, Jan 5, 2012, NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120105_PerceptionsAndDice.pdf]hw
The question then becomes, what is the most appropriate base period to use. We will argue that the appropriate base period is close to our initial
choice, 1951 1980. Also
we suggest that the "small" 0.5C global warming of the past three decades
already has practical effects, which will become major impacts if projected global warming of
2C or more this century is allowed to occur. The most useful base period, we suggest, is one representative of the climate to which life
on Earth is adapted. Paleoclimate data show that global temperature has been quite stable for a long period, more than ten thousand years, the
than at any time in the past several thousand years. Global temperature in 1951 1980, which is the earliest period with good global coverage of
meteorological stations, is ore representative of the Holocene and the climate to which plant and animal life on the planet is adapted. Changes of
( 24 26 ) . Although extreme heat waves and record floods receive most public attention, we wonder if there is not also a more pervasive effect of
warming that affects almost everyone. Natural ecosystems are adapted to the stable climate of the Holocene. Climate fluctuations are normal, but the
eastern Pennsylvania property of one of us (JH) exhibit signs of stress. Arborists identify proximate causes (borers and other pests, fungus, etc.) in
each case, but climate change, including longer summers with more extreme temperature and moisture anomalies, could be one underlying factor. The
tree species in this region have existed for millennia; it is implausible that Native Americans had to water the birch trees to keep them alive, as is the
report identifies a number of extremely severe risks for vital human support systems.
this
With extremes of
temperature,
heat waves, rainfall, and drought are projected to increase with warming; risks will be much
the most adverse impacts on water
availability are likely to occur in association with growing water demand as the world population
increases. Some estimates indicate that a 4C warming would significantly exacerbate existing water scarcity in many regions, particularly
northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, while additional countries in Africa would be newly
confronted with water scarcity on a national scale due to population growth. Drier conditions are projected for southern
Europe, Africa (except some areas in the northeast), large parts of North America and South America, and southern Australia, among others.
Wetter conditions are projected in particular for the northern high latitudesthat is, northern North America,
higher in a 4C world compared to a 2C world. In a world rapidly warming toward 4C,
northern Europe, and Siberiaand in some monsoon regions. Some regions may experience reduced water stress compared to a case without climate
Subseasonal and subregional changes to the hydrological cycle are associated with
severe risks, such as flooding and drought, which may increase significantly even if annual
averages change little. With extremes of rainfall and drought projected to increase with warming, these risks are expected to be much
higher in a 4C world as compared to the 2C world. In a 2C world: River basins dominated by a monsoon regime,
such as the Ganges and Nile, are particularly vulnerable to changes in the seasonality of runoff,
which may have large and adverse effects on water availability. Mean annual runoff is projected to decrease by
change.
20 to 40 percent in the Danube, Mississippi, Amazon, and Murray Darling river basins, but increase by roughly 20 percent in both the Nile and the
may decrease beyond these temperatures. New results published since 2007, however, are much less optimistic. These results suggest instead a
latitude coastal areas and increase seawater penetration into coastal aquifers used for irrigation of coastal plains. Further risks are posed by the
projected to reverse these gains in a number of regions: substantial increases in stunting due to malnutrition are projected to occur with warming of 2C
hantaviruses, leishmaniasis, Lyme disease, and schistosomiasis. Further health impacts of climate change could include injuries and deaths due to
Warming Good
No impact to warming and a laundry list of benefits outweigh
progress
Baliunas 02
[Sallie Baliunas= an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics PhD degrees in astrophysics from Harvard
University, The Kyoto Protocol and Global Warming, May 2002, http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climatechange/Baliunas.pdf]
No catastrophic humanmade global warming effects can be found in the best measurements of climate. The
alleged impacts havent occurred. Hurricanes have not increased in the United States over
the last half of the twentieth century; key infectious diseases such as malaria have been eradicated in
the United States by the health, living and technological advances made in the last century. 2.
Energy-use helped accomplish this last advance and it has also fed vast numbers of people while elevating
them from poverty. The longevity, health, welfare and productivity of humans have
improved with the use of fossil fuels for energy, and the resulting human wealth has
helped produce environmental improvements beneficial to health as well. 3. Carbon dioxide, the
primary greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels is not a toxic pollutant. It is
essential to life on earth. Plants, including crops, have flourished owing to the aerial
fertilization effect of increased carbon dioxide in the air. Agricultural experts estimate a 10 per cent
increase in crop growth in recent decades owing to the heightened concentration of
carbon dioxide in the air. The best science offers little justification for the rapid cuts in carbon dioxide mandated by the Kyoto
Protocol. Furthermore, the economic consequences come with considerable human and
environmental risk, at the cost of no significant climatic improvement in terms of avoided
temperature rise by the middle of the twenty-first century, according to the climate simulations. Given the lack of benefits for the
Three things can be said about the risk of perilous global warming from human energy use: 1.
Kyoto Protocol, what then is guiding its international momentum? One strong factor is the philosophy of the Precautionary Principle in
environmental regulation. The Precautionary Principle disallows an action that might harm the environment, until the action is certain to be
environmentally harmless. That philosophy is antithetical to science in practice, because it sets an impossible goal in proving harmlessness
with certainty. Despite the lack of evidence for catastrophic global warming and its calamities, the temptation to adopt a policy of doing
against a risk known reasonably well in outcome and probability of outcome. In the case of human-made global effects, the risk, premium
insuranceas stated above, the averted temperature resulting from mandated emission cuts will be inconsequential in terms of natural
climate variability. The underlying basis for the international negotiations is the Rio Treaty of 1992, which specifically states that
concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not emissions, be stabilized. In order to stabilize the airs concentration of
25% of the amount now sequestered in the oceans. If 90% of this 10,000 GT C were absorbed by oceans and
other reservoirs, atmospheric levels would approximately double, rising to about 600 parts per
million. (This assumes that new technologies will not supplant the use of hydrocarbons during the next 1,000 years, a pessimistic
estimate of technological advance.) One reservoir that would moderate the increase is especially
important. Plant life provides a large sink for CO2. Using current knowledge about the
increased growth rates of plants and assuming a doubling of CO2 release as compared
to current emissions, it has been estimated that atmospheric CO2 levels will rise by only
about 300 ppm before leveling off (2). At that level, CO2 absorption by increased Earth biomass
is able to absorb about 10 GT C per year.
As atmospheric CO2 increases, plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water
as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life,
which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally. Figures 17 to 22 show examples of
experimentally measured increases in the growth of plants. These examples are representative of a very large research literature on this
subject (49-55). Since plant response to CO2 fertilization is nearly linear with respect to CO2 concentration over a range of a few hundred
ppm, as seen for example in figures 18 and 22, it is easy to normalize experimental measurements at different levels of CO2 enrichment.
This has been done in figure 23 in order to illustrate some CO2 growth enhancements calculated for the atmospheric increase of about 80
ppm that has already taken place, and that expected from a projected total increase of 320 ppm. As figure 17 shows, long-lived (1,000- to
2000-year-old) pine trees have shown a sharp increase in growth rate during the past halfcentury. Figure 18 summarizes the increased
growth rates of young pine seedlings at four CO2 levels. Again, the response is remarkable, with an increase of 300 ppm more than tripling
the rate of growth.
Figure 19 shows the 30% increase in the forests of the United States that has
taken place since 1950. Much of this increase is likely due to the increase in atmospheric
CO2 that has already occurred. In addition, it has been reported that Amazonian rain forests are
increasing their vegetation by about 34,000 moles (900 pounds) of carbon per acre per
year (57), or about two tons of biomass per acre per year. Figure 20 shows the effect of CO2 fertilization on
sour orange trees. During the early years of growth, the bark, limbs, and fine roots of sour orange trees growing in an
atmosphere with 700 ppm of CO2 exhibited rates of growth more than 170% greater than
those at 400 ppm. As the trees matured, this slowed to about 100%. Meanwhile, orange production was 127%
higher for the 700 ppm trees. Trees respond to CO2 fertilization more strongly than do
most other plants, but all plants respond to some extent. Figure 21 shows the response of
wheat grown under wet conditions and when the wheat was stressed by lack of water.
These were open-field experiments. Wheat was grown in the usual way, but the
atmospheric CO2 concentrations of circular sections of the fields were increased by
means of arrays of computer-controlled equipment that released CO2 into the air to hold the levels as
specified. While the results illustrated in figures 17-21 are remarkable, they are typical of those reported in a very
large number of studies of the effect of CO2 concentration upon the growth rates of
plants (49-55). Figure 22 summarizes 279 similar experiments in which plants of various types were raised under CO2 -enhanced
conditions. Plants under stress from less-than-ideal conditions a common occurrence in
nature respond more to CO2 fertilization. The selections of species shown in figure 22 were biased toward plants
that respond less to CO2 fertilization than does the mixture actually covering the Earth, so figure 22 underestimates the effects of global
CO2 enhancement. Figure 23 summarizes the wheat, orange tree, and young pine tree enhancements shown in figures 21, 20, and 18 with
two atmospheric CO2 increases that which has occurred since 1800 and is believed to be the result of the Industrial Revolution and that
which is projected for the next two centuries. The relative growth enhancement of trees by CO2 diminishes with age. Figure 23 shows young