1ac

1AC Plan
The United States federal government should cooperate with the People’s
Republic of China and the Russian Federation to negotiate an international
agreement that bans debris-producing destruction or damage of orbiting space
systems.
 1AC Arms Race
The rising trend of kinetic ASAT arms racing is catastrophic—inadvertent
nuclear escalation is extremely likely in a case where ASAT capabilities strike
early warning communications satellites.
The threat of pre-emptive strikes encourages escalation to nuclear use.

Johnson-Freese 17—Joan Johnson-Freese, Professor and the Charles F. Bolden, Jr. Chair of
Science, Space & Technology at the Naval War College, Ph.D., Kent State University, 1981,
Political Science/International Relations (“Protecting Space Assets,” Chapter 1 of Space Warfare
in the 21st Century: Arming the Heavens, Routledge)

Space warfare runs two untenable risks: the creation of destructive debris and escalation to
terrestrial, even nuclear, warfare. Kinetic warfare in space creates debris traveling at a speed of more than
17,000 miles per hour, which then in itself becomes a destructive weapon if it hits another object—even
potentially triggering the so-called Kessler Syndrome,86 exaggerated for dramatic effect in the movie Gravity. Ironically, both China
and the United States learned the negative lessons of debris creation the hard way. In 1985, the United States tested a miniature
homing vehicle (MHV) ASAT launched from an F-15 aircraft. The MHV intercepted and destroyed a defunct US satellite at an altitude
of approximately 250 miles. It took almost 17 years for the debris resulting from that test to be fully eliminated by conflagration re-
entering the Earth’s atmosphere or being consumed by frictional forces, though no fragment had any adverse consequences to
another satellite—in particular, no collisions. China irresponsibly tested a direct-ascent ASAT in 2007, destroying one if its defunct
satellites. That test was at an altitude almost twice that of the 1985 US test. The debris created by the impact added 25 percent to
the debris total in low Earth orbit87 and will dissipate through the low Earth orbit, heavily populated with satellites, for decades,
perhaps centuries, to come. Perhaps most ironically, because of superior US debris-tracking capabilities, the United States—even
though not required to do so—has on more than one occasion warned China that it needed to maneuver one of its satellites to avoid
a collision with debris China itself had likely created.88 In 2013, a piece of Chinese space junk from the 2007 ASAT test collided with
a Russian laser ranging nanosatellite called BLITS, creating still more debris.89 The broader point is that all
nations have a
compelling common interest in avoiding the massive increase in space debris that would be
created by a substantial ASAT conflict.
Gen. Hyten has said that not creating debris is “the one limiting factor” to space war. “Whatever you do,” he warns, “don’t create
debris.”90 While that might appear an obvious “limiting factor,” preparing to fight its way through a debris cloud had been a
Pentagon consideration in the past. Now, however, sustaining the space environment has been incorporated
into Pentagon space goals.

Beyond debris creation, MacDonald points out that as

China becomes more militarily capable in space and there
is more symmetry between the countries, other risks are created – specifically, escalation.

That is, theUnited States could threaten to attack not just Chinese space assets, but also ground-based assets,
including ASAT command-and-control centers and other military capabilities. But such actions, which would
involve attacking Chinese soil and likely causing substantial direct casualties, would politically weigh much heavier than the U.S. loss
of space hardware, and thus might climb the escalatory ladder to a more damaging war that both sides would
probably want to avoid.91

MacDonald isn’t alone in concerns about escalation. Secure World Foundation analyst Victoria Samson has also voiced apprehension
regarding US rhetoric that does not distinguish between actions against unclassified and classified US
satellites, stating that “things can escalate pretty quickly should we come into a time of
hostility.”92

Theresa Hitchens explained the most frightening, but not implausible, risk of space war escalation in a
2012 Time magazine interview.
Say you have a crisis between two nuclear-armed, space-faring countries, Nation A and Nation B, which have a long-standing border
dispute. Nation A, with its satellite capability, sees that Nation B is mobilizing troops and opening up military depots
in a region where things are very tense already, on the tipping point. Nation A thinks: “That’s it, they’re going to
attack.” So it might decide to pre-emptively strike the communications satellite used by Nation B to
slow down its ability to move toward the border and give itself time to fortify. Say this happens and Nation B has no use of satellites
for 12 hours, the time it takes it to get another satellite into position. What
does Nation B do? It’s blind, it’s deaf, it’s
thinking all this time that it’s about to be overwhelmed by an invasion or even nuked. This is possibly a
real crisis escalation situation; something similar has been played out in U.S. Air Force war games, a scenario-planning
exercise practiced by the U.S. military. The first game involving anti-satellite weapons stopped in five
minutes because it went nuclear – bam. Nation B nuked Nation A. This is not a far-out, “The sky’s falling in!”
concern, it is something that has been played out over and over again in the gaming of these things, and I have real fears about it.93

While escalation
to a nuclear exchange may seem unthinkable, in war games conducted by the military,
nuclear weapons are treated as just another warfighting weapon.

Continued space arms race ends strategic stability ---it makes the risk of
accidental nuclear launch unacceptable---ONLY clarity and certainty over early
warning satellites maintains deterrence
Arbatov 19 — Alexey Arbatov (head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of
World Economy and International Relations, PhD, History, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, MA, Moscow State
Institute of International Relations, former scholar in residence and chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation
Program, member of the research council of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the governing board of Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, and the Russian Council for Foreign and
Defense Policy), 6-28-2019, “Arms control in outer space: The Russian angle, and a possible way forward,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, Volume 75, pages 157-158, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2019.1628475, [accessed: 8/1/19]
Prospects for agreements

Traditionally, practical (in contrast to romantic) disarmament stemmed from emergence of the overlapping strategic interests of the parties. Proceeding from common interest, initial US-Russian space arms
limitation may capitalize on strategic stability the concept of , which for 20 years served as the basis for START treaties.44 The concept of strategic stability was

formalized in the US-Soviet Declaration of 1990 ,45 which set out a goal: a state of strategic relationship under which the incentives for a first nuclear strike by either the United
States or Russia were removed.

Space arms control efforts may be related to strategic stability, first of all, if theyaim at enhancing survivability of early-warning
the the

satellites that provide info rmation about foreign ballistic missile launches 90 seconds after their start . Information about the origin,

Russia sustains it as the

scale, and initial direction of a missile attack is indispensable for retaliation in the form of launch-onwarning. This type of response is one of the operational options of both nuclear superpowers, but

principal concept of its nuclear deterrence strategy.46

A missile attack should also be confirmed by land based radars 10–15 minutes after its detection by satellites. After that, the leadership of the attacked nation would have several minutes to take political decision and technically authorize the launch of its own

Early warning
combat ready ICBMs and, for Russia, also for the firing of some missiles on submarines that are in their bases, rather than at sea. by satellites also allows alerted strategic aircraft to
immediately take off before they are destroyed at the airfields (leaving the possibility of calling them back in case of a false alarm).

With boost-glide hypersonic systems ICBMs might be launched on warning

the advent of , the on the basis of satellites’ detection of a

land-based radars unable to provide timely confirmation

hostile missile launch alone, beingASAT of an incoming hypersonic attack.47 Thus, an

threat to early-warning satellites would increase the risk of inadvertent or accidental nuclear tangibly

war caused by false alarm or interruption of communication with satellites

the firing missiles as a result of .

launch-on-warning
The creates a threat of nuclear war that might erupt due to a
concept is controversial and risky; it

technical malfunction, unauthorized actions, or a political miscalculation. even if both 48 But

countries abandon this operational concept, early warning

were to space systems would remain crucial for nuclear deterrence and strategic stability. They

provide timely warning to national leaders so they can take cover or delegate (underground or in the air)
authority for implementing retaliation to survivable command posts; make decisions that will increase the survivability of nuclear forces (such as dispersing ground-mobile ICBMs and putting aircraft
in the air); and have full understanding on the origin and scale of attack.

leaders will have time to make a thought-through decision

Possessing this information, on the scale and targets of a delayed second strike or any other response

This capability provided

steps. by early warning satellites reduces the incentives for a nuclear
– in large part –

first strike and enhances mutual nuclear deterrence and strategic stability.

Early-warning satellites also play a role in ballistic missile defenses. For many years, the assessment of anti-missile defenses as destabilizing or stabilizing has been a subject of great controversy between, on the one hand, the United States and its allies and, on the
other, Russia and China. Still, even if ballistic missile defense systems are considered destabilizing, there are numerous ways to defeat them besides putting early-warning satellites in jeopardy – which would be destabilizing no matter what.

Satellites of this class are located at geostationary or highly elliptical orbits.

There is good news in this context: At the moment, Russia

neither the
is reconstituting its constellation with the deployment of the Unified Space System. The United States meanwhile is replacing its old Defense Support Program satellites with the new Space-Based Infrared System. To date,

United States nor Russia has operationally deployed dedicated high-orbit anti-satellite weapons .

Those available are dual-purpose systems an element of (the US sea-based Aegis SM-3 and Russia’s land-based Nudol’ and forthcoming S-500 Prometey ballistic missile defense systems).

the dual-purpose nature of

On the one hand, ASAT systems makes their verifiable ban or
US and Russia’s main existing

limitation highly problematic. On the other hand, the existing systems are primarily for low-orbit interception ,
except for surveillance and space awareness satellites that are on high orbits and may be used to attack other satellites.

The aff’s ban on kinetic ASATs solves- focusing on hit-to-kill operations is the
first step in getting US, Russia, and China on the same page.
- High-value satellites for communication, navigation, and missile warning are higher up
- Arms-race of kinetic ASATs – testing creates debris jeopardizes satellites
- Ban on hit-to-kill is verifiable, prevents debris causing tests, and slows development

Lewis 14—Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James
Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies
at Monterey (“They Shoot Satellites, Don’t They?” Foreign Policy, August 9th,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/09/they-shoot-satellites-dont-they/)

China’s
Hit-to-kill is really just an advanced defense technology. There is a lot of talk about China pursuing "asymmetric" technologies to threaten the United States. But this is a case where

interest is totally symmetric. The Chinese are interested in hit-to-kill for the same reasons as the
United States is. In fact, the Chinese are probably doubly interested because they don’t want to be left behind as the United States develops an important new defense technology that can be used
to intercept anything — airplanes, missiles, and satellites. China might have shot down a missile during its last test, but it is really building up a broad technological capability that can be used for any number of

What Beijing ultimately chooses to do with its hit-to-kill capability, once the country has it, depends on a
missions.

lot of factors, not all of which are under our control.

It’s not only the United States and China . Russia, as well as many of America’s allies like Japan and Israel, are
investing in hit-to-kill systems that can be used for missile defense or anti-satellite applications. This is the basic technology that Israel uses in Iron Dome to intercept short-
range rockets. (Iron Dome doesn’t have any capability against satellites, but Israel’s Arrow system does, as might longer-range versions derived from Iron Dome.) Even India is getting

into the act.

the proliferation of hit-to-kill technologies means that many,

Which brings us to the problem. Whatever one thinks of missile defenses,

many countries are going to have very fancy anti-satellite weapons in the not-so-distant future.

Satellites are far more vulnerable than ballistic missiles — and a lot more important. China will never come
under ballistic missile attack from the United States unless America is starting a nuclear war. That’s not very likely. On the other hand, in a conventional conflict over

Taiwan or some rock outcropping doomed by global warming, China might be tempted to start knocking down U.S. or
Japanese satellites. No country depends on satellites for military operations more than the
United States do. The problem is that many countries also depend on these satellites for a range of civilian
applications including communications and navigation. And all of these assets would be jeopardized by the debris from anti-
satellite test strikes.
For a long time, some people argued that the proliferation of hit-to-kill systems might be a problem — but only for satellites in low-Earth orbit. These are mostly (though not exclusively) the satellites that take the

The really high-value civilian and

sort of pictures you find in Google Earth. The International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope are in this orbit too.

military satellites are used for communication, navigation, and missile warning. These are
higher up, with navigation satellites in medium-Earth orbit and satellites for missile warning and communications higher still in geosynchronous orbit. Which brings us to an ambiguous, but distressing
event.

In May 2013, China conducted a curious high-altitude scientific experiment, sending a sounding rocket into the
magnetosphere to release a cloud of barium powder. Although Beijing has a real research program to study the magnetosphere, this launch seemed different in a lot of important ways, from how it was conducted

to the secrecy surrounding it. The evidence is really quite ambiguous, but as my colleague Brian Weeden argues in a very long essay, the simplest explanation is that it was a test of a hit-
to-kill system that can reach geostationary orbit.

If China is developing an anti-satellite capability to hold at risk all U.S. satellites , this is a very
distressing development. After the mid-1980s, the United States gradually lost interest in developing
debris-creating anti-satellite weapons because it has the most to lose if space becomes so littered
with debris that it is unusable. China and Russia, on the other hand, might not be so delicate if push came to shove. A world filled
with hit-to-kill anti-satellite missiles should be very disturbing.
So what to do?

One option is to negotiate some sort of ban on hit-to-kill anti-satellite weapons. Washington and Moscow tried to do this in
the 1970s, but issues of definition and verification were pretty difficult. Remember the U.S. missile defense system modified to shoot down USA-193? How would the Russians know that software isn’t installed on
every U.S. Aegis destroyer?

Despite these problems, there are some verifiable partial measures, such as a ban on any hit-to-kill
test that creates orbital debris. That won’t stop the development of hit-to-kill capabilities for missile defense — but it would mean that
China’s newest SC-19 and any follow-on systems would remain untested against a real target.
That’s not much, but it’s something — and a place to start.

In 2008, then President-elect Barack Obama actually came out in support of such an agreement. That’s right, he filled out a little survey for the Arms Control Association that included the sentence: "I will pursue
negotiations of an agreement that would ban testing anti-satellite weapons." (Full disclosure: I volunteered on the team that actually filled out the survey for him. I hope you aren’t scandalized that presidents
don’t fill out questionnaires by themselves or that people try to put words in the president’s mouth!)

The administration simply hasn’t followed up on the idea of negotiating a ban on anti-satellite testing, despite the importance of protecting U.S. assets in space. The administration has stated, in its National Space
Policy, that it "will consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable, and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies." This is an
improvement over the 2006 edition, as U.S. officials argue, but it is still a passive position of waiting for someone else to come up with an idea to solve the problem. And it sure as hell doesn’t do anything to
prevent China from developing ever better anti-satellite missile technology.

Still, there are already a number of proposals outlined by various experts who share my concern about the proliferation of hit-to-kill technologies and the threat to space assets. So, perhaps it is time that the
administration consider some of them. Bruce MacDonald wrote a report for the Council on Foreign Relations that contained the model for such a treaty. Geoffrey Forden outlined a slightly different version in
Arms Control Today, while the Stimson Center’s Michael Krepon has suggested that the United States, Russia, and China could agree to a moratorium on "further [anti-satellite] tests that generate long-lived,
indiscriminately lethal space debris" as part of the now-stalled effort to develop a code of conduct for space activities. I have even offered my own meager thoughts on such an agreement in exchange for a few
days per diem in Geneva.

The short version of all the proposals is simple : no blowing things up in space that leaves a
bunch of space junk. All of these proposals aim to prevent the creation of yet more debris that will
threaten the commercial, civil, and military uses of space , while also trying to slow the
development of dedicated anti-satellite systems. States will still develop hit-to-kill systems — like the United States, Russia, and China — and have a latent capability
to threaten space assets. But the least we can do is prevent a race to start testing these systems against live

targets in orbit.

There is value to limiting anti-

I think a fair-minded observer would conclude that such a treaty certainly meets the criteria outlined in the National Space Policy.

satellite testing; the creation of debris is easily verified; and it would not limit U.S. missile
defense programs. But perhaps most importantly, a ban on anti-satellite tests that create debris in space would be more in the interest of the United States than any other country on Earth.

Even a small nuclear exchange kills millions and results in global famine
Erin Hunt 18, Program Manager at Mines Action Canada, working in humanitarian
disarmament in various capacities since 2006 and doing public education on the Ottawa Treaty
banning landmines since 2003, 6/25/18, “Sustaining Destruction: Nuclear Weapons and the
Sustainable Development Goals,” https://impakter.com/sustaining-destruction-nuclear-
weapons-sustainable-development-goals/

A single nuclear weapon detonated in a major city could kill millions and continue to cause
harm to people and the environment for decades . The humanitarian community knows that no relief efforts will be possible in the face of a nuclear
detonation, no state, agency or international organization has the capacity to respond to the

devastation caused by a nuclear weapon. A limited nuclear exchange is predicted to result in a global famine
that would kill two billion people due to the soot deposited in the atmosphere . That soot would alter
temperatures and decrease food production around the world . Costs would skyrocket and the most

vulnerable people who are already malnourished or food insecure would no longer be able to
afford food. As food prices increase and famine sets in, people will be forced to migrate to survive thus increasing pressure on the few areas still able to produce food.
While the international community is taking steps to address climate change, there are significantly fewer plans to address the threat posed by nuclear weapons. This lack of action is problematic because

nuclear weapons also hamper other global efforts like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a universal call to action to end poverty,
protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity, the SDGs set an ambitious and inclusive agenda for
development. All states have committed to working towards these targets by 2030. However, a commitment to the SDGs is completely incompatible with the use, development or possession of nuclear weapons
or the reliance on nuclear deterrence.

nuclear conflict would have disastrous consequences for global development . Global
As mentioned above, a limited

famine would make the achievement of the SDGs impossible. Clearly, the SDGs around reducing poverty and hunger, increasing health and human rights, and

building economic security for all would see dramatic declines in a situation where the majority of
the planet is struggling to feed themselves.

Chinese and Russian action is reactionary to US – absent diplomacy and arms

control, great power competition will consume space. Military modernization in
space drives arms racing and inevitable conflict—the aff’s narrow agreement
solves.
Lamrani 18—Omar Lamrani, Senior Military Analyst, Stratfor, master's degree from the
Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (“Space: The Final Frontier for War?” RealClearDefense,
September 25th,
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/09/25/space_the_final_frontier_for_war_113
835.html)

The U.S. move to beef up its defenses in space is understandable given the increasing attention the frontier is
receiving from its closest competitors, China and Russia. Both countries continue to develop their anti-satellite capabilities,
including specialized maneuvering satellites that could be deployed to either conduct repairs on other satellites or interfere with them in a nefarious way. Nevertheless, in the

absence of parallel diplomatic efforts and a wider comprehensive strategy to establish international standards for
conduct in space, the U.S. move to strengthen its defenses in space could drive the Russians and the Chinese to
accelerate their own space militarization efforts. For instance, the United States could technically use
interceptors, which are essential to a space-based ballistic missile defense system, to destroy other satellites — a fact that is bound to
drive Beijing and Moscow to establish their own deterrents in space in the absence of
significant transparency or agreements.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty is the world's foundational and governing document on space. The agreement bars members (including the United States, Russia and China) from placing nuclear weapons in space
and mandates only non-military activity on the moon and other celestial bodies. The pact does not, however, enact restrictions on the placement of conventional weapons in space, and subsequent efforts to
impose such limits, including the 2006 Space Preservation Treaty, have failed.

Such blanket treaties are unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future because of their significant limitations, as well as concerns over the ability to verify
compliance. The United States has especially voiced concern in this regard, repeatedly voting down such initiatives in addition to noting that the treaties fail to take into account the ability of terrestrial anti-
 transparency and
satellite weapons to damage space assets. Nevertheless, the dim prospect of any blanket ban on weapons in space should not limit the effort to engage in

confidence-building measures, which could provide a foundation for more narrow arms control
agreements that limit specific aspects of the increasing militarization of space or the scope of such activities over the
long term.

Whether or not U.S. defense in space is best served by the creation of a new service is an organizational question that will attract debate over the next few years both inside and outside the military. What the

any space
question does not address is the need to incorporate a simultaneous and concerted effort to establish international norms in space to prevent a destabilizing, militarized space race. Because

conflict would produce large amounts of space debris that would ruin the orbiting assets of all
countries — and devastate the world economy in the process — the only way to win a war in space is to not fight one. To that end, space should increasingly be
seen through a prism akin to that of nuclear deterrence in which the ultimate aim is to prevent a
space war from ever occurring. There is a vital need to build up a defensive capacity to deter an attack in space, but this capacity should be
tempered by outer space treaties and norms in much the same way as arms control agreements have played a vital role in restricting nuclear arsenals. The
future of the world and its neighborhood depends on it.
 1AC Solvency
The aff solves – China and Russia say yes, and other countries get on board.
Arbatov 19 (Alexey, Center for International Security at the Institute of World Economy and
International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the advisory council to
the Russian foreign minister and an adviser on defense and security to the head of the Center
for Strategic Research, member of the governing board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and of
the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of
International Studies at Monterey, former deputy chair of Defense Committee in Russian
parliament, former head of nuclear non-proliferation at Carnegie Moscow Center, “Arms control
in outer space: The Russian angle, and a possible way forward,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Volume 75, Issur 4, 2019, Taylor & Francis)

By the logic of the past ABM, SALT, and START agreements, an obvious common interest of the United States and Russia in
space should be to limit as much as possible (if total prohibition is unfeasible) the dedicated anti-satellite systems that
threaten the early-warning satellites of each nation. The negotiations on these ASAT systems
should be narrow, at least initially, to avoid overburdening the diplomatic process. This approach would leave out some
systems and perceived threats that are difficult to technically define or that pose huge verification problems (i.e. lasers, particle-beams, electronic jamming, cyber systems). But this method of focusing

on the ASAT systems whose prohibition or limitation could be verified would facilitate the start
of the process, like limiting the number of missile launchers available to each country did 50
years ago at the SALT-I talks.

The ability to elaborate realistic and reliable verification means is crucial to the success of
practical arms control. No doubt, it would be preferable to prohibit deployment of high-orbit anti-satellite systems, regardless of their destruction mechanism or basing modes – but for
technical reasons, this would be very difficult to do in a verifiable way. The development of reliable, direct-ascent ASAT systems to

attack early warning satellites in high orbits, however, would require major programs and realistic
testing that would be impossible to conceal.

Instead of prohibiting deployment of such high-orbit systems, the parties could resolve this problem indirectly, agreeing as a first step to
prohibit testing of anti-satellite systems involving the actual destruction of target satellites (space
objects) – that is, the kind of tests conducted by the USSR in 1960s and the 1980s, by the United States in the 1980s and 2008, by China in 2007 and by India in 2019. This test ban would not affect

already tested ASAT systems, but would seriously hamper the development of high-orbit follow-on weapons. At

the same time, such a ban would limit the growing volume of space debris threatening the
satellites of all nations.

Verification of such an agreement could be based on national technical means, preferably in conjunction with
cooperative measures and well-defined transparency. For example, the existing format for notification
of all missile launches should be expanded to all experiments that have a destructive effect on
space objects. Elimination of obsolescent satellites that threaten to fall to Earth should be conducted under the supervision of the other party or parties, with sufficient information presented so as
to remove suspicion of tacit ASAT testing.

Rendezvous and proximity operations – in which one satellite is maneuvered close to another – may gradually enhance anti-satellite capabilities and
eventually come to threaten early-warning satellites. This threat may be addressed at a later stage of talks.
A partial solution might consist of an agreement that would strictly regulate the permitted speed and distance of such approaches
toward all space objects and require pre-notification of all such operations.
The first treaty could initially involve the United States, Russia, and, one might hope, China and India, but also provide for
the possibility of membership for any other country in the future. The treaty could be limited to a 10-year
period, with the option of extending. This period would be less than the time required for the
deployment of any technically feasible space-based ballistic missile defense system that would be a primary
concern and target of Russian (and Chinese) land-based ASAT programs. That is why banning anti-
satellite tests might be acceptable to them. Besides, as with any other such agreement, this first anti-satellite weapon treaty should contain the right of
withdrawal, should an extraordinary event jeopardize the “supreme interests” of either side. Russia (and China, if it joined such an agreement) could make a unilateral statement referring to the creation of space
ballistic missile defense as a possible cause for invoking the withdrawal right.49

FOOTNOTE 49. If other nations follow India’s 2019 ASAT test example, it might be politically difficult to preserve a bi- or trilateral ASAT test ban. However, strategically this should not be an obstacle: the
deterrence to ASAT development by third states may rely on other weapon systems and
strategies rather than development of analogous anti-satellite arms (all the more so that third states would hardly have similar
high-value space systems of their own as objects for retaliation).

this proposal appears to be relatively

The proposed treaty has obvious deficiencies, but its advantages clearly outweigh its shortcomings. Perhaps most important,

feasible as a practical first step in preventing the weaponization of outer space. It is

strategically attractive to the parties, it has clear technical properties that could reasonably be addressed, and
compliance with those regulations could be verified through national technical means and
cooperative measures already in use.

the alternative to the

One final argument in favor of the proposed treaty: the apparent absence of realistic alternatives for initiating measures that promote space non-weaponization. In reality,

would be no legal restrictions on the weaponization of outer space, which would

proposed treaty

gradually transform it into an arena for arms racing and , potentially, armed conflicts.

The logic of arms control in space adopted by the plan hamstrings the U.S.
pursuit of national domination – an international legal regime would prevent
imperial expansion into space in favor of binding commitment to equal access.
Tannenwald ‘4 Nina, Joukowsky Family Research Assistant Professor and Director of the
International Relations Program, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University.
Law Versus Power on the High Frontier: The Case for a Rule-Based Regime for Outer Space, 29
Yale J. Int'l L. (2004).

The dominant challenge to the future of outer space lies in the existence of two competing
visions of how activities in space should be organized, managed, and controlled. The first view
emphasizes the central role of law in preserving space for peaceful purposes and in promoting
international cooperation in the use and exploitation of space for the benefit of all. This view emphasizes the benefits of a
multilateral legal regime as the best way to balance the various interests in space, to manage the possible interference of activities,
and to ensure that no single power dominates and possibly jeopardizes access to space by others. Power is constrained by
law, and national interests are pursued in the context of a developed and articulated legal framework and an assumption of mutual
and reciprocal interests. This is the logic of the current legal regime for space (however weak and incomplete),
as reflected in a set of outer space, arms control, and commercial treaties and agreements
beginning in the 1960s.3 The second view is the logic of national dominance projected by the former U.S. Space
Command (SPACECOM).4 With the United States increasingly reliant on space for both commercial and military support activities,
SPACECOM argues that U.S. assets in space are vulnerable to attack and that, in order to protect them, the United States
needs to dominate space militarily . SPACECOM's Visionfor 2020 argues that the protection of space requires superior
U.S. space warfare capability and proclaims its members "stewards for military space." 5 It sets out two principal themes: (1)
dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment; and (2) integrating space forces into
warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict. 6 As Air Force General Joseph W. Ashy, a former commander of
SPACECOM, explained, the United States "will engage terrestrial targets someday-ships, airplanes, land targets-from space. We will
engage targets in space, from space . . . . [The missions are] already assigned, and we've written the concepts of operations."7
SPACECOM also claims that the United States must establish a military presence in space in 8
order to preempt possible efforts by other nations to do so . Although this doctrine was once advanced
exclusively by SPACECOM, prominent civilian defense officials have endorsed the global engagement strategy, and have begun to
implement changes in Pentagon doctrine, organization, and budgets to move in that direction. The January 2001 Rumsfeld
Commission report on the management of U.S. space assets, produced by a study commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld before
he became Secretary of Defense, signaled his strong support for the need to project force in space in order to counter presumed
threats to U.S. military security there.9 Although it stopped short of directly advocating space weapons, no one could miss the point.
In late September 2001, the QuadrennialDefense Review Report, a wide-ranging assessment of U.S defense policy, called for beefing
up military space surveillance, communications, and other applications of earth-orbiting spacecraft. It also underscored the need to
deny the use of space by adversaries, and to address U.S. vulnerabilities in space with aggressive development of space capabilities.
10 Most tellingly, the Department of Defense's Nuclear Posture Review, portions of which were leaked in March 2002, reportedly
advocates the use of space-based assets to enhance conventional and nuclear strike capabilities.' In October 2002, SPACECOM
merged with the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls U.S. nuclear forces, to create a single entity responsible for early warning,
missile defense, and long-range strikes. 2 The Pentagon requested $1.6 billion dollars over FY 2003-2007 to develop space-based
lasers and kinetic kill vehicles to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles (and to destroy satellites). 13 Providing further evidence of
high-level support for the global engagement strategy, the current Bush administration's decision to withdraw from the 30-year-old
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty 14 appeared to be less of a necessary move driven by technical demands of missile defense
testing (since much testing could be done within the terms of the treaty, and deployment of a feasible system is not imminent) than
a symbolic move to sweep away inconvenient legal obstacles to U.S. power 5 projection in space. This
vision of national
dominance, the rest of the world, and especially 6 China, contends, is incompatible with the established legal
regime in space.' The international community has for over forty years repeatedly reaffirmed
that space should be preserved for peaceful purposes, should be available to all, and should be
weapon-free. Hence the relevant options appear to be reduced to two: an active contest over
national superiority in space, or an elaborated legal regime that would undoubtedly be designed
to prevent decisive predominance in space by any one country, the United States in 17 particular.
A contest over national superiority in space could extinguish the explicit equal right to use space
that all nations enjoy, creating instead a de facto regime of control over access and use by the
first nation to successfully deploy weapons based in space or weapons on the ground that target
satellites. Given the immense value of outer space and its resources, other nations might develop their own
antisatellite weapons designed to break this monopoly . Countries that lack the capabilities to build such
weapons might purchase them. Space-based weapons would also generate instability due to the
incentives for preemptive attack that powerful but vulnerable weapons systems seem likely to
create. A more elaborated legal regime would be aimed at preventing destabilizing conflicts
over the use of space. The problem posed is how to balance the interests of the United States with those of the rest of the
world. The SPACECOM position, if seriously pursued, would pit the United States against everyone else, and the support of even
close allies could be in question. Equally if not more important, other significant interests of the United States in space would be
jeopardized if an extended battle over space superiority were to develop. Given the inherent vulnerability of space activities,
traditional military support activities (including space-tracking, early warning, communications, reconnaissance, weather monitoring,
and navigation) would be placed in jeopardy. The viability of commercial and scientific activities in space would come into serious
question as well. In a conflict, terrestrial components of space activities could become objects of attack, while attacks against
satellites could litter space with speeding debris that might rip into commercial satellites and space vehicles, disrupting commercial
and scientific activity and communications on the ground. Although SPACECOM and its supporters aggressively assert their views,
advocates of space weaponry may be in the minority, even in the Pentagon. As many observers recognize, the interests of the
United States in space are much broader than SPACECOM presents. U.S. testing and deployment of orbital weapons could make the
use of space for other military and commercial purposes more difficult. Many in the military, especially those involved in crucial
military support activities, are quietly aware of this, as are officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and
the International Space Station (ISS),20 and their supporters in Congress. Congressional support for space weapons programs is
sometimes difficult to assess, but does not appear to be deep or widespread.21 Serious questions remain as to whether the threats
to U.S. assets in space are really as great as SPACECOM argues, and whether, even if the threats were real, expensive and difficult
space-based weapons would be the most effective way to deal with them. In many cases, those wishing to hurt the United States
likely will find it much easier, and more effective, to attack terrestrial targets.22 Overall, the risks brought on by a
competition for national dominance in space would ultimately be detrimental to the United
States. The United States is by far the nation most reliant on space for its military and economic well- being. It has an estimated
850 satellites, both military and commercial, in orbit-a number that is expected to increase substantially during the next ten years.23
Although this technological and financial edge in space will grow in the short term, the United States ultimately will see that
advantage diminish over time. Current U.S. space doctrine such as that articulated in Visionfor 2020 likely underestimates the speed
with which the U.S. advantage as a space power will erode (although SPACECOM advocates hope to preserve this advantage through
space domination).24 The
choice between a competition for national superiority and a strengthened
legal regime that preserves and balances the interests of all in space will have profound
consequences. If the United States aggressively moved weaponry into space, it would likely
provoke other nations to pursue countermeasures, with destabilizing consequences for global
and national security. In addition, by encouraging nations who do not currently have an interest in placing weapons in space
to compete directly and immediately with U.S. space-based assets, the United States would almost certainly guarantee the loss of
the advantages it seeks to protect. Although
an arms race in ASAT weapons is one of the dangers, the
threat currently of greatest concern to states such as China and Russia is the U.S. use of space
systems to augment its nuclear and conventional strategic strike capabilitie s. From the perspective of
these nations, the U.S. decision to expand strategic capabilities into space represents the collapse of the Cold War bargain of
strategic stability based on mutual vulnerability. A
military competition in space could thus invigorate a high-
tech arms race and renew emphasis on doctrines of nuclear warfare .25 Finally, a military
competition in space would largely extinguish the role of law in space in favor of a regime of
power. Despite the narrow organizational appeal of the latter to SPACECOM, the much broader interests of the United States in
space lie in the promotion of the rule of law. The United States has a long history of supporting the rule of
law both at home and in global affairs-in the latter case, promoting the development of rules that would secure U.S.
interests in an interdependent world.26 When presented with the choice , it is likely that most users of
space-including the satellite communications industry, those involved in military support operations, and the scientific community,
including NASA-would prefer the more stable protection provided by the rule of law rather than the
more uncertain and potentially disruptive protection of untested and complex weapons system s.
In sum, the United States and the international community have a strong interest in preventing a destabilizing military competition
in space through the timely negotiation of a more elaborated legal regime for space.

In the space domain, diplomatic arms control offers the most epistemologically
sound approach to breaking out of the security dilemma. It transforms mutual
vulnerability into common interest
Mutschler 13 – Max M. Mutschler, Researcher at the German Institute for International and
Security Affairs, Berlin, holds a doctoral degree from the Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen
(“Analyzing Arms Control in Space,” Chapter 6 in Arms Control in Space, Palgrave Macmillan,
Available through Springer)

The knowledge-based approach helps to solve the puzzles of the other two approaches. According to this
approach, states preferences are not exogenously given but are the result of internal processes of

interpretation. Which option is better for national security: unhindered arms dynamic or arms control? How this question is answered depends to a considerable extent upon the interpretation
of the situation at hand. Here, the factors power and interests come back in . How do states evaluate power

relationships? Are they self-centered and focus on their own strength with regard to a certain
weapon technology, or do they consider the consequences of their actions in an interdependent
world? Naturally, in the second case, the chances for preventive arms control are much higher than in the first case. In addition, several other questions are
related to this rather general issue: Does verification have to be waterproof or is a high
probability of detection sufficient? Do all sides have to possess the same standard in all fields of
weapon technology, or is it acceptable to make package-deals that account for those differences? How these questions are answered can
be influenced decisively by national and transnational political processes of learning.

an arms race has negative consequences for national security . It is this

The most important thing that must be learned is that

learning that transforms the Deadlock situation into a Prisoner’s Dilemma, thereby making
cooperation desirable in the first place. It seems plausible that cases of future weapon systems that are still in the process of development, at first resemble the
situation structure of a Deadlock game. Each state that is developing the respective weapon believes that the

development improves its national security, because it brings additional military capability.
Usually, the effects of the new weapons are unclear . In particular, because of the secrecy surrounding weapon development, states do not know how
others will and can react. Particularly in cases of technological asymmetry, the more advanced states can be expected to think that arming is better than arms control.

If a government believes that its weapon systems are superior to those of its rival, or that the strategy that will guide their use is superior, it may prefer mutual defection to mutual cooperation. (Downs et al. 1985:
122) The weaker states, while officially calling for arms control, might seek to exploit the weaknesses that often are the downside of asymmetric power. None of them think ahead and consider the negative

Learning about these consequences transforms the Deadlock

consequences of the inherent interdependence for its national security.

situation into a Prisoner’s Dilemma , thereby enabling cooperation. While the maximization of national security is the main goal of
policy-makers, they reinterpret their situation on the basis of new knowledge that points out the inconsistency between the goal – security – and the means – unilateral armament. While doubts regarding the
technical feasibility of a weapon system might prolong the process of R&D and delay procurement and deployment; it seems to be strategic reasoning, by doubting the added value for security of the weapon

system that makes states agree to preventive arms control. A closer look at the respective internal debates has shown that while
plenty of arguments against ABMs on the basis of technical shortcomings of whatever sort were
made by the critics, these arguments did not make the decisive points against ABMs. Right from the start,
especially in the U.S., there were massive doubts about whether ABM could ever work properly. These doubts have played an important role in

providing arguments for the critics to postpone the production and deployment of the systems ,
but they were not strong enough to make the case for arms control. Instead, it was the knowledge about the interdependent nature

of the arms dynamic and the impossibility of achieving security by unilateral armament which
convinced the top political decision-makers to seek an arms control solution .

Such a learning process transforms the Deadlock game , where the players prefer mutual
defection over cooperation, into a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation, where they prefer cooperation over mutual defection. We have seen
such a learning process in the case of ABMs but not in the case of space weapons. This is the central difference between the two cases, which explains the different outcomes: a regime with regard to ABMs and a

nonregime in the case of space weapons. Both cases have situation structures that can be interpreted as resembling the situation structure of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; in both cases,
preventive arms control could provide balanced gains ; and in both cases, verification measures
would allow states to apply a strategy of reciprocal cooperation. The major difference between the two cases is a process of learning
about the negative security consequences of an arms race, which has happened in one case but not in the other. Again, it is not important, if the things states have learned match reality. The

decisive point is that a certain interpretation of reality has triumphed over another one.

Scenario analysis is pedagogically valuable – enhances creativity and self-

reflexivity, deconstructs cognitive biases and flawed ontological assumptions,
and enables the imagination and creation of alternative futures.
Barma et al. 16 – (May 2016, [Advance Publication Online on 11/6/15], Naazneen Barma, PhD in
Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval
Postgraduate School, Brent Durbin, PhD in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Professor of
Government at Smith College, Eric Lorber, JD from UPenn and PhD in Political Science from
Duke, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Rachel Whitlark, PhD in Political Science from GWU, Post-
Doctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security
Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, “‘Imagine a
World in Which’: Using Scenarios in Political Science,” International Studies Perspectives 17 (2),
pp. 1-19,
http://www.naazneenbarma.com/uploads/2/9/6/9/29695681/using_scenarios_in_political_scie
nce_isp_2015.pdf)
**FYI if anyone is skeptical of Barma’s affiliation with the Naval Postgraduate School, it’s worth looking at her
publication history, which is deeply opposed to US hegemony and the existing liberal world order:

a) co-authored an article entitled “How Globalization Went Bad” that has this byline: “From terrorism to global
warming, the evils of globalization are more dangerous than ever before. What went wrong? The world
became dependent on a single superpower. Only by correcting this imbalance can the world become a safer
place.” (http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/how_globalization_went_bad)
b) most recent published scenario is entitled “World Without the West,” supports the a Non-Western
reinvention of the liberal order, and concludes that “This argument made a lot of people uncomfortable,
mostly because of an endemic and gross overestimation of the reach, depth and attractiveness of the
existing liberal order” (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/welcome-the-world-without-the-west-11651)

Over the past decade, the “cult of irrelevance” in political science scholarship has been lamented by a
growing chorus (Putnam 2003; Nye 2009; Walt 2009). Prominent scholars of international affairs have diagnosed the roots of the gap between
academia and policymaking, made the case for why political science research is valuable for policymaking , and offered a

number of ideas for enhancing the policy relevance of scholarship in international relations and comparative politics (Walt 2005,2011; Mead 2010; Van Evera 2010; Jentleson and Ratner 2011; Gallucci 2012;

Avey and Desch 2014). Building on these insights, several initiatives have been formed in the attempt to “bridge the gap.”2 Many of the specific efforts put in

place by these projects focus on providing scholars with the skills, platforms, and networks to better

communicate the findings and implications of their research to the policymaking community, a necessary and worthwhile
objective for a field in which theoretical debates, methodological training, and publishing norms tend more and more toward the abstract and esoteric.

Yet enhancing communication between scholars and policymakers is only one component of bridging the gap between international affairs theory
and practice. Another crucial component of this bridge is the generation of substantive research programs that are

actually policy relevant—a challenge to which less concerted attention has been paid. The dual challenges of bridging the gap are especially acute for graduate students, a particular
irony since many enter the discipline with the explicit hope of informing policy. In a field that has an admirable devotion to pedagogical self-

reflection, strikingly little attention is paid to techniques for generating policy-relevant ideas for
dissertation and other research topics. Although numerous articles and conference workshops are devoted to the importance of experiential and problem-based learning, especially through
techniques of simulation that emulate policymaking processes (Loggins 2009; Butcher 2012; Glasgow 2012; Rothman 2012; DiCicco 2014), little has been written about the use of such techniques for generating
and developing innovative research ideas.

This article outlines an experiential and problem-based approach to developing a political science
research program using scenario analysis. It focuses especially on illuminating the research generation and pedagogical benefits of this technique by describing the use of
scenarios in the annual New Era Foreign Policy Conference (NEFPC), which brings together doctoral students of international and comparative affairs who share a demonstrated interest in policy-relevant
scholarship.3 In the introductory section, the article outlines the practice of scenario analysis and considers the utility of the technique in political science. We argue that scenario analysis should be viewed as a
tool to stimulate problem-based learning for doctoral students and discuss the broader scholarly benefits of using scenarios to help generate research ideas. The second section details the manner in which NEFPC
deploys scenario analysis. The third section reflects upon some of the concrete scholarly benefits that have been realized from the scenario format. The fourth section offers insights on the pedagogical potential
associated with using scenarios in the classroom across levels of study. A brief conclusion reflects on the importance of developing specific techniques to aid those who wish to generate political science
scholarship of relevance to the policy world.

What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them in Political Science?

Scenario analysis is perceived most commonly as a technique for examining the robustness of strategy. It can immerse decision makers in future
states that go beyond conventional extrapolations of current trends, preparing them to take
advantage of unexpected opportunities and to protect themselves from adverse exogenous
shocks. The global petroleum company Shell, a pioneer of the technique, characterizes scenario analysis as the art of considering “what if” questions about possible future worlds. Scenario
analysis is thus typically seen as serving the purposes of corporate planning or as a policy tool to
be used in combination with simulations of decision making. Yet scenario analysis is not inherently limited to these uses . This

section provides a brief overview of the practice of scenario analysis and the motivations underpinning its uses. It then makes a case for the utility of the
technique for political science scholarship and describes how the scenarios deployed at NEFPC were created.
The Art of Scenario Analysis

We characterize scenario analysis as the art of juxtaposing current trends in unexpected

combinations in order to articulate surprising and yet plausible futures, often referred to as
“alternative worlds.” Scenarios are thus explicitly not forecasts or projections based on linear
extrapolations of contemporary patterns, and they are not hypothesis-based expert
predictions. Nor should they be equated with simulations, which are best characterized as functional
representations of real institutions or decision-making processes (Asal 2005). Instead, they are
depictions of possible future states of the world , offered together with a narrative of the driving
causal forces and potential exogenous shocks that could lead to those futures. Good scenarios thus rely on explicit causal propositions that, independent of
one another, are plausible—yet, when combined, suggest surprising and sometimes controversial future worlds. For example, few predicted the dramatic fall in oil prices toward the end of 2014. Yet independent
driving forces, such as the shale gas revolution in the United States, China’s slowing economic growth, and declining conflict in major Middle Eastern oil producers such as Libya, were all recognized secular trends
that—combined with OPEC’s decision not to take concerted action as prices began to decline—came together in an unexpected way.

While scenario analysis played a role in war gaming and strategic planning during the Cold War, the real antecedents of the contemporary practice are found in corporate futures studies of the late 1960s and early
1970s (Raskin et al. 2005). Scenario analysis was essentially initiated at Royal Dutch Shell in 1965, with the realization that the usual forecasting techniques and models were not capturing the rapidly changing
environment in which the company operated (Wack 1985; Schwartz 1991). In particular, it had become evident that straight-line extrapolations of past global trends were inadequate for anticipating the evolving
business environment. Shell-style scenario planning “helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will look much like the present” (Wilkinson and Kupers 2013, 4).
Using scenario thinking, Shell anticipated the possibility of two Arab-induced oil shocks in the 1970s and hence was able to position itself for major disruptions in the global petroleum sector.

Building on its corporate roots, scenario analysis has become a standard policymaking tool. For example, the Project on Forward Engagement advocates linking systematic foresight, which it defines as the
disciplined analysis of alternative futures, to planning and feedback loops to better equip the United States to meet contemporary governance challenges (Fuerth 2011). Another prominent application of scenario
thinking is found in the National Intelligence Council’s series of Global Trends reports, issued every four years to aid policymakers in anticipating and planning for future challenges. These reports present a handful
of “alternative worlds” approximately twenty years into the future, carefully constructed on the basis of emerging global trends, risks, and opportunities, and intended to stimulate thinking about geopolitical
change and its effects.4 As with corporate scenario analysis, the technique can be used in foreign policymaking for long-range general planning purposes as well as for anticipating and coping with more narrow
and immediate challenges. An example of the latter is the German Marshall Fund’s EuroFutures project, which uses four scenarios to map the potential consequences of the Euro-area financial crisis (German
Marshall Fund 2013).

Several features make scenario analysis particularly useful for policymaking.5 Long-term global
trends across a number of different realms —social, technological, environmental, economic, and political—combine in often-
unexpected ways to produce unforeseen challenges . Yet the ability of decision makers to
imagine, let alone prepare for, discontinuities in the policy realm is constrained by their existing mental
models and maps. This limitation is exacerbated by well-known cognitive bias tendencies such
as groupthink and confirmation bias (Jervis 1976; Janis 1982; Tetlock 2005). The power of scenarios lies in their ability
to help individuals break out of conventional modes of thinking and analysis by introducing
unusual combinations of trends and deliberate discontinuities in narratives about the future .
Imagining alternative future worlds through a structured analytical process enables
policymakers to envision and thereby adapt to something altogether different from the
known present.
Designing Scenarios for Political Science Inquiry

Scenarios
The characteristics of scenario analysis that commend its use to policymakers also make it well suited to helping political scientists generate and develop policy-relevant research programs.

are essentially textured, plausible, and relevant stories that help us imagine how the future political-
economic world could be different from the past in a manner that highlights policy challenges and opportunities. For example, terrorist organizations are a known threat that
have captured the attention of the policy community, yet our responses to them tend to be linear and reactive. Scenarios that explore how seemingly unrelated vectors of change—the rise of a new peer
competitor in the East that diverts strategic attention, volatile commodity prices that empower and disempower various state and nonstate actors in surprising ways, and the destabilizing effects of climate change
or infectious disease pandemics—can be useful for illuminating the nature and limits of the terrorist threat in ways that may be missed by a narrower focus on recognized states and groups. By illuminating the
potential strategic significance of specific and yet poorly understood opportunities and threats, scenario analysis helps to identify crucial gaps in our collective understanding of global politicaleconomic trends and

Very simply, scenario analysis can

dynamics. The notion of “exogeneity”—so prevalent in social science scholarship—applies to models of reality, not to reality itself.

throw into sharp relief often-overlooked yet pressing questions in international affairs that
demand focused investigation.

Scenarios thus offer, in principle, an innovative tool for developing a political science research agenda . In
practice, achieving this objective requires careful tailoring of the approach . The specific scenario analysis technique we outline below
was designed and refined to provide a structured experiential process for generating problem-based research questions with contemporary international policy relevance.6 The first step in the process of creating
the scenario set described here was to identify important causal forces in contemporary global affairs. Consensus was not the goal; on the contrary, some of these causal statements represented competing
theories about global change (e.g., a resurgence of the nation-state vs. border-evading globalizing forces). A major principle underpinning the transformation of these causal drivers into possible future worlds was
to “simplify, then exaggerate” them, before fleshing out the emerging story with more details.7 Thus, the contours of the future world were drawn first in the scenario, with details about the possible pathways to
that point filled in second. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that some of the causal claims that turned into parts of scenarios were exaggerated so much as to be implausible, and that an unavoidable degree
of bias or our own form of groupthink went into construction of the scenarios. One of the great strengths of scenario analysis, however, is that the scenario discussions themselves, as described below, lay bare
these especially implausible claims and systematic biases.8

An explicit methodological approach underlies the written scenarios themselves as well as the analytical process around them—that of case-centered, structured, focused comparison, intended especially to shed

The use of scenarios is similar to counterfactual analysis in that it

light on new causal mechanisms (George and Bennett 2005).

modifies certain variables in a given situation in order to analyze the resulting effects (Fearon 1991).
Whereas counterfactuals are traditionally retrospective in nature and explore events that did not actually occur in the context of known history,
our scenarios are deliberately forward-looking and are designed to explore potential futures that could
unfold. As such, counterfactual analysis is especially well suited to identifying how individual events might expand or shift the “funnel of choices” available to political actors and thus lead to different historical
outcomes (Nye 2005, 68–69), while forward-looking scenario analysis can better illuminate surprising intersections and sociopolitical dynamics without the perceptual constraints imposed by fine-grained historical

We see scenarios as a complementary resource for exploring these dynamics in

knowledge.

international affairs, rather than as a replacement for counterfactual analysis, historical case studies, or other methodological tools.
In the scenario process developed for NEFPC, three distinct scenarios are employed, acting as cases for analytical comparison. Each scenario, as detailed below, includes a set of explicit “driving forces” which
represent hypotheses about causal mechanisms worth investigating in evolving international affairs. The scenario analysis process itself employs templates (discussed further below) to serve as a graphical
representation of a structured, focused investigation and thereby as the research tool for conducting case-centered comparative analysis (George and Bennett 2005). In essence, these templates articulate key
observable implications within the alternative worlds of the scenarios and serve as a framework for capturing the data that emerge (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Finally, this structured, focused comparison
serves as the basis for the cross-case session emerging from the scenario analysis that leads directly to the articulation of new research agendas.

The scenario process described here has thus been carefully designed to offer some guidance to
policy-oriented graduate students who are otherwise left to the relatively unstructured norms by
which political science dissertation ideas are typically developed. The initial articulation of a dissertation project is generally an idiosyncratic and
personal undertaking (Useem 1997; Rothman 2008), whereby students might choose topics based on their coursework, their own previous policy exposure, or the topics studied by their advisors. Research
agendas are thus typically developed by looking for “puzzles” in existing research programs (Kuhn 1996). Doctoral students also, understandably, often choose topics that are particularly amenable to garnering
research funding. Conventional grant programs typically base their funding priorities on extrapolations from what has been important in the recent past—leading to, for example, the prevalence of Japan and
Soviet studies in the mid-1980s or terrorism studies in the 2000s—in the absence of any alternative method for identifying questions of likely future significance.

The scenario approach to generating research ideas is grounded in the belief that these
traditional approaches can be complemented by identifying questions likely to be of great
empirical importance in the real world, even if these do not appear as puzzles in existing research
programs or as clear extrapolations from past events. The scenarios analyzed at NEFPC envision alternative
worlds that could develop in the medium (five to seven year) term and are designed to tease
out issues scholars and policymakers may encounter in the relatively near future so that they
can begin thinking critically about them now. This timeframe offers a period distant enough
from the present as to avoid falling into current events analysis, but not so far into the future as
to seem like science fiction. In imagining the worlds in which these scenarios might come to pass, participants learn strategies for
avoiding failures of creativity and for overturning the assumptions that prevent scholars and
analysts from anticipating and understanding the pivotal junctures that arise in international
affairs.

The security dilemma is a robust and intellectually sound explanation of conflict

escalation
Jacobsen and Halvorsen 18 – (Jo, Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology; Thomas, Senior Scientist at SINTEF ( Stiftelsen for industriell og teknisk
forskning) Technology and Society; 5/22/18; The Durability of the Security Dilemma: An
Empirical Investigation of Action–Reaction Dynamics in States’ Military Spending (1988–2014);
doi: 10.1093/cjip/poy007)

The security-dilemma model, for its part, rests on a spiral logic that highlights the self-defeating—tragic—
properties of security-seeking in an anarchic world ;15 that is to say, a world, ‘where one state’s
attempts to increase its security appear threatening to others and provoke an unnecessary
conflict’.16 States seek survival and security, and as they cannot be certain of the intentions of
others, military capabilities become the ultimate means of protection . But here, suspicion and fear are
mutual, resulting in a cyclical pattern: one state increases its arms; the other, fearing that the
arms build-up may rest on malign intentions, follows suit ; the first reacts to this; the second reacts to the first’s reaction, and so on. Both
states are pure, defensively-minded security-seekers—but none can afford to trust that the other
is of this type.
Anarchy, Tragedy, and the Security Dilemma
The concept of the security dilemma thus catches, ‘the unfortunate fact that policies designed
to increase the state’s security often have the effect of decreasing the other’s securit y’.17 States
accumulate power for defence, but considering that, ‘no state can know that the power
accumulation of others is defensively-motivated only, each must assume that it might be
intended for attack. Consequently, each party’s power increments are matched by the others, and all
wind up with no more security than when the vicious cycle began’.18 Such tragic spirals, ‘between
states that want nothing more than to preserve the status quo’19 represent, according to some, ‘the
quintessential dilemma in international politics’.20
It was John Herz21 who originally introduced the term, lucidly capturing the key elements on which later scholars—notably Herbert Butterfield,22 Robert Jervis, and Charles Glaser—elaborate. The

security-dilemma logic has since been used to explain, inter alia, the security environment in East
Asia;23 World War I;24 the onset and continuation of the Cold War ;25 ethnic conflict;26 alliance
politics;27 and US ballistic missile defences and Russian countermoves .28
For Herz, it all begins with the structure of the system—of any system without a higher authority. In such an anarchic system, he writes, what arises is a,

‘security dilemma’ of men, or groups, or their leaders. Groups or individuals living in such a constellation must be, and usually are, concerned about their security from being attacked, subjected, dominated, or
annihilated by other groups and individuals. Striving to attain security from such attack, they are driven to acquire more and more power in order to escape the impact of the power of others. This, in turn, renders
the others more insecure and compels them to prepare for the worst. Since none can ever feel entirely secure in such a world of competing units, power competition ensues, and the vicious cycle of security and
power accumulation is on.29

The dilemma is a structural one. It follows not from characteristics of states or individuals; it is
rather based at Kenneth Waltz’s third level of analysis,30 arising from the lack of a supranational
sovereign—that is, from anarchy.31 This is a self-help, competitive system wherein actors or states are constrained with respect to their freedom of manoeuvre.
Security and survival being their fundamental goals, states are apt to err on the side of caution
in their security policies, constantly striving either to improve or to keep their power position
vis-à-vis others. For not doing so, considering the possibility that the motives or intentions of those others might not be benevolent, involves the risk
of being exploited.

the fear with which it is associated, ‘most strongly drives the security dilemma’. 32 Its command generates
This risk, and

efforts to maximise security by augmenting relative power. But when two (or more) states
simultaneously act according to this logic , both (all) will at the very least wind up no better off in terms of
security, and bearing the added costs that go with security competition and arms races .33 Indeed, security
should be reduced all around, because the vicious spiral enhances mutual suspicion and tensions.34 Worse still, if military

technology and prevailing strategies are such that striking first is rationally tempting, the
security dilemma mechanism can, by itself, trigger war.35

The security dilemma is a tragic dilemma, in the sense thatstates do not seek to become engaged in conflicts and vicious spirals ;
instead, the structural constraints under which they operate induce or compel them to undertake
actions that are in reality self-defeating .36 Mutual security is preferred, but security competition ensues as an unintended consequence of moves by, ‘decision
makers finding themselves in a predicament that is not of their own making’.37 The motives or intentions of actors play no necessary role in

the tragedy. Others’ intentions cannot be known for certain—and their future intentions are
impossible to predict. This means that even in a world consisting solely of security-seeking or
status quo-oriented states—as opposed to power-seeking, ‘revisionist’, or ‘greedy’ ones—fear and uncertainty prevail, as does the
security dilemma. As Robert Jervis observes, this fear and uncertainty stem not from any ‘limitations on rationality imposed by human psychology nor in a flaw in human nature, but in a
correct appreciation of the consequences of living in a Hobbesian state of nature’.38 The build-up of military capabilities , therefore, can be viewed as a

prudent response to an uncertain future (or present) in which worst-case scenario planning constitutes
insurance against threats to one’s security or survival .39

each state or player, under conditions of

This fits with the Prisoner’s Dilemma analogy, which Robert Jervis in particular has pondered and elaborated:40

imperfect information, rationally follows a strategy of ‘defection’, as opposed to one of

‘cooperation’, to avoid the ‘sucker’s payoff’. Both (or all) having done so, their interaction produces a Pareto suboptimal outcome, for both (all) would have
it
preferred mutual cooperation to reciprocal defection. But the conflict outcome—the game's ‘solution’—still has the character of a Nash equilibrium, which follows rationally from the game’s properties. Again,

is fundamentally structure (anarchy) coupled with the inescapable factor of information

deficiency that compels such a tragic outcome , even if the players’ preference orderings are
overwhelmingly status-quo inclined, in which case the game is not a Prisoners’ Dilemma but a Stag Hunt, wherein mutual cooperation is preferred even to the unilateral
defection. Yet, so long as the players are uncertain about which game they are actually participants of, defection should be the strategy of choice, and

conflict should therefore ensue.

states still try to estimate others’ motives, and in doing so are apt to pay
The ubiquitous uncertainty notwithstanding,

heed to the behaviour of potential security competitors , not least to their military spending and
posture.41 It is exactly here that the delicate balancing between security-enhancing and self-defeating behaviour commences. This constitutes a dilemma in itself. If a given state
has an incentive to signal benign motives to its adversary, it will (depending on the offence–defence balance, which is described later)
avoid augmenting military capabilities for fear the other will interpret this as signalling malign
intentions. At the same time, though, such a decision will necessarily put the former in a vulnerable position,
which it can scarcely afford given the prominence of security concerns under the perilousness of
anarchy.42 Contrarily, if the state instead increases its military spending, it risks signalling malign
intentions, in which case the second state would rationally react by doing the same.
Most states facing this situation would probably be inclined to settle for the ‘least-bad’ option, which entails the sacrifice of revealing their true, benign motives on the altar of military capabilities.43 However, this

the former’s arms build-up would signal both

still constitutes a quandary for the second state that would ultimately make it ‘doubly insecure’.44 That is to say,

enhanced military capacity and malevolent intentions . Consequently the second state, for its part, would be ill advised to let a potentially
‘greedy’45 or ‘imperialist’46 state gain an unfettered advantage with regard to capabilities. At core here is the reluctance or inability—out of fear,

uncertainty or risk aversion—to perceive the situation as a security dilemma, even when that is
what it really is. Two states, both of which are status-quo oriented, may thus end up, ‘in a
relationship of higher conflict than is required by the objective situation’.

Root cause explanations of International Relations don’t exist – methodological

pluralism is necessary to reclaim IR as emancipatory praxis and avoid endless
political violence.
Bleiker 14 – (6/17, Roland, Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland,
“International Theory Between Reification and Self-Reflective Critique,” International Studies
Review, Volume 16, Issue 2, pages 325–327)
This book is part of an increasing trend of scholarly works that have embraced poststructural critique but want to ground it in more positive political foundations, while retaining a reluctance to return to the
positivist tendencies that implicitly underpin much of constructivist research. The path that Daniel Levine has carved out is innovative, sophisticated, and convincing. A superb scholarly achievement.

the key challenge in international relations (IR) scholarship is what he calls “unchecked reification”: the widespread and
For Levine,

dangerous process of forgetting “the distinction between theoretical concepts and the real-
world things they mean to describe or to which they refer” (p. 15). The dangers are real, Levine stresses, because IR deals
with some of the most difficult issues, from genocides to war. Upholding one subjective position
without critical scrutiny can thus have far-reaching consequences. Following Theodor Adorno—who is the key theoretical influence on this
book—Levine takes a post-positive position and assumes that the world cannot be known outside of our human perceptions and the values that are inevitably intertwined with them. His ultimate goal is to
overcome reification, or, to be more precise, to recognize it as an inevitable aspect of thought so that its dangerous consequences can be mitigated.

Levine proceeds in three stages: First he reviews several decades of IR theories to resurrect critical moments when scholars displayed an acute awareness of the dangers of reification. He refreshingly
breaks down distinctions between conventional and progressive scholarship, for he detects self-reflective and critical moments in scholars that are usually

associated with straightforward positivist positions (such as E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, or Graham Allison). But Levine also shows how these moments of self-reflexivity
never lasted long and were driven out by the compulsion to offer systematic and scientific knowledge.
 outlines why IR scholars regularly closed down critique. Here, he points to a range of factors and phenomena, from peer review processes to the speed at which
The second stage of Levine's inquiry

academics are meant to publish. And here too, he eschews conventional wisdom, showing that work conducted in the wake of the third debate, while explicitly post-

positivist and critiquing the reifying tendencies of existing IR scholarship, often lacked critical self-awareness. As a result, Levine believes that
many of the respective authors failed to appreciate sufficiently that “reification is a consequence of all

thinking—including itself” (p. 68).

sustainable critique”: a form of self-reflection that can counter the

The third objective of Levine's book is also the most interesting one. Here, he outlines the path toward what he calls “

dangers of reification. Critique, for him, is not just something that is directed outwards, against particular theories or

theorists. It is also inward-oriented, ongoing, and sensitive to the “limitations of thought itself” (p.
12).

The challenges that such a sustainable critique faces are formidable. Two stand out: First, if the natural tendency to forget the origins and values of our concepts are as strong as Levine and other Adorno-inspired
theorists believe they are, then how can we actually recognize our own reifying tendencies? Are we not all inevitably and subconsciously caught in a web of meanings from which we cannot escape? Second, if one
constantly questions one's own perspective, does one not fall into a relativism that loses the ability to establish the kind of stable foundations that are necessary for political action? Adorno has, of course, been
critiqued as relentlessly negative, even by his second-generation Frankfurt School successors (from Jürgen Habermas to his IR interpreters, such as Andrew Linklater and Ken Booth).

He starts off with depicting

The response that Levine has to these two sets of legitimate criticisms are, in my view, both convincing and useful at a practical level.

reification not as a flaw that is meant to be expunged, but as an a priori condition for
scholarship. The challenge then is not to let it go unchecked.

Methodological pluralism lies at the heart of Levine's sustainable critique. He borrows from what Adorno calls a
“constellation”: an attempt to juxtapose, rather than integrate, different perspectives. It is in this spirit that Levine advocates multiple methods to understand the

same event or phenomena. He writes of the need to validate “multiple and mutually
incompatible ways of seeing” (p. 63, see also pp. 101–102). In this model, a scholar oscillates back and forth between
different methods and paradigms, trying to understand the event in question from multiple
perspectives. No single method can ever adequately represent the event or should gain the
upper hand. But each should, in a way, recognize and capture details or perspectives that the others
cannot (p. 102). In practical terms, this means combining a range of methods even when—or, rather,
precisely when—they are deemed incompatible. They can range from poststructual
deconstruction to the tools pioneered and championed by positivist social sciences.

The benefit of such a methodological polyphony is not just the opportunity to bring out nuances
and new perspectives. Once the false hope of a smooth synthesis has been abandoned, the very
incompatibility of the respective perspectives can then be used to identify the reifying
tendencies in each of them. For Levine, this is how reification may be “checked at the source” and this is how a
“critically reflexive moment might thus be rendered sustainable” (p. 103). It is in this sense that Levine's
approach is not really post-foundational but , rather, an attempt to “balance foundationalisms against
one another” (p. 14). There are strong parallels here with arguments advanced by assemblage thinking and complexity theory—links that could have been explored in more detail.

Outer space policy is an essential subject of debate---space militarization issues

open ground for profound questions about the nature of society, politics and
humanity, as well as possibilities for ontological transformation of the
political---the aff’s analysis breaks through the totalizing terms of status quo
debates
Natlie Bormann 9, Professor of Politics at Northeastern University; with Michael Sheehan, IR
Professor; 2009, “Introduction,” in Securing Outer Space: International Relations Theory and the
Politics of Space, p. 10-20
 our thinking about socio-political, economic and military-related issues were defined,
For fifty years, much of

shaped and driven by the Cold War and the centrality of a comfortable paradox — that of a bipolar nuclear confrontation. A decade and a half after the end of that
confrontation we are still deemed to be living in a period, the ‘post’—Cold War era, that is defined only in relation to the preceding one. And while there is a strong temptation ,

if not an expectation, for some scholars to adhere to these well-known and totalizing terms of the
debate, for others the past two generations have been animated by a different, and pervasive, intervention — the ‘space age’. The movement of humanity into space and the development of satellite
technology in retrospect may well appear as the defining characteristic of this period.

The fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the space age was marked on 4 October 2007. It was on this day, in 1957, that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first satellite to be placed in orbit. This dramatic

the space era, it also triggered a set of questions regarding the assumptions and effects
event not only ushered in

that were (and are) constitutive of this new endeavour : questions of the global, the international,
the political, the ethical, the technical, the scientific, humankind and modernity — to name but a
few. In what ways would these questions guide, alter and intervene with our activities in space?
But also, in what ways would the space age guide, alter and intervene with these questions?

That day in October 1957 also marked the beginning of serious concerns regarding the modes and kinds of space activities that we would be witnessing, and these
concerns were dominated from the outset by the fact that the first journey into space was
accompanied by — if not entirely driven by — the Cold War arms race. The initial steps in the exploration
of space were inexorably linked with pressures to militarize and securitize this new dimension . As a

geographical realm that had hitherto been pristine in relation to mankind’s warlike history, this immediate tendency for space exploration to be led by military rationales raised profound

philosophical and political questions. What should the purpose of space activity be, and what
should it not be? And how would we approach, understand and distinguish between military activities, civilian ones, commercial ones, and so forth?

questions as to ‘what we bring to space’ as well as how space activities challenge us, and to what effects, seem
More than a half century later, the

ever more pressing. While the debate over some of the assumptions, modes and effects of the space age never truly abated, most of the contributors in this volume agree that there is sense of

urgency in raising concern, re-conceptualizing the modes of the debate, and engaging critically with the
limits and possibilities of the dimension of space vis-a-vis the political.

This sense of urgency reflects the revitalization of national space programmes, and particularly
that of the United States and China since the start of the twenty—first century. In January 2004, at NASA
headquarters, US President George W. Bush announced the need for a new vision for America’s civilian and scientific space programme. This call culminated in a Commission’s Report on Implementation of United
States Space Exploration Policy, which emphasized the fundamental role of space for US technological leadership, economic validity, and most importantly, security. While this certainly stimulated the debate over
the future direction of US space exploration, it has led many to express concern over the implicitly aggressive and ambitious endeavour of colonizing space in the form of calling upon the need for permanent
access to and presence in space. A critical eye has also been cast on the Commission’s endorsement of the privatization and commercialization of space and its support for implementing a far larger presence of
private industry in space operations.

at the forefront of the current debate on space activities are notions of its militarization and
Certainly also

securitization. The deployment of technologies with the aim to secure, safeguard, defend and control certain assets, innovations and activities in
space is presented to us as an inevitable and necessary development. It is argued that just as the development of reconnaissance
aircraft in the First World War led inexorably to the emergence of fighter aircraft to deny the enemy the ability to carry out such reconnaissance and then bombers to deliver weapons against targets that could be
identified and reached from the air, so too has the ‘multiplier effect’ on military capabilities of satellites encouraged calls for the acquisition of space—based capabilities to defend one’s own satellites and attack
those of adversaries, and in the longer term, to place weapons in space that could attack targets on Earth. Here, the Bush administration’s indication that it envisaged a prominent role for space—based Weapons
in the longer term as part of the controversial national missile defence system contributed to the atmosphere of controversy surrounding space policy.

As space has become crucial to, and utilized by, far more international actors, so the political implications of space activities have multiplied. The members of the European Space Agency have pursued space
development for economic, scientific and social reasons. Their model of international space cooperation has been seen as offering an example to other areas of the world, particularly in their desire to avoid
militarizing efforts. Yet even Europe has begun to develop military space capabilities, following a path that has already been pursued by other key states such as China and India, suggesting that there is an

How we conceptualize space has therefore become of

inevitability about the militarization, and perhaps ultimately the weaponization, of space.

fundamental moral, political and strategic importance.

Outer space challenges the political imagination as it has always challenged the human imagination in many other fields. For millennia people have looked up to
the stars and imagined it as the home of gods or the location of the afterlife. For centuries they have looked to it for answers about the physical nature of the universe and the place of mankind’s ancestral home

Space exploration is a driver of innovation, encouraging

within it. And for decades, it has been seen as the supreme test for advanced technology.

us to dream of what might be possible, to push back the boundaries of thought and to change
the nature of ontological realities by drawing on novel epistemologies . The physical exploration of the solar system through
the application of science and technology has been the visible demonstration of this.

The challenges that space poses for political theory are profound. If space is about the use of imagination, and the application of novel developments to create new possibilities for human progress, how has
political theory and political reality responded to this challenge? The answer, at least thus far, is both that it has changed everything, and that it has changed very little. For international law, most notably in the
Outer Space Treaty, the denial of territoriality and limitations on sovereignty beyond planet Earth offers a fundamental challenge to the way in which international relations has been conceptualized and

On the other hand, the dream of many, that humanity would leave behind its
operationalized in the modern era.

dark side as it entered space, has not been realized. For the most part, the exploration and
utilization of space has reflected, not challenged, the political patterns and impulses that
characterized twentieth—century politics and international relations. Propaganda, military
rivalry, economic competition and exploitation, North-South discrimination and so on have extended
their reach beyond the atmosphere. Industrialization and imperialism in the nineteenth century
helped produce powerful new social theories, as well as new philosophy, political ideologies
and conceptualizations of the meaning of politics and the nature of human destiny. The realities
of the space age demand novel social theories of the same order.
With the above in mind, this volume is undoubtedly driven by, and wants to speak to, the articulation of a number of controversial policies, contentious strategies and linguistic utilizations that promote space
activities in various ways under the rubric of exploration and innovation, militarization and weaponization, colonization and commercialization. However, while the contributions here were clearly prompted by
recent and current policies, the aim of this book is neither necessarily to explain these policies and discuss the merits of the space age, nor to offer more ‘workable’ solutions. Rather, it seeks to place them in a
broader theoretical perspective by attempting to achieve two objectives.

First, it explores ways in which we can articulate an understanding of that which precedes and informs these policies to begin with. The contributions here engage in a reading of space that traces the discourses of
space activities, and particularly their military dimension, exposes their meaning- producing practices, and unearths the narratives that give possibility to seeing particular space strategies as desirable, inevitable
and seamless. The authors also draw attention to the contexts within which activities ‘out there’ in space are always embedded, and which we need to remind ourselves of when contemplating space
developments. The contributions emphasize the fact that space policies resonate practices already central to the overall ‘earth—bound’ forging of foreign policies, security strategies, development, the ‘war on
terror’, globalization and so forth.

we can articulate an understanding of, and critically engage with, the effects of particular manifestations of
Second, the book suggests ways in which

space policies. While our conception of space is always constitutive of what already ‘is’, the projection
of activities in space (and their possibilities) similarly constitute, produce and shape socio-political relations
and activities on Earth. The contributions here reflect critically on questions of sovereignty; perceptions of time and space; modes of destruction, fighting and killing in, from and through
space; and relations of technology and ethics.
2ac
 2ac – case
Calling for the “end of the world” is an obfuscatory and counter-productive
alternative.
Thomas 18 – Greg Thomas, Associate Professor of English at Tufts (“Afro-Blue Notes: The
Death of Afro-pessimism (2.0)?,” Theory & Event, Vol. 21, no. 1)

Thus there is the serious problem of elliptical truncation in Wilderson's repeated quotation of
the "end of the world" line taken from Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks. The "world" is never so
generic and singular as pessimism would have it, whether in or outside this or that Fanon—
whether it is the critical but "French" colonial Fanon or the radically decolonizing Fanon who
wages pan-African revolt against the French and all colonialism. The younger Fanon wrote, "The
Martinican is a man crucified. …[M]y friend had fulfilled in a dream his wish to become white—
that is, to be man. …I will tell him, 'The environment, society are responsible for your delusion.'
Once that has been said, the rest will follow of itself, and what that is we know. The end of the
world."39 The "world" in question is quite a specific one. It is not the only world that is, or ever
was, before another must be created into being out of necessity. It is the white world that
represents itself "as if" (to borrow a turn of phrase from Wynter here) it were the only world in
truth.

The Fanon of Black Skin, White Masks was writing about a certain type or class of "Negro" who
comes to crave this world. The introduction states this plainly from the start: "I shall try to
discover the various attitudes that the Negro adopts in contact with the white civilization"—that
"world." "The 'jungle savage' is not what I have in mind," this Fanon says with the arrogance of
the colonized elite, the assimilé or the so-called evolué: "That is because for him certain factors
have not yet acquired importance."40 He is dealing with the "climbers"41—in social class terms.
If, notably, to "speak a language is to take on a world,"42 the "accursed" world of the Antilles is
left behind by the "non-jungle savage" who strives, "climbs," in order to become truly part of
the "French" world of France in his or her captured imagination. His or her portrait is exposed in
"The Negro and Language," [End Page 298] "The Fact of Blackness" (or "The Lived Experience of
Blacks"), etc. In this case, he who can identify the need to restructure the world ends up instead
getting restructured by one world himself. He moves to this other, "spatial and temporal world"
of the white world—wanting, lusting for colonial liberal humanist acceptance, thinking "reason"
or "rationality" can be his salvation into "recognition." The whole world dominated by the white
world is the only world that this genre of "Negro" and the white world values, a pivotal
distinction effaced by Afro-pessimism (2.0). But, of course, he finds nullification in that world of
his cultivated longings. After all, a "normal Negro child, having grown up within a normal family,
will become abnormal on the slightest contact with the white world."43 Moreover, "[in] the
white world," Fanon writes, the "man of color" encounters "difficulty in the development of his
bodily schema."44 He would experience his body as a "corporal malediction" insofar as he
identifies this really white world as the only "real" world that could really, possibly matter to him
and to all real, rational "men" for whom jungles and savagery are merely things of the past.45

Négritude tempts the early Fanon's search for a "manhood" shared in the West with another,
historical take on worlds: "The white man wants the world; he wants it for himself alone. …Like
a magician, I robbed the white man of 'a certain world,' forever after lost to him and his."46 Let
this not be deleted from canonical-myopic readings of Black Skin, White Masks—qua "Fanon." It
was inspired by Léopold Senghor. But it is Césaire who provides a general resource-book for
Fanon's worldings here. The reference to Return to My Native Land is extensive in this regard.
He would tell Jean-Paul Sartre, accordingly: "There will always be a world—a white world—
between you and us."47 (92). The Césaire text shifts to "The Rebel," however, in The Wretched
of the Earth when Fanon is no longer ashamed to identify with the Haitian Revolution as he
was in Black Skin, White Masks ("I am a man. …I am not solely responsible for the revolt in Santo
Domingo"48), as a soon-to-be world-famous and world-infamous champion of Algerian and
African Revolution himself. That is when "civilization" and "savagery" will have come to mean
extremely different things for the iconic anti-colonialist Black revolutionary psychiatrist with a
hospital now named for him in Blida, a militant ambassadorship to Ghana behind him, a
neuropsychiatric day center in Tunisia cofounded by him, and a national archive now named for
him in Algiers, among other things and other places. Indeed, this is how his decolonizing praxis
would essentially rewrite his "Antillais et Africains" article from earlier years.

All told, Fanon made substantial reference to the Black world, the African world as well as the
Arab world over and against the white world, "the settler's world," the colonial world ("cut in
two"), the Western world, and much more. The white world masquerading as [End Page 299]
"the world," proper, is clearly exposed to be a certain world "outside"—the world of the
"foreigner."49 The worlds of "Third Worldism" mean to upstage it at long last. The actively
"underdeveloped world" will "shake" the world whose opulence is steeped in "slavery" and its
"blood,"50 destroying the colonizing zoning of Europeanism not by "rational confrontation" or
conversation but through "counter-violence."51 The move charted by the ultimate Fanon (and
the bulk of Fanon) is no longer of the "climber" from "jungle" to "mother country" "manhood"
but from colonized "individual" to liberated "nation" on to the un-whitened "world" at large
that must be expressly expropriated from European appropriation:52 "It is a question of the
Third World starting a new history or Man,"53 Fanon writes. The Wretched of the Earth cannot
be quarantined from Fanon's discourse on human being and "humanism;" it is the climax of that
discourse on colonial imperialism as well as slavery, for such colonialism and slavery form an
inseparable complex of physical and metaphysical (or "psycho-affective") assaults on humanity
beyond the white West. Hence, it is not the end of some worlds that Fanon desires or
pronounces as he speaks in their name to end the specific world held onto tightly in critique by
pessimists. Routinely, white discourse becomes the only discourse there is to discuss in their
own rhetorical articulations. To shear the white world of this spatial and temporal , cultural and
historical specificity reinforces whiteness and "anti-Blackness," so to speak; it reinforces
"Eurocentrism" or Europeanism and naturalizes by systematically totalizing the "anti-Black"
power of a provincial and solipsistic white-supremacism; and, in this reinforcement, the
elliptical truncation of the "end of the world" discourse in Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and
more radically so elsewhere provides an explanation for what Sexton cannot fathom in "The
Social Life of Social Death" (2011), that is, how or why "Afro-pessimism" (2.0) could be so curtly
dismissed by many critics as another "anti-Black" discourse itself.
 2ac – Black Quantum K
Policy debate over a governmental proposition fosters advocacy skills that
empower students and benefit all forms of potential political engagement –
information literacy is a common good that fosters an ethic of engagement, the
litmus test for breaking through in our information soaked economy.
Leek 16. Danielle R. Leek, professor of communications at Grand Valley State University,
“Policy debate pedagogy: a complementary strategy for civic and political engagement through
service-learning,” Communication Education, 65:4, 399-405

Service-learning, however, is not without its critics. Eby (1998), for example, argues that the
type of reflection done in service-learning promotes too simplistic an understanding of social
issues. Often students are asked about their personal feelings towards their service experience
and then called upon to abstract that experience to broader social policy when instructors
have spent little to no time in class exploring the relevant political dimensions of an issue.
This type of reflection serves to make the material reality of social
problems a function of a student’s personal experience. A student who
volunteers at an animal shelter, but has little information about regulations covering stray
animals in the community, for example, is unlikely to offer a sophisticated response if asked
about whether or not the local police should be involved in investigating animal abuse
complaints. The prevalence of shallow knowledge development in service-learning compels Eby
to call for student reflection that also includes “critical analysis and understanding of the
theoretical issues, service strategies, social change, agency policies, social policies, and
community structure” involved in a service-learning experience (p. 7). Students should be able
to call on a range of knowledge and information in their reflections. Only then can they gain the
full benefits of service-learning. Colby (2008), Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, similarly challenges service-learning educators to attend to the two
dimensions of engagement necessary for democratic practice. “Political and apolitical civic
engagement,” Colby argues, are both valuable to democratic communities. Service-learning
often favors civic engagement by encouraging voluntarism and a philanthropic mindset. This
type of activity can, but seldom does, lead students to “draw connections” to systemic issues
or practices. Students who do service work “generally encounter very little encouragement to
get involved in politics, even broadly defined.” This leaves many students con- fident about the
need to volunteer, but uncertain “about how they might be politically engaged, and what that
might involve.” Moreover, Colby contends, civic participation through service “can lead to the
development of politically relevant skills” such as writing memos or making persuasive public
appeals, but often it does not. Activities such as cleaning up a river, or tutoring children, do not
place students in roles where political skills are developed. To get the most out of service-
learning, students need concurrent attention to political learning, which encourages
engagement with public policy and electoral issues, while fostering opportunities to build
skills needed for political activities (Colby, 2008). Helping students gain knowledge about
politics and political processes is a first-step towards accomplishing this goal (Delli Carpini &
Keeter, 1996). But political learning should be more than acquiring a list of facts. It is what takes
place as students discover the connection between policy, institutional practice, and the
status quo. Political learning is happening when students come to understand that public policy
and practice can and do change, and that they influence how policy-making happens, even as an
ordinary member of the public. Political engagementhappens when students
develop the skills necessary to help make political change possible. As Colby
(2008) explains: Teaching for political understanding and engagement
involves helping students find political issues they can be passionate
about while also staying open to opposing views. It involves teaching students to
be sensitive to others’ feelings about hot-button issues while also encouraging them to be tough
and slow to take offense themselves. Students also need to develop a thoughtful, reasoned
approach to politics without becoming immobilized by doubt. Such attention to the dual roles of
civic and political engagement may also address another common criticism of service-learning
programs in higher education. By challenging students to engage the system-level ideology and
praxis relevant to social experience, educators can help mitigate against service-learning
experiences that promote power inequalities by situating students as charity providers to needy
others. We also must do more to reward community partners for the substantial time they
invest in student participants. Because com- munity organizations often serve vulnerable
populations such as immigrants and children, it is imperative that service-learning experiences
lead participants to engage politically and ethi- cally in and beyond the classroom in order to
justify the short-term disruptions and costs associated with bringing a group of students into a
civic space (Tryon et al., 2008). One way to address these criticisms is to incorporate policy
debate into service-learning programs. In the remainder of this essay, I show how integrating
policy debate into the pedagogy of service-learning deepens political learning and promotes
the acquisition of skills essential to political engagement . Policy debate in the service-learning
classroom In policy debate, students are asked to consider whether a particular course of action
should be taken, generally by state institutions such as the United States federal government, or
its respective branches, such as the Supreme Court or the Congress (Snider & Schnurer, 2002). A
policy debate can involve any institutional actor or agent such as the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and so on. Questions
of policy can address broad global issues, such as “Should the United States federal government
sign a new nuclear treaty with Iran?” Or they might consider narrow rules for legal action, such
as “Should the Michigan Department of Treasury require individ- uals to pay taxes online?”
When connected to a service-learning experience, educators might set aside time for students
to debate a relevant policy question. Using previous examples, stu- dents working on the
health campaign might also be asked to debate the question, “Should the City of Grand Rapids
provide mobile health clinics in the downtown area?” Chemistry students could debate,
“Should the federal government require a universal science curricu- lum in all high schools?” No
matter the topic, students should have the opportunity to engage multiple perspectives on
the question, including speaking on the affirmative to support a new policy and on the
negative in opposition to a change in the status quo. Students may be asked to work with one
or more partners to research and develop materials that can be used in their speeches or in
question-and-answer periods related to their arguments. Especially for readers familiar with
extracurricular policy debate competitions in high schools or college, this depiction of what
policy debate entails may seem overly simplistic. Yet, even basic consideration of policy issues
related to a service-learning experience can improve a student’s odds of political learning.
Through policy debate, students can develop information literacy and
learn how to make critical arguments of fact. This experience is politically
empowering for students who will also build confidence for political
engagement. Information literacy While there are many definitions of information literacy,
the term generally is understood to mean that a student is “able to recognize when
information is needed, and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the
information needed” for problem- solving and decision-making (Spitzer, Eisenberg, & Lowe,
1998, p. 19). Information exists in a variety of forms, in visual data, computer graphics, sound-
recordings, film, and photographs. Information is also constructed and disseminated through a
wide range of sources and mediums. Therefore, “information literacy” functions as a blanket
term which covers a wide range of more specific literacies. Critiques of service-learning’s knowl-
edge-building power, such as those articulated by Eby (1998) and Colby (2008), are chal- lenging
both the emphasis the pedagogy places on information gained through experience and the
limited scope of political information students are exposed to in the process. Policy debate can
augment a student’s civic and political learning by fostering extended information literacies.
Snider and Schnurer (2002) identify policy debate as an especially research intensive form of
oral discussion which requires extensive time and commitment to learn the dimensions of a
topic. Understanding policy issues calls
for contemplating a range of
materials, from traditional news media publications to court proceedings,
research data, and institutional propaganda. Moreover, the nature of policy
debate, which involves public presentation of arguments on two competing sides of a
question, motivates students to go beyond basic information to achieve a more advanced
level of expertise and credibility on a topic (Dybvig & Iverson, n.d.). This type of work differs
from traditional research projects where students gather only the materials needed to support
their argument while neglecting contrary evidence. Instead, the “debate research process
encourages a kind of holistic approach, where students need to pay attention to the critics of
their argument because they will have to respond to those attacks” (Snider & Schnurer, 2002, p.
32). In today’s attention economy, cultivating a sensibility for well-
rounded information gathering can also aid students in recognizing when
and how the knowledge produced in their social environments can be
effectively translated to specific contexts. The “cultural shift in the production of
data” which has followed the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies means that all students are
likely “prosumers”—that is, they consume, produce, and coproduce information online all at the
same time (Scoble, 2011). Coupling service- learning with policy debate calls on students to
apply information across registers of public engagement, including their own service efforts and
their own public argumentation, in and outside of their debates. Information is used in the
service experience, which in turn, informs the use of information in debates, where students
then produce new information through their argumentation. The process is what Bruce (2008)
refers to “informed learning,” or “using information in order to learn.” When individuals move
from learning how to gather materials for a task to a cognitive awareness and understanding
of how the information-seeking process shapes their learning, they are engaged in informed
learning. Through this process, students can come to recognize that information management
and credibility is deeply disciplinary and historically con- textual (Bruce & Hughes, 2010). This
understanding, combined with practical experience in locating information, is a critical missing
element in contemporary political engage- ment. Over 20 years ago, Graber (1994) argued that
one of the biggest obstacles to political engagement was not apathy, but a gap between the way
news media presents information during elections, and the type of information voters need and
will listen to during electoral campaigns. The challenge extends beyond elections into policy-
making, especially as younger generations continue to revise their notions of citizenship away
from institutional politics towards more social forms of activism (Bennett, Wells, & Freelon,
2011). For stu- dents to effectively practice more expressive forms of citizenship they need
experience managing the breadth of information available about issues they care about. As past
research indicates a strong correlation between service-learning experience and the motiv-
ation and desire for post-graduation service, it seems likely that students who debate about
policy issues related to service areas will continue their informed learning practices after they
have left the classroom (Soria & Thomas-Card, 2014). Arguing facts In addition to building
information literacies, students who combine policy debate with service-learning can practice
“politically relevant skills,” which will help them have confidence for political engagement in the
future. As Colby (2008) explains, this confidence should be tempered by tolerance for difference
and differing opinions. On the surface, debating about institutional politics might seem
counterintuitive to this goal. Politicians and the press have a credibility problem among
college-aged students, and this leaves younger generations less inclined to feel obligated to
the state or to look to traditional modes of policy- making for social change (Bennett et al.,
2011; Manning & Edwards, 2014). This lack of faith in government and media outlets also
makes political argument more difficult (Klumpp, 2006). Whereas these institutions once
served as authoritative and trustworthy sources of information, the credibility of legislators
and journalists has decreased over the last 40 years or so. Today, politicians and pundits are
viewed as political actors interested in spectacle, power, and profit rather than truth-seeking
or the common good. While some political controversies are rooted in competing values,
Klumpp (2006) explains that arguments about policy are more often based in fact. Indeed,
when engaged in public arguments over questions of policy, people tend to “invoke the
authority of facts to support their positions.” Likewise, “the governmental sphere has
developed elaborate legal and deliberative processes in recognition of the power of facts as
the basis for a decision.” Yet, while shared values
are often quickly agreed
upon, differences over fact are more difficult to resolve . Without credible
institutions of authority that can disseminate facts, public deliberation requires more time,
information-gathering, evaluation, and reasoning. The Bushadministration’s
decision to take military action in Iraq, for example, was presumably
based on the “fact” that Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass
destruction. This has now become a classic example of poor policy-making grounded in
faulty factual evidence. This shortcoming is precisely why policy debate is a
valuable complement to service- learning activities. Not only can students use
their developing literacies to better understand social problems, they can also learn to access
a broader range of knowledge sources, thereby mitigating the absence of fact-finding from
traditional institutions. Fur- thermore, policy advocacy gives students experience testing the
reasoning underlying claims of fact. Issues of source credibility, analogic comparisons, and data
analysis are three examples of the type of critical thinking skills that students may need to apply
in order to engage a question of policy (Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt, & Louden, 1999). While the
effect may be to undermine government action in some instances, in others students will gain a
better understanding of when and where institutional activities can work to make change. As
students gain knowledge about the relationship between institutional structures and the
communities they serve, they grow confidence in their ability to engage in future conversations
about policy issues. Zwarensteyn’s (2012) research high- lights these sorts of effects in high
school students who engage in competitive policy debate. Zwarensteyn theorizes that even
minimal increases in technical knowledge about politics can translate to significant increases
in a student’s sense of self-efficacy. Many students start off feeling very insecure when it
comes to their mastery of insti- tutional politics; policy debate helps overcome that insecurity.
Moreover, because training in policy debate encourages students to address issues as
arguments rather than partisan positions, it encourages them to engage policy-making without
the hostility and incivility that often characterizes today’s political scene. Indeed, it is precisely
that perceived hostility and incivility that prompts many young people to avoid politics in the
first place. I do not mean to imply that students who debate about their service-learning experi-
ences will draw homogenous conclusions about policies. Quite the contrary. Students who
engage in service-learning still bring their personal visions and history to bear on their debates.
As a result, students will often have very different opinions after engaging in a shared debate
experience. More importantly, the practice of debating should operate to particularize students’
knowledge of community partners and clients, working against the destructive generalizations
and power dynamics that can result when students feel privileged to serve less fortunate
“others.” For civic and political engagement through service-learning to be meaningful and
productive, it must do more to challenge students’ concepts of the homogenous “we” who
helps “them.” Seligman (2013) argues that this civic spirit can be cultivated through the core
pedagogical principle of a “shared practice,” which emphasizes the application of knowledge to
purpose (p. 60). Policy debate achieves this outcome by calling on students to consider and
reconsider their understanding of themselves, institutions, community, and policy every time
the question “should” may arise. As Seligman writes: ... the orientation of thought to purpose
(having an explanation rest at a place, a purpose) is of extreme importance. We must recognize
that the orientation of thought to purpose is to recognize moving from providing a knowledge
of, to providing a knowledge for. This means that in the context of encountering difference it is
not sufficient to learn about (have an idea of) the other, rather it means to have ideas for certain
joint purposes—for a set of “to-does.” A purpose becomes the goal towards which our
explanations should be oriented. (p. 61) Put another way, policy debate challenges students “to
maintain a sense of doubt and to carry on a systematic and protracted inquiry” in the process
of service-learning itself (Seligman, 2013, p. 60). This is precisely the type of complex, ongoing,
reflective inquiry that John Dewey had in mind. Political engagement through policy debate This
essay began with a discussion of the growing attention to civic engagement programs in higher
education. The national trend is to accomplish higher levels of student civic responsibility during
and after their time in college through service-learning experiences tied to curricular learning
objectives. A challenge for service-learning scholars and teachers is to recognize a distinction
between civic activities that are accomplished by helping others and political activities that
require engagement with the collective institutional structures and processes that govern social
life. Both are necessary for democracy to thrive. Policy debate pedagogy can help service-
learning educators accomplish these dual objectives. To call policy debate a pedagogy rather
than just a style of debate is purposeful. A pedagogy is a praxis for cultivating learning in
others. The pedagogy of service-learning helps students to know and engage social conditions
through physical engagement with their environments and communities. Policy debate
pedagogy leads students to know and engage these same social conditions while also
challenging them to apply their knowledge for the purpose of political advocacy. These
pedagogies are natural compliments for cul- tivating student learning. Therefore, future studies
should explore how well service-learn- ing combined with policy debate can resolve concerns
that policy debate alone does not go far enough to invest students with political agency
(Mitchell, 1998). The present analysis suggests the potential for such an outcome is likely.
Moreover, research is clear that the civic effects of service-learning as an instructional method
are improved simply by increasing the amount of time spent on in-class discus- sion about the
service work students do (Levesque-Bristol, Knapp, & Fisher, 2010). Policy debates related to
students’ service can accomplish this goal and more. Policy debates can also facilitate the
political learning students need to build their political efficacy and capacity for political
engagement. Through informed learning about the political process—especially in the context
of service practice—students develop literacies that will extend beyond the classroom. Using
this knowledge in reasoned public argument about policy challenges invites students to move
beyond cynical disengagement towards a productive recognition of their own potential voice
in the political world. Policy debate pedagogy brings unique elements to the process of political
learning. By emphasizing the conditional and dynamic nature of political
arguments and processes, debates can work to relieve students of the
misconception that there is a single “right answer” for questions about
policy-making and politics, especially during election time. The communication
perspective on policy debates also highlights students’ collective involvement in the ever-
changing field of political terms, symbols, and meanings that constitute interpretations of our
social world. In fact, the historical roots of the term “communication” seem to demand that
speech and debate educators call for such emphasis on political learning. “To make common,”
the Latin interpretation of communicare, situ- ates our discipline as the heart of public political
affairs (Peters, 1999). Connecting policy debate to service-learning helps highlight the common
purpose of these approaches in efforts to promote civic engagement in higher education.
Temporality DA—the 1NC misperceives political strategies as perceived with
only the short term. Historical injustices can inform progressive politics, but A
FOCUS ON FUTURE AND PRESENT ACCESS is the only way to combat urgent,
catastrophic political problems of climate change and fasicm
Kelz 19 (Rosine, 5/6/19, PHD Philosophy; research associate for the Institute of Advanced
Sustainability Studies. “Thinking about future/democracy: towards a political theory of futurity”
Sustainability Science, July 2019, Volume 14, Issue 4, pp 905–913| Cite
ashttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-019-00697-6

Today, representative politics are often perceived as being primarily concerned with short-term
goals. Moreover, the future appears to be pre-determined by economic or technological
necessities. This ‘closing’ of the future, however, becomes increasingly problematic in the face
of global existential crises, such as environmental depletion and climate change. These
catastrophic developments could only be mitigated by immediate, decisive political
interventions, which would amount to systemic changes that redirect technological research
and economic activities. This article seeks to outline how political theory and philosophy can
contribute to “(re-)Politicizing the Future”. I argue that political thought should take
temporality, and in particular futurity, as a central conceptual and methodological concern .
Drawing on the works of prominent twentieth century thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Stanley
Cavell, and Jacques Derrida, I want to develop a deepened analytical understanding of the
possibility for a ‘future directed’ political thought which highlights intrinsic connections between
sustainability and democracy.

Introduction Politics is concerned with the future—this seems to be too obvious to need stating.
Whether in debates about the building of a new road, the overhaul of national pension systems,
or the forging of transnational agreements on climate change mitigation, all these disparate
forms of political decision-making carry implicit or explicit visions of preferable futures. For
many, however, this truism sounds increasingly hollow. It appears as if representative politics in
contemporary liberal-capitalist countries is concerned primarily with short-term goals. Even
social movements are often criticized for lacking positive visions of a future that would radically
difer from the current status-quo. Western societies seem to have lost their abilities to imagine
utopian futures (Habermas 1985: 7). The disappearance of possible futures that would be
profoundly diferent from the present has been propagated as both a political reality and a
normative standpoint since at least the early 1980s, and is often linked to the rise of neoliberal
forms of government (see, e.g., Fukuyama 1992; Séville 2017). From Margaret Thatcher’s
famous proclamation that ‘There is no Alternative’ to current austerity reforms, the political
future is presented as pre-determined by economic or technological necessities. This ‘closing’
of the future at frst sight would seem to be at odds with the obvious acceleration of late modern
societies, where things appear to be in constant fux. However, while acceleration and rapid
change are often regarded as hallmarks of modernity, these are highly uneven and aporetic
processes. Some theorists argue that the acceleration of other parts of society leads to a ‘hyper-
accelerated standstill’ or to ‘polar inertia’ in the political sphere (see, e.g., Rosa 2003: 17, 21). In
the face of rapid movements and shifts in areas such as fnancial markets or scientifc research,
representative democratic politics appears to have lost the ability to actively steer social
developments. The need for future directed political action and thinking, however, becomes
ever more pressing. From the extraction of fossil fuels and the use of nuclear power to genome
editing—the use of contemporary technologies has consequences which stretch far into the
future. At the same time, capacities for modeling and thus anticipating the possible efects of
actions on a global scale have increased rapidly in the past decades. We are currently
confronted with dystopian scenarios of environmental depletion and a rapidly changing climate,
but current liberal democratic governments often seem to lack the political will to implement
systemic changes that would make it possible to avoid the most disastrous pathways.

Even though there is thus an obvious need to theorize how politics relates to the creation of
future(s), current political theory often appears strangely uninterested in the temporal
character of the political sphere. What is called for, then, is political thought that contributes to
a project of actively (re-)politicizing societal and political notions of the future . As the
‘Politicizing the Future’ project members argue, this would involve a number of diverse practices
which enable the proliferation of multiple alternative possible futures in the present. These
practices are intrinsically linked to the pluralization and deepening of democratic processes.
However, even though one explicit normative goal of this project is to ‘open up’ the realm of
thinkable futures, not all visions of future are equally valued. The normative dimension also
entails a notion of strong sustainability, allowing for future generations to exist in a world with
a livable natural and just social environment. Thus, Politicizing the Future involves a ‘de-
colonization’ of the future, where present people have to refrain from using up resources and
creating ecological and socio-political issues that would disadvantage those who come after
them (Knappe et al. 2018, this issue). The aim of this article is, therefore, twofold. First, I want to
show that there are resources in political and moral thought to highlight the importance of
temporality and futurity, which can be useful for current debates in sustainability studies.
Second, this paper seeks to further explore the normative connections between futurity,
democracy, and sustainability, which are proposed by the members of the ‘Politicizing the
Future’ project.

The notion of (political) contingency is an excellent starting point to

explore the connections between a commitment to an open future and the concept of
democracy. By political contingency, I mean the simple fact that even
though the way a
society is organized is not random, it could always be otherwise
(Marchart 2010: 80). As political systems are created by overlapping processes,
whose beginnings cannot be clearly determined and whose developments do not follow
necessary pathways, contingency is a feature of any form of societal organization. However,
many forms of rule disavow their own contingency. Often, they seek to afrm their own necessity
and immutability by appealing to something outside of the realm of politics, as, for example, a
doctrine of divine right, or the unyielding laws of the market. By contrast, the idea of democracy
presupposes its own contingent political foundation. Making contingency explicit, in turn,
allows for a continuous renegotiation of possible futures. Moreover, as I will
discuss in Section I, affirming contingency entails a specifc relationship to the past—and to the
role of history in understanding the present and the future— that enables us to learn
from past events without understanding history as determining the
future. Section II concentrates on the notion that the concept of democracy is closely linked to
a particular understanding of futurity. A democratic commitment to an open future, in turn, also
implies a commitment to at least a “thin” notion of sustainability. In Section III, the relationship
between democracy and sustainability is explored further. I argue that while a societal turn to
more sustainable social and economic practices would involve the willingness of individuals to
make substantive changes in their daily lives, these commitments are political in nature. Instead
of sliding into a neoliberal logic of individualized ‘sustainable consumption’, what is called for
is an understanding of moral autonomy that involves a deepening of shared, democratic
practices.

The AFF doesn’t change the framework states operate within – that takes out
all of their root cause claims, external impacts, and justifies our epistemology –
de Araujo, professor for Ethics at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 14
(Marcelo, “Moral Enhancement and Political Realism,” Journal of Evolution and Technology
24(2): 29-43)

Some moral enhancement theorists argue that a society of morally enhanced individuals would be in
a better position to cope with important problems that humankind is likely to face in the future such as,
for instance, the threats posed by climate change, grand scale terrorist attacks, or the risk of catastrophic wars. The

assumption here is quite simple: our inability to cope successfully with these problems stems mainly
from a sort of deficit in human beings’ moral motivation. If human beings were morally better – if
we had enhanced moral dispositions – there would be fewer wars, less terrorism , and more willingness to save

our environment. Although simple and attractive, this assumption is, as I intend to show, false. At the root of threats to
the survival of humankind in the future is not a deficit in our moral dispositions, but the
endurance of an old political arrangement that prevents the pursuit of shared goals on a
collective basis. The political arrangement I have in mind here is the international system of states. In my analysis of the political implications of moral
enhancement, I intend to concentrate my attention only on the supposition that we could avoid major wars in the future by making individuals morally better. I do not intend to
discuss the threats posed by climate change, or by terrorism, although some human enhancement theorists also seek to cover these topics. I will explain, in the course of my
analysis, a conceptual distinction between “human nature realism” and “structural realism,” well-known in the field of international relations theory. Thomas Douglas seems to
have been among the first to explore the idea of “moral enhancement” as a new form of human enhancement. He certainly helped to kick off the current phase of the debate. In
a paper published in 2008, Douglas suggests that in the “future people might use biomedical technology to morally enhance themselves.” Douglas characterizes moral
enhancement in terms of the acquisition of “morally better motives” (Douglas 2008, 229). Mark Walker, in a paper published in 2009, suggests a similar idea. He characterizes
moral enhancement in terms of improved moral dispositions or “genetic virtues”: The Genetic Virtue Program (GVP) is a proposal for influencing our moral nature through
biology, that is, it is an alternate yet complementary means by which ethics and ethicists might contribute to the task of making our lives and world a better place. The basic idea
is simple enough: genes influence human behavior, so altering the genes of individuals may alter the influence genes exert on behavior. (Walker 2009, 27–28) Walker does not
argue in favor of any specific moral theory, such as, for instance, virtue ethics. Whether one endorses a deontological or a utilitarian approach to ethics, he argues, the concept
of virtue is relevant to the extent that virtues motivate us either to do the right thing or to maximize the good (Walker 2009, 35). Moral enhancement theory, however, does not
reduce the ethical debate to the problem of moral dispositions. Morality also concerns, to a large extent, questions about reasons for action. And moral enhancement, most
certainly, will not improve our moral beliefs; neither could it be used to settle moral disagreements. This seems to have led some authors to criticize the moral enhancement
idea on the ground that it neglects the cognitive side of our moral behavior. Robert Sparrow, for instance, argues that, from a Kantian point of view, moral enhancement would
have to provide us with better moral beliefs rather than enhanced moral motivation (Sparrow 2014, 25; see also Agar 2010, 74). Yet, it seems to me that this objection misses

Many people, across different countries, already share moral beliefs

the point of the moral enhancement idea.

relating, for instance, to the wrongness of harming or killing other people arbitrarily, or to the moral requirement to
help people in need. They may share moral beliefs while not sharing the same reasons for these beliefs, or perhaps even not being able to articulate the beliefs in the conceptual
framework of a moral theory (Blackford 2010, 83). But although they share some moral beliefs, in some circumstances they may lack the appropriate motivation to act
accordingly. Moral enhancement, thus, aims at improving moral motivation, and leaves open the question as to how to improve our moral judgments. In a recent paper,
published in The Journal of Medical Ethics, neuroscientist Molly Crockett reports the state of the art in the still very embryonic field of moral enhancement. She points out, for
example, that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) citalopram seems to increase harm aversion. There is, moreover, some evidence that this substance may be
effective in the treatment of specific types of aggressive behavior. Like Douglas, Crockett emphasizes that moral enhancement should aim at individuals’ moral motives (Crockett

studies
2014; see also Spence 2008; Terbeck et al. 2013). Another substance that is frequently mentioned in the moral enhancement literature is oxytocin. Some

suggest that willingness to cooperate with other people ,and to trust unknown prospective cooperators, may be
enhanced by an increase in the levels of oxytoci n in the organism (Zak 2008, 2011; Zak and Kugler 2011; Persson and Savulescu 2012,
118–119). Oxytocin has also been reported to be “associated with the subjective experience of empathy” (Zak 2011, 55; Zak and Kugler 2011, 144). The question I would like to
examine now concerns the supposition that moral enhancement – comprehended in these terms and assuming for the sake of argument that, some day, it might become

The assumption that there is a relationship

effective and safe – may also help us in coping with the threat of devastating wars in the future.

between, on the one hand, threats to the survival of humankind and , on the other, a sort of “deficit” in our
moral dispositions is clearly made by some moral enhancements theorists. Douglas, for instance, argues that “according to
many plausible theories, some of the world’s most important problems — such as developing world poverty, climate change and war — can be attributed to these moral
deficits” (2008, 230). Walker, in a similar vein, writes about the possibility of “using biotechnology to alter our biological natures in an effort to reduce evil in the world” (2009,
29). And Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson go as far as to defend the “the need for moral enhancement” of humankind in a series of articles, and in a book published in 2012.
One of the reasons Savulescu and Persson advance for the moral enhancement of humankind is that our moral dispositions seem to have remained basically unchanged over the
last millennia (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 2). These dispositions have proved thus far quite useful for the survival of human beings as a species. They have enabled us to
cooperate with each other in the collective production of things such as food, shelter, tools, and farming. They have also played a crucial role in the creation and refinement of a
variety of human institutions such as settlements, villages, and laws. Although the possibility of free-riding has never been fully eradicated, the benefits provided by cooperation
have largely exceeded the disadvantages of our having to deal with occasional uncooperative or untrustworthy individuals (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 39). The problem,
however, is that the same dispositions that have enabled human beings in the past to engage in the collective production of so many artifacts and institutions now seem
powerless in the face of the human capacity to destroy other human beings on a grand scale, or perhaps even to annihilate the entire human species. There is, according to
Savulescu and Persson, a “mismatch” between our cognitive faculties and our evolved moral attitudes: “[…] as we have repeatedly stressed, owing to the progress of science, the
range of our powers of action has widely outgrown the range of our spontaneous moral attitudes, and created a dangerous mismatch” (Persson and Savulescu 2012, 103; see
also Persson and Savulescu 2010, 660; Persson and Savulescu 2011b; DeGrazie 2012, 2; Rakić 2014, 2). This worry about the mismatch between, on the one hand, the modern
technological capacity to destroy and, on the other, our limited moral commitments is not new. The political philosopher Hans Morgenthau, best known for his defense of
political realism, called attention to the same problem nearly fifty years ago. In the wake of the first successful tests with thermonuclear bombs, conducted by the USA and the
former Soviet Union, Morgenthau referred to the “contrast” between the technological progress of our age and our feeble moral attitudes as one of the most disturbing
dilemmas of our time: The first dilemma consists in the contrast between the technological unification of the world and the parochial moral commitments and political
institutions of the age. Moral commitments and political institutions, dating from an age which modern technology has left behind, have not kept pace with technological
achievements and, hence, are incapable of controlling their destructive potentialities. (Morgenthau 1962, 174) Moral enhancement theorists and political realists like
Morgenthau, therefore, share the thesis that our natural moral dispositions are not strong enough to prevent human beings from endangering their own existence as a species.
But they differ as to the best way out of this quandary: moral enhancement theorists argue for the re-engineering of our moral dispositions, whereas Morgenthau accepted the
immutability of human nature and argued, instead, for the re-engineering of world politics. Both positions, as I intend to show, are wrong in assuming that the “dilemma” results

both
from the weakness of our spontaneous moral dispositions in the face of the unprecedented technological achievements of our time. On the other hand,

positions are correct in recognizing the real possibility of global catastrophes resulting from the
malevolent use of, for instance, biotechnology or nuclear capabilities. The supposition that individuals’ unwillingness
to cooperate with each other, even when they would be better-off by choosing to cooperate, results from a sort of deficit of dispositions such as altruism, empathy, and
benevolence has been at the core of some important political theories. This idea is an important assumption in the works of early modern political realists such as Machiavelli
and Thomas Hobbes. It was also later endorsed by some well-known authors writing about the origins of war in the first half of the twentieth century. It was then believed, as
Sigmund Freud suggested in a text from 1932, that the main cause of wars is a human tendency to “hatred and destruction” (in German: ein Trieb zum Hassen und Vernichtung).

Freud went as far as to suggest that human beings have an ingrained “inclination” to
“aggression” and “destruction” (Aggressionstrieb, Aggressionsneigung, and Destruktionstrieb), and that this inclination has a “good biological basis”
(biologisch wohl begründet) (Freud 1999, 20–24; see also Freud 1950; Forbes 1984; Pick 1993, 211–227; Medoff 2009). The attempt to employ Freud’s

conception of human nature in understanding international relations has recently been

resumed, for instance by Kurt Jacobsen in a paper entitled “Why Freud Matters: Psychoanalysis and International Relations Revisited,” published in 2013. Morgenthau
himself was deeply influenced by Freud’s speculations on the origins of war.1 Early in the 1930s, Morgenthau wrote an essay called “On the Origin of the Political from the
Nature of Human Beings” (Über die Herkunft des Politischen aus dem Wesen des Menschen), which contains several references to Freud’s theory about the human propensity
to aggression.2 Morgenthau’s most influential book, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, first published in 1948 and then successively revised and edited,
is still considered a landmark work in the tradition of political realism. According to Morgenthau, politics is governed by laws that have their origin in human nature: “Political
realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature” (Morgenthau 2006, 4). Just like human enhancement
theorists, Morgenthau also takes for granted that human nature has not changed over recent millennia: “Human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not
changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to discover these laws” (Morgenthau 2006, 4). And since, for Morgenthau, human nature
prompts human beings to act selfishly, rather than cooperatively, political leaders will sometimes favor conflict over cooperation, unless some superior power compels them to
act otherwise. Now, this is exactly what happens in the domain of international relations. For in the international sphere there is not a supranational institution with the real
power to prevent states from pursuing means of self-defense. The acquisition of means of self-defense, however, is frequently perceived by other states as a threat to their own
security. This leads to the security dilemma and the possibility of war. As Morgenthau put the problem in an article published in 1967: “The actions of states are determined not
by moral principles and legal commitments but by considerations of interest and power” (1967, 3). Because Morgenthau and early modern political philosophers such as
Machiavelli and Hobbes defended political realism on the grounds provided by a specific conception human nature, their version of political realism has been frequently called
“human nature realism.” The literature on human nature realism has become quite extensive (Speer 1968; Booth 1991; Freyberg-Inan 2003; Kaufman 2006; Molloy 2006, 82–85;
Craig 2007; Scheuerman 2007, 2010, 2012; Schuett 2007; Neascu 2009; Behr 2010, 210–225; Brown 2011; Jütersonke 2012). It is not my intention here to present a fully-fledged
account of the tradition of human nature realism, but rather to emphasize the extent to which some moral enhancement theorists, in their description of some of the gloomy
scenarios humankind is likely to face in the future, implicitly endorse this kind of political realism. Indeed, like human nature realists, moral enhancement theorists assume that
human nature has not changed over the last millennia, and that violence and lack of cooperation in the international sphere result chiefly from human nature’s limited
inclination to pursue morally desirable goals. One may, of course, criticize the human enhancement project by rejecting the assumption that conflict and violence in the

Sparrow correctly argues that

international domain should be explained by means of a theory about human nature. In a reply to Savulescu and Persson,

“structural issues,” rather than human nature, constitute the main factor underlying political
conflicts (Sparrow 2014, 29). But he does not explain what exactly these “structural issues” are, as I intend to do later. Sparrow is right in rejecting the human nature
theory underlying the human enhancement project. But this underlying assumption, in my view, is not trivially false or simply “ludicrous,” as he suggests. Human nature realism
has been implicitly or explicitly endorsed by leading political philosophers ever since Thucydides speculated on the origins of war in antiquity (Freyberg-Inan 2003, 23–36). True,
it might be objected that “human nature realism,” as it was defended by Morgenthau and earlier political philosophers, relied upon a metaphysical or psychoanalytical
conception of human nature, a conception that, actually, did not have the support of any serious scientific investigation (Smith 1983, 167). Yet, over the last few years there has
been much empirical research in fields such as developmental psychology and evolutionary biology that apparently gives some support to the realist claim. Some of these
studies suggest that an inclination to aggression and conflict has its origins in our evolutionary history. This idea, then, has recently led some authors to resume “human nature
realism” on new foundations, devoid of the metaphysical assumptions of the early realists, and entirely grounded in empirical research. Indeed, some recent works in the field of
international relations theory already seek to call attention to evolutionary biology as a possible new start for political realism. This point is clearly made, for instance, by Bradley
Thayer, who published in 2004 a book called Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. And in a paper published in 2000, he
affirms the following: Evolutionary theory provides a stronger foundation for realism because it is based on science, not on theology or metaphysics. I use the theory to explain
two human traits: egoism and domination. I submit that the egoistic and dominating behavior of individuals, which is commonly described as “realist,” is a product of the
evolutionary process. I focus on these two traits because they are critical components of any realist argument in explaining international politics. (Thayer 2000, 125; see also
Thayer 2004) Thayer basically argues that a tendency to egoism and domination stems from human evolutionary history. The predominance of conflict and competition in the
domain of international politics, he argues, is a reflex of dispositions that can now be proved to be part of our evolved human nature in a way that Morgenthau and other earlier
political philosophers could not have established in their own time. Now, what some moral enhancement theorists propose is a direct intervention in our “evolved limited moral
psychology” as a means to make us “fit” to cope with some possible devastating consequences from the predominance of conflict and competition in the domain of
international politics (Persson and Savulescu 2010, 664). Moral enhancement theorists comprehend the nature of war and conflicts, especially those conflicts that humankind is
likely to face in the future, as the result of human beings’ limited moral motivations. Compared to supporters of human nature realism, however, moral enhancement theorists
are less skeptical about the prospect of our taming human beings’ proclivity to do evil. For our knowledge in fields such as neurology and pharmacology does already enable us

to enhance people’s performance in a variety of activities, and there seems to be no reason to assume it will not enable us to enhance people morally in the future. But the
question, of course, is whether moral enhancement will also improve the prospect of our coping
successfully with some major threats to the survival of humankind, as Savulescu and Persson propose, or to reduce evil in the
world, as proposed by Walker. V. The point to which I would next like to call attention is that “human nature realism” – which is implicitly presupposed by some moral
enhancement theorists – has been much criticized over the last decades within the tradition of political realism itself. “Structural realism,” unlike “human nature realism,” does
not seek to derive a theory about conflicts and violence in the context of international relations from a theory of the moral shortcomings of human nature. Structural realism
was originally proposed by Kenneth Waltz in Man, the State and War, published in 1959, and then later in another book called Theory of International Politics, published in 1979.
In both works, Waltz seeks to avoid committing himself to any specific conception of human nature (Waltz 2001, x–xi). Waltz’s thesis is that the thrust of the political realism
doctrine can be retained without our having to commit ourselves to any theory about the shortcomings of human nature. What is relevant for our understanding of international
politics is, instead, our understanding of the “structure” of the international system of states (Waltz 1986). John Mearsheimer, too, is an important contemporary advocate of
political realism. Although he seeks to distance himself from some ideas defended by Waltz, he also rejects human nature realism and, like Waltz, refers to himself as a
supporter of “structural realism” (Mearsheimer 2001, 20). One of the basic tenets of political realism (whether “human nature realism” or “structural realism”) is, first, that the

states are the main, if not the only, relevant actors in the context of international relations; and second, that states compete for
power in the international arena. Moral considerations in international affairs, according to realists, are secondary when set
against the state’s primary goal, namely its own security and survival. But while human nature realists such as
Morgenthau explain the struggle for power as a result of human beings’ natural inclinations, structural realists like Waltz and Mearsheimer argue that conflicts in the
international arena do not stem from human nature, but from the very “structure” of the international system of states (Mearsheimer 2001, 18). According to Waltz and

Mearsheimer, it is this structure that compels individuals to act as they do in the domain of
international affairs. And one distinguishing feature of the international system of states is its “anarchical structure,” i.e. the lack of a
central government analogous to the central governments that exist in the context of domestic politics. It means that each individual state is

responsible for its own integrity and survival . In the absence of a superior authority , over and above the
power of each sovereign state, political leaders often feel compelled to favor security over morality , even if, all other things
being considered, they would naturally be more inclined to trust and to cooperate with political leaders of other states. On the other hand, when political leaders do trust and
cooperate with other states, it is not necessarily their benevolent nature that motivates them to be cooperative and trustworthy, but, again, it is the structure of the system of
states that compels them. The concept of human nature, as we can see, does not play a decisive role here. Because Waltz and Mearsheimer depart from “human nature

even if human beings turn out to

realism,” their version of political realism has also sometimes been called “neo-realism” (Booth 1991, 533). Thus,

become morally enhanced in the future, humankind may still have to face the same scary scenarios
described by some moral enhancement theorists. This is likely to happen if, indeed , human beings remain compelled to

cooperate within the present structure of the system of states. Consider, for instance, the incident with a Norwegian weather rocket in January 1995. Russian radars
detected a missile that was initially suspected of being on its way to reach Moscow in five minutes. All levels of Russian military defense were immediately put on alert for a
possible imminent attack and massive retaliation. It is reported that for the first time in history a Russian president had before him, ready to be used, the “nuclear briefcase”
from which the permission to launch nuclear weapons is issued. And that happened when the Cold War was already supposed to be over! In the event, it was realized that the
rocket was leaving Russian territory and Boris Yeltsin did not have to enter the history books as the man who started the third world war by mistake (Cirincione 2008, 382).3 But

under the crushing pressure of having to decide in such a short time, and on the basis of
unreliable information, whether or not to retaliate, even a morally enhanced Yeltsin might have
given orders to launch a devastating nuclear response – and that in spite of strong moral dispositions
to the contrary. Writing for The Guardian on the basis of recently declassified documents, Rupert Myers reports further incidents similar to the one of 1995. He
suggests that as more states strive to acquire nuclear capability, the danger of a major nuclear accident is likely to increase (Myers 2014). What has to be

changed, therefore, is not human moral dispositions, but the very structure of the political
international system of states within which we currently live. As far as major threats to the survival of humankind are concerned, moral enhancement
might play an important role in the future only to the extent that it will help humankind to change the structure of the system of states. While moral
enhancement may possibly have desirable results in some areas of human cooperation that do not badly threaten our security – such as donating food, medicine,
and money to poorer countries – it will not motivate political leaders to dismantle their nuclear weapons.

Neither will it deter other political leaders from pursuing nuclear capability, at any rate not as
long as the structure of international politics compels them to see prospective cooperators in
the present as possible enemies in the future. The idea of a “structure” should not be understood here in metaphysical terms, as though
it mysteriously existed in a transcendent world and had the magical power of determining leaders’ decisions in this world. The word “structure” denotes merely a political

in the absence of the kind of security that law-

arrangement in which there are no powerful law-enforcing institutions. And

enforcing institutions have the force to create , political leaders will often fail to cooperate, and
occasionally engage in conflicts and wars, in those areas that are critical to their security and survival. Given the structure of

international politics and the basic goal of survival, this is likely to continue to happen , even if, in the future, political leaders

become less egoistic and power-seeking through moral enhancement. On the other hand, since the structure of the international system of
states is itself another human institution, there is no reason to suppose that it cannot ever be changed. If people become morally enhanced in the future they may possibly feel

addressing
more strongly motivated to change the structure of the system of states, or perhaps even feel inclined to abolish it altogether. In my view, however,

major threats to the survival of humankind in the future by means of bioengineering is unlikely
to yield the expected results, so long as moral enhancement is pursued within the present
framework of the international system of states.

Their thesis is wrong – anti-black racism is a contingent function of

institutionalized social power, which can be dismantled through the
transformation of these institutions
Gordon ‘17 (Lewis, professor of philosophy with affiliations in Judaic studies, Caribbean and
Latina/o studies, and Asian and Asian American studies at UCONN-Storrs, The Oxford Handbook
of Philosophy and Race, pp. 296-298)

Should the analysis remain at white and black, the world would appear more closed than it in
fact is. For one, simply being born black would bar the possibility of any legitimate appearance.
This is a position that has been taken by a growing group of theorists known as “Afro-
pessimists” (Wilderson 2010; Sexton 2011). Black for them is absolute “social death:’ it is outside
of relations. Missing from this view is; however, is at least what I argued in Bad Faith and
Antiblack Racism, which is that no human being is “really” any of these things; the claim itself is
a manifestation of mauvaise foi. The project of making people into such is one thing. People
actually becoming such is another. This is an observation Fanon also makes in his formulation of
the tone of nonbeing and his critique of Self—Other discourses in Peau noir, masques blancs
(Black Skin, White Masks). Fanon distinguishes between the zone of nonbeing (nonappearance
as human beings) and those of being. ‘The latter presumes a self-justified reality, which means it
does not call itself into question. The former faces the problem of illegitimate appearance
(Fanon 1952, chapters; Gordon 1999; AIcoir 2006; Yancy 2008). Thus, even the effort “to be” is
in conflict as the system in question presumes legitimate absence of certain groups. Yet,
paradoxically, the human being comes to the fore through emerging from being in the first
place. Thus, the assertion of being is also an effort to push the human being out of existence, so
to speak. The racial conflict is thus changed to an existential one in which an existential ontology
is posed against an ontology of being. Existential ontology pertains to human being, whereas
ontological being pertains to gods. This is why Fanon concludes that racism is also an attack
against human being, as it creates a world in which one set stands above others as gods and the
rest as below human. Where, in this formulation, stand human beings? The argument itself
gains some clarity with the etymology of “existence” which is from the Latin expression exsístere
(to stand out, to emerge -that is, to appear). Blacks thus face the paradox of existing (standing
out) as nonexistence (not standing out). The system of racism renders black appearance illicit.
This conundrum of racialized existence affects ethics and morals. Ethical relations are premised
on selves relating to another or others. The others must, however, appear as such, and they too,
manifest themselves as selves. Implicit in such others as other selves is the formalization of
ethical relations as equal. as found in the thought of Immanuel Kant and shifted in deference to
the other in that of Emmanuel Levinas, Racism, however, excludes certain groups from being
others and selves (if interpreted as being of a kind similar to the presumed legitimate selves).
Thus, the schema of racism is one in which the hegemonic group relates to its members as
selves and others, whereas the nonhegemonic groups are neither selves nor others. They, in
effect, could only be such in relation to each other. It is, in other words, a form of ontological
segregation as a condition of ethics and morals. The fight against racism, then, does not work as
a fight against being others or The Other. It is a fight against being nonothers. Fanon’s insight
demands an additional clarification. Racists should be distinguished from racism. Racists are
people who hold beliefs about the superiority and inferiority of certain groups of racially
designated people. Racism is the system of institutions and social norms that empower
individuals with such beliefs. Without that system, a racist would simply be an obnoxious,
whether overtly deprecating or patronizing, individual. With that system, racist points of view
affect the social world as reality. Without that system, racists ultimately become
inconsequential and, in a word, irrelevant beyond personal concerns of saving their souls from
unethical and immoral beliefs and choices. Fanon was concerned with racists in his capacity as a
psychiatrist (therapy, if necessary). but he was also concerned with racism as a philosopher,
social thinker, and revolutionary (Fanon 1959/1975). The latter, in other words, is a system,
from an antiracism perspective, in need of eradication. An objection to the Afro-pessimistic
assertion of blackness as social death could thus be raised from a Fanonian phenomenological
perspective: Why must the social world be premised on the attitudes and perspectives of
antiblack racists? Why don’t blacks among each other and other communities of color count as
a social perspective? And if the question of racism is a function of power, why not offer a study
of power, how it is gained and lost, instead of an assertion of its manifestations as ontological?
An additional problem with the Afro-pessimistic model is that its proponents treat “blackness”
as though it could exist independent of other categories. A quick examination of double
consciousness (Du Bois 1903)—a phenomenological concept if there ever were one by virtue of
the focus on forms of consciousness and, better, that of which one is conscious, that is,
intentionality would reveal why this would not work. Double conscious ness involves seeing
oneself from the perspective of another that deems one as negative (for example, the Afro-
pessimistic conception of blackness). That there is already another perspective makes the
subject who lives through double consciousness relational. Added is what Paget Henry (2005)
calls polemic, ted double consciousness and Nahum Chandler (2014, 6o—6i) calls the redoubled
gesture, which is the realization that the condemnation of negative meaning means that one
must not do what the Afro pessimist does. Seeing that that position is false moves one
dialectically forward into asking about the system that attempts to force one into such an
identity: This relational matter requires looking beyond blackness ironically in order to
understand blackness. This means moving from the conception of meaning as singular,
substance-based, fixed, and semantical into the grammar of how meaning is produced. Such
grammars, such as that of gender, emerge in interesting ways (Gordon 1999, 124—129; 1997,73
—74). However, as all human beings are manifestations of different dimensions of meaning, the
question of identity requires more than an intersecting model; otherwise there will simply be
one (a priori) normative outcome in every moment of inquiry: whoever manifests the maximum
manifestation of predetermined negative intersecting terms. That would in effect be an
essence before an existence indeed, before an actual event of harm. This observation emerges
as well with the Afro-pessimist model when one thinks of pessimism as the guiding attitude .
The existential phenomenological critique would be that optimism and pessimism are
symptomatic of the same attitude: a priori assertions on reality. Human existence is contingent
but not accidental, which means that the social world at hand is a manifestation of choices and
relationships in other words, human actions. Because human beings can only build the future
instead of it determining us, the task at hand, as phenomenology-oriented existentialists from
Beauvoir and Sartre to Fanon, William R. Jones, and this author have argued, depends on
commitment. This concern also pertains to the initial concerns about authenticity discourses
with which I began. One could only be pessimistic about an outcome, an activity. It is an act of
forecasting what could only be meaningful once actually performed. Similarly, one could only be
optimistic about the same. What however, if there were no way to know either? Here we come
to the foi element in mauvaise foi. Some actions are deontological, and if not that, they are at
least reflections of our commitments, our projects. Thus, the point of some actions is not about
their success or failure but whether we deem them worth doing . Taking responsibility for such
actions—bringing value to them— is opposed to another manifestation of mauvaise foi: the
spirit of seriousness.
1ar
 1ar – Linear Time
Adopting a generically linear view of time isn’t violent – it’s the only sensical
approach to revolutionary politics and the only way to redeem the violence of
the past
Ferguson ‘15 (Stephen C., Assoc. Prof. in Liberal Studies @ North Carolina A & T State U. [he is
black], Philosophy of African American Studies: Nothing Left of Blackness, pp. 137-139)

Alex Callinicos argues that every theory of history has a theory of directionality, that is, it offers an
account of the overall pattern described by the historical process. 29 Afrocentrists such as Asante and
Tsehloane C. Keto offer us a cyclical philosophy of history . Time and the events of history contained within go
around in a circle. History is nothing more than a recurring treadmill . 3° Foundational to the cyclical philosophy of
history are three assumptions. First, human beings, who by nature are the same, will respond uniformly to similar circumstances,
and so produce the same effects. Second, history repeats itself ad infinitum in cycles of time. And, lastly, the rise and fall of polities
must be seen as episodes in a cyclical movement. The appeal of a cyclical philosophy of history, for Afrocentricity, is based on the
explanation it offers of the fall of the African race from ancient civilization and glory into a state of slavery and supposed barbarism.
This tradition of racial vindicationism , Wilson Jeremiah Moses argues, envisioned a "utopia of the past'' in
which Black people were descendants of "a race of supermen," who had created one of the
greatest civilizations in world history. On the basis of the cycles of history, Black people would rise from the ashes of
slavery and colonialism and give rebirth to the redemption of Africa.-11 Asame argues that the African-centered
philosophy of history stands in opposition to "the Eurocentric idea of straightforward linear
progression in time from beginning to end." 32 According to Asame, "African thought was in terms of cycles, circles,
continuity."33 Asante and Keto argue that Eurocentric conceptions of history do not accept a
conception of world history understood as episodes in a cyclical movement. Yet, in the annals of European inrelleccual
history, from Plato to Aristotle to Machiavelli to Giovanni B. Vico to Oswald Spengler, various European or
Eurocentric philosophies of history were based on cyclical change .34 Did they adopt an African-centered
conception of history? Or can it be argued that the Afrocentrists have adopted a European philosophy of history? Keto argues that
the African-centered conception of history should be based on "a transcendent framework modeled on the experience of the every
changing seasonal cycles that rotate through the years and/or the cycles of human existence that go through irreversible stages yet
follow repetitive stages for each succeeding generation." 35 Keto also suggests a periodization based on these cycles: (1) the first
period before the fourth millennium BCE in Kerner that followed the creation of human cultures; (2) the second period between 600
and 1600 CE in West Africa that witnessed the creation of state power and the formation of empires in Ghana, Mali, and Songhai; (3)
the third period from 1800 to 1890 that saw the attempt to "rebuild defensive redoubts" through the unification of existing societies
among the Baganda, Ashanti, Fulani, t1.)rexample; and (4) the emergence of "African initiatives" in the post-1960 period through the
Civil Rights movement and the struggles for political independence in Africa and the Caribbean. In this account, the course of history
supposedly follows a cycle of progress and regression. Periods of history give structure to the historical process. Keto's periodization
is just simply too broad to allow for any systematic understanding of history. The leap from 4000 BCE in Kerner to 600 CE in West
Africa, for instance, is a rather ambitious scholarly approach to African history. The
result is not concrete history, but
arid abstractions about the continuity of African history under the lens of an African-centered
perspective. The difficulties with this periodization scheme become apparent when one sets out to examine and arrange African
history – whether of a past epoch or the present. The natural question we should ask, isn't this just a linear conception
of time? If there are multiple cycles of history that keep repeating, by default, we have to order them in a
linear series of time. As Nkrumah brings to our attention, "this time-dimension must order the cycles themselves, because
some of them must come before others." 36 From this standpoint, there is ultimately historical progress.
History merely repeats itself ad infinitum. Whether it is derived from ancient Egypt or Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence,'' ultimately,
the African-centered conception of history is a flight into speculative mysticism in order to
escape the challenge of the present. Despite Afrocentric conjectures, the temporal dimension of
historical development is ultimately a movement from past, present to future, that is,
temporally linear. Historical progression moves forward not backward. Indeed, Kwame Nkrumah understood this
when he fashioned the slogan, "Forward Ever, Back'Ward Never!" This viewpoint is not a denial
of the importance of past history in the cultural development of continental Africans, African
Americans, and all people of African descent. Rather, it is an emphatic recognition of the past as
the ground for our forward movement. History is thus the guide along the path to the future and the road of return
to the past via historical research. Our Afrocentrists are committed to an idealist conception of history that
emphasizes eminent historical figures and personalities such as African kings, queens, philosophers, politicians,
and warlords as the makers of history, its chief participants. This view is clearly expressed in the work of the English
philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle, who wrote in his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History: "Universal
history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked
here."·07 Asante and company take the behavior and actions of a single great individual (e.g., the pharaohs) as the only active
element from which arises all historical motion, change, and development. In this view, we have the invisible masses
of people that are the passive, dull, and "unhistorical" elements of history . By focusing on the
great personalities of history, we consequently ignore people's class membership, being unable or
unwilling to understand the dialectics of the relation between the individual and the activities of the classes they belong ro. We
have to move beyond the romantic idealism of Afrocentricity. It just is not true that all African
people were descendants of Kings, Queens, and the great philosophers of Africa! While "high" cultures
(or civilizations) did exist in ancient Africa, it is closer to the truth that the vast majority of Black people are descendants of African
peasants. I would argue that
the people are the chief creator, the real subject of history; this is a fundamental
proposition of historical materialism. The
truth of this proposition is expressed throughout African and
African American history. Here I use the concept of the people both in the broad sense, coinciding with the concept of the
population or the nation in general, and in the narrower sense, meaning working-class people, that is, the makers of history. The
concept of the masses or working people is a category chat changes and develops historically. It must be considered in relation co
certain socioeconomic formations, their specific social structure, and also in relation to the specific course of historical development
of the given society or given country. 08 The
utopian character of the African-centered conception of
history rests in the face that it devalues the historical experience of the Americas in order to
affirm ancient civilization and culture in Africa. Asante observes, "Walking the way of the new world means that we must
establish schools which will teach our children how to behave like the kings and queens they are meant to be."59 In a similar vein,
Maulana Karenga once remarked, "The day the slave ship landed in America, our history ended and the white man's story
began.''·iOHere we find Karenga engaging in an Afrocemric ver- sion of the "end of history."