1AC

Plan
The United States federal government should substantially expand the list of
predicate crimes in 18 USC section 1956(c)(7) to include tax crimes in the United States
 1AC---Taxes
Advantage 1 is Taxes

Tax evasion and avoidance locks in prolonged de-growth---sustainable responses

require tax revenue
Scilla Alecci 20. Investigative Reporter & Video Journalist @ ICIJ. 4-7-2020. “Crumbling economies must
tackle tax evasion to meet coronavirus crisis, experts warn.” ICIJ.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/crumbling-economies-must-tackle-tax-evasion-to-
tackle-coronavirus-crisis-experts-warn/

As emergency coronavirus medical and social programs lay bare economic and social deficiencies around the
world, experts are call ing for a more forceful tax response to the crisis. They said the dramatic spike in jobless

claims combined with the vast additional burden on health systems should be a tax call-to-arms for
governments internationally. The pandemic has highlighted global reliance on digital and pharmaceutical
behemoths, and at the same time should shine a spotlight on their tax behavior , said Rasmus Corlin Christensen, a researcher with
the International Centre for Tax and Development. “Digital giants [and other companies] have been exploiting the international tax

system, using its legal opportunities to reduce their tax burden and design their business model around
minimizing their tax bill,” Christensen told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. “There is this mismatch between the
important role that they play in our society and their tax behavior. ” Now that governments are facing an
economic meltdown, they are confronted with a reality that many economists and tax justice advocates
have been warning about for a long time: more than $800 billion in lost tax revenues, annually. In 2016, the
ICIJ-led Panama Papers investigation exposed the offshore financial dealings of politicians, companies and criminals,

helping governments recover at least $1.2 billion in fines and back taxes by April 2019. But trillions of dollars
remain hidden offshore. Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told ICIJ one of the clear lessons of the current economic dislocation was: “ Tax havens
are at the heart of the financial and budgetary crisis.” Each year, he estimates, 40% of multinational profits are shifted
to tax havens and 8% of personal wealth is stashed offshore. As past ICIJ investigations revealed, some of those multinationals include tech companies like
Facebook, Uber and Amazon that have become vital links across the world, as it scrambles to deal with the viral outbreak through mass quarantines. The list continues with Apple, which said it’s producing protective gear for

Experts say the paradox

medical workers, medtech companies like Medtronic, which produces ventilators, and Johnson & Johnson, which is working on a vaccine in partnership with a U.S. state agency.

of the current crisis is that the revenue lost due to the actions of tax havens, and these and other
corporate giants, could have been used to save lives and keep entire economies afloat as governments
responded to the crisis. Tax lessons from the coronavirus Zucman said if there was one lesson we could take from the current
economic crisis, it was: “Shoring up our public services starts with fighting tax avoidance and tax evasion
more aggressively.” When countries like Luxembourg offer “tailored tax deals to multinational
companies, when the British Virgin Islands enables money launderers to create anonymous companies
for a penny, and Switzerland keeps the wealth of corrupt elites out of sight in its coffers,” Zucman said, “they all
steal the revenue of foreign nations.” Developing countries are particularly vulnerable to such a system, with yearly tax losses estimated at around $200 billion, a figure roughly
equivalent to the amount the United Nations predicts they will lose due to the coronavirus pandemic. While often rich in natural resources, those nations routinely see their precious commodities extracted by multinationals that
shift profits out to their offshore shell companies and deprive the source country of much-needed tax revenue. Last year, ICIJ’s Mauritius Leaks investigation revealed how many corporations and wealthy individuals exploit so-
called tax treaties to essentially divert tax revenue from poor nations back to their coffers. While legal, tax treaties often become a way to avoid paying tax in developing countries, which may not be able to compete with the

Sustainable, robust public responses to shocks require administrative

incentives offered by tax havens like Mauritius and others. “

capacity and tax resources,” Christensen said. “Tax avoidance and global tax competition, more broadly, strain the
ability of countries to raise those resources.” To level the playing field, member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been
working on reforming the global tax system, which was set up in a pre-internet era. The plan would include new ways of taxing digital companies and reallocating some of their profits to the countries where they have customers —
often different from their business address or the subsidiary holding their intellectual property. (Think, for instance, of social media, e-commerce or mobile banking companies that may be incorporated in Europe but make lots of

profits in developing countries.) The OECD plan would also call for a minimum global effective tax rate for multinationals, making it harder to move profits
around and cut their tax bills. The result is estimated to be an additional $100 billion of revenue a year, Christensen said. However, many important details, such as the minimum tax rate, are yet
to be decided. And, in a tragic turn of events, the negotiations — which could benefit the countries whose economies are being badly hit by the coronavirus — may stall because of the pandemic. To mitigate

COVID-19’s impact on global economies, some experts have also suggested more effective reforms targeting
wealthy individuals and tax evasion. “Tax systems play another crucial role in that economic question at
the heart of this crisis,” wrote Tax Justice Network’s Nicholas Shaxson, also the author of “Treasure Islands: Tax havens and the Men who Stole the World.” “Now is the time to
push hard for tax justice,” he added, “calling for a strong fiscal stimulus which will lead to poor and vulnerable
people paying less and rich people and strong, profitable corporations paying more. ” ‘Solidarity is the best strategy’ The
outbreak and the ensuing lockdown have “disproportionately” hit the most vulnerable, as high-income
earners can continue to work from home or use their wealth “to weather the shock,” according to a recent study by Zucman,
Camille Landais and Emmanuel Saez. “Solidarity is the best strategy ,” the economists wrote in the report which focuses on Europe and its tax system. However, past crises have

shown that more long-term reforms are necessary to create a sustainable system that lasts long after
the emergency is over. A time-limited wealth tax on Europe’s 1%, they explained, could generate a large amount of tax revenue while preserving wealth for the rest of the population. Globally, bold
measures are also needed to enforce laws against tax evasion, which causes an increased tax burden and
an unequal distribution of such burden. Take for example, Italy, which has the world’s highest number of COVID-19-related deaths and recently announced a $28 billion plan to rescue
the virus-hit economy. The country has a 30% evasion rate and, in 2016, it lost $118.5 billion to tax dodging and underreporting, according to the latest government estimates. “The taxes that are

evaded have to be compensated for by higher taxes on the law-abiding,” Zucman told ICIJ via email “or else they
translate into less public goods and services for the rest of us — such as less access to health care.”

AND, it’s crowding out public investment while siphoning off protective safety nets---
that terminates long-term economic recovery
Heather Boushey and Somin Park 20. President & CEO, Washington Center for Equitable Growth;
Research Assistant to the Executive Director, Washington Center for Equitable Growth. 8-7-2020. “The
coronavirus recession and economic inequality: A roadmap to recovery and long-term structural
change.” Equitable Growth. https://equitablegrowth.org/the-coronavirus-recession-and-economic-
inequality-a-roadmap-to-recovery-and-long-term-structural-change/

Overview The coronavirus pandemic presents a new and unprecedented challenge to the United States. First and
foremost, it is a public health crisis that makes it impossible for our society and our economy to function as

usual due to the necessary social distancing required for the health of us all. Because the federal government neither acted early enough to contain the deadly coronavirus nor swiftly enough to forestall mass layoffs, our
nation is now facing a health crisis and economic recession simultaneously. What’s more, the underlying
problems of U.S. economic inequality today will only prolong and deepen this coronavirus recession.
Historically high economic inequality has concentrated economic resources among those at the very top
of the U.S. income and wealth ladders while leading to fewer and fewer protections for the economic
security of workers and their families. This has left the United States particularly vulnerable to shocks
such as health, climate, and economic crises. Only a decade has passed since the end of the previous
global financial crisis, from which U.S. working- and middle-class families had barely recovered despite a record run of economic growth. Indeed, younger generations and
many families, especially families of color, never recovered.1 To avoid that same outcome on the other
side of the coronavirus recession, policymakers’ response today will be most effective if directed at the
roots of these underlying problems of economic inequality. Decades of failed economic policies, based
on ideology instead of evidence, and a blind adherence to the idea that markets can solve every
problem, have made our economy and our society more vulnerable. Our nation now faces a grave economic challenge and concentrated efforts to
weaken public institutions and leave decisions up to the market over the past 40 years mean our policymakers and society are ill-equipped to handle it. Disparities by income, race,
ethnicity, and gender are inevitably exacerbated by this shift of social and economic risk from collective
institutions to individuals—rendering any response to a deep recession and eventual recovery all the
more difficult. An economy only functions when there are people who are able to act as producers and
consumers. The first principle of a strong and stable U.S. economy is to ensure the ability of people to
secure a good, steady job that provides enough income for people to support their family and buy goods
and services. The new coronavirus has uncovered how even as one of the richest economies in the
world, the United States remains incredibly fragile. This issue brief diagnoses why high and rising economic inequality left our economy and our society particularly
unprepared to cope with the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession. Six key points of vulnerability are then detailed—ranging across inequalities in health, wages, purchasing power, worker power, and government
investments—followed by a roadmap of broad policy principles to help guide policymakers as they consider long-term structural changes for the U.S. economy. These principles are detailed toward the end of this issue brief. But
briefly, they are: Recognize that markets cannot perform the work of government Address fragilities in our markets themselves Keep income flowing to all the unemployed workers and small businesses now and in future crises
Ensure those who are still employed can stay employed Produce headline economic statistics that represent the well-being of all Americans The coronavirus recession is exacting a large human toll across our nation. This toll is all
the more insidious due to the economic inequalities that cause the health and economic damages to fall unequally and inequitably among us. To have any chance of emerging on a stronger footing as a nation with less economic
inequality and more sustainable economic growth, policymakers need to enact a robust set of protections that will ensure high-end inequality is contained, build counterweights to concentrated power, and provide economic
security for all now and going forward. THE CORONAVIRUS RECESSION AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: A ROADMAP TO RECOVERY AND LONG-TERM STRUCTURAL CHANGE Diagnosing U.S. economic inequality and the coronavirus
recession For decades, policymakers and economists alike have put their faith in the idea that markets are the best and only way for our economy to deliver what’s needed for sustained economic growth and well-being. This
promise has not delivered. Over the past five decades, the U.S. economy has been characterized by high economic inequality and a lack of strong, stable, and broadly shared economic gains and well-being. Economic power at the

Those who start with economic advantages are able to design a

top has translated into social and political power coalesced among an elite few.

system of economic inequality that preserves and amplifies their position at the top, to the detriment of
the rest of us and the public good. 2 Allowing markets to determine outcomes, while pretending that the rules that govern markets are always neutral and fair, shifts economic risk toward
people and families and away from institutions that could better bear them.3 At no time has this been more apparent than right now. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many of the workers most likely to be in jobs with a high
degree of face-to-face contact with the public—and thus at greater risk of exposure—are those least likely to have access to paid sick time or employer-provided health insurance. Those in jobs that allow them to telecommute are

we’ve reduced the risks for those at the top,

also the workers most likely to have the best insurance coverage and most generous workplace benefits.4 At the same time,

including big corporations. Whereas power once rested in freely chosen democratic institutions that
collectively shouldered risk, that risk is now borne by individuals while the governance of commercial
activity is determined by those with the money and power to subvert those same institutions. The failed
ideology that claims the benefits of unconstrained private activity accrue to everyone with greater
efficiency and fairness than collective governance is exposed today as not just failing but also false . As we see in
this moment, a healthy economy and society require a competent, well-resourced federal government .5 The coronavirus
pandemic reveals how this shift in risks plays out across communities. Death rates are higher in communities of color, in no small part due to structural racism, segregation, and industrial policy, all of which have exposed them to
greater levels of air pollution alongside underlying health inequalities due to overrepresentation in vulnerable jobs and a failure to invest in ensuring all communities have access to high-quality and affordable healthcare. At the
same time, it’s now abundantly clear that the jobs that make it possible for those with families to go to work every day—childcare centers, schools, nursing homes—also are heavily staffed by women, especially women of color

Before the coronavirus crisis hit, the U.S.

and, in particular, immigrants to our country, and are among the least paid. These jobs are a key building block of a functional economy.6

economy was experiencing the longest economic expansion in our history . But the headline numbers belied serious
structural weaknesses, as the benefits of growth accumulated disproportionately to the already
wealthy. New data show that in 2016 —the latest year available—those in the top 10 percent of incomes accounted for
38 percent of the nation’s total personal income, while those in the lowest 10 percent accrued only 2
percent. Children in the United States used to have a 90 percent chance of earning more than their parents, but those chances had dropped to just 50 percent by 1980.7 When the new coronavirus hit our shores,
policymakers were ill-prepared. The fragilities created by economic inequality undermined our capacity to remain economically and politically stable. On the one hand, too many workers

and their families were obstructed from accessing basic protections and the kind of jobs and income
security that could help our nation weather this storm. On the other hand, those at the top who
subverted our markets and our democracy to protect themselves, not our nation as a whole, are better
prepared to ride out the coronavirus recession and further entrench the economic inequalities that left
our nation unprepared for these twin public health and economic crises in the first place. These
economic inequalities are identifiable and actionable. 8 The six key vulnerabilities facing our nation due to high economic inequality There are six key
factors that made the United States and the U.S. economy particularly susceptible to the coronavirus
pandemic and COVID-19, the disease delivered by the new coronavirus. Each of them, when examined together, are not only a problem today but also threaten to become even more enduring as our economy goes
through a wrenching recession and continues to confront the very real consequences of climate change. If these are not corrected, the United States is likely to experience a slow and inequitable economic recovery. These six

factors are: Too many people lack the basic protections that would have slowed the spread of the virus. Workers lack
the power to share in the gains of the economic expansion that would have given them protections and security. Decades of stagnant wages and meager workplace benefits leave many families without enough savings to weather

Policymakers starve public goods of investments that would have enabled better
the coronavirus recession.

protections from the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession. States and localities don’t have the
resources to deal with a pandemic or a recession. Business concentration across markets increases
consumer and small business vulnerabilities just when those threats are most dire . Let’s now look at each of them in turn. Too
 The gaps in our social insurance systems and labor market
many people lack the basic protections that would have slowed the spread of the virus

regulations to protect workers and families, including the lack of paid leave, unstable schedules, and
limited access to childcare, both exacerbated the spread of the virus and left millions of workers highly
at risk of not only contracting COVID-19 themselves but also spreading it further to their own families
and wider communities. Compounding the problem is the lack of health insurance or fear of high medical bills, both of which kept—and are still keeping—those who feel sick from seeing a doctor,
placing a serious burden on these individuals, as well as raising rates of transmission.9 Research is already showing the significant economic and psychological toll this pandemic is taking on these workers. These stresses are
heightened for people at the intersection of these eroded protections and institutional discrimination. People of color and immigrants, for example, are often foreclosed from accessing the limited protections that do exist, or are
forced by their already precarious economic straits to succumb to workplace abuses at the hands of their employers.10 Workers lack the power to share in the gains of the economic expansion that would have given them
protections and security Civic institutions—especially labor unions, which once served as voices for many wage-earning workers (though never representing all workers)—have suffered a long decline. Now, only 1 out of every 15
private-sector workers belongs to a union. On top of this, labor laws and policies have failed to reflect the growing role of the fissured workplace in our modern-day economy, where firms subcontract pieces of their work so they
can avoid responsibility for workers and working conditions.11 These two debilitating trends in our labor market mean that corporations that are ultimately in charge of labor practices and that make the largest profits are not liable
for maintaining 21st century workplace standards. The coronavirus pandemic exposed the failure of these labor market inequalities and the need for them to manage health crises and family care, as well as protect workers against
layoffs and the loss of these key health and family benefits.12 Decades of stagnant wages and meager workplace benefits leave many families without enough savings to weather the coronavirus recession At the onset of the
coronavirus pandemic in the United States at the beginning of the year, millions of people across the country were one paycheck away from financial catastrophe, even after a decade of economic expansion and historically low
unemployment. Case in point: Four in 10 adults in the United States said that if they had a $400 emergency expense, they would have to borrow, sell something, or would not be able to pay it.13 As the coronavirus recession
continues, more and more workers and their families who are most likely to spend money are robbed of buying power, which will undermine one of the key drivers of economic growth—the stable incomes that drive consumer
spending. Today, less-well-off workers in sectors of the economy most immediately exposed to the consequences of necessary self-distancing, such as food services, hotels and accommodations, and general services, are now
joining Unemployment Insurance telephone queues alongside millions of other workers who have been let go or furloughed by a broader array of firms, which will further crimp consumer spending.14 Policymakers starve public

Decades of tax cuts, culminating in the sharply

goods of investments that would have enabled better protections from the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession

regressive Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, have fueled a long-term decline in federal revenue that has
starved resources that can be used to fund critical public investments and basic
governmental functions, including in public health. High concentrations of income and wealth
hamstring our political system because the wealthy dictate the legislative agenda and shape news
headlines.15 Yet these same wealthy elites don’t prioritize investments in public health infrastructure or
other public goods, such as an effective Internal Revenue Service or the provision of paid leave or wage
replacements during emergencies—even though the lack of these policies have accelerated the spread
of the new coronavirus, endangering us all. Case in point: even as people at the top end of the wealth
distribution can retreat to their private enclaves with concierge medicine, too many others cannot
access high quality care amid this crisis. The government is the only entity with the power and scope to
dismantle the control that the economic elite have over our political system. 16 States and localities don’t have the resources to deal with
a pandemic or a recession During and after the Great Recession of 2007–2009, hard-hit state and local governments saw large drops in capacity as

Medicaid rolls rose and tax revenues fell. The decline in resources and staffing continued in the 2010s
even as the economy recovered. Yet the critical role that states and localities play in addressing the
coronavirus pandemic are clearly emerging in community after community. From ensuring hospitals are
prepared to putting in place and enforcing stay-at-home orders, the importance of effective local
policymakers is abundantly clear.17 Now, state and local governments are likely to experience sharper
drops in their capacity to provide the services needed to cope with the coronavirus recession, which will
surely induce further cuts to health and education and exacerbate the ongoing weaknesses. If this
happens, it will not only starve communities of the investments they need to thrive but also leave the
nation even less prepared for the next crisis. Austerity in state governments likewise disproportionately
harms people of color, as public-sector jobs form the basis of a strong middle class for black and Latino
workers.18 Business concentration across markets increases consumer and small business vulnerabilities just when those threats are most dire Wealthy and powerful
corporations use their status to maintain dominance in the marketplace. Large businesses and monopolies muscle competitors out of business,
suppress wages, and hobble innovation. These companies are also precisely the ones that will thrive after the coronavirus pandemic passes. Strong cash reserves combined with political influence allow entrenched businesses to
swoop in when asset prices are low and reshape rules of entire markets in the aftermath. The collapse of small businesses will disproportionately hurt people of color for whom business ownership is an especially important route
to wealth creation and to closing the racial wealth gap.19 We can see how these fragilities created by inequality are playing out right now by looking at the healthcare industry having to cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Hospital consolidation resulted in higher costs, decreased quality of care, and fewer worker protections, leaving staff less able to deal most effectively with the surge of incoming COVID-19 patients alongside the collapse in other
hospital procedures that provide key sources of revenue. Similarly, private-equity backed clinics and doctors—alongside profit and nonprofit hospitals more generally—fought against surprise billing legislation, which would limit
patients from being hit by huge out-of-network fees for care, a problem whose impact will increase as more people need care.20 Huge pharmaceutical companies have likewise used their market power to suppress low-cost
competition from generic alternatives by preventing the development of generic medicines, paying generics companies to delay launching their products, and excluding competition by other anticompetitive conduct. And they have
offshored the production of these drugs and their key ingredients, leaving our healthcare system very vulnerable to a pandemic. Developing a coronavirus vaccine or treatment is paramount, but it is also critical that we ensure
such solutions are affordable and readily accessible to prevent unequal access to life-saving medicine.21 The failure to prevent coronavirus infections and deaths and the ensuing recession President Donald Trump’s focus is and
always has been on the stock market rather than conceiving of and effectively implementing a comprehensive and fully thought out federal plan to address the coronavirus pandemic and its economic effects. Case in point: Though
the administration knew about the threat of the virus in early January and took an early effort to limit the transmission into the United States by halting travel from China, where the virus first emerged, it did not use that time to
prepare sufficient stockpiles of medical and protective supplies.22 Nor did the Trump administration put in place an economic plan to limit the transmission, such as immediately requiring all firms to provide paid sick time or
ensure access to free test kits, let alone free healthcare. These failures are now distorting our economy and seriously undermining our economic stability—failures that are further fueled by the key vulnerabilities detailed above
that are intertwined and ensconced across the breadth of our society and economy.23 The incidences of the coronavirus in the United States have surpassed every other nation, and the underlying fragilities may make our
economic crisis equally uniquely bad. Some economists and policymakers argue that these fragilities were the inevitable result of globalization, technological innovation, or economies of scale, and that the result in the end will be
better for both workers and consumers. But the role of policy choices in arranging our market structure—from the choice to bailout Wall Street rather than save homeowners a decade ago, to a long history of declining antitrust
enforcement, to policy choices and court decisions that make it harder to join a union—are unmistakable and remain enduring.24 Solutions to come out of the coronavirus recession more quickly and sustainably Congress, the
Trump administration, and states and localities have each taken steps to address the twin health and economic crises facing all of us today. As policymakers consider the next federal aid package, they also need to address long-
term structural challenges in our economy. They should focus on the following priorities: Recognize that markets cannot perform the work of government Address fragilities in our markets themselves Keep income flowing to all the
unemployed workers and small businesses now and in future crises Ensure those who are still employed can stay employed Produce headline economic statistics that represent the well-being of all Americans A detailed

The federal government must step up and

examination of each of these priorities closes out this issue brief. Recognize that markets cannot perform the work of government

provide the effective leadership required to fully contain the new coronavirus. This includes ensuring that all across the United States,
people have access to testing and protective gear, that our national health infrastructure is prepared for patient loads—without putting the lives of healthcare workers unnecessarily at risk—and that proper and effective steps are

Policymakers must
taken to protect all workers and contain the spread of this new, deadly virus. The only entity with the capacity to manage this health and economic crisis is the federal government.

reject the false premise that tax cuts and deregulation form the basis of effective macroeconomic
stimulus. Research finds that even in the best of times, tax cuts favor the wealthy and are not stimulative
because rich households just preserve their wealth and income rather than deploying it in an economy
that is 70-percent powered by consumer spending. Similarly, researchers have found payroll tax cuts to
be among the least effective stimulus programs during recessions. 25 This is especially true in a pandemic,
when discretionary spending is limited by social isolation. Instead of cutting taxes and cutting
regulation, the federal government must save the economy through the expansive fiscal stimulus that
this extraordinary crisis warrants. Policymakers also need to rebalance their priorities going forward to provide a stronger foundation for our economy and our society. Across all levels of
government, revenue is too low. Policymakers need to find ways to tax the enormous wealth concentrated in one part of

our economy, so that we can deploy it for the common good. Over the decade since the end of the
financial crisis, investment has been low relative to the resources firms have on hand, even as our nation
is facing grave challenges—from the lack of a health system sufficiently resourced to address a
pandemic, even though Americans spend twice as much on healthcare per capita than our economic
competitors, to the need to ensure all children have access to world-class educational opportunities,
and from the lack of basic family economic stability for most Americans in the wealthiest nation in the
world, to the urgent and pressing need to address climate change. 26

A sluggish economy increases the risk of global war---structural reform is key

Qian Liu 18. PhD in Economics from Uppsala University, Former Visiting Researcher at the University of
California, Berkeley, Managing Director for Greater China at The Economist Group, Guest Lecturer at
New York University, Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Fudan University.
11-13-2018. “The Next Economic Crisis Could Cause A Global Conflict. Here's Why.” World Economic
Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/the-next-economic-crisis-could-cause-a-global-
conflict-heres-why

The next economic crisis is closer than you think. But what you should really worry about is what comes after:
in the current social, political, and technological landscape, a prolonged economic crisis, combined
with rising income inequality, could well escalate into a major global military conflict. The 2008-09
global financial crisis almost bankrupted governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers
managed to pull the global economy back from the brink, using massive monetary stimulus, including
quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates . But monetary stimulus is like an
adrenaline shot to jump-start an arrested heart; it can revive the patient, but it does nothing to cure
the disease. Treating a sick economy requires structural reforms, which can cover everything from financial and labor
markets to tax systems, fertility patterns, and education policies. Policymakers have utterly failed to pursue such reforms, despite promising to
do so. Instead, they have remained preoccupied with politics. From Italy to Germany, forming and sustaining governments now seems to take more time than actual
governing. And Greece, for example, has relied on money from international creditors to keep its head (barely) above water, rather than genuinely reforming its
pension system or improving its business environment. The lack of structural reform has meant that the unprecedented excess liquidity that central banks injected
into their economies was not allocated to its most efficient uses. Instead, it raised global asset prices to levels even higher than those prevailing before 2008. In the
United States, housing prices are now 8% higher than they were at the peak of the property bubble in 2006, according to the property website Zillow. The price-to-
earnings (CAPE) ratio, which measures whether stock-market prices are within a reasonable range, is now higher than it was both in 2008 and at the start of the
Great Depression in 1929. As monetary tightening reveals the vulnerabilities in the real economy, the collapse of asset-price bubbles will trigger another economic
crisis – one that could be even more severe than the last, because we have built up a tolerance to our strongest macroeconomic medications. A decade of
regular adrenaline shots, in the form of ultra-low interest rates and unconventional monetary policies,
has severely depleted their power to stabilize and stimulate the economy. If history is any guide, the
consequences of this mistake could extend far beyond the economy . According to Harvard’s Benjamin Friedman,
prolonged periods of economic distress have been characterized also by public antipathy toward minority
groups or foreign countries – attitudes that can help to fuel unrest, terrorism, or even war. For example, during the
Great Depression, US President Herbert Hoover signed the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, intended to protect American workers and farmers

from foreign competition. In the subsequent five years, global trade shrank by two-thirds. Within a decade, World War II had begun. To be

sure, WWII, like World War I, was caused by a multitude of factors; there is no standard path to war. But there is reason to believe that high levels of

inequality can play a significant role in stoking conflict. According to research by the economist Thomas Piketty, a spike in
income inequality is often followed by a great crisis . Income inequality then declines for a while, before
rising again, until a new peak – and a new disaster . Though causality has yet to be proven, given the limited number of data points, this
correlation should not be taken lightly, especially with wealth and income inequality at historically high levels. This is all the more worrying in

view of the numerous other factors stoking social unrest and diplomatic tension, including technological
disruption, a record-breaking migration crisis, anxiety over globalization, political polarization, and
rising nationalism. All are symptoms of failed policies that could turn out to be trigger points for a future
crisis. Voters have good reason to be frustrated, but the emotionally appealing populists to whom they are increasingly giving their support are offering ill-
advised solutions that will only make matters worse. For example, despite the world’s unprecedented interconnectedness, multilateralism is increasingly being
eschewed, as countries – most notably, Donald Trump’s US – pursue unilateral, isolationist policies. Meanwhile, proxy wars are raging in Syria and Yemen.
Against this background, we must take seriously the possibility that the next economic crisis could lead
to a large-scale military confrontation. By the logic of the political scientist Samuel Huntington , considering such a scenario could help us
avoid it, because it would force us to take action. In this case, the key will be for policymakers to pursue the structural reforms

that they have long promised, while replacing finger-pointing and antagonism with a sensible and respectful global dialogue. The alternative may
well be global conflagration.

AND, ensures global leadership turnover

Markus Brückner and Hans Grüner 19. Ph.D. Economics, Professor of Economics @ Australian
National University, & external consultant to IMF and World Bank; Ph.D. Economics, Professor of
Economics @ University of Mannheim, & external consultant to European Central Bank. 10-31-2019.
“Economic growth and political extremism.” Public Choice. Issue 185/1-2. pp 131-159. Springer. pacc
Abstract We argue that the growth rate, but not the level of aggregate income, affects the support for extreme political parties. In our model, extreme parties offer
short-run benefits to part of the population at the expense of a minority. Growth effects on the support for such parties arise when uncertainty exists over whether
the same subset of individuals will receive the same benefits in the future. More
people are willing to take political risks if economic
growth is slow. Based on a panel of 16 European countries, our empirical analysis shows that slower growth rates are
associated with a significant increase in right-wing extremism. We find no significant effect of economic growth on the support
for extreme left-wing parties. 1 Introduction Distributional consequences are associated with political extremism, both in the short run and in the long run. Extreme
political parties often propose to redistribute resources away from specific subgroups of society, such as the rich, ethnic minorities, or citizens living in specific
regions. This paper analyzes the impact of economic growth on the support for extreme political parties in western democracies. We argue that the growth rate, but
not the level of aggregate income, affects the support for extremism. In the first part of our paper, we discuss three alternative explanations for why an increase in
the economic growth rate reduces the support for extreme political parties. Two well-known explanations are related to retrospective voting and behavioral effects,
the latter meaning that voters may react more strongly to changes in than to levels of economic well-being. The third, novel explanation is that parties with extreme
political platforms are perceived to create considerable uncertainty about the future distribution of income. We develop a simple game-theoretic model that
analyzes that uncertainty effect. In our model, extreme
political parties offer short-run gains from redistribution to a
group of individuals. However, the same individuals also face long-run losses owing to the higher income
risk that is associated with an extreme regime .1 The model permits a comparative static analysis with
respect to several key variables of interest. The growth rate is associated with larger future income risk. Such
risk reduces the number of voters favoring extreme parties. The level of aggregate income has no effect on the support for
extremism. Income inequality raises support for redistribution and affects the impact that a change in the growth rate has on the support for extremism. An
important feature of our model is that the effect of economic growth on the support for extremism depends on uncertainty of future income redistribution. If
redistributive policies are perceived as predictable—in the sense that the same group will have income taken away from it in the future—then the political support
for an extremist party is unaffected by growth. In the empirical part of our paper, we
estimate the relationship between economic
growth and the support for extreme political parties using a panel dataset comprising 16 European
countries. Our dependent variable is a survey-based measure, compiled by Euro-barometer, of respondents' support for extreme right-wing parties and
extreme left-wing parties. We use that data, which spans more than three decades and contains entries on a semi-annual

frequency, to estimate the effects of economic growth on the support for extremism. Our empirical analysis shows a significant
negative effect of real per capita GDP growth on the support for extreme right-wing parties: controlling for
country and time fixed effects, a one percentage point decline in real per capita GDP growth increases the vote
share of extreme right-wing parties by up to one percentage point. We document that the negative effect of economic
growth on the support for right-wing extremism is robust across estimation techniques and model specifications . We do not
find a systematic effect of growth on the support for left-wing extremism. A possible explanation for the differential effects between left-wing and right-wing
extremism that relates closely to our theoretical model is that right-wing extremism might be associated with more uncertainty over what groups will be subject to
income expropriation in the future. Left-wing extremism is associated with income redistribution, but little uncertainty exists over its target. Communist doctrine
(see, for example, the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels 1848), envisions a classless society; i.e., a society wherein incomes are distributed equally. Over
the past century, extreme left-wing parties have followed closely that doctrine by proposing to redistribute incomes from rich to poor; as opposition parties they
have voted against laissez faire policies and, when in power, they have implemented programs that reduced the wealth and income prospects of the rich (see, e.g.,
Brown 2010). Right-wing extremism, in contrast to left-wing extremism, does not advocate a classless society .
Instead, it often is associated with discrimination against specific groups of society for racial, religios, political
or other reasons.2 An extreme case of a murderous and discriminatory regime was the German fascist rule during the first half of the 20th century. One
can see it as a direct consequence of the Nazi party's "Fuhrerprinzip"—"the principle of unconditional authority of the leader" (Bernholz 2017, p.9)—which created
considerable uncertainty over who might be stigmatized, imprisoned or killed in the future.3 Indeed, from the Nazi period we know that various groups were
stigmatized for different reasons4 and that stigmatization also was particularly erratic.5,6 The empirical analysis of our paper is related to Stevenson (2001), who
examines the determinants of aggregate policy preferences in a panel of 14 European countries. One of Stevenson's main findings is that declines in economic
growth cause policy preferences to shift to the right, while increases in economic growth cause policy preferences to shift to the left.7 Our paper differs from
Stevenson in at least three important aspects. First, in contrast to Stevenson, we show that our empirical results are robust to controlling
for country
fixed effects, meaning that our results also hold at the within-country level, and not just in cross-section.
Relatedly, Acemoglu et al. (2008, 2009) showed that the cross-country relation between income and democracy turns

insignificant when country fixed effects are entered into the econometric model. Second, we provide evidence that our
empirical findings reflect a causal effect of economic growth on political extremism. We show that our main
findings are robust to estimating dynamic models that enable to test for Granger causality; and we also show
that the main findings hold with an instrumental variables approach. Third, we distinguish in our empirical analysis

between extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing parties. That distinction matters: a robust negative
effect of economic growth is found on the support for extreme right-wing parties, whereas no
systematic effect exists for the support of extreme left-wing parties. Our finding of a significant negative effect of
economic growth on the support for right-wing extremism is in line with the finding of Bromhead et al.
(2012), who show that the vote share of right-wing extremists during the Great Depression was

significantly larger in those countries that experienced a more severe economic crisis. Using subnational
data for 218 European regions during 1990-2016, Rao et al. (2018) find a significant negative effect of regional
output on the vote share of extreme right-wing parties , but no signicant effect on extreme left-wing parties.

That escalates great power war---goes nuclear

Andrew Bertoli et al 18. PhD & Assistant Professor @ IE University; Allan Dafoe. PhD & MA, Assistant
Professor of PoliSci @ Yale; Robert F. Trager. PhD & Associate Professor @ UCLA. 5-9-2018. "Is There a
War Party? Party Change, the Left–Right Divide, and International Conflict." Journal of Conflict
Resolution. Vol 63. No 4. pp 950–975. Sage. pacc
Abstract Are leaders from certain parties particularly likely to engage in military conflict? This question is difficult to
answer because of selection bias. For example, countries may be more likely to elect right-wing leaders if their publics are more hawkish or if the international system is particularly
dangerous. Put simply, who comes to power is not random , which makes causal inference difficult. We overcome

this problem by using a regression discontinuity design. Specifically, we look at close presidential elections that were
essentially "tossups" between two candidates. We find that electing right-wing candidates increases state aggression. We also find that electing

candidates from challenger parties makes countries much more likely to initiate military disputes,
particularly in the first year of the new leader's term. This result is consistent with other studies that find that
the likelihood of state aggression increases following major leadership transitions . Is the likelihood that a democracy will take
military action against other countries largely influenced by which party controls the presidency? Many believe so (Palmer, London, and Regan 2004; Arena and Palmer 2009; Clare 2010). In modern American

politics, one party is consistently identified as more hawkish than the other . Surveys have revealed that Republican voters

consistently prefer more aggressive policies (Eundak 2006; Trager and Vavreck 2011; Gries 2014). Moreover, many believe that Al Gore, had he been elected, would not have
invaded Iraq like President George W. Bush did (Jervis 2003; Lieberfeld 2005), and that the foreign policies of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would be similarly opposed (Paletta 2016). Nevertheless, it is very difficult to

which party
determine whether the party in control of the presidency really has an important impact on foreign policy due to the selection of parties into particular domestic and international contexts. Put simply,

controls the presidency is not random. For example, the victory of George W. Bush in 2004 can be attributed to a number of domestic and international factors at the time, including the
American public's heightened concerns over national security following September 11. Similarly, Barack Obama's success in 2008 was influenced by problems at home and a decrease in public willingness to engage in military

adventurism. Therefore, an observational analysis would likely be biased by such selection processes. Thus, even if countries behave differently when
we could
certain parties control the presidency, it would be very difficult to know if that difference is explained by the parties or by the environments into which the parties are selected. In principle,

overcome this problem by running an experiment in which we randomly assigned countries to be ruled by leaders from different parties.
Such an ideal research design would avoid the confounding problem, making it possible to test whether countries tend to be
more or less aggressive when certain parties control the presidency . Experiments are unmatched in their ability to identify causal effects, so this type
of study could greatly improve our understanding of how electing candidates from different parties influences foreign policy. We approximate this ideal experiment by using a regression discontinuity (RD)

design. Specifically, we look at close presidential elections where a candidate from one party barely defeated a candidate from a different party. Such a design works if it is close to random which

party won in these cases, a premise which is plausible given the inherent randomness in large national elections. Thus, we use close elections to get data that are similar to what would result from a

real experiment. Such natural experimental designs are extremely rare in the study of war and thus warrant attention in the exceptional instances when they do occur. We run two main analyses. First, we look at
whether countries tend to be more (or less) aggressive when presidential candidates from right-wing parties barely defeat candidates from left-wing parties. This quasi-experimental comparison involves a small sample size (n = 29),
but we still find noteworthy evidence that electing right-wing candidates increases the likelihood that countries will initiate high-level military disputes against other states. Second, to increase our statistical power, we examine
cases where candidates from incumbent parties barely won or barely lost to candidates from challenger parties (n = 36). Specifically, we test whether countries experienced a larger change in their propensity to engage in military

disputes when the candidate from the challenger party barely won. Thus, our key outcome of interest here is how much countries deviated from their prior levels of dispute involvement. We find statistically
significant evidence that electing candidates from challenger parties causes countries to experience a larger change in their propensity to engage in military conflict with other states. Upon further
examination of the data, we find that the results from our second test are largely explained by a tendency for candidates from challenger parties to initiate military disputes in their first year in office. Thus, these findings support

major leadership transitions tend to increase the chances of state aggression, either because new
the theory that

leaders lack the experience to manage international crises effectively or because they need to prove their
resolve by acting tough. This article makes several important contributions to the study of international relations. First, there is a long-standing debate in political science over whether leaders have an
important independent impact on interstate conflict or whether their influence is largely constrained by strategic realities (Byman and Pollack 2001; Mearsheimer and Walt 2003; Jones and Olken 2009; Chiozza and Goemans 2011;
Saunders 2011; Horowitz, Stam, and Ellis 2015; Croco 2015). This study provides quasi-experimental evidence that leaders do have a meaningful impact on foreign policy. Second, the results presented here suggest that domestic
political ideology can spill over into the international realm. One of the main explanations for the democratic peace is that democracies act in accordance with their domestic norms when it comes to foreign policy (Morgan and

these results suggest that

Campbell 1991). The findings presented here support that hypothesis by showing that left-wing leaders do tend to behave more dovishly in international affairs. Third,

we should be alert to the potential for interstate conflict when right-wing leaders are in office, as well as after
elections where party control of the presidency changes hands. This study is also notable because it is one of the first in the
international relations literature to use a preanalysis plan. Prior to looking at any of the results, we pre-registered the
main tests that we planned to conduct in this article. Our motivation here was to tie our hands, so that there could be no question of sifting
through the data to find the statistical tests that produced the most interesting or significant results. The
temptation for scholars to run many tests and then report the ones that are most "interesting" can lead to
misleading findings. This danger has attracted a great deal of attention across scientific fields over the last decade, and it is seen by many as a major problem for quantitative research (Nosek et al. 2015). The
purpose of preanalysis plans is to help ensure that research remains credible . The article proceeds as follows. We first discuss the theoretical bases for the claim that party
control of the presidency influences conflict decisions and review the existing empirical work on this subject. We then outline the research design in more detail. Next, we conduct design checks to verify that the research design is
appropriate. We then present the results for party ideology. After that, we test whether party turnover leads to changes in the likelihood of state aggression. We then discuss the findings and conclude. Leaders, Parties, and
International Conflict In recent years, much debate has arisen over whether leaders influence the chances of interstate conflict, and if so, how. A major question in this research program is whether leaders from certain parties are
more likely to behave aggressively in foreign affairs or whether the ideology of the leader is largely unrelated to state behavior. The theory that party control of the presidency influences the chances of interstate conflict can be

conservatives and liberals hold different views about the legitimacy or efficacy of
derived from three premises. The first is that

military force. This assumption is backed by cross-national survey data showing that liberals tend to be more
concerned with fairness, duties of care, and preventing harm, while conservatives tend to favor the
preservation of social orders, the purity of sanctified objects, and loyalty to in-groups (Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009; Boer and
Fischer 2013). Several studies have also found that these differences in moral foundations influence foreign policy attitudes (Schwartz 1992; Kertzer et al.

2014; Kertzer and Rathbun 2015). In particular, liberals are more "prosocial" and seek compromise internationally, in contrast to conservatives, who are more "proself” and therefore

bargain more aggressively (Schwartz, Caprara, and Vecchione 2010). The second assumption is that general differences in party attitudes appear at the elite level. There are two ways that these
differences could affect the behavior of political elites. First, the political leaders could sincerely hold beliefs and preferences similar to those of their constituents, leading them to have different foreign policy strategies and goals.

leaders could have different beliefs and attitudes than their constituents, but nonetheless recognize that
Alternatively, the

they must carry out their supporters' agenda if they hope to stay in office. Although it is difficult to know the extent to which leaders true
foreign policy preferences reflect those of their constituents, several observational studies show that changes in a leader's base correlate with changes in their approach to international affairs. First, Mattes, Leeds, and Carroll

Rathbun (2004) and

(2015) find that changes in the supporting coalitions of leaders predict foreign policy change, measured by the policy positions taken by nations in the United Nations General Assembly.

Haas (2005) come to a similar conclusion looking at support for peace-enforcement missions, and Solingen (2009)
finds that economic interests and the ideologies of partisan coalitions influence nuclear weapons policy.
Therefore, even when a leader has different foreign policy beliefs and goals than the rest of the party, there

may still be pressure to toe the party line . The third assumption is that leaders from different parties can act on their divergent preferences. This means that international and domestic constraints on leaders cannot
be so powerful that they largely limit leaders to a single course of action. For example, some realists argue that there is little room for leaders to have an independent impact on foreign policy because they all need to defend and advance the national interest (Mearsheimer 2001;
Mearsheimer and Walt 2003). Regarding domestic constraints, Trager and Vavreck (2011) find that right-wing and left-wing leaders can have incentives to hide their "types." Liberal leaders may be forced to adopt more hawkish foreign policies because they fear that their moderation will
sometimes be interpreted as weakness (Schultz 2005), whereas conservative leaders may have incentives to adopt more moderate policies because the public would likely judge them unduly aggressive if they acted hawkishly. Thus, leader preferences and political incentives could
actually push in opposite directions. Several previous studies have examined whether right-wing leaders tend to behave more aggressively in foreign policy than left-wing leaders. Using logistic regression on panel data covering eighteen parliamentary democracies from 1949 to 1992,
Palmer, London and Regan (2004) find that right-wing governments are more likely to be involved in military disputes, while left-wing governments are more likely to see the disputes in which they are involved in escalate. Their explanation is that right-wing parties favor using force more
often, so their leaders will engage in military conflict more often. However, when left-wing leaders engage in conflict, they will need to emerge victorious to justify their involvement, so they will be more likely to bargain tough and escalate if necessary. These researchers find that a shift
from left to right government increases the chances of dispute initiation by about 50 percent and that left-wing governments are about twice as likely to escalate conditional on being in a dispute. Second, Arena and Palmer (2009) apply a probit model to panel data covering twenty stable
democracies from 1960 to 1996 and find that right-wing governments are more likely to initiate disputes. Their theory is based on the finding that right-wing leaders are less likely to be removed from office for using force unwisely than left-wing leaders. This makes right-wing leaders
more likely to start international conflicts in the hopes of increasing their domestic support. Third, Clare (2010) applies logistic regression to twenty parliamentary democracies from 1950 to 1998 and finds that parliamentary democracies are about twice as likely to initiate disputes when

The central limitation of these studies is that their conclusions rest on the results of regression
they are controlled by right-wing parties.

analysis on cross-national panel data. Such an approach is not guaranteed to eliminate bias from omitted
variables. In fact, the results from this type of analysis can be badly biased, even when researchers control for a wide range of important
covariates (Clarke 2005). In some cases, controlling for potential con-founders can even amplify bias (Pearl 2013). Thus, the results
from these past studies should be interpreted as a tentative first cut at answering this question rather than the final word
on the subject. The design-based approach that we employ in this article gets around the omitted variable
bias problem because the as-if random assignment of leaders to office should create balance across
observable and unobservable pretreatment characteristics . In many other scientific fields, the results of conventional
observational analyses have been overturned by design-based studies. For example, the validity of hormone replacement therapy and a variety of
theories in development economics, psychology, and elsewhere have been overturned when experimental and quasi-experimental approaches were brought to bear (Women's Health Initiative 2002; Freedman 2009; Dunning

the tests that we present in this article provide an important step forward in our understanding of the
2012). Therefore,

empirical relationship between party control of the presidency and interstate conflict .
Before moving on to our research design, though, we should first lay out the hypotheses that we want to test. As we detail in our preanalysis plan, we started this project with the belief that leaders do matter and that electing leaders from different parties does affect the likelihood of state aggression. Given this prior, we formulated two main hypotheses. The first is the party ideology hypothesis, which predicts that electing leaders from right-wing parties will increase the likelihood of state aggression. The second hypothesis is highly general and speaks directly to the
question of whether leaders matter in international relations. It posits that electing a leader from the incumbent party will lead to less change in international dispute behavior than electing a leader from a challenger party. We refer to this as the incumbent/challenger hypothesis. Party Ideology Hypothesis: Electing presidential candidates from right-wing parties will make countries more aggressive than electing candidates from left-wing parties. Incumbent/Challenger Hypothesis: Electing candidates from challenger parties will lead to a greater change in state aggression
than electing candidates from incumbent parties (the absolute difference in aggression between presidential terms will be greater when there is party turnover). One issue that is related to the incumbent/challenger hypothesis is that new leaders may be particularly likely to act aggressively early in their terms. There are several reasons why this might be the case. First, new leaders may lack the experience to manage international crises effectively, making it more likely that disagreements with other states will turn into military conflicts (Potter 2007). Second, new leaders
may be more likely to want to show the international community that they are willing to use force abroad, which could strengthen their bargaining leverage in future international negotiations (Wolford 2007; Dafoe 2012). Third, new leaders may want to send a signal to their domestic audiences that they are tough when it comes to foreign affairs, which could increase their popularity at home. This idea that leaders are more likely to get involved in military disputes when they first arrive in office has received support from cross-national logistic regression analysis on panel
data (Gelpi and Grieco 2001) and a mixed-methods analysis that looks at American presidents (Potter 2007). While most of the existing theory and research on leadership transitions has focused on cases where new leaders come to office, a similar logic might be applied to party control of the presidency, particularly when it comes to the reputational mechanisms. New leaders who are from the same party as the old one should be able to associate themselves with the previous leader's reputation, giving them less of a need to signal their resolve. On the other hand, when
leaders from challenger parties come to power, there should be less certainty that the new leader will have an approach to foreign policy that is similar to the old one's. In short, when party control of the presidency changes hands, it marks a more significant leadership transition (Mattes, Leeds, and Matsumura 2016). Thus, even if parties tend to behave pretty similarly across ideologies, we might still find that leaders from challenger parties might be much more aggressive early in their tenures. Challenger Aggression Hypothesis: Electing candidates from challenger parties
will lead to an increase in state aggression when the new leader takes office. We did not preregister the challenger aggression hypothesis prior to looking at the results, but this was the only hypothesis we tested outside of those we preregis-tered. Thus, the findings do not reflect data mining. Nevertheless, some readers may wish to interpret the test of this particular hypothesis as exploratory. Research Design There are several different design-based approaches that could be used to investigate how leaders affect state behavior. One would be to look at all cases of
leadership turnover and compare how countries behaved before and after the leadership change. This research design rests on the idea that countries are comparable before and after leadership transitions. This assumption may be plausible in some cases, but in others, it is clearly invalid. For example, the periods before and after normal electoral leader transitions are usually not comparable. Many countries elect the leader and members of the legislature at the same time, making it difficult to determine the effect of leadership change by itself. Similarly, looking at cases
when leaders were forcibly removed from office also has its limitations, since leaders are usually removed at times of extreme political tension. Likewise, leadership changes that are caused by assassinations are not likely to provide valid comparisons. The new leader will probably have to deal with a more complicated political situation in the aftermath of the assassination, making the beginning of their term much different from the end of the previous leader’s term. Another potentially promising approach would be to focus on changes in leadership that resulted from the
natural deaths of leaders. The timing of natural leader deaths should be fairly unrelated to the domestic and international environments. Moreover, the legislature will typically not change following the natural death of a leader, making it much easier to isolate the independent effect of leaders on foreign policy. However, the natural death approach is not well-suited for this particular study. The reason is that the new leader almost always comes from the same party as the old leader. Thus, this exogenous change in leadership does not provide much leverage in
determining how party control of the presidency affects interstate conflict. This research design could be useful in looking at other types of variation in leaders, such as age, military experience, and occupational background. However, it is not a promising design for this study. The approach that we take instead is to use an RD design. RD involves comparing units that barely surpassed and barely fell short of an important cut point that influenced treatment assignment. For example, if there was a test where everyone who scored a fifty or higher got a scholarship, researchers
could assess the effects of getting the scholarship by comparing the students who scored fifty and fifty-one to the students who scored forty-eight and fortynine. So long as there is no sorting at the cut point, as could happen if the graders had opportunity and motive to nudge some test takers above the cut point, it should be close to random which of these students won the scholarship, since they were all on the verge of getting it (Lee 2008). Close elections provide an excellent opportunity to use RD analysis. Given the inherent randomness in the electoral process,
whether candidates barely win or barely lose in close elections is plausibly as-if random (Eggers et al. 2015).1 Political scientists have used RD to study questions like how winning an election influences a party’s likelihood of winning the next election (Lee 2008) and how winning an election affects a candidate’s wealth later in life (Eggers and Hainmueller 2009). Scholars have also used RD to test how economic and political outcomes differ when Republican candidates for mayor barely defeat or barely lose to Democratic candidates (Pettersson-Lidbom 2008; Gerber and
Hopkins 2011; Beland 2015; de Benedictis-Kessner and Warshaw 2016). In this article, we look at close presidential elections. To our knowledge, this study is the first to apply RD specifically to presidential elections. For our analysis, we followed the procedures that were outlined in our preanalysis plan (which is available at the end of the Online Appendix). We will briefly summarize these procedures in the remainder of this section. Our Statistical Approach There are two general ways to analyze an RD. The first, known as the continuity approach, involves plotting two
smoothing functions on either side of the cut point and estimating the difference at the cut point (Voeten 2014). This method should be used when the score, or “forcing variable,” is continuous. The second method is the local-randomization approach, appropriate when the forcing variable is discrete (Lee and Card 2008; Cattaneo, Frandsen, and Titiunik 2015; Bertoli 2017). It involves drawing a window around the cut point and treating the units within that window like they were in a randomized experiment. Since the forcing variable in this study is vote share in a
presidential election, which is essentially continuous, we would normally use the continuity approach. However, we discovered in our preanalysis plan that the continuity approach had a type 1 error rate (false-positive rate) of 12 percent for this study, which we believe is due to our small sample size. Since the type 1 error rate should be 5 percent by design, we chose not to use this method, since it was overly likely to give us significant results. Instead, we used the local-randomization approach, which we found had a type 1 error rate of about 4 percent. Defining Close
Elections We considered elections to be close if the top two candidates were within 2 percent of the cut point (48 percent to 52 percent range). Data on close races were available in the data set constructed by Bertoli, Dafoe, and Trager (2018). This data set includes every democratic election between 1815 and 2010, where democracies are defined as countries with Polity IV Institutionalized Democracy scores above five. The data set provides information on the top two candidates including their names, parties, and vote shares in the election. If there were more than two
candidates running in an election, we focused only on the votes for the top two candidates, rescaling their vote shares accordingly. In cases where there were runoffs, we used their vote shares from the runoff rather than the initial election. We also excluded close elections in nondemocracies because we were concerned about fraud in these cases. Given the possibility of fraud, we did not feel confident in assuming that the outcomes of these elections were as-if random. One complication that arose is that the United States elects presidents through the electoral college.
This system makes it possible for candidates to lose the popular vote but still win the election if they defeat their rival in the electoral college. To deal with this issue, we counted the electoral college vote rather than the popular vote when looking at the United States. This decision is consistent with other similar studies (Bertoli, Dafoe, and Trager 2018). For every other country, we used the popular vote. Measuring Party Ideology To identify parties as left or right-wing, we evaluated the parties against each other according to their positions at the time of the election on
social questions associated with liberalism and conservatism. Parties were judged further to the right when they expressed support for “traditional values,” national, religious, racial, or ethnic ingroups, or the benefits of authority and traditional sources of authority such as a monarchy. Parties were judged further to the left when they expressed inclusive sentiments, a duty of care for vulnerable groups, and support for democratic principles. Secondarily, we evaluated parties as left or right on economic policy preferences. Advocacy for wealthier interests placed a candidate
further to the right, and advocacy for the less well-off is associated with the left. These two social and economic dimensions are highly correlated, with the principal exceptions coming from communist and postcommunist countries. In these cases, the primary social dimension determined the left–right coding. When parties could not be easily classified as left or rig Main Analyses We looked at two different types of close elections. The first were close elections between right-wing and left-wing parties, where it was essentially random whether the presidency was controlled
by a leader with a right-wing or left-wing ideology. In total, we have twenty-nine close elections between right-wing and left-wing parties. The second set of close elections that we analyzed was narrow races between an incumbent and challenger party. In these cases, it was as-if random whether the country experienced party continuity or change in the executive branch. We have thirty-six of these close elections in our data set. For this group of cases, we were particularly interested in testing whether a change in party control of the presidency increased the likelihood of
a change in state aggression. Although our sample sizes are not large, the power tests that we ran at the beginning of this project indicated that we had a good chance of picking up a medium-sized or large effect. For the test of left- versus right-wing parties, we determined we would correctly detect (at a = .05) a medium-sized effect (0.5 standard deviation [SD]) 30 percent of the time, a large effect (0.8 SD) 54 percent of the time, and a very large effect (1.2 SD) 82 percent of the time. In the incumbency power analysis, we found that we would detect a medium-sized effect
55 percent of the time, a large effect 93 percent of the time, and a very large effect over 99 percent of the time. Also, if the effects were small or nonexistent, the power tests indicated that we would be able to establish confidence intervals that were precise enough to rule out very large (+1.2 SD) positive and negative effects.2 Moreover, although the results turn out to be significant at conventional levels, we encourage readers to avoid interpreting p values as either significant (p < .05) or not while reading this article and to bear the bias-variance trade-off in research
design in mind. Almost all quantitative research in international relations lacks any claim to strong causal identification, being based on observational data and linear adjustment of largely ad hoc covariate sets. By contrast, the design presented here has a strong claim to causal identification and unbiasedness, providing a crucial complement to the vast majority of the literature which does not. Thus, since p values provide a continuous measure of how inconsistent the evidence is with the null hypothesis, a higher p value in an unbiased design may actually reflect more
evidence against the null than a lower p value in a biased one. Small p values (e.g., p < .2), even if not significant at conventional standards, also provide important evidence in these contexts. In addition to our two main tests, we examined whether candidates from challenger parties are more likely to initiate military disputes at the beginning of their terms than candidates from incumbent parties, which would be consistent with the theory that major leadership transitions make state aggression more likely. Our motivation for running this test came from reading Wolford
(2007), Dafoe (2012), and Wu and Wolford (2016). These articles advance a compelling theory and intriguing empirical evidence that new leaders have reputational incentives to act tough when they first come to office. We find strong evidence consistent with this hypothesis. Outcomes We measured aggression using the number of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) that a country initiates. These disputes are cases where countries explicitly threatened, displayed, or used force against other states (Ghosn, Palmer, and Bremer 2004). Specifically, we look at the number of
these disputes that a state initiated starting from when the leader took office and ending at the date that the winner of the next election was scheduled to start. In cases where leaders were replaced part of the way through their term, we used the day that they left office instead. Since the length of time that candidates held office varied, we divided the total number of disputes by the duration of the time period. Thus, the unit of measurement is military disputes initiated per year in office. We use slightly different versions of the outcome variables for our different tests.
For the ideology test, we use military disputes initiated per year, as described in the previous paragraph. For the main incumbency test, we use the absolute change in military disputes initiated per year from the previous term. We use this variable because we are interested in evaluating whether there was a larger absolute change in military aggression when the challenger party barely won. Thus, the measure is: Absolute change in military aggression =|MIDs/year during winner's term —MIDs/year during previous term| In other words, we are testing whether challenger
parties gaining control of the presidency makes countries with high levels of prior aggression more likely to experience a decrease in dispute initiation and countries with low levels of prior aggression more likely to experience an increase in dispute initiation. We conduct a one-sided test for this analysis, since we expect that the absolute change will be larger for countries where the challenger party barely wins. Lastly, for the exploratory test about whether challenger candidates tend to be more aggressive when they first take office, we look at the number of disputes that
each country initiated in the first year of the new presidential term. Across these tests, our main outcomes are (1) military disputes initiated and (2) high-level military disputes initiated. High-level disputes are cases where countries used force against other states or entered into international wars.3 Following the preanalysis plan, we examine high-level disputes, which constitute actual uses of force, separately because the factors that drive posturing may be different from those that drive actual violence. As secondary outcomes, we look at (3) all disputes that countries
engaged in and (4) all high-level disputes that countries engaged in. These cases include disputes that countries did not start but participated in nonetheless. Estimation We employ two estimation strategies. Our primary statistical analysis involves t tests. This is a simple approach, recommended for its parsimony and robustness, which is appropriate given the assumption that close elections were as-if random (Dunning 2012). As a secondary test, we plot the outcome as a function of the electoral result and estimate how the expected value of the outcome changes at the
cut point using local linear regression, as is often done for RD designs. An advantage with using this approach is that it makes it possible to visualize how outcomes change at the cut point. Design Checks Our research design rests on one main assumption, necessary for internally valid estimates: the outcomes of the close elections considered in this study are as-if random. For example, the design would be invalid if any candidates could precisely manipulate their vote shares around the cut point, such as by counting the votes and adding just enough to win. This assumption
should be valid for democracies provided that elections are fair (Eggers et al. 2015). A second “representativeness” assumption facilitates generalizing from our results, and this is that the democracy years experiencing close elections are not dissimilar to democracy years in which elections are not close. If this assumption is reasonable, then we can generalize from our results to all democracy years. However, if the countries that had close elections are not representative of other democracies, then the causal estimates that we find may not reflect broader patterns in
international relations. We can test the as-if randomness assumption in two ways. First, we can check that the samples are balanced on important pretreatment characteristics. Figure 1 plots the balance using two-sided t tests. The graph on the left shows that countries where right-wing parties barely won were very similar to countries where left-wing parties barely won, and the graph on the right shows that countries where incumbent parties barely won were similar to countries where challenger parties barely won. In Figure 1, we look at twenty-four covariates, and not
a single one is significantly imbalanced. Thus, the data are consistent with the assumption that who won these close elections was as-if random. Second, we can test whether there is balance in the number of cases on either side of the cut point. Figure 2 shows how close right-wing and incumbent parties were to winning the presidency. For the twenty-nine close elections between rightwing and left-wing parties, there were sixteen cases where the right-wing party won and thirteen cases where the left-wing party won (p ¼ .71). Similarly, for the thirty-six close elections
between incumbent and challenger parties, there were seventeen cases where the incumbent party won and nineteen cases where the challenger party won (p ¼ .87). Thus, there is no evidence of sorting in either sample. We can also evaluate the external validity assumption by comparing the two samples to the broader population of all democracies since 1815. Figure 3 uses box-plots to compare our samples to the broader population with respect to covariates related to military power. The comparisons show that our samples are very similar to the broader population
of democracies from 1815 to 2010. Thus, at least with respect to these covariates, there is little reason to believe that either of our samples consist of an idiosyncratic group of countries that would behave differently than most other democracies. Rather, the representativeness of our samples indicates that our results should be indicative of broader trends in international relations. In sum, the outcomes of the close elections appear to be random, and the countries where the close elections happened are fairly representative of all other democracies. Therefore, the design
appears to have worked very well. In the next two sections, we will look at how electing presidential candidates from different parties affects state aggression using this new empirical approach.

right-wing parties tend to be more aggressive than left-wing parties . Table 1 shows the aggression
Results for Party Ideology Our results indicate that

countries where right-wing parties barely won

levels of the countries that had close elections between right-wing and left-wing candidates. On average, the

started .06 more disputes per year than countries where left-wing parties barely won . Similarly, they engaged
in .10 more high-level disputes per year than countries where left-wing parties barely won . Given that the average duration of
a presidential term for these countries is 4 years and 169 days, this adds up to .32 more disputes initiated and .43 more high-level disputes initiated over an average presidential term. Figure 4 plots the estimates for the two main

The confidence intervals are based on two-tailed t tests. They suggest that electing right-
outcome variables along with the two other indicators of aggression.

wing parties does increase state aggression, particularly when it comes to high-level disputes. Of course, all of these confidence intervals
cover zero, so we cannot rule out zero effect with 95 percent confidence based on this analysis alone. The estimate most different from zero is of high-level disputes initiated (p = .25). For disputes initiated, the results appear to be

more consistent with no effect (p = .64), as do the results for the supplemental tests of all disputes and all high-level disputes. However, if we look at the specific disputes in more
detail, the evidence that electing right-wing leaders increases state aggression grows stronger . While all the
high-level disputes that the right-wing leaders engaged in involved unequivocal uses of force, the only
high-level dispute that any of the left-wing leaders initiated is questionable and should probably be
excluded. This dispute was between Costa Rica and Nicaragua in 1995, and it did not involve any military action by either country. Costa Rican police crossed the Nicaraguan border in pursuit of suspects and were
arrested. Two days later, the Costa Rican police force retaliated by arresting two Nicaraguan police officers who had crossed the border "to get a drink of water." The two sides made a prisoner swap on the following day. If this
case is dropped, then electing right-wing parties appears to lead countries to initiate . 12 more high-level disputes per year (p = .162).4 Moreover, the only reason that these results are not significant is because the United States

modifying the outcome to a simple indicator variable for whether countries

(2001) is an outlier, which inflates the standard errors. We can address this issue by

initiated any high-level disputes (no = 0, yes = 1), which makes our test insensitive to outliers . The estimates then suggest that electing right-wing

parties increases the chances that countries will initiate high-level military disputes by 25 percent (p = .041).
Therefore, even though the initial tests were not statistically significant, they become more conclusive after we address some minor issues with the data. Given the number of democracies in the world today, there may be enough
close elections to get much more precise estimates a decade or two from now or maybe even after the next expansion of the MID data set. This design is definitely worth returning to in the near future. However, for the present,
we will turn to a second test in the next section on more data that yields increased statistical power. This test provides further evidence that which party controls the presidency does affect the likelihood of state aggression. Results
for Incumbent versus Challenger Parties The second test that we run compares cases where challenger parties barely defeated incumbent parties to cases where they barely lost to incumbent parties. In these cases, it was as-if
random whether the incumbent or challenger party won. Thus, we can test how much military aggression changes when the party that controls the executive branch changes. The outcomes that we use for this test are the absolute
changes in the military indicators between the term when the incumbent or challenger party barely won and the previous term. For this analysis, we use one-sided tests that assume that there will tend to be a larger change in

When
military aggression when the challenger party barely wins. Table 2 shows the absolute change in aggression levels for the countries that had close elections between candidates from incumbent and challenger parties.

the candidates from challenger parties barely won, the absolute change in disputes initiated per year
was .031 greater than when candidates from incumbent parties barely won (p = .30; 26 percent increase from baseline). For high-level disputes, the difference is even more notable. The absolute
change in high-level disputes initiated per year was .074 greater than when candidates from incumbent parties barely won (p = .046, 133 percent
increase from baseline). The average length of the presidential terms for these data was 4.42 years, so this adds up to a difference of .33 high-level disputes initiated per presidential term. Figure 5 plots the

This estimated effect is substantively large relative to other determinants of conflict that
confidence intervals for the aggression indicators.

international relations scholars have analyzed. For example, past studies have found that revolutions increase the likelihood that countries will initiate military disputes by about 74 percent (Colgan 2010), arms
transfers by about 60 percent (Krause 2004), and neutrality pacts with potential conflict joiners by about 57 percent (Leeds 2003). The effect of challenger parties winning appears to be in the ballpark of these estimates, although it
is hard to nail down this effect very precisely because of the relatively small sample size. Figure 6 illustrates the effect for high-level disputes across a greater range of margins of victory. As countries move from incumbent party
victories (the points on the left) to challenger party victories (the points on the right), there is a large shift in the absolute change in high-level disputes initiated. Countries where the challenger party barely won experienced a much

larger change than countries where the incumbent party barely won. Although this method of estimating the treatment effect was not the primary method that we discussed in our preanalysis plan, the results for this
approach are fairly conclusive.

Nuclear war causes extinction

Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway 19. Military Analyst, MA in Conflict Resolution from
Georgetown, BA in the History and Policy of IR from Carnegie-Mellon. Defense Journalist @ The Drive. 2-
27-2019. “Yes, India and Pakistan Could End the World As We Know It Through A Nuclear Exchange.”
The Drive. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26674/yes-india-and-pakistan-could-end-the-
world-as-we-know-it-through-a-nuclear-exchange. <3 Rafa

A global threat Indiaand Pakistan's nuclear arsenals are tiny compared to those of the United States and Russia, and these
weapons are focused primarily on deterring each other, but that does not mean they're purely regional threats. Unlike
conventional weapons, nuclear weapons create lasting and far-reaching effects that scientists have posited could
upend life on Earth if warring parties were to use them in sufficient numbers. In 2012, Alan Robock, a distinguished
professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University,
and Owen Brian Toon, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a research associate at the Laboratory for
Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argued that it
might not take a large amount of nuclear
weapons to create a scenario commonly known as "Nuclear Winter." In general, this hypothesized event occurs when
smoke and soot from nuclear explosions block significant amounts of sunlight from reaching the earth's surface,
leading to a precipitous drop in temperatures that results in mass crop failure and widespread famine. Robcock
and Toon summarized their findings, which were based in part on their previous work, in an article in the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists,
writing: "Even a 'small' nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50
Hiroshima-size atom bombs – only about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenal's explosive power – as
airbursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age
of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threatening the global food
supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface.
Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and
by 10 percent for a decade. The bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima Japan, known as Little Boy, was an inefficient and essentially
experimental design with a yield of around 15 kilotons. The reported results
from Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing
indicate that both countries can meet this threshold and both countries' weapons programs have almost certainly
matured in the decades since. In previous studies, Robcock, working with others, postulated that temperature changes could begin
within 10 days of a limited nuclear exchange and the effects from the detonations of 100 nuclear weapons in the 15-kiloton class would directly
result in the deaths of at least 20 million people. The second order impacts would be even worse in the years that followed. In
2014, Michael Mills and Julia Lee-Taylor, both then working at the federally-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research's (NCAR) Earth
System Laboratory, authored another paper with Robcock and Toon. This study concluded again that detonation of 100 15-
kiloton yield bombs in a purely regional conflict would result in "multi-decadal global cooling" and "would
put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine." It is important to note that critics have
questioned whether the Nuclear Winter concept relies on too many assumptions and would ever actually occur. At the center of many of these
rebuttals are debates about whether the nuclear explosions would truly create the amount of smoke and soot necessary for major climate
change, as well as the specific conditions for those particles to remain in the atmosphere for a prolonged period of time. The studies here do
indicate significant impacts based on a relatively limited number of nuclear detonations of smaller yield devices, though. But even if the
impacts are less pronounced than projected in this particular scenario, they could be far more severe if India and Pakistan
were to use a larger number weapons and/or ones of higher yields, which both belligerents readily have . In
addition, Nuclear Winter is just one of the potential things that might happen following a nuclear exchange
between the longtime foes. A detonation of dozens of nuclear weapons, even small ones, would throw hazardous
nuclear fallout into the air that, depending on the weather pattern, could carry that material far and wide, causing both near-
and short-term health impacts. The various ground zeroes themselves would be irritated and potentially hazardous for many years to come.
Depending on where the detonations occur, a nuclear exchange could potentially cut people off from critical water and food
supplies, putting increased and potentially unsustainable strains on uncontaminated areas. After the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,
situated in Ukraine, melted down and exploded in 1986, authorities established a 1,000 square mile restricted access "exclusion zone" that
remains in place today. There would also be a major danger of second-order "spillover" effects, as individuals fled
affected areas, putting economic and political strains on neighboring regions. This could inflame existing
tensions not directly related to the inter-state conflict between India or Pakistan or lead to all new and
potentially violent competition for what might already be limited resources. India has already threatened to
weaponize water access in its latest spat with the Pakistanis. Any serious impacts on food and water supplies,
or other economic upheavals as a direct or indirect result of the conflict, would have cascading impact across South
Asia and beyond, as well. The very threat of a potential India-Pakistan war of any kind already caused some negative reactions in regional
financial markets. Those markets would certainly collapse after an unprecedented nuclear exchange actually occurred,
and that is before the long-term physical impacts of such an event would even manifest themselves. Overall, we are talking about a sudden and
dramatic geopolitical, financial, and environmental shift that would change our reality in a matter of hours. Even then, the darkness, both
figuratively and literally, that could propagate over the weeks, months, and years would be far more damaging. How great is the risk? So far,
India and Pakistan have not made any clear indications that the fighting is close to crossing their nuclear thresholds. Pakistan's warnings about
the risks of escalation seem more calculated to try and prompt India to back down. India itself hasa so-called "no first use" policy,
which means it has publicly pledged to use its nuclear weapons only in retaliation to a nuclear strike. However,
experts have increasingly called into question whether this is truly the case and whether India might be
developing delivery systems more suited to a first strike should there be a need to shift policies. Pakistan, however, does
not have a no first use policy and has insisted on its right to employ nuclear weapons to defend itself even in the
face of purely conventional threat. Pakistani officials have, in the past, specifically cited this policy as way of
deterring India, which has a much larger and in some cases more advanced conventional force, and preventing larger wars.
The concern, then, is that this policy appears to have failed , at least to some degree, with India's strike on undisputed
Pakistani territory on Feb. 26, 2019. India, however, did not target Pakistani forces in that instance and exchanges between the two
countries have been limited, at least so far, to the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region, where violent skirmishes occur semi-
regularly without precipitating a larger confrontation. We can only hope that the two countries will find a diplomatic
solution to this latest conflict and avoid any further escalation. If things were to spiral out of control and lead to the
use of nuclear weapons, it would be something that would threaten all of humanity.

Economic resilience solves systemic vulnerabilities---imminent extinction.

Kassab 17. Hanna Samir Kassab, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northern Michigan
University, Prioritization Theory and Defensive Foreign Policy. Springer International Publishing, 2017. CrossRef,
doi:10.1007/978-3-319-48018-3. pp 222-227.
Furthermore, this work recognizes the importance of self-determination and economic development. These are not inherently bad things. Self-determination recognizes the right of a state as represented by its people to live out
the destiny of their own choosing. Economic development, even from this Western modernist perspective, recognizes the value of human life and seeks to protect it through the proper and efficient allocation of resources.
However, if peoples choose to withdraw into a closed community, it is their right to do so. Yet the problem remains: states and peoples are now more interconnected than ever. And so instead of remaining insular, everyone in the

problems such as global warming, the diffusion of

world has an interest to ensure the proper functioning of the international system and the tackling of the world’s

disease and other negative public outcomes. Such matters bind the autonomy and sovereignty of
peoples together in the universal need for survival. Final Words When we study International Relations from
the point of view of distribution of capabilities, scholars miss other aspects of the discipline. A state’s
behavior is carried out to survive against the systemic vulnerabilities described in this book. Power, driven by
economic development, is the tool for neutralizing these vulnerabilities, so as to protect individuals living inside the state. Power
can be considered a laundry list of resources (Waltz 2010) meant to achieve invulnerability from sources of
threat. Whether from competitor states or disease and cyber-attacks, the role of power is to enhance
the state’s survival ability against the odds: to decrease vulnerability. Since resources are necessary to increase
resilience to threats, they are the antidote to vulnerability, and the root of power to achieve invulnerability is
the economy: economic development is thus the cure for vulnerability. The stronger, more advanced the
economy, the more resilient it will be to exogenous shock in the ways described. Economic gains can be transformed into
power in military terms, but also provide the necessary infrastructure to deal with health, cyber,
environmental and other shocks and destabilization. Since power is tied to economic matters, economic
vulnerabilities can significantly impede power and a state’s ability to deal with threats. The financial crisis in 2008 damaged the European Union and much of the Caribbean
because of their dependence on the USA. The falling price of oil is decreasing global aggregate demand as Russians do not have as much to spend. This has occurred during a period of Russian expansionism and while Eastern
Europe is concerned about Russia’s military might, it must recognize the power of the world economy in terms of punishing this sort of action. Waltz focused on the distribution of capabilities as a means toward security. I look at
world politics as the struggle to correct vulnerabilities in order to remain secure. Military power cannot solve such vulnerability. Enhancing invulnerability will come through economic development in a modernist perspective but

threats will never be truly neutralized until all states in the system are economically developed. The economy, with all its sensitivity and vulnerability, is a
source of instability for all actors.

Expanding the predicate list solves:

1. Deterrence---is signaled by clearly defined statutes with severe penalties.
Crump 9. Donald Crump, J.D., & Lawyer @ Tenaris, (2009, “Criminals Don't Pay: Using Tax Fraud to Prohibit
Organized Crime,” Houston Business and Tax Journal, Vol. IX, pp. 386-410,
http://www.hbtlj.org/v09p3/v09p3Crump.pdf)//pacc

Courts and Congress alike are making a false assumption that prosecutors will use broadly-interpreted rules
and laws to take advantage of criminals181 and their prior criminal history.182 Just because there is a new rule created or there is a new use for a law, does not mean that rule or law
is too broad to be applied to present cases. If a defendant is breaking a law that does not involve some type of civil

disobedience, then it may be considered unconstitutional or too broad .183 [Footnote 183: See Gonzalez v.
Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 127 S. Ct. 1610, 1628 (2007) (“The void for vagueness doctrine requires that a penal statute define the
criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is
prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement .” (quoting Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S.
 If tax fraud is interpreted so broadly that no one understands what the law is or how that law is
352, 307 (1983)).]

to be applied, then there is an issue of enforcement - perhaps even an issue of unconstitutionality.184 The purpose for which the crime of tax fraud is currently being
used and the purpose for which it can be used in the future seem obvious. Rationally speaking, if someone intentionally lies or cheats on his or her taxes, then they are committing some form of tax fraud.185 There is no hidden or
esoteric loophole that punishes unsuspecting victims who intentionally and successfully attempt or unsuccessfully attempt to defraud the United States government. There are many opportunities to catch them in the act of

committing tax fraud because tax fraud is so prevalent among Americans.186 Instead of disguising tax fraud under the mail fraud or wire fraud
statutes,187 if tax fraud could be coupled with other RICO offenses, or even treated as a predicate offense, there are many goals that this action
could accomplish. Setting tax fraud as a predicate offense would help address two problems .188 [Footnote 188: If tax fraud

is used to punish people who engage in organized crime, it does two things: First, it discourages people in general from committing tax fraud

because of the stiff penalties that could ensue from committing this type of fraud . Second, it discourages
organized criminals from engaging in such activities because they would have to report this on their tax
return; and, if they reported what they were actually doing, then they would be essentially giving themselves up to the federal government. Id.
at 585.] In terms of a general tax fraud offense, Congress is punishing someone who has committed tax fraud

and that is it,189 but when thinking about tax fraud as applied to a predicate offense, it does much more.190
[Footnote 190: You are given the opportunity to punish someone who has contributed much more harm to society than merely cheating on his taxes. Do not make the mistake of assuming this Comment condones

tax fraud and ignores the detriment it causes to society, but this Comment does encourage one to realize the important fact that tax fraud, when combined with robbery,

illegal gambling, and other illegal acts that come along with organized crime and organized criminals, can result in
stiff penalties which can help deter criminals from engaging in tax fraud.]

2. Asset Forfeiture---it’s legal and strengthens evidence gathering.

Zoppei 12. Verena Zoppei – Master of Laws Program, The University of The Western Cape. “Tax evasion as a
predicate offence for money laundering,” 29 October 2012.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3822/c0633200eeb1ca7c937140f6649c5726a277.pdf

this section aims at analysing

3 Criminalisation of tax evasion under ML Following the discussion of the harmful consequences of fiscal competition, and the most common methods of tax evasion,

whether criminalising tax evasion under the umbrella of the ML would be an effective and appropriate
way of dealing with the issue. AML consists of two elements, one of criminal law, that is the
criminalisation of the conduct, and one regulatory, which aims at preventing the abuse of the financial
system for ML purposes. 3.1 The rationale of AML “The primary reason for fighting ML is to enable law enforcement
authorities to confiscate the proceeds of predicate criminal activities in those situations where
confiscation might otherwise not be possible”.92 The crime of ML was, in fact, invented, to “follow the
money” of criminal groups, since the imprisonment of even top ranking criminals did not result in a
reduction of organised crime rates.93 The underlying idea was to attack the criminals' economic wealth,
through assets recovery mechanisms. This, it was believed, would improve the effectiveness of the fight against ML and criminal activities, such as drug trafficking.94 Assets
recovery has been recognised as a key element also in the fight against corruption, under UNCAC.95 Additionally,
since most high level criminals usually stay aloof from the commission of crimes, while enjoying the
financial profits, ML can serve the purpose of gathering evidence against top criminals by tracking the
movement of money.96 The crime of ML punishes conduct aimed at disguising and concealing the origin
or the ownership of the proceeds of crime. In particular, when AML law allows the confiscation of the
equivalent, this can result in an advantage for law enforcement, when proceeds of crimes have been
intermingled with lawful assets, or are held by bona fide third parties. In the first case it should be still possible to confiscate the equivalent value
of assets from the money launderer, and, in the second case, the object of confiscation will be any property deriving from the ML, even the profit made by the selling of the criminal assets to bona fide third parties.

Financial gain is also what moves tax evaders. If the earnings resulting from tax evasion might be
confiscated as proceeds of ML, this may become a deterrent for legal persons involved in fiscal crimes. The
question, with regard to legitimacy under criminal laws, is this: Can tax evasion be the predicate offence which justifies the court in issuing a confiscation order?
Criminalizing evasion and avoidance funnels trillions into safety nets
Brigitte Unger and Joras Ferwerda 18. Professor, School of Economics U.S.E, Utrecht University;
School of Economics U.S.E, Utrecht University. 4-30-2018. “Money Laundering and Tax Fraud.” Coffers.
http://coffers.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/D6.4-Working-Paper.pdf

Many countries focused now on the tax revenue side in order to serve the increased public debt and
the need of the population for public expenditures like infrastructure, housing and education. Many
leaks, like the Panama Papers in April 2015, followed by Luxleaks, Bermuda Leaks revealed that the global unregulated
tax system was seriously going wrong. The most recent ‘Paradise Papers’ of November 2017 show 13.4 million
confidential documents relating to offshore investments of 120,000 people and companies in 19
jurisdictions involving around 10 trillion of USD (Boston Consulting Group 2017). They include mainly tax avoidance
constructions of big companies like Facebook, Apple, Uber, Nike, Siemens who all own offshore
companies. They also revealed illegal loans of 45 million USD from Glencore, the largest multinational
commodity trading and mining company, in order to get rights at a copper mine in Congo. Directors of
companies listed in the Paradise papers include leaders of African states, and even the British Queen and last not least also Lord Sassoon, the president of the
Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (ICIJ 2017). The revelation of the diverse leaks showed that a large volume of
unpaid taxes was missing which meant a tremendous inequality and which could fill the public coffers
and be used for public needs. To link tax evasion to money laundering can be seen as a political effort
to prevent and reduce tax evasion by criminalizing it more heavily. While drugs and organized crime are
clearly defined as crimes in the member states, tax evasion is not. It is therefore doubtable whether the directive really adds to the combat.
1.1 The volume of global tax evasion While there are significant uncertainties about the scale of tax avoidance, tax

evasion and money laundering, there is no longer any doubt that the volume of tax revenues lost is
substantial and that the amounts would be sufficient to solve many global problems of our time. Cobham
and Klees (2016) from the Tax Justice Network show that globally, revenue losses due to multinational corporate

tax manipulation alone are estimated at 600 billion USD annually. Revenue losses on income tax due to
non declared offshore wealth, are estimated to approach 200 billion USD. These lost revenues would be
sufficient to provide education globally or to reach many of the defined sustainable development goals
(The estimated education resource gap being 39 billion USD. Reaching all sustainable development goals
would need 1.4 trillion USD annuall y, see Cobham and Klees 2016). Crivelli et al (2015) from the IMF estimate total tax losses
of over 400 billion USD for OECD countries and 200 billion USD for developing countries through tax
havens and spill over effects. The estimated global revenue loss of 650 billion USD of James Henry for TJN comes close to these IMF estimates (see
Cobham 2016). A lower estimate is done by the OECD (2015). It suggests between 100 billion USD and 240 billion

USD annually lost. This estimate is based on company balance sheets. Cobham and Jansky (2015) estimate that profit shifting of US MNEs resulted in
revenue losses of 130 billion USD in 2012 (compared to 12 in 1994) which shows the immense growth of tax avoidance. In the US, the Internal

Revenue Service (see www.fortune.com from 29th of April 2016) calculates that tax evasion costs the US Government 458
billion USD a year, so approximately one fourth of American tax revenue is lost through MNEs shifting
their profits abroad. The range of estimates and what precisely is estimated are still very broad. The lowest and most prominent estimate of revenues
lost is made by University of Berkeley professor Gabriel Zucman (2015). In his widely noticed book ‘The Hidden Wealth of Nations - The

Scourge of Tax Havens ‘ he concluded that as of 2014, at least 7.6 trillion of world's total financial wealth of 95.5 trillion

USD was 'missing'. Countries’ national balance sheets recorded much more liabilities than assets. This means that the difference must be hidden
somewhere. Zucman calculated that 2.6 trillion USD of financial wealth in Europe is held offshore, leading to tax revenue losses of 78 billion USD annually.
Worldwide, 8% of financial wealth is held offshore, leading to global tax revenue losses of 190 billion USD. Next to the loss of tax income of 190 billion USD through
tax evasion, heestimated losses of 130 billion USD through tax avoidance by US corporations (Zucman 2015).
Zucman expressed his shock about what was going on globally by exclaiming: ‘As if planet earth were in part held by Mars’. His suspicion and the

findings of many authors mentioned above were definitely confirmed when the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in April 2015 revealed the ‘Panama Papers’. Some authors, notably
the Financial Secrecy Index of the Tax Justice Network found a perfect match between their own work and the Panama revelation www.cgdev.org/blog/panama-
papers-andcorrelates-hidden-activity). Zucman’s Martian men systematically were revealed: heads
of governments, top politicians,
football players and football managers, actresses, film makers; an elite which had apparently stopped
paying taxes by making use of loopholes emerging in an unregulated global world. These elites used
apparently the same offshore channels as drug dealers and human traffickers. It was this latter clientele,
drug dealers, fraudsters, human traffickers, to which the money laundering debate referred to. In 1995, the
Australian criminologist John Walker estimated that 2.85 trillion USD is laundered globally, of which almost half (46%) in the US. In 1998, Michel Camdessus from
the IMF guessed that around 2-5% of GDP worldwide are lost annually through money laundering. Camdessus’ estimate amounted then to 1.5 trillion USD.
worldwide (see Unger et al 2006, Walker and Unger 2009). Many estimates followed. Though no calculations of Camdessus could be found, his ‘wet finger’
approach has turned out valid and could not be rejected by far more sophisticated measures till today. Since
money launderers and tax
evaders both used offshore centers to hide their identity and business, it was only a matter of time that
the two fields – tax evasion and money laundering – would merge.
 1AC---Europe
Advantage 2 is Europe

Russia exploits the region’s financial institutions to establish spheres of influence---US-

EU cooperation is key
Chris Raggett 20. editor at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He previously worked as an
associate editor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, as well as for a legal publisher and a
medical journal. “Networks of impunity: Corruption and European foreign policy,” March 3, 2020.
https://ecfr.eu/publication/networks_of_impunity_corruption_and_european_foreign_policy/

The Danske Bank case is connected to actors such as those behind the Russian Laundromat and the
Azerbaijani Laundromat, which moved $2.9 billion in stolen funds through UK shell companies between 2012
and 2014. Perhaps the most troubling link in the case , though, is to the corruption network that killed Russian

lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky. In 2018 a report commissioned by Danske Bank revealed that its Estonian branch had received funds from
a $230m tax fraud against Hermitage Capital Management, a crime Magnitsky investigated. The report neglects to mention Magnitsky himself – much less the fact
that he was arrested for undertaking the investigation in 2008, or that he died in prison the following year seemingly due to inhumane treatment by the authorities,
not least the denial of medical care. Nor does it refer to the perpetrators of the fraud, who appear to be corrupt officials within Russia’s bureaucracy and security
services. The Danske Bank report’s lack of curiosity obscures how kleptocrats
exploit European financial networks to transform
local corruption in Russia into a foreign policy problem that extends well beyond Russia’s borders. And
the aftermath of the theft illustrates how kleptocrats often fund their international activities and pay off
domestic allies. Danske Estonia is only one of several parts of the European financial system to be
tainted by the Magnitsky case. Some of the proceeds of the tax fraud moved through the Cyprus branch of
Tanzanian bank FBME (formerly the Federal Bank of the Middle East). Investigations by the US Treasury and various private firms
found that FBME acted as an indirect link between figures associated with the Russian government and
the Syrian regime, through front companies such as Balec Ventures and Tredwell Marketing. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, part of the US
Treasury, concluded that the bank helped transfer funds from the fraud against Hermitage to the Syrian regime’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, via a now-
sanctioned Syrian-Russian frontman. In 2014 the
US designated FBME as a financial institution of primary money
laundering concern, leading to the bank’s closure three years later. For several years before the designation, European financial
institutions such as Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and Raiffeisen Bank provided FBME with access to US dollars and the wider
financial system through correspondent banking arrangements (which had fewer monitoring
requirements than FBME’s direct relationships with its customers). There appears to be no evidence that these larger banks understood the types of activity
that they facilitated through these arrangements – although that in itself raises questions about their fulfilment of ‘know your customer’ obligations. In light of
these failings, Magnitsky’s death seems all the more tragic for the importance of what he was trying to do. Although he could not have known it, at least some of
the money from the tax fraud would, after passing through a labyrinth of European financial pathways,
help fund an institution implicated in war crimes in Syria. As investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov contend,
the “corrupt and cynical” system the Kremlin uses to enhance its influence at home and abroad has long
exploited pliable foreign financial networks – and can trace many of its practices to the machinations of the Soviet-era KGB. The
corruption networks that run through places such as FBME Cyprus help sustain an alliance between
Damascus and Moscow that has endured since long before the fall of the Soviet Union. The klepintern, it
seems, is alive and well. Grifters of the world, unite. Given these events, European leaders who are uncertain
about the severity of Europe’s money laundering problem might reflect on the Magnitsky case. They
might also think back to an incident in which – having failed to destroy the financial networks that
underpin the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons programme – France, the UK, and the US engaged in a
form of enforcement that is far easier to understand (and probably much more expensive) than tortuous financial investigations.
On the night of 14 April 2018, one week after the deaths of at least 40 people in a chlorine attack on Douma, the three countries launched more than 100 missiles at
chemical-weapons facilities belonging to the Syrian regime. Their primary target was the Scientific Studies and Research Center.

A weak European economy provokes Russian adventurism, which escalates

Gideon Rachman 19. chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times. 10-7-2019, "The EU needs
to be a power project," The Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/ff92106c-e8e0-11e9-85f4-
d00e5018f061 - MBA AM

In Britain and the US, the idea that the EU could aspire to be a superpower is usually treated as either ludicrous
or sinister. So when Guy Verhofstadt, a prominent member of the European Parliament, recently made the case for the EU to be part of an emerging “world
order that is based on empires”, there was a predictable backlash. At the Conservative party conference a few days ago, his words, taken from a speech to their
anti-Brexit enemies the Liberal Democrats, were cited as evidence of the dangerous imperial ambitions of the EU — and proof that leaving the bloc is the UK’s only
safe option. Mr Verhofstadt can be arrogant. But, in this case, he also happens to be right. The
rise of China and India, and the America
First policies of Donald Trump’s US, makes it more important than ever that European countries defend
their interests collectively. The EU once dreamt that the whole world would move towards a law-based system, similar to the EU method. But a
world order, shaped by Xi Jinping’s China and Trump’s America, will be based on power rather than rules. The outbreak of a global trade war underlines that small
European countries can no longer rely on international rules to protect them. They need the bulk and heft that the EU provides. The former Belgian prime minister’s
choice of the word “empire” — with its connotations of conquest — was unfortunate. The EU is an empire by invitation. Nobody is forced to join. And, despite the
difficulties of Brexit, any member is free to leave.
It would be more accurate to say that the EU can and should aspire to
be a superpower — one of four or five major global powers, capable of shaping the world order. That aspiration is eminently
achievable. Indeed, in important respects, it has already been achieved. Last week provided an interesting illustration when the
European Court of Justice ruled that individual countries can demand that Facebook take down defamatory content, on a global basis. The ECJ ruling was made in
response to a complaint from an Austrian politician — and prompted an immediate and concerned response from Facebook. If this had just been a ruling by an
Austrian court, the Californian internet giant would have been able to brush it off. But the ECJ has sway over a market of more than 500m people — compared with
the 9m in Austria. Facebook’s ambitions for Libra, a digital currency, will also be shaped by rulings made in Brussels. The EU’s decisions — good or bad — change the
behaviour of the world’s largest firms, from Silicon Valley to southern China. The
EU is most comfortable and powerful when acting
on economic issues such as trade or competition policy. But it is also a geopolitical force. Russia’s annexation of
Crimea and continued interference in Ukraine has been met with sanctions and travel bans that have
slowed the Russian economy and hemmed in the Russian elite. Last August in Moscow, I found myself commiserating with a
member of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle who is now banned from taking his summer holiday in southern France or Italy. Bodrum in Turkey, we agreed, was
just as nice. The collective power of the EU is also evident over Brexit. The British elite is still trying to adjust
to the fact that, for the first time in centuries, Ireland is pushing Britain around — rather than vice versa. The EU economy
(even without Britain) is more than five times the size of the UK economy. Backed by the rest of Europe, the Irish can stand their

ground on Brexit. Of course, those who scorn the idea that the EU can ever be a superpower have some powerful points. They stress that the EU lacks the

military muscle to back up its geopolitical ambitions — a problem that will get worse when Britain leaves. The critics can also point to
damaging disagreements within the EU — on issues ranging from migration to the future of the eurozone. It is also true that EU countries spend less

on the military, as a percentage of gross domestic product than the US, Russia or China. Europe’s reliance on US military deterrence continues to anger the
White House. But even if the US pulled all its troops out of Europe, which is unlikely, it would still be a huge gamble for Russia (or anyone

else) to risk military aggression against a collective with the size and wealth of the EU. The fact is that, in the nuclear

age, advanced industrial nations tend not to go to war with each other. Big p ower struggles are played out

through other means — such as the current trade war. And here, the EU — with its huge internal market
and a unified trade and competition policy — is well-equipped to slug it out with China and the US; it
comfortably outmatches Russia or India. It is true that the EU is riven by internal divisions. But all political entities that are large enough to
aspire to superpower status are also large enough to be plagued by internal splits. This is true of the US, where political rivalries are so acute that the president is
tweeting about civil war. It is also true of China and India — just look at the problems in Hong Kong and Kashmir. Like all “empires”, the EU could eventually fly
apart. But the external pressures on European nations makes it more likely that the EU nations will manage their differences and continue to pull closer together.
The EU used to be called a peace project. In the modern world, it is more of a power project — and rightly so.
Russia uses money laundering to conduct hybrid war
Josh Rudolph and Thomas Morley 20. Fellow @ Malign Finance, Executive Director @ the IMF, and
on the White House National Security Council & U.S. Treasury Department. MA in European and Russian
Studies from Yale & Research Assistant @ ASD. 8-18-2020. "Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes
Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interference in Democracies." Alliance for Securing
Democracy. pp 54. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ASD-Covert-
Foreign-Money.pdf. pacc
8. Illegal Activities and Multi-vector Campaigns We noticed something when cataloguing instances in which the central thrust of cases appears to involve illegal
activity: They are rarely standalone operations. It is not always the case. But when
an authoritarian regime gets caught breaking the
law in ways that involve large amounts of money (funding violence, paying outright bribes, funneling big laundered foreign-sourced
political contributions, etc.), that boldness often reflects a broader multi-vector malign influence campaign also

utilizing legal loopholes discussed in this paper as well as non-financial tools of interference . Such aggressive
campaigns also tend to be seen by the authoritarian regime's top leadership as essential to its
perceived strategic interests. Because this context is important to stopping these dangerous operations, this chapter will include more discussion
of regional foreign policy campaigns, often approved by a head of state such as Putin. China has also been conducting sweeping illegal influence campaigns,
particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. In a few cases, Chinese bribery also makes its way as far west as the Belt and Road Initiative does. But the westward march of
illicit finance as a weapon of geopolitical hostility is mainly a Russian story, starting in Ukraine and now driving deep into the halls of power in Western capitals.
Central and Eastern Europe On top of Moscow's military occupation of neighboring countries, Russian criminal activity has been
undermining democracies in the former Soviet Union even before the last decade, from energy corruption in Kyiv
to rampant money laundering through the Baltic countries to Russian fiscal leverage over Georgia's
breakaway regions.590 [FOOTNOTE 590: In 2004, Putin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma established in
Switzerland a key intermediary used to fund pro-Russian political interference in Ukraine , RosUkrEnergo, co-
owned by Dmytro Firtash and Gazprom. See Grey, et al., 2014. In 2008, Georgia became the first target of modern Russian hybrid

warfare, from military invasion to fiscal aid to generate leverage over breakaway governments. See Anton
Troianovski, "To avoid sanctions, Kremlin goes off the grid," Washington Post, November 21, 2018. The Baltic states are the only part of the European

Union to have been regularly targeted by modern Russian active measures before 2014, with the Kremlin's toolkit including

information manipulation in Lithuania, cyberattacks in Estonia, and money laundering in Latvia that
sometimes flowed to the country's pro-Russia Harmony Party. See Shekhovtsov, pp. xxi, footnote 19; Springe and Shedrofsky, 2019.]

But three cases in the past decade around the frontlines of Europe—eastern Ukraine, Montenegro, and North
Macedonia—show an increasingly aggressive Kremlin secretly funding multi-vector destabilization
activities on the ground meant to block these peoples from choosing their own paths toward European
institutions. Since the spring of 2014, in addition to direct military action in Ukraine and the seemingly legal media influence described in the prior chapter,
Russia has funded separatist armed forces in eastern Ukraine. The form of this malign financial support evolved over the first
year of the war as Russia developed increasingly sophisticated channels for plausibly deniable funding. At first,

when the Kremlin wanted to quickly install loyal and well-funded leaders in the Donbas region, it relied on oligarch
Konstantin Malofeev.591 Later in 2014, financial regulators in Moscow allowed an online network of over a dozen purportedly humanitarian aid

groups in Russia to raise millions of rubles to buy weapons and other military equipment to "crowdfund the

war."592 In the spring of 2015, Russia instituted more formal fiscal and financial arrangements to secretly move rubles across borders, both of which continue to
operate today.593 First, Russian military supply lines transport newly printed rubles worth more than a billion dollars a year to fund from 70 percent to 90 percent
of the Donetsk and Luhansk fiscal needs.594 Second, a Russian-supported breakaway region of Georgia created a shadow banking system to funnel billions of rubles
electronically from Moscow to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in order to evade Western sanctions and provide the separatists with "financial, trade,
economic, legal and organizational infra-structure."595 Since 2017, Russia
has also propped up the separatists' coal industry by
laundering their illegal exports through networks of cross-border trains and shell companies based in Georgia.596
The UN's highest court is in the process of considering whether this malign financial support constitutes a Russian violation of a terrorist financing treaty.597
Unchecked influence in Europe erupts nuclear war
Keith Payne and John Stuart Foster 17. PhD, Defense Professor @ Missouri State, DoD Co-Chairman,
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy, and wrote multiple Nuclear Posture Reviews.
Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Director of American Defense Research and
Engineering under four Secretaries of Defense and two Presidents. 3-3-2017. “Russian strategy
Expansion, crisis and conflict.” Comparative Strategy. vol 36. is 1. Taylor & Francis. pacc <3 BPS

Russian President Vladimir Putin

has a worldview that differs substantially from that of his Western counterparts and
a grand strategy to expand Russia's power and control—necessarily at the expense of others. Putin's
worldview is evident in his statement that the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. Russia,
in his view, was humiliated in the wake of that devolution. He views the West as the culprit and a continuing threat to his
vision for Russia. Putin has often used powerful and even spiritual imagery to convey his messages to
the Russian people. For example, in his 2014 annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly, Putin cited the religious significance of Crimea—the
place where “Grand Prince Vladimir [born in Kiev circa 956 AD] was baptized before bringing Christianity to Rus.” And, he compared the significance

of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia to the “sacral importance” of the “Temple Mount in Jerusalem for
the followers of Islam and Judaism.”1 Vladimir Putin and other like-minded Russian leaders appear
determined to correct perceived injustices done to Russia. This revisionist agenda is to be accomplished at
the expense of the West—in particular, the United States and allies. The evidence for this thesis is apparent from
consistencies in Russian leadership statements and Russia's behavior over the past 20 years. As summarized
by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter in October 2015: Russia has used political, economic, and military tools to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity
of neighboring countries, flouted international legal norms, and destabilized the European security order by attempting to annex Crimea and continuing to fuel
further violence in eastern Ukraine.2 Russian Objectives. Moscow's grand strategy and identified key objectives include: expanding its
influence and reestablishing its global role as a multi-regional great power and “Russification” of the near abroad. U.S. leaders should be
aware that these objectives are not achievable in an era of peace and stability, but are highly revisionist and

confrontational. Russian actions toward these goals, if unchecked, invariably will lead to further crises and conflict
with the West. The territorial expansion which is sought by Moscow has been demonstrated clearly in Moldova,
Georgia, and Ukraine, and future incursions by Russian military forces could well erupt into a serious
confrontation with the West. In fact, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Russian military operations in
Syria, Russia has demonstrated the potential threat to states from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the
Balkans. Russia has declared repeatedly that it views NATO as its enemy and large-scale military exercises conducted over the past decade have underscored
the seriousness of that Russian perspective of NATO. Russia's expansion of influence and military buildup is not limited to its western flank. Its military activities in
the East—for example, in the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands—have understandably alarmed Japan, a key U.S. ally in the Pacific.3 Indeed, in 2014,
Russia's military seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and military forces in eastern Ukraine prompted a phone call between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and
U.S. President Obama. According to reports, the two leaders agreed that Russia's actions were “a threat to international peace and security.”4 Instruments of
Power. In order to further its objectives, Russia has used its multiple instruments of power—military, diplomatic, economic, and Information Warfare (IW)—in an
increasingly sophisticated/integrated way in recent contingencies. For example, in the three cases examined—Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine—Moscow has
exploited the declared need to intervene and protect enclaves of ethnic Russians who, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, found themselves living in other
countries. To varying degrees, these newly independent countries were pulling away from the influence of Moscow. Also in the case studies cited, domestic
repression and the employment of IW and Information Operations (IO) were used relatively effectively to incite to action those inclined to side with Russia, to
communicate internationally a narrative intended to provide a rationale for Russia's subsequent actions, and to threaten/intimidate those that might oppose those
actions. Threats included both direct military threats as well as economic threats, such as the cutoff of energy supplies. Russian involvement in Moldova, Georgia,
and Ukraine has displayed consistent uses of these elements of power. Moscow has improved its execution with each successive incursion. As noted earlier in this
report, the evidence
is clear that Russian military operations in Georgia and Ukraine were not improvisations, but
planned military incursions reflective of Moscow's grand strategy to dominate the post-Soviet space.
While this behavior by Russia's leaders may have come as a surprise to Western audiences, representatives from current U.S. allies that were previously members of
the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact have a different perspective. They recently reminded their NATO allies that territorial expansion and aggression has been a
consistent aspect of Russian behavior.5 The direct use of military power was threatened in the Moldova example and, in the case of Georgia, was limited and
demonstrated poor military performance. However, by the time of its 2014 military operations against Ukraine, Moscow had corrected some of its most blatant
military deficiencies and operational performance improvements were evident in Russia's military actions in Ukraine and Crimea. Russia is still rebuilding its
conventional forces, which currently are no match for the collective might of NATO's forces. However, Moscow has opted to try to deter any meaningful
military interference from the West by threatening nuclear first use as well as by acting quickly to achieve a fait accompli before NATO's slow-
moving, deliberative decision-making processes have time to unify and generate any substantive response. Putin seems to understand that, in general, most
European states would prefer to avoid confrontation with Russia. In order to further seed disunity among NATO members and others, prolific IW/IO actions are
employed to provide a rationale for Russian actions that will be believed by some, help blunt any emerging criticisms of Russian actions, and intimidate and silence
those who might openly disagree with Moscow. Russian
military incursions, media propaganda and threats appear to be part of a
long-term psychological war against the will and endurance of the West. Moscow's threats and actions are intended to
compel other governments to acknowledge Russia's position as a major power broker and hegemon in the former Soviet sphere of influence. In addition, Russia has
been forming partnerships with like-minded states, including China, and more recently Syria and Iran,6 to oppose Western interests and form a power bloc to
compete with the West. Russian Threats. Direct Russian threats and other expressions of hostility against the West have been prolific. Any country willing to host a
U.S. missile defense site—Poland, for example—is faced with numerous threats that it would then become a target for Russian nuclear forces. A September 2015
news report claiming that a relatively small number of U.S. B61 tactical nuclear bombs currently stored at an air base in Germany would soon be exchanged for a
like number of upgraded B61s from the United States was met by heated Russian rhetoric. Russian expressions of hostility included the baseless claim that this
exchange would be a “violation of the strategic balance in Europe” and would demand a Russian response.7 One threatened response was the deployment of
nuclear-tipped Iskander tactical missiles to the Kaliningrad exclave. Of course, security analysts who watch Russian actions closely have commented that Russia
likely has already taken this action, perhaps as early as 2013.8 Military Exercises. As noted earlier, Putin has boasted openly of his military potential saying, “If I
wanted, Russian troops could not only be in Kiev in two days, but in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw or Bucharest, too.”9 From 1999 to the present, Russian military
exercises have provided visible evidence that Moscow considers the United States and NATO as its enemy and is preparing for military conflict—even nuclear, if
necessary. Since then, these messages have been communicated numerous times by Russia's conduct during large-scale military exercises close to the border of
NATO's Baltic and Central European states. One exercise even included an amphibious landing in an area that was described as representing Poland's northern
coastline. In some cases, ostensibly to underscore the severity of the intended threat, Russian military exercises reportedly have included the simulated use of
nuclear weapons. Role of Nuclear Weapons. The public version of the Russian military doctrine of nuclear first use to “de-escalate” a conflict appears to be a key
element of Russia's psychological warfare and coercive strategy. To ensure that the West understood that Moscow considered the newly annexed Crimean
Peninsula as part of the “homeland,” Russian
Foreign Minister Lavrov, in July 2014, stated publicly that Crimea had become
Russian territory and, therefore, was covered by Russia's military doctrine regarding threats to its territory.10 Western leaders
have not sought confrontation with Russia's Putin, but to avoid conflict. Unfortunately, this ad hoc response to Russian misbehavior may be seen in Moscow as a
lack of will in the West to oppose such intimidation and territorial grabs. Russia's
grand strategy, including its nuclear modernization strategy, is not
limited to deterrence that is defensive in nature. Russia envisages and prepares for aggression against neighbors
to revise post-Cold War boundaries and spheres of influence while deterring any effective NATO response, including with nuclear
first-use threats. Indeed, Russia's military doctrine essentially states that Russia's relative weakness in
conventional weapons and forces vis-à-vis the West will be compensated for by modernized nuclear
forces. There are numerous public statements by Russian leaders declaring the importance of modern nuclear weapons and
that the modernization of Russian nuclear forces is their highest defense priority. A robust nuclear modernization
agenda, routine nuclear threats against the West, and a first-use nuclear “de-escalation” doctrine make Russian nuclear threats a focus of its strategy. Taken
cumulatively, Russian nuclear weapon developments over the past 15 years paint an ominous picture that, after decades of Western optimism in this regard, must
be taken seriously.

War is likely and escalates

George Beebe 19. VP & Director of Studies @ the Center for the National Interest & Former Head of
Russia Analysis @ the CIA. 10-7-2019. "We’re More at Risk of Nuclear War with Russia Than We Think."
POLITICO. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/07/were-more-at-risk-of-nuclear-war-
with-russia-than-we-think-229436. pacc

In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans genuinely and rightly feared the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Schoolchildren regularly participated in air raid drills. Federal, state and local governments prepared for operations in the event of a nuclear emergency. More than
a few worried citizens built backyard bomb shelters and stockpiled provisions. Today, that
old dread of disaster has all but disappeared ,
as have the systems that helped preclude it. But the actual threat of nuclear catastrophe is much greater than we realize .

Diplomacy and a desire for global peace have given way to complacency and a false sense of security that
nuclear escalation is outside the realm of possibility. That leaves us unprepared for—and highly
vulnerable to—a nuclear attack from Russia. The most recent sign of American complacency was the death, a few weeks ago, of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—a pivotal 1987 agreement that introduced intrusive on-site inspection provisions, destroyed an entire class of
dangerous weaponry, and convinced both Washington and Moscow that the other wanted strategic stability more than strategic advantage. The New START treaty,
put in place during the Obama administration, appears headed for a similar fate in 2021. In fact, nearly all the key U.S.-Russian arms control and confidence-building
provisions of the Cold War era are dead or on life support, with little effort underway to update or replace them. Meanwhile, U.S. officials from both parties
are focused not on how we might avoid nuclear catastrophe but on showing how tough they can look
against a revanchist Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin. Summit meetings between White House and Kremlin leaders, once viewed as

opportunities for peace, are now seen as dangerous temptations to indulge in Munich-style
appeasement, the cardinal sin of statecraft. American policymakers worry more about “going wobbly,” as Margaret Thatcher once put it,
than about a march of folly into inadvertent war. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the United States and Russia might explore ways to manage their
differences diplomatically has produced mostly head-scratching and condemnation. In my more than 25 years of government experience working on Russia matters,
I’ve seen that three misguided assumptions underlie how the United States got to this point. The first is that American
policymakers think that because neither side wants nuclear war, then such a war is very unlikely to occur.
Russia would be foolish, we reason, to cross swords with the powerful U.S. military and risk its own self-
destruction, and many Americans find it hard to imagine that modern cyber duels, proxy battles, information
operations and economic warfare might somehow erupt into direct nuclear attacks. If the Cold War ended peacefully, the
thinking goes, why should America worry that a new shadow war with a much less formidable Russia will end any differently? But wars do not always

begin by design. Just as they did in 1914, a vicious circle of clashing geopolitical ambitions, distorted
perceptions of each other’s intent, new and poorly understood technologies, and disappearing rules of
the game could combine to produce a disaster that neither side wants nor expects. In fact, cyber
technologies, artificial intelligence, advanced hypersonic weapons delivery systems and antisatellite weaponry
are making the U.S.-Russian shadow war much more complex and dangerous than the old Cold War
competition. They are blurring traditional lines between espionage and warfare, entangling nuclear and

conventional weaponry, and erasing old distinctions between offensive and defensive operations. Whereas
the development of nuclear weaponry in the Cold War produced the concept of mutually assured destruction and had a restraining effect, in the cyber

arena, playing offense is increasingly seen as the best defense. And in a highly connected world in which financial networks,
commercial operations, media platforms, and nuclear command and control systems are all linked in some way, escalation from the cyber world into the physical
domain is a serious danger. Cyber technology is also magnifying fears of our adversaries’ strategic intentions while
prompting questions about whether warning systems can detect incoming attacks and whether weapons will fire when buttons are pushed. This makes

containing a crisis that might arise between U.S. and Russian forces over Ukraine, Iran or anything else much more difficult. It
is not hard to imagine a crisis scenario in which Russia cyber operators gain access to a satellite system
that controls both U.S. conventional and nuclear weapons systems, leaving the American side uncertain about
whether the intrusion is meant to gather info rmation about U.S. war preparations or to disable our ability
to conduct nuclear strikes. This could cause the U.S. president to wonder whether he faces an urgent “use it or lose it”
nuclear launch decision. It doesn’t help that the lines of communication between the United States and Russia necessary for managing such situations
are all but severed. A related, second assumption American policymakers make is seeing the Russian threat as primarily a deterrence

problem. The logic goes something like this: Wars often happen because the states that start them believe they can win, but the United States can disabuse a
would-be aggressor of this belief through a show of force, thus deterring conflict. Indeed, Washington seems convinced that showing the

Kremlin it will punish Russian transgressions—through toughened economic sanctions, an enhanced military posture in Europe and more
aggressive cyber operations—is the best path to preserving peace. But, when dealing with states that believe they

are under some form of assault, focusing on deterrence can be counterproductive. Rather than averting
aggression by demonstrating the will to fight back, America might be unintentionally increasing the odds of a war. To a great
degree, this is the situation the United States already faces. Years of enlargement of NATO and perceived U.S. involvement in

Russia’s internal affairs have convinced the Kremlin that America poses an existential threat. In turn,
Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election , coupled with a string of aggressions against its neighbors, have
convinced Washington that Moscow is going for the West’s jugular. The United States experienced this
spiral phenomenon with Georgia in 2008. Convinced that Russia harbored aggressive designs on its southern neighbor, Washington
policymakers accelerated U.S. military training in Georgia, openly advocated bringing Tbilisi into the NATO alliance and issued
multiple warnings to Moscow against military action, believing this firm resolve would deter Russian aggression . In fact, it had

the opposite effect. Russia grew increasingly alarmed by the prospect of Georgian membership in NATO, while Tbilisi felt
emboldened to launch a military operation in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, which yielded an immediate and massive
Russian military response.

The plan solves---expanding the US predicate crimes list facilitates info sharing,
investigations, asset freezes, and confiscation
Isabelle Ioannides 17. PhD, Ex-Post Impact Assessment Unit, EU Parliament. “EU-US trade and
investment relations: Effects on tax evasion, money laundering and tax transparency.” March 2017.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2017/598602/EPRS_IDA(2017)598602_EN.pdf

Nonetheless, the 2016 FATF mutual evaluation report also draws attention to deficiencies on AML /TF measures. First,
although federal law enforcement authorities have the lead role in all large and/or international investigations and have been effective in their efforts, there is no
uniform approach to state-level AML efforts and it is not clear that all states give ML due priority. Moreover, while financial institutions (FIs), in general, have an
evolved understanding of ML/TF risks and obligations, and now have systems and processes for implementing preventive measures, including for customer on-
boarding, transaction monitoring and the reporting of suspicious transactions, key
shortcomings relate to the exemptions implied by
the regulatory framework of the Bank Secrecy Act. In addition, significant gaps, including minimal coverage
of certain institutions and businesses (investment advisers, lawyers, accountants, real estate agents,
trust and company service providers (other than trust companies) point to limitations in the US
regulatory framework. Specifically, most designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBP)
sectors are not subject to comprehensive AML /CFT measures, including requirements on reporting transactions involving more than
US$10 000 in cash, and targeted financial sanctions. DNFBP sectors include lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, trust and company service providers (except
trust companies). Moreover, as already mentioned, there is no requirement to systematically record beneficial ownership
information (as defined by the FATF). This gap in the legal framework reflects negatively on the ability of law
enforcement agencies to implement investigative and surveillance techniques and it hampers the
effectiveness of the financial intelligence system that would otherwise be broadly robust. As a result,
concerns remain about the ability of competent authorities to access accurate information in a timely
manner. 66 Furthermore, technical shortcomings were identified as to the definition of money laundering offence.
Although the FATF report dismissed those deficiencies as minor, it is worth mentioning them: ‘ the list of domestic predicate and foreign

ML offenses did not fully cover the designated categories of offenses; mere possession and concealment of proceeds did
not constitute ML; and the definition of property for the cross-border ML offence only included monetary instruments or funds.’67 On the exchange of

information at an international level, it was found that the United States has minor deficiencies in its
implementation of the Vienna and Palermo Conventions. Where dual criminality requirements apply there are the gaps that may be a barrier

to providing freezing and confiscation assistance (particularly when the predicate offence is not
covered in the United States); and the USA does not have multiple bilateral extradition treaties explicitly listing ML/TF as extraditable offences.68
Last but not least, the FATF report makes suggestions to strengthen the effectiveness of the AML /TF measures in
the United States. It recommends that the US administration take steps: to ensure that adequate beneficial ownership information of US legal persons is available to
competent authorities in a timely manner, by requiring that such information is obtained at the federal level; to apply appropriate AML/CFT obligations to
designated non-financial businesses and professions sectors; and to effectively implement beneficial ownership requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act
(scheduled to come into force in 2018) to investment advisers, lawyers, accountants, trust, company service providers and high-end real estate.69 On the

European Parliament side, the LIBE Committee has put particular emphasis on the gaps in US legislation on anti-
money laundering. In one of its opinions of April 2015, the LIBE Committee called on the Commission ‘to include a clause on
corruption, tax fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in the agreement in order to establish enhanced
cooperation between the Member States and the USA, including mechanisms for more efficient
international cooperation, mutual legal assistance, asset recovery, technical assistance, exchange of
information and implementation of international recommendations and standards .’70 However, this LIBE Committee
recommendation was not picked up on in the European Parliament’s resolution adopted on 8 July 2015, which included recommendations to the European
Commission on the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).71
Predicate expansion is the key internal link
Isabelle Ioannides 17. PhD, Ex-Post Impact Assessment Unit, EU Parliament. “EU-US trade and
investment relations: Effects on tax evasion, money laundering and tax transparency.” March 2017.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2017/598602/EPRS_IDA(2017)598602_EN.pdf

Foreign trade and investment data depict a strong, interdependent, and significant EU-US economic
relationship. This relationship is likely to grow in importance as advancements in technology and other
forces of globalisation force more trade and investment barriers to fall. The relationship could grow closer if and when the
EU and United States complete and implement the TTIP. In general, trade and investment relations between the European Union and the United States do not seem
to have impacted on US efforts to combat tax evasion, strengthen anti-money laundering legislation and its implementation, and boost tax transparency. The USA
has developed a robust framework of international agreements addressing international double taxation, tax fraud and other tax-related crimes. In accordance with
the OECD model, the USA has signed tax treaties with all EU Member States – with the sole exception of Croatia – and intergovernmental agreements with EU
Member States jurisdictions in order to implement the FATCA regulation. Moreover, according to FATF, the United States is fully compliant on national tax
cooperation and coordination, terrorist financing offences, financial institution secrecy laws, financial intelligence units, and the responsibilities of law enforcement
and investigative authorities. Nonetheless, the level of EU-US transactions is also plagued by challenges linked to tax
evasion, tax transparency and money laundering. Shortcomings in the US legal framework and
concerns about the effectiveness of US international cooperation for tax purposes have been pointed
out. The most relevant are the administrative costs of complying with the FATCA regulation, privacy
issues raised by some EU Member States, and the generally unsatisfactory US information exchange
system with regard to beneficial ownership and to designated non-financial businesses and professions.
FATF also points to the challenges in facilitating cross-border exchange of information and enforcement
of internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries. Moreover, while the FATF has found that the
United States is largely compliant on anti- money laundering regulation, mere possession is not criminalised and mere
acquisition through the commission of the predicate offence is not considered money laundering in the
United States. Moreover, tax crimes are not specifically predicates for money laundering and the list of predicate
offences for money laundering does not explicitly extend to all conduct that occurred in another country. The same report has found that the United

States capacity to assess risks and apply a risk-based approach is only partially compliant. Challenges
include the lack of sufficient and effective mitigation measures against vulnerabilities of high-end real
estate agents, lawyers, accountants, trustees and CFAs due to non-coverage under a comprehensive
BSA AML/CFT regime; exemptions and thresholds not supported by proven low risk; and limitations to
the scope of the regulation since not all investment advisers are covered.

AND, it enables prosecuting accomplices---they’re key

Verena Zoppei 12. Master of Laws Program, The University of The Western Cape. “Tax evasion as a
predicate offence for money laundering,” 29 October 2012.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3822/c0633200eeb1ca7c937140f6649c5726a277.pdf

ML = Money Laundering

The FATF Recommendations were revised in February 2012 in order to “strengthen global safeguards and further
protect the integrity of the financial system by providing governments with stronger tools to take action
against serious crime”.25 Tax crimes have been included as predicate offences for ML, with the aim of
contributing to better coordination between law enforcement, border and tax authorities, and
removing potential obstacles to international cooperation regarding tax crimes. 26 The idea behind making
tax crimes predicate offences of ML is that this should result in a higher deterrent effect on would-be
tax evaders, since it brings fiscal crimes into the money laundering fold. High-level tax evasion is often
committed through the help of professionals, such as lawyers, accounting firms, tax advisors, financial
service providers; the fact that these actors may face charges of ML, can be a high deterrent. Financial
institutions and nonfinancial designated businesses and professions have, in fact, an obligation to detect
suspected tax-dodgers among their clients, and report suspicious transactions. But above all, the change in the
FATF Recommendations will also involve the removal of some of the obstacles to co-operation between
tax authorities among different countries

It solves info sharing gaps

OECD 17. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2017, "Fighting Tax Crime: The
Ten Global Principles," http://www.oecd.org/tax/crime/fighting-tax-crime-the-ten-global-principles.pdf -
MBA AM

STR = suspicious transaction report

The FATF Recommendations provide: “…Jurisdictions should apply the crime of money laundering to
96.

all serious offences, with a view to including the widest range of predicate offences” (Recommendation 3). 97. Predicate offences are specified types of criminal activity that give rise to funds or assets. Those
funds / assets may then be “laundered” to obscure the illegal source. For example, the predicate offence of drug trafficking can generate revenue, and through one of the basic steps of placement, layering and integration, conceal

The designation of certain crimes as

the illegal source of the funds, allowing the drug trafficker to use the funds without generating suspicion of criminal activity.1 98.

predicate offences means that a person can be charged with the offence of money laundering as well as
with the predicate offence itself. 99. During the latest revision of the FATF Recommendations in 2012, “tax crimes (related to direct and indirect taxes)” were separately identified in the
existing list of specific categories of offences that should be predicate offences for money laundering.2 100. Including tax crimes as a predicate offence for money

laundering is important because it means that: • A person that has committed money laundering can also
be charged with the underling predicate offence. This may allow the authorities greater scope to secure
a conviction and / or to impose greater penalties. In practice, whether the investigation or prosecution of one or both offences are pursued will depend on the case and
factors such as the nature of the evidence and the elements of the offence which must be proven. • Financial institutions and other designated professionals

and reporting entities are required to file STRs, which report suspicions that a client’s funds are the
proceeds of a criminal activity, including money laundering as well as predicate offences . As such, STRs can
include suspicions of where a client’s funds are the proceeds of tax crimes. This can provide greater
intelligence from the private sector to the government authorities. In order for this to be more effective, awareness of the risks and indicators is
needed amongst the relevant reporting entities of funds being the proceeds of tax crimes. These reports are filed with the FIU. • STRs are analysed by the FIU and where relevant intelligence is disseminated to the domestic
competent authorities responsible for investigating and / or prosecuting the relevant predicate offence. As such, it is possible for STRs to be shared by the FIU with the authority responsible for investigating and / or prosecuting tax

. The mechanisms for international co-operation under the FATF Recommendations apply
crimes 3 (See also Principle 8). •

as between authorities that have responsibility for investigating and / or prosecuting money laundering
and predicate offences. Where tax crimes are included as predicate offences, those avenues for
international co-operation are expanded to include authorities responsible for investigating and / or
prosecuting tax crimes. This includes direct exchange of information and mutual legal assistance, both
between tax investigatory and / or prosecution authorities and between tax and non-tax investigatory /
prosecution authorities (see also principle 9). 101. In practice, most jurisdictions surveyed have noted that the inclusion of tax crimes
as a predicate offence has had a practical and positive impact on their work. Based on survey data, the most
reported impact of tax crimes being a predicate offence was better inter-agency co-operation. This
included increased ability to work with other agencies on particular cases and more generally on
strategic and policy matters, more awareness amongst other law enforcement, intelligence agencies and
amongst the private sector of the possibility of tax crimes occurring , and better avenues for communication with other agencies. Many
jurisdictions also reported having better access to information (particularly from the FIU and increased STRs). Some jurisdictions also reported that
prosecutions were easier to undertake and that there was an increase in prosecutions. One jurisdiction
noted the deterrent effect on would-be offenders.
 2AC---Dedev
1NC #
A) Redistribution is a pre-requisite to transition, BUT rapid collapse is coopted and
causes war
Milena Büchs and Max Koch 19. Associate Professor in Sustainability, Economics and Low Carbon
Transitions @ the University of Leeds. Professor of Social Policy @ Lund University. January 2019.
“Challenges for the degrowth transition: The debate about wellbeing.” Futures. Vol 105. pp 155-165.
Science Direct. pacc
3.1. Growth ‘lock in’

Economic growth, as an attribute of market capitalism, has structural properties – it is needed to stabilise modern
societies as it provides employment, public sector provision through tax revenues, rising wages, and
hence social stability (Petridis et al., 2015: 178, Rosa et al., 2017). Economic growth is organised around and shapes a range of tightly coupled structures,
including institutions, norms, discourses, culture, technologies, competences, identities, etc. Historically speaking, growth is a fairly recent phenomenon which only
picked up in the 19th century together with the industrialisation of Western economies. In a co-evolutionary process, a range of institutions developed
which are now coupled to a growth-based capitalist economy, including the nation state, representative

democracy, the rule of law and current legal, financial, labour market, education, research, and welfare
systems. These are based on philosophies which emerged to justify and give meaning to these institutions, for instance on individualism, freedom, justice,
sovereignty, or power. The embeddedness of the growth-based capitalistic economic system in these co-evolved institutions

and ways of thinking makes it difficult to transition to a degrowth system because the change of the
economic system would need to involve a parallel transformation of those coupled systems. In Luhmann’s
words, the constitution of the current system “defuturises” (Luhmann, 1976: 141) the future, it reduces the “openness” of the future; “path dependency” or even
“lock-in” are related expressions that capture this idea. Two examples which directly link to people’s wellbeing can illustrate this point: the relationship between
welfare states and growth, and between growth and people’s mind-sets and identities.

The satisfaction of needs is influenced by the character of socio-economic institutions, including the ways in which work, welfare, retirement, health, education and
family life are governed; as well as by the structure of the distribution of a range of resources that support health and wellbeing. Welfare
state
institutions play an important role in these areas in high income economies, and they are closely coupled with
economic growth (Bailey, 2015). Rising economic prosperity in the post Second World War period provided the resources for establishing welfare states in
Europe and elsewhere, and the funding of current welfare state institutions is closely coupled to economic growth as it largely depends on income-related taxes and
social security contributions. The positive relationship between economic growth and welfare states in many ways also works the other way round: welfare states
support growth by enhancing the population’s health and education levels, providing unemployment and minimum income benefits for people out of work. This
helps to increase productivity, maintain consumer demand, and more generally containand minimise social conflict through
redistribution and institutionalised conflict resolution between employers and employees.

Evidently, a fundamental reorganisation of the economic and welfare system would be required under
degrowth to sustain investments in health, education, and the reduction of poverty and inequality. This
will be crucial in a context of decreasing material and financial resources, because if left unmanaged, this could provide fertile ground

for new social conflicts with potentially detrimental implications for wellbeing. Various degrowth
authors have made suggestions for alternative welfare institutions and policies, including working time reduction and
redistribution as mentioned above (Victor & Rosenbluth, 2007), a basic income (Gorz, 1980; Dietz & O’Neill, 2013: 94), and, from a Marxian perspective, the
establishment of a cooperative economy in which businesses will be worker-owned and managed (Blauwhof, 2012). These are all relevant suggestions, however, it
should not be underestimated how radical the changes to existing social systems are that these new institutions represent. They
challenge deeply
entrenched ways of thinking about rights, justice, freedom, private property, individual responsibility, etc. A change of these
deeply rooted ‘logics’ on which these institutions are based is not impossible, but very difficult to steer with political means.

This point closely links to the idea that economic

growth is not only at the core of various socio-economic institutions but is also very deeply
anchored in people’s minds, bodies and identities which is likely to make the transition to degrowth
additionally challenging. The concept of social practices helps us understand the ways in which agents (and their mind-sets and bodies) and broader
social structures are continuously implicated and reproduced in the performance of social life (Büchs & Koch, 2017: ch. 6). From this perspective, economic

growth is not just an external premise that actors can decide to act upon or not, but it is a principle with
structural properties that is engrained in ways of thinking and acting – for the most part habitually.
Growth thus becomes something that is perceived as ‘natural’ by the vast majority of actors. A range of scholars have argued
that the growth paradigm is deeply embedded in people’s minds and bodies (Göpel, 2016; Lane, 1991; Welzer, 2011; Büchs & Koch, 2017: ch. 6). This implies that
people’s identities and life goals are closely aligned with the idea of growth – shaped by ideas of social
progress, personal status and success through careers, rising income and consumption . Even seemingly
alternative goals such as ‘personal fulfilment’ can be infused with ideas that remain tied to the growth paradigm,
for instance if fulfilment is sought through high consumption and high emissions practices such as extensive long haul travel or expensive hobbies and gadgets. As
Meadows (1999) has pointed out, the most effective, but also the most difficult step in system transformation is the shift of paradigms that underpin the system.
Again, since this is difficult to influence politically, it presents a major hurdle for a departure from growth-based systems
that also maintains wellbeing.

3.2. Implications of rapidly transforming social systems

The social practices lens is also useful for thinking about possible wellbeing implications of rapid social change more generally, and a transition away from a growth-
based economy specifically. While the concept of social practices inherently implies the possibility of change (with its focus on agency and creativity), it equally
strongly highlights the structural aspects of practices which provide stability and orientation. During
times of rapid social transitions,
social norms and ‘mental infrastructures’ often lag behind, creating disorientation, social conflict, and
negative impacts on wellbeing (Büchs & Koch, 2017: ch. 6).

Stability of structural dimensions of social practices offers orientation and some extent of predictability
of how oneself and other people are likely to act in the future , providing a framework within which flexibility and change are
possible. This orienting function of structural dimensions of practices is likely to be an important condition for people to

form reasonably stable identities and relationships – key ingredients for wellbeing. Examples from classical and contemporary
sociological and psychological research suggest that different speeds of changing social structures can establish misalignments and disruptions of social practices
which can, in turn, negatively influence health and other wellbeing outcomes. For instance, in his classical study, Durkheim presents suicide at least partly as an
outcome of a failure of cultural resources to provide meaning and orientation in the context of other, more rapid social changes (Durkheim, 2006; Vega & Rumbaut,
1991: 375). This idea also links to Bourdieu’s concept of the
“hysteresis effect”. Here, Bourdieu emphasises that, especially during phases of
social transition, people’s habitus and “objective” social circumstances can become disjointed: as a
result of hysteresis, dispositions can be “out of line with the field and with the ‘collective expectations’
which are constitutive of its normality. This is the case, in particular, when a field undergoes a major crisis and its regularities (even its rules)
are profoundly changed” (Bourdieu, 2000: 160). This can contribute to a deterioration of people’s wellbeing as it makes

them feel “out of place” or let them be perceived that way , “plung[ing] them deeper into failure” (Bourdieu, 2000: 161)
because they cannot make use of new opportunities or are mistreated or socially excluded by others .
Empirical research which partly builds on the idea of hysteresis has shown that wide-ranging organisational change can have a range of negative effects on people’s
health and mortality (Ferrie et al., 1998; McDonough & Polzer, 2012). One study found that across 174 countries, several measures of wellbeing and social
performance, including life satisfaction, health, safety and trust, voice and accountability, were highest in periods of economic stability, but lower in times of GDP
growth or contraction (O’Neill, 2015); and other studies concluded that life expectancy can be negatively affected by both rapid economic growth and contraction
(Notzon et al., 1998; Szreter, 1999).

Several scholars have recently highlighted the potential for social conflict inherent in ( rapid) social change.
For instance, Maja Göpel (2016: 49) remarks: “Unsurprisingly, the navigation or transition phase in shifting paradigms as well as

governance solutions is marked by chaos, politicization, unease and power-ridden struggles”. Wolfgang Streeck
has issued similar warnings (Streeck et al., 2016: 169). It is not difficult to see how such scenarios bear the potential of undermining some of the fundamental
conditions that are necessary for the satisfaction of basic needs as discussed above, and hence the danger of generating substantial wellbeing losses for current and
near-future generations.

In the current context, it is very difficult to imagine that we might be able to observe a rapid and radical cultural
change in which people adopt identities and related lifestyles that value intrinsically motivated activities
over pursuing satisfaction and status through careers and consumption . Even more worryingly, political events in
Europe, the United States and elsewhere since the ‘Great Crash’ of 2008 indicate that times of negative or
stagnant growth can provide a breeding ground for populist, nationalistic and anti-democratic
movements. Economic insecurity, a perceived threat of established identities through migrants, and deep mistrust against ‘elite’ politicians are amongst the
main explanations for previously unimaginable events such as the Brexit vote, Trump presidency, and recent electoral successes for far right-wing parties in a range
of European countries.

B) Redistribution is degrowth by DESIGN, not disaster

Samuel Alexander 20. PhD, Lecturer @ the University of Melbourne, Co-Director of the Simplicity
Institute, and Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute. 3-24-2020. "Is the
Economic Shut Down what Degrowth Advocates have been Calling For?" Resilience.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-03-24/is-the-economic-shut-down-what-degrowth-advocates-
have-been-calling-for/. pacc

As national and global economies grind to a halt in the attempt to contain COVID-19, people may ask whether this shock
to the system resembles what ‘degrowth’ advocates have been calling for in recent years .
Degrowth is a movement that sees the goal of limitless economic growth as being dangerously incompatible with a finite planet. From this perspective, the notion of
‘green growth’ – where economies grow but in sustainable ways – is considered a myth not based in reality. These critics of growth also argue that the inequalities
that have developed under global capitalism are grossly unjust and socially corrosive. Not good for people or planet.

In response to these failings, economic degrowth

is called for in order to downshift global material and energy demands to sustainable levels. However,
any economic contraction must be coupled with redistribution of wealth and power, so that all people
have enough to meet basic needs and live a good life based on material sufficiency . That’s the basic
vision.
So, is the current economic downturn what degrowth looks like in reality?

Degrowth is not recession

First of all, let’s be clear. Degrowth

means planned economic contraction. Nothing about the existing economic
shut down in response to COVID-19 was part of the plan for Australia (from where I write) or the world. Indeed, a couple of weeks
ago it was almost unthinkable. The plan was economic growth.

When an economy contracts involuntarily, that is called a recession or, if it lasts long enough, a
depression. Nobody advocates for such unplanned economic contraction because that has all sorts of
negative social effects, including rising unemployment, stress, and poverty. So we must never confuse
degrowth with recession.
Nevertheless, from a degrowth perspective, the current economic shut down does raise some important questions about how best to manage and understand the
unfolding economic and cultural responses to the pandemic.

Isn’t the economic shut down environmentally beneficial?

The current shut down is not aiming to save the planet . It is motivated solely by the need to constrain
the spread of COVID-19. But some climate commentators have been quick to point out the environment benefits.
For example, airlines have begun to shut down because so few people are travelling and this will obviously reduce carbon emissions. Indeed, across the economy
large economic sectors have been closed, meaning most of us will be spending far less money on consumer goods and services over coming weeks and months,
especially as anxieties over work and income increase.

The lesson here is profound: we really can act ‘as if the house is on fire’ when we believe our lives are at risk. But COVID-19 is a crisis within a broader crisis. The
current economic contraction has been in response to the pandemic, but flying less, consuming less, and producing less is actually needed for a range of ecological
and social reasons, including climate change.

While acknowledging that the current economic disruption is causing a great deal of hardship, let us also acknowledge that a huge reduction in superfluous
consumption has proven to be tolerable. Life goes on even when people can’t fly across the globe for a friend’s wedding. Now imagine we planned
this contraction, in line with safe planetary limits, rather than waited for it to be imposed upon us
through a pandemic. We could have had the environmental benefits without the social suffering and economic insecurity.

That’s what degrowth means.

Impacts are reducing for now, but isn’t the goal a return to growth?

From an environmental perspective, the risk is that everything bounces back to ‘normal’ levels of
growth and consumption as soon as this pandemic passes. History shows that emissions go down during recessions or
depressions but tend to rise again as soon as the growth engine starts turning again.

The question is whether we can manage this pandemic in a way that stops the virus getting out of control, avoids the
‘bounce back’ to high impact, carbon-intensive living, while also ensuring all people feel economically
secure in a downshifted economy.

That will obviously require significant shifts in the ways our economies are structured, including exploring
innovative new ways to govern access to land and having difficult but compassionate conversations about things like redistribution and population growth.

And, if
the response to COVID-19 shows us anything, it is that governments can mobilise extraordinary
amounts of money when there is political will. This is good news for funding a transition to renewable energy, for
example.

A degrowth transition will also mean a cultural recognition that high consumption lifestyles are unsustainable and that only lifestyles of material sufficiency,
moderation, and frugality are consistent with social and ecological justice. This challenges us to reimagine the good life beyond consumer culture.

My research has explored why and how a range of post-capitalist social movements will be needed to create the support for these structural and cultural shifts.

So, are our ambitions merely to return to business as usual? Or do we aspire for a resilient and sustainable society?

How crisis can be an opportunity to rethink

Recently the prominent French philosopher Bruno Latour tweeted: “Next time, when ecologists are ridiculed because ‘the economy cannot be slowed down’, they
should remember that it can grind to a halt in a matter of weeks worldwide when it is urgent enough.”

The current crisis shows that we can manage economic contraction when we feel we need to. Degrowth
advocates argue we need to – both
for people and planet. But we need to manage contraction by design not be forced into it by crisis after crisis.

C) the u-curve---growth makes every existential risk less likely AND improves human
response---Dedev freezes risk at its apex, which causes extinction---that’s
Aschenbrenner

D) Leadership turnover---right-wing populists co-opt their movements and start

nuclear wars because they’re hawkish, need to prove resolve, and inexperienced---
that’s Brückner and Bertoli

E) Russia War---decline emboldens Russian adventurism---goes nuclear---that’s

Rachman
F) EKC is true
Andrew McAfee 20. Cofounder & Codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Emeritus
Professor @ Harvard Business School, & fellow @ Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
10-6-2020. "Why Degrowth Is the Worst Idea on the Planet." Wired.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-why-degrowth-is-the-worst-idea-on-the-planet/. pacc <3 BPS

The rich world’s success at decoupling growth from pollution is an inconvenient fact for degrowthers. Even more
inconvenient is China's recent success at doing the same. China’s export-led, manufacturing-heavy economy has been growing at meteoric rates, but between 2013
and 2017 air pollution in densely populated areas declined by more than 30 percent. Here again the government mandated and monitored pollution declines and so
decoupled growth from an important category of environmental harm.

Prosperity Bends the Curve

China's progress with air pollution is heartening, but it's not surprising to most economists. It's a clear example of the environmental
Kuznets curve (EKC) in action. Named for the economist Simon Kuznets, EKC posits a relationship between a country's affluence and the condition of its
environment. As GDP per capita rises from an initial low level, so too does environmental damage ; but as affluence continues

to increase, the harms level off and then start to decline. The EKC is clearly visible in the pollution histories of today's rich countries, and it's now
taking shape in China and elsewhere.

Also consider air pollution death rates around the world. As the invaluable website Our World in Data puts it, “Rates have typically fallen across high-income
countries: almost everywhere in Europe, but also in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel and South Korea and other countries. But rates
have also fallen across upper-middle income countries too, including China and Brazil. In low and lower-middle income countries, rates have increased over this
period.”

The EKC is a direct refutation of a core idea of degrowth: that environmental harms must always rise as populations and economies do. It's
not surprising that today's degrowth advocates rarely discuss the large reductions in air and water pollution that have accompanied higher prosperity in so many
places around the world. Instead, degrowthers now focus heavily on one kind of pollution: greenhouse gas emissions.

The claims made are familiar ones: that any apparent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in rich countries are due to offshoring rather
than actual decarbonization. Thanks to the Global Carbon Project, we can see if this is the case. GCP has
calculated “consumption-based emissions” for many countries going back to 1990, taking into account imports
and exports, yielding the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in all the goods and services consumed in each country each year.

For several of the world's richest countries, including Germany, Italy, France, the UK, and the US, graphs of
consumption-based carbon emissions follow the familiar EKC. The US, for example, has 22reduced its total (not per capita)
consumption-based CO2 emissions by more than 13 percent since 2007.

These reductions are not mainly due to enhanced regulation. Instead, they've come about because of a combination of tech progress and
market forces. Solar and wind power have become much cheaper in recent years and have displaced coal for
electricity generation. Natural gas, which when burned emits fewer greenhouse gases per unit of energy than does coal (even after

taking methane leakage into account), has also become much cheaper and more abundant in the US as a
result of the fracking revolution.

G) Growth’s inevitable
Craig Calhoun 16. Centennial Professor, Director, & President of the London School of Economics and
Political Science. 2-24-2016. “The Future of Capitalism.” in Does capitalism have a future? Socio-
Economic Review. Vol 14. Issue 1. pp 171-176. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwv037. Oxford Academic.
pacc
Does capitalism have a future? Of course, it does. But it is not necessarily pretty. Wealth can be generated in evermore extensive and intensive ways even in a world
full of crises and challenges. And because capitalism is the dominant economic system in the world, it could continue
to contribute to climate change, conflict, inequality and instability . But this does not mean it will
collapse. The USSR collapsed as a state following a long period of stagnant growth and expensive arms
race. This was bracing, perhaps a warning to other states, but not necessarily a model for the end of capitalism. Much critical
engagement with capitalism has focused on its internal contradictions and potential collapse. Contradictions are real and
collapse is possible, but the language is misleading. We speak of the collapse of the Roman Empire, but this took
300 years of decline, instability and conflict. We speak of the collapse of feudalism, but it would again be more accurate to
see a long process of transformation as feudal structures were less able to organize social, economic and even military life, and less able to

reproduce key elements of their power structure while gradually states and what we now call capitalism grew. Capitalism has already proved that

although it is prone to generating crises, it is not merely a short episode between feudalism and
socialism, as the Communist Manifesto implied. It has endured much longer than Marx and Engels thought, and along with the
nation-state system dominated global geopolitics and economics for some 400 years. It may well last much longer—
but this continued existence could be marked by both growing systemic difficulties internal to capitalism and upheavals beyond capitalism that are exacerbated by it
and pose challenges to it. Capitalism is more than just markets or economics in general. It is a system of
production based on ever more intensive deployment of capital and pursuit of productivity (and profit)—
and hence a driver of both expansion and technological and organizational innovation . It is a system of
relations between states and other economic actors in which states guarantee forms of property,
security of contract and regimes of accumulation . Together these make it a system that drives not only
expansion, but also accumulation and concentration of capital. But capitalism is not always the same. In the first place, it
always exists in social and political contexts, not in a ‘pure’, abstract form. In the real world, capitalism is always shaped by state

support, regulation and mediation of conflicts ; states may carry the costs of capitalism’s negative externalities. In addition, capitalism’s
internal character varies. Of most immediate importance, since the 1970s, capitalism has seen a dramatic ascendancy of both finance and service work. Industry has
not disappeared any more than land lost all value during the industrial revolution. But where perhaps a quarter of capital was held in the form of financial assets 40
years ago, the figure now is about three-quarters. There has been similar proportionate growth in service employment. There may yet be a productivity revolution
in service work— though in what proportion that will bring freedom and opportunity ( probably only for an elite) or only low wages and unemployment (for the rest
of us) remains to be seen. The claim that we are moving into a ‘sharing economy’ points to some new developments, but fails to address basic structural dimensions
of capitalism.
To be sure, there is also variation in the forms of enterprise. The development, expansion and international spread of corporations have been remarkable innovations. Corporations may be organized through legal fictions—as artificial persons ‘without a soul to damn or body to kick’—but also as basic social institutions. Firms are almost as important as states. So ubiquitous are corporations (even though legal regimes vary) that it is now hard to recall capitalism before corporate capitalism. More recently, however, corporations have themselves have become commodities
bought and sold. From IPOs to mergers and acquisitions, this has enriched financial institutions. It has also made both capital markets and labour markets less stable. And it has brought a real cost in social solidarity. This is shaped by a decline in longterm employment, undermining of ties between firms and their localities, and financial pressures—ever more intensive and short-term—against the provision of health care, pension and other benefits to employees. Likewise, capitalism in any one time or place may be shaped more or less by entrepreneurs and the formation of
new enterprises. Entrepreneurs were crucial to the rise of merchant capitalism and in the industrial revolution. They were important in the ‘gilded age’, not just among the robber barons but also in launching a host of family businesses. And entrepreneurs played a central role in the rise of new industries in the last 40 years. There should be appreciation for the creative, enterprising spirit of entrepreneurs. But we should not be blinded by either the hagiography of individuals or the celebration of entrepreneurship in general to think that entrepreneurial successes are quite
as individualistic as the ideology suggests. Entrepreneurs depend on social networks and whole ecologies of support from universities to venture capitalists. Much of the achievement of technology firms in the last 40 years has been grounded in commercializing scientific advances that were funded by governments during the cold war—and then, quite remarkably, made publicly available with no claim to property rights by the government on behalf of citizens. The term entrepreneur can be used so elastically as to encompass both those acquiring great fortunes by building
companies in Silicon Valley and those working at a near subsistence level as contractors in new service economy businesses—like drivers organized through online booking agencies. Typically paid a fee for each service, these are entrepreneurs only in the same sense that ‘independent’ knitters and weavers were during the industrial revolution. As mechanization of spinning and expansion of markets drove up demand, knitters set up shop in their own homes, often enlisting family members as assistants. They provided their own equipment, sometimes bought on credit,
including knitting frames (machines that were human-powered but able to produce much more than simple handwork). They sold their work to intermediaries who ran ‘putting out’ businesses, distributing thread to knitters and collecting finished cloth. As intermediaries, these were arguably the 18th and early 19th century counterparts to Uber and other firms organizing services through ‘apps’. Framework knitting was initially a good occupation, requiring only modest skill though intense concentration and physical labour. But it was an easy business to enter and knitters
were eventually driven to work longer and longer hours both to repay their capital costs and to support their families. The creators of self-exploiting tiny businesses, more stable small businesses and ‘start-ups’ that might grow with venture capital and successful public offerings are all important. However, lumping them under the single term ‘entrepreneurs’ can be misleading as can an overly rosy picture of the ‘sharing economy’. Not least of all, states may themselves pursue capitalist ends like expansion of markets and accumulation of capital. They may either own
capitalist firms or actively try to manage capitalist enterprise and finance. Even countries in which liberal capitalist separation of state from market was celebrated have used such models. The US accomplished projects like rural electrification partly through state-owned enterprises and partly through preferential financing and state-guaranteed monopolies. Railroads that were initially private ventures were in many countries consolidated as public service companies. Only rarely was there clarity about whether to run them as for-profit firms (thus subsidized the state) or as
services funded partly by the state. Still, they demanded investment and generally became more capital-intensive. More strikingly, the Soviet Union was arguably as much an example of state capitalism as of socialism. And today, China is arguably the model for a capitalist future in which the boundary between state and economy is not celebrated—as it has been in the ideology of liberal capitalism. State-related enterprises and direct state organization of finance may be as basic to the near-term future of capitalism as, say, entrepreneurs. Still, capitalism works. Certainly it
only works more or less, and not always as well or in the ways we might wish. But it works well enough that it need not reach an end at any specific point. It is a good bet that it will still dominate global economics tomorrow, next year, and when the next crisis comes. But, capitalism is not an order of nature. It is a humanly created historical system. So, it will change. It will likely end, change beyond recognition or continue to exist. It will almost certainly lose its capacity to dominate. Capitalism is good at some things, not others, and actively bad at some. It is good at
creating wealth and driving innovation, indeed extraordinarily good. Even Marx and Engels praised capitalism for this (though they thought it was important at some point to say ‘we have enough, let’s concentrate on how wealth is shared’). Capitalism’s capacity to create wealth is why less developed countries are betting on it today. But by comparison, capitalism is bad at equitable distribution. It is not necessarily worse than all other systems: feudalism and slave societies are hardly models of equitable distribution of wealth. But arguably because capitalism depends on
consumer markets it needs distribution of wealth to survive. It thus operates in an uneasy (or outright denied) collusion with trade unions and other mechanisms that increase returns to labour and with states that ensure some levels of distribution of wealth. High employment industries may make distribution of wealth (and thus funding of consumer markets) easier; the erosion of industrial employment makes this harder, at least temporarily. Of course, capitalism’s extraordinary ability to generate wealth is not counterbalanced only by problems of distribution.
Capitalism also produces the opposite of wealth—which is not poverty but what John Ruskin called ‘illth’. Illth is bad stuff: accumulation of waste, pollution of air and water and even climate change offer good examples. But so do erosions of social solidarity and mutual support systems. States often step in to deal with illth and other negative externalities of capitalism. This is what Karl Polanyi analysed as the ‘double-movement’ of capitalism that led to the rise of the welfare-state. There are also market-based solutions, however, like insurance companies. And
philanthropy is also sometimes important, channelling privately accumulated capital to public purposes. But one way or another, illth and negative externalities demand attention. So, what challenges capitalism now? There is still risk—indeed high probability—of systemic financial crises. Addicted to finance and growth, the world continues to hope that the source of so much recent upheaval can become the source of salvation from it. The dominance of finance in contemporary capitalism ties every country into a global system that has risks built into its very architecture.
Some apparent solutions—like the spreading of risk through markets for derivatives—create new and intensified risks. So far, ‘financial engineering’ has helped create great fortunes but it has not produced the equivalent of bridges that do not collapse. And when financial crises have come, the prevailing pattern of response is to turn private problems into public ones— for example by nationalizing the toxic assets of failing banks. And yet we do not know what to do except invest. Risk can be mitigated, though this depends on both good analyses and organizational will.
Financial markets, instruments and contractual agreements are extraordinarily complex. Unfortunately, the financial system is poorly understood even though it is the product and object of brilliant research. This reflects not just complexity, but the extent to which the study of finance is bound up with the production of ‘financial engineering’ products that can actually work in practice. For example, unrealistic assumptions like unlimited liquidity are embedded into algorithms that price derivatives (and indeed to some extent organize derivatives markets). This is not an
error; it is a way of accomplishing effective pricing—except in those times where liquidity limits do become significant, in which cases the system is prone to crisis. Both the complexity of the global financial system and its systemic risk are increased by organizational factors. The system is not the product of some moment of rational planning. It grew by accretion and incremental if rapid change. Different actors set out to solve different problems: expanding mortgage availability to expand home ownership, for example, or attracting funding to new business ventures, or
building transportation and communication infrastructures. These are organized through different firms and government agencies. There is innovation in law (derivatives are contracts) as well as in finance per se, so different professions are involved with their different perspectives. The development of regulation usually lags, but so does the development of organizational competence even in private firms. Senior executives may not have full understanding of what subordinates—say traders—are doing and how it creates risks. ‘Silos’ separate different functions within
firms, for example, and give different knowledge and incentives to traders, risk officers and general managers. The risk is also exacerbated when international regulation and risk management is weak. This can also be a problem of inadequate understanding (and inadequate access to information, which is largely in the hands of firms with proprietary interests in it). But there is a deeper problem. International cooperation is weak on a number of different dimensions and policy areas, even while it is as crucial as ever. The financial crisis showed how difficult it was to
generate effective cooperation for changes to financial processes, not just at the global level but even within Europe—which found its institutions unexpectedly inadequate even after decades of development. The Bretton Woods institutions face new challenges, including a proliferation of alternative mediators of global finance from the BRICs bank to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank led by China and the US development of alternative regional trade agreements. But insufficient international cooperation in finance is mirrored by weaknesses in other areas: refugee
and security policies are notable examples at the moment. In any case, difficulty organizing effective and efficient regulation and support institutions for global finance multiplies risks. But the risks do not just concern financial collapse. They concern the possibility that no solutions will be found to paying for the costs externalized by capitalist firms. Another challenge for capitalism, also made evident in the financial crisis, is the huge scale of what we might call ‘unofficial capitalism’. This is wealth and flows of wealth that are unrecorded or incompletely recorded, and
perhaps more importantly unregulated or ineffectively regulated. Some of this derives from organized crime, including trafficking in drugs, arms and people. But some of it derives simply from tax evasion. Whatever the provenance of illicit capital, it amounts to trillions of euros trading in dark or at least obscure markets, and sometimes mingling with more legitimate capitalism in destabilizing ways. The flow of Russian money into Cyprus before the crisis of 2012–2013 was an example. Of course, unofficial economic activity helped many people survived financial crisis and
austerity policies. There are relatively benign, small-scale forms of off-the-books enterprise in certain businesses and ‘alternative economies’. Even these, however, deprive states of revenues that could be used to finance social expenditure. The impact of large-scale illicit capitalism is much greater. Diversion of funds into illicit capitalism and weak international cooperation are both factors in widespread destruction of the political and social conditions for capitalism. Even more basically, this is driven by financial capitalism itself and accompanying market fundamentalist
ideology. There has been a weakening of welfare states. This is often a matter of explicit state policy. Privatization may be driven by pro-market views, but also by criticism of inefficiencies in actual bureaucracies. It is also often driven by state fiscal challenges, which are in turn shaped by difficulty collecting taxes (not least where it is easy for money to flow across borders). Another way of looking at this is that it costs a lot of money to deal with capitalism’s externalities. There are the costs of coping with illth, and there are the costs of providing education, health care,
unemployment benefits and community services that not only sustain national populations and thus stabilize society, but also lower costs to capitalist firms—e.g., of skilled and healthy workers. The weakening of welfare states is only one example of much more pervasive institutional deficits. Corporations themselves can be important social institutions that provide their members with what amount to welfare benefits and even some sense of community. But long-term corporate employment and benefit structures are in decline, subjected to shortterm financial market
pressures influenced by the ideology of ‘shareholder value’. In other words, institutions of basic social importance are being made responsive only to one class of interests—those of investors. Assertions of value for other stakeholders are generally less effective. Other directly economic factors also challenge capitalism, such as unemployment, inequality and slow (or negative) growth. These are potentially disruptive to the capacity to realize profits, but also to social solidarity. At the same time, we should not underestimate how hard people try to make existing systems
work, to find their way to enough material resources and social integration for their own lives. They do this in part by continuing to participate in capitalist system. It is a source of frustration for many, though they do not always identify their personal problems with this systemic source. It also a widespread source of hope—not least in many poorer and developing countries. People continue to seek jobs and start businesses. And this is a matter of emotional attachments as well as economic practicality. To those optimistic about revolutions, I would stress that these do not
often turn out very well. In addition, one distinctive feature of the recent and in some ways continuing financial crisis has been the near-absence of anti-systemic movements. There have been occupations of public spaces, though these have been focused more on failures of government and power of global finance than on capitalism as such. There are populists on both Left and Right, but almost no real socialist mobilization. There are remarkable experiments in local-level alternative economies of barter and mutual support. But there are not large-scale movements for
truly transcending capitalism and replacing it by an alternative scalable economic system. So, what could happen?

Well, yes, capitalism could collapse. If this happens, purely economic calamity will likely be entwined with
war and environmental disaster. If any historians survive this apocalypse, they will argue over whether capitalism caused the catastrophe, or
only exacerbated other problems like climate change failures of international cooperation or decline in social solidarity. There could also be

technological or other innovation that reinvigorates aspects of capitalism and deals with some of its costly externalities.
Opportunities for expansion of capitalism’s reach are shrinking as it reaches the whole world. Still, there could be indefinite continued intensification. The liberal
hope that capitalism and democracy are somehow naturally linked is likely to be proven specious. Capitalist democracies may persist, but more state-authoritarian
versions of capitalism are at least as likely to prosper. Global integration will not bring homogeneity, but diversity of political, economic and social arrangements.
Governments will attempt to compensate for problems created by capitalist development. This may bring aspects of Polanyi’s double movement, but probably not a
renewal of the welfare state project—and ( perhaps ironically) particularly not in democratic states. How much states can do and how well will depend on how they
are linked in international cooperation, at regional as well as global levels. In any case, though, it is important to look at whether compensation for illth and positive
virtues of solidarity may be produced in other ways, including in business institutions, philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. Small achievements in mitigating
problems are worth the effort and worth cherishing. But neither reducing inequality nor stemming climate change is easy, and neither is likely without trade-offs
with freedom or growth. What
seems very unlikely is a pure collapse or revolutionary transformation creating socialism.
If capitalism is to be replaced by a new dominant economic form, this is likely to come about through a
prolonged period of ambiguity, difficulty and conflict. The end of capitalism may be more like the end of
the Roman Empire or of feudalism than like the end of the Soviet Union . In this context, creating and defending islands of
civility, solidarity and relative social justice may be a challenging but crucial project.
 2AC--- Taxes Adv
Nuke war causes extinction---nuclear winter blocks sunlight causing crop failure,
famine, ice age, ozone depletion, and fallout---cascades globally---that’s Trevithick and
Rogoway
Yes, nuke winter
A) Nuke war blocks sunlight causing crop failure, famine, ice age, ozone depletion, and
fallout---cascades globally---that’s Trevithick and Rogoway
B) Denkenberger concludes sun-blocking scenarios are possible and circumvent their
warrants---see re-highlighting
MBA=Blue

Denkenberger, et al, 17—Tennessee State University, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (David, with
D. Dorothea Cole, Mohamed Abdelkhaliq, Michael Griswold, Allen B. Hundley, and Joshua M. Pearce,
“Feeding Everyone if the Sun is Obscured and Industry is Disabled [Shut Down],” International Journal of
Disaster Risk Reduction 21, (2017), 284–290, dml)

A number of catastrophes could block the sun, including asteroid/comet impact, super volcanic eruption, and nuclear
war with the burning of cities (nuclear winter). The problem of feeding 7 billion people would arise (the food
problem is more severe than other problems associated with these catastrophes). Previous work has shown
this is possible converting stored biomass to food if industry is present. A number of risks could destroy electricity globally, including a
series of high-altitude electromagnetic pulses (HEMPs) caused by nuclear weapons, an extreme solar storm, and a super computer virus.
Since industry depends on electricity, it is likely there
would be a collapse of the functioning of industry and
machines. Additional previous work has shown that it is technically feasible to feed everyone given the loss of

industry without the loss of the sun. It is possible that one of these
sun-blocking scenarios could occur near in time to one of these industry-disabling scenarios. This
study analyzes food sources in these combined catastrophe scenarios. Food
sources include extracting edible calories from killed
leaves, growing mushrooms on leaves and dead trees, and feeding the residue to cellulose-digesting animals such as cattle
and rabbits. Since the sun is unlikely to be completely blocked, fishing and growing ultraviolet (UV) and
cold-tolerant crops in the tropics could be possible. The results of this study show these solutions could
enable the feeding of everyone given minimal preparation, and this preparation should be a high
Even a limited nuclear war causes nuclear winter---extinction.
Menon 19. Prakash Menon, Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution, Bangalore
and former Military Adviser in the National Security Council Secretariat, “The nuclear cloud hanging over
the human race,” https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-nuclear-cloud-hanging-over-the-
human-race/cid/1719608
It is well known that nuclear powers have and continue to base their targeting requirements of nuclear weapons on calculations that are restricted mostly to the
major but immediate effects of nuclear explosions – blast, heat and radiation. According to General Lee Butler, the former United States, Strategic Forces
Several
Commander, during the cold war, the Standard Integrated Operation Plan (SIOP) had targeted Moscow with 400 nuclear weapons and Kiev with 40.

scientific studies of the impact of nuclear explosions since the 1980s up to the present which utilises
advanced computer models, confirm the effect of smoke injected into the stratosphere that would
block sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface and is described as ‘ Nuclear Winter’. In essence global
temperatures would plunge below freezing point thus posing threats to life support systems especially
food production. In short, it threatened human existence itself. Later studies that focused on regional nuclear wars especially in
the Indo-Pak context, have indicated that the impact of a nuclear exchange would have an immediate significant and catastrophic impact in terms of death and
destruction. The latest Toon study, estimates that in a situation where around 350 warheads are used by India and Pakistan, the immediate casualties would vary
between 50 to 125 million lives depending on the yields of the weapons used which could vary between 15-100 Kilotons. (a Kiloton being the explosive equivalent
power of 1000 tons of TNT). Such scales and speeds of destruction for both parties would indeed be of an existential nature. Therefore, both India and Pakistan
despite the rhetoric during times of tension have so far displayed caution and refrained from getting into situations where nuclear weapons are alerted. The speedy
de-escalation after Balakot is indicative of a cautionary approach. Of course, this is no guarantee that the next round would not witness a different outcome. For as
long as nuclear weapons exist in the arsenals of both countries, the possibility of use remains, however low the probability. It
is now well known (but
widely ignored by the strategic cognoscenti) that even a regional Indo-Pak nuclear war with hundreds of
low yield nuclear explosions can also pose an existential threat at the global level. The latest study states “In the
India-Pakistan scenario, we calculated a total of 16.1 TG (1 TG is equivalent of one million tons of smoke) of black carbon injected into the upper atmosphere (11
from India and 5.1 from Pakistan) for weapons with yields of 15 kilotons; 27.3 TG (19.8 from India and 7.5 from Pakistan) for 50 kiloton weapons; and 36.6 TG (27.5
from India and 9.1 from Pakistan) for 100 kiloton weapons. The smoke would be heated by sunlight and lofted high into the stratosphere, where it could remain for
years, since it does not rain in the stratosphere”.

Counterforcing doesn’t work bc unknown locations of nukes plus irrational actos via
leadership turnover
 2AC--- Russia Advantage
Yes, Russia war
A) Reject impact defense---false sense of security is KGB propaganda that leaves us
vulnerable to a nuke war
B) Accidents---clashing ambitions and distorted perceptions escalate
C) Hybrid war---cyber, AI, hypersonics, and ASATs entangle nuclear and conventional
forces
D) Deterrence---fear of attack creates escalation spirals
That’s Beebe
Russia goes first---they fire a nuclear warning shot, which creates escalation spirals---
that’s Mosher

They got hybrid war wrong were talking about sepratists lol
 2AC--- States
Perm do both.
Ashdown 96 [Gerald G. Ashdown, Professor of Law, West Virginia University College of Law; B.B.A.,
1969, Univ. of Iowa; J.D., 1972, Univ. of Iowa. Federalism, Federalization, and the Politics of Crime. April
1996. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1810&context=wvlr]

B. Overextension of Federal Jurisdiction Where does the debate then lie? Initially, the point must be
emphasized that the issue is not joined each time Congress passes criminal legislation that applies to
conduct already covered by state law — dual or overlapping jurisdiction does not necessarily trigger the
debate. As noted above, dual jurisdiction is often essential. The problem arises when Congress makes federal crimes of behavior already
adequately covered by state law. The difficulty is then compounded when significant federal resources are devoted to enforcement.

Perm do CP
Fed key---
1) Jurisdiction---states’ can’t add predicate offenses to federal statutes---key to
deterrence and IRS prosecution.
2) Cooperation---Latin America won’t cooperate with states.
3) Preemption---States can’t regulate crimes with international implications.
Gupta 9. Amar Gupta, Law Professor at the University of Minnesota. Death Sao, JD at the University of
Arizona in progress. [Anti-Offshoring Legislation and United States Federalism: The Constitutionality of
Federal and State Measures Against Global Outsourcing of Professional Services, Texas International Law
Journal, 44(4), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1324555]//BPS

1. Potential Violations Under the Supremacy Clause

Because such anti-offshoring legislation involves parties and activities beyond the nation’s borders, it
triggers the Doctrine of Preemption by potentially entering into the federal domain of international
affairs, and conflicting with existing federal statutes or international agreements. The Constitution
grants Congress the power to preempt state law.44 In mandating federal dominance over states, the
Framers of the Constitution met their desire for uniformity in areas of national concern.45 Even if a Congressional act
contains no express provision for preemption, state law must when Congress intends to “ occupy the
field;” and even if Congress has not occupied the field , where state law is preempted to the extent that it
conflicts with a federal law.46 The U.S. Supreme Court has found preemption where it is impossible for a private
party to comply with both state and federal law.47 Alternatively, state law is invalid when it is an obstacle to the
accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.

Links to net benefit---

50 state fiat is a voter---relies on unprecedented uniformity that skews the literature,

gutting aff ground and education
 2AC---T Bidirectionality
1---We meet---stiff penalties reduce incarceration through deterrence---that’s Crump
[ ] Evans agrees
1NC, Evans 20. Douglas N. Evans, City University of New York - John Jay College of Criminal Justice
“Easily Overstated: Estimating the Relationship Between State Justice Policy Environments and Falling
Rates of Youth Confinement” January, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/254460.pdf //DH

The term reform, however, could also describe changes in policy and practice of a very different type. Some policymakers could think of reform as
increasing police surveillance, imposing stricter sentences, or making the terms of probation longer and
more restrictive. In such a framework, reforms could contribute to increases in incarceration, such as
mandatory minimum sentences and Three Strikes Laws, or they could be designed to reduce the ability of courts to impose non-
incarcerative sanctions and limit access to diversion for broad categories of offenses. “Tough on crime” and “zero tolerance” policies

during the 1980s and 1990s led to an expansion of secure facility space in the U.S. and increased the use of confinement (Scott and Saucedo 2013).
Some officials may view these policies as “reform.”

[ ] Mayson votes AFF---see re-highlighting---punishment is ESSENTIAL to criminal

justice reform---their violation is to criminal theory, which is not the topic
1NC, Mayson 20. Sandra G. Mayson, professor of law at the University of Georgia School of Law;
teaches criminal law and criminal justice reform (“The Concept of Criminal Law” Criminal Law and
Philosophy https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-020-09530-z //DH

Achieving clarity about the nature of criminal law is important for theory and reform alike.12 For purposes
of theory, recognizing criminal law as a mechanism of collective condemnation helps to refine the questions up for debate, because the concept
logically entails certain constraints on criminalization and punishment. For purposes of reform,
recognizing criminal law as a mechanism of collective condemnation is essential to thinking about
whether we want a criminal legal system at all, and what, in its best form, it should look like.

2---Reasonability---defensible interps prevent substance crowd out, which outweighs

semantics

3---Counter-interp---CJR includes increased enforcement

Steiker 19. Carol S. Steiker, Professor of Law & Co-Director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program at
Harvard Law School, former clerk for SCOTUS & D.C. Circuit of Appeals, former defense attorney against
SCOTUS, and has testified infront of Congress & State Legislature as an expert witness on CJR, (Nov.
2019, “Article: Dunwody Distinguished Lecture In Law: Keeping Hope Alive: Criminal Justice Reform
During Cycles Of Political Retrenchment,” Florida Law Review, 71, 1363, Lexis)//pacc

Before I turn to the tool catalog, a word is in order about the

definition of "criminal justice reform." Although a central focus
of current reformers is--completely appropriately--the rolling back of mass incarceration, the problems of American
criminal justice are not simply problems of too much punishment. Thus, reform is not always synonymous with
less law enforcement or punishment. Even as we over-incarcerate on a massive scale, there are also important pockets of
disturbing under-enforcement--of laws against political corruption, corporate and white-collar crime,
police abuse, violence in prisons and jails, and sexual assault . Reform, construed broadly, includes addressing over-incarceration
as part of a wider rethinking of law-enforcement priorities and overall investments, through criminal justice and otherwise, in public safety and security.

4---AFF flex---criminalization is a Congress-key warrant that checks OP CPs

5---Predictability---prefer descriptive ev with an intent to include---OR else, the NEG

wins by having a normative card that happens not to list the AFF

6---Burden mixing---case defense means AFFs aren’t T, and justifies decriminalization

and legalization AFFs

7---Functional limits---no lit, punishment Ks, civil CP, and state CP check

8---Cutting links in both directions solve

 2AC---T New Laws
We meet - We don’t make new laws just move them to a list of punishments
 2AC--- Con Con
Perm do CP---plan is a con con.

Perm do both---con con provides cover for the plan.

Perm do the plan and do the cp’s process on CJR generally---textually non-intrinsic
perms are good---force net benefits to be germane to the plan’s mandates

Perm – do the plan when the counterplan’s ratified. Shields since it takes years. It’s
not intrinsic since they introduced the element of time in the CP by dividing
amendments into distinct phases.
Chism 5 [Chism, National Archives education specialist, 2005, The constitutional amendment process.
(teaching content). Kahlil Social Education 69.7 (Nov-Dec 2005): p373(9)]

Even though the steps can be described briefly, actual ratification can take much longer. Some amendments,
such as the 27th (Congressional pay increases), took many years to complete the ratification process. It was proposed by James
Madison in 1789, but not ratified until 203 years later. This amendment required that any change in the salary of members of
Congress only take effect after the next general election (so lawmakers were not voting to increase their own salaries). Congress ratified other
amendments in short order, such as the 18th (Prohibition), which took little more than a year. The
length of time depends upon
the gravity of the issue the amendment is intended to address, the intensity of public sentiment
concerning the issue, and whether or not a time limit for ratification was written into the amendment
during the proposal stage.

Reject Amendment Fiat – multi-actor, multi-level fiat bastardizes the literature and
eliminates any hope of a deficit. “States say no” and “approval takes forever” are core
affirmative ground

Links to net-benefit---[X].

Delay deficit---waiting give tax criminals time to hide their assets---prevents

prosecution.

Fed says no AND cements degrowth.

Eidsmoe 92. [John A. Eidsmoe 1992, Prof of Law @ Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, United States
Air Force Academy Journal of Legal Studies, “A New Constitutional Convention? Critical Look at
Questions Answered, and Not Answered, by Article Five of the United States Constitution,” lexis]
It is no wonder, then, that Lawrence tribe, Professor of constitutional Law at Harvard, warns that a
new constitutional convention could
lead to domestic political confrontations of “nightmarish dimension” between Congress and the
Convention, between Congress and the Supreme Court, and between Congress and the states-not to
mention between the Supreme Court and the Convention. Tribe continues, Particularly in a period of recovery form a decade
ruptured by war, political assassination, near impeachment and economic upheaval, and particularly in a time when such recovery has already been interrupted by
new domestic and international crises, it is vital that the means we choose fro amending the Constitution be generally understood and, above all, widely understood
as legitimate. An
Article V convention, however, would today provoke controversy and debate unparalleled in
recent constitutional history. For the device is shrouded in legal mysteries of the most fundamental sort,
mysteries yielding to no ready mechanism of solution. Given the significance of the U nited States
Constitution both for our nation and for others, it would not be surprising if a convention of this
magnitude were to result in serious economic instability at home and abroad, as well as substantial
disruption of America’s relations abroad.

They screwed up the cp text because states are the only actor of the cp, but
constitutional convention aren’t ran by states; they’re their own body comprised of
delegates
Leachman 17. [Michael Leachman, senior director of state fiscal research at the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities.] “States Likely Could Not Control Constitutional Convention on Balanced Budget
Amendment or Other Issues” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 18 Jan 2017
(https://www.cbpp.org/research/states-likely-could-not-control-constitutional-convention-on-balanced-
budget-amendment-or)

Even if states could recall delegates, it likely would have no practical effect. Unlike a state legislature, a
constitutional convention is a one-time body; once it has voted to propose a set of amendments to the
Constitution, its work is over and it disbands . Recalling delegates at that point would be irrelevant.

Delegates ignore the states

Leachman 17. [Michael Leachman, senior director of state fiscal research at the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities.] “States Likely Could Not Control Constitutional Convention on Balanced Budget
Amendment or Other Issues” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 18 Jan 2017
(https://www.cbpp.org/research/states-likely-could-not-control-constitutional-convention-on-balanced-
budget-amendment-or)

The Constitution provides for no authority above that of a constitutional convention . This makes it
unlikely that the courts or any other institution could intervene if a convention failed to limit itself to
the language of state resolutions calling for a convention or to the congressional resolution establishing the convention.

Moreover, even if the courts determined that they had the authority to rule, they would be unlikely to intervene if a convention
veered away from its original charge. Article V contains only two limited restrictions on the scope of constitutional amendments (one of which
expired two centuries ago). Absent guidance from the Constitution’s text, the Supreme Court likely would regard this as a “political

question” inappropriate for judicial resolution (consistent with how the Court has treated other highly charged matters on which the
Constitution provides no judicially enforceable standard). A court would have great difficulty explaining why a convention

should be bound by state resolutions, given that the 1787 convention disregarded both its own stated
purpose and the Articles of Confederation’s amendment procedures .

In addition, although
some states’ resolutions seek to bar their convention delegates from voting for
amendments outside the subject matter of the resolution the state has adopted, the courts likely would
not intervene in a dispute between a state and a delegate, viewing it, too, as a “political question.” And if

the courts did intervene, they likely would be unsympathetic to states’ efforts to constrain delegates, given that delegates to the 1787

convention ignored their state legislatures’ instructions.

NB

Theory not a amendment

Separation of powers
 2AC--- Federalism
No uniqueness and from 2012
NO overlapping jurisdiction, BUT plan spurs cooperation.
FATF 16. Financial Action Task Force (FATF), independent inter-governmental body that develops and
recommends the global standard of policies for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing,
(December 2016, “Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures - United States,”
FATF, Fourth Round Mutual Evaluation Report,
https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/mer4/MER-United-States-2016.pdf)//pacc

ML = Money Laundering, TF = Terrorist Financing

147. Federal law, including the ML offenses, applies in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. Additionally, 36 States
have criminalized ML at the State level and may undertake their own State-level ML investigations and
prosecutions. Overall ML statistics are not readily available at State level and authorities confirmed that it is the Federal (not State)
agencies which are mostly at the forefront of the U.S. AML efforts. Box 4 indicates that some States are pursuing ML at the State level. [Box
4 omitted] 148. National strategies are intended primarily for and binding on Federal authorities. Most ML/TF activity in the U.S. is prosecuted

under Federal law. Federal, State, and local authorities may work together in joint task forces on ML/TF. Where a
case does not already fall under Federal jurisdiction but is too complex, or resource intensive, State and
local police authorities may refer it to Federal authorities to investigate. The set-up does vary slightly from State to State.
For example, Texan authorities commented that the amount of money involved in a case often dictates whether State or Federal charges are pursued, with
relatively smaller cases going to the State. The U.S. provided the assessment team with examples of how State and local forces integrate into and support Federal
investigations. 149. Where ML is criminalised at State level, State and local authorities work closely with local prosecutors (e.g. New York,
Texas, Florida), and cases have been provided to exemplify some of the work carried out by them (see Box 5). Several factors affect the prioritisation of ML within a
given State including the State’s risk profile and the priorities set by the State Attorney General. States may focus on crimes mattering more
to the local community e.g. crimes of violence and property crimes, rather than the crimes highlighted in the national strategies. [Box 5
omitted] 150. Where States have not criminalized ML, the picture is less clear. Discussions with a Federal Judge from one of these States suggested that the lack

of State-level criminalisation was not problematic as Federal ML offenses would be available, ensuring
that significant cases are pursued in line with the country’s ML priorities. Overall, U.S. authorities are encouraged to collect information on a more
regular and comprehensive basis concerning State-level ML investigations and prosecutions. Such information would enable Federal authorities to determine the
extent to which law enforcement activities at the State and local level only are consistent with national AML/CFT priorities and risks.

Federalism is resilient.
Bednar 14. Jenna Bednar, political science professor at the University of Michigan. [The Resilience of
the American Federal System, Handbook of Constitutional Law, Oxford University Press, http://www-
personal.umich.edu/~jbednar/WIP/handbook.pdf]//BPS
Federal systems of governance have the capacity to be robust— meaning that despite internal and external changing circumstances, they can continue to produce
the benefits of a decentralized but inter- nally coordinated polity. Whether or not a federal system is robust is a function of its institutional design and federal
culture. The
American federal system, distributing authority between levels of government, has been
remarkably resilient, failing only once during the past two centuries. Its resilience surprises many who
keep expecting it to wither away as the national government grows. In this chapter I make two contributions. In the first part,
I review the claims of the Ameri- can federation's inherent centralization and suggest the evidence as well as institutional and cultural reasons why federalism may
still be meaningful in the American context. Second, I
present the science of federal robustness: its key is its adaptability,
provided by a set of safeguards that jointly protect federalism's boundaries while permitting
experimentation around the edges. Future progress in the study of federalism obliges us to move beyond the standard equlibrium-based
analysis to take a more dynamic view of federal system design and operation.
OR, it’s thumped.
Smith 17. Stephen F. Smith, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame, former clerk for SCOTUS &
D.C. Court of Appeals, J.D. from University of Virginia Law, and B.A. from Dartmouth, (2017,
“Overfederalization,” Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Arizona State University, Reforming Criminal
Justice Vol. 1: Introduction and Criminalization,
https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/academy_for_justice/Reforming-Criminal-
Justice_Vol_1.pdf)//pacc

Since the 1960s, the federal government has played a far more expansive role in criminal law enforcement
by virtue both of the large and ever- growing number of federal criminal statutes and less restraint by
federal prosecutors. As a result of this “federalization” of criminal law, “the distinction between Federal
and State law is effectively dead, at least as a matter of substantive law.”1 Consequently, for all but the most trivial of crimes, a determined
federal prosecutor today could prosecute if he wished—and, increasingly, federal prosecutors are bringing more garden-

variety criminal cases in federal court. In addition to the usual problems associated with overcriminalization,2 federalization raises serious
problems of its own. That is to say, even if state criminal codes have been appropriately expanded, the enlarged scope of federal criminal jurisdiction remains
troubling, particularly given the unusual severity of federal punishments. There
is indeed a vital federal role in criminal law, but not
to duplicate the efforts of state enforcers. In areas of overlapping authority, federal enforcement must
be limited to crimes that cannot adequately be addressed by states . This simply will not happen without
federal sentencing reform, a better defined federal criminal code , and more nationally uniform federal enforcement.

No i/l between local terror and noko terror etc

Overfederalization now.
Smith 17. Stephen F. Smith, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame, former clerk for SCOTUS &
D.C. Court of Appeals, J.D. from University of Virginia Law, and B.A. from Dartmouth, (2017,
“Overfederalization,” Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Arizona State University, Reforming Criminal
Justice Vol. 1: Introduction and Criminalization,
https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/academy_for_justice/Reforming-Criminal-
Justice_Vol_1.pdf)//pacc

Since the 1960s, the federal government has played a far more expansive role in criminal law enforcement
by virtue both of the large and ever- growing number of federal criminal statutes and less restraint by
federal prosecutors. As a result of this “federalization” of criminal law, “the distinction between Federal
and State law is effectively dead, at least as a matter of substantive law.”1 Consequently, for all but the most trivial of crimes, a determined
federal prosecutor today could prosecute if he wished—and, increasingly, federal prosecutors are bringing more garden-

variety criminal cases in federal court. In addition to the usual problems associated with overcriminalization,2 federalization raises serious
problems of its own. That is to say, even if state criminal codes have been appropriately expanded, the enlarged scope of federal criminal jurisdiction remains
troubling, particularly given the unusual severity of federal punishments. There
is indeed a vital federal role in criminal law, but not
to duplicate the efforts of state enforcers. In areas of overlapping authority, federal enforcement must
be limited to crimes that cannot adequately be addressed by states . This simply will not happen without
federal sentencing reform, a better defined federal criminal code , and more nationally uniform federal enforcement.

One Federal violation won’t spillover – many safeguards check.

Bednar ‘20
Jenna Bednar, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, member of the external
faculty at the Santa Fe Institute and author of “The Robust Federation: Principles of Design” April 17
2020, "Of course Trump’s authority isn’t ‘total.’ Here are 3 myths about how federalism works,"
Washington Post, - 4/17 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/course-trumps-
authority-isnt-total-here-are-3-myths-about-how-federalism-works/
Instead of coordinating a national pandemic response, the federal government has compounded the collective action problem, as shown by
Jared Kushner’s striking assertion that the national stockpile is “ours” and not a resource for the states. The
founders pointedly
included safeguards to prevent national government overreach or shirking; those include the judiciary,
separation of powers, state representation in federal decisions, intergovernmental councils, the
people themselves and states’ ability to push back. Another safeguard emerged later: the party
system. In a robust federal system, these reinforce one another, a kind of fail-safe system intentionally
full of redundancies. The founders worked to design an institutional immune system so that no single
person or faction could disrupt the government . They hoped that federalism might sustain democracy. What might threaten
this robustness would be what the Federalist Papers called a “lack of diverse interests”: If the judiciary, the branches of federal government and
the internal workings of political parties were all aligned in their thinking or had a culture of obedience, and if the public were apathetic or ill-
informed, then the safeguards may simultaneously fail. Where
Trump has faced limits to his attempts to expand
powers, he has attempted to skirt them: purging internal oversight by firing inspectors general and on
Wednesday, making the extraordinary threat to adjourn Congress so he can make recess appointments.
Will the pandemic serve as a catalyst, making it even easier for the president to accumulate power, or awaken the slumbering safeguards?
The governors’ decisive responses to the pandemic may suggest that the safeguards can again
constrain the federal government.
1ar
 –AT shocks (lechner)
We solve shocks – their author says we need “a coordinated effort of public
authorities, civil society, industry, and academia will be require” – that’s only
achievable post-aff – we’ve inserted a relevant quote from their evidence –

(their card is super long, so we just put in the relevant section that is not underlined)

Lechner et al. 16. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for the Protection and
the Security of the Citizen (IPSC). 10/01/2016. “Resilience in a Complex World – Avoiding Cross-Sector
Collapse.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, vol. 19, pp. 84–91.
fairness's sake. Production lines of companies are transferred for profitability reasons from Central Europe to Eastern Europe, later to China and from there to
Vietnam. Domesticjobs are lost and costs are being saved, while dependencies rise and unfairness
increases. So a certain share of the digital revolution may just be a silent conversion of thousands of
jobs into an enormous cash flow towards the few big digital shareholders. The evolution of wealth
distribution in the US is very telling, and the perceived rule of billionaires has even been exploited with some success by Bernie Sanders in his
2016 US presidential candidature campaign for the Democrats. Europe also needs to monitor its trends very carefully. The situation of many young Greek
graduates without a job, in combination with loopholes for the wealthy in the national tax regime (or
its enforcement) has already created massive tensions, led to government changes and to discussions with EU partners, put
pressure on EU solidarity and weakened EU resilience during the financial crisis. 5. Discussion 5.1. Current situation When analyzing the resilience of our

modern and complex society, we start from the UNISDR Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction [36], defining resilience as 'The ability of a system, community

or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through

the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions.'
 AT: Rainout
No rainout
Mills et al. 14 (Michael Mills - Taine G. McDougal Professor of Engineering, the Chair of the Department of Materials Science and
Engineering. Owen Toon - Professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the
University of Colorado Boulder. Julia Lee-Taylor – CIRES Research Associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Researcher and project
scientist for The National Center for Atmospheric Research. Alan Robock – Climatologist and Distinguished Professor in the Department of
Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, New Jersey. <MKIM> “Multidecadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a
regional nuclear conflict” 1/4/14. DOA: 7/21/19. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013EF000205)

As in previous studies of this scenario [Robock et al., 2007b; Mills et al., 2008], the BC
aerosol absorbs SW radiation, heating
the ambient air, inducing a self-lofting that carries most of the BC well above the tropopause .
CESM1(WACCM) has 66 vertical layers and a model top of ∼145 km, compared to 23 layers up to ∼80 km for the GISS ModelE used by Robock
et al. [2007b] and 39 layers up to ∼80 km for SOCOL3 used by Stenke et al. [2013]. As Figure 1 shows, we
calculate significantly
higher lofting than Robock et al. [2007b, compare to their Figure 1b], penetrating significantly into the mesosphere ,
with peak mass mixing ratios reaching the stratopause (50–60 km) within 1 month and persisting throughout the first year.
This higher lofting, in conjunction with effects on the circulation we discuss later, produces significantly longer residence
times for the BC than those in previous studies. At the end of 10 years, our calculated visible-band optical depths from the BC
persist at 0.02–0.03, as shown in Figure 2. In contrast, Robock et al. [2007b] calculate optical depths near 0.01 only at high latitudes after 10
years, a level that our calculations do not reach for 15 years. 3.2. BC Burden, Rainout, and Lifetime During
the first 4 months, 1.2–1.6
of the 5 Tg of BC
is lost in our 50 nm experiment ensemble, and 1.6 Tg in our 100 nm experiment, mostly due to rainout in the first
few weeks as the plume initially rises through the troposphere (Figure 3a). This is larger than the 1.0 Tg initially lost in
the study of Mills et al. [2008], which used a previous version of WACCM. This is likely due to the difference in our initial distribution of BC
compared to that previous study, which injected 5 Tg into a single column at a resolution four times as coarse as ours. The more
concentrated BC in the previous study likely produced faster heating and rise into the stratosphere, mitigating
rainout. Our calculated rainout contrasts with the lack of significant rainout calculated by the GISS ModelE [Robock et al., 2007b], which
assumes that BC is initially hydrophobic and becomes hydrophilic with a 24 h e-folding time scale. The mass burden reaching the stratosphere
and impacts on global climate and chemistry in our calculations would doubtless be greater had we made a similar assumption to the GISS
ModelE. Stenke et al. [2013] calculate an initial rainout of ∼2 Tg in their interactive 5 Tg simulations, which assumed BC radii of 50 and 100 nm
in two separate runs. After initial rainout, the mass e-folding time for our remaining BC is 8.7 years for the average
of our 50 nm experiment ensemble and 8.4 years for our 100 nm experiment, compared to the 6 years reported by Robock et al. [2007b], ∼6.5
years by Mills et al. [2008], 4–4.6 years reported by Stenke et al. [2013], and 1 year for stratospheric sulfate aerosol from typical volcanic
eruptions [Oman et al., 2006]. Due
to this longer lifetime, after about 4.8 years the global mass burden of BC we
calculate in our ensemble is larger than that calculated by the GISS ModelE, despite the initial 28% rainout loss.
After 10 years, we calculate that 1.1 Tg of BC remains in the atmosphere in our 50 nm experiment ensemble and 0.82 Tg in our 100 nm
experiment, compared to 0.54 Tg calculated by the GISS ModelE and 0.07–0.14 Tg calculated by SOCOL3. The
long lifetime that we
calculate results from both the very high initial lofting of BC to altitudes, where removal from the
stratosphere is slow, and the subsequent slowing down of the stratospheric residual circulation. The Brewer-Dobson circulation is
driven waves whose propagation is filtered by zonal winds, which are modulated by temperature gradients [Garcia and Randel, 2008]. As
explained by Mills et al. [2008], the BC both heats the stratosphere and cools the surface, reducing the strength of the stratospheric
overturning circulation. Figure 4 shows the vertical winds in the lower stratosphere, which bring new air up from the troposphere and drive the
poleward circulation, for the control and BC runs. The middle-atmosphere heating and surface cooling reduce the average velocity of tropical
updrafts by more than 50%. This effect persists more than twice as long as in Mills et al. [2008], which did not include any ocean cooling effects.