1NC CP #1

The United States federal government should not increase its transportation
infrastructure investment. The United States federal government should
reprioritize current investment spending towards establishing a national
transportation infrastructure bank to substantially increase transportation
infrastructure.
-- Not topical the counterplan violates the word increase in the resolution
which means to add to something pre-existing
Random House 9 (Dictionary, Increase, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/increase)
verb (used with object)
1. to make greater, as in number, size, strength, or quality; AUGMENT;

ADD TO: TO

INCREASE TAXES.
-- Competes the CP doesnt increase transportation investment. It maintains it at
current levels and only changes the way it is prioritized. Any perm must sever the
plans increase, which is a voting issue for ground
-- Its legitimate offset counterplans are good: they disprove the resolution.
Resolutional focus is good: it fairly divides ground by proposing a controversial
policy option. Pure plan focus destroys all utility of the resolution.

1NC K #1
Political values or metaphysics cannot give life a higher meaning; we are still bits
of cosmic dust sitting on a rock, convinced of our own importance because we
have thought.

Nietzsche 1873 [On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense, pg 7]

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed
into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented
knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world
history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a
few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.
_One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately
illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and
arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities
during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human
intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional
mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and
begetter takes it so solemnly-as though the world's axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with
the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same
solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is
nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this
power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that

It is remarkable that
this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these
most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for
detaining them a minute within existence. For without this addition they
would have every reason to flee this existence as quickly as Lessing's son. The pride connected
he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought

with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving
them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value
of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves
something of the same deceitful character.

The 1AC mirrors a system of politics that seeks to justify ressentiment through a
structuring of the event of existence. You must refuse to concern yourself with the
affirmatives incessant paranoia about our world instead affirming chance as
necessary to love life.
Nietzsche 1879 [HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, MAXIM 284]
The means to real peace. No government admits any more that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest.
Rather the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one's
own morality and the neighbor's immorality; for the

neighbor must be thought of as eager to

attack and conquer if our state must think of means of self-defense.
Moreover, the reasons we give for requiring an army imply that our
neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much as does our own state, and who, for
his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and
a cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a
harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are now ranged against each other:
they presuppose their neighbor's bad disposition and their own good
disposition. This presupposition, however, is inhumane, as bad as war and

worse. At bottom, indeed, it is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because, as I have said, it
attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a hostile
disposition and act. We must abjure the doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense just as completely as the
desire for conquests. And perhaps the great day will come when people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest
development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its
own free will, "We

break the sword," and will smash its entire military

establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed
when one had been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling that is the
means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas
the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of
peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one's neighbor and, half from
hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and
fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared this must
someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth. Our liberal representatives, as is well known, lack the time for
reflecting on the nature of man: else they would know that they work in vain when they work for a "gradual decrease of the military
burden." Rather, only when this kind of need has become greatest will the kind of god be nearest who alone can help here. The tree
of war-glory can only be destroyed all at once, by a stroke of lightning: but lightning, as indeed you know, comes from a cloudand
from up high.

The singular event of the diceroll contains all of determination in destiny but
throws it to chance in a capricious act of lifes affirmation. This act precedes life as
an act of contingency.
Deleuze 83 [GILLES,, NIETZSCHE AND PHILOSOPHY, THE DICETHROW, P. 29-30]

Whereas the thrown dice affirm chance once and for all, the dice which fall
back necessarily affirm the number or the destiny which brings the dice
back. It is in this sense that the second moment of the game is also the two
moments together or the player who equals the whole. The eternal return is
the second moment, the result of the dicethrow, the affirmation of
necessity, the number which brings together all the parts of chance. But it is
also the return of the first moment, the repetition of the dicethrow, the
reproduction and reaffirmation of chance itself. Destiny in the eternal return
is also the welcoming of chance, I cook every chance in my pot. And only when it is quite cooked do I
welcome it as my food. And truly, many a chance came imperiously to me; but my will spoke to it even more imperiously, then it
went down imploringly on its knees - imploring shelter and love with me, urging in wheedling tones; Just see, 0 Zarathustra, how a
friend comes to a friend! (Z III Of the Virtue that makes small 3 p. 191). This means that there are fragments of chance which
claim to be valid in themselves, they appeal to their probability, each solicits several throws of the dice from the player; divided
among several throws, having become simple probabilities, the fragments of chance are slaves who want to speak as masters.24 But
Zarathustra knows that one

must not play or let oneself be played, on the contrary, it is

necessary to affirm the whole of chance at once (therefore boil and cook it like the player who
warms the dice in his hands), in order to reunite all its fragments and to affirm the
number which is not probable but fatal and necessary. Only then is chance a
friend who visits a friend, a friend who will be asked back, a friend of
destiny whose destiny itself assures the eternal return as such.

1NC T #1

A. Interpretation transportation infrastructure must physically be an asset of

transportation
Keever and Orr 08 (Gregory Keever is a California admitted attorney in private practice. He has experience in private
revenue bonds, foreign infrastructure planning with governmental participation in managed economies, and extensive corporate and
joint venture experience, including joint ventures between foreign governmental agencies and private firms. Ryan J. Orr is executive
director at the Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects and teaches Global Project Finance to engineering, law school and
MBA students. Enabling User-Fee Backed Transportation Finance in California Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects,
http://crgp.stanford.edu/publications/working_papers
/Orr_Keever_Enabling_User_Fee_Backed_Transportation_Finance_wp0041.pdf, ken)

In arriving at these conclusions, this paper examines data from recognized think tanks, the state
budget, published articles and commentary specific to California, international studies on user-fee backed finance, and
comments and views articulated by state senior government officials. Here transportation
infrastructure is defined as any fixed physical asset designed for transporting people and goods
including highways, arterial streets, bridges, tunnels, and mass transportation systems.1 An often
overlooked aspect of transportation infrastructure, even of the most well constructed type, is that it is a consumable
asset: it has a finite life, wears out with use, and needs periodic replacement. This paper is intended for a wide
audience: state assembly members who approve major freeway and mass-transportation
projects, public officials at Caltrans and local governments who are involved in project
implementation, and other participants in the decision making process, including but not
limited to local government agencies (such as local transit authorities), state agencies (such as
Business, Transportation and Housing), regional councils (such as the Bay Area Council),
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (such as environmental and neighborhood groups),
infrastructure operators and funds, labor groups, the Treasurers Office, the Governors office,
and taxpayers and users.
Investment excludes loans
Lai and Soumare 09 Van Son, Issouf S. (2009, An Analysis of Government Loan Guarantees and Direct
Investment through Public-Private Partnerships, 4-3-9, http://www.efmaefm.org/0EFMAMEETINGS/EFMA%20ANNUAL
%20MEETINGS/2009-milan/EFMA2009_0368_fullpaper.pdf)

This paper compares two forms of government support: loan guarantee and direct investment
through public-private partnerships (PPPs). With loan guarantee, government provides
financial guarantees to enhance project creditworthiness. With direct investment , government
invests capital in return for shares in the project. We find that loan guarantees are more effective in reducing
project borrowing costs. In an informationally asymmetric environment, where the government knows less about project quality
than do private partners, in other words the so-called plum problem rather than the familiar lemon problem, the project sponsors
should seek a loan guarantee from the government, unless they are willing to give up control over the project. We show how the
portion of shares given to the government can be a bargaining tool and can mitigate information asymmetry when structuring PPPs.

Increase means net increase

Words and Phrases, 5 (Cummulative Supplementary Pamphlet, v. 20a, p.295)
Cal.App.2 Dist. 1991. Term increase, as used in statute giving the Energy Commission modification jurisdiction over any
alteration, replacement, or improvement of equipment that results in increase of 50 megawatts or more in electric generating
capacity of existing thermal power plant, refers to net increase in power plants total generating capacity;
in deciding whether there has been the requisite 50-megawatt increase as a result of new units being incorporated into a plant,

Energy Commission cannot ignore decreases in capacity caused by retirement or deactivation of

other units at plant. Wests Ann.Cal.Pub.Res.Code 25123.
The plan isnt a net increase in investment

Pethokoukis 12 Citing CBO (James, 7/14/12, The CBO just poured cold water on Obamas idea for a national infrastructure
bank, http://ricochet.com/main-feed/The-CBO-just-poured-cold-water-on-Obama-s-idea-for-a-national-infrastructure-bank)//DR.
H
Among the problems, according

to CBO: a) most current highway spending is for projects too small to meet the minimum size
NIB might merely shift projects from being
funded by state governments to the federal government, resulting in no net increase in
investment.
requirements commonly proposed for an infrastructure bank; and b) an

B. Violation an NIB is not an increase in transportation infrastructure.

C. Voter
Limits transportation infrastructure defines the topicshifting away justifies reading any
affirmative which increases any infrastructure like sewers.
Ground they can spike out of any transportation-based disad.
Topic education not having to adhere to debating under transportation infrastructure
allows affirmatives to shift out of topic research which short-circuits the educational value of
debating a new resolution each year.
Extra-Topicality is an independent voting issuethey set up a new funding mechanism
and dont only increase transportation infrastructurethis is impossible to predict and allows
them to spike out of disads.

Will pass but PCs key

Avlon 1-31

1NC DA #1

John Avlon Jan 31, 2013 Immigration Reform Proposal Shows Similar Ideas Betweeen Bush and Obama
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/31/immigration-reform-proposal-shows-similar-ideas-betweeen-bush-andobama.html
The past president serves as both an unlikely inspiration and negative object lesson to the current effort. Because

the plan
pushed by Bush in his second term bears an uncanny resemblance to the bipartisan plan now backed by the
Gang of Eight senators and hailed by Obama as the best hope for comprehensive immigration reform in a
generation. Take a look back at President Bushs 2006 televised address to the nation on immigration reform and read it
alongside President Obamas Las Vegas take on the same subject this Tuesday. The style may be different, but the substance
and sentiment are essentially the same. In both cases, there are calls for increased border security paired with a temporary
guest-worker program and requirements for businesses to e-verify their employees. There are increased visas, incentives for
skilled immigration, and an eventual pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers in America. Above all,
there is the commitment to the idea of America as a nation of immigrants and a sincere attempt to reconnect our functional
reality to this animating aspiration. Whats old is new. Its an irony not lost on Bush administration alumni and family
members. Im encouraged by the common-sense plan outlined by a bipartisan group of senators, former Florida governor
and first brother Jeb Bush wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. It is a good step forward in building a comprehensive
immigration plan. This is a redux of the Bush effort and the underlying principles, says former White House homelandsecurity adviser Frances Townsend, but it will get done this time, because politics are right. There is a sense of Groundhog
Day to this, concurs Peter Wehner, the former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. In retrospect, we
should have led off the second term with immigration rather than Social Security, and if we had, we would have won passage
of it. By waiting as long as we did in pushing the issue, at a point when our administration was weak, we failed to get
immigration legislation signed into law ... I also think that because Governor Romney did so poorly with Hispanics

in 2012, and because the GOP primary was so aggressive in its message on immigrationto the point of
offending legal immigrantsthat the party is now more open to recalibration on this issue than in the
past. The depth of the demographic problems facing Republicans is beginning to dawn on them in ways that
hadnt been the case before. Wehners comments cut to the heart of the lessons learned. After
essentially ignoring immigration reform in its first term, the Obama administration is frontloading the ambitious effort andfor the time, at leastdeferring to the Gang of Eight in hopes that it
might be less polarizing if the presidents name isnt on the bill when senators from the opposing party try to sell it to their
base. Whats old is new. Its an irony not lost on Bush administration alumni and family members. The death of the Bush
bill came largely at the hands of a right-wing talk-radio revolt that attacked any path to citizenship as amnesty. The fact that
thenpresidential candidate John McCain was sponsoring the bill with none other than Ted Kennedy created an opening for
competitors like Mitt Romney to try to get to McCains right in a play to the primarys conservative populist cheap seats. But
the other hostile front came from resurgent House Democrats who frankly did not want to give the polarizing lame-duck
incumbent named Bush a political win. Fast-forward six years, an d the right-wing talk-radio crowd is weakened.

The evangelical, law-enforcement, and business communities are now united behind comprehensive
immigration reform. Responsible Republicans know they cannot afford to alienate Hispanics any longer . And
the presence of Florida Sen. Marco Rubioa onetime Jeb Bush protgis an essential addition to
the coalition. Senator Rubio, a Tea Party choice, is well respected and well liked and trusted, adds Wehner. With him as
the lead in these negotiations, conservatives are more willing to consider immigration reform than in the past. Youre not
seeing the explosion of opposition now that we saw in 2007. That doesnt mean it wont happen; but for now, it hasnt. Long
story short: its much easier for Marco Rubio to make the case for the Senates bipartisan path to citizenship than to argue on
behalf of President Obamas bill, which would be a nonstarter to much of the base. And so the president wisely held off from
offering his specific policy vision in the much-hyped Las Vegas speech earlier this week. Its not unlike the reason Harry
Truman gave for naming the postwar European-aid bill after his secretary of state, George Marshall: Anything that is sent up
to the Senate and House with my name on it will quiver a couple of times and then turn over and die. Unlike Truman and
George W. Bush, however, Obama is pushing for this bill at a time of maximum political capital and national
popularity, with polls showing his approval rating at nearing 60 percent. To truly depolarize this policy debate, its
tempting to imagine Obama enlisting President Bush to make the sale to the nation. But W. has made a determined effort to
stay out of political and policy debates since leaving 1600. The first post-election policy event of the Bush Center was a
conference on immigration reform, in which the former president let himself wax poetic on his unfinished legacy: America
can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time, he said. As our nation debates the proper course of action
relating to immigration, I hope we do so with a benevolent spirit and keep in mind the spirit of immigrants. A lead researcher
the Bush Center, Matthew Denhart, hails Washingtons full circle. Its funny how politics work sometimesthe details of
immigration reform announced this week by the Senate and White House are virtually indistinguishable from what was
advanced by President Bush and other leaders in 2007 ... While its unfortunate immigration reform failed to pass Congress
five years ago and has languished ever since, the current plan holds promise to boost economic growth, which should be our

countrys top priority. Other Bush allies, like the Goldwater Institutes Clint Bolick, who co-authored a recent Wall Street
Journal op-ed on immigration reform with Jeb Bush, are balancing optimism with skepticism as they look at the current
proposal: It is a step forward with some excellent features, says Bolick. But entering the country has to have a consequence,
and providing a path to citizenship rather than permanent residency will encourage future illegal immigration, just as the 1986
law did. It also fails to confront preferences for distant-family members that crowd out work-based immigration. But it is great
to see Republicans and Democrats coming to grips with immigration issues. The renewed atmosphere of something

like bipartisanship is refreshingand, of course, needed, to get anything done in a divided government.

But one final

irony is worth noting. The current Gang of Eight plan learns the lesson of opposition to the 2007 proposal by front-loading
border security before any progress toward a pathway to citizenship is made. The trigger mechanism and metrics for
establishing this success are still unclear. But the fact is that border security dramatically increased during the Obama
administrations first term, with officials almost doubling the number of agents patrolling the border from what was in place
when Bush made his speech to the nation. The walls have continued to be built, and criminal deportations have hit record
highs. Combined with the effects of the Great Recession, which reduced demand for undocumented workers, the Obama
administration has quietly accumulated a record of success on a front usually considered a conservative policy priority. And
so the stars seem to be aligning into one of those moments where, as Seamus Heaney once wrote, hope and history
rhyme. Make no mistakethere is still plenty of time for Washington to screw this up. But there is urgency to the

effort, rooted in the parties individual self-interest as well as the national interest . After all, if President
Obama and President Bush can agree on the substance of something as contentious as immigration reform,
surely it isnt too much to hope that our divided Congress can find a way to reason together on this issue.

The plans unpopular

Meyers 12 staff writer for Politico (Jessica, Federal marine highways project hard to launch, Politico, 5/22/12,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76633.html, AK)

Mention Americas highways and notice the nods. Talk about its marine highways and watch the
blank stares. A Department of Transportation initiative intended to promote the countrys water
routes has failed to make substantial inroads despite a 2007 federal law , escalating highway congestion
and a push for greener transport. These river and coastal corridors, known as marine highways or short-sea shipping, thrive in
Europe and exist in a handful of U.S. regions. Theyre billed as the future a cheaper and more fuel-efficient option for an
overburdened transportation system. But marine highways remain more a political talking point than an

industry reality. Trucks and railroads maintain the upper hand on speed. Waterways have less
experience carrying container goods than bulk cargo. And companies remain leery of an
uncertain market filled with tax hurdles and ship shortages. Without greater demand, the water
road concept wont float. Its a chicken-and-egg type of thing, said Sean Connaughton, a former DOT maritime
administrator who created the departments Americas Marine Highway Program. Shippers wont commit until theres reliable
service, but you cant have that until shippers commit. To do that, the industry needs an almost mythical nexus

of
federal incentives, public recognition and state support. Connaughton, now Virginias secretary of
transportation, told POLITICO that the federal DOTs marine highway push languished partly because it
coincided with the economic downturn. Transportation funding disappeared for paved roads, much less a quiet
transportation mode still trying to prove its worth. The bottom line, he said, is freight doesnt vote. Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood has designated 18 marine highway corridors in recent years and directed more than $110 million toward
marine highway projects. The agency backs the Marine Highways Cooperative, a public-private partnership dedicated to developing
the countrys 25,000 miles of water routes. The Obama administration is committed to investing in innovative marine
transportation services along Americas coast and waterways, in order to relieve congestion on our roadways, make our
transportation system greener and develop the vast unused capacity on our waterways, said DOT spokesman Justin Nisly. Not all
Democratic lawmakers agree. I personally dont think it has happened as well as it should, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), ranking
member of the House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, told POLITICO. This administration has yet to
request any funding goals for a marine transportation system. We still have a ways to go. Maritime groups point to the elimination
of a so-called double tax as the place to start. All cargo that comes into the country is subject to a harbor maintenance tax. But
shippers have to pay an additional tax if goods are off-loaded in one location and shipped to a second port. When freight moves by
land, it doesnt face this second tax. Putting this forward would be an indication of how serious the

government is to help the industry into existence, said C. James Patti, the president of the Maritime Institute for
Research and Industrial Development. Its a lightning rod. Several lawmakers have keyed on the issue .
This system encourages people not to use the water , Rep. Patrick Tiberi, (R-Ohio), a Ways and Means
Committee member, told POLITICO. He has sponsored a bipartisan bill to gut the tax. It levels the playing field and achieves some
balance in the movement of goods, he said. Like similar bills in previous sessions, it hasnt gotten far. The tax
issue also delves into transport equality. Trucks already pay higher user fees and railroads are mostly self-financed. Even if the bill
were to pass, the industry would need enough ships to carry the goods. A longtime law known as the Jones Act allows only American
built and manned ships to operate between U.S. ports. The problem: American companies dont want to build container vessels for
an invisible buyer. When financing a vessel, its great to have an established market to point to, said Paul Bea, a maritime adviser
who specializes in marine highways. Back to the Catch-22. American Feeder Lines just ended its nine-month container ship service

along the Northeast largely because of a shortage of suitable vessels. The markets arent there, said Chris Coakley, the vice
president of governmental affairs for Saltchuk Resources, a company that started with marine transport and now manages a variety
of trade operations. Theres not a retail connection to the maritime industry . Waterways are a bit of a

public relations nightmare. UPS stops at the front door. Rail toots by towns. Container ships
dont pop up on the drive to work.
Reform solves warming
Herman and Smith 10
Richard Herman & Robert L. Smith, 2010 (founder of Richard T. Herman & Associates, an immigration and business law firm in
Cleveland, Ohio, Why Immigrants Can Drive The Green Economy, http://www.ilw.com/articles/2010,0630-herman.shtm,
Accessed 1/24/2013)
Raymond Spencer, an Australian-born entrepreneur based in Chicago, has a window on the future--and a gusto for investing after
founding a high-technology consulting company that sold for more than $1 billion in 2006. "I have investments in maybe

10 start-ups, all of which fall within a broad umbrella of a 'green' theme," he said. "And it's
interesting, the vast majority are either led by immigrants or have key technical people who are
immigrants." It should come as no surprise that immigrants will help drive the green
revolution. America's young scientists and engineers, especially the ones drawn to emerging
industries like alternative energy, tend to speak with an accent. The 2000 Census found that immigrants,
while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up nearly half of the all scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees.
Their importance will only grow. Nearly 70 percent of the men and women who entered the fields of science and engineering from
1995 to 2006 were immigrants. Yet,

the connection between immigration and the development

and commercialization of alternative energy technology is rarely discussed.
Policymakers envision millions of new jobs as the nation pursues renewable energy sources, like
wind and solar power, and builds a smart grid to tap it. But Dan Arvizu, the leading expert on solar power
and the director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy in Golden,
Colorado, warns that much of the clean-technology talent lies overseas, in nations that began pursuing alternative
energy sources decades ago.

The 2000 Census found that immigrants, while accounting for 12 percent of the population, made up

nearly half of the all scientists and engineers with doctorate degrees. Their importance will only grow. Expanding

our own
clean-tech industry will require working closely with foreign nations and foreign-born scientists,
he said. Immigration restrictions are making collaboration difficult . His lab's efforts to work with a Chinese
energy lab, for example, were stalled due to U.S. immigration barriers.

Global warming causes extinctionUS action causes international modeling

Hansen 12 Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, an adjunct professor in the Department of
Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Iowa, best known for his
research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad
awareness of global warming, the author of Storms of My Grandchildren. (James, May 9, 2012, Game Over for the Climate, The
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html)//DR. H

concentrations
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene
era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.
That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would
accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures
would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planets species would be driven to
extinction. Civilization would be at risk .
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several
decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semipermanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding.
Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. Californias
If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies,

Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the
power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but
also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal
Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence

that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens
of thousands, were not natural events they were caused by human-induced climate change.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps
the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures
will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of
its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising and its because we are forcing them
higher with fossil fuel emissions.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years.
The tar sands contain enough carbon 240 gigatons to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the
United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to
phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. a level that would, as
earths history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We
should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the
collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach
would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most

Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not
only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great
as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous ,
according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the
worlds governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a
frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar
shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a planet in peril, but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the worlds course. Our
leaders must speak candidly to the public which yearns for open, honest discussion explaining that our continued technological
leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the

American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear its time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals,
environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that

global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting
goes far higher the longer we wait we cant wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged
immoral by coming generations.

CASE

ECON

No impact to economic decline

Barnett 09 senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing
editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine, columnist for World Politics Review (8/25,
Thomas P.M. The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis, World Politics
Review, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financialcrisis-398-bl.aspx)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and
commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global

economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day,
it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession
has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape.
None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed
to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic
crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 lowintensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the RussiaGeorgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most
important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle
between Georgia and its two breakaway regions.
Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil

conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two
potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon
capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends.
And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-intoPakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the
economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up
with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn ,
occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to
anything beyond advising and training local forces.
So, to sum up:
No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like
Greece, Moldova and Latvia?);
The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places);
Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered);

No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear
powers (despite all that diplomacy);
A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain);
and
No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are
Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on
basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.)
Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to
wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation
on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis.
Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis?
Indeed, no.

The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political

factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the
board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but
there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to
function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed.
Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis?
If it was, that shift was

clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the

brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to
breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism.
At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing
global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing

viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great
significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising"
China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests"
hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes
undisciplined, so bring it on -- please!
Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's

post-World War II international liberal trade order.

Immediate economic collapse is the only way to save humanityotherwise
capitalism will utterly destroy the planet.
Barry 08 [Dr. Glen, president and founder of Ecological Internet, Economic Collapse and
Global Ecology, 1/14, Counter Currents, http://www.countercurrents.org/barry140108.htm]
Humanity and the Earth are faced with an enormous conundrum -- sufficient climate policies enjoy political support only in times of
rapid economic growth. Yet this growth is the primary factor driving greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental ills. The
growth machine has pushed the planet well beyond its ecological carrying capacity, and unless

constrained, can only lead to human extinction and an end to complex life. With every economic
downturn, like the one now looming in the United States, it becomes more difficult and less likely that policy
sufficient to ensure global ecological sustainability will be embraced . This essay explores the possibility
that from a biocentric viewpoint of needs for long-term global ecological, economic and social sustainability; it would be better for
the economic collapse to come now rather than later. Economic growth is a deadly disease upon the Earth, with capitalism as its
most virulent strain. Throw-away consumption and explosive population growth are made possible by using up fossil fuels and
destroying ecosystems. Holiday shopping numbers are covered by media in the same breath as Arctic ice melt, ignoring their deep
connection. Exponential economic growth destroys ecosystems and pushes the biosphere closer to

failure. Humanity has proven itself unwilling and unable to address climate change and other
environmental threats with necessary haste and ambition . Action on coal, forests, population, renewable
energy and emission reductions could be taken now at net benefit to the economy. Yet, the losers -- primarily fossil fuel industries
and their bought oligarchy -- successfully resist futures not dependent upon their deadly products. Perpetual economic

growth, and necessary climate and other ecological policies, are fundamentally incompatible. Global ecological
sustainability depends critically upon establishing a steady state economy, whereby production is right-sized to not diminish natural
capital. Whole industries like coal and natural forest logging will be eliminated even as new opportunities emerge in solar energy
and environmental restoration. This critical transition to both economic and ecological sustainability is

simply not happening on any scale. The challenge is how to carry out necessary environmental
policies even as economic growth ends and consumption plunges . The natural response is going to be
liquidation of even more life-giving ecosystems, and jettisoning of climate policies, to vainly try to maintain high growth and
personal consumption. We know that humanity must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% over coming decades. How
will this and other necessary climate mitigation strategies be maintained during years of economic downturns, resource wars,
reasonable demands for equitable consumption, and frankly, the weather being more pleasant in some places? If efforts to reduce
emissions and move to a steady state economy fail; the collapse of ecological, economic and social systems is assured. Bright greens
take the continued existence of a habitable Earth with viable, sustainable populations of all species including humans as the ultimate
truth and the meaning of life. Whether this is possible in a time of economic collapse is crucially dependent upon whether enough
ecosystems and resources remain post collapse to allow humanity to recover and reconstitute sustainable, relocalized societies. It

may be better for the Earth and humanity's future that economic collapse comes sooner rather
than later, while more ecosystems and opportunities to return to nature's fold exist . Economic
collapse will be deeply wrenching -- part Great Depression, part African famine. There will be starvation and civil strife, and a long
period of suffering and turmoil. Many will be killed as balance returns to the Earth. Most people have forgotten how to grow food
and that their identity is more than what they own. Yet there is some justice, in that those who have lived most lightly upon the land
will have an easier time of it, even as those super-consumers living in massive cities finally learn where their food comes from and
that ecology is the meaning of life. Economic collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately

survive to prosper again. Human suffering -- already the norm for many, but hitting the currently materially affluent
-- is inevitable given the degree to which the planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded. We
are a couple decades at most away from societal strife of a much greater magnitude as the
Earth's biosphere fails. Humanity can take the bitter medicine now, and recover while emerging
better for it; or our total collapse can be a final, fatal death swoon. A successful revolutionary
response to imminent global ecosystem collapse would focus upon bringing down the Earth's
industrial economy now. As society continues to fail miserably to implement necessary changes to allow creation to
continue, maybe the best strategy to achieve global ecological sustainability is economic sabotage to hasten the day. It is more fragile
than it looks.

Growth increases the rich/poor gap which guarantees collapse

Lewis 2k - Ph.D. University of Colorado at Boulder (Chris H, The Paradox of Global Development and the Necessary Collapse
of Global Industrial Civilization http://www.cross-x.com/archives/LewisParadox.pdf)

By creating the specter of vast, untold wealth and freedom in the First World and massive,
desperate poverty and despair in the Third World, global development is creating the
contradictions that will undermine global industrial civilization. On the one hand, global
economic integration, which is known as globalization, is creating spectacular wealth and
progress for the twenty percent who live in the developed world, but, on the other hand, it is creating massive poverty and social
unrest for the eighty percent who live in the underdeveloped world.(Barnet and Cavanagh 1994)
Between 1960 and 2000, rather than shrinking, the income gap between the rich and the poor
actually grew. According to the 1999 UN Human Development Report, in 1960, the richest 20 percent of the world earned 30 times as much income as the poorest
20 percent, 60 times as much income in 1990, and 74 times as much income by 1997. This UN report also reported that the richest 20 percent of the
world consumes 86 percent of the World Gross Domestic Product, the middle 60 percent consume just 13 percent, and the poorest 20
percent consume just 1 percent of the world GDP. In 2000, according to the World Bank, a sixth of the worlds people produced 78 percent of the worlds goods and services and received 78 percent of the worlds
income, while three-fifths of the worlds people in the poorest 61 countries receive 6 percent of the worlds income. At the United Nations World Summit for Social Development in March 1995, James Speth,

"This widening gulf

breeds despair and instability. It imperils our world."(Crossette 1995:A6) Despite this growing
inequality between the developed and the developing worlds, aid to developing nations has been
shrinking and will continue to do so. Industrial nations and the major international lending
institutions are asking developing nations to invest more of their own money to meet basic
needs. (Crossette 1995:A6) But how can they afford to do this given the increasing burden of
debt-servicing? By 1999 the total external debt of developing countries was 2.5 trillion. In order
to pay off that debt, developing countries paid almost $300 billion in debtservice payments in 1999. The Jubilee 2000
Coalition called on First World countries and banks to cancel the unpayable debts of the worlds poorest countries. Instead of becoming developed,
some Third World leaders charged that they were becoming even poorer, and even more
dependent on shrinking foreign aid. (Escobar 1995) Indeed, most people in the world are living on the margins of development. Threequarters of
administrator of the United Nations Development Program, noting that the income gap between the rich and poor had doubled over the last 30 years, said:

the world's population lives in the 130 poorer countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and the majority of the population do not have either steady jobs or secure income.

there is a growing struggle between

"the forces of globalization and the territorially based forces of local survival seeking to preserve
and to redefine community." Barnet and Cavanagh (1995: 429) conclude that "local citizens' movements and alternative institutions are springing up all
(Barnet and Cavanagh 1994:179) In Global Dreams, Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh (1995:22) argue that

over the world to meet basic economic needs to preserve local traditions, religious life, cultural life, biological species, and other treasures of the natural world, and to struggle

This increasing conflict between the demands of global industrial civilization and
diverse peoples and cultures to protect their way of life and local autonomy is further evidence
that the modern industrial world is collapsing.
for human dignity."

That outweighs Nuclear war

JAMES GILLIGAN 96 has been on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School since 1966,
for whom he directed mental health services for the Massachusetts prison system for many years; and is Director of the Center for
the Study of Violence, Immediate Past President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy 96 p. 195-96
The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of
excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closest to eliminating structural violence. It had the
least inequity in income and living standards and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they

18 million deaths a year could be

attributed to structural violence to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade the discrepancies between
the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14-18 million deaths a year caused by structural
violence compare with about 100,000 deaths a year from armed conflict. Comparing this
frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military
and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths including those caused by genocide- or
about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000 deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-73) and even a
hypothetical nuclear exchange between the US and USSR (232 million) it was clear that
even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after
year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative
poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single
year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by
compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that

the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an
ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetuated on the weak and por every year of every
decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially
and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question
as to which of the two forms of violence-structural or behavioral- is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to
effect.

Abandoning current economic practices is key to solve extinction from warming,

NASA agrees were on the tipping point now
Foster, Clark, and York August 8 - *Professor of sociology, University of Oregon AND ** Assistant professor of
sociology, North Carolina State University AND *** Associate professor of sociology, University of Oregon
Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine; Jul/Aug2008, Vol. 60 Issue 3, p1-11, 11p)

( Ecology Monthly

To counter this business-as-usual scenario, the

Stern Review proposes a climate stabilization regime in

which greenhouse gas emissions would peak by 2015 and then drop 1 percent per year after that, so
as to stabilize at a 550 ppm CO2e (with a significant chance that the global average temperature increase would
thereby be kept down to 3C). But, given the enormous dangers, why not aim at deeper cuts in greenhouse
gas emissions, a lower level of atmospheric CO2e, and a smaller increase in global
average temperature? After all most climatologists have been calling for the stabilization of atmospheric CO2e 450 ppm or less,
keeping the global temperature increase at about 2C above pre-industrial levels. While Hansen and his colleagues at NASAs

Goddard Institute have now gone even further arguing that the target should be 350 ppm CO2 .
The Stern Review is very explicit, however, that such a radical mitigation of the problem should not be attempted. The costs to
the world economy of ensuring that atmospheric CO2e stabilized at present levels or below
would be prohibitive, destabilizing capitalism itself. Paths requiring very rapid emissions
cuts, we are told, are unlikely to be economically viable . If global greenhouse gas emissions
peaked in 2010 the annual emissions reduction rate necessary to stabilize atmospheric carbon at 450 ppm, the Stern Review
suggests, would be 7 percent, with emissions dropping by about 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. This is viewed as
economically insupportable. Hence, the Stern Reviews own preferred scenario, as indicated, is a 550 ppm target that would see
global greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2015, with the emission cuts that followed at a rate of 1 percent per year. By 2050 the
reduction in the overall level of emissions (from 2005 levels) in this scenario would only be 25 percent. (The report also considers,
with less enthusiasm, an in-between 500 ppm target, peaking in 2010 and requiring a 3 percent annual drop in global emissions.)

Only the 550 ppm target, the Stern Review suggests, is truly economically viable

because it is difficult to secure emission cuts faster than about 1% per year except in instances of recession or as the result of a
major social upheaval such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. a sustained annual cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 1 percent or
more, coupled with economic growth, among leading capitalist states was the United Kingdom in 19902000. Due to the discovery
of North Sea oil and natural gas, the United Kingdom was able to switch massively from coal to gas in power generation, resulting in
a 1 percent average annual drop in its greenhouse gas emissions during that decade. France came close to such a 1 percent annual
drop in 19772003, reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by .6 percent per year due to a massive switch to nuclear power. By far

the biggest drop for a major state was the 5.2 percent per year reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions in the Former Soviet Union in 198998. This however
went hand in hand with a social-system breakdown and a drastic shrinking of the
economy. All of this signals that any reduction in CO2e emissions beyond around 1 percent per year
would make it virtually impossible to maintain strong economic growth the bottom line of the capitalist
economy. Consequently, in order to keep the treadmill of profit and production going the
world needs to risk environmental Armageddon.10

TRADE

Trade does not solve wartheres no correlation between trade and peace
Martin et al 08 (Phillipe, University of Paris 1 PantheonSorbonne, Paris School of
Economics, and Centre for Economic Policy Research; Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1
PantheonSorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy
Research, Mathias THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris School of Economics, The Review
of Economic Studies 75)
Does globalization pacify international relations? The liberal view in political science argues that increasing
trade flows and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This
vision, which can partly be traced back to Kants Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: The main objective of
the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening
again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however, that during the 18702001 period, the correlation between trade

openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the 19th
century, was a period of rising trade openness and multiple military conflicts, culminating with
World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world
trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly, while the number of conflicts
decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that
the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of
military conflicts, even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states.
Fragile growth and transition to broad-based economy now, the plan reverses that
and collapses the global economy
Stanley Research 11/19 financial research service (The Global Macro Analyst, 11/19/12,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/118929861/Morgan-Stanley-2013-Global-Outlook)//SJF
Policy make or break: Our

Twilight base case crucially assumes only moderate fiscal tightening in the
US, successful ECB action on rates and OMT, and gradual progress on structural reforms in EM.
Such policy action, combined with further global monetary easing, should promote a bottoming of global
growth in 1H13 followed by a moderate re-acceleration. Two alternative scenarios Night and Day: Without
appropriate policy action, however, a renewed global recession would likely unfold. Our Night scenario
has global GDP growth plunging to 2% in 2013, with full-blown recessions in the US, Europe and
Japan and more fragility in EM economies. Conversely, in our Day scenario, more decisive policy action
in the major countries than we assume in our Twilight base case propels a more rapid acceleration to
almost 4% GDP growth already in 2013. Stay ready to switch between scenarios: With policy action still pending,
Europe and Japan currently in recession, US GDP tracking below 1% in 4Q, and the transition to
new growth models still sputtering in many EM countries, the next several months may feel more like our Night
scenario. Yet, investors have to be nimble and prepared to switch between Night, Twilight and Day
depending on policy developments.
Causes multiple scenarios for economic instability crowd-out, restrictions, and
currency failure
CFR 99 (Council on Foreign Relations, ROBERT A. BLECKER is Professor of Economics at
American University and a Research Associate of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI),both in
Washington, D .C. The Diminishing Returns to Export- Led Growth, 1999,
http://www.cfr.org/trade/diminishing-returns-export-led-growth-cfr-paper/p8709)//SJF
The basic flaw in the export-led growth strategy is that, under a given set of global demand conditions, the

market for
developing country exports of manufactures is limited by the capacity (and willingness) of the
industrialized nations to absorb the corresponding imports. The market for imports of labor-intensive

manufactures and other NIC exports can

only grow so fast, and as a result the export-led strategy can work
only for a limited number of countries at a time. If this market is growing at, say, 7 percent per year, then not all of
the NICs can have their exports increase at rates of 10 percent or 15 percent per yearalthough a few can, provided that the market
shares of other exporters or domestic producers are falling at the same time. If all try to grow faster than is possible in the aggregate,
the result can only be an overhang of excess industrial capacity and/or falling prices. And if some countries export

performance is disappointing, they will suffer economic stagnation and become more prone to a
currency collapse or financial cri- sisespecially if they attempt to paper over their growth slowdowns with
international borrowing that creates a fragile financial position and makes the currency overvalued. Of course, total
exports of manufactures from the developing countries can grow faster than domestic demand in the industrialized countries,
provided that the former countries as a group increase their productive capacity and lower their average costs, thus per- mitting
them to take away market share from domestic producers in the latter. In this respect, the ability of all developing country exporters
to increase their total market share abroad is limited by two factors: first, by protectionist policies, either previously existing
protection or responses to import surges; and second, by the eventual disappearance of domestic import-competing producers (or
the survival of only a few niche producers), which then constrains total import growth to the growth rate of the domes- tic market
in the industrialized countries. To the extent that the total market share of developing country exporters cannot be increased further
(e.g., because they are concentrated in product lines where there is no domestic production left in the industrialized countries, or
remaining domestic producers in the latter countries have solid market niches or enduring protection),then each new entrant

can achieve above-average rates of export growth only if it displaces some other exporting
countries, whose export growth will inevitably falter as a result. A key variable in this process is the exchange
rate: countries with low, competitive rates will succeed, while those with high, overvalued rates will lose out. But no
amount of competitive devaluations can allow all of these countries to succeed in the same game of export- led growth at the same
time with the same products. The current wave of export-led growth was initiated by Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, with its
tremendous success in tradition- al smokestack industries such as textiles, automobiles, and steel. By the late 1970s and early
1980s, when Japan was moving up the industrial ladder into more technologically advanced products, the Four Tigers stepped up
their exports of labor-intensive products, thus initiating what became known as the flying geese formation. At that time, the Four
Tigers were the only major developing country exporters of labor-intensive manufactures, and they grew rapidly by achieving rising
shares of the U.S. consumer market in particular. Then, in the late 1980s and 1990s, one country after another tried to emulate the
East Asian Tigers: Thailand, Mexico, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and various other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean,
South and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. As the market for developing country exports of manufactures
became more crowded with new entrants, signs of intensified competition among these countries for export

opportunities began to emerge in the 1990s.In particular, the success of the export-promoting
nations became extremely sensitive to exchange-rate changes, both domestic and foreign. First Japan and
then other East Asian nations (e.g., Korea) whose currencies had appreciated relative to others began to suffer slower export growth
and reduced market share abroad, with negative repercussions for their own domes- tic growth. In this process, not only changes in
the countries own exchange rates, but cross-effects of other countries exchange rate changes began to have

significant effects. For example, the Chinese and Mexican devaluations of 1994 boosted those countries export growth, but
put pressure on other countries some of which (notably Thailand and Korea) suffered currency collapses only a few years later.
There are a number of important qualifications to this hypothesis, in regard to both the Asian development model in particular and
export-led growth in general. Regarding the Asian model, an obvious caveat is that the Asian nations are diverse, and do not all
exactly fit what Singh aptly calls the ideal type of the Asian model. For example, three of the original Four Tigers (all except Hong
Kong) had significant government direction of their industrial development strategies and restrictions on foreign direct investment,
as does China today, while some other Southeast Asian economies have had less policy intervention of this type. Also, rapid export
growth was a necessary, but not a sufficient, explanation for the miraculous growth of the East Asian economies in the 1980s and
early 1990s.Other policies were also key to East Asias success, including the financial arrangements that have since been derided as
forms of crony capitalism. Also important were various types of restrictions on imports and direct foreign investment, not to
mention a variety of domestic policies usually touted as indicating strong fundamentals (including agricultural reforms, small
budget deficits, low inflation rates, and high educational achievement). The Asian model also included high private saving and
investment rates, and has been referred to as a case of investment-led growth rather than export-led. However, the high
investment rates were linked to export promotion efforts and appear to have fostered excess capacity in key export sectors. More
importantly, the high saving rates beg the question of what forces kept the Keynesian paradox of thrift from emerging. Our
argument is that the combination of rapid export growth and high investment demand focused on export activities provided the
aggregate demand stimulus that enabled these countries to sustain such high saving rates. As a result, when a country with

such a high saving rate loses competitiveness in export markets (e.g., because its own currency appreciates or
other countries currencies depreciate) and its export growth and investment demand fall off, the country is
left with no source of demand stimulus as long as domestic consumer spending continues to be
repressed. Another qualification is that not all of Asias export growth has been targeted to the industrialized countries. East Asia
especially has had significant growth of intraregional trade, which partly ameliorates the risks of relying on exports to the United
States and Europe. Ironically, however, this did not help, and in fact contributed to regional contagion effects when the entire region
became depressed in 199798. However, Japan has remained more closed to such intraregional trade in manufactures than most of
its less-developed neighbors, implying that they have had to rely mainly on exports to each other and to the United States. There
have also been other efforts at South-South regional integration, notably Mercosur [Southern Cone Common Market] in South
America. But again, an important lesson from the recent financial crisis is that such trade agreements do not work well,

and can even spread regional contagion effects, when macroeconomic and financial weaknesses
are not addressed. There are also important qualifications to the general idea of constraints on export-led growth. Most
importantly, the constraints in terms of the growth of global markets for manufactured imports are not fixed and given. These
constraints can be relaxed if the industrialized countries stimulate their domestic economies more and open up their import markets
more to developing nations exports. This point applies especially to Japan, which is notoriously closed to manufactured imports and
has been stuck in a chronic growth depression for most of the 1990s. However, the same point applies to Europewhich has
thus far mainly opened

itself up to more intraregional trade rather than more trade with outside
regions, and which has maintained slow growth and high unemployment in the 1990s for a combination of
macroeconomic and structural reasons that are hotly debated. In this authors view, the restrictive macroeconomic policies adopted
under the Maastricht plan for monetary union are the primary cause of high European unemployment, rather than the alleged
structural problems in European labor markets (rigid real wages, lack of flexibility).However, whatever ones view on this issue, it
is clear that European economies are unnaturally depressed and are not pro- viding growing markets for developing country exports
of manufactures. Even the United States, while more open to developing country exports of manufactures than most other
industrialized countries, maintains a number of limitations on imports of these goods such as the application of the fair trade or
contingent protection laws (anti-dumping, countervailing duty, etc.) that effectively inhibit imports in certain sectors such as steel.
Still, the United States is hardly alone in this respect. In spite of these restrictions, U.S. imports of manufactured products from
developing countries have grown more rapidly than similar imports into any other major industrialized country, and they have
contributed significantly to the growing U.S. trade deficit. As of 1998,56 percent of the U.S. merchandise trade deficit was accounted
for by Mexico plus the Asian developing nations, with 23 percent accounted for by China alone. By 19992000,the United States was
able to maintain large and growing trade deficits only as a result of the willingness of foreigners to lend this country more than $300
billion annually, while Europe and Japan were running large trade surpluses. However, the resulting increase in the

U.S.net international debt position and vulnerability of the dollar to depreciation pressures
suggests that this pattern of global imbalances is not sustainable in the long run. This comparison of
Japan, Europe, and the United States suggests that the industrialized nations of the North cannot be treated as a uniform bloc with
regard to either macroeconomic or commercial policies. As Table 1 shows, only the United States has a significantly higher ratio of
trade to GDP today than it did in the pre-World War I epoch, while (by this measure) the major European countries openness to
trade has barely returned to its pre- 1914 level and Japans overall openness is still notably lower than it was at that time. Although
the individual European countries appear more open to trade than either the United States or Japan, most of their trade is with each
other, and the external trade of the European Union countries as a group is about the same order of magnitude as that of the United
States (and higher than Japans). In recent years, and in spite of the occasional bouts of contingent protection referred to above, the
United States has served as the consumer of last resort for exporters from all continents and regions due to a combination of
relatively open markets, robust economic growth, and booming consumer demand (the latter of which is in turn attributable partly
to the stock market boom and partly to growing consumer debt). Much of the tension in the inter- national trading

system today results from the disproportionate share of global manufactured exports that is
absorbed in the U.S. market, which widens the U.S. trade deficit and causes political
resentments in the United States, while also restricting export growth in the developing
countries. To be fair, Western Europe has been engaged in a process of continental integration, in which the Northern and
Central European countries are increasingly absorbing manufactured imports from relatively low-wage countries in the European
periphery (e.g., Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Eastern Europe)and suffering some of the same industrial dislocations and
employment losses as the United States as a result. Still, Europes absorption in its own internal integration and slow growth
combined with Japans general closure and malaise put the main burden of absorbing developing country exports of manufactures
squarely on the United States. Greater macroeconomic stimulus policies together with increased market openness and structural
reforms in Europe and Japan could help to relieve these pressures on the United States while increasing export opportunities for
developing countries. Finally, it is important to recognize that, in principle, simultaneous export expansion can potentially provide
increased reciprocal demand for all nations exports. This is the vision of a prosperous, open international economy promoted by
classical liberal economic thinkers since the time of Adam Smith. If this vision holds true, the constraints on export-led growth can
become very elastic or even nonbinding. However, for such simultaneous export growth to be successful in expanding the global
market for all countries exports in reality, it is vital that the countries that are promoting their exports are also opening their own
markets to imports and maintaining high domestic demand at the same time. In this way, simultaneous export expansion with
roughly balanced trade can occur. What is not feasible is for all countries to attempt to achieve trade

surpluses by promoting their exports while simultaneously restricting their imports in

mercantilist fashion. Because all countries cannot have trade surpluses at the same time, the
widespread pursuit of this type of neomercantilist policy only tightens the global constraints on
export-led growthbecause not enough countries are willing to absorb the corresponding
imports and thus fosters intensified conflict over foreign market share. In short, the classical liberal vision of a world in which
export- led growth solves the demand problem through reciprocal and balanced market expansion is not flawed as a vision, but
rather as a characterization of the real world in which we live. The challenge for policy today is whether and how that vision could be
achieved in the future, and what nations should do in the present while that vision is not fulfilled in practice. We shall return to this
policy dilemma in the concluding section, but first we take a detour through a review of studies of exports and growth followed by a
discussion of some preliminary evidence on growing conflict over shares of the U.S. import market.

ADAPTATION

WARMING

Warmings not realtheir studies are skewed

Freedman, 12/20 Andrew freedman is a science writer for Climate Central, focusing on extreme weather and climate
change Satellite climate data at 33 years: questioning shady claims that downplay global warming December 20, 11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-satellite-temperature-record-questioning-shaky-claimsafter-33-years/2011/12/20/gIQAd8KE7O_blog.html czhang
An interesting press release marking the 33rd anniversary of the satellite temperature record makes questionable claims dismissive
of the human role in global warming. These claims are not supported by the scientific literature.
The release, from the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), reports that the warming trend in the lower atmosphere is lower
than at the surface, and states that the satellite data points to flaws in climate models used to project how

the planets climate system may respond to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the air.
Globally averaged, Earths atmosphere has warmed about 0.45 Celsius (about 0.82 F) during the
almost one-third of a century that sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites have measured the temperature of oxygen
molecules in the air, the release states. This is at the lower end of computer model projections of how much the atmosphere should
have warmed due to the effects of extra greenhouse gases since the first Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) went into service in Earth
orbit in late November 1978.
While 0.45 degrees C of warming is noticeable in climate terms, it isnt obvious that it represents an

impending disaster, says John Christy of UAH, who, along with Roy Spencer, has maintained one of the satellite-derived
temperature records.
The press release may seem straightforward at first, but it makes claims that have long been debunked by mainstream climate
scientists.
For example, Christy claims that computer models are flawed, since there are discrepancies between their

projections for surface warming compared to warming in the lower layers of the atmosphere ,
known as the troposphere. The climate models produce some aspects of the weather reasonably well, but they have yet
to demonstrate an ability to confidently predict climate change in upper air temperatures , Christy
states in the press release.

The satellites should have shown more deep-atmosphere warming than the surface, not less ,
Spencer says. Whatever warming or cooling there is should be magnified with height. We believe this is telling us
something significant about exactly why the climate system has not warmed as much as
expected in recent decades.
Interestingly, these statements were contradicted by a 2006 U.S. Climate Change Science Program report that Christy and Spencer
helped write, which examined the discrepancy between surface temperature trends and warming in the lower atmosphere. That
Federally-sponsored report concluded: Given the range of model results and the overlap between them and the available
observations, there is no conflict between observed changes and the results from climate models. The report did emphasize,
however, lingering differences between the pattern of warming in the tropics and what computer models project for these areas, and
it is generally recognized that surface warming is outpacing atmospheric warming, but not by as much as Christy and Spencer claim.
Moreover, a 2010 review of more recent research on this topic concluded: There is no reasonable evidence of a fundamental
disagreement between tropospheric temperature trends from models and observations when uncertainties in both are treated
comprehensively
A second misleading claim the press release makes is that its simply not possible to identify the human

contribution to global warming, despite the publication of studies that have done just that.
While many scientists believe it [warming] is almost entirely due to humans, that view cannot
be proved scientifically, Spencer states.
Chinas solving warming now
Firl, 12/20 (Gerold Firl engineer consultant at PDG Oncore, independent research of the science of the evolution of socio
cultural systems) [International Relations in the Era of Global Warming Dec 20, 2011
http://lemongrove.patch.com/articles/international-relations-in-the-era-of-global-warming-fad28080] czhang
But there is also cause for optimism. Consider the emergence of SustainUS and the China-US Youth Coalition for
Sustainable Development. Even

as the senior representatives for China and the U.S. were working to
protect oil and coal interests, young people from both countries put together intelligent
proposals for a sustainable future. People in their 20s find it much more difficult than the
elderly to pretend that global warming is a hoax. Youngsters are going to have to live with the consequences of
their elders greed and ignorance.
Up until now, the U.S. has been

able to hide behind China and India to rationalize our enslavement

to the pollution lobby. India and China claim they shouldnt have to control their pollution

levels, because theyre still trying to catch up with the West. The U.S. says theres no point
having the rest of the world agree to greenhouse gas limits if India and China are exempted. But
here in 2011, that little charade has run out of steam. For the first time, China has signaled a willingness to play a
constructive role in the climate change battle.
2012 will be a pivotal year, and not just for climate. The fracture in the stonewall coalition presages a potentially momentous
realignment of the geopolitical constellation. In Durban, future directions for Chinese political evolution were revealed in some
surprising ways.

Within five to 10 years, China is expected to be the worlds largest economy, and also the worlds
largest polluter. China runs a large trade surplus with the U.S., and many of those excess dollars
are re-invested into U.S. government securities. That has created a strange and uneasy mutual dependence
between the two nations. Their economies are both hitched to the same grossly polluting wagon,
burning mountains of coal, oceans of oil and belching huge amounts of carbon into the
atmosphere. But at Durban, China has given indications they may opt for a different path.
The EU has always been the strongest advocate for action on climate change . The fossil-fuel lobby
doesnt have nearly the same control over the governments of Europe as they have here in the U.S. But China has never cared about
pollution until now. When the Chinese finally agreed to legally binding pollution controls, India and

the U.S. couldnt hide behind them anymore, and now the entire world is apparently on-board even
if some of us had to be dragged kicking and screaming.
Progressive elements of the Chinese leadership have

recognized the necessity of transitioning from dirty

renewables. In Durban, China and the EU found themselves on the same side, with
the U.S. still playing the reactionary holdout. This opens the question of whether Chinese strategic interests in the
energy and moving to

coming decades will be more closely aligned with Europe or the U.S. Two vitally important issues will be answered in 2012, which
will have a major bearing on this question: the European debt crisis, and American elections.

MIDDLE EAST

No impact:
a) no conflagrationnational incentives and history.
Maloney and Takeyh 07 *senior fellow for Middle East Policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the
Brookings Institution AND **senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (Susan and Ray,
International Herald Tribune, 6/28, Why the Iraq War Won't Engulf the Mideast,
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/0628iraq_maloney.aspx)
Yet, the Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, and others are very unlikely to go to war either to
protect their own sect or ethnic group or to prevent one country from gaining the upper hand in Iraq.
The reasons are fairly straightforward. First, Middle Eastern leaders, like politicians everywhere, are primarily

interested in one thing: self-preservation. Committing forces to Iraq is an inherently risky

proposition, which, if the conflict went badly, could threaten domestic political stability . Moreover,
most Arab armies are geared toward regime protection rather than projecting power and thus
have little capability for sending troops to Iraq.
Second, there is cause for concern about the so-called blowback scenario in which jihadis returning from Iraq
destabilize their home countries, plunging the region into conflict.
Middle Eastern leaders are preparing for this possibility. Unlike in the 1990s, when Arab fighters in the Afghan jihad against
the Soviet Union returned to Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and became a source of instability, Arab security services are
being vigilant about who is coming in and going from their countries.
In the last month, the Saudi government has arrested approximately 200 people suspected of ties with militants. Riyadh is also
building a 700 kilometer wall along part of its frontier with Iraq in order to keep militants out of the kingdom.
Finally, there is no precedent for Arab leaders to commit forces to conflicts in which they are not

directly involved. The Iraqis and the Saudis did send small contingents to fight the Israelis in 1948 and 1967, but they were
either ineffective or never made it. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arab countries other than Syria, which had a compelling interest in
establishing its hegemony over Lebanon, never committed forces either to protect the Lebanese from the Israelis or from other
Lebanese. The civil war in Lebanon was regarded as someone else's fight .
Indeed, this is the way many leaders view the current situation in Iraq. To Cairo, Amman and Riyadh, the situation in Iraq is
worrisome, but in the end it is an Iraqi and American fight.
As far as Iranian mullahs are concerned, they have long preferred to press their interests through proxies as opposed to direct
engagement. At a time when Tehran has access and influence over powerful Shiite militias, a massive cross-border incursion is both
unlikely and unnecessary.
So Iraqis will remain locked in a sectarian and ethnic struggle that outside powers may abet, but will remain within the borders of
Iraq.

The Middle East is a region both prone and accustomed to civil wars. But given its experience
with ambiguous conflicts, the region has also developed an intuitive ability to contain its civil
strife and prevent local conflicts from enveloping the entire Middle East.
b) no global escalation
Dyer 02 Ph.D. in Military and Middle Eastern History from the University of London and former professor at the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University (Gwynne, Queens Quarterly, The coming war, December, questia)

All of this indicates an extremely dangerous situation, with many variables that are impossible to assess fully. But there is one
comforting reality here: this will not become World War III. Not long ago, wars in the Middle East always went

to the brink very quickly, with the Americans and Soviets deeply involved on opposite sides,
bristling their nuclear weapons at one another. And for quite some time we lived on the brink of oblivion. But
that is over. World War III has been cancelled, and I don't think we could pump it up again no matter how hard we
tried. The connections that once tied Middle Eastern confrontations to a global confrontation
involving tens of thousands of nuclear weapons have all been undone . The East-West Cold War is finished.
The truly dangerous powers in the world today are the industrialized countries in general. We are the ones with the resources and
the technology to churn out weapons of mass destruction like sausages. But the good news is: we are out of the business .

Middle East war slows rapid Chinese growth and power

Cetron, 07 - president of Forecasting International (Marvin, The Futurist, Worst-case scenario: the Middle East: current
trends indicate that a Middle Eastern war might last for decades, 9/1,
http://www.mywire.com/pubs/TheFuturist/2007/09/01/4296533?page=1)

OTHER INTERNATIONAL IMPACTS OF A MIDDLE EASTERN WAR

China is well supplied with oil from Africa, which it has on longterm contracts. However, it is even more dependent on
Iranian oil, which it would be unlikely to receive. This deficit would lead Beijing to develop its own oil shale, but its
reserves are modest. China is likely to find its economic growth--and its global power --reduced for
many years.
Chinas rise risks war with the U.S. and threatens kicking the U.S. out of Asia
Mearsheimer 05 (John, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, Foreign Policy, January,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2740)

China cannot rise peacefully, and if it continues its dramatic economic growth over the next few
decades, the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with
considerable potential for war. Most of Chinas neighbors, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and
Vietnam, will likely join with the United States to contain Chinas power. To predict the future in Asia, one needs a
theory that explains how rising powers are likely to act and how other states will react to them .
My theory of international politics says that the mightiest states attempt to establish hegemony
in their own region while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region. The
ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system. The
international system has several defining characteristics. The main actors are states that operate
in anarchywhich simply means that there is no higher authority above them. All great powers have some offensive military
capability, which means that they can hurt each other. Finally, no state can know the future intentions of other
states with certainty. The best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible,
relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it.
The great powers do not merely strive to be the strongest great power, although that is a welcome outcome. Their ultimate aim is to
be the hegemonthe only great power in the system. But it is almost impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony in the
modern world, because it is too hard to project and sustain power around the globe. Even the United States is a regional but not a
global hegemon. The best outcome that a state can hope for is to dominate its own backyard. States that gain regional hegemony
have a further aim: to prevent other geographical areas from being dominated by other great powers. Regional hegemons, in other
words, do not want peer competitors. Instead, they want to keep other regions divided among several great powers so that these
states will compete with each other. In 1991, shortly after the Cold War ended, the first Bush administration boldly stated that the
United States was now the most powerful state in the world and planned to remain so. That same message appeared in the famous
National Security Strategy issued by the second Bush administration in September 2002. This documents stance on preemptive war
generated harsh criticism, but hardly a word of protest greeted the assertion that the United States should check rising powers and
maintain its commanding position in the global balance of power. China is likely to try to dominate Asia the way the United States
dominates the Western Hemisphere. Specifically, China will strive to maximize the power gap between itself and its neighbors,
especially Japan and Russia, and to ensure that no state in Asia can threaten it. It is unlikely that China will go on a rampage and
conquer other Asian countries. Instead, China will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries,
much the way the United States does in the Americas. An increasingly powerful China is also likely to try to

push the United States out of Asia, much the way the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western
Hemisphere. Not incidentally, gaining regional hegemony is probably the only way that China will get back Taiwan. Why should we
expect China to act differently than the United States? U.S. policymakers, after all, react harshly when other great powers send
military forces into the Western Hemisphere. These foreign forces are invariably seen as a potential threat to American security. Are
the Chinese more principled, more ethical, less nationalistic, or less concerned about their survival than Westerners? They are none
of these things, which is why China is likely to imitate the United States and attempt to become a regional hegemon. Chinas
leadership and people remember what happened in the last century, when Japan was powerful and China was weak. In the anarchic
world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi. It is clear from the historical record how American
policymakers will react if China attempts to dominate Asia. The United States does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated
in the 20th century, it is determined to remain the worlds only regional hegemon. Therefore, the United States will seek to contain
China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer capable of dominating Asia. In essence, the United States is likely to
behave toward China much the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

This causes global nuclear war

Khalilzad, 1995 (Zalmay, RAND, Washington Quarterly, Spring, lexis)

The same is also true of Japan. Given

a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan would have to look after
its own security and build up its military capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already
fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability
dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant Russian forces. This
could result in arms races, including the possible acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons . Given
Japanese technological prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the development of its nuclear
power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also build longrange missiles and carrier task forces.

With the shifting balance of power among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional
powers such as India, Indonesia, and a united Korea could come significant risks of preventive or
proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance could lead to major wars in Europe or East Asia. If the
United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could become dominated by a
hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to exclude
the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of
Europe or East Asia, such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States would face

another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more catastrophic than the las t. Under
the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to
multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable
not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have
tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy,
free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with

the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by
renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another
hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and
all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to
global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

SOPO

Obama solves
CNN 9 (Interview with Fareed Zakaria, a foreign policy analyst for CNN, October 9, 2009,
Zakaria: Nobel rewards Obamas big bold gambit,
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/zakaria.obama.nobel/)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a stunning decision that comes just eight months into his presidency. The Norwegian Nobel
Committee said it honored Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The decision appeared to catch most
observers by surprise. The president had not been mentioned as among front-runners for the prize, and the roomful of reporters gasped when Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of
the Nobel committee, uttered Obama's name. Fareed Zakaria, author and host of "Fareed Zakaria:GPS" spoke to CNN about Obama's Nobel Prize. CNN: What do you think of

it's more an award to America for rejoining the

world than recognition of President Obama per se. People here underestimate how relieved the
world is to have a more engaged, less bullying America. CNN: What has President Obama done
specifically to deserve the award? Zakaria: Quite a bit, in fact. He ended many "war on terror"
practices that made people (both inside and outside the country) see America as betraying its
ideals; he reached out to the Muslim world in a way that hasn't been done before; he made
proposals to reduce the world's nuclear arsenals; he re-engaged on the Israeli-Palestinian issue;
he started winding down the Iraq war. All this collectively adds up to a changed American
profile in the world -- as is evident in President Obama being awarded the prize today. CNN: Do you think that President Obama needs this encouragement?
President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win? Fareed Zakaria: It is great news. But I think

Zakaria: He may not need it but I think it gives him legitimacy. Regardless, the American right-wing will react predictably (and already are). Just take a look at the reaction to
President Obama's United Nations speech last month to get a feel for what's to come in the aftermath of the Nobel Peace Prize announcement. After that remarkable speech to
the UN General Assembly, many in the arch-conservative camp were livid. For Michelle Malkin, the speech was evidence that President Obama was "the great appeaser." For
Rush Limbaugh, the president's speech was "basically a coup against America." At the National Review's Web site, a debate broke out -- an entirely serious debate among
serious people -- as to whether the speech proved that President Obama actually wanted the world's tyrants to win, in the tradition of past intellectuals who admired Mussolini
and Hitler. This was because he urged global cooperation to combat nuclear proliferation, climate change and other problems that go beyond the borders of any one country.
The speech was well received all over the world, except one place: America. CNN: Will the award make a difference? Zakaria: It may not influence the far right, but it may make
clear for many other undecided Americans what President Obama hopes to achieve. Obama's outreach to the world is an experiment: He wants to demonstrate at home that
engagement does not make America weak. For decades, it's been thought deadly for an American politician to be seen as seeking international cooperation. Denouncing,
demeaning and insulting other countries was a cheap and easy way to seem strong. In the battle of images, tough and stupid always seemed to win. President Obama is

In a new
world, with other countries more powerful and confident, America's success -- its security, its
prosperity -- depends on working with others. It's a big, bold gambit. The Nobel committee
wanted to encourage this sentiment. I hope Americans will see that and encourage the path
President Obama is taking.
gambling that America is now mature enough to understand that machismo is not foreign policy, and that grandstanding on the global stage just won't succeed.

No impact to soft powercountries will still work with us

Kagan, 06 (Robert, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The
Washington Post, 1/15, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?
fa=view&id=17894&prog=zgp&proj=zusr)
The striking thing about the present international situation is the degree to which America
remains what Bill Clinton once called "the indispensable nation." Despite global opinion polls
registering broad hostility to George W. Bush's United States, the behavior of governments and
political leaders suggests America's position in the world is not all that different from what it
was before Sept. 11 and the Iraq war. The much-anticipated global effort to balance against
American hegemony -- which the realists have been anticipating for more than 15 years now -has simply not occurred. On the contrary, in Europe the idea has all but vanished. European
Union defense budgets continue their steady decline, and even the project of creating a common
foreign and defense policy has slowed if not stalled. Both trends are primarily the result of
internal European politics. But if they really feared American power, Europeans would be taking
more urgent steps to strengthen the European Union's hand to check it. Nor are Europeans
refusing to cooperate, even with an administration they allegedly despise. Western Europe will not be a strategic partner as
it was during the Cold War, because Western Europeans no longer feel threatened and therefore do not seek American protection.
Nevertheless, the current trend is toward closer cooperation . Germany's new government, while still dissenting

from U.S. policy in Iraq, is working hard and ostentatiously to improve relations. It is bending over
backward to show support for the mission in Afghanistan, most notably by continuing to supply a small but, in German terms,

meaningful number of troops. It even trumpets its willingness to train Iraqi soldiers. Chancellor Angela Merkel promises to work
closely with Washington on the question of the China arms embargo, indicating agreement with the American view that China is a
potential strategic concern. For Eastern and Central Europe, the growing threat is Russia, not America,

and the big question remains what it was in the 1990s: Who will be invited to join NATO?