2010+BQ+1ACs

BQ 1ACs - Subject to Change, but we will try to efficiently post the changes. toc



=Okinawa 1AC=

 Contention 1 is Crisis:

The US just retracted it’s promise to move troops from Okinawa to Guam – Futenema will never get relocated.

Satoshi Ogawa , Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper Correspondent “U.S. marines' Guam move seen delayed / Futenma plan also could be jeopardized”. 7-24 -10 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T100723005957.htm

WASHINGTON-- The U.S. government has   effectively   given up on completing the transfer of about 8,000 U.S. marines stationed in Okinawa   Prefecture to Guam   in 2014 , sources have said  , a decision that also could scuttle the planned relocation of a U.S. base in the prefecture. The U.S. Pacific island territory's infrastructure cannot handle such a hasty construction schedule, according to the Joint Guam Program Office (JGPO) of the U.S. Navy. The United States told the Guam government Thursday of its unofficial decision, according to the sources. It had already informed the Japanese government of the possibility, they said. Moving about 8,000 III Marine Expeditionary Force personnel and their approximately 9,000 dependents from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam is one pillar of the U.S.-Japan Roadmap for Realignment Implementation, agreed upon between the two countries in May 2006. Another focus is the relocation of Futenma Air Station in the prefecture. Relocating Futenma and transferring the marines have been considered as a set, according to the U.S. Defense Department. With the marines' transfer expected to be delayed, some observers believe it highly likely  that Futenma Air Station wil l not be relocated    from its current location of Ginowan. The possible delay in completing the marines' relocation to Guam was revealed in a preliminary meeting held Thursday on the environmental impact assessment by the JGPO. Although the bilateral agreement governing the transfer of the U.S. Marine Corps personnel from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam calls for a target completion date of 2014, the JGPO's statement says it "recognized that Guam's infrastructure may not be able to handle such a rapid construction pace." "In response, the DEIS [draft environmental impact statement] will identify a mitigation measure called 'adaptive program management,' in which the pace and sequencing of construction will be adjusted to stay within the limitations of Guam's utilities, port, roadways and other systems. This will result in a more stretched-out, manageable construction timeline," the statement says. The statement took into consideration the Guam government's assertions that the territory's civil infrastructure, including utilities, must be improved to cope with the rapid population growth that will result from the marines' relocation. As the U.S. government is prioritizing the improvement of civil infrastructure over construction of the marines' base, it became inevitable that construction would take longer and cost more than originally planned. This position will be officially announced in the final environmental impact statement to be compiled within the month, the sources said. Meanwhile, a Japanese government source said this country's officials had been already briefed by the United States on the matter. " It will take  several  years  to improve the infrastructure," the source said, indicating that, objectively speaking,  it would be impossible to complete the base's construction by the end of 2014. Some observers have said the postponement of the marines' relocation to Guam is partly the result of the lack of progress in Japan on the relocation of Futenma. " This may suggest that interest within the U.S. govern ment toward promoting the overall realignment of U.S. forces has been diminishing   ," a Foreign Ministry source said. The Japanese and U.S. governments have agreed that Japan will shoulder 6.09 billion dollars, or 59 percent, of the total budget of 10.27 billion dollars for moving the marines from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam. The Japanese portion includes fiscal spending of 2.8 billion dollars. Guam's strong resistance The de facto postponement of completing the U.S. marines' relocation to Guam was prompted by strong resistance from the Guam government. Guam Gov. Felix Camacho argued strongly for improvements in civil infrastructure when the Defense Department announced the draft environmental impact statement in November. As such improvements will require a certain amount of time and a larger budget, many within the U.S. government and Congress are now increasingly uncertain about when the relocation will be finished. As a result, the budget for fiscal 2011 saw major cuts in funding for the construction of military facilities connected with the relocation to Guam.



Japan is in the midst of a transition towards equal relations with the US, but controversy over Okinawa will sink the boat.

John Feffer , Ph.D. co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, taught an international conflict graduate course at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, lectured at NYU and Cornell. 5-6- 10 , http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/LC06Dh01.html

You'd think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn't make a big fuss about closing one of them. Think again. The current battle over the US Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa  - an island prefecture almost 1,600 kilometers south of Tokyo that hosts about three dozen US bases and 75% of American forces in Japan   - is just revving up. In fact, Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base alone, which rev eals much about US anxieties in the age of   President Barack   Obama. What makes this so strange, on the surface, is that Futenma is an obsolete base. Under an agreement the George W Bush administration reached with the previous Japanese government, the US was already planning to move most of the Marines now at Futenma to the island of Guam. Nonetheless, the Obama  administration  is insisting  , over the protests of Okinawans and the objections of Tokyo,   on completing that agreement by building a new   partial replacement   base   in a less heavily populated part of Okinawa. The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere "Pacific squall ", as Newsweek dismissively described it. After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan  finally  seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington  ,  and the relationship that Dwight D Eisenhower once called an "indestructible alliance" is displaying ever more hairline fractures. Worse yet, from the Pentagon's perspective, Japan's resistance might prove infectious - one major reason why   the United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base   and the building of another of dubious strategic value. During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the US war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon's new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the US out of its air base in Manta. All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the US military is experiencing globally. But the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-water mark and will soon recede. **Toady no more?** Until recently, Japan was virtually a one-party state, and that suited Washington just fine. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had the coziest of bipartisan relations with that city's policymakers and its "chrysanthemum club" of Japan-friendly pundits. A recent revelation that, in 1969, Japan buckled to president Richard Nixon's demand that it secretly host US ships carrying nuclear weapons - despite Tokyo's supposedly firm anti-nuclear principles - has pulled back the curtain on only the tip of the toadyism. During and after the Cold War, Japanese governments bent over backwards  to give Washington whatever it wanted. When government restrictions on military exports got in the way of the alliance, Tokyo  simply   made an exception    for the United States. When cooperation on missile defense contradicted Japan's ban on militarizing space, Tokyo again waved a magic wand and made the restriction disappear. Although Japan's constitution renounces the "threat or the use of force as a means of settling international disputes", Washington pushed Tokyo to offset the costs of the US military adventure in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991, and Tokyo did so. Then, from November 2001 until just recently, Washington persuaded the Japanese to provide refueling in the Indian Ocean  for vessels and aircraft involved in the war in Afghanistan. In 2007, the Pentagon even tried to arm-twist Tokyo into raising its defense spending to pay for more of the costs of the alliance.

 Relations on the brink – domestic turmoil threatens the alliance and precludes cooperation.

Tobias Harris , doctoral student in political science at the MIT, Newsweek. 7-16- 10 “Japan-U.S. Relations Could Get Bumpy” http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/16/a-fragile-alliance.html A mere month later,   Japan is   once again   mired in political confusion. In July the DPJ fell  well  short of a majority  in the upper-house elections. It will now  have to find either permanent coalition partners or , failing that,  parties willing to cooperate on an issue-by-issue basis. Kan has survived his party’s defeat but  faces a party leadership election  in September  that looks certain to be contentious. The result is that the DPJ government will have little choice but to moderate its goals. Accordingly, for U.S. policymakers interested in strengthening the relationship often described as “the cornerstone of peace and security” in East Asia, Japan’s domestic political environment will continue to serve as an obstacle. For the foreseeable future, no government will be in a position to advance major new initiatives, especially those pertaining to Japan’s security policy. And the sad reality is that even if the DPJ had won a convincing victory, Washington’s interest in a more ac tive security partnership—in which Japan would spend more on its armed forces, participate more in overseas operations, and perhaps   even  revise or reinterpret its Constitution to permit self-defense within the alliance—would continue to face serious obstac les.

Put away the advantage counterplans – Okinawa is key to the alliance. C ongressional  R  esearch  S  ervice Emma Chanlett-Avery, an Analyst in Asian Affairs in the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade division of CRS and Weston S. Konishi Analyst in Asian Affairs, CRS. “The Changing U.S.-Japan Alliance: Implications for U.S. Interests” 7-23- 09

Okinawa as Focus of Realignment Efforts The reduction of Marines  from about 18,000 to 11,000  on Okinawa seeks to quell the political controversy that has surrounded the presence of U.S. forces in the southernmost part of Japan for years. Public outcry against the bases has continued since the 1995  rape of a Japanese schoolgirl  by an American serviceman,  and was renewed after a U.S. military helicopter crashed into a crowed university campus in 2004. Though constituting less than 1% of Japan’s land mass, Okinawa currently hosts 65% of the total U.S. forces in Japan. Okinawan politicians, along with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, have called for a renegotiation of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and a reduction in U.S. troop strength. The U.S. and central Japanese governments have opposed revising the SOFA, but Japan has increasingly pushed the U.S. to alleviate the burden of its military presence in Okinawa .9 ** The DPRI review identified friction between the U.S. forces stationed in Okinawa and the local population as a key obstacle to a durable alliance ** **.**  In addition to the  1995  rape  conviction, complaints about  noise pollution  from the air bases  and  concern about  safety issues  after the crash of a helicopter in August 2004  convinced alliance managers that **the burden on Okinawa**  ’s urban areas ** needed to be reduced in order to make the alliance more politically sustainable **. As part of the realignment of U.S. bases, U.S. officials agreed to move most aircraft and crews constituting the Marine Air Station at Futenma (a highly populated area) to expanded facilities at Camp Schwab, located in a less-congested area of Okinawa. The challenge of replacing Futenma had dogged alliance managers for years: since 1996, both sides had worked to implement the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO) Report, which called for the return of 12,000 acres of land to the Japanese, provided that appropriate replacement facilities were arranged. In addition to the Futenma agreement, the United States agreed to relocate the Okinawa-based III Marine Expeditionary Force  (III MEF), which includes 8,000 U.S. personnel and their dependents, to new facilities in Guam. In return, Tokyo promised to pay $6.09 billion of the $10.27 billion estimated costs associated with the move. With the DPRI review and the revitalized alliance, new momentum led to a tentative agreement in 2006. However, implementation of the agreement has been slow and reflects the long-standing struggle between the Okinawan and central Tokyo governments. Public opposition and cost overruns threaten to further stall the Futenma relocation plan. Nevertheless, some progress has been made in the Guam relocation initiative. In February 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone signed a new agreement on implementing the Guam relocation plans by 2014.

Thus the plan: The United States Federal Government should withdraw all of its military presence from the Okinawa Prefecture in Japan.



__Contention 2 is Bilateral Relations__

__Scenario 1: East Asian Stability__

Lack of an alternative means Japan must gain military power within the US security alliance and domestic opinion ensures it will be slow. Allowing them to assume more power will allow US – Japanese relations to check foreign worries.

William E. Rapp , Brigadier General William E. Rapp graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) in 1984 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, Ph.D. in international relations Stanford University. “Paths Diverging? The Next Decade in the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance” 1- 04

It appears clear that Japan will  continue  slowly  and incrementally to  loosen the restrictions on the use of military force and   the ability to   participate in collective and cooperative defense schemes. Due to the changing security environment and the resulting mismatch between the threats of that environment and Japan’s capabilities to respond,  the domestic resistance to change in security policy is slowly eroding. Such liberation of policy is in Japan’s long-term self-interest, as it seeks to shape the world around itself in ways that enable peace and prosperity to flourish. Finding that economic and diplomatic tools alone are not sufficient for the task of achieving its national interests, the Japanese are slowly emerging from nearly 60 years of military isolation and are incrementally gaining more of a balance in their foreign policy mechanisms. It is vital to note that Japan  , while increasing its capability to participate in more traditional military exercise of power,   is not wholeheartedly transitioning into a realpolitik, balance of power nation. Rather, Japan is choosing to become more assertive as a means to bring about its own conception of “civilian power   ” (  application of predominately nonmilitary national means)  and strong desire for harmonious, community-based relations between nations. Interestingly, the Japanese support for the United States in the showdown on Iraq in early 2003 in the UNSC was motivated as much by support to an ally (in return for continued protection from DPRK) as it was by a desire to prevent a fatal rift from destroying that highly valued institution. In the near future, the Japanese do not have a viable security alternative to the alliance with the United States. With  the   distinct   t hreat of North Korea and    the future   uncertainties of China   and a potentially unified Korean Peninsula,   Japan continues to need the alliance. In general, however, the Japanese people increasingly dislike the unilateralism and penchant for the use of militar y force that they see in the United States. Therefore, to many,  being the junior partner   in an alliance with the United States  (especially  as currently configured)   is not part of the ideal  , long-term   future of Japan. This point is vital―the alliance with the Americans is a means to security for the Japanese, not an end desired in and of itself. In order to maintain the strength of the alliance, it is exceedingly important that both countries recognize and act on this increased Japanese desire and capacity for bilateral and international voice. The United States  eventually   will have to share power with the Japanese, who will  ,  in turn,  need to   embrace a more active, risk taking role   or hazard a brittle failure of the increasingly artificial asymmetries of the alliance. However,   these changes in capability and structure, both in Japan and within the alliance, will have a secondary impact on the Chinese and Koreans that must be mitigated through   forthright,   transparent, and confidence-building measures taken by the Japanese and American governments. This  important, but secondary,   role, multilateral diplomatic, economic, social, and military institutions have their place in both countries’ foreign policies. The primary mechanism for long-term achievement of peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia will be an enhanced and deepened U.S.-Japan security alliance.



US – Japan relations aid regional negotiations – Proliferation Security Initiative proves.

William E. Rapp , Brigadier General William E. Rapp graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) in 1984 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, Ph.D. in international relations Stanford University. “Paths Diverging? The Next Decade in the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance” 1- 04

Finally, as the United States undertakes these alliance measures, it also must look to widening and deepening the multilateral institutions necessary to mitigate the resultant fears of China and Korea. Current forums such as ARF and APEC may be insufficient to secure the peace but provide a baseline to advance cooperative security. Although the U.S.-Japan Alliance will be the true shield and sword of deterrence to maintain the peace in the region, these  other international forums will be necessary to build confidence, appeal to the popular affinity for multilateral endeavors, continue the process of deepening interdependencies, and prevent an escalation of tensions and security fears. They also will help to show China a way forward into superpower status in the next several decades that encourages peaceful integration and accommodation rather than paranoia and revisionism. A superb recent example is the Proliferation Security Initiative recently exercised in the Coral Sea by the Australians, Japanese, and American naval and special forces. Paradoxically, perhaps, the U.S.-Japan alliance is served well by encouraging multinational regimes and institutions in the region.

Japan is comparatively better than US unilateralism at creating Asian stability.

William E. Rapp , Brigadier General William E. Rapp graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) in 1984 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, Ph.D. in international relations Stanford University. “Paths Diverging? The Next Decade in the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance” 1- 04

Finally, as the partnership deepens, Tokyo’s influence in Asia could further the common interests of the alliance. Japan is in a better position to mitigate the fears of its neighbors―through its leadership in multilateral institutions, continued transparency about its increased military role, and thoughtful recognition of historical emotions. By not intentionally inflaming passions in Korea and China, through acts of nationalist pride aimed at domestic audiences, and by leading East Asia in a number of multilateral forums, Japan could gain influence where the United States might not be so welcomed. 66 Former UN diplomat Yasushi Akashi recently stated that Japan can be an important bridge for the United States into Asia. “There is a gap spreading between the United States and other countries. Japan, as a U.S. ally, can fill that gap. If Japan takes action in areas out of reach for the United States, Washington will count highly on Japan.”204 Having built a reputation for nuance, flexibility, and pragmatism through its ODA program and postwar interaction with Asian countries, Japan may be in a position to soften the more ideological tone of American foreign policy toward the region for the benefit of the two partners.205 For example, Japan could help extend the joint shaping capabilities of the alliance into ASEAN. A potential example is future negotiations over nonproliferation with Iran, with which Japan still maintains diplomatic relations and Washington does not.206 In that manner, Japan and the United States could act as a coordinated team and be successful in molding the future security environment of Asia.



A healthy cooperation prevents multiple nuclear wars – Asia is the most likely hotspot.

Richard L. Armitage  Kurt M.Campbell, Michael J. Green, Joseph S. Nye et al. 2k , fmr. Dep. Secretary of State, CSIS, CFR, JFK School of Government at Harvard (also contributed to by James A. Kelly, Pacific Forum, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Edward J. Lincoln, Brookings Institution; Robert A. Manning, Council on Foreign Relations; Kevin G. Nealer, Scowcroft Group; James J. Przystup, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University; “The United States and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership”, Institute for National Strategic Studies Special Report, October, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/SR_01/SR_Japan.htm)

Asia, in the throes of historic change, should carry major weight in the calculus of American political, security, economic, and other interests. Accounting for 53 percent of the world’s population, 25 percent of the global economy, and nearly $600 billion annually in two-way trade with the United States, Asia is vital to American prosperity. Politically, from Japan and Australia, to the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia, countries across the region are demonstrating the universal appeal of democratic values. China is facing momentous social and economic changes, the consequences of which are not yet clear. Major war in Europe is inconceivable for at least a generation, but the prospects for conflict in Asia are  far from remote. The region feat ures some of the world’s largest and most modern armies, nuclear-armed major powers, and several nuclear-capable states. Hostilities that could  directly   involve the United States   in a major conflict   could occur at a moment’s notice on the Korean peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait. The Indian subcontinent is a major flashpoint. In  each   area, war   has the potential of nuclear escalation. In addition, lingering turmoil in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest nation, threatens stability in Southeast Asia. The U nited States is tied to the region by a series of bilateral security alliances that remain the region’s de facto security architecture. In this promising but also potentially dangerous setting, the U.S.-Japan bilateral relationship is more important than e ver. With the world’s second-largest economy and a wellequipped and competent military, and as our democratic ally, Japan remains the keystone of the U.S. involvement in Asia. The U.S.-Japan alliance is central to America’s global security strategy. Japan, too, is experiencing an important transition. Driven in large part  by  the forces of  globalization , Japan is in the midst of its greatest social and economic transformation since the end of World War II. Japanese society, economy, national identity, and in ternational role are undergoing change  that is potentially as fundamental as that Japan experienced during the Meiji Restoration. The effects of this transformation are yet to be fully understood. Just as Western countries dramatically underestimated the potential of the modern nation that emerged from the Meiji Restoration, many are ignoring a similar transition the effects of which, while not immediately apparent, could be no less profound. For the United States, the key to sustaining and enhancing the al liance in the 21st century lies in reshaping our bilateral relationship in a way that anticipates the consequences of changes now underway in Japan. Since the end of World War II, Japan has played a positive role in Asia. As a mature democracy with an educ ated and active electorate, Japan has demonstrated that changes in government can occur peacefully. Tokyo has helped to foster regional stability and build confidence through its proactive diplomacy and economic involvement throughout the region. Japan’s participation in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cambodia  in the early 1990s, its various  defense exchanges and security dialogues , and its  participation in  the  A  ssociation of  S  outheast  A  sian  N  ations  R  egional  F  orum and the new “Plus Three” grouping are further testimony to Tokyo’s increasing activism. Most significantly, ** Japan’s alliance with the United States has served as the foundation for regional order ** **. ** We have considered six key elements of the U.S.-Japan relationship and put forth a bipartisan action agenda aimed at creating an enduring alliance foundation for the 21st century.



__Scenario 2 is Democracy:__

We’ll isolate three internal links

1. Legal: Japan currently uses the courts to enforce state policy on the Okinawa issue.

Aurelia Mulgana , PhD in Japanese Politics, Australia National University,  2K  “Managing the US Base Issue in Okinawa: A Test for Japanese Democracy” http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713683781, WBTA

The way in which the Supreme Court and the Fukuoka High Court handled the Ota case and  the method of the courts’ rulings support arguments that the Japanese judiciary is a tool of executive, especially on matters that embody a challenge to state policy and authority    .24   Lack of judicial independence stems from political controls over judicial appointments and other aspects of judges’ employment   such as promotions and salary. 25 The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is designated by the Cabinet and appointed by the Emperor while the 14 other justices are appointed by the Cabinet. LDP leaders `appoint to the Supreme Court only those judges whose policies are consistent with their own’

Governance over issues of protest are critical to transitional democracies. Aurelia Mulgana , PhD in Japanese Politics, Australia National University,  2K  “Managing the US Base Issue in Okinawa: A Test for Japanese Democracy” http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713683781, WBTA The confidence which has resulted from the economic success of East Asia has been accompanied by an element of anxiety as old institutions and values come into contact with modern forces. One only has to talk with senior members of society to hear complaints of a decline of traditional values and a trend of materialist individualism. And  changes in aspirations and perceptions of good governance and feelings of alienation have had implications for politics and social relations. These  implications   have been   quite   dramatic in transitional democracies. Democracy groups hav e been unhappy with the pace of change in some cases and civil activists have been promoting participatory modes of local democracy. The public in Japan is less willing to trust the integrity of the alliance between the bureaucracy, the Liberal Democratic Party and business in working for the interests of Japan behind closed doors; there are significant calls for more transparency and accountability. In Thailand, tourists enjoying a river cruise to the ancient capital of Ayutthaya witness the ramshackle river houses of the poor next to the multimillion dollar hotel and housing developments. The old tour guide script explains that this is not a source of social discontent or instability because generally the mindset of the people is to accept their situation without complaint. Yet at the same time tens of thousands of disadvantaged people, especially from the countryside, conduct demonstrations in the centre of Bangkok against the uneven distribution of income from the booming economy. Thus, feelings of cultural identity - whether declining or in resurgence - coexist with increasing political consciousness in the context of globalizing forces. People are more assertive, overcoming traditional restraint and mobilizing from the bottom up.

2. Politics: Ignoring Okinawa would squelch democracy – the DPJ only recently brought Japan out of a one party system and big mistakes will set Japan back.

John Feffer , Ph.D. co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, taught an international conflict graduate course at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, lectured at NYU and Cornell. 5-6- 10 , http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/LC06Dh01.html

Even if the Social Democratic Party is no longer in the government constantly raising the Okinawa base issue, the DPJ still must deal with democracy on the ground. The Okinawans are dead set against a new base. The residents of Nago, where that base would be built, just elected a mayor who campaigned on a no-base platform. It won't look good for the party that has finally brought real democracy to Tokyo to squelch it in Okinawa.



3. Alliance: US – Japan bilateral alliance provides a model of successful democratic principals that will spread through Asia.

William E. Rapp , Brigadier General William E. Rapp graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) in 1984 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, Ph.D. in international relations Stanford University. “Paths Diverging? The Next Decade in the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance” 1- 04

Finally, the alliance can provide the continuity of peace and trust necessary for the growth of liberalism throughout the region. Success for the United States and Japan will increasingly be measured in terms of an increased community of vibr ant, pacific, free-market democracies in Asia. Making the two publics aware of the idealistic benefits of the alliance will make more headway toward acceptance of a deepening partnership than simply focusing on the alliance’s role in power politics in the region. Creating the conditions for that liberal development and tamping down the anticipated frictions that will arise along the way can best be accomplished in tandem. In the long run, this liberalism backed by the concerted power of the United States an d Japan will bring lasting stability to the region.

That’s key: International multilateral advancement of democracy is critical to the movement – it stops genocide and nuclear war.

Martin Shaw, IR Professor at Sussex, 11-9-99 “The unfinished global revolution: Intellectuals and the new politics of international relations”

From these political fundamentals, strategic propositions can be derived. First, democratic movements  cannot regard non-governmental organisations and civil society as ends in themselves. They must aim to civilise local states, rendering them open, accountable and pluralistic, and curtail the arbitrary and violent exercise of power. Second, democratising local states is not a separate task from integrating them into global and often Western-centred networks. Reproducing isolated local centres of power carries with it classic dangers of states as centres of war. 84 Embedding global norms and integrating new state centres with global institutional frameworks are essential to the control of violence. (To put this another way: the proliferation of purely national democracies is not a recipe for peace.) Third, while the global revolution cannot do without the West and the UN, neither can it rely on them unconditionally. We need these power networks, but we need to tame them too, to make their messy bureaucracies enormously more accountable and sensitive to the needs of society worldwide. This will involve the kind of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ argued for by David Held 85. It will also require us to advance a global //social//-democratic agenda, to address the literally catastrophic scale of world social inequalities. This is not a separate problem: social and economic reform is an essential ingredient of alternatives to warlike and genocidal power; these feed off and reinforce corrupt and criminal political economies. Fourth, if we need the global-Western state, if we want to democratise it and make its institutions friendlier to global peace and justice, we cannot be indifferent to its strategic debates. It matters to develop international political interventions, legal institutions and robust peacekeeping as strategic alternatives to bombing our way through zones of crisis. It matters that international intervention supports pluralist structures, rather than ratifying Bosnia-style apartheid. 86 As political intellectuals in the West, we need to have our eyes on the ball at our feet, but we also need to raise them to the horizon. We need to grasp the historic drama that is transforming worldwide relationships between people and state, as well as between state and state. We need to think about how the turbulence of the global revolution can be consolidated in democratic, pluralist, international networks of both social relations and state authority. We cannot be simply optimistic about this prospect. Sadly, it will require repeated violent political crises to push Western and other governments towards the required restructuring of world institutions. 87 What I have outlined is a huge challenge; but the alternative is to see the  global  revolution splutter into  partial  defeat ,  or degenerate into new genocidal wars - perhaps even nuclear conflicts. The practical challenge for all concerned citizens, and the theoretical and analytical challenges for students of international relations and politics, are intertwined.

 __Scenario 3 is Global Environment:__

Current political environments, complementary abilities, and similar goals would allow strong US – Japan cooperation to solve global warming with multilateral agreements and domestic action. Security issues are linked.

(Kent E. **Calder**, Director of Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS/Johns Hopkins University, **02/01**/2010 “U.S. CLIMATE POLICY AND PROSPECTS FOR U.S.‐JAPAN COOPERATION”, . AP) Active U.S. ‐ Japan cooperation on energy and environmental issues has a powerful, unprecedented logic today, given prevailing political configurations in Tokyo and Washington, D.C. Both the Obama and Hatoyama Administrations place emphasis on these issue areas, and their general approaches are broadly similar. The Obama energy policy approach, for example, emphasizes downstream energy efficiency rather than upstream energy resource development. and also systematic long‐term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The Hatoyama priorities appear to be broadly congruent. Both administrations are also interested in broad, systemic approaches to energy and environmental problems, integrating technological innovation and mass ‐ transportation policy into solutions for energy and environmental questions. Both administrations also find multilateral cooperation congenial. U.S. and Japanese capacities in addressing energy and environmental issues are also complementary in many important respects. The U.S. has historically proven adept at technological innovation, and was a pioneer in nuclear and resource‐exploitation technology, such as off‐shore drilling. Japan is a global leader in promoting energy efficiency through technical innovation, as well as systems and product engineering, and in devising effective industrial standards. Given the pressing nature of global energy and environmental problems, the general congruence of underlying U.S. and Japanese approaches to these issues, and the strategic importance of strengthening the U.S. ‐ Japan alliance, the two countries could productively initiate a bilateral energy and environmental dialogue. The US currently engages in such bilateral dialogues with both China and South Korea, and the logic is strong for an analogous dialogue with Japan. The two countries can also, of course, productively cooperate in broader international fora, as they have in the COP ‐ 15 process. Among the concrete topics on which the U.S. and Japan can productively consider energy and environmental cooperation are the following : (1)  Demonstration projects, such as energy ‐ efficient  buildings, that illustrate novel methods for reducing resource use, and thereby reducing global emissions; (2)  Clean coal  technology, where their capabilities are well‐matched, in an area of fateful long‐term importance for large‐scale energy consumers such as China and India; (3)  carbon capture and storage (  CCS) technology; (4)  mass ‐ transit  approaches, including high‐speed rail, which reduce use of resources; (5)  product  standards that promote  energy efficiency  ; (6)  civilian nuclear issues , including safety and storage questions, the closed fuel cycle, and the improvement and strengthening of multilateral non‐proliferation regimes; and (7)  water use. Both countries can learn substantially from the other, thereby strengthening and broadening their vital bilateral relationship. Cooperation on energy and environmental matters, however, cannot easily serve as a substitute for cooperation in areas of hard security, such as host ‐ nation support, however, for both strategic reasons and due to the configuration of embedded political interests in both countries.



US – Japan cooperation is successful at creating multilateral solutions to global warming. Embassy of Japan “Overview of Japan-U.S. Relations” 2-  08  http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/english/html/japanus/japanusoverview2009.htm

(5) Global Warming On February 14, 2002, the United States announced a climate change policy that targeted an 18% reduction in emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG) per unit GDP by the year 2012. Japan, while renewing its efforts for delivering its Kyoto Protocol commitments, has talked with the United States on the merits of the Protocol, strengthening domestic environmental policies in the United States, and a constructive role by the United States in developing a set of rules for participation in the Protocol by the United States, China, India and all other major GHG emitters. The cooperation between Japan and the United States includes cabinet level consultations (e.g. the Third High Level Consultation meeting on August 7, 2003 ),  working level consultations on the three areas of (i) science and technology,  (ii) issues specific to  developing countries, and  (iii)  the market mechanism, and bilateral nuclear energy technology cooperation. On the international front, on July 28, 2005,  the United States initiated and Japan joined the “Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate,” aiming at the sectoral development and deployment of clean, efficient technology to address environmental pollution, energy security , and climate change issues. Japan and the United States are committed to the Bali Action Plan adopted at the COP 15 of December 2007. As reflected in the “Japan-US Joint Statement on Energy Security, Clean Development and Climate Change” (April 27 2007), “Fact Sheet: Japan-US Cooperation on Energy Security, Clean Development and Climate Change” (Nov. 16 2007) and in various policy statements of respective leaders on various occasions since 2007, both countries are committed to the ultimate objective of  : (i)  stabilizing GHG concentrations  in the atmosphere  at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system  ; (ii)  advancing the Major Economies Process  for a detailed contribution to global agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by 2009,  pursuing an agreement based on commitments by all major economies to take actions  ; (iii)  leading and encouraging other major economies in technological research, development and deployment;  and (iv) further enhancing cooperation in the field of nuclear energy under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) and the US-Japan Joint Nuclear Energy Action Plan

Chaos and Extinction – history proves feedback loops cause disaster quickly.

Oliver Tickell , British journalist, author and campaigner on health and environment issues, and author of the Kyoto2 climate initiative “On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction,” The Guardian, 8-11-  08  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die. Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who warned that "if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase". This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of tonnes of methane – a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years – captured under melting permafrost is already under way. To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.

 __Contention 3 is Solvency__

Sharing power with Japan allows US to keep it’s presence despite overstretch – the seventh fleet and Pacific Air Force are sufficient deterrence and crisis response.

William E. Rapp , Brigadier General William E. Rapp graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) in 1984 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, Ph.D. in international relations Stanford University. “Paths Diverging? The Next Decade in the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance” 1- 04

Focusing narrowly on East Asia, for a number of reasons it is in the best interests of the United States to share power with Japan in a well-defined security partnership. First, the United States will find a growing objectives–means shortfall in the future pursuit of national security interests. The United States may increasingly find that it does not have the resources to maintain a dominant hegemonic position worldwide and will need to find like-minded partners to maintain its interests in various regions and share the burdens of maintaining peace. Second, sharing power with Japan in exchange for long-term basing guarantees maintains the American presence in Northeast Asia  ―all the more important since the election of President Roh and the resulting uncertainties about American force structure and bases on the Korean peninsula. Already, concrete plans are being made to move American troops further south in Korea, or even to bring some of them home.164 These bases in Japan (especially ports for the Seventh Fleet and airfields for the Pacific Air Force [PACAF] fighter and transport wings) are critical to the continued forward presence of the U.S. in East Asia.

And the aff is bilateral through and through: consultation is normal means. Decisions on Okinawa are run through the bilateral __[DPRI]__ Defense Policy Review Initiative and __[SEC]__ Security Consultative Committee. C ongressional  R  esearch  S  ervice Emma Chanlett-Avery, an Analyst in Asian Affairs in the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade division of CRS and Weston S. Konishi Analyst in Asian Affairs, CRS. “The Changing U.S.-Japan Alliance: Implications for U.S. Interests” 7-23- 09

Bilateral Reviews of the Alliance Concurrent with Japan’s internal reviews, U.S.-Japan bilateral initiatives reinforced the new and expanded commitment to security cooperation by establishing common strategic objectives, outlining major command changes, explicitly identifying the stability of the Taiwan Strait and the Korean peninsula as common priorities  in the Pacific region for the first time, and calling on China to make its military modernization more transparent. These unprecedented agreements and statements emerged first through the working-level Defense Policy Review Initiative (DPRI), launched in 2002,  and later at the cabinet level through the Security Consultative Committee  (SCC, also known as the “2+2” meeting),  composed of the U.S. Secretaries of Defense and State and their Japanese counterparts  .7 The October 2005 “2+2” report outlines the major command changes agreed to by Japanese and U.S. officials. One would shift 300 American soldiers from the 1st Army Corps headquarters from Washington State to Camp Zama (25 miles southwest of Tokyo) to establish a forward operational headquarters. (The headquarters were opened in December 2007.) The Ground Self Defense Forces (GSDF) would also base a rapid-response headquarters at Camp Zama. A bilateral and joint operations center will be built at Yokota U.S. Air Base (about 23 miles northwest of Tokyo) to enhance coordination between the Japanese and U.S. air and missile defense command elements. The headquarters of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, meanwhile, would be moved from Okinawa to Guam, reducing the number of Marines by about 8,000. Despite reports of frustration on the part of negotiators because of the slow process,8 ** the DPRI talks led to more joint contingency planning and provided a mechanism to sort through bilateral issues, particularly those involving the bases in Okinawa ** (see later section). According to U.S. and Japanese officials at the time, the DPRI also led to increased coordination between the Japan Defense Agency (JDA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), and the Prime Minister’s Cabinet office, which had been problematic in the past. ** Alliance managers consider cooperation in the inter-agency process crucial to implementing further security cooperation. **

= ** Okinawa 1AC- K version ** =



While the era of U.S military bases is receding, Washington is clinging desperately to a base it has no utility for, and US-Japan relations are suffering as a result.

John **__Feffer__**, staff writer for Foreign Policy in Focus, 3/4/**__10__**, []

For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for U.S. military power. We couldn’t have fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally. Even today, Japan remains the anchor of what’s left of America’s Cold War containment policy when it comes to China and North Korea. From the Yokota and Kadena air bases, the United States can dispatch troops and bombers across Asia, while the Yokosuka base near Tokyo is the largest American naval installation outside the United States. You’d think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn’t make a big fuss about closing one of them. Think again. The current battle over the Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa  -- an island prefecture almost 1,000 miles south of Tokyo   that hosts about three dozen U.S. bases and 75% of American forces in Japan -- is just revving up. In fact,  Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base al one   , which reveals much about U.S. anxieties in the age of Obama. What makes this so strange, on the surface,  is that   Futenma is an obsolete base. Under an agreement the Bush administration reached with the previous Japanese government, the U.S. was already planning to move most of the Marines now at Futenma to the island of Guam. Nonetheless,  the Obama administration is insisting  , over the protests of Okinawans and the objections of Tokyo,   on   completing that agreement by   building a new partial replacement base   in a less heavily populated part of Okinawa. The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere “Pacific squall,” as Newsweek dismissively [|described it]. After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan finally seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington  , and   the relationship   that Dwight D. Eisenhower once called an “indestructible alliance”   is displaying ever more hairline fractur es. Worse yet, from the Pentagon’s perspective, Japan’s resistance might prove infectious -- one major reason why the  United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base   and the building of another of dubious strategic value. During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless Communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, NATO countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon’s new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the U.S. out of its air base in Manta. All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the U.S. military is experiencing globally. But  the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-wa ter mark and will soon recede.



U.S. soldiers use aggression and sexual violence against girls and women in the localities surrounding the bases, in acts that aren’t taken seriously by the U.S. government. Gwyn **__Kirk__**, research analyst with the Global Fund for Women and a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist **__&__** John **__Feffer__**, author and international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia, March 14, 20**__08__**, [], "GENDER AND U.S. BASES IN ASIA PACIFIC" Military personnel are trained to dehumanize “others” as part of their preparation for war. Their aggressiveness, frustration, and fear spill over into local communities  , for example  in acts of violence against girls and women. Although most U.S. troops do not commit such violations, these incidents happen far too often to be accepted as aberrations. Racist and sexist stereotype s about Asian women   – as exotic, accommodating, and sexually compliant –   are an integral part of such violence. These crimes inflame local hostility and resistance to U.S. military bases and operations, and have long-lasting effects on victims/survivors. C ases are seriously underreported   due to women’s shame and fear or their belief that perpetrators will not be apprehended. This pattern of sexual violence reveals structural inequalities between Asian communities and the U.S. military, encoded in Status of Forces Agreements and Visiting Forces Agreements. The military sees each crime as an isolated act committed by individual soldiers. Local communities that protest these crimes see gendered violence as a structural issue that is perpetuated by legal, political, economic, and social structures. Military prostitution continues despite the military’s declared “zero tolerance” policy, affirmed in Department of Defense memoranda and Executive Order 13387 that President George W. Bush signed in October 2005. These days, most women working in clubs near U.S. bases in South Korea and Japan/Okinawa are from the Philippines due to low wages, high unemployment, and the absence of sustainable economic development at home. These governments admit Philippine women on short-term entertainer visas. Servicemen are still protected from prosecution for many infringements of local laws  and customs. The sexual activity of foreign-based troops, including (but not exclusively) through prostitution, has had serious effects on women’s health, boosting rates of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, drug and alcohol dependency, and mental illness. U.S. Navy ships visit the Philippines for R & R and make stops at Pattaya (Thailand) where the sex-tourism industry flourished during the Vietnam War.







The US militaristic presence in Okinawa is imperialistic and justifies and perpetuates unthinkable abuses against women.
 * __P__**arty for **__S__**ocialism and **__L__**iberation, 3/4/**__08__**, []

The United States military presence in Japan has stoked fresh anger and resentment after a recent series of attacks on women __. __ Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, was arrested on Feb. 10 __amid the outcry of the people of Okinawa for the rape of a 14-year-old girl.__ Shortly thereafter, __another U.S. soldier was accused of sexually assaulting a Filipino woman at a hotel—the second such incident in less than ten days. Four months earlier, U.S. servicemen from the Iwakuni U.S. Marine Corp Air Station gang raped a woman in Hiroshima City.__ The population’s justified rage has forced the U.S. military to take face-saving measures restraining its occupying forces. The U.S. military limited some 45,000 troops, civilian employees and their families to bases, workplaces or off-base homes indefinitely on Feb. 20, going beyond a midnight curfew already in place. On Feb. 29, prosecutors released Hadnott and dropped charges against him, reportedly because the victim chose not to pursue the case.

By March 3, the military had already announced an end to the curfew for civilians and a relaxation of the curfew for military personnel to only cover late night and early morning hours. The announcement came despite violations of the curfew, including one where an intoxicated soldier smashed an office window with a steel pipe. __More often than not, U.S. soldiers are permitted to do as they please and criminal actions are hushed up or the offender is given a slap on the wrist.__ The se heinous criminal acts only add to the grievances behind decades of opposition to U.S. presence on the island chain. It is a typical trend for U.S. military personnel camped out on foreign lands to abuse the local population. __Such incidents rarely surface.__

Violence against women is a common offense committed by imperialist soldiers. Such recurring criminal acts are not merely coincidental __nor do they spring from a handful of "bad apples"__ such as Hadnott. __Violence against the local population near U.S. military bases abroad is the direct result of the racism each soldier is indoctrinated with, and women are particularly vulnerable.__ The Army does its fair share to create the conditions for such crimes __. The U.S. military uses 7,000 Filipinas to serve its soldiers in Okinawa__. During the first Gulf War, rest-and-recreation ships were reportedly floated for the U.S. servicemen with 50 Filipino women each__. As__ __of one year ago, 900 Filipinas worked for $200 a month at "massage parlors" inside U.S. camps and bases in Iraq__.

In that context, the November 2005 rape of a 22-year-old Filipino woman by U.S. soldiers in Olongapo City, Philippines may have been shocking, but was hardly surprising. When Lance Corporal Daniel Smith was found guilty, the U.S. government quickly negotiated his release into U.S. custody by threatening to suspend joint military exercises in the Philippines. U.S. military presence in Japan

It is not commonly highlighted that the United States has several major bases in Japan. Following its defeat in World War II, Japan was reduced to the status of a regional junior partner to the United States, who has established a number of military bases in Japanese territory. The bases are a springboard for projecting of U.S. power into the Korean peninsula and the rest of East Asia. Okinawa was the site of significant battle in World War II. The United States has kept bases in Japan despite returning formal control of the islands to Japan by 1972. The U.S. base in Okinawa is highly valuable for its hegemony in the region. Okinawans, an oppressed nation within Japanese territory, have long fought back against U.S. occupation __.__ __For decades, Okinawans have voiced their opposition to the crime, crowding and noise brought by U.S. troops__. Protests in the 1990s forced the closing of a Marine air station, and now a plan to build a new airstrip on the island has stirred persistent opposition. The United States does not want any element of a popular threat to its presence in Okinawa. U.S. military officials have apologized profusely and Ambassador Thomas Schieffer traveled to Okinawa in order to avert a larger crisis. The week following Hadnott's arrest, Okinawan lawmakers passed resolutions demanding tighter discipline among U.S. troops. Demonstrations of hundreds have been organized to voice outrage at the ghastly crime and to demand an end to the occupational U.S. base on their island. It would not be the first time that outcry to a crime committed by U.S. personnel in Okinawa resulted in popular pressure to end the U.S. occupation. Hadnott’s crime is being compared to the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen. That incident triggered massive protests against the U.S. military, including a march of 85,000 people. The three men were convicted and sentenced to prison.



Card continues, no text removed

The U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, signed in 1960, has also been a focus of protest. The agreement restricts the jurisdiction of the Japanese government and allows the U.S. military to maintain custody of someone accused of a crime until a formal indictment is filed in a Japanese court. These types of legal agreements that provide protection or full exemption from local law have always been an integral element of colonial relations, and the U.S. government demands nothing less for its soldiers.

__The recent cases of sexual assault are only the most well known. Unknown numbers of women have been the victims of sexual and other violence for the entirety of the U.S. presence in Japan. There are also many other incidents, such as murder, harassment, drunk driving and property destruction that are regularly carried out by U.S. military personnel around bases.__ The crimes committed by U.S. troops are a product of the colonial mentality instilled by the military to serve the needs of imperialism. They take place in the context of the current plans of the U.S. government to expand its military presence Okinawa, Iwakuni and Kanagawa, Japan  __.__ Only the removal of U.S. bases abroad can bring such atrocities to an end. A growing movement in Okinawa, the Japanese mainland and throughout Asia is voicing this demand.
 * U.S. troops out of Japan and all of Asia!**



The origins of our military bases in Japan lie in the U.S.’s patriarchal goals – today, they actively condone and increase gender inequality.

Gwyn **__Kirk__**, research analyst with the Global Fund for Women and a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist **__&__** John **__Feffer__**, author and international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia, March 14, 20**__08__**, [], "GENDER AND U.S. BASES IN ASIA PACIFIC" Militarism is a system of institutions, investments, and values, which is much wider and more deeply entrenched than any specific war. To create alternate definitions of genuine peace and security, it is important to understand institutionalized gendered relations and other unequal power dynamics including those based on class, colonialism, and racism inherent in U.S. military po licy and practice. Demilitarization requires a de-linking of masculinity and militarism , stopping the glorification of war and warriors, and defining adventure and heroism in nonmilitary terms. It also requires genuinely democratic processes and structures for political and economic decision-making at community, national and transnational levels. In addition, the United States must take responsibility for cleaning up all military contamination in the Asia-Pacific region. Instead of undermining indigenous control of lands and resources in Guam, for example, the United States and local government agencies should support the self-determination of the Chamorro people. The proposed Marines base for Henoko (Okinawa) should be scrapped  and the Japanese government should redirect funds earmarked for it to economic development to benefit Okinawan people. Since military expansion is a partner in corporate capitalist expansion, economic, political, and social development based on self-sufficiency, self-determination, and ecological restoration of local resources must be encouraged. Communities adjoining U.S. bases in all parts of the region suffer from grossly distorted economies that are overly reliant on the services (legal and illegal) that U.S. soldiers support. This economic dependency affects local men as well as women. Locally directed projects, led by those who understand community concerns, should be supported, together with government reforms to redistribute resources for such initiatives. In addition, the United States and Asian governments need to revise their legal agreements to protect local communities. Local people need transparency in the implementation of these policies, in interagency involvement (Pentagon, State Department, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency) and in executive orders that affect U.S. military operations in the region. Such revisions should include the ability for host governments to prosecute perpetrators of military violence so that the U.S. military can be held accountable for the human consequences of its policies. U.S. military expansion and restructuring in the Asia-Pacific region serve patriarchal U.S. goals of “full spectrum dominance.” Allied governments are bribed, flattered, threatened, or coerced into participating in this project. Even the apparently willing governments are junior partners who must, in an unequal relationship, shoulder the costs of U.S. military policies. For the U.S. military, land and bodies are so much raw material to use and discard without responsibility or serious consequences to those in power. Regardless of gender, soldiers are trained to dehumanize others so that, if ordered, they can kill them. Sexual abuse and torture committed by U.S. military personnel and contractors against Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison illustrate a grim new twist on militarized violence, where race and nation “trumped” gender. White U.S. women were among the perpetrators, thereby appropriating the masculinized role. The violated Iraqi men, meanwhile, were forced into the feminized role. Gendered inequalities, which are fundamental to U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific region, affect men as well as women. Young men who live near U.S. bases see masculinity defined in military terms. They may work as cooks or bartenders who provide rest and relaxation to visiting servicemen. They may be forced to migrate for work to larger cities or overseas, seeking to fulfill their dreams of giving their families a better future. U.S. peace movements should not only address U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, but also in other parts of the world. Communities in the Asia-Pacific region have a long history of contesting U.S. militarism  and offer eloquent testimonies to the negative impact of U.S. military operations there. These stories provide insights into the gendered dynamics of U.S. foreign and military policy,  and the complicity of allied nations in this effort. Many individuals and organizations are crying out for justice , united by threads of hope and visions for a different future. Our job is to listen to them and to act accordingly.



The neocolonization of Okinawa has brought about exploitation of women’s sexuality through patriarchal policies, naturalizing masculine violence. Ayano **__Ginoza__**, prof women’s studies, Washington State University, September 20**__05__**, [], “The American Village as a Space of Militarism and Tourism: U.S. Militarism, Gender Hierarchy, Class, and Race in Okinawa,” p. 10-14 __ In the American Village, traditional Japanese gender roles seems to be less restrictive due to the absence of the Japanese and Okinawan cultural presence __. However, once women are freed and alienated from the Japanese social gender norms in the American Village, their sexuality becomes subjugated to the militariza tion of GIs. __As Teaiwa affirms: “This collaboration between militarism and tourism affects the complex process of displacement and social mobility for Islanders, affecting the physical, mental, and emotional health of island bodies” (252). Thus, the space of the American village negotiates and fluctuates with Japanese women’s social class, gender, and race relations.__ The carefully designed popular images of an American landscape entice younger GIs and Japanese women in particular. __Suzuyo Takazato, a politician and feminist activist against military violence,__ also __points out that__, through media, __“Japanese young girls” 10__ __ constantly receive images of “U.S. soldiers as friendly foreigners” and “images of movie heroes” which make them “dream of…the opportunity to court U.S. soldiers” __ (Takazato 263). The imagined American popular landscape exploits that dream and supposedly provides an opportunity to experience that dream. The idealization of the American landscape prevents Okinawan women and tourists from questio ning, challenging, and explaining the militarization of Okinawan women’s sexualities. Further, Okinawan women in the American Village who enjoy the access to the American style commodities and entertainment in the space neutralize the tension between Okinawan conflicts with U.S. imperialism and mitigate the restlessness of the Okinawan- U.S. issue. Masahide Ota, the former Okinawan governor and a tireless critic of the U.S. military bases, laments that the younger generation of Okinawan women who “[have] no immediacy” to military violence “freely accept the bases” (148). Both Takazato and Ota lament Okinawan women’s incapability and lack of knowledge about militarization. However, they seem to dismiss the sociopolitical process of naturalizing the militarization of the Okinawan landscape. __Most of the time,__ the militarization process is so naturally constructed in the landscape of Okinawa through media that people, even politicians, easily dismiss the process and end up blaming and lamenting the women’s behavi ors. __ This shows the vulnerability of younger Okinawans who interpret the neocolonization of the space as urbanization. __ In this space, thus, Okinawan __women are the ones most sexually visible and easily seen as a cause of the sexual assaults and militarization of their bodies although they are the ones most impacted and sexually and racially violated.__ __While Okinawan women consume the positive image of America and romanticize the idea of dating GIs, GIs objectify and exploit the women’s sexuality__. This often results in sexual abuse and rape of Okinawan women. An article in Time titled “Sex and Race in 11 Okinawa: U.S. Servicemen and Local Women Can Be A Volatile Mix, A Rape Allegation Against An American Casts Harsh Light on The Island’s Race Relations” describes a rape case in the American Village. This article illustrates a militarized situation of the American Village with a hypersexualized image of female tourists from mainland Japan as “dream seekers” whose “biggest draws” are “the real live Americans” (August 27, 2001, p39). In the article, the American Village is depicted as “[r]eminders of Uncle Sam abound— America Mart, America Hotel and Club America”: A two-story emporium called American Depot stands in the shadow of a giant Ferris wheel emblazoned with a Coca-Cola logo. Even at traditional matsuri, or summer festivals, children wave cotton candy, shirtless skateboarders do stunts on open walkways and women in shorts and bikini tops lick jewel-colored snow cones. Tourists and dream seekers from the Japanese mainland flock [there]. __The biggest draws, especially for Japanese women, are the real live Americans. (__39) This not only provides the American journalists’ view of the American Village, but also stereotypes hypersexualized Asian women’s bodies which are available to desire “the real live American” males. The sexual objectification of women’s bodies—“lick[ing] jewel- colored snow cones”—is constructed to justify the rape against Japanese women. At the same time, Americans are on display and commodified as well. According to Lynn Lu, description of Asian women’s bodies by the Western media derives from “the Western (male) popular imagination” which constructed “the exotic mysteries of [Asian women’s] sex” (17). However, __a crucial aspect to be noticed here is that in the American Village the young generations of Okinawans are able to perform and dress like younger generations of Americans, and GIs racialize this performance as exotic and sexual.__ __As Enloe points out,__ popular media “can become the basis for c rafting patriarchal and militarized public 12 policies”   (The Curious Feminist 228). __This__ “public policy discourse,”  __ she argues, __  “acknowledges a woman either as silently symbolic or silently victimized” and privileges masculinity (  229). Thus, the hypersexua lization of women’s bodies is a product of dynamic political and patriarchal ideas which valorize women’s sexuality. The women’s hypersexualized bodies are also racialized in the media. In an interview for the online Time Magazine, a “U.S. Air Force guy” arrogantly generalizes Okinawan women’s attitudes towards GIs: [Okinawan women] come out to bars. They know we’re there. What do you think they’re looking for? I mean, come on, they know what can happen, they’ve heard the stories, too. I mean, they live in Okinawa, and they still keep coming, looking for us. So what does that tell you? So they come in, have a good time, and the guy says, so you want to come home with me, and they say, sure, because that sounds like fun and you



(card continues, no text removed)

know we Americans treat them a helluva lot better than the Japanese guys do, right? (2 July 2001) This demonstrates the ways in which GIs conceive of Okinawan women’s sexuality as compared to “Japanese guys.” Those GIs not only sexualize Okinawan women’s bodies, but at the same time racialize them by generalizing all Okinawan women’s bodies as sexually available to GIs. Moreover, the implication is that GIs masculinize themselves by denigrating Japanese men. This also justifies GIs’ sexual abuse of Okinawan women in the American Village where they consider Okinawan women are GIs’ objects. That is, they are claiming the western masculine centrality against Okinawan women’s bodies. The hypersexualization an d racialization of Okinawan women’s bodies by U.S. 13 media and GIs demonstrate the dynamics of sociopolitical processes that militarize Okinawan women’s bodies and naturalize masculinized violence.



Patriarchy sanctions and perpetuates war and environmental destruction – we must take a stance against patriarchy to move away from militarism.

Karen **__Warren and__** Duane **__Cady__**, Assistant Professors @ Macalester College and Hamline University, 19**__96__**, “Bringing peace home: feminism, violence, and nature,” p. 12-13

Operationalized, the evidence of   patriarchy as a dysfunctional system   is found in the behaviors to   which   it   gives rise , (c) the unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment  , spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic pornography   are   examples of behaviors practices,   sanctioned   , or tolerated   within patriarchy. In the realm of  environmentally destructive behaviors  , strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil   are   instances of   behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They , too,   rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay t o “rape the earth,”    that it is “man’s God-given right” to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value,   that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for “progress   .”  And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current “unmanageability” of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with  nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence towards women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors—the symptoms of dysfunctionality—that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this “unmanageability ” can be seen for what it is   —as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy. The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature. Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a  militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society   because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth.” Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning:  Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.



Rejecting sexual violence comes first – our discussion of international politics must include discussions of sexuality or the oppression of women will continue unabated.

Gayle **__Rubin__**, Assistant Professor @ University of Michigan, 19**__99__**, [], [CJL] , "Culture, Society, and Sexuality," p.143

The time has come to think about sex. To some, sexuality may seem to be an unimportant topic, a frivolous diversion from the more critical problems of poverty, war, disease, racism, famine, or nuclear annihilation. But it is precisely at times such as these, when we live with the possibility of unthinkable destruction, that people are likely to become dangerously crazy about sexuality. Con  temporary conflicts over sexual values   and erotic conduct have much in common with the religious disputes of earlier centuries. They  acquire immense symbolic weight. Disputes over sexual behaviour often become the vehicles for displacing social anxieties, and discharging their attendant emotional intensity. Consequently, sexuality should be treated with special respect in times of great social stress. The realm of sexuality also has its own internal politics, inequities, and modes of oppression. As with other aspects of human behaviour, the concrete institutional forms of sexuality at any given time and place are products of human activity. They are imbued with conflicts of interest and political maneuver, both deliberate and incidental. In that sense, sex is always political. But there are also historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.



Okinawa has long suffered the wrath of American imperialism

George Feifer,  editor of World Policy Journal, Fall of  2000 , Ebsco

Japanese and American veterans of the Battle of Okinawa who return as tourists often gape at the Rising Sun and the Stars and Stripes flying side by side from tall flagpoles. Okinawans see less irony in those banners than the hallmarks of their centuries-long subjugation. The American participation began in 1853, when Matthew Perry called on Okinawa on his way to open Japan. "It would be difficult for you to imagine the beauties of this island with respect to the charming scenery and the marvelous perfection of cultivation," the commodore wrote, rubbing his eyes like previous visitors. But he was not so beguiled as not to point his big guns at the utterly inoffensive islanders before making brazen, unprovoked demands. Determined to secure an American base there, Perry claimed suzerainty over the Ryukyus. By the time his report of this act reached Washington, the presidency had been assumed by Franklin Pierce, who, convinced the occupation would require congressional approval, ordered it to end. Still, the ambitious commodore compelled a captive Ryukyu monarchy to sign a flagrantly unequal, unjust "friendship" treaty that established a "permanent anchorage" on Okinawa for the United States. General MacArthur's assertion of the same was couched in strikingly similar language. The United States had to maintain dominion over the Ryukyus, the supreme commander insisted, because they were "absolutely essential to the defense of our Western Pacific Frontier...[and] in my opinion, failure to secure them for control by the United States might prove militarily disastrous." To avoid association with nineteenth-century imperialism, the defense of our "frontier" was said to greatly benefit Okinawans too, just as Japan had claimed throughout the much longer history of its mistreatment of the island. Even today, Pentagon strategists maintain the island still needs our protection, now against China's expansionist potential. Citing the threat to Taiwan, some 400 miles to the southwest, they argue that the Okinawan bases are "the linchpin" of America's Far East strategy. Some military experts doubt the bases are a right or necessary linchpin, or that Okinawa is suitable for training troops; Hawaii or Guam, both said to be willing to accept a transfer, would be better. Moreover, these experts argue that withdrawing our installations from the island, which is "dangerously vulnerable" to missile attack, would enhance our Pacific defenses by freeing us from an obsolete Cold War stance that also impedes the rapid deployment of the highly mobile forces more likely to be needed to meet current crises. Aircraft carriers for launching quick strikes at distant targets have become much more valuable than fixed bases. But whatever the rights and wrongs of that dispute, the major powers' pursuit of their own strategic interests is precisely what has long tormented Okinawans. They might consider the burden of the bases less onerous if they could understand their benefit to them. Even before the Soviet Union's collapse, some Okinawans were emboldened to ask what the bases were protecting them from. Never having had an argument with Moscow and now having none with Bejing, the majority fear the purportedly "protecting" installations, with their dangerous equipment and potential as targets, more than any conceivable enemy.

Japan was occupied for the singular reason of serving as the linchpin of the American anticommunist bastion of racism and imperialism

//Mire// Koikari  is an assistant professor in the Women's Studies Program at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. 20 02 , < http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3347272.pdf>

As MacArthur’s Fourth of July message indicates, US interventions in Asia, including Japan, were driven by missionary zeal for racial uplift. Civilizing and remarking racially inferior Others in the image of racially superior America/West constituted a central theme in both cases. Both the Filipinos and Japanese were made “students” who were to be reformed in the school of American democracy. Significantly, the racist paradigm of US interventions in pre- and postwar Asia had a predecessor in European colonial cultural politics , which has been widely discussed since publication of Edward Said’s //Orientalism// in 1978. Yet continuities between European colonialism and US overseas expansionism go beyond a racist, binary construction of Self and Other. The US colonization of the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century challenged – and replaced – its European predecessor, the Spanish colonial power. In like manner, fifty years later the US occupation of Japan replaced European as well as Japanese colonial domination in Asia  and competed against the Soviet Union for hegemony in the region. John Dower argues that the postwar US policy in Asia and the Pacific aimed at converting the area into an “American Lake” against the communist block, which would replace the Pax Britanica with a Pax Americana. MacArthur’s statement in 1949 reveals the American vision of incorporating Asia and the Pacific into its Cold War strategies: Now the Pacific has become an Anglo-Saxon lake and our line of defense runs through the chain of islands fringing the coast of Asia. It starts from the Philippines and continues through Ryukyu archipelago which includes its broad main bastion, Okinawa. Then it bends back through Japan and the Aleutian Island chain to Alaska. In this American Cold War strategy, Japan constituted the “linchpin in an iron noose of American containment in Asia.” The US intervention in postwar Japan and Asia at large, in which the former extended its military, political, economic, and cultural authority over the latter, comes surprising close to the classic definition of imperialism. As Dower states, during and after the occupation the United States successfully established its own military bases in sovereign Japan, particularly Okinawa; incorporated the Japanese economy, together with that of Southeast Asia, as “part of a ‘great crescent’ of anticommunist containment in Asia,” often at the expense of workers’ rights;  turned Japan into a political ally subordinated to the US domestic and geopolitical interests; and attempted massive “Americanization” of its culture. With these observations, it is not hard to recognize that in terms of intent, processes, and consequences, the American interventions in postwar Japan constitute an instance of imperialism.

US foreign bases are used to project and perpetuate its military empire

STEPHEN R. SHALOM  is the author of Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War (South End Press, 1993), and is on the editorial board of NEW POLITICS, Winter 19  99 , New Politics, 

If nuclear weapons are to remain part of the U.S. arsenal and if military interventions are still to be relied on, then Washington will continue to need foreign military bases. And sure enough, U.S. officials have continued their persistent effort to secure military access wherever they can. Thus, though the U.S. Navy was thrown out of Subic by a nationalist Philippine Senate in 1991, the Pentagon has been working with compliant Philippine officials to find some backdoor way to obtain some form of basing rights. In Japan, despite the overwhelming opposition of the people of Okinawa, the Pentagon and Tokyo politicians are intent on maintaining U.S. military facilities. And military access agreements have been concluded with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Such U.S. bases serve two principle purposes. First, they allow Washington to intervene, to threaten intervention, or simply to act provocatively wherever it chooses. Of course we are told that these bases help to maintain regional stability. But consider, for example, the case of North Korea. Washington reached an agreement to provide the North Koreans with civilian nuclear power technology and oil in return for assurances that Pyongyang would end its nuclear weapons program. Emboldened by its regional military bases and its stepped up military exercises in South Korea, the United States has simply refused to keep its side of the deal. When North Korea responded to U.S. bad faith with reckless cruise missile tests, U.S. saber-rattling escalated. And, tellingly, Secretary of Defense William Cohen has declared that there will be a U.S. presence on the Korean peninsula even when there is a unified Korea (remarks to World Affairs Council, Los Angeles, June 29, 1998). A second purpose of foreign bases is to ensure the dependence of Washington's major allies. Ostensibly defensive alliances, such as NATO and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, have been intended to keep potential rivals in a state of military -- and thus political and ultimately economic -- dependency. The United States has been trying to get its allies to pick up an increasingly larger share of the costs of the U.S. bases, but Washington has resolutely blocked any effort for independent action on the part of its partners. Thus, Washington has refused to turn over any part of NATO's southern command to a European, and rejected any peacetime European planning within NATO. Military action by the allies in support of U.S. interests is welcome -- in fact, the U.S. has continually pressed Japan to ignore its constitutional prohibition on war -- whether in the Middle East or in defense of Pacific sealanes. Independent action, however, is unacceptable.



American imperialism is based off the skewed vision of self-imposed leadership via military expansionism; we cannot explain the problems we face without getting rid of this illusion

Chalmers Johnson  is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//. 2000. Pg. 7, 8 of Blowback …only a few missiles in essentially doctored tests have hit their targets- but it is unquestionably expensive, and arms sales, both domestic and foreign, have become one of the Pentagon’s most important missions. I believe the profligate waste of our resources on irrelevant weapons systems and the Asian economic meltdown, as well as the continuous trail of military “accidents” and of terrorist attacks on American installations and embassies, are all portents of a twenty-first century crisis in America’s informal empire, an empire based on the projection of military power to every corner of the world and on the use of American capital and markets to force global economic integration on our terms, at whatever costs to others. To predict the future is an undertaking no thoughtful person would rush to embrace. What form our imperial crisis is likely to take years or even decades from now is, of course, impossible to know. But history indicates that, sooner or later, empires do reach such moments, and it seems reasonable to assume that we will not miraculously escape that fate. What we have freed ourselves of, however, is any genuine consciousness of how we might look to others on this globe. Most Americans are probably unaware of how Washington exercises its global hegemony, since so much of this activity takes place either in relative secrecy or under comforting rubrics. Many may, as a start, find it hard to believe that our place in the world even adds up to an empire. But only when we come to see our country as both profiting from and trapped within the structures of an empire of its own making will it be possible for us to explain many elements of the world that otherwise perplex us. Without good explanations, we cannot possibly produce policies that will bring us sustained peace and prosperity in a post—Cold War world. What has gone wrong in Japan after half a century of government-guided growth under U.S. protection? Why should the emergence of a strong China be to anyone’s disadvantage? Why do American policies toward human rights, weapons proliferation, terrorism, drug cartels, and the environment strike so many foreigners as the essence of hypocrisy? Should American-owned and -managed multinational firms be instruments, beneficiaries, or adversaries of United States foreign policy? Is the free flow of capital really as vulnerable as free trade in commodities and manufactured goods? These kinds of questions can only be answered once we begin to grasp what the United States really is. If Washington is the headquarters of a global military-economic dominion, the answers will be very different than if we think of the United States as simply one among many sovereign nations. There is a logic to empire that differs from the logic of a nation, and acts committed in service to an empire but never acknowledged as such have a tendency to haunt the future.



The problem with American imperialism is America itself; it has metamorphosized into a militarist institution where its original democratic foundations have withered into oblivion

Chalmers Johnson , professor @ UCSD,  2000. Pg. 221-223 of Blowback … his dispute with Congress. But much like the warfare between Gorbachev and the Communist old guard in the Soviet Union, it had the effect of further weakening the structures of political authority. Congressional willingness to resort to so untested a device as impeachment combined with a president willing to try to divert attention through warlike actions suggests a loss of prudence, even a recklessness, on the part of American elites that could be fatal to the American empire in a time of crisis. Even though the United States at century’s end appears to have the necessary firepower and economic resources to neutralize all challengers, I believe  our very hubris ensures our undoing. A classic mistake of empire managers is to come to believe that there is nowhere within their domain—in our case, nowhere on earth—in which their presence is not crucial. Sooner or later, it becomes psychologically impossible not to insist on involvement everywhere, which is, of course, a definition of imperial overextension. Already, the United States cannot afford its various and ongoing global military deployments and interventions and has begun extracting ever growing amounts of “host-nation support” from its clients, or even direct subsidies from its “allies." Japan , one of many allied nations that helped finance the massive American military effort in the Gulf War,  paid up to the tune of $13 billion  . (The U.S. government even claimed in the end to have made a profit on the venture.) Japan also pays more generously than any other nation for the American troops on its soil. On the economic front, the arrogance, contempt, and triumphalism with which the United States handled the East Asian Financial crisis guarantees blowback for decades to come.  Capitals like Jakarta and Seoul smolder with the sort of resentment that the Germans had in the 1920s, when inflation and the policies of Britain and France destabilized the Weimar regime. ln the long run, the people of the United States are neither militaristic enough nor rich enough to engage in the perpetual police actions, wars, and bailouts their government’s hegemonic policies will require , Moreover, in Asia the United States now faces a renascent China, not only the world’s oldest continuously existent civilization but the product of the biggest revolution among all historical cases. Today, China is both the world’s most populous society and its fastest growing economy. The United States cannot hope to “contain" China; it can only adjust to it. But our policies of global hegemony leave us unprepared and far too clumsy in even our limited attempts to arrive at such an adjustment . Meanwhile, the Chinese are very much aware of the large American expeditionary force deployed within striking distance of their borders and the naval units permanently off their coastline. It does not take a Thucydides to predict that this developing situation portends conflict. The indispensable instrument for maintaining the American empire is its huge military establishment.  Despite the money lavished on it, the endless praise for it in the media, and the overstretch and blowback it generates, the military always demands more.  In the decade following the end of the Cold War,  military budgets consistently gave priority to an arms race that had no other participants  . For example, the Pentagon’s budget for the fiscal year 2000 called for replacing the F-15, “the world’s most advanced aircraft," with the 1:-22, also “the world’s most advanced aircraft." The air force wanted 339 F-22s at $188 million each, three times the cost of the airplane it is replacing, The United States already has 1,094 F»15s, against which there is no equal or more capable aircraft on earth. The last Clinton defense budget included funds for yet more nuclear-attack submarines, for which there is no conceivable use or contingency. They merely provide work for local defense contractors and will join the fleet of America's “floating Chernobyls," along with its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, cruising the seas waiting for an accident to occur. The American military at the end of the century is becoming an autonomous system. We no longer have a draft army based on the obligation of citizens to serve their nation  . When the Vietnam War exposed the inequities of the draft—for example, the ease with which college students could gain deferments—Congress decided to abolish conscription rather than enforce it in an equitable manner. Today,  the military is an entirely mercenary force, made up of volunteers paid salaries by the Pentagon  . Although the military still tries to invoke the public’s support for a force made up of fellow citizens,  this force is increasingly separated from civilian interests and devoted to military ones. Equipped with the most advanced precision-guided munitions, high- performance aircraft, and intercontinental-range missiles, the American armed forces can unquestionably deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation. Even so, these forces voraciously demand more and newer equipment, while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda. Accustomed to life in a half-century-old, well-established empire, the corporate interests of the armed forces have begun to take precedence over the older idea that the military is only one of several means that a democratic government might employ to implement its policies. As their size and prominence grow over time, the armed forces of an empire tend to displace other instruments of foreign policy implementation. What also grows is militarism, “a vast array of customs, interests, prestige, actions, and thought associated with armies and wars and yet transcending true military purpose"—and certainly a reasonable description of the American military ethos today.7 “Blowback“ is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown.  Given its wealth and power,  the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback , particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States. But it is blowback in its larger aspect—the tangible costs of empire—that truly threatens it. Empires are costly operations, and they become more costly by the year.  The hollowing out of American industry, for instance, is a form of blowback—an unintended negative consequence of American policy  — even though it is seldom recognized as such. The growth of militarism in a once democratic society is another example of blowback. Empire is the problem. Even though the United States has a strong sense of invulnerability and substantial military and economic tools to make such a feeling credible,  the fact of its imperial pretensions means that a crisis is inevitable. More imperialist projects simply generate more blowback.

American imperialism is the root cause of nuclear war; the aff is the only plausible module of solving

Robert William Jensen  is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication. Jensen also is director of the Senior Fellows Program, the honors program of the UT College of Communication. 6/15/ 10 , < http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/15-3> If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics. That means working toward a world free of nuclear weapons demands we not only critique the reactionary wing of the U.S. power structure, the Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds -- call them the reckless hawks. A serious commitment to a future free of nuclear weapons demands critique of moderate wing, the Obamas and Bidens and Clintons -- call them the reasonable hawks. The former group is psychotic, while the latter is merely cynical. After eight years of reckless reactionary psychotics, it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by reasonable moderate cynics. But we should remember that a hawk is a hawk. The next step is asking whose interests are advanced by the hawks. Even though in the post-World War II era the hawks have sometimes differed on strategy and tactics, they have defended the same economic system: a predatory corporate capitalism. Let's call those folks the vultures. Different groupings of hawks might be associated with different groupings of vultures, giving the appearance of serious political conflict within the elite, but what they have in common is much more important than their differences. The political empire of the contemporary United States serves the corporate empires that dominate not only the domestic but the global economy, and it all depends on U.S. military power, of which the nuclear arsenal is one component. George W. Bush was the smirking frat-boy face of the U.S. empire. Barack Obama is the smiling smart-guy face of the U.S. empire. Whoever is at the helm, the U.S. political/economic/military empire remains in place, shaky at the moment, but still the single greatest threat to justice and peace on the planet. Any serious project to rid the world of the particular threat of nuclear weapons has to come to terms with the more general threat of the empire. We shouldn't expect our leaders, Republican or Democrat, to agree with that assessment of course. And they don't. Here's a paragraph from the Obama administration's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review: The conditions that would ultimately permit the United States and others to give up their nuclear weapons without risking greater international instability and insecurity are very demanding. Among those conditions are success in halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, much greater transparency into the programs and capabilities of key countries of concern, verification methods and technologies capable of detecting violations of disarmament obligations, enforcement measures strong and credible enough to deter such violations, and ultimately the resolution of regional disputes that can motivate rival states to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons. Clearly, such conditions do not exist today. http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20Nuclear%20Posture%20Review%20Report.pdf Nowhere on the list is a recognition of a more crucial fact: nuclear abolition depends on the death of the American empire. The reason that is not on the list is because nuclear weapons are a key component of U.S. empire-building. That is as true today as it was when Harry S Truman dropped the first nuclear weapon to end World War II and begin the Cold War. Although tonight we want to focus on the present, it's useful to return to that moment to remind ourselves of the harsh reality of empires.

 (card continues, no text deleted)

Though the culture can't come to terms with this history, the consensus of historians is that the U.S. decision to drop atomic weapons on Japan had little to do with ending WWII and everything to do with sending a message to the Soviet Union. The barbaric act that ended the barbarism of WWII opened up a new chapter in the tragedy of empire, leading to more barbarism in the U.S. assault on the developing world over the past six decades. Even though it was clear that after WWII the United States could have lived relatively secure in the world with its considerable wealth and extensive resources, the greed that drives empire demanded that U.S. policy-makers pursue a policy not of peace but of domination, as seen in this conclusion of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in 1947: "To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat. Preponderant power must be the object of U.S. policy."[1] Preponderant power means: We run the world. We dictate the terms of the global economy. Others find a place in that structure or they risk annihilation. No challenge from another system or another state is acceptable. In service of this quest, elites created the mythology of the Cold Wa r -- that we were defending ourselves against a Soviet empire bent on destroying us --  which was grafted easily onto the deeper U.S. mythology about a shining city upon the hill and Manifest Destiny, about the divine right of the United States to dominate. As a result, much of the U.S. public is easily convinced of the righteousness of the U.S. imperial project and persuaded to believe the lie that we maintain nuclear weapons only as a deterrent.



In response to various abuses by the U.S. military, Okinawan women have organized in favor of the removal of the soldiers from bases – only our aff solves for the ongoing crimes against humanity.


 * __I__**nternational **__N__**etwork for the **__A__**bolition of **__F__**oreign **__M__**ilitary **__B__**ases, local and national campaigns from numerous countries, all opposing foreign military bases, fleets, and other forms of unwanted military presence , 20**__09__**, []

“Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence" was organized on November 8, 1995, as an outgrowth of the participation of 71 Okinawan women in the Beijing Women's Conference NGO Forum last September. We base our position on the section of   the Platform of Action approved by the Beijing Women's Conference that clearly states: "Rape that takes place in a situation of armed conflict constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity." We are proceeding on the premise that the same holds true for Okinawa, which has long suffered a foreign military military presence . Okinawan women have resolved that we will no longer tolerate this violence and violation of human rights,   and have thus petitioned the Japanese government to consolidate the U.S. bases and withdraw U.S.military personnel  , review the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the Status of Forces Agreement, and award full compensation to all victims. We have conducted a signature campaign, engaged in a 12-day sit-in demonstration, and visited the both Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue our appeal. We have received wide support for our efforts from women throughout Japan.

Rejection of the rape and other violence committed by U.S. soldiers is essential to allow the women of Okinawa to represent their nation and take an important stance against patriarchy.

Linda Isako **__Angst__**, asst. prof of anthropology @ Lewis and Clark, 20**__01__**, The Sacrifice of a Schoolgirl: The 1995 Rape Case, Discourses of Power, and Women’s Lives in Okinawa, p. 248

Finally, not only has the rape  been redeployed in a representational capacity, it  has simultaneously been absorbed into and redefines existing symbolic expressions of Okinawan victimhood. It is as symbol that the rape/rape victim functions most powerfully and critically for Okinawan identity politic s. Moreover, particularly in the discourse of nationalism, as Carol Delaney tells us, “Women do not represent, they are what is represented .… This observation opens theoretical space to think about the differences between symbolization and representation, often held to be the same.” In many countries,  women symbolize the nation, but men represent it, and often the nation is referred to as female and represented as a female statue. Most fundamentally, “because of their symbolic association with land, women are, in a sense, the ground over which national identity is played out.” 14 As symbol, the 1995 rape and the rape victim can serve in many capacities to many Okinawans, and as such, the event and the girl made it possible, beyond the immediate exigencies of political protest, for a variety of groups with different goals and competing agendas to come together as a unified Okinawan voice of dissent. Identity politics is implicitly one of resistance —  in this case, against the Japanese state and the powerful myth of Japanese cultural homogeneity, and against U.S. military power. This article explores the nature and practice of hegemony within a politics of protest, including the ways in which activists in the Okinawa anti-war movement appropriate and apply the rape as a symbol of Okinawan subjugation.



America must step back and realize that withdrawal is the ONLY solution in the post-Cold War world

Chalmers Johnson , professor @UCSD  2000. Pg. 221-223 of Blowback More generally, the United States should seek to lead through diplomacy and example rather than through military force and economic bullying. Such an agenda is neither unrealistic nor revolutionary. It is appropriate for a post—Cold War world and for a United States that puts the welfare of its citizens ahead of the pretensions of its imperialists. Many U.S. leaders seem to have convinced themselves that if so much as one overseas American base is closed or one small country is allowed to manage its own economy, the world will collapse. They might better ponder the creativity and growth that would be unleashed if only the United States would relax its suffocating embrace. They should also understand that their efforts to maintain imperial hegemony inevitably generate multiple forms of blowback. Although it is impossible to say when this game will end, there is little doubt about how it will end. World politics in the twenty-first century will in all likelihood be driven primarily by blowback from the second half of the twentieth century —that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post—Cold War world. U.S. administrations did what they thought they had to do in the Cold War years. History will record that in some places they did exemplary things; in other places, particularly in East Asia but also in Central America, they behaved no better than the Communist bureaucrats of their superpower competitor. The United States likes to think of itself as the winner of the Cold War, In all probability, to those looking back a century hence,  neither side will appear to have won, particularly if the United States maintains its present imperial course.



Imperialism and the crimes that come with it can only end by withdrawal

Chalmers Johnson , professor @ UCSD, 7/30/  09  , Lexis

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued: " New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan  [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them." The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago. That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet. The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious, " writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities. This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today. In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes. Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not

 (card continues, no text removed)

prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged. Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009),  quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible. It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. As a result a group of female veterans in 2006 created the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). Its agenda is to spread the word that "no woman should join the military." I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.

Imperialism and the crimes that come with it can only end by withdrawal

Chalmers Johnson , professor @ UCSD, 7/30/  09  , Lexis

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued: " New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan  [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them." The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago. That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet. The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious, " writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from



(card continues, no text deleted)

gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities. This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today. In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes. Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged. Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009),  quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible. It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. As a result a group of female veterans in 2006 created the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). Its agenda is to spread the word that "no woman should join the military." I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.

And, dismantling the American empire takes precedence over any other priority; we must change because what is perceived as solutions through an imperialist framework is in reality a failure. Action is the only avenue of solvency

Robert William Jensen  is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication. Jensen also is director of the Senior Fellows Program, the honors program of the UT College of Communication. 6/15/ 10 , < http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/15-3> Yes, the world can change --- if the dominant military power in the world, the United States, can change. If the United States could give up the quest to consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources and disavow its reliance on securing that unjust distribution of wealth through the largest and most destructive military in the history of the world, things could change. That's why most U.S. elites are interested in non-proliferation, not abolition. The goal of abolition will remain safely out of reach, on the horizon, just beyond our ability to accomplish in the near future -- while the United States continues to imagine a future in which the rest of the world accepts U.S. domination. Since countries threatened by the empire won't accept non-proliferation unless there is a meaningful commitment to abolition and a scaling back of imperial designs, the U.S. policy will fail. That's because it's designed to fail. U.S. policy is designed to keep a hold on power and wealth, and the people running the country believe nuclear weapons are useful in that quest. That's why the Nuclear Posture Review of the Obama administration is not all that different from the Bush administration's, as Zia Mian (an analyst at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security) pointed out at a gathering of activists preceding the May 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. That's why Obama's policy includes a commitment to nuclear weapons, conventional missile defense, and modernization of the nuclear complex. That's why Obama is increasing expenditures on nuclear weapons, now over $50 billion a year, for modernization.

 (card continues, no text deleted)

Our task is to make sure we aren't conned by politicians, either those who push the fear button or pull on our hope strings. When we take up questions of military strategy and weapons, our task is to understand the underlying political and economic systems, name the pathologies of those systems, identify the key institutions in those systems, withhold our support from those institutions when possible, create alternative institutions when possible, and tell the truth. We may support cynical politicians and inadequate policy initiatives at times, but in offering such support we should continue to tell the truth. This commitment to telling the truth about our leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, also means telling the truth about ourselves. I have argued that any call for the elimination of nuclear weapons that does not come with an equally vociferous call for the elimination of the U.S. empire is empty rhetoric, and that a call for the end of an empire also must come with a deep critique of our economic system. I want to end by taking the argument one step further: Such critiques ring hollow if we don't engage in critical self-reflection about how many of us in the United States have grown comfortable in these systems. We decry injustice but spend little time talking about how our own material comfort is made possible by that injustice. A serious commitment to the end of nuclear weapons, the end of empire, the end of a predatory corporate capitalist system demands that we also commit to changing the way we live. We cannot wake up tomorrow and extract ourselves from all these systems. There are no rituals of purification available to cleanse us. But we can look in the mirror, honestly, and start the hard work of reconfiguring the world.

= = ==  Iraq 1AC Contention 1 is Inherency Troops on schedule to be withdrawn from Iraq now but will be delayed – General Odierno reports army reinforcing bases in response to threat from Iranian Shiite militia instead of preparing to leave (  Debkafile  ,   7-22   -10, “US-Iranian combat looms in Iraq as US plans UN role for US troop remnant” http://www.debka.com/article/8920/) Rising military tensions are reported in Iraq as pro-Iranian Shiite militias appear to be planning attacks on American forces, debkafile's exclusive sources report from Washington and Baghdad. Tehran is furious over Washington's decision to retain a number of US troops in Iraq, possibly as UN peacekeepers, after the pullout pledged by President Barak Obama to start on September 1 Administration officials are holding intense consultations with UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon for the US detachment staying on in Iraq to be reclassified as international peacekeepers. This means that not all the American troops due to withdraw in six weeks will in fact do so. Just last Friday, July 16, Vice President Joe Biden told a Democratic Party event  in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly after returning from a visit to Iraq: "We will have brought home 95,000. There is no one in the military who thinks we cannot do that.  I do not have a doubt in my mind that we will be able to meet the commitment of having only 50,000 troops there and it will not in any way affect the physical stability of Iraq." But then, on Wednesday night, July 21,  General  Ray  Odierno, commander of the US forces in Iraq, said the American army is busy reinforcing its bases and preparing its forces in anticipation of attacks by at least three Shiite militias recently trained in Iran to strike American targets in Iraq. He also said the US drawdown was progressing on schedule, with about 74,000 troops currently in the country. According to the Obama administration's drawdown timetable, U.S. forces will number just 50,000 by the end of August and drop to zero by the end of 2011 in time with the transition to Iraqi agencies. However, for the second time in a week, the American general warned of an Iranian threat to US forces. debkafile's military sources report that the new state of combat alert may well delay the departure of some of the troops scheduled to leave Iraq by Sept. 1. Instead of preparing for their exit they have been pressed into work on new defense systems for US bases. If tensions with Iran continue to rise, the next batch of 24,000 troops due to withdraw may have to stay on after that date.



Withdrawing non-PMC troops from Iraq will cause increased use of PMCs WILLIAM MATTHEWS ,  7/12  /2010, Staff writer at Defence news, US contract use in Iraq expected to rise, http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4704826&c=MID&s=TOP As the U.S. military pulls troops and equipment out of Iraq,  the State Department will have to rely increasingly on contractors to perform such services as flying rescue helicopters and disarming roadside bombs, a congressional commission warned. That is not an ideal solution but none other seems available, members of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said during a July 12 hearing. While the Defense Department works to reduce its dependence on contractors, the State Department will have to greatly increase its use of hired help. "Boy, that really troubles me," said Dov Zakheim, a commission member and former Pentagon budget chief. "You're going to be getting contractors not only doing what they're doing today, but doing things that are inherently governmental." In a scenario spelled out by commission Co-chairman Michael Thibault, if State Department employees working as trainers for the Iraqi police come under fire from Iraqi insurgents, the injured might well have to be rescued by contractors because U.S. military forces are pulling out of the country.



Delaying withdrawal leads to inevitable involvement and Iraqi corruption Tom Andrews , Fmr. Maine Congressman, 2/24/ 10 , Common Dreams (Iraq Withdrawal in Danger, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/24-10) So, where does that put our soldiers in Iraq? Waiting in the wings to see if the contingency plans being drawn up by their superiors put them back on the front lines. And that is both a senseless and an extremely dangerous place  for our soldiers to be. As I wrote last May: "Will there continue to be violence and instability in Iraq as U.S. forces are removed? Yes. But if a   secure and   peaceful Iraq is the requirement for the removal of U.S. forces  , then   our forces will be there for a very long time   .  If, on the other hand, the bottom line is that  it is time for Iraqis to take responsibility for Iraq   -   as   80% of   the   Iraqi   population wants  -then the president is right. It is  time for U.S. forces to go." The bottom line for US policy in Iraq must be sovereignty , not security. If Iraqi leaders want to engage in flim-flam political maneuvers that enrage their opponents, alienate millions of Sunnis and ignite a new round of sectarian violence, that is their business. Iraq is their country. But the LAST thing that anyone should be thinking and planning and announcing is that our men and women in uniform might be ordered into harm's way to clean up the mess. Even the existence of so-called "  contingency plans   " by the US military   send   s   a dangerous signal that   once again   our soldiers might be ordered to risk life   and limb   to bail out bad choices by sectarian Iraqis   who hold the reins of power. Mr. President, please order General Odierno to dump his contingency plans and read your orders for the withdrawal of all combat forces from Iraq by the end of August. There should not be a shadow of a doubt that our soldiers are leaving Iraq on schedule.




 * Thus the Plan: The United States federal government should withdraw forces including private military contractors from Iraq. This withdrawal will operate in accordance with the timetables specified by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). We’ll clarify. **



Contention 2 is the Insurgency

Iraq is barely stable, but violence could return. [Zalmay Khalilzad , former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN and American counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), June 28, 20  10  “Zalmay Khalilzad's take on Iraq – Part 1,” Iraq Oil Report, [] ] Zalmay Khalilzad: I think this election w as a    success. A  positive step  , a positive evolution   in Iraqi politics. The level of violence was low. The level of  participation was acceptable   and the   Iraqis voted in a less sectarian manner than in the previous election. The two leading parties, one is clearly a secular, non-sectarian, cross-sectarian party of Ayad Allawi that did very well. At the same time Prime Minister Maliki’s party (Dawlat Al-Qanoon) also presented itself as non-sectarian, cross-sectarian and it did very well as well. Of course still most Shia voted for Shia parties and most Sunnis voted for Iraqiya, but nevertheless it shows evolution in the attitudes of the people. ZK: You cannot rule it out. It’s possible it could be reignited. It could happen in two ways. One is if there is contestation of the election results, and if takes a very long time to form a government and during this period violence increases. Or if terrorists are able to carry out operations, spectacular operations, that could once again increase insecurity. Also, violence could increase if a narrowly based and sectarian government is formed.
 * BL: You were ambassador in Iraq during a quite violent time, when there was a lot of animosity between Shia and Sunni in Iraq. There’s a fear that this could return – maybe in different ways, maybe at a lower level – but that it could. Especially after the elections, if some parties are marginalized, ** do you think there is a risk of   this   violence returning?



US military brings insurgency, withdrawal brings stability Global Times, 7/19/10 (“U.S. withdrawal means chance of normal Iraq”, []) In fact, the prospect of the US military evacuation  from Iraq depends neither on the Iraqi security situation, nor the policies of the new Iraqi regime. Instead, it is based on the methodology of how the US maintains its interests in Iraq. To station troops in Iraq is not the best way to achieve its interests. The US cannot maintain its influence in Iraq by relying on  garrison  forces. A large  number of troops is  economically unsustainable and also  unhelpful for the US in getting rid of the identity   and image   of an invader. Meanwhile, the US  garrison  has be come the main reason for the social unrest, unstable political environment, and worsening security situation    in Iraq. It was because of this that the Bush administration, which launched the Iraq war, made the decision for the full evacuation of US forces in Iraq. The Obama administration followed the decision and implemented the evacuation agreement, keeping his commitment during the election. The biggest bottleneck for the US is the legality problem of its interests in Iraq. Rather than get out of the "quagmire," the US would actually like to straighten out its relations with Iraq while taking the opportunity of the Iraqi election to es-tablish normal relations with the country. As a result, with such a kind of lasting legitimacy, US interests in Iraq might be even amplified at a lower cost. From this perspective, the Iraqi election in April is a new attempt for the US to solve the legality problem of its presence in the country. The US took great efforts to influence the direction of the Iraqi elections, starting from the development of the electoral law amendment, the final vote, and the settlement of the "election blacklist" incident, to the personal backing of President Barack Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton on the election polling day. Therefore, when the "long-waited" election results were announced, the US immediate-ly acted and set the tone for the arrangement: To congratulate the Iraqi people and government and to support the election results. In 2005, the US sought to define the Iraqi political structure through the democratic electoral process in order to maintain and expand its long-term interests in the country. However, the 2005 election in Iraq was heavily manipulated by the Bush administration, which strongly supported Shiite power and was resisted by the Sunnis. The elected government did not reflect the real power structure of domestic political forces in Iraq, which led to the retrogression of ethnic and political progress. Serious sectarian and ethnic conflicts were triggered, which led to the deterioration of the security situation. Therefore, the Obama administration tried to facilitate an elective government with broadly representative and social foundations. The US was relatively neutral in this election and essentially respected the domestic results produced by different political forces in Iraq. As Odierno said, the security guarantee of US military bases in Iraq has been strengthened and the joint operations to suppress anti-government militants have also been upgraded. A evacuation plan from Iraq is within reach now, which indicates the coming of a "post-occupation" era in the country. The US is trying to maintain its influence in Iraq in a more proper way under  the   new conditions, which is a   notable   change in   the   relations   of the two countries. The end of foreign military occupation is the logical starting point for the normalization of Iraq. The direct intervention of external forces will gradually weaken over time and US-Iraq relations will become more normalized. The political and social order  , broken by the war,   will   effectively   reach a fragile balance after the temporary pains. No matter voluntary or forced,  the Iraqi elite and the public   should   have sufficient political wisdom   and courage to seek for a path   to realize political and ethnic reconciliation   in the US-designed framework. Iraq's problems will  eventually   be solved by the Iraqi people   themselves. The normalization process of Iraqi political structures and development is also the restoring process of its national independence and nativity.

Insurgent violence is aimed at destabilizing attempts at government formation Michal Harari , fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, 6.10. 2010, [|www.understandingwar.org/files/FactSheet_IraqGovFormation2.pdf] During  this period of   government formation  ,   insurgent groups   have   sought to destabilize the   political and security  situation by targeting members of the Iraqiyah list. In recent weeks  three m embers    of al-Iraqiyah   were assassinated  while another was injured in an assassination attempt. 7 Most incidents occurred in Sunni areas of northern Iraq which arguably points to Sunni insurgent groups trying to provoke a response from al-Iraqiyah.



Rise in insurgency will spark an Iraqi Civil War as factions fight for control, impact is Middle East war and econ collapse. Ashraf Fahim , writer on Middle Eastern Affairs for the Asia Times, 8.20. 2005, Asia Times Online, []

Given all this grist, how might the dark mill of   civil war   begin turning in Iraq? It  might   simply   develop out of   a continuing, steady rise in the vicious cycle of  revenge  killings. Alternatively,   a   sudden   breakdown of the political process   could lead each sect to quickly assert its interests by force: the Kurds attempting to seize Kirkuk  , for example,  or   Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites fighti ng for control    of the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite towns  south of Baghdad -  all of which would entail ethnic cleansing. Further ideological and interdenominational divisions would also arise. Inter-Shi'ite rivalries were recently on display in the southern town of Samawa, where supporters of SCIRI and influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed. Muqtada espouses a brand of Iraqi and Islamic nationalism that could lead his Mehdi Army to side with those opposed to federalism if civil war did erupt. And then there are the neighbors. As professor Juan Cole, an expert in Iraq and Shi'ism, recently wrote  in the Nation: "  If Iraq fell into civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites,   the Saudis and Jordanians would   certainly   take the side of the Sunnis  , while   Iran would support the Shi'ites   ." In essence, a civil war would see the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s replayed   on Iraqi territory. To complicate matters, any   Kurdish success would draw in Turkey. Beyond Iraq, a civil war could destabilize   the Gulf ,  and  thereby  the world economy. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions could be kindled in states like Bahrain, Kuwait and most importantly, Saudi Arabia, where an occasionally restive Shi'ite population forms a majority in the eastern part of the country (where all the oil is).

War in the Middle East turns to global nuclear war, causing extinction. John Steinbach , nuclear specialist, Secretary of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capitol Area, 3.2. 2002, Centre for Research on Globalisation [] Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, " Should war break out in the Middle East   again  ,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did,  a   nuclear escalation , once unthinkable except as a last resort  ,   would   now   be a strong probability  ."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "  The nuclear issue is gaining momentum   (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major  (if not the major)  target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the deepening   Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration  ." (44)



Withdrawal According to SOFA Increases Peace and Security in the Middle East

Ryan Crocker , Dean and executive professor, George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, 7/  10  , National Interest, “Dreams of Babylon,” Ebsco, http://web.ebscohost.com

Now we need to shore up the accomplishments of Baghdad. If it is true that failure in Iraq would have had far-reaching consequences for our interests in the region and beyond, it is also true that the emergence of a stable, prosperous and pluralistic country can have a positive impact far beyond its borders. Since the 1958 revolution that overthrew the monarchy, successive Iraqi regimes have defined themselves in opposition to the West generally and the United States in particular. For example, Iraq led OPEC in nationalizing the oil sector. For the first time in fifty years, we are witnessing an Iraq  that  wants close e conomic and strategic ties with the West. Nuri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have made multiple visits to Washington and European capitals. Immediately after his campaign against Jaish al-Mahdi in 2008, al-Maliki went to Brussels for meetings with EU and NATO representatives. The signal to the West --and to Tehran and Damascus--  was clear. Major international oil companies, including from the United States, are now helping to develop the country's petroleum resources. An Iraq at the heart of the Middle East, strategically linked to the West could profoundly alter the political calculus of the region. And  we now have the blueprint to make this a reality. In the post-surge climate of relative stability at the end of 2008 we were able to negotiate  two historic bilateral accords,  the Status of Forces Agreement and the Strategic Framework Agreement , which provided for a smooth handover from the Bush to the Obama administration. They  are our road map for the future. Perhaps inevitably, most public attention has been on the first , which provides for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011. That agreement effectively ended the allegations in Iraq that America sought permanent occupation , as it did the debate in this country about our presence there. Although we are no longer involved in combat operations, the fact that our military is on the ground is an important reassurance to Iraqis. The Obama administration's decision to reduce troop levels to fifty thousand by the end of August will require very careful management to ensure that Iraqis do not become less inclined to compromise as they wrestle with the hard decisions ahead of them. And if the new government in Baghdad approaches us about the possibility of extending our presence beyond 2011, I hope we will listen very carefully. The Strategic Framework Agreement should emerge over time as the model for our long-term relationship. It lays out the parameters for a U.S.-Iraqi partnership in education, trade, diplomacy, culture, and science and technology. It is the outline for an alliance that can fundamentally alter the strategic map of the Middle East. But it will require U.S. commitment. I am heartened to see Vice President Joe Biden engage directly and repeatedly on Iraq. That sustained, high-level ef fort will be essential in helping the Iraqis deal with the multiple challenges ahead of them and in cementing our partnership for the future. Over time, these agreements will define an increasingly normalized relationship between two sovereign partners. At present, our active involvement will continue to be vital. We need to be sensitive to Iraqi concerns over sovereignty, but we need to be in country. While recent progress has brought new hope to Iraqis, the fear hardwired into their society from the Saddam era remains profound. The Shia are afraid of the past--that a Sunni dictatorship will reassert itself. The Sunnis are afraid of the future--an Iraq in which they are no longer ascendant. And the Kurds, with their history of suffering, are afraid of both the past and the future. Our sustained presence and involvement works to mitigate those fears. Iraq is in a far better place today than it was before the surge. But it is a long war, and the need for sustained commitment continues. Increasingly, that engagement will be through civilian rather than military means, but it is vital that we not lose focus. Iran and Syria have had a bad few years in Iraq, but they are willing to wait. Patience is not our strong suit. Over the years, in the broader Middle East, our allies have come to fear our strategic impatience, and our adversaries to count on it. Our disengagement from Pakistan and Afghanistan after the Soviet retreat in 1989  ultimately gave al-Qaeda the space to plan the 9/11 attacks. Now we are back; but in Afghanistan in 2002 and in Pakistan from 2004 to 2007, I found many who wondered when we would head for the exits again. As it is in Iraq, the continuity in policy from the Bush to the Obama administration in both these countries is welcome and extremely important. We saw what happened the last time the United States decided to leave. We are dealing with the same enemies today, and they have not become kinder or gentler in the interim.



Contention 3 is Soft Power

US soft power on the brink – Obama panders to enemies and is ignored while alienating allies ( Irwin M . Stelzer , director of -economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute  , 7-1  -10, “Obama: Impotence Abroad, Omnipotence at Home”, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/01/opinion/main6637037.shtml) While the secretary of defense works on plans to reduce spending on the military, his boss concocts plan after plan to increase spending on social programs. Even overseas interventions deemed important to national security are grudging, time-limited affairs-we might drop in for a while, but we are soon homeward bound. The  American government’s power to influence   foreign events   is   assumed to be   extraordinarily limited. While increasingly threatening and intransigent enemies strut across the world stage in defiance of sanctions and pleadings of international institutions,  America has cast its lot with   those   multilateral institutions, eschewing unilateralism even when vital overseas interests are involved, pursuing the approval of adversaries from th e Arab Middle East to Russia  , Asia, and Africa. Fast forward to domestic policy. Here government power is considered almost without limit. Fossil fuels create environmental and security problems, so government will order the invention of alternatives. The health care system is flawed, but rather than repair it we will transform it into one run largely by government. If Americans cannot be wooed to support these transformations, they are to be ignored by an administration and Congress that is far to their left, deploying a variety of parliamentary tricks. No wooing of support from Americans, from whom  approval for domestic interventions is seen as less necessary than   is   the approval of the “international community” for our foreign policy. Indeed, when it comes to domestic policy, so strong is the administration’s sense of rectitude that the approval of the international community, so sought after in overseas affairs, matters not. If attacking a leading British company helps make the case for preventing offshore drilling, attack it the president will. If the European nations decide that austerity is necessary to get their finances in order, lecture them on the need to continue their stimulus programs. If Germany’s trade policies don’t suit the administration, go after Angela Merkel in advance of a G20 meeting. Those, of course, are traditional allies. An exception to the policy of disregarding the views of other nations  on U.S. domestic policy   can always be made for a less friendly nation. If China manipulates its currency, rather than publicly identifying that practice, as the law requires, postpone the mandated report, even though currency manipulation by the Chinese regime undercuts the president’s goal of doubling exports in the next five years. China, after all, is a potential adversary, to be wooed, while Britain  , its pension funds heavily dependent on dividends from BP,  is to be lacerated, never mind that we rely on its troops to support our efforts in Afghanistan.



International perception that the US is overly militant because of the Iraq War kills soft power. Hinnebusch 07 (Raymond, Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics, Vol. 16, No. 3, 209–228, Fall 2007, Middle East Critique, The US Invasion of Iraq: Explanations and Implications, []) But heg  emony also  depends on legitimacy  —many  states accept it as long as the hegemon defends a world order that benefits more actors than itself. For John Ikenberry,[|16] the hegemon's overwhelming power is actually unthreatening since the US is content to be an 'off-shore balancer' and eschews territorial aggrandizement; because, being democratic, its policy is predictable and self-restraining, not arbitrary; and because its power is exercised through multinational institutions where it is constrained by mutually agreed rules. The Iraq war, however,  suggests that the US role in the world has taken a turn away from benign hegemony   as predictability, self-restraint, and multilateralism no longer hold and,  in the Middle East at least,  the US has become a partisan player, not a balancer. Iraq may mark a watershed, as the squandering of soft power and substitution of force for consent undermines the legitimacy of US leadership.



Inability for Obama to commit to the withdrawal date will show weakness Christopher A. Preble , director of foreign policy at the CATO institute, 3/5/20  10  , CATO institute (Iraq Elections Should Not Impact U.S. Troop Withdrawal, http://www.cato.org/pressroom.php?display=ncomments&id=326  A spate of bombings and other killings in Iraq   in advance of this weekend's elections -- including a series of blasts in Baghdad that killed at least 12 people on Thursday --  have prompted calls to postpone or abandon altogether plans for withdrawing U.S. troops   . The Obama administration should proceed as scheduled, and   all U.S. military personnel should be out of the country by the end of next year  , if not sooner. Sectarian tensions remain high in Iraq, and allegations of election fraud might only make these problems worse. Given the political uncertainties following the election, some would renegotiate -- or simply ignore -- the agreement crafted by the outgoing Bush administration, and signed and ratified by the Iraqi government, to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. Rather than adhere to the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), some would condition our withdrawal upon events on the ground, paving the way for an open-ended presence. Such a policy reversal is neither warranted nor wise. An expedi tious military withdrawal from Iraq, and a handover of security responsibilities to the Iraqi people is in America's strategic interest. The war in Iraq has already consumed far too much blood and treasure, and our troops are straining under the burdens of repeated foreign deployments. Meanwhile, although Americans remain bitterly divided over a host of issues both foreign and domestic, there is strong bipartisan support for following through on our commitment to exit Iraq. The public is right to oppose a costly, endless state-building mission in that country. Even though the elections in Iraq have been marred by violence, the fact that they took place at all is yet another reminder that the Iraqi people are taking charge of their future. Barack Obama came to Washington promising not just to end the war in Iraq, but also "the mindset that led us into Iraq." If Obama waffles on the more modest promise to simply follow through on withdrawal, it will be a discouraging sign that Washington has changed him more than he has changed Washington.



Loss in US soft power causes extinction. Florig, 10 **-** Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Dennis, “Hegemonic Overreach vs. Imperial Overstretch,” 2/6, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548783_code1259934.pdf?abstractid=1548783&mirid=1 )

There is an even larger question than whether the U.S. will remain the hegemonic state within a western dominated system. How long will the West remain hegemonic in the global system?25 Since Spengler the issue of the decline of the West has been debated. It would be hard to question current western dominance of virtually every global economic, political, military, or ideological system today. In some ways the domination of the West seems even more firm than it was in the past because the West is no longer a group of fiercely competing states but a much more cohesive force. In the era of western domination, breakdown of the rule of each hegemonic state has come because of competition from powerful rival western states at the core of the system leading to system-wide war. The unique characteristic of the Cold War and particularly the post-Cold War system is that the core capitalist states are now to a large degree politically united and increasingly economically integrated. In the 21st century , two factors   taking place   outside the West seem more of a threat   to the reproduction   to   the   hegemony   of the American state  and the western system than conflict between western states:  1. resistanc e to western hegemony in the Muslim world   and other parts of the subordinated South,   and   2. the rise of newly powerful  or reformed super   states. Relations between the core and periphery have already undergone one massive transformation in the 20th century—decolonization. The historical significance of decolonization was overshadowed somewhat by the emergence of the Cold War and the nuclear age. Recognition of its impact was dampened somewhat by the subsequent relative lack of change of fundamental economic relations between core and periphery. But one of the historical legacies of decolonization is that  ideological legitimation has become   more   crucial in operating the global system. The manufacture of  some level of   consent, particularly among the elite   in the periphery has to some degree   replaced brute domination. Less raw force is necessary but  in return   a greater burden of ideological   and cultural   legitimation is required. Now it is no longer enough for colonials to obey, willing participants must believe. Therefore,  cultural and ideological challenges to the foundations of the liberal capitalist world view assume much greater significance. Thus the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, ethnic nationalism, and even social democracy in Latin America as ideologies of opposition have increasing significance in a system dependent on greater levels of willing consent. As Ayoob suggests, the  sustained resistance within the Islamic world to western hegemony may have a “demonstration effect” on other    southern   states with similar grievances against the West  .26 The other new dynamic is the re-emergence of great states that at one time or another have been brought low by the western hegemonic system. China, in recent centuries low on the international division of labor, was in some ways a classic case of a peripheral state, or today a semi-peripheral state. But its sheer size, its rapid growth, its currency reserves, its actual and potential markets, etc. make it a major power and a potential future counter hegemon. India lags behind China, but has similar aspirations. Russia has fallen from great power to semi-peripheral status since the collapse of the Soviet empire, but its energy resources and the technological skills of its people make recovery of its former greatness possible. No one knows exactly what the resurgence of Asia portends for the future. However, just as half a century ago global decolonization was a blow to western domination, so the shift in economic production to Asia will redefine global power relations throughout the 21st century. Classical theory of hegemonic cycle is useful if not articulated in too rigid a form. Hegemonic systems do not last forever; they do have a life span. The hegemonic state cannot maintain itself as the fastest growing major economy forever and thus eventually will face relative decline against some major power or powers. The hegemon faces recurrent challenges both on the periphery and from other major powers who feel constrained by the hegemon’s power or are ambitious to usurp its place. Techniques of the application of military force and ideological control may become more sophisticated over time, but so too do techniques of guerilla warfare and ideological forms of resistance such as religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and politicization of ethnic identity. World war may not be imminent, but   wars on the periphery have become quite deadly,   and   the threat of the use of nuclear weapons   or other WMD   by the rising number of powers who possess them looms. The hegemonic state tends to become overstretched, but more importantly  the U.S., because of its messianic sense of mission, tends to overreach. Some of the burden the hegemon has to assume is inevitable, but the U.S. is particularly prone to massive miscalculation.



Contention 4 is Overstretch

US military overstretch is on the brink; we are incapable of dealing with potential security threats in the future. Foreign Policy Magazine. A publication dedicated to unbiased studies and reports regarding foreign policy matters. 02-19- 08  . http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/02/19/the_us_military_index Today, the U.S. military is engaged in a campaign that is more demanding and intense th an anything it has witnessed in a generation. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now entering their fifth and seventh years respectively, have lasted longer than any U.S. military engagements of the past century, with the exception of Vietnam. More than 25,000 American servicemen and women have been wounded and over 4,000 killed. Additional deployments in the Balkans, on the Korean Peninsula, and elsewhere are putting further pressure on the military's finite resources. And. at any time, U.S. forces could be called into action in one of the world's many simmering hot spots--from Iran or Syria, to North Korea or the Taiwan Strait. Yet, even as the U.S. military is being asked to sustain an unprecedented pace of operations across the globe, many Americans continue to know shockingly little about the forces responsible for protecting them. Nearly 70 percent of Americans report that they have a high level of confidence in the military, yet fewer than 1 in 10 has ever served. Politicians often speak favorably about people in uniform, but less than one quarter of the U.S. Congress has donned a uniform. It is not clear whether the speeches and sound bites we hear from politicians and experts actually reflect the concerns of those who protect our nation. What is the actual state of America's military? How healthy are the armed forces? How prepared are they for future conflicts? And what impact are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan really having on them? To find out, FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for a New American Security teamed up to conduct a groundbreaking survey of current and former military officers. Recognizing that the military is far from a monolith, our goal was to find out what America's highest-ranking military people  --the very officers who have run the military during the past half century--  collectively think about the state of the force, the health of the military, the course of the war in Iraq , and the challenges that lie ahead. It is one of the few comprehensive surveys of the U.S. military community to be conducted in the past 50 years. In all, more than 3,400 officers holding the rank of major or lieutenant commander and above were surveyed from across the services, active duty and retired, general officers and field-grade officers. About 35 percent of the participants hailed from the Army, 33 percent from the Air Force, 23 percent from the Navy, and 8 percent from the Marine Corps. Several hundred are flag officers, elite generals and admirals who have served at the highest levels of command. Approximately one third are colonels or captains--officers commanding thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines--and 37 percent hold the rank of lieutenant colonel or commander. Eighty-one percent have more than 20 years of service in the military. Twelve percent graduated from one of America's exclusive military academies. And more than two thirds have combat experience, with roughly 10 percent having served in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both. These  officers see a military apparatus severely strained by the grinding demands of war. Sixty percent say the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. Asked why, more than half cite the wars in Iraq  and Afghanistan,  and the pace of troop deployments those conflicts require. More than half the officers say the military is weaker than it was either 10 or 15 years ago. But asked whether "the demands of the war in Iraq have broken the U.S. military," 56 percent of the officers say they disagree. That is not to say, however, that they are without concern. Nearly 90 percent say that they believe   the demands of the war in Iraq have "stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin   ." The health of the Army and Marine Corps, the  services that have borne  the brunt of  the fighting in Iraq, are of greatest concern  to the index's officers. Asked to grade the health of each service on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning the officers have no concern about the health of the service and 10 meaning they are extremely concerned, the officers reported an average score of 7.9 for the Army and 7.0 for the Marine Corps. The health of the Air Force fared the best, with a score of 5.7. The average score across the four services was 6.6. More than 80 percent of the officers say that, given the stress of current deployments,  it is unrea sonable to ask the military to wage another major war today. Nor did the officers express high confidence in the military's preparedness to do so. For instance, the officers said that the United States is not fully prepared to successfully execute such a mission against Iran or North Korea. A majority of the officers also say that some of the policy decisions made during the course of the Iraq war hindered the prospects for success there. These include shortening the time units spend at home between deployments and accepting more recruits who do not meet the military's standards. Even the military's ability to care for some of its own--mentally wounded soldiers and veterans--was judged by most officers to be substandard. These negative perceptions, however, do not necessarily translate into a disillusioned or disgruntled force. Sixty-four percent of the officers report that they believe morale within the military is high. Still, they are not without concern for the future. Five years into the war in Iraq, for example, a majority of the officers report that either China or Iran, not the United States, is emerging as the strategic victor [CARD CONTINUES, NO TEXT DELETED] [CARD CONTINUES, NO TEXT DELETED] in that fight. In an era when the U.S. military is stretched dangerously thin, it's a sign that the greatest challenges may still lie ahead. THE NEXT WAR When it comes to addressing threats such as the nuclear ambitions of Iran or North Korea , American officials are fond of saying that "all options are on the table." But given the ongoing conflicts in Iraq  and Afghanistan,  how credible is it to assume that the U   nited   S   tates   could   successfully   conduct another   major   military operation  somewhere else in the world today? According to the index's officers, not very. Asked whether it was reasonable or unreasonable to expect the U.S. military to successfully wage another major war at this time, 80 percent of the officers say that it is unreasonable. The officers were also asked about four specific hot spots--Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Taiwan Strait--and how prepared they believe the United States is to successfully fight a major combat operation there, were a war to break out today. Using a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning that the United States is fully prepared and 1 meaning that the United States is unable to execute such a mission, the officers put America's preparedness for war against Iran at just 4.5. The average readiness score for America's armed forces to go to war in those four hot spots was 4.8.



The Armed Forces are becoming overstretched because of Iraq. Michael Evans  The Times; The Sunday Times staff writer, defence editor. 11-5- 07  The Times; The Sunday Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2806256.ece The Armed Forces are “running on empty”,  overstretched by the long-running operations in Iraq  and Afghanistan,  according to a report on the state of the military. “The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan  have seriously diminished the ability of the Armed Forces to meet future challenges  ,” the think-tank Demos said. With such pressures affecting the Forces, the current situation was “unsustainable – financially, organisationally, operationally and in terms of military-society relations”.



Overstretch causes loss in hard power Carlo Kopp. Journalist, Research Fellow in Regional Military Strategy at the Monash Asia Institute in Melbourne. PhD and MSc degrees at Monash University. June 20 09  Defence Today However, this recapitalisation will have to compete against the sustained funding drain of GWOT operations  and equipment maintenance, in a political climate where the Bush Administration has been on an ongoing defensive against its many critics. This is complicated by many extant equipment recapitalisation programs, framed against the strategic circumstances of the 1990s. These programs could result in force structure components ill suited for the strategic geography and circumstances of the Pacific Rim. The Joint Strike Fighter, designed around Middle Eastern and European geography, is a prime example. This strategic morass affects Australia, with its increasing strategic dependency on US forces. Force structure planning in Canberra has been recently focused away from regional capability priorities, playing instead on the global stage as a supporting actor. This has been a strategic miscalculation of unprecedented proportions and needs to be addressed urgently, since there is no certainty at this stage that the US will be able to recover its strategic position in the Pacific Rim within the coming decade. While it is far too early to arbitrarily write the US off as a spent power, the US is entering a decade of serious stress in its military budgets and force structures, resulting ongoing difficulties in maintaining a credible deterrent posture in the Pacific Rim region.

Loss of hard power internationally escalates to global extinction. Hard power solves all their DA !’s. Zalmay  Khalilzad  , Deputy Sec of Def, WQ Spring 19   95

A world in which the United States exercises leadership wou ld have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and 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, renegade states, and low level conflicts. Finally,  US leadership would help preclude the rise of another global rival, enabling the US and the world to avoid   another cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including   a global nuclear exchange.



Loss in US hard power causes extinction. Florig, 10 **-** Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Dennis, “Hegemonic Overreach vs. Imperial Overstretch,” 2/6, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548783_code1259934.pdf?abstractid=1548783&mirid=1 )

There is an even larger question than whether the U.S. will remain the hegemonic state within a western dominated system. How long will the West remain hegemonic in the global system?25 Since Spengler the issue of the decline of the West has been debated. It would be hard to question current western dominance of virtually every global economic, political, military, or ideological system today. In some ways the domination of the West seems even more firm than it was in the past because the West is no longer a group of fiercely competing states but a much more cohesive force. In the era of western domination, breakdown of the rule of each hegemonic state has come because of competition from powerful rival western states at the core of the system leading to system-wide war. The unique characteristic of the Cold War and particularly the post-Cold War system is that the core capitalist states are now to a large degree politically united and increasingly economically integrated. In the 21st century , two factors   taking place   outside the West seem more of a threat   to the reproduction   to   the   hegemony   of the American state  and the western system than conflict between western states:  1. resistance to western hegemony in the Muslim world  and other parts of the subordinated South,   and   2. the rise of newly powerful  or reformed super   states. Relations between the core and periphery have already undergone one massive transformation in the 20th century—decolonization. The historical significance of decolonization was overshadowed somewhat by the emergence of the Cold War and the nuclear age. Recognition of its impact was dampened somewhat by the subsequent relative lack of change of fundamental economic relations between core and periphery. But one of the historical legacies of decolonization is that  ideological legitimation has become   more   crucial in operating the global system. The manufacture of  some level of   consent, partic ularly among the elite    in the periphery has to some degree   replaced brute domination. Less raw force is necessary but  in return   a greater burden of ideological   and cultural   legitimation is required. Now it is no longer enough for colonials to obey, willing participants must believe. Therefore,  cultural and ideological challenges to the foundations of the liberal capitalist world view assume much greater significance. Thus the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, ethnic nationalism, and even social democracy in Latin America as ideologies of opposition have increasing significance in a system dependent on greater levels of willing consent. As Ayoob suggests, the  sustained resistance within the Islamic world to western hegemony may have a “demonstration effect” on other   southern   states with similar grievances against the West  .26 The other new dynamic is the re-emergence of great states that at one time or another have been brought low by the western hegemonic system. China, in recent centuries low on the international division of labor, was in some ways a classic case of a peripheral state, or today a semi-peripheral state. But its sheer size, its rapid growth, its currency reserves, its actual and potential markets, etc. make it a major power and a potential future counter hegemon. India lags behind China, but has similar aspirations. Russia has fallen from great power to semi-peripheral status since the collapse of the Soviet empire, but its energy resources and the technological skills of its people make recovery of its former greatness possible. No one knows exactly what the resurgence of Asia portends for the future. However, just as half a century ago global decolonization was a blow to western domination, so the shift in economic production to Asia will redefine global power relations throughout the 21st century. Classical theory of hegemonic cycle is useful if not articulated in too rigid a form. Hegemonic systems do not last forever; they do have a life span. The hegemonic state cannot maintain itself as the fastest growing major economy forever and thus eventually will face relative decline against some major power or powers. The hegemon faces recurrent challenges both on the periphery and from other major powers who feel constrained by the hegemon’s power or are ambitious to usurp its place. Techniques of the application of military force and ideological control may become more sophisticated over time, but so too do techniques of guerilla warfare and ideological forms of resistance such as religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and politicization of ethnic identity. World war may not be imminent, but   wars on the periphery have become quite deadly,   and   the th reat of the use of nuclear weapons    or other WMD   by the rising number of powers who possess them looms. The hegemonic state tends to become overstretched, but more importantly  the U.S., because of its messianic sense of mission, tends to overreach. Some of the burden the hegemon has to assume is inevitable, but the U.S. is particularly prone to massive miscalculation.



Contention 5 is Solvency

Withdrawal is key to Iraqi stability and relations with Iraq and the rest of the world. [Raed Jarrar , political consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, and a senior fellow at Peace Action  , 05-27  -10 “Don't reward violence in Iraq by extending US troop withdrawal deadline,” Juneau Empire, http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/052710/opi_645328218.shtml] President Obama should not bow to the Beltway voices urging him to  keep U.S. troops longer in Iraq. At a speech at West Point on Saturday, Obama said: "We are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer." His statement, which the cadets greeted with applause, is a reaffirmation of his pledge to have all U.S. combat forces leave Iraq by Aug. 31. Any remaining armed forces are required to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 in accordance with the binding bilateral Security Agreement, also referred to as the Status of Forces Agreement. But Washington pundits are still pushing Obama to delay or cancel the U.S. disengagement, calling on him to be "flexible" and take into consideration the recent spike of violence in Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed and injured during the last few months in what seems to be an organized campaign to challenge U.S. plans. While most Iraqis would agree that Iraq is still broken, delaying or canceling the U.S. troop removal will definitely not be seen as "flexibility," but rather as a betrayal of promises. Iraqis believe that  prolonging the military occupation will not fix what the occupation has damaged, and they don't think that extending the U.S. intervention will protect them from other interventions. The vast majority of Iraqis see the U.S. military presence as a part of the problem, not the solution. Linking the U.S. withdrawal to conditions on the ground creates an equation by which further deterioration in Iraq will automatically lead to prolonging the U.S. military presence. Some of the current Iraqi ruling parties want the U.S. occupation to continue because they have been benefiting from it. Some regional players, including the Iranian government, do not want an independent and strong Iraq to re-emerge. And other groups, including al-Qaeda, would gladly see the United States stuck in the current quagmire, losing its blood, treasure and reputation. Connecting the pullout to the prevalent situation would be an open invitation to those who seek an endless war to sab otage Iraq even further, and delaying it will send the wrong message to them. By contrast, adhering to the current time-based plan would pull the rug from under their feet and allow Iraqis to stabilize their nation , a process that may take many years but that cannot begin as long as Iraq's sovereignty is breached by foreign interventions. If the Obama administration reneges on its plans, it will effectively reward those responsible for the bloodshed and further embolden them. Such a decision would most likely have serious ramifications for the security of U.S. troops in Iraq, and will impede the security and political progress in the country. And delaying the U.S. pullout will not only harm the U.S. image around the world, which Obama has been trying hard to improve, but it will also be the final blow to U.S. credibility in Iraq. The mere promise of a complete withdrawal has boosted Iraqi domestic politics and enhanced the U.S. perception in the country. Unless Obama delivers on his promises, many of these achievements will be lost, and Iraq will be sent back to square o ne.

=South Korea 1AC= 

Contention 1 is Inherency Troops on schedule to be withdrawn from Iraq now but will be delayed – General Odierno reports army reinforcing bases in response to threat from Iranian Shiite militia instead of preparing to leave (  Debkafile  ,   7-22   -10, “US-Iranian combat looms in Iraq as US plans UN role for US troop remnant” http://www.debka.com/article/8920/) Rising military tensions are reported in Iraq as pro-Iranian Shiite militias appear to be planning attacks on American forces, debkafile's exclusive sources report from Washington and Baghdad. Tehran is furious over Washington's decision to retain a number of US troops in Iraq, possibly as UN peacekeepers, after the pullout pledged by President Barak Obama to start on September 1 Administration officials are holding intense consultations with UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon for the US detachment staying on in Iraq to be reclassified as international peacekeepers. This means that not all the American troops due to withdraw in six weeks will in fact do so. Just last Friday, July 16, Vice President Joe Biden told a Democratic Party event  in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly after returning from a visit to Iraq: "We will have brought home 95,000. There is no one in the military who thinks we cannot do that.  I do not have a doubt in my mind that we will be able to meet the commitment of having only 50,000 troops there and it will not in any way affect the physical stability of Iraq." But then, on Wednesday night, July 21,  General  Ray  Odierno, commander of the US forces in Iraq, said the American army is busy reinforcing its bases and preparing its forces in anticipation of attacks by at least three Shiite militias recently trained in Iran to strike American targets in Iraq. He also said the US drawdown was progressing on schedule, with about 74,000 troops currently in the country. According to the Obama administration's drawdown timetable, U.S. forces will number just 50,000 by the end of August and drop to zero by the end of 2011 in time with the transition to Iraqi agencies. However, for the second time in a week, the American general warned of an Iranian threat to US forces. debkafile's military sources report that the new state of combat alert may well delay the departure of some of the troops scheduled to leave Iraq by Sept. 1. Instead of preparing for their exit they have been pressed into work on new defense systems for US bases. If tensions with Iran continue to rise, the next batch of 24,000 troops due to withdraw may have to stay on after that date.



Withdrawing non-PMC troops from Iraq will cause increased use of PMCs WILLIAM MATTHEWS ,  7/12  /2010, Staff writer at Defence news, US contract use in Iraq expected to rise, http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4704826&c=MID&s=TOP As the U.S. military pulls troops and equipment out of Iraq,  the State Department will have to rely increasingly on contractors to perform such services as flying rescue helicopters and disarming roadside bombs, a congressional commission warned. That is not an ideal solution but none other seems available, members of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said during a July 12 hearing. While the Defense Department works to reduce its dependence on contractors, the State Department will have to greatly increase its use of hired help. "Boy, that really troubles me," said Dov Zakheim, a commission member and former Pentagon budget chief. "You're going to be getting contractors not only doing what they're doing today, but doing things that are inherently governmental." In a scenario spelled out by commission Co-chairman Michael Thibault, if State Department employees working as trainers for the Iraqi police come under fire from Iraqi insurgents, the injured might well have to be rescued by contractors because U.S. military forces are pulling out of the country.



Delaying withdrawal leads to inevitable involvement and Iraqi corruption Tom Andrews , Fmr. Maine Congressman, 2/24/ 10 , Common Dreams (Iraq Withdrawal in Danger, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/24-10) So, where does that put our soldiers in Iraq? Waiting in the wings to see if the contingency plans being drawn up by their superiors put them back on the front lines. And that is both a senseless and an extremely dangerous place  for our soldiers to be. As I wrote last May: "Will there continue to be violence and instability in Iraq as U.S. forces are removed? Yes. But if a   secure and   peaceful Iraq is the requirement for the removal of U.S. forces  , then   our forces will be there for a very long time   .  If, on the other hand, the bottom line is that  it is time for Iraqis to take responsibility for Iraq   -   as   80% of   the   Iraqi   population wants  -then the president is right. It is  time for U.S. forces to go." The bottom line for US policy in Iraq must be sovereignty , not security. If Iraqi leaders want to engage in flim-flam political maneuvers that enrage their opponents, alienate millions of Sunnis and ignite a new round of sectarian violence, that is their business. Iraq is their country. But the LAST thing that anyone should be thinking and planning and announcing is that our men and women in uniform might be ordered into harm's way to clean up the mess. Even the existence of so-called "  contingency plans   " by the US military   send   s   a dangerous signal that   once again   our soldiers might be ordered to risk life   and limb   to bail out bad choices by sectarian Iraqis   who hold the reins of power. Mr. President, please order General Odierno to dump his contingency plans and read your orders for the withdrawal of all combat forces from Iraq by the end of August. There should not be a shadow of a doubt that our soldiers are leaving Iraq on schedule.




 * Thus the Plan: The United States federal government should withdraw forces including private military contractors from Iraq. This withdrawal will operate in accordance with the timetables specified by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). We’ll clarify. **



Contention 2 is the Insurgency

Iraq is barely stable, but violence could return. [Zalmay Khalilzad , former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN and American counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), June 28, 20  10  “Zalmay Khalilzad's take on Iraq – Part 1,” Iraq Oil Report, [] ] Zalmay Khalilzad: I think this election w as a    success. A  positive step  , a positive evolution   in Iraqi politics. The level of violence was low. The level of  participation was acceptable   and the   Iraqis voted in a less sectarian manner than in the previous election. The two leading parties, one is clearly a secular, non-sectarian, cross-sectarian party of Ayad Allawi that did very well. At the same time Prime Minister Maliki’s party (Dawlat Al-Qanoon) also presented itself as non-sectarian, cross-sectarian and it did very well as well. Of course still most Shia voted for Shia parties and most Sunnis voted for Iraqiya, but nevertheless it shows evolution in the attitudes of the people. ZK: You cannot rule it out. It’s possible it could be reignited. It could happen in two ways. One is if there is contestation of the election results, and if takes a very long time to form a government and during this period violence increases. Or if terrorists are able to carry out operations, spectacular operations, that could once again increase insecurity. Also, violence could increase if a narrowly based and sectarian government is formed.
 * BL: You were ambassador in Iraq during a quite violent time, when there was a lot of animosity between Shia and Sunni in Iraq. There’s a fear that this could return – maybe in different ways, maybe at a lower level – but that it could. Especially after the elections, if some parties are marginalized, ** do you think there is a risk of   this   violence returning?



US military brings insurgency, withdrawal brings stability Global Times, 7/19/10 (“U.S. withdrawal means chance of normal Iraq”, []) In fact, the prospect of the US military evacuation  from Iraq depends neither on the Iraqi security situation, nor the policies of the new Iraqi regime. Instead, it is based on the methodology of how the US maintains its interests in Iraq. To station troops in Iraq is not the best way to achieve its interests. The US cannot maintain its influence in Iraq by relying on  garrison  forces. A large  number of troops is  economically unsustainable and also  unhelpful for the US in getting rid of the identity   and image   of an invader. Meanwhile, the US  garrison  has be come the main reason for the social unrest, unstable political environment, and worsening security situation    in Iraq. It was because of this that the Bush administration, which launched the Iraq war, made the decision for the full evacuation of US forces in Iraq. The Obama administration followed the decision and implemented the evacuation agreement, keeping his commitment during the election. The biggest bottleneck for the US is the legality problem of its interests in Iraq. Rather than get out of the "quagmire," the US would actually like to straighten out its relations with Iraq while taking the opportunity of the Iraqi election to es-tablish normal relations with the country. As a result, with such a kind of lasting legitimacy, US interests in Iraq might be even amplified at a lower cost. From this perspective, the Iraqi election in April is a new attempt for the US to solve the legality problem of its presence in the country. The US took great efforts to influence the direction of the Iraqi elections, starting from the development of the electoral law amendment, the final vote, and the settlement of the "election blacklist" incident, to the personal backing of President Barack Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton on the election polling day. Therefore, when the "long-waited" election results were announced, the US immediate-ly acted and set the tone for the arrangement: To congratulate the Iraqi people and government and to support the election results. In 2005, the US sought to define the Iraqi political structure through the democratic electoral process in order to maintain and expand its long-term interests in the country. However, the 2005 election in Iraq was heavily manipulated by the Bush administration, which strongly supported Shiite power and was resisted by the Sunnis. The elected government did not reflect the real power structure of domestic political forces in Iraq, which led to the retrogression of ethnic and political progress. Serious sectarian and ethnic conflicts were triggered, which led to the deterioration of the security situation. Therefore, the Obama administration tried to facilitate an elective government with broadly representative and social foundations. The US was relatively neutral in this election and essentially respected the domestic results produced by different political forces in Iraq. As Odierno said, the security guarantee of US military bases in Iraq has been strengthened and the joint operations to suppress anti-government militants have also been upgraded. A evacuation plan from Iraq is within reach now, which indicates the coming of a "post-occupation" era in the country. The US is trying to maintain its influence in Iraq in a more proper way under  the   new conditions, which is a   notable   change in   the   relations   of the two countries. The end of foreign military occupation is the logical starting point for the normalization of Iraq. The direct intervention of external forces will gradually weaken over time and US-Iraq relations will become more normalized. The political and social order  , broken by the war,   will   effectively   reach a fragile balance after the temporary pains. No matter voluntary or forced,  the Iraqi elite and the public   should   have sufficient political wisdom   and courage to seek for a path   to realize political and ethnic reconciliation   in the US-designed framework. Iraq's problems will  eventually   be solved by the Iraqi people   themselves. The normalization process of Iraqi political structures and development is also the restoring process of its national independence and nativity.

Insurgent violence is aimed at destabilizing attempts at government formation Michal Harari , fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, 6.10. 2010, [|www.understandingwar.org/files/FactSheet_IraqGovFormation2.pdf] During  this period of   government formation  ,   insurgent groups   have   sought to destabilize the   political and security  situation by targeting members of the Iraqiyah list. In recent weeks  three m embers    of al-Iraqiyah   were assassinated  while another was injured in an assassination attempt. 7 Most incidents occurred in Sunni areas of northern Iraq which arguably points to Sunni insurgent groups trying to provoke a response from al-Iraqiyah.



Rise in insurgency will spark an Iraqi Civil War as factions fight for control, impact is Middle East war and econ collapse. Ashraf Fahim , writer on Middle Eastern Affairs for the Asia Times, 8.20. 2005, Asia Times Online, []

Given all this grist, how might the dark mill of   civil war   begin turning in Iraq? It  might   simply   develop out of   a continuing, steady rise in the vicious cycle of  revenge  killings. Alternatively,   a   sudden   breakdown of the political process   could lead each sect to quickly assert its interests by force: the Kurds attempting to seize Kirkuk  , for example,  or   Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites fighti ng for control    of the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite towns  south of Baghdad -  all of which would entail ethnic cleansing. Further ideological and interdenominational divisions would also arise. Inter-Shi'ite rivalries were recently on display in the southern town of Samawa, where supporters of SCIRI and influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed. Muqtada espouses a brand of Iraqi and Islamic nationalism that could lead his Mehdi Army to side with those opposed to federalism if civil war did erupt. And then there are the neighbors. As professor Juan Cole, an expert in Iraq and Shi'ism, recently wrote  in the Nation: "  If Iraq fell into civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites,   the Saudis and Jordanians would   certainly   take the side of the Sunnis  , while   Iran would support the Shi'ites   ." In essence, a civil war would see the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s replayed   on Iraqi territory. To complicate matters, any   Kurdish success would draw in Turkey. Beyond Iraq, a civil war could destabilize   the Gulf ,  and  thereby  the world economy. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions could be kindled in states like Bahrain, Kuwait and most importantly, Saudi Arabia, where an occasionally restive Shi'ite population forms a majority in the eastern part of the country (where all the oil is).

War in the Middle East turns to global nuclear war, causing extinction. John Steinbach , nuclear specialist, Secretary of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capitol Area, 3.2. 2002, Centre for Research on Globalisation [] Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, " Should war break out in the Middle East   again  ,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did,  a   nuclear escalation , once unthinkable except as a last resort  ,   would   now   be a strong probability  ."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "  The nuclear issue is gaining momentum   (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major  (if not the major)  target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the deepening   Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration  ." (44)



Withdrawal According to SOFA Increases Peace and Security in the Middle East

Ryan Crocker , Dean and executive professor, George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, 7/  10  , National Interest, “Dreams of Babylon,” Ebsco, http://web.ebscohost.com

Now we need to shore up the accomplishments of Baghdad. If it is true that failure in Iraq would have had far-reaching consequences for our interests in the region and beyond, it is also true that the emergence of a stable, prosperous and pluralistic country can have a positive impact far beyond its borders. Since the 1958 revolution that overthrew the monarchy, successive Iraqi regimes have defined themselves in opposition to the West generally and the United States in particular. For example, Iraq led OPEC in nationalizing the oil sector. For the first time in fifty years, we are witnessing an Iraq  that  wants close e conomic and strategic ties with the West. Nuri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have made multiple visits to Washington and European capitals. Immediately after his campaign against Jaish al-Mahdi in 2008, al-Maliki went to Brussels for meetings with EU and NATO representatives. The signal to the West --and to Tehran and Damascus--  was clear. Major international oil companies, including from the United States, are now helping to develop the country's petroleum resources. An Iraq at the heart of the Middle East, strategically linked to the West could profoundly alter the political calculus of the region. And  we now have the blueprint to make this a reality. In the post-surge climate of relative stability at the end of 2008 we were able to negotiate  two historic bilateral accords,  the Status of Forces Agreement and the Strategic Framework Agreement , which provided for a smooth handover from the Bush to the Obama administration. They  are our road map for the future. Perhaps inevitably, most public attention has been on the first , which provides for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011. That agreement effectively ended the allegations in Iraq that America sought permanent occupation , as it did the debate in this country about our presence there. Although we are no longer involved in combat operations, the fact that our military is on the ground is an important reassurance to Iraqis. The Obama administration's decision to reduce troop levels to fifty thousand by the end of August will require very careful management to ensure that Iraqis do not become less inclined to compromise as they wrestle with the hard decisions ahead of them. And if the new government in Baghdad approaches us about the possibility of extending our presence beyond 2011, I hope we will listen very carefully. The Strategic Framework Agreement should emerge over time as the model for our long-term relationship. It lays out the parameters for a U.S.-Iraqi partnership in education, trade, diplomacy, culture, and science and technology. It is the outline for an alliance that can fundamentally alter the strategic map of the Middle East. But it will require U.S. commitment. I am heartened to see Vice President Joe Biden engage directly and repeatedly on Iraq. That sustained, high-level ef fort will be essential in helping the Iraqis deal with the multiple challenges ahead of them and in cementing our partnership for the future. Over time, these agreements will define an increasingly normalized relationship between two sovereign partners. At present, our active involvement will continue to be vital. We need to be sensitive to Iraqi concerns over sovereignty, but we need to be in country. While recent progress has brought new hope to Iraqis, the fear hardwired into their society from the Saddam era remains profound. The Shia are afraid of the past--that a Sunni dictatorship will reassert itself. The Sunnis are afraid of the future--an Iraq in which they are no longer ascendant. And the Kurds, with their history of suffering, are afraid of both the past and the future. Our sustained presence and involvement works to mitigate those fears. Iraq is in a far better place today than it was before the surge. But it is a long war, and the need for sustained commitment continues. Increasingly, that engagement will be through civilian rather than military means, but it is vital that we not lose focus. Iran and Syria have had a bad few years in Iraq, but they are willing to wait. Patience is not our strong suit. Over the years, in the broader Middle East, our allies have come to fear our strategic impatience, and our adversaries to count on it. Our disengagement from Pakistan and Afghanistan after the Soviet retreat in 1989  ultimately gave al-Qaeda the space to plan the 9/11 attacks. Now we are back; but in Afghanistan in 2002 and in Pakistan from 2004 to 2007, I found many who wondered when we would head for the exits again. As it is in Iraq, the continuity in policy from the Bush to the Obama administration in both these countries is welcome and extremely important. We saw what happened the last time the United States decided to leave. We are dealing with the same enemies today, and they have not become kinder or gentler in the interim.



Contention 3 is Soft Power

US soft power on the brink – Obama panders to enemies and is ignored while alienating allies ( Irwin M . Stelzer , director of -economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute  , 7-1  -10, “Obama: Impotence Abroad, Omnipotence at Home”, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/01/opinion/main6637037.shtml) While the secretary of defense works on plans to reduce spending on the military, his boss concocts plan after plan to increase spending on social programs. Even overseas interventions deemed important to national security are grudging, time-limited affairs-we might drop in for a while, but we are soon homeward bound. The  American government’s power to influence   foreign events   is   assumed to be   extraordinarily limited. While increasingly threatening and intransigent enemies strut across the world stage in defiance of sanctions and pleadings of international institutions,  America has cast its lot with   those   multilateral institutions, eschewing unilateralism even when vital overseas interests are involved, pursuing the approval of adversaries from th e Arab Middle East to Russia  , Asia, and Africa. Fast forward to domestic policy. Here government power is considered almost without limit. Fossil fuels create environmental and security problems, so government will order the invention of alternatives. The health care system is flawed, but rather than repair it we will transform it into one run largely by government. If Americans cannot be wooed to support these transformations, they are to be ignored by an administration and Congress that is far to their left, deploying a variety of parliamentary tricks. No wooing of support from Americans, from whom  approval for domestic interventions is seen as less necessary than   is   the approval of the “international community” for our foreign policy. Indeed, when it comes to domestic policy, so strong is the administration’s sense of rectitude that the approval of the international community, so sought after in overseas affairs, matters not. If attacking a leading British company helps make the case for preventing offshore drilling, attack it the president will. If the European nations decide that austerity is necessary to get their finances in order, lecture them on the need to continue their stimulus programs. If Germany’s trade policies don’t suit the administration, go after Angela Merkel in advance of a G20 meeting. Those, of course, are traditional allies. An exception to the policy of disregarding the views of other nations  on U.S. domestic policy   can always be made for a less friendly nation. If China manipulates its currency, rather than publicly identifying that practice, as the law requires, postpone the mandated report, even though currency manipulation by the Chinese regime undercuts the president’s goal of doubling exports in the next five years. China, after all, is a potential adversary, to be wooed, while Britain  , its pension funds heavily dependent on dividends from BP,  is to be lacerated, never mind that we rely on its troops to support our efforts in Afghanistan.



International perception that the US is overly militant because of the Iraq War kills soft power. Hinnebusch 07 (Raymond, Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics, Vol. 16, No. 3, 209–228, Fall 2007, Middle East Critique, The US Invasion of Iraq: Explanations and Implications, []) But heg  emony also  depends on legitimacy  —many  states accept it as long as the hegemon defends a world order that benefits more actors than itself. For John Ikenberry,[|16] the hegemon's overwhelming power is actually unthreatening since the US is content to be an 'off-shore balancer' and eschews territorial aggrandizement; because, being democratic, its policy is predictable and self-restraining, not arbitrary; and because its power is exercised through multinational institutions where it is constrained by mutually agreed rules. The Iraq war, however,  suggests that the US role in the world has taken a turn away from benign hegemony   as predictability, self-restraint, and multilateralism no longer hold and,  in the Middle East at least,  the US has become a partisan player, not a balancer. Iraq may mark a watershed, as the squandering of soft power and substitution of force for consent undermines the legitimacy of US leadership.



Inability for Obama to commit to the withdrawal date will show weakness Christopher A. Preble , director of foreign policy at the CATO institute, 3/5/20  10  , CATO institute (Iraq Elections Should Not Impact U.S. Troop Withdrawal, http://www.cato.org/pressroom.php?display=ncomments&id=326  A spate of bombings and other killings in Iraq   in advance of this weekend's elections -- including a series of blasts in Baghdad that killed at least 12 people on Thursday --  have prompted calls to postpone or abandon altogether plans for withdrawing U.S. troops   . The Obama administration should proceed as scheduled, and   all U.S. military personnel should be out of the country by the end of next year  , if not sooner. Sectarian tensions remain high in Iraq, and allegations of election fraud might only make these problems worse. Given the political uncertainties following the election, some would renegotiate -- or simply ignore -- the agreement crafted by the outgoing Bush administration, and signed and ratified by the Iraqi government, to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. Rather than adhere to the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), some would condition our withdrawal upon events on the ground, paving the way for an open-ended presence. Such a policy reversal is neither warranted nor wise. An expedi tious military withdrawal from Iraq, and a handover of security responsibilities to the Iraqi people is in America's strategic interest. The war in Iraq has already consumed far too much blood and treasure, and our troops are straining under the burdens of repeated foreign deployments. Meanwhile, although Americans remain bitterly divided over a host of issues both foreign and domestic, there is strong bipartisan support for following through on our commitment to exit Iraq. The public is right to oppose a costly, endless state-building mission in that country. Even though the elections in Iraq have been marred by violence, the fact that they took place at all is yet another reminder that the Iraqi people are taking charge of their future. Barack Obama came to Washington promising not just to end the war in Iraq, but also "the mindset that led us into Iraq." If Obama waffles on the more modest promise to simply follow through on withdrawal, it will be a discouraging sign that Washington has changed him more than he has changed Washington.



Loss in US soft power causes extinction. Florig, 10 **-** Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Dennis, “Hegemonic Overreach vs. Imperial Overstretch,” 2/6, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548783_code1259934.pdf?abstractid=1548783&mirid=1 )

There is an even larger question than whether the U.S. will remain the hegemonic state within a western dominated system. How long will the West remain hegemonic in the global system?25 Since Spengler the issue of the decline of the West has been debated. It would be hard to question current western dominance of virtually every global economic, political, military, or ideological system today. In some ways the domination of the West seems even more firm than it was in the past because the West is no longer a group of fiercely competing states but a much more cohesive force. In the era of western domination, breakdown of the rule of each hegemonic state has come because of competition from powerful rival western states at the core of the system leading to system-wide war. The unique characteristic of the Cold War and particularly the post-Cold War system is that the core capitalist states are now to a large degree politically united and increasingly economically integrated. In the 21st century , two factors   taking place   outside the West seem more of a threat   to the reproduction   to   the   hegemony   of the American state  and the western system than conflict between western states:  1. resistanc e to western hegemony in the Muslim world   and other parts of the subordinated South,   and   2. the rise of newly powerful  or reformed super   states. Relations between the core and periphery have already undergone one massive transformation in the 20th century—decolonization. The historical significance of decolonization was overshadowed somewhat by the emergence of the Cold War and the nuclear age. Recognition of its impact was dampened somewhat by the subsequent relative lack of change of fundamental economic relations between core and periphery. But one of the historical legacies of decolonization is that  ideological legitimation has become   more   crucial in operating the global system. The manufacture of  some level of   consent, particularly among the elite   in the periphery has to some degree   replaced brute domination. Less raw force is necessary but  in return   a greater burden of ideological   and cultural   legitimation is required. Now it is no longer enough for colonials to obey, willing participants must believe. Therefore,  cultural and ideological challenges to the foundations of the liberal capitalist world view assume much greater significance. Thus the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, ethnic nationalism, and even social democracy in Latin America as ideologies of opposition have increasing significance in a system dependent on greater levels of willing consent. As Ayoob suggests, the  sustained resistance within the Islamic world to western hegemony may have a “demonstration effect” on other    southern   states with similar grievances against the West  .26 The other new dynamic is the re-emergence of great states that at one time or another have been brought low by the western hegemonic system. China, in recent centuries low on the international division of labor, was in some ways a classic case of a peripheral state, or today a semi-peripheral state. But its sheer size, its rapid growth, its currency reserves, its actual and potential markets, etc. make it a major power and a potential future counter hegemon. India lags behind China, but has similar aspirations. Russia has fallen from great power to semi-peripheral status since the collapse of the Soviet empire, but its energy resources and the technological skills of its people make recovery of its former greatness possible. No one knows exactly what the resurgence of Asia portends for the future. However, just as half a century ago global decolonization was a blow to western domination, so the shift in economic production to Asia will redefine global power relations throughout the 21st century. Classical theory of hegemonic cycle is useful if not articulated in too rigid a form. Hegemonic systems do not last forever; they do have a life span. The hegemonic state cannot maintain itself as the fastest growing major economy forever and thus eventually will face relative decline against some major power or powers. The hegemon faces recurrent challenges both on the periphery and from other major powers who feel constrained by the hegemon’s power or are ambitious to usurp its place. Techniques of the application of military force and ideological control may become more sophisticated over time, but so too do techniques of guerilla warfare and ideological forms of resistance such as religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and politicization of ethnic identity. World war may not be imminent, but   wars on the periphery have become quite deadly,   and   the threat of the use of nuclear weapons   or other WMD   by the rising number of powers who possess them looms. The hegemonic state tends to become overstretched, but more importantly  the U.S., because of its messianic sense of mission, tends to overreach. Some of the burden the hegemon has to assume is inevitable, but the U.S. is particularly prone to massive miscalculation.



Contention 4 is Overstretch

US military overstretch is on the brink; we are incapable of dealing with potential security threats in the future. Foreign Policy Magazine. A publication dedicated to unbiased studies and reports regarding foreign policy matters. 02-19- 08  . http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/02/19/the_us_military_index Today, the U.S. military is engaged in a campaign that is more demanding and intense th an anything it has witnessed in a generation. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now entering their fifth and seventh years respectively, have lasted longer than any U.S. military engagements of the past century, with the exception of Vietnam. More than 25,000 American servicemen and women have been wounded and over 4,000 killed. Additional deployments in the Balkans, on the Korean Peninsula, and elsewhere are putting further pressure on the military's finite resources. And. at any time, U.S. forces could be called into action in one of the world's many simmering hot spots--from Iran or Syria, to North Korea or the Taiwan Strait. Yet, even as the U.S. military is being asked to sustain an unprecedented pace of operations across the globe, many Americans continue to know shockingly little about the forces responsible for protecting them. Nearly 70 percent of Americans report that they have a high level of confidence in the military, yet fewer than 1 in 10 has ever served. Politicians often speak favorably about people in uniform, but less than one quarter of the U.S. Congress has donned a uniform. It is not clear whether the speeches and sound bites we hear from politicians and experts actually reflect the concerns of those who protect our nation. What is the actual state of America's military? How healthy are the armed forces? How prepared are they for future conflicts? And what impact are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan really having on them? To find out, FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for a New American Security teamed up to conduct a groundbreaking survey of current and former military officers. Recognizing that the military is far from a monolith, our goal was to find out what America's highest-ranking military people  --the very officers who have run the military during the past half century--  collectively think about the state of the force, the health of the military, the course of the war in Iraq , and the challenges that lie ahead. It is one of the few comprehensive surveys of the U.S. military community to be conducted in the past 50 years. In all, more than 3,400 officers holding the rank of major or lieutenant commander and above were surveyed from across the services, active duty and retired, general officers and field-grade officers. About 35 percent of the participants hailed from the Army, 33 percent from the Air Force, 23 percent from the Navy, and 8 percent from the Marine Corps. Several hundred are flag officers, elite generals and admirals who have served at the highest levels of command. Approximately one third are colonels or captains--officers commanding thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines--and 37 percent hold the rank of lieutenant colonel or commander. Eighty-one percent have more than 20 years of service in the military. Twelve percent graduated from one of America's exclusive military academies. And more than two thirds have combat experience, with roughly 10 percent having served in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both. These  officers see a military apparatus severely strained by the grinding demands of war. Sixty percent say the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. Asked why, more than half cite the wars in Iraq  and Afghanistan,  and the pace of troop deployments those conflicts require. More than half the officers say the military is weaker than it was either 10 or 15 years ago. But asked whether "the demands of the war in Iraq have broken the U.S. military," 56 percent of the officers say they disagree. That is not to say, however, that they are without concern. Nearly 90 percent say that they believe   the demands of the war in Iraq have "stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin   ." The health of the Army and Marine Corps, the  services that have borne  the brunt of  the fighting in Iraq, are of greatest concern  to the index's officers. Asked to grade the health of each service on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning the officers have no concern about the health of the service and 10 meaning they are extremely concerned, the officers reported an average score of 7.9 for the Army and 7.0 for the Marine Corps. The health of the Air Force fared the best, with a score of 5.7. The average score across the four services was 6.6. More than 80 percent of the officers say that, given the stress of current deployments,  it is unrea sonable to ask the military to wage another major war today. Nor did the officers express high confidence in the military's preparedness to do so. For instance, the officers said that the United States is not fully prepared to successfully execute such a mission against Iran or North Korea. A majority of the officers also say that some of the policy decisions made during the course of the Iraq war hindered the prospects for success there. These include shortening the time units spend at home between deployments and accepting more recruits who do not meet the military's standards. Even the military's ability to care for some of its own--mentally wounded soldiers and veterans--was judged by most officers to be substandard. These negative perceptions, however, do not necessarily translate into a disillusioned or disgruntled force. Sixty-four percent of the officers report that they believe morale within the military is high. Still, they are not without concern for the future. Five years into the war in Iraq, for example, a majority of the officers report that either China or Iran, not the United States, is emerging as the strategic victor [CARD CONTINUES, NO TEXT DELETED] [CARD CONTINUES, NO TEXT DELETED] in that fight. In an era when the U.S. military is stretched dangerously thin, it's a sign that the greatest challenges may still lie ahead. THE NEXT WAR When it comes to addressing threats such as the nuclear ambitions of Iran or North Korea , American officials are fond of saying that "all options are on the table." But given the ongoing conflicts in Iraq  and Afghanistan,  how credible is it to assume that the U   nited   S   tates   could   successfully   conduct another   major   military operation  somewhere else in the world today? According to the index's officers, not very. Asked whether it was reasonable or unreasonable to expect the U.S. military to successfully wage another major war at this time, 80 percent of the officers say that it is unreasonable. The officers were also asked about four specific hot spots--Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Taiwan Strait--and how prepared they believe the United States is to successfully fight a major combat operation there, were a war to break out today. Using a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning that the United States is fully prepared and 1 meaning that the United States is unable to execute such a mission, the officers put America's preparedness for war against Iran at just 4.5. The average readiness score for America's armed forces to go to war in those four hot spots was 4.8.



The Armed Forces are becoming overstretched because of Iraq. Michael Evans  The Times; The Sunday Times staff writer, defence editor. 11-5- 07  The Times; The Sunday Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2806256.ece The Armed Forces are “running on empty”,  overstretched by the long-running operations in Iraq  and Afghanistan,  according to a report on the state of the military. “The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan  have seriously diminished the ability of the Armed Forces to meet future challenges  ,” the think-tank Demos said. With such pressures affecting the Forces, the current situation was “unsustainable – financially, organisationally, operationally and in terms of military-society relations”.



Overstretch causes loss in hard power Carlo Kopp. Journalist, Research Fellow in Regional Military Strategy at the Monash Asia Institute in Melbourne. PhD and MSc degrees at Monash University. June 20 09  Defence Today However, this recapitalisation will have to compete against the sustained funding drain of GWOT operations  and equipment maintenance, in a political climate where the Bush Administration has been on an ongoing defensive against its many critics. This is complicated by many extant equipment recapitalisation programs, framed against the strategic circumstances of the 1990s. These programs could result in force structure components ill suited for the strategic geography and circumstances of the Pacific Rim. The Joint Strike Fighter, designed around Middle Eastern and European geography, is a prime example. This strategic morass affects Australia, with its increasing strategic dependency on US forces. Force structure planning in Canberra has been recently focused away from regional capability priorities, playing instead on the global stage as a supporting actor. This has been a strategic miscalculation of unprecedented proportions and needs to be addressed urgently, since there is no certainty at this stage that the US will be able to recover its strategic position in the Pacific Rim within the coming decade. While it is far too early to arbitrarily write the US off as a spent power, the US is entering a decade of serious stress in its military budgets and force structures, resulting ongoing difficulties in maintaining a credible deterrent posture in the Pacific Rim region.

Loss of hard power internationally escalates to global extinction. Hard power solves all their DA !’s. Zalmay  Khalilzad  , Deputy Sec of Def, WQ Spring 19   95

A world in which the United States exercises leadership wou ld have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and 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, renegade states, and low level conflicts. Finally,  US leadership would help preclude the rise of another global rival, enabling the US and the world to avoid   another cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including   a global nuclear exchange.



Loss in US hard power causes extinction. Florig, 10 **-** Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Dennis, “Hegemonic Overreach vs. Imperial Overstretch,” 2/6, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1548783_code1259934.pdf?abstractid=1548783&mirid=1 )

There is an even larger question than whether the U.S. will remain the hegemonic state within a western dominated system. How long will the West remain hegemonic in the global system?25 Since Spengler the issue of the decline of the West has been debated. It would be hard to question current western dominance of virtually every global economic, political, military, or ideological system today. In some ways the domination of the West seems even more firm than it was in the past because the West is no longer a group of fiercely competing states but a much more cohesive force. In the era of western domination, breakdown of the rule of each hegemonic state has come because of competition from powerful rival western states at the core of the system leading to system-wide war. The unique characteristic of the Cold War and particularly the post-Cold War system is that the core capitalist states are now to a large degree politically united and increasingly economically integrated. In the 21st century , two factors   taking place   outside the West seem more of a threat   to the reproduction   to   the   hegemony   of the American state  and the western system than conflict between western states:  1. resistance to western hegemony in the Muslim world  and other parts of the subordinated South,   and   2. the rise of newly powerful  or reformed super   states. Relations between the core and periphery have already undergone one massive transformation in the 20th century—decolonization. The historical significance of decolonization was overshadowed somewhat by the emergence of the Cold War and the nuclear age. Recognition of its impact was dampened somewhat by the subsequent relative lack of change of fundamental economic relations between core and periphery. But one of the historical legacies of decolonization is that  ideological legitimation has become   more   crucial in operating the global system. The manufacture of  some level of   consent, partic ularly among the elite    in the periphery has to some degree   replaced brute domination. Less raw force is necessary but  in return   a greater burden of ideological   and cultural   legitimation is required. Now it is no longer enough for colonials to obey, willing participants must believe. Therefore,  cultural and ideological challenges to the foundations of the liberal capitalist world view assume much greater significance. Thus the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, ethnic nationalism, and even social democracy in Latin America as ideologies of opposition have increasing significance in a system dependent on greater levels of willing consent. As Ayoob suggests, the  sustained resistance within the Islamic world to western hegemony may have a “demonstration effect” on other   southern   states with similar grievances against the West  .26 The other new dynamic is the re-emergence of great states that at one time or another have been brought low by the western hegemonic system. China, in recent centuries low on the international division of labor, was in some ways a classic case of a peripheral state, or today a semi-peripheral state. But its sheer size, its rapid growth, its currency reserves, its actual and potential markets, etc. make it a major power and a potential future counter hegemon. India lags behind China, but has similar aspirations. Russia has fallen from great power to semi-peripheral status since the collapse of the Soviet empire, but its energy resources and the technological skills of its people make recovery of its former greatness possible. No one knows exactly what the resurgence of Asia portends for the future. However, just as half a century ago global decolonization was a blow to western domination, so the shift in economic production to Asia will redefine global power relations throughout the 21st century. Classical theory of hegemonic cycle is useful if not articulated in too rigid a form. Hegemonic systems do not last forever; they do have a life span. The hegemonic state cannot maintain itself as the fastest growing major economy forever and thus eventually will face relative decline against some major power or powers. The hegemon faces recurrent challenges both on the periphery and from other major powers who feel constrained by the hegemon’s power or are ambitious to usurp its place. Techniques of the application of military force and ideological control may become more sophisticated over time, but so too do techniques of guerilla warfare and ideological forms of resistance such as religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and politicization of ethnic identity. World war may not be imminent, but   wars on the periphery have become quite deadly,   and   the th reat of the use of nuclear weapons    or other WMD   by the rising number of powers who possess them looms. The hegemonic state tends to become overstretched, but more importantly  the U.S., because of its messianic sense of mission, tends to overreach. Some of the burden the hegemon has to assume is inevitable, but the U.S. is particularly prone to massive miscalculation.



Contention 5 is Solvency

Withdrawal is key to Iraqi stability and relations with Iraq and the rest of the world. [Raed Jarrar , political consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, and a senior fellow at Peace Action  , 05-27  -10 “Don't reward violence in Iraq by extending US troop withdrawal deadline,” Juneau Empire, http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/052710/opi_645328218.shtml] President Obama should not bow to the Beltway voices urging him to  keep U.S. troops longer in Iraq. At a speech at West Point on Saturday, Obama said: "We are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer." His statement, which the cadets greeted with applause, is a reaffirmation of his pledge to have all U.S. combat forces leave Iraq by Aug. 31. Any remaining armed forces are required to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 in accordance with the binding bilateral Security Agreement, also referred to as the Status of Forces Agreement. But Washington pundits are still pushing Obama to delay or cancel the U.S. disengagement, calling on him to be "flexible" and take into consideration the recent spike of violence in Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed and injured during the last few months in what seems to be an organized campaign to challenge U.S. plans. While most Iraqis would agree that Iraq is still broken, delaying or canceling the U.S. troop removal will definitely not be seen as "flexibility," but rather as a betrayal of promises. Iraqis believe that  prolonging the military occupation will not fix what the occupation has damaged, and they don't think that extending the U.S. intervention will protect them from other interventions. The vast majority of Iraqis see the U.S. military presence as a part of the problem, not the solution. Linking the U.S. withdrawal to conditions on the ground creates an equation by which further deterioration in Iraq will automatically lead to prolonging the U.S. military presence. Some of the current Iraqi ruling parties want the U.S. occupation to continue because they have been benefiting from it. Some regional players, including the Iranian government, do not want an independent and strong Iraq to re-emerge. And other groups, including al-Qaeda, would gladly see the United States stuck in the current quagmire, losing its blood, treasure and reputation. Connecting the pullout to the prevalent situation would be an open invitation to those who seek an endless war to sab otage Iraq even further, and delaying it will send the wrong message to them. By contrast, adhering to the current time-based plan would pull the rug from under their feet and allow Iraqis to stabilize their nation , a process that may take many years but that cannot begin as long as Iraq's sovereignty is breached by foreign interventions. If the Obama administration reneges on its plans, it will effectively reward those responsible for the bloodshed and further embolden them. Such a decision would most likely have serious ramifications for the security of U.S. troops in Iraq, and will impede the security and political progress in the country. And delaying the U.S. pullout will not only harm the U.S. image around the world, which Obama has been trying hard to improve, but it will also be the final blow to U.S. credibility in Iraq. The mere promise of a complete withdrawal has boosted Iraqi domestic politics and enhanced the U.S. perception in the country. Unless Obama delivers on his promises, many of these achievements will be lost, and Iraq will be sent back to square o ne.

=Afghanistan 1AC=

 Contention 1 – Inherency Counterinsurgency is the main strategy in Afghanistan now—Petraeus Julian Barnes , staff writer, 7/22//  10  “Petraeus Sharpens Afghan Strategy” The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954804575381223866697214.html

WASHINGTON—Gen. David Petraeus plans to ramp up the U.S. military's troop-intensive strategy in Afghanistan, according to some senior military officials , who have concluded that setbacks in the war effort this year weren't the result of the strategy, but of flaws in how it has been implemented. The new allied commander in Afghanistan plans to ramp up the U.S. military's troop-intensive strategy, which officials say has put too much attention on hunting down Taliban leaders. Julian Barnes and David Weidner discuss. Also, Charles Forelle and Paul Vigna discuss the euro's recent rally, which many say reflects worries about the U.S. economy. The officials said Gen. Petraeus, who took over as allied commander in Afghanistan this month and is conducting a review of the war, intends to draw on many of the same tactics he implemented to turn around the war in Iraq—and which his predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, introduced in Afghanistan. But the officials said Gen. McChrystal put too much attention on hunting down Taliban leaders, at the expense of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, which focuses on protecting civilians and bolstering popular support for the government. Supporters of Gen. McChrystal dispute that assessment, dismissing any notion there were flaws in how he fought the war. Gen. Petraeus's determination to intensify a strategy focused on driving a wedge between the Taliban and the Afghan people could be tricky to pull off, given the mounting political pressure in the U.S. to show results in the nearly nine-year war, and to begin drawing down troops next year. Gen. McChrystal was fired last month by President Barack Obama after the general and his staff made disparaging comments about senior civilian officials in a magazine article. When announcing the change in command, Mr. Obama praised Gen. McChrystal's work and  said the appointment of Gen. Petraeus, who wrote the army manual on counterinsurgency, would guarantee that the strategy would continue uninterrupted. Gen. Petraeus is expected to make several more moves to retool the strategy, according to people familiar with the situation. Such moves are expected to include a greater focus on how Afghanistan's security forces are being trained and how  to make the Afghan people feel safe , they said, without offering details.

 Contention 2—Hegemony A. COIN Causes Civilian Backlash Ann Jones, author and humanitarian aid worker in afghanistan ,  7/1/2010  , Tomgram: Ann Jones, Strategies for "Success" in Afghanistan, Tom Dispatch

General McChrystal himself played both roles. As the US commander, he was responsible for killing what he termed, at one point, "an amazing number of people" who were not threats, but he also regularly showed up at Afghan President Hamid Karzai's palace to say, "Sorry." Karzai praised him publicly for his frequent apologies (each, of course, reflecting an American act or acts that killed civilians), though angry Afghans were less impressed. The part of the lethal activity that often goes awry is supposed to be counterbalanced by the "sorry" part, which may be as simple as dispatching US officers to drink humble tea with local "key leaders." Often enough, though, it comes in the form of large, unsustainable gifts. The formula, which is basic COIN, goes something like this: kill some civilians in the hunt for the bad guys and you have to make up for it by building a road. This trade-off explains why, as you travel parts of the country, interminable (and often empty) strips of black asphalt now traverse Afghanistan's vast expanses of sand and rock, but it doesn't explain why Afghans, thus compensated, are angrier than ever. Many Afghans, of course, are angry because they haven't been compensated at all, not even with a road to nowhere. Worse yet, more often than not, they've been promised things that never materialize. (If you were to summarize the history of the country as a whole in these last years, it might go like this: big men—both Afghan and American—make out like the Beltway Bandits many of them are, while ordinary Afghans in the countryside still wish their kids had shoes.

B. Counterinsurgency causes military overreach when limited counterterrorism solves. Michael J. Boyle  - lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews. 1/18/ 2010.  Wiley InterScience. [].

Finally, this emphasis on a fused threat between terrorists and insurgents can incorrectly imply that the response must also draw in equal measure on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategy. Such an approach tends to see each emerging terrorist threat as a new front in a global counterinsurgency effort and imply that the US and its allies need to be concerned with winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local populations to prevent its development. This is a fundamentally offensive approach in which the US and its allies need to take the fight to the terrorists wherever they may be while simultaneously persuading the Muslim world to reject Al-Qaeda and its political programme. The obvious risk of such an approach is that it will **lead to strategic overreach,** especially if the US winds up fighting small wars and engaging in costly nation-building as a method of preventing Al-Qaeda from gaining ground in distant conflicts. As an example of this danger, consider the conflation of terrorism and insurgency that marked the discussion over the failed attack on a US airline on 25 December 2009. Reports that the failed bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had received instruction in explosives from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) immediately raised questions about whether American combat operations would be needed to fight Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in Yemen. In the US, Senator Joseph Lieberman called Yemen ‘tomorrow’s war’ and urged pre-emptive action against Al-Qaeda operatives there. 38 An alternative chorus of voices insisted that additional US funds and civilian trainers would be needed to improve the security forces and governance in that remote country. 39 The fact that AQAP activity was intertwined with the tribal revolts which had been threatening the stability of the country appeared to lend superficial support to a quasi-counterinsurgency approach as a way to deal with the threat posed by Al-Qaeda in the peninsula. But the attempted attack was a terrorist act on a US-bound flight from Europe by an African citizen. It is entirely unclear whether improving policing capacity and governance in Yemen would have interrupted the attack, which was carried by a small number of operatives with only limited ties to the local community. The conflation of threats meant that the US looked like sleepwalking into a quasi-COIN strategy in that country, potentially assuming responsibility for areas that may have been irrelevant to Abdulmutallab’s ability to launch a terrorist attack. Worse still, such an expanded role would be viewed with hostility by the local population, which is already suspicious of American encroachment on the country. 40 Because current policy is premised on the intellectual error that an interlinked threat demands a comprehensive response, and specifically on the notion that terrorism can be solved through counterinsurgency techniques, ** US strategy tends to drift towards counterinsurgency—and over- extension in foreign conflicts—when a more limited counterterrorism response might be more appropriate. **



C. Military overstretch killing US heg Robert Lieber – Professor of **Government** and International Affairs at Georgetown University**,** 07/30/ 2008 The Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. http://www.biu.ac.il/Besa/perspectives47.html)

Scarcely a day goes by without yet another book, article, speaker or report asserting that America is in trouble. We are told that the rise of China and India, the recovery of Putin’s Russia and the expansion of the European Union signal a profound shift in geopolitical power. War and insurgency in Iraq and  the tenacity of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan are cited as evidence that **military commitments are “breaking” the army.**  The leaders of Iran and North Korea vilify America and frustrate efforts to limit their nuclear programs. President Chavez of Venezuela, fortified by $130 per barrel oil, denounces Yankee imperialism and threatens to cut off oil shipments to the US. Meanwhile, opinion polls show widespread anti-American sentiment abroad. On the domestic front, the subprime mortgage crisis, investment bank turmoil, a yawning balance of payments deficit, and the falling dollar lead to a warning that, “We are competing – and losing – in a global marketplace.” And America has become an “enfeebled” superpower,  according to Fareed Zakaria, who adds that  while the US will not be replaced in the foreseeable future, nevertheless, “Just as the rest of the world is opening up, America is closing down.” The declinists’ central proposition holds that both the rise of other countries and an increasing degree of counterbalancing are transforming the international system and profoundly weakening the leading role of the United States in world affairs. The new declinism rests not only on a global narrative, but it also makes an argument about fundamental domestic weaknesses. It points to the long-term burdens of entitlement programs, which will face large unfunded liabilities. Deficits in international trade and payments and the federal budget, a major credit crisis, collapse of the residential housing bubble and economic turbulence add to the list of troubles. Another clearly overdue task concerns the need to reduce dependence on imported oil and the resultant economic and security vulnerabilities. America’s infrastructure is aging and in need of repair and modernization. In addition, the effectiveness of government institutions may be less than optimal, as evident in the chaotic response to Hurricane Katrina, ongoing problems at the Department of Homeland Security, cumbersome interaction among intelligence agencies, and the need for more effective coordination of national security policy.

D. American primacy is vital to accessing every major impact—the only threat to world peace is if we allow it to collapse Thayer 2006 [Bradley A., Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, The National Interest, November -December, "In Defense of Primacy", lexis]

A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy --and  the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics , allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states  to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains 

from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates.The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists , most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned  --between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only



way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. Fourth and finally, the United States , in seeking primacy,  has been willing to use its power  not only to advance its interests but  to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--  it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg. THERE IS no other state, group of states or international organization that can provide these global benefits. None even comes close. The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on matters great and trivial. Thus it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect Russia or China to take up these responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have the capabilities. Let's face it: for the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only practical hope of solving the world's ills.

 Contention 3—Terrorism

A. Nation Building creates more incentives for terrorism

Gary T. Dempsey , specialized in post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy, 3/21/  02  , Policy Analysis, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa429.pdf MS

Since September 11, 2001, there have been calls from various quarters to embrace nation building as a tool for combating terrorism. The logic behind the idea is that “good” states do not do “bad” things, so Washington should build more “good” states. That idea, however,  relies on several dubious assumptions  —for example, that embarking on multiple nation-building missions will reduce the potential for anti-American terrorism. If anything, nation building is likely to create more incentives, targets, and opportunities for terrorism, not fewer. The nation-building idea also draws on false analogies with the past. For example, some people assert that Europe’s experience under the Marshall Plan can be readily duplicated in a whole host of countries and that, with enough economic aid, trained bureaucrats, and military force of arms, “bad” states anywhere can be transformed into open, self-sustaining, peaceful states. In reality, combating terrorism is tied to the realist perspective, which says that it increasingly makes sense for states to use or condone violence, including terrorism, when they fall prey to the idea that violence will succeed. A realist approach to combating terrorism, therefore, does not hinge on nation building or making the world safe for democracy. It hinges on a policy of victory and credible deterrence. And if there is no competent government for the United States to deter? U.S. policymakers should understand that that is precisely where the terrorists are at their most vulnerable, because there is no power to protect them

B. COIN can’t solve terror—incites national hostility Hugh Gusterson , professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. 7/20/ 10  (“Against Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan” Al-Jazeerah, http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20Editorials/2010/July/20%20o/Against%20Counterinsurgency%20In%20Afghanistan%20By%20Jugh%20Gusterson.htm)

Given the Pentagon's fantasies of future counterinsurgencies, it is vital to make the argument that counterinsurgency has failed in Afghanistan  not because of flaws in its execution but  because , as I have argued before,  counterinsurgency campaigns  almost  inevitably contain  within themselves  the seeds of their own failure. Counterinsurgency forces stand little chance of defeating the insurgents without large numbers of troops, but the presence of foreign troops inevitably excites nationalist hostility from the local population; the more foreign troops there are, the more hostility there will be. Also, the more troops there are, the more military casualties there will be, and this undermines support for counterinsurgency at home--as we are now seeing in the UK and the U.S. Counterinsurgency campaigns also benefit from being allied to a strong and popular local government. We hear a lot these days about Karzai's inadequacy in this regard, but it may not be all his fault: Almost by definition, a leader who relies on external occupying troops for his power will be seen as a foreign puppet and will be compromised in the eyes of his people. Finally, there is the issue of development, about which the U.S. media and military leaders have shown an extraordinary inability to think clearly in Afghanistan. U.S. military leaders are surely right to think that they are more likely to win the hearts and minds of local populations if they bring them not just roadblocks, nighttime raids, and detentions, but also power plants, irrigation projects, schools, and so on. But the problem is that, when you pour huge amounts of money into a poor country, you inevitably produce corruption and all sorts of other social distortions. Leaving aside the military contracting money pouring into Afghanistan, the U.S. is allocating almost $4 billion a year for development projects in Afghanistan, the fifth poorest country in the world (with a GDP estimated at $13-23 billion and a per capita GDP of $1,000). And it is complaining that Karzai's inability to control corruption in Afghanistan is alienating the population. But you could put Mother Teresa in charge of Afghanistan and, with flows of resources of that magnitude, she would be unable to prevent the kind of corruption we see in Afghanistan today. It is not Karzai, but the U.S. strategy of counterinsurgency itself, that is ultimately responsible for the corruption.

 C. Terrorism in Afghanistan spills over into Pakistan United News of India, 4/21/  09  (“Pakistan asks NATO to do more in fighting Taliban insurgency” http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pakistan+asks+NATO+to+do+more+in+fighting+Taliban+insurgency.-a0199276624)

Pakistan army has asked NATO to do more in effectively fighting Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, saying Islamabad has already done a lot in the war on terror. NATO should do more as most of the terror centres, in our opinion, are in Afghanistan, military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas  told  local  media today. Pakistan has come under increasing pressure over deal with Islamists in a part of Northwestern Frontier Province to sign the agreement for enforcement of Islamic system of justice. The military spokesman said the army's performance in the war on terror could be judged by the number of casualties it had suffered. Over 1,500 soldiers and officers have died in the war on terror, he claimed. Gen Abbas further said the military had a plan to tackle areas from where threats were emanating and disrupting peace in settled areas. He added that with the deployment of more troops in Afghanistan alongside the border with Pakistan, the Pakistan army might expect a spill over of militants from the other side. The spokesman said, We need to enhance our vigilance of the militants into Pakistan.

D. Nuclear terrorism John Nagl , President of the Center for a New American Security and Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy Class of 1988, 20  10  , (“A Better War in Afghanistan” JFQ: Joint Force Quarterly; 2010 1st Quarter, Issue 56, p32-39, 8p, EBSCO)

The primary objective of American efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan remains the elimination of at Qaeda-associated sanctuaries and, if possible, top leaders who .support transnational terrorist operations. Many in this shadowy alliance, which was originally based in Afghanistan but squeezed by allied military operations, have shifted to Pakistan's cities and frontier areas beyond easy reach of the coalition. American efforts now focus on Pakistan as a launching pad for militants fighting in Afghanistan. But the problem runs both ways: a failed Afghanistan would become a base from which  Taliban and  al Qaeda militants could work to further destabilize the surrounding region. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have served as an inspiration for and sometime-ally of violent extremist groups targeting the resource-rich states of Central Asia.'" More dangerously, they also have ties to the insurgents seeking to overthrow Pakistan, and the ultimate prize in that contest would  not  be  another ridge or valley, but possibly access  to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. An unraveling of Pakistan  in the face of the Taliban insurgency, whether gradual or unexpectedly rapid,  could spark a cascading regional meltdown and lead to nuclear arms failing into the hands of a terrorist group that would use them against the United States or its allies  . This is, to be sure,  widely considered a low-probability event, but the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons is hardly clear, and U.S. visibility into events there is fairly low."

E. Counterterrorism in Afghanistan solves terrorism—counterinsurgency fails Marc Sageman , Director of Research at ARTIS Research and Risk Modeling and former Secret Service consultant, December 20  09  (“Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan” Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume III, Issue 4, http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=92&Itemid=54) ME

In conclusion, counter-terrorism works and is doing well against the global neo-jihadi terrorist threat. It consists of a combination of good domestic police work, good domestic intelligence, good cooperation with foreign domestic intelligence agencies, good airport security, good border control, keeping up the pressure on al-Qaeda and its transnational allies in Pakistan through arrests and Predator drone attacks, using political and economic skill to deny terrorist sanctuary in Pakistan, supporting the Pakistan military to dislodge foreign militants from Waziristan while sealing the border on the Afghan side, and continued sanctuary denial in Afghanistan. These are measures that will continue regardless of what is done in Afghanistan. There is definitely no necessity and very little value added for the counter-insurgency option, which is the most costly in terms of blood and treasure, probably the least likely to succeed and may even make things worse in the short run in the homeland.

 Contention 4—NATO

A. NATO members are considering pulling out—the mission is on the brink David E. Sanger , Staff Writer for New York Times,  7/21/  10, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/world/asia/22assess.html?_r=1&ref=worldms

For two months, Democrats in Congress have been holding up billions of dollars in additional financing for the war, longer than they ever delayed similar requests from President [|George W. Bush]. Most Republican leaders have largely backed a continued commitment, but the White House was surprised the other day when one of Mr. Obama’s mentors on foreign policy issues in the Senate, [|Richard G. Lugar] of Indiana, argued that “the lack of clarity in Afghanistan does not end with the president’s timetable,” and that both the military and civilian missions were “proceeding without a clear definition of success.” “ We could make progress for decades on security, on employment, good governance, women’s rights,” he said, without ever reaching “a satisfying conclusion.” The allies, voicing similar concerns, have abandoned most talk of a conditions-based withdrawal in favor of harder timetables. Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, did his best to sound as though he and Mr. Obama were on the same page during his first visit to the White House on Tuesday, but he also  told a [|BBC] interviewer while in Washington, “We’re not going to be there in five years’ time.” The Dutch leave this fall, and the Canadians say they intend to follow suit by the end of 2011. As one of Mr. Obama’s top strategists said this week, with some understatement, “There are signs that the durability of this mission has to be attended to.”

B. Cooperation in Afghanistan critical to NATO’s cohesion Ioan Micrea Pascu , Minister of National Defense Romania, 12/1/  06  , https://www.pfpconsortium.org/file/3736/view

Finally, the lessons-learned type of knowledge management in the military establishment is an intrinsic part of the transformation of our armed forces. At the end of 2003, we created in the General Staff a new structure tasked to deal with doctrine and lessons learned under the coordination of the first field commander of Romanian troops in Afghanistan. Cooperation with NATO and other allies in this area will significantly improve our capacity to react rapidly to changes in the theaters and efficiently prepare for our participation in operations. Finally, what I would like to say is that, to retain the cohesion of NATO, it is important to rebuild the feeling that the security of the United States and Europe are inseparable. This connection, which was so important during the Cold War, has somehow been broken. Both sides claim that there is indivisibility of security on both sides, but naturally during the Cold War era it was asymmetrical in practice, because Europe felt extremely vulnerable, and it was the U.S. who was supposed to provide 75 assistance. Now the situation is totally different, with the U.S. feeling more vulnerable than Europe. Nevertheless, the sense that our security is somehow connected, and that we must avoid decoupling this security, is of the utmost importance. And I think that one should present two sets of advice to both sides. First, I think that the U.S. should sacrifice some efficiency in some military operations in order to bring Europeans on board and work toward carrying out common operations, such as in Afghanistan. And I would say that, even if Europeans are able to carry out an operation of their own, without American assistance, even a symbolic American presence would be good. I think that Bunya was a bit of a loss; it would be good to have at least two Americans on board, just to show that this link exists. So maintaining this transatlantic link will be critical for NATO’s future; in fact, I feel that this link is absolutely necessary. So let’s hope that, in having this link, we can contribute to shortening the path from trying the various solutions that are now under consideration to arriving at the best one. Without a functioning transatlantic link, arriving at a solution will be very difficult.



C. Without NATO, It would be impossible to handle a Russian Crisis (John Feffer , co-director of foreign policy, institute of policy studies, 09/20  09  , “Will NATO’s 60th Anniversary be its last?” http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175124/feffer_%20john_Afghanistan_NATO%D5s_graveyard)

The once central focus of NATO -- a commitment to the collective defense of any member under attack -- was, by now, looking ever less workable. Western European countries appeared anything but enthusiastic about the idea of defending the former Soviet bloc states against a prospective Russian attack. And despite promises to station troops in Central and Eastern Europe, the United States left its new NATO allies in the lurch. " While they are loath to say it publicly, [Central and Eastern European] leaders have told me that they are no longer certain NATO is capable of coming to their rescue if there were a crisis involving Russia,  " wrote Ronald Asmus, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration. "They no longer believe that the political solidarity exists or that NATO's creaky machinery would take the needed steps."

D. Crisis Between U.S. and Russia results in the destruction of human civilization

Nick Bostrom , Philosophy Oxford University, published in the journal of evolution and technology,  3/02  , http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankind’s potential permanently. Such a war might however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st century.

 Thus the plan: The United States Federal Government should withdraw all of its counterinsurgent personnel from Afghanistan. We’ll clarify.

Contention 5—Solvency

Counterterrorism is the best long-term strategy to fight terrorism Austin Long , assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, 20  10  (“Small is Beautiful: The Counterterrorism Option in Afghanistan” Orbis, Volume 54, Issue 2, Pages 200-201, Google Scholar, ME)

To return to the point from which this analysis began—strategy is matching means and ends. If the ends desired are about al Qaeda, the counterterrorism option is the best fit in terms of means. It is sustainable, always crucial in prolonged conflict, as it limits the expenditure of U.S. blood and treasure. It is also less dependent on Pakistan choosing to abandon its proxies, a possibility that seems remote at present. The counterterrorism option is not only possible, but as Steve Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argue, it is  the best alternative for the United States.5

Counterterrorism solves best—COIN is unnecessary to keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan Marc Sageman , Director of Research at ARTIS Research and Risk Modeling and former Secret Service consultant, December 20  09  (“Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan” Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume III, Issue 4, http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=92&Itemid=54) ME

Even if a triumphant Taliban invites al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan, its presence there will look very similar to its presence in the FATA. Times have changed. The presence of large sanctuaries in Afghanistan was predicated on Western not so benign neglect of the al-Qaeda funded camps there. This era is gone because Western powers will no longer tolerate them. There are many ways to prevent the return of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan besides a national  counter-insurgency  strategy. Vigilance through electronic monitoring, spatial surveillance, networks of informants in contested territory, exploitation of internal Afghan rivalries, combined with the nearby stationing of a small force dedicated to physically eradicate any visible al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan will prevent the return of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The proper military mission in Afghanistan and elsewhere is sanctuary denial.