Gradualism 1AC

Inherency
The Cuban Embargo wont be lifted anytime soon Dreyfuss, Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security, 11
(Bob, January 19, 2011, thenation.com, Not Enough on Cuba Embargo, http://www.thenation.com/blog/157863/not-enough-cuba-embargo#, ACCESSED June 30, 2013, RJ) Next year, the US embargo against Cuba will be a half-century old, a mold-encrusted relic in the cold war museum, yet there it isand it doesnt look like the Obama administration is planning to end it anytime soon. On January 14, the White House announced a series of half-measures that weaken American efforts to isolate Havana, welcome steps all: academic, cultural, and religious groups can now freely travel to Cuba; American citizens are free to send money to non-relatives in the island nation, up to $500 every three months; and any US airport may now allow licensed charter aircraft to fly roundtrip. Its a follow-up to measures that President Obama announced in April 2009 lifting restrictions on travel and cash remittances by family members of Cuban residents. Yet the presidents actions hardly qualify as a profile in courage. He held off making the announcement last fall, when hawks in Congress, including Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Albio Sires (D-NJ) warned that easing anti-Cuba measures could hurt Democrats' re-election chances, and when the decision was made it was released late on Friday evening, while Republicans were out of town on a retreat. Yet more than two-thirds of voters support easing travel restrictions on Cuba, and 75 percent (86 percent of Democrats) back the idea of a meeting between US and Cuban leaders. Conservative groups, from the US Chamber of Commerce to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops want to end the isolation of Cuba. And in the end, what Obama did only gets American policy back roughly to where it was during the Clinton administration, before George W. Bush tightened the screws. The usual suspects made noises: Representative Ileana RosLehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, condemned Obamas decision, and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) called it a "gift to the Castro brothers." It remains to be seen if Obama will quietly ignore their ilk and move forward to end the embargo once and for all. The Cuban foreign ministry, while calling Obamas actions "positive," concluded: "They have a very limited reach and do not change US policy against Cuba." It's past time for change we do believe in.

Plan
The USFG should gradually lift the embargo over 15 years as Cuba meets benchmark goals.

Solvency
Cuba has been gradually moving toward policies more favorable to the US Haven 1/26/13 (Paul Haven, Associated Press bureau chief in Havana, Kerry, Hagel On Cuba: Cabinet
Nominees Could Help Ease Relations, Lift Trade Embargo, Huff Post World, 1/26/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/26/kerry-hagel-cuba-us-trade-embargo_n_2559023.html, AD: 7/12/13, AK)
"I think having a secretary of state and secretary of defense who understand and are willing to speak publicly that isolation is counterproductive is a very good start," said Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the nonpartisan Cuba Study Group, which advocates using engagement to spur democratic change. "I'm optimistic about the opportunity." Carlos Alzugaray, an ex-Cuban ambassador to the European Union and the author of several studies about Cuba-US relations, said that if both men are confirmed, no Cabinet since the Carter administration would have such high-level voices in favor of rapprochement. At the same time, the composition of Cuban-Americans in Florida

is evolving, with younger voters less emotionally attached to the issue than their parents and grandparents. Exit polls showed 49 percent of Cuban-Americans in the state voted for Obama, roughly the same percentage as four years ago, an indication the group no longer plays the make-or-break role it once did in presidential politics. The atmosphere is changing in Cuba as well. Alzugaray noted that the island has taken many steps that would normally be welcomed by Washington such as freeing dozens of political prisoners, opening the economy to limited capitalism, hosting peace talks for war-torn Colombia and eliminating most restrictions on travel for its own citizens. "Cuba is changing, and it is changing in the direction that the United States says Cuba must change," Alzugaray told The Associated Press in an interview in his Havana apartment

Fully lifting the embargo cant solve only an incremental approach to phase out restrictions solves CHELSEA A. ZIMMERMAN, Georgetown Law, 10, Rethinking The Cuban Trade Embargo: An Opportune Time To Mend a Broken
Policy, http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/documents/Fellows2010/Zimmerman.pdf, ACC. 6-13-2013, JT//JEDI

Elimination of the trade embargo immediately is not a feasible solution , as such a proposal would not attract sufficient political support. Furthermore, the Cuban political and legal infrastructure does not have the capability of adapting to such a radical change . Instead, I recommend incremental measures that would 1) reduce the restrictions on the financing of Cubas purchase of U.S. products by allowing payments to be made directly to U.S. banks; and 2) reduce and eventually eliminate the restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba by initially permitting travel for educational and cultural purposes and eventually permitting direct commercial flights from the U.S. to Cuba. The U.S. International
Trade Commissions analysis of the effects of government restrictions on export financing estimates that the U.S. share of Cuban agricultural, fish and forest product imports would increase between one-half and two-thirds, and that all U.S. agricultural sectors would benefit from the lifting of financing restrictions (U.S. International Trade Commission). The Commission also studied the effect on U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba if travel restrictions were eliminated, and concluded that significant increases in U.S. exports of processed foods, poultry, beef and pork and fish would result (U.S. International Trade Commission).

Lifting the embargo will lead to change in cuba Lear 9 (John Lear teaches Latin American studies at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma. Marisela Fleites-Lear
taught at the University of Havana. President Obama should end the Cuban embargo February 27, 2009 http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2008794926_opinc01lear.html cici)

The irony of U.S.-Cuban relations is that the embargo's unilateral end would most likely accomplish what the embargo has failed to do: deprive the regime of the glue of U.S. aggression that holds it together. Lifting the embargo would promote an open flow of ideas and trade and more people-to-people contacts. It would

allow more Cubans to confront their internal problems, pushing the Cuban leadership to stop making excuses and to bring about the changes that Cubans in the island want and will ultimately determine. It is time we acknowledge that bullying tactics do not promote peace and democracy in the world. By lifting the embargo, Obama would help us build our image in the world as a forwardlooking nation of good will

Economy
The US economy is extremely fragile total collapse is inevitable absent policy action Delong 7/1 2013 J. BRADFORD DELONG, Professor of Economics at the University of California,
Berkeley, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Visiting Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, The Second Great Depression, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013 (publication date 7/1/2013) http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139464/j-bradford-delong/the-second-greatdepression?page=show
Despite its many virtues, however, the book paints an overly optimistic portrait of the state of the U.S. economy. More than four years after Lehman Brothers went under, Blinder writes, policy makers are still nursing a frail economy back to health. But the

U.S. economy is

worse than frail,

and there

are few signs that it is being nursed back to health. Most economists claim at

least one silver lining in the economic downturn: that it was not as bad as the Great Depression. Up until recently, I agreed; I even took to calling the episode the Lesser Depression. I now suspect that I was wrong. Compare the

ongoing crisis to the Great Depression, and there is hardly anything lesser about it. The European economy today stands in a worse position compared to 2007 than it did in 1935 compared to 1929, when the Great Depression began. And it looks as if the U.S. economy, when all is said and done, will have faced certainly one lost decade, and perhaps even two. The U.S. economy has enjoyed a recovery only in the sense that conditions have not gotten worse. Blinder notes that the
unemployment rate jumped to ten percent at the height of the crisis and is now hovering around eight percent, nearly halfway back to economic health. But this assessment is misleading. In the middle of the last decade, the percentage of American adults who were employed was roughly 63 percent. That figure dropped to about 59 percent in 2009. It remains there today. From

the perspective of

employment, the U.S. economy is not recovering but flatlining . Look at the GDP figures: in the 12 years between the
beginning of the Great Depression and the United States entry into World War II, the U.S. economy saw its production drop by an amount equal to 180 percent of the output of one average pre-crisis year. If one assumes, as the Congressional Budget Office does, that U.S. production will return to its pre-2008 form by 2017, the economy will have suffered a shortfall equivalent to only 60 percent of one average pre-crisis year. But it

is unlikely that the economic downturn will be over by 2017: no war or major innovation appears to be looming on the horizon that could propel the country into an economic boom the way World War II did at the end of the Great Depression. If the downturn drags on into a second lost decade, the United States will incur further
losses equal to the output of a full average pre-crisis year, bringing the total cost of the crisis to 160 percent of an average pre-crisis year and nearly equal to that of the Great Depression. Of course, the present downturn has caused far less human misery than the Great Depression did. But that is because of political factors, not economic ones. The great network of social insurance programs established by President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, President Harry Trumans Fair Deal, President John F. Kennedys New Frontier, and President Lyndon Johnsons Great Society, and defended by President Bill Clinton, sharply limits the amount of poverty a downturn can cause. And what of the future? Only

ambitious political action economic calamity

of the kind that created those programs can

insure the country against suffering an equal

down the line. Yet the

U.S. political system is dysfunctional. Congress will not support the kind of

financial regulation the country sorely needs. Blinder concludes his narrative with a number of smart forward-looking recommendations, but his books biggest weakness is its lack of a road map out of the present impasse that takes into account the political climate. Without years ahead.

a more dramatic set of actions, the United States is likely to suffer another major economic crisis in the

Lifting trade restrictions is the best way to save the US economy

Messamore 12 [W.E., contributor to Independent Voter Network, a news service providing political analysis and democracy-based news, Proposal: Revitalize US Economy by Easing Foreign Sanctions, 724-12, http://ivn.us/2012/07/24/proposal-revitalize-us-economy-by-easing-foreign-sanctions/] Easing economic sanctions on foreign countries like Cuba and North Korea could be a potential solution to the struggling US economy while fostering international cooperation and good will abroad. Economic
sanctions, or embargoes, are a step below war with another country and a step above normal, collaborative diplomacy. They represent the use or threat of military or police action to enforce a blockade against a countrys economy or parts of its economy, preventing the free trade of goods and services between the people and businesses of the target nation and those of the nation or nations enforcing the embargo.

Sanctions are used to pressure governments into adopting certain policy reforms desired by the sanctioning country, and currently the

United States has sanctions in place against Iran, North Korea, and its neighbor, Cuba, among others. The problem is that in unambiguous cost-benefit terms, the results show that sanctions are massive policy failures, ineffective at accomplishing their
objectives, and humanitarian disasters. According to a year 2000 UN-commissioned report for instance: The theory behind economic sanctions is that economic pressure on civilians will translate into pressure on the government for change. This theory is bankrupt both legally and practically. The Free Trade Petition to the G20 Conference circulated by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation compellingly sums up the failure of trade barriers as instruments of foreign policy: A great deal of rigorous empirical research supports the proposition that trade

promotes peace. Perhaps the most tragic example of what happens when that insight is ignored is World War II. International trade
collapsed by 70 percent between 1929 and 1932, in no small part because of Americas 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff and the retaliatory tariffs of other nations. Economist Martin Wolf notes that this collapse in trade was a huge spur to the search for autarky and Lebensraum, most of all for Germany and Japan. The most ghastly and deadly wars in human history soon followed. By reducing war, trade saves lives. Barriers to international trade fail to produce desired policy outcomes, tend to rally a countrys people around their repressive governments against what they perceive as US hostility, lead to poverty and starvation among the poorest classes of targeted nations, foster ill-will against the United States, are historically precursors to more open military hostility, and are even bad for the economy of the sanctioning coun try According to data from the White Houses export council in 2000: the United States has imposed more than 40 trade sanctions against about threedozen countries since 1993 those sanctions have cost American exporters $15 billion to $19 billion in lost annual sales overseas and caused long-term damage to U.S. companies lost market share and reputations abroad as unreliable suppliers. Moving

to ease sanctions

on foreign countries and establish permanent normal trade relations with countries currently under economic blockade could go a long way toward fostering international good will while opening up valuable markets and economic opportunities for trade, stimulating growth

and job creation in the US. It would be like a multi-billion dollar economic stimulus package that taxpayers wouldnt have to pay for and the US government wouldnt have to borrow money to finance, and its effects wouldnt be temporary, they would be permanent, systemic, and structural. That stimulus of potentially tens of billions of dollars would come in year after year by way of free and undirected economic trade between the people of the United States and those of nations currently under an embargo. The structural and systemic nature of the policy reform, rather than a temporary shot in the arm like a giant borrow-and-spend appropriation from Congress (e.g. 2009s $800 billion Stimulus Package), would permanently shift economic behavior, inject some confidence in jittery markets, allow capital to flow to investments that will be the most productive, and create jobs that are more sustainable over the long term.
the gardens.

Economic decline causes global wars Royal 10 director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense (Jedediah,
Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal, and Political Perspectives, pg 213-215) Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict.
Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent stales. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level. Pollins (20081 advances Modclski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms

in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 19SJ) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fcaron. 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately. Pollins (1996) also shows that global
economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level. Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if

the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources . Crises could potentially be
the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third,

others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Mom berg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict,

particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write. The linkage, between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict lends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other (Hlomhen? & Hess. 2(102. p. X9> Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blombcrg. Hess. & Wee ra pan a, 2004). which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions . Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996),
DcRoucn (1995), and Blombcrg. Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force arc at least indirecti) correlated. Gelpi (1997). Miller (1999). and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that Ihe tendency towards diversionary tactics arc greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked lo an increase in the use of force. In summary, rcccni economic

scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict al systemic, dyadic
and national levels.' This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economicsecurity debate and deserves more attention.

The impact is nuclear exchange Merlini 11 Cesare Merlini, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Italian Institute of International
Affairs, of which he had been the president for many years, and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, A Post-Secular World? Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Volume 53, Issue 2, 2011, DOI:10.1080/00396338.2011.571015
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One

or more of the acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involves the use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing
or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.

International Law
The Cuban embargo violates international law because it undermines Cubas right to development: BENJAMIN MANCHAK, 2010 (staff writer, Boston College Third World Law Journal, NOTE:
COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT, AND CONSTITUTIONALLY IMPERMISSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 30 B.C. Third World L.J. 417, Lexis, Accessed 2/24/2013, rwg) Abstract: This Comment examines the legality of the comprehensive unilateral embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba within the frame-work of international law. It argues that, independent of its humanitarian impact or the dubious legality of its extra-jurisdictional components, the comprehensive embargo violates international law because it undermines Cuba's right to development. International law is, and has always been, a component part of U.S. law-it is enforceable in U.S. courts, it informs judicial interpretation of U.S. statutes, and it guides
legislative and executive action in matters of both foreign and domestic policy. In addition to its supplementary interpretive function in our legal system, international

law is, through the Supremacy Clause, binding on the United States as a constitutional

matter. Because of the role international law plays in the United States, a direct conflict between federal and international law is
constitutional anathema. This Comment argues that the tension must be resolved by reference to the substance and timing of the federal enactments that violate international law. Thus, of the coordinate branches, the legislative branch is in the best position to correct the constitutional imbalance. The Comment concludes that Congress must either pass new legislation explicitly renouncing the right to development as an international legal norm, or, in light of the role of international law in our constitutional system, execute faithfully its duty to interpret and uphold the Constitution by repealing the legislation that has created the decades-old embargo.

Even the most restrictive interpretation of international law would deem the Cuban embargo illegal: BENJAMIN MANCHAK, 2010 (staff writer, Boston College Third World Law Journal, NOTE:
COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT, AND CONSTITUTIONALLY IMPERMISSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 30 B.C. Third World L.J. 417, Lexis, Accessed 2/24/2013, rwg)
Such an understanding of the contours of the right to development is more expansive, and perhaps more nuanced, than that to which the United States adheres. n80 Nevertheless,

if it is U.S. domestic law that is in conflict with the international

legal right to development , it is necessary to view the embargo in light of the United States's limited conception. n81 [*438] The fact that the United States has recognized the importance of banking, communications and technology, human capital, and infrastructure to the meaningful growth and development of a state--areas of the Cuban nation that are thoroughly eroded by the embargo-demonstrates the illegality of the blockade even under the most restrictive understandings of development.
n82

Judicial incorporation of customary international law will be perceived and modeled this leads to the bolstering of international law: Douglas Sylvester, 1994 professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, Spring, 1994, 42 Buffalo L. Rev. 555, Lexis
3. Countervailing Arguments. The preceding sections have shown that historical and theoretical objections to a modern application of customary international law are not dispositive. Since

the judiciary is not precluded from applying customary international

only remaining question to be answered is whether the judiciary should begin applying it. The answer is clearly yes, for a number of reasons. First, there is the fact that

law

by the Constitution, history, or political theory, the

much of international law since the Second World War has been created and fostered under the auspices, and to the benefit, of the United States. Judicial applications of international law have the possibility of continuing to solidify and evolve that process. Second, the decisions of domestic tribunals, as evidence of state practice, can have a significant impact on the further development of international law . Increased participation of the domestic judiciary in international law cases will aid in the development of international law in accordance with the interests of the United States. [*620] Third, United States attempts to foster
n301

the rule of law in other nations have been seriously hampered by this country's refusal to be bound by the very proscriptions it espouses. This country's return to international legitimacy , even if through judicial imposition, would go far to strengthening the rule of law in international relations -- a development that can only support American interests. Finally, the disproportionate effect that this country's actions have
upon the development of international law is another factor compelling the judiciary to enforce legitimacy. The incorporation of this law into United States constitutional discourse could have important ramifications. Such

an incorporation could simultaneously strengthen the body of customary international law and make it easier for other nations to identify and enforce this law. Once these laws are made explicit it will become more difficult for violations to occur.
n302

The Cuban embargo is key: resolving the tension of international law with the embargo is crucial to demonstrate to the world the US commitment to take international law seriously: BENJAMIN MANCHAK, 2010 (staff writer, Boston College Third World Law Journal, NOTE:
COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT, AND CONSTITUTIONALLY IMPERMISSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 30 B.C. Third World L.J. 417, Lexis, Accessed 2/24/2013, rwg)
As a matter of domestic law, it is clear the United States may disavow or ignore its obligations under international law. n119 This principle does not extend to the international arena--failure to give domestic effect to international legal commitments does not absolve the United States of those obligations on the international level. n120 With

respect to both treaty obligations and international legal norms that have risen to the level of customary international law, then, the United States is bound to follow international law or risk defaulting on its obligations as a member of the international community. n121 In the absence of meaningful enforcement mechanisms, this does not seem particularly problematic. n122 [*446] So much more is at stake, though--if the United States wishes to use international legal mechanisms to pursue its interests , it must demonstrate to the world that it takes international law seriously within the constitutional framework. n123 Especially in the context of the Cuban embargo , where U.S. federal law is in direct conflict with international law, the United States must accord adequate respect for the latter and take steps to resolve the tension . n124 In order to accomplish this, each branch of government--executive,
legislative, and judicial--has a role to play. n125

Free Trade
Free trade is crumbling- Obama isnt signing any trade agreements Koffler, 12 (Keith is an award winning journalist, White House Dossier, Obama has negotiated zero
free trade deals, May 10th 2012, http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2012/05/10/obamahas-negotiated-zero-free-trade-deals, jk) President Obama has not negotiated a single free trade agreement during his term as president, ignoring one of the best engines of job growth even as he claims that jobs are his biggest priority. Instead, Obama has actually hindered free trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea negotiated by George W. Bush but not approved by Congress during Bushs presidency, acceding to labors wishes that he renegotiate the deals before sending them to Capitol Hill. The Colombia and South Korea deals, along with another Bush-negotiated agreement with Panama, were not submitted to Congress until October 2011, when they were finally ratified. The failure to negotiate free trade deals is clearly U.S. policy. Instead of being fired, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk remains close to the president, anointed as the only senior Obama aide allowed to golf regularly with the president most recently on April 29.

Strong US free trade is key to maintain the current global system Bergsten 97 (Fred C., Peterson Institute for International Economics, Global Trade and American
Politics, September 27th, 1997, The Economist, http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/print.cfm?doc=pub&ResearchID=291)
Second, the trade policy credibility of the United States will totally evaporate if it sits on the sidelines for the next four yearsthe minimum result of a failure to win new negotiating authority. The United States led the agreement of the 34 democracies in the Western Hemisphere to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The United States turned the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), whose 18 members comprise half the world economy, into a substantive organisation by initiating annual summit meetings in 1993 and supporting its agreement to achieve free and open trade and investment by 2010 (for its industrialised members ) and 2020 (for the rest). The

United States insisted that the World Trade Organisation agree to resume negotiations on agriculture, services and other central issues by 2000. American withdrawal from these initiatives would doom them all, threatening a reversal into protectionism. Third, American leadership has been crucial in assuring the compatibility, indeed the complimentarity, of regional and global liberalisation. Some purists have condemned the United States for deviating from the exclusive pursuit of multilateral agreements. But American strategy has promoted regional arrangements (starting with its pact with Canada and extending through NAFTA to the current FTAA and APEC initiatives) partly to press the more inward-looking EU and others to move ahead on the global path. Now that so many regional arrangements are in place or underway, America's defection could throw the whole process into reverse. Key groupsthe EU, Mercosur and perhaps some new Asian groupingscould forget the global track and bring to life the much
feared nightmare of a world of hostile trade blocs. Fourth, American trade policy itself could suffer irreparable harm from a failure of the current legislative effort. The United States is in its seventh year of expansion with unemployment and inflation at their lowest in decades. Its chief competitors in Europe and Japan remain mired in prolonged slumps. President Clinton was decisively re-elected a year ago and remains extremely popular. If

the United States cannot pursue trade liberalisation now, when will it ever be able to? A failure, or a severe limitation on the use of new authority (e.g., to add only Chile to NAFTA), would represent a stunning victory for organised labor and others that oppose globalisation. Such a victory would be led by Congressman Richard Gephardt, the
minority leader of the House of Representatives, and a likely presidential candidate in 2000. The United States has not had a protectionist President for a century (though Ronald Reagan's wrong-headed macroeconomic policies produced a spate of new import quotas) but such an outcome is by no means impossible if the present debate were to misfire. The countries that have taken out insurance policies against a US reversion to protectionism via free trade agreements, Canada and Mexico, have not idly overcome their historical aversions to getting into bed with their superpower neighbor. Would all this be so serious for the rest of the world? After all, the United States is no longer hegemonic in economic terms. Its share of world output has dropped below a quarter and its share of trade is even less. The EU is larger on both counts and

the creation of the euro will end America's monetary dominance. Moreover, globalisation has enormous momentum. Big trade agreements have been proceeding without America. The EU brokered an interim financial services agreement in 1995 when America chose to stay out, is expanding its membership and heading toward mostly free trade with its Mediterranean neighbors by 2010, and is pursuing agreements with Mercosur and Mexico. Subregional pacts such as Mercosur and the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement are moving ahead. Canada and Mexico have concluded their own free trade agreements with Chile. All these deals hurt the United States, by creating or threatening discrimination against it,but this is nothing more than turnabout for America's own preferential compacts. The

global problem is that American

disengagement would puncture, and probably destroy, the prospects for consummating the extraordinarily promising scenario for world trade that has evolved since the end of the Uruguay Round and is now poised to proceed. That scenario has two related
elements.

Free trade is best system awesome empirical studies prove.

Hillebrand 10 Professor of Diplomacy @ University of Kentucky and a Senior Economist for the Central Intelligence Agency. [Evan E.
Hillebrand, Deglobalization Scenarios: Who Wins? Who Loses?, Global Economy Journal, Volume 10, Issue 2 2010+

A long line of writers from Cruce (1623) to Kant (1797) to Angell (1907) to Gartzke (2003) have theorized that economic interdependence can lower the likelihood of war. Cruce thought that free trade enriched a society in general and so made people more peaceable; Kant thought that trade shifted political power away from the more warlike aristocracy, and Angell thought that economic interdependence shifted cost/benefit calculations in a peace-promoting direction. Gartzke contends that trade relations enhance transparency among nations and thus help avoid bargaining miscalculations. There has also been a tremendous amount of empirical research that mostly supports the idea of an inverse relationship between trade and war. Jack Levy said that, While there are extensive debates over the proper research designs for investigating this question, and while some empirical studies find that trade is associated with international conflict, most studies conclude that trade is associated with peace, both at the dyadic and systemic levels (Levy, 2003, p. 127). There is another
important line of theoretical and empirical work called Power Transition Theory that focuses on the relative power of states and warns that when rising powers approach the power level of their regional or global leader the chances of war increase (Tammen, Lemke, et al, 2000). Jacek Kugler (2006) warns that the rising power of China relative to the United States greatly increases the chances of great power war some time in the next few decades. The

IFs model combines the theoretical and empirical work of the peace through trade tradition with the work of the power transition scholars in an attempt to forecast the probability of interstate war. Hughes (2004) explains how he, after consulting with scholars in both camps, particularly Edward
Mansfield and Douglas Lemke, estimated the starting probabilities for each dyad based on the historical record, and then forecast future probabilities for dyadic militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and wars based on the calibrated relationships he derived from the empirical literature.

The probability of a MID, much less a war, between any random dyad in any given year is very low, if not zero. Paraguay and Tanzania, for example, have never fought and are very unlikely to do so. But there have been thousands of MIDs in the past and hundreds of wars and many of the 16,653 dyads have nonzero probabilities. In 2005 the mean probability of a country being involved in at least one war was estimated to be 0.8%, with 104 countries having a probability of at least 1 war approaching zero. A dozen countries12, however, have initial probabilities over 3%. The globalization scenario projects that the probability for war will gradually decrease through 2035 for every countrybut not every dyad--that had a significant (greater than 0.5% chance of war) in 2005 (Table 6). The decline in prospects for war stems from the scenarios projections of rising levels of democracy, rising incomes, and rising trade interdependenceall of these factors figure in the algorithm that calculates the
probabilities. Not all dyadic war probabilities decrease, however, because of the power transition mechanism that is also included in the IFs model. The probability for war between China and the US, for example rises as Chinas power rises gradually toward the US level but in these calculations the probability of a China/US war never gets very high.14 Deglobalization

raises the risks of war substantially. In a world with much lower average incomes, less democracy, and less trade interdependence, the average probability of a country having at least one war in 2035 rises from 0.6% in the globalization scenario to 3.7% in the deglobalization scenario. Among the top-20 war-prone countries, the average probability rises from 3.9% in the globalization scenario to 7.1% in the deglobalization scenario. The model estimates that in the deglobalization scenario there will be about 10 wars in 2035, vs. only 2 in the globalization scenario15. Over the whole period, 2005-2035, the model predicts four great power wars in the deglobalization scenario
vs. 2 in the globalization scenario.16

U.S. increasing free trade spurs more free trade around the world- empirics prove Norberg '04 *Johan Norberg has a degree in history, Progress foundation, Globalisation- golden
straitjacket or goldmine? http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=131, December 1, jk) The big steps towards liberalisation and globalisation around the world has been unilateral decisions on the part of countries who have seen the potential. In his book Free Trade Today, the famous trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati points out that unilateral trade liberalization induces imitation by demonstrating success and by increasing the influence of exporters in other nations. Nations such as Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, India, Singapore and Hong Kong have demonstrated the success of unilateral free trade reforms. An interesting example is that the EU and Japan refused to negotiate reciprocal reductions in protections for their financial and telecommunications sectors. But when the US successfully opened up these sectors, both the EU and Japan unilaterally reduced protectionism in those sectors. The WTO has been able to make progress only because the member countries got convinced by the value of free trade, and liberalised themselves, and it fails now that there is a lack of interest from the nations. The WTO is like a car without an engine, it has to be pushed by the states in order to move forward.