1NC

1NC
5
 1NC
Midterms DA

Failed GOP health care policy means Republicans can’t expand their Senate
majority now---the plan allows the GOP to pick up 10 seats for a total of 62
James Arkin 17, Real Clear Politics staff, 7/25/17, “GOP Fears Health Care Fail Could Thin
Senate Majority,”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/07/25/gop_fears_health_care_fail_could_thi
n_senate_majority.html
Senate Republicans have a favorable electoral map in 2018, with far more Democrats up for re-election,
including in states President Trump won last year. But there is growing concern within the party that a failed vote
on Obamacare this week could imperil the GOP’s effort to expand the Senate majority next
year.
After months of negotiations and weeks of false starts, Republicans will finally move ahead Tuesday on a procedural vote to begin
debate on their Obamacare measure – though as of late Monday, it was unclear precisely what would receive a vote after the
procedural motion – repeal with a replacement, or repeal alone.
GOP leaders expressed confidence they would secure the votes to start debate on the measure Tuesday, and some Republican
senators said there was momentum in favor of the vote Monday evening. If GOP senators do vote to support debate, the political
consequences will shift based on how the bill is changed, and whether the final, amended version can pass the Senate.
Either way, there has been strong opposition from both the moderate and conservative wings of the party.
For the few Republicans up for re-election next year, including Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake
of Arizona, the vote could be central to Democrats’ efforts to defeat them . While most of the
senators opposed to the GOP plans are not up for re-election next year, the effort still has a significant impact on
the party’s chances in 2018.
The favorable map makes it unlikely that Republicans will lose their Senate majority – unlike the
House majority, which many Republicans admit could be in play next year. But there is concern that failure on the
measure could imperil their chances to knock off the 10 Democratic incumbents
running next year in states President Trump won .
In particular, Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia have been two of the
most vocal senators opposing the replacement plans, concerned about the impact Medicaid cuts could have on
their states. Neither is up for re-election next year, but Republicans had considered their Democratic colleagues, Sens.
Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, to be two of the most vulnerable next year. Sen. Ron
Johnson of Wisconsin has also spoken out against the GOP plan, and Republicans plan to target Sen. Tammy Baldwin in her re-
election in the Badger State.
Josh Holmes, a Senate GOP strategist and former chief of staff to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said there was “no question”
that opposition from GOP senators made it more difficult to challenge Democrats in those states.
“There has, up until about four weeks ago, been an incredibly clear contrast between the Republican position on health care and the
Democratic support of Obamacare,” Holmes said. “To say that that has been muddled a bit, I think, is an understatement.”
Capito, Portman and Johnson have not backed away from their support for repealing and replacing Obamacare as a principle, but
Capito and Portman have expressed serious reservations about the party’s replacement plan. And despite voting in 2015 to repeal
the measure outright, with a two-year delay to craft a solution, both said they oppose that strategy now. They haven't indicated how
they'll vote on Tuesday's measure to proceed.
“The reality is that the president is going to sign this bill. I think that’s a big change,” Capito said in a local radio interview last week,
defending the switch in position. She emphasized that in a meeting with all GOP senators last week, Trump himself pushed for
repealing and replacing the ACA. “I don’t think that it’s a responsible way to repeal something, have everything fall off a cliff in two
years, have more people uninsured, have no plan in front of us. I want to see the plan in front of us so I can stay consistent with my
repeal-and-replace votes in the past.”
Trump spoke to thousands of Boy Scouts at a national jamboree in West Virginia Monday evening – and singled out the state's GOP
senator, saying Republicans "better get Sen. Capito to vote for it." He was scheduled for a campaign rally in Ohio Tuesday evening.
Democrats have noticed the GOP opposition and think it will be a useful tool in making the case
against the GOP efforts on Obamacare.
"The fact that even Republican senators are speaking out against the GOP’s health care plan
should tell you everything you need to know about how toxic their agenda will be on the campaign
trail,” said David Bergstein, spokesman for Democrats’ campaign committee.
Manchin and Brown have avoided politicizing their GOP colleagues’ position on the health care bill, focusing on their own
opposition to repealing Obamacare and the impact it would have in their state – though they have also proposed bipartisan
conversations to fix certain aspects of the law. But Manchin did express support for Capito’s position Friday.
“I’m just very proud of her,” Manchin said of Capito last week. “A lot of pressure was on her. She made a tough decision, but she
knows her state the same as I know my state – very, very well. This is something we talked about just couldn’t happen.”
Some Republicans think that opposition from Republican senators could help the case of challengers seeking Democratic seats. One
GOP strategist, who requested anonymity to avoid criticizing Republicans, said outsider candidates in West Virginia could use GOP
opposition to further their own case – arguing either in Ohio or West Virginia that with two senators voting against repeal, the state
needs to elect someone who would vote for the measure.
But in an interview on a local radio program last Friday, Rep. Evan Jenkins – one of two candidates running in the primary to
challenge Manchin next year – defended Capito’s position even while touting his support for the House repeal measure that passed
in May.
“You will not hear me criticizing Sen. Capito for the due diligence with which she is approaching this very difficult, challenging
issue,” Jenkins said. “She’s looking at the proposals being presented in the Senate, not from the House. I have a wonderful working
relationship with Sen. Capito and appreciate the hard work that she puts into it.”
His primary opponent, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, has also struck a similar position to Capito. In a local newspaper
interview after his announcement earlier this month, he said, “I would sit in for as long as it takes to repeal Obamacare, preserve
Medicaid and protect it for those who need it.”
But Morrisey was endorsed by the conservative group FreedomWorks, which sent an email last week labeling Capito a “fraud” –
along with Portman and Maine Sen. Susan Collins – for her opposition to the repeal-only strategy.
In Ohio, state Treasurer Josh Mandel is likely to face Brown in a campaign next fall. But Mandel has long opposed the state’s
Medicaid expansion – his website says he “did everything he could” to prevent the expansion – which puts him at odds with both
Portman and Gov. John Kasich.
Yetsome Republicans caution that if the health effort fails, it’s unlikely that it will be a central
campaign issue a year from now, particularly with an ever-changing news cycle and myriad issues to
focus on against Democrats in Trump states. If Obamacare isn’t a successful campaign issue for them,
Republicans say, they simply won’t spend television money advertising on it , and will seek other ways to
animate their base ahead of the midterms.
But Holmes, the former McConnell aide, argues it would have serious consequences for the party .
“The worst-case scenario for Republicans is they miss the opportunity to make conservative
reforms and as the insurance market collapses, they are forced to engage with Democrats on a
whole-sale insurance bailout,” he said. “From a policy perspective it’s a disaster, and from a political
perspective it’s a catastrophe.”

Filibuster-proof majority means the GOP expands offshore drilling---locks in

warming which causes extinction
Patrick Parenteau 17, professor of law at Vermont Law School, 1/3/17, “Will Trump Scuttle
Obama's Offshore Drilling Bans?,” https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/01/03/will-trump-
scrap-obama-s-offshore-drilling-bans
President Obama gave environmental advocates a Christmas present when he announced in late December that he was
banning oil and gas drilling in huge swaths of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. This action
“ indefinitely ” protects almost 120 million acres of ecologically important and highly sensitive marine environments from the
risks of oil spills and other industrial impacts.
President Obama acted boldly to conserve important ecological resources and solidify his
environmental legacy. But by making creative use of an obscure provision of a 1953 law, Obama ignited a
legal and political firestorm .
Republicans and oil industry trade groups are threatening to challenge the ban in court or through
legislation . They also contend that the Trump administration can act directly to reverse it. But a close reading of the law
suggests that it could be difficult to undo Obama’s sweeping act.
The power to withdraw
Congress passed the law now known as the O uter C ontinental S helf L ands A ct in 1953 to assert federal control over
submerged lands that lie more then three miles offshore, beyond state coastal waters. Section 12(a) of the law authorizes the
president to “withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental
Shelf.”
Starting in 1960 with the Eisenhower administration, six presidents from both parties have used this power. Most withdrawals were
time-limited, but some were long-term. For example, in 1990 President George H. W. Bush permanently banned oil and gas
development in California’s Monterey Bay, which later became a national marine sanctuary.
President Obama used section 12(a) in 2014 to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay, one of the most productive wild salmon fisheries in the
world. In 2015 he took the same step for approximately 9.8 million acres in the biologically rich Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
Obama’s latest action bars energy production in 115 million more acres of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas – an area known as
the “Arctic Ring of Life” because of its importance to Inupiat Peoples who have lived there for millennia. The order also
withdraws 3.8 million acres off the Atlantic Coast from Norfolk, Virginia to Canada, including
several unique and largely unexplored coral canyons.
Why Obama acted
In a Presidential Memorandum on the Arctic withdrawals, Obama provided three reasons for his action. First, he asserted, these
areas have irreplaceable value for marine mammals, other wildlife, wildlife habitat, scientific research and Alaska Native subsistence
use. Second, they are extremely vulnerable to oil spills. Finally, drilling for oil and responding to spills in Arctic waters poses unique
logistical, operational, safety and scientific challenges.
In ordering the Atlantic withdrawals, Obama cited his responsibility to “ensure that the unique resources associated with these
canyons remain available for future generations.”
Market forces support Obama’s action. Royal Dutch Shell stopped drilling in the Chukchi Sea in 2015 after spending US$7 billion
and drilling in what proved to be a dry hole. Since 2008 the Interior Department has canceled or withdrawn a number of sales in
Alaskan waters due to low demand. Shell, ConocoPhillips, Statoil, Chevron, BP and Exxon have all to some degree abandoned
offshore Arctic drilling.
Low oil prices coupled with high drilling costs make business success in the region a risky prospect. Lloyd’s of London forecast this
scenario in a 2012 report that called offshore drilling in the Arctic “a unique and hard-to-manage risk.”
What happens next?
Critics of President Obama’s action, including the state of Alaska and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say they may challenge
Obama’s order in court, in hopes that the Trump administration will opt not to defend it. But environmental groups, which hailed
Obama’s action, will seek to intervene in any such lawsuit.
Moreover, to demonstrate that they have standing to sue, plaintiffs would have to show that they have suffered or face imminent
injury; that this harm was caused by Obama’s action; and that it can be redressed by the court. Market conditions will make this very
difficult.
The Energy Information Administration currently projects that crude oil prices, which averaged about $43 per barrel through 2016,
will rise to only about $52 per barrel in 2017. Whether these areas will ever be commercially viable is an open question, especially
since rapid changes are taking place in the electricity and transportation sectors, and other coastal areas are open for leasing in
Alaska’s near-shore waters and the Gulf of Mexico.
The Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig Kulluk broke loose and ran aground near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska as it was being towed
to Seattle for winter maintenance in December 2012. This Coast Guard overflight video shows the harsh conditions along Alaska’s
coast in winter.
Alternatively, Donald Trump could issue his own memorandum in office seeking to cancel Obama’s. However, section 12(a)
does not provide any authority for presidents to revoke actions by their predecessors. It delegates
authority to presidents to withdraw land unconditionally. Once they take this step, only Congress can
undo it .
This issue has never been litigated. Opponents can be expected to argue that Obama’s use of section 12(a) in this manner is
unconstitutional because it violates the so-called “nondelegation doctrine,” which basically holds that Congress cannot delegate
legislative functions to the executive branch without articulating some “intelligible principles.”
However, one could argue that Obama’s action was based on an articulation of intelligible principles gleaned from the stated policies
of the OCSLA, which recognizes that the “the outer Continental Shelf is a vital national resource reserve held by the Federal
Government for the public.” The law expressly recognizes both the energy and environmental values of the OCS. Thus President
Obama’s decision reflects a considered judgment that the national interest is best served by protecting the unique natural resources
of these areas, while at the same time weaning the nation from its dangerous dependence on fossil fuels.
The section 12(a) authority is similar in some respects to the authority granted by the Antiquities Act, which authorizes the president
to “reserve parcels of land as a part of [a] national monument.” Like the OCSLA, the Antiquities Act does not authorize subsequent
presidents to undo the designations of their predecessors. Obama has also used this power extensively – most recently, last week
when he designated two new national monuments in Utah and Nevada totaling 1.65 million acres.
Some laws do include language that allows such actions to be revoked. Examples include the Forest Service Organic Administration
Act, under which most national forests were established, and the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which sets out
policies for managing multiple-use public lands. The fact that Congress chose not to include revocation language in the OCSLA
indicates that it did not intend to provide such power.
What can the new Congress do?
Under Article IV of the Constitution, Congress has plenary authority to dispose of federal property as it
sees fit. This would include the authority to open these areas to leasing for energy
development . Members of Alaska’s congressional delegation are considering introducing legislation to override Obama’s
drilling ban. But Democrats could filibuster to block any such move, and Republicans – who
will hold a 52-48 margin in the Senate – would need 60 votes to stop them.
On the other hand, Congress may be content to let President-elect Trump make the first move and see how it goes in court. If Trump
attempts to reverse the withdrawal, environmental groups contesting his decision would face some of the same obstacles as an
industry challenge to Obama’s action. It could be especially challenging for environmental groups to show that the claim is “ripe” for
judicial review, at least until a post-Obama administration acts to actually open up these areas for leasing. That may not occur for
some time, given the weak market for the oil in these regions.
In the meantime, this
decision is a fitting capstone for a president who has done everything within
his power to confront the existential threat of climate change and rationally move
the nation and the world onto a safer and more sustainable path .
 1NC
States CP

The fifty states and relevant subnational territories of the United States should
establish Medicare Part C equivalent policies for all.

States solve
PPG 8/5, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board, 8/5/17, "Healthy devolution: For the next
round of health care reform, look to states," www.post-
gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2017/08/06/Healthy-devolution-For-the-next-round-of-
health-care-reform-look-to-states/stories/201708310015
The conservative principle of federalism and the liberal cause of a single-payer option could, for example, be combined.
Both sides understand that the source of ballooning health care costs lies in the system’s vast
complexity, which makes government and insurance companies alike unaccountable in
keeping costs under control . Liberals recognize that simplifying the health insurance
market on free enterprise principles would make insurance utterly unaffordable or simply inaccessible for
millions of Americans. But conservatives fear that a health care service based in Washington would be
too far removed from patient needs . They also bridle against the rationing and wait
times such a system would require to control costs and equalize access. Canadians in need of a hip or knee
replacement wait an average of six months for the procedure. With a much larger population
than Canada — or any of the other countries with single-payer health care and comparable governments —
America under an equivalent system could see substantially worse waiting periods.
But such a system need not be administered from Washington —
a state could do it .
This is where conservatives
and liberals could find common cause: having states create their own
systems . The reason Massachusetts’ and Vermont’s experiments in state-provided health care
failed is that they were basically state-sized Medicaid programs added on top of the
existing Byzantine structure .
Conservatives have good reason to believe the health care systems of Europe and the Pacific Rim
would translate poorly to our much larger democracy and its history of individualism. But they are
wrong to deny the relative success of the universal model in those countries. Rather than
simply copying and pasting that model, consider an adaptation . Government health care
administration could be steered toward the states , building on the American traditions of federalism and choice.
With Congress often paralyzed by partisan conflict, states and cities are taking more
matters into their own hands , in any event.
 1NC
Kritik

National insurance is a technology of security---it’s aimed at promoting a collective

national identity in the face of external threats to Western ways of life, which is
inseparable from violent global security strategies and depoliticizes critique of the
social order
Chris Zebrowski 16, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Loughborough
University, The Value of Resilience: Securing Life in the Twenty-first Century, 2016, pp. 51-58
To a nation still very much steeped in war, the promise of a stable post-war period financed through the peace dividend provided
comfort, solace and hope. Less than a month after the last major raid of the London Blitz, which had devastatingly displayed modern
life's total exposure to modern total war, an interdepartmental committee, chaired by William Beveridge, commenced planning for
an ambitious scheme for post-war social security. Social Insurance and Allied Services popularly known as the Beveridge report —
was presented to Parliament in 1942. No doubt strongly influenced by the spectre of the Great Depression, the report spoke
powerfully to the forms of civil contingency expected to greet post-war administrations. It advocated compulsory social
insurance , social housing, public education, a national health service and a commitment to full employment to
ensure freedom from the 'Giant Evils' of want, squalor, ignorance, disease and idleness in post-war Britain. The document would
be widely recognized as the cornerstone for what would emerge, post-war, as an ambitious state programme for the
management of Civil Contingencies: the British welfare state.
The concurrent operation of these two great machineries of government has been difficult to reconcile within a common historical
account of the post-war period given the very different meanings commonly associated with their inceptions. Historical
narratives of civil defence and the welfare state regularly appeal, explicitly or implicitly, to
diametrically opposed teleologies of the modern liberal state. On the one hand, the welfare state is
taken to represent the culmination of a long project associated with the humanization of the
state wherein policies guided by raison d'état were marginalized and state interests aligned with those of the
nation which it serves Cold War civil defence, on the other hand, invokes a more sinister narrative of
the historical trajectory of the modern state: Advances in weaponry, paired with a conviction of their
necessity, raised the stakes of war so as to wager the existence of whole nations while persistently
underfunded civil defence programmes placated an anxious nation so as to keep it from turning against the official policy of
deterrence. But what if these projects were not so dissimilar? Could it be, as Foucault insisted, that an
indissociable relation exists between state biopolitics, aimed at the protection and
promotion of the species-life of the nation , and the emergence of a thanatopolitical
geopolitics wagering the continued existence of the nation (Foucault. 1998: 143)?
Rather than treating the coexistence of these two great machineries of governance as either coincidental or ironic. this chapter
argues that the security logic of these two albeit distinct machineries of security emanates from a
shared matrix of governmentality . We begin by examining the protective logic of security shared
by the welfare state and civil defence. Building on the analysis undertaken in the previous chapter, the logic of
protection enacted by these two great machineries of emergency governance is shown to derive from a common
problematization of public anxiety and the threat it posed to social order. Identifying this common logic
of security of course is not to reduce these two distinct machineries of governance to the same. Indeed, given the diverse
technologies and practices comprising these machineries of security governance this protective logic of security was in actuality
enacted in quite diverse ways both within and across these assemblages. By focusing on the distinct ways in which this protective
logic was differentially enacted by social insurance and civil defence machineries this chapter locates the composition of a
line of flight (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 9—15: Deleuze. 1992) leading to the emergence a novel approach to the
government of anxiety and, ultimately, the origins of resilience.
In contrast to conventional resilience narratives which place the discovery of resilience in the 1970s, this chapter traces
the
origins of resilience to critiques of the protective logic of security enacted by post-war social
liberal security initiatives. This critique is traced to concerns surrounding the potentially demoralizing effects of social
insurance in debates leading up to the constitution of the British welfare state. Next, we show how this critique of protection was
mobilized in the wake of the Strath report, which demonstrated to policy-makers the genocidal potential of a thermonuclear attack
on Britain. to redirect investment from protectionist policies of civil defence, to "active defence" policies rooted in the idea of
deterrence. Rather than seeking to placate public fears, a policy of active defence required the development of new techniques of
security governance which would mobilize anxieties to encourage preparedness and maintain support for deterrence policies.
Eclipsing a security project rooted in the manufacture of a stoic citizenry, governmental techniques would
increasingly aim at the production of subjects acclimatized to dangerous worlds, confident in
their ability to overcome the risks they faced — even if those included thermonuclear war.
Freedom from fear: social insurance and the British welfare state
Of the diverse mechanisms comprising the welfare state social insurance has been recognized as
its quintessential technology (Dean, 2010; Ewald, 1986, 1991; O’Malley, 2004; Rose, 1996a). By spreading risks
across every member of the nation, social insurance permitted the contingencies inherent to
liberal capitalist societies to be managed without requiring a wholesale reform of the
economic and political order . In doing so, social insurance did more than just free citizens from the Great Evils of
want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness which stood in the way of 'social progress' (Beveridge, 1942: 6). Social insurance
sought to free liberal subjects from the fear of the future. Social insurance thus enacted a social
form of security: reinforcing the social bonds of the nation while simultaneously working to
manage both the risks and the fears which threatened their dissolution . In order to better
understand the role or technologies of government in promoting this notion of social security it is useful to draw on the analyses of
insurance conducted within governmentality literatures before moving on to examine the social and political context which gave
British social insurance its particular form.
Ewald (1991) describes insurance as an abstract technology which operates in relation to a calculative
rationality of risk. Risk, for Ewald, is not an objective condition (cf. Beck, 1992). It is a mode of rationalizing
uncertainty, a way of ordering reality, representing events and understanding dangers which makes them amenable to governance.
Of course, the ways in which risks are conceptualized and addressed vary markedly within and across different fields. Compare, for
example. the risks dealt with by social workers, epidemiologists and insurers (Dean, 2010: 217—27), It is therefore imperative that
risk be analysed in relation to the varied governmental techniques and political projects which invoke it in order to shape the
conduct of individuals and populations.
Risks are rendered calculable through actuarial sciences which 'produce' (Dean, 2010: 213) risks by
extrapolating the regularity of past instances of an event into the future to form probabilities of
its reoccurrence. With insurance, risk can then operate as 'a capital against whose loss the insurer offers a guarantee' (Ewald,
1991: 204). What is offered by insurance does not, and cannot, equal the loss suffered - indeed the loss of a limb, or a life, would be
incalculable (Ewald, 1991: 204). Rather, what is remunerated is an amount which has been contractually agreed upon with the
insurer to be paid out should a particular event materialize. For example. while the cost of an industrial accident to the individual is
itself incalculable, insurance ensures that one need not worry that the loss of one's ability to earn a
wage resulting from such an accident cascades into the bankruptcy of one's family. While
insurance cannot therefore protect one from harm, it can help to mitigate the financial
implications arising from an event's occurrence . It can ensure a degree of financial
stability in an uncertain world . Insurance thus provides the policy holder with a form of
'reparational security' which mitigates financial exposure to a pre-specified event in order to ensure the
continuation of a particular lifestyle (Lobo-Guerrero, 201 1: 6, 911. For this reason, the security referent of
insurance technology is not the material body but a way of life (Lobo-Guerrero, 2011).
The financial security provided by insurance has ethical consequences. As a moral technology (Ewald, 1991: 207) insurance
helps to shape particular behaviours and subjectivities. Insurance provides a way of managing an uncertain
future. Through the purchase of insurance, subjects are compelled to understand their lives in an enterprising manner. They are
encouraged to adopt a disposition to the future that is both rational and calculative (Ewald, 1991: 207). This in turn imposes a
number of moral obligations on subjects with regards to their personal, familial and social responsibilities. The insurance industry
has long capitalized on invoking the responsibility of the policy owner for the well-being of their dependants to sell products such as
life insurance.
Purchasing insurance (the industry tells us) means no longer having to worry about the future. "Insurance…liberates man from fear"
(Ewald, 1991: 208):
One of the first and most salutary effects of insurance is to eliminate from human affairs the fear that paralyses all activity and
numbs the soul. Seneca says somewhere Rex est quit metuit nihil: he who fears nothing is a king. Delivered from fear, man is king of
creation: he can dare to venture; the ocean itself obeys him, and he entrusts his fortune to it.
(Chauffon as quoted in Ewald. 1991: 208)
Ewald thus refers to insurance as a 'liberator of action' (Ewald, 1991: 208). By immunizing the subject from the negative financial
implications of an event, insurance may encourage risk-taking and enable risky lifestyles. The disinhibition produced by insurance
has obvious advantages for the entrepreneur. Citing a passage from Gros, Ewald draws an affinity between the effects produced by
insurance and those of religion:
The global sense of security produced by our already fragmentary existing forms of insurance, and still more by its integral forms yet
to come, is like a transposition on to the earthly plane of the religious faith that inspires the believer. (Gros as quoted in Ewald, 1991:
208)
As an abstract technology, the
spread of insurance is dependent on the extension of an ‘ insurantial
imaginary’: "that is to say, on the ways in which, in a given social context, profitable, useful and necessary uses can be found
for insurance technology" (Ewald, 1991: 198). In contrast to the spread of private insurance, which rests on the ability of insurers to
actualize the abstract technology in innovative ways in order to render insurable. and thus profitable, new forms of risk, the
advent of social insurance, according to Ewald, represented 'the realization of a new form of
insurance, linked to the development of an insurantial imaginary which in this case is also a
political imaginary’ (Ewald. 1991: 198). In order to account for the specific ‘insurantial form’ (Ewald 1991: 198) which social
insurance took in Britain, it is therefore necessary to further inquire into the particular social and political context in which the
abstract technology of insurance was actualized.
In the UK, the evolution of social insurance was shaped to a considerable extent by the social and political environment of the Poor
Laws. By the end of the nineteenth century, the deterrent and moralizing discipline of the Poor Laws was increasingly perceived as
inadequate in addressing the various 'social' problems afflicting Britain's urban labouring classes such as disease, suicide, cyclical
unemployment and the working conditions of many industries. Nikolas Rose explains that 'the social' emerged as an 'invention of
the late nineteenth century that both sociology and welfare government constituted as their object and target' (Rose, 1996b: 56). The
social is not synonymous with society (Donzelo, 1979: xxvii). Rather it 'refers to a particular sector in which quite diverse problems
and special cases can be grouped together, a sector comprising specific institutions and an entire body of qualified personnel'
(Deleuze, 1979: ix). In Britain, empirical investigations spawned by the new Poor Law helped to gradually dissociate a distinctly
'social' domain from political and economic issues in the latter half of the nineteenth century (Poovey, 1995:8—13). In particular, the
application of statistical sciences to the 'avalanche' of information generated from institutions including workhouses, prisons and
hospitals. was instrumental in giving the sense that regularities existed in the appearance of events associated with social problems
such as reproduction, disease and mortality (Foucault, 2003, 2007; Hacking, 1982, 1990, 1991). By the late nineteenth century,
contingencies such as accidents, illness, unemployment and even death were increasingly seen as properties of statistical
distribution rather than negligence (Hacking, 1990). The gradual consolidation of a distinctly social domain gave rise to a vision of
society increasingly understood as a phenomenon displaying laws of statistical regularity. In turn, a variety of personal and
economic problems formerly subject 'to the hazards of struggle, charitable practices and repression' (Donzelot, 1979: 81) would be
redefined as social risks.
Social insurance arises from the application of the abstract technology of insurance to social
risks (Ewald, 1986. 1991). With the Beveridge report, social insurance would be mobilized as the principal means for combating the
'Giant Evils' of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness which stood in the way of the 'Road to Reconstruction' and 'social
progress' more generally (Beveridge, 1942: 6). The Beveridge report sought to review, integrate and extend across the entire social
body a number or pre-existing insurance schemes which had arisen in piecemeal fashion from the turn of the century, including
those already operating in the fields of old age pensions (1908), health (1912) and unemployment (1920). Its success rested on the
ability to portray poverty in a manner consistent with the rationality of insurance Drawing on a 'diagnosis of want' advanced
by inter-war social surveys (Beveridge. 1942: 8), Beveridge would portray
a variety of events including sickness,
unemployment, accident, retirement and death as risks which threatened the interruption or
loss of earning power (Beveridge, 1942: 120). In construing these problems as social risks, as opposed
to , say, problems endemic to the structure of capitalism , the Beveridge report encouraged the
application of insurantial technologies while side-lining more ambitious calls for a
restructuring of society itself . Social insurance would translate the 'abstract technology of
insurance' into a comprehensive political programme which would cover all the major risks and pay benefits at a
subsistence level as a benefit of national citizenship.
For Foucauldian analysts, social insurance was thus not only a response to the emergency of the social,
but a technology of solidarity (Ewald, 1986, 1991: 209-10). Rose explains:
It incarnates social solidarity in collectivizing the management of the individual and dangers
posed by the economic riskiness of a capricious system of wage labour, and the
corporeal riskiness of a body subject to sickness and injury, under the stewardship of a 'social'
State. And it enjoins solidarity in that the security of the individual across the vicissitudes of a life history is guaranteed by a
mechanism that operates on the basis of what individuals and their families are thought to share by virtue of their common sociality,
Social insurance thus establishes new connections and association between 'public' norms and procedures and the fate of individuals
in their 'private' economic and personal conduct. (Rose, 1996b: 48)

Mobilizing security around insurance and social cohesion enables a global regime
of violence---surplus populations are simultaneously encouraged to be self-reliant
in the face of instability and treated as threats to the Western social order
Mark Duffield 7, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Global Insecurities Centre,
University of Bristol, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of
Peoples, 2007, pp. 184-188
This chapter is concerned with development as a technology of containment associated with the
division of the global population into insured and non-insured life at the time of
decolonization, and especially the permanent crisis of containment arising from the moral,
political and practical impossibility of maintaining this division. The opposite of containment is
the unsecured circulation of surplus population that external poverty, instability and associated
social breakdown continually threaten. As a supreme technology of containment, the new or culturally coded
racism that shapes development discourse is examined. During decolonization an early success of this racism was to
place the immigrant within a zone of exception excluded from normal society. At the same time, development became a
series of compensatory state-led technologies that divided into interconnected domestic and
overseas sites or variants. The former is associated with a state-encouraged race relations industry based on identity,
entitlement and integration, while the latter is denoted by the emergence of development as a contemporary interstate relationship.
The policing of global circulation brings together the search for internal harmony and the quest for external homeostasis within an
episodic international security architecture. At each crisis of containment, the biopolitical linkages between these sites and
technologies multiply and thicken. The governmentalization of the aid industry and the shift to a post-interventionary terrain of
contingent sovereignty, for example, interconnects with the abandonment of multiculturalism in favour of more collective forms of
national identity and social cohesion. The threat from ungoverned space is now an internal as well as an external problem. In
attempting to think across the national–international divide, this chapter begins by examining the blurring of these categories
within political imagination.
The collapse of the national–international dichotomy
The end of the Cold War heralded two interconnected revolutions in international affairs. With the weakening of former restrictions,
including respect for non-interference, the first was the ability of the UN, donor governments and aid agencies to intervene in
ongoing and unresolved internal conflicts. This allowed a step change in all forms of humanitarian, development and peace activism,
which, together with its increasing militarization, has contributed to a significant decline in formal civil conflicts within the erstwhile
Third World (HSC 2005). While political instability and insecurity are still rife, this process of pacification has produced a new
political space of contingent sovereignty; while respect for territorial integrity remains, sovereignty over life within ineffective states
is now internationalized, negotiable and conditional. Continent sovereignty, however, is closely associated with another revolution,
that is, the collapse of the traditional national–international dichotomy within political imagination. The French sociologist Didier
Bigo has commented that many students of crime, conflict and international relations have, for some time, been struck by how the
institutions of the police and military, once thought of as belonging to the separate domains of ‘national’ and ‘international’
security respectively, ‘now appear
to be converging regarding border, order and the possible threats to
identity, linked to (im)migration’ (Bigo 2001: 91). Moreover, this perception of the merging of internal and external
security was being driven by practitioners and politicians rather than ‘a cross-fertilisation from the literature’ (ibid.). As if on cue, in
addressing the UK Labour Party’s annual conference following the events of 9/11, Tony Blair outlined his now often quoted view of a
new and radically interdependent world.
Today the threat is chaos, because for people with work to do, family life to balance, mortgages to pay, careers to further,
pensions to provide, the yearning is for order and stability and if it doesn’t exist elsewhere, it is unlikely to exist here. I have long
believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in (Blair 2001).
This does not mean that in the past the national and international were somehow unconnected. As suggested by successive
epochs of world exploration, trade, conquest and war, the national and the international have
for centuries been closely interwoven within the narrative of modernity. Indeed, in all these historic
phases of the national/international, one finds ‘a temporal bracketing that crucially coincides with fundamental politico-legal
changes in the West itself’ (Hussain 2003: 23). However, when threats to the territorial nationstate were security’s primary concern,
the home/foreign distinction played an essential role in the art of government. It helped to mobilize national armies against those of
other nations. As the above quote suggests, however, international security is now experienced differently. In a globalized
world, international instability menaces society more than it does the state. It undermines the
dependability of jobs, careers and livelihoods; it weakens financial stability and savings and pensions; it threatens
the ability of people to raise families and secure their futures; and it jeopardizes energy supplies, mass transport systems, centralized
food chains, and just-in-time commodity flows. Such threats are biopolitical in nature since they impact upon the collective
existence of population. They are, in short, threats to the West’s way of life. Moreover, these dangers do not
emanate from enemy states as such. Apart from the occasional rogue regime, states now figure more
frequently as the facilitators, conduits or ineffectual hosts of opposing or contrary ways of
life . Rather than opposing armies on a battlefield, unending war fields oppose ways of life on the
radically interconnected terrain of global society .
The post-Cold War pacification of the global borderland has revealed that ending internal wars within ineffective states is relatively
easy. Winning the post-interventionary peace among the world of peoples, however, is more difficult. The danger is no longer the
early 1990s fear of uncontrollable local scarcity wars (Kaplan 1994); today the concern is over low-intensity but
generalized political instability that threatens mass society’s radically interconnected global way
of life (Strategy Unit 2005). The interlinkage of homeland and borderland populations through the dynamics of global circulation
has moved questions of the integration or non-integration of peoples, regions, religions, cultures, generations and genders into the
political foreground (Denham 2001). At the time of writing, the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has rekindled and already
claimed the lives of a number of British soldiers. Reflecting today’s radical interdependence, however, the first British casualties in
this long war were not from the British Army. They were five London Muslims killed in October 2001 fighting for the Taliban (Harris
et al. 2001). State-led technologies of development and security now interconnect mass society’s
internal anthropological frontier built around notions of equality, entitlement and identity,
with an external frontier located within the individual psyches, gendered subjectivities,
households and self-reliant communities that inhabit zones of crisis . While conditions differ greatly,
within both of these frontier zones the key issue is social cohesion and the developmental need to reconcile the necessity of order
with the inevitability of progress. The emergent security architecture linking the two is planetary in ambition.
Or at least, it
predicates the security of the homeland on the stability of a post-interventionary
borderland. The national and international have always been interconnected. However, what is happening in, say, the
backstreets of Bradford and the alleyways of Islamabad now assumes a new significance. Looking for connections has historically
been the task of the police and intelligence services. Today, however, with the collapse of the national–international dichotomy in
political imagination they come together as parts of the same developmental challenge. Defending the West’s way of life
is dependent on promoting social cohesion within the homeland as well as the
borderland.
The internal and external frontiers of this security architecture are radically interconnected through the flows and spaces of global
circulation, which itself creates a need to police its dynamics, that is, allowing the ‘good’ circulation on which globalized markets
depend – such as investment, commodity flows, information, patent rights, technology, skilled migration and tourism – while
preventing the ‘bad’ circulation that poses a risk to national and international stability: non-insured
migrants , refugees and asylum seekers, together with the shadow economies, money
laundering, drugs, international crime, trafficking and terrorism associated with ineffective states and zones
of crisis. The development of computers and information technologies, the digitalization of the flows and
spaces of circulation, new modes of surveillance and data mining all promise ever more
comprehensive and intimate ways in which movement can be monitored and policed (I-CAMS 2005). It
has already been argued that development offers a liberal alternative to the extermination or eugenic manipulation of surplus
population. The scope of the challenge facing development is suggested by claims from political economy that most of the
people living on the margins of global society, that is, outside the greater North American, west European and east
Asian economic blocs, are now ‘structurally irrelevant’ to the process of capitalist
accumulation (Castells 1998: 75–82). Their only relevance is political: an excess freedom to move,
flow and circulate thus potentially destabilizing international society’s finely balanced and globally interconnected way of life.
While the differences between the United States’ militarized approach to unending war and the more developmental European
stance is often flagged (Kagan 2003; Coker 2003), they are united in terms of the need to protect mass consumer society from
transborder, non-state asymmetric threats (compare Bush 2002 and Solana 2003). In examining the origins of the NGO movement,
chapter 2 outlined the way in which decolonization allowed the re-expansion of international trusteeship
based on the non-governmental promotion of community self-reliance . Development
as self-reliance, however, exists in relation to a double exception. The expansion of the NGO movement was
premised on the condition of permanent emergency in which self-reliance exists. It was this state of
exception that called forth the necessity of a developmental trusteeship over non-
insured peoples . As well as providing a developmental opportunity, however, permanent emergency also
encourages social breakdown, displacement and the circulation of surplus population. In terms of
achieving security over life, this double exception constitutes decolonization as both an opportunity and a
threat , that is, as an occasion for the consolidating effects of development and, at the same time, as a need
for the globalizing reach of security .
Previous chapters have analysed the post-Cold War governmentalization of the aid industry and the emergence of post-
interventionary society. This chapter provides a greater appreciation of how this deepening external biopolitical
frontier is bracketed together with an internal one . Moreover, within the international architecture of
unending war, development as a state-led technology of security now interconnects the two . Since
threats to the West’s way of life now stem from contrasting and contrary ways of life, it is essential that the place of racism within
liberalism and development is considered. Using Foucault’s work on state racism as a point of departure, the shift from a biological
to a culturally coded racism during the struggle for independence is examined, before the way in which the policing of immigration
links to compensating technologies of internal and external development is considered.

Vote negative to problematize the limits of political community

Vivienne Jabri 13, Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies, King's
College London, The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming politics/governing others in late
modernity, 2013, pp. 61-62
When the lens is placed on the limits of political community, the focus is not simply on how
these limits are constructed historically, but also on their power to reconstitute the
subject of politics . It is in this sense that the ‘international’ matters to the postcolonial subject, as we will see later in this
book, for the international, while certainly of the modern colonial order, is at the same time (and aporetically) constitutive of the
postcolonial subject. However, it is this very aporia that confers the potential of an authorial voice for the postcolonial subject, as we
will see in the next chapter.
In rendering the limits of political community the subject of international political theory, the
interesting question to ask is wherein lies agency in relation to the drawing and re-drawing of
such limits. A juridical approach to this question focuses on sovereign authority, while a historical-sociological approach
relocates the lens to practices of government and specifically the government of populations and their classification and
distribution.4 Both renditions of this Foucaultian-inspired distinction understand the capacity, or indeed
agency, to draw and redraw the limits of political community on the side of power. As we will see
below, another option we have in discerning or seeking out the agency to draw the limits of political community is to
relocate the lens towards the subject of politics, the subject who claims the right to politics.
The question of limits is not only of significance in the history of the postcolonial world, but is of particular salience
now in late modernity, when inside/outside distinctions can no longer be associated with the
boundaries of the state, but are manifest in corporeal terms, both in relation to the individual self
and in relation to populations. While the juridical rendition on the limits of political community is and continues to be a
defining factor in the constitution of the postcolonial subject, it is the ‘government’ of the postcolonial subject
and their capacity to draw and redraw the limits of political community that is core to any
critical discourse on the postcolonial international. It is in the context of these practices of government that the claim to
the right to politics must be understood.
The motivating force of events brings into sharp focus the seductions of the empirical domain, and especially when these concern
resistance and mass protest. How do we capture this moment in a discipline whose historic remit is defined in terms of the state,
international order, and material capabilities? This neo-realist rendition of the international has, of course, been long questioned
and indeed discredited, variously by constructivists, feminists, postcolonial, critical, and poststructural theorists. These latter
perspectives have rendered the international a political as well as a social domain, so that ‘people’, to borrow from Christine
Sylvester (1994), are as much part of the picture as states and institutional arrangements. However, the
problem has
never simply been one of ‘peopling’ international relations, nor simply one of adding non-
state actors to the so-called pluralist mix so that the relationships purportedly within the scientific
purview of the discipline are not confined to one set of relations defining the inter-state system. The
problem, rather, is one of interrogating the very limits of political community , how these
limits are historically defined, pre-determined, naturalised, and ultimately complicit in the
practices and discourses of inclusion and exclusion .
 1NC
Rate Setting CP

The United States federal government should establish all-payer rate-setting,

including global budgeting and administered by an independent, bipartisan
federal commission, for basic services in the United States.

The United States federal government should commit to funding cost-sharing

reductions.

Solves health care costs and lowers premiums

David Dayen 17, contributor to The Intercept and also writes for Salon, the Fiscal Times, the
New Republic, and more, “Single Payer, Meet All Payer: The Surprising State That is Quietly
Revolutionizing Health Care,” 7/24/17, https://theintercept.com/2017/07/24/single-payer-
meet-all-payer-the-surprising-state-that-is-quietly-revolutionizing-healthcare/
MARYLAND IS THE only state in America where all hospitals must charge the same rate for services to
patients, regardless of what insurance they carry. There’s some variance between hospitals, but every patient in a
particular hospital pays the same. Other states experience huge, seemingly random differences in hospital costs, depending on the
insurer (or lack thereof).
Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission has set hospital reimbursement rates for over 40
years. The state obtained a federal waiver to include Medicaid and Medicare in its all-payer system, with the goal of keeping cost
increases below Medicare growth. And it’s worked, creating the lowest rate of growth in hospital costs in
America.
In 2014, to prevent hospitals from making up profit margins through volume, Maryland tweaked the
system, adding global budgeting . “The traditional way it worked, every hospital got a rate card,” said Joshua Sharfstein,
an associate dean at Johns Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a former head of Maryland’s Health Department.
“Now you get a number, which is the total revenue for the year.”
this creates hospital incentives
Because the global budget doesn’t change based on the number of admissions,
toward better outcomes . “It makes the health system focused on keeping people healthy
rather than just treating illnesses,” said Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative, a state
advocacy group. That includes increased preventive treatment, using case managers to connect patients to primary care, eliminating
unnecessary tests, and encouraging good health outside the hospital walls.
Three years into global budgeting, the state is “meeting or exceeding” its goals, according to a January
Health Affairs study. Hospital revenue growth is well below counterparts nationwide, or the growth of
Maryland’s economy. Plus, state hospitals have saved $429 million for Medicare, more in three years than it
targeted for five. Most important, every state hospital (all of which are nonprofit) and every insurer in Maryland are on board with
the system.
If a centralized rate-setter bands every insurer together to negotiate prices, all payer can
functionally act like single payer in terms of bringing down costs. All payer reduces
hospital and insurer overhead, since billing costs are known in advance. And because the
Affordable Care Act caps the amounts insurers can take in as profits, lower hospital costs should flow back to the
individual in the form of smaller premiums .
This is why five countries — France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and The Netherlands — use all-payer rate setting
as the basis for their universal health care systems. These countries have been found to control costs far better
than America’s fragmented system.
The system only applies to hospital payments, not primary care doctors or clinicians. However, last year Maryland submitted a
“progression plan” to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with the goal of expanding the system by January 2019. That
would line up with the swearing in of Maryland’s next governor.
Other states have looked to Maryland as a model. Pennsylvania has adopted global budgeting for rural hospitals. And in the wake of
its single-payer failure, Vermont moved to an all-payer accountable care organization, where providers are paid based on health
outcomes for the population. “In some ways it’s more radical [than single payer] if you’re able to
get the incentives right,” said Joshua Sharfstein. But the true test of Maryland-style all payer is whether it can support
universal coverage for every resident.
 1NC
Innovation DA

The US is key to global medical innovation---NHI trades off with new drugs that
combat diseases
Ryan Huber 17, PhD, Executive Editor of Arc digital magazine. 3/29/17, “U.S. Health Care
Reality Check #1: Pharmaceutical Innovation” https://arcdigital.media/u-s-health-care-reality-
check-1-pharmaceutical-innovation-574241fb80ba
That is, despite the many regulations and laws aimed at consumer protection and safety that do exist in the United
States, our health care market is relatively freer and more dynamic than those of other
developed countries. This leads to a high rate of medical and pharmaceutical innovation that
ends up benefiting the rest of the world, particularly other rich countries, in a similar way that
NATO nations, for example, benefit from close military alliance with the United States. In short and
somewhat reductive terms: we spend more money so everyone else can be healthier.
But this doesn’t make total sense at first. If the United States is developing
more innovative medicines,
devices, and procedures than every other advanced economy, why aren’t we making money by
selling these medical innovations to others for a hefty profit? Why aren’t there many more billions of dollars
of revenue coming into the United States Treasury because of our status as a medical innovator?
The answer is complicated, but here are some facts you need to know:
First, pharmaceutical companies which innovate in the United States chargetheir domestic
customers much more than they do their customers abroad. This is because, if countries don’t like
the prices charged by a given pharmaceutical company for a certain drug, they will simply ignore
the patent that company holds for their drug in the United States or elsewhere.
Novartis spent nearly 15 years seeking a patent in India for Glivec, a medicine for chronic myeloid leukemia. That quest reached its
dead end, at last. India’s Supreme Court rejected the Swiss drugmaker’s patent application. Glivec (marketed in America as
“Gleevec”) is a blockbuster, earning the Swiss drugmaker $4.7 billion last year. Its prospects in India are now zilch.
Although in this example Novartis happens to be a Swiss drug company, the ruling sends the same clear message to drug makers in
the United States: Give us your drugs for next to nothing or you’ll get exactly nothing.
Second, and relatedly, notice that there seems to be a correlation between how much a country
spends on prescription drugs and the percentage of NMEs (New Molecular Entities) produced
by that country.
If you combine points 1 and 2, you start to understand that the high spending of health care
consumers in the United States is arguably funding not only global pharmaceutical
innovation but is also facilitating the availability of new medicines to other countries at much
lower prices than domestic consumers pay.
There is a third factor that might help explain why health care, especially with regard to pharmaceutical innovation, is so much more
expensive in the United States: our massive regulatory agency of all things drugs and food, also known as the FDA, is significantly
more burdensome for medical innovation than the analogous agency for all of Europe, the EMA (European Medicines Agency).
The EMA doesn’t get the final say on whether a drug gets approved for sale in the EU, and perhaps even more significantly, they
don’t breathe down their drug companies’ necks during clinical trials.
In the U.S., because of the cumbersome bureaucracy of the FDA and its processes, we decide to tackle more targets in the drug
development scene through “Fast Track” and “Breakthrough Therapy” route than through the more traditional and more costly
standard drug approval processes.
Does this represent an implicit admission that government is inefficient?
It’s understandable that, given limited resources, the regulatory process can’t be automatic, or even fast-tracked, for all applicants.
But if the FDA can put a medication on a path where an evaluation can be made “quickly and efficiently,” does that mean the normal
course of action is to proceed slowly and inefficiently? If so, this could represent a needless driver of health care costs.
We need to be able to ask this question: Is there something going wrong with the drug development process to have the costs so high
and climbing higher every year?
Looking at a cost breakdown of Big Pharma companies from 2014, a big chunk of their costs, almost equal to the sum of the entire
first and second phase of their clinical trials, come from the 4th phase of clinical trials, which is often referred to as “post-marketing
surveillance.”
This is the phase of a drug’s life that takes place after its approval for sale on the U.S. market, in which the FDA requires continued
and ongoing studies to validate the drug’s safety and efficacy using data generated from every phase of clinical trials leading up to its
approval in the first place. It’s in this phase of a drug’s life where, after spending large amounts of money to get the drug approved,
companies can still watch as the FDA rescinds a drug’s approval status, which leads to the drug getting withdrawn from the market,
in many cases never to be seen again.
In fact, as of 2015, 462 medicinal products were withdrawn from the market between 1953 and 2013, and the supporting evidence in
72 % of cases consisted of anecdotal reports. Only 43 (9.34 %) drugs were withdrawn worldwide and 179 (39 %) were withdrawn in
one country only. Withdrawal was significantly less likely in Africa than in other continents (Europe, the Americas, Asia, and
Australasia and Oceania).
So, not only is almost a fourth of a drug’s average R & D cost attributable to legislative constraints the government imposes on
pharmaceutical companies to police their own products even after they’ve been approved based on incredibly high standards of
safety and testing, but also, compared to less developed countries, we’re more likely to pull drugs off the
market and revoke their status as a result of anecdotal case reports of adverse effects that
generally go unverified.
We consistently decide to err on the side of safety, even if it means pulling the plug on a 10–15-year-long investment (the average
length of development for a drug), which helps clarify how aspiring for safer and more effective drugs begins to preclude cheaper
drugs.
So the United States produces the most novel and cutting edge therapeutic compounds despite
the most expensive and stringent approval process and sells them to other countries at much
lower prices than we do at home. In doing this, we are indeed subsidizing research and
development of drugs and medical devices for the rest of the world. This subsidized medical innovation is a
major contributing factor to the out-of-control health care costs in the United States, and losing this innovation will be
one of the sacrifices we make if we move toward a more cost-controlled or government-run
health care system over the next several years.

Disease = Extinction
Arturo Casadevall 12, M.D., Ph.D. in Biochemistry from New York University, Leo and Julia
Forchheimer Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Albert
Einstein College of Medicine, former editor of the ASM journal Infection and Immunity, “The
future of biological warfare,” Microbial Biotechnology Volume 5, Issue 5, pages 584–587,
September 2012, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-7915.2012.00340.x/full
In considering the importance of biological warfare as a subject for concern it is worthwhile to review the known
existential threats. At this time this writer can identify at three major existential threats to humanity: (i) large-scale
thermonuclear war followed by a nuclear winter, (ii) a planet killing asteroid impact and (iii) infectious disease . To this
trio might be added climate change making the planet uninhabitable. Of the three existential threats the first is deduced from the
inferred cataclysmic effects of nuclear war. For the second there is geological evidence for the association of asteroid impacts with
massive extinction (Alvarez, 1987). As to an existential threat from microbes recent decades have provided
unequivocal evidence for the ability of certain pathogens to cause the extinction of entire
species. Although infectious disease has traditionally not been associated with extinction this
view has changed by the finding that a single chytrid fungus was responsible for the extinction
of numerous amphibian species (Daszak et al., 1999; Mendelson et al., 2006). Previously, the view
that infectious diseases were not a cause of extinction was predicated on the notion that many
pathogens required their hosts and that some proportion of the host population was
naturally resistant. However, that calculation does not apply to microbes that are acquired
directly from the environment and have no need for a host, such as the majority of fungal
pathogens. For those types of host–microbe interactions it is possible for the pathogen to kill off every
last member of a species without harm to itself, since it would return to its natural habitat
upon killing its last host. Hence, from the viewpoint of existential threats environmental microbes
could potentially pose a much greater threat to humanity than the known pathogenic microbes, which
number somewhere near 1500 species (Cleaveland et al., 2001; Taylor et al., 2001), especially if some of these species acquired the
capacity for pathogenicity as a consequence of natural evolution or bioengineering.

Investment by big pharma is key to tissue engineering advances---high market

costs in the US drive investment
Nicholas Kitonyi 15, is a financial analyst with extensive experience in investment research and
stock market analysis. His analysis has been featured on research sites like Seeking Alpha and
Benzinga. 3/26/15, “Big Pharma Companies Are Betting On Regenerative Medicine - Should
You?” https://www.gurufocus.com/news/337932/big-pharma-companies-are-betting-on-
regenerative-medicine--should-you
Regenerative medicine is organized around medical technologies potentially possessing the
answers to reversing the human aging process. It is described as a medicine with the unique ability to repair,
replace or regenerate deteriorating tissues and organs affected by either injury, disease or simply due to the natural aging process.
Regenerative medicines can be applied in a wide variety of disorders including
neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's Diseases, among others. Often these are chronic diseases,
which in many cases tend to come at later stages in life. Other potential applications of regenerative medicine include
cardiovascular, hepatic, dermatological and orthopedic disease and disorders.
This industry has existed for more than two decades with the majority of early entrants concentrated around the use of stem cells,
but growth has only started to pick up over the last few years driven by developments in
specific areas of technology, such as tissue engineering , improved stem cell therapies, nanotechnology and
electroceuticals. The rapid aging of the global population and the increasing prevalence of obesity is
leading to a significant and growing rate of inflammatory and degenerative diseases of all types.
These demographically driven changes are generating significant interest from large, multi-national
pharmaceutical companies now targeting small biotechnology start-ups engaged in developing
diagnostics and treatments for these degenerative diseases.
Some of the notable companies already showing interest in regenerative medicine research include Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), Johnson &
Johnson(NYSE:JNJ) and Celgene (NASDAQ:CELG), among others.
So why exactly are big pharma companies investing heavily in regenerative medicine?
I pointed out at the beginning that regenerative medicine technologies and treatments could possibly replace current methods of
treatment in the coming years. While current technologies are treating symptoms of disease or injury, it's not curing the underlying
pathology, which explains why the process of aging remains such a huge quandary to human existence.
However, with regenerative medicine, the possibility exists of regenerating deteriorating tissue and
potentially slowing the rate of deterioration or even curing the basic pathology permanently.
The Big Pharma companies know precisely how people value life and thus would embrace the process of living a
longer healthy life with open arms. Take an example of America alone, where people spend more than $300
billion on healthcare every year. Everyone would be looking to cut down on spending by
using regenerative medicine to cure chronic conditions they suffer from, rather than continually seeking general medicine
on a yearly basis.
Therefore, this indicates early industry players are far likelier to benefit more than companies coming in later stages, especially given
the vast number of people already suffering from various diseases. Additionally, the industry is attracting all types of players from
large cap companies to SME's and private startups. This means an open arena still exists for savvy operators to venture into endless
possible capacities.
Generally, small startup biotech companies are leading the way in terms of research in this new
market, while big pharma offers the financial muscle required for financing clinical trials for
commercializing potential products . This is why we are seeing a lot of collaboration
between the big players and small biotech companies.
There are already consolidations and partnerships in regenerative medicine research taking place to allow these companies to
position themselves for early entry into the market. Notably, a few players already have products in the clinical pipeline while others
are still at preclinical stage.
For instance, Celgene recently announced a 4.5% stake in Mesoblast (MEOBF), which is one of the leading players in regenerative
medicine research. Celgene's investment is geared towards the development of an Acute Graft Versus Host Disease "GVHD"
program, which is now in Phase III.
The price of Mesoblast rallied following Celgene's announcement, which was an indication of investor approval. The company
definitely needs funds to conduct the clinical trial and subsequent pursuit of FDA approval, but Celgene certainly does have the
finances to pursue this path.
Another major player, Teva Pharma (NYSE:TEVA), already holds about a 20% stake in Mesoblast and is a major partner in the
Chronic Congestive Heart Failure "CCHF" program, which is also in Phase III. This is an excellent example of how major
pharmaceutical companies are eyeing stakes in the regenerative medicine space, especially after the startup biotech's establish
positive grounds for clinical trials.
In another example, Pfizer has created a unit of its own dedicated specifically to regenerative
medicine research. The company initiated operations in Cambridge, MA in 2008 for the sole purpose of regenerative
medicine research, but now that unit, Neusentis, has grown to include other types of therapies.
Since 2011, Neusentis' main research areas have been in therapies for pain and sensory disorders. Neusentis is currently developing
cell based therapies for age related macular degeneration.
Lastly, Johnson & Johnson invested $12.5 million last year (and that could rise to $325 million based on milestones) in a stem-cell
therapy program being developed by startup company Capricor Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CAPR). The program, which has also
attracted $20 million in support from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is set to begin a Phase II trial for
cardiovascular disease in 2016.
It is worth mentioning that while most Big Pharma players are investing in more traditional cell-based therapies, GlaxoSmithKline
(NYSE:GSK) is heavily investing in a new field called "bioelectronics" or "electroceuticals" by establishing a $50 million strategic
venture capital fund. The purpose of this fund is to finance companies whose technologies use electrical signals in the body to target
diseases. SetPoint Medical was the first company to receive a $5 million investment from GlaxoSmithKline to develop implantable
devices for immune system disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease.
In a nutshell, it
remains pretty clear the research and development process of regenerative
medicine requires significant capital and extensive testing before getting the product to
market. However, one of the companies in the sector Endonovo Therapeutics (ENDV) claims that it has already created a new
and less invasive way to treat chronic and inflammatory diseases using electroceutical™ technology originally developed at NASA
that could prove to be more affordable and safer alternative for patients once their products are on the market.

Tissue engineering is key to global food security

Mark Post 14, MD, PhD in Pharmacology from Utrecht University, Professor of Vascular
Physiology and Chair of Physiology at Maastricht University, and Cor van der Weele, Prof and
bioethicist in the Dept of Applied Philosophy at Wageningen University, PhD in philosophy of
Biology, “Principles of Tissue Engineering for Food,” Ch 78 in Principles of Tissue Engineering
(Fourth Edition), 2014, Pages 1647–1662, Science Direct
Most techniques in tissue engineering were developed for medical applications. The potential benefits of tissue
engineering and regenerative medicine for the repair of non-regenerative organs in the human body have not really been questioned. It is generally accepted that these
technologies offer therapeutic opportunities where very limited alternatives are at hand to improve quality of life. Therefore, a tremendous amount of government funded
research and business R&D has been and continues to be devoted to tissue engineering. Still, 25 years after its introduction, regenerative medicine by tissue engineering is not
yet part of mainstream medical therapy [1]. This suggests that the technical challenges to generate tissues that are fully functional and can immediately replace damaged tissue

As a spin off from this research activity, techniques in tissue engineering and
are substantial.¶

regenerative medicine may be used to produce organs to produce food. This idea is not new and had in fact been proposed by

Winston Churchill in his 1932 book ‘Thoughts and adventures' [2] and by Alexis Carrel [3]. Although the biological principles of tissue

engineering of food are very similar to the medical application there are also differences in goals, scale of
production, cost-benefit ratio, ethical-psychological considerations and regulatory requirements.¶ In this chapter the distinctions between the challenges of tissue engineering
for food production are highlighted and discussed. The focus will be mainly on tissue engineering of meat as a particularly attractive and suitable example.¶ Why Tissue
Engineering of Food?¶ Growing food through domestication of grasses, followed by other crops and livestock has a 13,000 years head start. The success of economical food
production likely determined the growth and sophistication of our civilization [4]. Why would we try to replace the relatively low-tech, cheap and easy natural production of food
by a high-tech complicated engineering technology that is likely to be more expensive? There are two main reasons why current ways of food production need to be

reconsidered.¶ First, with growth of the world population to 9.5 billion and an even faster growth in global economy,
traditional ways of producing food, and in particular meat, may no longer suffice to feed
the world [5]. Food security is already an issue for some populations, but absence of this security may
spread across all civilizations due to generalized scarcity of food . Meat production
through livestock for example already seems maximized by the occupation of 70% of current arable land surface, yet the
demand for meat will double over the next four decades [6]. Without change, this will lead to scarcity and high
prices. Likely, the high prices will be an incentive for intensification of meat production, which will increase the pressure of

using crops for feed for livestock instead of feeding people . The arable land surface could be increased but this
would occur at the expense of forests with predictable unfavorable climate consequences. Lifestyle changes that include the reduction of

meat consumption per capita would also solve the problem, but historically this seems unlikely to happen. A
technological alternative such as tissue engineering of meat might offer a solution. In fact, the
production of meat is a good target for tissue engineering. Pigs and cows are the major sources of the meat we consume, and these animals are very

inefficient in transforming vegetable proteins into edible animal proteins, with an average bioconversion rate of 15% [7]. If this
efficiency can be improved through tissue engineering, this will predictably lead to less
land, water and energy use for the production of meat [8], which introduces the second major reason why
alternatives and more efficient meat production should be considered.

Food shortages spark nuclear war

FDI 12 – Future Directions International ’12 (“International Conflict Triggers and Potential
Conflict Points Resulting from Food and Water Insecurity Global Food and Water Crises
Research Programme”, May 25, http://www.futuredirections.org.au/files/Workshop_Report_-
_Intl_Conflict_Triggers_-_May_25.pdf,)
There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century will most likely be fought over a
lack of resources . Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the French and Russian
revolutions as conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s World War Two efforts
are said to have been inspired, at least in part, by its perceived need to gain access to more food. Yet the
general sense among those that attended FDI’s recent workshops, was that the scale of the problem in the future could be
significantly greater as a result of population pressures, changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other
farm inputs, and increased affluence in the developing world.¶ In his book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay Falvey, a participant
in FDI’s March 2012 workshop on the issue of food and conflict, clearly expresses the problem and why countries across the globe
are starting to take note. .¶ He writes (p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the state is not stable – riots,
violence, breakdown of law and order and migration result.” “Hunger feeds anarchy.” This view is also shared by Julian Cribb,
who in his book, The Coming Famine, writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the
decades that lie ahead, then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow .” He continues: “An increasingly
credible scenario for World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their
allies, as a festering, self-perpetuating chain of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st
Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge armies, than a
scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by
bloody competition over dwindling resources.” As another workshop participant put it, people do not go to
war to kill; they go to war over resources , either to protect or to gain the resources for themselves. Another
observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because people are going hungry. A study by the
International Peace Research Institute indicates that where food security is an issue, it is more likely to
result in some form of conflict. Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea and the Balkans experienced such wars.
Governments, especially in developed countries, are increasingly aware of this phenomenon.¶ The UK Ministry of
Defence, the CIA, the US C enter for S trategic and I nternational S tudies and the Oslo Peace Research
Institute, all identify famine as a potential trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war .
Health Care
 Econ D---1NC
Economic crises don’t cause war
Christopher Clary 15, Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT, Postdoctoral Fellow, Watson
Institute for International Studies, Brown University, “Economic Stress and International
Cooperation: Evidence from International Rivalries,” April 22, 2015,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597712
Do economic downturns generate pressure for diversionary conflict? Or might downturns encourage austerity and economizing
behavior in foreign policy? This paper provides new evidence that economic stress is associated with
conciliatory policies between strategic rivals. For states that view each other as military threats, the biggest step
possible toward bilateral cooperation is to terminate the rivalry by taking political steps to manage the competition. Drawing on
data from 109 distinct rival dyads since 1950, 67 of which terminated , the evidence suggests
rivalries were approximately twice as likely to terminate during economic downturns than they were
during periods of economic normalcy. This is true controlling for all of the main alternative
explanations for peaceful relations between foes (democratic status, nuclear weapons possession, capability imbalance,
common enemies, and international systemic changes), as well as many other possible confounding variables. This
research questions existing theories claiming that economic downturns are associated with diversionary war, and instead argues that
in certain circumstances peace may result from economic troubles .
Defining and Measuring Rivalry and Rivalry Termination
I define a rivalry as the perception by national elites of two states that the other state possesses conflicting interests and presents a
military threat of sufficient severity that future military conflict is likely. Rivalry termination is the transition from a state of rivalry
to one where conflicts of interest are not viewed as being so severe as to provoke interstate conflict and/or where a mutual
recognition of the imbalance in military capabilities makes conflict-causing bargaining failures unlikely. In other words, rivalries
terminate when the elites assess that the risks of military conflict between rivals has been reduced dramatically.
This definition draws on a growing quantitative literature most closely associated with the research programs of William Thompson,
J. Joseph Hewitt, and James P. Klein, Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl.1 My definition conforms to that of William Thompson. In
work with Karen Rasler, they define rivalries as situations in which “[b]oth actors view each other as a significant political-military
threat and, therefore, an enemy.”2 In other work, Thompson writing with Michael Colaresi, explains further:
The presumption is that decisionmakers explicitly identify who they think are their foreign enemies. They orient their military
preparations and foreign policies toward meeting their threats. They assure their constituents that they will not let their adversaries
take advantage. Usually, these activities are done in public. Hence, we should be able to follow the explicit cues in decisionmaker
utterances and writings, as well as in the descriptive political histories written about the foreign policies of specific countries.3
Drawing from available records and histories, Thompson and David Dreyer have generated a universe of strategic rivalries from
1494 to 2010 that serves as the basis for this project’s empirical analysis.4 This project measures rivalry termination as occurring on
the last year that Thompson and Dreyer record the existence of a rivalry.5
Why Might Economic Crisis Cause Rivalry Termination?
Economic crises lead to conciliatory behavior through five primary channels. (1) Economic crises lead to austerity
pressures , which in turn incent leaders to search for ways to cut defense expenditures. (2)
Economic crises also encourage strategic reassessment , so that leaders can argue to their peers and their
publics that defense spending can be arrested without endangering the state. This can lead to threat deflation, where
elites attempt to downplay the seriousness of the threat posed by a former rival. (3) If a state faces multiple
threats, economic crises provoke elites to consider threat prioritization , a process that is postponed
during periods of economic normalcy. (4) Economic crises increase the political and economic
benefit from international economic cooperation . Leaders seek foreign aid, enhanced trade,
and increased investment from abroad during periods of economic trouble. This search is made easier if tensions are
reduced with historic rivals. (5) Finally, during crises, elites are more prone to select leaders who are perceived as capable of
resolving economic difficulties, permitting the emergence of leaders who hold heterodox foreign policy views. Collectively, these
mechanisms make it much more likely that a leader will prefer conciliatory policies compared to during periods of economic
normalcy. This section reviews this causal logic in greater detail, while also providing historical examples that these mechanisms
recur in practice.
 Costs Not K2 Econ---1NC
Health care costs aren’t key to the economy
John R. Graham 16, a public-policy analyst, is Director of the Health Technology Forum: DC;
and a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. 4/20/16, “The U.S. Health
System Is Not An Economic Burden”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/04/20/the-u-s-health-system-is-not-an-
economic-burden/#10720a622832
Health spending consumes a higher share of output in the United States than in other countries.
In 2013, it accounted for 17% of Gross Domestic Product. The next highest country was France, where health
spending accounted for 12% of GDP. Critics of U.S. healthcare claim this shows the system is too expensive
and a burden on our economy, demanding even more government intervention. This conclusion is misleading
and leads to poor policy recommendations, according to new research published by the National Center for Policy
Analysis (U.S. Health Spending is Not A Burden on the Economy, NCPA Policy Report No. 383, April 2016).
Discussing health spending in dollars, rather than proportion of GDP, the report notes Americans spent $9,086 per capita on
healthcare in 2013, versus only $6,325 in Switzerland, the runner-up. (These dollar figures are adjusted for purchasing power parity,
which adjusts the exchange rates of currencies for differences in cost of living). This big difference certainly invites us to question
whether we are getting our money’s worth. However, it is not clear that this spending is a burden on
Americans, given our very high national income.
After subtracting health spending from U.S. GDP, we still had $44,049 per capita to spend on all
other goods and services we value. Only two countries, Norway and Switzerland, beat the United
States on this measure. But compared to larger developed countries, Americans have
higher income per capita after subtracting healthcare spending. For example, in the United
Kingdom, GDP per capita after health spending was only $34,863 in 2013. So, even though
Americans spent significantly more on healthcare than the British, the average American
enjoyed $9,185 more GDP after health spending than his British peer; and just under $6,000
more than his Canadian neighbor.
Britain socialized its health system shortly after World War II, completing the work by 1948. Canada’s healthcare was more
gradually socialized by provincial and federal governments during the period 1947 through 1966. Many assert these so-called single-
payer systems relieved the burden of private payment from citizens and made the economy more productive.
On the contrary: Since 1960, the U.S. economy has outperformed all comparable developed countries
except Norway and Switzerland with respect to economic growth, after subtracting health
spending. From 1960 through 2013, the share of U.S. GDP allocated to healthcare more than
tripled. However, this had no impact on the ability of the U.S. economy to deliver
high GDP per capita, outside healthcare . Adjusted for purchasing power parity, U.S. health spending
increased $8,937, while GDP per capita increased $50,269, from 1950 through 2013. Thus, GDP per capita available for other goods
and services, after spending on health care, increased $41,332, or $780 per year.
 AT I/L

Kotlikoff’s proposal fails to solve rising medical costs---continues adverse

selection
David H. Johnson 7, doctoral candidate in the University of Texas at Austin School of Social
Work, where he also holds an appointment with the Health Behavior Research and Training
Institute, "BOOK REVIEW OF LAURENCE J. KOTLIKOFF’S THE HEALTH CARE FIX:
UNIVERSAL INSURANCE FOR ALL AMERICANS", mjpa.umich.edu/files/2014/06/2008-
Johnson-KotlikoffBook.pdf
**MSS = Medical Security System
Additionally, Kotlikoff’s proposal is relatively inadequate with respect to controlling the
rapid rise in medical costs , another component of economic feasibility. In his lengthy statement about
the problems with the current system, Kotlikoff makes a compelling argument against Medicare
and many private insurers’ current fee-for-service arrangements. Kotlikoff , conversely, does not
describe how these arrangements would differ under his proposal . Rather, in a very brief
section on the reduction of health care costs, he contends that administrative savings, stemming from a government-determined
universal and electronic claims processing system, will be a cost-saving measure. He fails to consider the costs of
administering the voucher program. Because the MSS plan requires experience rating, the
government will have to collect and process massive health care data on each participant. This
task, alone, would equate to formidable administrative costs under MSS, having the potential to
wipe out any anticipated savings from the reduced administrative burden under the new claims system. Kotlikoff
also makes a one-sentence reference to the need for malpractice reform to limit payouts and, thereby, reduce the costly use of
defensive medicine. Such a major component of cost reductions deserves more explanation, which would strengthen his overall
case.¶ The economic feasibility of the MSS plan must also be examined from the individual level.
One might conclude from Kotlikoff’s own argument that the aging baby-boomer generation would require, on average, much larger
vouchers than younger citizens. In this sense, the elderly and the seriously ill would continue to consume the
larger share of the national health budget. However, only basic benefits—as defined by the government
itself—would be required under the plans. Insurers would be free to offer private-pay major
medical coverage to those wishing more comprehensive coverage. By Kotlikoff’s own
admission, this would reopen the system to the adverse selection problem previously
mentioned. Whether those who currently have either government or employer-provided major medical coverage would consent to
paying for “gap” plans, especially with post-tax dollars, is questionable and unaddressed in the MSS proposal.
 ACA UQ---1NC
ACA markets resilient
Dylan Scott 8/24, Vox health care writer, “Why Obamacare didn't implode,” 8/24/17,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/24/16193682/obamacare-empty-counties-
fixed
Two months ago, things looked dire for Obamacare — and not just because Republicans in Congress were still hell-bent
on repealing and replacing it. Nearly 50 counties across the United States lacked any insurers willing to sell plans on the law’s
marketplaces in 2018, leaving almost 40,000 people at risk of having no options for coverage next year.
But now, after reports in the past 24 hours that the last two empty counties in Ohio and Wisconsin would be filled, the problem is
gone: No counties currently lack health plans for next year.
The law seems to have healed itself, or at least staved off disaster, even as President Trump has
been swearing that
Obamacare would implode or threatening to nuke it himself.
What happened? It’s actually pretty simple: Obamacare provides significant federal assistance for
many lower-income and middle-class Americans to buy insurance. It is explicitly designed to make coverage reasonably
affordable for people, while requiring the government to pick up any excess costs.
That’s a pretty good proposition for any business.
So while Obamacare still has a monopoly problem — there are 1,340 counties, with 2.7 million customers, where only one insurer is
available — its market hasn’t imploded. Instead, the design of the law itself seems to have helped bring it back from the edge. State
officials also worked at the local level to provide coverage for their constituents.
“ It
shows how resilient the market is . The open-ended premium subsidies are an enormous
carrot for insurers to go into underserved areas, even in the face of significant
uncertainty ,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “It's not a great outcome to have
monopoly insurers, but it's a whole lot better than having no insurers.”
 Costs UQ---1NC
Health care cost growth is decreasing
John Holahan 17, Institute fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute, former
director of the Health Policy Center, “The Evidence on Recent Health Care Spending Growth
and the Impact of the Affordable Care Act,” May 2017,
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/90471/2001288-
the_evidence_on_recent_health_care_spending_growth_and_the_impact_of_the_affordable
_care_act.pdf
National health expenditures grew at historically low rates in recent years (3.6 percent per year on
average in between 2009 and 2013),7 and projections for future growth rates are significantly below
those experienced over recent decades. Average annual growth rates between 1970 and 2010 were equal to growth in
GDP plus 2.5 percent.13 Current estimates from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) indicate that the average
annual growth in NHE between 2010 and 2020 will be GDP growth plus 0.8 percent ; for 2020 to
2025, CMS projects the increase in NHE to be GDP growth plus 1.2 percent. The slow growth in recent years was at least partly
related to the recession and slow economic recovery,14,15 but other factors, including changes associated with the ACA,
seem to have contributed as well; evidence indicates and analysts predict that these and other factors are likely to cause
these slower growth rates to persist into the future.
CMS routinely revises its spending forecasts as new data become available. The most recent forecast, released in February 2017,
includes actual spending estimates for 2010 to 2015, and projections for 2016 to 2025.7 Table 1 compares the current (2017)
estimates of actual spending growth to the forecast for 2010 to 2015 spending that was made shortly after the ACA passed in 2010.10
The most recent estimates suggest NHE grew 4.3 percent annually from 2010 to 2015 compared with the original forecast of 6.5
percent. Current estimates of growth in each component of NHE spending for the 2010 to 2015 period are lower than the original
forecast, from 5.8 percent to 4.5 percent for Medicare, from 9.9 percent to 6.5 percent for Medicaid, and from 6.6 percent to 4.4
percent for private insurance. “Other” health spending, which includes spending on the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the
US Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs health programs, public health activity, and investments, including new
construction and capital equipment, was originally projected to increase 5.8 percent; the spending for that category actually grew 3.1
percent.
Actual NHE growth from 2010 to 2015 was lower than projected in 2010 for several reasons. Those reasons include the 2007
to 2009 economic recession and slow recovery, unexpectedly low inflation, increased employer offerings of high-deductible
cost-containment efforts within
insurance plans (higher cost-sharing requirements lead to lower use of care),
state Medicaid programs, and Medicare policies unrelated to the ACA, including cuts as a result of
sequestration. But the ACA , too, probably contributed to low NHE growth in several ways.10
Many of the cost-containment provisions of the ACA were reflected in the 2010 forecast, including the Medicare payment reductions
to hospitals and other providers; the reduction in Medicare Advantage payments; and the managed competition structure in
marketplaces that limited subsidies to the second-lowest-cost silver plan, in turn forcing insurers to price aggressively. Thus, any
contribution of the ACA to reductions in projected spending not already in the baseline would have come from larger-than-
anticipated effects of these provisions or from other factors. Many ACA-related factors that were not included in
the original projections may have helped slow spending growth. First, starting in 2011, adjustments to
ACA Medicare payments seem to have played a role in reducing the number of Medicare
hospital days , outpatient visits , skilled nursing facility days , and advanced imaging
procedures between 2010 and 2014.16 Second, lower Medicare payment rates may have had
spillover effects on other payers; commercial insurers often use Medicare as a benchmark for their negotiations with
hospitals and physicians.17–19 Finally, Medicare policies such as financial penalties for hospital readmissions
may have changed provider practice patterns for patients of other payers as well.
The lower-than-expected spending from 2010 to 2015 has also contributed to lower projected spending through 2019. We compare
the estimates for the 2014 to 2019 period (the current forecast), which reflect actual data for 2014 and 2016 and projections for 2016
to 2019, to the projections made for the same period in 2010. We find that the most recent 2017 CMS forecast estimated that
national health expenditures for 2014 to 2019 would total $20.8 trillion;7 this is $2.9 trillion, or 12 percent, below the CMS forecast
of $23.7 trillion for the same period made in late 2010, shortly after the ACA was passed (Figure 1).10
The 2017 forecast also estimated lower spending for Medicare, Medicaid and private
insurance , compared with the 2010 forecast of spending after enactment of the ACA (data not shown). Medicare
expenditures for 2014 to 2019 were projected to be $4.3 trillion in the 2017 forecast, down from $4.7 trillion in the original 2010
ACA baseline forecast. In the 2017 projections, Medicaid spending for 2014 to 2019 was projected to be $3.5 trillion, compared with
$4.6 trillion in the ACA baseline forecast. Some, but not all, of this decline stemmed from the Supreme Court decision that made
Medicaid expansion a state option.20 Private health insurance expenditures for the 2014 to 2019 period were projected to be $7.7
trillion in the ACA baseline forecast but fell to $7.0 trillion in the updated 2017 forecast.
 Bargaining Power Fails---1NC
Bargaining power fails to reduce rates---it’ll get politicized and abused, which
causes increases in payment and costs
Chris Pope 16, senior advisor at the West Health Policy Center, “Medicare's Single-Payer
Experience,” Winter 2016, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/medicares-
single-payer-experience
These thought leaders believe that single-payer health care could replicate the cost-control enjoyed by
other countries, while preserving the quality and access to care Americans expect. They argue that the government could negotiate
better rates with providers and eliminate administrative costs incurred by insurers. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has
endorsed this vision: "[W]e don't have to imagine such a system, because it already exists. It's called Medicare, it covers all
Americans 65 and older, and it's enormously popular. So why didn't we just extend that system to cover everyone?"
Yet, rather than offering a solution to the inefficient and costly fragmentation of American health care, Medicare's
structure is responsible for much of the current situation . While it is known to voters as an
entitlement for seniors and the disabled, the program's purchasing power has been prized by policymakers
as an instrument for controlling and shaping the delivery of American health care. But rather than promoting the
coordination of care and efficient purchase of services, it is too easily forced by the most politically
powerful providers into subsidizing their operations and protecting them from
competition. The result has been the gradual consolidation of American health care, often
creating local hospital monopolies — able to impose excessive fees and deferential contracting
arrangements on insurers required to pay for their services.
Hamstrung competition and regulated prices curtail incentives to enhance the quality of care. Medicare's rigid payment
structures and artificial targets for thousands of different procedures are also too easily abused by
providers seeking to maximize their revenue from the government. Yet recent attempts to reform Medicare
away from mechanistic fee-for-service payments are ill-suited to a single-payer system, whose resistance to special
pleading and aggressive lobbying by powerful provider interests depends on its payment structure being simple, transparent, and
rule-based.
Entitlements
 O
Hegemony causes war and prolif---balancing makes effective exercise of power
impossible
Nuno P. Monteiro 12, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, “Unrest
Assured: Why Unipolarity Is Not Peaceful,” International Security, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Winter
2011/12), pp. 9–40, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00064
A unipole carrying out a defensive-dominance strategy will seek to preserve all three aspects of the status quo:
maintaining the territorial boundaries and international political alignments of all other states, as well as freezing the global
distribution of power.60 This strategy can lead to conflict in two ways, both of which stem from uncertainty about the
unipole’s intentions. First, not knowing the extent of the unipole’s determination to pursue a strategy of
defensive dominance may spur some minor powers to develop their capabilities . Second,
uncertainty about the degree to which the unipole will oppose small changes to the status quo may lead
some minor powers to attempt them. In both cases, the opposition of the unipole to these actions is likely
to lead to war. In this section, I lay out these two pathways to conflict and then illustrate them with historical examples.¶ To be
sure, states can never be certain of other states’ intentions.61 There are a couple of reasons, however, why this uncertainty
increases in unipolarity, even when the unipole appears to be determined to maintain the status quo. First, other states
cannot be certain that the unipole will always pursue nonrevisionist goals. This is particularly
problematic because unipolarity minimizes the structural constraints on the unipole’s grand
strategy. As Waltz writes, “Even if a dominant power behaves with moderation, restraint, and forbearance,
weaker states will worry about its future behavior. . . . The absence of serious threats to American security gives the
United States wide latitude in making foreign policy choices.”62 Second, unipolarity takes away the principal tool
through which minor powers in bipolar and multipolar systems deal with uncertainty about great power
intentions—alliances with other great powers. Whereas in these other systems minor powers can, in
principle, attenuate the effects of uncertainty about great power intentions through external balancing, in a
unipolar world no great power sponsor is present by definition. In effect, the systemic imbalance of
power magnifies uncertainty about the unipole’s intentions.63¶ Faced with this uncertainty, other states have two options. First, they
can accommodate the unipole and minimize the chances of conflict but at the price of their external autonomy.64 Accommodation is
less risky for major powers because they can guarantee their own survival, and they stand to benefit greatly from being part of the
unipolar system.65 Major powers are therefore unlikely to attempt to revise the status quo. Minor powers are also likely to
accommodate the unipole, in an attempt to avoid entering a confrontation with a preponderant power. Thus, most states will
accommodate the unipole because, as Wohlforth points out, the power differential rests in its favor.66¶
Accommodation, however, entails greater risks for minor powers because their survival is not
assured if the unipole should turn against them. Thus some of them are likely to implement a second strategic
option—resisting the unipole.¶ The structure of the international system does not entirely determine whether or not a minor
power accommodates the unipole. Still, structure conditions the likelihood of accommodation in two ways. To begin, a necessary
part of a strategy of dominance is the creation of alliances or informal security commitments with regional powers. Such regional
powers, however, are likely to have experienced conflict with, or a grievance toward, at least some of its neighboring minor powers.
The latter are more likely to adopt a recalcitrant posture. Additionally, by narrowing their opportunities for regional
integration and security maximization, the unipole’s interference with the regional
balance of power is likely to lower the value of the status quo for these minor powers.67 As the
literature on the “value of peace” shows, countries that attribute a low value to the status quo are more risk
acceptant. This argument helps explain, for example, Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 and Syria’s and Egypt’s
decision to attack Israel in 1973.68 In both cases, aggressor states knew that their capabilities were significantly weaker than those of
their targets. They were nonetheless willing to run the risk of launching attacks because they found the prewar status quo
unacceptable.69 Thus, for these states, the costs of balancing were lower relative to those of bandwagoning.¶ In an international
system with more than one great power, recalcitrant minor powers would, in principle, be able to balance externally by finding a
great power sponsor.70 In unipolarity, however, no such sponsors exist.71 Only major powers are available, but because their
survival is already guaranteed, they are likely to accommodate the unipole. And even if some do not, they are unlikely to meet a
recalcitrant minor power’s security needs given that they possess only limited power-projection capabilities.72 As such,
recalcitrant minor powers must defend themselves, which puts them in a position of extreme
self-help .¶ There are four characteristics common to states in this position: (1) anarchy, (2) uncertainty about other states’
intentions, (3) insufficient capabilities to deter a great power, and (4) no potential great power sponsor with whom to form a
balancing coalition. The first two characteristics are common to all states in all types of polarity. The third is part of the rough-and-
tumble of minor powers in any system. The fourth, however, is unique to recalcitrant minor powers in unipolarity. This dire
situation places recalcitrant minor powers at risk for as long as they lack the capability to defend themselves. They depend on the
goodwill of the unipole and must worry that the unipole will shift to a strategy of offensive dominance or disengagement.
Recalcitrant minor powers will therefore attempt to bolster their capabilities through internal
balancing .¶ To deter an eventual attack by the unipole and bolster their chances of survival in the event deterrence fails,
recalcitrant minor powers will attempt to reinforce their conventional defenses, develop the most effective asymmetric
strategies possible, and, most likely in the nuclear age, try to acquire the ultimate deterrent— survivable

nuclear weapons .73 In so doing, they seek to become major powers.¶ Defensive dominance, however, also
gives the unipole reason to oppose any such revisions to the status quo. First, such revisions decrease
the benefits of systemic leadership and limit the unipole’s ability to convert its relative power
advantage into favorable outcomes. In the case of nuclear weapons, this limitation is all but irreversible,
virtually guaranteeing the recalcitrant regime immunity against any attempt to coerce or
overthrow it. Second, proliferation has the potential to produce regional instability, raising
the risk of arms races . These would force the unipole to increase defense spending or accept a narrower overall
relative power advantage. Third, proliferation would lead to the emergence of a recalcitrant major power that could become the
harbinger of an unwanted large-scale balancing attempt.¶ The unipole is therefore likely to demand that recalcitrant minor powers
not revise the status quo. The latter, however, will want to resist such demands because of the threat they pose to those states’
security.74 Whereas fighting over such demands would probably lead to defeat, conceding to them peacefully would bring the
undesired outcome with certainty. A preventive war is therefore likely to ensue.¶ In the second causal path to war,
recalcitrant minor powers test the limits of the status quo by making small revisions—be they
territorial conquests, altered international alignments, or an increase in relative power—evocative of
Thomas Schelling’s famous “salami tactics.”75 The unipole may not, however, accept these revisions, and
instead demand their reversal. For a variety of reasons, including incomplete information, commitment problems, and
the need for the minor power to establish a reputation for toughness, such demands may not be heeded. As a result, war
between the unipole and recalcitrant minor powers emerges as a distinct possibility.76¶ Regardless of
the causal path, a war between the unipole and a recalcitrant minor power creates a precedent for other recalcitrant
minor powers to boost their own capabilities. Depending on the unipole’s overall capabilities—that is, whether it
can launch a second simultaneous conflict—it may also induce other recalcitrant minor powers to accelerate their balancing process.
Thus, a war against a recalcitrant minor power presents other such states with greater incentives for, and (under certain conditions)
higher prospects of, assuring their survival by acquiring the necessary capabilities, including nuclear weapons. ¶ At the same time,
and depending on the magnitude of the unipole’s power preponderance, a war against a recalcitrant minor power
creates an opportunity for wars among major and minor powers—including major power
wars . To the extent that the unipole’s power preponderance is limited by its engagement in the first war, its ability to
manage confrontations between other states elsewhere is curtailed, increasing the chances that these will
erupt into military conflicts. Therefore, even when the unipole is engaged, war remains a possibility.¶ Between the end of the Cold
War and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States generally implemented a strategy of defensive dominance.
During this period, the dynamics described in this section can be seen at work in the cases of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 1999
Kosovo War, as well as in the Kargil War between India and Pakistan, and in North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs. ¶ On August
2, 1990, Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to invade Kuwait, convinced the United States would not oppose this revision of the
status quo. During the months that followed, the United States assembled an international coalition determined to restore Kuwaiti
independence, and it obtained UN authorization to use force if Iraq did not withdraw its occupation forces by January 15, 1991. Two
days after this deadline, the U.S.-led coalition began military action against Iraqi forces, expelling them from Kuwait in six weeks.77 ¶
Two points deserve mention. First, the Gulf War was triggered by Iraq’s miscalculation regarding whether the United States would
accept Iraqi annexation of Kuwait. At the outset of the unipolar era, great uncertainty surrounded the limits of what actions U.S.
decisionmakers would find permissible.78 Iraq miscalculated the degree of U.S. flexibility, and war ensued. Second, the war was
made possible by unipolarity, which placed Iraq in a situation of extreme self-help. Indeed, lack of a great power sponsor—at the
time, the Soviet Union was in strategic retrenchment—was duly noted in Baghdad. Immediately after the war, Saddam’s foreign
minister, Tariq Aziz, lamented, “We don’t have a patron anymore. . . . If we still had the Soviets as our patron, none of this would
have happened.”79¶ Similarly, in 1999, Serbian leaders miscalculated U.S. tolerance to ethnic violence in Kosovo, a secessionist
province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In March 1999, reacting to increasing brutality in the province, the international
community convened a conference, which produced the Rambouillet accords. This agreement called for the restoration of Kosovo’s
autonomy and the deployment of NATO peacekeeping forces, both unacceptable to Serbian authorities, who refused to submit to
it.80 In response, NATO launched a bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. In early June, after nine weeks of bombing, NATO offered the
Serbian leadership a compromise, which it accepted, ending the war.81¶ Once the war had started and it became clear that Serbia
had overreached, Belgrade relied on the support of its ancestral major power ally, Russia. Serbian strategy during the war thus
aimed in part at buying time for Russia to increase pressure on NATO to cease hostilities. Contrary to Belgrade’s expectations,
however, Russian support for Serbian aims eroded as the war continued. On May 6, Russia agreed with the Group of Seven nations
on a plan that included the deployment of UN peacekeepers and a guarantee of Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity. By mid-May, faced
with Serbia’s obduracy, Moscow began to press its ally to accept the offer. Thus, not only did Russian support fail to prevent a U.S.-
led intervention, but it was instrumental in convincing Serbia to accede to NATO’s demands.82¶ The only war between major powers
to have occurred thus far in a unipolar world—the Kargil War between India and Pakistan—started, as my theory
would have predicted, while the United States was involved in Kosovo .83 In May 1999, India detected
Pakistani forces intruding into the Kargil sector in Indian-controlled Kashmir. This action triggered the first Indo-Pakistani war of
the nuclear age, which ended on July 4—after the cessation of military operations in Kosovo—when President Bill Clinton demanded
Pakistan’s withdrawal, which occurred on July 26.84¶ In the absence of a great power sponsor and uncertain of
U.S. intentions, Iran and North Korea—both recalcitrant minor powers—have made considerable efforts to
bolster their relative power by developing a nuclear capability. Unsurprisingly, the United States has
consistently opposed their efforts, but has so far been unable to persuade either to desist.

Prolif causes nuclear war---inadvertent escalation is likely and traditional checks

don’t apply
Stephen J. Cimbala 15, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State
University Brandywine, The New Nuclear Disorder: Challenges to Deterrence and Strategy,
2015, pp. 59-63
Although the construct or policy option of a preventive nuclear war became institutionally unthinkable in Washington and in Moscow, the
possibility of inadvertent nuclear war or escalation to nuclear from conventional war was very
real during the Cold War . This legacy has carried forward into the post-Cold War and
twenty-first century world. The term “inadvertent” means something other than “accidental” war, such as the possibility of a test misfire
or other technology failure that leads to a war. Inadvertent nuclear war is the result of an unforeseen combination
of human and technical factors, pulling both sides in a nuclear crisis over the brink despite their shared interest in avoiding war.¶ The
likelihood of inadvertent nuclear war between two states is based on their political intentions, military capabilities, approaches to crisis management,
the personalities of leaders, standard operating procedures for the management of nuclear forces during peacetime and in crisis, and other variables.16
A decision for nuclear preemption is so irrevocable that leaders will want as much intelligence as possible relative to the plans and actions of their
opponent. Unfortunately, inside
dope on the opponent’s political thinking and military planning may be
hard to come by, under the exigent pressures of crisis. Therefore, states may infer the other side’s
intentions from the disposition of its forces, from the behavior of its command, control,
communications and intelligence systems, or from guesswork based on past experience.¶ For
example: during Able Archer 83, a NATO command and communications exercise testing procedures for the release of alliance nuclear weapons in
November 1983, there was an apparent mind set among some Soviet intelligence officials that led them to conclude (temporarily) that the exercise
might be the “real thing”: an actual set of preparatory moves for NATO nuclear release and a possible first strike against Soviet forces and installations
in Europe.17 The pessimistic Soviet interpretations of Able Archer were not universally shared among their intelligence officers, but some of the
alarmism arose from Soviet military doctrine that foresaw the conversion of an exercise simulating an attack into a real attack as one possible path to
war.18¶ Another example of the difficulty of reading the other side’s intentions during a crisis occurred during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. A
second letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy on October 27, more demanding in its terms for settlement compared to an earlier letter the previous day,
caused some ExComm deliberators to wonder whether Khrushchev had been overruled by a hostile faction of the Soviet Presidium. Robert Kennedy
noted that “The change in the language and tenor of the letters from Khrushchev indicated confusion within the Soviet Union, but there was confusion
among us as well.”19 Fortunately, in both the NATO “Able Archer” exercise and in the Cuban crisis, the most pessimistic assumptions were proved
incorrect before leaders could act on them.¶ A post-Cold War example of a scenario for inadvertent nuclear war occurred in January 1995 during the
launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket for the purpose of studying the Aurora borealis. The initial phase of the rocket’s trajectory resembled that of a
ballistic missile launched from a nuclear submarine and possibly headed for Russian territory. Russian early warning systems detected the launch and
passed the information to military headquarters. Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the defense minister and the chief of the Russian general staff were
connected via their emergency communication network, and the Russian President for the first time opened his secure briefcase or “football” with
nuclear codes for launch authorization. The crisis passed when the rocket trajectory eventually veered away from any possible threat to Russia. The
operational misinterpretation of the Norwegian rocket launch was made possible by an earlier bureaucratic mistake. Norwegian officials had notified
the Russian foreign ministry well in advance of the launch date that the rocket test was scheduled and of its mission. For unknown reasons, the Russian
foreign ministry failed to pass that information to the defense ministry or other military headquarters in time to avoid confusion.¶ The Future: Issues of
Concern¶ If the possibility existed of a mistaken preemption during and immediately after the Cold
War, between the experienced nuclear forces and command systems of America and Russia,
then it may be a matter of even more concern with regard to states with newer and more
opaque forces and command systems . In addition, the Americans and Soviets (and then Russians)
had a great deal of experience getting to know one another’s military operational proclivities and
doctrinal idiosyncrasies: including those that might influence the decision for or against war.¶ Another consideration, relative to nuclear
stability in the present century, is that the Americans and their NATO allies shared with the Soviets and Russians a commonality of culture and
historical experience. Future
threats to American or Russian security from weapons of mass destruction may be presented by
states or non-state actors motivated by cultural and social predispositions not easily understood
by those in the West nor subject to favorable manipulation during a crisis.¶ The spread of nuclear
weapons in Asia (including those parts of the Middle East with geostrategic proximity or reach into Asia) presents a complicated
mosaic of possibilities in this regard. States with nuclear forces of variable force structure, operational
experience, and command-control systems will be thrown into a matrix of complex political,
social and cultural cross-currents contributory to the possibility of war. In a

ddition to the existing nuclear powers in Asia, others may seek nuclear weapons if they feel threatened by regional rivals or hostile alliances.
Containment of nuclear proliferation in Asia is a desirable political objective for all of the obvious reasons. Nevertheless, the
present century
is unlikely to see the nuclear hesitancy or risk aversion that marked the Cold War: in part, because the
military and political discipline imposed by the Cold War superpowers no longer exists, but also because states in Asia have new
aspirations for regional or global respect.20¶ The spread of ballistic missiles and other nuclear capable delivery systems in Asia,
or in the Middle East with reach into Asia, is especially dangerous because plausible adversaries live close together and are
already engaged in ongoing disputes about territory or other issues. The Cold War Americans and
Soviets required missiles and airborne delivery systems of intercontinental range to strike at one another’s vitals. But short range ballistic missiles or
fighter-bombers suffice for India and Pakistan to launch attacks at one another with potentially “strategic” effects. China shares borders with Russia,
North Korea, India and Pakistan; Russia, with China and North Korea; India, with Pakistan and China; Pakistan, with India and China; and so on.¶
The short flight times of ballistic missiles between the cities or military forces of contiguous states means that very
little time will be available for warning and attack assessment by the defender.
Conventionally armed missiles could easily be mistaken for a tactical nuclear first use. Fighter-bombers
appearing over the horizon could just as easily be carrying nuclear weapons as conventional ordnance. In addition to the challenges posed by shorter
flight times and uncertain weapons loads, potential victims of nuclear attack in Asia may also have first strike
vulnerable forces and command-control systems that increase decision pressures for rapid,
and possibly mistaken, retaliation .¶ This potpourri of possibilities challenges
conventional wisdom about nuclear deterrence and proliferation on the part of policy makers and
academic theorists. For policy makers in the United States and NATO, spreading nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in
Asia could profoundly shift the geopolitics of mass destruction from a European center of gravity (in the twentieth
century) to an Asian and/or Middle Eastern center of gravity (in the present century).21 This would profoundly shake up
prognostications to the effect that wars of mass destruction are now passé, on account of the emergence of the
“Revolution in Military Affairs” and its encouragement of information-based warfare.22 Together with this, there has emerged the argument that large
scale war between states or coalitions of states, as opposed to varieties of unconventional warfare and failed states, are exceptional and potentially
obsolete.23 The spread of WMD and ballistic missiles in Asia could overturn these expectations for the obsolescence or marginalization of major
interstate warfare.

Hegemonic decline is key to promote a flexible and pluralist international system

Leonid L. Fituni 14, Director of the Center for Strategic and Global Studies in Moscow, “From
Boulders to Ashlars – BRICS of a New World Order: Hierarchies of Power and Degrees of
Freedom in the Emerging World System of the Twenty-first Century”, chapter in The BRICS and
Beyond: The International Political Economy of the Emergence of a New World Order, ed. Li
Xing, September 2014, pp. 93-95, partially available via Google Books
The existence of recognized “rules of the game”, together with capabilities to make international actors abide by them, jointly
constitutes a prerequisite condition for the existence of a specific or authoritative world “order”. Stability of such a world order is
ensured in theory either by a balance of power and the interests of the key players (on condition that the chief power centers are
prepared to stand up for their own interests, often presented as global ones), or by an obvious predominance of’ one of’ the world
powers. Contrastingly, the advent of a “new” world order envisages the decline of old
hegemons /hierarchs, or at least their incapability to rule the world by old means and
according to old norms (“old rules of the game”). The term “new world order” (NWO) has been used to refer to any new
period of history evidencing a dramatic change in global political thought and the balance of power. As such, NWO has no intrinsic
positive or negative substance. It has been used and abused by many political leaders, power groups and social thinkers with
different mindsets and intentions from Weishaupt's Illuminati to George HW Bush, and from Hitler to Gorbachev. ¶ The modern,
contemporary concept of the world order is inextricably linked to the problematique of global governance and leadership within the
system and hierarchies of such governance. The notion of global governance should not be confused or identified with some form of
necessarily-democratic collective governance by equal or homogenous international actors. Its structure has always been
hierarchical. Any given world order would have a leader or driver, or a few competing leaders, as well as lower levels of satellites,
proxies and exploited lowest strata. Through history, individual nations have shot up and plummeted down within the hierarchies of
international power. At the same time, in a non-globalized world, certain nations tended to remain within broader hierarchical
clusters.¶ Three major international developments contributed to the demise of unsustainable old
ways and have altered the course of the hitherto unipolar global post-Cold War order in the new
millennium: a) the consequences of US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan; b) the
protracted “global” financial and economic crisis; and c) the emergence of the BRICS as an
alternative intercontinental political and economic force or center of global importance. ¶ All three
developments signaled the decline of the post-Cold War American hegemony and the collapse of
a ‘unipolar” world model, characteristic of the 1990s. Meanwhile, a new world system is being
formed. Within this emerging “new” world order, large developing countries and myriad new actors ,
including non-state and non-structured ones, gradually have come to assume important roles and influence.
"Old players” — mainly recognized world powers and other developed nations, concentrated in the OECD/G8 — are being
compelled to cede some of their top-dog positions in favor of multilateral decision-making and
collective action.2 They also have had to expand some of their “closed clubs” for global governance to accommodate a few
“new members”, symbolized, for example, by the G20.¶ The plane (two-dimensional) post-Cold War dichotomy of
unipolarity/rnultipolarity is gradually giving way to a novel multidimensional quality in
global relationships, in which the orientation aspect (polarity) is but one of numerous important characteristics. The
world order that is embryonic at the end of the first decade of the current millennium is polvcentric and
multilevel . ¶ Russian researchers have identified several structurally-based levels of analysis and interaction in this emerging
world order (Dynkin. 2011: 157). The first is the interstate or military-diplomatic dimension of world politics, characterized by a
growth in aggregate-might and the evolution of claims to a more significant role in the world arena by the few, huge developing
states (above all China, India and Brazil in the BRICS). The second is the economic dimension, which is growing substantially in
significance against the backdrop of processes of exponential globalization and the strengthening of the role of transnational actors.
The third is the field of global demographic shifts, the weight and significance of which has clearly been underestimated in previous
decades and the role of which, in consideration of the First (rich) World's restricted opportunities for accepting and assimilating
immigrants, can only increase in the coming years. The fourth, penultimate factor is a specific space constituting the domain of
symbols and ideals — the field of cultural codes and their deconstruction — predominance within which provides additional means
for legitimizing the political course followed by any given state and an additional impetus in ensuring political leadership. And
finally, fifth, is the geopolitical and geoeconomic level, the all-embracing transformation of political space and economic space
characteristics of the world (Dussouy, 2010).¶ Well-known U.S. political scientists (e.g. Nye, 2002) talk of multi-board/-level games,
asserting that the unipolar world is to be replaced by one comprised of myriad dimensions (military,
economic, cultural. etc.), and within the scope of each of which are significant players ( with respect
to given issues ). The emerging new hierarchies and geopolitical configurations are, for the most part, rickety,
contradictory, uneven and non-uniform (Dynkin, 2011: 157).¶ But, this emergent polycentric multidimensional world
rests on a shaky foundation — the remnants of a unipolar construct supported by power relations and
obsolete hierarchies of the previous century. In the eyes of developing countries, the existing world
order, from international finance to conflict resolution, has been increasingly biased and unrepresentative.
Existing mechanisms fail to address contemporary economic, political, demographic and cultural challenges
or to answer the grievances of the majority of humanity. The hierarchies that were inherited from the short-
lived period of unipolarity obstruct a broad rise of powerful new actors from among and within the
developing countries.¶ Until very recently, the effective governance of the global system was the prerogative of a select group
of world powers. The lack of a democratic alternative within the post-Cold War world system has, on occasion, been
detrimental to international peace and security. From time to time, this lack of any democratic alternative allowed
the privileged parties to circumvent or manipulate international law and organization, and to selfishly advance protracted conflicts
and instability under the guise of humanitarian intervention, R2P (responsibility to protect) and/or peace enforcement.

US competitive decline causes peaceful retrenchment, and stops escalatory

conflicts with great powers---no transition wars
Paul K. MacDonald 11, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, with
Joseph M. Parent, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. May 2011
“Resurrecting Retrenchment: The Grand Strategic Consequences of U.S. Decline”
http://www.belfercenter.org/publication/resurrecting-retrenchment-grand-strategic-
consequences-us-decline
CURRENT U.S. DECLINE AND THE UNPOPULARITY OF RETRENCHMENT
Many policymakers and pundits contend that U.S. relative power is declining and that this
decline will have negative consequences for international politics. They justify this pessimism on
the belief that great powers have few options for dealing with acute relative decline. Critics say that
retrenchment, a policy of retracting grand strategic commitments in response to a decline in relative power, is a contemptible policy
that demoralizes allies and emboldens potential adversaries. Furthermore, domestic interest groups and lobbies look like immovable
obstacles with regard to policies designed to harmonize ends with means.
There is little evidence, however, to justify the pervasive pessimism about retrenchment. The
historical record suggests that not only is great power retrenchment common; it is also effective.
Retrenching states shift burdens to allies, constrain military budgets, and avoid militarized
disputes to preserve their position in the hierarchy of nations. In contrast, states that fail to retrench never
recover their rank among the great powers.
The competitive nature of the international system explains the success of retrenchment. If
states shoulder disproportionate burdens, pamper private interests, become bogged down in
costly conflicts, and generally masquerade as more powerful than they are, they will tend to be exploited by more
disciplined and realistic adversaries. Great powers have a considerable incentive, therefore, to
moderate their ambitions in the face of sustained declines in relative power.
KEY FINDINGS
To date, there has been no comprehensive study of great power retrenchment and no study that defends retrenchment as a probable
or practical policy. Using historical data on gross domestic product, we identify eighteen cases of
"acute relative decline" since 1870. Acute relative decline happens when a great power loses an
ordinal ranking in global share of economic production, and this shift endures for five or more years. A
comparison of these periods yields the following findings:
Retrenchment is the most common response to decline. Great
powers suffering from acute decline, such as the
United Kingdom, used retrenchment to shore up their fading power in eleven to fifteen of the
eighteen cases that we studied (61–83 percent).
The rate of decline is the most important factor for explaining and predicting the magnitude of retrenchment. The faster a state falls,
the more drastic the retrenchment policy it is likely to employ.
The rate of decline is also the most important factor for explaining and predicting the forms that retrenchment takes. The faster
a state falls, the more likely it is to renounce risky commitments , increase reliance on other states,
cut military spending, and avoid starting or escalating international disputes.
In more detail, secondary findings include the following:
Democracy does not appear to inhibit retrenchment. Declining states are approximately equally likely to retrench regardless of
regime type.
Wars are infrequent during ordinal transitions. War broke out close to the transition point in between one and four of the eighteen
cases (6–22 percent).
Retrenching states rebound with some regularity. Six of the fifteen retrenching states (40 percent) managed to recapture their
former rank. No state that failed to retrench can boast similar results.
Declining great powers cut their military personnel and budgets significantly faster than other great powers. Over a five-year period,
the average nondeclining state increased military personnel 2.1 percent—as compared with a 0.8 percent decrease in declining
states. Likewise, the average nondeclining state increased military spending 8.4 percent—compared with 2.2 percent among
declining states.
Swift declines cause greater alliance agreements. Over a five-year period, the average great power signs 1.75 new alliance
agreements—great powers undergoing large declines sign an average of 3.6 such agreements.
Declining great powers are less likely to enter or escalate disputes. Compared to average great powers, they are 26 percent less likely
to initiate an interstate dispute, 25 percent less likely to be embroiled in a dispute, and markedly less likely to escalate those disputes
to high levels.
IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICYMAKERS
From the analysis above, three main implications follow for U.S. policy. First, we are likely to see retrenchment in
U.S. foreign policy. With a declining share of relative power, the United States is ripe to shift
burdens to allies, cut military expenditures, and stay out of international disputes. This will not be
without risks and costs, but retrenchment is likely to be peaceful

and is preferable to nonretrenchment. In short, U.S. policymakers should resist calls to maintain a
sizable overseas posture because they fear that a more moderate policy might harm U.S. prestige
or credibility with American allies. A humble foreign policy and more modest overseas presence
can be as (if not more) effective in restoring U.S. credibility and reassuring allies.
Second, any potential U.S.-Sino power transition is likely to be easier on the United States
than pessimists have advertised. If the United States acts like a typical retrenching state, the
future looks promising. Several regional allies—foremost India and Japan—appear capable of
assuming responsibilities formerly shouldered by the United States, and a forward defense is no longer as
valuable as it once was. There remains ample room for cuts in U.S. defense spending. And as China grows it will find, as
the United States did, that increased relative power brings with it widening divisions at home
and fewer friends overseas. In brief, policymakers should reject arguments that a reduction in
U.S. overseas deployments will embolden a hostile and expansionist China. Sizable forward
deployments in Asia are just as likely to trap the United States in unnecessary clashes as they are to deter
potential aggression.
Third, the United States must reconsider when, where, and how it will use its more modest resources in the future. A sensible policy
of retrenchment must be properly prepared for—policymakers should not hastily slash budgets and renounce commitments. A
gradual and controlled policy of reprioritizing goals, renouncing commitments, and shifting burdens will bring greater returns than
an improvised or imposed retreat. To this end, policymakers need to engage in a frank and serious debate about the purposes of U.S.
overseas assets.
Our position is that the primary role of the U.S. military should be to deter and fight
conventional wars against potential great power adversaries, rather than engage in limited
operations against insurgents and other nonstate threats. This suggests that U.S. deployments in Iraq
and Afghanistan should be pared down; that the United States should resist calls to involve
itself in internal conflicts or civil wars, such as those in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa; and
that the Asia-Pacific region should have strategic priority over Europe and the greater Middle East. Regardless of whether one
accepts these particular proposals, the United States must make tough choices about which regions and
threats should have claim to increasingly scarce resources.
CONCLUSION
Retrenchment is probable and pragmatic. Great powers may not be prudent, but they tend to
become so when their power ebbs. Regardless of regime type , declining states routinely
renounce risky commitments, redistribute alliance burdens, pare back military outlays, and
avoid ensnarement in and escalation of costly conflicts.
Husbanding resources is simply sensible. In the competitive game of power politics, states must unsentimentally realign means with
ends or be punished for their profligacy. Attempts to maintain policies advanced when U.S. relative power was greater are outdated,
unfounded, and imprudent. Retrenchment policies—greater burden sharing with allies, less military spending, and less involvement
in militarized disputes—hold the most promise for arresting and reversing decline.
 D
Trump ends multilateralism---he’ll exclusively pursue bilateral diplomacy because
he thinks that lets us ‘win’
EPSC 17 – European Political Strategy Centre, the European Commission’s in-house think
tank, 2/14/17, “The Trump Presidency: Policy Outlook, Scenarios and Possible Implications for
the EU,” https://ec.europa.eu/epsc/sites/epsc/files/epsc-brief-the-trump-presidency.pdf.pdf
‘America First’ Foreign Policy
President Trump has announced his intention to conduct a foreign policy focused on American
interests and based on a vision of American national security anchored in the following basic
tenets: ensuring respect for the US through projection of strength; maintaining
unquestioned US military dominance; and embracing diplomacy with old enemies and new
allies alike. President Trump seems to favour all things bilateral as a way of having the
upper hand in any international negotiation. Instead of a win-win multilateral
approach, his world seems to be one based on a zero-sum game where America needs to
come out on top.

Multilateralism fails—US leadership crowds out other interests and disenchants

key players
Amitav Acharya 14, Professor of International Relations at American University, 6/19/14,
UNIPOLAR NO MORE: THE OBAMA DOCTRINE AND THE EMERGING POWERS,
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/unipolar-no-more-the-obama-doctrine-and-the-emerging-
powers/#_
If Obama is to make good on his promise of collective action, then he also has to embrace the principle of shared
leadership. This requires pushing for the reform and democratization of international institutions. Here, too, there is a huge gap
between rhetoric and reality of U.S. leadership. Obama asserted that:¶ After World War II, America had the wisdom to shape
institutions to keep the peace and support human progress, from NATO and the United Nations, to the World Bank and I.M.F. These institutions are
not perfect, but they have been a force multiplier….Now, just as the world has changed, this architecture must change as well. At the height of the Cold
War, President Kennedy spoke about the need for a peace based upon a gradual evolution in human institutions. And evolving these international
institutions to meet the demands of today must be a critical part of American leadership.All these words would be very welcome to the emerging
powers. But Obama disappointingly provided no specifics on the progress of and challenges facing
the reform of global institutions. In fact, U.S. leadership on reform of global governance has been less than
stellar. The United States has little ability to advance Security Council reform in the absence of consensus from other Permanent Five members.
This effort has stalled beyond redemption. And in the one area in which reform has made most progress, concerning IMF voting rights,
Congress has blocked ratification.The problem with Obama’s assertion that if America does not lead, “no one
else will,” is not just that it sounds a trifle self-serving and arrogant, but it also does not take into account
different forms of leadership exercised by others such as Canada, Australia, the EU, and the Scandinavian countries in
promoting human rights, transitional justice, and humanitarian law. Collective action can also be decentralized to the regional level. At West
Point, Obama talked mostly about NATO, more so than the U.N. or any other global or regional multilateral group and made
only passing references to other regional groups (he did mention the OSCE and ASEAN). The emerging powers don’t share the same love for NATO.
Strangely enough, Obama did not even mention the EU, preferring to use terms such as Europe and European allies. He
ignored other non-Western regional groupings such as the African Union and the Organization
of American States. Yet, only a relatively blinded analyst of the contemporary world order would fail to recognize that regional
multilateral groups such as the EU, ASEAN and the AU have an important place in shaping the security of their respective
regions. The United States itself recognizes Indonesia’s leadership in Southeast Asia and ASEAN’s role in Asia-Pacific security. Regional
powers such as Japan, South Africa, and Brazil have played key roles in regional economic
development and diplomacy.¶ This does not mean regional organizations are always effective or can substitute for the U.N. But as
Hillary Clinton had recognized in her new American moment speech, “few, if any, of today’s challenges can be understood or solved without working
through a regional context.” In that speech, Clinton mentioned region (including “region,” “regional,” “regionally,” “regions,” etc.) no less than 24
times. There was an entire section on strengthening regional architecture, (excluding discussion of NATO, which was under a separate preceding
section on alliances), and this section was longer than that on global institutions in the 21st century.¶ Instead of claiming leadership solely for itself,
might it not be better for the United States to help these other actors lead in different issue areas where
they have special interest and expertise? Many regional groups in the developing world could do with greater authority from the
U.N. Security Council and support in material resources from powers like the United States in advancing collective action. ¶ The unipolar moment in
international relations is over and the emerging world order is not multipolar, as many mistakenly characterize it. It is better described as
a multiplex world (further elaboration in my book, The End of American World Order). Like in a multiplex cinema running several shows
with different scripts, actors, directors, producers within one complex, we live in a global system with multiple key players (traditional
great powers, emerging powers, international institutions and non-state actors) interacting closely with each other while
bound by complex forms of interdependence. Indeed, when Rice referred to the challenge of U.S. leadership in “a world that is
more complex and more interdependent than ever before,” she provided an apt description of the multiplex world. But collective action to
manage stability of the multiplex world requires shared leadership. The Obama Doctrine’s vision for
that shared leadership lacks clarity and consistency.¶

Primacy’s not key to peace

Christopher Preble 16, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute, 8/31/16, “NO MORE OF THE SAME: THE PROBLEM WITH PRIMACY,”
https://warontherocks.com/2016/08/no-more-of-the-same-the-problem-with-primacy/
Such expenditures might still be justified if they were instrumental in keeping Americans safe. But, in fact, primacy is based
on a number of faulty premises, including: (a) that the United States is subjected to more urgent and
prevalent threats than ever before; (b) that U.S. security guarantees reassure nervous allies and thus contribute
to global peace and stability; and (c) that a large and active U.S. military is essential to the health of the
international economy.
Primacists hold that the United States cannot adopt a wait-and-see attitude with respect to distant trouble spots. They believe
that the security of all states are bound together and that threats to others are actually threats to
the United States. Primacists believe that instability and crises abroad will adversely affect American interests if they are allowed
to fester. “The alternative to Pax Americana—the only alternative—is global disorder,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Bret
Stephens, with emphasis. Because any problem, in any part of the world, could eventually threaten U.S.
security or U.S. interests, primacy aims to stop all problems before they occur .
This assumption is based on a very selective reading of world history, grossly exaggerates the United States’
ability to control outcomes, and underplays its costs. It also miscasts the nature of the threats that
are facing us.
Technology has not evaporated the seas, allowing large land armies to march across the
ocean floor. Meanwhile, potential challengers like China face more urgent problems that will diminish
their desire and ability to project power outside of their neighborhood. They can cause trouble in the South China Sea,
but that does not mean they can or will in the South Pacific or the Caribbean. China’s economic troubles and rising popular unrest,
for example, could constrain Chinese military spending increases and focus Beijing’s attention at home. Causing problems
abroad would threaten critical trading relations that are essential to the health of the Chinese economy.
Primacists argue that we cannot rely on oceans to halt nuclear missiles that fly over them or
cyberattacks in the virtual realm. And terrorists could infiltrate by land, sea, or air, or they could be grown right here at home.
But our own nuclear weapons provide a powerful deterrent against state actors with return
addresses, and a massive, forward-deployed military is not the best tool for dealing with terrorists
and hackers. The hard part is finding them and stopping them before they act. That is a job for the intelligence and law
enforcement communities, respectively. And small-footprint military units like special operations forces can help as needed.
There have always been dangers in the world, and there always will be. To the extent that we can identify myriad
threats that our ancestors could not fathom, primacy compounds the problem . By calling on the United
States to deal with so many threats, to so many people, in so many places, primacy ensures that even distant problems become our
own.
Primacy’s other key problem is that, contrary to the claims of its advocates, it inadvertently increases the
risk of conflict. Allies are more willing to confront powerful rivals because they are
confident that the United States will rescue them if the confrontation turns ugly, a classic case of moral hazard, or
what MIT’s Barry Posen calls “reckless driving.”
Restraining our impulse to intervene militarily or diplomatically when our safety and vital national interests are
not threatened would reduce the likelihood that our friends and allies will engage in such reckless
behavior in the first place. Plus, a more restrained foreign policy would encourage others to assume the
burden of defending themselves.
Such a move on the part of our allies could prove essential, given that primacy has not
stopped our rivals from challenging U.S. power . Russia and China, for example, have resisted the U.S.
government’s efforts to expand its influence in Europe and Asia. Indeed, by provoking security fears, primacy
exacerbates the very sorts of problems that it claims to prevent, including nuclear proliferation. U.S.
efforts at regime change and talk of an “axis of evil” that needed to be eliminated certainly provided additional incentives for states
to develop nuclear weapons to deter U.S. actions (e.g., North Korea).
Meanwhile, efforts intended to smother security competition or hostile ideologies have destabilized vast
regions, undermined our counterterrorism efforts, and even harmed those we were ostensibly trying to help. After U.S. forces
deposed the tyrant Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq descended into chaos and has never recovered. The civil war in Syria, and the
problem of the Islamic State in particular, is inextricable from the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The situation in Libya is
not much better — the United States helped overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, but violence still rages. The Islamic State,
which originated in Iraq, has now established a presence in Libya as well, provoking still more U.S. military action there. It is
clear that those interventions were counterproductive and have failed to make America safer and
more secure, yet primacists call for more of the same .
Lastly, primacists contend that U.S. military power is essential to the functioning of the global economy.
“U.S. security commitments,” explain leading primacists Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “help
maintain an open world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations.” The United States sets the rules of the
game and punishes those who disobey them. If the United States were less inclined to intervene in other people’s
disputes, the primacists
say, the risk of war would grow, roiling skittish markets. But such claims
exaggerate the role that U.S. ground forces play in facilitating global trade, especially given
the resiliency and flexibility of global markets in the face of regional instability. Moreover,
primacists ignore the extent to which past U.S. military activism has actually undermined market stability and upset vital regions.
Smart alternatives to primacy feature a significant role for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in
providing security in the global commons while avoiding the downsides of onshore activism.
In conclusion, America’s default foreign policy is unnecessarily costly and unnecessarily risky. Its
defenders misconstrue the extent to which U.S. military power has contributed to a relatively
peaceful international system, and they overestimate our ability to sustain an active global
military posture indefinitely.
The United States needs an alternative foreign policy, one that focuses on preserving America’s strength and advancing its security,
and that expects other countries to take primary responsibility for protecting their security and preserving their interests. America’s
leaders should restrain their impulse to use the U.S. military when our vital interests are not directly threatened while avoiding
being drawn into distant conflicts that sap our strength and undermine our safety and values.
2NC
 Econ D---2NC
Instability from economic decline doesn’t translate into conflict
Robert Jervis 11, Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of International
and Public Affairs at Columbia University, December 2011, “Force in Our Times,” Survival, Vol.
25, No. 4, p. 403-425
Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the
more peaceful world generate new interests that would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum
sense of status would be one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely would be a worsening of
the current economic difficulties, which could itself produce greater nationalism, undermine
democracy and bring back old-fashioned beggar-my-neighbor economic policies. While these
dangers are real, it is hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead
the members of the community to contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that
economic interdependence has proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed – states that were more
internally interdependent than anything seen internationally have fought bloody civil wars. Rather it is that even if
the more extreme versions of free trade and economic liberalism become
discredited , it is hard to see how without building on a preexisting high level of political conflict leaders and
mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could prosper by impoverishing or
even attacking others. Is it possible that problems will not only become severe, but that people will entertain the thought
that they have to be solved by war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as
outlandish as it did before the financial crisis, an optimist could reply (correctly, in my view) that
the very fact that we have seen such a sharp economic down-turn without anyone
suggesting that force of arms is the solution shows that even if bad times bring about
greater economic conflict , it will not make war thinkable .

Aggregate data from the recession refutes all of their warrants

Daniel Drezner 14, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University, “The System Worked: Global Economic Governance during the
Great Recession,” World Politics 66, No 1 (January 2014), 123-64
The final significant outcome addresses a dog that hasn’t barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-
border conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted
that the financial crisis would lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in
power .42 They voiced genuine concern that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in
conflict—whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a
ratcheting up of great power conflict. Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South
China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fueled impressions of a surge in global public
disorder.¶ The aggregate data suggest otherwise , however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has
concluded that “the average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in
20 07 .”43 Interstate violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis, as
have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great
Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict, as Lotta Themnér and Peter Wallensteen
conclude: “[T]he pattern is one of relative stability when we consider the trend for the past five years.”44 The secular decline in
violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed. Rogers Brubaker observes that “the crisis has not to
date generated the surge in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been
expected.”45
Advantage 2
 Heg = War---2NC
Hegemony causes nuclear war---creates a moral hazard for allies to start wars, and
creates a security dilemma that causes prolif
Christopher Preble 16, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute. PhD in History from Temple University. With William Ruger. 2016. “The Problem
With Primacy.” In “Our Foreign Policy Choices, Rethinking America’s Global Role”
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=741072022102024090075118113101083026016
0560000290240690691231110760820800090640931080161201110060270110490070740221
15108007102123042042011081092085100005025006088070001052041101115092080116097
001012108114029011071004086091092118120095090091004096029029&EXT=pdf
Another key problem is that primacy inadvertently increases the risk of conflict. Allies are more
willing to confront powerful rivals, because they are confident that the United States will rescue them
if the confrontation turns ugly, a classic case of moral hazard , or what Barry Posen calls "reckless driving."
Restraining our impulse to intervene militarily or diplomatically when Our vital national interests are not
threatened would reduce the likelihood that Our friends and allies will engage in such reckless
behavior in the first place. Libya and Georgia are only two cases of this problem. Plus, a
more restrained U.S. foreign policy would provide a powerful incentive for allies to share the burden of
defense.
Primacy has not stopped rivals from challenging U.S. power. Russia and China, for example, have resisted
the U.S. government's efforts to expand its influence in Europe and Asia. Indeed, by provoking
security fears, primacy exacerbates the very sorts of problems that it claims to
prevent, including nuclear proliferation. U.S. efforts at regime change and talk of an "axis of evil" that needed
to be eliminated certainly provided additional incentives for States to develop nuclear weapons to
deter U.S. actions (e.g„ North Korea).
Meanwhile, efforts intended to smother security competition or hostile ideologies have destabilized vast
regions , undermined Our counter- terrorism efforts, and even harmed those we were ostensibly
trying to help. After U S. forces deposed the tyrant Saddam Hussein in 211)3, Iraq descended into chaos and has
never recovered. The situation in Libya is not much better; the United States helped Overthrow Muammar el-
Qaddafi in 2011, but violence still rages. The Islamic State, which Originated in Iraq, has now established a
presence in Libya as well. It is clear that those interventions were counterproductive and have
failed to make America safer and more secure.

Unipolarity creates structural conditions for conflict---makes war inevitable

Nuno Monteiro 14, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Theory of
Unipolar Politics, 2014, pp. 5-7
Second, I show that a unipolar world is not peaceful. Despite frequent U.S. involvement in military conflicts throughout the last two
and a half decades, not much has been written on the question of how unipolarity may contribute to interstate war.’4 I claim that unipolarity

generates conditions propitious for significant conflict .’ Neither the structure of a unipolar world nor U.S.
strategic choices have a clear beneficial impact on the overall prospects for peace. The absence of a global balance of power
between two or more states, while eliminating great-power competition, makes room for
significant conflict beyond the most powerful stares in the system. Unipolarity will generate abundant
opportunities for war between the unipole and recalcitrant minor powers that do not have the capabilities or
allies necessary to deter it. It
will also make ample room for conflict among minor powers, which are less likely to
be disciplined by great-power allies, as would be the case when an overall balance of power is present. As a result, unipolarity will be
prone to produce asymmetric and peripheral conflicts.¶ Finally, my argument about grand strategy derives from the claims I make about durability and
peace. Because the optimal strategy for a unipole varies depending on specific features of its situation — namely, the costs of war and the benefits it
extracts from its power preponderance — that strategy cannot be determined a priori theoretically. Still, it is possible to determine, based on the
arguments I make about unipolar peace and durability, what is the optimal strategy for a unipole such as the contemporary United States, for which the
costs of war vis-à-vis peripheral states are low relative to the benefits it extracts from its current international position of preponderance. ¶ The United
States’ interests are best served by a grand strategy of defensive accommodation, which combines a military strategy aimed at maintaining the
international status quo – what I call defensive dominance – with an economic strategy that makes room for accommodating the interests of rising
major powers. ¶ For the United States, defensive accommodation has pluses and minuses. On the downside, it will lead to frequent U.S. involvement in
peripheral military conflicts. On the upside, it is the only strategy that allows for the durability of U.S. military power preponderance.¶ Militarily,
defensive dominance requires the unipole’s regular involvement in conflicts aimed at
maintaining the status quo. At the same time, however, it lowers incentives for regional arms races that would lift the power of all
competitors relative to that of the United States, undermining the durability of its position. Defensive dominance is therefore conducive to a durable
unipolar world. The present circumstances, in which the United States derives non-negligible economic benefits from its preponderant place in the
international system, make defensive dominance preferable to disengagement, which would make room for major powers to compete with each other,
eventually undermining U.S. power preponderance. Defensive dominance is also a superior strategic option vis-i-vis an attempt to increase the
unipole’s global position — what I call offensive dominance. To begin with, offensive dominance is likely to entail even greater U.S. involvement in
interstate wars. In addition, when implemented in regions inhabited by major powers that enjoy growing economic capabilities, offensive dominance
would prompt them to balance against the unipole in an attempt to guarantee their long-term survival through continued economic growth. Defensive
dominance is therefore the best grand-strategic military option of the United States, allowing for the maintenance of its status as primus inter pares.¶
Defensive dominance is not sufficient to guarantee the durability of U.S. power preponderance, however. As a military strategy, it says nothing about
the economic posture of the unipole. To give other states incentives to allow the continuation of U.S. military preponderance, the United States must
also implement an economic strategy of growth accommodation toward major economic powers. As a consequence, the
continuation of
the current U.S. position as a unipole is only possible by implementing a strategy that will not
only involve U.S. military forces in frequent action but may also eventually make room for other
major powers to overtake the U.S. economy. Clearly, the maintenance of U.S. military power preponderance is not free of
cost.¶ These arguments highlight the mixed view of unipolarity I lay out ahead. Although military power preponderance certainly allows the unipole to
shape the system in ways that are beyond the reach of one great power among several, it is not without peril. Minor
powers who find
themselves in opposition to the unipole will have great incentives to boost their defensive
capabilities. Relations with such powers will be harder to manage and, at least before they acquire greater
defensive capabilities, more likely to devolve into armed conflict . At the same time, a unipole must balance the
international demands of global management with the domestic investments required to maintain its power preponderance.¶ In this sense, the ironic
saying “may god protect us from answered prayers” applies to the U.S. global position after the demise of the Soviet Union.’ Its erstwhile foe long gone,
Washington continues to face the consequences of the power vacuum left by Moscow’s demise as a global competitor, which are not an unmitigated
boon.¶ At the same time, although the picture I paint in this book is certainly less rosy than most other views of the post—Cold War world, nothing in
my argument foreordains the decline of U.S. power. My
theory of unipolarity accounts for the possibility of
frequent conflict in a nonetheless durable unipolar system. Such is the paradoxical nature of
power preponderance. The overall power advantage possessed by the contemporary United States does not mean
that it will be able to convert policy preferences into outcomes peacefully. Preponderant power, at
least preponderant military power, does not necessarily get states what they want.
 Only our offense---2NC
Only our offense---their evidence concedes global aging makes great power conflict
impossible, and we’ve impact turned the things it says aging stops the US from
doing---I.E. nation building, and humanitarian intervention----their evidence
Haas, ‘7 – Mark, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University, “A
Geriatric Peace? The Future of U.S. Power in a World of Aging Populations,” International
Security, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Summer 2007), pp. 112–147. Available online @ Harvard Belfer Center,
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/is3201_pp112-147.pdf. -- iowa debate
Fourth, although the United States is in better demographic shape than the
other great powers, it, too, will confront massive new costs created by its own
aging population. As a result, it will most likely be unable to maintain its current
international position. Thus while the United States will be even more secure
from great power rivalry than it is today , it (and its allies) will be less able
to realize other key international objectives, including preventing the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), funding nation building, engaging
in military humanitarian interventions, and mitigating the effects of local
security problems. Global aging, in short, is likely to result in a great power
“geriatric peace,” but this same phenomenon may threaten other important
U.S. international interests, including by facilitating international conºict in
non-great power relations

Proves voting negative is the perfect middle ground---it stops great power war
without overstretching the US or causing foreign policy crisis like Iraq, Libya and
Afghanistan---turns case
Stephen M. Walt 16, is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at
Harvard University. 5/26/16, “A New-Old Plan to Save the World … That Has No Hope of
Saving the World” http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/26/a-new-old-plan-to-save-the-world-
that-has-no-hope-of-saving-the-world-cnas/
Third, like the neoconservatives who promised the invasion of Iraq would be quick and cheap and yield manifold benefits, the
report assumes the recommended “extensions” of American power carry no real risks. If America just asserts itself in
all these places, the report assumes adversaries will be cowed and behave pretty much as we want. The past
25 years might have taught the signatories that 1) other states have vital interests too; 2) the enemy
gets a vote; 3) even close allies don’t always follow the U.S. lead; and 4) military force is a crude
instrument that typically produces lots of unintended consequences, and sometimes fails
completely — as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya . Yet the possibility that their various prescriptions will
not work as intended does not seem to have occurred to them. As soon as one of their ambitious projects goes badly, America’s
ability to pursue the others will perforce decline.
Fourth, and following from the last point, the report’s authorsdo not recognize that even a global power like the
United States needs to set priorities and make choices. There is no recognition that doing more in the
Middle East might impinge on the U.S. ability to balance China in Asia, or that the strategy they
recommend might drive China, Russia, and Iran closer together. There is no awareness that
confronting Russia in its own backyard might undermine efforts to cooperate with Moscow over the
conflict in Syria, China’s rising power, Iran’s nuclear program, or nuclear security more broadly. Nor do they admit that their
strategy inevitably means higher taxes or bigger deficits (or both) and less money to
devote to strengthening the long-term foundations of U.S. power: infrastructure, education,
and R&D. For these reasons, as Daniel Davis warns in his own critique of the report, their prescriptions are more likely to
jeopardize U.S. primacy than prolong it.
That possibility is even more likely if China’s leaders are smart enough to avoid costly conflicts and focuses primarily on building a
world-class economy. Remember: The United States joined the ranks of the great powers by staying out of distant battles and
building power at home, and the European powers’ penchant for fighting ruinous wars helped accelerate America’s rise. Beijing
appears to have learned that lesson well, while Washington repeatedly forgets it.
 unqualified defense of liberal hegemony is how insensitive it
Fifth, what is perhaps most revealing about this
is to the actual state of the world. It doesn’t matter where the United States is located, what its
internal condition is, where principal dangers might lie, what the balance of power is in different parts of
the world, or whether the main challenge we face is a large and well-armed peer competitor like the
Soviet Union or a shadowy terrorist network like al Qaeda. No matter what the question is, the answer is
always the same: The United States is the “indispensable power,” it must take the lead in
solving every global issue, and it must actively interfere in other countries in order to keep the current
world order intact.
Extending American Power ends by warning that “the task of preserving a world order is both difficult and never-ending.” The
authors undoubtedly hope this admonition will persuade readers to suck it up and bear the necessary burdens of running the world.
What this statement actually reveals, however, is that they recognize the liberal order the United States has labored for
decades to create is about as durable as cotton candy.
This depressing realization suggests America’s foreign-policy experts need to rethink their basic approach to
dealing with the rest of the world, instead of simply devising new rationales for a failing strategy. But as
this report (and others like it) demonstrate, that much-needed reassessment is not likely to emerge from the same people and
institutions that helped bring us to where we are today.
 Aff worse for detterance---2NC
Unipolarity makes credible assurances impossible---causes deterrence failure and
undermines the effectiveness of US military power---causes war
Nuno Monteiro 14, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Theory of
Unipolar Politics, 2014, pp. 156-157
The first source of conflict under these conditions stems from information problems about the unipole’s intentions and resolve. In a
counterintuitive way, the unipole’s overwhelming advantage in military capabilities over recalcitrant
minor powers makes it harder for them to evaluate its intentions and resolve, undermining
the likelihood of success of its coercive attempts . There are several reasons for this effect. Effective
coercion — the ability to coerce an adversary by threatening to use force without having to actually carry out that threat —
depends on both credible threats and credible assurances. It requires not only a credible threat
to impose costs on the target in case it fails to comply with the demand but also a credible assurance to refrain
from doing so in case the target complies.8 Preponderant power, by lowering the costs the unipole incurs to
impose damage on other states, undermines the ability to issue credible assurances, thereby making coercion
more difficult. This argument applies to both deterrent and compellent efforts, aimed at, respectively, maintaining or altering the
status quo. A unipole determined to uphold the status quo will have a difficult time assuring a recalcitrant
minor power that it will not have revisionist goals in the future. Similarly, a unipole that wants to revise
the status quo in its favor will have difficulty persuading a recalcitrant minor power that limited demands
at the present time will not be followed by future, wider requests. Finally, the unipole’s advantage in military power
undermines its ability to emit costly signals, which are a primary way of signaling resolve in the context of a crisis. Because a
unipole can conduct military operations against a minor power while only paying a relatively lower cost and
running limited risks, its threat to escalate a crisis and use force has a smaller ability to signal

resolve. This may result in the target of coercive threats by the unipole misreading its level of
resolve, leading to a bargaining breakdown and, consequently, war. In sum, a unipole implementing either strategy of
dominance will experience significant information problems in its dealings with recalcitrant minor powers.’
 Heg Causes Prolif---2NC

Unipolarity lowers the cost of proliferation and means minor powers need a
deterrent against the US
Nuno Monteiro 14, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Theory of
Unipolar Politics, 2014, pp. 163-165
In sum, despite strong overall incentives to accommodate the unipole, for some minor powers the risks of doing so are
greater than the risks of recalcitrance. Put differently, for these countries the costs of balancing are lower

relative to bandwagoning . Consequently, some minor powers in a unipolar system are likely to opt not to
accommodate the unipole.¶ By placing these recalcitrant minor powers in extreme self-help, a particularly dire situation, a unipole
implementing a strategy of defensive dominance prompts them to attempt to bolster their own capabilities. Uncertainty about
the unipole’s intentions places recalcitrant minor powers at risk for as long as they lack the
capability to defend themselves. In practice, they depend on the good will of the unipole and must worry that it will shift
to a strategy of offensive dominance, which would target them, or disengagement, which would make room for acute regional
security competition. In short, in terms of the incentives it creates for recalcitrant minor powers, defensive dominance is not much
different from its offensive variant. ¶ Both to deter an eventual attack by the unipole and to bolster their own chances of survival in
case deterrence fails, recalcitrant minor powers will attempt to reinforce their conventional defenses,
develop the most effective asymmetric strategies, share information, and, most likely in the nuclear age, acquire
survivable
nuclear weapons , the ultimate deterrent. In other words, recalcitrant minor powers will do their utmost
to become major powers — states that can deter the unipole because they possess the capabilities to put up a costly fight.¶ A
strategy of defensive dominance therefore provides recalcitrant minor powers with strong incentives
to balance internally, particularly by developing nuclear weapons. Given the risks entailed in extreme self-
help, no recalcitrant minor power would forfeit an opportunity to escape it. In a nuclear world, there is one sure way for minor
powers with sufficient technological and economic might to escape extreme self-help and virtually guarantee their survival vis-à-vis
the unipole: developing a survivable nuclear arsenal.” Waltz puts it succinctly: “There is only one way that a country can reliably
deter a dominant power, and that is by developing its own nuclear force.” Campbell Craig, along similar lines, argues that “smaller
states know that they can provide for their own security, if they come to believe that it is endangered…by developing a small and
invulnerable nuclear arsenal.” In sum, a second-strike nuclear capability (or, some argue, even a minimal nuclear
deterrent) guarantees survival, allowing minor powers to escape extreme self-help. As Hansen writes, this
is particularly valuable in a nuclear world:¶ By going nuclear, the other states are largely able to protect themselves from the
management efforts of the superpower and achieve an effective deterrent. This generally increases their security. These gains are not
exclusive to unipolarity. In some cases, however, they are particularly important in the case of unipolarity due to the single option
[i.e., the absence of another great power].
 Alt Solves Prolif---2NC
No prolif in the future multipolarity---reject their assumptions
Jonathan D. Moore 11, master’s candidate in International Studies/International Security,
specializing in nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, thesis presented for master’s degree,
“Products of Their Environment? Nuclear Proliferation and the Emerging Multipolar
International System,” November 2011, Gradworks
A key neo-realist assumption is that instability increases in multipolar system, thus the chance of war
also increases. This assumption is reflected in many predictions of nuclear proliferation in the coming
years. Francis J. Gavin explains that a wide variety of public figures and politicians, from President Obama and Senator John McCain to even
Thomas Schelling, have recently proclaimed that nuclear proliferation is and will be America’s greatest security challenge in the future.1 Indeed, the
2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reflects these sentiments. Although the NPR does not refer to the emerging system, or a multipolar system
explicitly, it explains that the United States is shifting its focus to nuclear proliferation and “adapting to a changed security environment.”2 The
NPR reflects the changes in the global system that I will be addressing here, including changes in security assurances and reduced constraint on
states in the international system, but fails to address other aspects of the emerging international system

that will have a large impact on proliferation in the future. It explains, “A failure of reassurance could lead to a
decision by one or more non-nuclear states to seek nuclear deterrents of their own, an outcome which could contribute to an unraveling of the NPT
regime and to a greater likelihood of nuclear weapon use.”3¶ A National Intelligence Council report further confirms the belief that nuclear weapons
will spread in the future, particularly in reaction to perceived Iranian capacity to produce nuclear weapons.4 Further, the report claims:¶ Historically,
emerging multipolar systems have been more unstable than bipolar or unipolar ones….[T]he next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught
with risks. Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, investments, and technological innovation and acquisition, but we cannot rule out
a 19th century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion, and military rivalries.5 ¶ Among the risks the NIC outlines is an increase in nuclear
proliferation, particularly in the Middle East.6¶ Does
this mean that more and more states will seek nuclear
weapons in order to ensure security in this type of environment? If we were to believe basic neo-realist
assumptions, the answer would be yes. In fact, it was my intention to demonstrate this at the outset of this study; however, my assumption was based
on only a narrow understanding of the emerging international system, and a monocausal explanation of nuclear calculations based on the security
environment of states.¶ It is not my goal to determine a unified theory of proliferation, nor is it my goal to predict which states will and will not pursue
nuclear weapons in the future. Instead, it
is my goal to counter the theories predicting widespread
proliferation in the future caused by a multipolar system. The world will be a very different place
than it was during the Cold War, and nuclear weapons research should reflect these changes.¶ Some of the largest changes
in the emerging system have nothing to do with the balance of power as traditionally
understood. Instead, major themes in the future will include economic power, globalization, and a
larger emphasis on norms and ideas . Although states will be less constrained in the multipolar system than under the
previous unipolar and bipolar systems, the conditions of the emerging system will influence states not to
pursue nuclear weapons. All too often, once analysts begin to consider what forces are pushing a state
towards proliferation, they forget to look at the degree to which those factors are actually
pushing and which factors are pushing back .
 Prolif = War---2NC
It causes war---reject impact
defens

Stephen J. Cimbala 15, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State

University Brandywine, The New Nuclear Disorder: Challenges to Deterrence and Strategy,
2015, Google Books, pp. 19-20
The boiling nuclear pot in Asia is, of course, a part of the larger problem of global nuclear
proliferation . In Chapter 8 we take aim at some of the arguments made by proliferation optimists
and others who contend that the spread of nuclear weapons among additional state actors is not
necessarily bad for world peace and international stability. These pro-proliferation arguments cannot be dismissed as
cracker-barrel ruminations, for they are based on international systems logic and rational deterrence theory. From a deductive
standpoint, according to this logic, international realist theory and deterrence logic suggest that nuclear weapons states will be
constrained by other nuclear weapons states, i.e., by deterrence based on assured retaliation. Historical examples can be cited to
that, compared to deterrence based on conventional weapons, nuclear deterrence has worked very well. We have had no two-sided
nuclear wars and no nuclear weapons fired in anger since 1945. Some states seem to behave more cautiously once they have acquired
nuclear arsenals than they did prior to becoming a nuclear weapons state. Even a state like North Korea or regional rivals like India
and Pakistan, it is alleged, have been forced to adapt their behavior to a regime of mutual deterrence supported by a balance of
nuclear terror.¶ In contrast to these assertions made by optimists about nuclear weapons spread, pessimists would contend that
nuclear proliferation optimism rests on flawed theory and mistaken analysis of how
nations behave. Realist theories of international politics assume that states seek to maximize their power relative to other
actors, and especially against rivals for regional or international hegemony. However, nuclear weapons do not “add up”
in the same way that conventional forces do: more are not necessarily better , for deterrence
or for crisis management. An imbalance in nuclear strike capabilities between larger and smaller powers
might motivate the smaller power to attack first, in order to prevent the larger power from
acquiring a nuclear first strike capability. Rational deterrence theory also assumes that political leaders make cost-
benefit decisions whether to attack on the basis of expected utilities for the “winner” of a nuclear exchange and expected disutilities
for the “loser.” However, nuclear conflicts are as likely to begin from a flawed bargaining process
in which states misestimate enemy intentions, capabilities, and mind sets. Imagine something like the
July crisis of 1914 among the great powers of Europe played out in a future nuclear Asia. It turns out that skepticism and
pessimism are justified in assessing the spread of nuclear weapons within or across regions.
The risk of a nuclear war may not increase in a direct and linear fashion along with an increase in the number of nuclear weapons
states. But there are no guarantees that crisis bound nuclear states’ competing rationalities will find a
solution short of war.
 AT Nedal
Decline under Trump leads to regional security alliances that are better at
sustaining peace than American hegemony
Jeet Heer 17, Senior Editor of The New Republic. 5/15/17, “Donald Trump Killed the
“Indispensable Nation.” Good!” https://newrepublic.com/article/142571/donald-trump-killed-
indispensable-nation-good
But the chaos of Trump’s foreign policy might well be an opportunity for the rest of the world.
We’re far removed from Nazism and Stalinism, when the U.S. provided a clear-cut leadership role that
no other nation could. Many of today’s international problems require regional cooperation,
which could easily be taken up by local alliances without America’s aid.
In January, after Trump called NATO “obsolete,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “We Europeans
have our fate in our own hands.” Trump’s isolationism, and the United Kingdom’s impending exit from the European
Union, is proving Merkel’s words true. “U.S. allies are resigning themselves to the likelihood that Trump’s
administration will remain unpredictable and often incoherent, if not downright hostile, in its foreign
policy,” noted the Foreign Policy report. “And they are beginning to draw up contingency plans to
protect their interests on trade and security, as they adapt to a world where strong American leadership
is no longer assured.”
Trump’s unreliability is likely to increase the ongoing push for European military integration,
which would create a formidable force that could work independently of the U.S. to face
challenges like Russian aggression. A more independent Europe could also take a stronger role
in the Middle East—not just taking in refugees, as it does now, but using military and diplomatic force to
solve the region’s problems. A more active European involvement in the Israel/Palestine negotiations
could be a boon, since the Europeans, seen as more sympathetic to the Palestinians, could provide a
counterweight to America’s pro-Israel policy. This might help break a stalemate that has lasted decades.
At worst, it can’t be less productive than the status quo.
The same logic applies in other regions of the world, where promising new alliances are
emerging as a response to Trump’s foreign policy. Earlier this month, in an implicit rebuke of Trump’s anti-trade
rhetoric, the finance ministers of China, South Korea, and Japan signed a statement stating, “We will resist
all forms of protectionism.” Historically, these three countries have been rivals, but here we see the
seeds of a new alliance system. South Korea has been the victim of both Chinese and Japanese
colonialism in the past, but in the new era they might find their Asian neighbors more trustworthy in
dealing with North Korea than Trump’s America. Japan, for its part, now has an incentive to overcome its own
isolationism, rooted in its defeat in World War II, and become a regional power.
A more isolationist America could also be a boon to Africa. The
presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama
brought a regrettable militarization of American policy towards Africa, with the creation of the United
States Africa Command in 2008. Under the sway of AFRICOM, the continent has become the newest
theater for America’s counterterrorism policy, to the determent of development aid. If African nations learn
to distrust U.S. intervention under Trump, they won’t become dependent on American military spending via AFRICOM and end up
with the top-heavy armies found in other U.S. satrapies.
Latin America offers a model for what a post-American world might look like . “After
9/11, Washington effectively lost interest in Latin America,” the journal Foreign Affairs lamented in
2006. “Since then, the attention the United States has paid to the region has been sporadic and narrowly
targeted at particularly troubling or urgent situations. Throughout the region, support for Washington’s policies has
diminished. Few Latin Americans, in or out of government, consider the United States to be a dependable
partner.” But considering America’s long history of supporting coups and death squads in Latin America, this recent disinterest
qualifies as benign neglect. Central and South America have enjoyed an era of often tumultuous and
contentious politics—the winding down of a guerrilla war in Colombia, the botched socialist experiment
in Venezuela, a presidential impeachment in Brazil—all taking place within a broadly democratic
framework. It hasn’t been a perfect era, as Venezuela descends into authoritarian chaos, but it has experienced far less violence
than earlier periods. Free from American interference, Latin Americans have proven they can
tackle their own problems better than the U.S can.
What Latin America has learned this century, the rest of the planet could discover in the Trump era: The
world doesn’t need America, and can work to solve its own problems free from the shadow
of American hegemony.
Proponents of the “indispensable nation” argue that the U.S. protects the world from the rise of a more hostile superpower. If
America cedes the throne, the theory goes, then Russia or China will fill the vacuum.
The risk of this is unclear. China is a status-quo power, eager to enlarge its sphere of influence in Asia
and establish trade with Africa, but no desire to radically alter global politics . Under Putin,
Russia has been increasingly adventurist, but it’s not obvious that the U.S. is the best nation to check
Russia behavior. A more independent Europe is likely to have a stiffer spine in
resisting Russian interventions in Eastern Europe (where, in any case, Russia is increasingly
unpopular).
Others who argue that America is “indispensable” fear a return to the cutthroat global jungle of the 1920s and 1930s. For instance, in
warning against America’s becoming a “normal nation,” Kagan wrote:
Americans after 1920 managed to avoid global responsibility for two decades. As the world collapsed around them, they told
themselves it was not their problem. Americans will probably do the same today. And for a while they will be right. Because of their
wealth, power and geography they will be the last to suffer the consequences of their own failures. Eventually they will discover,
again, that there is no escape. The question is how much damage is done in the meantime and whether, unlike in the past, it will be
too late to recover.
But having the stability of the world depend on one nation—and thus, on one democratically elected
leader—is itself an inherently risky system, as we’re seeing with Trump. Learning to live without America
might be the best way for the other leading nations of the world to create a more durable
international order—one held up not by a lone Atlas, but the shoulders of many nations.
 AT: Transition War---Generic
Macdonald---renounce risky commitments

No transition wars---Cross-sectional datasets prove retrenchment is peaceful---

only we have non-theoretical support for our argument
Douglas B. Atkinson 16, PhD candidate in the Department of International Affairs at the
University of Georgia, studying international relations and comparative politics. With George W.
Williford, Ph.D. Student at The University of Georgia. December 2016. “Research note: “Should
we stay or should we go? Exploring the outcomes of great power retrenchment””
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053168016682888
Exploring the link between shifting power and variation in a state’s foreign policy has long been central
to the study of international relations. However, it has also become a question of increased political
importance as policy-makers in the United States grapple with fears of decreasing international
influence caused by the economic and military growth of great power competitors. Scholarship exploring this
topic has been deeply divided, with prominent scholars such as Brooks et al. (2013), Copeland (2000), and Gilpin (1983) suggesting
that a strategy of retrenchment will leave declining states less safe and less prosperous and Copeland (2000) and Gilpin (1983)
contending that retrenchment will open a declining state up to predation and imperil their security. On the other hand, scholars
such as Layne (2009, 2012), MacDonald and Parent (2011), and Posen (2013) suggest that retrenchment will
lead to a more secure and prosperous America.
Although there has been intense theoretical debate regarding the benefits and costs of retrenchment,
these theories have only been tested on a handful of cases with various degrees of methodological
rigor. Work by MacDonald and Parent (2011) represents one notable exception as
they base their findings on a cross-case analysis of all major powers over the same
time span that we analyze. However, their analysis is limited in its ability to control for confounding factors that may
affect the success of strategies of retrenchment. We build on this work by testing these arguments on a time-series
crosssectional dataset of all major powers that stretches from 1870 to the present. Scholars have
often pointed to the United Kingdom’s successful policy of retrenchment following World War II as a rare exception to an otherwise
bleak record (Gilpin, 1983). Our
findings suggest that retrenchment is generally effective, making states more
likely to recover their previous power and less likely to experience the most dangerous interstate
conflicts.
We propose two hypotheses that directly test two of the most contentious claims in the literature.
H1: When in a period of decline, a state that chooses to retrench will be more likely to recover their previous position than a state
that does not.
H2: A great power experiencing a period of decline will be less likely to be the target of predation at the hands of fellow states than a
great power that does not.
Research design
We test our argument on a sample comprising all states identified as great powers by the Correlates of War (COW) project from 1870
to 2007. This specific time-span is analyzed due to data availability.1 States enter the dataset in 1870 or the first year thereafter in
which they achieve great power status and exit the dataset when they lose their great power status for the last time. The full list of
countries and years included in the data is provided in Table 1.
To operationalize relative power, we follow MacDonald and Parent (2011) in constructing an ordinal ranking of all great powers in a
given year. States are ranked according to their overall share of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita among great powers. This is
preferable to measures of absolute power, such as overall capabilities, that do not allow us to capture the relational nature of our
theory. States can experience relative decline because their own economic performance is poor, or because other states are simply
advancing faster than they are.2
States are coded as entering a period of relative decline when they lose at least one rank in a given year. States exit a period of
decline, or recover, when they regain at least one ordinal rank after they enter a period of decline. In our view, partial recoveries that
reverse the process of decline without restoring a state to its full previous rank still indicate successful retrenchment. We also believe
that states should maintain their improved ranking for some minimum period of time. States that regain a rank but immediately lose
it again have not successfully recovered. Since we have no strong theoretical priors regarding how long this period should be, we use
two different thresholds and present results for both. One requires a state to maintain their improved ranking for at least one year
after recovery, and the other requires states to maintain their ranking for five years. Once states recover, they become “at risk” of
experiencing another period of decline.
To operationalize retrenchment, we use the percentage change in a state’s military expenditures over the previous year as a proxy for
its military posture. Whether they are drawing down foreign commitments or decreasing military investment at home, states
engaged in a strategy of retrenchment should display declining military expenditures. This provides a continuous measure that
allows us to capture both whether a state retrenches and the degree to which it does so. Data on military expenditures come from the
COW project’s National Military Capabilities Dataset and are measured in nominal values (Lemke and Reed, 1998).3 Because we do
not have reliable data on the inflation rate for military capabilities, we choose not to adjust these values for inflation. This decision
should be inconsequential for our results, since we care more about yearly changes in military expenditures rather than their
absolute level.4
We include several control variables to ensure that our models capture the effects of adopting a
strategy of retrenchment rather than changes in latent military capabilities. To control for the effects of
a state’s absolute power, independent of its position relative to other states, we include the absolute
level of GDP per capita. We also include the change in GDP per capita over the previous year to control for abrupt changes in
absolute power. We also control for factors that may affect a state’s ability to retrench effectively. First, states with strong
alliance portfolios should have an easier time retrenching by relying on allies to take up the
slack in m

Marked

anaging international security threats. We control for this using the S alliance score measure, which provides a measure of
alliance portfolio strength relative to the system leader (Small and Singer, 1969). Second, states capable of nuclear
deterrence may be able to reduce military spending more easily by cutting conventional capabilities.
We control for this using data on nuclear weapons status from Jo and Gartzke (2007). Third, regime type may have an effect on a
state’s ability to retrench. Because autocracies possess less veto players, we expect that they may be able to adjust their spending
priorities more easily. In addition, since well-consolidated regimes of either type may be more capable of adjusting state policy than
anocracies, regime type may have a curvilinear effect on our variables. To account for this, we include both the state’s Polity2 score
and its square using data from the Polity IV dataset (Marshall and Jaggers, 2002).5 To avoid the possibility of simultaneity bias, we
lag our independent variables and the control variables accounting for power by one year in all models.
Recovery models
H1 predicts that states in periods of decline are more likely to recover their previous status if they retrench. To test this, we use
discrete time duration models to estimate the probability that a state in a period of decline recovers in a given year. The dependent
variable for these models is our binary indicator of Recovery. For each version of our Recovery variable (1 year and 5 year), we
estimate binomial logit models on the subset of the data for all years in which a state is coded as in decline. We model the change in
the probability of failure as a function of time using cubic polynomials of the time since the beginning of the period of decline (Carter
and Signorino, 2010). Because some countries never experience decline, both sets of models omit observations on some countries.
We begin by discussing the results of our models that employ the one year recovery threshold (see Table 2). Model 1 estimates the
probability of recovery solely as a function of a state’s change in military expenditures. Model 2 introduces the control variables
discussed above, and Model 3 introduces fixed effects for each country (i.e., unit-specific intercepts) to control for unobserved
heterogeneity induced by including repeated measures on the same units. Taken together, these results provide modest support for
the argument that retrenchment helps a state recover their previous standing during periods of decline. Although the coefficient on
changes in military expenditures is insignificant in Model 1 and 2, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in Model 3 reveals that
increases in military expenditures have a negative and significant effect (at the 0.1 level) on the probability of recovery. Put
otherwise, states that decrease their military spending in a given year are less likely to experience recovery in the following year.
To illustrate the substantive significance of this effect, Figure 1 plots the predicted probability of recovery as a function of changes in
military expenditures with all other variables held at their observed values. The probability of recovery is highest after states make
significant cuts in their military spending. This probability steadily decreases from 0.239 to 0.018 at the high end of military
expenditures, indicating that states which make sharp increases in their military spending have almost no chance of recovery. Table
3 presents the results of our models using the five year recovery threshold. Although the coefficients are in the predicted direction,
our military expenditures variable is not significant in any of the three models. In addition, including fixed effects in the model
requires dropping a number of cases, since several states never experience our more restrictive coding of recovery. As such, it is
difficult to draw firm conclusions on the basis of these models. In sum, we find some evidence that retrenchment facilitates recovery,
although this is sensitive to both measurement and model specification.
Predation models
H2 predicts that states in periods of decline may be subject to increased attacks by enemy states. To test
this argument, we use binomial logistic regression to model the probability that a great
power is attacked by another state . Our dependent variable is a measure of whether another
state initiated a militarized interstate dispute (MID) against a state in a given year (Palmer et al., 2015).
Because we care about whether other states actually attack declining great powers, we restrict our
analysis to MIDs that involve fatalities. Our primary independent variables are our indicator of whether
a state is in decline and our measure of retrenchment. Since the choice of recovery threshold determines how long a
state is coded as in decline, we run models using both our one year and five year coding schemes. We present the models using our
one year threshold here. Models using the five year threshold are included in the Supplementary Online Appendix. These models
include the same control variables discussed in the previous section as well as cubic polynomials of the number of years since the last
MID initiation.
Table 4 presents the results of these models. Model 1 includes only our measures of decline and retrenchment, Model 2 introduces
control variables, and Model 3 introduces fixed effects for each country year. Our results provide modest support for the argument
that states experiencing relative decline are subject to opportunistic attacks by challengers. Although this effect does not reach
conventional levels of statistical significance in Model 1, it becomes significant after introducing control variables (Model 2) and
fixed effects (Model 3). Holding all other variables constant at their observed values, the predicted probability of fatal MID onset in a
given year is 0.063 for states in periods of decline and 0.031 for states that are not. As such, great powers in periods of decline are
effectively twice as likely to be attacked by another state in a given year. This provides support for the argument that great powers
may be subject to opportunistic attacks by challengers during periods of weakness.
We also find modest support for the proposition that great powers that retrench may be able to avoid predatory
attacks by challengers. The coefficient for change in military expenditures is positive and significant at
the 0.1 level in two of our three models. This indicates that increases in military spending are
associated with an increased risk of predatory attacks . This effect is also substantively
significant. To provide some intuition of the size of the effect, Figure 2 plots the predicted probability of fatal MID onset using
Model 3 across the observed range of our Retrenchment variable with all other variables held at their observed values. The predicted
probability of fatal MID onset increases from 0.008 at the minimum to 0.146 at its maximum. This provides modest support for the
position of retrenchment optimists. Although great powers do appear to be subject to attack during periods of relative decline, our
results suggest that states that decrease their military expenditures may be less prone to this type of
behavior.
On the whole, our
results are relatively robust. In general, the predicted values of both sets of models track well with the
observed data.6 Both our models of recovery and predation are robust to changes in the coding of our
decline variable using both one and five year thresholds for our recovery variable. However, our results are
somewhat sensitive to measurement and model specification, which points to the need for further testing before drawing firm
conclusions. In particular, the fixed effects model performs well in all of our analyses. We
believe this is the theoretically
most appropriate model, since it controls for unit effects and corrects for the violations of the
assumption that observations are measured independently. Nonetheless, this speaks to the need for further testing
before drawing firm conclusions on the basis of our results. Additional studies that employ alternate measures of power and
retrenchment would be especially useful in this regard.
Conclusion
have assessed the outcomes of great power retrenchment using a dataset of
In this paper, we
all great powers from 1870–2007. Counter to the expectations of the skeptics, we have found
that retrenchment has led to relatively successful outcomes. Declining states that choose to
retrench experience shorter periods of relative economic decline and are less likely to be the targets of
predation than declining states that choose not to retrench. While these findings are suggestive, more research
needs to be done to fully assess the outcomes of retrenchment. Among other topics, future work should explore the impact that
retrenchment has on the credibility of the international commitments that the declining state chooses to maintain. Additionally, our
data contain a number of instances of declining states that chose not to retrench and subsequently experienced prolonged economic
problems and predation. Our findings suggest that retrenchment would have mitigated some of the negative
effects of decline. Of these cases, post-World War II France represents and interesting instance of a declining power that chose
not to retrench (Spruyt, 2005). Future research should employ quantitative counterfactual analyses, such as synthetic control, to
explore how retrenchment could have changed France’s fortunes.
 Minilateralism
The alternative promotes minilateralism---this is key to solve all global problems---
also mean
Moises Naim 13, PhD in Econ from MIT, senior associate in Carnegie’s International
Economics Program, former editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy, former executive director of the
World Bank, chairman of the boards of both the Group of Fifty and Population Action
International as well as a member of the Boards of Directors of the National Endowment for
Democracy, International Crisis Group, and the Open Society Foundations, The End of Power:
From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It
Used to Be, March 2014, pp. 95-97, Google Books
The multiplication of working partnerships, some more formal than others, among countries
involved in one issue or another reflects the shifting lines of power in geopolitics today. The
Cairns Group, founded in 1986 to reform agricultural trade, gathers nineteen food-exporting countries, including
Canada, Paraguay, South Africa, Argentina, and the Philippines, that push for cutting both tariffs and subsidies. And the BRICS group, which,
as noted, is an acronym for five large emerging markets—Brazil. Russia. India. China, and now South Africa—held its first
summit meeting in Russia in 2009, though the acronym was coined by a banker for Goldman Sachs eight years earlier and had spread in financial
circles before the politicians latched on. Russia also belongs to the G-8 of industrial nations; Mexico and South Africa joined Brazil, India, and China as
the “plus 5 in the expanded G8+5. There are two different G-20s, one consisting of finance ministers and central bank governors of
nineteen large nations, plus the EU; the other a grouping of developing countries that are now more than twenty in number. The memberships of the
New trade blocs and regional cooperation agencies are simmering in all parts
two overlap.

of the world. And the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), an alliance begun by Venezuela and Cuba in 2005, has seven members
including Ecuador, Nicaragua, and the Caribbean nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda. It resembles a trade
pact but has larger political aspirations, and among the benefits it shares among nations are eye care (provided by Cuba and subsidized by Venezuelan
oil).¶ The key common feature is that none
of these groups is trying to be a universal alliance. By allowing admission
only to members with a common outlook or concerns, they
more resemble the “coalitions of the willing’ in America's Iraq
and Afghanistan wars than they do the United Nations or the international climate-change negotiations. In March 2012, for example,
the members of BRICS discussed the creation of a common development bank to mobilize savings between the countries and promote the opening of

further trade links, particularly between the other members and Russia and China. ¶ Such groupings also have a higher
chance of accomplishing whatever it is they set out to do. Truly global agreements have
grown exceedingly rare—especially ones that actually work. The last global trade deal was in 1994, with the agreement to create the World
Trade Organization; the United States has vet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and many signatories have missed their targets; and the United Nations
Millennium Declaration, signed by 192 countries in 2000, set out numerous global social goals to be achieved by their target date of 2015. The
Copenhagen fiasco, with its vast expenditure of diplomatic effort for barely a symbolic outcome, is far more characteristic of multilateral initiatives that

aim for universal adherence. ¶ The alternative is what I have called minilateralism . At its most fine-tuned,
minilateralism consists of gathering the smallest number of countries necessary to make a major
change to the way the world addresses a particular issue—for instance, the ten largest polluters, the
twenty largest consumers of endangered fish stocks, the dozen major countries involved in aid to
Africa as donors or recipients, and so on. Minilateralism can serve small countries too, when it takes the
shape of alliances of the few that have a greater chance of succeeding, but also of not being shut down by
dominant powers whose leverage is diminished. In turn, minilateralism is vulnerable to the decay of power. Because many of these associations are ad
hoc and lack the moral pressure of global membership, they are also more vulnerable to dissolution or defection when a member-government falls, its
population dissents, or its policy preferences change.¶ ANYONE IN CHARGE HERE?¶ The leveling of hierarchy means that a
small number
of dominant nations (let alone a single hegemon) no longer hold sway over the direction of
international cooperation and how the world will handle present and future crises. It also means the bypassing of the
traditional diplomatic establishment—foreign ministries, embassies and their staff, national aid agencies, and other bilateral
services—that has controlled the terms of engagement across borders. Diplomats were once the gatekeepers and guardians of certain norms of
interaction. Now they have been disinter-mediated, and the advantages of traditional statecraft blunted, in a landscape of small-country initiatives,
promotion by nonstate actors, and channels of direct access to overseas public opinion. ¶ The edifice of cooperation and deterrence built in the last
seven decades has been strong enough to see through decolonization, ward off invasions and conquests, and limit secessions. The dissolution of
unwieldy unions that had been held together by ideology and force—the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia—stand as the exceptions that confirm the rule. So
sovereign states remain, and they still possess the trappings of sovereignty, which are not insignificant: armies, border controls, currencies, economic
policy, taxation. The rivalry among states—along with its expression through the Great Game of negotiations, alliances, agreements, propaganda, and
confrontation—is here to stay.¶ The tail will not always wag the dog, either. The power of the United States or China is vastly superior to that of a small
European, Latin American, or Asian state both on paper and almost always in practice. It is the
effectiveness of that power that is
lagging, not its potential. The American president will have his or her phone call taken at any hour anywhere in the world. He can barge
into a meeting of fellow leaders and redirect the conversation. The clout of the Chinese premier by that measure is growing. These are the dynamics that
unfold at international conferences and summit meetings, and they have an impact on the outcome. Keeping tabs on them is more than a matter of
jingoism or attachment to bygone ways: it does make a difference.¶ But the decay of power means that obsessingabout which great
power is on the rise and which one is declining, as if geopolitics in the end reduced to a zero-sum game among a global elite,
is a red herring . Yes, each issue on which they face off is significant on its own merits. The alignment of military forces between the United
States, Russia, and China is certainly worthy of concern. So is the nature of China’s response to American entreaties that it manage its currency
differently. So are differences between the United States and the European Union on trade policy, agricultural subsidies, and the prosecution of war
criminals. So are the stances of India and China on carbon emissions. But none
of this signifies the fall of one hegemon and
the rise of another in its place. Future superpowers will neither look nor act like those of
the past . Their room for maneuver has tightened, and the capability of small powers to obstruct, redirect, or
simply ignore them will continue to grow.¶ So, does this mean that the alternative view is correct? Is the world
spiraling toward an updated, twenty-first-century version of Hobbes’s war of all against all, made
more complicated by the cross-cutting and blurred lines between nation-states, nonstate actors. unmoored financial flows, charities, NGOs and Gongos,
and free agents of all kinds? The default answer is yes—unless, and until, we adjust to the decay of power and accept that the ways we cooperate across
borders, both inside and outside the framework of governments, must change. ¶ There is no reason we cannot do so. The
collapse of the
world system has been repeatedly predicted at times of technological change and cultural and
demographic flux. Thomas Malthus predicted that the world could not carry an expanding population. Yet it did. Witnessing the industrial
revolution and the expansion of global markets and trade in the nineteenth century, the Marxists anticipated a collapse of capitalism under the weight
of its internal contradictions. It did not. World
War II and the Holocaust deeply shook our faith in the moral
character of humanity, yet the norms and institutions the world established in response have
endured to this day. Nuclear annihilation, the cardinal fear of the 1950S and 196os, failed to occur.¶ Today’s panoply of
international threats and crises—from global warming and resource depletion to nuclear proliferation, trafficking, fundamentalism,
and more—come as the hierarchy of nations is in flux and the very exercise of state power is no
longer what it used to be. The juxtaposition can be jarring. Each new massacre, bombing, or environmental disaster jolts us anew, and
the laborious, ambiguous results of conferences and summit meetings seem to offer little consolation or hope. It may seem that no one is in charge.
That feeling, and the trends that provoke it, will continue. But looking
for a current or new hegemon or a committee of
elite nations to reassert control is a fool’s errand . The solutions to the new challenges of
international cooperation—ultimately, of sharing the planet—will emerge in a landscape where power is
easier to obtain and harder to use or even keep.
1NR
 Innovation DA
No link turn---The aff causes political uncertainty and revenue decline for pharma
companies---that causes them to cut new RnD programs
David Epstein 17, executive partner at Flagship Pioneering. March 17. “The next horizon of
innovation for pharma” http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-
products/our-insights/the-next-horizon-of-innovation-for-pharma
You also have to look at the external environment and think about what could go wrong. We should always
worry when there’s political change . For instance, when payors—which is the government in most
parts of the world—come under economic pressure, changes in legislation could disrupt the
innovation process. If all of a sudden investors had no hope of being able to take their
companies public and make a good return, that money would dry up, as would innovation. If
pharma companies saw prices fall so far that their margins came under huge pressure, they
would cut costs and reduce R&D as well as other spending. Eventually there would be an industry shakeout,
and it would correct itself, but you’d have several years or longer where things slowed down or paused, and
that’s an ongoing risk.
Evidence says alt causes to farmer financial stability
Wakefield 7/18 (Jeffrey R. Wakefield, Associate Communications Director at University of
Vermont, “New UVM Study: Health Insurance Costs Threaten Farm Viability¶ ”
http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&storyID=24706&category=uvmhome)
According to a new U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded study, lack of access to
affordable health insurance is one of the most significant concerns facing
American farmers, an overlooked risk factor that affects their ability to run a
successful enterprise.¶ "The rising cost of healthcare and the availability of affordable health
insurance have joined more traditional risk factors like access to capital, credit and land as a
major source of worry for farmers," said principal investigator Shoshanah Inwood, a rural
sociologist at the University of Vermont, who conducted the study with colleagues at the
Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis at NORC at the University of Chicago.¶ "The
study found that health-related costs are a cross-sector risk for agriculture, tied
to farm risk management, productivity, health, retirement, the need for off-farm income
and land access for young and beginning farmers," said Alana Knudson, co-director of
the NORC Walsh Center.¶ Study results were based on a March 2017 mail survey of
farmers and ranchers in 10 study states and interviews with farm families in each of the
study states in 2016.¶ Three of four farmers and ranchers (73 percent) in the survey said
that having affordable health insurance was an important or very important means of
reducing their business risk. And just over half (52 percent) are not confident they could
pay the costs of a major illness such as a heart attack, cancer or loss of limb without
going into debt.¶ Insights from the interviews supported the survey results. "During the
course of interviews with farmers, many relayed stories about their family members or
neighbors who had lost their farms or dairies due to catastrophic illness or
injury when they were uninsured," Knudson said.¶ Sixty-four percent report
having pre-existing conditions¶ To meet the needs of farmers, changes in current health
insurance law will need to be carefully considered, the survey suggests.¶ Two out of
three farmers and ranchers (64 percent) reported having a pre-existing health
condition. With an average age of 58, farmers and ranchers are also
vulnerable to higher insurance premiums due to age-rating bands. And among
farmers and ranchers 18 to 64 years old, one out of four (24 percent) purchased a plan
in their state's insurance marketplace.¶ "A number of farmers in their 50s we spoke with
said they had left off-farm employment in the last five years to commit to full-time
farming because they and their families would not be denied health insurance in the
individual market due to pre-existing conditions," Knudson said.¶ Health Insurance
costs create barriers for young and beginning farmers¶ Health care costs also
factor into farm succession issues, potentially denying young people access to land to
farm.¶ Almost half (45 percent) of the farmers surveyed said they're concerned they will
have to sell some or all of their farm or ranch assets to address health related costs such
as long-term care, nursing home or in-home health assistance.¶ "These findings
indicated that many farmers will need to sell their land, their most valuable asset,
to the highest bidder when they need cash to cover health-related costs," Inwood
said, "making it more difficult for young farmers to afford land and increasing the
likelihood farmland is sold for commercial development."¶ Lack of access to
affordable health insurance could potentially drive young people away from farming, the
research found. Young farmers who had taken advantage of the Medicaid expansion in their
states said told the researchers in interviews that it allowed them to provide health insurance for
their children and have time and energy to invest in the farm or ranch rather than having to seek
a full-time off-farm or ranch job with benefits.¶ Most farm families have health insurance,
over half through public sector employment¶ The vast majority of farmers and ranchers
(92 percent) reported that they and their families had health insurance in 2016 but that
it frequently came from off-farm employment. Over half (59 percent) of farm and ranch
families received benefits through public sector employers (health, education and
government).¶ "Public sector jobs, especially in rural areas often offer the highest wages
and most generous benefits," Inwood said. "Changes in public and private sector
employment options or benefits affect the financial stability and social well-being of
farm families with impacts reverberating through rural communities."¶ Nearly three
quarters say USDA should represent farmer interests¶ Given the pressing nature of their
health insurance concerns, farmers are also seeking help from the federal government.¶
Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of farmers said USDA should represent farmers'
needs in national health policy discussions, particularly due to unique health needs of
farmers and farm workers (e.g., coverage for blood tests to examine potential pesticide
exposures).¶ The timing is right, Inwood said, the five-year update of the U.S. Farm Bill
is due in 2018. The comprehensive Farm Bill deals with agriculture and all other issues
under the jurisdiction of the USDA.¶ "We have a shrinking and aging farm population,"
Inwood said. "The next Farm Bill is an opportunity to start thinking about how health
insurance affects the trajectory of farms in the United States."¶ Nothing is more
important to the country's food system than the viability of the farm sector, she said.¶
"It's a matter of national security," she said.¶ For the study, a total of 1,062 farmers and
ranchers were surveyed in March 2017 in Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Nebraska, Mississippi, Kentucky, Washington, Utah and California. Study
states were selected in each of the four Census regions and included a mix of those that
had expanded or not expanded Medicaid. The study results were also based on
interviews of up to 10 families in each of the study states.
K
 Framework---2NC

Security depends on actors who strip out political questions in favor of purely
technical debates over the delivery of goods by the government---sole focus on the
plan constrains the bounds of social life within narrow institutional parameters of
security and national identity
Michael S. Drake 10, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Hull, Political Sociology for a
Globalizing World, 2010, no page #
Ignoring the status of security as an ‘essentially contested concept’ in Gallie’s sense (1964), and
assuming its content as given in technical expertise rather than as political, Loader and Walker thus
posit a prior value of security as a public good that is a condition of social life , then
identify the state as the ‘prior’ agent of delivery and proceed to announce imperatives which
displace politics and the political from everyday life , with the explicit aim of
containing contention within the given institutional parameters of formal
political practice , though these are precisely the channels that have been disrupted by the politics of identity, new social
movements, representation, culture and globalization. The
parameters of the political thus become the
parameters of control , a new front line on which the task of security is to constrain and
contain the possibilities of social life within given limits, thus establishing set conditions for
living. Loader and Walker thus subordinate classical questions of the political – questions of how we should live – to the technical
prerequisites of security, its maintenance and guarantee.
The state provision of functions of security, we are told, is essential because ‘they entail the crafting of stable identities’ (Loader and
Walker 2007: 172), thus precluding hybridity, fluidity and creativity of identification. For Loader and Walker, identity, both personal
and social, must be indexed to the apparatus of the state lest it undermine the latter’s capacity to fulfil its functions in providing
security. The argument becomes doubly tautological when they discuss why the state is the best means for the provision of security,
since it appears that the state alone produces identities which constitute an environment that enables security (ibid.: 172–6). The
politics of self and social identity , in the sense of the contention and challenge of conventional forms, are thus
off-limits, illegitimate and even dangerous, since politics are to be restricted to the politics of
distribution (in their terms, the ‘delivery of public goods’). Restricting the political to such questions
means rolling back its parameters to exclude the contention of authority. As we have seen, that
contention is implicitly marked not only by 1968, but also by the revolts of 1989 and the reassertion of civil society as a space of
freedom against the determinations of the state, since the necessary attributes of the state’s provision of
security ‘require the priority of the state as a site of political identity over others to be
internalized ’ (ibid.: 181). The task of democratic governance then becomes the improvement of security, state and police, a
structural order of precedence in which the political – the question of how we should live – becomes conditional
on given technical prerequisites of how we must live, without any scope for challenging those
norms which are assumed, a priori, as given.
Once they have established this imperative of police security and the essential priority of the state in its legitimate provision, Walker
and Loader note four cautions against the untrammelled operations of security forces, which necessitate the civilizing of security,
but, whereas as security provides the condition for civility, democratic governance is clearly predicated on security, and these
‘pathologies’ are as much those of governance as of security (Loader and Walker 2007: 196–212). The risks are the tendencies of
policy drift to ‘professional paternalism’ (which indicates security-sector technocracy, the only one that is truly a risk or pathology of
security itself), to consumerism (particularly electoral pandering to populism), to authoritarianism (which can arise from either of
the former paths) and to fragmentation (in which either consumerist individuals or interest groups particularize security,
contravening its function as a common good). However, each of these is ultimately dismissed as a second-order concern, after
security, which is to say they are risks that must be taken, a conclusion in stark contrast to the imperative basis of security as an
essential and preconditional public good. The practice of civilizing security subsequently turns out to mean the use of the state and
its ordering capacities to constrain popular demands for security, which is in effect a further security function.
For Loader and Walker, police ordering operations and the security of the state apparatus that provides this function are the
precondition of democracy and politics, rather than vice versa, so that democratic governance of security is conditional on the
technical prerequisites of police security and the state, precluding social experiments in identification, representation and living
arrangements. In attempting to develop normative guidelines for securitization, Loader and Walker thus seem to have reconstructed
in abstract the logic of the security reflex which converts protest or resistance into terror, so they appear as an
ontological threat to the given order and its parameters of the political. Such forces of the creation of
identity and the opening of new possibilities for life can be understood as exercises of constitutive power, in contrast to the
constituted power of established institutions and given relations, but these are two moments of power, not two opposed forces; they
are incommensurable and therefore cannot be brought into ‘balance’ as security and liberty, a formulation which misunderstands
the contemporary political situation, reducing it to the dichotomy of norm and deviance.
When their order of precedence is extended to the global dimension, Loader and Walker are clear that security is not only prior to
society, but if necessary it must be imposed. In their reasoning, global security order could be established as a public good on the
basis of the shared understandings of national state security apparatuses quite regardless of the conventional requirements of
democratic consent or legitimation (2007: 262). However, if security is also enabling and even productive of identities, opportunities
for global identity formation and new forms of association would remain containerized within nation-states. The common
functions of states as security providers, and the technical expertise invested in that
provision , would establish an integrated grid of security for a subject which will internalize
the identity given by that grid , just as the national citizen is normatively expected to
internalize a love for their nation-state. The subject of global order is thus the subject of security, which is
constructed by channelling political action into given institutions and by controlling
the parameters of the political to maintain given constraints, producing a naturalized
antagonism to anything outside those parameters.
 Impact---Biopower/Security
The biopolitical strategies of the aff cause extinction---upholding life at home and
protecting it from risk abroad is the necessary precondition to nuclear war and
genocide
Zohreh Bayatrizi 8, Associate Professor Social Theory at Alberta University, Life Sentences:
The Modern Ordering of Mortality, 165-7
The drive to protect life against the threat of anarchic and disorderly death has significance not
only within national borders but also internationally. The United Nations measures ‘human development,’ in part,
in terms of longevity, health, and infant mortality, and, as a con sequence, international aid is often targeted to address high mortality rates in poor
countries. Moreover, provisions
are made within international laws and conventions to protect all citizens of the
world against genocide, war crimes, and arbitrary killings. In
practice, however, the principle of the sanctity of life has
been upheld in a morally inconsistent manner. Beginning with Hobbes, the moral commitment to
the value of life has always been qualified and conditional: it has meant respect for
the life of some but not all people . Hobbes himself argues that the prohibition against war only
applies to civil wars — wars of ‘us’ against ‘us’ — and not wars aimed at the domination of
‘other’ peoples by ‘us’ (Leviathan, xx). By waging wars and colonial campaigns or by presiding over a
system of distribution of wealth in the world that leaves many to die from hunger, the ‘civilized,’
life-respecting countries of the West have, arguably, imposed more death on one another or on
the rest of the world than any of the vilest empires that history can remember. The case of Terri Schiavo,
which I first discussed in the introductory chapter of this book, is instructive. In the spring of 2005, when this conclusion was originally being drawn
up, a genocidal campaign was being waged in Sudan, many civilians were struggling with the ‘collateral damage’ of the war on terror in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and thousands of people in the world’s poorest countries were dying prematurely from easily preventable causes. As all this was unfolding, the
United States came to grips with a moral crisis over the question whether it was right or wrong to let one person, Terri Schiavo, die after being in a
persistent vegetative state for years. The pilot
who drops bombs from a safe distance is a national hero, the
terrorist who blows himself up is a coward, the child dying from hunger is a non-person , and Terri Schiavo is a
cause célèbre for a morally confused culture of respect for life. The writings of Foucault (1990, 2003), Agamben (1998, 2005), and Bauman (1992,
1998), as well as those of postcolonial writers such as Balibar (2001), suggest that this
moral inconsistency is integral to the
dynamics of the Western culture of life and death. Foucault has argued that racism and violence
on a mass scale is inscribed in Western political order: ‘For millennia man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living
being with the additional capacity for political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics calls his existence as a living being into question’
(1990: 143). According to this view, the Holocaust, as well as the looming possibility of a nuclear war during the
Cold War, both stemmed, ironically, from the modern Western political imperative to take charge of
life and how it is lived. Wars are no longer waged to defend the sovereign, but rather, they are
undertaken ‘on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the
purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity : massacres have
become vital’ (ibid.: 137). Similarly, today the ‘naked question of survival’ (ibid.) is reinvoked to justify
the actions of those who endanger the lives of thousands of civilians around the world in the name of a pre-emptive ‘war on terror,’
undertaken to protect their own citizens and civilization from the mere potential of terrorist, nuclear,
and biological attacks at some uncertain point in the future. In all of these cases, ‘the power to
expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an
individual’s continued existence’ (ibid.). Giorgio Agamben and Etienne Balibar explain this ironic
contradiction in terms of the creation of categories of living non-citizens (within national
borders as well as on a global scale) and their subsequent exclusion from participation in the
politico-legal realm. Invoking the ancient figure of homo sacer — the person who falls outside of legal and
political protections and thus can be killed with impunity but not sacrificed — Agamben argues
that sovereignty ancient or modern, is characterized by the exceptional right to define and
exclude homo sacer or bare life from the politicolegal realm: ‘What is at stake is, once again, the definition of a life
that may be killed without the commission of homicide’ (1998: 165). Agamben describes the Nazi concentration camps, as well as contemporary refugee
camps in the heart of Europe and elsewhere, as zones of exception, which function to exclude certain categories of people from the legal protections
afforded ordinary citizens who are integrated in the political community (ibid.: 147). Balibar
has argued that under modern
capitalist political-economic conditions, the whole world is divided into life zones and
death zones, the former occupied by the citizens of affluent, stable, and mostly Western countries, while the
latter host millions of the world’s inhabitants who are subjected to various forms of extreme
violence, including primarily, the lack of access to political participation, as well as being subject to hunger, war, and
genocide. For Balibar (2001: 10), although it is not always clear whether the life zones are responsible for the creation of the death zones, what is
less in doubt is that the existence of such zones is beneficial for the workings of Western capitalism, as they leave millions of people too concerned with
the naked question of survival to democratically participate in securing their political and economic rights against global powers.
 Reps/Securitization First---Aff = War Inev
Security is a psychological construction---representations of external threat bias
decision-making and make war inevitable
Sybille RD Buitrago 16, studied International Affairs, Peace Research, Conflict Resolution and
International Communication at American University. Article was double-bind peer reviewed.
“Threats of a Different Kind: China and Russia in U.S. Security Policy Discourse”
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0175-274X-2016-3-165/threats-of-a-different-kind-
china-and-russia-in-u-s-security-policy-discourse-jahrgang-34-2016-heft-3
It matters how a state’s national decision makers perceive and construct challenges and threats
in international security. This also extends to the construction of other states; whether or not another state is
constructed as threatening or as nonthreatening shapes policy /security policy and interstate relations
accordingly . As argued by scholars and outlined below, how something or someone is constructed
constitutively affects interpretation of issues, developments or actors’ behavior, confines the
way in which action and interaction are thought possible, and thereby contributes to
behavior towards another state. U.S. national decision makers follow a U.S. self-role of global leader in international
security, and U.S. national security is defined as extending beyond national borders. This also
facilitates an extended view of threats and threatening others. In the U.S. perspective, more issues and actors
represent potential threats. Thus, also states that challenge globally defined U.S. national security or the
U.S. in the provision of international security may be viewed as potentially threatening. Aside from
international terrorism, extremism, fragile states, rogue actors, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational
organized crime, cyber attacks, and consequences from external violent conflicts, as stated in the 2015 U.S. National Security
Strategy (see for example White House 2015), both China and Russia are/have become again serious
concerns in U.S. security policy discourse. And while U.S. discourse under the Obama administrations has also
increasingly highlighted the need for multilateral action, it is unilateral measures that remain primary for the
U.S.
This article offers empirical results on how the U.S. approach international security, and, in
particular, how U.S. security policy discourse constructs current challengers. Perceiving and
constructing another state as rival, threat or enemy has constitutive effects on interaction with
that state. Discourse’s constitutive effects on behavior are illustrated in recent scholarship (Herschinger/ Renner 2014;
Diez/Bode/Fernandes da Costa 2011; Nabers 2009). Thus, as this article argues, if states such as the U.S. perceive and construct
other states such as China and Russia as threat to own and international security, it will constitutively affect interaction with these
countries (see also Campbell 1998; Dalby 1997).
As U.S. decision makers are said to still see the U.S. leading the world (Nye 2015; Tomes 2014: 46; Wolf 2014: 89-92),1 this
article poses the question of how potential challengers to U.S. primacy are constructed. Regarding
China, for example, scholars point to the U.S. fearing a loss of influence in the region (Hacke 2013; Goh 2007/2008: 113-157), to
China’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of its interests, its options for asymmetric conduct towards the U.S. (Colby 2015;
Worcester/Bühler 2011: 28-29), and even a new bipolarity (Maull 2015). In case of rising U.S.-Sino conflict, the great U.S.
mistrust in the Chinese government would likely favor tough policies (Wolf 2014: 96). Additional tension
can come from Chinese efforts to increase military presence in the South China Sea. Russia, on the other side, was not seen as threat
to U.S. interests until the Ukraine crisis. Some merely argued that Russia is a difficult partner for the U.S. and that the U.S. have the
dilemma of needing Russian cooperation to deal with global challenges but also aiming for deeper relations with the young
democracies in Russia’s neighborhood (Hacke 2013: 6-7). In 2012, Russia was still no clear challenge, as Russian and U.S. interests
did not intolerably interfere (Smith 2012: 184-186). But the Ukraine crisis has created the view of a threatening Russia and even
conjured up Cold War images (Monagan 2015). Increased strategic Sino-Russian aligning (Trenin 2015; Rudolf 2014) likely
increases U.S. concern.
As outlined here, perception, national identity and self-other constructions inform – via decision
makers – interstate relations. By their very nature, interstate relations are the experience of
different and at times opposed perspectives, where perception and identity impact the
interpretation of events and of self and other. Possible outcomes are threat constructions,
even enemy images, and the demarcation and defense of spheres of influence. The sense of national
identity is also shaped by historical experience as shared by the collective of a state; experienced gains and victories as well as losses
and traumata in relations with other states impact how national identity is felt and acted out vis-à-vis others. This also
includes relations with those perceived as rivals or enemies. As argued (Nabers 2009: 191-214; Mersken 2005:
373), an enemy can be a useful hegemonic tool for mobilization and the enabling of new policy
measures. But when one state discursively constructs another state as a threat, it creates
dichotomies and boundaries to that state (Eriksson/Noreen 2002: 8-10; Campbell 1998: 3-4, 170-171). A critical
geopolitics lens adds the link of identity, discourse, space, power and policy, and how this link
may translate into processes of ordering by one state towards another, referring to the creation
of spatial order with effects of inclusion or exclusion (Agnew/Muscarà 2012: 1-2, 11, 28-29). In this light,
U.S. security policy is explained with America’s myth and universalizing tendency as facilitator
of both expansion and strong self-other differentiation (Ó Tuathail/Agnew 2008: 225-228). A state’s
national identity can become threatened, motivating a need to safeguard national identity, which
in turn may facilitate the creation of dichotomies and barriers between states (Campbell 1998; Shapiro
1997: 58-59). It must be clearly stated here, that there is a distinction between states engaging in
self-other constructions for their identity – a normal process, and divisive processes of othering,
in which another state is articulated as threat. Since also states have ontological security, national identity can
become threatened by changing situations and inherent uncertainty (Steele 2008: 12), including increases in other states’ power.
This article is based on an analysis of national security documents and speeches by U.S. security
policy officials. It should be pointed out that such documents, in particular national security documents, are products of
lengthy processes with multiple authors and rounds of writing and editing, etc. Such processes and the resulting assessments are
also informed by information and analyses of other actors, including security and defense agencies/ departments (CIA, NSC,
Pentagon, etc.), foreign policy institutions (State Department), legislative bodies (Congress), a number of U.S. think tanks – of
varying ideological position, and the media (key among them being the New York Times and Washington Post, for example).2
Additional actors in the political establishment that provide information and interpretation, and thereby inform policy formulation,
are, for example, the United States European Command (EUCOM), United States Pacific Command (PACOM), or NATO. These
bodies are based in specific regions/countries and in dialogue with local representatives. The commanders typically report to the
U.S. president via the U.S. defense secretary about issues and developments in their particular region. These reports then become
part of the policy formulation process regarding a region or country. Developments and issues that are interpreted
as particularly important or threatening likely receive greater attention, while it is typically the case that
several issues must be attended to at the same time. There are then multiple actors that are directly and indirectly involved in policy
formulation (for more information, see Bolton 2008; Dixon 1984). Constructions of enmity relate to perception
and discursive processes; it can be influenced by conscious efforts to create or exaggerate
enmity, for various reasons, including political agendas, or by efforts to overcome enmity and foster dialogue. Because national
identity, self-other constructions, perceptions and even emotions are involved in perceiving and
interpreting developments, processes relating to the construction of enmity are also
psychologically driven and not only conscious; whether conscious or not is however difficult to analytically
assess. In the following sections, the article presents empirical results on 2) the U.S. construction of China, and 3) the U.S.
construction of Russia. The article closes with 4) implications of U.S. self-other constructions vis-à-vis China and Russia.
2. U.S. Construction of China
The analysis of U.S. discourse on China reveals both positives and negatives. Also changes over time are expressed, in response to
changes in U.S. administrations, the global environment and China’s influence; constructions of a threatening China have increased.
Already in 1994, the U.S. recognized China’s possible impact on U.S. security, based on China’s growing economic power, UN
Security Council veto power, nuclear arms and military advancements, and thus called for rebuilding relations with China by
establishing high-level dialogues and working-level relations (Perry 1994). Today, China is perceived as challenge to U.S. influence
and interests and even as threatening near-pear adversary, due to the rapid modernization of its military and global defense industry
and a more complicated world (Hagel 2014; U.S. Department of Defense 2015).
China is constructed as clear challenge and threat to U.S. vital interests. Thus, China is said to aim to “replace the United States as
primary power in Asia”, weaken U.S. alliances with Asian partners and limit U.S. access to and deterrence of threats in the region,
and that China’s “dangerous policies” present a “systematic” challenge for the U.S. (Blackwill/Tellis 2015: 19, 20). Not only is China
articulated as threat to the U.S., but also to the future of Asia and the liberal international order (Blackwill/Tellis 2015: 20, 39; U.S.
Department of Defense 2012: 2, 4). The representation of China as systematic challenge to the U.S., thus to core values and
interests, is particularly telling. It points to China having become the key other of the U.S., against which the U.S. must safeguard.
Actions directed against China as threat likely promote conflict potential. Portraying China as threat for regional
stability furthermore fits with expressed U.S. regional interests.
 Alt
Critique has political effects---security is produced through mundane practices
and scholarly frames, which means making visible the practices of security can
rupture their naturalization
Claudia Aradau 15, Department of War Studies at King's College London, Jef Huysmans,
Andrew Neal and Nadine Voelkner INTRODUCING CRITICAL SECURITY METHODS, in
Critical Security Methods, 13-4
The ‘political life of methods’ draws attention to the role that methods can play in challenging
and changing dominant productions of (in)security. Methods do not just carry substantive assumptions about
the world; they also have effects for social and political life. This demands that critical security
methods consider not only the ‘situated-ness’ and limits of knowledge and the contestations surrounding methods, but also
include a sensitivity to potentially subjugated, silenced or marginalized practices and knowledges. Unease
with scientificity and the dominance it entails upon other forms of knowledge has often surfaced in critical approaches. For example,
feminist scholars have rightly pointed out that scientific knowledge entails its own forms of masculine domination (Tickner 2006;
Sylvester 1994). They have led a call for a methodological privileging of subordinated positions, in
which knowledge about the world can be formulated from the position of those who are
politically as well as epistemologically marginalized. As such, feminism has been most outspoken about
developing knowledge that is grounded in the lifeworld of women who are often absent from security knowledge (Enloe 2007;
Haraway 1988). Poststructuralist approaches similarly experimented with methods of intertextuality and the breaking down of
worlds are not simply created
disciplinary distinctions between genres of text and knowledge to demonstrate how
by political and security systems and elites but are also brought into being in
mundane practices that are often seen as insignificant in the security studies field, such as sports,
travel writing, diaries, popular TV series and so on (see e.g., Lisle 2013; Rowley and Weldes 2012; Kiersey and Neumann 2013;
Derian and Shapiro 1989). Their methods also made visible how instituted
scholarly methods tend to reproduce
dominant power relations and the legitimating frameworks that sustain them.
Disrupting the latter by introducing genre-crossing methods aimed at creating the possibility for subjugated knowledge and practice
to gain presence in the scholarly field of security knowledge.
The political life of methods thus refers to reflexivity about the power relations and habitus
that methods produce and sustain. This means proactively positioning oneself through the
development of methods so as to challenge familiar and instituted processes of validation of what
matters for security practice and studies. A key question for critical scholars, in spite of their IR/security
studies heritage, is what it means to start not here in ‘the international’ but elsewhere. Feminist, Marxist,
and postcolonial approaches share this mobilizing of a distinct positioning, as does the use of popular culture and the recent
experimenting with autoethnographic methods to understand international politics. For critical security scholars this can
mean
starting with situated practices of struggle rather than security (see Chapter 6). For example,
developing critical mapping methods when analysing geopolitical security practice or the
reification of territoriality through border control regimes often work by making visible the victims and injustices
produced by security practices (Chapter 2). Or, it can require that critical security scholars undo security as an object and
experiment with methods that analyse security practices as more dispersed and possibly not primarily intelligible as ‘security’ (see
Chapter 6). Another way of taking a critical position through method is to experiment with collaboration in order to challenge the
limits of individualizing forms of knowledge production in scholarly fields organized through new management practices (Chapter
8).
Critical security methods are thus also political because of their rupturing effects (see Aradau and
Huysmans 2013). This
may not mean ‘changing the world’ in the way that Marx (1994) called on
philosophers to do (although it might); more often, critical methods mean changing worlds in
local and immediate terms. When we practise methods, we talk to selected people, we go to distinct places, we interact, we
are hired, we employ assistants, we buy, we consume, we introduce ideas, we collaborate, we argue, we produce and we publish. As
security researchers, we interact with those affected by security practices and those responsible for security practices, and we
interact with other researchers, creating new forms of knowledge and new social arrangements. In so doing,
these practices can introduce turbulence into existing routines, habitus and practices. Sometimes
they might resolve issues and questions, but they might also make them messier. Sometimes they also create entirely new issues and
questions.