ice breakers aff - scufi - paper

SCFI 2012 Icebreakers Aff Shackelford/Gannon/Stevenson ___ of ___

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Icebreakers Aff 1AC

1ACInherency/Plan ..................................................................................................................... 4 1ACArctic War Advantage (1/4) ...................................................................................................5 1ACArctic War Advantage (2/4) .................................................................................................. 6 1ACArctic War Advantage (3/4) ................................................................................................... 7 1ACArctic War Advantage (3/4) .................................................................................................. 8 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (1/7) .................................................................................................... 9 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (2/7) .................................................................................................. 10 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (3/7)................................................................................................... 11 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (4/7) .................................................................................................. 12 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (5/7) ................................................................................................... 13 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (6/7) .................................................................................................. 14 1ACSea Lanes Advantage (7/7) ................................................................................................... 15 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (1/8) .................................................................................... 16 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (2/8) ................................................................................... 17 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (3/8) ................................................................................... 18 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (4/8) ................................................................................... 19 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (5/8) .................................................................................. 20 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (6/8) ................................................................................... 21 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (7/8) .................................................................................. 22 1ACScience Leadership Advantage (8/8) .................................................................................. 23

Topicality

TopicalityJurisdiction ................................................................................................................ 24 TopicalityTerritories/Possessions ............................................................................................. 25 TopicalityTerritories/Possessions ............................................................................................. 26 TopicalityIn the US ..................................................................................................................... 27 TopicalityGood General Cards................................................................................................... 28 TopicalityMaritime Territories .................................................................................................. 29 TopicalityArctic Transportation Routes .................................................................................... 30

Inherency

InherencyNow Key ..................................................................................................................... 31 InherencyMore Ships Needed ................................................................................................... 32 InherencyUnderfunded Now ..................................................................................................... 33 Ships Decaying Now ..................................................................................................................... 34 Current Ships Fail ......................................................................................................................... 35 A2: US Building More ................................................................................................................... 36 A2: 2012 Budget ............................................................................................................................. 37 A2: Global Warming Solves Ice .................................................................................................... 38

Arctic Advantage

Arctic AdvWar Coming .............................................................................................................. 39 Arctic AdvWar Coming .............................................................................................................. 40 Arctic AdvUS Falling Behind ...................................................................................................... 41 Arctic AdvUS Falling Behind ..................................................................................................... 42 Arctic AdvRussia Dominating Now ........................................................................................... 43 Arctic AdvRussia Dominating Now ........................................................................................... 44 Arctic AdvIce Breakers Key ....................................................................................................... 45


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Arctic AdvIce Breakers Key ....................................................................................................... 46 Arctic AdvIce Breakers Key ........................................................................................................47 Arctic War Bad .............................................................................................................................. 48 Russia Dominance Bad ................................................................................................................. 49

Sea Lanes Advantage

Sea Lanes AdvIce Blocking Now ................................................................................................ 50 Sea Lanes AdvUS Losing Trade Routes Now ............................................................................. 51 Sea Lanes AdvUS Losing Trade Routes Now ............................................................................ 52 Sea Lanes AdvIce Breakers Key ................................................................................................. 53 Sea Lanes AdvIce Breakers Key ................................................................................................. 54 Sea Lanes AdvIce Breakers Key .................................................................................................. 55 Sea Lanes AdvArctic Region Key ............................................................................................... 56 Sea Lanes AdvA2: US-China Econ Coop Solves ......................................................................... 57 Sea Lanes AdvShipping Routes GoodEconomy ...................................................................... 58 Sea Lanes AdvShipping Routes GoodHegemony .................................................................... 59 Sea Lanes AdvShipping Routes GoodPiracy ........................................................................... 60 Northwest Passage Good Solves Panama ................................................................................... 61

Science Leadership Advantage

Science Leadership AdvI/L ....................................................................................................... 62 Science Leadership AdvI/L ....................................................................................................... 63 Science Leadership AdvI/L Ice Breakers ............................................................................... 64 Science Leadership AdvArctic Key Science Research ............................................................ 65 Science Leadership AdvWarming Research I/L ........................................................................ 66 Science Leadership AdvWarming Research I/L .........................................................................67 Science Leadership AdvEnviro Disaster I/L ............................................................................. 68 Science Leadership AdvOil Spills I/L ........................................................................................ 69 Science Leadership AdvOil Spills Bad Enviro ........................................................................ 70 Science Leadership AdvOil Spills Bad Enviro ......................................................................... 71 Science Leadership AdvOil Spills Bad Economy ..................................................................... 72 Science Leadership AdvA2: Oil Spills Containable .................................................................... 73

2AC Add-Ons

Emergency Response Add-on ........................................................................................................74 Onshore Infrastructure Add-on ..................................................................................................... 75

Solvency

SolvencyAgent Specification .......................................................................................................76 Solvency6 Ice Breakers Solve ..................................................................................................... 77 Solvency2 Ice Breakers Solve .................................................................................................... 78 SolvencyRepair Solves ................................................................................................................79 Contracting Solves ........................................................................................................................ 80 Incremental Funding ..................................................................................................................... 81 Bulbous Bow ................................................................................................................................. 82 SolvencyLaundry List ................................................................................................................ 83 SolvencyA2: Cost ....................................................................................................................... 84 SolvencyA2: Timeframe ............................................................................................................. 85 SolvencyA2: Dont Build Enough .............................................................................................. 86


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AT: Off case arguments A2: Spending ................................................................................................................................. 87 A2: Spending ................................................................................................................................. 88 A2: PoliticsPlan Popular ............................................................................................................ 89 A2: PoliticsPlan Popular ............................................................................................................ 90 A2: Oil ............................................................................................................................................ 91 A2: Canada Relations.................................................................................................................... 92 A2: Canada Relations.................................................................................................................... 93 A2: Canada Relations.................................................................................................................... 94 A2: Canada Relations.................................................................................................................... 95 A2: Coast Guard Tradeoff ............................................................................................................. 96 A2: Private Actor CP ......................................................................................................................97 A2: Private Actor CP ..................................................................................................................... 98 A2: States CP ................................................................................................................................. 99 A2: States CP ............................................................................................................................... 100 A2: States CP ................................................................................................................................ 101 A2: Refurbish CP ......................................................................................................................... 102 A2: Foreign Country Contract CP ................................................................................................ 103 A2: Foreign Country Contract CP ................................................................................................ 104 A2: LOST CP ................................................................................................................................ 105 A2: LOST CP ................................................................................................................................106 A2: Arctic Drilling CP .................................................................................................................. 107 A2: Consult CP ............................................................................................................................ 108

Negative

NEGT-In the US .......................................................................................................................109 NEGT-Transportation Infrastructure ...................................................................................... 110 NEGSquo Solves ........................................................................................................................ 111 NEGA2: Arctic Conflict Advantage ........................................................................................... 112 NEGA2: Arctic Conflict Advantage ........................................................................................... 113 NEGA2: US Sea Lanes Advantage ............................................................................................ 114 NEGA2: Environment/Oil Spills Advantage ............................................................................ 115 NEGA2: Arctic Resources Advantage ....................................................................................... 116 NEGSolvency ............................................................................................................................ 117 Canada DAUniqueness Relations High ................................................................................. 118 Canada DALink ......................................................................................................................... 119 Canada DALink ......................................................................................................................... 120 Canada DACooperation Key ..................................................................................................... 121 Canada DAQuebec Secession Impact ....................................................................................... 122 Coast Guard T/O DALinks ....................................................................................................... 123 Spending DALinks .................................................................................................................... 124 Politics DAPlan Unpopular ....................................................................................................... 125 Politics DAObama Pushes ......................................................................................................... 126 Private Actor CP ........................................................................................................................... 127 Private Actor CP ........................................................................................................................... 128 LOST CP ....................................................................................................................................... 129 LOST CP ....................................................................................................................................... 130 LOST CP ....................................................................................................................................... 131 Arctic Task Force CP .................................................................................................................... 132 Jones Act CP ................................................................................................................................ 133


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1ACInherency/Plan

The US currently lacks sufficient ice breaker capabilities to open up sea lanes of transportation around the United States Beilinson, Deputy Editor of Popular Mechanics, 12 (Jerry, February 17th, Why the U.S. Must Build More Icebreakers Now, Popular Mechanics, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/why-the-us-must-build-more-icebreakers-now-6693195) Coast Guard cutters are stationed in the Bering Sea, and C-130s take infrequent flights over American waters beyond the North Slope. However, the United States does not have what youd call a persistent maritime presence in the Arctic, a region with increasing geopolitical importance. Most of the time, there are no patrol ships or planes up there at all. Its ironic, but the warming Arctic has actually increased demand for icebreakers.

The Coast Guard needs more of the ships to prepare for search-and-rescue missions, oil-spill response (offshore drilling by Shell could commence in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas this summer), law enforcement, and plain old flag-waving in northern waters. These ships are also needed for science. The United States is a leader in oceanography, climate investigations, and all kinds of polar studies, thanks partly to the National Science Foundations first-rate support of research. (In fact, the NSF has overseen the budget for maintaining icebreakers since 2006; the

proposed budget properly puts that responsibility back with the military.) But with just one or two working icebreakers, theres no way the NSF and Coast Guard can accomplish all they need to. When the Healy churned its way to Alaska to help deliver fuel, its maintenance schedule was thrown off. As a result, scientific projects may have to be delayed this summer. To deliver supplies to Americas McMurdo Station in Antarctica each year, the NSF has been relying on foreign-flagged vessels. As PM reported last July, Swedens move to pull its icebreaker Oden off the McMurdo job put the entire 20112012 research season in jeopardy. NSF scrambled and eventually was able to commission a Russian vessel. This feels a lot like the situation in space: With the retirement of the space shuttle, the United States cant fly astronauts to the International Space Station without a lift

from Russian rockets. Now, it appears, the country cant supply its main Antarctic base without Russian help, either. Building up Americas fleet of icebreakers will resolve such situations while allowing the Coast Guard to react to a changing world.

Plan:

The United States federal government should modernize the icebreaker fleet for icebreaking operations in the United States.


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1ACArctic War Advantage (1/4) Advantage 1 is Arctic War

The Arctic zone will be the next arena for global military conflict the US has fallen behind in the currently militarizing ice race Huffington Post 4/16/12, Arctic Climate Change Opening Region To New Military Activity. Eric Talmadge. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/16/arctic-climate-change-military-activity_n_1427565.html To the world's military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts. By Arctic standards, the region is already buzzing with military activity, and experts believe that will increase significantly in the years ahead. Last month, Norway wrapped up one of the largest Arctic maneuvers ever Exercise Cold Response with 16,300 troops from 14 countries training on the ice for everything from high intensity warfare to terror threats. Attesting to the harsh conditions, five Norwegian troops were killed when their C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed near the summit of Kebnekaise, Sweden's highest mountain. The U.S., Canada and Denmark held major exercises two months ago, and in an unprecedented move,

the military chiefs of the eight main Arctic powers Canada, the U.S., Russia, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland gathered at a Canadian military base last week to specifically discuss regional security issues. None of this means a shooting war is likely at the North Pole any time soon. But as the number of workers and ships increases in the High North to exploit oil and gas reserves, so will the need for policing, border patrols and if push comes to shove military muscle to enforce rival claims. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped natural gas is in the Arctic. Shipping lanes could be regularly open across the Arctic by 2030 as rising temperatures continue to melt the sea ice, according to a National Research Council analysis commissioned by the U.S. Navy last year. What countries should do about climate change remains a heated political debate. But that has

not stopped north-looking militaries from moving ahead with strategies that assume current trends will continue. Russia, Canada and the United States have the biggest stakes in the Arctic. With its military budget stretched thin by Iraq, Afghanistan and more pressing issues elsewhere, the United States has been something of a reluctant northern power, though its nuclear-powered submarine fleet, which can navigate for months underwater and below the ice cap, remains second to none. Russia one-third of which lies within the Arctic Circle has been the most aggressive in establishing itself as the emerging region's superpower. Rob Huebert, an associate political science professor at the University of Calgary in Canada, said Russia has recovered enough from its economic troubles of the 1990s to significantly rebuild its Arctic military capabilities, which were a key to the overall Cold War strategy of the Soviet Union, and has increased its bomber patrols and submarine activity. He said that has in turn led other Arctic countries Norway, Denmark and Canada to resume regional military exercises that they had abandoned or cut back on after the Soviet collapse. Even non-Arctic nations such as France have expressed interest in deploying their militaries to the Arctic. "We have an entire ocean region that had previously been closed to the world now opening up," Huebert said. "There are numerous factors now coming together that are mutually reinforcing themselves, causing a buildup of military capabilities in the region. This is only going to increase as time goes on." Noting that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, the U.S. Navy in 2009 announced a beefed-up Arctic Roadmap by its own task force on climate change that called for a three-stage strategy to increase readiness, build cooperative relations with Arctic nations and identify areas of potential conflict. "We want to maintain our edge up there," said Cmdr. Ian Johnson, the captain of the USS Connecticut, which is one of the U.S. Navy's most Arctic-capable nuclear submarines and was deployed to the North Pole last

year. "Our interest in the Arctic has never really waned. It remains very important." But the U.S. remains ill-equipped for large-scale Arctic missions, according to a simulation conducted by the U.S. Naval War College. A summary released last month found the Navy is "inadequately prepared to conduct sustained maritime operations in the Arctic" because it lacks ships able to operate in or near Arctic ice, support facilities and adequate communications. "The findings indicate the Navy is entering a new realm in the Arctic," said Walter Berbrick, a War College professor who participated in the simulation. "Instead of other nations relying on the U.S. Navy for capabilities and resources, sustained operations in the Arctic region will require the Navy to rely on other nations for capabilities and resources." He added that although the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet is a major asset, the Navy has severe gaps elsewhere it doesn't have any icebreakers, for example. The only one in operation belongs to the Coast Guard. The U.S. is currently mulling whether to add more icebreakers.


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1ACArctic War Advantage (2/4)

Ice breakers are a key to keeping up failure to modernize the fleet ensures that the US will fall behind Tyler Davis, Young Leaders Program at Heritage Foundation, 11 (December 9, 2011The Lone Icebreaker: U.S. Sovereignty in the Arctic, http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/09/the-lone-icebreaker-u-s-sovereignty-in-the-arctic/, Heritage foundation) DG The United States Coast Guard is being left behind in the Arctic. While countries such as Russia are building up their icebreaker fleet and actively increasing their presence in the Arctic, the United States is losing its only form of sovereignty in the region. On December 1, Rear Admiral Jeffrey M. Garrett, U.S. Coast Guard, testified before Congress on protecting U.S. sovereignty in the Arctic. He stated in Second Line of Defense that the Icebreaker fleet represents the main surface presence that the U.S. can exert in what is essentially a maritime domain in the Arctic Ocean. Yet today, the Coast Guard has an icebreaker fleet of only three ships. Worse yet, two of these ships are out of commission due to maintenance work and will not be available for at least seven more years. The lone icebreaker in commission is the USCGC Healy, which conducts all types of missions from search and rescue to navigational aid to scientific research. Though the ship has been effective at its job in the Arctic, it is designed to break through ice of only medium thickness; for ice of heavy thickness, the Healy is absolutely useless. And like the other two icebreakers, it is quickly aging. Without efforts to modernize the fleet, the future of the U.S. national maritime interest and security in the Arctic is looking pretty bleak. Icebreakers are a necessity in the region, and without them the U.S. might as well throw in the towel. These ships are key to year-round access to the Arctic and are the only U.S. insurance policy for future hazardous events. If something happens to the Healy, then the United States would not only lose access to the region but would not be able to react to potential oil spills and would become less effective in search-and-rescue missions. Complicating matters even further, ice in the Arctic is melting, producing more ocean area for the transportation of goods and services in the region. Essentially, whoever best utilizes this route will control trade and transportation of goods and materials in the upper hemisphere. With all other nations around the Arctic building their icebreaker fleets and exploiting the key transportation route

that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the United States is falling behind. In order to create an icebreaking fleet to maintain U.S. presence in the region, the Administration should look toward privatizing the fleet. Allowing private companies to own and operate the U.S. icebreaking fleet and perform national security functions would not only allow for crucial modernization but also save federal dollars and expand U.S. capabilities in the Arctic. This is particularly important at a time when the government is looking to cut

corners in federal spending. Ultimately, something must be done. If the U.S. does not act fast, it will come in last in the race for the Arctic.

Ice breakers are the biggest internal link to all US activity in the Arctic the plan is key to ensuring US leadership ORourke, specialist in naval affairs, 6/14. Ronald ORourke Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL34391.pdf ***[The study] concludes that future capability and capacity gaps will significantly impact four [Coast Guard] mission areas in the Arctic: Defense Readiness, Ice Operations, Marine Environmental Protection, and Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security. These mission areas address the protection of important national interests in a geographic area where other nations are actively pursuing their own national goals.... The common and dominant contributor to these significant mission impacts is the gap in polar icebreaking capability. The increasing obsolescence of the Coast Guards icebreaker fleet will further exacerbate mission performance gaps in the coming years.... The gap in polar icebreaking capacity has resulted in a lack of at-sea time for crews and senior personnel and a corresponding gap in training and leadership. In addition to providing multi-mission capability and intrinsic mobility, a helicopter-capable surface unit would eliminate the need for acquiring an expensive shore-based infrastructure that may

only be needed on a seasonal or occasional basis. The most capable surface unit would be a polar icebreaker.


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1ACArctic War Advantage (3/4) Polar icebreakers can transit safely in a variety of ice conditions and have the endurance to operate far from logistics bases. The Coast Guards polar icebreakers have conducted a wide range of planned and unscheduled Coast Guard missions in the past. Polar icebreakers possess the ability to carry large numbers of passengers, cargo, boats, and helicopters. Polar icebreakers also have substantial command, control, and communications capabilities. The flexibility and mobility of polar icebreakers would assist the Coast Guard in closing future mission performance gaps effectively.... 17 For examples of bill and report language in recent years relating to the study of Coast Guard missions and capabilities for operations in high latitude areas, see Appendix C. Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress Congressional Research Service 9 Existing capability and capacity gaps are expected to significantly impact future Coast Guard

performance in two Antarctic mission areas: Defense Readiness and Ice Operations. Future gaps may involve an inability to carry out probable and easily projected mission requirements, such as the McMurdo resupply, or readiness to respond to less-predictable events. By their nature, contingencies requiring the use of military capabilities often occur quickly. As is the case in the Arctic, the deterioration of the Coast Guards icebreaker fleet is the primary driver for this significant mission impact. This will further widen mission performance gaps in the coming years. The recently issued Naval Operations Concept 2010 requires a surface presence in both the Arctic and Antarctic. This further exacerbates the capability gap left by the deterioration of the icebreaker fleet.... The significant deterioration of the Coast Guard icebreaker fleet and the emerging mission demands to meet future functional requirements in the high latitude regions dictate that the Coast Guard acquire material solutions to close the capability gaps.... To

meet the Coast Guard mission functional requirement, the Coast Guard icebreaking fleet must be capable of supporting the following missions: Arctic North Patrol. Continuous multimission icebreaker presence in the Arctic. Arctic West Science. Spring and summer science support in the Arctic. Antarctic, McMurdo Station resupply. Planned deployment for break-in, supply ship escort, and science support. This mission, conducted in the Antarctic summer, also requires standby icebreaker support for backup in the event the primary vessel cannot complete the mission. Thule Air Base Resupply and Polar Region Freedom of Navigation Transits. Provide vessel escort operations in support of the Military Sealift Commands Operation Pacer Goose; then complete any Freedom of Navigation exercises in the region. In addition, the joint Naval Operations Concept establishes the following mission requirements:

Assured access and assertion of U.S. policy in the Polar Regions. The current demand for this mission requires continuous icebreaker presence in both Polar Regions.

This allows the US to play a critical role in de-escalating Arctic conflict NRC et al 07 (National Research Council , Polar Research Board,Marine Board (MB)Earth and Life Studies (DELS)Transportation Research Board, Committee on the Assessment of U.S. Coast Guard , Polar Icebreakers in a Changing World: An Assessment of U.S. Needs. Online PDF at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11753#orgs ) In the Arctic, economic activity is expected to increase as the southern extent of the Arctic summer ice pack thins, providing opportunity for ice-capable ships to travel through these regions. Greater human activity will increase the need for the United States to assert a more active and influential presence in the Arctic to protect not only its territorial interests, but also its presence as a world power concerned with the security, economic, scientific, and international political issues of the region. Icebreakers will play a critical role in supporting U.S. interests because the sea-ice margin does not retreat uniformly or predictably, which may create difficult ice conditions in these waters. Possible U.S.

ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea will require the United States to collect data to extend its economic zone and/or to counter territorial claims by other Arctic nations. Icebreakers will be needed to provide access to ice-covered waters to acquire this necessary data.


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1ACArctic War Advantage (3/4)

Absent de-escalation, current militarization will ensures Arctic conflicts go nuclear Wallace and Staples, 10(Michael Wallace and Steven Staples. *Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia AND ** President of the Rideau Institute in Ottawa Ridding the Arctic of Nuclear Weapons: A Task Long Overdue,http://www.arcticsecurity.org/docs/arctic-nuclear-report-web.pdf) DG The fact is, the Arctic is becoming a zone of increased military competition. Russian President Medvedev has announced the creation of a special military force to defend Arctic claims. Last year Russian General Vladimir Shamanov declared that Russian troops would step up training for Arctic combat, and that Russias submarine fleet would increase its operational radius. 55 Recently, two Russian attack submarines were spotted off the U.S. east coast for the first time in 15 years. 56 In January 2009, on the eve of Obamas inauguration, President Bush issued a National Security Presidential Directive on Arctic Regional Policy. It affirmed as a priority the preservation of U.S. military vessel and aircraft mobility and transit throughout the Arctic, including the Northwest Passage, and foresaw greater capabilities to protect U.S. borders in the Arctic. 57 The Bush administrations disastrous eight years in office, particularly its decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty and deploy missile defence interceptors and a radar station in Eastern Europe, have greatly contributed to the instability

we are seeing today, even though the Obama administration has scaled back the planned deployments. The Arctic has figured in this renewed interest in Cold War weapons systems, particularly the upgrading of the Thule Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar in Northern Greenland for ballistic missile defence. The Canadian government, as well, has put forward new military capabilities to protect Canadian sovereignty claims in the Arctic, including proposed ice-capable ships, a northern military training base and a deep-water port. Earlier this year Denmark released an all-party defence position paper that suggests the country should create a dedicated Arctic military contingent that draws on army, navy and air force assets with shipbased helicopters able to drop troops anywhere. 58 Danish fighter planes would be tasked to patrol Greenlandic airspace. Last year Norway chose to buy 48 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, partly because of their suitability for Arctic patrols. In March, that country held a major Arctic military practice involving 7,000 soldiers from 13 countries in which a fictional country called Northland seized offshore oil rigs. 59 The manoeuvres prompted a protest from Russia which objected again in June after Sweden held its largest northern military exercise since the end of the Second World War. About 12,000 troops, 50 aircraft and several warships were involved. 609 Ridding the Arctic of Nuclear Weapons: A Task Long Overdue Jayantha Dhanapala, President of Pugwash and former UN under-secretary for disarmament affairs, summarized the situation bluntly: From those in the international peace and security sector, deep concerns are being expressed over the fact that two nuclear weapon states the United States and the Russian Federation, which together own 95 per cent of the nuclear weapons in the world converge on the Arctic and have competing claims. These claims, together with those of other allied NATO countries Canada, Denmark, Iceland,

and Norway could, if unresolved, lead to conflict escalating into the threat or use of

nuclear weapons. 61 Many will no doubt argue that this is excessively alarmist, but no

circumstance in which nuclear powers find themselves in military confrontation can be taken lightly. The current geo-political threat level is nebulous and low for now, according to Rob Huebert of the University of Calgary, [the] issue is the uncertainty as Arctic states and non-Arctic states begin to recognize the geo-political/economic significance of the Arctic because of climate change. 62


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1ACSea Lanes Advantage (1/7) Advantage 2 is sea lanes

China is currently exploiting the Arctic to overtake the US economically failure to develop ice breakers cedes the region to Chinese economic dominance Beilinson, Deputy Editor of Popular Mechanics, 12 (Jerry, February 17th, Why the U.S. Must Build More Icebreakers Now, Popular Mechanics, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/why-the-us-must-build-more-icebreakers-now-6693195) China, a country with no Arctic coast, is building icebreakersand that should get Americas attention. Its one thing for Russia, with the worlds longest Arctic coastline, to operate a couple dozen of the ships. (Fortunately, theyre available for leasing, at a price.) Its understandable, maybe, for Finland, Sweden, and Canada to surpass the United States in this area. But why is China constructing an 8000-ton vessel capable of breaking through 4.5 ft of ice at a steady clip, to join the XueLong, its existing ice-class vessel? In fact, Chinas interest is unsurprising given its role as a world economic power. Commercial ships are already traversing the Northern Sea Route above Russia, carrying goods between Europe and East Asia. Often, icebreakers go along as insurance against bad conditions. And soon, ships will start carrying liquefied natural gas from Norway along the route. Traffic through the Northwest Passage above Canada is building more slowly, and talk of the Arctic sea routes competing

with the Suez Canal is overblown. Nevertheless, the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia is already getting crowded. According to Rear Adm. Thomas P. Ostebo, who commands the U.S. Coast Guard in Alaska, about 1000 vessel transits take place in the Strait each summer. Thats Americas backyard.

Ice breakers are key to giving the US economic control of Arctic sea lanes solves Chinese dominance and allows the US to control the international economy Treadwell, Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, 11 (Mead, December 1, America is Missing the Boat Congressional Testimony United States House of Representatives Committee Transportation on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/Media/file/TestimonyCGMT/2011-12-1-Treadwell.pdf) Meanwhile, other Arctic and circumpolar nations are investing in fleets of icebreakers. The report of exactly how many ships are being operated by other countries varies (some count polar, medium and light icebreakers, as well as ice strengthened or capable

vessels), but all the tallies make one thing clear: other nations have seen the writing on the wall and are investing in infrastructure. Sweden has at least four vessels; Finland, at least six; and Russia over two dozen (and counting). Canada has about eight, and even the European Union is constructing an icebreaker a heavy, polar class icebreaker. 3 Our Arctic neighbors are leaps and bounds ahead of our position, and non-Arctic nations are in hot pursuit. A Chinese researcher, Mr. Li Zhenfu of Dalian Maritime University, writes that, Whoever has control of the Arctic route will control the new passage of world economics and international strategies. The prospect of commercial and strategic opportunities presented by receding sea ice cover and accessibility of Arctic resources has moved the Chinese government to allocate more resources for Arctic research, and they have asked to join the Arctic Council as an observer. Chinas Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo has asserted that no nation has sovereignty over the Arctic, and said that China must plan to have an indispensable role in Arctic exploration as they have one-fifth of the worlds population.


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1ACSea Lanes Advantage (2/7)

Relative US economic strength key to preventing aggressive Chinese adventurism and war over Taiwan Pape, PolSci Prof at UChicago, 9 (Robert, January, Empire Falls http://nationalinterest.org/article/empire-falls-2952) Over time, America's power is fundamentally a result of its economic strength. Productive capacity-defined by indicators such as wealth, technology and population size-is a prerequisite for building and modernizing military forces. The United States, like any state, may choose to vary the degree to which its productive capacities are used to create military assets. But it is the economy as a whole that constrains the choice. And the size of the economy relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics. Major assessments of this relative position have long turned heavily on a single statistic: America's share of world economic product. Advocates of extending America's unipolar dominance are well aware of the central importance of the economic foundations of American power and routinely present detailed statistics on the U.S. share of world product. The basic notion is simple: take U.S. domestic product in any year and divide it by the aggregate total of the gross domestic product of all states in the world. To measure gross domestic product, the unipolar-dominance school prefers to compare every country's output in current-year U.S. dollars, a method that tends to show America is much further ahead of other countries than alternative measures. Indeed, the most recent call for America to exploit its hegemonic position (published in 2008) rests on the presumption of U.S. dominance based on the current-year dollar figures.2 By this metric, in 2006 the United States had 28 percent of world product while its nearest most likely competitor, China, had 6 percent. Looks pretty good for America, right? Alas, single-year "snapshots" of America's relative power are of limited value for assessing the sustainability of its grand strategy over many years. For grand-strategic concerns-especially how well the United States can balance its resources and foreign-policy commitments-the trajectory of American power compared to other states is of seminal importance. For the sake of argument, let us start with the unipolar-dominance school's preferred measure of American hegemony, but look at the trajectory of the data over time. According to GDP figures in current U.S. dollars from the International Monetary

Fund (IMF), the United States increased its share of world production during the 1990s, reached its apogee in 2000, and then began to steadily lose ground during the eight years of the Bush administration, with its relative power ultimately falling by nearly a quarter in the first decade of the twenty-first century. At the same time, the relative power of China, the state many consider America's most likely future rival, has grown consistently. If we look out as far as the IMF can see (2013), things get even worse-with the United States expected to continue declining and China to continue rising. The United States has been going through the first decade of the twenty-first century not stronger than before, but substantially weaker. How good are the numbers? Economists commonly use two other methods to calculate GDP, constant-dollar calculations and purchasing power parity.3 Although each offers advantages and disadvantages, for our purposes what matters is that they form a lower bound of America's relative decline. And regardless of the metric, the trend is the same. Again using IMF figures, Table 2 shows the trajectory of the share of world product for the United

States and China using both alternative measures. Simply put, the United States is now a declining power. This new reality has tremendous implications for the future of American grand strategy. THE EROSION of the underpinnings of U.S. power is the result of uneven rates of economic growth between America, China and other states in the world. Despite all the pro-economy talk from the Bush administration, the fact is that since 2000, U.S. growth rates are down almost 50 percent from the Clinton years. This trajectory is almost sure to be revised further downward as the consequences of the financial crisis in fall 2008 become manifest. As Table 3 shows, over the past two decades, the average rate of U.S. growth has fallen considerably, from nearly 4 percent annually during the Clinton years to just over 2 percent per year under Bush. At the same time, China has sustained a consistently high rate of growth of 10 percent per year-a truly stunning performance. Russia has also turned its economic trajectory around, from year after year of losses in the 1990s to significant annual gains since 2000. Worse, America's decline was well under way before the economic downturn, which is likely to only further weaken U.S. power. As the most recent growth estimates (November 2008) by the IMF make clear, although all major countries are suffering economically, China and Russia are expected to continue growing at a substantially greater rate than the United States. True,

the United States has not lost its position as the most innovative country in the world, with more patents each year than in all other countries combined. However, the ability to diffuse new technology-to turn chalkboard ideas into mass-produced applications-has been spreading rapidly across many parts of the globe, and with it the ultimate sources of state power-productive capacities. America is losing its overwhelming technological dominance in the leading industries of the knowledge economy. In past eras-the "age of iron" and the "age of steel"-leading states retained their technological advantages for many decades.4 As Fareed Zakaria describes in his recent book, The Post-American World, technology and knowledge diffuse more quickly today, and their

rapid global diffusion is a profound factor driving down America's power compared to other countries. For instance, although the United States remains well ahead of China on many indicators of leading technology on a per capita basis, this grossly under-weights the size of the knowledge economy in China compared to America. Whereas in 2000, the United States had three times the computer sales, five times the internet users and forty times the broadband subscribers as China, in 2008, the Chinese have caught or nearly caught up with Americans in every category in the aggregate.5 The fact that the United States remains ahead of

China on a per capita basis does matter-it means that China, with more than four times the U.S. population, can create many more knowledge workers in the future. So, how much is U.S. decline due to the global diffusion of technology, U.S. economic weaknesses under Bush or China's superior economic performance? Although precise answers are not possible, one can gain a rough weighting of the factors behind America's shrinking share of world production by asking a few simple counterfactual questions of the data. What would happen if we assumed that the United States grew during the Bush years at the same rate as during Clinton's? What would have happened had the world continued on its same trajectory, but we assume China did not grow at such an astounding rate? Of course, these are merely thought experiments, which leave out all manner of technical problems like "interaction effects." Still, these back-of-the-envelope approximations serve as useful starting points. The answers are pretty straightforward. Had the American economy grown at the (Clinton) rate of 3.7 percent per year from 2000 to 2008 instead of the (Bush) rate of 2.2 percent, the United States would have had a bigger economy in absolute terms and would have lost less power relative to others. Assuming the rest of the world continued at its actual rate of growth, America's share of world product in 2008 would have risen to 25.2 percent instead of its actual 23.1 percent.6 When compared to the share of gross world product lost by the United States from 2000 to 2008-7.7 percent-the assumed marginal gain of 2.1 percent of world product amounts to some 27 percent of the U.S. decline.


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1ACSea Lanes Advantage (3/7) How much does China matter? Imagine the extreme case-that China had not grown, and the United States and the rest of the world continued along their actual path of economic growth since 2000. If so, America's share of world product in 2008 would be 24.3 percent, or 1.2 percent more than today. When compared to the share of world product lost by the United States from 2000 to 2008-7.7 percent-the assumed marginal gain of 1.2 percent of world product accounts for about 15 percent of the U.S. decline.

These estimates suggest that roughly a quarter of America's relative decline is due to U.S. economic weaknesses (spending on the Iraq War, tax cuts, current-account deficits, etc.), a sixth to China's superior performance and just over half to the spread of technology to the rest of the world. In other words, self-inflicted wounds of the Bush years significantly exacerbated America's decline, both by making the decline steeper and faster and crowding out productive investment that could have stimulated innovation to improve matters. All of this has led to one of the most significant declines of any state since the mid-nineteenth century. And when one examines past

declines and their consequences, it becomes clear both that the U.S. fall is remarkable and that dangerous instability in the international system may lie ahead. If we end up believing in the wishful thinking of unipolar dominance forever, the costs could be far higher than a simple percentage drop in share of world product. THE UNITED States has always prided itself on exceptionalism, and the U.S. downfall is indeed extraordinary. Something fundamental has

changed. America's relative decline since 2000 of some 30 percent represents a far greater loss of relative power in a shorter time than any power shift among European great powers from roughly the end of the Napoleonic Wars to World War II. It is one of the largest relative declines in modern history. Indeed, in size, it is clearly surpassed by only one other great-power decline, the unexpected internal collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Most disturbing, whenever there are major changes in the balance of power, conflict routinely ensues. Examining the historical record reveals an important pattern: the states facing the largest declines in power compared to other major powers were apt to be the target of opportunistic aggression. And this is surely not the only possible danger from relative decline; states on the power wane also have a history of launching preventive wars to strengthen their positions. All of this suggests that major relative declines are often accompanied by highly dangerous international environments. So, these declines matter not just in terms of economics, but also because of their destabilizing

consequences. Tsarist Russia presents the first case in point. Compared to other great powers on the European continent, its power declined the most during the mid-nineteenth century. And, it became the target of opportunistic aggression by the state with the greatest rising power, Great Britain, during the Crimean War (1854-1856). Indeed, the consequences of Russia's decline were not fully recognizable until the war itself. Though Russia was still a great power and the war cost Britain and France more than expected, Russia emerged the clear loser. Russia's inability to defend the status quo in the Crimea confirmed its grand-strategic weaknesses, and ultimately left it worse-off than had it anticipated its vulnerabilities and sought to negotiate a reduction in its military commitments to the region peacefully. Considering that the Crimea conflict left Russia with fairly gaping wounds, and that even its slow 10 percent decline in relative power over twenty years left the country bruised and battered, one might

wonder how our far more rapid descent might play out. Meanwhile, similar destabilization occurred in the two decades before World War I and before World War II, when France and Great Britain were declining European powers. In both instances, France and Britain became targets of opportunistic aggression by one of the strongest rising powers in the region: Germany. And as a small cottage industry of scholarship suggests, Germany's fairly modest relative declines compared to Russia prior to World War I and the Soviet Union prior to World War II encouraged German leaders to wage preventive wars. Again, these declines occurred as another power was concomitantly rising (Germany in the

case of France and Britain, and Russia-later the Soviet Union-relative to Germany). Of course, this only served to increase the danger. But again, these rises and falls were less precipitous than America's current losses, and our descent appears far trickier to navigate. As we look to address our current fall from grace, lest we forget, the United States faced two major declines of its power during the cold war as well. Neither was without risk. The first occurred shortly after World War II, when the devastation of the Soviet, European and many Asian economies, combined with the increasingly productive American economy, left the United States with a far larger share of gross world product-41 percent in 1948-than it even possessed in the age of unipolar dominance beginning in 1991. As the war-torn economies recovered, U.S. share of world product fell 20 percent by 1961 while that of its main rival, the Soviet Union, grew by 167 percent. This relative American decline corresponds to the height of U.S.-Soviet cold-war rivalry in Europe and Asia. Eight of the nine U.S.-Soviet nuclear crises occurred from 1948-1962, all of which involved efforts by the Soviet Union or its allies to revise the political status quo in their favor7-that is, all could be reasonably interpreted as instances in which the United States or its allies became the targets of opportunistic aggression. The second major U.S. relative decline occurred from 1970 to 1980, when the U.S. share of world product fell 27 percent. This decade brought with it challenges to America's position in the world. This was especially true toward the end of the decade with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution, which collectively increased concern about Soviet dominance of Persian Gulf oil. However, the 1970s was mainly a period of "dtente" between the cold-war protagonists, which corresponds to the fact that the shares of world product for both the United States and the Soviet Union were in decline. In other words, it is reasonable to think that America's decline in the 1970s did not lead to more significant trouble for the United States because its main rival was descending even

faster. Clearly, major shifts in the balance of power in the international system often lead to instability and conflict. And America's current predicament is far more severe. This time, our relative decline of 32 percent is accompanied, not by an even-steeper decline of our near-peer competitor, but rather by a 144 percent increase in China's relative position. Further, the rapid spread of technology and technological breakthroughs means that one great discovery does not buoy an already-strong state to decades-long predominance. And with a rising China-with raw resources of population, landmass and increasing adoption of leading technology-a true peer competitor is looming. America's current, rapid domestic economic decline is merely accelerating our own downfall. The distinct quality of a system with only one superpower is that no other single state is powerful enough to balance against it. A true global hegemon is more powerful still-stronger than all second-ranked powers acting as members of a counterbalancing coalition seeking to contain the unipolar leader. By these standards, America's relative decline is fundamentally changing international politics, and is fundamentally different from Russia circa 1850 and Great Britain circa 1910. In current-U.S.-dollar terms-the preferred measure of the unipolar-dominance school-the United States has already fallen far from being a global hegemon and unipolarity itself is waning, since China will soon have as much economic potential to balance the United States as did the Soviet Union during the cold war. At the beginning of the 1990s, the United States was indeed not only stronger than any other state individually, but its power relative to even the collective power of all other major states combined grew from 1990 to 2000. Although the growth was small, America almost reached the crucial threshold of 50 percent of major-power product necessary to become a true global hegemon. So it is understandable that we were lulled into a sense of security, believing we could do as we wished, whenever and wherever we wished. The instability and danger of the cold war quickly became a distant memory. Near the time of the Iraq War, it would have required virtually every major power to actively oppose the United States in order to assemble a counterbalancing coalition that could approximate America's potential power. Under the circumstances, hard, military balancing against the United States was not a serious possibility. So, it is not surprising that major powers opted for soft-balancing measures-relying on institutional, economic and diplomatic tools to oppose American military power. And yet we are beginning to see "the conflict of history" repeat itself. Even with less relative power, in the run-up to the Iraq War, people grossly underrated the ability of Germany, France, Russia and China, along with important regional powers like Turkey, to soft balance against the United States; for instance, to use the United Nations to delay, complicate and ultimately deny the use of one-third of U.S. combat power (the Fourth Infantry Division) in the opening months of the Iraq War. This is not yet great-power war of the kind seen in centuries past, but it harkens the instability that future unilateral efforts may trigger.


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1ACSea Lanes Advantage (4/7) The balance of world power circa 2008 and 2013 shows a disturbing trend. True, the United States remains stronger than any other state individually, but its power to stand up to the collective opposition of other major powers is falling precipitously. Though these worlds depict potential power, not active counterbalancing coalitions, and this type of alliance may never form, nonetheless, American relative power is declining to the point where even subsets of major powers acting in concert could

produce sufficient military power to stand a reasonable chance of successfully opposing American military policies. Indeed, if present trends continue to 2013 and beyond, China and Russia, along with any one of the other major powers, would have sufficient economic capacity to mount military opposition at least as serious as did the Soviet Union during the cold war. And it is worth remembering that the Soviet Union never had more than about half the world product of the United States, which China alone is likely to reach in the coming decade. The faults in the arguments of the unipolar-dominance school are being brought into sharp relief. The world is slowly coming into balance. Whether or not

this will be another period of great-power transition coupled with an increasing risk of war will largely depend on how America can navigate its decline. Policy makers must act responsibly in this new era or risk international opposition that poses far greater costs and far greater dangers. A COHERENT grand strategy seeks to balance a state's economic resources and its foreign-policy commitments and to sustain that balance over time. For America, a coherent grand strategy also calls for rectifying the current imbalance between our means and our ends, adopting policies that enhance the former and modify the latter. Clearly, the United States is not the first great power to suffer long-term decline-we should learn from history. Great powers in decline seem to almost instinctively spend more on military forces in order to shore up their disintegrating strategic positions, and some like Germany go even further, shoring up their security by adopting preventive military strategies, beyond defensive alliances, to actively stop a rising competitor from becoming dominant. For declining great powers, the allure of preventive war-or lesser measures to "merely" firmly contain a rising power-has a more compelling logic than many might assume. Since Thucydides, scholars of international politics have famously argued that a declining hegemon and rising challenger must necessarily face such intense security competition that hegemonic

war to retain dominance over the international system is almost a foregone conclusion. Robert Gilpin, one of the deans of realism who taught for decades at Princeton, believed that "the first and most attractive response to a society's decline is to eliminate the source of the problem . . . [by] what we shall call a hegemonic war." Yet, waging war just to keep another state down has turned out to be one of the great losing strategies in history. The Napoleonic Wars, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, German aggression in World War I, and German and Japanese aggression in World War II were all driven by declining powers seeking to use war to improve their future security. All lost control of events they thought they could control. All suffered ugly defeats. All were worse-off than had they not attacked. As China rises, America must avoid this great-power trap. It would be easy to think that greater American military efforts could offset the consequences of China's increasing power and possibly even lead to the formation of a multilateral strategy to contain China in the future. Indeed, when China's economic star began to rise in the 1990s, numerous voices called for precisely this, noting that on current trajectories China would overtake the United States as the world's leading economic power by 2050.8 Now, as that date draws nearer-indeed, current-dollar calculations put the crossover point closer to 2040-and with Beijing evermore dependent on imported oil for continued economic growth, one might think the case for actively containing China is all the stronger. Absent provocative military adventures by Beijing,

however, U.S. military efforts to contain the rising power are most likely doomed to failure. China's growth turns mainly on domestic issues-such as shifting the workforce from rural to urban areas-that are beyond the ability of outside powers to significantly influence.

Although China's growth also depends on external sources of oil, there is no way to exploit this vulnerability short of obviously hostile alliances (with India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan) and clearly aggressive military measures (controlling the sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf to Asia) that together could deny oil to China. Any efforts along these lines would likely backfire-and only exacerbate America's problems, increasing the risk of counterbalancing. Even more insidious is the risk of overstretch. This self-reinforcing spiral escalates current spending to maintain increasingly costly military commitments, crowding out productive investment for future growth. Today, the cold-war framework of significant troop deployments to Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf is coming unglued. We cannot afford to keep our previous promises. With American forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and mounting troubles in Iran and Pakistan, the United States has all but gutted its military commitments to Europe, reducing our troop levels far below the one hundred thousand of the 1990s. Nearly half have been shifted to Iraq and elsewhere. Little wonder that Russia found an opportunity to demonstrate the hollowness of the Bush administration's plan for expanding NATO to Russia's borders by scoring a quick and decisive

military victory over Georgia that America was helpless to prevent. If a large-scale conventional war between China and Taiwan broke out in the near future, one must wonder whether America would significantly shift air and naval power away from its ongoing wars in the Middle East in order to live up to its global commitments. If the United States could not readily manage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, could it really wage a protracted struggle in Asia as well? And as the gap between America's productive resources and global commitments grows, why will others pass up opportunities to take advantage of America's overstretched grand strategy? Since the end of the cold war, American leaders have consistently claimed the ability to maintain a significant forward-leaning military presence in the three major regions of the globe and, if necessary, to wage two major regional wars at the same time. The harsh reality is that the United States no longer has the economic capacity for such an ambitious grand strategy. With 30 percent of the world's product, the United States could imagine maintaining this hope. Nearing 20 percent, it cannot.


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China will escalate the conflict perception of rational escalation ensures US gets drawn into the nuclear arms race Glaser, PolSci Prof at George Washington, 11 (Charles, March/April, Will Chinas Rise Lead to War? Foreign Affairs, Vol 90 Issue 2, EbscoHost) ACCOMMODATION ON TAIWAN? THE PROSPECTS for avoiding intense military competition and war may be good, but

growth in China's power may nevertheless require some changes in U.S. foreign policy that Washington will find disagreeable--particularly regarding Taiwan. Although it lost control of Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War more than six decades ago, China still considers Taiwan to be part of its homeland, and unification remains a key political goal for Beijing. China has made clear that it will use force if Taiwan declares independence, and much of China's conventional military buildup has been dedicated to increasing its ability to coerce Taiwan and

reducing the United States' ability to intervene. Because China places such high value on Taiwan and because the United States and China--whatever they might formally agree to--have such different attitudes regarding the legitimacy of the status quo, the issue poses special dangers and challenges for the U.S.-Chinese relationship, placing it in a different category than Japan or South Korea. A crisis over Taiwan could fairly easily escalate to nuclear war, because each step along the way might well seem rational to the actors involved. Current U.S. policy is designed to reduce the probability that Taiwan will declare independence and to make clear that the United

States will not come to Taiwan's aid if it does. Nevertheless, the United States would find itself under pressure to protect Taiwan against any sort of attack, no matter how it originated. Given the different interests and perceptions of the various parties and the limited control Washington has over Taipei's behavior, a crisis could unfold in which the United States found itself following events rather than leading them. Such dangers have been around for decades, but ongoing improvements in China's military capabilities may make Beijing more willing to escalate a Taiwan crisis. In addition to its improved conventional capabilities, China is modernizing its nuclear forces to increase their ability to survive and retaliate following a large-scale U.S. attack. Standard deterrence theory holds that Washington's current ability to destroy most or all of China's nuclear force enhances its bargaining position. China's nuclear modernization might remove that check on Chinese action, leading Beijing to behave more boldly in future crises than it has in past ones. A U.S. attempt to preserve its ability to defend Taiwan, meanwhile, could fuel a conventional and nuclear arms race. Enhancements to U.S. offensive targeting capabilities and strategic ballistic missile defenses might be interpreted by China as a signal of malign U.S. motives, leading to further Chinese military efforts and a general poisoning of U.S.-Chinese relations.

A protracted decline in the US economy will shred global economic resilience and lead to a complete breakdown of the world economy Mandelbaum, Director of Foreign Policy Program at John Hopkins, 5 (Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the Worlds Government in the Twenty-First Century p 192-195) Although the spread of nuclear weapons, with the corresponding increase in the likelihood that a nuclear shot would be fired in anger somewhere in the world, counted as the most serious potential consequence of the abandonment by the United States of its role as the world's government, it was not the

only one. In the previous period of American international reticence, the 1920s and 1930s, the global economy suffered serious damage that a more active American role might have mitigated. A twenty-first-century American retreat could have similarly adverse international economic consequences. The economic collapse of the 1930s caused extensive hardship throughout the world and led indirectly to World War II by paving the way for the people who started it to gain power in Germany and Japan. In retrospect, the Great Depression is widely believed to have been caused by a series of errors in public policy that made an economic downturn far worse than it would have been had governments responded to it in

appropriate fashion. Since the 1930s, acting on the lessons drawn from that experience by professional economists, governments have taken steps that have helped to prevent a recurrence of the disasters of that decade.5 In the face of reduced demand, for example, governments have increased rather than cut spending. Fiscal and monetary crises have evoked rescue efforts rather than a studied indifference based on the assumption that market forces will readily reestablish a desirable economic equilibrium.


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1ACSea Lanes Advantage (6/7) In contrast to the widespread practice of the 1930s, political authorities now understand that putting up barriers to imports in an attempt to revive

domestic production will in fact worsen economic conditions everywhere. Still, a serious, prolonged failure of the international economy, inflicting the kind of hardship the world experienced in the 1930s (which some Asian countries also suffered as a result of their fiscal crises in the 1990s) does not lie beyond the realm of possibility. Market economies remain subject to cyclical downturns, which public policy can limit but has not found a way to eliminate entirely. Markets also have an inherent tendency to form bubbles, excessive values for particular assets, whether seventeenth century Dutch tulips or twentieth century Japanese real estate and Thai currency, that cause economic harm when the bubble bursts and prices plunge. In responding to these events, governments can make errors. They can act too slowly, or fail to implement the proper policies, or implement improper ones. Moreover, the global economy and the national economies that comprise it, like a living organism, change constantly and sometimes rapidly: Capital flows across sovereign borders, for instance, far more rapidly and in much greater volume in the early twenty-first century than ever before. This means that measures that successfully address economic malfunctions at one time may have less effect at another, just as medical science must cope with the appearance of new strains of influenza against which existing vaccines are not effective.

Most importantly, since the Great Depression, an active American international economic role has been crucial both in fortifying the conditions for global economic well-being and in coping with the problems that have occurred, especially periodic recessions and currency crises, by applying the lessons of the past. The absence of such a role could weaken those conditions and aggravate those problems. The overall American role in the world since World War II therefore has something in common with the theme of the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, in which the angel Clarence, played by Henry Travers, shows James Stewart, playing the bank clerk George Bailey, who believes his existence to have been worthless, how life in his small town of Bedford Falls would have unfolded had he never been born. George Bailey

learns that people he knows and loves turn out to be far worse off without him. So it is with the United States and its role as the world's government. Without that role, the world very likely would have been in the past, and would become a less secure and less prosperous place. The abdication by the United States of some or all of the responsibilities for international security that it had come to bear in the first decade of the twenty-first century would deprive the international system of one of its principal safety features, which keeps countries

from smashing into each other, as they are historically prone to do. In this sense, a world without America would be the equivalent of a freeway full of cars without brakes. Similarly, should the American government abandon some or all of the ways in which it had, at the dawn of the new century, come to support global economic activity, the world economy would function less effectively and might even suffer a severe and costly breakdown. A world without the United States would in this way resemble a fleet of cars without gasoline.


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Thats the key internal link to escalation of regional wars makes every conflict go global Friedberg, IR Professor at Princeton, 8 (Aaron, The Dangers of a Diminished America Wall Street Journal) Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future? Meanwhile,

traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures. As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power. What does this all mean? There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have before us is between the potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff price tag of continued American leadership.


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1ACScience Leadership Advantage (1/8) Advantage 3 is science leadership

Scenario 1 Warming

Warming is real and anthropogenicmodels and scientific consensus are on our side Rahmstorf 8 (Richard. Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto. Edited by Ernesto Zedillo. Anthropogenic Climate Change? Page 42-49) It is time to turn to statement B: human activities are altering the climate. This can be broken into two parts. The first is as follows: global climate is warming. This is by now a generally undisputed point (except by novelist Michael Crichton), so we deal with it only briefly. The two leading compilations of data measured with thermometers are shown in figure 3-3, that of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and that of the British Hadley Centre for Climate Change. Although they differ in the details, due to the inclusion of different data sets and use of different spatial averaging and quality control procedures, they both show a consistent picture, with a global mean warming of 0.8C since the late nineteenth century. Temperatures over the past ten years clearly were the warmest since measured records have been available. The year 1998 sticks out well above the longterm

trend due to the occurrence of a major El Nino event that year (the last El Nino so far and one of the strongest on record). These events are examples of the largest natural climate variations on multiyear time scales and, by releasing heat from the ocean, generally cause positive anomalies in global mean temperature. It is remarkable that the year 2005 rivaled the heat of 1998 even though no El Nino event occurred that year. (A bizarre curiosity, perhaps worth mentioning, is that several prominent "climate skeptics" recently used the extreme year 1998 to claim in the media that global warming had ended. In Lindzen's words, "Indeed, the absence of any record breakers during the past seven years is statistical evidence that temperatures are not increasing.")33 In addition to the surface measurements, the more recent portion of the global warming trend (since 1979) is also documented by satellite data. It is not straightforward to derive a reliable surface temperature trend from satellites, as they measure radiation coming from throughout the atmosphere (not just near the surface), including the stratosphere, which has strongly cooled, and the records are not homogeneous' due to the short life span of individual satellites, the problem of

orbital decay, observations at different times of day, and drifts in instrument calibration.' Current analyses of these satellite data show trends that are fully consistent with surface measurements and model simulations." If no reliable temperature measurements existed, could we be sure that the climate is warming? The "canaries in the coal mine" of climate change (as glaciologist Lonnie Thompson puts it) ~are mountain glaciers. We know, both from old photographs and from the position of the terminal moraines heaped up by the flowing ice, that mountain glaciers have been in retreat all over the world during the past century. There are precious few exceptions, and they are associated with a strong increase in precipitation or local cooling.36 I have inspected examples of shrinking glaciers myself in field trips to Switzerland, Norway, and New Zealand. As glaciers respond sensitively to temperature changes, data on the extent of glaciers have been used to reconstruct a history of Northern Hemisphere temperature over the past four centuries (see figure 3-4). Cores drilled in tropical glaciers

show signs of recent melting that is unprecedented at least throughout the Holocene-the past 10,000 years. Another powerful sign of warming, visible clearly from satellites, is the shrinking Arctic sea ice cover (figure 3-5), which has declined 20 percent since satellite observations began in 1979. While climate clearly became warmer in the twentieth century, much discussion particularly in the popular media has focused on the question of how "unusual" this warming is in a longer-term context. While this is an interesting question, it has often been mixed incorrectly with the question of causation. Scientifically, how unusual recent warming is-say, compared to the past millennium-in itself contains little information about its cause. Even a highly unusual warming could

have a natural cause (for example, an exceptional increase in solar activity). And even a warming within the bounds of past natural variations could have a predominantly anthropogenic cause. I come to the question of causation shortly, after briefly visiting the evidence for past natural climate variations. Records from the time before systematic temperature measurements were collected are based on "proxy data," coming from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and other sources. These proxy data are generally linked to local temperatures in some way, but they may be influenced by other parameters as well (for example, precipitation), they may have a seasonal bias (for example, the growth season for tree rings), and high-quality long records are difficult to obtain and therefore few in number and geographic coverage. Therefore, there is still substantial uncertainty in the evolution of past global or hemispheric temperatures. (Comparing only local or regional temperature; as in Europe, is of limited value for our purposes,' as regional variations can be much larger than global ones and can have many regional causes, unrelated to global-scale forcing and climate change.) The first quantitative reconstruction for the Northern Hemisphere temperature of the past millennium, including an error estimation, was presented by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes and rightly highlighted in the 2001 IPCC report as one of the major new findings since its 1995 report; it is shown in figure 3_6.39

The analysis suggests that, despite the large error bars, twentieth-century warming is indeed highly unusual and probably was unprecedented during the past millennium. This result, presumably because of its symbolic power, has attracted much criticism, to some extent in scientific journals, but even more so in the popular media. The hockey stick-shaped curve became a symbol for the IPCC, .and criticizing this particular data analysis became an avenue for some to question the credibility of the IPCC. Three important things have been overlooked in much of the media coverage. First, even if the scientific critics had been right, this would not have called into question the very cautious conclusion drawn by the IPCC from the reconstruction by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes: "New analyses of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the twentieth century is likely to have been the largest of any century

during the past 1,000 years." This conclusion has since been supported further by every single one of close to a dozen new reconstructions (two of which are shown in figure 3-6). Second, by far the most serious scientific criticism raised against Mann, Hughes, and Bradley was simply based on a mistake. 40 The prominent paper of von Storch and others, which claimed (based on a model test) that the method of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes systematically underestimated variability, "was [itself] based on incorrect implementation of the reconstruction procedure."41 With correct implementation, climate field reconstruction procedures such as the one used by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes have been shown to perform well in similar model tests. Third, whether their reconstruction is

accurate or not has no bearing on policy. If their analysis underestimated past natural climate variability, this would certainly not argue for a smaller climate sensitivity and thus a lesser concern about the consequences of our emissions.

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