Tournament: Jvnovicenationals | Round: 5 | Opponent: Liberty Call-Crane | Judge: Sandoz
1nc 1
Legally codifying the plan loses the war on terrorism---sends a signal that terrorists can have safe havens outside conflict zones and grants immunity to terror groups that hop borders---it’s unique because the rules’ current status as non-binding policy doesn’t link
Geoffrey Corn 13, Professor of Law and Presidential Research Professor, South Texas College of Law, 5/16/13, Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CQ Congressional Testimony, lexis
3. What is the geographic scope … be subject to lawful attack.
Extinction
Rhodes 9 – Richard, affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Former visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT, and author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” which won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. “Reducing the nuclear threat: The argument for public safety” 12-14, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/reducing-the-nuclear-threat-the-argument-public-safety
The response was very different among nuclear and national security experts when Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar surveyed PDF them in 2005. This group of 85 experts judged that the possibility of a WMD attack against a city or other target somewhere in the world is real and increasing over time. The median estimate of the risk of a nuclear attack somewhere in the world by 2010 was 10 percent. The risk of an attack by 2015 doubled to 20 percent median. There was strong, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist organization than by a government. The group was split 45 to 55 percent on whether terrorists were more likely to obtain an intact working nuclear weapon or manufacture one after obtaining weapon-grade nuclear material. “The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not just a security problem,” Lugar wrote in the report’s introduction. “It is the economic dilemma and the moral challenge of the current age. On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the destructive potential of international terrorism. But the September 11 attacks do not come close to approximating the destruction that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction have made it possible for a small nation, or even a sub-national group, to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in months of fighting during World War II. “The bottom line is this,” Lugar concluded: “For the foreseeable future, the United States and other nations will face an existential threat from the intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” It’s paradoxical that a diminished threat of a superpower nuclear exchange should somehow have resulted in a world where the danger of at least a single nuclear explosion in a major city has increased (and that city is as likely, or likelier, to be Moscow as it is to be Washington or New York). We tend to think that a terrorist nuclear attack would lead us to drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons. I think the opposite case is at least equally likely: A terrorist nuclear attack would almost certainly be followed by a retaliatory nuclear strike on whatever country we believed to be sheltering the perpetrators. That response would surely initiate a new round of nuclear armament and rearmament in the name of deterrence, however illogical. Think of how much 9/11 frightened us; think of how desperate our leaders were to prevent any further such attacks; think of the fact that we invaded and occupied a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with those attacks in the name of sending a message.
1nc 2
Plan causes executive to seek war powers authority in international right to self-defense
Barnes, 12 -- J.D. Candidate, Boston University School of Law
Beau, “Reauthorizing the ‘War on Terror’: The Legal and Policy Implications of the AUMF’s Coming Obsolescence,” Military Law Review, Vol 211, 2012, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2150874, accessed 9-19-13, mss
A failure to reauthorize military force would lead to significant negative consequences on the international level as well. Denying the Executive Branch the authority to carry out military operations in the armed conflict against Al Qaeda would force the President to find authorization elsewhere, most likely in the international law of self-defense--the jus ad bellum. n142 Finding sufficient legal authority for the United States's ongoing counterterrorism operations in the international law of self-defense, however, is problematic for several reasons. As a preliminary matter, relying on this rationale usurps Congress's role in regulating the contours of U.S. foreign and national security policy. If the Executive Branch can assert "self-defense against a continuing threat" to target and detain terrorists worldwide, it will almost always be able to find such a threat.
Global nuclear war
Obayemi, 6 -- East Bay Law School professor
Olumide, admitted to the Bars of Federal Republic of Nigeria and the State of California, Golden Gate University School of Law, "Article: Legal Standards Governing Pre-Emptive Strikes and Forcible Measures of Anticipatory Self-Defense Under the U.N. Charter and General International Law," 12 Ann. Surv. Int'l and Comp. L. 19, l/n, accessed 9-19-13, mss
The United States must abide by the rigorous standards set out above that are meant to govern the use of preemptive strikes, because today's international system is characterized by a relative infrequency of interstate war. It has been noted that developing doctrines that lower the threshold for preemptive action could put that accomplishment at risk, and exacerbate regional crises already on the brink of open conflict. n100 This is important as O'Hanlon, Rice, and Steinberg have rightly noted: ...countries already on the brink of war, and leaning strongly towards war, might use the doctrine to justify an action they already wished to take, and the effect of the U.S. posture may make it harder for the international community in general, and the U.S. in particular, to counsel delay and diplomacy. Potential examples abound, ranging from Ethiopia and Eritrea, to China and Taiwan, to the Middle East. But perhaps the clearest case is the India-Pakistan crisis. n101 The world must be a safe place to live in. We cannot be ruled by bandits and rogue states. There must be law and order not only in the books but in enforcement as well. No nation is better suited to enforce international law than the United States. The Bush Doctrine will stand the test *42 of time and survive. Again, we submit that nothing more would protect the world and its citizens from nuclear weapons, terrorists and rogue states than an able and willing nation like the United States, acting as a policeman of the world within all legal boundaries. This is the essence of the preamble to the United Nations Charter.
1nc 3
Obama’s political capital is preventing new Russia sanctions, but confrontation over executive authority means GOP legislation will stifle Russian energy exports and their economy
The Guardian 3/4“Obama wary of fight with Republicans over Russia sanctions” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/04/obama-republicans-fight-severity-russia-sanctions¶
GOP pushing for … to include sanctions against the petrochemical industry.”¶
Plan causes that confrontation - triggers whole disad
Rubin 9/9 Jennifer, “Lose-lose for Democrats”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/09/09/lose-lose-for-democrats/, CMR
A presidential loss …status would be a given.
Russian economic deterioration causes extinction.
Sheldon Filger 2009 “Russian Economy Faces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction” May 10, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-filger/russian-economy-faces-dis_b_201147.html
In Russia, historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that is rarely encountered in other major industrialized economies. It was the economic stagnation of the former Soviet Union that led to its political downfall. Similarly, Medvedev and Putin, both intimately acquainted with their nation's history, are unquestionably alarmed at the prospect that Russia's economic crisis will endanger the nation's political stability, achieved at great cost after years of chaos following the demise of the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-payment of their salaries. Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev are eroding rapidly. Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have been forced to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive jets in a desperate attempt to raise cash. Should the Russian economy deteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not out of the question, the impact will go far beyond the obvious accelerant such an outcome would be for the Global Economic Crisis. There is a geopolitical dimension that is even more relevant then the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities and perceived decline from superpower status, Russia remains one of only two nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of sufficient scope and capability to destroy the world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the prospect that a national economic crisis can transform itself into a virulent and destabilizing social and political upheaval. It just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obama's national security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown in Russia for the peace of the world. After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the Global Economic Crisis represents the greatest national security threat to the United States, due to its facilitating political instability in the world. During the years Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia, security forces responsible for guarding the nation's nuclear arsenal went without pay for months at a time, leading to fears that desperate personnel would illicitly sell nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. If the current economic crisis in Russia were to deteriorate much further, how secure would the Russian nuclear arsenal remain? It may be that the financial impact of the Global Economic Crisis is its least dangerous consequence.
1nc 4
Text: Congress should delegate restrictions on War Powers Authority of the President of the United States to use targeted killing outside of areas of activate hostilities to the Department of Defense. The Department of defense should implement restrictions pursuant to the congressional delegation.
Counterplan results in bureaucratic discretion and adaptability which functionally constrains the plan’s object of war powers authority. The counterplan is mutually exclusive and proves the links to politics/warfighting only go our way.
David Epstein and O’Hallaron 99, Department of Political Science and Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia and Stanford University, and Sharyn O’Hallaron, Department of Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs and Hoover Institution, Columbia and Stanford University, January 1999 (“The Nondelegation Doctrine and the Separation of Powers” – Cardozo Law Review) p. lexis
Our institutional analysis begins with the observation that there are two alternative modes for specifying the details of public policy. Policy can be made through the typical legislative process, in which a committee considers a bill and reports it to the floor of the chamber, and then a majority of the floor members must agree on a policy to enact. Alternatively, Congress can pass a law that delegates authority to regulatory agencies, allowing them to fill in some or all of the details of policy. The key is that, given a fixed amount of policy details to be specified, these two modes of policymaking are substitutes for each other. To the degree that one is used more, the other will perforce be used less. Note also that it is Congress who chooses where policy is made. Legislators can either write detailed, exacting laws, in which case the executive branch will have little or no substantive input into policy, they can delegate the details to agencies, thereby giving the executive branch a substantial role in the policymaking process, or they can pick any point in between. Since legislators' primary goal is reelection, it follows that policy will be made so as to maximize legislators' reelection chances. Thus, delegation will follow the natural fault lines of legislators' political advantage. In making this institutional choice, legislators face costs either way. Making explicit laws requires legislative time and energy that might be profitably spent on more electorally productive activities. After all, one of the reasons bureaucracies are created is for agencies to implement policies in areas where Congress has neither the time nor expertise to micro-manage policy decisions, and by restricting flexibility, Congress would be limiting agencies' ability to adjust to changing circumstances. This tradeoff is captured well by Terry Moe in his discussion of regulatory structure: The most direct way to control agencies is for today's authorities to specify, in excruciating detail, precisely what the agency is to do and how it is to do it, leaving as little as possible to the discretionary judgment of bureaucrats - and thus as little as possible for future authorities to exercise control over, short of passing new legislation... Obviously, this is not a formula for creating effective organizations. In the interests of public protection, agencies are knowingly burdened with cumbersome, complicated, technically inappropriate structures that undermine their capacity to perform their jobs well. n40 Where oversight and monitoring problems do not exist, legislators would readily delegate authority to the executive branch, taking advantage of agency expertise, conserving scarce resources of time, staff, and energy, and avoiding the logrolls, delays, and informational inefficiencies associated with the committee system. Consider, for example, the issue of airline safety, which is characterized on the one hand by the need for technical expertise, and on the other hand by an almost complete absence of potential political benefits. That is, policymakers will receive little credit if airlines run well and no disasters occur, but they will have to with *963 stand intense scrutiny if something goes wrong. n41 Furthermore, legislative and executive preferences on this issue would tend to be almost perfectly aligned - have fewer accidents as long as the costs to airlines are not prohibitive. The set of individuals receiving benefits, the public who use the airlines, is diffused and ill organized, while those paying the costs of regulation, the airline companies, are well-organized and politically active. Furthermore, keeping in mind that deficiencies in the system are easily detectable, delegated power is relatively simple to monitor. For all these reasons, even if legislators had unlimited time and resources of their own (which they do not), delegation to the executive branch would be the preferred mode of policymaking.
If they’re topical, then the counterplan will link less than the plan – allows congress to logroll rule-making details
Moe and Howell 99 (Terry Moe, William Bennett Munro professor of political science at Stanford University, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12, William Howell, the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics in the Harris School, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the College, and a co-director of the Program on Political Institutions, “The Presidential Power of Unilateral Action” 1999, Oxford University Press, http://jleo.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.baylor.edu/content/15/1/132.full.pdf)
Now let’s return to the kinds of theoretical concerns that are not so easily captured in these models. In our earlier section on constitutional ambiguity, we concluded by noting that presidents are greatly advantaged by the executive nature of their jobs. While there are good reasons for this, it might seem that such a conclusion is premature—and indeed that, far from being a boon to presidential power, the fact that presidents are executives is ultimately their Achilles’ heel. For even though they have independent authority under the Constitution and are not properly Congress’s agents, they are still required to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” And this means, presumably, that Congress can constrain presidential behavior through the statutes that it writes. It is true, of course, that what presidents can and cannot do is shaped by the statutes they are charged with executing. And Congress has the right to be quite specific in designing these laws, as well as the agencies that administer them. If it wants, it can specify policy and structure in enough detail to narrow executive discretion considerably, and thereby the scope for presidential control. It can also impose requirements that (if the courts agree) explicitly limit how presidents may use their enumerated powers, as it has done, for instance, in pro- tecting members of independent commissions from removal and in mandating civil service protections for most government personnel. Yet statutory constraint cannot be counted upon to work especially well as a check on unilateral action by presidents. In the ?rst place, legislators may actually prefer broad delegations of authority on many occasions, granting presidents substantial discretion to act unilaterally. This can happen, for instance,¶ (1) when their policy goals are similar to those of presidents, (2) when they are¶ heavily dependent on the expertise and experience of the administration, (3)¶when they want to avoid making conflictual decisions within the legislature,¶ and thus find it attractive to “shill the responsibility" to the executive, (4) when Congress, as a collective institution, really doesn't have specific preferences¶ and can only decide on the broad outlines of a policy, (5) when, in complex pol-¶ icy areas with changing environments, it is impossible to design a decent policy¶ that promises to meet its objectives unless substantial authority is delegated to the executive, and (6) when certain policies require speed, flexibility, and¶ secrecy if they are to be successful (Moe, 1990, 1998; Epstein and O'l-ialloran,¶ I999). Most of these conditions, we should point out, are more likely to be met in foreign rather than domestic policy, so there is good reason to expect broad delegations to be more common in that realm.
1nc 5
The representations of the 1AC ensure the plan is functionally rolled back – appeals to national security empirically result in a stronger executive ESPECIALLY in the face of congressional/court restrictions
Rana 2011 (Aziz, Assistant Professor of Law @ Cornell. “Responses to the Ten Questions.” William Mitchell Law Review, 37 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 5099)
It is the failure to reckon with this political dimension of the national security Constitution that largely explains the inadequacy of efforts since the 1940s to address the problems of executive authority, heightened centralization, and pervasive secrecy. As the opening quote from Schlesinger makes clear, today's critics of the imperial President are hardly the first to raise such worries. Instead, these critics are part of a sixty-year history of reform aimed at limiting presidential prerogative and preventing likely abuses. What is remarkable about such reform efforts is that in every generation scholars and politicians have articulated the same basic anxieties and presented virtually identical procedural solutions. These solutions have focused on enhancing the institutional strength of both Congress and the courts to rein in executive prerogatives. They either promote new statutory schemes that codify legislative responsibilities or call for greater court activism. As early as the 1940s, Clinton Rossiter argued that only a clearly established legal framework in which Congress enjoyed the power to declare and terminate states of emergency would prevent executive tyranny in times of crisis. 9 After the Iran-Contra scandal, Harold Koh, now State Department Legal Adviser, once more raised this approach, calling for passage of a national security charter, which explicitly enumerated the powers of the executive and the legislature, and promoted greater balance between the branches. More recently, Bruce Ackerman has defended the need for an emergency constitution premised on congressional oversight. As for greater judicial vigilance, Schlesinger argued over thirty years ago that the courts "had to reclaim their own dignity and meet their own responsibilities" by abandoning deference and by offering a meaningful check on presidential power.4 Today, Lawrence Tribe and Patrick Gudridge once more hope that, by providing a powerful voice of dissent, the courts can play a critical role in balancing the branches. They write that adjudication can "generate -even if largely (or, at times, only) in eloquent and cogently reasoned dissent-an apt language for potent criticism.4 None of these calls to action, in either their older or more recent forms, have presented a meaningful check on national security practices. "Instead, presidential and military prerogatives continue to expand even when the courts or Congress intervene. The ultimate result is often to entrench further the system of discretion and centralization. In essence, today's scholarship finds itself mired in an argumentative loop, representing inadequate remedies and seemingly incapable of recognizing past failures. The hope-returned to by scholars for the last sixty years-has been that by creating procedures for strengthening the other branches, executive abuse can be stemmed.4 What leaves this hope perpetually unrealized is that the ideal of national security articulated so powerfully by Herring-takes for granted the need for constitutional flexibility. Only through the exercise of such flexibility can the United States assert authority abroad and intervene continuously to pacify emerging and perceived sources of instability. Since the executive branch (armed with the expertise of the professional military) is presumed to embody the institution best equipped to exercise this constitutional flexibility, the other branches necessarily face a legitimacy deficit. Under the realities of national security, whenever Congress or the courts intercede to limit executive power they inevitably do so on shaky grounds. Thus, the tendency of procedural reform efforts has been to place greater decision making in the other branches and then to watch those branches delegate such power back to the Presidency. In the case of congressional legislation (from the 200 standby statutes on the books to the post-9/11 and Iraq War Authorizations for the Use of Military Force to the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Acts), this has often entailed Congress self-consciously playing the role of junior partner-buttressing executive practices by extending its own constitutional imprimatur to them. As just one example, the USA PATRIOT Act, while no doubt politically controversial, has been renewed by Congress for ten consecutive years without any meaningful checks. In fact, following the most recent renewal (for three months), the Obama administration is on record declaring it would like a longer-term extension and the Senate debate has principally concerned whether the Act should be renewed for three years or made permanent. In essence, current practices have meant the internalization of emergency norms within the ordinary operation of American constitutional politics.46 This internalization takes the form of statutes and administrative procedures that provide legal underpinning for the executive's expansive and coercive powers.
Their modelling claims rely on a “city on the hill” mentality - this, along with the rest of the aff, rely on a rationalist ontology is the root cause of war, the attempt to order the world that is implicit in a realist perspective create a violent logic that makes war inevitable
Burke, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2K7 Anthony, Johns Hopkins University Press, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, page @ http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html
This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events, threats, insecurities and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be discounted, but they flow over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media, citizens, bureaucracies and military forces with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truth-systems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in modernity: ontologies, statements about truth and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential attributes'.http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html - _edn17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not essential or timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and conflictual socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html - _edn18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for ontological certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an ontology of violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost and with limited impact -- it permeates being.
Our alternative is to reject the ideology of security and the policy logic that replicates it. This opens space for a rethinking of security and the ontological structures that make violence and ecological destruction inevitable. Only by taking actions outside of the space of the political can the modern security paradigm be overcome
Burke 2007(Anthony, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason” Theory and Event vol. 10.2, Project Muse) I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that the available critical, interpretive or performative languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a moral community that stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is. The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of 'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates (indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to others, provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference.85 My argument here, whilst normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come, against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress, modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government, technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die. Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark ontology of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that, even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities.88) There seems no point in following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique. However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy choices could aim to bring into being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price? Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and violence? Will our thought?
1nc solvency
Use of “zone of active hostilities” guarantees circumvention --- Impossible to define the precise geographic scope and what constitutes active hostilities - your Huq evidence isn't specific to zones of hostilities, our is.
Daskal, 13 --- Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law (April 2013, Jennifer C., University of Pennsylvania Law Review, “ARTICLE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD: A FRAMEWORK FOR DETENTION AND TARGETING OUTSIDE THE "HOT" CONFLICT ZONE,” 161 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1165)
2. Identifying the Zone
Consistent with treaty and case law,overt and sustained fighting are key factors in identifying a zone of active hostilities. Specifically, the fighting must be of sufficient duration and intensity to create the exigent circumstances that justify application of extraordinary war authorities, to put civilians on notice, and to justify permissive evidentiary presumptions regarding the identification of the enemy. n133 The presence of troops on the *1207 ground is a significant factor, although neither necessary nor sufficient to constitute a zone of active hostilities. Action by the Security Council or regional security bodies such as NATO, as well as the belligerent parties' express recognition of the existence of a hot conflict zone, are also relevant.
Linking the zone of active hostilities primarily to the duration and intensity of the fighting and to states' own proclamations suffers, however, from an inherent circularity. A state can itself create a zone of active hostilities by ratcheting up violence or issuing a declaration of intent, thereby making previously unlawful actions lawful. n134
It is impossible to fully address this concern. The problem can, however, be significantly reduced by insisting on strict compliance with the law-of-war principles of distinction and proportionality and by vigorously punishing states for acts of aggression. n135There will, of course, be disagreement as to whether a state's escalation of a certain conflict constitutes aggression, particularly given underlying disagreements about who qualifies as a lawful target. The zone approach is helpful in this regard as well: it narrows the range of disagreement by demanding heightened substantive standards as to who qualifies as a legitimate target outside the zones of active hostilities. Under the zone approach, the escalation of force must be aimed at a narrower set of possible military targets until the increased use of force is sufficiently intense and pervasive enough to create a new zone of active hostilities.
3. Geographic Scope of the Zone
A secondary question relates to the geographic scope of the zone of active hostilities. In answering the related question of the scope of the overarching armed conflict, the Tadic court defined the conflict as extending throughout the state in which hostilities were conducted (in the case of international armed conflict) n136 and the area over which a party had territorial control (in the case of a noninternational armed conflict that did not extend *1208 throughout an entire state). n137Neither approach, however, maps well onto the practical realities of a transnational conflict between a state and a non-state actor. In many cases, the non-state actor and related hostilities will be concentrated in a small pocket of the state. It would be contrary to the justifications of exigency and proper notice to define the zone of active hostilities as extending to the entire state. A territorial control test also does not make sense when dealing with a non-state actor, such as al Qaeda, which does not exercise formal control over any territory and is driven more by ideology than territorial ambition.
1nc afghan
- India-Pakistan war won’t happen—nuclear deterrence solves
Malik, 03 (Mohan, The Stability Of Nuclear Deterrence In South Asia, Asian Affairs, Fall, KONTOPOULOS)
The presence of nuclear weapons certainly makes states exceedingly cautious, notable examples are China and Pakistan's postrudear behavior The consequences of a nuclear war are elooho^endojslocwiierroUie Policymakers in New Delhi and Isamabad have a sound understanding of each other's capabiltes. mentions, polices, and. more important, red lines, which they are careful not to cross This repeatedly has Deer de*onst-ated since the late 1980s. Despite the 1999 Kargil War and the post-Septembc 11 bnnkmanship that illustrate the "stabilly-instab lit/ paradox thai nuclear weapons have introduced to the equation in South Asia.23 proponents of nuclear deterrence in -,l.-r,.fceiflT; \e* "-rlr- ce'irve wt nuclear deterrence IS working to prevent war in the region. Th-y coin to the 'act that rehire-the 1999 argi conflict no- the post-September I' miliary sartdof esca ated beyond a limited conventional engagement due to the threat o' nuclear war So the stability argument is based on the reasonable cendusion that nuclear weapons have served an Important purpose in the sense that India and Pakstan have not gore x an a l-out war since 1971 24 just as rue ear deterrence maintained stabilty between the United States and the USSR during the cold war, so l can induce s If r stabilizing effects in South .Asia. Regarding the technica1 requirements of slab'e deterrence, questions about command, control, and safety procedures continue to be raised Bo* Pakistan and India claim to have maintained tighter controls over their arsenal-rt is not in their own interests to see anestale actors ganng control of nudear technology Both India and Pakistan publicly have declared moratoriums on funher nudear tests, and India's adherence to no-first-use (NFU) posture and confidence-building measures such as pre-notification of missile tests and an agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear installations promotes crisis stability. Devin Hegarty argues that this is responsande behavior in staA contrast to U.S.-Soviet nudear options nduding 'deoloymen: of ters of thousands of nudear warheads bombers flying on 24-hour alert status and the nuclear safety lapses that characterized the superpower arms race '25 Pott-September 11 measures to promote greater securty and cont'd over nudear weapons and materials have been accorded the toomost priority India's nuclear arsenal is firmly under the control of civilian leadership, and the Pakistani army always has retained the real authority over its country's nuclear weapons regard«ss of who is head of state. Pakistan's military chain of command appears intact despite internal tu'moil and "eshuflirg at the top of the government 26 The United States reportedly is considering offering assistance to ensure the physical protection o* sensitive nudear assets with vaults, sensors, alarms, tamperproof seals and labels and other means of protection, ensunng pe*sornel reliability and secure transport of sensitwe items.27
2. Indo-Pak war won’t escalate
Spectator, 02 (Hamilton, May 24th 2002, KONTOPOULOS)
For those who do not live in the subcontinent, the most important fact is that the damage would be largely confined to the region. The Cold War is over, the strategic understandings that once tied India and Pakistan tp the nv?l alliance systems have a» beep camelled, and pp outside powers would fre drawn nyto The fighting. The detonation of a hundred or so relatively small nuclear weapons over India and Pakistan would not cause grave harm to the wider world from fallout. People over 40 have already lived through a period when the great powers conducted hundreds of nuclear tests m the atmosphere, and they are mostly still here.
3. India’s strategic focus has changed – no risk of overreaction or war
Wax, 08 (Emily Wax, “Pakistan Turmoil Draws Muted Concern in India,” Washington Post, Saturday, January 19, 2008; Page A18 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011803368.html)
NEW DELHI, Jan. 18 -- They have almost always been mentioned in the same breath: India and Pakistan. For decades, the two countries have been inextricably tied in politics and in war. But analysts say that Pakistan's recent crisis has showcased the changing strategic focus in the region. As Pakistan's nuclear-armed neighbor, India is closely monitoring the political upheaval consuming its arch rival. The developments in Pakistan have implications for peace talks in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, and have raised fears that extremists could spill over the border. Analysts say, however, thatIndia is not nearly as worried by the crisis as it might have been in the past. With a fast-growing economy, India is the world's largest democracy and sees itself as an emerging superpower. Its new obsession is China, with which it has a hugely important trading relationship. "India is concerned about Pakistan, but not alarmed. The two countries have been completely de-hyphenated," said K. Santhanam, a defense expert in New Delhi. "There are many other things that are happening in India. Kashmir's violence has gone down. India's priority is economic now. The dynamic has really changed." In recent days, newspaper coverage in India has been dominated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Beijing; Pakistan's elections next month have received scant mention. After the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto last month, India's stock market sank and train service to Pakistan was suspended out of security concerns. But the market bounced back in a matter of hours, and trains were in service again within days. India and Pakistan have fought three wars with each other, and their arms race set off international alarm in the late 1990s. In 2001, they reached the brink of war over an attack on the Indian Parliament that was blamed on Pakistan-backed militants. "But it's all about China now," said VirSanghvi, a popular columnist with the Hindustan Times. "After Bhutto was killed, the Indian government didn't mobilize troops or do anything dramatic. The reaction was tempered and thoughtful. These days India only worries about Pakistan if there is a cricket match or a terrorist attack. That's the new reality."
NATO is useless
Conry, 95— Analyst at CATO (Barbara, The Western European Union as NATO’s Successor, 9/18/95, Cato Policy Analysis)
Instead of encouraging America's West European allies to develop a new security system that is relevant to the post-Cold War era, Washington insists on maintaining theNorth AtlanticTreaty Organization--an alliance that was designed to defend the West against the Soviet Union and has no other credible mission or rationale.In many ways, the debate over post-Cold War European security epitomizes the foreign policy community's irrational, almost sentimental, attachment to Cold War institutional and policy relics, regardless of their relevance in the new international environment. As one Russian journalist has commented, "Some analysts in the West believe that under the new conditions, to justify the existence of NATO is a jigsaw puzzle for its strategists."(1) Indeed, so strong is the determination to maintain NATO that the alliance no longer seems to be viewed as a tool to protect American vital interests; in the eyes of many of its proponents, NATO itself has risen to the level of a vital interest. That approach is wrong and potentially dangerous. NATO functioned effectively during the Cold War, butit is out of place in the new international environment. The conditions that led to its creation--the Soviet threat and the extraordinary coincidence of American and European interests in containing that threat--no longer exist.The Soviet Union is gone, and the concurrence in American and European interests has diminished dramatically; conflict, not cooperation, has been the hallmark of U.S.-European relations in the post-Cold War era. Former British diplomat Jonathan Clarke makes the provocative observation,"If NATO did not already exist, it is doubtful that Washington would now invent it."Yet Washington not only refuses to disinvent NATO, it seems determined to reinvent it. Much of the foreign policy community is obsessed with proposals for new NATO missions and expanded NATO membership. Many of the proposals conflict with one another, and others are inherently unworkable, but their authors remain engaged in an earnest discus-sion of how to ensure that NATO remains relevant in the post-Cold War world. To most of NATO's champions, no suggestion is too radical for serious consideration--except the suggestion that the alliance has outlived its usefulness and should be eliminated so that an alternative arrangement for European security, one that is appropriate to the post-Cold War era, can be made.(3)
2. Indo-Pak war won’t escalate
Spectator, 02 (Hamilton, May 24th 2002, KONTOPOULOS)
For those who do not live in the subcontinent, the most important fact is that the damage would be largely confined to the region. The Cold War is over, the strategic understandings that once tied India and Pakistan tp the nv?l alliance systems have a» beep camelled, and pp outside powers would fre drawn nyto The fighting. The detonation of a hundred or so relatively small nuclear weapons over India and Pakistan would not cause grave harm to the wider world from fallout. People over 40 have already lived through a period when the great powers conducted hundreds of nuclear tests m the atmosphere, and they are mostly still here.
3. India’s strategic focus has changed – no risk of overreaction or war
Wax, 08 (Emily Wax, “Pakistan Turmoil Draws Muted Concern in India,” Washington Post, Saturday, January 19, 2008; Page A18 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011803368.html)
NEW DELHI, Jan. 18 -- They have almost always been mentioned in the same breath: India and Pakistan. For decades, the two countries have been inextricably tied in politics and in war. But analysts say that Pakistan's recent crisis has showcased the changing strategic focus in the region. As Pakistan's nuclear-armed neighbor, India is closely monitoring the political upheaval consuming its arch rival. The developments in Pakistan have implications for peace talks in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, and have raised fears that extremists could spill over the border. Analysts say, however, thatIndia is not nearly as worried by the crisis as it might have been in the past. With a fast-growing economy, India is the world's largest democracy and sees itself as an emerging superpower. Its new obsession is China, with which it has a hugely important trading relationship. "India is concerned about Pakistan, but not alarmed. The two countries have been completely de-hyphenated," said K. Santhanam, a defense expert in New Delhi. "There are many other things that are happening in India. Kashmir's violence has gone down. India's priority is economic now. The dynamic has really changed." In recent days, newspaper coverage in India has been dominated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Beijing; Pakistan's elections next month have received scant mention. After the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto last month, India's stock market sank and train service to Pakistan was suspended out of security concerns. But the market bounced back in a matter of hours, and trains were in service again within days. India and Pakistan have fought three wars with each other, and their arms race set off international alarm in the late 1990s. In 2001, they reached the brink of war over an attack on the Indian Parliament that was blamed on Pakistan-backed militants. "But it's all about China now," said VirSanghvi, a popular columnist with the Hindustan Times. "After Bhutto was killed, the Indian government didn't mobilize troops or do anything dramatic. The reaction was tempered and thoughtful. These days India only worries about Pakistan if there is a cricket match or a terrorist attack. That's the new reality."
2. Collapse is inevitable
Walt, 99 – Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago (Stephen, The National Interest, Winter 1998, Issue 54)
Given these achievements, it is hardly surprising that few voices now call for an end to the alliance, and equally unsurprising that pundits like Zbigniew Brzezinski believe it can work a similar magic in areas far beyond NATO'S original mandate.(n1) Unfortunately, such claims ignore the deep structural forces that are already beginning to pull Europe and America apart. Instead of becoming the core of an expanding security community, united by liberal values, free markets, and strong international institutions, the transatlantic partnership that fought and won the Cold War is already showing unmistakable signs of strain. No matter how many new states join NATO, and no matter how many solemn reaffirmations emerge from the endless parade of NATO summits, the high-water mark of transatlantic security cooperation is past.The reasons are not difficult to discern. For the past forty years, the partnership between Europe and the United States was held together by three uniting forces. The first and most important was the Soviet threat. The second was America's economic stake in Europe, which reinforced its strategic interest in European prosperity. The third was the existence of a generation of European and American elites whose personal backgrounds and life experiences left them strongly committed to the idea of an Atlantic community. All three unifying forces are now gone or eroding, arid there is little hope of resurrecting them. NATO'S formal structure may remain intact (and the alliance may keep busy adding new members), but Americans and Europeans should no longer base their foreign and military policies on a presumption of military cooperation.
War in the Middle East will never escalate to all-out war – conflicts remain relatively localized
Cook, Takeyh, and Maloney, 07 (Douglas Dillon Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ray, Senior Fellow For Middle Eastern Studies at the CFR, Suzanne, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, June 28, , online: http://www.cfr.org/publication/13702/why_the_iraq_war_wont_engulf_the_mideast.html, accessed December 25, 2007)
Yet, the Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, and others are very unlikely to go to war either to protect their own sect or ethnic group or to prevent one country from gaining the upper hand in Iraq. The reasons are fairly straightforward. First, Middle Eastern leaders, like politicians everywhere, are primarily interested in one thing: self-preservation. Committing forces to Iraq is an inherently risky proposition, which, if the conflict went badly, could threaten domestic political stability. Moreover, most Arab armies are geared toward regime protection rather than projecting power and thus have little capability for sending troops to Iraq. Second, there is cause for concern about the so-called blowback scenario in which jihadis returning from Iraq destabilize their home countries, plunging the region into conflict. Middle Eastern leaders are preparing for this possibility. Unlike in the 1990s, when Arab fighters in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union returned to Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and became a source of instability, Arab security services are being vigilant about who is coming in and going from their countries. In the last month, the Saudi government has arrested approximately 200 people suspected of ties with militants. Riyadh is also building a 700 kilometer wall along part of its frontier with Iraq in order to keep militants out of the kingdom. Finally, there is no precedent for Arab leaders to commit forces to conflicts in which they are not directly involved. The Iraqis and the Saudis did send small contingents to fight the Israelis in 1948 and 1967, but they were either ineffective or never made it. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arab countries other than Syria, which had a compelling interest in establishing its hegemony over Lebanon, never committed forces either to protect the Lebanese from the Israelis or from other Lebanese. The civil war in Lebanon was regarded as someone else’s fight. Indeed, this is the way many leaders view the current situation in Iraq. To Cairo, Amman and Riyadh, the situation in Iraq is worrisome, but in the end it is an Iraqi and American fight. As far as Iranian mullahs are concerned, they have long preferred to press their interests through proxies as opposed to direct engagement. At a time when Tehran has access and influence over powerful Shiite militias, a massive cross-border incursion is both unlikely and unnecessary. So Iraqis will remain locked in a sectarian and ethnic struggle that outside powers may abet, but will remain within the borders of Iraq. The Middle East is a region both prone and accustomed to civil wars. But given its experience with ambiguous conflicts, the region has also developed an intuitive ability to contain its civil strife and prevent local conflicts from enveloping the entire Middle East.
1nc norms
No turkey Impact
Fettweis, 07(Christopher J. Professor of National Security Affairs @ Naval War College, 07 (Survival 49.4, “'On the Consequences of Failure in Iraq,”)
No matter what the outcome in Iraq, the region is not likely to devolve into chaos. Although it might seem counter-intuitive, by most traditional measures the Middle East is very stable. Continuous, uninterrupted governance is the norm, not the exception; most Middle East regimes have been in power for decades. Its monarchies, from Morocco to Jordan to every Gulf state, have generally been in power since these countries gained independence. In Egypt Hosni Mubarak has ruled for almost three decades, and Muammar Gadhafi in Libya for almost four. The region’s autocrats have been more likely to die quiet, natural deaths than meet the hangman or post-coup firing squads. Saddam’s rather unpredictable regime, which attacked its neighbours twice, was one of the few exceptions to this pattern of stability, and he met an end unusual for the modern Middle East. Its regimes have survived potentially destabilising shocks before, and they would be likely to do so again. The region actually experiences very little cross-border warfare, and even less since the end of the Cold War. Saddam again provided an exception, as did the Israelis, with their adventures in Lebanon. Israel fought four wars with neighbouring states in the first 25 years of its existence, but none in the 34 years since. Vicious civil wars that once engulfed Lebanon and Algeria have gone quiet, and its ethnic conflicts do not make the region particularly unique. The biggest risk of an American withdrawal is intensified civil war in Iraq rather than regional conflagration. Iraq’s neighbours will likely not prove eager to fight each other to determine who gets to be the next country to spend itself into penury propping up an unpopular puppet regime next door. As much as the Saudis and Iranians may threaten to intervene on behalf of their coreligionists, they have shown no eagerness to replace the counter-insurgency role that American troops play today. If the United States, with its remarkable military and unlimited resources, could not bring about its desired solutions in Iraq, why would any other country think it could do so?17 Common interest, not the presence of the US military, provides the ultimate foundation for stability. All ruling regimes in the Middle East share a common (and understandable) fear of instability. It is the interest of every actor – the Iraqis, their neighbours and the rest of the world – to see a stable, functioning government emerge in Iraq. If the United States were to withdraw, increased regional cooperation to address that common interest is far more likely than outright warfare. Even a Turkish invasion of the north is hardly inevitable. Withdrawal from Iraq would, after all, hardly rob the United States of all its tools with which to influence events. Washington and the rest of NATO still wield significant influence over Ankara; a cross-border invasion would almost certainly doom Turkey’s prospects of entering the European Union. It is puzzling why anyone would think that no incentive structure could be devised to convince Turkey not to attack its neighbour. Should such an assault prove undeterrable, it is not clear that intervention would be in the strategic interest of the United States. One of the worst suggestions that occasionally surfaces in the withdrawal debate is that the United States should ‘redeploy’ troops to Kurdistan in northern Iraq, in order to ‘deter’ Turkey and reward its Kurdish allies.18 Such a move would allow a continuation of what amounts to state-sponsored terrorism, and risk embroiling the United States in yet another local, intractable conflict. The removal of de facto US protection would presumably encourage the Kurds to act more responsibly toward their more powerful neighbours, and may well prove to be good for stability. Clearly, elements in Kurdistan actively support Kurdistan Workers’ Party terrorists in Turkey, but that would change if they faced the possibility of paying a price for their behaviour. A regional descent into the whirlwind following a US withdrawal cannot be ruled out; using that logic, neither can benevolent transitions to democracy. Just because a scenario is imaginable does not make it likely. In fact, most of the chaotic outcomes pessimists predict require unprecedented breaks with the past. Since the United States has historically overestimated the threats it faces, there is every reason to believe that it is doing so again.
The United States will never attack Russia
Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, 04
Ivanov's position would seem to be entirely rational and sound. First of all, it's hard to imagine that, over the next few years, the mood in Washington will swing toward launching a war against Russia. Or even to conceive of some sort of military provocations. Admittedly, we have not exactly become fast friends with Washington over the past decade, but neither do we regard each other as enemies. No US politicians in their right minds are currently thinking in terms of thermonuclear war -- their No. 1 enemy is terrorism. Moreover, what would war against Russia really mean for the Americans? Mass casualties, which would inevitably spell the end of many political careers. And enormous economic costs as well -- after all, the population of a country occupying one sixth of the planet's land mass would need to be fed and maintained somehow or other, and that kind of drain would overcome even the economy of the United States of America.
Social science proves no modeling- US signals are dismissed
Zenko ‘13 Micah, Council on Foreign Relations Center for Preventive Action Douglas Dillon fellow, "The Signal and the Noise," Foreign Policy, 2-2-13, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/20/the_signal_and_the_noise, accessed 6-12-13, mss
Later, Gen. Austin observed of cutting forces from the Middle East: "Once you reduce the presence in the region, you could very well signal the wrong things to our adversaries." Sen. Kelly Ayotte echoed his observation, claiming that President Obama's plan to withdraw 34,000 thousand U.S. troops from Afghanistan within one year "leaves us dangerously low on military personnel...it's going to send a clear signal that America's commitment to Afghanistan is going wobbly." Similarly, during a separate House Armed Services Committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter ominously warned of the possibility of sequestration: "Perhaps most important, the world is watching. Our friends and allies are watching, potential foes -- all over the world." These routine and unchallenged assertions highlight what is perhaps the most widely agreed-upon conventional wisdom in U.S. foreign and national security policymaking: the inherent power of signaling. This psychological capability rests on two core assumptions: All relevant international audiences can or will accurately interpret the signals conveyed, and upon correctly comprehending this signal, these audiences will act as intended by U.S. policymakers. Many policymakers and pundits fundamentally believe that the Pentagon is an omni-directional radar that uniformly transmits signals via presidential declarations, defense spending levels, visits with defense ministers, or troop deployments to receptive antennas. A bit of digging, however, exposes cracks in the premises underlying signaling theories. There is a half-century of social science research demonstrating the cultural and cognitive biases that make communication difficult between two humans. Why would this be any different between two states, or between a state and non-state actor? Unlike foreign policy signaling in the context of disputes or escalating crises -- of which there is an extensive body of research into types and effectiveness -- policymakers' claims about signaling are merely made in a peacetime vacuum. These signals are never articulated with a precision that could be tested or falsified, and thus policymakers cannot be judged misleading or wrong. Paired with the faith in signaling is the assumption that policymakers can read the minds of potential or actual friends and adversaries. During the cycle of congressional hearings this spring, you can rest assured that elected representatives and expert witnesses will claim to know what the Iranian supreme leader thinks, how "the Taliban" perceives White House pronouncements about Afghanistan, or how allies in East Asia will react to sequestration. This self-assuredness is referred to as the illusion of transparency by psychologists, or how "people overestimate others' ability to know them, and...also overestimate their ability to know others." Policymakers also conceive of signaling as a one-way transmission: something that the United States does and others absorb. You rarely read or hear critical thinking from U.S. policymakers about how to interpret the signals from others states. Moreover, since U.S. officials correctly downplay the attention-seeking actions of adversaries -- such as Iran's near-weekly pronouncement of inventing a new drone or missile -- wouldn't it be safer to assume that the majority of U.S. signals are similarly dismissed? During my encounters with foreign officials, few take U.S. government pronouncements seriously, and instead assume they are made to appease domestic audiences.
