Tournament: UNLV | Round: 6 | Opponent: Cal EM | Judge:
PLAN: The United States Congress should establish statutory requirements for drone strikes in the area of targeted killing based on relevant executive documents outlining the legal basis and justifications for drone strikes.
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CONTENTION 1: DRONE PROLIFERATION
Current US drone policy causes unchecked drone proliferation around the world
Stanford and NYU Law, International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic of the NYU Law School, September 2012, “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan” http://www.livingunderdrones.org/report/
US Targeted Killing and Drone Strike Practices May Establish Dangerous Precedents and Undermine the Rule
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the US is “establishing precedent that other nations may follow.”790
This has two impacts
A. This drone proliferation escalates to extinction absent US government action – Obama action alone won’t be enough, treaties don’t solve, and DOD shift isn’t sufficient – only Congress can set the necessary precedent
Kristen Roberts 13, news editor for the National Journal, master in security studies from Georgetown, “When the Whole World Has Drones”, March 22, http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/when-the-whole-world-has-drones-20130321
The proliferation of drone technology has moved well beyond the control of the United States government and its closest allies. The aircraft are too easy to obtain, with barriers to entry on the production side crumbling too quickly to place limits on the spread of a technology that promises to transform warfare on a global scale. Already, more than 75 countries have remote piloted aircraft. More than 50 nations are building a total of nearly a thousand types. At its last display at a trade show in Beijing, China showed off 25 different unmanned aerial vehicles. Not toys or models, but real flying machines. It’s a classic and common phase in the life cycle of a military innovation: An a\
dvanced country and its weapons developers create a tool, and then others learn how
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operations manual for other nations but a legal and moral one as well.
*This outweighs nuclear war because MAD doesn’t apply
Jenkins 13, Simon, “Drones are fool's gold: they prolong wars we can't win,” The Guardian, 10 January 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/drones-fools-gold-prolong-wars
The greatest threat to world
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a greater danger to world peace.
B. Armenia-Azerbaijan War
Unrestricted drone use causes nuclear war in the Caucuses
Clayton 12 (Nick Clayton, Worked in several publications, including the Washington Times the Asia Times and Washington Diplomat. He is currently the senior editor of Kanal PIK TV's English Service (a Russian-language channel), lived in the Caucuses for several years,10/23/2012, "Drone violence along Armenian-Azerbaijani border could lead to war", www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/121022/drone-violence-along-armenian-azerbaijani-border-could-lead-war)
Armenia and Azerbaijan could soon
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“an Armenian-Azerbaijani war will not be small. That’s the one thing I’m sure of.”
That causes extinction
Blank 2k
(Stephen, Prof. Research at Strategic Studies Inst. @ US Army War College, “U.S. Military Engagement with Transcaucasia and Central Asia”, www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub113.pdf)
Washington’s burgeoning military-political-economic involvement seeks, inter alia, to demonstrate
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is not much we could do absent a strong and lasting regional commitment.
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CONTENTION 2: HEGEMONY
Drone strikes hurts US soft power and hegemony
Stanford and NYU Law, International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic of the NYU Law School, September 2012, “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan” http://www.livingunderdrones.org/report/
The significant global opposition
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tackle pressing global challenges.
Two ways the plan solves
A. Legitimacy
Drones risk US alliances because of legitimacy issues that exist due to a lack of transparency and codified law
Kennedy 13 (Greg, a Professor of Strategic Foreign Policy at the Defence Studies Department, King's College London, based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, “Drones: Legitimacy and Anti-Americanism,” Parameters 42(4)/43(1) Winter-Spring 2013, Strategic Studies Institute at the United States Army War College
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Issues/WinterSpring_2013/3_Article_Kennedy.pdf
p. 26)
The current debate over the legitimacy
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.”6This article will address only the first three critical questions.
Plan solves – clarified drone procedures solve perception of legitimacy
Machon 2006 (Maj. Matthew J., US Army Major and investigor for the School of Advanced Military Studies, “Targeted Killing as an Element of U.S. Foreign Policy in the War on Terror”, 5/25/06, http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/machon.pdf, p. 57)
To maintain international legitimacy and retain the moral high ground within the war on ¶
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appears to be the case thus far in the war on ¶ terror.
Lack of transparency and Congressional support now kills allied credibility
Jack Goldsmith, the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Jean Perkins Task Force on National Security and Law and served in the Bush administration as assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel and as special counsel to the general counsel, 5/1/13, “How Obama Undermined the War on Terror”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112964/obamas-secrecy-destroying-american-support-counterterrorism
As a result, much of what the administration says about its secret war—
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and unfamiliar war for which he would need sustained domestic and international support."
Legitimacy is key to exercise hard power
Nye 2004 (Joseph S. Nye, political scientist and former Harvard school of government dean, “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy” Vol. 119, No. 2, Summer 2004 , http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20202345.pdf,p. 260-261)
In the global information age, the attractiveness of the United States will be crucial
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as the new realities of the information age. We cannot afford that.
B. Democratic hypocrisy
Lack of transparency and codification makes the US seem like it is not following its own ideals – this hurts our standing in the world
John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff under Clinton and Chair for the Center for American Progress and previously served on the National Security Council and is a graduate of Georgetown Law, 3/13/13, “Obama should lift secrecy on drones” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-podesta-obama-should-lift-secrecy-on-drones/2013/03/13/7e98d7ca-8a9b-11e2-8d72-dc76641cb8d4_story.html
From Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week,
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prologue to a farce or tragedy; or, perhaps, both.”
That kills hegemony
APSA 9 (American Political Science Association, The American Political Science Association is the
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, Consequences, and the Future,” Task Force Report, October 2009,
http://www.apsanet.org/media/PDFs/APSAUSStandingShortFinal.pdf
p. 3-4)
Unlike something a nation possesses and can easily measure, like wealth or military might
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understanding of Americans, even when it has no readily observable behavioral implications.
Decline in hegemony causes escalation of multiple global flashpoints for violence—there is no sustainable alternative to American leadership
Kagan 11 (Robert, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and and a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, “The Price of Power,” 1/24, http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/price-power_533696.html?page=3)
Today the international situation is also one of high risk. • The terrorists who
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impractical but that it is immoral and contrary to the nation’s true ideals.
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US counter-terrorism efforts are failing. Overreliance on drones results in civilian deaths that cause blowback- terrorist groups use civilian deaths for recruitment and fundraising, their key strategies for resurgence.
Cronin, prof-GMU, 13 (Audrey Kurth, Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and the author of How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns, “Why Drones Fail,” Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug2013, Vol. 92, Issue 4)
Like any other weapon, armed drones
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, the United States risks multiplying its enemies and heightening their incentives to attack the country.
And, lack of transparency to the drone program collapses allied cooperation on terrorism, which is critical to intelligence sharing.
Human Rights First 13 (How to Ensure that the U.S. Drone Program does not Undermine Human Rights BLUEPRINT FOR THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION, Updated April 13, http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/blueprints2012/HRF_Targeted_Killing_blueprint.pdf)
The Obama Administration has dramatically escalated targeted killing by drones as a central feature of
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allies and thereby impeded the flow of critical intelligence about terrorist operations.12
Allied cooperation on intelligence is critical to effective counterterrorism
McGill and Gray 12 (Anna-Katherine Staser McGill, David H. Gray, “Challenges to International Counterterrorism Intelligence Sharing,” Global Security Studies, Summer 2012, Volume 3, Issue 3, http://globalsecuritystudies.com/McGill20Intel20Share.pdf)
In his article “Old Allies and New Friends: Intelligence-Sharing in the War on Terror”, Derek Reveron states “the war on terror requires high
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also be addressed in order to sustain current operations.
Globalization means only cooperation can solve terrorism—the world is too interconnected for local efforts to solve.
Cordesman 10, (Anthony H. Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, International Cooperation in Counterterrorism: Redefining the Threat and the Requirement, March 11, 2010, http://csis.org/files/publication/100315_IntCoopinfightterror.pdf)
The first lesson in improving such cooperation
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more than create hollow, pointless tragedies.
Terrorism causes miscalculation that draws in Russia and China and culminates in extinction- also causes rising alert levels
Ayson 2010 (Robert Ayson, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, “After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)
A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by
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for the terrorists. This might not help the chances of nuclear restraint.
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CONTENTION 4: SOLVENCY
Leaks about the program make a certain level of transparency inevitable – controlling them and codifying requirements into law is key to maintaining legitimacy of the program
Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution and a distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law and is cofounder and contributor to the Lawfare Blog and writes frequently on topics relating to US counterterrorism policy and law, 6/18/13, “Trust, but Codify: Metadata, Drones, and Legal Transparency” http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/06/trust-but-codify-metadata-drones/
There is a subtle connection between
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were brought into the light and entrenched in statute.
And, there is existing Congressional oversight now, but legally codifying it is key
Washington Post, 5/8/13, “Lawmaker wants military to promptly alert Congress about drone strikes” http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-08/world/39114073_1_drone-strikes-operations-oversight
Rep. Mac Thornberry (Tex.), the chairman of a
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so everybody knows,’ ” he said.
Drone strikes are legal now but only Congressional codification puts them on stronger political and diplomatic standing
Washington Post, 2/6/13, “A time to explain the drone campaign” http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-06/opinions/36948039_1_drone-strikes-legal-memos-obama-administration
THURSDAY’S CONFIRMATION hearing for John O. Brennan as director of the CIA
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press and hotly debated by the country’s politicians; what’s missing is official U.S. information.
As for the legal memos, we have argued before that, while the administration’s
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, which would be a first step in the right direction.
