1ac myth 1ac -critical Introduction of us armed Forces Aff
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- States are not the primary actors in global politics – agency must be theorized transversally
- Imposes Western Categories on Non-West
- Faulty Inside/Outside Assumption
- Causes Middle Eastern Violence
- Applying realist principles to the Middle East causes domestic suppression of local populations
- Realist approaches perpetuate economic, political and societal violence in the Middle East
- Tech Warfare Conflict
A2: RealismFaulty View of AgencyRealism has a faulty view of human agency – it has imposed a static image on the fluidity of world eventsBleiker 2000 [Roland, Prof of International Relations, Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics, p. 16-7] Human agency is not something that exists in an a priori manner and can be measured scientifically in reference to external realities. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as human agency, for its nature and its function are, at least in part, determined by how we think about human action and its potential to shape political and social practices. The mutually constituted and constantly shifting relationship between agents and discourses thus undermines the possibility of observing social dynamics in a value-free way. To embark on such an endeavour nevertheless is to superimpose a static image upon a series of events that can only be understood in their fluidity. It is to objectivise a very particular and necessarily subjective understanding of agency and its corresponding political practices. The dangers of such an approach have been debated extensively. Authors such as Richard Ashley, Jim George and Steve Smith have shown how positivist epistemologies have transformed one specific interpretation of world political realities, the dominant realist one, into reality per se.41 Realist perceptions of the international have gradually become accepted as common sense, to the point that any critique against them has to be evaluated in terms of an already existing and objectivised world-view. There are powerful mechanisms of control precisely in this ability to determine meaning and rationality. ‘Defining common sense’, Smith thus argues, is ‘the ultimate act of political power’.42 It separates the possible from the impossible and directs the theory and practice of international relations on a particular path.Dissent in global politics is precisely about redirecting this path. It is about interfering with the very manner in which international relations have been constituted, perceived and entrenched. The point, then, is not to ‘rescue the exploration of identity from postmodernists’, 43 but to explore questions of agency and identity in the context of an understanding of social dynamics that takes into account how ideas and practices mutually influence each other. This is to accept and deal with the recognition ‘that our rationalisation of the international is itself constitutive of that practice’.44 The purpose and potential of such an approach are well recognised at least since Robert Cox introduced a distinction between critical and problem-solving approaches to world politics. The latter, exemplified by realist and positivist perceptions of the international, take the prevailing structures of the world as the given framework for action. They study various aspects of the international system and address the problems that they create. The problem with such approaches, according to Cox, is that they not only accept, explicitly or implicitly, the existing order as given, but also, intentionally or not, sustain it.45 Critical theories, by contrast, problematise the existing power relations and try to understand how they have emerged and how they are undergoing transformation. They engage, rather than circumvent, the multi-layered dynamics that make up transversal struggles. The notion of discourse, I shall demonstrate, is the most viable conceptual tool for such a task. It facilitates an exploration of the close linkages that exist between theory and practice. It opens up possibilities to locate and explore terrains of transversal dissent whose manifestations of agency are largely obscured, but nevertheless highly significant in shaping the course of contemporary global politics. States are not the primary actors in global politics – agency must be theorized transversallyBleiker 2000 [Roland, Prof of International Relations, Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics, p. 273-4] A series of fundamental transformations in global politics calls for an equally fundamental rethinking of how we have come to understand this central aspect of contemporary life. Processes of globalisation have led to various cross-territorial interactions that render the political and mental boundaries of the existing international system increasingly anachronistic. Nation-states no longer play the only role in a world where financial, productive and informational dynamics have come to disobey, transgress and challenge the deeply entrenched political principle of state sovereignty. This book is to be read in the context of recently undertaken efforts to understand these and other changing dimensions of global politics. Its prime task has been to scrutinise the role that dissent plays at a time when the transgression of boundaries has become a common feature of life. A conceptual break with existing understandings of global politics is necessary to recognise trans-territorial dissident practices and to comprehend the processes through which they exert human agency. A long tradition of conceptualising global politics in state-centric ways has entrenched spatial and mental boundaries between domestic and international spheres such that various forms of agency have become virtually unrecognised, or at least untheorised. The centrality of dissent can thus be appreciated only once we view global politics, at least for a moment, not as interactions between sovereign states, but as ‘a transversal site of contestation’.2 This is to say that one’s investigative gaze must be channelled less on national boundaries and the discursive practices that legitimise and objectivise them, but more on various forms of connections, resistances, identity formations and other political flows that transgress the spatial givenness of global politics. With such a conceptual reorientation in mind, the present book has embarked on a disruptive reading of the agency problematique in international theory. This is to say that it has tried to understand transversal dissent and its influences on global politics by employing epistemological and methodological strategies that one would not necessarily expect in an investigation of an international relations theme. Cross-territorial manifestations of human agency have thus been scrutinised, for instance, not by engaging the well-developed structure– agency debate in international theory, but by employing a form of inquiry that illuminates the issues in question from a novel set of theoretical and practical perspectives. The following concluding remarks now reflect on the benefits that such a disruptive reading engenders for an understanding of contemporary global politics. Imposes Western Categories on Non-WestRealism imposes Western categories on the non-West, masking sub-state insecurity and promoting Western interestsBilgin 2008 associate professor of international relations at Bilkent University [Pinar, “Thinking Past ‘Western’ IR?” Third World Quarterly 29.1] IR (especially its neo-realist variant) has not always been interested in the world beyond the great powers. ‘Denmark does not matter’ quipped Kenneth Waltz, underlining the marginality of smaller states to system theorising.32 This is not only because those who are in the peripheries of world politics are also relegated to the peripheries of one’s thinking. It is also because neo-realism teaches students of International Relations to focus on great powers and think of them as like units, the internal dynamics of which are of little consequence for world politics. The choices made in favour of conducting stateand great power-centric analyses have had implications for ‘Western’ IR. Throughout the years critical scholars have been documenting the implications of such methodological and epistemological choices,33 thereby preparing the groundwork for the project of thinking past ‘Western’ IR. Whereas students of the ‘Third World’ have long warned about what Baghat Korany referred to as the ‘increasing irrelevance’ of ‘standard’ concepts and theories in explaining the dynamics of non-Western locale,34 ‘Western’ approaches, even as they focused on the ‘non-West’, have failed to be fully relevant to the concerns of people, states and societies in the ‘nonWest’. This is because analyses of ‘sage bush wars’, ‘low intensity conflicts’ and ‘guerrilla wars’ focused on and thus were able to capture only the threat perceptions and interest calculations of the ‘West’. Put differently, the ‘nonWest’, even when it was made the focal point of IR, was not treated as the referent object (what/who needs protection).35 In those instances when they became the focal point of analyses, ‘nonWestern’ states (and non-state actors) were slotted into one of the two roles that were available. Either they were considered as part of the ‘established paradigm, and assigned the role of junior-partners in the power game’ or they were labelled ‘trouble-makers’, thriving on ‘nuisance power’, fit for the exercise of counter-insurgency techniques discussed in the literature.36 Although this has begun to change in recent years, with more attention being paid to the insecurities of individuals, social groups and states in the developing world (as with the emergence of concerns about and the literature on ‘human security’), the inordinate amount of attention paid to ‘state failure’ should serve as a reminder of the persistence of the aforementioned dynamics (of putting ‘Western’ insecurities first when studying ostensibly ‘non-Western’ dynamics). For, although the shift in mainstream security analyses from purely military to broader ‘human security’ concerns may be considered a ‘good thing’, state ‘weakness’ is still portrayed as a problem by virtue of ‘weak’ states’ inability to prevent their territories from being used as a safe harbour by terrorists—not because those states fail to deliver the necessary goods and services to their citizens. So-called ‘strong’ states of the ‘non-West’, in turn, even when they fail to prioritise their citizens’ concerns, are not considered to be a problem as long as they remain attentive to ‘Western’ security interests.37 To recapitulate, one explanation as to why ‘Western’ IR has produced relatively little about ‘non-Western’ ways of thinking about and doing world politics has to do with the disciplinary straitjacket imposed by IR as a social science, in that students of world politics have not been socialised into being curious about the ‘non-West’ but have been encouraged to explain away ‘non-Western’ dynamics by superimposing ‘Western’ categories. Faulty Inside/Outside AssumptionThe principle of international anarchy is based on faulty assumptions about subjectivity and sovereignty – this inside/outside divide is incoherentBilgin 2005 associate professor of international relations at Bilkent University [Pinar, Prof of International Relations, Regional Security in the Middle East, p.34] Buzan’s first move could be criticised first, for its depiction of the international system as anarchical (and therefore the realm of insecurity) and second, for identifying individuals’ security with citizenship and the state (the realm of security). This (neo-realist) stance adopted by Buzan has been criticised forcefully by Alexander Wendt (1992) among others (see, for example, Tickner 1995; Wyn Jones 1995b; Krause and Williams 1997b) and will not be dealt with here in detail. Suffice it to note that the anarchical conception of the international system derives from assumptions made by neo-realists about subjectivity and sovereignty, and the reasoning that the absence from the international arena of what makes order possible at the domestic arena (i.e., a central government) is what renders the latter anarchical (Krause and Williams 1997b: 41). There is indeed no world government; but it does not necessarily follow that this makes international security impossible. Furthermore, the anarchy/order, inside/outside divides introduced by this argument are problematic for, as Keith Krause and Michael Williams (1997b: 43) maintained, both are built upon the assumption that ‘security comes from being a citizen, and insecurity from citizens of other states’ and that ‘threats are directed towards individuals qua citizens (that is, toward their states)’. However, although states are there, in theory, to provide security for their citizens, there remain the practices of many states, which are constant reminders of the fact that some are worse than others in fulfilling their side of the bargain. Added to this is the case of ‘gangster’ states that constitute a major threat to the security of their own citizens (see Wheeler 1996). Moreover, as Ann Tickner (1992: 57) reminds us, the international arena is not the only realm characterised by the absence of mechanisms of order and there may be construed yet another anarchy/order divide – that of the ‘boundary between a public domestic space protected, at least theoretically, by the rule of law and the private space of the family’ which is not always as well protected, particularly concerning the case of domestic violence. In sum, the first move Buzan makes to justify the privileged position of the security of states is contested in both theory and practice.
Realist approaches to the Middle East become self-fulfilling, creating a vicious cycle of violence that’s impossible to breakBilgin 2001 associate professor of international relations at Bilkent University [Pinar, “Alternative Futures for the Middle East,” Futures 33] However, although the Middle East remained chronically insecure for most of the twentieth century, the question that should be asked is whether recent history justifies one author’s observation that the Middle East is a region that ‘best fits the realist view of international politics’ [2] and is therefore destined to relive the past. This is a question that should be asked because when such stereotypical representations of the Middle East are coupled with a cyclical view of history that is part and parcel of the realist approach, the future of the region looks bleak. The significance of such pessimistic presentations of the future of the Middle East is that they are used to justify heavily militarised security policies that do not enable this vicious circle to be broken. Furthermore, such pessimistic conjectures and prognoses have the potential to become self-fulfilling, thereby making it difficult if not impossible to invent a new tomorrow for the Middle East.
[Pinar, “Whose Middle East?” International Relations 18.1] What I call the ‘Middle East’ perspective is usually associated with the United States and its regional allies. It derives from a ‘western’ conception of security which could be summed up as the unhindered flow of oil at reasonable prices, the cessation of the Arab–Israeli conflict, the prevention of the emergence of any regional hegemon while holding Islamism in check, and the maintenance of ‘friendly’ regimes that are sensitive to these concerns. This was (and still is) a top-down conception of security that privileged the security of states and military stability. It is top-down because threats to security have been defined largely from the perspective of external powers rather than regional states or peoples. In the eyes of British and US defence planners, Communist infiltration and Soviet intervention constituted the greatest threat to security in the ‘Middle East’ during the Cold War. The way to enhance regional security, they argued, was for regional states to enter into alliances with the West. Two security umbrella schemes, the ill-born Middle East Defence Organisation (1951) and the Baghdad Pact (1955), were designed for this purpose. Although there were regional states such as Iraq (until the 1958 coup), Iran (until the 1978–9 revolution) and Turkey that shared this perception of security to a certain extent, many Arab policy-makers begged to differ.22 Traces of this top-down thinking were prevalent in the US approach to security in the ‘Middle East’ during the 1990s. In following a policy of dual containment,23 US policy-makers presented Iran and Iraq as the main threats to regional security largely due to their military capabilities and the revisionist character of their regimes that are not subservient to US interests. However, these top-down perspectives, while revealing certain aspects of regional insecurity, at the same time hinder others. For example the lives of women in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are made insecure not only by the threat caused by their Gulf neighbours’ military capabilities, but also because of the conservative character of their own regimes that restrict women’s rights under the cloak of religious tradition.24 For it is women who suffer disproportionately as a result of militarism and the channeling of valuable resources into defence budgets instead of education and health. Their concerns rarely make it into security analyses. This top-down approach to regional security in the ‘Middle East’ was compounded by a conception of security that was directed outwards – that is threats to security were assumed to stem from outside the state whereas inside is viewed as a realm of peace. Although it could be argued – following R.B.J. Walker – that what makes it possible for ‘inside’ to remain peaceful is the presentation of ‘outside’ as a realm of danger,25 the practices of Middle Eastern states indicate that this does not always work as prescribed in theory. For many regional policy-makers justify certain domestic security measures by way of presenting the international arena as anarchical and stressing the need to strengthen the state to cope with external threats. While doing this, however, they at the same time cause insecurity for some individuals and social groups at home – the very peoples whose security they purport to maintain. The practices of regional actors that do not match up to the theoretical prescriptions include the Baath regime in Iraq that infringed their own citizens’ rights often for the purposes of state security. Those who dare to challenge their states’ security practices may be marginalized at best, and accused of treachery and imprisoned at worst. Realist approaches perpetuate economic, political and societal violence in the Middle EastBilgin 2005 associate professor of international relations at Bilkent University [Pinar, Regional Security in the Middle East, p.195-6] This book set out to present a framework for thinking differently about regional security in the Middle East. This was attempted by adopting a critical security approach that seeks to reconceptualise security in theory and practice by broadening and deepening; looking below and beyond the state for other referents and agents; and suggesting emancipatory practices toward shaping alternative futures. Contesting those accounts that present the Middle East as only amenable to realist readings, it was argued that critical approaches present a fuller account of regional security in the Middle East. This is not to suggest that the items of the traditional agenda have lost their pertinence. As the US-led war on Iraq has shown, military concerns retain their place on regional security agendas, and military instruments remain useful in meeting certain kinds of threats. Rather, the point is that such traditional concerns should be addressed within a comprehensive framework cognisant of the dynamic relationships between multiple dimensions of security (including basic needs such as subsistence, health and education, and issues such as religious and cultural identity, democratisation and human rights). Although US policy-makers’ view – that military instability in the Middle East threatens global security – retains its validity, focusing on military issues to the neglect of others risks further exacerbating those structurally-based (economic, political, societal) security concerns. Dealing with the militarysecurity agenda is a must; yet, a military-focused and determined approach to security (in theory and practice) results in a diversion of already scarce resources into military build-up. The militarisation of the region during the Cold War not only made it more difficult to meet the traditional agenda, but also undermined regional states’ capacity to provide welfare to their citizens thereby exacerbating non-military threats and rendering intractable regional conflicts MiscTech Warfare ConflictNew technological warfare lowers the threshold for conflictsAndrew J. Bacevich 13 Jr. (born 1947) is an American political scientist specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is currently Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University.[1] He is also a retired career officer in the United States Army. He is a former director of Boston University's Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005) and author of several books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002), The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005) and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008). He has also appeared on television shows such as The Colbert Report and the Bill Moyers Report and has written op-eds which have appeared in papers such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The new American militarism: how Americans are seduced by war,” 2013, Oxford University Press, DOA: 8-1-13, y2k In short, by the dawn of the twenty-first century the reigning postulates of technology-as-panacea had knocked away much of the accumulated blood-rust sullying war’s reputation. Thus reimagined and amidst widespread assurances that the United States could be expected to retain a monopoly on this new way of war, armed conflict regained an aesthetic respectability, even palatability, that the literary and artistic interpreters of twentieth-century military cataclysms were thought to have demolished once and for all. In the right circumstances, for the right cause, it now turned out, war could actually offer an attractive option.cost-effective, humane, even thrilling. Indeed, as the Anglo-American race to Baghdad conclusively demonstrated in the spring of 2003 , in the eyes of many, war has once again become a grand pageant, performance art, or a perhaps temporary diversion from the ennui and boring routine of everyday life. As one observer noted with approval, public enthusiasm for the whiz-bang technology of the U.S. military had become almost boyish. 31 Reinforcing this enthusiasm was the expectation that the great majority of Americans could count on being able to enjoy this new type of war from a safe distance. The old-fashioned style of warfare, emphasizing mass and the sustained application of force on a colossal scale, had been a participatory activity. From 1914 to 1918 and again from 1939 to 1945 , it had consumed whole generations, with even liberal democracies conscripting willing and unwilling alike to provide the generals with the requisite steady flow of cannon fodder. But in the new style of technowar, mass became an impediment; large formations simply offered easily identifiable, slow-mov-ing, and highly vulnerable targets. Postindustrial warfare emphasized compact formations consisting of highly skilled and highly motivated volunteers.thereby encouraging the average citizen to see war as something to be experienced vicariously. This new aesthetic has contributed, in turn, to an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves, a fourth manifestation of the new American militarism. Directory: file -> fetch fetch -> 11 th Lit Semester 1 Final Study Guide!!! fetch -> Industrial Revolution Inventors fetch -> Analysis for Galveston Hurricane of 1900 fetch -> The Illuminators (Team 2) 1900 Galveston Hurricane Cycle a team Assignment fetch -> Team csi-utb ruth Reyes Jose Ferrer fetch -> Galveston Hurricane of 1900 Cycle a-teacher as a Problem Solver fetch -> Is Climate Change Starting a New Dust Bowl? 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