2014 ndi – Pre Camp Natural Gas Negative

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Economy I/L Turn

Plan kills the US economy

Glaeser,7-11-12(Edward, Harvard Econ professor, “What the U.S. Can Learn From Australia’s Coal Mines,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-11/what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-australia-s-coal-mines.html,)

A recent paper I co-wrote with William Kerr and Sari Pekkala Kerr examined the long-run impact of mining across the U.S. Fifty years ago, the economist Benjamin Chinitz noted that New York appeared even then to be more resilient than Pittsburgh. He argued that New York’s garment industry, with its small setup costs, had engendered a culture of entrepreneurship that spilled over into new industries. Pittsburgh, because of its coal mines, had the huge U.S. Steel Corp. (X), which trained company [people] men with neither the ability nor the inclination to start some new venture. A body of healthy literature now documents the connection between economic success and measures of local entrepreneurship, such as the share of employment in startups and an abundance of smaller companies.¶ Our new paper documents Chinitz’s insight that mineral wealth historically led to big companies, not entrepreneurial clusters. In Australia, iron ore and coal are mined by giant corporations such as Rio Tinto Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd., and giant enterprises typically work best with other big companies. Across U.S. metropolitan areas, we found that historical mining cities had fewer small companies and fewer startups, even today in sectors unrelated to mining or manufacturing, and even in the Sunbelt. These mining cities were also experiencing less new economic activity.¶ Low Taxes¶ Australia’s economic future depends on using its mineral wealth wisely, following the example of Iowa farmers who once used their corn profits to fund high schools. Yet Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, was ousted in a backdoor political coup in 2010 partially because of his support for an extra mining tax. I’m against almost all industry-specific taxes, but the share of miners’ “resource profits” returned to the Australian government in the form of taxes and royalties fell from about 40 percent in 2001 to less than 20 percent seven years later.¶ It is a fiction that U.S. economic woes could be solved if only the nation adopted a “drill, baby, drill” attitude toward natural resources. Less than 0.6 percent of American jobs are in natural-resource extraction. Even a vast increase in drilling employment would have a trivial impact on U.S. jobs. Oil prices are set in the world market, so American production can do little to radically decrease the global price of petroleum.¶ The wealth that comes out of the ground is a short-term windfall, not a long-term source of economic growth. The U.S. and Australia should both recognize that their futures depend on training smart, innovative entrepreneurs and reducing the barriers that limit their success.¶ *Gender Modified

XT – Economy I/L Turn

Natural resource extraction crowds out entrepreneurship and undermines economic growth.

Glaeser et al, Professor of Economics at Harvard, 12 (Edward. Sari Pekkala Kerr, Wellesley College, William R. Kerr, Harvard Business School, July, “Entrepreneurship and Urban Growth: An Empirical Assessment with Historical Mines,” http://conference.nber.org/confer//2012/SI2012/PRENT/Glaeser_Pekkala_Kerr_Kerr.pdf, page 1, accessed 8-5-12)

We tackle this problem by using an idea suggested in Chinitz’s original account. Chinitz claimed that Pittsburgh’s dearth of entrepreneurs in the 1950s reflected its historical concentration in steel, which in turn reflected proximity to large deposits of coal and iron ore (White, 1928). The steel industry has significant returns to scale, and Chinitz argued that its presence crowded out more entrepreneurial activities. This left Pittsburgh with an abundance of company men but few entrepreneurs. Moreover, Chinitz emphasized how this dampening of entrepreneurship comes through both static factors (e.g., access to inputs for new businesses) and dynamic factors (e.g., the transmission of skills and attitudes from parents to children).¶ We systematically investigate the connection between historical mineral and coal deposits and modern entrepreneurship. There are returns to scale in many extractive industries and their industrial customers, not just coal and steel. The process of bringing ores out of the earth is a capital-intensive operation that often benefits from large-scale operations. Transforming and transporting ores also typically requires large machines and production facilities. Therefore, we hypothesize that cities with a historical abundance of nearby mineral and coal mines will have developed industrial structures with systematically larger establishments and less entrepreneurship. These early industrial traits can in turn influence modern entrepreneurship through persistence and intergenerational transmissions that we elaborate on further below.

AT: Low Prices K2 Manufacturing

No offense---prices are low enough now to support the US manufacturing base, all of our uq ev proves

The DOE says exports increase prices and hurts our domestic economy

Markey 4/18/12 (Ed, Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee, “Exporting Gas = Exporting Jobs” http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2012/04/what-should-us-policy-be-on-en.php)

Right now, America’s natural gas is about six times as cheap as it is in Asia and four times as cheap as Europe. That is a competitive advantage for U.S. companies, leading to an American manufacturing renaissance. Nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs have returned to the U.S. in the last two years and cheap natural gas is a major reason why. What’s the number one way this progress could be stopped? By exporting America’s natural gas. The Department of Energy has already approved one export terminal, and has eight more under consideration. If all of these export terminals were approved and full export capacity utilized, the Energy Department says natural gas prices could rise by up to 54 percent. And those price increases are just the result of approving the first eight terminals. If subsequent export applications are approved, natural gas prices in the U.S. could go even higher. Right now, major oil companies are also nearing agreement on a plan to send American natural gas from Alaska to China. So in addition to cheaper Chinese labor and predatory Chinese trade practices that put American manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage, Chinese companies would also have low-cost American energy. If China won’t give us their rare earths to put into our solar panels and cars, why should we send them our cheap natural gas? That would be a one-way ticket to manufacturing oblivion.

No exports key warrant---unexported supply alone displaces enough demand to suppress prices

Kasey 8/16/12 (Pam, staffwriter, “Study: Natural gas exports likely unprofitable for decades” http://www.statejournal.com/story/19297893/study-natural-gas-exports-likely-not-very-profitable-for-decades)

"LNG trade in 2011 totaled 32 (billion cubic feet per day, or bcfd)," Madlock wrote. "Currently, in the U.S. alone there is over 17 bcfd of export capacity in various stages of proposal and development," he continued. "If even one-third of this capacity is built and placed into operation, it will dramatically alter the ability to supply the Asian market with natural gas." Indeed, even without being exported, U.S. shale gas has been reducing prices in Europe and Asia by displacing gas that could have been imported here. "LNG supplies whose development was anchored to the belief that the United States would be a premium market have been diverted to European and Asian buyers," Madlock wrote.

Upward price trend key to natural gas drilling – massive jobs benefit

Dlouhy 12 (Jennifer A., report at Hearst Newspapers, Bachelor of Journalism, Journalism, Political Science at University of Missouri-Columbia, “Natural gas glut a dilemma for Obama,” FuelFix, 7-16-12, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/07/16/natural-gas-glut-a-dilemma-for-obama/)

Energy companies and analysts have argued that current U.S. natural gas prices are unsustainable. It closed Friday at $2.874 per million British thermal units in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The opposing argument is that exports could cause prices to spike, sending electricity bills upward and jeopardizing a resurgence in domestic manufacturing tied to abundant, cheap natural gas. Manufacturers that use natural gas to fuel their plants and as a building block to make other products were hit hard over the past two decades by volatile swings in prices, which last peaked over $15 in 2005. Because any position risks alienating important constituencies – energy producers and manufacturers as well as voters – few elected officials are pushing the issue. ‘Safer for politicians’ “It’s a lot safer for politicians who don’t want to be on the wrong side to defer it,” said Kevin Book, an analyst with ClearView Energy Partners. Even key stakeholders in the debate are keeping low profiles. Several major energy industry groups have kept mostly quiet, possibly for fear of advocating an export strategy linked to higher prices. Many manufacturers, meanwhile, are wary of visibly opposing energy exports and being painted as free trade foes. Some companies also are torn because their foreign operations could benefit from an influx of cheaper U.S. natural gas. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney also have avoided making big pronouncements. Democratic U.S. Rep. Gene Green, whose east Houston district includes several chemical plants, says the key is finding a threshold that keeps prices low enough for manufacturers and high enough to sustain production levels. “I don’t want our gas prices to get so outrageous as seven years ago, when the chemical industry was transferring jobs to other places,” said Green, who backs case-by-case approvals. “I don’t want to kill the good things we’re doing, but I also know we want to keep those drillers working.” Advances in drilling technology have allowed energy companies to extract natural gas from dense rock formations coast to coast and tap what analysts widely describe as a 100-year supply of the fossil fuel. A few congressional critics are pushing for a timeout. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has introduced legislation that would halt new natural gas exports until 2025. Markey argues that the domestic natural gas explosion gives the U.S. a major global advantage that would be squandered by exports. “This is our biggest game-changing moment in a generation,” he said. “Low-priced natural gas is driving an American manufacturing renaissance.” Linking U.S. natural gas production with global markets would hamper moves to power more cars and produce more electricity with the gas, Markey said. “Natural gas producers do not want low prices. They want a global natural gas market that maximizes consumer pain domestically in the same way the global oil market does,” Markey added. “That would be painful for American consumers and catastrophic for the fertilizer manufacturers, the chemical and plastic makers, and the steel manufacturers who are relying on low-priced natural gas.” Prices to rise? Many analysts contend natural gas prices are destined to rise even without more exports, as companies scale back production. Bob Ineson, the head of North American natural gas research for IHS CERA, said he anticipates U.S. natural gas prices will rise without exports and stabilize around $3.50 to $4. “The current price environment is unsustainably low,” he said, because in some areas, gas costs more to produce than its price. A bipartisan group of lawmakers from areas rich in natural gas drilling warned the Energy Department in a letter earlier this month that if prices don’t rise, it could jeopardize domestic natural gas production and all of the jobs and economic activity tied to it.

AT: Econ Impact

No chance of war from economic decline---best and most recent data

Daniel W. Drezner 12, Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, “The Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked,” http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf

The final outcome addresses a dog that hasn’t barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.37 Whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict, there were genuine concerns that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict. Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fuel impressions of surge in global public disorder. ¶ The aggregate data suggests otherwise, however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has constructed a “Global Peace Index” annually since 2007. A key conclusion they draw from the 2012 report is that “The average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007.”38 Interstate violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis – as have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict; the secular decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed.39 Rogers Brubaker concludes, “the crisis has not to date generated the surge in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been expected.”40¶ None of these data suggest that the global economy is operating swimmingly. Growth remains unbalanced and fragile, and has clearly slowed in 2012. Transnational capital flows remain depressed compared to pre-crisis levels, primarily due to a drying up of cross-border interbank lending in Europe. Currency volatility remains an ongoing concern. Compared to the aftermath of other postwar recessions, growth in output, investment, and employment in the developed world have all lagged behind. But the Great Recession is not like other postwar recessions in either scope or kind; expecting a standard “V”-shaped recovery was unreasonable. One financial analyst characterized the post-2008 global economy as in a state of “contained depression.”41 The key word is “contained,” however. Given the severity, reach and depth of the 2008 financial crisis, the proper comparison is with Great Depression. And by that standard, the outcome variables look impressive. As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff concluded in This Time is Different: “that its macroeconomic outcome has been only the most severe global recession since World War II – and not even worse – must be regarded as fortunate.”42

Global economic governance institutions guarantee resiliency

No empirical support for diversionary theory

Tir, 2010 [Jaroslav Tir - Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, “Territorial Diversion: Diversionary Theory of War and Territorial Conflict”, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 72, No. 2, April 2010, Pp. 413–425, Chetan]

According to the diversionary theory of war, the cause of some militarized conflicts is not a clash of salient interests between countries, but rather problematic domestic circumstances. Under conditions such as economic adversity or political unrest, the country’s leader may attempt to generate a foreign policy crisis in order both to divert domestic discontent and bolster their political fortunes through a rally around the flag effect (Russett 1990). Yet, despite the wide-ranging popularity of this idea and some evidence of U.S. diversionary behavior (e.g., DeRouen 1995, 2000; Fordham 1998a, 1998b; Hess and Orphanides 1995; James and Hristolouas 1994; James and Oneal 1991; Ostrom and Job 1986), after five decades of research broader empirical support for the theory remains elusive (e.g., Gelpi 1997; Gowa; 1998; Leeds and Davis 1997; Levy 1998; Lian and Oneal 1993; Meernik and Waterman 1996). This has prompted one scholar to conclude that ‘‘seldom has so much common sense in theory found so little support in practice’’ (James 1987, 22), a view reflected in the more recent research (e.g., Chiozza and Goemans 2003, 2004; Meernick 2004; Moore and Lanoue 2003; Oneal and Tir 2006). I argue that this puzzling lack of support could be addressed by considering the possibility that the embattled leader may anticipate achieving their diversionary aims specifically through the initiation of territorial conflict2—a phenomenon I call territorial diversion.

AT: Heg Impact

No heg impact

Fettweis, 2010 (Christopher J. Professor of Political Science at Tulane, Dangerous Times-The International Politics of Great Power Peace, pg. 175-6)

If the only thing standing between the world and chaos is the US military presence, then an adjustment in grand strategy would be exceptionally counter-productive. But it is worth recalling that none of the other explanations for the decline of war – nuclear weapons, complex economic interdependence, international and domestic political institutions, evolution in ideas and norms – necessitate an activist America to maintain their validity. Were American to become more restrained, nuclear weapons would still affect the calculations of the would be aggressor; the process of globalization would continue, deepening the complexity of economic interdependence; the United Nations could still deploy peacekeepers where necessary; and democracy would not shrivel where it currently exists. More importantly, the idea that war is a worthwhile way to resolve conflict would have no reason to return. As was argued in chapter 2, normative evolution is typically unidirectional. Strategic restraint in such a world be virtually risk free.

Heg solves nothing

Kagan, 2012 [Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, 1/5/12, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2012/0105_international_relations_kagan.aspx]

If the United States is not suffering decline in these basic measures of power, isn’t it true that its influence has diminished, that it is having a harder time getting its way in the world? The almost universal assumption is that the United States has indeed lost influence. Whatever the explanation may be—American decline, the “rise of the rest,” the apparent failure of the American capitalist model, the dysfunctional nature of American politics, the increasing complexity of the international system—it is broadly accepted that the United States can no longer shape the world to suit its interests and ideals as it once did. Every day seems to bring more proof, as things happen in the world that seem both contrary to American interests and beyond American control. And of course it is true that the United States is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then it never could. Much of today’s impressions about declining American influence are based on a nostalgic fallacy: that there was once a time when the United States could shape the whole world to suit its desires, and could get other nations to do what it wanted them to do, and, as the political scientist Stephen M. Walt put it, “manage the politics, economics and security arrangements for nearly the entire globe.” If we are to gauge America’s relative position today, it is important to recognize that this image of the past is an illusion. There never was such a time. We tend to think back on the early years of the Cold War as a moment of complete American global dominance. They were nothing of the sort. The United States did accomplish extraordinary things in that era: the Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance, the United Nations, and the Bretton Woods economic system all shaped the world we know today. Yet for every great achievement in the early Cold War, there was at least one equally monumental setback. During the Truman years, there was the triumph of the Communist Revolution in China in 1949, which American officials regarded as a disaster for American interests in the region and which did indeed prove costly; if nothing else, it was a major factor in spurring North Korea to attack the South in 1950. But as Dean Acheson concluded, “the ominous result of the civil war in China” had proved “beyond the control of the ... United States,” the product of “forces which this country tried to influence but could not.” A year later came the unanticipated and unprepared-for North Korean attack on South Korea, and America’s intervention, which, after more than 35,000 American dead and almost 100,000 wounded, left the situation almost exactly as it had been before the war. In 1949, there came perhaps the worst news of all: the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb and the end of the nuclear monopoly on which American military strategy and defense budgeting had been predicated. A year later, NSC-68, the famous strategy document, warned of the growing gap between America’s military strength and its global strategic commitments. If current trends continued, it declared, the result would be “a serious decline in the strength of the free world relative to the Soviet Union and its satellites.” The “integrity and vitality of our system,” the document stated, was “in greater jeopardy than ever before in our history.” Douglas MacArthur, giving the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in 1952, lamented the “alarming change in the balance of world power,” “the rising burden of our fiscal commitments,” the ascendant power of the Soviet Union, “and our own relative decline.” In 1957, the Gaither Commission reported that the Russian economy was growing at a much faster pace than that of the United States and that by 1959 Russia would be able to hit American soil with one hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles, prompting Sam Rayburn, the speaker of the House, to ask, “What good are a sound economy and a balanced budget if we lose our national lives and Russian rubles become the coin of the land?” Nor was the United States always able to persuade others, even its closest allies, to do what it wanted, or to refrain from doing what it did not want. In 1949, Acheson tried and failed to prevent European allies, including the British, from recognizing Communist China. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration failed to get its way at the Geneva Conference on Vietnam and refused to sign the final accords. Two years later it tried to prevent the British, the French, and the Israelis from invading Egypt over the closure of the Suez Canal, only to see them launch an invasion without so much as a heads-up to Washington. When the United States confronted China over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, the Eisenhower administration tried and failed to get a show of support from European allies, prompting John Foster Dulles to fear that NATO was “beginning to fall apart.” By the late 1950s, Mao believed the United States was a superpower in decline, “afraid of taking on new involvements in the Third World and increasingly incapable of maintaining its hegemony over the capitalist countries.” But what about “soft power”? Wasn’t it true, as the political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. has argued, that the United States used to be able to “get what it wanted in the world” because of the “values expressed” by American culture as reflected through television, movies, and music, and because of the attractiveness of America’s domestic and foreign policies? These elements of soft power made other peoples around the world want to follow the United States, “admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness.” Again, the historical truth is more complicated. During the first three decades after World War II, great portions of the world neither admired the United States nor sought to emulate it, and were not especially pleased at the way it conducted itself in international affairs. Yes, American media were spreading American culture, but they were spreading images that were not always flattering. In the 1950s the world could watch televised images of Joseph McCarthy and the hunt for Communists in the State Department and Hollywood. American movies depicted the suffocating capitalist conformism of the new American corporate culture. Best-selling novels such as The Ugly American painted a picture of American bullying and boorishness. There were the battles over segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, the globally transmitted images of whites spitting at black schoolchildren and police setting their dogs on black demonstrators. (That “used to be us,” too.) The racism of America was practically “ruining” the American global image, Dulles feared, especially in the so-called Third World. In the late 1960s and early 1970s came the Watts riots, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the shootings at Kent State, and then the government-shaking scandal of Watergate. These were not the kinds of images likely to endear the United States to the world, no matter how many Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen movies were playing in Parisian cinemas. Nor did much of the world find American foreign policy especially attractive during these years. Eisenhower yearned “to get some of the people in these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us,” but the CIA-orchestrated overthrows of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala did not help. In 1957, demonstrators attacked the vice president’s motorcade in Venezuela, shouting, “Go away, Nixon!” “Out, dog!” “We won’t forget Guatemala!” In 1960, Khrushchev humiliated Eisenhower by canceling a summit when an American spy plane was shot down over Russia. Later that year, on his way to a “goodwill” visit in Tokyo, Eisenhower had to turn back in mid-flight when the Japanese government warned it could not guarantee his security against students protesting American “imperialism.” Eisenhower’s Democratic successors fared little better. John F. Kennedy and his wife were beloved for a time, but America’s glow faded after his assassination. Lyndon Johnson’s invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 was widely condemned not only in Latin America but also by European allies. De Gaulle warned American officials that the United States, like “all countries that had overwhelming power,” had come “to believe that force would solve everything” and would soon learn this was “not the case.” And then, of course, came Vietnam—the destruction, the scenes of napalm, the My Lai massacre, the secret incursion into Cambodia, the bombing of Hanoi, and the general perception of a Western colonialist superpower pounding a small but defiant Third World country into submission. When Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, visited West Berlin in 1967, the American cultural center was attacked, thousands of students protested American policies, and rumors swirled of assassination attempts. In 1968, when millions of Europe’s youth took to the streets, they were not expressing their admiration for American culture. Nor were the great majority of nations around the world trying to emulate the American system. In the first decades of the Cold War, many were attracted to the state-controlled economies of the Soviet Union and China, which seemed to promise growth without the messy problems of democracy. The economies of the Soviet bloc had growth rates as high as those in the West throughout much of this period, largely due to a state-directed surge in heavy industry. According to Allen Dulles, the CIA director, many leaders in the Third World believed that the Soviet system “might have more to offer in the way of quick results than the U.S. system.” Dictators such as Egypt’s Nasser and Indonesia’s Sukarno found the state-dominated model especially attractive, but so did India’s Nehru. Leaders of the emerging Non-Aligned Movement—Nehru, Nasser, Tito, Sukarno, Nkrumah—expressed little admiration for American ways. After the death of Stalin, moreover, both the Soviet Union and China engaged in hot competition to win over the Third World, taking “goodwill tours” and providing aid programs of their own. Eisenhower reflected that “the new Communist line of sweetness and light was perhaps more dangerous than their propaganda in Stalin’s time.” The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations worried constantly about the leftward tilt of all these nations, and lavished development aid on them in the hope of winning hearts and minds. They found that the aid, while eagerly accepted, guaranteed neither allegiance nor appreciation. One result of Third World animosity was that the United States steadily lost influence at the United Nations after 1960. Once the place where the American war in Korea was legitimized, from the 1960s until the end of the Cold War the U.N. General Assembly became a forum for constant expressions of anti-Americanism. In the late 1960s, Henry Kissinger despaired of the future. The “increased fragmentation of power, the greater diffusion of political activity, and the more complicated patterns of international conflict and alignment,” he wrote to Nixon, had sharply reduced the capacity of both superpowers to influence “the actions of other governments.” And things only seemed to get more difficult as the 1970s unfolded. The United States withdrew from Vietnam in defeat, and the world watched the first-ever resignation of an American president mired in scandal. And then, perhaps as significant as all the rest, world oil prices went through the roof. The last problem pointed to a significant new difficulty: the inability of the United States to wield influence effectively in the Middle East. Today people point to America’s failure to bring Israelis and Palestinians to a negotiated settlement, or to manage the tumultuous Arab Awakening, as a sign of weakness and decline. But in 1973 the United States could not even prevent the major powers in the Middle East from engaging in all-out war. When Egypt and Syria launched their surprise attack on Israel, it was a surprise to Washington as well. The United States eventually had to go on nuclear alert to deter Soviet intervention in the conflict. The war led to the oil embargo, the establishment of OPEC as a major force in world affairs, and the sudden revelation that, as historian Daniel Yergin put it, “the United States itself was now, finally, vulnerable.” The “world’s foremost superpower” had been “thrown on the defensive, humiliated, by a handful of small nations.” Many Americans “feared that the end of an era was at hand.”

No transition wars

Haass, 2010 – President of the Council on Foreign Relations and Ph.D. from Oxford University (Richard N., 2/25/10, "The Weakest Link", http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/25/the-weakest-link.html)

That we should care so much about weak states marks a major change. Much of 20th-century history was driven by the actions of strong states—the attempts by Germany, Japan, and, in the century's second half, the Soviet Union to establish global primacy, and the corresponding efforts of the United States and a shifting coalition of partners to resist. Those struggles produced two world wars and a Cold War. In the 21st century the principal threat to the global order will not be a push for dominance by any great power. For one thing, today's great powers are not all that great: Russia has a one-dimensional economy and is hobbled by corruption and a shrinking population; China is constrained by its enormous population and a top-heavy political system. Just as important, China and the other major or rising powers seek less to overthrow the existing global order than to shape it. They are more interested in integration than in revolution. Instead, the central challenge will be posed by weak states—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Mexico, Congo, and others. What they have in common (in addition to the fact that many, like Iraq, are located in the greater Middle East) are governments that lack the capacity, the will, or both to rule. They are unable to exercise what is expected of sovereign governments—namely, control over what goes on within their own territory. In the past, this would have been mostly a humanitarian concern. But as we all know, thanks to globalization, people and things travel. Terrorists, diseases, illegal migrants, weapons of mass destruction—for all of them, international boundaries are often little more than formalities. On the other hand, we cannot resolve these problems solely by using the U.S. military. As we learned in Iraq, replacing governments is easier sought than done, and in many cases there is no clear—much less preferable—alternative to the current authority. Even in a supporting role, foreign soldiers can provoke a nationalist backlash against the government they're trying to bolster, making the weak-state problem even worse. Nor is it always clear that doing more militarily will result in lasting improvements that are commensurate with the investment in blood and treasure. This could well be America's fate in Afghanistan.

No U.S. lashout—decline causes caution and restraint

MacDonald & Parent, 2011 Paul, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College, Joseph, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, “Graceful Decline?,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Spring 2011), Pg. 7-44, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00034

With regard to militarized disputes, declining great powers demonstrate more caution and restraint in the use of force: they were involved in an average of 1.7 fewer militarized disputes in the five years following ordinal change compared with other great powers over similar periods.67 Declining great powers also initiated fewer militarized disputes, and their disputes tended to escalate to lower levels of hostility than the baseline category (see figure 2).68 These findings suggest the need for a fundamental revision to the pessimist's argument regarding the war proneness of declining powers.69 Far from being more likely to lash out aggressively, declining states refrain from initiating and escalating military disputes. Nor do declining great powers appear more vulnerable to external predation than other great powers. This may be because external predators have great difficulty assessing the vulnerability of potential victims, or because retrenchment allows vulnerable powers to effectively recover from decline and still deter potential challengers.

AT: Chemical Industry

Exporting natural gas ends competitiveness, causes oil dependence and collapses the chemical industry

Makey 9/28/2012 (Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. Ranking Member, House Natural Resources Committee http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2012/09/sizing-up-the-role-of-natural.php#2246213)

The boom in American natural gas production is causing a seismic shift in the entire American economy. Developed wisely, these resources have the potential to bolster America’s manufacturing competitiveness, eliminate oil imports from the Persian Gulf, and radically reduce emissions of global warming pollution. Just four years ago, coal generated half of our electricity. Now it’s down to 35 percent. Why? Because electric utility executives have decided to replace dirty old coal-fired power plants with cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient natural gas, which has grown from 21 percent to 30 percent of U.S. electricity generation in that time. Coal is also being edged out of the electricity market by wind, which has grown from virtually none of our power to 4 percent today. Solar is doubling every year. And when it comes to heating homes during the winter, natural gas wins in landslide. Last winter, families spent an estimated $2,238 to heat their homes, compared to $629 to heat with natural gas. That’s why 1.4 million households in the Northeast have switched away from heating oil in the last 8 years. Most of them are choosing natural gas. Yet, the Republican Party is oblivious to the free market revolution taking place. They are focused on making it easier for the coal industry to pollute while voting to extend more taxpayer subsidies for big oil, nuclear and coal. When you add up hydro, wind, solar, other renewables, and throw in natural gas and other gases, you get 44 percent of our electricity. But just like Governor Romney has given up on 47 percent of Americans, House Republicans are giving up on 44 percent of our electricity sector. In truth, the switch to natural gas is happening for one simple reason: it’s cheaper. Natural gas prices have decreased by 66 percent since 2008. Coal’s gotten 17 percent more expensive during that time. It is cheaper to produce new electricity from natural gas than from coal. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s competition. Low price natural gas is driving an American manufacturing renaissance. The competitiveness of American steel, fertilizer, and petrochemical industries that use huge amounts of natural gas for fuel and feedstock has surged. Many of the 500,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs created since 2010 are a direct result of low natural gas prices. Pricewaterhouse Coopers estimates we’ll create another 1 million jobs by 2025 as a result of abundant, low-cost natural gas. Exporting natural gas will do one thing: raise prices. In fact, that is just what the oil and gas industry wants. By shipping American made natural gas to Japan and Korea, they can fetch prices 6 times higher than ours. In Europe, prices are 3 times higher. Ultimately, some natural gas producers may hope to create a global natural gas market that maximizes their profits. But if that happens, natural gas consumers will be exposed to higher prices and greater market volatility -- in much the same way that the global oil market routinely rips off consumers at the pump. Eighteen applications have been submitted to the Department of Energy seeking to export 40 percent of our current natural gas consumption. Exporting less than half that amount could send domestic natural gas prices skyrocketing by more than 50 percent, according to the Department. If all 18 or more are approved, and if electric utility demand and home heating demand continue on their current course, we could again see a huge price spike in natural gas. This would be painful for American consumers and catastrophic for the fertilizer manufacturers, the chemical and plastics producers, and the steelmakers that rely on low-priced natural gas. It would make it harder to convert our heavy- and medium-duty trucks and buses onto natural gas, which has the potential to reduce our oil imports by 2.4 million barrels per day. But don’t take it from me, billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens had this to say about exporting natural gas: “If we do it, we’re truly going to go down as America’s dumbest generation. It’s bad public policy to export natural gas.” I agree. That is why I believe we need a time out on approving additional LNG export terminals so that we can think through the consequences of expanded LNG exports for our own domestic prices and economic growth. We’ve had 5 votes on the House floor in the past year and half on exporting American energy resources. Republicans have voted in favor of exporting every time. The current natural gas drilling bonanza is radically reshaping our energy portfolio. We must ensure that this American resource is used to bring our troops home and protect the wallets of consumers, and not used to simply further enrich big oil and gas companies.

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