Uniqueness—Internet Freedom

American influence is on the brink—the changing world order necessitates changes like the affirmative

In conclusion, the American century is not over, if by that we mean the extraordinary period of American pre-eminence in military, economic, and soft power resources that have made the United States central to the workings of the global balance of power, and to the provision of global public goods. Contrary to those who proclaim this the Chinese century, we have not entered a post-American world. But the continuation of the American century will not look like it did in the twentieth century. The American share of the world economy will be less than it was in the middle of the last century, and the complexity represented by the rise of other countries as well as the increased role of non-state actors will make it more difficult for anyone to wield influence and organize action. Analysts should stop using clichés about unipolarity and multipolarity. They will have to live with both in different issues at the same time. And they should stop talking and worrying about poorly specified concepts of decline that mix many different types of behavior and lead to mistaken policy conclusions. Leadership is not the same as domination. America will have to listen in order to get others to enlist in what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called a multipartner world. It is important to remember that there have always been degrees of leadership and degrees of influence during the American century. The United States never had complete control. As we saw in Chapter 1, even when the United States had preponderant resources, it often failed to get what it wanted. And those who argue that the complexity and turmoil of today’s entropic world is much worse than the past should remember a year like 1956 when the United States was unable to prevent Soviet repression of a revolt in Hungary, French loss of Vietnam, or the Suez invasion by our allies Britain, France, and Israel. One should be wary of viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses. To borrow a comedian’s line, “hegemony ain’t what it used to be, but then it never was.” Now, with slightly less preponderance and a much more complex world, the United States will need to make smart strategic choices both at home and abroad if it wishes to maintain its position. The American century is likely to continue for a number of decades at the very least, but it will look very different from how it did when Henry Luce first articulated it.

US soft power is declining—China is more attractive

Kurlantzick 06 (Joshua, visiting scholar for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “China’s Charm: Implications of Chinese Soft Power,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2006, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/PB_47_FINAL.pdf)//kjz

Declining American Soft Power America’s popularity is plummeting around the world. Washington has made it harder for foreigners to obtain visas, undermining the idea of the United States as a land of opportunity. The United States’ unrivalled global power has fostered resentment in some nations toward the United States. The George W. Bush administration’s disavowal of multilateral institutions has damaged the U.S. moral legitimacy abroad. The failures of neoliberal economics, linked to Washington, in regions like Latin America have rebounded against the United States. The results are stark. In a poll of twenty-one nations done by the British Broadcasting Corporation, only one-third of people wanted American values to spread in their nation, and, in another study, more than twice as many nations believed China has a mostly positive influence on the world as believed the United States does. Respect for U.S. values, culture, and companies is deteriorating, too: in a study last year of numerous nations, respondents ranked the United States only eleventh worldwide in cultural, political, and business attractiveness.

Chinese soft power attractive due to recent investment back success

Sing 4/29 (Michael, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 2005 to 2008, he worked on Middle East issues at the National Security Council, “China-Led Bank a Sign of U.S. Struggle to Transform Power Into Policy Success,” Washington Wire, 4/29/15, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/29/china-led-bank-a-sign-of-u-s-struggle-to-transform-power-into-policy-success/?KEYWORDS=%22soft+power%22)//kjz

The failure of the U.S. campaign to dissuade allies from joining China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was greeted in some quarters as a sign of American decline. But this episode was not a crisis of American power, which remains unequaled. And while the threat that the bank poses to that power and to the international order it undergirds has been much touted, it is in fact overstated. In fact, the main portent of the episode is not Beijing’s overturning of the international economic order or the arrival of China as a U.S. peer but the United States’ continued struggle to transform its power into policy success. Democracy favors freedom and debate over efficiency in policy making. Contrast the long-running clashes between the White House and Congress over Iran policy with China’s swift execution of its infrastructure investment bank, which President Xi Jinping proposed in 2013. The checks and balances in the U.S. system are a diplomatic strength and ensure that our foreign policy serves the public interest and can be sustained over political cycles. But the level of inefficiency this debate imposes on policy making can vary widely. The difference between deliberation and dysfunction is, in part, a matter of presidential and political leadership. It is no coincidence that the Chinese bank has progressed as two initiatives in Washington foundered: International Monetary Fund quota reform, which would increase the IMF’s capitalization while increasing the voting rights of emerging economies; and fast-track trade promotion authority to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership. U.S.-led reform of the international economic order that preserves our role while appealing to emerging economies would likely win more adherents than any Chinese-led order. But Washington’s lack of progress toward IMF and trade reform means that the U.S. has been fighting something with nothing. The experience with China’s investment bank is less a demonstration that Chinese soft power is compelling than that America’s has been allowed to atrophy. It’s tempting to chalk up U.S. policy paralysis to political polarization, but that wouldn’t be accurate. IMF reform is opposed primarily on the right; trade-promotion authority on the left. As campaigning has increasingly trumped governing, bipartisan consensus has become more elusive even on issues where it once reigned such as Iran and Israel policy. A similar erosion of statecraft is evident in U.S. foreign relations. The United States has faced difficulty in recent years in challenging adversaries–failing, for example, to transform economic leverage into negotiating gains in the Iran nuclear talks or to deter serial Russian aggression in its near abroad. At the same time, we have neglected alliances that would conserve and amplify U.S. power. It would be challenging to identify a single U.S. alliance that is stronger today than it was in 2009. How to think about all this? The world is changing, but our diplomacy has not kept up. During the Cold War, it was relatively straightforward to make the case that states should not only pursue their own interests but also uphold the Western-led international order in the face of the Communist threat. Today, we are victims of our own success: No such unifying threat exists, and power and prosperity are more diffuse. Our diplomacy must therefore be more nimble–setting priorities, forming coalitions around shared values and interests, and working assiduously to maintain the broad appeal of the international order. This means working harder not only to understand how our allies perceive their interests–in this case, allies clearly determined that their interests were better served by joining with Beijing–but also demonstrating U.S. dedication to those interests amid diminishing national security budgets and commitments.

Surveillance Hurts Soft Power

Surveillance revelations cause decline in American influence

Quinn, ’13, (Adam, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at University of Birmingham, “Obama’s soft power a hard sell after NSA revelations,” The Conversation, October 28, 2013, http://theconversation.com/obamas-soft-power-a-hard-sell-after-nsa-revelations-19572)//erg

For presidents, like sports team managers, the tough weeks tend to outnumber the jubilant. But even by the standards of an unforgiving job, Barack Obama could be forgiven for feeling unusually buffeted of late. Many of the blows have come on the domestic front, with the all-consuming stand off of the government shutdown segueing into frantic efforts to defend and repair the roll-out of Obamacare amid charges of fatal technological incompetence. But if he were tempted to seek solace in the autonomy of foreign policy – as modern presidents have been wont to do – there has been little consolatory triumph to be found. In August and September, he was caught in a mighty tangle over Syria, threatening military strikes over its chemical weapons use before being hamstrung first by Britain’s refusal to join the charge and then by the reluctance of his own Congress. The legacy of that mess continues to work itself out in unpredictable ways, such as increasingly public tensions between the US and Saudi Arabia, hitherto one of its more solid allies. Though the eventual Russian-orchestrated deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons was a respectable one given the circumstances, the episode as a whole spoke of an America straining to translate its power into influence, or to maintain a united front among its friends. Now the rolling scandal over National Security Agency surveillance, triggered by the mass leak of secrets by Edward Snowden, has entered another phase of intensity, this time centred on Europe. Revelations that the US tapped the phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, operated numerous “listening posts” on European soil, and sucked up vast quantities of communications data from millions of citizens across Europe have broken in the press. Public expressions of displeasure have been forthcoming, including a European Union statement. Taken together, these vignettes of public dissention will be enough to make many ask the question: is the US losing its influence even over its allies? Is this just a tricky moment for a particular president, or harbinger of a broader trend? Global shift First, the necessary caveats: enduring alliance relationships resemble long marriages, in that the mere presence of moments of strain, or even audible arguments, cannot be taken as evidence of imminent separation. Looking back over the longer-term history of America’s relations with its allies, episodes such as the Vietnam War, the “Euromissile” crisis of the 1980s, and the controversial interventions in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, demonstrate that sharp differences of opinion and conflicting priorities are no radical new state of affairs. And however unhappy they may be with their recent treatment, it is not obvious that countries such as Germany, France or Saudi Arabia have anywhere to go if they did decide the time had come to tout for alternative alliance partners. It is not entirely clear how European annoyance might manifest in ways that have practical importance. It is true they have it in their power to threaten progress on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership process, but it is not clear that such an action would harm the US more than Europe itself. In short, even if they are disgruntled, necessity may ultimately prove a sufficient force to help them get over it. The reason present friction between the US and its allies carries greater weight, however, is that it arises in the context of a global shift in power away from the US and its established allies and towards new powers. The prospect of “American decline” in terms of relative international power is the focus of a great deal of debate over both substance and semantics. But the central fact is that even the part of the US’s own intelligence apparatus charged with long-term foresight regards it as established that within 20 years the world will have transitioned from the “unipolar” American dominance of the first post-Cold War decades to a world in which multiple centres of power must coexist. The centre of economic gravity has already shifted markedly towards Asia during the last decade.

Current domestic surveillance practices significantly damage US ability to leverage soft power

Quinn, ’13, (Adam, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at University of Birmingham, “Obama’s soft power a hard sell after NSA revelations,” The Conversation, October 28, 2013, http://theconversation.com/obamas-soft-power-a-hard-sell-after-nsa-revelations-19572)//erg

This certainly does not mean any single new power is about to rise to replace the US as a hegemonic force. Nor does it mean the US will be going anywhere: the scale of its existing advantages across a range of fronts – military, economic, institutional – is sufficiently great that it is assured a prominent place at the table of whatever order may come. What it does mean is that Americans must presently be engaged in thinking carefully about how best to leverage their advantages to retain the maximum possible influence into the future. If they cannot continue to be first among equals in managing the world order, they will wish at least to ensure that order is one that runs in line with their own established preferences. Soft power Many of those who are optimistic about the ability of the US to pull off this project of declining power without declining influence place emphasis on two things: the extent to which the US has soft power due to widespread admiration for its political and cultural values, and the extent to which it has locked in influence through the extent of its existing networks of friends and allies. Even if these advantages cannot arrest America’s decline on harder metrics, if played properly they can mitigate its consequences and secure an acceptable future. Shoring up support from like-minded countries such as those of Europe ought to be the low-hanging fruit of such an effort. So the current problems do harm on both fronts. It will be difficult to maintain the allure of soft power if global opinion settles on the view that American political discord has rendered its democracy dysfunctional at home, or that its surveillance practices have given rein to the mores of a police state. And it will be harder to preserve American status through the force of its alliances if its politicians' economic irresponsibility (for example, publicly contemplating a default on American national debt) or scandals over surveillance or drone strikes alienate their public or cause their leaders to question the extent to which they really are on the same side as the US. Obama’s day-to-day foreign policy struggles should not be simplistically taken as signs of collapsing American influence. But if the long-term plan is to carefully manage relative decline so as to preserves maximum influence, episodes such as those his country has faced since August do nothing to boost the prospects of success.

US hypocrisy prevents spill over

Migranyan 13 (Andranik, professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and as a director of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, “Scandals Harm U.S. Soft Power,” The National Interest, 7/5/13, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/scandals-harm-us-soft-power-8695)//kjz

On a practical geopolitical level, the spying scandals have seriously tarnished the reputation of the United States. They have circumscribed its ability to exert soft power; the same influence that made the U.S. model very attractive to the rest of the world. This former lustre is now diminished. The blatant everyday intrusions into the private lives of Americans, and violations of individual rights and liberties by runaway, unaccountable U.S. government agencies, have deprived the United States of its authority to dictate how others must live and what others must do. Washington can no longer lecture others when its very foundational institutions and values are being discredited—or at a minimum, when all is not well “in the state of Denmark.” Perhaps precisely because not all is well, many American politicians seem unable to adequately address the current situation. Instead of asking what isn’t working in the government and how to ensure accountability and transparency in their institutions, they try, in their annoyance, to blame the messenger—as they are doing in Snowden’s case. Some Senators hurried to blame Russia and Ecuador for anti-American behavior, and threatened to punish them should they offer asylum to Snowden. Ads by Adblade Trending Offers and Articles Here's the ugly truth about diabetic amputation your doctor will never tell you. 30 News Anchors With Jaw Dropping Beauty These Hollywood actresses weren't shy when it came to showing their figures These threats could only cause confusion in sober minds, as every sovereign country retains the right to issue or deny asylum to whomever it pleases. In addition, the United States itself has a tradition of always offering political asylum to deserters of the secret services of other countries, especially in the case of the former Soviet Union and other ex-socialist countries. In those situations, the United States never gave any consideration to how those other countries might react—it considered the deserters sources of valuable information. As long as deserters have not had a criminal and murderous past, they can receive political asylum in any country that considers itself sovereign and can stand up to any pressure and blackmail. Meanwhile, the hysteria of some politicians, if the State Department or other institutions of the executive branch join it, can only accelerate the process of Snowden’s asylum. For any country he might ask will only be more willing to demonstrate its own sovereignty and dignity by standing up to a bully that tries to dictate conditions to it. In our particular case, political pressure on Russia and President Putin could turn out to be utterly counterproductive. I believe that Washington has enough levelheaded people to understand that fact, and correctly advise the White House. The administration will need sound advice, as many people in Congress fail to understand the consequences of their calls for punishment of sovereign countries or foreign political leaders that don’t dance to Washington’s tune. Judging by the latest exchange between Moscow and Washington, it appears that the executive branches of both countries will find adequate solutions to the Snowden situation without attacks on each other’s dignity and self-esteem. Russia and the United States are both Security Council members, and much hinges on their decisions, including a slew of common problems that make cooperation necessary. Yet the recent series of scandals has caused irreparable damage to the image and soft power of the United States. I do not know how soon this damage can be repaired. But gone are the days when Orwell was seen as a relic of the Cold War, as the all-powerful Leviathan of the security services has run away from all accountability to state and society. Today the world is looking at America—and its model for governance—with a more critical eye.

Surveillance undermines democracy and soft power

Legal Monitor Worldwide 13 (a subscription based publication covering legal news and developments from worldwide jurisdictions, “Disintegration of democratic values threatens future of US,” Legal Monitor Worldwide, 6/21/13, Lexis)//kjz

The case of Edward Snowden raises a number of difficult issues for the US. The case impacts on Washington's foreign policy and on its domestic politics. The decline of US democracy is now sharply in focus. Snowden's dramatic flight to Hong Kong raises the issue of US-China relations. The complexities of Hong Kong law could lead to Snowden residing there for an extended time while matters move through the courts. It is ironic that just before the recent summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama, the White House undiplomatically pointed an accusing finger in public at China for alleged cyber warfare. Such clumsy, abrasive, and unnecessary tactics blew up in Washington's face with the Snowden affair. While spy cases often spark lurid headlines and a stir when made public, state-to-state relations are not destabilized. As governments well know, espionage is part and parcel of the game of nations. High-profile cases involving political dissenters, while prickly, do not destabilize fundamental state-to-state relations. Snowden positioned himself as a political dissenter who knowingly took an extreme step in violation of the law to make his political point. The US and China have an appropriate official mechanism for consultation on cyber war issues within the important US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue process. The Snowden affair seems to be an appropriate agenda item for the upcoming July meeting, an opportunity for Washington to provide a full explanation. Americans naturally want military and other capabilities to defend their country, but we do not want such capabilities turned on ourselves in violation of the US constitution. Since the 9/11 attacks, however, the Bush administration and the Obama administration engaged in internal surveillance activities which are controversial if not unconstitutional. The Snowden case has had more impact on US domestic politics than on the state-to-state relations between the US and China. China has maintained a diplomatic low-profile stance. Russia and Iceland have indicated they would consider an asylum request by Snowden. It would be understandable if China would do the same at some point. The impact on US domestic politics is squarely on issues of constitutional law. Already the watchdog American Civil Liberties Union has filed a court case against the government as a result of Snowden's revelations. Irate politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties denounce what they see as improper and unconstitutional behavior. The constitutional issue in the US is complicated by the fact that the US Congress itself passed legislation, opposed by critics, which included vague language and loopholes that the White House took advantage of for domestic surveillance activities. Critics were outraged by what they saw as White House lying about possibly illegal domestic surveillance activities. There was further outrage over the recent congressional testimony of the head of the NSA and the head of the US Intelligence Community. Critics said these two men committed perjury by lying to the US Congress, which is a high crime. In the US system governed by its unique constitution, the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers is a core value. Constitutions and political systems naturally vary around the world, but the separation of powers doctrine is fundamental to the US constitution. It is based on ancient principles found in Greco-Roman tradition as well as in European parliamentary tradition. As a result of the Snowden affair, one aspect of the internal crisis of US democracy is before the world. The construction of the "imperial presidency" and distortion of the separation of powers started during the Cold War. Critics today say US constitutional democracy is in deep decline reflecting not only the disintegration of the rule of law, but also reflecting the disintegration of US civic culture. While some US politicians and officials hypocritically attempt to manipulate the cyber war issue to undermine US-China relations, the real issue is the constitutional crisis and disintegration of democracy in the US. The Snowden affair shows the US must clean up its own house rather than point an accusing finger at others.

Hypocrisy hurts soft power and human rights protection

Gardels 05 (Nathan, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly since it began publishing in 1985. Since January 2014 he has been editor-in-chief of THEWORLDPOST, “The Rise and Fall of America’s Soft Power,” New Perspectives Quarterly, winter 2005, https://onlinelibrarystatic.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1540-5842.2005.00718.x/asset/j.1540-5842.2005.00718.x.pdf?v=1&t=ib9nb68d&s=a861662ec00cfe0815f1f12ce5848ee8cb9ca038)//kjz

IRAQ WAR AND ABU GHRAIB IMAGES | The other element that has brought down American prestige, and not just in the Arab and Muslim world, is the Iraq war and the torture at Abu Ghraib. For a superpower to act unilaterally—if it is perceived to act ONLY in its own interest as if it were a NORMAL power—is, by definition, to undermine the basis of the consensual hegemony granted to it by others, who expect it to look after their interests as well. Without dwelling on facts familiar to all during the buildup to war, acting in the name of the world but without the world’s consent forfeited too much political capital—that is, soft power. Another superpower did emerge to oppose US policy in the past year: global public opinion. It was led, figuratively, by Nelson Mandela, the ultimate soft power icon of moral leadership, who said early on, “America is a threat to world peace.” Its opposition to US policy meant that the political objectives for which our unparalleled military might paved the way could not in the end be met. Soft power checkmated hard power. Here it might be apt to paraphrase Stalin on the Pope. Some skeptics might ask “how many divisions does global public opinion have?” Answer: It has the divisions so direly needed now but not deployed in Iraq—no divisions from Turkey, from the French, from Spain, from NATO. Walter Lippmann wrote about phantom public opinion. But in this case we’ve seen a phantom coalition, where public opinion from Japan to Italy to Britain doesn’t stand behind their leaders, constraining the actual capacity of the coalition to shape postwar Iraq. Spain bowed out after the fact of war; the fledgling democracy in Turkey, though championed by the US for membership in Europe, bowed out before, making the US invasion jump through tactical hoops to get into Iraq. It turned out to be only an assumed ally. In this context, and by contrast, across much of Asia, China has become seen as the stabilizer seeking a “peaceful rise” while the US upsets the apple cart, not only through the war in Iraq but with its anti-terror crusade that is a low priority for most Asians. The lack of consent for going into Iraq, and the daily demonstration of powerlessness since, have made even those Asians suspicious of China’s new power concerned about whether they can rely on the US. Tokyo’s nationalist governor, Shintaro Ishihara, told me as much in a long conversation last year: Japan, he said, can no longer depend on the US to take care of anyone’s interest but its own, so Japan must reopen its nuclear option and be prepared to remilitarize. Just as DeGaulle was sure the US would not sacrifice New York for Paris, so too the new breed of Japanese politician doesn’t trust the US not to sacrifice Tokyo in pursuit of other interests. Paradoxically, by willfully ignoring the interests of others as expressed in their public opinion, the US unilateralist approach to Iraq and other issues has pushed the multipolar world order out of its post-Cold War womb. This is the most profound strategic consequence of the loss of US soft power. America has been demoted from a hegemon to a preponderant power—by the public opinion of its own allies! Condi Rice once argued to me that the French call for a multipolar world was the rhetoric of an adversary, not an ally, especially when proclaimed at summits in Beijing and Moscow. The rhetoric is now on its way to realization. In this respect, the Iraq war has had a demonstration effect, but not the one Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney envisioned. Rather than demonstrate American power it has demonstrated the limits to American power. Qian Qichen, China’s former foreign minister, has summed up the lesson as most of the world sees it: “The st Century is not the ‘American Century.’ That does not mean the US does not want the dream. It means it is incapable of realizing the goal.” As Joe Nye writes in his book Soft Power, “Politics in an information age may ultimately be about whose story wins.” Much of America’s winning story which accounted for it being a soft superpower—human rights, the rule of law, an historic liberator instead of occupier—was further undercut by the images of humiliation, torture and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Certain images so iconify a moment in history they are impossible to erase. Germans knocking down the Berlin Wall piece by piece with sledge hammers is one. The lone individual standing down a Chinese tank near Tiananmen Square is another. On the ignoble side, now there are the images of Abu Ghraib. The further the truth of the image is from a false claim, the deeper and more enduring the damage. Whereas American softpower undermined Soviet hard power nearly  years ago, here American hard power undermined its own soft power. As Brezezinski argued recently: “In our entire history as a nation, world opinion has never been as hostile toward the US as it is today.” The hearts and minds once won are now being lost. And there are real costs. Just two examples to illustrate the case. After the Abu Ghraib images emerged, I asked Boutros Boutros-Ghali about the impact in the Arab world and beyond. First, of course, he said these photos were a gift to Al Qaeda recruiters. Second, he said, “they damage the role of organizations all around the world that deal with the protection of human rights and law in the time of war. I am the president of the Egyptian Commission on Human Rights, “ he told me. “It will be difficult for me now to say, ‘Look, the international community is demanding that we clean up the human rights situation in the Arab world.’ Their response now is: ‘The superpower is not respecting human rights in Iraq or Guantanamo. So the pressure is off . . . governments all over the world will say that security is more important than the protection of human rights.’”

NSA revelations tanked credibility

Gross 13 (Grant, covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for the IDG News Service, “The NSA scandal has damaged U.S. credibility online,” ComputerWorld, 12/5/13, http://www.computerworld.com/article/2486546/internet/the-nsa-scandal-has-damaged-u-s--credibility-online.html)//kjz

The U.S. government has a huge image problem worldwide as it promotes Internet freedom on one hand and conducts mass surveillance on the other, potentially creating major problems for U.S. technology companies, a former official with President Barack Obama's administration said Thursday. Many U.S. policy makers don't recognize the level of distrust created by recent revelations about U.S. National Security Agency surveillance, and that lack of trust will drive other countries away from U.S. technology firms, said Andrew McLaughlin, former White House deputy CTO. "We, as an advocate for freedom of speech and privacy worldwide, are much, much, much more screwed than we generally think in Washington, and ... American industry and our Internet sector is more much, much, much more screwed than we think internationally," McLaughlin said during a speech at a Human Rights First summit in Washington, D.C. Many overseas critics of the U.S. see the Obama administration's push for Internet freedom as "profoundly hypocritical" in the face of the NSA surveillance revelations and a continued push by U.S. trade officials to have U.S. trading partners filter the Internet to protect against copyright violations, said McLaughlin, now president of Digg, the online news aggregation service. The NSA surveillance has led to an intense "level of anger and the degree of betrayal" in many countries that U.S. policy makers don't seem to fully appreciate, he said. And many countries have begun to explore other options beyond U.S. technology companies because of the surveillance revelations, he added. There's now a perception outside the U.S. that the country's technology companies "are willing instruments of violation of civil rights and civil liberties," McLaughlin said. "We have essentially nationalized what were previously seen as stateless Internet entities."

NSA revelations hurt US influence

Neier 13 (Aryeh, an American human rights campaigner. He was the president of the Open Society Institute from 1993-2012 and a founder of Human Rights Watch. His most recent book is Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights, “After the NSA revelations, who will listen to America on human rights?,” The Guardian, 11/11/13, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/11/nsa-revelations-america-human-rights)//kjz

One of the unfortunate consequences of the spying by the NSA that has now been revealed is that it makes it more difficult for the United States to be effective in promoting human rights internationally. America's ability to exercise a positive influence on the practices of other governments had been severely damaged under the Bush administration. That was because American abuses against detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib deprived Washington of the moral authority to criticise others when they engaged in such practices as prolonged detentions without charges or trials, or trials before irregular courts, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or torture. President Obama's inability to fulfil his promise to close Guantánamo because of congressional opposition, and his unwillingness to hold Bush-era officials to account for their abuses, has hampered his administration in recovering lost moral authority. That may help to explain why the Obama administration has been relatively reluctant to speak out forcefully about abuses of rights by governments such as those of China and Russia. Of course, dependence on those governments economically and eagerness for their collaboration in the ongoing global struggle against terrorism were also probably factors in muting American criticism. What the world has learned about the NSA's systematic intrusions on the privacy of others has dashed hopes that the US would gradually recover its voice in speaking out for rights. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a government that is seen by many worldwide as a great violator of rights to be credible in promoting those same rights. Of course, the damage to American foreign policy by the practices of the NSA goes far beyond American capacity to promote human rights. Perhaps the damage in Europe has been the greatest. Europe has much stronger protections for privacy than the US, reflecting a high level of public concern. Nowhere is the commitment to privacy stronger than in Germany, where article one of the country's constitution, the Basic Law, begins with the assertion: "Human dignity is inviolable. To respect it and protect it is the duty of all state power." Dignity, which also has a central place in the European charter of fundamental rights, but is not mentioned in the US constitution, is understood in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to encompass a commitment to privacy. In the absence of a clear repudiation by the Obama administration of practices of the NSA that go far beyond the requirements of national security, including a pledge to discontinue spying on European leaders, and to end indiscriminate surveillance of many millions of European citizens, it seems likely that co-operation with the United States on a host of issues will decline drastically. The US once enjoyed a reputation as a country that respected human rights. This enhanced its political standing with other countries and gave Washington the capacity to promote these rights worldwide. Its stand on rights had been an asset; now it is turning into a liability. The main reason to respect rights, of course, is because of their intrinsic worth and significance. A secondary reason that is not negligible, however, is that America's practices on rights also have a significant impact on the country's other interests in its relations with the rest of the world.

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