Globalization has eradicated great power war, dedev reverses
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- Economic decline collapses democracy
- Economic Collapse tanks democracy
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DemocracyDecline Kills DemocracyEconomic decline collapses democratizationHalperin 5 Morton Halperin et al, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the Open Society Policy Center, 2005, The Democracy Advantage, p. 90 This chapter has made the case that economic stagnation is a threat to de mocratization. Over 70 percent of democratic backtrackers experienced economic stagnation in the years preceding their political contraction. Moreover, democratizers with more prolonged recessions had a greater tendency to revert to authoritarianism. Backtracking under economic duress has been primarily concentrated in parts of Latin America, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. Nonetheless, democracy has amazing staying power. In more than 95 percent of the cases of sustained economic con traction, democratizing states did not backtrack. Furthermore, even for those that eventually did backtrack, 60 percent regained their democratic course after a several-year interval.
Ben, professor of economics at Harvard, Meltdown: A Case Study, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200507/friedman Not just in America but in the other Western democracies, too, history is replete with instances in which a turn away from openness and tolerance, often accompanied by a weakening of democratic institutions, has followed economic stagnation. The most familiar example is the rise of Nazism in Germany, following that country's economic chaos in the 1920s and then the onset of worldwide depression in the early 1930s. But in Britain such nasty episodes as the repression of the suffragette movement under Asquith, the breaking of Lloyd George's promises to the returning World War I veterans, and the bloody Fascist riots in London's East End all occurred under severe economic distress. So did the ascension of the extremist Boulangist movement in late-nineteenth-century France, and the Action Française movement after World War I. Conversely, in both America and Europe fairness and tolerance have increased, and democratic institutions have strengthened, mostly when the average citizen's standard of living has been rising. The reason is not hard to understand. When their living standards are rising, people do not view themselves, their fellow citizens, and their society as a whole the way they do when those standards are stagnant or falling. They are more trusting, more inclusive, and more open to change when they view their future prospects and their children's with confidence rather than anxiety or fear. Economic growth is not merely the enabler of higher consumption; it is in many ways the wellspring from which democracy and civil society flow. We should be fully cognizant of the risks to our values and liberties if that nourishing source runs dry. Economic Collapse tanks democracyPetrou 9 Michael, PhD in History from Oxford, Maclean’s, March 9, Proquest History suggests the results will be damaging. Political freedom rarely advances during a worldwide recession. "The current downturn, if it continues for some period of time, is likely to be very unhelpful for hope that democracy will spread around the world," says Benjamin M. Friedman, a Harvard University economist and the author of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, in an interview with Maclean's. Friedman argues that political freedom expands during prolonged periods of prosperity, and contracts during regression or stagnation. It's a thesis echoed by Freedom House's Puddington. "Democracy moves ahead when diings are flush," he says. "The history of democracy in times of real economic pain and crisis- it's not very good. I'm certainly hopeful that we're not going to end up like we did in the late 1920s and 1930s. That was a terrible time for world politics." ProlifDecline Causes ProlifGrowth turns proliferation.Schrage 9 (Michael J. Green and Steven P., Michael J. Green is Senior Advisor and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Steven P. Schrage is the CSIS Scholl Chair in International Business and a Former Senior Official with the US Trade Representative's Office, State Department and Ways & Means Committee, It's not just the economy, Available Online @ the Asian Times) Dangerous states It is noteworthy that North Korea, Myanmar and Iran have all intensified their defiance in the wake of the financial crisis, which has distracted the world's leading nations, limited their moral authority and sown potential discord. With Beijing worried about the potential impact of North Korean belligerence or instability on Chinese internal stability, and leaders in Japan and South Korea under siege in parliament because of the collapse of their stock markets, leaders in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang have grown increasingly boisterous about their country's claims to great power status as a nuclear weapons state. The junta in Myanmar has chosen this moment to arrest hundreds of political dissidents and thumb its nose at fellow members of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Iran continues its nuclear program while exploiting differences between the US, UK and France (or the P-3 group) and China and Russia - differences that could become more pronounced if economic friction with Beijing or Russia crowds out cooperation or if Western European governments grow nervous about sanctions as a tool of policy. It is possible that the economic downturn will make these dangerous states more pliable because of falling fuel prices (Iran) and greater need for foreign aid (North Korea and Myanmar), but that may depend on the extent that authoritarian leaders care about the well-being of their people or face internal political pressures linked to the economy. So far, there is little evidence to suggest either and much evidence to suggest these dangerous states see an opportunity to advance their asymmetrical advantages against the international system Yes Prolif Impact Optimists ignore recent developments in IR theory Matthew Kroenig 12, Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University and Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, “The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future?” Prepared for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, May 26, 2012, http://www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=1182&tid=30 The proliferation optimist position, while having a distinguished pedigree, has several major problems. Many of these weaknesses have been chronicled in brilliant detail by Scott Sagan and other contemporary proliferation pessimists.[34] Rather than repeat these substantial efforts, I will use this section to offer some original critiques of the recent incarnations of proliferation optimism. ¶ First and foremost, proliferation optimists do not appear to understand contemporary deterrence theory. I do not say this lightly in an effort to marginalize or discredit my intellectual opponents. Rather, I make this claim with all due caution and with complete sincerity. A careful review of the contemporary proliferation optimism literature does not reflect an understanding of, or engagement with, the developments in academic deterrence theory in top scholarly journals such as the American Political Science Review and International Organization over the past few decades.[35] While early optimists like Viner and Brodie can be excused for not knowing better, the writings of contemporary proliferation optimists ignore the past fifty years of academic research on nuclear deterrence theory. ¶ In the 1940s, Viner, Brodie, and others argued that the advent of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) rendered war among major powers obsolete, but nuclear deterrence theory soon advanced beyond that simple understanding.[36] After all, great power political competition does not end with nuclear weapons. And nuclear-armed states still seek to threaten nuclear-armed adversaries. States cannot credibly threaten to launch a suicidal nuclear war, but they still want to coerce their adversaries. This leads to a credibility problem: how can states credibly threaten a nuclear-armed opponent? Since the 1960s academic nuclear deterrence theory has been devoted almost exclusively to answering this question.[37] And, unfortunately for proliferation optimists, the answers do not give us reasons to be optimistic.¶ Thomas Schelling was the first to devise a rational means by which states can threaten nuclear-armed opponents.[38] He argued that leaders cannot credibly threaten to intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war, but they can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.”[39] They can engage in a process, the nuclear crisis, which increases the risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. As states escalate a nuclear crisis there is an increasing probability that the conflict will spiral out of control and result in an inadvertent or accidental nuclear exchange. As long as the benefit of winning the crisis is greater than the incremental increase in the risk of nuclear war, threats to escalate nuclear crises are inherently credible. In these games of nuclear brinkmanship, the state that is willing to run the greatest risk of nuclear war before back down will win the crisis as long as it does not end in catastrophe. It is for this reason that Thomas Schelling called great power politics in the nuclear era a “competition in risk taking.”[40] This does not mean that states eagerly bid up the risk of nuclear war. Rather, they face gut-wrenching decisions at each stage of the crisis. They can quit the crisis to avoid nuclear war, but only by ceding an important geopolitical issue to an opponent. Or they can the escalate the crisis in an attempt to prevail, but only at the risk of suffering a possible nuclear exchange. Proliferation cascades---causes nuclear war and terrorism Matthew Kroenig 12, Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University and Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, “The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future?” Prepared for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, May 26, 2012, http://www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=1182&tid=30 Further proliferation. Nuclear proliferation poses an additional threat to international peace and security because it causes further proliferation. As former Secretary of State George Schultz once said, “proliferation begets proliferation.”[69] When one country acquires nuclear weapons, its regional adversaries, feeling threatened by its neighbor’s new nuclear capabilities, are more likely to attempt to acquire nuclear weapons in response. Indeed, the history of nuclear proliferation can be read as a chain reaction of proliferation. The United States acquired nuclear weapons in response to Nazi Germany’s crash nuclear program. The Soviet Union and China acquired nuclear weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The United Kingdom and France went nuclear to protect themselves from the Soviet Union. India’s bomb was meant to counter China and it, in turn, spurred Pakistan to join the nuclear club. Today, we worry that, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, other Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, might desire nuclear capabilities, triggering an arms race in a strategically important and volatile region.¶ Of course, reactive proliferation does not always occur. In the early 1960s, for example, U.S. officials worried that a nuclear-armed China would cause Taiwan, Japan, India, Pakistan, and other states to acquire nuclear weapons.[70] In hindsight, we now know that they were correct in some cases, but wrong in others. Using statistical analysis, Philipp Bleek has shown that reactive proliferation is not automatic, but that rather, states are more likely to proliferate in response to neighbors when three conditions are met 1) there is an intense security rivalry between the two countries, 2) the potential proliferant state does not have a security guarantee from a nuclear-armed patron 3) and the potential proliferant state has the industrial and technical capacity to launch an indigenous nuclear program.[71] In other words, reactive proliferation is real, but it is also conditional. If Iran enters the nuclear club, therefore, it is likely that some, but not all, of the countries that we currently worry about will eventually follow suit and become nuclear powers.¶ We should worry about the spread of nuclear weapons in every case, therefore, because the problem will likely extend beyond that specific case. As Wohlstetter cautioned decades ago, proliferation is not an N problem, but an N+1 problem. Further nuclear proliferation is not necessarily a problem, of course, if the spread of nuclear weapons is irrelevant or even good for international politics as obsessionists and optimists protest. But, as the above discussion makes clear, nuclear proliferation, and the further nuclear proliferation it causes, increases the risk of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, emboldens nuclear-armed states to be more aggressive, threatens regional stability, constrains U.S. freedom of action, and weakens America’s alliance relationships, giving us all good reason to fear the spread of nuclear weapons. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.56 Mb. Share with your friends:
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