Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 Hegemony Core Brovero/Verney/Hurwitz

AT – Entanglements/Wars

No entanglement – hegemony reduces likelihood of conflict

[Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, “Lean Forward”, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7-2-13, AFB]

For many advocates of retrenchment, the problem is that the mere possession of globe-girdling military capabilities supposedly inflates policymakers' conception of the national interest, so much so that every foreign problem begins to look like America's to solve. Critics also argue that the country's military superiority causes it to seek total solutions to security problems, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, that could be dealt with in less costly ways. Only a country that possessed such awesome military power and faced no serious geopolitical rival would fail to be satisfied with partial fixes, such as containment, and instead embark on wild schemes of democracy building, the argument goes.

Furthermore, they contend, the United States' outsized military creates a sense of obligation to do something with it even when no U.S. interests are at stake. As Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the UN, famously asked Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when debating intervention in Bosnia in 1993, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

If the U.S. military scrapped its forces and shuttered its bases, then the country would no doubt eliminate the risk of entering needless wars, having tied itself to the mast like Ulysses. But if it instead merely moved its forces over the horizon, as is more commonly proposed by advocates of retrenchment, whatever temptations there were to intervene would not disappear. The bigger problem with the idea that a forward posture distorts conceptions of the national interest, however, is that it rests on just one case: Iraq. That war is an outlier in terms of both its high costs (it accounts for some two-thirds of the casualties and budget costs of all U.S. wars since 1990) and the degree to which the United States shouldered them alone. In the Persian Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. allies bore more of the burden, controlling for the size of their economies and populations.

Besides, the Iraq war was not an inevitable consequence of pursuing the United States' existing grand strategy; many scholars and policymakers who prefer an engaged America strongly opposed the war. Likewise, continuing the current grand strategy in no way condemns the United States to more wars like it. Consider how the country, after it lost in Vietnam, waged the rest of the Cold War with proxies and highly limited interventions. Iraq has generated a similar reluctance to undertake large expeditionary operations--what the political scientist John Mueller has dubbed "the Iraq syndrome." Those contending that the United States' grand strategy ineluctably leads the country into temptation need to present much more evidence before their case can be convincing.

AT – Counterbalancing

Balancing arguments false – no meaningful balancing

[Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, “Lean Forward”, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7-2-13, AFB]

One such alleged cost of the current grand strategy is that, in the words of the political scientist Barry Posen, it "prompts states to balance against U.S. power however they can." Yet there is no evidence that countries have banded together in anti-American alliances or tried to match the United States' military capacity on their own-- or that they will do so in the future.

No counterbalancing – security threshold makes it impossible and causes states to bandwagon

Fiammenghi, University of Bologna Department of Politics Fellow, 11

[Davide, Spring 2011, “The Security Curve and the Structure of International Politics: A Neorealist Synthesis,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 136-137, EBSCOhost, accessed 7/9/13, WD]
Balancing makes sense as long as it has a theoretical possibility of success. When an aspiring hegemon’s concentration of power becomes too great, however, balancing ceases to be possible. If a state were to become so powerful that it no longer feared its rivals, even if they were in a coalition, then opposing it would be useless. This hypothesis appears to drive William Wohlforth’s analysis of U.S. unipolarity.39 I refer to this concept as the “absolute security threshold,”40 that is, the amount of relative power beyond which negative security externalities revert to being positive because balancing becomes impossible (see ªgure 1). One could argue that when rivals pool their efforts to counter a hegemon, the hegemon’s relative power position should decline. Although this is probably true, it is not always so. Sometimes the hegemon’s latent power is simply too great, as the Macedonians and Romans demonstrated.41 Aware of their limitations in the face of such preponderant adversaries, weaker states bandwagon with the hegemon, and the hegemon’s security increases rapidly in step with its power. The security threshold is “absolute” because no state or group of states can impede the hegemon. From a theoretical perspective, the structural incentives are ambiguous, because the function that describes the relationship between power and security is not linear. Up to a certain point, the maximization of power coincides with the maximization of security. But when an aspiring hegemon crosses the security threshold, it must decide whether to aim for the absolute security threshold or maintain a position of preeminence as a great power, though not as the hegemon. In neither case can it be said that the state has disregarded structural constraints or that structural variables are the only determinants of its behavior. In light of the security curve, scholars should reconsider the debate regarding the strategy of maximization.

The US is past the security threshold which means that only a collapse in hegemony risks conflict

Fiammenghi, University of Bologna Department of Politics Fellow, 11

[Davide, Spring 2011, “The Security Curve and the Structure of International Politics: A Neorealist Synthesis,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 143, EBSCOhost, accessed 7/9/13, WD]
In principle, the absolute security threshold should not pose the same problem because of the logical limits in determining it. Ideally, the absolute threshold should represent 50 percent of the capabilities in the system, because at this level the sum of all the forces opposing the aspiring hegemon is in - sufficient to successfully balance it. Still, it is useful to consider William Wohlforth’s admonition: “If balancing were the frictionless, costless activity assumed in some balance-of-power theories, then the unipolar power would need more than 50 percent of the capabilities in the great power system to stave off a counterpoise. . . . But such expectations miss the fact that alliance politics always impose costs.” 59 It is therefore reasonable to assume that the absolute security threshold is around 45 percent of the military capabilities in the system. This is the figure William Thompson suggests in describing a near- unipolar system. 60

In this light, the absence of balancing against the United States today appears less puzzling. The United States has already moved beyond the absolute threshold, making balancing futile. 61 Levy and Thompson raise the important question of why other states failed to balance against the United States when it was a rising power but not yet a hegemon. 62 Part of the answer lies in the United States’ unusual path to primacy. For decades, the Soviet Union maintained a rough balance with the United States. 63 U.S. primacy resulted from the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. It may be an exaggeration to suggest that the United States became a hegemon by accident, but the outcome was not planned. 64 The extraordinarily wide gap in capabilities created by the fall of the Soviet Union left other states with little choice but to acquiesce. Countries such as China, Iran, Russia, and Syria, or even Brazil and Pakistan, may not like U.S. primacy, but they lack the capabilities to challenge it. 65 Meanwhile, other countries benefiting from U.S. primacy appear not to be worried about it. The next section considers hegemonic strategies that can soften opposition.

Even if others want to counterbalance, the US is way too far ahead

Thayer, Baylor Political Science Professor, 6

[Bradley A., November 1, 2006, National Interest, “In Defense of Primacy,” p. 37, EBSCOhost, accessed 7/7/13, WD]

THERE IS no other state, group of states or international organization that can provide these global benefits. None even comes close. The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on matters great and trivial. Thus it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect Russia or China to take up these responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have the capabilities. Let's face it: for the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only practical hope of solving the world's ills.

500 years of statistical evidence is on our side – no counterbalancing – and simply maintaining the status quo of US hegemony does not provoke coalitions

Levy, Rutgers University Professor, and Thompson, Indiana Political Science Professor, 10

[Jack S., and William R., Summer 2010, “Balancing on Land and at Sea,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 1, p. 41-42, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00001, accessed 7/9/13, WD]

Our argument and our empirical findings have important implications for contemporary debates about balancing behavior. The absence of a great power balancing coalition against the United States is not the puzzle that some have claimed it to be, but it is consistent with at least five centuries of behavior in the global system. This is not to say that balancing coalitions never form against leading maritime or global powers, only that the threshold for balancing is both higher and different. We can certainly imagine the United States behaving in such a way as to threaten the interests of other great powers and eventually to provoke a balancing coalition, but the trigger would have to involve specific behavior that threatens other great powers, not the fact of U.S. power. Whereas dominant continental powers are inherently threatening because of their power and system-induced uncertainties regarding their intentions, the threat from predominant global powers to other great powers emerges primarily from their behavior and from what that signals about their intentions.

No counterbalancing – heg is sustainable

Monteiro, Yale Political Science Professor, 11

[Nuno P., April 25, 2011, “Balancing Act: Why Unipolarity May Be Durable,” http://irworkshop.sites.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Monteiro_IRW.pdf, p. 19-20, accessed 7/6/13, WD]

The post-Cold War empirical record is insufficient for a definitive test of my theory. Still, the absence of militarization by China provides support for my qualified-durability thesis in contrast with declinist views. Declinists have no good account for why a balancing effort has not taken place thus far but is nevertheless guaranteed to take place in the future. Their argument that US competitors are still too weak to put up a militarized challenge to US hegemony is unpersuasive. Japan challenged US preponderance in the Pacific head-on in 1941 when it had only about 12% of US GDP. China’s GDP is today over 35% of the US’s, or three times higher in comparison. 47 And yet, China has not challenged US global preponderance militarily. But, by the same token, the history of the last twenty years does not allow us to adjudicate between my theory and primacists views. After all, primacists can only be refuted once a balancing effort against the United States is under way. Nonetheless, it is possible to compare the two theories’ accounts of the reasons behind the absence of balancing. According to my view, China has not balanced against the United States because its nuclear arsenal guarantees its survival and its long-term economic prospects are facilitated by a US strategy of accommodation. According to the primacist view, in contrast, the absence of a Chinese balancing effort against the United States results from the insurmountable power gap between the two countries. For primacists, the power gap between the United States and China heightens the difficulty -- in terms of inefficiency, cost, and collective-action problems -- of balancing, beyond the point at which it stops making sense. 48 But this cannot be the case. Again, if Japan challenged US preponderance in 1941 with one-third of the relative economic power China possesses today, something other than insufficient economic power must account for the absence of a Chinese military challenge to the United States. In order to show how the contemporary historical record matches the empirical implications of my theory, the remainder of this section will establish four points. First, that Chinese economic power has been increasing steadily and rapidly. Second, that the United States has actively accommodated this rise in Chinese latent power, even at the expense of its own relative power. Third, that China’s survival is guaranteed by its nuclear arsenal. Fourth, that despite the rapid rise in Chinese economic power, Beijing has thus far eschewed a strategy of militarization and armed competition with the United States.

No threat to preeminence – foreign policy allows for regional leaders without counter-balancing threat

Wohlforth Dartmouth College Government Professor 9

[William C., January 2009, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, And Great Power War”,http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf, World Politics 61, no. 1, p. 53, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]

Given its material dominance and activist foreign policy, the United ¶ States is a salient factor in the identity politics of all major powers, and ¶ it plays a role in most regional hierarchies. Yet there is scant evidence in ¶ U.S. foreign policy discourse of concerns analogous to late cold war perceptions of a Soviet “thrust to global preeminence” or mid-nineteenthcentury British apprehensions about Tsar Nicholas’s “pretensions to be ¶ the arbiter of Europe.” Even when rhetoric emanating from the other ¶ powers suggests dissatisfaction with the U.S. role, diplomatic episodes ¶ rich with potential for such perceptions were resolved by bargaining ¶ relatively free from positional concerns: tension in the Taiwan Strait ¶ and the 2001 spy plane incident with China, for example, or numerous tense incidents with Russia from Bosnia to Kosovo to more recent ¶ regional disputes in post-Soviet Eurasia.

On the contrary, under unipolarity U.S. diplomats have frequently ¶ adopted policies to enhance the security of the identities of Russia, ¶ China, Japan, and India as great (though second-tier) powers, with an ¶ emphasis on their regional roles. U.S. officials have urged China to ¶ manage the six-party talks on North Korea while welcoming it as a ¶ “responsible stakeholder” in the system; they have urged a much larger ¶ regional role for Japan; and they have deliberately fostered India’s status ¶ as a “responsible” nuclear power. Russia, the country whose elite has ¶ arguably confronted the most threats to its identity, has been the object ¶ of what appear to be elaborate U.S. status-management policies that ¶ included invitations to form a partnership with NATO, play a prominent ¶ role in Middle East diplomacy (from which Washington had striven to ¶ exclude Moscow for four decades), and to join the rich countries’ club, ¶ the G7 (when Russia clearly lacked the economic requisites). Statusmanagement policies on this scale appear to be enabled by a unipolar ¶ structure that fosters confidence in the security of the United States’ ¶ identity as number one. The United States is free to buttress the status of these states as second-tier great powers and key regional players precisely because it faces no serious competition for overall system ¶ leadership.

No balancing – US rivals haven’t ramped up defense spending, nor have states changed their policies towards the US – relations with China, Russia, and India have actually improved

Lieber, University of Notre Dame Political Science Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and Alexander University of Virginia Politics Associate Professor, 5

(Keir A., Gerard, Summer 2005, International Security, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back,” http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, p. 109, accessed 7/5/13, IC)

Many scholars and policy analysts predicted the emergence of balancing against the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Since then, however, great power balancing—when states seriously commit them- selves to containing a threatening state—has failed to emerge, despite a huge increase in the preponderant power of the United States. More recently, the prospect and then onset of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 gener- ated renewed warnings of an incipient global backlash. Some observers claim that signs of traditional balancing by states—that is, internal defense buildups or external alliance formation—can already be detected. Others suggest that such “hard balancing” may not be occurring. Instead, they argue that the world is witnessing a new phenomenon of “soft balancing,” in which states seek to undermine and restrain U.S. power in ways that fall short of classic measures. But in both versions, many believe that the wait is over and that the world is beginning to push back.

This article argues, in contrast, that both lines of argument are unpersuasive. The past few years have certainly witnessed a surge in resentment and criti- cism of specific U.S. policies. But great power balancing against the United States has yet to occur, a finding that we maintain offers important insights into states’ perceptions and intentions. The United States’ nearest rivals are not ramping up defense spending to counter U.S. power, nor have these states sought to pool their efforts or resources for counterbalancing. We argue, fur- ther, that discussion of soft balancing is much ado about nothing. Defining or operationalizing the concept is difficult; the behavior typically identified by it seems identical to normal diplomatic friction; and, regardless, the evidence does not support specific predictions suggested by those advancing the concept.

Global interactions during and after the Iraq war have been filled with both a great deal of stasis—as many states leave their policies toward the United States fundamentally unchanged—and ironies, such as repeated requests by the United States for its allies to substantially boost their military spending and capabilities, requests that so far have gone unfilled. Moreover, U.S. rela- tions with regional powers such as China, Russia, India, and other key states (e.g., Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia) have improved in recent years. These revealing events and trends are underappreciated by many, perhaps most, analyses in search of balancing

No reason that balancing would occur – shared interests, limitations, and values mean both realists and liberals agree

Lieber, University of Notre Dame Political Science Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and Alexander University of Virginia Politics Associate Professor, 5

(Keir A., Gerard, Summer 2005, International Security, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back,” http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, p. 133 accessed 7/5/13, IC)

Why Countries Are Not Balancing against the United States

The major powers are not balancing against the United States because of the nature of U.S. grand strategy in the post–September 11 world. There is no doubt that this strategy is ambitious, assertive, and backed by tremendous of- fensive military capability. But it is also highly selective and not broadly threatening. Specifically, the United States is focusing these means on the greatest threats to its interests—that is, the threats emanating from nuclear proliferator states and global terrorist organizations. Other major powers are not balancing U.S. power because they want the United States to succeed in defeating these shared threats or are ambivalent yet understand they are not in its crosshairs. In many cases, the diplomatic friction identified by proponents of the concept of soft balancing instead reflects disagreement about tactics, not goals, which is nothing new in history. To be sure, our analysis cannot claim to rule out other theories of great power behavior that also do not expect balancing against the United States. Whether the United States is not seen as a threat worth balancing because of shared interests in nonproliferation and the war on terror (as we argue), be- cause of geography and capability limitations that render U.S. global hege- mony impossible (as some offensive realists argue), or because transnational democratic values, binding international institutions, and economic interde- pendence obviate the need to balance (as many liberals argue) is a task for fur- ther theorizing and empirical analysis. Nor are we claiming that balancing against the United States will never happen. Rather, there is no persuasive evi- dence that U.S. policy is provoking the kind of balancing behavior that the Bush administration’s critics suggest. In the meantime, analysts should con- tinue to use credible indicators of balancing behavior in their search for signs that U.S. strategy is having a counterproductive effect on U.S. security. Below we discuss why the United States is not seen by other major powers as a threat worth balancing. Next we argue that the impact of the U.S.-led in- vasion of Iraq on international relations has been exaggerated and needs to be seen in a broader context that reveals far more cooperation with the United States than many analysts acknowledge. Finally, we note that something akin to balancing is taking place among would-be nuclear proliferators and Islamist extremists, which makes sense given that these are the threats targeted by the United States.

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