Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 Hegemony Core Brovero/Verney/Hurwitz
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UniquenessTransition Now is KeyMultipolarity is inevitable but transition now is key – the alternative is political turmoil and deadly transition warsPosen, MIT Political Science Professor, 13 [Barry R., Jan/Feb 2013, Foreign Affairs, “Pull Back,” Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete, accessed 7/2/13, WD] Shifting to a more restrained global stance would yield meaningful benefits for the United States, saving lives and resources and preventing pushback, provided Washington makes deliberate and prudent moves now to prepare its allies to take on the responsibility for their own defense. Scaling down the U.S. military's presence over a decade would give partners plenty of time to fortify their own militaries and develop the political and diplomatic machinery to look after their own affairs. Gradual disengagement would also reduce the chances of creating security vacuums, which opportunistic regional powers might try to fill. U.S. allies, of course, will do everything they can to persuade Washington to keep its current policies in place. Some will promise improvements to their military forces that they will then abandon when it is convenient. Some will claim there is nothing more they can contribute, that their domestic political and economic constraints matter more than America's. Others will try to divert the discussion to shared values and principles. Still others will hint that they will bandwagon with strong neighbors rather than balance against them. A few may even threaten to turn belligerent. U.S. policymakers will need to remain cool in the face of such tactics and keep in mind that these wealthy allies are unlikely to surrender their sovereignty to regional powers. Indeed, history has shown that states more often balance against the powerful than bandwagon with them. As for potential adversaries, the United States can continue to deter actions that threaten its vital interests by defining those interests narrowly, stating them clearly, and maintaining enough military power to protect them. Of course, the United States could do none of these things and instead continue on its present track, wasting resources and earning the enmity of some states and peoples while infantilizing others. Perhaps current economic and geopolitical trends will reverse themselves, and the existing strategy will leave Washington comfortably in the driver's seat, with others eager to live according to its rules. But if the U.S. debt keeps growing and power continues to shift to other countries, some future economic or political crisis could force Washington to switch course abruptly, compelling friendly and not-so-friendly countries to adapt suddenly. That seems like the more dangerous path. Uniqueness – BrinkHegemony is in crisisIkenberry, Princeton University professor of Politics and International Affairs, 11 (John, 10-16-11, Foreign Policy, "Ikenberry's turn," http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/10/16/ikenberrys_turn, accessed 7-3-12, CNM) I go on to argue that this hegemonic order is in crisis. Importantly, it is not liberal internationalism -- as a logic of order -- that is in crisis. It is America's hegemonic role that is in trouble. There is a global struggle underway over the distribution of rights, privileges, authority, etc. I argue that this is a "crisis of success" in that it is the rise of non-Western developing states and the ongoing intensification of economic and security interdependence that have triggered the crisis and overrun the governance institutions of the old order. This is a bit like Samuel Huntington's famous "development gap" -- a situation in which rapidly mobilizing and expanding social forces and economic transformation, facilitated by the old political institutions, have outpaced and overrun those institutions. That is what has happened to American hegemony. The book ends by asking: what comes next? And I argue that the constituencies for open, rules-based order are expanding, not contracting. The world system may become "less American," but it will not become "less liberal." So that is my argument. Transition NowU.S. losing influence and leverage –Iran provesCunningham, International Affairs Expert Writer, 13 (Finian Cunningham is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England¶ , 4-13-13, PressTV, “Iran deals deathblow to US global hegemony,” http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/04/12/297864/iran-key-to-us-global-defeat/, accessed 7-9-13, LLM) The United States of America has become a byword for war. No other nation state has started as many wars or conflicts in modern times than the USA - the United States of Armageddon. Beneath the Western media façade of “unpredictable” and “aggressive” North Korea, the real source of conflict in the present round of war tensions on the Korean Peninsula is the US. Washington is presented as a restraining, defensive force. But, in reality, the dangerous nuclear stand-off has to be seen in the context of Washington’s historical drive for war and hegemony in every corner of the world. North Korea may present an immediate challenge to Washington’s hegemonic ambitions. However, as we shall see, Iran presents a much greater and potentially fatal challenge to the American global empire. It is documented record, thanks to writers and thinkers like William Blum and Noam Chomsky, that the US has been involved in more than 60 wars and many more proxy conflicts, subterfuges and coups over the nearly seven decades since the Second World War. No other nation on earth comes close to this American track record of belligerence and threat to world security. No other nation has so much blood on its hands. Americans like to think of their country as first in the world for freedom, humanitarian principles, technology and economic prowess. The truth is more brutal and prosaic. The US is first in the world for war-mongering and raining death and destruction down on others. Since then we have seen the US become embroiled in more and more wars - sometimes under the guise of “coalitions of the willing”, the United Nations or NATO. A variety of pretexts have also been invoked: war on drugs, war on terror, Axis of Evil, responsibility to protect, the world’s policeman, upholding global peace and security, preventing weapons of mass destruction. But always, these wars are Washington-led affairs. And always the pretexts are mere pretty window-dressing for Washington’s brutish strategic interests. Now it seems we have reached a phase of history where the world is witnessing a state of permanent war prosecuted by the US and its underlings: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Libya, Pakistan, Somalia (again), Mali and Syria, to mention a few. These theaters of criminal US military operations join a list of ongoing covert wars against Palestine, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Iran, however, presents a greater and more problematic challenge to US global hegemony. The US in 2013 is a very different animal from what it was in 1945. Now it resembles more a lumbering giant. Gone is its former economic prowess and its arteries are sclerotic with its internal social decay and malaise. Crucially, too, the lumbering American giant has squandered any moral strength it may have had in the eyes of the world. Its veil of morality and democratic principle may have appeared credible in 1945, but that cover has been torn asunder by the countless wars and nefarious intrigues over the ensuing decades to reveal a pathological warmonger. The American military power is still, of course, a highly dangerous force. But it is now more like a bulging muscle hanging on an otherwise emaciated corpse. Iran presents this lumbering, dying power with a fatal challenge. For a start, Iran does not have nuclear weapons or ambitions and it has repeatedly stated this, thereby gaining much-reciprocated good will from the international community, including the public of North America and Europe. The US or its surrogates cannot therefore credibly justify a military strike on Iran, as it might do against North Korea, without risking a tsunami of political backlash. Secondly, Iran exerts a controlling influence over the vital drug that keeps the American economic system alive - the world’s supply of oil and gas. Any war with Iran, if the US were so foolish to embark on it, would result in a deathblow to the waning American and global economy. A third reason why Iran presents a mortal challenge to US global hegemony is that the Islamic Republic is a formidable military power. Its 80 million-strong people are committed to anti-imperialism and any strike from the US or its allies would result in a region-wide war that would pull down the very pillars of Western geopolitical architecture, including the collapse of the Israeli state and the overthrow of the House of Saud and the other the Persian Gulf oil dictatorships. US planners know this and that is why they will not dare to confront Iran head-on. But that leaves the US empire with a fatal dilemma. Its congenital belligerence arising from in its capitalist DNA, puts the US ruling elite on a locked-in stalemate with Iran. The longer that stalemate persists, the more the US global power will drain from its corpse. The American empire, as many others have before, could therefore founder on the rocks of the ancient Persian empire. Download 1.85 Mb. Share with your friends:
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