Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 Hegemony Core Brovero/Verney/Hurwitz

There must be a world hegemon that encourages efforts to combat climate change – it’s the only way to solve warming

(Joyeeta, Science Policy, “Negotiating challenges and climate change,” http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/readings/gupta_2012.pdf, accessed 7/7/13, CBC)

At least three objections might be raised against the preceding analysis. First, it might be claimed that the issue of which norms should be adopted is a distributive issue which may lead to a situation in which one involved party wins while another loses. Thus the adoption of the precautionary principle may require countries that are emitting large quantities of GHGs to reduce their emissions while benefitting others who emit low quantities of GHGs but are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This, arguably, disqualifies the issue from being addressed in the negotiations through the use of soft bargaining strategies. However, as argued above, one need not view the climate change negotiations through this frame. In the long term, using soft bargaining strategies can lead to the creation of win –win situations for all those concerned. This is because the system becomes predictable when there is clarity about how responsibilities are to be shared between defined categories of countries based on specific criteria. It also sends a long-term message to all concerned parties about how they should develop in the future and, moreover, that the responsibilities of a country that graduates into a different category of country will change. Such signals change the cost – benefit analyses of governments and other social actors, and help with the process of planning new infrastructure, and production and consumption patterns. If developed countries adopt targets, then all future developed countries (based on clear criteria) will be on notice that they have to modify their development paths. Thus, the question of the future emissions growth of developing countries becomes irrelevant. Even if developed countries find that such emissions reductions are not cost-effective in the short term, they will become so because developing countries will have to (in a good faith) approachpacta sunt servanda(‘agreements must be kept’), follow suit, and indeed fairly soon.

The second objection is that the application of the precautionary principle when adopting a longterm objective limits the size of the potential pie and as such would be part of a distributive strategy.

However, this would only limit the size of the GHG pie and not the development pie, which might be enlarged inter alia through decarbonization, dematerialization, the green economy, sustainable infrastructure, sustainable product chains, multiple land use, and sustainable procurement policies.

These options will only have the space to grow and become cost-effective when a long-term legally binding GHG stabilization objective is adopted by all involved parties. Moreover, these may even be promoted in alternative fora with new actors.

The third and perhaps most worrying objection is that countries can simply opt out of treaties.

Developing countries might follow the precedents of the US, Canada, and Russia, and simply decide not to participate in a post-Kyoto regime. Currently, although there are many rules at the global level, global governance is anarchic and, according to Annan (2000), there is a limited rule of law.

The rule of law implies that there is a common, normative framework and that there is a non-discriminatory application of clear, consistent (and not arbitrary), equitable, and stable principles for all countries, both of which provide for a certain degree of predictability about the evolution of law.

Some powerful nations reject the global rule of law because this makes them a mere subject (and not creator) of international rules (cf. Whittell, 2002), presenting a clear risk to the extant distribution of power between countries (Craig, 1997; Hager, 2000). However, promoting the global rule of law is becoming increasingly important for at least five reasons: (i) humanity is crossing global planetary boundaries (Rockstro¨m et al., 2009); (ii) long-term problems need to be addressed in a consistent and predictable manner as societies need to re-order their long-term production patterns and infrastructure; (iii) powerful countries that currently see the rule of law and good governance as essential within countries and as an ‘objective of and condition for development assistance’ (Santiso, 2001, p. 1) cannot subsequently and plausibly deny that it is not necessary at the global level (cf. Sandelius, 1993, Fitzpatrick, 2003); (iv) politics needs the law to make it legitimate (Fitzpatrick, 2003), such that ‘those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it; and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it’ (Annan, 2000); and (v) even if it has been in the past interest of some hegemons (such as the US) not to promote the rule of global law, it may be wiser – as the global centre of power shifts to Russia, China, India, and South Africa – to promote it rather than to wait and see how the new hegemons shape the new global (dis)order (Roberts, 2011). Indeed, further development of the legal concept of obligations erga omnes (‘for all’) that are owed to the global community may be able to deal with the problem of free-riders (Gupta, 1997).

Solves Trade

Hegemony is the key internal link to free trade – prevents great power wars

Zhang, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Researcher, et al 11

[Yuhan, and Lin Shi, Columbia University, January 22, 2011, East Asia Forum, “America’s decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry,” http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-a-harbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/, accessed 7/7/13, WD]

Over the past two decades, no other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts.

However, as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the US alliance. The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid.

As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain ‘rules the waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemisphere’s security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy and rule of law.

Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society. As a result of such political stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared. And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and cooperative relations.

However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence declines? Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way.

Public imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to regional organisations.

For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and, well, less free — and major powers would compete for supremacy.

Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973).

A world without American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.

Solves Economy

US hegemony is key to global economic order – Chinese alternative fails

Kagan, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies senior fellow, 12

(Robert W., 2-11-12, “Why the World Needs America,” Wall Street Journal,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html, Accessed online 7/6/13, AX)
And do the Chinese really value an open economic system? The Chinese economy soon may become the largest in the world, but it will be far from the richest. Its size is a product of the country's enormous population, but in per capita terms, China remains relatively poor. The U.S., Germany and Japan have a per capita GDP of over $40,000. China's is a little over $4,000, putting it at the same level as Angola, Algeria and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, China's per capita GDP by 2030 would still only be half that of the U.S., putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece are today. As Arvind Subramanian and other economists have pointed out, this will make for a historically unique situation. In the past, the largest and most dominant economies in the world have also been the richest. Nations whose peoples are such obvious winners in a relatively unfettered economic system have less temptation to pursue protectionist measures and have more of an incentive to keep the system open.

China's leaders, presiding over a poorer and still developing country, may prove less willing to open their economy. They have already begun closing some sectors to foreign competition and are likely to close others in the future. Even optimists like Mr. Subramanian believe that the liberal economic order will require "some insurance" against a scenario in which "China exercises its dominance by either reversing its previous policies or failing to open areas of the economy that are now highly protected." American economic dominance has been welcomed by much of the world because, like the mobster Hyman Roth in "The Godfather," the U.S. has always made money for its partners. Chinese economic dominance may get a different reception.

Another problem is that China's form of capitalism is heavily dominated by the state, with the ultimate goal of preserving the rule of the Communist Party. Unlike the eras of British and American pre-eminence, when the leading economic powers were dominated largely by private individuals or companies, China's system is more like the mercantilist arrangements of previous centuries. The government amasses wealth in order to secure its continued rule and to pay for armies and navies to compete with other great powers. Although the Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open international economic order, they could end up undermining it simply because, as an autocratic society, their priority is to preserve the state's control of wealth and the power that it brings. They might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they can't figure out how to keep both it and themselves alive.

American primacy is key to the global economy – jobs, markets

Nau, George Washington Political Science Professor, 9

[Henry R., 2009, International Studies Review, “Is American Hegemony Bad or Just Better than

Alternatives?” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2008.01834.x/pdf, p. 185-186, accessed 7/6/13, WD]
If American leadership has been so deficient, how did the Cold war end without a hot war and how has the world enjoyed unprecedented prosperity since the Cold War ended? The volume seems completely oblivious to the fact that this latest “outburst” of capitalism has raised the standard of living of more people living under the poverty line than ever before. China and India, with most of the world’s poorest population, are growing three or four times faster than Europe, Japan and America, and have been for 20 years or more. Would this have happened under Soviet (if Moscow had won the Cold War), European, Chinese, Indian or Japanese hegemony or consortium? Would these countries have championed freer trade policies for East Asian and now Chinese, Indian and Latin American exporters, or sympathized with the promotion of human rights in places such as Sudan and Zimbabwe, where Russian and Chinese policies currently block international efforts to stop humanitarian atrocities?

The criticism of America is not the problem. A dominant power is fair game. But the criticism also ironically takes for granted the benefits of American hegemony-the open markets and global security provided by US foreign policy, the flexibility of America’s middle classes, which have transitioned to better jobs in America so that more jobs could be created in poorer countries, and the light footprint of American imperialism that since 1945 has nurtured not colonies but democratic self-governments in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Admittedly, America’s soft power is under a cloud, but the relevant question is, compared to what. Some, if not much, of the opposition to America has little to do with America. It has to do with authoritarian ideologies in other countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, that prefer elitist over middle-class economies and nationalist over liberal political ideologies.

US withdrawal would collapse the global economy

Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, “A World without Power” July/August 4. http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous—roughly 20 times more—meaning that friction between the world’s disparate “tribes” is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on fresh water and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it.

For more than two decades, globalization—the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital—has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization—which a new Dark Age would produce—would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe’s Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists’ infiltration of the E.U. would become irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default abroad.

The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy—from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai—would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there?

Economy

US hegemony crucial to economic preeminence and stable global trade

Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13

[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]

MILITARY DOMINANCE, ECONOMIC PREEMINENCE

Preoccupied with security issues, critics of the current grand strategy miss one of its most important benefits: sustaining an open global economy and a favorable place for the United States within it. To be sure, the sheer size of its output would guarantee the United States a major role in the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the country's military dominance undergirds its economic leadership. In addition to protecting the world economy from instability, its military commitments and naval superiority help secure the sea-lanes and other shipping corridors that allow trade to flow freely and cheaply. Were the United States to pull back from the world, the task of securing the global commons would get much harder. Washington would have less leverage with which it could convince countries to cooperate on economic matters and less access to the military bases throughout the world needed to keep the seas open.

A global role also lets the United States structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington used its overseas security commitments to get allies to embrace the economic policies it preferred--convincing West Germany in the 1960s, for example, to take costly steps to support the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. U.S. defense agreements work the same way today. For example, when negotiating the 2011 free-trade agreement with South Korea, U.S. officials took advantage of Seoul's desire to use the agreement as a means of tightening its security relations with Washington. As one diplomat explained to us privately, "We asked for changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses, and the Koreans took it all." Why? Because they feared a failed agreement would be "a setback to the political and security relationship."

More broadly, the United States wields its security leverage to shape the overall structure of the global economy. Much of what the United States wants from the economic order is more of the same: for instance, it likes the current structure of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund and prefers that free trade continue. Washington wins when U.S. allies favor this status quo, and one reason they are inclined to support the existing system is because they value their military alliances. Japan, to name one example, has shown interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important free-trade initiative in the region, less because its economic interests compel it to do so than because Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda believes that his support will strengthen Japan's security ties with the United States.

The United States' geopolitical dominance also helps keep the U.S. dollar in place as the world's reserve currency, which confers enormous benefits on the country, such as a greater ability to borrow money. This is perhaps clearest with Europe: the EU'S dependence on the United States for its security precludes the EU from having the kind of political leverage to support the euro that the United States has with the dollar. As with other aspects of the global economy, the United States does not provide its leadership for free: it extracts disproportionate gains. Shirking that responsibility would place those benefits at risk.

Collapse of hegemony leads to massive economic collapse that has a high probability of nuclear escalation

Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins American Foreign Policy Program director and professor, 5

[Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century, p. 224]

At best, an American withdrawal would bring with it some of the political anxiety typical during the Cold War and a measure of the economic uncertainty that characterized the years before World War II. At worst, the retreat of American power could lead to a repetition of the great global economic failure and the bloody international conflicts the world experienced in the 1930s and 194os. Indeed, the potential for economic calamity and wartime destruction is greater at the outset of the new century than it was in the first half of the preceding one because of the greater extent of international economic interdependence and the higher levels of prosperity—there is more to lose now than there was then—and because of the presence, in large numbers, of nuclear weapons.

US hegemony is crucial to the global economy

Thayer, University of Minnesota political science professor, 7

[Bradley A. American Empire: A Debate. Routledge Press: Taylor and Francis Group, NY. Page 43]

Economic prosperity is also a product of the American Empire. It has created a Liberal International Economic Order (LIED)—a network of worldwide free trade and commerce, respect for intellectual property rights, mobility of capital and labor markets—to promote economic growth. The stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly states in the Third World. The American Empire has created this network not out of altruism but because it benefits the economic well-being of the United States. In 1998, the Secretary of Defense William Cohen put this well when he acknowledged that "economists and soldiers share the same interest in stability"; soldiers create the conditions in which the American economy may thrive, and "we are able to shape the environment [of international politics] in ways that are advantageous to us and that are stabilizing to the areas where we are forward deployed, thereby helping to promote investment and prosperity...business follows the flag.

Directory: rest -> wikis -> openev -> spaces -> 2013 -> pages -> Gonzaga -> attachments

Download 1.85 Mb.

Share with your friends: