Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 Hegemony Core Brovero/Verney/Hurwitz
Hegemony Bad 1NC – Hegemony Bad Case Turn
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- B. Primacy rationalizations are compelling – begetting more efforts at primacy
- C. Prolonging transition risks global stability
- D. Turns the case – Hegemony causes econ collapse, backlash, and foreign overstretch – only retreat is sustainable
Hegemony Bad1NC – Hegemony Bad Case TurnA. Transition to multipolarity nowBrzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies Counselor and Trustee, Feist, CNN’s Washington Bureau Chief and Senior Vice President 12 (Zbigniew, Former White House National Security Adviser, Sam, March 29, 2012, Council of Foreign Relations, “A Conversation With Zbigniew Brzezinski,” http://www.cfr.org/us-strategy-and-politics/conversation-zbigniew-brzezinski/p27829, accessed 7/4/12, YGS) QUESTIONER: Thank you very much. Dr. Brzezinski, I want to ask you about the other side of the coin. I was just at the World -- the Affordability World Security (sic\Affordable World Security two-day meeting here in town that was put on by the East-West Center and Kerry Foundation (ph), and had an amazing collection of people. But what they said that means is that we have to address climate, water, food, population, jobs -- I mean, it was this long list of things that we have to figure out how to work together on solving them so that we all sort of stay alive. How do we make that happen? BRZEZINSKI: Well, you make that happen by avoiding the kind of global politics that we have had for the last 200 years. And that is to say we have to have entities that are to some extent balanced in equilibrium and as there a consequence of which they realize they cannot prevail. And I think what gives me some degree of optimism is also the knowledge that we now live in a world in which in fact hegemony by a single power is not attainable because the people the worldwide are politically awakened. I've written a great deal about the notion of the global political awakening, and that's a new phenomenon; we've never had that historically. It only started with the French Revolution, then it spread to Asia with World War I and its aftermath. It's now global, and that makes it much more difficult for any power to think it can be dominant. You know, President George Bush II once said that God has chosen America to be the model for the world. Well, you know, I don't know where he got this information -- whether it was from the CIA -- my sources tell me that God is neutral on these subjects. (Laughter.) But in any case, the world is no longer congenial to domination by a single power. So we and the Chinese are operating in a very different environment from the one in which we and the Soviets competed and threatened each other, or we and the Nazis fought against each other or the British and the French fought against the Germans and then we joined in in World War I and so forth, because these problems are potentially as destructive or even more destructive than the wars that we have fought. FEIST: Question. Yes sir? QUESTIONER: Zbig, my question to you is a follow-on for really, I think, what you've just been talking about. And that is, you've laid out a pretty sophisticated kind of road map, as you say -- but maybe a vision for where the United States should go in terms of thinking about its role. But -- BRZEZINSKI: You'd better speak up, because I'm not sure everyone can hear you. QUESTIONER: I'm sorry. But -- do we have a political culture and a political system that is capable of thinking in these terms? Or do we have to instead talk about exceptionalism and think in terms of bumper sticker terms in terms of foreign policy? BRZEZINSKI: Well, that's one of my grave concerns in my book. In fact, I talk about some of the basic structural weaknesses of America, which actually threaten our ability to play a preeminent role. And I leave that slightly open in terms of whether we will or will not be able to do it. B. Primacy rationalizations are compelling – begetting more efforts at primacyWalt, Harvard University international affairs professor, 11 (Steven M., professor of international affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, October 25, 2011, The National Interest, “The End of the American Era,”http://nationalinterest.org/article/the-end-the-american-era-6037?page=show, Accessed: 6/29/12, LPS) THE UNITED States has been the dominant world power since 1945, and U.S. leaders have long sought to preserve that privileged position. They understood, as did most Americans, that primacy brought important benefits. It made other states less likely to threaten America or its vital interests directly. By dampening great-power competition and giving Washington the capacity to shape regional balances of power, primacy contributed to a more tranquil international environment. That tranquility fostered global prosperity; investors and traders operate with greater confidence when there is less danger of war. Primacy also gave the United States the ability to work for positive ends: promoting human rights and slowing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. It may be lonely at the top, but Americans have found the view compelling. C. Prolonging transition risks global stabilityFarley, University of Kentucky assistant professor of Diplomacy and International Commerce, 3-7-12 (Dr. Robert, World Politics Review, "Over the Horizon: The Future of American Hegemony," http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11696/over-the-horizon-the-future-of-american-hegemony, accessed 7-6-12, CNM) What are the dangers? Hegemony has never meant the ability to achieve any outcome the United States wants, whenever it wants. Indeed, hegemony may mean the luxury to make dreadful mistakes without suffering dreadful consequences. However, as the gap between the United States and other great powers declines, the margin for error narrows. The most dangerous steps for the United States to take would involve projects that threaten fiscal capacity while also undercutting the U.S.-sponsored system of global management. The invasion of Iraq, for example, is not an undertaking that the United States would want to repeat in the future. It undermined global confidence in both the international system of governance and the decision-making capacity of the United States government, while damaging the fiscal health of the United States. Ironically, advocates of the war believed that it would demonstrate not only American power, but also reinforce confidence in American leadership. For better or worse, the U.S. has imparted the character of the major formal and informal institutions that have managed international life for the past 70 years. The shift from U.S. hegemony to multipolarity -- or to unipolarity around another nation -- will change the nature of those institutions, likely leading to a significant degree of upheaval and uncertainty. The great danger is that the United States will, in an effort to prolong and maintain its hegemony, undertake policies that undermine the foundations of American’s place in the world. It is not comforting that those who talk loudest of U.S. exceptionalism and a new American Century consistently recommend policies that misunderstand the relationship between U.S. power and the modern international system. Nothing about the future is guaranteed; wise policies can revise and extend a globally acceptable “American Century,” while foolish policies can cut it short. D. Turns the case – Hegemony causes econ collapse, backlash, and foreign overstretch – only retreat is sustainablePosen, 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] Despite a decade of costly and indecisive warfare and mounting fiscal pressures, the long-standing consensus among American policymakers about U.S. grand strategy has remained remarkably intact. As the presidential campaign made clear, Republicans and Democrats may quibble over foreign policy at the margins, but they agree on the big picture: that the United States should dominate the world militarily, economically, and politically, as it has since the final years of the Cold War, a strategy of liberal hegemony The country, they hold, needs to preserve its massive lead in the global balance of power, consolidate its economic preeminence, enlarge the community of market democracies, and maintain its outsized influence in the international institutions it helped create. To this end, the U.S. government has expanded its sprawling Cold War-era network of security commitments and military bases. It has reinforced its existing alliances, adding new members to NATO and enhancing its security agreement with Japan. In the Persian Gulf, it has sought to protect the flow of oil with a full panoply of air, sea, and land forces, a goal that consumes at least 15 percent of the U.S. defense budget. Washington has put China on a watch list, ringing it in with a network of alliances, less formal relationships, and military bases. The United States' activism has entailed a long list of ambitious foreign policy projects. Washington has tried to rescue failing states, intervening militarily in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya, variously attempting to defend human rights, suppress undesirable nationalist movements, and install democratic regimes. It has also tried to contain so-called rogue states that oppose the United States, such as Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, Syria. After 9/11, the struggle against al Qaeda and its allies dominated the agenda, but the George W. Bush administration defined this enterprise broadly and led the country into the painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although the United States has long sought to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons, the prospect of nuclear-armed terrorists has added urgency to this objective, leading to constant tension with Iran and North Korea. In pursuit of this ambitious agenda, the United States has consistently spent hundreds of billions of dollars per year on its military -- far more than the sum of the defense budgets of its friends and far more than the sum of those of its potential adversaries. It has kept that military busy: U.S. troops have spent roughly twice as many months in combat after the Cold War as they did during it. Today, roughly 180,000 U.S. soldiers remain stationed on foreign soil, not counting the tens of thousands more who have rotated through the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of American and allied soldiers have lost their lives, not to mention the countless civilians caught in the crossfire. This undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security. It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own defense, and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans, further raising the costs of carrying out its foreign policy. During the 1990s, these consequences were manageable because the United States enjoyed such a favorable power position and chose its wars carefully Over the last decade, however, the country's relative power has deteriorated, and policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to fight and how to fight them. What's more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its current force structure -- levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States' ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable. It is time to abandon the United States' hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint. This approach would mean giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national security interests. It would mean transforming the military into a smaller force that goes to war only when it truly must. It would mean removing large numbers of U.S. troops from forward bases, creating incentives for allies to provide for their own security And because such a shift would allow the United States to spend its resources on only the most pressing international threats, it would help preserve the country's prosperity and security over the long run. Download 1.85 Mb. Share with your friends:
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