AT: The Affirmative reduces imperialism (Link Turns)

AT: The Affirmative reduces imperialism (Link Turns)

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( ) Engagement has always been paired with strategies of containment, which means it’s not uniquely different or preferable…and won’t solve for the harms of US/China’s security dilemma.

[Ashley Smith, member of the International Socialist Review editorial board. “US imperialism's pivot to Asia.” International Socialist Review. March, 2013. http://isreview.org/issue/88/us-imperialisms-pivot-asia]

US strategy toward China has undergone dramatic shifts from the Cold War to today. After Nixon’s famous engagement with China in the early 1970s, Washington treated it as an ally against Russia. Once the Cold War ended and US-China relations resumed after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the United States celebrated a neoliberal honeymoon with China, using it as an export-processing platform for American multinationals. But that very policy has ironically helped turn China into a competitive rival.¶ US strategy has thus become plagued by a fundamental contradiction—it is economically integrated with its main international competitor, relying on Chinese credit to sustain the deficit and cheap labor to boost the bottom lines of US corporations. The American state has facilitated US corporations like Apple offshoring production to China, for example. On the other hand, the United States and its corporations are now increasingly coming into conflict with the Chinese state and capital. Expressing this conundrum, Hillary Clinton famously asked, “How can you get tough with your banker?”8¶ For a while the United States managed this contradiction with a policy of engagement, which it still verbally declares, but always paired it with a subordinate policy of containment. Aaron Friedberg has coined the neologism “congagement” to capture the contradictory nature of US strategy toward China.9¶ During the Clinton administration, when American engagement with China was at its height and his state department called it a “strategic partner,” the United States still sustained its military power throughout Asia as a deterrent to Beijing. It also staged the single largest military action since the Vietnam War in 1996 to block China’s threat against Taiwan.¶ In reaction to China’s increasing power, the Bush administration re-termed China a “strategic competitor.” It also found itself locked in a harsh standoff with Beijing over a collision between a Chinese fighter jet and an American spy plane over China. But after 9/11, Bush backed off his confrontational approach to seek China’s support in the “war on terror.” He also advocated its entry into the WTO as a means to incorporate it into the world system.

ANSWER TO: The Affirmative reduces imperialism (Link Turns)

( ) You should be skeptical of any action taken in the name of “national interest.” Even policies intended to deescalate tensions and avoid conflict are meant to ensure unchallenged US influence in global affairs. Pursuing primacy towards China under the guise of “national interest” risks global confrontation.

[Laurence H. Shoup, Ph.D., author and activist. “Dangerous Circumstances: The Council on Foreign Relations Proposes a New Grand Strategy Towards China.” Monthly Review, Volume 67, Issue 04. September 2015. http://monthlyreview.org/2015/09/01/dangerous-circumstances/]

The CFR in general and this study group and its report authors specifically are engaging in the fiction that the “national interest” is an objective fact. In reality the United States is a class, race, and gender divided society, where different groups have sharply different interests. So the definition of the “national interest” from which their proposed policies—”primacy” toward China and the rest of the world—flow is actually the special, narrow, capitalist class interest, representing the small but powerful U.S. plutocracy. The CFR promotes and hides behind secrecy and super-nationalism, making key decisions behind the scenes and attempting to convince the larger population to support their preferred policies through appeals to patriotic feelings. The aggressive policies they propose toward China—involving the promotion of military power, including significantly higher military spending, additional bases, building up the armed forces of Asian allies, and implied threats to use force—are not really in the national interest of the United States. This group, led by a number of people like Wolfowitz, Libby, and Blackwill, who were disastrously wrong on Iraq a little over a decade ago, are trying to put us on the road to dangerous great power conflict.¶

In some ways, it represents a path similar to what happened a century ago, when the European branch of capitalist civilization entered upon a phase of suicidal destruction beginning with the First World War. This was also based on great power rivalry, and a narrow, often super-nationalist, definition of the national interest of each European country involved. There was a large element of delusional thinking involved one hundred years ago, especially on the part of the leaders of Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Similarly, the CFR and its study group assume that U.S. power is nearly limitless, when in fact U.S. power is limited and confrontation best avoided. In fact, the United States shares the planet with other powers, most prominently China, that refuse to be intimidated by either U.S. strength or will. The path proposed by the CFR in this report is thus also based on deluded thinking and will therefore likely prove to be disastrous in practice, possibly leading to an Asian arms race, growing conflict, and great power war. But if Washington gives up its goal of “primacy,” adopts a more realistic assessment of U.S. power, and becomes aware of the dangers to humanity and the planet posed by nuclear confrontation and a rapidly developing ecological crisis, then managing differences and nurturing widespread cooperation between nations for the advancement of humankind becomes possible.¶