Int’l cps- brag lab- wave 1 Theory
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- Best data proves – economic collapse causes war
- EU soft power is insufficient – increasing it is key to stopping wars
Soft power K2 EconEU soft power is key to economic stability, governmental stability, and prevention of conflicts and warsWitney 14, Nick Witney, 2/24/14, Witney is Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and formerly the European Defence Agency’s first Chief Executive, “Hard truths about Europe’s soft power,” http://europesworld.org/2014/02/24/hard-truths-about-europes-soft-power/#.U71W5vldV8E, NN The temptation to misapply defence budgets in these ways is understandable, especially in the midst of recession. But it cannot be healthy in democracies to assert one thing and practice another; and such oblique methods of funding economic objectives are unlikely to be the most efficient. Implicit in this behaviour, moreover, is a set of assumptions about the world around us, and our position in it, which when unpacked should give us pause. This general European lack of seriousness about defence pre-supposes that we can rest easy in the apparent absence of military threat for the foreseeable future. It further pre-supposes either that the notions of European ‘power and influence’ on the global stage are irrelevant/distasteful/outdated, or that in the modern age effective armed forces have no part to play in maintaining such power. None of this looks safe. Time and again, as when we have found ourselves astonished by invasions of the Falkland Islands or Kuwait, or by the Arab Spring, we discover that the ‘foreseeable future’ can amount to as little as a few days. Worse, an attitude of ‘no threats, so no defence needed’ overlooks the vital deterrent purpose of armed forces. Threats are not like weather events – they are backed by human calculation (something we almost wilfully obscure by broadening our concept of ‘security’ to include pandemics and climate change). And human calculation is crucially affected by perceptions of the other party’s will to resist, or at any rate stand up to bullying. In short, an evident lack of seriousness about defence risks turning the potential threat into actuality. As for European aspirations to be a ‘global player’, proactively promoting our interests and distinctive values, the economic crisis has inevitably done great damage. Witness the mercantilisation of our diplomacy, with Europe’s national leaders jostling in Beijing and the Gulf for investment and export orders. The U.S. ‘pivots to Asia’, but Europeans refuse to view the other side of the globe as more than an enormous market. Germany sells arms as though they were nothing but expensive machine tools; British Conservatives evoke Singapore as the model of their national ambition. Yet even ‘realists’ should reflect that simply ceding global leadership to hungrier and more determined new powers is no way, ultimately, to achieve even the most basic aim of enabling our children to make a living – that Europe’s continuing prosperity depends on a continuing ability to demand that trade be fair as well as free, to maintain access to raw materials, and to insist on minimum environmental and social standards in global economic activity. “European leaders have had their heads in the sand about this for too long, too ready to hide behind the 2003 Strategy – a triumph in its day, but now the product of a bygone era” So power and influence in the wider world are vital if we are adequately to protect our interests, never mind promoting our values, at a time when most of the rest of the world seems more interested in the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism than in any Western norms. The democracies amongst the new powers may be somewhat more concerned for human rights: but Brazil and India as much as China evince a ‘neo-Westphalian’ view of international affairs, focussing on national sovereignty and non-interference rather than on any ‘rules-based world’. Which of course is a big part of why military power has an essential part to play if Europe is not to find itself shunted to the margins of global affairs. We in Europe may be post-modern, but the rest of the world is not – including all those ‘swing voters’ whose preferences will determine which of the new contenders for global leadership carries most weight. Across the Middle East, through Africa, to East and South-East Asia, national leaders are either military men, or at least preoccupied on a day-to-day basis with military issues which may well be matters of government or even state survival. They want arms, and they also want training, and advice, and intelligence, and the reassurance that can come from working with partners who understand military affairs, and who will from time to time demonstrate their military reach and presence. This is not a matter of sending gun-boats, or subscribing to Frederick the Great’s dictum that ‘diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments’. It is a matter of understanding that effective armed forces can and should have a role to play, not just in ‘countering threats’ but as instruments of state-craft. European leaders have had their heads in the sand about this for too long, too ready to hide behind the 2003 Strategy – a triumph in its day, but now the product of a bygone era. It is high time for a first-principles European re-evaluation of how the world has changed, and will continue to change (demographic projections, for example, are both dependable and worrying for Europeans), and to flush out those old assumptions guiding Europe’s foreign policy which no longer hold true. A glance at Europe’s own neighbourhood is enough to explode the notion that ‘soft power’ is all it takes. And what policy should we now substitute for the happy but evaporated hope that new powers could be house-trained to become ‘responsible stakeholders’ in an international system designed by the West? To the credit of the European Council’s president, Herman Van Rompuy, last December’s defence discussion opened the door to this sort of debate when national leaders agreed to ‘assess the impact of changes in the global environment’ and to consider ‘the challenges and opportunities arising for the Union’. It is to be hoped that later this year the successor to Catherine Ashton will choose to exploit this opening to the full. Without a fundamental rethink of Europe’s external strategy it will not just be Europe’s armed forces that can expect to be hollowed out, but Europe’s interests and values too. Best data proves – economic collapse causes warJedidiah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, M.Phil. Candidate at the University of New South Wales, 2010, “Economic Integration, Economic Signalling and the Problem of Economic Crises” Thus, the answer to the first question set out at the beginning of this section, whether economic integration and economic crises are linked, seems reasonably well-established. Substantial recent scholarship indicates a positive association between interdependence and economic crises. What then about the second question? Is there a correlation between economic crises and armed conflict? The impacts at an individual level and on a state level are intuitive and well-documented (see. e.g., Richards & Gelleny, 2006). Rodrik (1997a, 1997b), among others, argues that instability in the global economic system contributes to social disintegration and political conflict. Social unrest, regime change and even civil war have directly resulted from the vagaries of economic integration. / Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent stales. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. / First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon. 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. / Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland’s (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that “future expectation of trade” is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states. / Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, / The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess. 2002. p. 89) / Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg- Hess, & Weerapana. 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. / Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. 'Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995), and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. / In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. EU soft power is insufficient – increasing it is key to stopping warsRettman 13, Andrew Rettman, 6/5/13, Rettman is a staff writer for EUObserver, “Nato chief: EU soft power is 'no power at all',” http://euobserver.com/defence/120046, NN We Europeans must understand that soft power alone is really no power at all. Without hard capabilities to back up its diplomacy, Europe will lack credibility and influence," he told MEPs on the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee in Brussels on Monday (6 May). "If European nations do not make a firm commitment to invest in security and defence, then all talk about a strengthened European defence and security policy will just be hot air," he added. Twenty one out of the 27 EU countries are also Nato members. Rasmussen said they lack "transport planes, air-to-air refuelling and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets." He noted that, given the financial crisis, it is "too expensive for any individual [EU] country" to buy the hardware that Nato needs Europe to have. He also indicated that European countries are too dove-ish in their approach to foreign crises. "We must also have the political will to use them [military means]. To deal with security challenges on Europe's doorstep. To help manage crises further away that might affect us here at home," he said. Rasmussen spoke in the run-up to an EU summit on defence in December - the first one since the financial crisis erupted in 2008. His remarks on EU foreign policy prompted questions on whether he is interested in taking EU foreign service chief Catherine Ashton's job when she departs next year. "I haven't started thinking about the next step," he said, referring to his own career. He envisaged EU-level security co-operation with Nato as a mixture of police missions and diplomacy. Taking the Western Balkans as an example, he said: "Nato has shown its capacity to act quickly and in high intensity crises, while the European Union is able to deploy a wide range of civilian and military expertise to help rebuild nations." He commended Ashton on her recent diplomatic breakthrough in helping Belgrade and Pristina to end a frozen conflict in north Kosovo. But he added: "Both parties wanted assurance that Nato would guarantee the security to implement the agreement." MEPs also quizzed Rasmussen about Syria. The civil war saw two new developments in recent days. Over the weekend, Israeli jets struck several Syrian targets, including a military complex near Damascus. Reports say they killed more than 40 soldiers and that they did it to stop Syrian weapons getting into the hands of Israel's fiercest enemy, the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. A UN investigator, Carla Del Ponte, also told Swiss TV on Sunday "there are strong, concrete suspicions" that Syrian rebels have used Sarin gas, a banned chemical weapon. The developments saw the Russian foreign ministry ring the alarm on Monday. "We are seriously concerned about the signs that global public opinion is being prepared for a possible armed intervention in the Syrian conflict," its foreign ministry spokesman told Russian media. For his part, Rasmussen in Brussels repeated the long-standing Nato line on Syria. He told MEPs there will be no Nato intervention because there is no UN mandate and because the conflict is too "complex." He also said the only way out is a "political solution." He declined to comment on the Israeli strikes and he claimed he knows no more than what he reads in the papers about chemical weapons. Nato has deployed US, German and Dutch "Patriot" anti-missile defence systems on Nato member Turkey's border with Syria. 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