Next gen affirmative 1ac advantage-Econ

Heg Impact-A2: Obama

Thomas J. Lynch & Robert S. Singh, Lecturer and Professor Foreign Policy, University of London, 2008, After Bush: the case for continuity in American foreign policy, p. 5-6

Notwithstanding their obvious dissimilarities, the parallels between the Truman and Bush presidencies are instructive. The Bush presidency was the most important and controversial in American foreign policy since Truman. But the demise of the Bush presidency marks not the repudiation of an aberrant or even revolutionary disjuncture in foreign policy but the beginning of the end of the first phase in a Second Cold War against Jihadist Islam. The past is, in this respect at least, truly prologue, even as this particular prologue has now passed. Just as Truman left office with his popularity at its lowest ebb, his party charged with a succession of foreign policy failures, and the nation mired in a seemingly unwinnable war, so Bush ends his tenure with relatively few commentators either within or outside America mourning his exit. But, like Truman before him, Bush’s imprint on American grand strategy, his joining a global war on Islamist terror and establishment of policies at home and abroad to see America prevail in that war will remain substantially intact under his successors. The central premises and prescriptions of the National Security Strategy (NSS) documents of 2002 and 2006 will continue to shape American foreign policy in the new administration of 2009-13 and beyond.
Continuity of the terrorist threat and failure of multilateral alternatives make presidential pursuit of primacy inevitable

Thomas J. Lynch & Robert S. Singh, Lecturer and Professor Foreign Policy, University of London, 2008, After Bush: the case for continuity in American foreign policy, p. 293-4

For this reason, and despite the hopes of the liberal left and the predictions of realists, there is not a single mainstream US politician with serious presidential ambitions who would choose the constraints of multipolarity over the freedom of US primacy. It is inconceivable that a presidential candidate who seeks a permission slip to act on behalf of American security could win the White House; in 2004, John Kerry’s reference to “a global test” for US foreign policy should pass won him very few votes. Whilst building the United Nations into the Second Cold War is fine in principle, the structural and political impediments to doing so are manifold and, we confidently predict, quite beyond the remit of even the most tactically astute, rhetorically gifted, and politically empowered American president. The European Union, likewise, offers the United States very little in terms of enhanced military or diplomatic effectiveness. The freedom of action Bush enjoyed, which included the freedom to botch disastrously the aftermath of the Iraq War, is one none of his successors will sacrifice. Much as it pains Bush’s many detractors – on the right and the left – to acknowledge, a change of administration in Washington will have no measurable effect on Islamist ideology, though it might on their capacity; a sound policy will negate that capacity, a poor one will advance it. The Bin Laden camp waged war as fiercely against Bill Clinton as it did against George W. Bush and will continue to do so against their successors. A jihadist suicide bomber is supposedly afforded seventy-two virgins in heaven whether he kills Democrats or Republicans. Because the frustrations and ambitions of the enemy are unlikely to change much over time we should not expect the American response to those ambitions to alter very much either. Continuity of threat will determine the continuity of American strategy. The imperative will be one few American presidents can amend without risking catastrophe. We predict the next few will not try.

Heg Impact-A2: Bad Alliances

Thomas J. Lynch & Robert S. Singh, Lecturer and Professor Foreign Policy, University of London, 2008, After Bush: the case for continuity in American foreign policy, p. 136-7

Critics argue that only a hypocritical nation would urge the democratization of states like Afghanistan and Iraq whilst sustaining the military dictatorships of Pakistan, the autocracy of Uzbekistan or the feudal theocracy of Saudi Arabia. The war on terror is hardly unique in this regard. The First Cold War was replete with US alliance-making of dubious moral character. Such an auditing of both cold wars misses the necessity of nose-holding when facing an existential threat. In her famous Commentary article, the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick argued that American foreign policy came most unstuck when it was guided by a naive moral compass. Jimmy Carter was her case study. The fear, for her, was not that friendly dictators would be replaced by liberal internationalists but by “less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion.” The logic applied to Iran in 1979 – when a westward-looking dictator was overthrown by anti-American Islamists—applies today in places like Pakistan. American interests are rarely served by abandoning friends on account of their moral turpitude. This enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend approach explains why the US-Soviet wartime alliance of 1941-5 was so effective, despite the less than pristine human rights record of Joseph Stalin, and why, in the First Cold War, supporting Pinochet’s junta in Chile was preferable to allowing communist subversion across that continent. Ultimately, as Kirkpatrick predicted, right-wing regimes, like Chile, transitioned into functioning, pro-western democracies. The odds on this happening to Pakistan and Kazakhstan are perhaps long but only possible at all if they remain within the US camp.

Heg Impact-A2: Multilaterialism Good

Thomas J. Lynch & Robert S. Singh, Lecturer and Professor Foreign Policy, University of London, 2008, After Bush: the case for continuity in American foreign policy, p. 38-9

Consistent with the purported moral sanctity of multilateralism is the belief that it is more effective practically than the unilateralism of any one state. This is open to dispute on a number of fronts. If anything, the lesson of post 1991 international crises is that if the US government does not act the EU is unlikely to do so. US ambivalence over the Rwandan genocide (1994) goes some way to explaining—even if it does not excuse—European inaction. It seems reasonable to argue that, without an American willingness to take on Serbia in 1994-6 and 1999, EU leaders, as Alikja Izetbegovic, the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, is alleged to have said, “would have talked and talked until we are all dead.” Sometimes the multilateral imperative (which of its very nature requires an illusive consensus) leads to a lethal inaction.
Primacy doesn’t trade-off with multilateral problem solving

Robert J. Lieber, Government Professor GWU, 2009, International Politics, Vol. 46, p. 134-5

Can American primacy be sustained? Threats from radical Islamist groups, nuclear proliferation, the potential use of CBRN weapons and competition from authoritarian capitalist powers pose challenges that require assertive American engagement. In addition, democratic allies and others have shown few signs of wanting to forego the involvement of the North American ‘Goliath,’7 and despite heated rhetoric about ‘hyperpower’8 and real or imagined excesses of unilateralism, a good deal of multilateral cooperation has continued to take place. The NSS of September 2002 included a much-overlooked endorsement of multilateralism and, at the time, the Bush administration avidly sought to enlarge its coalition of the willing for the use of force against Saddam. In recent years, there have been six-party talks with North Korea, deference to Germany, Britain and France (the EU-3) for their ultimately unsuccessful negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, promotion of the multilateral Proliferation Security Initiative aimed at strengthening the NPT, co-sponsorship with France of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, a massive increase in funding to combat AIDS in Africa, an expanded NATO role in Afghanistan and UN mandates – UNSC Resolutions 1546 (2004) and 1637 (2005) – for the US-led multinational force in Iraq.
International cooperation is dependent on unilateralism – it spurs countries into action

Michla Pomerance, Professor of International Law, Hebrew University, Spring 2002 (“U.S. Multilateralism, Left and Right” – Orbis) p. ScienceDirect

More fundamentally, those who have understood the concept of "multilateralism" best have always emphasized the dependence of multilateralism on unilateralism. Thus, the foremost American scholar of international organization, Inis Claude (author of Swords into Plowshares), has written that despite the world’s bias against unilateralism, "unilateralism … is, in fact, indispensable to effective multilateralism." "Effective multilateralism starts with resolute unilateralism; the mission of the leader is not respectful deference to the majority but determined pulling and hauling at it." Or as Thomas Friedman wrote in 1995: If the Clinton foreign policy team has learned anything these past two years I hope it is this: there is no multilateralism without unilateralism. Unless you first show people that you are ready to go alone, you will never have partners to go with you …. Repeat after me: ‘The UN is us. The UN is us.’ From this perspective, the ones who were paying lip service to multilateralism were not Bush and his Republican followers, who understood this important lesson instinctively, but rather all those who insisted on untainted "humanitarian" motives for multilateral actions. Theirs was a prescription for inaction and could provide its pretext.