Relations impacts and cp’s
US soft power solves China rise
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- Environmental destruction leads to a global rash of interstate and civil wars
- US soft power fails - Asia
US soft power solves China riseFailure to shore up soft power with Asia drives countries towards China and increases its soft power Kurlantzick, 7/12 [Joshua, fellow for southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, 2010, Newsweek How Obama Lost His Asian Friends, lexis] But there is still much room for growth in America's relationship with Asia. As the global economic crisis has strengthened China's hand, Beijing has begun to challenge America's military projection, claim larger swaths of ocean, and increase its soft power through growing disbursements of aid money. By alienating potential friends--the resentment felt in the DPJ, for example, may well endure--Washington only nudges these countries closer to Beijing. As DPJ lawmaker Kuniko Tanoika said during a visit to Washington in May, "the very stubborn attitude of no compromise of the U.S. government ... is clearly pushing Japan away, toward China." What's more, while America stands aloof, Asia is building its own networks and institutions, which one day might exclude the United States. Besides the intra-Asian trade deals, Asian states are creating new security institutions with ASEAN as the core. In a new book titled Asia Alone, Singaporean analyst Simon Tay argues that ASEAN is increasingly becoming a regional power in its own right, forcing larger players like the U.S. and China to act more multilaterally. Chinese Soft Power fuels environmental collapse by placing a focus on development before the environment. This environmental harm spreads to Africa and other countries China gives aid to. Joshua Kurlantzick, 2007. [Joshua, visiting scholar in the Carnegie Endowment’s China Program. Also a special correspondent for The New Republic and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect.Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World Pg 163-165] China’s growing soft power also could lead it to export its environmental problems. Within China, environmental protection is almost nonexistent, and despite a government campaign for more sustainable development, most officials, focused on keeping up growth rates, care little about the ecological consequences of construction and industrialization. As the China environmental export Elizabeth Economy has revealed, Beijing has demonstrated little commitment to river and watershed preservation within China, destroying the Yangtze River and other major waterways. Two-third of Chinese cities fail World Health Organization standards for air quality, by far the worst rate of any large country. Several cities rank among the highest rates of airborne carbon monoxide in the world. This environmental recklessness spreads across borders as China’s global influence grows. Ten years ago, China’s environmental mismanagement was a problem for a citizen of polluted Lanzhou city or someone living along the Yangtze; today it is a threat to citizens in Burma or someone living along the Amazon. Besides the logging of its neighbors, China may fund a massive Burmese dam that could proceed without adequate environmental studies, and China’s Export-Import Bank reportedly declines to sign environmental guidelines commonly adopted by credit providers from Western countries. In northern Laos, according to a consultant with the Asian Development Bank, a major aid donor, Chinese firms tasked to build part of the country’s newest highway simply refused to produce an environmental impact assessment. “The Chinese just went ahead and did their part of the road, without an assessment,” said the consultant who worked on the highway, “The would just never talk to me” Environmental destruction leads to a global rash of interstate and civil warsThomas Homer-Dixon, assistant professor of political science and director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Programme at the University of Toronto, associate fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, 1998, World Security: Challenges for a New Century, Third Edition, edited by Michael Klare and Yogesh Chandrani, p. 342-3 Experts have proposed numerous possible links between environmental change and conflict. Some have suggested that environmental change may shift the balance of power between states either regionally or globally, causing instabilities that could lead to war.4 Another possibility is that global environmental damage might increase the gap between rich and poor societies, with the poor then violently confronting the rich for a fairer share of the world’s wealth.5 Severe conflict may also arise from frustration with countries that do not go along with agreements to protect the global environment, or that “free-ride” by letting other countries absorb the costs of environmental protection. Warmer temperatures could lead to contention over more easily harvested resources in the Antarctic. Bulging populations and land stress may produce waves of environmental refugees, spilling across borders and disrupting relations among ethnic groups. Countries might fight among themselves because of dwindling supplies of water and the effects of upstream pollution.6 A sharp decline in food crop production and grazing land could lead to conflict between nomadic tribes and sedentary farmers. Environmental change could in time cause a slow deepening of poverty in poor countries, which might open bitter divisions between classes and ethnic groups, corrode democratic institutions, and spawn revolutions and insurgencies.7 In general, many experts have the sense that environmental problems will “ratchet up” the level of stress within states and the international community, increasing the likelihood of many different kinds of conflict—from war and rebellion to trade disputes—and undermining possibilities for cooperation. US soft power fails - AsiaObama’s attempts to improve relations with Asian countries empirically fail Kurlantzick, 7/12 [Joshua, fellow for southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, 2010, Newsweek How Obama Lost His Asian Friends, lexis] But he has made similar moves before, only to abandon them. In the early days of his administration, he declared himself the first "Pacific president" and said he wanted to distinguish himself from George W. Bush by sending the message to the world's fastest-growing and most populous region that America is once again engaged in Asia. At a regional Asian gathering in July 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the "United States is back" in Asia. The White House built on that promise by quickly notching a series of Asian triumphs. It acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, a cornerstone of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and a document the Bush administration had refused to sign. Last November, Obama sat down with all 10 ASEAN leaders, the first time an American president had taken that step. The White House launched plans for a "comprehensive partnership" with Indonesia, a country where Obama, unlike Bush, enjoyed enormous popularity, in part because he spent four years of his childhood in Jakarta. Result: early in his term he boasted high approval ratings nearly everywhere in Asia, from Indonesia to India and even China, where two thirds of respondents in one BBC poll believed America's relations with the world would improve under Obama. But then these efforts began to go downhill. Distracted by the Middle East, the war in Afghanistan, and an increasingly toxic political environment at home, Obama made little progress with Asia. He appeared distrustful of the new Japanese government and unsure of how to build on the relationship with India. In early June he canceled a planned trip to Indonesia--for the third time--angering many of his Indonesian supporters and reminding Asians of the Bush administration, which also did not seem to understand the value of putting in face time to improve diplomacy in the region. The Obama White House also invested precious little capital pushing trade initiatives in Asia. And even with the region's giants--India, Japan, and China--the administration often appears to be ignoring their central concerns or simply alienating their leaders. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.27 Mb. Share with your friends:
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