Written by: Manu Meel and Isaiah Sirois #mags lab

Terrorism Scenario

1NC

Drone strikes key to fight counterterrorism- disrupts leadership

Targeted killing of high-value terrorist targets, by contrast, is the end result of a long, independent intelligence process. What the drone adds to that intelligence might be considerable, through its surveillance capabilities—but much of the drone’s contribution will be tactical, providing intelligence that assists in the planning and execution of the strike itself, in order to pick the moment when there might be the fewest civilian casualties. Nonetheless, in conjunction with high-quality intelligence, drone warfare offers an unparalleled means to strike directly at terrorist organizations without needing a conventional or counterinsurgency approach to reach terrorist groups in their safe havens. It offers an offensive capability, rather than simply defensive measures, such as homeland security alone. Drone warfare offers a raiding strategy directly against the terrorists and their leadership. If one believes, as many of the critics of drone warfare do, that the proper strategies of counterterrorism are essentially defensive—including those that eschew the paradigm of armed conflict in favor of law enforcement and criminal law—then the strategic virtue of an offensive capability against the terrorists themselves will seem small. But that has not been American policy since 9/11, not under the Bush administration, not under the Obama administration—and not by the Congress of the United States, which has authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the war on terror aggressively. The United States has used many offensive methods in the past dozen years: Regime change of states offering safe havens, counterinsurgency war, special operations, military and intelligence assistance to regimes battling our common enemies are examples of the methods that are just of military nature. Drone warfare today is integrated with a much larger strategic counterterrorism target—one in which, as in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, radical Islamist groups seize governance of whole populations and territories and provide not only safe haven, but also an honored central role to transnational terrorist groups. This is what current conflicts in Yemen and Mali threaten, in counterterrorism terms, and why the United States, along with France and even the UN, has moved to intervene militarily. Drone warfare is just one element of overall strategy, but it has a clear utility in disrupting terrorist leadership. It makes the planning and execution of complex plots difficult if only because it is hard to plan for years down the road if you have some reason to think you will be struck down by a drone but have no idea when. The unpredictability and terrifying anticipation of sudden attack, which terrorists have acknowledged in communications, have a significant impact on planning and organizational effectiveness.

2NC – Internal Link

Prefer our ev- drones strikes are effective- critics are wrong

Young 13 [Alex Young- Associate staff member at Harvard International Review, 2/25/2013, “A Defense of Drones,” http://hir.harvard.edu/a-defense-of-drones, mm]

The War on Terror is no longer a traditional conflict. The diffuse, decentralized nature of terrorist organizations had already made this an unconventional war; now, the use of unmanned aircraft has added another non-traditional layer. Conventional military strategies have failed in Iraq and Afghanistan: the United States has, in many cases, stopped sending people into combat, opting instead for airstrikes by unmanned aerial vehicles. Over the past decade, US military and intelligence agencies have expanded their use of unmanned Predator and Reaper drones; these robotic aircraft are generally used to carry out targeted strikes against known members of terrorist groups. US reliance on drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries has changed the nature of the war on terror. This strategy is not without controversy. The Obama administration’s heavy use of unmanned drones in the War on Terror has come under fire from a variety of opponents, including human rights groups, think tanks, and even foreign governments. Critics claim that drone strikes cause civilian casualties, incorrectly target only the most prominent leaders of terrorist groups, and create backlash against the US. To hear some tell it, the use of drones exacerbates, rather than solves, the problem of terrorism. The reality is not so bleak: drones are very good at what they do. Unmanned attacks are highly effective when it comes to eliminating specific members of terrorist organizations, disrupting terrorist networks without creating too much collateral damage. Their effectiveness makes drone strikes a vital part of US counterterrorism strategy. Predator and Reaper drones are not the indiscriminate civilian-killers that some make them out to be: strikes are targeted and selective. This has become increasingly true as drone technology has improved, and as the military has learned how best to use them. A confluence of factors has made drone strikes much better at eliminating enemy militants while avoiding civilians: drones now carry warheads that produce smaller blast radiuses, and the missiles carrying those warheads are guided using laser, millimeter-wave, and infrared seekers. The result has been less destructive drone strikes that reach their intended target more reliably. A number of non-technological shifts have also made drones a more useful tool: Peter Bergen, a national security analyst for CNN, summarized on July 13th, 2012 that more careful oversight, a deeper network of local informants, and better coordination between the US and Pakistani intelligence communities have also contributed to better accuracy. Data gathered by the Long War Journal indicates that the civilian casualty rate for 2012 and the beginning of 2013 is only 4.5 percent. Even Pakistani Major General Ghayur Mehmood acknowledges that, “most of the targets [of drone strikes] are hard-core militants.” Imprecise drone strikes that cause many civilian casualties are now a thing of the past. This improved accuracy may also help to mitigate anti-American sentiment that stems from civilian casualties.

Drones are key---militants can’t replace senior leaders

Johnston 13 [Patrick B. Johnson- Associate Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, cites Anoop Sarbahi- Postdoc scholar in Dept. Political Sci @ UCLA, July 2013, “The Impact of U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” http://patrickjohnston.info/materials/drones.pdf, mm]

We expect drone strikes that kill terrorist leaders will be associated with reductions in terrorist attacks. Previous research convincingly demonstrates that conducting effective terrorist attacks requires skilled individuals, many of whom are well-educated and come from upper middle- class backgrounds. 21 Indeed, captured documents containing detailed biographical data on foreign al Qa’ida militants in Iraq illustrate that among the foreign terrorists—who are conventionally known to be more sophisticated than local fighters—their most commonly listed “occupation” prior to arriving in Iraq was that of “student.” For militants for whom information on “experience” was available, “computers” was the most commonly listed experience type, just ahead of “weapons.”22 In the context of northwest Pakistan, where militant freedom of movement is limited by the threat of drone strikes, we expect that militant groups will be unable to replace senior leaders killed in drone strikes because recruiting and deploying them, perhaps from a foreign country with a Salafi jihadist base, will be costly and difficult. This is not to say that leaders killed in drone strikes are irreplaceable. On the contrary, other militants are likely to be elevated within their organization to replace them. But we also anticipate that those elevated to replace killed leaders will be, on average, of lower quality to the organization than their predecessors. Thus, we predict that the loss of leaders will be associated with the degradation of terrorists’ ability to produce violence. This logic implies Hypothesis 3: H3: All else equal, drone strikes that kill one or more terrorist leader(s) will lead to a decrease in terrorist violence.

Data supports our drone args

Johnston 13 [Patrick B. Johnson- Associate Political Scientist at RAND Corporation, cites Anoop Sarbahi- Postdoc scholar in Dept. Political Sci @ UCLA, July 2013, “The Impact of U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” http://patrickjohnston.info/materials/drones.pdf, mm]

Given that killing terrorist leaders or HVIs in terrorist organizations is the purpose of drone strikes, we evaluate whether patterns of militant attacks differ following strikes in which a militant leader was killed. Table 3 provides tests of Hypotheses 3 and 4 against the four metrics of militant violence examined here using the same 2FESL specifications as in table 2. The results are largely consistent with Hypothesis 3—that killing militant leaders is associated with decreased violence. There is little support for Hypothesis 4, that killing HVIs has counterproductive effects on violence. Controlling for the number of drone strikes per agency-week, the first column of table 3 shows that drone strikes that kill a HVI are associated with reductions in the number of militant incidents that occur. This result is statistically significant at the one-percent level. There is, however, weaker evidence that HVI removals reduce militant lethality and IED attacks.45 Overall, the evidence is somewhat consistent with the argument that individuals matter for a terrorist organization’s ability to produce violence at sustained rates. Along with other evidence from macro-level studies of leadership decapitation, the present results suggest that critics who argue against the efficacy of removing key figures may be overemphasizing the extent to which such individuals can be readily replaced.46

Drone strikes deter terrorists and resolves criticism

Blum and Heymann 10 [Gabriella Blum- Assistant Prof of Law at Harvard Law School, Phillip Heymann- James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, June 2010, “Law and Policy of Targeted Killing,” http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Vol-1_Blum-Heymann_Final.pdf, mm]

At the most basic level, targeted killings, which are generally undertaken with less risk to the attacking force than are arrest operations, may be effective. According to some reports, the killing of leaders of Palestinian armed groups weakened the will and ability of these groups to execute suicide attacks against Israelis. By deterring the leaders of terrorist organizations and creating in some cases a structural vacuum, waves of targeted killing operations were followed by a lull in subsequent terrorist attacks, and in some instances, brought the leaders of Palestinian factions to call for a ceasefire. The Obama administration embraced the targeted killing tactic, holding it to be the most effective way to get at Al-Qaeda and Taliban members in the ungoverned and ungovernable tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or in third countries. Despite the adverse effects such operations may have on the attitudes of the local population toward the country employing targeted killings, the demonstration of superiority in force and resolve may also dishearten the supporters of terrorism. Publicly acknowledged targeted killings are furthermore an effective way of appeasing domestic audiences, who expect the government “to do something” when they are attacked by terrorists. The visibility and open aggression of the operation delivers a clearer message of “cracking down on terrorism” than covert or preventive measures that do not yield immediate demonstrable results. The result in Israel has been to make a vast majority of citizens supportive of targeted killings, despite the latter’s potential adverse effects. And, perhaps surprisingly, of all the coercive counterterrorism techniques employed by the United States, targeted killings have so far attracted the least public criticism.

Drone strikes only reinvigorate terrorists

Cronin 13 [Audrey Kurth Cronin- Distinguished Service Professor; Director, International Security Program George Mason University, July 2013, “Why Drones Fail,” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/somalia/2013-06-11/why-drones-fail, mm]

The war-weary United States, for which the phrase “boots on the ground” has become politically toxic, prefers to eliminate its terrorist foes from the skies. The tool of choice: unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones. In Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen -- often far away from any battlefield where American troops are engaged -- Washington has responded to budding threats with targeted killings. Like any other weapon, armed drones can be tactically useful. But are they helping advance the strategic goals of U.S. counterterrorism? Although terrorism is a tactic, it can succeed only on the strategic level, by leveraging a shocking event for political gain. To be effective, counterterrorism must itself respond with a coherent strategy. The problem for Washington today is that its drone program has taken on a life of its own, to the point where tactics are driving strategy rather than the other way around. The main goals of U.S. counterterrorism are threefold: the strategic defeat of al Qaeda and groups affiliated with it, the containment of local conflicts so that they do not breed new enemies, and the preservation of the security of the American people. Drones do not serve all these goals. Although they can protect the American people from attacks in the short term, they are not helping to defeat al Qaeda, and they may be creating sworn enemies out of a sea of local insurgents. It would be a mistake to embrace killer drones as the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism. AL QAEDA’s RESILIENCE At least since 9/11, the United States has sought the end of al Qaeda -- not just to set it back tactically, as drones have surely done, but also to defeat the group completely. Terrorist organizations can meet their demise in a variety of ways, and the killing of their leaders is certainly one of them. Abu Sayyaf, an Islamist separatist group in the Philippines, lost its political focus, split into factions, and became a petty criminal organization after the army killed its leaders in 2006 and 2007. In other cases, however, including those of the Shining Path in Peru and Action Directe in France, the humiliating arrest of a leader has been more effective. By capturing a terrorist leader, countries can avoid creating a martyr, win access to a storehouse of intelligence, and discredit a popular cause. Despite the Obama administration’s recent calls for limits on drone strikes, Washington is still using them to try to defeat al Qaeda by killing off its leadership. But the terrorist groups that have been destroyed through decapitation looked nothing like al Qaeda: they were hierarchically structured, characterized by a cult of personality, and less than ten years old, and they lacked a clear succession plan. Al Qaeda, by contrast, is a resilient, 25-year-old organization with a broad network of outposts. The group was never singularly dependent on Osama bin Laden’s leadership, and it has proved adept at replacing dead operatives. Drones have inflicted real damage on the organization, of course. In Pakistan, the approximately 350 strikes since 2004 have cut the number of core al Qaeda members in the tribal areas by about 75 percent, to roughly 50–100, a powerful answer to the 2001 attacks they planned and orchestrated nearby. As al Qaeda’s center of gravity has shifted away from Pakistan to Yemen and North Africa, drone strikes have followed the terrorists. In September 2011, Michael Vickers, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for intelligence, estimated that there were maybe four key al Qaeda leaders remaining in Pakistan and about ten or 20 leaders overall in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Drones have also driven down the overall level of violence in the areas they have hit. The political scientists Patrick Johnston and Anoop Sarbahi recently found that drone strikes in northwestern Pakistan from 2007 to 2011 resulted in a decrease in the number and lethality of militant attacks in the tribal areas where they were conducted. Such strikes often lead militants simply to go somewhere else, but that can have value in and of itself. Indeed, the drone threat has forced al Qaeda operatives and their associates to change their behavior, keeping them preoccupied with survival and hindering their ability to move, plan operations, and carry them out. The fighters have proved remarkably adaptable: a document found left behind in February 2013 by Islamist fighters fleeing Mali detailed 22 tips for avoiding drone attacks, including using trees as cover, placing dolls and statues outside to mislead aerial intelligence, and covering vehicles with straw mats. Nonetheless, the prospect of living under the threat of instant death from above has made recruitment more difficult and kept operatives from establishing close ties to local civilians, who fear they might also be killed. But the benefits end there, and there are many reasons to believe that drone strikes are undermining Washington’s goal of destroying al Qaeda. Targeted killings have not thwarted the group’s ability to replace dead leaders with new ones. Nor have they undermined its propaganda efforts or recruitment. Even if al Qaeda has become less lethal and efficient, its public relations campaigns still allow it to reach potential supporters, threaten potential victims, and project strength. If al Qaeda’s ability to perpetuate its message continues, then the killing of its members will not further the long-term goal of ending the group. Not only has al Qaeda’s propaganda continued uninterrupted by the drone strikes; it has been significantly enhanced by them. As Sahab (My Butts), the propaganda branch of al Qaeda, has been able to attract recruits and resources by broadcasting footage of drone strikes, portraying them as indiscriminate violence against Muslims. Al Qaeda uses the strikes that result in civilian deaths, and even those that don’t, to frame Americans as immoral bullies who care less about ordinary people than al Qaeda does. And As Sahab regularly casts the leaders who are killed by drones as martyrs. It is easy enough to kill an individual terrorist with a drone strike, but the organization’s Internet presence lives on. A more effective way of defeating al Qaeda would be to publicly discredit it with a political strategy aimed at dividing its followers. Al Qaeda and its various affiliates do not together make up a strong, unified organization. Different factions within the movement disagree about both long-term objectives and short-term tactics, including whether it is acceptable to carry out suicide attacks or kill other Muslims. And it is in Muslim-majority countries where jihadist violence has taken its worst toll. Around 85 percent of those killed by al Qaeda’s attacks have been Muslims, a fact that breeds revulsion among its potential followers. The United States should be capitalizing on this backlash. In reality, there is no equivalence between al Qaeda’s violence and U.S. drone strikes -- under the Obama administration, drones have avoided civilians about 86 percent of the time, whereas al Qaeda purposefully targets them. But the foolish secrecy of Washington’s drone program lets critics allege that the strikes are deadlier and less discriminating than they really are. Whatever the truth is, the United States is losing the war of perceptions, a key part of any counterterrorism campaign. Since 2010, moreover, U.S. drone strikes have progressed well beyond decapitation, now targeting al Qaeda leaders and followers alike, as well as a range of Taliban members and Yemeni insurgents. With its so-called signature strikes, Washington often goes after people whose identity it does not know but who appear to be behaving like militants in insurgent-controlled areas. The strikes end up killing enemies of the Pakistani, Somali, and Yemeni militaries who may not threaten the United States at all. Worse, because the targets of such strikes are so loosely defined, it seems inevitable that they will kill some civilians. The June 2011 claim by John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser at the time, that there had not been a single collateral death from drone attacks in the previous year strained credulity -- and badly undermined U.S. credibility. The drone campaign has morphed, in effect, into remote-control repression: the direct application of brute force by a state, rather than an attempt to deal a pivotal blow to a movement. Repression wiped out terrorist groups in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and tsarist Russia, but in each case, it sharply eroded the government’s legitimacy. Repression is costly, not just to the victims, and difficult for democracies to sustain over time. It works best in places where group members can be easily separated from the general population, which is not the case for most targets of U.S. drone strikes. Military repression also often results in violence spreading to neighboring countries or regions, which partially explains the expanding al Qaeda footprint in the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the Caucasus.

AT: Terrorism Good

Relations low now – Ukraine tensions

Ellyat, 6/16

Holly Ellyat, Assistant Producer at CNBC, citing government officials, “Russia warns of 'new military confrontation' in Europe,” CNBC, 6/16/15, http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/16/russia-warns-of-new-military-confrontation-in-europe.html // IS

Russia-West relations took a downturn this week when Moscow warned that any stationing of military equipment along its border with Europe could have "dangerous consequences" and President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would add more than 40 ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year. At a military and arms fair on Tuesday, Putin announced the addition of the intercontinental ballistic missiles which, he said, were able to overcome "even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems." After the announcement, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said that Putin's statement was one reason why the international military alliance was upping its deterrence measures.

Relations low now – treaty withdrawal

Lozansky,6/14

Dr. Edward Lozansky President and Founder of the American University in Moscow, “Solving the crisis in U.S.-Russia relations,” The Washington Times, 6/14/15, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/14/edward-lozansky-solving-the-crisis-in-us-russia-re/ // IS

It is unrealistic at the moment to expect a speedy improvement of U.S.-Russia relations. This is regrettable, but it is a fact: The relations between the two countries today may be even worse than during Soviet times — a really disturbing development. Russians and Americans alike are aware that their leaders are facing off on the political, economic and informational fronts, but they are also confronting each other in another area only followed by a narrow circle of experts. Tension there, though, bears directly on the most important security issues facing the whole planet. The reference is, of course, to major arms control treaties. These took many years and tremendous efforts to negotiate, and yet they now dissolve one after another. Washington and Moscow keep accusing each other of violating and abrogating these treaties and plan new and often drastic retaliatory countermeasures.

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 0.65 Mb.

Share with your friends: