Hegemony Core - Gonzaga 2014

Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 1
Hegemony Core
Hegemony Core

Hegemony Core
Contents
Hegemony Core...........................................................................................................................................1
Links & Internal Links................................................................................................................................9
Non-Military Tradeoff Link...................................................................................................................10
Non-Military Tradeoff Link Scenario................................................................................................11
Tradeoff Link/Military CP Solvency..................................................................................................13
Hard Power............................................................................................................................................16
General..............................................................................................................................................17
Air Power..........................................................................................................................................19
Aerospace..........................................................................................................................................20
Readiness...........................................................................................................................................23
Power Projection Key........................................................................................................................27
Asia Pivot..........................................................................................................................................29
AT Soft Power Solves.....................................................................................................................30
AT Multilateralism Solves..............................................................................................................33
Navy Specific........................................................................................................................................34
Navy Key to Hegemony....................................................................................................................35
Aircraft Carriers Key to Power Projection.........................................................................................40
Navy Solves Piracy............................................................................................................................44
AT Navy Cost Unsustainable..........................................................................................................47
AT Troops Key................................................................................................................................48
Soft Power.............................................................................................................................................49
General Key to Hegemony................................................................................................................50
Soft Power Key to Influence..............................................................................................................53
Outweighs Hard Power......................................................................................................................56
Solves Terrorism................................................................................................................................59
Alt Causes..........................................................................................................................................61
Credibility..........................................................................................................................................63
Humanitarian.....................................................................................................................................65
Hard Power Influence Fails...............................................................................................................66
Hard Power Undercuts Soft Power....................................................................................................68
Environmental Regulation.....................................................................................................................69
Environmental Regulation Hurts Hegemony.....................................................................................70

Hegemony Core
International Law...................................................................................................................................71
International Law Helps Hegemony..................................................................................................72
International Law Hurts Hegemony...................................................................................................74
LOST.....................................................................................................................................................75
LOST Increases Hegemony...............................................................................................................76
LOST Hurts Hegemony.....................................................................................................................79
LOST Article 76 Hurts Hegemony....................................................................................................81
Science Diplomacy................................................................................................................................83
Science Diplomacy Helps Hegemony................................................................................................84
Science Diplomacy Hurts Hegemony................................................................................................87
Economy................................................................................................................................................89
Key to Hegemony..............................................................................................................................90
Economic Hegemony is Key to Military Hegemony.........................................................................97
Economic Power Key to Soft & Hard Power...................................................................................101
Manufacturing Key to Hegemony....................................................................................................102
Manufacturing Key to Soft Power...................................................................................................105
Manufacturing Key to Competitiveness...........................................................................................107
Competitiveness Key to Hegemony.................................................................................................109
Dollar Key to Hegemony.................................................................................................................113
Trade Key to Hegemony..................................................................................................................115
Trade Key to US Economy..............................................................................................................119
Economy Outweighs Military..........................................................................................................123
Economy Outweighs Credibility......................................................................................................125
AT Economy Key to Hegemony...................................................................................................126
AT Dollar Hegemony....................................................................................................................134
AT Trade Key to the Economy......................................................................................................136
Energy Security...................................................................................................................................138
Energy Security Key to Hegemony..................................................................................................139
AT Energy Security Key to Hegemony.........................................................................................142
Maritime Terrorism..............................................................................................................................143
Terrorism Hurts Hegemony.............................................................................................................144
Navigation...........................................................................................................................................147
Sea Lanes Key to Trade...................................................................................................................148
Navigation Key to Hegemony.........................................................................................................153

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Piracy...................................................................................................................................................160
Piracy Hurts Hegemony...................................................................................................................161
Piracy Hurts Trade...........................................................................................................................167
Proliferation.........................................................................................................................................171
Proliferation Undercuts Hegemony..................................................................................................172
Internal Link Answers..........................................................................................................................175
AT Hegemony Influences Others..................................................................................................176
Hegemony Inevitable Power Consolidation..................................................................................177
Hegemony Inevitable AT Economic Challengers.......................................................................193
Hegemony Inevitable Nuclear Deterrence....................................................................................194
Hegemony Inevitable Multipolarity Fails.....................................................................................196
AT Retrenchment Ensures Hegemony Decline.............................................................................197
AT Hard Power Decline Bad.........................................................................................................199
Hegemony Good......................................................................................................................................203
1NC Hegemony Good..................................................................................................................204
Uniqueness..........................................................................................................................................208
Uniqueness & Impact......................................................................................................................209
Lead Now........................................................................................................................................214
Lead Now Military.......................................................................................................................215
AT Challengers Now.....................................................................................................................216
AT China Threat Now...................................................................................................................218
AT Hegemony Unsustainable/Cost...............................................................................................220
AT Hegemony Unsustainable........................................................................................................223
AT Empire Decline.......................................................................................................................234
AT Multipolar Transition..............................................................................................................236
Hegemony Good Impacts....................................................................................................................238
Laundry List....................................................................................................................................239
Deters Nuclear Crises......................................................................................................................250
Deters Regional Crises....................................................................................................................252
Deters Conflict.................................................................................................................................253
Collapse Causes War........................................................................................................................263
Decline Hurts Russia-US Relations.................................................................................................272
Decline Causes China War...............................................................................................................274
Solves Stability................................................................................................................................275

Hegemony Core
Solves Terrorism..............................................................................................................................283
Solves Proliferation.........................................................................................................................286
Cooperation.....................................................................................................................................288
Solves Democracy...........................................................................................................................290
Solves Climate.................................................................................................................................291
Solves Trade....................................................................................................................................294
Solves Economy..............................................................................................................................297
AT Hegemony Bad Args...................................................................................................................302
AT Criticisms of Hegemony.........................................................................................................303
AT Hegemony Causes Great Power War.......................................................................................305
AT Entanglements/Wars................................................................................................................307
AT Russia/China/Iran Alliance......................................................................................................310
AT Counterbalancing....................................................................................................................311
AT Soft Balancing.........................................................................................................................319
AT Hard Counterbalancing...........................................................................................................325
AT China Rise...............................................................................................................................333
AT Hierarchy Bad.........................................................................................................................335
AT Unipolarity Bad.......................................................................................................................336
AT US Will Cling to Hegemony...................................................................................................338
AT US Influence Fails...................................................................................................................340
AT Hegemony Alternatives...............................................................................................................341
AT Multipolarity Good.................................................................................................................342
AT Bipolarity Solves.....................................................................................................................350
AT Retrenchment Solves/AT Posen...........................................................................................352
AT Offshore Balancing Solves......................................................................................................357
Hegemony Bad........................................................................................................................................362
1NC Hegemony Bad.........................................................................................................................363
Uniqueness..........................................................................................................................................366
Transition Now Key.........................................................................................................................367
Transition Now................................................................................................................................368
Hegemony Constrained Now...........................................................................................................371
Hegemony Low No Leverage.......................................................................................................373
Hegemony Unsustainable................................................................................................................375
Hegemony Unsustainable Rising Powers.....................................................................................382

Hegemony Core
Naval Hegemony Declining.............................................................................................................385
China Rising Now...........................................................................................................................386
Offshore Balancing Now.................................................................................................................387
Multipolarity Coming Now.............................................................................................................391
Economy Uniqueness..........................................................................................................................397
Decline Now....................................................................................................................................398
Unsustainable Debt.......................................................................................................................401
Military Spending Declining Now...................................................................................................402
China Taking Over...........................................................................................................................405
US Wont Play Leadership Role......................................................................................................407
Hegemony Bad Impacts.......................................................................................................................409
Laundry List....................................................................................................................................410
Prolonging Transition Causes War...................................................................................................414
Causes Conflict................................................................................................................................417
Causes Terrorism.............................................................................................................................418
Causes China Conflict.....................................................................................................................420
Causes Russian-Chinese Alliance....................................................................................................422
Causes Iran Conflict........................................................................................................................425
Causes Oil Dependence...................................................................................................................426
Causes Proliferation.........................................................................................................................428
Decline Good Counterbalancing...................................................................................................429
Hurts the Economy..........................................................................................................................430
Hegemony Alternatives.......................................................................................................................432
Offshore Balancing Solves..............................................................................................................433
Retrenchment Solves.......................................................................................................................435
Nuclear Deterrence Solves...............................................................................................................438
AT Hegemony Good Args.................................................................................................................439
No Impact to Hegemony..................................................................................................................440
AT Deterrence...............................................................................................................................442
AT Asia Pivot Good......................................................................................................................444
AT Hegemony Solves Conflict.....................................................................................................445
AT Transition Wars.......................................................................................................................447
AT Loss of Alliances Causes Violence..........................................................................................452
AT Withdrawal Causes Economic Decline....................................................................................453

Hegemony Core
AT Military Hegemony Key to the Economy................................................................................456
AT Hegemony Key to Oil Stability...............................................................................................459
AT China Decline.........................................................................................................................460
AT Military Primacy Key..............................................................................................................462
Heg Authors Wrong.........................................................................................................................464
Terminal Impacts.....................................................................................................................................466
Free Trade............................................................................................................................................467
Free Trade Good Impact..................................................................................................................468
Democracy...........................................................................................................................................470
Democracy Good Impact.................................................................................................................471
AT Democracy Peace Theory........................................................................................................472
Terrorism.............................................................................................................................................473
Terrorism Retaliation Bad Impact....................................................................................................474
AT Nuclear Terrorism Impact.......................................................................................................476
AT Loose Nukes...........................................................................................................................478
AT Harder to Attribute..................................................................................................................480
AT Deterrence Doesnt Apply.......................................................................................................485
Proliferation.........................................................................................................................................486
Proliferation Bad Impact..................................................................................................................487
Russia War...........................................................................................................................................490
Russia-US War Bad Impact.............................................................................................................491
Asia.....................................................................................................................................................492
China War Impact............................................................................................................................493
Asian Instability Bad Impact...........................................................................................................495
India-US Relations Good Impact.....................................................................................................496
India-Pakistan Nuclear War Impacts................................................................................................497
AT China War...............................................................................................................................499
War......................................................................................................................................................501
Escalation Likely.............................................................................................................................502
Cant Solve War...............................................................................................................................503
Risk of War Low..............................................................................................................................504
Risk of Missile Attack Low.............................................................................................................506
Military Counterplans..............................................................................................................................507
Army Corps of Engineers CP..............................................................................................................508

Hegemony Core
Army Corps of Engineers = Military...............................................................................................509
Wind Siting Solvency......................................................................................................................510
Energy Extraction Solvency............................................................................................................512
Reef Solvency..................................................................................................................................513
Dredging Solvency..........................................................................................................................515
AFF v Army Corps of Engineers CP...................................................................................................517
AFF Army Corps of Engineers = Non-Military............................................................................518
Coast Guard CP...................................................................................................................................521
Coast Guard = Military....................................................................................................................522
EEZ Solvency..................................................................................................................................523
Environmental Protection Solvency.................................................................................................524
OTEC Solvency...............................................................................................................................525
Icebreakers Solvency.......................................................................................................................527
AFF v Coast Guard CP........................................................................................................................532
Aff Overstretch.............................................................................................................................533
Aff Icebreakers.............................................................................................................................536
Navy CP..............................................................................................................................................537
Exploration Solvency.......................................................................................................................538
MH-370 Solvency............................................................................................................................539
Dredging Solvency..........................................................................................................................542
Geospatial Technology Solvency.....................................................................................................543
Ocean Mapping Solvency................................................................................................................545
Energy Innovation Solvency............................................................................................................549
Green Tech Solvency.......................................................................................................................550
Renewables Solvency......................................................................................................................552
Algae Biofuels Solvency.................................................................................................................554
Seawater Fuel Tech Solvency..........................................................................................................555
OTEC Solvency...............................................................................................................................559
Wave Power Solvency.....................................................................................................................561
Wind Solvency.................................................................................................................................562

Hegemony Core
Links & Internal Links

Hegemony Core
Non-Military Tradeoff Link

Hegemony Core
Non-Military Tradeoff Link Scenario

Expanding non-military use of oceans trades off with military
Medina, NOAA Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Oceans, et al., 14
[Monica, Joel Smith, Center for a New American Security Research Associate, Commander Linda A.
Sturgis, Center for a New American Security United States Coast Guard Senior Military Fellow, 1-30-14,
Center for a New American Security, National Coastal Ocean Mapping: Advancing National Defense
and Ocean Conservation http://www.cnas.org/ocean-mapping#.U4i6r8tOWUk, p. 4, accessed 7-10-14,
AFB]
Recent disputes between the military and other users over the use of the coastal ocean have
highlighted competing economic, security and environmental interests in this increasingly crowded
space. Off the coast of Virginia earlier this year, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security
raised an issue regarding the location of a planned offshore wind farm, contending that the
introduction of fixed infrastructure in off limits military training areas could create an unsafe
situation, endanger lives or impede military operations.22 Private operators in the area have also
voiced concerns that the proposed wind farm would shift the pre-established routes of commercial vessels
navigating the area and create delays or unsafe operating situations for towing vessels during hazardous
weather and restrict north to south coastal navigation.23 Additionally, this area is situated within the
migratory path of several marine species, including the previously mentioned North Atlantic right whale.
In March, the California state government ruled to limit the Navys sonar and explosives activity
during exercises off its coast, citing potential harmful effects on highly concentrated numbers of
endangered marine mammals.24 It is unclear what effect this ruling will have; similar injunctions in the
past by the California state government and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations have
led to exemptions by the federal government for the Navy. A recent court ruling in which a consortium
of conservation organizations lost a decision regarding Navy plans to build an undersea training
range further highlights the potential for conflict between conservation and military interests.25 A
transparent communication and operational planning tool based on hard data ocean maps would
be a useful aid in avoiding similar disputes in the future and would help to better align military
offshore training needs for national defense readiness with private-sector users and ocean
conservation groups.
Unconstrained military use of the ocean is vital to prevent great power war and
respond to emergent threats
US Federal Agencies with ocean-related programs, 98
[The report was prepared for the 1998 Year of the Ocean by US federal agencies with ocean-related
programs. The report was funded by NOAA, EPA, DOE, Mineral Management Service, and US
Geological Survey, 1998 Year of the Ocean: THE OCEANS AND NATIONAL SECURITY,
http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/200051DL.txt?

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ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=1995%20Thru
%201999&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&
QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&
XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5CZYFILES%5CINDEX%20DATA%5C95THRU99%5CTXT
%5C00000012%5C200051DL.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=p
%7Cf&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results
%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=10#, p. B2-3, accessed 7-10-14, AFB]
The role of naval power in U.S. military strategy is in transition. With the end of the Cold War, the
United States is much less likely to face the prospects of a world war. However, uncertainty remains
over when, where, and how future conflicts involving U.S. armed forces will occur. Draw-downs in
the size of U.S. forces maintained, and a more diffuse and complex political environment, have put a
premium on flexible forces that can quickly move anywhere and remain there for a long time. These
forces must function without undue logistic strain to respond to threats to international peace or
security. There is also a premium on flexible forces that are capable of multiple missions. Maritime
forces have inherent strengths which make them Americas best tool to effectively meet most
emergent and changing military situations.
Through the use of the worlds oceans by U.S. forces, the advantage of on-scene capabilities for
simultaneously executing all three components of the National Military Strategy is possible without
infringing on any nations sovereignty. According to the Chief of Naval Operations: "The Navy
contribution to our national security objectives is defined by the major components of the National
Military Strategy: peacetime engagement, deterrence and conflict prevention, and controlling
crises."4 This role is rooted in the fundamental ability of the Navy-Marine Corps-Coast Guard Team to
maneuver independently of the control of other nations and win. This is done through an ability to
operate in international waters with forward deployed forces in the highest possible state of readiness.
Modern military systems allow the United States to hold potential adversaries at risk at ever
greater distances. As technologies shrink the globe, the United States is effectively closer to
potential enemies who also have long-distance military capabilities. To counter these capabilities,
U.S. forces must be prepared to use the oceans to meet potential adversaries on their home ground or
on waters far from U.S. coasts. In this very important way, the oceans can buffer North America from
conflict overseas.
Key to the ability to provide trained, ready forces anywhere in the world at any time to meet our
national security objectives is freedom of navigation. U.S. public vessels provide a forward U.S.
presence to protect our own and allied interests. Freedom of the seas also ensures that commercial and
military cargoes can move freely by sea. The U.S. has a special interest in maintaining secure, stable
lines of communication at sea throughout the world. As the 21st century approaches, the United States
can look back at fifty years of relative peace on the high seas. Maintaining this combination of security
and navigational freedom of the seas is a fundamental condition for global peace, security, and
prosperity.

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Tradeoff Link/Military CP Solvency

Only a risk of a link competition for scarce space means the plan trades off with
military balancing interests in favor of the military first would make the plan
more effective
and Ocean Conservation http://www.cnas.org/ocean-mapping#.U4i6r8tOWUk, p. 1-2, accessed 7-10-14,
AFB]
The United States is a maritime nation with an expansive coastal ocean that is integral to economic,
environmental and national security.1 The coastal ocean hosts a wide range of users, including the U.S.
military, coastal shipping companies, offshore energy producers, commercial and sport fishermen,
recreational users and conservation groups. As a primary user of the coastal ocean, the U.S.
military needs dedicated and charted offshore areas in which to train and conduct exercises to
prepare for war, thwart terrorist activities and prevent other threats against the United States. For
the Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps, operating in the coastal ocean is critical to maintaining
operational readiness.2 Although the ocean may seem vast, a unified effort is necessary to balance
increased offshore activity with the need to maintain U.S. military proficiency and national security
and ensure the safety and sustainability of this vital resource.
White House Executive Order 13547 adopted the final recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy
Task Force and established the National Ocean Council to implement an ocean policy to safeguard the
countrys ocean interests. The executive order requires the council to work with stakeholders across the
country to develop coastal and marine spatial planning.3 To improve transparency and coordination, nine
regional planning bodies were created to manage the neighboring coastal ocean and produce plans by
2015 for incorporation into the national ocean plan.4 Although significant progress has been made on
national ocean planning over the past four years, efforts across the nation to improve information
sharing and coordination among ocean users are inconsistent. Meanwhile, increased offshore
activity and competition for space in the coastal ocean have created tension among national
security, commercial industry and ocean conservation communities.5
As a steward of the ocean, the military expends significant time and resources to comply with federal
environmental requirements. However, military users are often challenged by the environmental
conservation community because of the potentially harmful effects on ocean life as a result of certain
military activities.6 The development of a national coastal ocean mapping system that integrates
geospatial data from all coastal ocean users (federal agencies, the military, local and state regulators
and law enforcement, industry and private individuals) would be an integral step toward balancing the
offshore training needs of the military with the needs of ocean conservation groups and private
sector communities. Such a mapping system would also help integrate federal, military and regional
planning efforts to manage these areas more effectively. Ultimately, it would increase transparency

Hegemony Core
and awareness of the burgeoning activity along Americas coasts. The military, in particular, would
benefit from a mapping system, which would inform operational planning efforts and help it
comply with applicable environmental laws and statutes.
Military should take the lead leads to uniformity and private sector follow on that
avoids agency fragmentation lack of uniformity turns the case
and Ocean Conservation http://www.cnas.org/ocean-mapping#.U4i6r8tOWUk, p. 4-5, accessed 7-10-14,
AFB]
Management of the coastal ocean is fundamentally an issue of governance. However, the diverse
group of agencies with statutory obligations to manage ocean resources or undertake activities in
these areas creates challenges for effective governance in the coastal ocean. For instance, the
Department of the Interiors Bureau of Ocean Energy Management leases rights to drill for oil and
natural gas and build wind farms in the coastal ocean, while the Commerce Departments National
Marine Fisheries Service manages the number, type and location of fish that can be caught and
oversees the permitting process for the Navy to use sonar in training areas. In total, more than 140
federal laws govern the coastal ocean areas.26
The creation and empowerment of regional planning bodies has been a central pillar of the national ocean
policy. The military, particularly the Coast Guard and Navy, play a key role in regional planning
efforts along with public and private stakeholders. Some regional planning bodies have made
significant progress to advance ocean planning. Because of a lack of funding and centralized
oversight, efforts throughout the nation have been inconsistent.
The Northeast Regional Ocean Council and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO)
are widely recognized as leaders in regional planning. MARCO has led the way in transparency,
cooperation and data sharing through the MARCO portal. If this level of effort could be replicated
across the nation and integrated into an ocean plan, ocean users would clearly benefit.
Even for these relatively successful regional groups, challenges persist. Participants in a MARCO
workshop in April noted that the fragmentation of federal management was so strong that it would
be difficult for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Body to overcome in any meaningful way and
that the lack of dedicated funding in support of regional ocean planning was considered a
substantial challenge.27
For effective coastal and marine spatial planning, the National Ocean Council must empower regional
planning bodies to address the competing uses in each region and resolve conflicts. Furthermore, there
must be a national-level coordination mechanism to ensure consistency across adjacent areas and
nationally unified ocean governance. Without sustained funding for their efforts, regional planning
bodies will face challenges in creating uniform plans by 2015, and conflicts among users are likely
to persist.

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Numerous information technology programs map ocean use, but no single program
comprehensively captures all major coastal ocean activities. Perhaps the most notable effort, the
ocean.data.gov website, is designed to serve as the National Ocean Councils gateway for ocean use data.
This website has many positive qualities and has the potential to become a comprehensive resource for
coastal ocean mapping. However, it is based on limited data almost exclusively from federal sources
and therefore captures only a subset of coastal ocean activity. Other publicly available geospatial
applications, such as the Marine Cadastre program, a joint venture between the NOAA and the Bureau
of Ocean Energy Management, are useful in certain applications, but are also limited by funding and scope
of data.
Informed decisions require good data. To exemplify the importance of transparency and data
sharing, the Coast Guard initiated the Atlantic Coast Port Access Route Study to evaluate vessel
routing from Florida to Maine and assist the Bureau of Ocean Energy Managements efforts to
identify priority areas for offshore wind energy development. Data from automatic identification
systems to track vessel movements were used to create a comprehensive view of current shipping
routes, allowing analysts to depict the concentration of vessel movements and approaches to ports
along the eastern seaboard. The data provide a useful starting point for discussions about port
access and vessel routing and efforts to preserve navigational safety in conjunction with offshore
energy development proposals.28
This is an era of big data and ever-increasing amounts of publicly available information. Ocean
users should strive to foster information sharing, improved cooperation and conflict avoidance. As the
environmental compliance administrator, the Council on Environmental Quality should encourage
government agencies to use coastal ocean mapping to ease the administrative burden of complying with
federal statutes and regulations. A comprehensive coastal ocean mapping system based either on an
existing platform, such as ocean.data.gov or on entirely new software should compile, integrate
and analyze the available data. Those data need to be collected in a holistic manner for all major
activities in the coastal ocean, and they should include overlays describing such characteristics as
water depth, bottom type, currents, shipping routes, marine protected areas, commercial and
recreational fishing grounds, projected oil and gas lease sales, and military training areas. Using the
standardized data collection methods, this system would produce region-specific maps based on the
unique characteristics of each area. A publicly accessible and user-friendly mapping system could
provide users and regional planning bodies with essential tools for national ocean planning.
Given the U.S. militarys history of researching and acquiring technology to advance coastal ocean
awareness, we recommend that it lead the mapping effort, with input from public and private
stakeholders. The military should invest in the development of a national coastal ocean mapping
system that would provide regional planning bodies with a unified tool for ocean planning.

Hegemony Core
Hard Power

Hegemony Core
General
Hard power solves peace and nuclear deterrence
Dowd, Sagamore Institute Senior Fellow for Policy Research, 7
[Alan, 8-1-7, Hoover Institution Stanford University, Declinism,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/5864, accessed 7-6-13, MSG]
To be sure, the U.S. faces challenges, competitors and threats that could erode its global position: China
and India are ascending economically; the world abounds with asymmetrical threats that have the
capacity to undermine the liberal order that Washington has sought to spread for generations; and
Americans find themselves in the midst of yet another great ideological conflict, in the words of the
presidents most recent security strategy document.
Today as in the past, U.S. primacy is neither inevitable nor a birthright. It is a burden that must be
justified and shouldered anew by each generation in its own way. Even so, and notwithstanding Iraq,
this is an unusual moment to diagnose the United States as a nation in decline. Just as the past is
littered with unfulfilled predictions by the declinists, the present is teeming with evidence of
unprecedented U.S. power.
From peace-keeping to war-fighting, deterrence to disaster relief, it is the U.S. military that the world
turns to when in need. Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami has noted, The world rails against the
United States, yet embraces its protection, its gossip and its hipness.12 Especially its protection:
More than half the globe enjoys overt defense and security treaties with the United States. The U.S.
military is the last (and first) line of defense for most of the rest.
Of course, the U.S. military does more than protect and defend: In the span of about 23 months, it
overthrew two enemy regimes located on the other side of the planet and replaced them with
popularly supported governments. Even as American forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, they
kept watch on the Korean peninsula and kept the sea-lanes open for the oil and goods that feed a
truly global economy; did the dirty work of counterterrorism from Tora Bora to Timbuktu; and
responded to disasters of biblical proportion in places as disparate as Louisiana and Sumatra.
This does not seem to be the handiwork of a faltering empire. Indeed, no other military could
attempt such a feat of global multitasking. The British empire, writes Niall Ferguson in Colossus
(Allen Lane, 2004), never enjoyed this kind of military lead over the competition . . . [and] never
dominated the full spectrum of military capabilities the way the United States does today.
Military retrenchment failsthe US must make a concerted effort to maintain

primacy in every area
Metz, Army War College Strategic Studies Institute Director, 13

Hegemony Core
[Steven, 10/22/13, World Politics Review, A Receding Presence: The Military Implications of
American Retrenchment, www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13312/a-receding-presence-themilitary-implications-of-american-retrenchment , accessed 7/11/14, AC]
To a large extent, the type of armed forces that the United States elects to maintain will affect both
the role Washington can play in the future global security system and the way the world responds to
declining American involvement. The United States did not always have this degree of strategic choice:
The modern U.S. military was largely built in response to the capabilities of America's enemies, initially
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and subsequently the Soviet Union and its clients. Defeating or
deterring these enemies required an American military with balanced capabilities including air, sea
and land power, and conventional and unconventional forces. Because the United States had to
project power over long distances, it needed a dominant navy and air force. But it also needed the
ability to undertake lengthy conventional wars and stabilization or peacekeeping campaigns, which
required robust land power. A multidimensional, balanced military of this sort enabled the United
States to help manage security in diverse regions and against diverse threats.
As the United States struggles with budget issues, domestic political polarization and the decline of
public support for active global engagement and a strong defense, it may be moving away from
these principles of military design toward a less balanced and more specialized force. If current
trends continue, the future U.S. military will be optimized for two things: long-range precision
strikes using aerospace and naval power, and what are called "light footprint" operations based on
"small, long-term, civilian-led missions that leverage a combination of air power, special operators,
intelligence agents, indigenous armed groups and contractors." Such a military would be hardpressed to undertake protracted conventional war or large-scale stability operations. This
narrowing of military capabilities would compel a major change in America's global strategy.

Hegemony Core
Air Power
Air power solves hegemony specifically key to East Asia
Schmitt, co-director of the AEI Center for Security Studies and Donnelly, senior
fellow at the Project for the New American Century, 11
(Gary and Thomas, 1/17/11, WSJ, Shore Up America's Air Superiority,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704511404576085171839462108.html, accessed 7/9/13,
KR)
The F-22 flies faster, higher and its suite of sensors makes it an even more effective platform than the F35. In the best of all worlds, the U.S. would already have a longer-range, day-night, stealth bomber
capability on hand to supplement the use of the F-22s. But it doesn't. And in the meantime, the reduced
numbers of F-22s leave the U.S. tactically at a disadvantage. All of this will cost money, of course.
American political leaders on both sides of the aisle seem bound and determined to cut the
Pentagon's budget rather than increase it. The cuts are the work of the green eyeshade folks in the
administration and in Congress, whose agenda is driven largely by the politics of the budget and little or
no strategic analysis. While keeping the peace always seems expensive when totaling up today's
budget, the failure to do so is even more costly. Regaining American air superiority in East Asia is
absolutely essential to ensure stability and prosperity in the region in the years ahead.

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Aerospace
Aerospace industry is key to maintaining hegemonymultiple warrants
Schmitt and Donnelly, American Enterprise Institute Security Studies Program CoDirectors, 11
[Gary and Thomas, 1/17/11, Wall Street Journal, Shore up Americas Air Superiority,
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704511404576085171839462108, accessed
7/8/14, AC]
After the Chinese military tested its new stealthy fighter during U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates'
visit to Beijing, most attention focused on whether or not President Hu Jintao had advance
knowledge of the test. The fact that Mr. Hu appeared surprised when Mr. Gates brought it up led to
speculation on the relative independence of the PLA and its potential role in next year's change in China's
leadership. These are obviously important issues but they should not make us lose sight of the test
itself and the central fact that the balance of air power in the region is leaning increasingly in favor
of the Chinese.
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and its allies face a competitor that can call
into question what has been the American military's ace-in-the-holeits supremacy in the skies.
The test of a fifth generation fighter is not the only reason for this change in the regional balance of
power. There are numerous contributing factors.
First, over the past 20 years, China has continually upgraded its air defense system. It has done in
good measure by buying Russian-made S-300s. This family of surface-to-air radars and missiles is
regarded as being among the world's most effective regional air defence systems, comparable and in
certain respects superior in performance to the U.S.-made Patriot. With S-300s deployed across from
Taiwan, the Chinese can put at risk any non-stealthy, U.S. aircraft flying in the vicinity of the
Taiwan Strait. Since the vast bulk of American fighters and all U.S. tankers and transport aircraft
are not stealthy, this is a serious problem.
The second problem is China's expansive deployment of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic
missiles. With advances in targeting, this vast arsenal of missiles puts every major American and
allied air base in Northeast Asia in jeopardy. Short on hardened shelters for planes and control centers,
these bases have become inviting "soft" targets.
Add to this China's acquisition of a new generation of attack submarines, fighters, fighter bombers,
cruise missiles of all sorts, a new suite of sensors to locate potential targets, and a newly operational

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ballistic missile designed to hit U.S. carriers at a distance, and it is increasingly clear that the
cornerstone of America's ability to project military power in the region, the aircraft carrier and its
aircraft, is no longer rock solid.
In 1996, when President Bill Clinton sent two carriers in the waters near Taiwan in response to a military
provocation by the Chinese when it launched a salvo of missiles off the northern and southern coasts of
that island, he did so with confidence that the Chinese would not challenge the deployment or further
escalate tensions. Today, an American president would have nowhere near the same confidence.
So what's to be done? Perhaps the worst thing the U.S. can do is implicitly concede this advantage
to the Chinese military by implementing strategies that would stage and deploy most American
military assets from bases outside the region. Creating a Fortress Guam in response, for example, will
undermine the credibility of American security ties with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. It will be
next to impossible to assure our partners that "we have their backs" when we are 1,500 miles away.
At a minimum, the U.S. needs to work with its partners and allies to begin hardening existing bases and
establish new bases throughout the region to complicate China's military plans. Next, given the growing
threat posed by Chinese submarine developments, the U.S. will need to expand its own submarine fleet,
increase resources for the Navy's anti-submarine warfare program, and move ahead with developing a
new generation of airborne electronic warfare platforms that can foul and confuse enemy radars and
sensor systems.
Equally urgent is getting allies like Japan and South Korea to upgrade their air fleets with stealthy
aircraft. No one knows just how stealthy the new Chinese plane is or exactly when full-scale production
might occur. That said, the plane will almost surely be equal to or better than the vast majority of fighters
now in U.S. allies' air forces.
Accordingly, the Pentagon should be working with the Japanese and South Koreans for them to
procure the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber. And precisely because of the threat to air bases posed by
China's ballistic and cruise missiles, it is even more incumbent that the VSTOL version of the F-35
go forward, despite current problems in the program. Having a capacity to take off and land vertically
and on short runways will become even more essential in the years ahead.
Finally, Congress needs to reverse the administration's decision on ending production of the F-22 at
187. Not only is the stealthy "Raptor" far and away the finest fighter in the worldand will remain
so for many years to comeit is the only plane available for more than a decade that can operate
night and day in an independent fashion in a hostile Chinese air defense environment.

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Readiness
Military readiness key to hegemony
Talbot, founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon founder and former editor-inchief, 2
(David Talbot, Jan 3 2002, Salon, The making of a hawk, http://www.salon.com/2002/01/03/hawk/,
accessed 7-7-13, DAG)
Despite their eventual success, each U.S. military response in the past decade even to the brazen
sky terrorism that leveled the World Trade Center and devastated the Pentagon has sparked
passionate opposition in political, media and cultural circles. Conservative commentators like
Andrew Sullivan, Charles Krauthammer and the Wall Street Journal editorial board have blamed current
antiwar resistance on the left and its tradition of pacifism and criticism of American hegemony. And
its true, any liberal who came of age during the Vietnam War, as I did, feels some kinship with these
implacable critics of American policy, even a lingering sense of alienation from our own countrys worldstraddling power. But most of us, at some point during the last two decades, made a fundamental
break from this pacifistic legacy. For me, it came during the savage bombing of Sarajevo, whose
blissfully multi-ethnic cosmopolitanism was, like New York would later become, an insult to the forces of
zealous purity. Most liberals of my generation, however, feel deeply uneasy about labeling themselves
hawks to do so conjures images for them of Gen. Curtis Bombs Away LeMay, it suggests a break
from civilization itself, a heavy-footed step backwards, toward the bogs of our ancestors. What I
have come to believe, however, is that Americas unmatched power to reduce tyranny and terror to
dust is actually what often makes civilization in todays world possible. I want to retrace my journey
here, for those who might be wrestling with similar thoughts these days.
In truth, the opposition to assertive American foreign policy over the past decade has come from liberals
and conservatives alike (as has support for interventionism), and while the Susan Sontags and Noam
Chomskys have become convenient targets for pro-war pundits in recent months, the most effective
critiques of American power since Vietnam have come not from Upper East Side salons and Berkeleys
ivory towers but from within the government itself, including even the Pentagon.
Ever since the Vietnam War, the foreign policy establishment has been suffering from what the astute
analyst Robert Kagan calls a loss of nerve. This failure of will within the foreign policy elite
and Washingtons struggle to escape the shadow of Vietnam is the theme of David Halberstams
recent bestseller, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals. As in his Vietnam
classic, The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam builds his new book around portraits of key
policymakers. But unlike his Vietnam book which laid the blame for the debacle on arrogant
interventionists like Robert MacNamara and the Bundy brothers Halberstams new book is
clearly sympathetic toward foreign policy boldness. The irony here has not escaped observers like
Kagan, who in a withering essay in last months New Republic pinned much of the establishments
loss of confidence on popular critics like Halberstam himself. According to Kagan, prominent
writers like Halberstam fixed it in the popular mind, and in the elite mind, that the best and the
brightest were dangerous. To be among the best and the brightest was to stand accused of criminal

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incompetence. And what did that mean about America? If our best and brightest could not be trusted not
to destroy us, then we were doomed. Could American power be wielded with a measure of confidence?
No, it was impossible to wield power at all. Was national greatness a possibility if the best among us were
fools?
Though he doesnt concede his thinking has undergone any revision, Halberstams views have clearly
changed with time. The heroes in War in a Time of Peace are the hawks in the Clinton administration
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Balkans negotiator and later U.N. Ambassador Richard
Holbrooke, and Kosovo air war commander General Wes Clark. Both Holbrooke, who served as a young
diplomat in Saigon, and Clark, who commanded an Army company and was wounded four times in one
battle, were shaped by Vietnam. But unlike other future political and military leaders who came of
age in the crucible of that jungle war, neither of these men was incapacitated by it. Despite
Americas failure in Vietnam, both men recognized how important it was for the country to play a
strong global role and their hawkish views of the Milosevic killing machine in the Balkans finally
helped convince Clinton to strike back at the dictator, who despite all the dire predictions from GOP
doves like Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich (and perennial Vietnam-era peace crusaders like Tom Hayden)
promptly wilted.
But, as Halberstam makes clear, the hawks were an embattled minority during the Clinton years as
they were during most of the senior Bushs administration. Whether it was the cynical James Baker, who
famously concluded that America did not have a dog in that fight and thereby allowed the Balkans war
to take its savage course, or the ineffectual Warren Christopher (Dean Rusk without the charisma, as
Democratic Party insiders mordantly summed up Clintons choice for secretary of state), Americas
foreign policy was led during these years by men who believed it must operate within very narrow
constraints
Readiness key to stopping terror, global instability, and genocide

Talbot, founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon, 2
(David Talbot, Jan 3 2002, Salon, The making of a hawk, http://www.salon.com/2002/01/03/hawk/,
accessed: 7-7-13, DAG]
The transition from dove to hawk is a political, intellectual and personal journey that many others in
my generation have been making in recent years, some since Sept. 11. The length of this collective trek
came home for me this morning on the way to work, as I listened closely for the first time to the lyrics of
Neil Youngs new song, Lets Roll, inspired by the words of United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd
Beamer as he and his brave comrades rushed the cockpit. Thirty years ago, I was equally stirred by
Youngs bitter Ohio, his antiwar anthem about the Kent State student protesters who were cut down by
tin soldiers in Nixons army. (It was the one time the fortunate sons in the National Guard saw action
during Vietnam, to kill their fellow citizens.) But its the simplicity of Youngs current song that sums up
the world today: No one has the answers/but one thing is true/Youve got to turn on evil/ when its
coming after you Time is running out, lets roll.
For years after Vietnam, I wanted America to step back from the world, and what I regarded as its
arrogant if not imperial need to impose its own sense of order on history. But I have come to

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share the view of Robert Kagan, that if you are the president of the United States, you do not find
trouble, trouble finds you. Or as Richard Holbrooke told Halberstam, speaking of Clintons early
desire to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues (believing this was the electorates message in
choosing him over the internationalist Bush): What Clinton did not yet understand was that foreign
policy never lets an American president go. There are inevitably times when the darkest powers of
the human heart find the means and opportunity to threaten not just the worlds peace but its sense
of decency. And while international coalitions or U.N. peacekeeping forces would, in a better world, be
the best way to respond to these explosions of evil, the sober truth is that from Kuwait to Kosovo to
Kabul only the United States has demonstrated the force and the will to do so effectively.
I am no foreign policy expert, as is surely plain by now. But I believe its incumbent on all Americas
citizens to learn as much as our busy lives allow about the world and not just leave it to our best and
brightest because the United States unique leadership role assures that all of us will feel the
impact of the globes crises, no matter how remote they might initially seem. I have developed my
own criteria for when I think American intervention is justified; that is, when its worth the cost in
blood and treasure, not only for the U.S., but for the people we are trying to rescue. In my mind,
there are three cases when resorting to military force is necessary: 1) When the United States is
directly attacked which it was not only on Sept. 11 but in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center, as well as the explosions aimed at the U.S. embassies in Africa and naval ship in Yemen; 2)
When an aggressor threatens regional stability and world peace such as Saddam Husseins
invasion of Kuwait and Milosevics assaults on Bosnia and Kosovo; 3) When a nation launches a
campaign of genocidal extermination against its own people or those of its neighbors as
Milosevic did against the Muslims of the former Yugoslavia and the Hutu tribe did against the
Tutsis in Rwanda.
Bloodbaths like Rwanda strike many Americans as not worth the cost of intervention, since they do
not directly threaten our national security. But we do indeed have a dog in these fights. These orgies
of violence are crimes against humanity and unless theyre stopped and their perpetrators
brought to justice, they degrade the world we live in and embolden future Pol Pots and Interhamwes,
the machete-wielding vigilantes who hacked to death nearly a million of their Rwandan neighbors in a
100-day spasm of gore, while the U.S. did nothing and U.N. soldiers fled the country. The tragedy of
Rwanda, as a 1999 Frontline report on PBS documented, was that this low-tech genocide could have
been stopped with a minimal show of force. Instead it was a triumph of evil, as Frontline titled its
report, which the philosopher Edmund Burke observed happens when good men do nothing. When
demonic visionaries are allowed to put their Grand Guignol theories into practice, the moral universe that
all of us inhabit shrivels.
Readiness is key to credible deterrence absence risks great power wars

Spencer, Roe Institute Director, 2K
[Jack Spencer, September 15, 2000,Policy Analyst for Defense and National Security, Heritage
Foundation, The Facts About Military Readiness,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2000/09/bg1394-the-facts-about-military-readiness, Accessed
7/6/14, AA]

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America's national security requirements dictate that the armed forces must be prepared to defeat
groups of adversaries in a given war. America, as the sole remaining superpower, has many enemies.
Because attacking America or its interests alone would surely end in defeat for a single nation, these
enemies are likely to form alliances. Therefore, basing readiness on American military superiority
over any single nation has little saliency. The evidence indicates that the U.S. armed forces are not
ready to support America's national security requirements. Moreover, regarding the broader capability to
defeat groups of enemies, military readiness has been declining. The National Security Strategy, the
U.S. official statement of national security objectives,3 concludes that the United States "must have the
capability to deter and, if deterrence fails, defeat large-scale, cross-border aggression in two distant
theaters in overlapping time frames."4According to some of the military's highest-ranking officials,
however, the United States cannot achieve this goal. Commandant of the Marine Corps General James
Jones, former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson, and Air Force Chief of Staff General
Michael Ryan have all expressed serious concerns about their respective services' ability to carry out a
two major theater war strategy.5 Recently retired Generals Anthony Zinni of the U.S. Marine Corps and
George Joulwan of the U.S. Army have even questioned America's ability to conduct one major theater
war the size of the 1991 Gulf War.6 Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military
readiness signal to the rest of the world that the United States is not prepared to defend its interests.
Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be more likely to lash out against American allies and
interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in combat. A high state of military readiness is more
likely to deter potentially hostile nations from acting aggressively in regions of vital national interest,
thereby preserving peace.

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Power Projection Key

Forward deployment is key to global stability
Flournoy, former Defense Undersecretary, and Davidson, Council on Foreign
Relations Senior Fellow, 12
[Michele and Janine, 7/10/12, The Diplomat, A Plea for Smart, Forward U.S. Military Engagement ,
http://thediplomat.com/2012/07/a-plea-for-smart-forward-u-s-military-engagement/, accessed
7/6/14, AC]
The recent global economic downturn has generated doubts about American resilience and our ability to
lead in the world. Far from being a nation in decline, however, the United States global standing remains
unmatched and the imperative for it to lead in todays tumultuous environment is clear. Those who
assume that in order to recover economically the United States must close its overseas bases and
bring its military forces home misunderstand the role the U.S. military plays in promoting global
prosperity. The United States has benefited enormously from a highly interdependent and globalized
economy one that has relied on the security and stability underwritten by our armed forces and our
alliances for over 70 years. In this context, we simply cannot divorce American interests from
global interests or otherwise opt out of the system economically or militarily.
As the U.S. military downsizes following a decade of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, we face a
strategic inflection point with respect to how we restructure and re-posture our forces abroad. The United
States has an opportunity and a responsibility to shape the global environment through its leadership,
global reach, and ability to catalyze positive multilateral activity that enables and encourages others to
share the burden of global stability and security. This means being present in key regions of the world
where threats are likely to emerge and focusing our military activities on prevention and
preparedness.
Our military posture should thus be tailored in a strategic way that reflects the imperatives of
regional threats and respects the interests of partners and allies. In places such as the Korean
peninsula, the Straits of Hormuz, or Malacca, a clear, visible U.S. posture is required; in other regions a
less visible, over-the-horizon presence may be more appropriate. In some places, part-time use of shared
facilities and flexible access agreements may constitute the extent of U.S. military presence. In all of
these regions, the United States can and should continue to build and lead powerful partnerships
and alliances founded on shared norms such as freedom of navigation, peaceful resolution of
disputes, respect for the rule of law, human rights, and civilian control over the military.
Key to our global rebalancing is President Barack Obamas renewed focus on the Asia-Pacific. Militarily,
this means the United States will sustain a robust presence with our long-term allies while enhancing our
military activities with other partners across the region. Our posture from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean will
be more geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable. Our bases in South
Korea and Japan will remain the cornerstone of our presence in Northeast Asia, where we will enhance
our cooperative planning and military exercises. We will leverage the geo-strategic value of our U.S.
territory by moving a few thousand marines to Guam, and we will forward deploy new littoral combat

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ships in Singapore. Up to 2500 marines will be scheduled to rotate in and out of Darwin Australia for
bilateral training exercises and we will ramp up our utilization of other Australian ports and airfields as
part of a wider re-commitment to this key ally. Such moves, along with increased military cooperation
with the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam demonstrate the U.S. commitment to sustaining our
leadership while assisting others in meeting the most pressing challenges, from terrorism and piracy, to
freedom of navigation or humanitarian disasters.
This re-commitment to Asia should not be interpreted as our abandoning our leadership role elsewhere in
the world. In the greater Middle East and Central Asia, our military activities will continue to support
multilateral solutions to shared security threats. Following our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, we will
transition to a lighter, but scalable footprint focused on countering terrorism, deterring the destabilizing
behavior of Iran, ensuring the free flow of commerce, and checking the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). Instead of maintaining permanent installations, U.S. air and naval forces will likely
rotate in and out of countries such as Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and,
potentially, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the wake of the Arab Spring, our military-to-military engagements
with the regions rising democracies can help promote the development of civilian-led security forces,
respectful of human rights and the rule of law.
Our military posture in Europe reflects the fact that NATO, through American leadership, remains the
indispensible global military alliance. We have fought hard and learned valuable lessons together over the
past 10 years, from the major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to our multilateral operations in Libya, to
operations against pirates in the Red Sea. Our U.S. military posture in Europe will leverage these lessons
to ensure that the alliance remains capable of responding to emerging threats in and outside of the
European theater. We will retain two modernized brigade combat teams along with seven other enabling
army brigades and air forces optimized for global reach and partnership. We will build a robust missile
defense architecture sustained by forward-based Aegis cruisers and maintain a network of bases and
agreements that ensure our ability to train regularly with allies and respond to crises.
This emphasis on partnership and multilateral activities is also reflected in our posture across Africa and
South America. In regions where few U.S. forces are permanently stationed, the United States day-to-day
military posture should remain tailored toward the needs of our partners, focused on high-priority
activities such as countering violent extremism, halting illicit trafficking and support to law enforcement.
A focus on building partner capacity will enhance their abilities to meet local and transnational challenges
before they become larger crises.
A robust, forward engaged U.S. military is the right strategic investment at this critical inflection
point. As we emerge from a decade of war and reduce the overall size of our military, we cannot
afford to have our remaining forces inefficiently garrisoned at home training only themselves. Not
only does forward engagement allow our forces to train the way they will most likely fight--abroad
and with allies--but it is also a more efficient way to ensure they are postured to respond should
deterrence fail. As Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asserted, We do not have to choose between
national security and fiscal security. Continued U.S. leadership in the world, underpinned by
smart forward military engagement, is imperative to our domestic economic prosperity and to
shaping the future security environment.

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Asia Pivot
Asia pivot is critical to maintaining US power and preserving global peace
Markowitz, Harvard University International Affairs Fellow, and Fariss, Penn State
Political Science Professor, 13
[Jonathan N. and Christopher J., 11/1/13, Social Science Research Network, Geopolitical Competition
and the Rise of Naval Power, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2204867,
accessed 7/8/13, AC]
The United States currently maintains ten combatant commands that are designed to facilitate the
projection of U.S. military force to every corner of the globe. Part of the justification for deploying
U.S. military forces globally is that they are needed to maintain stability both globally and in specific
regions. This justification appears to be reasonable for many parts of the world, such as the Middle East
and Asia, but not in others. The United States still dedicates military forces to Latin America and
Western Europe, yet these regions have experienced little military competition since the end of the
Cold War and are likely to continue to see low levels of military competition, according to our
theory and empirical findings. For these reasons, we would suggest that the U.S. can begin to shift
its forces away from these regions, as they are unlikely to return to military competition in the
absence of a strong U.S. military presence. This is not to say that the U.S should politically disengage
from these regions, but that it no longer needs to deploy so much of its military power there.
Freeing up U.S. forces allows policy makers to either reduce spending on U.S. armed forces (currently
larger then most of the worlds combined military spending) or shift forces to regions in which U.S.
strategic interests are at greater risk. The most recent U.S. pivot to the Pacific saw an increase in
the number of U.S. ships in operation there from 50% to 55%. This proportion will eventually
reach only 60%. Representatives of the U.S. military have claimed that U.S. forces are tightly
constrained and cannot more strongly pivot to Asia without compromising other U.S. commitments. The
question is how necessary are these commitments for defending U.S. interests and/or maintaining
stability in regions of the world that are unlikely to militarily compete or threaten U.S interests in
the absence of U.S. forces? In short, our theory and empirical evidence suggests that the U.S. may
be oversupplying security in some areas of the world and under-supplying it in others.

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AT Soft Power Solves

Soft power is useless hard power is the root of influence
Lacey, Marine Corps War College Strategic Studies Professor, 13
[Jim, 4/22/13, National Review, Soft Power, Smart Power ,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346131/soft-power-smart-power, accessed 7/6/14, AC]
Well, soft power and smart power were fascinating intellectual exercises that led nowhere. Iran is
still building nuclear weapons, North Korea is threatening to nuke U.S. cities, and China is
becoming militarily more aggressive. It turns out that power is what it has always been the
ability to influence and control others and deploying it requires, as it always has, hard
instruments. Without superior military power and the economic strength that underpins it, the U.S.
would have no more ability to influence global events than Costa Rica.
When President Obama made the strategic decision to pivot toward Asia, he did not follow up by sending
dance troupes to China, or opening more cultural centers across the Pacifics great expanse. Rather, he
ordered the U.S. military to begin shifting assets into the region, so as to show the seriousness of our
intent. If North Korea is dissuaded from the ultimate act of stupidity, it will have a lot more to do with our
maintenance of ready military forces in the region than with any desire the North Korean regime has for a
continuing flow of Hollywood movies.
By now every serious strategist and policymaker understands that if the United States is going to
continue influencing global events it requires hard power a military second to none. That is
what makes a new report from the well-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
troubling. According to SIPRI, in 2012, Chinas real military spending increased by nearly 8 percent,
while Russias increased by a whopping 16 percent. Worse, SIPRI expects both nations to increase
spending by even greater percentages this year.
The United States, on the other hand, decreased real spending by 6 percent last year, with much larger
cuts on the way. After a decade of war, much of our military equipment is simply worn out and in need of
immediate replacement. Moreover, technologys rapid advance continues, threatening much of our current
weapons inventory with obsolescence. As much as the utopians (soft-power believers) want to deny it,
American power is weakening even as the world becomes progressively less stable and more
dangerous.
In a world where too many states are led by men who still believe Maos dictum that Power comes from
the barrel of a gun, weakness is dangerous. Weakness is also a choice. The United States, despite our
current economic woes, can easily afford the cost of recapitalizing and maintaining our military. We are
not even close to spending levels that would lead one to worry about imperial overstretch. Rather, our
long-term security is being eaten up so as to fund entitlement overstretch.
I suppose that one day, if left unchecked, the welfare state will absorb so much spending that the only
military we can afford will be a shadow of what has protected us for the past seven decades. Soft

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power will then cease to be one option among many and, instead, become our only choice. We will
become as relevant to the rest of the world as Europe.
I wonder how many people realize just how different their daily lives will become if that day arrives. For
a long time, American hard power has cast a protective shield around the liberal world order. It will
not be pretty when that is gone.
Soft power is irrelevantUS military and economic primacy mean that states will
always follow the USempirically proven
Cohen, former State Department speechwriter, 14
[Micah, Century Foundation Fellow and former Foreign Affairs Columnist, March/April 2014,
Hypocrisy Hype, Foreign Affairs 93:2, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140760/michaela-cohen-henry-farrell-and-martha-finnemore/hypocrisy-hype, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
Still, even if one grants Farrell and Finnemore the benefit of the doubt, or concedes that even false
accusations of American hypocrisy are harmful, it is difficult to accept their larger claim: that
Washingtons alleged inability to consistently abide by the values that it trumpets will harm the
national interest by changing the way other countries act toward the United States. Mannings and
Snowdens leaks proved embarrassing, and Washington has had to deal with some short-term diplomatic
fallout. But the leaks are highly unlikely to have lasting diplomatic effects. For the sake of
comparison, consider the impact of the U.S.-led global war on terrorism. After 9/11, U.S. actions
and policies on a wide range of issues, such as torture, detention, and preventive war, pointed to a
fairly wide gulf between the countrys stated principles and its actual behavior. And during the
Bush administration, Washington treated some of its close European allies so poorly that their
leaders responded by publicly distancing themselves from the United States. In 2002, for example,
German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder successfully ran for reelection by trumpeting his opposition
to U.S. plans to invade Iraq.
Yet none of these actions led to a wholesale change in the transatlantic alliance or to global
bandwagoning against Washington. The reason should be somewhat obvious: foreign countries,
particularly close U.S. allies, continue to rely heavily on American diplomatic, military, and
economic power. Farrell and Finnemore assert that the potential gap between Washingtons stated
values and U.S. actions creates the risk that other states might decide that the U.S.-led order is
fundamentally illegitimate. But that risk is vanishingly small: after all, the U.S.-led order greatly
(even disproportionately) benefits U.S. allies, and even some rivals. Germany might be angry about
the fact that the NSA bugged Chancellor Angela Merkels private cell phone, but not so angry that
it will leave NATO or fundamentally change its bilateral relationship with the United States.
Likewise, it is hard to imagine that Brazil would curtail its significant economic ties to the United
States because of the NSAs spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff -- or, for that matter, that
China would disengage from the World Trade Organization because the United States is hacking
Chinese computers.

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Farrell and Finnemore never explain why other countries would respond to U.S. hypocrisy (real or
imagined) by taking steps that could end up doing them more harm than good. Throughout the
postCold War era, even when the United States has taken actions that other countries opposed,
those countries have nevertheless maintained their fealty to the U.S.-led liberal world order. That is
not a bug of the international system: it is its most important feature, and an indication of its strength.
This should hardly come as news to Farrell and Finnemore, who have long been insightful observers of
international politics. But they perhaps should have looked more closely at some of the very evidence
they cite. Consider, for example, their interpretation of remarks made in 2010 by then Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates, who said that the national security implications of Mannings leaks would be
fairly modest. Farrell and Finnemore claim that Gates downplayed the impact of the leaks because they
did not reveal anything that was truly unexpected. But thats not why Gates thought the effect of the leaks
would be mild. The fact is, Gates said, governments deal with the United States because its in
their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we
can keep secrets. . . . Some governments . . . deal with us because they fear us, some because they
respect us, most because they need us. . . . So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will
continue to work with us.
Gates full statement, which Farrell and Finnemore disregard, is perhaps the most compelling refutation of
their thesis: an unusually candid reminder of precisely how international cooperation works in the
U.S.-led global order. Farrell and Finnemore are right to acknowledge that hypocrisy is the lubricating
oil of that order. But they err in believing that is going to change anytime soon.

Hegemony Core
AT Multilateralism Solves
Multilateral international organizations fail and dont solve the impact
Haass, Council on Foreign Relations president, 13
[Richard, Foreign Policy Begins at Home, p. 48-49, AC]
Beyond their individual weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the major powers share a common predicament:
their inability to agree on how the world is to be organized and operated. The result is a gap between what
exists and what is needed in the way of global rules and arrangements to enable globalizations positive
effects and inhibit its negative ones. Accounting for this global gap is the absence of consensus as to the
rules necessary for governing international relations and to the penalties for breaking them.
There are of course any number of international organizations, from the United Nations and the
International Monetary Fund to the World Health Organization and the World Trade
Organization. But they all fall short of what is needed. Part of the problem is that many of these
institutions were designed at and for a different time. Many originated during or soon after World
War II, when the world was dominated by the Allies, which included the United States, Great
Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. There was no (or at most a severely limited) role for Axis
countries such as Germany and Japan, and little provision for colonial areas that would soon emerge as
states. The China that was envisioned was that of the pro-Western Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, not
the Communists who won out in 1949.The wars lasting impact on Great Britain and France was
underestimated. Many of the features and forces that fall under the rubric of globalization were either in
their infancy or literally unimaginable.
That world is now close to seventy years in the past. There is no way that a UN Security Council
designed in 2012 would count the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France as its five
permanent, veto-wielding members. There would be pressure and good reason to include Japan, India,
and possibly Brazil, and create a single European chair so that Germany had a voice. But agreeing on any
such changes is near impossible, as under any imaginable scheme for reform there would be losers as well
as winners. Efforts such as the G-20 are a step in the direction of rectifying this flaw, but the G-20 lacks
authority and capacity in addition to suffering from its very size. The result is what can best be termed
multilateralisms dilemma: that the inclusion of more actors increases the legitimacy of a process or
organization at the same time as it decreases its efficiency and utility. It is always more difficult to
arrive at consensus and get anything done with more in the room, but there is enormous pressure to
expand participation all the same. In addition to these institutions being dated and there being too
many cooks, the basic political problem is that the major powers rarely agree on what needs doing
in the international arena. Even where there is a degree of accord in principle, such as on the need
to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, prevent climate change, or promote trade, there is too little
agreement in practice. The result is that the world is a far messier and more dangerous place than it
could or should be.

Hegemony Core
Navy Specific

Hegemony Core
Navy Key to Hegemony

Naval power solves hegemony its key to power projection
Markowitz, Harvard Research Fellow, and Fariss, UCSD Research Fellow, 13
(Jonathan Markowitz and Christopher Fariss, Jan 22, 2013, Geopolitical Competition and the Rise of
Naval Power, SSRN, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2204867, accessed 7/9/13, KR)
We define power projection capabilities as the force structure required to deploy military force over
distance. To operationalize this concept we use capital ships. Capital ships are a useful measure for
several reasons. First, capital ships, unlike land armies, are not useful for domestic suppression.
Therefore, a leaders decision to build a navy is not likely to be for the purpose of domestic suppression.
Second, no state can project power globally without building capital ships. Thus, a leaders choice to
build and maintain capital ships is a costly signal that they seek to build the capabilities to project
military force beyond their immediate borders. Some leaders can project power great distances
without building capital ships (e.g. pre-20th century Russia). However, no state has ever projected a
substantial amount of conventional forces globally without building a navy. Third, the oceans have
increased in relative importance due to increases in maritime trade and the opening of deep-sea
maritime resources due to technological innovation. Additionally, as territorial borders have stabilized
and the number and intensity of maritime disputes have increased, predicting which states will be
likely to enhance their naval capabilities will have important implications for how the global commons is
to be governed.
Naval power is the single most important part to hegemonic presence

Velandy, Major USMC, 14
(Siddhartha M., Spring, 2014, Major, United States Marine Corps Reserve, THE ENERGY PIVOT:
HOW MILITARY-LED ENERGY INNOVATION CAN CHANGE THE WORLD, 15 Vt. J. Envtl. L.
672, Lexis, Accessed 7/8/14, AA)
The United States military plays in its own league. Accounting for close to forty percent of the
world's total military spending, the U.S. military budget dwarfs all others. And of course, the financial
ledger does not tell the whole story. China's People's Liberation Army is the largest military force in the
world, with an advertised active strength of around 2.3 million personnel. n16 Even so, the ability to
project power is a critical variable. In this area, the United States has the sizable advantage.
The United States Navy is the premier vehicle of American force projection. The Navy sails ten
nuclear powered aircraft carriers, with two more under construction. n17 They are the largest ships
in the world, each designed for an approximately 50-year service life, with only one mid-life
refueling. n18 As Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, stated recently:

Hegemony Core
[T]he Founding Fathers . . . recognized that having a Navy and Marine Corps to sail the world's oceans
and protect our commerce and national interest was vital in making the United States a player on the
world stage. From George Washington's first schooners . . . the Navy was seen as important, yes in
wartime, but also in peacetime . . . that is called presence. Presence is what we do; presence is what
the Navy and Marine Corps are all about. n19
Naval presence is the base of overall US grand strategy

Cropsey, Center for American Seapower Director, 11
(Seth, Jan Feb 11, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and Bush administrations, senior
fellow at the Hudson Institute [Areas of Expertise: Foreign Policy, Terrorism & Radical Ideologies,
Defense Strategy, Security Alliances, National Security], World Affairs, JANUARY/FEBRUARY
2011,Anchors Away: American Sea Power in Dry Dock,
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/anchors-away-american-sea-power-dry-dock, Accessed 7/8/14,
AA)
The danger that a single power would control the European continent remained after the Nazis
disappeared, when the USSRs power reached the border of divided Germany. Again, US grand strategy
aimed to prevent a hostile power from dominating the continent. NATO was a coalition of continental
democratic states that stood between the Soviets and the waters surrounding the European
peninsula. Our allies could be certain that we would resupply them with secure seaborne supplies
and ground troops. At the same time, US naval combatants would whittle down Moscows
submarine-borne strategic reserve and provide diversionary assaults on the flanks of the large
Soviet ground force if it struck westward.
For a century, in other words, American grand strategy has, through alliances backed by maritime
power, aimed to prevent the rise of dangerous peer competitors on distant continents. Seaborne
power has helped maintain coalitions and, through its very presence, deterred nuclear exchanges.
Perhaps most important, sea power, through its encompassing, trans-oceanic role, has protected
freedom of navigation and occasionally acted to enforce standards of national sovereignty and nonaggression, which serve Americas broadest interest in a peaceful global order.
Empirically proven naval power key to winning wars

Cropsey, Center for American Seapower director, 11
AA)

Hegemony Core
Grand strategy is the set of objectives that unite a nations foreign and military policies at any single
moment and give a coherent view over a long period of time of how a state protects itself and its interests.
Since it became a major world power early in the twentieth century, the United States has been
guided by Britains centuries-old maritime grand strategy. British policy used naval power to
secure the sea-lanes on which its trade and eventually its colonial empire depended, to support and
reassure its continental allies, and to protect itself from waterborne assault. Complementing its
maritime strategy was the long-standing effort to preserve security by building continental alliances
and coalitionscontributing ground forces only where necessaryto prevent the emergence of a
dominant European power that might eventually challenge Britain at sea.
Americas own grand strategy formed around maritime power, beginning with wars against the
Barbary pirates and continuing with the War of 1812 and the riverine and coastal encirclement that
helped the Union choke the Confederacy during the Civil War. At the end of the nineteenth century,
the war with Spain ended the last of European holdings in the Americas and simultaneously secured US
interest in and responsibility for the Philippines. By 1914, the Panama Canal allowed US sea power to
move smoothly and strategically between the Atlantic and Pacific, acknowledging Americas
increasing interest in the great breadth of ocean on each of its coasts. Theodore Roosevelts
construction and around-the-world deployment of a large US battle fleet underlined the same idea:
that the worlds oceans provided in-depth strategic defense for Americas increasingly global
interests.
US policy during World War I rested as much on safe transit of a large number of American troops
and a huge amount of logistical support through the Atlantics U-boat-patrolled seas as it did on a
coalition strategy with allied forces on the ground in northern Europe. When conflict broke out again two
decades later, the dovetailing relationship between sea and land power remained central to
American grand strategy. The United States supplied the tools Winston Churchill asked for, but
only after they traveled safely over water first. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery told an audience
nearly a decade and a half after the end of World War II that the Second World War was
fundamentally a struggle for the control of the major oceans and seasthe control of sea
communicationsand until we had won that struggle we could not proceed with our plans to win
the war.
The Navy ensures peace in peacetime but the tides are turning
Cropsey, Center for American Seapower director, 11
(Seth, Jan-Feb 11, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and Bush administrations, senior
AA)
The danger that a single power would control the European continent remained after the Nazis
disappeared, when the USSRs power reached the border of divided Germany. Again, US grand strategy

Hegemony Core
aimed to prevent a hostile power from dominating the continent. NATO was a coalition of continental
democratic states that stood between the Soviets and the waters surrounding the European
peninsula. Our allies could be certain that we would resupply them with secure seaborne supplies
and ground troops. At the same time, US naval combatants would whittle down Moscows
submarine-borne strategic reserve and provide diversionary assaults on the flanks of the large
Soviet ground force if it struck westward.
For a century, in other words, American grand strategy has, through alliances backed by maritime
power, aimed to prevent the rise of dangerous peer competitors on distant continents. Seaborne
power has helped maintain coalitions and, through its very presence, deterred nuclear exchanges.
Perhaps most important, sea power, through its encompassing, trans-oceanic role, has protected
freedom of navigation and occasionally acted to enforce standards of national sovereignty and nonaggression, which serve Americas broadest interest in a peaceful global order.
Several major policy changes since the end of the Cold War show that this fundamental idea of
grand strategy has shifted. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the continuing war in Afghanistan are
continental struggles in which no threat of a rising peer competitor exists. Allies were called on and
coalitions formed. Naval power is employed in the War on Terror. But US grand strategy has come
loose from the moorings, namely, that significant hegemony in either of the worlds two most
important continents, Europe and Asia, constitutes a perilous threat to American security, and that
partnership with the states that separate these threats from the worlds major oceans offers the first
and surest way to protect Americas interest in preventing the approach of danger.
Naval power is key to US global influence

Smith, US Navy Strategy and Policy Division Director, 12
[Michael, Rear Admiral, 10/19/12, US Navy, Power Projection and #WARFIGHTING,
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2012/10/19/power-projection-and-warfighting/, accessed 7/8/14, AC]

Power projection is the ability of a nation to apply elements of its national power outside of its
territory to respond to crises, contribute to deterrence, and protect national interests. Naval power
projection involves influencing events on land from the sea, and requires a full spectrum of lethal,
non-lethal, conventional, and special capabilities applied in concert to gain an advantage.
With our Navy we have the unique ability to help influence events overseas by being continuously
forward deployed and operationally ready to respond to events quickly and effectively. In short,
power projection is the Navys ready, versatile offensive punch, employed across a broad spectrum
of military operations to deter or defeat aggression and, if required, enable the introduction and
sustainment of follow-on forces.
In cooperation with our allies and joint force partners, the Navy is able to apply the inherent
lethality, flexibility, and reach of our naval forces across all operational domains: sea, air, land,
space and cyberspace. Power projection capabilities include cruise missiles, naval aircraft, naval
surface fires, electronic warfare, amphibious forces (employed in concert with our Marine partners),
SEALs, and other naval special warfare units.

Hegemony Core
While the Navy is capable of overcoming many geographic challenges, naval forces today face
increasingly capable anti-access/area-denial threats that make power projection in some critical areas of
operation more risky. The Navy therefore remains constantly engaged in the development and
implementation of new capabilities and techniques designed to address such threats.

Hegemony Core
Aircraft Carriers Key to Power Projection

Aircraft carriers are key to US power projection and global dominanceoutweigh
all other military hardware
Buss, US Navy Rear Admiral, et al., 13
[David H., William F. Moran, US Navy Vice Admiral, and Thomas J. Moore, US Navy Rear
Admiral, 4/26/13, Foreign Policy, Why America Still Needs Aircraft Carriers,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/26/why_america_still_needs_aircraft_carriers,
To sustain global leadership, we must have enough ships to maintain an enduring and capable naval
presence in those areas of significant interest to the United States. To be effective, our capability
must be credible -- and fully appreciated by any potential adversary. As we deal with declining
budgets, there will be pressure to pursue a strategy suggested by some critics (who are mostly focused on
near-term cost and perceived vulnerability) to eliminate some big-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers
(CVNs) and convert the "savings" into some quantity of smaller surface combatants and L-class
amphibious ships. In theory, this strategy would increase the presence density of U.S. naval forces and
meet the capacity demands outlined in current defense strategic guidance. But let's examine this emerging
strategy a bit more closely.
Numbers alone do not guarantee attainment of the goals of naval presence, which include, as J.J.
Widen has noted, assistance, cooperation, assurance, influence, persuasion, deterrence, compellence, and
coercion. The Navy must, as Greenert's "Sailing Directions" states, provide "offshore options to deter,
influence and win in an era of uncertainty." Devolving the qualitative value of naval presence
afforded by a CVN and her embarked air wing into the quantitative value of a larger number of
smaller surface combatants neglects the fundamental purpose of naval presence: deter, influence,
and win in an uncertain environment.
There are a number of navies around the globe that can sustain a force consisting of smaller surface
combatants, but none that can equal the global presence of the U.S. Navy. What clearly distinguishes
the U.S. Navy from the rest of the world is its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and extremely
effective (and becoming more so) embarked carrier air wing (CVW). But the strength of the U.S. Navy
derives from more than just hardware. It derives from the adaptability and flexibility of this combatproven team that throughout the past 70 years has evolved to overcome potential adversary capabilities.
Time and again, the innovative and evolutionary character of naval aviation has proven its value to deter
-- or substantively and decisively contribute -- to major conflicts around the globe, protect commerce and
free trade, and ultimately contribute to the security of the United States.
Smaller fleets around the globe are relatively limited in what they can accomplish, both at sea and
ashore. Naval gunfire is traditionally effective on shore and the revolution in precision strike weapons,
such as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM), has increased the range, precision, and explosive
yield of its kinetic effects. However, these are principally kinetic effects, limited to what we call the "right
side of the kill chain." An aircraft carrier and its embarked air wing, meanwhile, have the capability

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to operate across the full spectrum of warfare, including the electromagnetic spectrum and the nonkinetic or "left side of the kill chain."
Additionally, an air wing operating from a nuclear-powered aircraft is capable of transcending the
air-land boundary with high-end effects (precision strikes), mid-level effects (non-kinetic shows of
force), and lower-end but strategically significant effects (security cooperation or humanitarian
assistance/disaster relief). In the end, the CVN/CVW combination is the only maritime force
anywhere in the world capable of delivering effects along the entire spectrum -- from assistance to
coercion -- with the ability to rapidly transition into large-scale major combat operations if
required. Emerging and re-emerging navies around the world understand this. That's why countries
aspiring to extend their influence are building aircraft carriers.
As the Department of Defense considers future force design, it must recognize that in many
scenarios, the United States can deploy a CVN/CVW combination in place of a large onshore
footprint, while taking full advantage of international air and sea space, without requiring over flight
or basing rights. Affordability -- the central tenet in big-deck carrier critics' arguments -- fails to consider
the cost-avoidance value of these marvels of power, efficiency, and adaptability. Seen this way, the dollar
cost of the carrier is a bargain and the political advantages are overwhelming, especially for a war-weary
nation looking to avoid protracted commitments in foreign lands.
But the United States is also struggling to repair its fiscal house, and the aircraft carrier is expensive -being arguably the most complicated and technologically advanced weapon system in the history of
warfare. But if one views that investment through the lens of a 50-year service life (which, by the way,
is how long our CVNs are designed to last) that includes warfighting upgrades, modernization, and
upkeep, carriers promise a pretty good return. Consider the legendary 51-year history of the recently
retired USS Enterprise (CVN 65). Designed in and for a different age, "Big E" was combat-ready and
credible in her first deployment during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, just as she was combat-ready
and credible during her final deployment in support of operations in Afghanistan in 2012.
Today, the U.S. Navy is building the Ford class of aircraft carriers. Many recent articles quote values
ranging from $13-15 billion as the cost to build the first ship of the class, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN
78). Those figures, however, include not only the cost of building the first of ship, but also all of the
design and development costs for the entire Ford class -- a class of ship that will be in service for the next
94 years. Factoring the design and development cost of the entire class into the price of the first ship is
like saying the first iPhone cost $150 million or the first Toyota Prius cost more than $1 billion. When the
design and development costs are removed from the inflated "shock value" cost of the CVN 78, it is
only 18 percent more expensive than the most recent ship built in our current Nimitz carrier
class. Moreover, the design and development investment in the Ford class will deliver a product that is
more capable and has lower life cycle costs ($4 billion less) than its predecessors, and which will
continue paying dividends for nearly a century.
Even in light of that return-on-investment timeline, affordability remains a key consideration and the
Navy is leveraging the learning on CVN 78 to further reduce costs on the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN
79). In real terms, CVN 79 will cost more than $1 billion less to build than CVN 78, and will require
fewer man-hours to build than the last carrier in the current class. In the end, the Navy is building one
Ford class carrier every 5 years, which represents about 0.4 percent of the defense budget during that time
frame. If we take a long strategic view and keep the USS Enterprise in mind, that is pretty good return on
investment.

Hegemony Core
Finally, some critics have questioned whether an aircraft carrier can remain relevant in tomorrow's
threat environment. The answer to that question lies not only with the aircraft carrier, but also with
her embarked air wing. The USS Midway (CV 41) was commissioned in 1945, with an air wing
consisting of Corsairs and Avengers. During her final combat cruise in Operation Desert Storm in
1991, her air wing was comprised of Intruders, Hornets, Prowlers, and Hawkeyes. Likewise, the air
wing complement on Ford class carriers at the end of their service life, we postulate, will be radically
different than the air wing CVN 78 will carry at the time of her commissioning.
Unlike other classes of ships, the aircraft carrier does not need to be retired when its primary weapons
system becomes obsolete. Similarly, defensive systems are more easily upgraded aboard an aircraft carrier
than any other ship. The USS Midway's 1945 five-inch guns, for example, had been replaced by the Sea
Sparrow surface-to-air missile system as well as Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems (CIWS) capable of
defending the carrier against Anti Ship Missiles (ASM), aircraft, and littoral warfare threats by 1991.
Likewise, by the time she retires in 2065, the Ford's Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile, Rolling Airframe
Missile, and CIWS will likely be replaced by entirely new defensive systems that we can't even imagine
today -- and her two nuclear reactors and unprecedented electrical power will provide plenty of "juice" to
integrate the directed energy weapons of the future. Greenert has used the USS Enterprise as a prime
example in his "Payloads Over Platforms" theme for the future design of our Navy, and it is a testament to
the aircraft carrier's proven track record of strategic adaptability. This record of strategic adaptability is
proof-positive that we ought never to cede battlespace to any potential adversary.
For more than 70 years, the unmatched range, speed, endurance, and flexibility of the U.S. Navy's
aircraft carrier strike force has presented the United States with global freedom of action while
operating -- even when contested -- in international waters and air domains. Nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers and their embarked air wings enable the United States to act as a key guarantor of
peace and stability around the world. Having the ability to operate without a "permission slip" for
basing and over-flight access, while generating the range of effects necessary to deter potential
adversaries, is more than just a symbol of power. It is the essence of power.
Aircraft carriers are a prerequisite to hegemonymultiple warrants

Markowitz, Harvard University International Affairs Fellow, and Fariss, Penn State
Political Science Professor, 13
[Jonathan N. and Christopher J., 11/1/13, Social Science Research Network, Geopolitical Competition
and the Rise of Naval Power, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2204867,
Capital ships are a useful measure for several reasons. First, capital ships, unlike land armies, are
not nearly as useful for domestic suppression. Therefore, a leaders decision to build a navy is
not likely to be for the purpose of domestic suppression. Second, no state can project power
globally without building capital ships. Thus, a leaders choice to build and maintain capital ships is
a costly signal that they seek to build the capabilities to project military force beyond their
immediate borders. Some leaders can project power great distances without building capital ships

Hegemony Core
(e.g. pre-20th century Russia); however, no contemporary state has ever projected a substantial
amount of conventional forces globally without building a navy. Third, the oceans have increased in
relative importance due to increases in maritime trade and the opening of deep-sea maritime
resources due to technological innovations. Moreover, as territorial borders have stabilized and the
number and intensity of maritime disputes have increased, predicting which states will be likely to
enhance their naval capabilities will have important implications for how the global commons is to
be governed.

Hegemony Core
Navy Solves Piracy

The US Navy is key to maritime piracy prevention- we leave the pirates quaking in
their boots
Rayman, Staff Writer for Time, 14
(Noah, 1/6/2014, Time, Did 2013 Mark the End of Somali Piracy?
http://world.time.com/2014/01/06/did-2013-mark-the-end-of-somali-piracy/, Accessed: July 6, 2014,
PKM)
When five armed men in a small motorboat approached an oil tanker sailing off the coast of
Somalia on Dec. 9, the crew sprang into action. They increased speed and unleashed fire hoses off
the side to evade the assailants, according to a report from the International Maritime Bureau
(IMB). They called for help from the British Royal Navy, which dispatched a helicopter to their location.
And they summoned to the deck an armed security team traveling with the tanker, who made sure
the assailants saw they were carrying weapons.
The suspected pirates, presumably now deterred from their original intentions of attempting to
hijack the ship and kidnap its crew, turned back.
Its a testament to the success of recent antipiracy measures that hijackings of major shipments off
the coast of Somalia plummeted to zero in 2013, according to the final numbers compiled by the
U.S. Navy and released last week. The pirates are also trying less often: there were nine suspected
attempts in 2013 in the shipping lanes that pass between Yemen and Somalia, down from seven hijackings
and 25 attempts a year earlier. In 2009, there were 51 hijackings and 130 attempts, according to the
Navy, including the failed attempt to take the Maersk Alabama that formed the basis of the
Hollywood film Captain Phillips.
The US Navy has reduced maritime piracy by 75%- they are the only ones to have
this level of security success
Kelly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, 12
(Thomas, 10/25/2012, Remarks at Countering Piracy Week, The U.S. Government's Approach to
Countering Somali Piracy, http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/rm/199929.htm, Accessed: July 6, 2014, PKM)
In a globalized world, the impact of piracy in one area can ripple across the globe. People in
countries around the world depend on secure and reliable shipping lanes for their food, their
energy, and their consumer goods brought by cargo ships and tankers. By preying on commercial
ships in one of the worlds busiest shipping lanes, pirates off the Horn of Africa threaten more than
just individual ships. They threaten a central artery of the global economy -- and that means that they
threaten global security and exact a painful toll.

Hegemony Core
Action had to be taken. While there seemed to be no limit to the growth of piracy, through the
collective effort of the United States, the UK, NATO, the EU, the broader international community, and
the private sector, we are now seeing signs of dramatic progress.
Today, I can report that, according to figures from the U.S. Navy, we are on track to experience a 75
percent decline in pirate attacks this year compared with 2011. We are seeing fewer attempted attacks
in no small measure because pirates were less successful at hijacking ships. In 2011, the number of
successful pirate attacks fell by half. This year, in 2012, the number of successful attacks has
continued to decline. To date, pirates have captured ten vessels this year, compared to 34 in 2011 and
68 in 2010. The last successful Somali pirate attack on a major commercial vessel was more than five
months ago on May 10, 2012. The lack of success at sea means that pirates are holding fewer and
fewer hostages. In January 2011, pirates held 31 ships and 710 hostages. Today, pirates hold five ships
and 143 hostages. That is roughly a 75 percent reduction in ships and hostages held by pirates since
January 2011. While this is still unacceptably high, the trend is clear. We are making significant
progress.
The US is committed to fighting pirates off the coast of Africa

Office of the Spokesperson for the US Department of State, 14
(June 20, Press Releases, United States Counter Piracy and Maritime Security Action Plan
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/06/228108.htm, Accessed July 8, 2014, KS)
The United States has long been a leader in maritime security. Since 2009, the United States pioneered
the international effort to counter pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia, with dramatic results. In the
spirit of this leadership, the United States has completed a government-wide Counter Piracy and Maritime
Security Action Plan.
The plan affirms the U.S. commitment to repress piracy and related maritime crimes, strengthen regional
governance and rule of law for the safety and security of mariners, preserve freedom of the seas, and
promote free flow of commerce through lawful economic activity. The Counter Piracy and Maritime
Security Action Plan focuses on three core areas: prevention of attacks, response to acts of maritime
crime, and enhancing maritime security and governance; and provides specific frameworks for the Horn
of Africa and Gulf of Guinea. These frameworks establish a tailored and specific methodology for the
focus regions, and provide guidance on how the United States will respond to the regional threats
associated with the varying environments.
Under the plan, the U.S. Government will work toward the following objectives:
Reduce the vulnerability of the maritime domain to piracy and related maritime crimes;

Hegemony Core
Prevent pirate attacks and other related maritime crimes against U.S. vessels, persons, and interests, as
well as those of our allies and partners;
Interrupt and terminate acts of piracy, consistent with international law and the rights and
responsibilities of other States;
Ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their actions by facilitating
the prosecution of suspected pirates, and ensure that persons
committing related maritime crimes are similarly held accountable by regional, flag, victim, or
littoral States or, in appropriate cases, the United States;
Preserve the freedom of the seas, including all the rights, freedoms, and uses of the sea
recognized in international law;
Protect ocean commerce and transportation;
Continue to lead and support international efforts to combat piracy and other related maritime
crimes and urge other States to take decisive action both individually and through international
efforts;
Build the capacity and political will of regional states to combat piracy and other related maritime
crimes, focusing on creating institutional capacity for governance and the rule of law;
and
Strengthen national law to better enable successful prosecution of all members of piracy-related
criminal enterprises, including those involved in financing, negotiating, or otherwise facilitating
acts of piracy or other related maritime crimes.

Hegemony Core
AT Navy Cost Unsustainable

The Navy is not too expensive; bringing it back would cost more than maintaining it
AA)
The problems of a decreasing US fleet should be at the heart of this discussion. Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs Mike Mullen said in June 2010 that our national debt is our biggest security threat. One of the
most likely sources of reducing the debt is defense spending. Our fleet today is less than half the size
it was during the Reagan administration. Further cuts will clearly decrease American sea power,
which is ultimately far more expensive to replace than to sustain. Such a loss also takes decades to
overcome, time that would permit an opponent like China to solidify. The size of the US fleet should
be increased to 350 ships within the next decade (from about 285 now), and American political
leadership, if it is unwilling publicly to argue for this naval program as critical to maintaining our status
as a great Pacific power, should allow the Navy to offer such a justification in its arguments before
Congress.
To prevent bureaucratic strife, the defense budget has for years been divided equally. This was not always
the rule. As American grand strategy once made deliberate choices, the division of the defense budget
once reflected them. In 1958, when the Eisenhower administration placed its hopes for strategic
deterrence primarily in the Strategic Air Command, the Air Force received 48 percent of the budget. The
Navys portion was almost 29 percent, and the Army received 21 percent, down by nearly a half from its
39 percent share during the Korean War.
After Washington ends our large-scale commitment to wars in the Middle East, it must commit a division
of the defense budget toward maintaining the current balance of power in Asia and the western Pacific
region. This should of course include a stabilizing US presence carried out by the military services best
situated to the task. If strategy has any meaning, it must choose among competing claims and place
informed bets. Is the contentment of our three military services a greater good than an allocation of
resources that sustains our power in Asia and prevents the continued rise of a rival regional
hegemon? If the US cannot make such strategic decisions under the burden of increasingly straitened
national resources, are we still capable of maintaining international leadership, much less our own
security?

Hegemony Core
AT Troops Key
Naval power is the single most important part to hegemonic presence
672, Lexis, Academic, Accessed 7/8/14, AA)

Hegemony Core
Soft Power

Hegemony Core
General Key to Hegemony

Increasing soft power resources would balance US priorities and sustain leadership
Nye, Harvard government professor, 11
(Joseph, 5/12/11, Foreign Policy, The War on Soft Power,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/12/the_war_on_soft_power, accessed 7/7/13, KR)
Smart power is the ability to combine the hard power of coercion or payment with the soft power of
attraction into a successful strategy. U.S. foreign policy has tended to over-rely on hard power in
recent years because it is the most direct and visible source of American strength. The Pentagon is the
best-trained and best-resourced arm of the U.S. government, but there are limits to what hard power
can achieve on its own. Democracy, human rights, and civil society are not best promoted with the
barrel of a gun.
It is true that the U.S. military has an impressive operational capacity, but the practice of turning to the
Pentagon because it can get things done leads to the image of an over-militarized foreign policy.
Moreover, it can create a destructive cycle, as the capacity of civilian agencies and tools gets
hollowed out to feed the military budget. Today, the United States spends about 500 times more on
its military than it does on broadcasting and exchanges combined. Congress cuts shortwave
broadcasts to save the equivalent of one hour of the defense budget. Is that smart?
It sounds like common sense, but smart power is not so easy to carry out in practice. Diplomacy and
foreign assistance are often underfunded and neglected, in part because of the difficulty of
demonstrating their short-term impact on critical challenges. The payoffs for exchange and
assistance programs is often measured in decades, not weeks or months. American foreign-policy
institutions and personnel, moreover, are fractured and compartmentalized, and there is not an adequate
interagency process for developing and funding a smart-power strategy. Many official instruments of soft
or attractive power -- public diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance,
disaster relief, military-to-military contacts -- are scattered around the government, and there is no
overarching strategy or budget that even tries to integrate them.
The obstacles to integrating America's soft- and hard-power tool kit have deep roots, and the
Obama administration is only beginning to overcome them, by creating a second deputy at State,
reinvigorating USAID, and working with the Office of Management and Budget. Increasing the size of
the Foreign Service, for instance, would cost less than the price of one C-17 transport aircraft, yet there
are no good ways to assess such a tradeoff in the current form of budgeting. Now, that progress may be
halted.
Leadership in a global information age is less about being the king of the mountain issuing
commands that cascade down a hierarchy than being the person in the center of a circle or network
who attracts and persuades others to come help. Both the hard power of coercion and the soft
power of attraction and persuasion are crucial to success in such situations. Americans need better to
understand both these dimensions of smart power.

Hegemony Core
Soft power is the key internal link to hegemony

Meyer, Stellenbosch Master of Arts in international studies, 7
[Marius, March 2007, Stellenbosch Press, An Exploration of the Role of Soft Power in Hegemony: the
USA and China, scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/10019.1/2391/1/Meyer.pdf, accessed 7/9/14, AC]
On the ideational levels the US seems to have the most primacy or strength within the system- at the
moment. Goh (2003: 80) notes that US power resides in:
US values and cultural appeal
The perception that US hegemony is benign
US actions/ power is legitimate based on consent
These are all soft power variables which Goh indicates. These variables are imperative to the reascendance of US hegemony as it is these factors which form the base of US primacy. It was however
indicated that anti-US sentiments and US unilateral diplomacy severely retarded US soft power.
This is why the next section is wholly devoted to exploring the nature of US hegemony exclusively with
regards to its soft power capabilities.
It is argued that the US is not in the process of new ascension-in the light of discrepancies with regards to
all the spheres of hegemony. Yet the US still exerts much influence in the world system which is
inexplicable-unless one explores the soft power capabilities which serve to attract, legitimize and
enable US hegemony. This is why in the next section we will look at the current nature of US soft
power-having indicated that it has declined in real terms, it is still important to explore the nature of
US soft power in order to predict or forecast the future of the US and how it will behave.
Soft power is declining in the status quo saving it is key to hegemony

(Marius, March 2007, Stellenbosch Press, An Exploration of the Role of Soft Power in Hegemony: the
USA and China, scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/10019.1/2391/1/Meyer.pdf, accessed 7/7/13, KR)
To come back to the question of what makes the US hegemonic it has become prevalent that for
perhaps even three decades the US has cheated hegemonic decline through careful alliance
forming in the guise of regimes and international organisations. The US was saved by the fact that
they were focusing on us and not me. Thus consensus makes the US hegemonic. Yet at the
moment- in the light of growing US unilateralism- the US seems to be focusing on the US (me) and
not on us as in their alliances. Thus the USs soft power seems to be waning under the pressure of
crumbling alliances- due to over investment and reliance on hard power capabilities to reach the
ends which they could reach if soft power was implemented instead.

Hegemony Core

Hegemony Core
Soft Power Key to Influence

Soft power is key to solve every impactthe rise of the rest means hard power alone
doesnt solve
Nye, Harvard IR Professor, 9
[Joseph S., former Assistant Defense Secretary, 9/10/9, Project Syndicate, American Power in
the Twenty-First Century, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/american-power-inthe-twenty-first-century, accessed 7/6/14, AC]
The United States governments National Intelligence Council projects that American dominance will be
much diminished by 2025, and that the one key area of continued American superiority military
power will be less significant in the increasingly competitive world of the future. Russian President
Dmitri Medvedev has called the 2008 financial crisis a sign that Americas global leadership is coming to
an end. The leader of Canadas opposition Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff, suggests that US power has
passed its mid-day. How can we know if these predictions are correct?
One should beware of misleading metaphors of organic decline. Countries are not like humans with
predictable life spans. For example, after Britain lost its American colonies at the end of the eighteenth
century, Horace Walpole lamented Britains reduction to as insignificant a country as Denmark or
Sardinia. He failed to foresee that the industrial revolution would give Britain a second century of even
greater ascendency.
Rome remained dominant for more than three centuries after the apogee of Roman power. Even then,
Rome did not succumb to another state, but suffered a death of a thousand cuts inflicted by various
barbarian tribes. Indeed, for all the fashionable predictions of China, India, or Brazil surpassing
the US in the coming decades, the classical transition of power among great states may be less of a
problem than the rise of modern barbarians non-state actors. In an information-based world of
cyber-insecurity, power diffusion may be a greater threat than power transition.
So, what will it mean to wield power in the global information age of the twenty-first century? What
resources will produce power? In the sixteenth century, control of colonies and gold bullion gave Spain
the edge; seventeenth-century Holland profited from trade and finance; eighteenth-century France gained
from its larger population and armies; and nineteenth-century British power rested on its industrial
primacy and its navy.
Conventional wisdom has always held that the state with the largest military prevails, but in an
information age it may be the state (or non-state) with the best story that wins. Today, it is far from
clear how the balance of power is measured, much less how to develop successful survival strategies.
In his inaugural address in 2009, President Barack Obama stated that our power grows through its
prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering
qualities of humility and restraint. Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, America
cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America.
We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal. Smart power
means the combination of the hard power of command and the soft power of attraction.

Hegemony Core
Power always depends on context. The child who dominates on the playground may become a laggard
when the context changes to a disciplined classroom. In the middle of the twentieth century, Josef Stalin
scornfully asked how many divisions the Pope had, but four decades later, the Papacy was still intact
while Stalins empire had collapsed.
In todays world, the distribution of power varies with the context. It is distributed in a pattern that
resembles a three-dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely
unipolar, and the US is likely to remain the only superpower for some time. But on the middle
chessboard, economic power has already been multi-polar for more than a decade, with the US,
Europe, Japan, and China as the major players, and others gaining in importance.
The bottom chessboard is the realm of cross-border transactions that occur outside of government
control. It includes diverse non-state actors, such as bankers electronically transferring sums larger
than most national budgets, and, at the other extreme, terrorists transferring weapons or hackers
threatening cyber-security. It also includes new challenges like pandemics and climate change.
On this bottom board, power is widely dispersed, and it makes no sense to speak of unipolarity,
multipolarity, hegemony, or any other clich. Even in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the giddy
pace of technological change is likely to continue to drive globalization and transnational challenges.
The problem for American power in the twenty-first century is that there are more and more things
outside the control of even the most powerful state. Although the US does well on military
measures, there is much going on that those measures fail to capture.
Under the influence of the information revolution and globalization, world politics is changing in a way
that prevents America from achieving all its international goals acting alone. For example,
international financial stability is vital to Americans prosperity, but the US needs the cooperation
of others to ensure it. Global climate change, too, will affect Americans quality of life, but the US
cannot manage the problem alone.
In a world where borders are more porous than ever to everything from drugs to infectious diseases
to terrorism, America must help build international coalitions and institutions to address shared
threats and challenges. In this sense, power becomes a positive sum game.
It is not enough to think in terms of power over others. One must also think in terms of power to
accomplish goals. On many transnational issues, empowering others can help to accomplish ones
own goals. In this world, networks and connectedness become an important source of relevant
power. The problem of American power in the twenty-first century is not one of decline, but of
recognizing that even the most powerful country cannot achieve its aims without the help of others.
Concerted effort to maintain soft power is key to fostering global cooperation

Nye, Harvard IR Professor, 4
[Joseph, Summer 2004, Soft Power and American Foreign Policy, Political Science Quarterly,
119:2, 255-270, http://www.pols.boun.edu.tr/uploads%5Cfiles%5C1104.pdf AC]

Hegemony Core
Skeptics about soft power say not to worry. Popularity is ephemeral and should not be a guide for
foreign policy in any case. The United States can act without the world's applause. We are so strong we
can do as we wish. We are the world's only superpower, and that fact is bound to engender envy
and resentment. Fouad Ajami has stated recently, "The United States need not worry about hearts and
minds in foreign lands." IJ Columnist CaI Thomas refers to "the fiction that our enemies can be made
less threatening by what America says and does."10 Moreover, the United States has been unpopular
in the past, yet managed to recover. We do not need permanent allies and institutions. We can always
pick up a coalition of the willing when we need to. Donald Rumsfeld is wont to say that the issues should
determine the coalitions, not vice-versa. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the recent decline in our
attractiveness so lightly. It is true that the United States has recovered from unpopular policies in
the past, but that was against the backdrop of the Cold War, in which other countries still feared the
Soviet Union as the greater evil. Moreover, while America's size and association with disruptive
modernity are real and unavoidable, wise policies can soften the sharp edges of that reality and
reduce the resentments that they engender. That is what the United States did after World War II. We
used our soft power resources and co-opted others into a set of alliances and institutions that lasted
for sixty years. We won the Cold War against the Soviet Union with a strategy of containment that used
our soft power as well as our hard power. It is true that the new threat of transnational terrorism
increased American vulnerability, and some of our unilateralism after September 11 was driven by
fear. But the United States cannot meet the new threat identified in the national security strategy
without the cooperation of other countries. They will cooperate, up to a point, out of mere self-interest,
but their degree of cooperation is also affected by the attractiveness of the United States. Take Pakistan for
example. President Pervez Musharraf faces a complex game of cooperating with the United States on
terrorism while managing a large anti-American constituency at home. He winds up balancing
concessions and retractions. If the United States were more attractive to the Pakistani populace, we would
see more concessions in the mix.

Hegemony Core
Outweighs Hard Power

Soft power outweighs hard power it legitimizes actions
Joseph Nyes term soft power was explored, as it is the chief aspect which is almost synonymous with
non- material power. It was found that soft power attracts and legitimises actions whilst building
alliances and consensus. It was found that soft power is a more peaceful alternative to the zero- sum
strategy of the realists- that focuses excessively on hard power capabilities. Thus the soft power of
attraction creates uniform behaviour far better than force in hard power terms.
Soft power is more important than military presenceeven the DOD agrees
Nye, Harvard IR professor, 11
[Joseph, 4/11/12, Foreign Policy, The War on Soft Power,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/12/the_war_on_soft_power, accessed 7/8/12, AC]
The sad irony is that the Obama administration had been moving things in the right direction. When
Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, she spoke of the importance of a "smart power" strategy,
combining the United States' hard and soft-power resources. Her Quadrennial Diplomacy and
Development Review, and her efforts (along with USAID chief Rajiv Shah) to revamp the United States'
aid bureaucracy and budget were important steps in that direction. Now, in the name of an illusory
contribution to deficit reduction (when you're talking about deficits in the trillions, $38 billion in savings
is a drop in the bucket), those efforts have been set back. Polls consistently show a popular
misconception that aid is a significant part of the U.S. federal budget, when in fact it amounts to less
than 1 percent. Thus, congressional cuts to aid in the name of deficit reduction are an easy vote, but a
cheap shot.
In 2007, Richard Armitage and I co-chaired a bipartisan Smart Power Commission of members of
Congress, former ambassadors, retired military officers, and heads of non-profit organizations at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. We concluded that America's image and
influence had declined in recent years and that the United States had to move from exporting fear
to inspiring optimism and hope.
The Smart Power Commission was not alone in this conclusion. Even when he was in the George W.
Bush administration, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on Congress to commit more money
and effort to soft-power tools including diplomacy, economic assistance, and communications
because the military alone cannot defend America's interests around the world. He pointed out that
military spending then totaled nearly half a trillion dollars annually, compared with a State

Hegemony Core
Department budget of just $36 billion. In his words, "I am here to make the case for strengthening
our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power." He acknowledged that
for the secretary of defense to plead for more resources for the State Department was as odd as a
man biting a dog, but these are not normal times. Since then, the ratio of the budgets has become even
more unbalanced.
Hard power is sufficient in the status quosoft power is the only barrier to effective
US global leadership
Nye, Harvard IR professor, 11
[Joseph, 4/11/12, Foreign Policy, The War on Soft Power,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/12/the_war_on_soft_power, accessed 7/8/12, AC]
Smart power is the ability to combine the hard power of coercion or payment with the soft power of
attraction into a successful strategy. U.S. foreign policy has tended to over-rely on hard power in
recent years because it is the most direct and visible source of American strength. The Pentagon is
the best-trained and best-resourced arm of the U.S. government, but there are limits to what hard
power can achieve on its own. Democracy, human rights, and civil society are not best promoted
with the barrel of a gun.
It is true that the U.S. military has an impressive operational capacity, but the practice of turning to the
Pentagon because it can get things done leads to the image of an over-militarized foreign policy.
Moreover, it can create a destructive cycle, as the capacity of civilian agencies and tools gets
hollowed out to feed the military budget. Today, the United States spends about 500 times more on
its military than it does on broadcasting and exchanges combined. Congress cuts shortwave
broadcasts to save the equivalent of one hour of the defense budget. Is that smart?
It sounds like common sense, but smart power is not so easy to carry out in practice. Diplomacy and
foreign assistance are often underfunded and neglected, in part because of the difficulty of
demonstrating their short-term impact on critical challenges. The payoffs for exchange and
assistance programs is often measured in decades, not weeks or months. American foreign-policy
institutions and personnel, moreover, are fractured and compartmentalized, and there is not an adequate
interagency process for developing and funding a smart-power strategy. Many official instruments of soft
or attractive power -- public diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance,
disaster relief, military-to-military contacts -- are scattered around the government, and there is no
overarching strategy or budget that even tries to integrate them.
The obstacles to integrating America's soft- and hard-power tool kit have deep roots, and the
Obama administration is only beginning to overcome them, by creating a second deputy at State,
reinvigorating USAID, and working with the Office of Management and Budget. Increasing the size of
the Foreign Service, for instance, would cost less than the price of one C-17 transport aircraft, yet there
are no good ways to assess such a tradeoff in the current form of budgeting. Now, that progress may be
halted.

Hegemony Core
Leadership in a global information age is less about being the king of the mountain issuing
commands that cascade down a hierarchy than being the person in the center of a circle or network
who attracts and persuades others to come help. Both the hard power of coercion and the soft
power of attraction and persuasion are crucial to success in such situations. Americans need better to
understand both these dimensions of smart power.

Hegemony Core
Solves Terrorism
Soft power boosts international cooperation key to preventing terrorism military
action alone is insufficient
Nye, Harvard International Relations professor, 4
(Joseph S., Summer 2004, Political Science Quarterly, Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,
Volume 119, Issue 2; page 255, proquest, download date: 7-06-13, DAG)
Some hard-line skeptics might say that whatever the merits of soft power, it has little role to play in
the current war on terrorism. Osama bin Laden and his followers are repelled, not attracted by
American culture, values, and policies. Military power was essential in defeating the Taliban
government in Afghanistan, and soft power will never convert fanatics. Charles Krauthammer, for
example, argued soon after the war in Afghanistan that our swift military victory proved that "the
new unilateralism" worked. That is true up to a point, but the skeptics mistake half the answer for
the whole solution. Look again at Afghanistan. Precision bombing and Special Forces defeated the
Taliban government, but U.S. forces in Afghanistan wrapped up less than a quarter of al Qaeda, a
transnational network with cells in sixty countries. The United States cannot bomb al Qaeda cells in
Hamburg, Kuala Lumpur, or Detroit. Success against them depends on close civilian cooperation,
whether sharing intelligence, coordinating police work across borders, or tracing global financial
flows. America's partners cooperate partly out of self-interest, but the inherent attractiveness of
U.S. policies can and does influence the degree of cooperation. Equally important, the current struggle
against Islamist terrorism is not a clash of civilizations but a contest whose outcome is closely tied to a
civil war between moderates and extremists within Islamic civilization. The United States and other
advanced democracies will win only if moderate Muslims win, and the ability to attract the
moderates is critical to victory. We need to adopt policies that appeal to moderates and to use public
diplomacy more effectively to explain our common interests. We need a better strategy for wielding
our soft power. We will have to learn better how to combine hard and soft power if we wish to meet the
new challenges.
Soft power key to the international cooperation that is vital to preventing terrorism
Nye, Harvard International Relations professor, 4
(Joseph S., Summer 2004, Political Science Quarterly, Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,
Volume 119, Issue 2; page 255, proquest, download date: 7-06-13, DAG)
Skeptics about soft power say not to worry. Popularity is ephemeral and should not be a guide for
foreign policy in any case. The United States can act without the world's applause. We are so strong we
can do as we wish. We are the world's only superpower, and that fact is bound to engender envy
and resentment. Fouad Ajami has stated recently, "The United States need not worry about hearts and

Hegemony Core
minds in foreign lands."IJ Columnist CaI Thomas refers to "the fiction that our enemies can be made
less threatening by what America says and does."10 Moreover, the United States has been unpopular
in the past, yet managed to recover. We do not need permanent allies and institutions. We can always
pick up a coalition of the willing when we need to. Donald Rumsfeld is wont to say that the issues should
determine the coalitions, not vice-versa. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the recent decline in our
attractiveness so lightly. It is true that the United States has recovered from unpopular policies in
the past, but that was against the backdrop of the Cold War, in which other countries still feared the
Soviet Union as the greater evil. Moreover, while America's size and association with disruptive
modernity are real and unavoidable, wise policies can soften the sharp edges of that reality and
reduce the resentments that they engender. That is what the United States did after World War II. We
used our soft power resources and co-opted others into a set of alliances and institutions that lasted
for sixty years. We won the Cold War against the Soviet Union with a strategy of containment that used
our soft power as well as our hard power. It is true that the new threat of transnational terrorism
increased American vulnerability, and some of our unilateralism after September 11 was driven by
fear. But the United States cannot meet the new threat identified in the national security strategy
without the cooperation of other countries. They will cooperate, up to a point, out of mere self-interest,
but their degree of cooperation is also affected by the attractiveness of the United States. Take Pakistan
for example. President Pervez Musharraf faces a complex game of cooperating with the United States on
terrorism while managing a large anti-American constituency at home. He winds up balancing
concessions and retractions. If the United States were more attractive to the Pakistani populace, we would
see more concessions in the mix.

Hegemony Core
Alt Causes
Alt causes to soft power decline military unilateralism and pressure to conform to
US values
Goh (2003: 89) argues that the USs reaction to the September 11 attacks severely destabilised their
soft power capabilities as they not only lost a significant amount of influence over other actors within
the system-but this also cost the US many alliances due to the incongruence in their actions and
policies. To explain: US soft power is very much built on regimes which uphold shared values and
codes within the system and are based on mutual acceptance. The US was very much a champion and
father of this system and most of the regimes which are paramount to it (having been instrumental in the
creation and sustenance of these values through formal institutional means). Yet with the USs retort to
9/11 they have found that they are losing alliances in the light of (Goh, 2003: 84- 85, 90):
inconsistent military targets (why did the US not invade North Korea which proclaimed to have WMD
capabilities)
growing unilateralism which adversely affects consensus building (e.g. not signing the Kyoto protocol
and invading Iraq with no UN support)
refusing to submit to UN war crimes tribunals
allies fear retribution by those who are aligned against the US (which are growing in number)
The decline of US hegemony (soft power) can also be attributed to the blow back or adverse
reaction which was forced through military intervention in response to the 9/ 11 terrorist attacks (Goh,
2003: 82). Blowback as a term, within this context, refers strictly to the advent of malevolent reaction by
terrorist movements to the actions of the perceived aggressors (US)- and most importantly not the ideas
which they propagate but rather their physical actions (Goh, 2003: 82). Thus, according to Goh, terrorist
and fundamentalist reaction and anti US sentiment which is causal to it- does not stem from the
deficiency of shared ideas between the US and the terrorist- but rather from the direct policy and
military influence which the US is exerting in the Middle East and the rest of the world. This suggests
that the US is experiencing a decline in soft power in the light of their opting for hard power
influence which adversely affects soft power capabilities and hence the ability to influence others
within the international system.
The US is alienating the world through the use of hard power. It needs to reinvigorate its soft power
capabilities in order to stem the avalanche of anti US sentiment which is growing in momentum
against them. The US has lost a great amount of legitimacy in the eyes of the world- in the light of their
military interventionist policies and actions. Legitimacy is imperative to the advent and sustenance of
global hegemony. This does, however, indicate decline in soft power for the US- yet the damage is not
irreparable.

Hegemony Core
Samuel Huntington is a staunch advocator of US decline- focusing on differentiation between cultures (or
civilisations) as the main cause for conflict within the system (Huntington, 1993: 22). Huntington (1999:
36- 37) provides a list of US policies and actions which he argues are the cause for the growing antiUS sentiment and thus the decline in US soft power:
pressurises states to conform to US values (overtly and covertly)
prevents and controls other nations military capabilities
enforces US law and propagates US values in other states
applies sanctions based on the USs notion of what is right or wrong
promotes economic liberalism- contradicting this by also promoting US MNCs interest above that
of other countries MNCs
shapes agendas and influence leadership in IGOs (UN, WTO, IMF, etc.)
intervene in sovereign states (Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Somalia, Balkans, etc.)
force economic policies on sovereign states (Structural Adjustment Programmes)
military expansionism and the labelling of states as rogue or evil based on US values

Hegemony Core
Credibility
Credibility is key to cooperation and the influence of the US popular theory and
Bush examples
Kydd, University of Wisconsin political science professor, 5
(Andrew, In America We (Used to) Trust: U.S. Hegemony and Global Cooperation, pgs 19-21, AFGA).
In his State of the Union address in January 2004, President George W. Bush argued that Libya's decision
to abandon its quest for weapons of mass destruction was due to the United States invasion of Iraq. As he
put it, "Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with
Libya, while twelve years of diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear: For diplomacy to be
effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America." The President
was articulating a central tenet of deterrence theory, that threats must be credible if they are to
influence the behavior of other states.1 The United States said that it would invade Iraq if Saddam
Hussein remained in power, and when he did, the United States invaded. Other states can now believe that
if a similar threat is made in the future, it is likely to be carried out as well . Deterrence theorists view the
credibility of this kind of threat as a key foundation of global order . International hegemons like the
United States maintain stability by issuing credible threats that those who violate the rules will be
punished, and then backing up these threats with action. In the view of the Bush administration, then, the
invasion of Iraq reinforced American credibility, and strengthened world order.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world took a different view. The inability to find weapons of mass
destruction or related manufacturing facilities indicated to many observers that twelve years of sanctions
and United Nations inspections, along with U.S. and British military pressure, did effectively disarm
Iraq. The evidence on Iraqi weapons programs presented before the war was thin and did no! support the
claims being made about them. With the stated reason for going to war now rather than later so dubious,
the United Slates was seen as. at best, trigger happyexercising poor judgment and prone to violence
or. more sinister!)', acting on interests that it failed to acknowledge: a desire to control oil resources,
protect Israel, or even attack Islam in general. Many foreign observers argued that the Bush
administration's unilateralism was evidence that the United States was a rogue state, using its military
forces in unjustified ways in pursuit of its own interests. In short, the word of America is doubted as
never before. This mistrust has led to a failure of international cooperation. If the hegemon cannot
be trusted to act deliberately and in the common interest, with due respect for the opinions of
others and for international law. other states will refuse to be associated with it. This will deprive
the hegemon of material aid and international legitimacy, thereby undermining world order .
Both sides would agree that belief in the word of the United States is crucial to its ability to
influence international events and maintain stability. However, each side has a very different view of
how this matters, and why. The Bush administration's viewpoint is based on deterrence theory and the
theory of public goods. The public goods theory of hegemony argues that hegemons unilaterally produce
public goods that other stales free ride on. The public good in question is the coercion or deterrence of
potential rule breakers in the international system. In this view of hegemony, it is not crucial that most
states trust the hegemon. because their cooperation or lack thereof is of negligible importance. What is

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important is that the potential rule breakers fear the hegemon and find its threats to be credible. This
conception of hegemony underlies the Bush administration's emphasis on preventive action against
threats, undertaken alone if necessary, as articulated in the 2002 National Security Strategy."1 The war
against Iraq was conceived of as a public good, benefiting all, which the United States provided while
others rode free. The United States should be considered more credible post-Iraq: it said it would invade
and it did.
An alternative view of hegemony, however, has a very different understanding of the role of credibility.
In what can be called the hegemonic assurance perspective, hegemons are seen as overcoming
multilateral mistrust problems. Many states want to cooperate if they believe that the cooperative
endeavor is well designed to achieve a shared goal, and that enough other slates will cooperate to
ensure success. However, there is always uncertainty about the best way to proceed and about the
motivations of other statessome states may try to hijack international efforts to serve their own
more narrow interests, whereas others want to free ride or exploit the cooperation of others.
Trustworthy hegemons solve these problems by working with other states to identify policies that a
majority can support, and then providing assurances that the hegemon and enough other states will
cooperate in the common good to make it worthwhile for all the well-disposed states to cooperate.
Untrustworthy hegemons would be incapable of fulfilling this role, because they would arouse
suspicions of the aims or tactics of the cooperative venture, or of the hegemon's intentions of
actually cooperating.

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Humanitarian
Humanitarian missions are key to US legitimacy
Thayer, Professor of Political Science Baylor University, 6
[Bradley A., Nov/Dec 2006, In Defense of Primacy, The National Interest, No. 86, Pg. 36,
http://nationalinterest.org/article/in-defense-of-primacy-1300, JZ]
American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost
any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the
United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in
poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October
2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million
homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror
in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also
provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of
the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of
Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than
unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir,
the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real
impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting
a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As
the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States
humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.

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Hard Power Influence Fails

Hard power influence fails Middle East proves
Goodman, National War College International Relations Professor, 13
[Melvin A., 7/8/13, Consortium News, US Finds Influence Hard to Buy,
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/08/us-finds-influence-hard-to-buy/, accessed 7/6/14, AC]
For decades the U.S. government has ladled billions upon billions in military assistance to countries
that either dont need it or use it to suppress popular uprisings. But all that money has bought very little
in terms of genuine influence with the recipients, ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman writes
The current crisis in Egypt and the inability of the United States to formulate a policy and to have
any influence in Cairo marks another setback for U.S. foreign policy, which relies too heavily on
military assistance. Too many pundits and analysts believe that U.S. military aid to Egypt, which
amounts to $1.3 billion annually, is a source of leverage in the Egyptian domestic crisis. Well, it isnt
and the same could be said for the lack of U.S. influence, let alone leverage, with any of the top recipients
of U.S. military assistance.
The top six recipients of U.S. military aid (Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey)
provide very little return on our investment. Israel has overwhelming military dominance in the
Middle East and doesnt require military aid. In fact, the United States is constantly and deliberately
embarrassed by the Israeli government despite the huge amounts of military assistance that Israel has
received over past decades.
Egypt has received more than $60 billion in military and economic aid over the past three decades
with no indication that Egyptian policy was susceptible to U.S. influence. Cairo doesnt violate its
peace treaty with Israel because of U.S. assistance; it adheres to the treaty because it is in Egypts interest
to do so.
Pentagon officials believe that close ties between U.S. and Egyptian armed forces helped the Egyptian
military council become a force for social cohesion rather than repression. A retired commandant of the
U.S. Army War College, Major General Robert Scales, has argued that they learn our way of war but
they also learn our philosophies of civil-military relations. If only this were true.
The most futile example of U.S. military aid programs is the case of Pakistan. The Bush and Obama
administrations have sent billions of dollars in aid to Islamabad, but Pakistan has never stopped its double
dealing on pledges to fight the Afghan Taliban. At the same time, the United States has never used its
assistance to promote democracy in Pakistan. The U.S. military presence in Pakistan, including its
efforts at so-called assistance, merely contribute to militant anti-Americanism.
Military assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan does not contribute to U.S. goals and objectives in the
region. No sooner had U.S. forces withdrawn from Iraq than the Obama administration announced
multibillion-dollar arms sales to Iraq, including advanced fighter aircraft, tanks and helicopters.

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This deal was announced as the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki worked to
consolidate his authority, create a one-party Shiite-dominated state, and abandon the U.S.-backed powersharing arrangement. Meanwhile, Iraq has improved its bilateral relations with Iran, raising the prospect
that U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf could encounter U.S. weaponry in a future conflict.
With the United States winding down its combat role in Afghanistan, the government of Hamid Karzai is
already demanding $4 billion annually for its military and policy forces over the next decade. Afghanistan
is unable to use effectively the assistance that it receives, and thus far has been unable to create a military
force that can counter the Taliban threat.
The surge in recent years in incidents of Afghan soldiers killing U.S. and European military personnel,
and the increased corruption in Afghanistan that is fueled by U.S. dollars argue for very limited
assistance.
Turkey is the sole case where huge amounts of military assistance provide some influence in getting
Turkish support for U.S. diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East. But the recent violence in Istanbuls
Taksim Square could one day match the combustion in Cairos Tahrir Square, and Prime Minister
Recep Erdogan Turkeys most important leader since Ataturk doesnt appear receptive to demands
for a genuine, pluralistic democracy. For the first time since he came to power, Erdogan appears
politically vulnerable. At this particular time, Turkey needs more genuine political debate, not U.S.
military assistance.
The United States gives military assistance to numerous countries that do not need it or do not
deserve it because of serious human rights violations. The recent sale of $30 billion in arms to Saudi
Arabia was ill-timed because it is more likely that such aid would be used to suppress demonstrations for
reform in Bahrain than in any other scenario.
Eastern European countries need economic and political stability, not modern military technology.
Indonesia, a country with numerous human rights violations, receives $20 million annually in military
aid.
While the Obama administration was conducting a feckless debate over whether a military coup had taken
place in Cairo, the Egyptian military rapidly emerged as the dominant political force in the country. It is
also the richest (and most corrupt) institution in the country, and hardly needs U.S. largesse.
There is no external security threat to Egypt that requires the huge weapons platforms that its military
forces demand. The United States was slow to criticize the authoritarian actions of former presidents
Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi, and we still have no strategy for fostering political and
economic reform in Cairo.
At the very least, the Obama administration needs to call a coup a coup, and begin to suspend
military assistance to the interim Egyptian government. U.S. policy should be based on getting Egypt
to establish a coalition government and to begin a consensus-based transition process.

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Hard Power Undercuts Soft Power

Too much hard power hurts soft power
Nye, former US assistant secretary of defense and National Intelligence Council
chair, 2
[Joseph S, The Guardian, 3-30-2002, Why military power is no longer enough,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/mar/31/1, accessed 7-7-13 BLE]
There is also an indirect way to exercise power. A country may secure the outcomes it wants in world
politics because other countries aspire to its level of prosperity and openness. It is just as important to
set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat
or use of military or economic weapons. This aspect of power is "soft power" - getting people to
want what you want.
Wise parents know that if they have brought up their children with the right values, their power will be
greater than if they have relied only on cutting off allowances or taking away the car keys. Similarly,
political leaders and thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci have long understood the power that comes
from determining the framework of a debate. If I can get you to want to do what I want, then I do not
have to force you to do what you do not want to do.
Soft power is not simply the reflection of hard power. The Vatican did not lose its soft power when it
lost the Papal States in Italy in the nineteenth century. Conversely, the Soviet Union lost much of its soft
power after it invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia, even though its economic and military
resources continued to grow. Imperious policies that utilised Soviet hard power actually undercut
its soft power. And countries like the Canada, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian states have political
clout that is greater than their military and economic weight because of their support for international aid
and peace-keeping.
The countries that are likely to gain soft power are those closest to global norms of liberalism,
pluralism, and autonomy; those with the most access to multiple channels of communication; and
those whose credibility is enhanced by their domestic and international performance. These
dimensions of power give a strong advantage to the United States and Europe.
By the late 1930s, the Roosevelt administration became convinced that 'America's security depended on
its ability to speak to and to win the support of people in other countries.' With World War II and the Cold
War, the government sponsored efforts including the United States Information Agency, the Voice of
America and the Fulbright student exchange programme.
But much soft power arises from forces outside government control. Even before the Cold War,
'American corporate and advertising executives, as well as the heads of Hollywood studios, were selling
not only their products but also America's culture and values, the secrets of its success, to the rest of the
world.'

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Environmental Regulation

Hegemony Core
Environmental Regulation Hurts Hegemony

Environmental regulations undermine naval hegemony
Gaffney, Center for Security Policy founder & director, 12
[Frank, 6-5-12, NewsMax, Law of the Sea Treaty Is Wrong for US,
http://www.newsmax.com/FrankGaffney/Law-Sea-Treaty-Senate/2012/06/05/id/441292/, accessed 7-1014]
On May 9, Secretary Panetta nonetheless asserted that By moving off the sidelines, by sitting at the table
of nations that have acceded to this treaty, we can defend our interests, we can lead the discussions, we
will be able to influence those treaty bodies that develop and interpret the Law of the Sea.
That is simply not so if, as is true of the LOSTs various institutions, we would have but one seat among
many, and no certainty that we can decisively influence bodies that develop and interpret the law
of the sea.
In fact, thanks to the rigged-game nature of those institutions, such bodies can be relied upon to
hamstring us by, for example, applying environmental regulations over which we have no control
to our Navys anti-submarine warfare exercises and our domestic emissions into inland air and
water that migrates to the international oceans.

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International Law

Hegemony Core
International Law Helps Hegemony

International law is key to hegstabilization, reduced backlash, and increased
credibility
Krisch, Barcelona Institute of International Studies Professor, 3
[Nico, Unilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: International Perspectives, Weak as Constraint, Strong as
Tool: The Place of International Law in U.S. Foreign Policy, edited by: David Malone and Yuen Foong
Khong, p. 63, AC]
Even the United States itself recognizes the value of legal regulation of international relations, as the
description of its attempts to create and enforce law by unilateral means has shown. It is not ready to
renounce law as an instrument, because law stabilizes expectations and reduces the costs of later
negotiation and of the enforcement of certain policies. Thus, the question is whether it is in the U.S.
interest to accept the more egalitarian process of international law instead of using unilateral,
hierarchal legal instruments. Although it is impossible to enter into a comprehensive discussion of the
general value of international law in this chapter, I shall outline at least some arguments in favor of such
an acceptance.
First, a stronger use of international law could help stabilize the current predominant positions of
the United States. If the United States now concludes that treaties with other states that reflect its
superior negotiating power (even if not to the degree the United States would wish), U.S. preferences
can shape international relations in a longer perspective, as change in international law is slower
and more difficult than political change. It is worthwhile noting that past great powers similarly
influenced the international legal order to such a degree that it is possible to divide the history of
international law into epochs dominated by these powers epochs that have left many traces in
contemporary law.
Second, even if the U.S. power continues to increase and this argument therefore appears to be less
appealing, the United States can gain from stronger reliance on international law because the law
can help legitimize its current exercise of power. Unilateralism in international politics is always
regarded suspiciously by other states, and it is quite probable that perceptions of imperialism or
bully hegemony will lead to stronger reactions by other states in the long run. Already now, some
states show greater unity. Although it remains to be seen whether in the Case of Russia and China this
greater unity is only symbolic, other instances, such as the strong stance of the like-minded states in
the ICC, indicate a more substantive regrouping in the face of U.S. predominance. Similarly, the
accelerated integration of the EU can be regarded as caused in part by the desire to counterbalance the
United States. IF the United States were able to channel its power into the more egalitarian process
of international law, it could gain much more legitimacy for its exercise of power and significantly
reduce the short and long term costs of its policies. This has been recognized in the aftermath of the
terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001, and the U.S. president not only
sought to build an international ad hoc coalition but also taken steps to bolster the international
legal regime against terrorism, in particular by transmitting conventions against terrorism to the Senate
in order to proceed with ratification. Multilateralism is certainly valued more highly by U.S.

Hegemony Core
administration since the attacks, but reluctance still prevails in many areas, as enduring U.S.
opposition to the ICC and to the additional protocol to the BWC shows.
Third, it is highly questionable whether the United States will in fact be able to pursue its strategy of
subjecting international law in the future. In the past, it might have been possible to exert
significant influence on the content of international agreements and then not subscribe to them.
Repeating this in the future is likely to be more difficult as the United States discovered in the case of
the ICC statute after a certain point. As one observer to the ICC negotiations notes:
Increasingly, the other delegations felt that it would be better to stop giving in to the Untied States; they
believed that the United States would never be satisfied with the concessions it got and ultimately would
never sign the treaty for completely unrelated domestic political reasons.
Similarly, the use of reservations in order to secure a privileged position has become increasingly
difficult as other states become wary of this strategy and seek to foreclose the possibility of
reservations to new treaties entirely, as in the ICC statute and the Ottawa Convention. And
discontent with U.S. behavior might backfire in unexpected circumstances as with the loss of the seat in
the Commission for Human Rights, or the suit brought and vigorously defended by Germany in the
LaGrand case. In general, these effects are likely to undermine the U.S. capacity for leadership
which to a large degree is based on reputation, credibility, and persuasiveness not only on brute
power. Moreover, as the United States discovered in its failure to achieve desired goals in the
climate change and the landmine negotiations, leadership can be barred by too great a difference in
opinion between the leader and those to be led. Compromise may thus be necessary to maintain the
momentum to lead. The United States may be forced to choose between engagement, leadership,
and control, on the one hand, and free-riding, isolation, and a loss of influence on the other.

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International Law Hurts Hegemony

International law hurts hegcomparatively outweighs their internal link
Rivkin, former UN Commission on Human Rights Member, and Casey, Partner at
Baker Hostelter, 2k
[David B., Partner at Baker Hostelter, Co-Chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Lee A. Casey, Winter 2000-2001, The Rocky Shoals of
International Law, The National Interest, Issue 62, 35, http://nationalinterest.org/article/therocky-shoals-of-international-law-523, AC]
The impetus for extending the reach of international law stems from both our allies and our
adversaries, who have chosen to use it as a means to check, or at least harness, American power.
While each group has different strategic goals, from the perspective of both, the great "problem" of
international affairs in the post-Cold War world is the unchallenged military, diplomatic, economic
and even cultural predominance of the United States. Our global antagonists, particularly China,
would like to see the United States disengage from world affairs. For our allies, who continue to
depend far too much on U.S. military might to wish for a new American isolationism, the great
danger has become American "unilateralism"an all-purpose term for U.S. action not sanctioned
by the "international community." They do not want to prevent U.S. global engagement; they want
to influence and control it.
Both our allies and our adversaries understand the value of international law in achieving their
ends. Law and its rhetoric have always played a far more important role in the United States than in
almost any other country. We are a nation bound together not by ties of blood or religion, but by paper
and ink. The Declaration of Independence itself was, at its heart, an appeal to lawthe laws of nature
and of natures Godto justify an act of rebellion against the British Crown. As Alexis de Tocqueville
wrote in the early days of the American republic: "[t]he influence of legal habits [in the United States]
extends beyond the precise limits I have pointed out. Scarcely any political question arises in the United
States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question. Hence all parties are obliged to borrow,
in their daily controversies, the ideas, and even the language, peculiar to judicial proceedings."
Tocqueville was clearly prescient. Today almost every key policy issue in the United States is framed
as a legal question. Law is our genius and our Achilles Heel. If the trends of international law in the
1990s are allowed to mature into binding rules, international law may prove to be one of the most
potent weapons ever deployed against the United States.

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LOST

Hegemony Core
LOST Increases Hegemony

Signing LOST would help increase military presence in the Arctic
Pegna, United States Coast Guard Department of International Affairs
SOUTHCOM and Caribbean Advisor Assistant and Foreign Visits Coordinator, 13
(Melissa Renee, Master's candidate at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University. 2013; April, Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, U.S. Arctic Policy: The Need to Ratify
a Modified UNCLOS and Secure a Military Presence in the Arctic, 44 J. Mar. L. & Com. 169 Lexis,
Accessed: 7/8/14, CD]
Melting ice in the Arctic region has increased the possibilities of resource extraction and
commercial transit accessibility, as well as new security risks. The United States has attempted to
respond to this changing environ-ment through strategic policy analysis; however, recent attempts
to provide a solid and practical Arctic policy have fallen short. Proponents of Executive Order 13547:
National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes, claim that
America's interests will be adequately protected by signing the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), including UNCLOS Article 76 which permits states to claim their
extended continental shelf (ECS), and by maintaining the current progress in securing military
Arctic assets and a presence in the Arctic region. Although President Obama's recent executive order
outlines strategic interests and current and future claims for the United States in the Arctic, there is a
tactical force application gap in what the U.S. wants to do as opposed to what the U.S. currently can do.
LOST contains provisions that bolster military advantage

Garamone, American Forces Press Service, 7
(Jim, Sept. 28, Military, Civilian Officials Urge Accession to Law of Sea Treaty, Department of Defense
News, http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=47616, Accessed: 7/8/14, CD)
Nations negotiated the Law of the Sea Treaty between 1973 and 1982. The treaty sought to update
the customary law of the sea that existed from the 1600s on. While U.S. officials helped hammer out
the treaty, objections to the deep-sea mining clause caused the nation to not accede to it.
U.S. officials have signed the treaty, but the Senate has not ratified it. More than 150 other nations
have accepted the treaty, and it has been in force since 1994.
U.S. objections have been addressed, Negroponte said in his testimony. President Bush has urged
accession to the treaty, and it probably is headed for a vote in the Senate this session.
From the military perspective, the treaty guarantees various aspects of passage and overflight. The
nation has invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the years building the infrastructure needed
to transport troops and equipment over global distances. Combat ships, oilers, sustainment ships,

Hegemony Core
transport aircraft, tankers and pre-positioned assets all are key to getting combat power where it is
needed, often within hours.
The treaty guarantees right of passage through some of the most strategic areas of in the world. The Joint
Chiefs of Staff sent a 24-star letter to the Senate in June, urging accession. The convention
codifies navigation and overflight rights and high seas freedoms that are essential for the global
mobility of our armed forces, the letter says. It furthers our National Security Strategy,
strengthens the coalition and supports the Presidents Proliferation Security Initiative.
The Proliferation Security Initiative is a collective approach of about 90 nations to use all their national
and international authorities to interdict the shipment of weapons of mass destruction and related material.
(The United States) joining the convention will help expand the number of nations that participate in (the
initiative), Walsh said. Strategic nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia will be more likely to join (the
initiative) if we in turn join the convention.
Walsh also told the senators that the convention does not unduly limit U.S. forces freedom of action.
There is a perception held by some that by joining the convention our armed forces will somehow be
constrained if not by the actual language by the convention then by international tribunals or arbitration
panels operating under the authority of the convention, he said. I could not support the treaty if I
thought the treaty curbed the reach or the authority or limited in any way our actions.
From the Defense Department perspective, its all about global mobility, said Rear Adm. Bruce
McDonald, the Navys judge advocate. Its all about getting out and doing the business of the
military on seven-tenths of the Earths surface, he said.
The need for the treaty was driven home to military leaders in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom,
when Turkey denied overflight rights, MacDonald said. A lot of this was a result of the fact that we
cannot rely on other nations to allow us to overfly or base forces on their territories, he said.
The treaty guarantees certain rights: the right of innocent passage, transit passage and archipelagic
sea lanes passage. Of these, transit passage is the most important, MacDonald said. It allows us to
use the strategic choke points Hormuz, Malacca, Singapore Strait these international straits are
defined as international straits under the treaty, he said.
The treaty allows ships traversing these passages to do so in a normal mode. If you are sailing an
aircraft carrier, normal mode is with aircraft flying, helos flying, a (combat air patrol) in the air
providing force protection, MacDonald said. If you are in a battle group that means you have
cruisers and destroyers screening the carrier.
If you are going through the Strait of Hormuz, that is important because you have Iran on the right and
you want that kind of protection as you are going through.
Until now, the United States has relied on customary international law. Yes, many of the principles
enshrined in the Law of the Sea Treaty have become a matter of custom, MacDonald said. The problem
is that what has been the custom of nations can change over time.
The treaty gives the United States the opportunity to lock these rights in and get positive treaty law as the
basis for doing the nations business.

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Another argument for acceding to the treaty is that it buys the United States a seat at the table for any
future negotiations. Now that it has come into force, treaty law can be changed by those nations that
have acceded to it, MacDonald said. We think the United States, as the largest maritime power on the
Earth, ought to take the lead in future development of maritime law, and this is a perfect way to do that.
The United States cannot stay outside the treaty and hope to influence negotiations or work through
proxies, the admiral said.
We need to lock in the navigation and the overflight rights and high-seas freedoms contained in the
convention, Walsh said. And then by acting from within the convention, we can best exercise as our
leadership to ensure that those rights and freedoms are not whittled away foreign states.
Signing LOST would help increase Coast Guard Arctic presence

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the U.S. military cannot currently meet President Obama's
Arctic opera-tions strategy due to maritime domain awareness (MDA) deficiencies, inefficient
assets, and a lack in the number of required assets. The U.S. must close this gap by increasing and
modernizing the Coast Guard Icebreaker Fleet, by signing UNCLOS UNCLOS with the disclaimer
that Article 76 does not apply to the Arctic area, and by creating a military base ca-pable of
allowing asset operations year-round on the northern shores of Alaska. These recommendations
would allow the U.S. to have [*170] the capability to meet its security requirements and protect its
commercial in-terests in the Arctic.

Hegemony Core
LOST Hurts Hegemony

US already agrees to other treaties which solve the impact and LOST would destroy
its naval power
Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, et al., 12
(Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is the second ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Sen. Roger
Wicker, R-Miss., is the ranking member of the SASC Subcommittee on Seapower. Sen. Jeff Sessions, RAla., is the ranking member of the Budget Committee, 5/22/12, Politico, Law of the Sea Would Usurp
Navys Authority, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76627.html, accessed: 7/8/14, CM)
The U.S. Navy has been the master of the seven seas since World War II, the pre-eminent maritime
force.
It seems odd, then, that Navy leadership has long pressed for what amounts to a redundant international
hall pass.
A steady stream of admirals and service chiefs over many years have advocated for the U.N.
Convention on the Law of the Sea, or the Law of the Sea Treaty an accord rejected by President
Ronald Reagan in 1982.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, said this treaty codifies
navigational rights and freedoms essential for our global mobility.
It is true that the treatys navigational articles codify noncontroversial traditional maritime rules of the
road. But the Navy has successfully preserved and protected its navigational rights and freedoms for 200
years without it.
For the treaty to be essential for our global mobility, the Navy would have to suffer a devastating
decline either from drastic budget cuts or a major reduction in its mission and capabilities.
Ceding any authority to an international body is not only a threat to our sovereignty, it also creates
another avenue for other nations to stop U.S. unilateral activity.
Some fear the Navy is at a tipping point. Increased global threats, combined with fewer resources, have
created growing concern for its future. Devastating budget cuts under the Obama administration mean
doing even more with much less.
If the proposed defense cuts through sequestration go into effect, potential cuts include the littoral combat
ship, amphibious ships, a reduction in aircraft carriers and far fewer sailors. After sequestration, our fleet
could be smaller than 230 ships the smallest since 1915.
Could it be that some have decided to put their hope in a piece of paper rather than provide the resources
necessary to maintain our Navys traditional strength? Does this U.N. treaty provide real justification for
such devastating cuts? If not, we need detailed explanations from our top military officials.
The Navy already operates within the bounds of international and customary laws. Shortly after
World War II, the U.S. joined the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization, now

Hegemony Core
called the International Maritime Organization. The purpose of the group is to set maritime laws
that are now broadly enforced by national and local maritime authorities to improve safety at sea,
facilitate trade among seafaring states and protect the marine environment.
These laws allow the U.S. to execute commerce and military operations around the globe as an
independent and sovereign nation. Thus, LOST is unneeded and redundant.
Most of the opposition to the Law of the Sea pact stems from the treatys non-navigational portions
that deal with the international taxation from natural resources revenue, issues related to U.S.
sovereignty and the redistribution of wealth from the U.S. to the Third World. But even worse, this
agreement would be an albatross that takes our nations military down with it.
Proponents say the treaty exempts military activity from international litigation. But those of us opposing
it are deeply concerned because this terribly flawed document fails to define what is included in that
exemption. In addition, it opens the U.S. military to the jurisdiction of international courts and governing
bodies.
Military training exercises that do not have the approval of other nations could be prevented because of
potentially negative environmental impacts. U.S. military vessels could be stopped on the grounds that
they are too heavy a polluter.
All the while, billions if not trillions in limited U.S. funds would be transferred from the U.S.
Treasury to international coffers through the tax and redistribution provisions of the treaty. As we
have seen, when funds are limited, the first place to get squeezed is our military.
At the same time, nations like China and Iran, both signers of the treaty, have been flexing their muscles.
Iran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and attack U.S. vessels. Chinas navy has engaged in
acts of harassment meant to intimidate its neighbors in the South China Sea. In both cases, it is the might
of the U.S. Navy not the treaty that maintains order.
The Senate should reject this dangerous hand over of U.S. sovereignty. Instead, it should provide
the Navy with the resources necessary to keep it the best force on the high seas.

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LOST Article 76 Hurts Hegemony

Article 76 of LOST undermines US sovereignty and freedom of navigation
Recommendation # 1: Ratify UNCLOS with the formal reservation that Article 76 will not apply to
extended continental claims in the Arctic. Recommend that the Arctic Council determine ECS and
territorial disputes in the Arctic. n105
Article 76 of UNCLOS will result in a series of ECS claim submissions being made by several Arctic
nations. These claims for delineated extended continental shelves will overlap due to deficiencies in
MDA, misunder-standings of the ECS, and overzealous state claims to stretch the boundaries of
Article 76. n106 These ambiguities may cause future conflicts and debates which could negatively
affect the positive relationships that the U.S. has with several of the Arctic nations. Article 76 has
become a sounding board for Canada and Russia to test their ECS claims by announcing that the
two Arctic passage ways are under each state's complete jurisdiction, which exceeds the original
design of Article 76. With Canada's claim of ECS to the [*191] Lomonosov Ridge, the archipelago
islands and the Northwest Passage would fall under Canadian jurisdiction. Russia's claim also ex-tends to
the Lomonosov Ridge and would place the North Sea Route under Russia's jurisdiction. n107 Article 76
in UNCLOS would diminish U.S. sovereignty and freedom of navigation and cause endless disputes
that would choke any type of territorial claim process in the Arctic.
While Article 76 might work well in other parts of the world, the ECS claims and regulations
detailed in Arti-cle 76 are not applicable and functional in the Arctic. The U.S. should sign
UNCLOS in order to actively partici-pate in the global maritime domain and to secure America's
EEZ. n108 However, Arctic ECS claims are unique and should not be approached as a normal territory
dispute. The Arctic and ECS issues will require specific agree-ments and tailored understandings between
Arctic countries. UNCLOS's Article 76 would limit these as applied. n109 UNCLOS should exempt
the Arctic from Article 76 and permit the Arctic states to determine which path best suits their
unique situation in the region. n110 The U.S. and other Arctic nations should rely on the Arctic Council
to establish specific definitions for the ECS and divide and delineate territorial claims that benefit the
Arctic spe-cifically. n111 The Arctic Council is fully capable of responding to the specific desires and
needs of each Arctic nation. The Arctic Council's 2011 Nuuk Agreement is a multilateral agreement on
search and rescue and provides an example of an alternate forum that the U.S. can use for the
establishment of maritime laws. The Arctic Council forum would benefit U.S. interests and U.S.
national security in the Arctic, specifically with regards to the U.S. claiming its extended continental
shelf. The one prerequisite to implementing the Nuuk Agreement is the required modernization of
each country's Arctic fleet to enable proper and efficient joint operations.

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Science Diplomacy

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Science Diplomacy Helps Hegemony

Science diplomacy is key to solve every global problem and maintain US leadership
Fedoroff, former Science and Technology advisor to the Secretary of State, 8
[Nina, 4/2/8, State Department, Making Science Diplomacy More Effective, http://20012009.state.gov/g/stas/2008/105286.htm, AC]
S&T advances have immediate and enormous influence on national and global economies, and thus on
the international relations between societies. Nation states, nongovernmental organizations, and
multinational corporations are largely shaped by their expertise in and access to intellectual and physical
capital in science, technology, and engineering. Even as S&T advances of our modern era provide
opportunities for economic prosperity, some also challenge the relative position of countries in the
world order, and influence our social institutions and principles. America must remain at the
forefront of this new world by maintaining its technological edge, and leading the way
internationally through science diplomacy and engagement.
Science by its nature facilitates diplomacy because it strengthens political relationships,
embodies powerful ideals, and creates opportunities for all. The global scientific community
embraces principles Americans cherish: transparency, meritocracy, accountability, the objective
evaluation of evidence, and broad and frequently democratic participation.
Science is inherently democratic, respecting evidence and truth above all. Science is also a common
global language, able to bridge deep political and religious divides. Scientists share a common
language. Scientific interactions serve to keep open lines of communication and cultural
understanding. As scientists everywhere have a common evidentiary external reference system,
members of ideologically divergent societies can use the common language of science to cooperatively
address both domestic and the increasingly trans-national and global problems confronting humanity
in the 21st century. There is a growing recognition that science and technology will increasingly drive
the successful economies of the 21st century.
Science and technology provide an immeasurable benefit to the U.S. by bringing scientists and
students here, especially from developing countries, where they see democracy in action, make
friends in the international scientific community, become familiar with American technology,
and contribute to the U.S. and global economy. For example, in 2005, over 50% of physical science
and engineering graduate students and postdoctoral researchers trained in the U.S. have been foreign
nationals. Moreover, many foreign-born scientists who were educated and have worked in the U.S.
eventually progress in their careers to hold influential positions in ministries and institutions both in
this country and in their home countries. They also contribute to U.S. scientific and technologic
development: According to the National Science Board`s 2008 Science and Engineering Indicators,
47% of full-time doctoral science and engineering faculty in U.S. research institutions were foreignborn.
Finally, some types of science - particularly those that address the grand challenges in science
and technology - are inherently international in scope and collaborative by necessity. The ITER

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Project, an international fusion research and development collaboration, is a product of the thaw in
superpower relations between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
This reactor will harness the power of nuclear fusion as a possible new and viable energy source by
bringing a star to earth. ITER serves as a symbol of international scientific cooperation among key
scientific leaders in the developed and developing world - Japan, Korea, China, E.U., India, Russia,
and United States - representing 70% of the world`s current population.
The recent elimination of funding for FY08 U.S. contributions to the ITER project comes at an
inopportune time as the Agreement on the Establishment of the ITER International Fusion Energy
Organization for the Joint Implementation of the ITER Project had entered into force only on October
2007. The elimination of the promised U.S. contribution drew our allies to question our commitment
and credibility in international cooperative ventures. More problematically, it jeopardizes a platform
for reaffirming U.S. relations with key states. It should be noted that even at the height of the cold
war, the United States used science diplomacy as a means to maintain communications and avoid
misunderstanding between the world`s two nuclear powers - the Soviet Union and the United
States. In a complex multi-polar world, relations are more challenging, the threats perhaps
greater, and the need for engagement more paramount.
Using Science Diplomacy to Achieve National Security Objectives
The welfare and stability of countries and regions in many parts of the globe require[s] a
concerted effort by the developed world to address the causal factors that render countries
fragile and cause states to fail. Countries that are unable to defend their people against
starvation, or fail to provide economic opportunity, are susceptible to extremist ideologies,
autocratic rule, and abuses of human rights. As well, the world faces common threats, among
them climate change, energy and water shortages, public health emergencies, environmental
degradation, poverty, food insecurity, and religious extremism. These threats can undermine the
national security of the United States, both directly and indirectly. Many are blind to political
boundaries, becoming regional or global threats.
The United States has no monopoly on knowledge in a globalizing world and the scientific
challenges facing humankind are enormous. Addressing these common challenges demands
common solutions and necessitates scientific cooperation, common standards, and common goals.
We must increasingly harness the power of American ingenuity in science and technology
through strong partnerships with the science community in both academia and the private
sector, in the U.S. and abroad among our allies, to advance U.S. interests in foreign policy.
There are also important challenges to the ability of states to supply their populations with
sufficient food. The still-growing human population, rising affluence in emerging economies, and
other factors have combined to create unprecedented pressures on global prices of staples such as
edible oils and grains. Encouraging and promoting the use of contemporary molecular techniques
in crop improvement is an essential goal for US science diplomacy.
An essential part of the war on terrorism is a war of ideas. The creation of economic opportunity
can do much more to combat the rise of fanaticism than can any weapon. The war of ideas is a
war about rationalism as opposed to irrationalism. Science and technology put us firmly on the
side of rationalism by providing ideas and opportunities that improve people`s lives. We may use
the recognition and the goodwill that science still generates for the United States to achieve our

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diplomatic and developmental goals. Additionally, the Department continues to use science as a means
to reduce the proliferation of the weapons` of mass destruction and prevent what has been dubbed
`brain drain`. Through cooperative threat reduction activities, former weapons scientists redirect their
skills to participate in peaceful, collaborative international research in a large variety of scientific
fields. In addition, new global efforts focus on improving biological, chemical, and nuclear
security by promoting and implementing best scientific practices as a means to enhance security,
increase global partnerships, and create sustainability.

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Science Diplomacy Hurts Hegemony

Science diplomacy fails and risks more conflict
Dickson, former Nature editor, 9
[David, 4/6/9, SciDevNet, The limits of science diplomacy,
http://www.scidev.net/global/capacity-building/editorials/the-limits-of-science-diplomacy.html,
Only so much science can do
Recently, the Obama administration has given this field a new push, in its desire to pursue "soft
diplomacy" in regions such as the Middle East. Scientific agreements have been at the forefront of the
administration's activities in countries such as Iraq and Pakistan.
But as emerged from a meeting entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy, held in London this
week (12 June) using science for diplomatic purposes is not as straightforward as it seems.
Some scientific collaboration clearly demonstrates what countries can achieve by working together. For
example, a new synchrotron under construction in Jordan is rapidly becoming a symbol of the potential
for teamwork in the Middle East.
But whether scientific cooperation can become a precursor for political collaboration is less evident.
For example, despite hopes that the Middle East synchrotron would help bring peace to the region,
several countries have been reluctant to support it until the Palestine problem is resolved.
Indeed, one speaker at the London meeting (organised by the UK's Royal Society and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science) even suggested that the changes scientific innovations
bring inevitably lead to turbulence and upheaval. In such a context, viewing science as a driver for
peace may be wishful thinking.
Conflicting ethos
Perhaps the most contentious area discussed at the meeting was how science diplomacy can frame
developed countries' efforts to help build scientific capacity in the developing world.
There is little to quarrel with in collaborative efforts that are put forward with a genuine desire for
partnership. Indeed, partnership whether between individuals, institutions or countries is the new
buzzword in the "science for development" community.
But true partnership requires transparent relations between partners who are prepared to meet as
equals. And that goes against diplomats' implicit role: to promote and defend their own countries'
interests. John Beddington, the British government's chief scientific adviser, may have been a bit harsh
when he told the meeting that a diplomat is someone who is "sent abroad to lie for his country". But he
touched a raw nerve.
Worlds apart yet co-dependent

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The truth is that science and politics make an uneasy alliance. Both need the other. Politicians need
science to achieve their goals, whether social, economic or unfortunately military; scientists need
political support to fund their research.
But they also occupy different universes. Politics is, at root, about exercising power by one means or
another. Science is or should be about pursuing robust knowledge that can be put to useful
purposes.
A strategy for promoting science diplomacy that respects these differences deserves support. Particularly
so if it focuses on ways to leverage political and financial backing for science's more humanitarian goals,
such as tackling climate change or reducing world poverty.
But a commitment to science diplomacy that ignores the differences acting for example as if
science can substitute politics (or perhaps more worryingly, vice versa), is dangerous. The Obama
administration's commitment to "soft power" is already faltering. It faces challenges ranging from
North Korea's nuclear weapons test to domestic opposition to limits on oil consumption. A taste of
reality may be no bad thing.

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Economy

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Key to Hegemony
Economic power is a prerequisite to hegcomparatively outweighs credibility and
military spending
Colby, Center for a New American Security fellow, and Lettow, former White House
senior director for Strategic Planning, 7/3/14
[Elbridge and Paul, Elbridge Colby is a recipient of the Exceptional Public Service Award from the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and of the Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards from the Department of
State, Paul Lettow is the former White House senior director for strategic planning, 7/3/14, Foreign
Policy, Have we hit peak America?,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/07/03/have_we_hit_peak_america, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
Many foreign-policy experts seem to believe that retaining American primacy is largely a matter of
will -- of how America chooses to exert its power abroad. Even President Obama, more often accused
of being a prophet of decline than a booster of America's future, recently asserted that the United States
"has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world." The question, he continued, is "not whether
America will lead, but how we will lead."
But will is unavailing without strength. If the United States wants the international system to
continue to reflect its interests and values -- a system, for example, in which the global commons are
protected, trade is broad-based and extensive, and armed conflicts among great nations are curtailed -- it
needs to sustain not just resolve, but relative power. That, in turn, will require acknowledging the
uncomfortable truth that global power and wealth are shifting at an unprecedented pace, with
profound implications. Moreover, many of the challenges America faces are exacerbated by
vulnerabilities that are largely self-created, chief among them fiscal policy. Much more quickly and
comprehensively than is understood, those vulnerabilities are reducing America's freedom of action and
its ability to influence others.
Preserving America's international position will require it to restore its economic vitality and make
policy choices now that pay dividends for decades to come. America has to prioritize and to act.
Fortunately, the United States still enjoys greater freedom to determine its future than any other major
power, in part because many of its problems are within its ability to address. But this process of renewal
must begin with analyzing America's competitive position and understanding the gravity of the
situation Americans face.
THE RELATIVE ECONOMIC DECLINE OF THE UNITED STATES IS A FACT. For the first
time in 200 years, most growth is occurring in the developing world, and the speed with which that
shift -- a function of globalization -- has occurred is hard to fathom. Whereas in 1990 just 14 percent of
cross-border flows of goods, services, and finances originated in emerging economies, today nearly
40 percent do. As recently as 2000, the GDP of China was one-tenth that of the United States; just
14 years later, the two economies are equal (at least in terms of purchasing power parity).
This shift reorders what was, in some sense, a historical anomaly: the transatlantic dominance of
the past 150 years. As illustrated by the map below, it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution took hold in

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the 19th century that the world's "economic center of gravity" decisively moved toward Europe and the
United States, which have since been the primary engines of growth. Today, however, the economic
center of gravity is headed back toward Asia, and it is doing so with unique historical speed.
This trend will persist even though emerging economies are hitting roadblocks to growth, such as
pervasive corruption in India and demographic challenges and serious distortions in the banking system in
China. For instance, according to the asset-management firm BlackRockand the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), consumption in emerging markets has already
eclipsed that in the United States, and spending by the middle classes in Asia-Pacific nations is on track to
exceed middle-class spending in North America by a factor of nearly six by 2030.
U.S. wealth is not shrinking in absolute terms -- and it continues to benefit from economic globalization -but the United States and its allies are losing might compared with potential rivals. Although Europe
and Japan have been responsible for much of the developed world's lost relative economic power, the
U.S. economy has also slowed from its traditional rates of expansion over the past several decades.
Worsening productivity growth has played a particularly large role in the U.S. slowdown, dropping
to around 0.5 percent annually, which the Financial Times has referred to as a "productivity crisis."
A range of factors are responsible, including a decline in the skill level of the American workforce and a
drop in resources allocated to research and development.
This shift in economic growth toward the developing world is going to have strategic consequences.
Military power ultimately derives from wealth. It is often noted that the United States spends more
on defense than the next 10 countries combined. But growth in military spending correlates with
GDP growth, so as other economies grow, those countries will likely spend more on defense,
reducing the relative military power of the United States. Already, trends in global defense spending
show a rapid and marked shift from the United States and its allies toward emerging economies,
especially China. In 2011, the United States and its partners accounted for approximately 80
percent of the military spending by the 15 countries with the largest defense budgets. But, according to
a McKinsey study, that share could fall significantly over the next eight years -- perhaps to as low as
55 percent.
The resulting deterioration in American military superiority has already begun, as the countries
benefiting most rapidly from globalization are using their newfound wealth to build military
capacity, especially in high-tech weaponry. As Robert Work and Shawn Brimley of the Center for a
New American Security wrote this year: "[T]he dominance enjoyed by the United States in the late
1990s/early 2000s in the areas of high-end sensors, guided weaponry, battle networking, space and
cyberspace systems, and stealth technology has started to erode. Moreover, this erosion is now
occurring at an accelerated rate." (Work has since been confirmed as deputy secretary of defense.)
China, in particular, is acquiring higher-end capabilities and working to establish "no-go zones" in
its near abroad in the hopes of denying U.S. forces the ability to operate in the Western Pacific.
China's declared defense budget grew 12 percent this year -- and has grown at least ninefold since
2000 -- and most experts think its real defense spending is considerably larger. The International
Institute for Strategic Studies has judged that Beijing will spend as much on defense as Washington
does by the late 2020s or early 2030s. Meanwhile, regional powers like Iran -- and even nonstate
actors like Hezbollah -- are becoming more militarily formidable as it becomes easier to
obtain precision-guided munitions and thus threaten U.S. power-projection capabilities.

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Economic power is the most important internal link to hegbest analysis proves
Hubbard, former National Defense University Official, 10
[Jesse, 5/28/10, American University, Hegemonic Stability Theory: An Empirical Analysis,
http://isrj.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/hegemonic-stability-theory/, accessed 7/7/14, AC]
Regression analysis of this data shows that Pearsons r-value is -.836. In the case of American
hegemony, economic strength is a better predictor of violent conflict than even overall national
power, which had an r-value of -.819. The data is also well within the realm of statistical
significance, with a p-value of .0014. While the data for British hegemony was not as striking, the same
overall pattern holds true in both cases. During both periods of hegemony, hegemonic strength was
negatively related with violent conflict, and yet use of force by the hegemon was positively correlated
with violent conflict in both cases. Finally, in both cases, economic power was more closely associated
with conflict levels than military power. Statistical analysis created a more complicated picture of the
hegemons role in fostering stability than initially anticipated.
VI. Conclusions and Implications for Theory and Policy
To elucidate some answers regarding the complexities my analysis unearthed, I turned first to the existing
theoretical literature on hegemonic stability theory. The existing literature provides some potential
frameworks for understanding these results. Since economic strength proved to be of such crucial
importance, reexamining the literature that focuses on hegemonic stability theorys economic implications
was the logical first step. As explained above, the literature on hegemonic stability theory can be broadly
divided into two camps that which focuses on the international economic system, and that which
focuses on armed conflict and instability. This research falls squarely into the second camp, but insights
from the first camp are still of relevance. Even Kindlebergers early work on this question is of relevance.
Kindleberger posited that the economic instability between the First and Second World Wars could
be attributed to the lack of an economic hegemon (Kindleberger 1973). But economic instability
obviously has spillover effects into the international political arena. Keynes, writing after WWI,
warned in his seminal tract The Economic Consequences of the Peace that Germanys economic
humiliation could have a radicalizing effect on the nations political culture (Keynes 1919). Given later
events, his warning seems prescient.
In the years since the Second World War, however, the European continent has not relapsed into
armed conflict. What was different after the second global conflagration? Crucially, the United
States was in a far more powerful position than Britain was after WWI. As the tables above show,
Britains economic strength after the First World War was about 13% of the total in strength in the
international system. In contrast, the United States possessed about 53% of relative economic power in
the international system in the years immediately following WWII. The U.S. helped rebuild Europes
economic strength with billions of dollars in investment through the Marshall Plan, assistance that was
never available to the defeated powers after the First World War (Kindleberger 1973). The interwar years
were also marked by a series of debilitating trade wars that likely worsened the Great Depression (Ibid.).
In contrast, when Britain was more powerful, it was able to facilitate greater free trade, and after World
War II, the United States played a leading role in creating institutions like the GATT that had an essential

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role in facilitating global trade (Organski 1958). The possibility that economic stability is an important
factor in the overall security environment should not be discounted, especially given the results of my
statistical analysis.
Another theory that could provide insight into the patterns observed in this research is that of
preponderance of power. Gilpin theorized that when a state has the preponderance of power in the
international system, rivals are more likely to resolve their disagreements without resorting to
armed conflict (Gilpin 1983). The logic behind this claim is simple it makes more sense to
challenge a weaker hegemon than a stronger one. This simple yet powerful theory can help explain the
puzzlingly strong positive correlation between military conflicts engaged in by the hegemon and conflict
overall. It is not necessarily that military involvement by the hegemon instigatesfurther conflict in the
international system. Rather, this military involvement could be a function of the hegemons weaker
position, which is the true cause of the higher levels of conflict in the international system. Additionally, it
is important to note that military power is, in the long run, dependent on economic strength. Thus, it is
possible that as hegemons lose relative economic power, other nations are tempted to challenge them even
if their short-term military capabilities are still strong. This would help explain some of the variation
found between the economic and military data.
The results of this analysis are of clear importance beyond the realm of theory. As the debate rages
over the role of the United States in the world, hegemonic stability theory has some useful insights
to bring to the table. What this research makes clear is that a strong hegemon can exert a positive
influence on stability in the international system. However, this should not give policymakers a
justification to engage in conflict or escalate military budgets purely for the sake of international stability.
If anything, this research points to the central importance of economic influence in fostering
international stability. To misconstrue these findings to justify anything else would be a grave error
indeed. Hegemons may play a stabilizing role in the international system, but this role is
complicated. It is economic strength, not military dominance that is the true test of hegemony. A
weak state with a strong military is a paper tiger it may appear fearsome, but it is vulnerable to
even a short blast of wind.
Hegemony is reliant on a strong economy

Dymski, Leeds University Business School applied economics chair, 2
(Gary A. Dymski, PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Economics, 2002, Post-Hegemonic U.S.
Economic Hegemony: Minskian and Kaleckian Dynamics in the Neoliberal Era,
http://economics.ucr.edu/papers/papers02/02-13.pdf, accessed 7/8/14, GNL]
Until 1971, the U.S. enjoyed global economic hegemony because it underwrote the Bretton
Woods system of fixed exchange rates. It was hegemonic in the sense defined by
Kindleberger (1973, 1974)it underwrote the system of fixed exchange rates, and operated as a
lender of last resort within that system. After 1971, the U.S. has been a global economic hegemon in
the sense defined above, though not in Kindlebergers sense: it has been a posthegemonic hegemon. This
hegemony has rested on the U.S. economys importance in global trade, the U.S. dollars role as a

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reserve currency and unit of global exchange, and the dominance of U.S. markets and institutions
in global finance. This recent period, an era of great instability and recurrent crashes, has seen a step-bystep global deregulation of financial markets and a relaxation of controls on cross-border capital
movements. In this period, global growth has been slower and more unstable; but U.S. military
hegemony has, if anything, become stronger. With fewer restrictions on cross-border capital
movements, a slower pace of global economic growth, and continued U.S. military power, the U.S.
has increasingly been a safe harbor magnet for globally mobile wealth. These changes in the
character of U.S. global economic hegemony are root cause of changes in the character and timing
of U.S. cyclical fluctuations.
US economic hegemony key to global economic stability

Gelb, former Secretary of Defense senior official, 10
[Leslie H., President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations former senior official in the U.S.
Defense Department from 1967 to 1969 and in the State Department from 1977 to 1979 and he was a
Columnist and Editor at The New York Times from 1981 to 1993, November/December 2010, Foreign
Affairs, GDP Now Matters More Than Force A U.S. Foreign Policy for the Age of Economic Power,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66858/leslie-h-gelb/gdp-now-matters-more-than-force, accessed
7/8/14, GNL]
Today, the United States continues to be the world's power balancer of choice. It is the only regional
balancer against China in Asia, Russia in eastern Europe, and Iran in the Middle East. Although
Americans rarely think about this role and foreign leaders often deny it for internal political reasons, the
fact is that Americans and non-Americans alike require these services. Even Russian leaders today look
to Washington to check China. And Chinese leaders surely realize that they need the U.S. Navy and Air
Force to guard the world's sea and trading lanes. Washington should not be embarrassed to remind others
of the costs and risks of the United States' security role when it comes to economic transactions. That
applies, for example, to Afghan and Iraqi decisions about contracts for their natural resources, and to
Beijing on many counts. U.S. forces maintain a stable world order that decidedly benefits China's
economic growth, and to date, Beijing has been getting a free ride.
A NEW APPROACH
In this environment, the first-tier foreign policy goals of the United States should be a strong
economy and the ability to deploy effective counters to threats at the lowest possible cost. Secondtier goals, which are always more controversial, include retaining the military power to remain the world's
power balancer, promoting freer trade, maintaining technological advantages (including cyberwarfare
capabilities), reducing risks from various environmental and health challenges, developing alternative
energy supplies, and advancing U.S. values such as democracy and human rights. Wherever possible,
second-tier goals should reinforce first-tier ones: for example, it makes sense to err on the side of freer
trade to help boost the economy and to invest in greater energy independence to reduce dependence
on the tumultuous Middle East. But no overall approach should dictate how to pursue these goals in
each and every situation. Specific applications depend on, among other things, the culture and politics of
the target countries. An overarching vision helps leaders consider how to use their power to achieve their

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goals. This is what gives policy direction, purpose, and thrust -- and this is what is often missing from
U.S. policy.
The organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy should be to use power to solve common problems.
The good old days of being able to command others by making military or economic threats are largely
gone. Even the weakest nations can resist the strongest ones or drive up the costs for submission.
Now, U.S. power derives mainly from others' knowing that they cannot solve their problems without the
United States and that they will have to heed U.S. interests to achieve common goals. Power by services
rendered has largely replaced power by command.
No matter the decline in U.S. power, most nations do not doubt that the United States is the
indispensable leader in solving major international problems. This problem-solving capacity creates
opportunities for U.S. leadership in everything from trade talks to military-conflict resolution to
international agreements on global warming. Only Washington can help the nations bordering the
South China Sea forge a formula for sharing the region's resources. Only Washington has a chance of
pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians toward peace. Only Washington can bargain to increase the low
value of a Chinese currency exchange rate that disadvantages almost every nation's trade with China. But
it is clear to Americans and non-Americans alike that Washington lacks the power to solve or manage
difficult problems alone; the indispensable leader must work with indispensable partners.
To attract the necessary partners, Washington must do the very thing that habitually afflicts U.S. leaders
with political hives: compromise. This does not mean multilateralism for its own sake, nor does it
mean abandoning vital national interests. The Obama administration has been criticized for softening
UN economic sanctions against Iran in order to please China and Russia. Had the United States not
compromised, however, it would have faced vetoes and enacted no new sanctions at all. U.S. presidents
are often in a strong position to bargain while preserving essential U.S. interests, but they have to
do a better job of selling such unavoidable compromises to the U.S. public.
U.S. policymakers must also be patient. The weakest of nations today can resist and delay. Pressing
prematurely for decisions -- an unfortunate hallmark of U.S. style -- results in failure, the prime enemy of
power. Success breeds power, and failure breeds weakness. Even when various domestic constituencies
shout for quick action, Washington's leaders must learn to buy time in order to allow for U.S. power -and the power of U.S.-led coalitions -- to take effect abroad. Patience is especially valuable in the
economic arena, where there are far more players than in the military and diplomatic realms. To
corral all these players takes time. Military power can work quickly, like a storm; economic power
grabs slowly, like the tide. It needs time to erode the shoreline, but it surely does nibble away.
To be sure, U.S. presidents need to preserve the United States' core role as the world's military and
diplomatic balancer -- for its own sake and because it strengthens U.S. interests in economic
transactions. But economics has to be the main driver for current policy, as nations calculate power
more in terms of GDP than military might. U.S. GDP will be the lure and the whip in the
international affairs of the twenty-first century. U.S. interests abroad cannot be adequately
protected or advanced without an economic reawakening at home.
U.S. leaders forever swear their allegiance to making the tough choices to restore the U.S. economy. But
they never deliver. Equally often, they appear to grasp the need for a new foreign policy for the age of
economic power. But that, too, they fail to deliver. President Barack Obama, in particular, has often struck
just the right themes, only to let them fizzle in the din. In the meantime, Americans of nearly every

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political stripe are waiting and wondering whether their leaders are prepared to let the nation that saved
the world in the twentieth century sink into history in the twenty-first.

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Economic Hegemony is Key to Military Hegemony

Economic strength is key to military projection
Beckley, former Belfer Center international security research fellow, 11
[Michael, Winter 2011/2012, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, "China's Century? Why
America's Edge Will Endure", http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Chinas_Century.pdf, pages 57-58,
accessed 7/8/14, GNL]
The key point is that national power is multifaceted and cannot be measured with a single or a
handful of metrics. In the analyses that follow, I allot more space to economic indicators than to military
indicators. This is not because economic power is necessarily more important than military power, but
rather because most declinist writings argue that the United States is in economic, not military, decline.
Moreover, military power is ultimately based on economic strength. International relations scholars
tend to view civilian and military realms as separate entities, but militaries are embedded within
economic systems. In a separate study, I show that countries that excel in producing commercial
products and innovations also tend to excel in producing military force. Part of this advantage stems
from greater surplus wealth, which allows rich states to sustain large military investments.
Economically developed states, however, also derive military benefits from their technological
infrastructures, efficient production capacities, advanced data analysis networks, stocks of
managerial expertise, and stable political environments. In short, economic indicators are, to a
significant degree, measures of military capability. Focusing on the former, therefore, does not imply
ignoring the latter.
Economic power is key to hegemony and comparatively outweighs military power

Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus, 10
[Leslie H., Nov/Dec 2010, GDP Now Matters More Than Force, Foreign Affairs, 89:6, 35-43,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66858/leslie-h-gelb/gdp-now-matters-more-than-force,
The best U.S. strategy for this new era is to update the approach taken by Truman and Eisenhower
during the early Cold War. Its underlying principles were to make the American economy the top
priority, even if it meant tamping down military spending and military interventions; to strengthen
the economies of key allies, especially in Western Europe and Japan, to lessen their vulnerability to
Soviet pressure and increase their value as allies; and to fend off threats by means of containment,
deterrence, and a policy of providing military and economic assistance to partners worldwide.
To strengthen the economy, Truman and Eisenhower leveraged foreign threats to initiate economic
projects at home. Eisenhower used the Soviets' launching of Sputnik to advocate crash programs in math
and science, for example, and he convinced Congress to build the national highway system in order to

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strengthen the country against the Soviet military threat. Similarly, leaders today could press
for more math and science education to restore U.S. trade competitiveness and could leverage the threat
of terrorism to provide more money for building physical infrastructure, which would increase U.S.
resiliency against terrorist attacks and enhance the country's overall economic efficiency.
Truman and Eisenhower carried out their reforms while holding military spending in check-Pentagon budgets came last, not first. Both presidents allocated defense outlays using the
"remainder method," whereby they subtracted necessary domestic spending from tax revenues and
gave the leftovers (the "residual," as Eisenhower called it) to defense. Presidents could not repeat that
math given today's politics, but they could approach Pentagon requests more skeptically and lower them
accordingly. Eisenhower and Truman were particularly conscious of the ill effects of being a debtor
nation. As such, they both essentially balanced the federal budget. This course still represents the right
direction, especially at a time when 40 cents of every federal dollar spent is borrowed from abroad.
Today, the Truman and Eisenhower approach would almost certainly revolutionize basic priorities--for
example, by elevating Mexico far above Afghanistan as a national priority. The fact is that Mexico could
damage of help the United States profoundly and inescapably--just consider illegal immigration, drugs,
crime, as well as the trade and investment potential. By contrast, the war in Afghanistan will have little
lasting effect on the United States, whatever the outcome, except for the incredible cost in lives and
dollars. Terrorists will still find homes in Pakistan and many other locales. In the face of all this,
Washington nonetheless showers its attentions on Afghanistan and virtually ignores Mexico.
By following a second basic principle--to not just strengthen the United States but also bulk up its
key allies--Truman and Eisenhower constructed an impregnable wall against communist
encroachment while nurturing mutual trade and investment. The main beneficiaries were Western
Europe (through the brilliance of the Marshall Plan) and Japan. By the late 1950s, this triangle of
allies--the United States, Western Europe, and Japan--constituted the bulk of the world's economic,
military, and diplomatic punch. Together, they could not be defeated, whatever the setbacks. Even
[today, this triangle represents the world's greatest commonality of interests and values and, as such, is the
best place to start constructing twenty-first-century coalitions. Such coalitions would, however, have to
include a number of other nations, as situations required.
Of course, the present-day U.S. economy barely resembles that of the Truman and Eisenhower days.
Today, trade accounts for about one-quarter of U.S. GDP, more than double its share during the
early Cold War years. Trillions of dollars cross national boundaries daily, mostly unconstrained by
governments. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which Truman essentially
created, now occupy a much smaller place in the global economy. The United States is still the beacon
for world trade, but its power has declined from the days when Truman created the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade, which was the precursor to the World Trade Organization. The reason for the United
States' decline in trade power is that the U.S. economy is relatively weaker than before. The country's past
trade power rested largely on the size and vitality of its economy. Thus, in trade talks, the United States
could give more access to markets than it got, confident that it would recoup more than its fair share in
the long run.
No matter how compelling the case for an economic focus to U.S. strategy, the effort will falter
unless Washington makes clear that first, focusing on economics will not weaken national security
and, second, it is constantly developing new ways to confront today's threats. The starting point is to
reassure the public about China and, to a far lesser extent, Russia. Neither country can seriously challenge

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U.S. military power beyond its borders. Moscow's conventional military forces are weak and in decline,
and its army counts only near home. China's military is indeed increasing in strength, but it will take
decades before it approaches parity with the United States', if then.
Moreover, both Russia and China are unlikely to launch an unprovoked attack and risk the
unpleasant consequences. To be sure, Beijing could bring military tensions to a boil over Taiwan or the
resource-abundant South China Sea. Washington has to maintain naval and air capability in those regions
to make such ventures too risky for China. As with the Berlin airlift in Truman's day, the White House
has to place the burden of risk and escalation on potential aggressors, such as Beijing. In a larger
sense, China is contained and deterred by its vast trade with and huge investments in the United
States. Although hawks in the United States may denigrate the power of money, the Chinese do not.
Economic supremacy is a linchpin of hegemony

Layne, Texas A&M University School of Government Chair in Intelligence and
National Security, 6
(Christopher, The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, The Unipolar Illusion Revisited The Coming of the United States' Unipolar Moment, 2006,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v031/31.2layne.html, Accessed: 7/5/12, MLF)
What is hegemony? First, hegemony is about raw, hard power. Militarily, a hegemon's capabilities
are such that "no other state has the wherewithal to put up a serious fight against it." 11 A hegemon
also enjoys "economic supremacy" in the international system and has a "preponderance of
material resources." 12 Second, hegemony is about the dominant power's ambitions. A hegemon
acts self-interestedly to safeguard its security, economic, and ideological interests. 13 Third,
hegemony is about polarity. Because of its overwhelming advantages in relative military and
economic power over other states in the international system, a hegemon is the only great power in
the system, which is therefore, by definition, unipolar. 14 Fourth, hegemony is about will. A hegemon
purposefully exercises its overwhelming power to impose order on the international system. 15
Finally, hegemony is fundamentally about structural change, because "if one state achieves
hegemony, the system ceases to be anarchic and becomes hierarchic." 16 Yet, as Robert Gilpin notes,
because "no state has ever completely controlled an international system," hegemony is a relative, not an
absolute, concept. 17 When a great power attains hegemony, as, for example, the United States did in
Western Europe after World War II, the system is more hierarchicand less anarchicthan it would be in
the absence of hegemonic power. 18 Implicit in Gilpin's observation is a subtle, but important, point:
although [End Page 11] the United States is a hegemon, it is not omnipotentthere are limits to its ability
to shape international outcomes. This explains why the United States has been unable to suppress the
insurgency in Iraq (and failed in the Vietnam War), and why it has not succeeded in compelling either
North Korea or Iran to halt their nuclear weapons programs.
Nevertheless, the United States' hegemonic power is not illusory. As Kenneth Waltz notes, power does
not mean that a state possesses the ability to get its way all of the time. 19 Material resources never
translate fully into desired outcomes (military strategists acknowledge this when they observe that "the
enemy has a vote" in determining the degree to which a state can realize its strategic goals). Although a

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hegemon does not get its way all of the time, its vast power will help it get its way with other states
far more often than they will get their way with it. Precisely because the United States is a hegemon,
there is a marked asymmetry of influence in its favor. In international politics, the United States
does not get all that it wants all of the time. But it gets most of what it wants an awful lot of the
time, and it affects other states far more than other states affect it.

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Economic Power Key to Soft & Hard Power

Strong economy key to soft and hard power
Nye, former US assistant secretary of defense, 11
(Joseph S, Project Syndicate, Has Economic Power Replace Military, 6-6-11, http://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/has-economic-power-replaced-military-might-, accessed 6-29-12, FFF)
Economic resources can produce soft-power behavior as well as hard military power. A successful
economic model not only finances the military resources needed for the exercise of hard power, but
it can also attract others to emulate its example. The European Unions soft power at the end of the
Cold War, and that of China today, owes much to the success of the EU and Chinese economic
models.

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Manufacturing Key to Hegemony

Manufacturing key to hegemony solves unemployment and economic
competitiveness
Boushey, Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Economist, 12
[Heather, 7/19/12, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Testimony before the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Ways and Mason on Tax Reform and the U.S. Manufacturing Sector,
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/general/report/2012/07/19/11949/tax-reform-and-the-u-smanufacturing-sector/, page 4-5, ES]
Having a strong manufacturing industry in the United States should be at the top of our national
economic agenda. Without a vibrant and innovative manufacturing base, we will not be a global
leader for long. Moreover, as more of our energy future will rely on high-tech manufacturing, our
economic competitiveness will be even more closely aligned with our ability to be an innovator and
producer of manufactured goods.
Further, this is an urgent national issue and one of those cases where success begets success.
Economists have begun to study and show that the industrial commons matters for innovation and the
extent to which we allow manufacturing processes to continue to go overseas, we only make it that
much harder to regain our place as a global leader.11 As my colleagues Michael Ettlinger and Kate
Gordon have put it, the cross-fertilization and engagement of a community of experts in industry,
academia, and government is vital to our nations economic competitiveness.12
Manufacturing is not only a key part of our economy, but moving forward it will remain critical to
our nations economic vitality.
The U.S. manufacturing sector is still a force internationally and an important part of our economy,
despite employment losses and the relative rise in manufacturing in other countries over the past few
decades.13 Last year, manufacturing contributed over $1.8 trillion to U.S. gross domestic product, or
about 12 percent of the economy.14 Two years ago, manufacturing accounted for 60 percent of all U.S.
exports.15 In 2008, the United States ranked first in the world in manufacturing value added, and it was
the third largest exporter of manufactured goods to the world, behind only China and Germany and ahead
of Japan and France.16 Between 1979 and 2010 manufacturing output per hour of labor in the United
States increased by an average of 4 percent annually, and the United States has one of the worlds most
productive workforces.17 Moreover, in 2009 there were 11.8 million direct jobs in manufacturing and 6.8
million additional jobs in related sectors.18 Put another way, one in six U.S. private-sector jobs is
directly linked to manufacturing.19
Yet the industry suffered declines in the 2000s. The U.S. share of worldwide manufacturing value
added dropped from 26 percent in 1998 to less than 20 percent in 2007, and we have gone from being
a net exporter of manufactured goods in the 1960s to a net importer.20 Manufacturing as a share of
U.S. GDP has declined from more than 15 percent in 1998 to 11 percent in 2009.21 And jobs in U.S.
manufacturing declined from 17.6 million in January 1998 to 11.5 million in January 2010.22 And

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although the manufacturing sector has gained jobs in every month since then, for a total of 504,000 jobs
as of June 2012, its share of total employment is down from 16.8 percent in 1998 to 10.8 percent today.23
These trends matter because the United States needs a strong manufacturing
sector. Manufacturing provides good, middle-class jobs; propels U.S. leadership in technology and
innovation, which is critical to our economic growth and vitality; and is important to balancing the
trade deficit, as well as important for our nations long-term national security. The manufacturing
sector has historically been a source of solid, middle-class jobs and it continues to be so today. The
average manufacturing worker earns a weekly wage that is 8.4 percent higher than non-manufacturing
workers, taking into account worker and job characteristics that influence wages, including
unionization.24 Economist Susan Helper and her colleagues conclude that the economic evidence points
to the fact that the main reason why manufacturing wages and benefits are higher than those outside of
manufacturing is that manufacturers need to pay higher wages to ensure that their workers are
appropriately skilled and motivated. 25 U.S.-based manufacturing underpins a broad range of jobs
in other industries, including higher skill service jobs such as accountants, bankers, and lawyers, as
well as a broad range of other jobs such as basic research and technology development, product and
process engineering and design, operations and maintenance, transportation, testing, and lab work.26
Compared to jobs in other economic sectors, manufacturing jobs have the highest multiplier effect,
that is, the largest effect on the overall economy for each job created, relative to jobs in other industries.
To put this in perspective, each job in motor vehicle manufacturing creates 8.6 indirect jobs, each job
in computer manufacturing creates 5.6 indirect jobs, and each job in steel product manufacturing creates
10.3 indirect jobs.27
Manufacturing is also important because it fuels the United States leadership in technology and
innovation, which are critical to maintain for our future economic competitiveness.28 Manufacturing
firms are more likely to innovate than firms in other industries: Research from the National Science
Foundation finds that 22 percent of manufacturing companies are active innovators compared to only 8
percent of nonmanufacturing companies.29 This number is even higher for specific sectors within
manufacturing. For example, in computer and electronic products manufacturing, 45 percent of
companies are product innovators and 33 percent are process innovators.30 Manufacturing firms also
perform the vast majority of private research and development: Despite comprising just 12 percent of the
nations GDP in 2007, manufacturing companies contributed 70 percent of
private research and development spending.31
In addition to what manufacturers spend on innovation, there is increasingly strong empirical
evidence showing a tight link between innovation and manufacturingproduction. Economic research now
shows that the United States will not likely be able to keep the highly skilled technical jobs if the
production jobs go overseas. Harvard Business School professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih have
written about the decline of the industrial commons in the United States: the collective R&D,
engineering, and manufacturing capabilities that mutually reinforce each other to sustain innovation.32
For many types of manufacturing, geographic proximity is key to having a strong commons, and they
point to evidence showing that there are few hightech industries where the feedback loop from the
manufacturing process is not a factor in developing new products.33 As they put it, product and process
innovation are intertwined. Pisano and Shih point to the example of rechargeable batteries as a product
where innovation followed manufacturing. Rechargeable battery manufacturing left the United States
many years ago, leading to the migration of the batteries commons to Asia. Now new technology
(batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles) are being designed in Asia where the commons are located. Id

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draw your attention to a January New York Times article on Chinas increasing investment in research and
development, which asked, Our global competitiveness is based on being the origin of the newest, best
ideas. How will we fare if those ideas originate somewhere else?34

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Manufacturing Key to Soft Power

Manufacturing key to boost soft power
Ray, Joint Center for Poverty Research senior writer, 11
[Barbara, 5/24/11, Building Resilient Regions, Manufacturing is key to global recovering,
http://brr.berkeley.edu/2011/05/manufacturing-is-key-to-regional-recovery/, accessed 7/7/14, CM]
U.S. manufacturing has been in decline for years, but we should not treat continued decline as
inevitable, Howard Wial, BRR member and fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program,
noted in a press release. Manufacturing still produces the bulk of our exports. It is still key to innovation.
It still provides high-wage jobs. Our task now is to play to our strengths and provide the tools and
investments manufacturers need.
To bolster manufacturing, states should:
Reconfigure financial incentives to support existing manufacturing.
Help small and mid-sized firms in the manufacturing chain adopt new technologies
Combine engineering research with education for businesses on how to adopt new technologies.
In but one example, many manufacturing industries have long supply chains, where layers of specialized
firms provide components for a finished product. As the Brooking report notes, Over the last few
decades, suppliers, often small or medium-sized, have become responsible for designing and making
much of the content of manufactured goods. Consequently, innovation in U.S. manufacturing depends
increasingly on the capabilities of these firms. Yet most of them do little or no formal R&D and cannot
easily take advantage of university-based R&D. Unlike many European countries, the United States has
few institutions that help coordinate upgrading of suppliers, and few state efforts fill this gap.
To spark this process, states should create manufacturing centers for research and education, Wial argues.
The centers, located in metro areas, can do much more in terms of building a sustainable manufacturing
base than incentives and business-attraction strategies. They can help develop and spread manufacturing
technologies and foster relationships between goods producers and their suppliers. The centers can
also solve generic technical and management problems in one or more industries.
For example, new technologies can improve production, and it would seem logical that there are some
problems that are widely shared, despite the type of manufacturing one does. Yet there is little research on
which problems matter to a wide range of manufacturersnot just within one industry. There is also little
understanding of how workflow and other organizational management issues might change once
technological advances are adopted. Some organizations in the U.S. are trying to tackle these issues, but
they typically focus on technological breakthroughs by industry, not across industries. (For a good
example in Europe, see Germanys 59 Fraunhofer Institutes.) Manufacturing centers could tackle these
issues.
The centers could also do research that both advances knowledge and is of practical use in the near term.
For example, the centers could delve into the chemical properties of new, lightweight materials that could

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aid in reducing energy use. The precise research focus would vary from state to state, building on the
existing economic development strengths of regional industry clusters within the state.
While the Brookings paper focuses on the local role in bolstering manufacturing, a second paper, Nisha
Mistry and Joan Byron of the Urban Institute looks at the federal role. The paper focuses on small
manufacturingthe cabinet makers or the computer components manufacturers and their importance to
urban economies. In 2007, the report notes, of the approximately 51,000 manufacturers in the United
States employing fewer than 20 people, more than a third were located in the nations 10 largest cities.
Yet despite their importance to families and regions, the federal government clings to an outdated
perceptions about the how, what, and where of American manufacturing. As a result, the vital role of
small manufacturing is overlooked and at worst undermined (if inadvertently) by policies and programs
that may have been adopted to achieve other local development ends.
The Federal Role in Supporting Urban Manufacturing offers several examples of how the federal role
could be improved. To start, it says, federal policies could help these manufacturers form clusters, whose
collective insights and skills can spark synergy and innovation in training, research, and export strategies.
In addition, the federal government can ensure that the small manufacturers have the space, infrastructure,
and technical assistance they need. The joint $75 million initiative of the departments of Housing and
Urban Development and Transportation is an example of a forward-looking policy. It funds localized
planning activities that integrate transportation, housing, and economic development. Under that banner,
planning for the reduction of conflict between freight facilities and residential areas is an eligible activity.
Despite the losses in manufacturing between 2000 and 2009, even this comparatively diminished
manufacturing sector accounts for the bulk of U.S. exports, notes the Brookings report. It is key to
innovation and provides many high-wage jobs for less educated workers. (Seven in ten U.S. workers
do not have a bachelors degree.) Therefore, a focus on manufacturing remains critical to an
economic recovery that can help lift the futures of America s families, and position the U.S. as a
leader in innovation.

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Manufacturing Key to Competitiveness

Manufacturing key to US competitiveness
Timmons, CEO National Association of Manufacturers, 14
[Jay, 2/25/14, Real Clear Politics, Manufacturing: A Key Ingredient for U.S. Growth,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/02/25/manufacturing_a_key_ingredient_for_us_growth_1
21698.html, accessed 7/6/14, CM]
For the past two weeks weve witnessed Olympians reach amazing heights through hard work and
determination and overcome obstacles and challenges along the way. In many ways, manufacturings cando attitude is a lot like the Olympic spiritand manufacturers hard work and determination have
propelled our nation to its position as the most prosperous on earth.
Today, manufacturing is poised for a comeback. There was no medal ceremony, but for the first time in
history, manufacturing in the United States surpassed the $2 trillion mark. Taken alone, the manufacturing
sector would rank as the worlds eighth-largest economy. Manufacturing output has soared since the end
of the recession, and manufacturing employment surged in the last months of 2013.
The challenge now is maintaining this momentum. Making the comeback a reality comes down to a focus
on three areas: products, people and policy.
Manufacturers in America are making more products today and making them better than ever before.
Innovation is a big reason. The ability to adapt, innovate and improve shows up in abundance in
manufacturing.
Who would have thought, for example, that in 2014 the U.S. would be in a position to become energy
independent and even export our energy resources? But innovation made it possible, helping to spawn the
boom in domestic energy production. New technologies and techniques are allowing us to tap energy
reserves that were out of reach not long ago.
Affordable natural gas has made production more cost effective for manufacturers across the board. The
result is more jobs for workers and more economic growth in America. The American Chemistry Council
reports that $90 billion of new private-sector manufacturing investments are planned, thanks to the shale
boom.
As production ramps up and manufacturers make new investments, theyll need the support of a strong
workforce. The good news is that the people involved in manufacturing are second to none. From the
CEOs office to the shop floor, manufacturing attracts some of the most dedicated, hardworking,
innovative and talented women and men in America.
But we dont have enough of them. Eighty-two percent of manufacturers report that jobs are going
unfilled because they cant find people with the right skills.
The National Association of Manufacturers-affiliated Manufacturing Institute is helping to bridge this gap
by developing a skills-certification program that enables American workers to receive a portable

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credential and by reaching out to veterans, many of whom have skill sets that are perfectly aligned with
what manufacturers need.
But theres also a need for public policy reforms that will broaden the pool of skilled workers and address
a host of other challenges confronting manufacturers. For the past few years, manufacturers have
succeeded in spite of Washington, which has stood still on manufacturers priorities or, even worse,
enacted policies that make it harder to compete.
Manufacturers have a number of ideas to spur economic growth and job creation, but were tired of
waiting on Washington.
Common-sense solutions abound. For one, policymakers should let the shale energy revolution continue
to blossom. The energy industry is at risk of suffocation by regulation. It seems like all we hear from the
administrationparticularly the Environmental Protection Agencyand its allies in Congress is that they
want to put a stop to the use of oil, gas and coal. President Obama could also score a major victory for
economic growth by approving the Keystone XL pipeline.
If Washington stays out of the way, the United States will not only continue to decrease its reliance on
energy imports from potentially unstable parts of the globe, but also will become a major exporter of
energy.
Exports represent a significant growth opportunity for manufacturers. Ninety-five percent of the worlds
consumers live outside the United States, so its encouraging that we are pursuing two major marketopening agreements: the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership. However, to complete these agreements, Congress and the administration need to approve
Trade Promotion Authority or risk falling even further behind our competitors in our efforts to reach and
expand in new markets abroad.
For America to maintain our mantle of economic leadership, we need policies that harness the innovation
and ingenuity that have created world-changing products as well as the incredible strength of people who
work in manufacturing. The 12 million men and women who make things in America strive every single
day to ensure the strength of our nations economy. Its time for Washington to demonstrate that same
commitment to our nations future.

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Competitiveness Key to Hegemony

The US is using rebalancing to create competitiveness with China and keep its
hegemonic stance
Liru, former President, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations
14
(Cui, January 24, http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/us-rebalancing-and-competition-withchina/, accessed 7/6/14, ALR)
Strategic adjustments of American diplomacy have been a main theme in US foreign policies since
Barack Obamas very first day in office as US president. After winning general election, the new
administration found two historical missions on its shoulders: One was to reinvigorate US economy; the
other was to rebuild the countrys role as world leader. During Obamas first term of office, an important
aspect of diplomatic readjustments was disposing of the negative legacies left behind by the Bush
administration. But the most remarkable change in diplomatic strategies characteristic of the Obama
administration has been the rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific. It seems to me that the word
rebalancing indeed has conveyed the central idea of US strategic adjustments in the Asia-Pacific: Since
the end of the Cold War, significant changes have occurred in the pattern of US-dominated strategic
balance in the Asia-Pacific. In order to maintain its hegemonic status, the United States has to make
active adjustments to dictate the building of a new strategic equilibrium that can adapt to the profound
changes in international relations of the 21st century. Which is at the same time the core concept behind
the US foreign strategic adjustments in the new era.
Debates over whether the United States has embarked on a downward slide toward decline are still
raging on the world over. Yet it has been an undisputed reality that more centers of power have rapidly
arisen. Due to the severe blows from the financial crisis that broke out in 2008 and the ensuing global
economic crisis, the United States international status has obviously been on the decline.
Twenty-first-century international relations have a more fundamental characteristic: Economic
globalization has resulted in unprecedented inter-dependence between countries, which is particularly
prominent between major countries. This is actually a significant difference between the multipolarization of the present-day world and previous multi-polar international systems in world history.
Which means, with its capabilities of dominating international affairs on the decline, the United
States has to face more competitors; while at the same time seeking more effective cooperation with
other countries, especially emerging countries, so as to establish an international system that will
both adapt to the new world, and sustain the United States leadership role.
Therefore, the strategic adjustments of US diplomacy are a kind of strategic transformation in nature and
need to simultaneously cope with challenges from two aspects. On one hand, in order to address the gap
between capabilities and ambitions resulted from excessive expansion during the Bush era, the United
States has to readjust the sequence of global strategic goals on its priority list and change its
unilateralist behavioral mode. On the other hand, with an eye on the mega-trend of changes in world
affairs, the United States has to enhance alliances and partnerships, transform international
economic, political and security mechanisms, and to preserve the international order that has long

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been dominated by the West. While the basis for the realization of the above goals, and the most
imperative task, is to revitalize the US economy, and strengthen American superiority.
The most conspicuous move in the Obama administrations adjustments of foreign strategies has been the
explicit shift of strategic center of gravity to the Asia-Pacific. The two major reasons for such an
adjustment are obvious. One is economic and the other is strategic . Rejuvenating the US economy is the
Obama administrations most important historical mission, as well as its most pressing task. As the new
center of gravity for the global economy, Asia has the most important role in American foreign
economic and trade relations both at present and in the future. Home to the worlds biggest and most
vigorous emerging economic entities, such as China and India, Asia is not only the most important
engine driving present global economic growth, but also our globes largest export market and most
attractive investment destination. It will also become the largest source of overseas investments in the
future. The US economy has been woven tightly together with Asia, making its future development
even more inseparable from Asia.
In the meantime, the United States has also located its major strategic challenges in Asia. First, the
United States sees the rapidly rising China as its foremost rival in strategic competition. Second,
Washington believes the Asia-Pacific is home to the biggest number of instable and uncertain factors in
terms of security. Identifying a main rival in strategic competition has always been a core factor in
American diplomatic and military strategies. However, for quite a long period of time, palpable
strategic competition had not emerged between China and the United States.
Such situations did not see tangible changes until after 2008, when the rise of China appeared to turn
from a murky concept into a jaw-dropping reality. After a persistent ascent on the ladder of global GDP
rankings, China has overtaken Japan as the worlds second largest economy in GDP terms, become more
pro-active than ever diplomatically; and achieved the status of the United States top foreign creditor.
Meanwhile, the rapid progress of Chinas national defense construction has raised concerns in some
countries, and tensions have arisen in relations with Japan and the Philippines because of territorial
disputes.
Also during that period of time, the United States saw the unprecedented financial crisis break out, and
was subsequently bogged down in the most serious economic recession since the end of World War II.
Debts and financial deficits, enlarging wealth gap and double-digit unemployment, as well as political
and social polarization became each others cause and effect, resulting in a damaging vicious circle.
Pessimism permeated. Public confidence in the government plummeted to record lows. Extreme
conservatism found opportunities to make waves and saw its political energy amplified. Trade
protectionism and economic nationalism raised their ugly heads, and China has thus become the most
convenient target of attacks by politicians and the media alike. With consecutive years of severe
crackdown on terrorism and strict precautions showing obvious effects, Americans worries about terrorist
threats have mitigated greatly. Under such circumstances, following traditional strategic concepts, it is a
matter of course for Washington to identify China, who has rapidly grown into the worlds second
largest economic entity but remains politically heterogeneous, as the United States main strategic
competitor.
It is on the basis of such complicated economic and strategic concerns that the United States put forward
its rebalancing strategy in the Asia-Pacific. Its central idea is to preserve US dominance in Asia
through the use of the so-called smart power under new conditions where the international
strategic pattern is turning from uni-polar to multi-polar. However, in the face of the even more

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complex conditions under the new pattern, the connotations of the so-called rebalancing are also
convoluted. From the economic perspective, the rebalancing has an eye on forging closer ties with the
entire Asia-Pacific region, where China remains the most important existence few meaningful
connections can navigate. There are both competition and cooperation between China and the
United States. Their relationship could be competitive when it comes to regional dominance, but the
two parties have to collaborate to sustain mutually beneficial economic and trade relations.
The US-proposed TPP has dual implications: Economically, it aims at upgrading cooperation with the
Asia-Pacific; at the same time, it has evidently incorporated macro strategic considerations about
enhancing long-term competitiveness against China. From the perspective of political and military
strategies, the United States focuses primarily on checking and balancing Chinas rise and subsequent
expanding influences, while simultaneously taking care of other targets and challenges in the area. The
Obama administration has made a high-profile statement that the United States will consolidate
military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, including enhancing alliance systems, building a more
extensive partnership network, increasing inputs in military expenses, personnel and equipment,
the construction of military bases and supply points, and holding more joint military drills. The
United States newly formulated anti-access denial strategy and Air-Sea Battle strategy display a
quite clear intention of targeting China. Thanks to its thick military colors, the rebalancing strategy has
provoked criticisms both at home and abroad.
In China, some people share the strong belief that the US rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific is in
essence a strategy to contain China, which is tantamount to a New Cold War. Such a point is not
completely groundless. In fact, some people in the United States have been open advocates for the
containment of a rising China. However, more people have reached the cool-headed understanding that
containing China does not align with American interests not to mention that no country can prevent
China from rising through containment. Since the two countries again opened the doors of exchanges and
communication, progress in bilateral relations has brought tremendous benefits to both sides, as well as to
Asia and the world at large. This is a fact no one can ignore. Nowadays, the deep and broad
interdependence that has been formulated in economy and trade has turned out to be an important basis
for the development of both countries.
Chinas rise undoubtedly constitutes an increasing challenge for US hegemony. At the current stage, the
competitive aspect of Sino-US relations has grown in prominence and become a focus of public
attention. However, this has in no way changed the need for the continuous progress of bilateral
cooperation between China and the United States.
The United States has always been a believer of policies backed up by power. Revitalizing its economy is
essential for the United States to sustain its strong national might. Continuously enhancing its military
advantages and turning them into a sharp sword that can effectively deter rivals will always be the
United States most-favored instrument. China is simultaneously a partner the United States needs and
a competitor it wants to hold in check. The US China strategy is actually seeking a balance between the
two needs. The so-called rebalancing thus refers to strategic adjustments intended to cope with
the changes in the strategic pattern. And the rise of China has been perceived as the most important
variable resulting in such changes. At the same time, the rebalancing, as a process of strategic
transition, cannot be fulfilled at one stroke. The various future uncertainties are important problems the
US Asia-Pacific strategy must take into consideration. The process of the strategic adjustments of the
rebalancing will at least last through Obamas entire term of office. It will be subject to revisions or

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modifications as a result of changing conditions in various fields and aspects. A certain process of
interaction may also emerge at the same time between China and the United States.
The orientation of future interaction between China and the United States is a question of major strategic
significance that promises uncertainties. Obama said the United States will never be second place;
China is determined to realize great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Therefore, competition is
inevitable between the two countries. In fact, both China and the United States have taken the other
as a main strategic competitor. However, since the two are yet to be on a par with each other in terms of
comprehensive strength, the United States remains in a dominant position for its tremendous
advantages. Given the popular belief that, step-by-step, China will narrow the gap between it and the
United States, the latter certainly cannot sit back and relax. Therefore, the United States current
rebalancing is actually a precautionary move aimed at future competition. Yet, from the
perspective of the prospect of Sino-US relations, the core question is in what manner the well-matched
competition between the future China and United States will unfold, instead of the competition
itself. Based on realistic political theories and the historical experiences that rising powers and
established powers of the 20th century repeatedly headed from competition toward confrontation,
some Americans asserted that confrontation will ultimately be inevitable between China and the
United States, and that the United States must make strategic preparations for that scenario. Many
more believe relations between major countries of the 21 st century have been dramatically different, and
China and the United States should and could avoid repeating the historical destiny of confrontation. The
prospect of the bilateral ties will rest mainly on Chinas and the United States strategic orientations,
policy goals, and ways of dealing with differences. The consensus, wisdom and political will of the two
countries leaders and decision-makers to prevent confrontation will prove to be decisive.
In June of 2013, President Obama, who was beginning his second term in office, and President Xi
Jinping, the newly appointed leader of China, held a meeting at the Annenberg Retreat in Rancho Mirage,
California. The two had in-depth and candid discussions about extensive topics on bilateral ties, and
reached important consensuses. One thing that attracted the most outsider attention was President
Obamas positive response to President Xis proposal of a new type of major-country relations. This is
an important step the US side has taken regarding the idea about the future development of
bilateral relations. The outstanding Sino-US competitions that call for management and control,
however, concentrate in the Asia-Pacific. Therefore, the process of Chinas and the United States
exploration in building the proposed new-type major country relations will certainly show a
tricky correlation with the proceeding of the US rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific.
At the meeting, President Xi defined the new type of major-country relationship as no conflict, no
confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.

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Dollar Key to Hegemony

Dollar hegemony gives the US authority in the international sphere
McDowell, Syracuse University Political Science Assistant Professor, 13
(Daniel McDowell, Oct. 22, 2013, World Politics Review, "Losing Faith: The Costs Of Mismanaging the
Dollar", www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13319/losing-faith-the-costs-of-mismanaging-the-dollar,
accessed 7-7-14, LAS)
Canadian economist and intellectual father of the euro Robert Mundell once quipped that the optimal
number of currencies in the world is an odd number, preferably less than three. At one level, Mundell
was pointing out that economic exchange is most efficient when everyone is using the same
measuring stick. This is why, in the national context, governments generally opt to have a single
currency as opposed to allowing several tenders to coexist. The same logic applies internationally, so
global markets tend to adopt a select few national currencies with which they conduct their
business. As is the case within the national context, international money serves three basic
purposes: as a unit of account, a medium of exchange and a store of value. Moreover, international
currency serves these functions at two basic levels: the official level (uses of the currency by
governments) and the private level (uses of the currency by firms or individuals in markets).
Most national monies see little to no international use. The dollar is one exception to this rule. On every
meaningful measure, the U.S. dollar is the worlds most internationalized currency. Each day,
dollars change hands in international foreign exchange markets more than any other money. By
most estimates, more than half of international trade is settled in dollars. And governments from
Tokyo to Brasilia invest more of their savings, known as foreign exchange reserves, in dollardenominated assets than in all other currencies combined. So, while there is no single global currency, no
currency is more global than the dollar.
The dollars status is a function of a number of conditions, not least of which are the size of the
American economy; the United States historical role at the center of global commerce and finance;
Washingtons credibility as a debtor and reputation for sound economic management; and the
unrivaled U.S. Treasury bond market, which is at once open, mature, liquid and deep, enabling
foreign governments to safely and easily invest trillions of dollars in U.S. government debt.
This status is not inconsequential. Americas position atop the global monetary hierarchy brings with
it a number of benefits. At the private level, American financial institutions hold a considerable
advantage over their foreign counterparts because of the dollars global role, and they profit from it
greatly. For example, last year, most of the more than $18 trillion in total global trade was financed
in U.S. dollars. American banks are the obvious place for exporters and importers around the
world to go for that service. This foreign business earns those banks a hefty return.
More importantly, the dollars global role also enhances American power in a couple of ways. First,
by virtue of the dollars role as the worlds top reserve currency, the U.S. benefits from what has
been called power as autonomy. The concept, first applied to monetary affairs by political economist
Benjamin J. Cohen, is distinct from standard definitions that equate power with influence. Cohen and

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others have noted that issuing the worlds key reserve currency frees U.S. economic policy from many of
the external influences and constraints other states must bend to. Specifically, the dollars role gives the
U.S. the power to delay making painful economic adjustments.
Because foreign demand for U.S. government debt is almost insatiable, the country can run fiscal
deficits with an impunity most countries can only dream of. Furthermore, in times of trouble,
demand for U.S. Treasuries only goes upeven when the trouble lies in the American economy
itself. For example, during the worst weeks of the 2008 crisis, global investors flocked to the dollar
even though the U.S. economy was the epicenter of the financial turmoil. Similarly, shortly after the
American credit ratings agency Standard & Poors downgraded U.S. debt following the 2011 debt
ceiling impasse, the yield on Treasuries actually fell, indicating that demand for downgraded U.S.
debt had increased. Countries like Greece or Portugal would love to have such luxuries.
A second way U.S. power is enhanced by the dollars role as the worlds key reserve currency is
associated with the ideas of Albert Hirschman, as developed further by political economist
Jonathan Kirshner. Kirshner points out that the U.S. gains a type of structural power over other
states as a function of their decision to invest so heavily in the American currency. In short, given the
fact that countries like China and Japan have invested so much of their national savings in the dollar,
these countries now have a vested interest in the value and stability of the dollar itself. In other words, the
interests of statesas well as private actors within those statesare shaped by virtue of their
participation in a global monetary system dominated by the dollar.

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Trade Key to Hegemony

Trade promotes peace which is key to hegemonic leadership Empirically proven
Gady, East West Institute Senior Fellow, 10
[Franz-Stefan, 11/10/10, American Diplomacy, Should the United States continue as a champion of free
trade? http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2010/0912/comm/gady_freetrade.html, accessed 7/06/14,
TH]
Ever since the end of the Second World War and the introduction of the Bretton Woods system, the
United States has been seen as a champion of free trade. In part due to its industrial supremacy and the
onset of the Cold War, the U.S. government was one of the most consistent proponents of reduced tariff
barriers and free trade in the last sixty years and helped to establish the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later, the World Trade Organization. Today, with its economic power
in relative decline and neo-mercantilist powers such as China on the rise, the question arises whether the
US will remain a champion of free trade.
This paper will argue that the United States should continue to be a champion of free trade for two
reasons. First, free trade promotes peace and hence, makes it easier for the single hegemonic power
to manage the international system. It lessens the cost of the empire, so to speak. Second, the
argument that the United States will deviate from free trade due its relative decline in relation to neomercantilist powers such as China is unsubstantiated. The truth is that a hegemon1, despite the arguments
of the hegemonic stability theory, can do very little to influence states behavior in the international
system. Hegemony is based on tacit consensus among the members of the international system. Hence,
the professed inability of the hegemon to deal with a new emerging power should not be seen as a decline
but merely as a natural exposition of the limitations of any state trying to influence the domestic policy of
another state in the international arena.
Trade leads to economic growth and communication both key to hegemonic

leadership
Gady, East West Institute Senior Fellow, 10
[Franz-Stefan, 11/10/10, American Diplomacy, Should the United States continue as a champion of free
trade?, http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2010/0912/comm/gady_freetrade.html, accessed
7/06/14, TH]
The second assumption is an efficiency argument in that it compares the relative costs of acquiring
productive resources. As trade increases it will become progressively less productive to acquire
resources through plunder or conquest in order to promote economic growth. A good illustration for
this is that the Soviet Union delivered more raw materials and wheat to Germany in one year prior to

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1941 than Germany was able to extrapolate during four years of its occupation of the western parts of the
Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944.
The third assumption is a sociological hypothesis and focuses on how trade helps to increase contact
and communication across societies. Through those contacts national loyalties and competitive
behavior are displaced and hence lead to a more stable international environment. Italy during the
Renaissance provides a good example for this hypothesis. Wars were not uncommon during this
period of time, but they were relatively bloodless and short mostly due to the economic interests of
the parties involved such as the Medici family of Florence.
Fourth and lastly, international commerce, international trade and the resulting human interaction
can provide important signaling mechanism that can help a state to achieve a negotiated
compromise short of war.
Openness in trade keeps the U.S. competitive

Zoellick, US Trade Representative, 1
[Robert B., 9/24/01, The Institute for International Economics, American Trade Leadership: What is at
Stake page 1, http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/zoellick1001.pdf, accessed 7/07/14, TH]
Like the best of institutions public or private the Institute for International Economics is guided by
core values. The work at IIE draws from a powerful idea: that an open international economy will
spur energies and creativity that will better the condition of people around the world, individually
and collectively.
I have always felt that openness is America's trump card openness to goods, to services, to capital,
to people, and to ideas. Openness is what keeps the United States competitive, fresh, and dynamic.
It ensures that America can draw on the best that the world has to offer.
US navy commerce facilitation promotes US hegemonyhistory proves

Glasser and Rahman, US Naval Academy Department of Economics Professors, 12
(Darrell and Ahmed, November 2012, United States Naval Academy, Ex Tridens Mercatus*- Sea-power
and Maritime Trade in the Age of Globalization, http://www.usna.edu/Users/econ/rahman/ex%20tridens
%20mercatus%2011-12.pdf, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
Once the U.S. shed its postbellum isolationism, its navy too became an instrument for the facilitation
of commerce. Though not as dependent on foreign trade as England, the U.S.s regional hegemony was
sensitive to global nance (Mitchener and Weidenmier 2005). The U.S. often used its naval powers for
commercial missions, starting perhaps most famously when it sent one-fourth of its Navy in 1853
to open Japan to American traders (Morck and Nakamura 2007). The U.S. intervention in Santo
Domingo made credible the threat of naval forces conducting gunboat diplomacy or seizing foreign
customs houses in Central and Latin America to promote trade (Mitchener and Weidenmier 2005). And

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when American naval forces were sent to the Philippines to wage war in 1898, Philippine
merchants urged the U.S. to take control of the Philippines in the belief that this would bolster
their business (Rocko 2012).
Trade increases hegemonyhistory proves

Mitchener, Santa Clara University Associate Professor of Economics, and
Weidenmier, Claremont-McKenna College Professor of Economics, 08
(Kris James, Marc, January 2008, National Bureau of Economic Research, Trade and Empire,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13765.pdf, page ii, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
Although many modern studies find large and significant effects of prior colonial status on bilateral trade,
there is very little empirical research that has focused on the contemporaneous impact of empire on trade.
We employ a new database of over 21,000 bilateral trade observations during the Age of High
Imperialism, 1870-1913, to quantitatively assess the effect of empire on trade. Our augmented gravity
model shows that belonging to an empire roughly doubled trade relative to those countries that
were not part of an empire. The positive impact that empire exerts on trade does not appear to be
sensitive to whether the metropole was Britain, France, Germany, Spain, or the United States or to
the inclusion of other institutional factors such as being on the gold standard. In addition, we examine
some of the channels through which colonial status impacted bilateral trade flows. The empirical analysis
suggests that empires increased trade by lowering transactions costs and by establishing trade
policies that promoted trade within empires. In particular, the use of a common language, the
establishment of currency unions, the monetizing of recently acquired colonies, preferential trade
arrangements, and customs unions help to account for the observed increase in trade associated with
empire.
Trade flourishes under hegemony

Kling, economist and Cato Institute adjunct scholar, 8
(Arnold, 2/4/08, Ideas in Action, The Benefits of Hegemony,
http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2008/02/the-benefits-of-hegemony.html, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
Trade flourishes under hegemony. That is the lesson I took from Power and Plenty, a dense, arduous
survey of economic history written by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke. In addition to the Mongol
empire, they describe the increased trade under the hegemonies of the Romans, the Muslim Caliphate,
and various dynasties in China and Latin America during the first millenium. Of course, the most recent
example of trade under hegemony has been what Walter Russell Mead in God and Gold calls the
maritime powers of Great Britain and the United States.
It makes sense once you think about it. Disparate peoples can coexist in three ways: in isolation, under
hegemony, or at war. In the absence of hegemony, peaceful intercourse is an elusive ideal.

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Squalid Isolation
Geographical isolation has been a factor for most of human history. For millenia, inhabitants of what we
now call the "new world" were unaware of the existence of the "old world," and vice-versa. Geographical
isolation was overcome by transportation technology, from ocean-going ships to railroads to automobiles
and airplanes. Another important technological development was communications, from the telegraph to
the telephone to the Internet.
Political and military factors also have produced isolation. In medieval times, when castles were the
dominant military technology, this tended to promote isolation. More recently, during the Cold War, the
capitalist countries were isolated from the Communist countries, by such means as the Berlin Wall and the
refusal by the United States to have any relations with Communist China.
Today, many Americans long for isolation, especially from the Islamic world. Such a desire is reflected in
the political popularity of "energy independence," in spite of the impracticality of this notion.
Historically, isolation correlates with economic backwardness. The most underdeveloped societies are
those that have been cut off from trade--remote islands in the ocean or villages in Africa and Latin
America located far from water transport.
Squalid isolation has also been observed in the West. The fall of the Roman Empire produced isolation
and decline in Europe. The two decades following World War I saw trade curtailed and living standards
reduced.
The Golden Passport
In the absence of hegemony, trade is impaired. If Marco Polo wants to buy goods in Afghanistan
and sell them in China, he has to be able to avoid having his goods stolen, either by bandits along
the route or by criminals or government rulers at his destination. Without protection from a
hegemon, he is unlikely to be able to complete his trade mission.
Marco Polo carried with him a Golden Passport, which signified Kublai Khan's protection. Every trader
needs the equivalent of such a Golden Passport.
The United States Constitution was in part a contract for hegemony. The separate states were given
wide latitude for setting policies within their borders. However, the "commerce clause" stated that
states could not introduce tariffs or other impediments to interstate commerce.
The "commerce clause" effectively gave American traders their Golden Passport within the United States.
As Walter Russell Mead points out, the British and American navies helped give Anglo-American traders
a Golden Passport throughout the world.

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Trade Key to US Economy

Trade is key to the US economyexports, jobs, services
Ward, US Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General Editor, 09
(John, 5/20/09, International Trade Administration, Importance of Trade to U.S. Economy Highlighted in
World Trade Week Events, http://trade.gov/press/publications/newsletters/ita_0509/wtw_0509.asp,
accessed: 7/6/14, SM)
A Vital Contributor to the Economy

Just as it always has during previous cycles of growth and recession, exporting holds an important
place in the U.S. economy. In 2008, U.S. exports of goods and services, on a balance of payments
basis, totaled $1.84 trillion, an increase of 12 percent over 2007.
During the past decade, the share of U.S. gross domestic product accounted for by exporting has been
growingfrom 10.9 percent in 1998 to 13.0 percent in 2008.
6 Million Jobs
In 2008, according to figures compiled by the Census Bureau, exports of manufactured goods totaled
$1.12 trillion. Manufactured exports supported roughly 6 million U.S. jobs in 2006, the latest year for
which figures are available. Of those export-supported jobs, 2.58 million were in manufacturing
industries. Those jobs accounted for 19.9 percent of all U.S. manufacturing employment, nearly one
out of every five jobs.
Trade Surplus for Services
In 2008, servicesthe other component of exportingposted a record trade surplus of $139.7
billion, an increase of 17.3 percent over 2007. Services exports totaled $544.4 billion in 2008, an
increase of 9.5 percent over 2007.
Top U.S. services exports included other private services, such as business, professional, and technical
services ($238.3 billion); travel ($110.5 billion); and royalties and license fees ($88.2 billion).
Trade hasnt contributed to US economic growth

Lee, Economic Policy Institute International Economist, 11
(Thea, Deputy Chief of Staff @ The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial
Organizations, 11/7/11, Council on Foreign Relations, Can Trade Motor U.S. Economy?
http://www.cfr.org/trade/can-trade-motor-us-economy/p26425, accessed: 7/6/14, SM)
Increased trade has the potential to boost U.S. economic growth--and create jobs--under the right
circumstances and with the right supportive policies. Such a boost would be tremendously welcome at the

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current moment, as most other potential growth engines--consumption, investment, and government
spending--do not offer bright prospects.
Increasing net exports is, therefore, an enormously attractive option, and the U.S. labor movement would
be delighted to see economic growth powered by exports.
But we need to be realistic about the prospects for significant short-term economic growth fueled by net
export growth if our current set of trade, tax, domestic education, and infrastructure policies don't change.
It has been a couple of decades since trade contributed in a significant and sustained way to U.S.
economic growth. Instead, we have run chronic and massive trade and current account deficits-even as we have signed new bilateral trade deals and embarked on more multilateral liberalization.
And we are not the only country hoping to export our way to prosperity. As we slowly emerge from
the global recession, most countries hope to boost growth through exports. Most of those countries have
been strategic and concerned about protecting domestic markets through tax, procurement, and trade
policies; and most have invested substantially more than we have in modern transportation,
communication, and energy infrastructure.
Maritime trade key to the US economy

Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies, 13
(8/16/13, Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies, Maritime Trade Contributes to Every States
Economy, http://www.ittsresearch.org/blog/?p=1290, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
International traffic through a maritime port accounted for 11% of the nations GDP. For states
without coastal port facilities, the estimated economic share of maritime trade was lower than the national
average. For states in the Mountain West, this ranged from 1% to 4%. For most inland states, international
trade through ports accounted for 5% to 10% of their economies. The true contribution may be higher,
since the nature of international shipments and global supply chains may negatively skew the value of
maritime trade to these inland states. The role of ports is critical to economies in the southeastern
U.S., where maritime trade accounts for over 10 percent of most state economies.
International trade will remain a critical, and growing, component of the U.S. economy, as
highlighted by the National Export Initiative and the push for more trade agreements. Improving trade,
including trade through the nations maritime system and its linkages to inland markets, can provide
economic opportunities to U.S. firms. However, as with most infrastructure in the United States, this
highway on-ramp to global prosperity is in need of attention, as potholes can disrupt our
transportation system and the economy. The nations infrastructure requires constant and secure funding,
not only for ports and their associated dredging and infrastructure needs, but also for the corridors that
link ports with inland markets.
Key Points:
1. Every state in the U.S. depends upon maritime trade.
2. As trade grows, so too does the importance of ports to handle this trade, creating jobs in port areas.

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3. The growth in ports also requires strong connections to inland markets to ensure that U.S. goods are
competitively priced in world markets. This supports/creates jobs for many different industries and modes
throughout the nation, just not in port areas.
Maritime trade important for the US economyexports, imports, jobs

Navy League of the United States, 8
(10/28/08, Navy League of the United States, Americas Maritime Industry: The foundation of American
seapower, http://navyleague.org/files/americas-maritime-industry.pdf, page 12-13, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
The Maritime Industry in America contributes to our national economy and economic wellbeing
both through international tradeapproximately 28% of our economy depends on imports or
exportsand by virtue of the millions of jobs it creates or sustains domestically both within the
industry itself and through its total value contribution to the economy.
International trade is a critical component of the U.S. economy. According to the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the trade-to-GDP ratio for the U.S. increased from
about 20.5% in 1990 to over 28% in 2006. The World Bank predicts that this ratio will rise to 35% by
2020, showing that trade will become an even more important component of the U.S. economy. Trade
will not only grow in absolute terms, it will also increase as a share of GDP and thus as a contributor to
growth in U.S. jobs and wealth. If current trends continue, imports and exports will comprise almost
55% of GDP by 2038. In other words, trade will grow twice as fast as the U.S. economy as a whole.3
With 95% of our foreign trade moving by ship, the role of maritime transportation will continue
to increase. In 2009, for example, 6,996 oceangoing vessels made 55,560 calls at U.S. ports
transporting 1.2 billion metric tons of U.S. imports and exports with a combined value in excess of
1 trillion U.S. dollars. On average, that equates to over 180 oceangoing vessels calling at U.S. ports
every day. 4
It is projected that the maritime share of U.S. trade as measured by TEUs (20-foot Container
Equivalent Units) will double by 2023 to about 45 million TEUs and increase to 75 million TEUs
(about 2.4 billion tons) by 2038. Trade by sea will grow even faster by value, rising from about $1.8
trillion in 2008 and to about $10.5 trillion in 2038. Thus, over the next 30 years, trade will increase by
an average annual growth rate of 1.9% by volume and 6.4% by nominal value. These growth rates
reveal that the U.S. will be trading in goods of higher value per ton and highlight yet again the
increasing importance of maritime trade to the U.S. economy and national wealth creation. 5
Overall, when trade-dependent jobs are included in the analysis, it is estimated that maritime
industry related employment represents approximately 13 million U.S. jobs. 6
Trade is key to the US economyjobs

Shoji 14

Hegemony Core
(Kohei, 5/29/14, US Japan Research Institute, Stimulating the Economy through Trade Facilitation,
http://www.us-jpri.org/en/reports/cspc_shoji_2014.pdf, page 1, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
International trade is an integral part of the U.S. economy. Increasing exports can increase
production inside the U.S., creating new jobs; export-supported jobs rose from 7.6 million in 1993
to 10.3 million in 2008, an increase of 2.7 million jobs; this accounted for 40 percent of total job
growth in the United States during this period. 1 Also, as U.S. multi-national companies continue to
expand their supply chains and markets globally, the competitiveness of the backbone of the U.S.
economy partly rests on the ability of them to smoothly move their goods across borders. Therefore, as
the FRB looks to cut back on its massive quantitative easing measures, bolstering trade, especially
exports, would provide the U.S. economy with the much-needed stimulation.
Maritime trade will become even more important to the US economy

Coast Guard 01
(2/1/01, US Coast Guard, Coast Guard 2020, http://www.uscg.mil/history/articles/coastguard2020.pdf,
page 4-5, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
America will become more dependent upon international trade, the vast majority of which will be
transported on the water. U.S. maritime trade will double, if not triple, by 2020. Trade with AsianPacific and Latin American countries will increase more than with other world regions. Efficient
maritime transportation will become more critical to Americas economy and competitiveness. Global
seaborne trade will bring larger numbers of ultra-large, deep-draft, and minimally crewed ships.
Americas inland and coastal commerce will experience increased barge and tow traffic. Higher
volumes of oil, hazardous materials, and bulk commodities are likely. Just-in-time delivery of raw
materials and finished goods will become the norm, magnifying the consequences of disruptions and
emphasizing the importance of the marine transportation systems reliability. Furthermore, growing
numbers of people will have the resources and leisure time to spend on cruises and recreational boating.
Collectively, this congestion on Americas waterways will create a greater need for a well-integrated
intermodal transportation system with close links among the sea, land, and air components.

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Economy Outweighs Military

The economys a better internal link to hegemony than hard power
Hubbard, Open Society Foundations Washington DC Program Assistant, 10
(Jesse Hubbard, Hubbard Jesse Hubbard Program Assistant at Open Society Foundations Washington,
District Of Columbia International Affairs Previous National Democratic Institute (NDI), National
Defense University, Office of Congressman Jim Himes Education PPE at University of Oxford, May 28,
2010, IRSJ: think Globally: American University undergraduate SIS Journal, Hegemonic Stability
Theory: An Empirical Analysis, http://isrj.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/hegemonic-stabilitytheory/http://isrj.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/hegemonic-stability-theory/, accessed July 9, 2013, EK)
Using the data from the Correlates of War Project, I was able to perform a number of statistical analyses
on my hypothesis. To measure hegemonic strength, I used the Composite Index of National Capability, a
metric that averages together six different dimensions of relative power as a share of total power in the
international system. I then matched this data with data cataloging all conflicts in the international system
since 1815. I organized this data into five-year increments, in order to make statistical analysis more
feasible. Regression analysis of the data revealed that there was a statistically significant negative
correlation between relative hegemonic power and conflict levels in the international system. However,
further statistical tests added complications to the picture of hegemonic governance that was emerging.
Regression analysis of military actions engaged in by the hegemon versus total conflict in the system
revealed a highly positive correlation for both American and British hegemony. Further analysis revealed
that in both cases, military power was a less accurate predictor of military conflict than economic
power. There are several possible explanations for these findings. It is likely that economic stability has
an effect on international security. In addition, weaker hegemons are more likely to be challenged
militarily than stronger hegemons. Thus, the hegemon will engage in more conflicts during times of
international insecurity, because such times are also when the hegemon is weakest. Perhaps the most
important implication of this research is that hegemons may well be more effective in promoting peace
through economic power than through the exercise of military force.
Nations calculate power using the economy not the military

Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a senior official in the
U.S. Defense Department from 1967 to 1969 and in the State Department from 1977 to 1979, and he was
a Columnist and Editor at The New York Times from 1981 to 1993, November/December 2010, Foreign
Affairs, GDP Now Matters More Than Force, Vol. 89 Issue 6, p35-43, ebsco, accessed July 9, 2013,
EK)
U.S. policymakers must also be patient. The weakest of nations today can resist and delay. Pressing
prematurely for decisions--an unfortunate hallmark of U.S. style--results in failure, the prime enemy of

Hegemony Core
power. Success breeds power, and failure breeds weakness. Even when various domestic constituencies
shout for quick action, Washington's leaders must learn to buy time in order to allow for U.S. power--and
the power of U.S.-led coalitions--to take effect abroad. Patience is especially valuable in the economic
arena, where there are far more players than in the military and diplomatic realms. To corral all these
players takes time. Military power can work quickly, like a storm; economic power grabs slowly,
like the tide. It needs time to erode the shoreline, but it surely does nibble away.
To be sure, U.S. presidents need to preserve the United States' core role as the world's military and
diplomatic balancer--for its own sake; and because it strengthens U.S. interests in economic
transactions. But economics has to be the main driver for current policy, as nations calculate power
more in terms of GDP than military might. U.S. GDP will be the lure and the whip in the
international affairs of the twenty-first century. U.S. interests abroad cannot be adequately
protected or advanced without an economic reawakening at home.

Hegemony Core
Economy Outweighs Credibility

US economy bolsters hegemony
Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a senior official in the
U.S. Defense Department from 1967 to 1969 and in the State Department from 1977 to 1979, and he was
a Columnist and Editor at The New York Times from 1981 to 1993, November/December 2010, Foreign
Affairs, GDP Now Matters More Than Force, Vol. 89 Issue 6, p35-43, ebsco, accessed July 9, 2013,
EK)
A U.S. Foreign Policy for the Age of Economic Power

Most nations today beat their foreign policy drums largely to economic rhythms, but less so the United
States. Most nations define their interests largely in economic terms and deal mostly in economic power,
but less so the United States. Most nations have adjusted their national security strategies to focus on
economic security, but less so the United States. Washington still principally thinks of its security in
traditional military terms and responds to threats with military means. The main challenge for
Washington, then, is to recompose its foreign policy with an economic theme, while countering
threats in new and creative ways. The goal is to redefine "security" to harmonize with twenty-firstcentury realities.
The model already exists for such an economic-centric world and for a policy to match: the approach
of U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. They understood that a strong economy is the
basis of both a vibrant democracy at home and U.S. military might abroad. They also knew that no
matter how strong the U.S. economy and military, Washington would need a lot of help in checking
communism. Accordingly, they bolstered U.S. power by resurrecting the economies of Western
Europe and Japan, and they added legitimacy to that power by establishing international
institutions such as the World Bank and NATO. To respond to threats from the Soviet Union and
communism, Truman and Eisenhower fashioned the policies of containment and deterrence, backed up by
military and economic aid. The idea was to check Soviet military power without bankrupting the United
States. Today, of course, any U.S. approach must account for the complexity of the global economy as
well as new threats from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. All this can be done--but not without
causing some intellectual and political mayhem.
The most ferocious fight will be over how to rejuvenate the U.S. economy. Everyone agrees that it must
be fixed, lest the nation face further decline and more dangers. But few agree on how. The basic must-do
list is lengthy, unforgiving, and depressingly obvious: improve public schools to sustain democracy and
restore global competitiveness; upgrade the physical infrastructure critical to economic efficiency and
homeland security; reduce public debt, the interest on which is devouring revenue; stimulate the economy
to create jobs; and promote new sources of energy and freer trade to increase jobs, lower foreign debt, and
reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

Hegemony Core
AT Economy Key to Hegemony
Economic power has no effect on hegemony relative economic decline is net better
globally
Kenny, Center for Global Development Senior Fellow, 14
[Charles, 1/17/14, Washington Post, America is No. 2! And thats great news,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-is-no-2-and-thats-greatnews/2014/01/17/09c10f50-7c97-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
In fact, the link between the absolute size of your economy and pretty much any measure that truly
matters is incredibly weak. Whenever China takes over the top spot, it will still lag far behind the
worlds leading countries on indicators reflecting quality of life. For starters, there are a lot more
people sharing Chinas GDP; even the rosiest forecasts for the countrys economic growth suggest
that per capita income will be lower than in the United States for decades to come. The average
American lives five years longer than the average person in China, and civil and political rights in
the worlds soon-to-be-biggest economy are routinely abused. Living in an America that ranks second
in GDP to China will still be far, far better than living in China.
There are some real economic costs related to losing the top spot in the GDP rankings, but they are
small and manageable. The dollar might lose its dominance as the currency of choice for central bank
reserves and trading, and some predict that will increase the cost of U.S. borrowing and exporting. In
fact, the dollar share of global reserves has already fallen from about 80 percent in the 1970s to
about 40 percent today, with the euro and the renminbi gaining ground, but there isnt much sign
that that has spooked global markets. Meanwhile, businesses in the rest of the world still manage to
export, even though they must go through the trouble of exchanging currencies.
And if you want further reassurance that you dont need to be large to be rich, remember that in tiny
Luxembourg, average incomes are almost twice those in the United States.
Of more concern to Washington might be that having the worlds largest economy helps the United
States maintain the planets largest defense budget. At the moment, America accounts for about four
out of every 10 dollars in global defense spending; China, in second place, accounts for less than one out
of 10. But one way to think about this is to ask how much the three-quarters increase in defense
spending between 2000 and 2011 enhanced Americas well-being. It is distinctly unclear that having
one of the worlds largest defense budgets, rather than the largest, poses an existential threat to U.S.
citizens quality of life.
While the downsides are limited, the upside to the United States of losing the top GDP spot is
immense. The countrys declining economic primacy is mainly a result of the developing economies
becoming larger, healthier, more educated, more free and less violent. And there is little doubt the
United States benefits from that. Just over the past few years, for example, U.S. export markets in
Asia, Africa and Latin America have grown rapidly. Three-fifths of Americas exports go to the

Hegemony Core
developing world, and that suggests that about 6 million Americans are employed providing goods and
services to emerging markets. As the developing world gets richer, it will import more and create more
jobs here.
The rest of the world is also inventing more stuff, from modular building techniques in China to
new drug therapies and low-water cement-manufacturing processes in India to mobile banking
applications in Kenya. We can benefit from those inventions as much as we already benefit from
foreign innovators coming to the United States. Among the patents awarded in 2011 to teams at the
10most innovative American universities, for example, three-quarters involved a foreign-born
researcher, according to the Partnership for a New American Economy. As more people in developing
countries go to college and as more firms there research and develop new products, theres a potential for
increased innovation in both the West and the Rest. That could bring faster progress in a number of
different areas here at home, from connectivity to health.
And growth in the developing world, even if it means that some populous economies may eventually
grow larger than the United States, also means that there are more places for Americans to travel in
security and comfort, and more places to learn, work or while away our retirement years.
Americans can get health care at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok accredited by the
Joint Commission International, which certifies health-care organizations worldwide for a fraction of
the cost they can in Bethesda. Or their kids can attend college at the University of Cape Town, rated
higher than Georgetown University in international rankings but one-fifth as expensive. Or perhaps they
can get jobs at one of the new breed of world-class multinational firms based in the developing world,
such as Tata or Huawei.
Americas tenure on top is ending because much of the world is becoming more like America in
many ways: richer, more democratic, more secure. The world increasingly shares aspirations,
priorities and attitudes similar to ours. This is a success story for U.S. stewardship of the global
economy.
So celebrate with me: Were No. 2!
Economic power contributes little to hegemony

Kagan, Brookings Institution Project on International Order and Strategy in the
Foreign Policy senior fellow, 12
[Robert Kagan, Brookings Institution Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy
senior fellow and foreign policy commentator at Brookings Institution, 1/11/12, The New Republic, Not
Fade Away, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/99521/america-world-powerdeclinism?
page=0,1&passthru=ZDkyNzQzZTk3YWY3YzE0OWM5MGRiZmIwNGQwNDBiZmI&utm_source=P
ANTHEON_STRIPPED&utm_campaign=PANTHEON_STRIPPED&utm_medium=PANTHEON_STRI
PPED, accessed 7/8/14, GNL]
BUT WHAT ABOUT the rise of the restthe increasing economic clout of nations like China, India,
Brazil, and Turkey? Doesnt that cut into American power and influence? The answer is, it depends. The

Hegemony Core
fact that other nations in the world are enjoying periods of high growth does not mean that
Americas position as the predominant power is declining, or even that the rest are catching up in
terms of overall power and influence. Brazils share of global GDP was a little over 2 percent in 1990
and remains a little over 2 percent today. Turkeys share was under 1 percent in 1990 and is still under 1
percent today. People, and especially businesspeople, are naturally excited about these emerging
markets, but just because a nation is an attractive investment opportunity does not mean it is a
rising great power. Wealth matters in international politics, but there is no simple correlation
between economic growth and international influence. It is not clear that a richer India today wields
greater influence on the global stage than a poorer India did in the 1950s under Nehru, when it was the
leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, or that Turkey, for all the independence and flash of Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan, really wields more influence than it did a decade ago.
As for the effect of these growing economies on the position of the United States, it all depends on who is
doing the growing. The problem for the British Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century was not
its substantial decline relative to the United States, a generally friendly power whose interests did not
fundamentally conflict with Britains. Even in the Western hemisphere, British trade increased as it ceded
dominance to the United States. The problem was Britains decline relative to Germany, which aimed for
supremacy on the European continent, and sought to compete with Britain on the high seas, and in both
respects posed a threat to Britains core security. In the case of the United States, the dramatic and rapid
rise of the German and Japanese economies during the Cold War reduced American primacy in the world
much more than the more recent rise of the rest. Americas share of the worlds GDP, nearly 50 percent
after World War II, fell to roughly 25 percent by the early 1970s, where it has remained ever since. But
that rise of the rest did not weaken the United States. If anything, it strengthened it. Germany and Japan
were and are close democratic allies, key pillars of the American world order. The growth of their
economies actually shifted the balance irretrievably against the Soviet bloc and helped bring about its
demise.
When gauging the impact of the growing economies of other countries today, one has to make the
same kinds of calculations. Does the growth of the Brazilian economy, or of the Indian economy,
diminish American global power? Both nations are friendly, and India is increasingly a strategic
partner of the United States. If Americas future competitor in the world is likely to be China, then a
richer and more powerful India will be an asset, not a liability, to the United States. Overall, the fact that
Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa are enjoying a period of economic growthwhich may or
may not last indefinitelyis either irrelevant to Americas strategic position or of benefit to it. At
present, only the growth of Chinas economy can be said to have implications for American power in the
future, and only insofar as the Chinese translate enough of their growing economic strength into military
strength.
Debt has no effect on primacy recent recession proves

Cohen, New America Foundation senior research fellow, 12
[Michael Cohen, 7/13/12, Democracy Arsenal, This Week In Threat Mongering - The Debt Version,
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2012/07/this-week-in-threat-mongering-the-debt-version.html,

Hegemony Core
In the world of hysterical, threat-mongering about US national security there are few issues that
produce more solemn and serious head-nods than the issue of America's growing national debt.
Ever since then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen declared two years ago that the
national debt "is the number one national security issue," agreement with this assertion has become some
sort of entry route to "foreign policy seriousness" for pundits and policymakers alike.
This is strange because the idea of taking strategic advice from Mike Mullen is a bit of a head scratcher taking economic advice from him is almost impossible to fathom.
And yet here, last week, was not one, but two Brookings Fellows, writing in the Los Angeles Times that
Mullen was right - debt is the number one national security issue in the country. They are not alone, it's a
view that receives broad political support. Here's Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama; Congressman
John Culberson of Texas, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky; Cong. John Campbell of California, Cong.
Adam Smith of Washington and even Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations all making
the same argument. It was a topic of discussion in last year's CNN national security debate where it was
endorsed by Jon Huntsman.
The argument that debt is a national security threat is based on the notion that if the US becomes too
deeply mired in red ink it will be unable to field a world class military; "there would be continued loss of
confidence in America" says Mullen; our allies will begin to doubt American resolve; America's foreign
alliances will crumble . . . and before you know it cats will be sleeping with dogs, there will be an Islamic
caliphate in the Middle East and we'll all be eating lo mein for dinner.
Quite helpfully, O'Hanlon and Lieberthal have provided the most divorced from reality example of this
argument:
American economic weakness undercuts U.S. leadership abroad. Other countries sense our weakness and
wonder about our purported decline. If this perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we
are in decline becomes more persuasive, countries will begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism
about America's future. Allies and friends will doubt our commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons
for their own security, for example; adversaries will sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing
around their weight in their own neighborhoods. The crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions
will likely become less stable. Major war will become more likely.
This is truly a chunky, threat-mongering stew of fact-free assertions, breathless fear-mongering and worst
case scenarios that ends up where these types of arguments always do - in a more insecure world all
because of a lack of American commitment to global hegemony.
The fact is, if last year's debt limit debacle hasn't already convinced other nations to be skeptical of
America's future then I think we're probably in the clear. Of course, the debt limit debate is
instructive in this regard. Even though both parties agreed to a mandated reduction of the defense budget,
which would basically return the Pentagon budget to FY 2007 levels (or what some might call, non-crazy
levels of spending), the ink was barely dry on the agreement before both parties began falling over
themselves to restore the cuts. The House of Representatives even went so far as to take a
sledgehammer, earlier this year, to key social safety net programs in order to prevent the Pentagon
from taking a haircut. Secretary of Defense Panetta practically ran around Washington with his
hair on fire decrying the impact of sequestration cuts.

Hegemony Core
O'Hanlon and Lieberthal's predictions of doom are fanciful at best and are based on the notion that
the world is a dangerous place when in fact it's never been safer. But even if they are right that their
calamitous series of events could occur there are about $690 billion reasons to believe that the sort of
defense cuts that would lead to this series of events will never happen - especially when the country can
rely on esteemed national security experts to convince Americans that if it were to occur the world would
descend into a dystopian state.
But that isn't even the worst part of the debt is a national security threat argument - O'Hanlon and
Lieberthal, as well as pretty everyone else who makes this assertion, don't appear to understand the
difference between debt and economic growth. Yes, America's economy is weak; but it has very
little to do with the fact that we have a lot of debt.
Indeed, the problem is that the federal government hasn't taken on enough debt in order to grow our
economy, create jobs and pull ourselves out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Quite simply, the government has failed at one of its most basic responsibilities in the face of economic
calamity - spending money (even that which is borrowed) in order to fill the gap in aggregate demand. As
Ezra Klein rightly points out, the world is desperate to loan us money so that we can spend it on important
national priorities, rebuild out infrastructure and create jobs. Instead we have folks telling us that we
should reducing out debt . . . and that it's a national security priority.
So while debt-mongers are right to be concerned about America's economic future, their diagnosis
is way off-base.
Indeed a greater focus on reducing the national debt will mean less resources to grow the economy, less
money for infrastructure, less money for improving our education system and less money to support clean
energy initiatives . . . unless O'Hanlon, Lieberthal, Haass and Mullen believe that cutting
government spending to reduce the deficit will somehow grow the economy. It won't. Instead it will
make things worse.
In fact, the misguided focus on debt is a good part of the reason that our economy remains so weak;
we've devoted so much energy to worrying about the debt that we are supposedly leaving for our
grandchildren that we forgot to think about the terrible economy and high unemployment that we
are bequeathing to Americans today - and utilize the tools at our disposal to make this situation
better.
In the end, "restoring U.S. economic strength" should be a top priority of US policymakers. But focusing
on the debt as a means to achieve that goal is the best example I can think of as to why defense wonks and
Naval officers should stay away from economic analysis in general.
Economic size not key to hegemony China proves that there is no risk US heg will
be overcome
Drezner et al, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy international politics
professor, 12
[Daniel Drezner, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy international politics professor, Gideon
Rachman, Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator , Brookings Institution Project on
International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy senior fellow, 2/14/12, Foreign Policy, The Rise

Hegemony Core
or Fall of the American Empire Tackling the great decline debate,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/14/the_rise_or_fall_of_the_american_empire?page=full,
But how much weight should we put on this statistic in any case? Some, surely. There is no question
that as China's share of the global economy grows, Chinese influence will grow in some respects as
well. But I find it remarkable that in so many of these discussions, those who point to China's
growing GDP share neglect to mention that China's per capita GDP is a fraction of that of the
United States and other leading economic powers. Per capita GDP in the United States is over $40,000;
in China it is a little over $4,000, roughly the same level as in Angola and Belize. Even if optimistic
forecasts are correct, by 2030 China's per capita GDP will still be only half that of the United States,
roughly where Slovenia's is today. It is interesting to contemplate what this might mean if China
were to become economically dominant, because it is historically unprecedented; in the past, the
world's dominant powers have also been the world's richest.
As a matter of geopolitics and power, the size of a country's economy by itself is not a great
measure. If it were, then China would have been the world's strongest power in 1800, when it had
the largest share of global GDP. So the next question is whether China can translate its economic
power into geopolitical influence. Again, it will undoubtedly do so to some extent. But power and
influence do not stem from economic strength alone, and China is already the best proof of this.
Over the past couple of years, as the U.S. economy has been slumping and China's has been booming, the
United States has significantly improved its standing in East Asia and Southeast Asia, while China's
position has deteriorated. In fact, the more China uses its newfound muscle, the more it sparks a
reaction in the region, which then looks to the United States for succor. (This was the key insight of
William Wohlforth years ago in his brilliant essay, "The Stability of a Unipolar World.") Gideon keeps
predicting that Japan is about to tilt toward China, but all signs point in the opposite direction -- and not
only for Japan but also for most of China's other neighbors. The fact that China is the top trading
partner of all these countries does not necessarily increase China's clout. I gather that even
Brazilians are increasingly unhappy at becoming merely a raw materials provider to the Chinese.
No economy in the world is more dependent on China than Australia's, but look at the new U.S. base the
Australians just welcomed onto their soil. Trade does not necessarily breed comity or strategic
dependence. As many have pointed out, in 1914 Germany and Britain were each other's largest
trading partners too.
China, in fact, has significant obstacles to overcome before it can become a global power on a par
with the United States -- above all, the fears and suspicions of neighbors who are themselves pretty
powerful and, in the case of India, rising almost as fast as China. It is a clich, but the United States
really was blessed with a favorable geographic situation. It has no great powers in its hemisphere and
faces no direct threat from any of its neighbors. China is surrounded by past and future adversaries.
Even the Soviet Union was in better shape during the Cold War.
This in part answers Dan's question about the state of America's allies. That India and Brazil may not
move in lock step with the United States is not all that important. U.S. influence does not derive from
being able to tell everyone what to do all the time; it never could, even in Europe at the height of the Cold
War. Rather, it is the overall balance of influence in the world that helps determine America's position. In

Hegemony Core
a future where the United States and China are likely to be competitors, a powerful India strengthens the
American hand no matter how friendly New Delhi and Washington may be.
As to Europe, let's take a broader perspective, please. Compared with the devastated Europe that the
United States inherited as an ally in 1945, today's Europe, even with its economic crisis, is a megasuperpower and a very fine ally to have, indeed.
Economic decline doesnt affect power

Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, 10
(Eric, fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Understanding Americas Contested
Primacy, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2010/10/understanding-americas-contested-primacy/3/,
accessed 7/7/14, GNL)
American decline and the longevity of a unipolar world order will not be determined purely by
economic gains or losses. The future shape of the international system will depend on broader
measures of national power than the percentage of global production that a given state controls.
Measuring national power, however, is notoriously difficult. In an unprecedented situation of
unipolarity, with little historical precedent to guide analysts, the measurement of relative power
shifts is perhaps harder still.
The main metrics tend to include GDP, population, defense spending, and then a variety of other factors.
There are differences among the various methods as to how one might quantify or otherwise
measure many of the factors. But since all agree that these kinds of measurements are inherently
subjective it is not surprising that slightly different factors and different weights to different factors
can lead to differing results. It is not clear how much these models can account for discontinuities
and dynamic changes as opposed to straight-line projections and relative shifts in power. Nor is it clear
that the models can really measure the all-important question of how world leaders perceive shifts in
relative national strength and power. The key factor would seem to be getting at the ability of
countries to convert resources into usable power combining both hard power and soft power.
At the end of the day, at least as important as the objective measures of national power are the subjective
assessments of international statesmen and military leaders about the international distribution of power.
Those judgments are inevitably affected by a range of cultural, psychological, bureaucratic and
political factors. The debate over American decline and whether or not we are entering a
multipolar, as opposed to unipolar, world in and of itself will inevitably have an impact on those
subjective judgments.
Our assessment of putative powers, however, will cover the traditional contenders, Europe and
Japan, and include the so-called BRICs as well.
Size of economy is not key to hegemony

Kagan, Brookings Institute senior fellow, 2-14-12

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(Robert, Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School,
Gideon Rachman is chief foreign-affairs commentator for the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, "The Rise
or Fall of the American Empire,"
accessed 7-5-12, CNM)
As a matter of geopolitics and power, the size of a country's economy by itself is not a great measure.
If it were, then China would have been the world's strongest power in 1800, when it had the largest
share of global GDP. So the next question is whether China can translate its economic power into
geopolitical influence. Again, it will undoubtedly do so to some extent. But power and influence do not
stem from economic strength alone, and China is already the best proof of this. Over the past couple of
years, as the U.S. economy has been slumping and China's has been booming, the United States has
significantly improved its standing in East Asia and Southeast Asia, while China's position has
deteriorated. In fact, the more China uses its newfound muscle, the more it sparks a reaction in the
region, which then looks to the United States for succor. (This was the key insight of William
Wohlforth years ago in his brilliant essay, "The Stability of a Unipolar World.") Gideon keeps predicting
that Japan is about to tilt toward China, but all signs point in the opposite direction -- and not only for
Japan but also for most of China's other neighbors. The fact that China is the top trading partner of all
these countries does not necessarily increase China's clout. I gather that even Brazilians are
increasingly unhappy at becoming merely a raw materials provider to the Chinese. No economy in
the world is more dependent on China than Australia's, but look at the new U.S. base the
Australians just welcomed onto their soil. Trade does not necessarily breed comity or strategic
dependence. As many have pointed out, in 1914 Germany and Britain were each other's largest trading
partners too.

Hegemony Core
AT Dollar Hegemony
US dollar heg resilient and no impact to transitionbest data proves
Stokes, University of Exeter International Security and Strategy Professor, 13
[Doug, 5/8/13, Review of International Political Economy, Achilles Deal: Dollar decline and
US grand strategy after the crisis,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/09692290.2013.779592#tabModule, accessed
7/8/14, AC]
For declinists, US hegemony and, by implication, the distribution of power within the international
system is now in a state of profound flux. The Achilles heel of US reliance on others to fund its
budget deficit is a dangerous foundation for US power with the 2008 financial crisis allegedly
making this vulnerability even more acute. However, this paper has argued that the data does
support this claim to date, there is very little indication that foreign investors or central banks are
fleeing from a dollar centric global monetary order. The vast majority of the worlds trade
continues to be denominated in the dollar. The only viable contender reserve currency is the euro,
which is not only much weaker, but even during its pre-sovereign crisis strength, acted largely as a
regional reserve currency. The worlds appetite for US debt continues to remain strong. In 2011 and
2012, the US had the luxury of offering zero interest on billions of dollars of its debt, and it still had
foreign banks and investors clamouring for the safe harbour of its oversubscribed treasuries.
As such, for the foreseeable future at least, there is simply no alternative to the current global
monetary order. Contender states have as much interest in US economic stability as the US does
due to their exposure and reliance on the US market. Given the stakes involved, any attempt to
suddenly disrupt this order would almost certainly set in place a significant response from the US.
The US also has a significant basket of strategic goods and it retains the capacity to parlay its
mediation in East Asia into motivating regional states into US-centric structures. This deal plays
into US hands. Why would any state in the system seek to switch off the US strategic capacity, an
inevitable consequence of a move from the dollar, given that their own security rests on this
capacity? In the case of China, in the unlikely event that it stopped supporting the dollar, this would
likely lead to a severe straining of the USChina relationship, with the interdependent conflictpacifiers currently in place diminishing and stronger incentives for hard balancing taking over.
China is surrounded by states that are worried about what its rise might portend. This is surely an
important factor in Chinese strategic thinking and one of a number of motivations for the Chinese to
continue to participate within the US-led system.
It would be hubristic in the extreme to suggest that the current configuration of world order can go on
indefinitely and declinists are right to point to the potentiality of change and how this may impact US
interests. Similarly, one could justifiably argue that US profligacy has severely imbalanced the US
domestic economy. The housing bubble, the bursting of which in 200708 precipitated the financial crisis,
was a direct result of loose credit and the kinds of monetary privileges examined in this paper. Moreover,
cheap credit in the US domestic economy helped ease a decades-long wage stagnation a form of
financing now unlikely to return and which will further exacerbate income inequality in the US.
Given the range of options open to the US, coupled with its continued strategic unipolarity and
centrality to the global economy, it is very unlikely that we will see a sudden revolutionary shift in
the monetary order. A more evolutionary shift may occur and this may not necessarily be against
US interests, as it could pre-empt more radical moves for reform and burden share to some extent.

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If this gradual shift were to occur, the US could call upon a wide range of options to help parlay
these shifts into forms of order that would lock-in contending states. For example, in the event of
significant global financial institutional reform or diffusion to a less dollar-centric order, the US
would be at its heart, given the centrality of its institutions to the global economy. As such, it would
thus be able to help structure post-crisis financial architectures in ways that would complement its
interests. Indeed, we are already witnessing this nascent process in the debates over divergence between
the US-led Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the multilateral Basel III
banking reform framework. Given the above, it is not yet the case that dollar hegemony is on the
wane. The global economic deal between the US and its debt purchasers remains secure, for now at
least.

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AT Trade Key to the Economy

Trade is not enough to fix the US economy
Alden, Council on Foreign Relations Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, 11
(Edward, 11/7/11, Council on Foreign Relations, Can Trade Motor U.S. Economy?
There is no question that trade done well can boost U.S. economic growth at a time of sluggish domestic
demand. It is also true that trade done poorly will do little to set the economy on a stronger recovery
path. For too long, the political debate over trade has been mired in a "trade good/trade bad" food fight
that has left the United States stuck while other countries are using trade strategically to lift living
standards. It is time for this country to do the latter.
As the CFR's new Task Force Report on U.S. Trade and Investment Policy lays out clearly, there are three
pillars to a trade policy that will boost economic returns for more Americans: a trade-opening strategy
that focuses on the biggest and fastest-growing markets in the developing world, especially Brazil, India,
and China; a renewed commitment to enforcement of trade rules; and a comprehensive worker retraining
strategy to help Americans retool for a hyper-competitive global economy.
There are some encouraging signs, though far more needs to be done. Congress recently ratified three
outstanding free trade agreements, with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama, and reauthorized the
useful, if insufficient, Trade Adjustment Assistance program to help displaced workers. The White Houseappointed Council on Jobs and Competitiveness endorsed the idea of a National Investment Initiative to
jumpstart what has been a steady decline in foreign investment over the past decade. Secretary of State
Hilary Clinton has taken the lead in the administration on the need to spur U.S. economic growth through
a more ambitious and sophisticated trade and investment strategy. Meanwhile, the U.S. Trade
Representative's Office has stepped up in tackling the most egregious subsidies in China in sectors such
as clean energy technology.
In 1970, trade accounted for just 10 percent of U.S. GDP; today it is more than 25 percent and
rising. But increasing trade volumes alone will not fix what ails the economy; the United States still
exports too little for a large economy, and has not adjusted well to import competition. Economic
success in the long term depends on the United States becoming not just a bigger trading nation, but also
a better trading nation. That is the challenge that both parties in Congress and the administration should
be addressing.
Global trade dragging down the US economy

Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy Institute , 11
(Clyde V., Council on Foreign Relations, Can Trade Motor U.S. Economy?

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Trade has sometimes been a driver of U.S. economic recovery and growth. But this is not always the
case. Indeed, global trade is presently a drag on the struggling recovery of the U.S. economy. In the
context of high unemployment, low capacity utilization, and falling household incomes, imports are
rising faster than exports, thereby increasing the large, chronic U.S. trade deficit and undercutting
domestic production and employment. In addition, a continuing movement toward the off-shoring of
the production of tradable goods and the provision of tradable services is reducing the potential for
new U.S. job creation.
It can be argued that inexpensive imports benefit consumers by keeping prices low and inflation under
control. If the United States were at full employment and capacity utilization with robust economic
growth this would be a compelling argument. But in the current sluggish economic environment, rising
imports tend to depress wages and incomes more than prices so that the benefit to consumers is
outweighed by the negative impact on workers and producers (who are also consumers).
The familiar mantra that trade is always a win-win proposition is not true. Ricardian free trade
theory (PDF) assumes full employment, full capacity utilization, fixed exchange rates, and the total
absence of cross border flows of capital, technology, and people. Since these circumstances usually don't
apply, the fact is that trade may or may not be beneficial depending on the circumstances.
To make trade work for the United States today will require a global rebalancing. This means that big
exporting countries with chronic trade surpluses should increase domestic consumption, invest less,
export less, and import more. Conversely, countries like the United States with chronic trade deficits
should reduce domestic consumption, while increasing investment, production, and exports.
The United States must produce more of what it consumes, and export more of what it produces.
This will require action to prevent currency manipulation that overvalues the dollar, tax incentives for
exporters, tax disincentives for consumption (a Value Added Tax for example), and strong financial
incentives to attract investment in production of tradable goods and provision of tradable services to the
United States.

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Energy Security

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Energy Security Key to Hegemony

Energy security key to uphold US global security interests
Franc, Heritage Governmental Studies Vice President, 7
[Michael Franc, Vice president of Governmental Studies at the Heritage Foundation, 1/24/07, Heritage
Foundation, Strengthening Energy Supplies and Security
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2007/01/strengthening-energy-supplies-and-security
Accessed July 8th, 2014, RW]
Not only do we depend on foreign oil, but those sources are usually in bad neighborhoods.
Alarmingly, three-quarters of the world's supply of oil is controlled by unstable or hostile regimes,
most of which are unsympathetic to investor and property rights. 57.5% of world oil reserves are in the
Middle East, 11% in Russia and Venezuela, and 6% in Africa. The People's Republic of China,
moreover, just erected its first oil rigs in Cuba's territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico, barely 50 miles
off Florida's coast.
Some are willing to use oil as a tool to threaten U.S. national security objectives. Proclamations by
al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that U.S. and Western economies and their oil lifelines are
legitimate targets make it clear that the oil and gas infrastructure is in peril. "Today," FedEx
Chairman Frederick Smith explains, "ninety percent of the world's proven oil reserves are owned by
national oil companies, and many of thosecompanies are owned by countries who wish the United
States ill."
At the same time, American energy production and its infrastructure are hamstrung by federal
policies that consciously limit access to known energy resources. Such restrictions have had a
chilling effect on developing, production, exploration and infrastructure and foster uncertainty
among investors.
Even the most severe critics of these anti-energy policies were aghast to learn the full extent of our
self-inflicted wounds. Last month, the federal Bureau of Land Management released its much-anticipated
inventory of oil and natural gas deposits on federal lands. The report estimates that Uncle Sam's onshore
holdings amount to an astounding 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 21 billion barrels of oil.
But our energy inventory doesn't stop at the shoreline. A companion federal study calculates that an
additional 83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 19.1 billion barrels of oil lie beneath federallycontrolled territorial waters. But experts note that, because estimates of offshore energy deposits are
notoriously low and tend to increase significantly over time, our real energy inventory is likely much
larger.
Unfortunately, the government goes on to note, regulatory constraints make it next to impossible to
recover the overwhelming majority of these sorely-needed resources. Just 3% of onshore federal oil
and 13% of onshore federal gas are accessible under standard leasing terms. Debilitating restrictions,
such as a ban on surface occupancy, tie up 46% of the onshore federal oil and 60% of the onshore federal
gas. The rest -- 51% of the oil and 27% of the gas -- are completely off-limits to development.

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Pro-energy lawmakers struggled valiantly throughout the 109th Congress to bring more of America's
energy portfolio on line. In fact, Congress considered and rejected proposals to:
Open up the barren wasteland of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and our offshore waters to oil and
natural gas drilling.
Alleviate regulatory barriers that have prevented the construction of a new oil refinery in America for
over 30 years.
Loosen the so-called "boutique fuels" requirement that, for no discernable environmental gain, has
created severe supply bottlenecks and causes the annual spring spike in gas prices.>
But anti-energy lawmakers resisted and, in the end, all Congress had to show for its effort was an
exceedingly modest bill that expands offshore drilling while keeping virtually all the existing restrictions
in place.
We can do better.
U.S. energy policy should advance two essential U.S. interests. First, it should adhere to free-market
principles by allowing for the safe development of domestic energy supplies and infrastructure
without the government determining winners and losers. This approach is the only way to
guarantee the long-term viability of our economy.
Second, we should enhance the security, stability, and economic and democratic development of oil
and gas producing countries so that energy resources remain readily available, ample, affordable,
and safe. It is simply untenable to live in a world where potential enemies of the U.S. control so
much of the world's oil.
US energy security is key to remaining the global hegemon in the face of Russia and
China everything the US produces is derivative of energy.
Moore, Heritage Foundation Chief Economist, 5-31-14
[Stephen Moore, Chief Economist at the Heritage Foundation as well as the founder of the Club for
Growth and Free Enterprise Fund, 5/31/14, The Daily Signal, Russia and China Just Signed and Energy
Deal. Why You Should Be Scared. http://dailysignal.com/2014/05/31/russia-china-pipeline/, Accessed
July 8th, 2014, RW]
Is anyone else scared to death about this weeks announcement out of Beijing that China and Russia
have agreed to a 30-year natural-gas deal? The agreement means the building of hundreds of miles
of pipelines to feed cheap Siberian gas to China. President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir
Putin of Russia met in Shanghai to ratify this treaty in person, thus announcing to the world this is a big,
big deal a game-changer.
These two countries were our adversaries in the Cold War, and remain our greatest economic and
foreign-policy rivals. While this energy pact isnt quite as threatening to the world as the NaziSoviet
non-aggression pact was in 1939, its security and economic ramifications over the next quarter

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century could be very serious indeed. Russia is already doing more than saber-rattling in Eastern
Europe, and Chinas expansionist ambitions in the Far East are no secret. China also has been boasting
that it will soon replace the U.S. as the worlds economic superpower and this energy deal may
represent a big step forward toward that goal.
To respond to this stunning economic development by shrugging and moving on, as if nothing had
happened, would be a grave mistake. When LeBron James and Kevin Durant sign with the same team,
youd better start doing an urgent talent upgrade, or prepare to get buried.
The right response is to get serious about forming a monster deal of our own: to unite with our
neighbors and allies in Canada and Mexico to connect North Americas energy bonanza from shale
oil and gas and oil sands to every area of the continent from Alberta to Mexico City and then
build the infrastructure to export it to our allies in Western Europe. Stop pretending, Mr. President, that
we are going to power our $18 trillion economy with windmills and solar panels. This isnt a time for
pixie dust.
So step one is obvious: Get going immediately on building the Keystone pipeline. This is now an
economic and national-security issue of the highest order.
Step two: Let private industry build out the construction projects pipelines, transmission lines,
liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) terminals so we can export our 500 years worth of natural gas all
over the world. Repeal federal laws that prohibit exporting petroleum.
Step three: End the war on coal, or at least call a truce. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. Why
would we want to stop production especially as coal plants have become much cleaner in the past
decade?
Step four: Start issuing permits and leases for drilling on federal lands. Its long past time to tap
into our trillions of dollars of energy assets.
Energy is known as the master resource for good reason. Everything else our nation produces is a
derivative of energy. Energy, therefore, is power for our economy and our military. Can we
please stop forcing the Pentagon to waste billions of dollars every year on biofuels at a time when
defense dollars are already scarce? National security is not a welfare program.

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AT Energy Security Key to Hegemony

Energy Security isnt key to US hegemony 4 warrants
a. Impossible to avoid global oil market prices
b. It is impossible to control the flow of the global oil market
c. Energy security doesnt do anything to our military strength
d. Energy security takes away our access to cheap oil
Taylor, CATO Institute environmental policy researcher, 1

[Jerry Taylor, Political Science major as well as an environmental policy researcher at the CATO Institute,
10/12/01, CATO Institute, Dont Worry about Energy Security,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/dont-worry-about-energy-security, Accessed July 8th 2014,
RW]
First, even if every drop of oil we consumed came from Oklahoma, Texas, and Alaska, a cutback in
OPEC production would raise domestic oil prices as high as if all our oil came from Saudi Arabia.
Thats because there are no regional markets for oil only global markets and regional prices
invariably rise to the world price. In 1979, for instance, Great Britain was energy independent
all the crude oil it consumed came from the North Sea. But the oil price spike of 1979 hit
Great Britain as hard as it hit Japan, a country dependent upon imports for its oil. No country can
wall itself off from the world market.
Second, once oil is in the tanker or refinery, there is no controlling its destination. During the 1973
embargo, for instance, oil that was exported to Europe was resold to the United States or ended up
displacing non-OPEC oil that was diverted to the U.S. market. It was no more possible for OPEC
to keep its oil out of U.S. ports than it was for the United States to keep its grain out of Soviet
silos several years later.
Third, reliance on foreign oil imports does not affect our military capabilities. Defense Department
officials have testified that the military could fight two major regional wars the size of Operation
Desert Storm nearly simultaneously while using only one-eighth of Americas current domestic oil
production.
Fourth, energy independence even if achievable would be harmful in that higher prices
would be paid for energy than is necessary. After all, the United States imports Persian Gulf oil for
a reason; its significantly less expensive than domestic petroleum or non-fossil fuel alternatives.
Artificially limiting our access to foreign oil is to artificially limit our access to cheap oil hardly
a wise policy in the midst of a recession.

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Maritime Terrorism

Hegemony Core
Terrorism Hurts Hegemony

Maritime terrorism would collapse the global economy and US leadership.
Flynn, Retired Commander US Coast Guard, 3
(Stephen, Council on Foreign Relations, The Fragile State of Container Security
http://www.cfr.org/defensehomeland-security/fragile-state-container-security/p5730, accessed July 12,
2014, DVOG)
A year later I joined with former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart in preparing our report,
America: Still UnpreparedStill In Danger. We observed that nineteen men wielding box-cutters
forced the United States to do to itself what no adversary could ever accomplish: a successful blockade of
the U.S. economy. If a surprise terrorist attack were to happen tomorrow involving the sea, rail, or
truck transportation systems that carry millions of tons of trade to the United States each day, the
response would likely be the samea self-imposed global embargo. Based on that analysis, we
identified as second of the six critical mandates that deserve the nations immediate attention: Make
trade security a global priority; the system for moving goods affordably and reliably around the world is
ripe for exploitation and vulnerable to mass disruption by terrorists.
This is why the topic of todays hearing is so important. The stakes are enormous. U.S. prosperityand
much of its powerrelies on its ready access to global markets. Both the scale and pace at which
goods move between markets has exploded in recent years thanks in no small part to the invention
and proliferation of the intermodal container. These ubiquitous boxesmost come in the 40x8x8
sizehave transformed the transfer of cargo from a truck, train, and ship into the transportation
equivalent of connecting Lego blocks. The result has been to increasingly diminish the role of distance for
a supplier or a consumer as a constraint in the world marketplace. Ninety percent of the worlds freight
now moves in a container. Companies like Wal-Mart and General Motors move up to 30 tons of
merchandise or parts across the vast Pacific Ocean from Asia to the West Coast for about $1600.
The transatlantic trip runs just over a $1000which makes the postage stamp seem a bit
overpriced.
But the system that underpins the incredibly efficient, reliable, and affordable movement of global
freight has one glaring shortcoming in the post-9-11 worldit was built without credible
safeguards to prevent it from being exploited or targeted by terrorists and criminals. Prior to
September 11, 2001, virtually anyone in the world could arrange with an international shipper or carrier to
have an empty intermodal container delivered to their home or workplace. They then could load it with
tons of material, declare in only the most general terms what the contents were, seal it with a 50-cent
lead tag, and send it on its way to any city and town in the United States. The job of transportation
providers was to move the box as expeditiously as possible. Exercising any care to ensure that the
integrity of a containers contents was not compromised may have been a commercial practice, but it was
not a requirement.
The responsibility for making sure that goods loaded in a box were legitimate and authorized was
shouldered almost exclusively by the importing jurisdiction. But as the volume of containerized cargo
grew exponentially, the number of agents assigned to police that cargo stayed flat or even declined among

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most trading nations. The rule of thumb in the inspection business is that it takes five agents three hours to
conduct a thorough physical examination of a single full intermodal container. Last year nearly 20
million containers washed across Americas borders via a ship, train, and truck. Frontline agencies
had only enough inspectors and equipment to examine between 1-2 percent of that cargo.
Thus, for would-be terrorists, the global intermodal container system that is responsible for moving
the overwhelming majority of the worlds freight satisfies the age-old criteria of opportunity and
motive. Opportunity flows from (1) the almost complete absence of any security oversight in the
loading and transporting of a box from its point of origin to its final destination, and (2) the fact
that growing volume and velocity at which containers move around the planet create a daunting
needle-in-the-haystack problem for inspectors. Motive is derived from the role that the
container now plays in underpinning global supply chains and the likely response by the U.S.
government to an attack involving a container. Based on statements by the key officials at U.S.
Customs, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Department of
Transportation, should a container be used as a poor mans missile, the shipment of all containerized
cargo into our ports and across our borders would be halted. As a consequence, a modest investment by
a terrorist could yield billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy by shutting downeven
temporarilythe system that moves just-in-time shipments of parts and goods.
Given the current state of container security, it is hard to imagine how a post-event lock-down on
container shipments could be either prevented or short-lived. One thing we should have learned from the
9-11 attacks involving passenger airliners, the follow-on anthrax attacks, and even last fall Washington
sniper spree is that terrorist incidents pose a special challenge for public officials. In the case of most
disasters, the reaction by the general public is almost always to assume the event is an isolated one. Even
if the post-mortem provides evidence of a systemic vulnerability, it often takes a good deal of effort to
mobilize a public policy response to redress it. But just the opposite happens in the event of a terrorist
attackespecially one involving catastrophic consequences. When these attacks take place, the
assumption by the general public is almost always to presume a general vulnerability unless there is
proof to the contrary. Government officials have to confront head-on this loss of public confidence
by marshalling evidence that they have a credible means to manage the risk highlighted by the
terrorist incident. In the interim as recent events have shown, people will refuse to fly, open their mail,
or even leave their homes.
If a terrorist were to use a container as a weapon-delivery devise, the easiest choice would be highexplosives such as those used in the attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Some form
of chemical weapon, perhaps even involving hazardous materials, is another likely scenario. A bioweapon is a less attractive choice for a terrorist because of the challenge of dispersing the agent in a
sufficiently concentrated form beyond the area where the explosive devise goes off. A dirty bomb is the
more likely threat vs. a nuclear weapon, but all these scenarios are conceivable since the choice of a
weapon would not be constrained by any security measures currently in place in our seaports or within the
intermodal transportation industry.
This is why a terrorist attack involving a cargo container could cause such profound economic
disruption. An incident triggered by even a conventional weapon going off in a box could result in a
substantial loss of life. In the immediate aftermath, the general public will want reassurance that
one of the many other thousands of containers arriving on any given day will not pose a similar
risk. The President of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other keys

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officials responsible for the security of the nation would have to stand before a traumatized and
likely skeptical American people and outline the measures they have in place to prevent another
such attack. In the absence of a convincing security framework to manage the risk of another
incident, the public would likely insist that all containerized cargo be stopped until adequate
safeguards are in place. Even with the most focused effort, constructing that framework from
scratch could take monthseven years. Yet, within three weeks, the entire worldwide intermodal
transportation industry would effectively be brought to its kneesas would much of the freight
movements that make up international trade.
Maritime terrorist attack would weaken naval and commercial fleets and thus
destroy hard power.
Walker, Maritime Security Analyst, 12
(Andrew, Center for International Maritime Security, Breaking the Bottleneck: Maritime Terrorism and
Economic Chokepoints, http://cimsec.org/breaking-the-bottleneck-maritime-terrorism-and-economicchokepoints-part-1/, accessed July 12, 2014, DVOG)
The American naval historian and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) claimed in his Influence
of Sea Power on World History that strong naval and commercial fleets are essential to the nations
military power. In a post September 11th society, governments have dedicated heavy resources to
assessing the vulnerability of their homelands to acts of terrorism. The number of terrorist attacks
in the maritime environment is proportionally small in comparison to the overall number. However,
(Ret) Admiral Sir Alan West, The UKs First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff deemed maritime
terrorism a clear and present danger that may potentially cripple global trade and have grave
knock-on effects on developed economies. The probability of a terrorist attack on a major North
American port may be low for some security analysts, but given the catastrophic effect an attack
via improvised explosive devices (IEDs), hijacking and using a ship as a weapon, or biological
weapons could have on such economic chokepoints, significant focus must be placed on the
subject.

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Navigation

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Sea Lanes Key to Trade

South China Sea lanes key to global economy oil and trade
Nincic, Cal Maritime Policy and Management Professor, 12
(Donna, Ph.D. in Political Science @ NYU, BA in International Relations @ Carleton College, MA in
International Relations @ NYU, Globalization and Maritime Power, page #11-12, SM)
The South China Sea. Concerns arise largely because of Chinas claim, in 1992, to 95 percent of the
South China Sea as its territorial waters.46 Contrary to international law, which recognizes only a 12nautical-mile territorial sea plus a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, this area extends up to 1,000 miles
from the Chinese mainland and includes Japan and the Philippines within Beijings security range. This
area also includes the Spratly, Paracel, and Senkaku island chains, which China claims as its own and
which are contested in varying degrees by six other states: Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Brunei, and Malaysia. The Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei claim specific parts of the South China Sea,
while China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim all of its islands, islets, and reefs. In addition, China and the
Philippines have staked a claim to many of the submerged features as well (most of the reefs, cays, and
shoals are under water much of the year.)47 The disputes over the Spratly Islands230 islands, islets,
and reefs comprising a mere 3.1 square miles of entirely uninhabitable landare the most worrisome as
they lay directly in the path of shipping lanes that converge on the Indonesian Straits. These vital
sea lanes transport oil from the Middle East to Japan and the west coast of the United States.
Approximately one quarter of the worlds total shipping trade passes through this contested area
every year.48
China has backed its claims with armed force on more than one occasion. In March 1988,
Vietnamese and Chinese forces clashed, resulting in the deaths of 72 people, the loss of 2 Vietnamese
ships, and the occupation by China of 6 islands.49 A more recent example is its brief military
standoff with the Philippines in 1995 over Mischief Reef in the Spratlys. China has also engaged in a
number of large and sometimes bellicose military exercises, such as those that coincided with the
presidential elections in Taiwan in March 1996 when Beijing engaged in live-fire wargames off the
southeast coast near the Taiwan Strait involving more than 10 warships and as many aircraft dropping
bombs.
Chinas contentions with Indonesiathe worlds largest natural gas exporterover the Natunas Islands
is particularly troubling. In dispute since 1993, when China published a map showing historic claims to
the islands, the Natunas are rich in oil and natural gas. In September 1996, the Indonesian military
conducted its most extensive wargames in 4 years on the islands; the location was chosen to carry the
message that the Natunas belong to Indonesia.50
Chinas perceived ambitions are not the only concern in the South China Seas. In July 1997, Singapore
increased the number of its armed vessels patrolling the South China Sea with the intent of
securing the areas sea lanes. The addition of two navy patrol vessels was justified on the grounds that
freedom of navigation through the Malacca and Singapore Straits as well as the South China Sea is
fundamental to the continued survival and prosperity of Singapore, in the words of the Minister for
Foreign Affairs and Law, Shanmugam Jayakumar.51

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In none of these incidents has merchant shipping been the direct target of state actions. Rather, the worry
is that were a regional territorial dispute to escalate, merchant shipping would have to be detoured
for reasons of safetyaround the zone of conflict. This loss, even temporarily, of some of the
worlds most important shipping lanes would disrupt trade, extend transit schedules significantly,
and result in higher prices. At the same time, were a conflict to occur, merchant ships bound for an
adversarys territory could be intercepted, harassed, or worse.
Open sea lanes key to US, China, and global economies

Nincic, Cal Maritime Policy and Management Professor, 12
(Donna, Ph.D. in Political Science @ NYU, BA in International Relations @ Carleton College, MA in
International Relations @ NYU, Globalization and Maritime Power, page #11-12, SM)
Many threats and concerns face the sea lanes and chokepoints that the United States depends on
for its international trade. They can be understood not only by the source of the threatincreased
demand and supply threats such as physical constraints, disputed state claims, state aggression, and
nonstate actorsbut also by the solutions they imply. Within the broad objective of preserving national,
international, and global trade security, responses include: diplomacy, policing measures concerned with
the maintenance of law and order at sea, and when necessary, active military responses.
Little can be done to reduce demand on the worlds sea lanes of communication or their attendant
physical constraints in the near future. For demand to reduce, alternate means of transportation would
have to be provided. Although this is possiblemuch could be done to develop the road and rail
infrastructure throughout Asia, for exampleit is unlikely to occur to a significant extent to alleviate
pressure on maritime transportation routes. Similarly, there is little that can be done to mitigate the
physical constraints facing key chokepoints and trade routes; while the Panama and Suez Canals could be
deepened and widened, capitalization is insufficient to make this certain. Alleviating the physical
constraints on the natural maritime chokepoints, even if it were technologically feasible, would almost
certainly be under-capitalized as well. Lastly, as has been discussed, the addition of any new trade routes
barring the Cape Horn, Strait of Magellan, and Northwest Passage routesis not likely to occur.
In each of the cases of disputed state claims (Canada and the Northwest Passage, the Turkish Straits and
Indonesia and the Strait of Malacca), the conflict occurred with a state considered friendly to the United
States. At no time did any of these disputes threaten to escalate beyond the measures of active
diplomacy. Additionally, in each of these examples, a case could be made that the littoral states attempted
to impose restrictions for the purposes of environmental conservation or maritime safety. The Arctic is a
fragile and unique ecosystem, particularly vulnerable to pollution and oil spills. The Turkish Straits have
witnessed excessive traffic congestion, pollution, and maritime accidents. The Indonesian Straits are
among the most crowded in the world, and collisions and groundings are routine. Nonetheless, it is
vital to U.S. and global commerce that these sea lanes remain open with minimal state restrictions
and interference. Active diplomacy is the best means of resolving the concerns of the littoral states and
global maritime trade.
Potential threats to sea lane trade security from states typically will require policing measures. Currently,
the states most worrisome to maritime trade are China, with its ambition to exert its control throughout

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the South China Sea, and Iran, with its control of the Strait of Hormuz. While each threat should be taken
seriously, China and Iran would stand to suffer as much as anyone were hostilities to obtain. As will be
discussed in chapter 10, if maritime trade was threatened in the South China Sea and traffic
became diverted, China would stand to lose its lifeline to Middle Eastern oil. With almost no
domestic oil of its own, China depends on the free transit of shipping through the South China
Sea. Furthermore, China is fast developing on the strength of its ability to export; were this ability
threatened, the Chinese economy might experience significant contractions.
Open sea lanes are key to trade with Asia

Kelly, US Naval War College Bureau of Political Military Affairs Secretary, 14
(Tom, 3/25/14, US Department of State, Maritime Security, Sea Power and Trade,
http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/rm/2014/223921.htm, accessed: 7/6/14, SM)
The Rebalance Toward Asia

Consider the Asia-Pacific region, home to many of the worlds most heavily traveled trade and
energy routes. Twenty-first century capitalism cannot function unless these sea lanes remain secure.
Our 555 billion dollars in exports to the Asia-Pacific last year supported 2.8 million jobs here in
America. The security and prosperity of the United States are inextricably linked to the peaceful
development of the Asia-Pacific, including in the maritime domain. You dont get trade with Asia
without open sea lanes.
As an example of our commitment to strengthen maritime capacities in Southeast Asia, on December 16,
Secretary of State Kerry announced that the U.S. will provide 40 million dollars (in GSCF money by the
way) to the Philippines in new regional and bilateral assistance to advance maritime security capacity
building in the area. The GSCF money will complement a 32-and-a-half million dollar regional assistance
package that will help Southeast Asian nations protect their territorial waters.
The Secretarys announcement builds upon the United States longstanding commitment to support
the efforts of Southeast Asian nations to enhance security and prosperity in the region. Existing
programs include efforts to combat piracy in and around the Malacca Strait; to counter transnational
organized crime and terrorist threats in the tri-border region south of the Sulu Sea between the southern
Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia; and to expand information sharing and professional training
through the Gulf of Thailand initiative.
Open sea lanes are the lifelines of the global economy

US Navy 7
(October 2007, US Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,
http://www.navy.mil/maritime/MaritimeStrategy.pdf, page 5-6, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)

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The world economy is tightly interconnected. Over the past four decades, total sea borne trade has
more than quadrupled: 90% of world trade and two-thirds of its petroleum are transported by
sea. The sea-lanes and supporting shore infrastructure are the lifelines of the modern global
economy, visible and vulnerable symbols of the modern distribution system that relies on free
transit through increasingly urbanized littoral regions.
Expansion of the global system has increased the prosperity of many nations. Yet their continued growth
may create increasing competition for resources and capital with other economic powers, transnational
corporations and international organizations. Heightened popular expectations and increased competition
for resources, coupled with scarcity, may encourage nations to exert wider claims of sovereignty over
greater expanses of ocean, waterways, and natural resourcespotentially resulting in conflict.
Technology is rapidly expanding marine activities such as energy development, resource extraction, and
other commercial activity in and under the oceans. Climate change is gradually opening up the waters
of the Arctic, not only to new resource development, but also to new shipping routes that may
reshape the global transport system. While these developments offer opportunities for growth, they are
potential sources of competition and conflict for access and natural resources.
Open sea lanes are key to the global economy

Naval Studies Board 08
(Maritime Security Partnerships, page #157, SM)
Globalization in the 21st century has forced into keen focus the absolute imperative for an ability to
assure free and peaceful access to the sea. The U.S. economyin fact, all economies of all developed
and developing nations and multinational corporationsare more reliant than ever before on global
trade for their prosperity. The exchange of raw materials, product components, and finished goods
by sea conveyance has paralleled the expanding global economy. But this exchange requires free
and uninterrupted use of the seas, which has seen a largely peaceful environment for the past 50
years due in large part to the maritime dominance of the United States and its allies and friends.
Maritime security partnerships (MSP) may become the means by which all nations contribute to
maintaining the freedom of the seas at the same time as they protect their homelands.1
Without assured freedom of the seas, global trade and global economies could be hindered.
Consequently, all users of the sea for commerce should embrace and support such initiatives that will
protect the seas from criminal activity and disruption.
In stable regions of the world, where maritime trade is mature and follows established routes,
commodities, and even schedules, evolving technologies have been applied to optimize the generation of
data that immediately highlight any disruption to normal commerce.
Multinational corporations, shipping lines, coast guards, port authorities, and any number of government
entities should find it in their interest to invest

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Maritime security is key to national security

Kelly, US Naval War College Bureau of Political Military Affairs Secretary, 14
(Tom, 3/25/14, US Department of State, Maritime Security, Sea Power and Trade,
http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/rm/2014/223921.htm, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
Defining Maritime Security

Ninety-percent of world trade is conducted on the oceans. Our food, our fuel, our imports and exports
all travel on these global economic highways. Maritime trade is our nations life blood. Keeping the
oceans free for commerce in two words, maritime security is key to our national security.
How important is maritime security? Ask the Greeks. They faced odds of about three to one at the
Battle of Artemisium, the sea side of the Battle of Thermopylae. They survived, due partly to good luck,
and lived to fight another day at the Battle of Salamis, where they defeated the invading Persians for
good. The Greek ability to secure their maritime domain may have saved western civilization as we
know it today.

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Navigation Key to Hegemony

Navigation is a way for the US to assert dominance and hegemony South China
Sea
Liu, China Institute for International Studies American Studies deputy director, 10
[Feitao, 11/8/10, Global Research, Asia-Pacific Military Dominance: U.S. Makes Waves In South China
Sea, http://www.globalresearch.ca/asia-pacific-military-dominance-u-s-makes-waves-in-south-chinasea/21816, accessed 7/6/14, JW]
Since July, US politicians such as President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates
have frequently mentioned on various public occasions the issue of free and safe navigation in
South China Sea.
They claim that maintaining free navigation in the South China Sea is in the US national interest
and oppose any actions obstructive to free navigation. If one listens to them, the South China Sea no
longer seems calm and tranquil.
But there is no threat to free navigation in the South China Sea. Maintaining free navigation and ensuring
a smooth trade flow is in line with the globalization era, which has already become an international
consensus.
Those who act against free navigation, such as pirates and maritime terrorists, have become the enemy of
all, as the traditional legal description of pirates goes, and are opposed by every nation.
The South China Sea is one of the worlds busiest shipping channels with more than 40,000 vessels per
year passing through.
If there were really problems, how could so many ships sail through the South China Sea
frequently, safely and smoothly?
The answer is self-evident. The US is beating the drum on an issue which doesnt really exist.
Behind its high-sounding words, what exactly are US intentions?
The first aim is to maintain US military hegemony in Asia-Pacific region.
The US has been sending a variety of military surveillance ships, observation boats and survey
ships to launch probes and collect national information in the South China Sea for years. It seriously
threatens the security and interests of surrounding countries and undermines regional peace and stability.
Facing international opposition, the US deliberately altered the concept and then created the pseudoproposition of free navigation in the South China Sea, trying to shape international public opinion and
force littoral countries and regions to accept its increasing military detection activities.
The freedom of navigation which the US claims to protect is actually the freedom of the US military
to threaten other countries.

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The US is also seeking a fulcrum for its new Asia-Pacific strategy. The US government is pursuing a
return to Asia. If it intends to return with a mutually beneficial attitude and open mind, this is fair enough.
If it is self-conceited, intolerant to others and trapped in a Cold War mentality, it inevitably will start
forming cliques.
The US is also trying to contain China through the use of the South China Sea issue.
The US has acquired many benefits from friendly cooperation with China. But Chinas goodwill has not
received good returns from the US.
Based on a Cold War zero-sum mind-set, the US cannot tolerate the reasonable growth of Chinas national
strength and regional influence.
It falsely claims that China will challenge US global hegemony in the future and believes that China will
implement an Asian Monroe Doctrine while the US is too busy to look after East Asia.
In advocating that free and safe navigation in South China Sea is threatened, the US is creating a false
impression of a worrying situation of South China Sea to the international community. It boosts the
China threat theory claimed by some Western politicians, distances the relations between China and
Southeast Asian countries and creates new leverage to contain Chinas development.
Thus, the speculation of the US over the issue of free navigation in South China Sea is in the name of
a public good but for the sake of private interests. The US has no justifiable reasons to interfere the
South China Sea by simply using the free navigation issue.
US navigation helps the US maintain dominance and command

Trombly, National Security/International Affairs Analyst, 11
[Daniel, 7/13/11, Slouching Towards Columbia, Taiwan, sea denial, and the bounding of US
dominance, http://slouchingcolumbia.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/taiwan-sea-denial-and-the-boundingof-us-dominance/, accessed 7/6/14, JW]
The case might actually be a bit more complicated. Put simply, Chinas vision of freedom of navigation
is strictly commercial. The Chinese interpretation of UNCLOS basically territorializes the
Exclusive Economic Zone as far as military matters are concerned. This is not a minor issue for the
United States, because the US vision of commanding the commons, as well as its security guarantees
to overseas allies, rely on maritime military transit through strategic chokepoints around Eurasia.
Such an interpretation would not only concern US policy towards China, but US policy towards any
potential combat theater of operations near these Chinese seas, and within the range of land-based
Chinese missiles, aircraft, and shorter-range Chinese attack subs.
In other words, freedom of navigation (and let us remember this issue helped turn the tide in
American public opinion during World War I, and was responsible for a large amount of conflict in
our republics early years) has become part and parcel in the greater grand strategic objective of
commanding the global commons. While China is certainly not going to dismantle global maritime
trade at whim, denying sea control to its maritime neighbors and the United States are a critical
component of its maritime strategy. While essentially defensive in character, the capabilities of a Chinese

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active defense (or deep sea defense, as some documents refer to it) do have important implications for
broader US policy involving not just Southeast Asia or Taiwan, but Japan and Korea.
Navigation key to heg leads to informational dominance

White, Navy oceanography and navigation director, 13
[Jon, January 2013, Sea Technology magazine, Challenges and Opportunities: Naval Oceanography in
2013, http://www.sea-technology.com/features/2014/0114/4_White.php, accessed 7/6/14, JW]
Despite the fiscal challenges, Naval Oceanography made important progress in 2013 as a critical
enabler for realizing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenerts three tenets: warfighting
first, operate forward and be ready.
Information Dominance
This year the Navy released its Strategy for Achieving Information Dominance. Information
dominance is the operational advantage gained from fully integrating the Navys information
functions, capabilities and resources to optimize decision making and maximize warfighting effects.
The Navys oceanography program is an important contributor to information dominance. Our
ability to characterize the physical environment, and to know the environment better than our
adversaries, provides a competitive advantage in any engagement. Moreover, our work with precise
timing and astrometry supports position, navigation and timing (PNT) functions across the military and,
in large part, the nation.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert calls the U.S. Navy Americas away team. Through
environmental knowledge, Naval Oceanography provides a home-field advantage to the away team.
The Information Dominance Strategy is built upon three pillars: assured command and control,
battlespace awareness and integrated fires.
Assured Command and Control
Effective command and control includes the safe navigation of Navy platformson, above and
below the sea, as we operate forward. Safe navigation relies on precise time and astrometric
measurements, as well as the organic systems that ingest, distribute and display PNT (positioning,
navigation and timing) information.
The Navy continues to transition to the Electronic Chart Display and Information SystemNavy variant
(ECDIS-N) navigation suite that replaces legacy paper chart navigation. It is a combination of software
and hardware that displays digital nautical charts overlaid by continuous and automated positioning
systems (GPS and inertial systems), as well as ancillary equipment displays supporting navigation like
radar, environmental sensors, ship performance parameters and an automated information system. The
result is an official, digital navigation plot with enhanced situational awareness tools to facilitate safety of
navigation. To date, 162 ships are electronically navigating, and the remaining ships will be outfitted by
the end of fiscal year 2016.
GPNTS, the GPS-based position, navigation and timing service by Raytheon (Waltham, Massachusetts),
is the Navys future surface ship PNT distribution system, which will replace legacy Navigation Sensor

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System Interface (NAVSSI) suites and stand-alone military GPS receivers (WRN-6). GPNTS is scheduled
for initial fielding by the end of fiscal year 2015 and will assure PNT in anti-access and area denial
environments.
Last August, the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) announced that its four new rubidium fountain clocks
had achieved full operational capability. The frequency and stability of rubidium atoms can be measured
to a precision of fractions of a trillionth of a second. These clocks, designed and fabricated at USNO, join
a suite of existing cesium and hydrogen maser clocks to produce the most precise and accurate time
reference in the world. USNO is the manager and sole source of precise time information for DoD.
Among many other applications, the USNO Master Clock ensemble serves as the official time reference
for the GPS satellite system, which uses time and satellite location parameters to determine positions on
or near the Earth, and is a key parameter for assured command and control in cyberspace operations.
Battlespace Awareness
A foundational element for achieving effective battlespace awareness is the characterization of the
physical environment and its impacts on operations, including everything from the seabed to the
top of the atmosphere. This process includes the use of T-AGS oceanographic survey ships, autonomous
and unmanned undersea vehicles, satellite sensors and organic assets on board our warfighting platforms
to acquire data. Our key advantage is the unparalleled ability to assimilate this data, process it in
near real time and, using high-performance computers, predict the future physical environment
and its specific impacts on warfighting.
Freedom of navigation is key to preserving US hegemony conflicts in the South

China Sea prove
Goh, Australian National University Strategic Policy Studies Professor, 13
[Evelyn, The Struggle for Order, p. 99, JW]
In East Asias post-Cold War transition, the SCS has become a prime arena for negotiating the scope,
domain, and modes of provision of two key security public goods. The first, freedom of navigation,
is superficially uncontested-all parties to the disputes have repeatedly declared their commitment to the
right of vessels engaged in peaceful activities to unimpeded passage in regional maritime routes. Yet, as
various incidents demonstrated-most notably when Chinese ships harassed the US navy
surveillance ship Impeccable in March 2009, and cut the cables of Vietnamese and Filipino oil
exploration vessels in March-June 2011 there is significant contestation over what constitutes
legitimate activity within the SCS. Washington regards freedom of navigation within maritime
exclusive economic zones (EEZs) as an absolute public good that ought to be available to foreign
commercial as well as military surveillance vessels. In contrast, Beijing holds that the passage of
foreign military vessels within a nations EEZ is detrimental to its national security-not a public good but
a common pool resource, the use of which by one party diminishes its utility to another. Furthermore, US
naval preponderance in the region exacerbates Chinese worries that Washington could exclude
adversaries from their rights to maritime passage in effect turning freedom of navigation into a club good.
Provision of regional peace in the SCS also turns on a second intermediate public good, the negotiation of
acceptable parameters for the multiple disputes over territory and jurisdiction. That is, the agreed

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principles by which the disputes would be adjudicated, and the norms or rules that would guide
conduct while the ultimate sovereignty questions remain unresolved. Given that the claimants
universal assertion of sovereignty creates a roadblock to actual conflict resolution, the challenge
meanwhile is to find modes of managing the conflict that would minimize the potential use of force. This
task has been shouldered by ASEAN rather than the great powers in measures mainly focused on conflict
avoidance and joint development of resources in the disputed areas. In general, the role of great powers in
providing these security public goods in the SCS is less clear cut than on the Korean peninsula. As the
sole great power party to the intractable sovereignty disputes, China is directly engaged in a deeply
asymmetrical contest with the weaker Southeast Asian claimants. This might create impetus for
Beijing to impose its will, if not for Washingtons capability and proven willingness to enforce the
imperative of freedom of navigation. Not only do US leaders consider freedom of navigation a vital
security public good, they also regard the possession and provision of it to be their hegemonic right.
Yet Washingtons neutrality in the territorial disputes and aloofness from regional multilateral efforts at
conflict management impose a divide between the two public goods at stake.
The great power dynamic in dealing with the SCS disputes is not only potentially confrontational, but also
mutually testing. Since its 1995 seizure of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, Chinas behavior in these
sovereignty disputes has been regarded as a test of its intentions as a rising power. Yet, arguably more is
required from China if it is prove itself a responsible great power capable of providing regional order-it
ought to be able to manage conflicts in a sustainable, institutionalized, mutually beneficial manner. The
SCS disputes also test the basis of US regional hegemony, which is pinned on its commitment to
providing critical public goods such as freedom of navigation. Washingtons evolving approach to
conflict management here will shed light on the extent to which it is able and willing to build
further the normative and institutional elements of its hegemonic leadership, in contrast to relying
primarily upon its preponderant coercive power.
Freedom of navigation key to maintain security through US hegemony

Kotani, Japan Institute of International Affairs Senior Research Fellow, 11
[Tetsuo, December 2011, Japan Center for International Exchange, Freedom of Navigation and the USJapan Alliance: Addressing the Threat of Legal Warfare,
http://www.jcie.org/researchpdfs/USJapanPapers/Kotani.pdf, accessed 7/8/14, JW]
The United States is also concerned about Chinas assertiveness and has called for the peaceful
resolution of territorial disputes in the South China Sea, emphasizing its interest in the freedom of
navigation. At the East Asia Summit in Bali in November 2011, the United States reiterated the
importance of freedom of navigation and commerce and appealed for a peaceful resolution based
on international law.
China has not rejected dialogue with other South China Sea claimants out of hand. It signed the 2002
Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which calls for peaceful solutions
through dialogue. Given the US determination to stand firm on this issue, China agreed with ASEAN on
adopting guidelines to implement the DOC before the ASEAN Regional Forum in July 2011, and it hinted
that it would be willing to start negotiations on a legally binding code of conduct at the November 2011
East Asia Summit

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Japan has its own strategic interests in the South China Sea, which is a critical sea lane through which 90
percent of its imported oil passes. The military balance in the South China Sea also has an impact on
security in Japans surrounding waters. Tokyo thus revised its common strategic objectives with
Washington in June 2011 to include the maintenance of maritime security and freedom of navigation by
promoting relevant customary international law.7 Japan also proposed an East Asia Maritime Forum to
discuss issues regarding freedom of the seas at the 2011 East Asia Summit, although it was premature to
do so.
Proposals for the US-Japan Alliance
Today, the growing global economy depends on free and fair access to the maritime domain,
through which 90 percent of all trade is transported.8 US military operations also require stability
in the maritime domain, and the United States has guaranteed the free and fair use of the maritime
commons. Given the ongoing Chinese legal warfare in the western Pacific, Japan and the United
States need to work together to ensure free and fair access to the global maritime commons by
promoting the universal concept of freedom of navigation in Asia Pacific.
Many Asian littoral states share in the Chinese interpretation of the current laws and do not welcome
foreign military surveillance activities in their EEZs.9 There have been constant attempts to restrict
military activities in foreign EEZs. For example, the Tokyo-based Ocean Policy Research Foundation
(OPRF) published guidelines for navigation and overflight in EEZs in 2005, which calls for the restriction
of surveillance and other military activities in foreign EEZs.10 The OPRF regarded those military
activities as a source of conflict and proposed those guidelines as confidence-building measures. But
EEZs now account for 40 percent of worlds waters, and if military activities in those EEZs were
restricted, that would lead to an increased level of unpredictability and uncertainty and, as a result,
would destabilize regional security. In the context of the US-Japan alliance, if the US military
cannot conduct surveillance in other countries EEZs, that would restrict US strategic mobility and
undermine the credibility of the US security umbrella.
Freedom of navigation helps US heg in the South China Sea and the USs ability to
counteract threats such as piracy in the region
Cronin, Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security
Senior Director, et al., 12
[Cronin, Patrick M., Dutton, Peter A., Fravel, M. Taylor, Holmes, James R., Kaplan, Robert D., Rogers,
Will, Storey, Ian, January 2012, Center for a New American Security, Cooperation from Strength The
United States, China and the South China Sea,
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_CooperationFromStrength_Cronin_1.pdf,
accessed 7/8/14, JW]
Additionally, expressions of support for the norms must be backed up by operational activities and
exercises because coastal states objections to freedom of navigation for naval operations in the EEZ
could also hinder the ability of the United States and other states to use their navies to perform
constabulary tasks against nontraditional threats in the region. Piracy, for instance, has been a
persistent problem in the South China Sea, although it gets less attention than the much larger piracy
problem off the Horn of Africa.21 Regional governments recognize the issue, however, and in 2010, the

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Cooperation and Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) regional maritime exercises a series of
bilateral exercises between the U.S. Navy and Southeast Asian military forces included visit,
board, search and seizure activities to help build the regional mari time capacity to counter piracy.

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Piracy

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Piracy Hurts Hegemony

Piracy tanks hegemony 3 warrants
Berube, US Naval Academy Military Professor of Political Science, 2010
(Claude, LCDR USN, The Daily Signal, Stopping Piracy Matters, June 14,
http://dailysignal.com/2010/06/14/stopping-piracy-matters/, accessed July 12, 2014, DVOG)
The threat of modern piracy is tangible. Piracy as a result of the largely ungovernable region of
Somalia has risen particularly in the past five years. Again U.S. and other navy ships were sent to
patrol the region and protect commerce. But there have been too few assets. Cooperation between
navies has been largely positive. The establishment of the Internationally Recommended Transit
Corridor in the high-traffic area of the Gulf of Aden has been largely effective in mitigating the number
and success of pirate attacks; this has led pirates to seek out opportunities elsewhere throughout the
Indian Ocean. Another encouraging note is that the European Union may continue its mission for another
year. In recent months, it appears that more mother ships that provide support to the small skiffs used to
attack ships have been taken out of the fight.
Nevertheless, the differences in operational procedures and expectations (particularly with so-called
catch and release) and opportunities to bring pirates to justice have been inconsistent or problematic.
Last month several shipping organizations began a campaign calling for immediate concrete actions from
governments to find real solutions to the growing piracy problem under the slogan Enough is enough.
Piracy has some direct consequences to the shipping companies who ply the waters, to the sailors whose
lives are at risk (some 17 ships and 357 sailors are currently being held for ransom), and to the local
economies who are reliant on secure and stable maritime environments. But there are also indirect and
longer term consequences. Namely if the U.S. is unwilling or unable to effectively deter piracy how
would we respond to another failed or failed state who threaten the high seas? Or, more importantly, if
other organizations or states fail to learn from what is happening off Somalia. At the same time, pirate
attacks have encouraged a small but apparently growing maritime security industry to fill protective
requirements for shipping companies.
Chris Rawley wrote about this at the Navy milblog Information Dissemination and is correct. He
suggests, in part: 1) by allowing piracy to proliferate and expand, the greatest navy in the world has
effectively ceded freedom of the seas to teenagers toting Kalishnikovs and RPGs. If our Navy
cannot address this relatively minor situation, then how can we be expected to exercise sea power
globally; 2) our failure to defeat piracy has greater strategic implicationspiracy provides
emerging strategic naval competitors with a perfect excuse to conduct unprecedented out-of-area
deployments and improve their naval operations; and 3) similar to the proliferation of suicide
bombers and IEDs, other non-state actors will realize the successful business model that Somali
pirates have developed and emulate them in around the world.

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Piracy is a growing threat to US hegemonycontinued success will export the

business model globally.
Heritage Foundation Maritime Security Working Group, 9
(The Heritage Foundation, Maritime Security: Fighting Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Beyond,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/06/maritime-security-fighting-piracy-in-the-gulf-of-adenand-beyond, accessed July 12, 2014, DVOG)
Piracy in the waters in and around the Gulf of Aden remains a global concern. Incidences of piracy on
one of the worlds busiest waterways continue to climb. In addition, these criminal enterprises
contribute to lawlessness in the Horn of Africa, empowering extremist groups, some with links to
transnational terrorist organizations. Although piracy does not directly threaten U.S. vital national
interests at the moment, transnational criminal activities at sea adversely affect American interests
in the region and are detrimental to freedom of the seas and the exercise of global commerce (80
percent of which takes place by sea) upon which U.S. security and prosperity depend. Pirate activities
in the region have focused on the Gulf of Aden, a key component of the Suez Canal shipping lane
linking Asia and the West without circumnavigating the African continent. The gulf, with an average
width of about 300 miles, flows about 920 miles between Yemen (on the south coast of the Arabian
Peninsula), Somalia, and Djibouti, covering 205,000 square miles.
Approximately 21,000 commercial ships transit the Gulf of Aden each year. Over 10 percent of the global
waterborne transportation of oil passes through the gulf. About 7 percent of the worlds maritime
commerce transits the Suez Canal. About 80 percent of the vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden carry cargo
to and from Europe, East Africa, South Asia, and the Far East, although a significant portion of the
cargo carried is eventually bound for the United States. Much of this commerce also indirectly
affects the United States through its impact on facilitating the global supply chain of moving goods
and services.
The waterways importance to global commerce rests on the fact that the alternative shipping route
requires ships to round the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa. According to the U.S. Maritime
Administration (MARAD), following the longer route adds 2,700 miles for tanker traffic from Saudi
Arabia to the United States. A tanker transiting this route could see an increase in annual fuel costs of
about $3.5 million. Due to the longer route, a tanker would also have to reduce its round trips by one per
year (reducing the tankers delivery capacity by 26 percent). The economic impact for liner trades, such
as container ships, might be even more significant. Ships following the longer route from Tokyo to
Rotterdam would have to follow a 23 percent longer route. Increased additional costs amount to $74.4
million for fuel and $14.6 million in charter expenses. The potential disruption to supply chains could also
be great. While rerouting might not greatly impact lower-value cargoes (like bulk commodities not
required for a manufacturing process), the cost of consumer goods or commodities and parts needed for
just-in-time manufacturing might be significantly affected. The circumnavigation route is not only longer,
and more costly, but winter storms around the cape can pose a grave danger to navigation.
In addition, for commercial transport, a number of ships must transit the waters off the southeast coast of
Somalia. These ships carry goods and supplies, including humanitarian relief, to or from ports along the
east coast of Africa. Finally, Somali waters are some of the most abundant fishing grounds in the world.

Hegemony Core
This maritime activity as well as the economic resources and the environment of the gulf must be
safeguarded as well.
Crimes at Sea.
The goal of modern-day pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden is primarily to make money
taking over a ship, seizing hostages and cargo, and waiting for the shipping company to pay a ransom.
This approach usually translates into $1 million to $2 million in ransom per ship. As a result, the security
consulting firm BGN Risk estimated an increase in total insurance costs for ships transiting the area at
about $400 million due to the increase in piracy in the region since November 2008. This does not include
coverage for injury, liability, and ransom that carriers may opt to buy. In addition to these increased costs,
worldwide maritime freight rates have declined, putting additional financial pressure on carriers.
Nevertheless, despite the higher costs and risks, substantial trade has not been diverted from the gulf since
carriers still feel the economic benefits of the route outweigh the costs and risks.
The major pirate bases are in Somalia, principally in Eyl in the northeastern Puntland region, and in
Xarardheere, in the central part of the country. An official of the East African Seafarers Assistance
Programme estimated that Somali pirates total about 1,000 armed men. Many are former fisherman or
militia fighters.
Typically, pirates deploy in a mother ship, often a stolen fishing vessel. Depots are established along the
coast to rearm and resupply the ships so they can operate at sea for extended periods. The mother ship
will observe shipping in a 40 to 50 nautical mile area. After identifying ships for seizure, the mother ship
will send two to four small high-speed (up to 25 knots) boats. The boats will flank the target, sometimes
firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades to intimidate the crew and force the ship to slow
down. Using grappling hooks or ladders, the pirates climb on board and sequester the crew. The boarding
pirate team often consists of seven to 10 pirates armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Contributing to the easeof taking over a ship is the low number of crew members (often no more than a
dozen or so) that staff most modern merchant ships. Most are unarmed.
The attack skiffs used in the seizure are taken under tow by the hijacked ship, which is directed to an
anchorage off the Somali coast. The pirates then employ intermediaries to negotiate the release of the
crew and ship. In 2008, only four mariners were reported killed. Fourteen more are missing and presumed
dead. Although crewmembers are rarely harmed, they are often robbed and the ships pilfered.
Piracy in the Gulf of Aden directly affects only a small number of ships, but the frequency of attacks has
been increasing. In 2006, the Somali pirates began to significantly shift operations from Somali waters to
the gulf and further down the African coast as far as the Seychelles. The International Chamber of
Commerces International Maritime Bureau reported 111 incidents off the coast of Somalia 2008, twice
the number from the year before. Thirty-two were hijacked.
The Pirate Universe.
The pirates live in Somalia. They sell the fruits of their piracy. They obtain resources for more missions,
and collect intelligence needed to target ships from on-shore spies that are believed to be deployed in
ports throughout the region. Cutting pirates off from these benefits is central to minimizing Somali piracy
over the long term.

Hegemony Core
Somalia has a well-earned reputation as a failed state. Since the U.N. withdrew in March 1995 without
restoring an effective central government, little progress has been made. Aside from the autonomous,
broadly self-governed enclaves of Somaliland and Puntland in the northern parts of the country, Somalia
has suffered from anarchic conditions and the dysfunctional rule of a succession of tribal factions,
warlords, Islamist groups, and foreign interventions for the past 18 years. Today there is no effective
central government.
Somalias condition as a failed state reflects local rage and impotence created by a national inability to
defend its fishing grounds from the predations of illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic wastes
including nuclear wasteby non-Somalis, sometimes backed up by their countries warships. U.N.
Environmental Program spokesman Nick Nuttal graphically described the lawlessness imposed by the
outside world on Somalia when he forecast that European countries and others would continue to use
Somali waters as a dumping ground for a wide array of nuclear and hazardous wastes. Theres
uranium radioactive waste, theres lead, theres heavy metals like cadmium and mercury, theres industrial
wastes, and theres hospital wastes, chemical wastesyou name it. The U.N. Special Envoy for Somalia
last year scored a disaster off the Somali coast, a disaster [for] the Somali environment,
[and] the Somali population. Scottish academic Peter Lehr referred to the pirates booty of $100 million
in ransoms, and the EuroAsian pilfering of $300 million in fish as a resource swap. In turn, pirates
often portray themselves to an angry populace as modern day Robin Hoods orfailing the test of
redistributionat least a successful embodiment of local grievance. Posing as defenders of Somali
fishermen, some pirate groups have taken to calling themselves the National Volunteer Coast Guard of
Somalia, or Somali Marines.
Within this ungoverned space, pirate groups have carved an effective operational support network.
According to J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James
Madison University, many people are involved in the processfrom the dealers who supply the pirates
with the fuel to sail out, to the prostitutes who entertain them on their return. The network in which
pirates operate is transnational, including pirate financiers in the Somali diaspora. The logistical and
support network for the pirates extends to Yemen and beyond.
The pirate network also includes, according to Pham, the regional Puntland government and al-Shabab,
the al Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group that was formally designated a foreign terrorist organization
last year by the U.S. State Department. Al-Shabab benefits from the pirate activities in several ways.
Pirates are used to smuggle goods and weapons from Yemen to Somalia. There are also documented cases
where pirates have transported foreign fighters into the country, and terrorists out, including one of the
perpetrators on a bombing in Yemen in March 2009 that killed four South Korean tourists. Additionally,
the pirates share the proceeds with al-Shabab for being allowed
to operate in the areas controlled by the Islamist group. Finally, some reports suggest that pirates have
been helping train and equip the militias so that they can expand Islamist control over the Somali coastal
waters.
Perhaps the most negative consequences of the success of the pirate activity are its contributions to
making lawlessness endemic in the Horn of Africa, expanding the network of transnational criminal
activity, and facilitating the expansion of Islamist influence. Pirates obtained about $30 million in ransom
in 2008, in addition to making money through other criminal activities, such as smuggling. Profits are
distributed to members of the pirate groups and their supporters and suppliers, as well within the clan,

Hegemony Core
which includes both families and friends. In addition, pirates use their profits to expand their capabilities
and scope of their criminal activities. Flush with cash, pirates may upgrade their equipment (boats,
weapons, boarding equipment), Rear Admiral Ted Branch stated in congressional testimony, and
improve their tactics and procedures, and continue to adapt to coalition naval presence over time.4
Thus, even as security at sea is enhanced, pirates may well adopt more lethal and violent tactics as
well as new weapons and capabilities to capture ships. A pirate skiff recently lobbed explosives at a
commercial ship, the first time that tactic had been reported.
There is also the potential that successful piracy tactics could be exported to other regions. While
piracy in the Strait of Malacca has declined in recent years, other areas of the world have seen an
increase. Since 2003, notable pirate activity has also been reported off Bangladesh, Brazil,
Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Guyana. Recently there were two attacks in Portau-Prince, Haiti, and a coastal tanker was hijacked off the coast of Colombia. Rising levels of piracy
off the coast of Africa could be a precursor to a new global trend. The success of the Somali pirates
may empower and inspire other groups. The number, frequency, and level of violence from piracy
acts could increase.
Piracy destroys US leadership in Africacollapses rule of law.

United States Counter Piracy and Maritime Security Action Plan, June 2014 (June,
United States Counter Piracy and Maritime Security Action Plan,
http://www.ieee.es/Galerias/fichero/OtrasPublicaciones/Internacional/2014/US_Counter_PiracyMaritime_Security_Action_Plan_June2014.pdf, p. 9, accessed July 12, 2014, DVOG)
Piracy and related maritime crime in the Gulf of Guinea (GOG), a strategically significant region of
Africa, are increasingly placing at risk the interests of the United States and our allies and partners.
These maritime crimes threaten to undermine the four pillars of the U.S. Strategy
Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, which include spurring broad-based and inclusive economic growth, trade,
and investment, as well as advancing peace and security. Hijackings for fuel and cargo oil theft constitute
the majority of incidents, though there are also significant numbers of robberies and kidnappings for
ransom (KFR). These maritime attacks largely occur in weakly governed territorial seas that extend as far
west as Cote dIvoire and as far south as Gabon.
The GOG suffers from a combination of factors that make it vulnerable to piracy, robbery at sea, and
related maritime crime that are far more complex and violent than that occurring on the east coast of
Africa. Many countries in the GOG region have ineffective governance, weak rule of law, precarious legal
frameworks, inadequate naval, coast guard, and maritime law enforcement forces, and corrupt systems of
government. While crude oil theft has been an issue for many years in the Niger Delta, recent hijackings
of tankers transporting refined petroleum products and the increase in kidnappings for ransoms off the
Niger Delta are of growing concern for both mariners and the oil industry operating in the region. When
maritime criminals focus on the high value cargo aboard oil tankers and general cargo vessels, with little
regard for the operators, it becomes much more dangerous for mariners.

Hegemony Core
Criminals can only thrive in areas where they operate with impunity either due to inadequate criminal
justice systems or governments that are susceptible to corruption. For many people in the GOG, including
the most powerful individuals, illicit markets present opportunities for personal enrichment not found in
the legal economy with low risk of negative consequences.
Partnerships with politically committed stakeholders, like the Economic Communities of West and
Central African States, are critical to reducing opportunities for maritime crime and piracy within the
GOG. Nigeria has the largest regional economy, and its potential willingness to institute rule of law and
effective governance will reflect much of what can be achieved by the entire region.
The maritime sector is fundamental to a States national defense, law enforcement, economy, and
social goals and objectives. Africas seas, lakes, and rivers are crucial sources of livelihood, as well as
food and water security for many communities. These water sources also serve as a platform for trade and
commerce (including for landlocked countries), as a theater for potential conflict, and, if poorly governed,
as an area that transnational criminal networks can exploit with impunity. Investors are less inclined to do
business in risky environments due to the increased cost of operating in higher crime areas. The absence
of effective maritime governance dissuades capital investment, discourages growth, threatens food
security, and hinders a States ability to improve the conditions that contribute to its citizens
quality of life. This leads to increases in other areas of maritime crime, such as illegal, unreported,
and unregulated fishing; human trafficking; the smuggling of narcotics; and circumventing
sanctions through the shipment of contraband goods and weapons. In contrast, improved levels of
maritime security enable a State to more effectively detect, deter, and interdict illicit actors whose
actions indirectly or directly challenge local governance, health, and stability. Improvements in
governance promote stability and encourage the growth of commerce within those nations that
enforce rule of law.
The United States and partner nations play a leading role in western Africas oil sector, which
provides high-quality, light-sweet oil, and is important to the regions economy. Nigeria, Gabon,
Ghana, and other countries around the GOG produce more than 3 million barrels of oil a day, or about
one-third of Africas output. Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea are also leading liquefied natural gas
exporters. Oil output disruptions in West Africa could affect global oil prices, including within the United
States, due to strong interconnectedness within the international market. Seafarers are becoming
increasingly wary of using the seas in the GOG as the number of acts of piracy, armed robbery at
sea, and related maritime crime rises. The United States must continue to partner with member
states in the GOG to increase maritime security capacity, forge a concerted effort to stem piracy
and armed robbery at sea, and prevent the region from becoming susceptible to the same conditions
associated with the Horn of Africa.

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Piracy Hurts Trade

Pirates are a massive threat to international trade
Burlando, University of Oregon economics professor, et al. 14
(Alfredo, Professor of Economics, University of Oregon, Anca Cristea, Professor of Economics,
University of Oregon, Logan M. Lee, Professor of Economics, University of Oregon, May 1, 2014 The
Trade Consequences of Maritime Insecurity: Evidence from Somali Piracy,
http://pages.uoregon.edu/cristea/Research_files/PiracyTrade.pdf, page 2, Accessed: July 8, 2014, KS)
Maritime piracy around Somalia has emerged over the past two decades as a legitimate threat to
international trade. The combination of weak governmental institutions, a natural geographic choke point
in the Gulf of Aden, and a significant flow of ships through the Gulf has allowed pirates to establish safe
harbors from which to attack a plethora of available targets. Successful attacks have significant
consequences: hijacked ships, kidnapped crews, expensive ransom negotiations, and loss of life. As
merchant ships are attacked and trade flows disrupted, the cost of transporting goods through pirate
waters increases, possibly discouraging trade through these regions. This problem has global dimensions.
Annually, 12 percent of world trade is estimated to pass through the Suez Canal. For the countries in the
Indian Ocean region, whose ports are in relatively close proximity to pirate waters, as much as 60 percent
of their imports travel through pirate infested waters. These countries are potentially exposed to
significant disruptions to their trade, and could be the victims of pirate-induced price distortions in their
traded goods, with consequent welfare implications.
Pirates obliterate international trade, tourism, human lives

Bockmann, Bloomberg Shipping Staff Writer, 12
(Michelle W, February 8, 2012, Bloomberg News, Piracy Costing $6.9 Billion as Attacks Off Somalias
Coast Climb to Record http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-08/piracy-costing-6-9-billion-asattacks-off-somalia-s-coast-climb-to-record.html, Accessed: July 8, 2014, KS)
Somali pirates cost the shipping industry and governments as much as $6.9 billion last year as average
ransom payments advanced 25 percent, according to One Earth Future Foundation.
Ships are spending an extra $2.7 billion on fuel to speed up through the area because no vessel has been
captured while traveling at 18 knots or faster, the Colorado-based non-profit group said in a report today.
Governments spent $1.27 billion on military operations, including warship patrols, and ship owners
another $1.16 billion on armed guards and security equipment.
Attacks in the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and off of Somalia, an area larger than Europe, jumped fivefold
in the past five years to a record 236, according to the London-based International Maritime Bureau. An
estimated 42,450 vessels a year passed through the piracy-prone region, One Earth said. About 20 percent

Hegemony Core
of world trade goes through the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and Somalia, which is used to get
to Egypts Suez Canal, connecting the Red Sea and Mediterranean. It is the fastest crossing from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.
The human cost of piracy cannot be defined in economic terms, Anna Bowden, the author of the report,
said in a statement. We do note with great concern that there were a significant number of piracy-related
deaths, hostages taken, and seafarers subject to traumatic armed attacks in 2011.
Attacks off the East African countrys coast last year led to 1,118 seafarers being taken hostage and 24
killed, One Earth said. A total of 31 ransoms were paid, with the average amount increasing by 25 percent
to $5 million.
Piracy Costs
Shipping bore about 80 percent of piracy costs, totaling between $5.3 billion and $5.5 billion, according
to the report.
The highest ransoms were paid for tankers carrying oil, because cargoes are worth around $200 million
on the biggest ships, One Earths said. About half of all ships use armed guards, up from 25 percent a year
earlier. Vessels using this form of protection have been safe from hijacking.
About $530.6 million is paid to maritime security firms a year, One Earth estimated. Owners and
operators were also spending nearly $37,000 a year on security equipment such as razor wires and electric
barriers for ships.
Re-routing vessels away from the piracy areas probably added as much as another $680 million to
shipping costs and owners paid $635 million in insurance premiums, One Earth said. Vessels are diverting
from piracy-prone areas by sailing closer to the western Indian coastline rather than sailing around the
Cape of Good Hope, the standard practice when attacks first started nearly four years ago, according to
the report. About 30 percent of seafarers are paid twice as much for going through the area, adding an
estimated $195 million in labor costs.
Prosecuting Pirates
About $38 million a year is spent on prosecuting and imprisoning pirates and building up local
capabilities to fight piracy, One Earth said.
About 90 percent of pirates caught by military patrols arent prosecuted, One Earth said, citing a United
Nations report published January 2011.
The international community seems to be approaching a saturation of willpower and/or capacity to
accept further pirates for trial, according to the report.

Hegemony Core
About a third of pirates caught between 2008 and 2010 were arrested, with more than 1,000 tried or
waiting for trials in 20 countries at the end of 2010, according to the report, compared with less than 10
percent at the beginning of 2011.
Fewer Patrols
One Earth also said counter-piracy patrols will decline this year, from around 18 vessels to about 11 or 12,
as European and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led operations signaled deployments will be curbed
in 2012.
Piracy also cut regional trade and affected tourism in neighbouring Kenya, according to the report. Kenya
lost between an estimated $129 million and $795 million in tourism revenue and between 3 percent and
20 percent of the countrys tourism jobs after kidnappings in 2011, the report calculated. Indias coal
imports from South Africa fell in 2011 because of additional costs moving the commodity through piracy
zones, according to the report.
Less piracy means more trade- Philippines proves

De la Cruz, Reuters, 14
(Erik, April 29, 2014, Reuters, U.S. removes Philippines from piracy watch list after 20 years,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/29/us-philippines-usa-piracy-idUSBREA3S06U20140429,
Accessed: July 8, 2014, KS)
The United States said it has removed the Philippines from its piracy watch list after two decades
following significant reforms put in place by Manila, raising prospects for increased trade and investment
between the two allies.
The announcement, posted on the website of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on April
28, came during the first state visit of U.S. President Barack Obama in the Philippines, the United States'
oldest ally in the Asia-Pacific region.
In its statement, the USTR said the Southeast Asian country, which had been consistently on the watch list
since 1994 and was first listed in 1989, had undertaken in recent years "significant legislative and
regulatory reforms" to protect and enforce intellectual property rights rules.
Officials said the USTR decision would boost investor confidence in the Philippines. The United States is
among of the country's top three trading partners.

Hegemony Core
"Removal from the watch list creates the proper investment climate," said Ricardo Blancaflor, directorgeneral of the Philippines' Intellectual Property Office. "It reflects a vibrant rule of law system where
foreign trading partners can feel secure in doing business in the country."
The USTR said in its statement significant challenges remained, but did not elaborate. It noted, however,
that Philippine authorities had made "laudable" gains in enforcing intellectual property rights.
Senator Grace Poe said the country's removal from the piracy watch list was "a leap forward" in
encouraging more foreign and domestic investment in the country.
"Removing us from the watch list gives us a better leverage in the international business community. We
need to ensure that we encourage and increase that confidence with additional legislation that is business
friendly," she added.
Piracy stops food aid

Middleton, University of Bristol Economics Professor, 08
( Roger, author of Piracy in Somalia: Threatening Global Trade, Feeding Local Wars, published for the
Chatham House which is at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and is an independent policy
institute based in London, October 2008, Chatham House Briefing Paper, Piracy In Somalia,
http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Africa/1008piracysomalia.pdf
pg. 9, Accessed: July 8, 2014, KS)
The danger of Somali waters in late 2007 forced the WFP to suspend food deliveries by sea (delivery
by land is just as risky and is impractical for transporting large quantities of food aid). According to the
WFP, Somalia will require at least 185,000 tonnes of food aid in 2008. This was temporarily solved by
the naval escorts for WFP vessels mentioned above. The WFP was forced to stop for two months when
the Netherlands completed its stint until Canada announced that the HMCS Ville de Quebec would
escort WFP deliveries. Without the naval escorts and the regular delivery of food aid, Somalia's
food stocks were seriously threatened. In a country without a functioning central government that
is suffering from drought and war, and with over a million internally displaced people,* imported
food aid is essential . The uncertainty surrounding escorts for WFP ships needs to end and escorts should
be pledged in advance so that dangerous gaps in food delivery can be avoided. If the international
community does only one thing, then ensuring the safe delivery of food aid should be the priority.

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Proliferation

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Proliferation Undercuts Hegemony

Proliferation undercuts hegemony
Lind, Economic Growth Program policy director, 7
(Michael Lind, June 2007, Beyond American Hegemony,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2007/beyond_american_hegemony_5381, Accessed 7-613, DAG)
During the Cold War, the United States was the stronger of two superpowers in a bipolar world. The antiSoviet alliance was not a traditional alliance of equals, but a hegemonic alliance centered on the United
States. West Germany, Japan and South Korea were semi-sovereign U.S. protectorates. Britain and France
were more independent, but even they received the benefits of "extended deterrence," according to which
the United States agreed to treat an attack on them as the equivalent of an attack on the American
homeland. Americas Cold War strategy was often described as dual containment -- the containment not
only of Americas enemies like the Soviet Union and (until the 1970s) communist China, but also of
Americas allies, in particular West Germany and Japan. Dual containment permitted the United States to
mobilize German and Japanese industrial might as part of the anti-Soviet coalition, while forestalling the
re-emergence of Germany and Japan as independent military powers.
The Cold War officially ended in Paris in 1990, but the United States has continued to pursue a dual
containment strategy based on three principles: dissuasion, reassurance and coercive nonproliferation.
Dissuasion -- directed at actual or potential challengers to the United States -- commits the United States
to outspend all other great military powers, whether friend or foe. This policys goal -- in the words of the
1992 Defense Planning Guidance draft leaked from then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheneys Pentagon -is the dissuasion or "deterring [of] potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global
role."
By the end of the 1990s, as Charles Krauthammer noted in these pages four years ago:
"The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. Even at its height Britain could
always be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. Britain had a smaller army than the land
powers of Europe and its navy was equaled by the next two navies combined. Today, American military
spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries combined. Its navy, air force and space power are
unrivaled."
This approach flies in the face of the strategy usually adopted by traditional status quo great powers,
which sought to ensure that they belonged to alliances with resources that exceeded those of potential
challengers. It is no surprise that, despite the absence of any threat to the United States equivalent to that
of the Soviet Union, our defense spending today, as a share of our total GDP, is nearly at the Cold War
average.
High levels of defense expenditures are not merely to overawe potential challengers. (In outlining
possible competitors, Krauthammer noted, "Only China grew in strength, but coming from so far behind

Hegemony Core
it will be decades before it can challenge American primacy -- and that assumes that its current growth
continues unabated.") To again quote from the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, "we must account
sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our
leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order." Reassurance, the second
prong of the hegemonic strategy, entails convincing major powers not to build up their military
capabilities, allowing the United States to assume the burdens of ensuring their security instead.
In other words, while outspending allies like Germany and Japan on defense, the United States should be
prepared to fight wars on behalf of Germany and Japan, sparing them the necessity of re-arming -- for
fear that these countries, having "renationalized" their defense policies and rearmed, might become
hostile to the United States at some future date. For example, even though the threats emanating from the
spillover of the Balkan conflicts affected Germany and its neighbors far more than a geographically farremoved United States, Washington took the lead in waging the 1999 Kosovo war -- in part to forestall
the emergence of a Germany prepared to act independently. And the Persian Gulf War was, among other
things, a reassurance war on behalf of Japan -- far more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than the United
States -- confirmed by the fact that Japan paid a substantial portion of the United States costs in that
conflict. Today, the great question is whether or not two other Asian giants -- India and China -- will
eschew the development of true blue-water navies and continue to allow the United States to take
responsibility for keeping the Gulf open.
Finally, the global hegemony strategy insists that Americas safety depends not on the absence of a hostile
hegemon in Europe, Asia and the Middle East -- the traditional American approach -- but on the
permanent presence of the United States itself as the military hegemon of Europe, the military hegemon
of Asia and the military hegemon of the Middle East. In each of these areas, the regional powers would
consent to perpetual U.S. domination either voluntarily, because the United States assumed their defense
burdens (reassurance), or involuntarily, because the superior U.S. military intimidated them into
acquiescence (dissuasion).
American military hegemony in Europe, Asia and the Middle East depends on the ability of the U.S.
military to threaten and, if necessary, to use military force to defeat any regional challenge-but at a
relatively low cost. This is because the American public is not prepared to pay the costs necessary if the
United States is to be a "hyperpower."
Given this premise, the obsession with the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and other Weapons
of Mass Destruction (WMD) makes perfect sense. WMD are defensive weapons that offer poor states
a possible defensive shield against the sword of unexcelled U.S. conventional military superiority.
The success of the United States in using superior conventional force to defeat Serbia and Iraq (twice)
may have accelerated the efforts of India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran to obtain nuclear deterrents. As
an Indian admiral observed after the Gulf War, "The lesson is that you should not go to war with the
United States unless you have nuclear weapons." Moreover, it is clear that the United States treats
countries that possess WMD quite differently from those that do not.
So proliferation undermines American regional hegemony in two ways. First, it forces the U.S.
military to adopt costly and awkward strategies in wartime. Second, it discourages intimidated
neighbors of the nuclear state from allowing American bases and military build-ups on its soil.
With this in mind, proponents of the hegemony strategy often advocate a policy of preventive war
to keep countries deemed to be hostile to the United States from obtaining nuclear weapons or

Hegemony Core
WMD. Preventive war (as distinguished from pre-emptive attack to avert an impending strike) is not
only a violation of international law but also a repudiation of Americas own traditions. Presidents
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all ruled out preventive wars against the Soviet Union and
China to cripple or destroy their nuclear programs, and President Ronald Reagan, along with Britains
Margaret Thatcher, denounced Israels 1981 attack on Iraqs nuclear reactor at Osirak. Yet, by 2002, a
bipartisan majority in the Congress authorized President George W. Bush to wage the first -- and to date
the only -- preventive war in American history against Iraq. Although it turned out to be a disaster, it was
perfectly consistent with the radical neoconservative variant of U.S. global hegemony strategy.

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Internal Link Answers

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Influences Others

Hegemony cant cause smaller countries to obey smaller countries realize their
relative power
Weisbrode, European University Institute diplomatic historian, 11
(Kenneth Weisbrode is a diplomatic historian at the European University Institute and author of "The
Atlantic Century." 2-8-11, World Politics Review, The U.S. and Egypt: The Limits of Hegemony,
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/7805/the-u-s-and-egypt-the-limits-of-hegemony, accessed 78-12, CNM)
The Obama administration's air of ambivalence, however, evokes a perennial condition of

international relations. Accustomed as most of us are to power hierarchies, we often overlook how
difficult and complex actual relations can be between big and small countries, especially when those
relations fall into the category of patron and client.
In this respect, the difficulties the U.S. confronts as its Egyptian ally shows signs of collapsing are
similar to those China has faced in recent years with regard to North Korea, those between Iran
and its various auxiliaries in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region, and, for that matter, between the
United States and other important allies, like Israel: For every bit of leverage a patron seeks to wield,
the client comes to realize its own relative power. Rarely does the big power command and the
smaller obey. In other words, no member of the latter group above is a proxy, strictly speaking.

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Inevitable Power Consolidation

American hegemony is at an all-time high and nobody can catch up creativity,
manufacturing, technology, energy abundance, and capital
Kurtzman, former Harvard Business Review editor and Milken Institute and
Wharton senior fellow, 14
[Joel, 2-14-14, Harvard Business Review, Four Reasons to Believe in a Second American Century,
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/four-reasons-to-believe-in-a-second-american-century/, accessed: 7-8-14,
JY]
Despite evidence to the contrary, Americans like to think our nation is about to be eclipsed. When I was a
boy, people worried the Soviet Union would bury us. (Howd that work out?) Early in my career, a lot of
commentators were sure Japan was on its way to becoming number one. Now its Chinas turn to pull
ahead.
I have nothing against China, or any other country. But overtake the United States? Not for a while. Ive
been watching the global economy for decades, and it seems to me that growth in the United States is
about to speed up, while growth in the emerging markets is slowing down.
I make that statement in light of four powerful forces which are at work in the United States and
which no other country can duplicate. American creativity remains unsurpassed. Manufacturing is
undergoing a renaissance, building on a strong base. New technology has turned the U.S., however
improbably, into the worlds largest energy producer. And capital is abundant.
American Creativity
If you doubt the force of Americas creativity, take a walk through the Kendall Square area of Cambridge,
Massachusetts. In the shadow of MIT, there are dozens of large biotech and life sciences companies,
and many dozens of startups. The neighborhood has become one of the most dynamic research centers
in the world for the biosciences.
Because of Kendall Squares concentration of talent, and its infrastructure, Novartis, the giant Swiss
pharmaceutical company, moved nearly its entire research center here from Switzerland. When the French
pharmaceutical company Sanofi bought Cambridge-based Genzyme, for $17 billion, it made Cambridge
the Paris-based companys most important research hub. These commercial companies are surrounded
by academic research centers at MIT and Harvard and by a complex of private, non-profit research
centers like the Broad Institute, the McGovern Institute, and many others, all working to transform
medicine and extend the frontiers of science.
Other countries would love to have a cluster of research institutions like those located in Cambridge. And
the fact is, Cambridge is just one of several such clusters in the United States. There is the Bay Area,
encompassing the Universities of California at San Francisco and Berkeley as well as Stanford; the area
around San Diego; Research Triangle in North Carolina; the area around Austin and Houston Texas;
the I-95 corridor in New Jersey; as well as Seattle and many other areas of the country.

Hegemony Core
Manufacturing Renaissance
Americans are also fond of telling each other, we dont make anything here anymore. The need to
renew manufacturing was a big issue in the Presidential election of 2012. It might surprise you to learn
that the United States remains the worlds preeminent producing nation, responsible for about 20
percent of the worlds goods a little more than China produces.
China leads the world in low-margin electronics assembly, textiles, and some types of machinery; the
United States, on the other hand, is a high-end producer. The average person assumes we dont make
anything because we dont make a lot of what a typical consumer buys. Instead, we make jet turbines,
helicopters, sophisticated airliners and business jets, electric generators, radar, chemicals and plastics,
satellites, and all kinds of weapons.
Despite years of flat or declining budgets, the United States has retained its lead in space. Private
companies like SpaceX are building some of the worlds most sophisticated and efficient rockets (and will
resume launching people into space), while Orbital Sciences and the United Launch Alliance retain the
lead in satellites.
Evidence abounds that even more manufacturing is coming to the United States. A new wave of it
began before the crash in 2008, stopped while the world caught its breath, and is now resuming. The
domestic automobile industry is in the midst of upgrading its manufacturing plants, foreign auto
companies are expanding in the U.S., and companies like General Electric are making more of their white
goods domestically. And whats behind Americas return to manufacturing? Two things
An Energy Bonanza
First, Americas energy bonanza has changed the equation. This makes the United States, for many
chemical companies, the preferred place to manufacture. Germanys BASF, the worlds largest chemical
company, has been investing $1 billion a year in the United States to expand its facilities and take
advantage of Americas cheap natural gas to use as a feedstock. Dow Chemical is expanding its
investment in the U.S. for the same reason.
How cheap is Americas natural gas? Over the past year, it has on average cost around $4 to buy a
million BTUs worth of natural gas in the U.S. The same amount of natural gas cost about $14 in
Europe, $15 in China, and about $16 in Japan. Not only can natural gas be used as a feedstock for
chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, paints, plastics, and cosmetics, in 2013 the Cummins Corp. an engine
manufacturer, began building an engine for long-haul trucks optimized to run on natural gas.
Americas energy bonanza is not a short-lived phenomenon. It could be with us for a century, perhaps
even longer. As it develops, the U.S. will shift from energy importer to energy independent, then to
net energy exporter. As that happens, the trade deficit will fall. Indeed, it could even turn positive.
Abundant Capital
The Great Recession did what recessions tend to do. It shifted debt from the private side of the countrys
balance sheet to the public side. The result has been that the government has a lot of debt, while
households are in better shape than in decades. Today, households use a smaller share of their incomes
to pay off their credit cards, mortgages, and other debts than at any time in the last 35 years.

Hegemony Core
While households have been trimming down their debt, the value of peoples savings, investments, and
retirement accounts has recovered from the recessionary low. In addition, since falling during the Great
Recession, home prices are recovering, too.
Partly as a result of the slowdown, partly as a result of increases in productivity, and partly as a result of
renegotiating their debt at highly favorable rates in the aftermath of the downturn, companies are flush
with cash. Although estimates vary, American companies have between $4 and $5 trillion in liquid assets,
a sum greater than the size of the German economy.
Americas continued progress will be driven by creativity, manufacturing excellence, abundant
energy, and large capital reserves. Whereas some countries might enjoy the effects of one or two of
these forces, no country but the U.S. has all four going for them. For the first time since the Great
Recession, the economic winds are at our backs.
Im not suggesting that the U.S. doesnt have problems. We certainly have our share. What I will say is
that we now have resources available to fix those problems. While Im at it, Ill also note the good news
that Americans are personally healthier than in decades. Its enough to make you want to believe in a
new American Century.
Alarmists including Mead misread power politics 70 years of US leadership

has locked in stable and expansive world order
Ikenberry, Princeton Politics and International Affairs Professor, 14
[John G., May/June, Foreign Affairs, The Illusion of Geopolitics,
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&sid=37552f35-a63a-4822-b8f087b9bfde0e63%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d
%3d#db=bth&AN=95603432, accessed: 7-8-14, JY]
The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order

Walter Russell Mead paints a disturbing portrait of the United States' geopolitical predicament. As
he sees it, an increasingly formidable coalition of illiberal powers -- China, Iran, and Russia -- is
determined to undo the post-Cold War settlement and the U.S.-led global order that stands behind
it. Across Eurasia, he argues, these aggrieved states are bent on building spheres of influence to threaten
the foundations of U.S. leadership and the global order. So the United States must rethink its optimism,
including its post-Cold War belief that rising non-Western states can be persuaded to join the West and
play by its rules. For Mead, the time has come to confront the threats from these increasingly dangerous
geopolitical foes.
But Mead's alarmism is based on a colossal misreading of modern power realities. It is a misreading
of the logic and character of the existing world order, which is more stable and expansive than
Mead depicts, leading him to overestimate the ability of the "axis of weevils" to undermine it. And
it is a misreading of China and Russia, which are not full-scale revisionist powers but part-time
spoilers at best, as suspicious of each other as they are of the outside world. True, they look for
opportunities to resist the United States' global leadership, and recently, as in the past, they have

Hegemony Core
pushed back against it, particularly when confronted in their own neighborhoods. But even these
conflicts are fueled more by weakness -- their leaders' and regimes' -- than by strength. They have no
appealing brand. And when it comes to their overriding interests, Russia and, especially, China are
deeply integrated into the world economy and its governing institutions.
Mead also mischaracterizes the thrust of U.S. foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, he
argues, the United States has ignored geopolitical issues involving territory and spheres of influence
and instead adopted a Pollyannaish emphasis on building the global order. But this is a false
dichotomy. The United States does not focus on issues of global order, such as arms control and
trade, because it assumes that geopolitical conflict is gone forever; it undertakes such efforts
precisely because it wants to manage great-power competition. Order building is not premised on
the end of geopolitics; it is about how to answer the big questions of geopolitics.
Indeed, the construction of a U.S.-led global order did not begin with the end of the Cold War; it
won the Cold War. In the nearly 70 years since World War II, Washington has undertaken
sustained efforts to build a far-flung system of multilateral institutions, alliances, trade agreements,
and political partnerships. This project has helped draw countries into the United States' orbit. It
has helped strengthen global norms and rules that undercut the legitimacy of nineteenth-century-style
spheres of influence, bids for regional domination, and territorial grabs. And it has given the United
States the capacities, partnerships, and principles to confront today's great-power spoilers and
revisionists, such as they are. Alliances, partnerships, multilateralism, democracy -- these are the
tools of U.S. leadership, and they are winning, not losing, the twenty-first-century struggles over
geopolitics and the world order.
No challenge to US economy, alliances, deterrence, geography

THE GENTLE GIANT

In 1904, the English geographer Haiford Mackinder wrote that the great power that controlled the
heartland of Eurasia would command "the World-Island" and thus the world itself. For Mead, Eurasia
has returned as the great prize of geopolitics. Across the far reaches of this supercontinent, he
argues, China, Iran, and Russia are seeking to establish their spheres of influence and challenge
U.S. interests, slowly but relentlessly attempting to dominate Eurasia and thereby threaten the United
States and the rest of the world.
This vision misses a deeper reality. In matters of geopolitics (not to mention demographics, politics,
and ideas), the United States has a decisive advantage over China, Iran, and Russia. Although the
United States will no doubt come down from the peak of hegemony that it occupied during the
unipolar era, its power is still unrivaled. Its wealth and technological advantages remain far out of

Hegemony Core
the reach of China and Russia, to say nothing of Iran. Its recovering economy, now bolstered by
massive new natural gas resources, allows it to maintain a global military presence and credible
security commitments.
Indeed, Washington enjoys a unique ability to win friends and influence states. According to a study
led by the political scientist Brett Ashley Leeds, the United States boasts military partnerships with
more than 60 countries, whereas Russia counts eight formal allies and China has just one (North
Korea). As one British diplomat told me several years ago, "China doesn't seem to do alliances." But the
United States does, and they pay a double dividend: not only do alliances provide a global platform for
the projection of U.S. power, but they also distribute the burden of providing security. The military
capabilities aggregated in this U.S.-led alliance system outweigh anything China or Russia might
generate for decades to come.
Then there are the nuclear weapons. These arms, which the United States, China, and Russia all
possess (and Iran is seeking), help the United States in two ways. First, thanks to the logic of mutual
assured destruction, they radically reduce the likelihood of great-power war. Such upheavals have
provided opportunities for past great powers, including the United States in World War II, to entrench
their own international orders. The atomic age has robbed China and Russia of this opportunity. Second,
nuclear weapons also make China and Russia more secure, giving them assurance that the United
States will never invade. That's a good thing, because it reduces the likelihood that they will resort
to desperate moves, born of insecurity, that risk war and undermine the liberal order.
Geography reinforces the United States' other advantages. As the only great power not surrounded
by other great powers, the country has appeared less threatening to other states and was able to rise
dramatically over the course of the last century without triggering a war. After the Cold War, when
the United States was the world's sole superpower, other global powers, oceans away, did not even
attempt to balance against it. In fact, the United States' geographic position has led other countries to
worry more about abandonment than domination. Allies in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have
sought to draw the United States into playing a greater role in their regions. The result is what the
historian Geir Lundestad has called an "empire by invitation."
The United States' geographic advantage is on full display in Asia. Most countries there see China as a
greater potential danger -- due to its proximity, if nothing else -- than the United States. Except for the
United States, every major power in the world lives in a crowded geopolitical neighborhood where shifts
in power routinely provoke counterbalancing -- including by one another. China is discovering this
dynamic today as surrounding states react to its rise by modernizing their militaries and reinforcing their
alliances. Russia has known it for decades, and has faced it most recently in Ukraine, which in recent
years has increased its military spending and sought closer ties to the EU.
Geographic isolation has also given the United States reason to champion universal principles that
allow it to access various regions of the world. The country has long promoted the open-door policy
and the principle of self-determination and opposed colonialism -- less out of a sense of idealism
than due to the practical realities of keeping Europe, Asia, and the Middle East open for trade and
diplomacy. In the late 1930s, the main question facing the United States was how large a geopolitical
space, or "grand area," it would need to exist as a great power in a world of empires, regional blocs, and
spheres of influence. World War II made the answer clear: the country's prosperity and security depended
on access to every region. And in the ensuing decades, with some important and damaging exceptions,
such as Vietnam, the United States has embraced postimperial principles.

Hegemony Core
It was during these postwar years that geopolitics and order building converged. A liberal international
framework was the answer that statesmen such as Dean Acheson, George Kennan, and George Marshall
offered to the challenge of Soviet expansionism. The system they built strengthened and enriched the
United States and its allies, to the detriment of its illiberal opponents. It also stabilized the world
economy and established mechanisms for tackling global problems. The end of the Cold War has
not changed the logic behind this project.
No challengers interdependence checks realistic ambitions against international

order they are regionally ambitious spoilers at worse
REVISIONISM REVISITED
Not only does Mead underestimate the strength of the United States and the order it built; he also
overstates the degree to which China and Russia are seeking to resist both. (Apart from its nuclear
ambitions, Iran looks like a state engaged more in futile protest than actual resistance, so it shouldn't
be considered anything close to a revisionist power.) Without a doubt, China and Russia desire greater
regional influence. China has made aggressive claims over maritime rights and nearby contested islands,
and it has embarked on an arms buildup. Putin has visions of reclaiming Russia's dominance in its "near
abroad." Both great powers bristle at U.S. leadership and resist it when they can.
But China and Russia are not true revisionists. As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami
has said, Putin's foreign policy is "more a reflection of his resentment of Russia's geopolitical
marginalization than a battle cry from a rising empire." China, of course, is an actual rising power,
and this does invite dangerous competition with U.S. allies in Asia. But China is not currently trying
to break those alliances or overthrow the wider system of regional security governance embodied in
the Association or southeast Asian Nations and the East Asia Summit. And even if China harbors
ambitions of eventually doing so, U.S. security partnerships in the region are, if anything, getting
stronger, not weaker. At most, China and Russia are spoilers. They do not have the interests -- let
alone the ideas, capacities, or allies -- to lead them to upend existing global rules and institutions.
In fact, although they resent that the United States stands at the top of the current geopolitical
system, they embrace the underlying logic of that framework, and with good reason. Openness
gives them access to trade, investment, and technology from other societies. Rules give them tools to
protect their sovereignty and interests. Despite controversies over the new idea of "the responsibility to
protect" (which has been applied only selectively), the current world order enshrines the age-old norms of
state sovereignty and nonintervention. Those Westphalian principles remain the bedrock of world
politics -- and China and Russia have tied their national interests to them (despite Putin's disturbing
irredentism).

Hegemony Core
It should come as no surprise, then, that China and Russia have become deeply integrated into the
existing international order. They are both permanent members of the UN Security Council, with
veto rights, and they both participate actively in the World Trade Organization, the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G-20. They are geopolitical insiders, sitting at all the high
tables of global governance.
China, despite its rapid ascent, has no ambitious global agenda; it remains fixated inward, on
preserving party rule. Some Chinese intellectuals and political figures, such as Yan Xuetong and Zhu
Chenghu, do have a wish list of revisionist goals. They see the Western system as a threat and are waiting
for the day when China can reorganize the international order. But these voices do not reach very far into
the political elite. Indeed, Chinese leaders have moved away from their earlier calls for sweeping change.
In 2007, at its Central Committee meeting, the Chinese Communist Party replaced previous proposals
for a "new international economic order" with calls for more modest reforms centering on fairness
and justice. The Chinese scholar Wang Jisi has argued that this move is "subtle but important,"
shifting China's orientation toward that of a global reformer. China now wants a larger role in the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, greater voice in such forums as the G-20, and
wider global use of its currency. That is not the agenda of a country trying to revise the economic
order.
China and Russia are also members in good standing of the nuclear club. The centerpiece of the Cold
War settlement between the United States and the Soviet Union (and then Russia) was a shared effort to
limit atomic weapons. Although U.S.-Russian relations have since soured, the nuclear component of their
arrangement has held. In 2010, Moscow and Washington signed the New START treaty, which requires
mutual reductions in long-range nuclear weapons.
Before the 1990s, China was a nuclear outsider. Although it had a modest arsenal, it saw itself as a voice
of the nonnuclear developing world and criticized arms control agreements and test bans. But in a
remarkable shift, China has since come to support the array of nuclear accords, including the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It has affirmed a "no first use"
doctrine, kept its arsenal small, and taken its entire nuclear force off alert. China has also played an active
role in the Nuclear Security Summit, an initiative proposed by Obama in 2009, and it has joined the "P5
process," a collaborate effort to safeguard nuclear weapons.
Across a wide range of issues, China and Russia are acting more like established great powers than
revisionist ones. They often choose to shun multilateralism, but so, too, on occasion do the United
States and other powerful democracies. (Beijing has ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea;
Washington has not.) And China and Russia are using global rules and institutions to advance their own
interests. Their struggles with the United States revolve around gaining voice within the existing
order and manipulating it to suit their needs. They wish to enhance their positions within the
system, but they are not trying to replace it.
Mead and other alarmists flawed expansion of democratic liberal order reduces
non-democratic influence Russia and China are in a geopolitical box

Hegemony Core
THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY

Mead's vision of a contest over Eurasia between the United States and China, Iran, and Russia
misses the more profound power transition under way: the increasing ascendancy of liberal
capitalist democracy. To be sure, many liberal democracies are struggling at the moment with slow
economic growth, social inequality, and political instability. But the spread of liberal democracy
throughout the world, beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating after the Cold War, has
dramatically strengthened the United States' position and tightened the geopolitical circle around
China and Russia.
It's easy to forget how rare liberal democracy once was. Until the twentieth century, it was confined
to the West and parts of Latin America. After World War II, however, it began to reach beyond those
realms, as newly independent states established self-rule. During the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s,
military coups and new dictators put the brakes on democratic transitions. But in the late 1970s, what the
political scientist Samuel Huntington termed "the third wave" of democratization washed over southern
Europe, Latin America, and East Asia. Then the Cold War ended, and a cohort of former communist states
in eastern Europe were brought into the democratic fold. By the late 1990s, 60 percent of all countries
had become democracies.
Although some backsliding has occurred, the more significant trend has been the emergence of a
group of democratic middle powers, including Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South
Korea, and Turkey. These rising democracies are acting as stakeholders in the international system:
pushing for multilateral cooperation, seeking greater rights and responsibilities, and exercising
influence through peaceful means.
Such countries lend the liberal world order new geopolitical heft. As the political scientist Larry
Diamond has noted, if Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey regain their
economic footing and strengthen their democratic rule, the G-20, which also includes the United
States and European countries, "will have become a strong 'club of democracies,' with only Russia,
China, and Saudi Arabia holding out." The rise of a global middle class of democratic states has
turned China and Russia into outliers -- not, as Mead fears, legitimate contestants for global
leadership.
In fact, the democratic upsurge has been deeply problematic for both countries. In eastern Europe,
former Soviet states and satellites have gone democratic and joined the West. As worrisome as
Russian President Vladimir Putins moves in Crimea have been, they reflect Russia's geopolitical
vulnerability, not its strength. Over the last two decades, the West has crept closer to Russia's borders.
In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland entered NATO. They were joined in 2004 by seven
more former members of the Soviet bloc, and in 2009, by Albania and Croatia. In the meantime, six
former Soviet republics have headed down the path to membership by joining NATO'S Partnership for
Peace program. Mead makes much of Putin's achievements in Georgia, Armenia, and Crimea. Yet

Hegemony Core
even though Putin is winning some small battles, he is losing the war. Russia is not on the rise; to
the contrary, it is experiencing one of the greatest geopolitical contractions of any major power in
the modern era.
Democracy is encircling China, too. In the mid-1980s, India and Japan were the only Asian
democracies, but since then, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and
Thailand have joined the club. Myanmar (also called Burma) has made cautious steps toward multiparty
rule -- steps that have come, as China has not failed to notice, in conjunction with warming relations with
the United States. China now lives in a decidedly democratic neighborhood.
These political transformations have put China and Russia on the defensive. Consider the recent
developments in Ukraine. The economic and political currents in most of the country are inexorably
flowing westward, a trend that terrifies Putin. His only recourse has been to strong-arm Ukraine into
resisting the EU and remaining in Russia's orbit. Although he may be able to keep Crimea under
Russian control, his grip on the rest of the country is slipping. As the EU diplomat Robert Cooper has
noted, Putin can try to delay the moment when Ukraine "affiliates with the EU, but he can't stop
it." Indeed, Putin might not even be able to accomplish that, since his provocative moves may serve
only to speed Ukraine's move toward Europe.
China faces a similar predicament in Taiwan. Chinese leaders sincerely believe that Taiwan is part of
China, but the Taiwanese do not. The democratic transition on the island has made its inhabitants' claims
to nationhood more deeply felt and legitimate. A 2011 survey found that if the Taiwanese could be assured
that China would not attack Taiwan, 80 percent of them would support declaring independence. Like
Russia, China wants geopolitical control over its neighborhood. But the spread of democracy to all
corners of Asia has made old-fashioned domination the only way to achieve that, and that option is
costly and self-defeating.
While the rise of democratic states makes life more difficult for China and Russia, it makes the
world safer for the United States. Those two powers may count as U.S. rivals, but the rivalry takes
place on a very uneven playing field: the United States has the most friends, and the most capable
ones, too. Washington and its allies account for 75 percent of global military spending. Democratization
has put China and Russia in a geopolitical box.
Iran is not surrounded by democracies, but it is threatened by a restive pro-democracy movement at
home. More important, Iran is the weakest member of Mead's axis, with a much smaller economy and
military than the United States and the other great powers. It is also the target of the strongest
international sanctions regime ever assembled, with help from China and Russia. The Obama
administration's diplomacy with Iran may or may not succeed, but it is not clear what Mead would do
differently to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. U.S. President Barack Obama's
approach has the virtue of offering Tehran a path by which it can move from being a hostile
regional power to becoming a more constructive, nonnuclear member of the international
community -- a potential geopolitical game changer that Mead fails to appreciate.
No challenge to global order alliances, institutions, interdependence check there

is no realistic alternative

Hegemony Core
HERE TO STAY
Ultimately, even if China and Russia do attempt to contest the basic terms of the current global
order, the adventure will be daunting and self-defeating. These powers aren't just up against the
United States; they would also have to contend with the most globally organized and deeply
entrenched order the world has ever seen, one that is dominated by states that are liberal, capitalist,
and democratic. This order is backed by a U.S.-led network of alliances, institutions, geopolitical
bargains, client states, and democratic partnerships. It has proved dynamic and expansive, easily
integrating rising states, beginning with Japan and Germany after World War II. It has shown a capacity
for shared leadership, as exemplified by such forums as the G-8 and the G-20. It has allowed rising nonWestern countries to trade and grow, sharing the dividends of modernization. It has accommodated
a surprisingly wide variety of political and economic models -- social democratic (western Europe),
neoliberal (the United Kingdom and the United States), and state capitalist (East Asia). The prosperity
of nearly every country -- and the stability of its government -- fundamentally depends on this
order.
In the age of liberal order, revisionist struggles are a fool's errand. Indeed, China and Russia know
this. They do not have grand visions of an alternative order. For them, international relations are
mainly about the search for commerce and resources, the protection of their sovereignty, and,
where possible, regional domination. They have shown no interest in building their own orders or
even taking full responsibility for the current one and have offered no alternative visions of global
economic or political progress. That's a critical shortcoming, since international orders rise and fall
not simply with the power of the leading state; their success also hinges on whether they are seen as
legitimate and whether their actual operation solves problems that both weak and powerful states care
about. In the struggle for world order, China and Russia (and certainly Iran) are simply not in the
game.
US hegemony is highreject their declinist argumentsempirically, declinist

predictions about the US have been wrong for two hundred years
Dowd, Sagamore Institute for Policy Research Senior Fellow, 7
[Alan W., August/September 2007, Hoover Institution, Declinism,
http://www.hoover.org/research/declinism, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
Are the declinists right about Americas impending demise? Perhaps. But perhaps theyre wrong:
After all, declinism has a long history and a strange way of rearing its head when the U.S. is riding
the waves of what Churchill called the primacy of power. Indeed, it is during periods of U.S.
ascendance or perhaps better said, periods that subsequently are recognized as having been

Hegemony Core
ascendant that the declinists usually start sounding the (false) alarms. The decline and fall of
America mantra has become an almost-decennial prophecy.
By the mid-eighteenth century, the University of Virginias James Ceaser has written, it was widely
accepted in Europe that due chiefly to atmospheric conditions, in particular excessive humidity, all
living things in the Americas were not only inferior to those found in Europe but also in a condition
of decline.Not surprisingly, the men who forged the American republic took issue with this early form of
declinism. In fact, Ceaser notes, Alexander Hamilton rebutted Europes pseudoscientific slander
in Federalist No. 11. Pointing to the arrogant pretensions of Europe, Hamilton observed that men
admired as profound philosophers have in direct terms attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority
and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America. He
called on his countrymen to vindicate the honor of the human race by building one great American
system superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, able to dictate the terms of the
connection between the old and the new world!
Descending and ascending
The 13 colonies hugging the Atlantic seaboard would rally behind Hamiltons vision and redefine the
nature of their connection with the Old World, but the revolutionary moment was short-lived. After
defeating the British Empire in a brutal war for independence, the young republic was soundly swatted
back into its place less than 30 years later during the War of 1812. The war saw U.S. forces routed in
Canada, U.S. sailors captured and impressed into duty on British warships, U.S. ports blockaded,
and the U.S. Capitol and White House set ablaze by a British invasion force. When measured
against Great Britain and against its own position just a generation earlier it appeared that
the United States had declined drastically.
Two generations later, the Civil War would decapitate the national government and deform the
nation. As Jay Winiks April 1865 (HarperCollins, 2001) reminds us, the war not only called into
question almost a hundred years of independent self-government, but also embodied decline in its purest
sense. Winik recounts savage episodes of murder, mayhem, guerilla warfare, terrorism, vigilantism, and
state-sanctioned brutality on a par with anything we condemn today innocent civilians rounded up and
summarily executed; cities burned to the ground; entire counties depopulated; mutilations and
beheadings; all manner of torture. After Lincolns murder, General Sherman openly feared Americas
slipping into anarchy. The Union general wondered who was left on this continent to give order and
shape to the now disjointed elements of the government. The war had rolled back American civilization,
and recovery of what was lost was anything but certain. America had declined immeasurably or
perhaps better said, descended.
Americans suffered savage incidents of terrorism during the Civil War on a par with anything we
condemn today.
Of course, Americans on both sides of the war would rebuild. By the early twentieth century, the
United States would claim an empire of its own, with President Theodore Roosevelt using U.S.
warships to flex American muscle in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Pacific and President Woodrow
Wilson deploying American troops to Russia and Europe. Indeed, the rise of the United States in the
global pecking order was aided by the economic and military devastation visited upon Europe by the
Great War. Yet as historian Benjamin Rhodes has observed, Americas image abroad sank
disastrously during the Coolidge presidency, mainly due to European resentment over how the

Hegemony Core
U.S. handled the role of global creditor. Washingtons mishandling of its newfound status as an
economic-military power yielded a United States weaker than the nation that had tipped the balance in the
Great War.
The U.S. failed to respond to the threats posed by the rise of power-projecting dictatorships in
Europe and the Pacific threats punctuated by Japans attack on the uss Panay in December 1937 and
numerous German attacks in the Atlantic and the Red Sea. As if to underscore American weakness,
President Franklin Roosevelt famously sent word to Hitler in 1938 that the United States has no
political involvements in Europe. The German dictator got the message. Washingtons diplomatic
deference and military meekness, says Gerhard Weinberg in A World At Arms (Cambridge, 1994),
confirmed Hitlers assessment that this was a weak country, incapable, because of its racial
mixture and feeble democratic government, of organizing and maintaining strong military forces.
Losing the postwar peace, losing the Cold War
In 1945, notes Derek Leebaert in The Fifty Year Wound (Little Brown, 2002), America had the strut and
swagger of a confident nation beating back tyrants. . . . The country was alive with strength and purpose.
But by 1946, less than an eye-blink in the lifespan of a great power, everything had changed. The
swagger was gone, replaced by uncertainty and worry.
Consider John Dos Passoss gloomy analysis of postwar Germany, which appeared in the January 7,
1946Life. The U.S. had just flattened Imperial Japan and plowed into the heart of Hitlers Thousand Year
Reich, yet Dos Passos could say Weve lost the peace. . . . Friend and foe alike look you accusingly in
the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American.
Pointing to the postwar division of Europe, which left half of the continent free and the other under Soviet
domination, historian Michael Hunt has noted that American policymakers opened this period of
ostensible dominance by losing Eastern Europe.Leebaert adds texture to the portrait of postwar decline.
Ten months after the wars end, he writes, not one U.S. Army division or Air Force group could be
rated ready for combat. General Marshall himself called the postwar force a hollow shell. In fact, as
late as 1949, the U.S. had just 12 battle-ready tanks in Germany. Likewise, the evidence in occupied
Japan pointed to Americas virtual collapse as an enduring military power. Each division of the Eighth
Army, Leebaert reports, was a thousand rifles short, the Fifth Air Force still had no jet fighters in 1949,
and there were just 500 U.S. soldiers based in Korea. Thus, as world war gave way to Cold War, The
United States neither looked nor felt ready to contain anybody.
As the Cold War began in earnest, accusations over Who lost China? rang out across the U.S.
Worries about Americas decline soon spiked when communist forces rolled through Korea. General
MacArthurs daring amphibious landing at Inchon would lead not to victory over the invaders but
stalemate. Against a global backdrop of communist revolution, U.S. power seemed to be ebbing and
Washington seemed to be expending the power it had at an unsustainable clip.
Between the Potsdam Conference and the Berlin airlift, President Harry Truman committed the American
people to support any nation resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside
pressures. He poured unheard-of sums into a standing peacetime army and oversaw the creation of the
Department of Defense, National Security Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and nato to wage a new kind of
war. He signed on to permanent defense treaties in Western Europe and the Pacific, opened the door to
scores of other entangling alliances, repackaged war as police action, and justified it all because of the

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nature of the enemy and the omnipresent threat it posed. If we falter in our leadership, he warned, we
may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
Critics warned that Truman would weaken the Constitution, militarize U.S. foreign policy, and destroy the
UN.
Trumans doctrine wasnt a ready-made road map for waging the Cold War, according to Leebaert.
Instead, the Cold Wars first four years which coincided with Trumans first four years as president
were filled with starts and stops rather than any considered policy or long-range goals. The result: a
patched-together postwar order.
Nor did Americans immediately rally around Trumans battle plan. As historian Walter LaFeber recalls,
Trumans critics tore apart his doctrine and policies. They warned that Truman would weaken the
Constitution, overinflate the presidency, militarize U.S. foreign policy and destroy the un.
Still others argued that, despite all its spending, deployments and pronouncements, Americas Cold
War battle plan was not working. Even in the early 1950s, as Barry Goldwater recalled in The
Conscience of a Conservative (Victor Publishing, 1960), it was clear that we were losing the Cold
War. Lamenting the deterioration of Americas fortunes, the arch-conservative worried about an
enemy with the will and capacity to dominate absolutely every square mile of the globe and warned that
a craven fear of death is entering the American consciousness. Indeed, Washingtons nonreaction to the
Soviet invasion of Hungary just three years after the armistice in Korea seemed to trace the outer limits of
Americas will, if not its power. As the bloody tragedy played itself out on the streets of Budapest,
America watched, waited and did nothing, Patrick Buchanan bitterly recounts in his introduction. The
sense of frustration and failure was all the greater because Moscow had taken the risk of war, and
Moscow had won.
U.S. political power and prestige suffered yet another blow when Sputnik rocketed into orbit in 1957 and
Moscow took the high ground in the space race. Senator Henry Jackson called it a national week of
shame and danger. Senator Lyndon Johnson warned that control of space means control of the world.
Of course, the U.S. faced terrestrial problems as well. The Soviet Union increasingly appeared to be a
triumphal industrial giant, Leebaert says. The New York Times, he notes, predicted that Soviet
industrial output would exceed Americas by the end of the twentieth century, and the cia surmised
that the Soviet economy would be three times larger than Americas by 2000. The overwhelming
question, Leebaert writes of the 1950s, was whether an apparently soft, even hedonistic American
consumer society had the stamina for a long, inconclusive contest with communism.
Senator John Kennedy was worried about the answer to that question. Running for president in 1960, he
pointed to a missile gap with the Soviet Union as evidence of Americas weakening defenses. We
are . . . gambling with our survival, he warned. This years defense budget is our last chance to do
something about it, he added for dramatic effect.
Among those echoing Kennedy was his Democratic colleague Joseph Clark. Under the headline U.S.
Decline Seen in Eisenhower Era, The New York Times reported on a May 1960 speech in which Clark
derided timid leadership in both foreign and domestic affairs. Like Goldwater, he expressed worries
that Americas world role had shrunk and called for a build-up in American military muscle.

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Yet even after Kennedy had swooped in to save America from decline, it continued to look as if the U.S.
had fallen fast and hard from its World War 11 perch. Ineptitude at the Bay of Pigs and irresolute
responses to earlier communist challenges would conspire to invite the very thing Churchill had warned
against in his Cold War preamble: temptations to a trial of strength.
In fact, by building missile bases and airstrips on Cuba, Moscow was exploiting a gaping hole in
Americas veneer of invincibility. The ensuing Cuban missile crisis merely exposed that gap to the rest of
the world and prompted some governments to develop alternative sources of deterrence: Shaken by the
notion that, in LaFebers clever phrase, Washington had dragged them uncomfortably close to
annihilation without representation, the French and others grew ever more independent.
The trial of strength over Cuba would precede a trial by fire in Vietnam. In Modern
Times (HarperCollins,1983), Paul Johnson calls Vietnam and the consequent crisis of confidence
Americas suicide attempt. During the Vietnam War, Washington entered into 16 bombing pauses
and 72 peace initiatives. These self-imposed restraints, as Johnson observes, were interpreted by friend
and foe alike as evidence not of humanity, but of guilt and lack of righteous conviction and decline.
The wars final chapter, which saw North Vietnam violate the peace accords with impunity and
Washington beat a hasty retreat out of Saigon, would be the gravest and most humiliating defeat in
American history.
In the midst of this macro-humiliation, there were countless smaller humiliations, each serving as a
piece in the dark mosaic of American decline:
French leader Charles de Gaulle withdrew from natos military structure in 1966 and afterwards pursued a
separate peace with Moscow.
Western Europe averted its gaze from the agony of its patron and protector. Not even Britain would lend a
hand in Vietnam.
When Israel called for help and the U.S. answered during the 1973 war, nato turned its back. Only
Portugal would grant overflight rights to U.S. supply planes.
North Korea openly challenged and mocked U.S. power during the Vietnam debacle. Pyongyang seized
the uss Pueblo in international waters and tortured its crew for 11 months, shot down a U.S. plane in
international airspace, and, according to Leebaert, hacked to death two U.S. officers in the 38th parallels
demilitarized zone.
In the American sphere, Venezuela sided with opec and nationalized U.S. firms; left-wing forces ousted a
U.S.-backed government in Nicaragua; and Argentina broke ranks and shipped grain to Moscow.
After Vietnam, the United States appeared to be in a geopolitical freefall. Amid recession, oil
embargoes and assassinations, Johnson says, Soviet leaders referred to the deepening general crisis in
the United States, and Beijing dismissed America as a power in decline. Even Washington seemed to
believe Americas best days were behind it. Leebaert records an exchange between Admiral Elmo
Zumwalt and Henry Kissinger in which Kissinger concluded the United States had passed its high point
like so many other civilizations, adding that he was trying to persuade the Russians to give us the best
deal we can get.
It wasnt a very good deal. Coming on the heels of Vietnam, dtente was an expression of American
weakness. A 1976 report by Donald Rumsfeld conceded that in the event of war, Americas ability to

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reinforce nato or come to the aid of Japan or Israel was in doubt.Indeed, according to Johnson,
Americas decline in the Seventies seemed even more precipitous. in contrast with the apparent solidity
and self-confidence of the Soviet regime. By 1971, he notes, Moscow had bypassed Washington in
numbers of land-based and sub-based nuclear missiles. The ussr built some1,300 warships
between 1962 and 1977, the U.S. just 302; and while Washington retracted and retreated, Moscows
proxies established themselves across the Third World.
Weve become fearful to compete with the Soviet Union, one presidential candidate concluded in
a campaign speech. I want to see our nation return to a posture and an image and a standard to make us
proud once again . . . we ought to be a beacon for nations who search for peace and who search for
freedom. The words could have been spoken by Ronald Reagan, but in fact it was Jimmy Carter, who
three years later would deliver a sermon to the American people essentially blaming them for American
decline. Johnson takes note of Carters conclusion that Americas capacity to shape global events was
very limited. This was never more apparent than during Irans unchallenged violation of the U.S.
embassy in Tehran, which would mark the postwar nadir of American power and, it appeared, the
fulfillment of declinist prophecies.
Bipolar disorder
The country did not elect Reagan out of serious belief that he would change things, Derek Leebaert
argues, but because it felt cornered. If embassies could be seized with impunity, if opec could gear up to
new heights of effrontery, if the United States was behaving as if its liberties depended on the Peoples
Republic of China, then America was indeed looking like a pitiful giant and perhaps well on the way to
becoming one.
As a candidate, Reagan ticked off a seemingly endless list of U.S. vulnerabilities and outright
defeats in the global conflict with Moscow: Soviet troops in Afghanistan, failure in the arms race,
American hostages languishing in Iran, propaganda defeats at the un, faltering leadership in Europe.
Reagans solution was simple. Rather than accommodating Moscow through dtente or containing it
behind curtains and parallels, the United States would defeat the Soviet system once and for all: We
win, he said. They lose.
Even as Reagan was reformulating Americas grand strategy, those in the declinist school clung
tenaciously to their arguments. In his treatise on decline, The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers (Random House, 1987) Paul Kennedy wondered whether the countrys electoral and political
system had the capacity to allow policymakers to reformulate the grand strategy in light of the larger,
uncontrollable changes taking place in world affairs. His implication was not just that the U.S. political
system was outmoded, but that American power was outmatched.
The book laid out in grim detail how the United States was tumbling toward the same fate that had
felled the dominant powers of earlier centuries; how the American share of world power has been
declining relatively faster than Russias over the past few decades; and how U.S. defense outlays and
commitments were unsustainable and were pushing the United States toward the same imperial
overstretch that had undone earlier powers.
From Kennedys perspective, U.S. interests were too numerous, too widespread and too expensive to
sustain. The bipolar system, he said, was giving way to a multipolar one. Thus, he reasoned, there was a
need to manage affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States takes place slowly and smoothly.

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Kennedys requiem was representative of a chorus of declinist predictions in the mid- to late 1980s.
Writing just a few years ahead of Kennedy, Richard Barnet declared that the American Century had
lasted about 26 years. He mocked the Reagan administration for promising to reverse the stunning
decline of American power that marked the 1970s, for alarming millions in the United States and
Europe, and, finally, for retreating from its hard line with Moscow.
In 1988, Flora Lewis sighed that Talk of U.S. decline is real in the sense that the U.S. can no longer pull
all the levers of command or pay all the bills.
Even in trying to deflect the declinists, James Schlesinger conceded in 1988 that the U.S. was no longer
economically the preponderant power . . . no longer militarily the dominant power . . . no longer can
achieve more or less whatever it desires.
The signs of decline are evident to those who care to see them, declared Peter Passell in 1990,
noting that the U.S. had lost its competitive edge and was losing its battle with the Japanese juggernaut.
Europeans and Asians, wrote Anthony Lewis in 1990, are already finding confirmation of their
suspicion that the United States is in decline.
Citing Americas dependence on foreign sources for energy and crucial weaknesses in the military, Tom
Wicker concluded that maintaining superpower status is becoming more difficult nearly impossible
for the United States.
Other declinists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Leebaert recalls, were predicting that the last
decade of the twentieth century would be when the American empire ran out of gas and took the
British route to second-class economic status.

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Hegemony Inevitable AT Economic Challengers

No realistic economic challengers
Fortunately, the liberal principles that Washington has pushed enjoy near-universal appeal, because
they have tended to be a good fit with the modernizing forces of economic growth and social
advancement. As the historian Charles Maier has put it, the United States surfed the wave of twentiethcentury modernization. But some have argued that this congruence between the American project
and the forces of modernity has weakened in recent years. The 2008 financial crisis, the thinking
goes, marked a world-historical turning point, at which the United States lost its vanguard role in
facilitating economic advancement.
Yet even if that were true, it hardly follows that China and Russia have replaced the United States
as the standard-bearers of the global economy. Even Mead does not argue that China, Iran, or
Russia offers the world a new model of modernity. If these illiberal powers really do threaten
Washington and the rest of the liberal capitalist world, then they will need to find and ride the next
great wave of modernization. They are unlikely to do that.

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Hegemony Inevitable Nuclear Deterrence

US deterrence sustainable empirically proven
Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies Counselor and Trustee,
Feist, CNNs Washington Bureau Chief and Senior Vice President 12
(Zbigniew, Former White House National Security Adviser, Sam, March 29, 2012, Council of Foreign
Relations, A Conversation With Zbigniew Brzezinski, http://www.cfr.org/us-strategy-andpolitics/conversation-zbigniew-brzezinski/p27829, accessed 7/4/12, YGS)
Look, that kind of a guarantee by the United States has a solid, 100 percent record of reliability. We
have protected Japan and South Korea from North Korea on that basis, and neither one of them is
pleading for a war against North Korea. We defended our allies in Europe for 40 years during the
worst days of the Cold War -- very threatening days of the Cold War -- and nothing happened. So
deterrence does work. So first of all that's one option. Secondly, if for some reason there was evidence
that the Iranians seeking a large-scale nuclear program with weaponry, we could go to the Security
Council and ask for approval for action against Iran from China and from Russia -- FEIST: Do you think
we would get it? BRZEZINSKI: Probably not. But if we don't get it, isn't that a significant message to us,
that we are no longer the unilateral policemen of the world? I think these are the kinds of things we have
to think about and talk about seriously and calmly and without hype and without too much emotion, but
with a sense of responsibility. FEIST: What if they were to get a nuclear weapon before the U.S. or Israel
took action? So imagine for a moment that we are in a world where Iran has now tested a nuclear
weapon. How de-stabilizing is that? Fareed Zakaria last week said, you know, it might not be so bad, it
might not be de-stabilizing at all. It might actually be stabilizing. BRZEZINSKI: Well, first of all, I don't
understand, frankly, what you're talking about, because how can you have a nuclear weapon without
having nuclear explosions or test it? FEIST: I'm just saying, if you have a -- if you test -- if Iran becomes
a nuclear capable power -- BRZEZINSKI: It -- I don't know what nuclear capable is. It either has them or
doesn't have them. FEIST: They have them. BRZEZINSKI: Well, that means they have had to test it.
FEIST: OK. BRZEZINSKI: After testing it, they have to weaponize it and they have to have a delivery
system. In other words, there are time sequences here. So it doesn't become weapons capable all at once.
FEIST: No. BRZEZINSKI: There are stages and stages. We have plenty of time. FEIST: So -BRZEZINSKI: And during that time, we can make it very clear that if they use that weapon to
threaten anyone, it is as if they were threatening us. And that is a system of deterrence that has
worked reliably for decades. There's no argument to the contrary because it has, except one
extremely silly argument that, somehow or other, the Iranians are messianic; they want desperately to
commit suicide, a course of action which apparently hasn't occurred to them in the course of 3,000 years
of their history. But all of a sudden, now they want to be messianic. You know who's messianic?
Netanyahu, because he talks that way. And that's a very risky position. This is why I favor the position
that most Israelis have, which is this should not be done. Public opinion polls in Israel are very clear: that
the majority of the Israelis don't want that to happen. FEIST: A strike. BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. FEIST:
Sounds like you're less concerned if Iran were to gain that power. BRZEZINSKI: Well, why should I be
so concerned if I dealt with the Soviet Union, which had 4,000 weapons, and I remember being woken
up one night at 3:00 a.m. to be told by my military assistant that we are under nuclear attack. It obviously

Hegemony Core
didn't happen, since we're all here. (Laughter.) There would have been 85,000 -- 85 million Americans
and Soviets dead six hours later. FEIST: All right, I want to talk about -- BRZEZINSKI: We deterred
them. If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter
Iran?

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Inevitable Multipolarity Fails

No real multipolarity US uses multilateralism as a cover for unilateralist motives
Grunstein, World Politics Review editor-in-chief, 12
(Judah, World Politics Review, 6-22-12, Obama's Record: Tactics Trump Strategy in an Age of
Constraints, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12085/obamas-record-tactics-trump-strategyin-an-age-of-constraints, accessed 7-8-12, CNM)
In the meantime, in the absence of diplomatic progress toward halting Irans nuclear ambitions, Obama
has resorted to covert action (Flame, Stuxnet), with unpredictable consequences for both outcomes in
Iran and broader policy precedents in the cyber domain. Along with his use of drone warfare, this
highlights another major facet of Obamas idealist-realist split, whereby his highly visible
multilateralism in support of collective action is undergirded by a hidden unilateralism in pursuit
of U.S. national interests. On one hand, the U.S. is posited as the guarantor of global stability in the
transition to an uncertain and unstable emergent order. On the other, it is placed above that order
as the unilateral rule-set enforcer. In a 21st century update of Theodore Roosevelts famous walk
softly but carry a big stick, Obama leads from behind but strikes from above.

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AT Retrenchment Ensures Hegemony Decline

Additional military spending is unnecessary and forward deployment is net worse
for hegemony; domestic actions to increase soft power are all thats needed for heg
Rothkopf, Foreign Policy Chief Editor, 7/7/14
[David, 7/7/14, Foreign Policy, Therapy for the Self-Hating Superpower,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/07/07/therapy_for_the_self_hating_superpower_ame
rican_declinism, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
What America needs is an intervention. Not another overseas intervention; it has tried those, and
they only accelerated the descent into a collective neurosis that has Americans behaving like they're
channeling Woody Allen.
No, what the country needs is a good, strong domestic intervention, along the lines of what someone
would do for a self-destructive friend or family member. Americans all gather in someone's living room -Jay Z and Beyonc probably have space for everyone at their house -- and start telling some hard truths in
the hopes that the country will snap out of this downward psychological spiral it is in.
The intervention needs to show that this mopey, downcast Eeyore of a global power is actually
doing much better than it thinks it is. The facts suggest that, come the end of this century, perhaps the
only things that will be the same on planet Earth are that America will still be seen as the richest, most
powerful nation around -- and the world will still be complaining about it.
Of all the world's major developed economies, America has best recovered from the financial crisis,
showing again its resilience and ability to reinvent itself. Thanks in no small part to this reality, North
American partners -- that is, Canada and Mexico -- are enjoying simultaneous periods of promise.
NAFTA is working, big time. For example, Texas exports almost as much to Mexico as the United States
exports to China. Integrated supply chains are fueling this, and more integration of the countries'
economies is inevitable. That's all very good, especially because, when there is growth below the border,
Mexico's youthful, energetic population is less inclined to head north (and more likely to be reliable
consumers of U.S. products back home).
Moreover, cheap energy, especially natural gas, is already driving investment flows to the United
States. That will make it easier for the country to compete in key sectors, such as petrochemicals
and other similarly energy-intensive industries, while also lowering emissions. Hitting President
Barack Obama's new goal of reducing emissions by almost a third should be a relative snap. (This, in part,
is thanks to the fact that overall emissions have already fallen 10 percent since 2005, the start date from
which the cuts are to be calculated.)
Critically, too, the U.S. budget deficit is shrinking. The total for the first eight months of this fiscal year
is the smallest since the same time period in 2008, and the overall deficit for 2014 is projected to be about
half a trillion dollars -- a big fall from $1.4 trillion in 2009. The country is certainly not out of the
woods, but it is trending in a direction that makes deficit spending sustainable.

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There is concern that budget pressures will result in America cutting back its defense spending in
some quarters and that America will therefore become weaker internationally. In their article about
American power inthis issue of Foreign Policy, for instance, Elbridge Colby and Paul Lettow fret that the
U.S. has already weakened itself by cutting $600 billion from planned defense spending over the next
decade. But that probably won't happen, given Washington's penchant for the status quo on such
things. And even if it did, that would only be a 10 percent cut (based on current spending). Given
that today America spends as much as the next 10 countries (ranked by defense budgets) combined,
the number will still be pretty darn beefy.
Some argue that, regardless of what's happening with defense and deficits, America is losing its will
to lead in the world. There are plenty of well-founded criticisms of the current administration's foreign
policy -- and I've aired them before -- but the reality is that the country is in a typical retrenchment
that follows major overseas military involvement. And historically, after World War I, World War II,
the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, America has re-engaged within a decade or two. My guess is
that, no matter who wins the presidency in 2016 (Hillary Clinton? Jeb Bush?), she or he will be more
inclined to have America play its traditional leadership role. And many of America's allies and
other actors will welcome that re-engagement in ways that would have been impossible to imagine
after the fiasco in Iraq. After all, global institutions and alliances require an engaged United States.
In short, there's every reason to expect that the 21st century might also be seen as an American
century.

Hegemony Core
AT Hard Power Decline Bad

Forward deployment is unsustainable and unnecessarystatus quo shift to reserve
forces solves their impact
Williams, MIT Security Studies Program Principal Researcher, 13
[Cindy, Nov/Dec 2013, Accepting Austerity, Foreign Affairs, 92:6, 54-64,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140158/cindy-williams/accepting-austerity, AC]
Once the government agrees on what strategy the country will pursue, it will need to reshape the military
to reflect it. Defense planners will face crucial choices about what to jettison, what to keep, and where to
add. Resource constraints will force tradeoffs among the armed services, between active and reserve
forces, and among force structure, modernization, and readiness.
If the White House and the Department of Defense really want the United States to focus more on the
Asia-Pacific region, as they claim to, then it makes sense to shift resources toward maritime forces. Wars
in that region are more likely to be fought at sea than on land. Moreover, if the United States is planning
to avoid future stability and counter-insurgency operations, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq, which
require large numbers of boots on the ground over multiple rotations, then the military will need
considerably fewer ground forces. Hagel suggested as much when he reported on the SCMR in July
2013.
Yet Hagel may find it difficult to deliver on that recommendation. At least since the 1970s, the
Department of Defense has allocated budgets among the armed services according to the same formula
every year, with the shares of the budget awarded to the army, the navy, the air force, and the Marine
Corps rarely varying by more than one percent from year to year. Changing the mix of forces will be
politically daunting. Others have tried and failed. In 2001, for example, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld launched a major internal review of the Pentagon's strategy. After rumors swirled that he
wanted to cut ground forces to free up money for airpower, space systems, and missile defense, the army
and key members of Congress balked. In a letter to Rumsfeld, 82 members of Congress warned him not
to cut the size of the army. The services' budget shares did not move.
But given the coming cuts and the country's stated grand strategy, policymakers will have to
overcome their aversion to a smaller army. If, on the other hand, the Pentagon continues to allocate
money according to the same formula as before, it will have a hard time convincing Americans that it
really intends to rebalance away from protracted ground operations and toward Asia.
As they bring the military's ground forces in line with budgetary realities, officials would also be
wise to disproportionately favor the reserve component, which includes the National Guard and the
Reserves. When deployed, reserve forces cost as much as active-duty ones, but in peacetime, they
cost just a fraction of their full-time counterparts. And they can be just as effective. Before 2001,
U.S. reserve units were generally less well equipped and less ready for their missions than their activeduty counterparts, but that changed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The army invested appreciable resources
in its reserve component, outfitting it with new equipment instead of hand-me-downs from the active
forces and staffing and training units for multiple deployments. As a result, today, Army National

Hegemony Core
Guard and Army Reserve units are arguably better equipped and more ready to fight than at any
time since World War II.
If the U.S. government is truly serious about avoiding long wars that require multiple reserve callups, then the reserve forces will prove a particularly cost-effective alternative to maintaining high
levels of active-duty troops. Even if their readiness drops back to pre-9/11 levels as the experience
accumulated in Afghanistan and Iraq recedes, the reserve forces could still be readied for war within a
year or less. And if the army ends up taking steeper budgetary cuts than the other services, then favoring
reserve forces would allow the army to avoid just the kind of devastating reduction in size that its
advocates so fear: if the reserve forces were kept at their current sizes, the army could retain about
150,000 more soldiers across its total force than if the reserves were cut in lockstep with the active
component.
Compared with the shift toward naval forces, the politics of favoring the reserves should be easy. If the
secretary of defense proposes keeping more National Guard and Reserve forces at the expense of activeduty ones, senior leaders from the active component will no doubt cry foul. But Congress is likely to side
with the secretary on this one. The National Guard has powerful champions in statehouses and on
Capitol Hill, and history suggests the active component will lose if it comes to a showdown. Even the
air force's modest proposal last year to eliminate 5,000 positions from the Air National Guard was met
with fierce resistance from its advocates; in the end, lawmakers allowed only 1,000 slots to be cut.
READY OR NOT
More generally, the Pentagon faces important tradeoffs among force structure, modernization, and
readiness. In the SCMR, the Defense Department explored two options: keeping a larger total force but
spending less to outfit it with new equipment or making deeper force reductions to free up more money
for modernization. The first option would safeguard the force's size and presence for today's missions; the
second would lead to a smaller but better-equipped military. Given the abruptness of the BCA'S cuts, the
best choice between these two is actually a phased approach: cut modernization disproportionately at first,
while drawing the forces down to sizes that will be affordable over the long term, and then increase
equipment purchases to the level needed to outfit the remaining forces. Unfortunately, the SCMR did not
view readiness as an element that could be traded off deliberately against force size or modernization. Yet
targeted adjustments to readiness could free up money for forces and equipment without harming the
effectiveness of the military's missions.
A phased approach to force size and modernization makes good sense in today's world, where
existential war is no longer imminent and the United States still enjoys vast military superiority. A
two-or three-year slowdown in development and procurement would also give the services time to
consider cheaper alternatives to their present modernization plans -- for example, extending the life
of existing equipment or choosing materiel that incorporates technologies that are already well
understood.
Policymakers often associate any drop in readiness with the 1970s, when soldiers had to buy their own
training shoes because the army ran out and airplanes had to be grounded for lack of maintenance crews.
And they worry that curtailing readiness could mean reliving the disruptive first months of sequestration
in 2013, when ships had their deployment orders canceled abruptly, fighter squadrons were grounded at
the last minute, and scheduled army training sessions were called off. But keeping the entire force ready
for war at a moment's notice costs money that could be better spent elsewhere, and there are good

Hegemony Core
reasons to give up some near-term mission readiness in exchange for keeping more forces or
building more equipment. If planned and targeted, reductions in readiness could avoid major disruptions
and serve strategic purposes.
In fact, the army and the navy are already quietly tinkering with their readiness. For example, the
army is now planning to fully staff and equip only those units that are preparing to deploy soon,
leaving those scheduled for later rotations somewhat less ready. The navy is also exploring options
to "adjust the readiness of non-deployed forces," in the words of Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the chief
of naval operations.
Steps such as these could free up funding for changes in force structure and modernization. And the
military could go even further than it already has, undertaking additional deliberate, targeted reductions in
immediate readiness. For example, the navy could move some ships into storage and convert some to
reserve status. The army could sharply reduce the junior ranks in selected combat brigades, retaining key
officers and enlisted personnel to train and lead brigades that could be fully manned when needed. If
planned carefully, such moves would ensure a stronger and more durable military than would wholly
eliminating ships and brigades. But they will require officials to stop reflexively associating readiness
cutbacks with the hollow forces of former times.
No impact to cutting the militaryhistory proves

Leffler, UVA History Professor, 13
[Melvyn P., Nov/Dec 2013, Defense on a Diet, Foreign Affairs, 92:6, 65-76,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139985/melvyn-p-leffler/defense-on-a-diet, accessed 710-14, AC]
What lessons does all this history teach? First, that the negative consequences of defense austerity
have been exaggerated. The United States did not leave itself vulnerable to attack during its retreat
from a global presence after 1919. Given the absence of threats in the 1920s and the constraints on
British, German, and Japanese forces until the mid-1930s, U.S. defense policies were not imprudent in
the aftermath of World War I. Likewise, the limited defense budgets of 1946-49 did not cause the
Cold War or stifle creative responses to looming threats. The rancorous domestic climate and
austere budget environment that characterized the last years of the Vietnam War did not stymie
creative adaptation, and there is no reason to believe that inadequate U.S. military spending
triggered the Islamic Revolution in Iran or Soviet adventurism in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. Nor
did demands for a peace dividend after the Cold War prevent the first Bush administration from
formulating a new strategy designed to sustain American hegemony.
The country did struggle with various problems during these times of budget cuts, of course. But
those problems were rarely, or only partly, the result of austerity itself. Too often, officials clung to
prevailing strategic concepts without fully reassessing their utility, reappraising their costs and benefits,
reexamining threats and opportunities, or rethinking goals and tactics. The country's worst military
problems of the post-World War II era -- China's intervention in the Korean War, the quagmire in
Vietnam, the morass in Iraq -- had nothing to do with tight budgets.

Hegemony Core
The second lesson stresses the importance of having a coherent strategic concept, a clear assessment of
threats, a precise delineation of interests and goals, and a calibrated sense of priorities. And in this regard,
history shows that austerity can help rather than hurt, as it did in 1940-41 and 1946-49. Strategy in a time
of austerity should emphasize an artful combination of initiatives to reassure allies and engage
adversaries. Eisenhower and Dulles put much more stress on the former, and Nixon and Kissinger, on the
latter, but reassurance and engagement are both essential, and good judgment is a prerequisite to
configuring the right mixture of the two.
One reason austerity has gotten such a bad reputation is that other factors, such as bureaucratic
and domestic politics, often enter the picture and cause Washington to cut the wrong things in the
wrong ways or fail to perceive and respond to new challenges and opportunities. Turf battles and distrust
-- and the sheer complexity of redirecting such a giant enterprise as U.S. defense and security policy -have often undermined careful, comprehensive planning. But that happens in good economic times as
well, probably even more so than in bad ones.
The truth is that the sort of austerity the Pentagon now faces is not all that severe. The United
States currently spends more on its military than all its geopolitical competitors combined and will
continue to do so even after the coming cuts have taken place. Defense spending will not be slashed
but simply decline a bit -- or possibly just grow at a slower rate. This shift should not become a
cause for despair but rather be treated as a spur to efficiency, creativity, discipline, and, above all,
prudence. Past bouts of austerity have led U.S. officials to recognize that the ultimate source of
national security-is domestic economic vitality within an open world order -- not U.S. military
strength or its wanton use. Relearning that lesson today would be a good thing indeed.

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Good

Hegemony Core
1NC Hegemony Good

A. Uniqueness and impact hegemony now, but post-Cold War transition not
locked in missteps risk emergence of hostile global rival, risking stability
Mead, Bard College Foreign Affairs and Humanities professor, 14
[Walter Russell, Foreign Affairs, May/June, The Return of Geopolitics: The Revenge of the Revisionist
Powers, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141211/walter-russell-mead/the-return-of-geopolitics,
accessed 7-11-14, AFB]
The United States has not suffered anything like the economic pain much of Europe has gone through, but
with the country facing the foreign policy hangover induced by the Bush-era wars, an increasingly
intrusive surveillance state, a slow economic recovery, and an unpopular health-care law, the public mood
has soured. On both the left and the right, Americans are questioning the benefits of the current
world order and the competence of its architects. Additionally, the public shares the elite consensus
that in a postCold War world, the United States ought to be able to pay less into the system and get
more out. When that doesnt happen, people blame their leaders. In any case, there is little public
appetite for large new initiatives at home or abroad, and a cynical public is turning away from a
polarized Washington with a mix of boredom and disdain.
Obama came into office planning to cut military spending and reduce the importance of foreign
policy in American politics while strengthening the liberal world order. A little more than halfway
through his presidency, he finds himself increasingly bogged down in exactly the kinds of
geopolitical rivalries he had hoped to transcend. Chinese, Iranian, and Russian revanchism havent
overturned the postCold War settlement in Eurasia yet, and may never do so, but they have
converted an uncontested status quo into a contested one. U.S. presidents no longer have a free
hand as they seek to deepen the liberal system; they are increasingly concerned with shoring up its
geopolitical foundations.
THE TWILIGHT OF HISTORY
It was 22 years ago that Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, and it is tempting to
see the return of geopolitics as a definitive refutation of his thesis. The reality is more complicated. The
end of history, as Fukuyama reminded readers, was Hegels idea, and even though the revolutionary
state had triumphed over the old type of regimes for good, Hegel argued, competition and conflict
would continue. He predicted that there would be disturbances in the provinces, even as the heartlands of
European civilization moved into a post-historical time. Given that Hegels provinces included China,
India, Japan, and Russia, it should hardly be surprising that more than two centuries later, the
disturbances havent ceased. We are living in the twilight of history rather than at its actual end.
A Hegelian view of the historical process today would hold that substantively little has changed since the
beginning of the nineteenth century. To be powerful, states must develop the ideas and institutions
that allow them to harness the titanic forces of industrial and informational capitalism. There is no
alternative; societies unable or unwilling to embrace this route will end up the subjects of history
rather than the makers of it.

Hegemony Core
But the road to postmodernity remains rocky. In order to increase its power, China, for example, will
clearly have to go through a process of economic and political development that will require the country
to master the problems that modern Western societies have confronted. There is no assurance, however,
that Chinas path to stable liberal modernity will be any less tumultuous than, say, the one that Germany
trod. The twilight of history is not a quiet time.
The second part of Fukuyamas book has received less attention, perhaps because it is less flattering to the
West. As Fukuyama investigated what a post-historical society would look like, he made a disturbing
discovery. In a world where the great questions have been solved and geopolitics has been
subordinated to economics, humanity will look a lot like the nihilistic last man described by the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: a narcissistic consumer with no greater aspirations beyond the next
trip to the mall.
In other words, these people would closely resemble todays European bureaucrats and Washington
lobbyists. They are competent enough at managing their affairs among post-historical people, but
understanding the motives and countering the strategies of old-fashioned power politicians is hard
for them. Unlike their less productive and less stable rivals, post-historical people are unwilling to
make sacrifices, focused on the short term, easily distracted, and lacking in courage.
The realities of personal and political life in post-historical societies are very different from those in such
countries as China, Iran, and Russia, where the sun of history still shines. It is not just that those different
societies bring different personalities and values to the fore; it is also that their institutions work
differently and their publics are shaped by different ideas.
Societies filled with Nietzsches last men (and women) characteristically misunderstand and
underestimate their supposedly primitive opponents in supposedly backward societies -- a blind spot
that could, at least temporarily, offset their countries other advantages. The tide of history may be
flowing inexorably in the direction of liberal capitalist democracy, and the sun of history may
indeed be sinking behind the hills. But even as the shadows lengthen and the first of the stars
appears, such figures as Putin still stride the world stage. They will not go gentle into that good
night, and they will rage, rage against the dying of the light.
B. Link [insert]
C. Hegemony deters conflict and nuclear crises
Brooks, Dartmouth government professor, et al., 13
[Brooks, Stephen G., Ikenberry, G. John, Wohlforth, William C., STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate
Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor
of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee
University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at
Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, Lean Forward, Jan/Feb2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search
Complete, accessed 7-2-13, AFB]

Hegemony Core
KEEPING THE PEACE
Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far below what advocates of
retrenchment claim, they would not be worth bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do.
The most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict.
The United States' security commitments deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from
contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from trying to solve security problems on their
own in ways that would end up threatening other states.
Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent
dangerous rivalries from erupting. They maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the
many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to prevent conflict. In
other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the American
pacifier.
But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would
likely expand their military capabilities and go nuclear, which could provoke a destabilizing
reaction from China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried
to obtain nuclear weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its
security commitments to restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to
leave the Middle East, the countries currently backed by Washington--notably, Israel, Egypt, and
Saudi Arabia--might act in ways that would intensify the region's security dilemmas.
There would even be reason to worry about Europe. Although it's hard to imagine the return of
great-power military competition in a post-American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee
governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political
costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing
itself from threats on its periphery, unable to join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might
want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers.
Given how easily a U.S. withdrawal from key regions could lead to dangerous competition,
advocates of retrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't
actually hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the United States could survive the return
of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East--but at what cost? Were states in one or both of
these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military budgets,
arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the
United States, in part because its lead in military capabilities would narrow.
Greater regional insecurity could also produce cascades of nuclear proliferation as powers such as
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those
countries' regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals. Although nuclear deterrence
can promote stability between two states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the
United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple nuclear rivals with less robust
arsenals. As the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit transfers, irrational
decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up.

Hegemony Core
Uniqueness

Hegemony Core
Uniqueness & Impact

Hegemony not locked in yet and decline will not be peaceful, risking international
stability
Mead, Bard College Foreign Affairs and Humanities professor, 14
[Walter Russell, Foreign Affairs, May/June, The Return of Geopolitics: The Revenge of the Revisionist
Powers, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141211/walter-russell-mead/the-return-of-geopolitics,
So far, the year 2014 has been a tumultuous one, as geopolitical rivalries have stormed back to
center stage. Whether it is Russian forces seizing Crimea, China making aggressive claims in its coastal
waters, Japan responding with an increasingly assertive strategy of its own, or Iran trying to use its
alliances with Syria and Hezbollah to dominate the Middle East, old-fashioned power plays are back in
international relations.
The United States and the EU, at least, find such trends disturbing. Both would rather move past
geopolitical questions of territory and military power and focus instead on ones of world order and
global governance: trade liberalization, nuclear nonproliferation, human rights, the rule of law,
climate change, and so on. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the most important objective of
U.S. and EU foreign policy has been to shift international relations away from zero-sum issues
toward win-win ones. To be dragged back into old-school contests such as that in Ukraine doesnt
just divert time and energy away from those important questions; it also changes the character of
international politics. As the atmosphere turns dark, the task of promoting and maintaining world
order grows more daunting.
But Westerners should never have expected old-fashioned geopolitics to go away. They did so only
because they fundamentally misread what the collapse of the Soviet Union meant: the ideological
triumph of liberal capitalist democracy over communism, not the obsolescence of hard power.
China, Iran, and Russia never bought into the geopolitical settlement that followed the Cold War,
and they are making increasingly forceful attempts to overturn it. That process will not be peaceful,
and whether or not the revisionists succeed, their efforts have already shaken the balance of power and
changed the dynamics of international politics.
A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY
When the Cold War ended, the most vexing geopolitical questions seemed largely settled.
When the Cold War ended, many Americans and Europeans seemed to think that the most vexing
geopolitical questions had largely been settled. With the exception of a handful of relatively minor
problems, such as the woes of the former Yugoslavia and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the biggest
issues in world politics, they assumed, would no longer concern boundaries, military bases, national
self-determination, or spheres of influence.
One cant blame people for hoping. The Wests approach to the realities of the postCold War world has
made a great deal of sense, and it is hard to see how world peace can ever be achieved without replacing

Hegemony Core
geopolitical competition with the construction of a liberal world order. Still, Westerners often forget that
this project rests on the particular geopolitical foundations laid in the early 1990s.
In Europe, the postCold War settlement involved the unification of Germany, the dismemberment of the
Soviet Union, and the integration of the former Warsaw Pact states and the Baltic republics into NATO
and the EU. In the Middle East, it entailed the dominance of Sunni powers that were allied with the
United States (Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies, Egypt, and Turkey) and the double containment of Iran and
Iraq. In Asia, it meant the uncontested dominance of the United States, embedded in a series of security
relationships with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, and other allies.
This settlement reflected the power realities of the day, and it was only as stable as the relationships that
held it up. Unfortunately, many observers conflated the temporary geopolitical conditions of the post
Cold War world with the presumably more final outcome of the ideological struggle between liberal
democracy and Soviet communism. The political scientist Francis Fukuyamas famous formulation that
the end of the Cold War meant the end of history was a statement about ideology. But for many people,
the collapse of the Soviet Union didnt just mean that humanitys ideological struggle was over for good;
they thought geopolitics itself had also come to a permanent end.
At first glance, this conclusion looks like an extrapolation of Fukuyamas argument rather than a
distortion of it. After all, the idea of the end of history has rested on the geopolitical consequences of
ideological struggles ever since the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel first expressed it
at the beginning of the nineteenth century. For Hegel, it was the Battle of Jena, in 1806, that rang the
curtain down on the war of ideas. In Hegels eyes, Napoleon Bonapartes utter destruction of the Prussian
army in that brief campaign represented the triumph of the French Revolution over the best army that
prerevolutionary Europe could produce. This spelled an end to history, Hegel argued, because in the
future, only states that adopted the principles and techniques of revolutionary France would be able to
compete and survive.
Adapted to the postCold War world, this argument was taken to mean that in the future, states would
have to adopt the principles of liberal capitalism to keep up. Closed, communist societies, such as the
Soviet Union, had shown themselves to be too uncreative and unproductive to compete economically and
militarily with liberal states. Their political regimes were also shaky, since no social form other than
liberal democracy provided enough freedom and dignity for a contemporary society to remain stable.
To fight the West successfully, you would have to become like the West, and if that happened, you would
become the kind of wishy-washy, pacifistic milquetoast society that didnt want to fight about anything at
all. The only remaining dangers to world peace would come from rogue states such as North Korea, and
although such countries might have the will to challenge the West, they would be too crippled by their
obsolete political and social structures to rise above the nuisance level (unless they developed nuclear
weapons, of course). And thus former communist states, such as Russia, faced a choice. They could jump
on the modernization bandwagon and become liberal, open, and pacifistic, or they could cling bitterly to
their guns and their culture as the world passed them by.
At first, it all seemed to work. With history over, the focus shifted from geopolitics to development
economics and nonproliferation, and the bulk of foreign policy came to center on questions such as
climate change and trade. The conflation of the end of geopolitics and the end of history offered an
especially enticing prospect to the United States: the idea that the country could start putting less
into the international system and taking out more. It could shrink its defense spending, cut the State

Hegemony Core
Departments appropriations, lower its profile in foreign hotspots -- and the world would just go on
becoming more prosperous and more free.
This vision appealed to both liberals and conservatives in the United States. The administration of
President Bill Clinton, for example, cut both the Defense Departments and the State Departments
budgets and was barely able to persuade Congress to keep paying U.S. dues to the UN. At the same time,
policymakers assumed that the international system would become stronger and wider-reaching while
continuing to be conducive to U.S. interests. Republican neo-isolationists, such as former Representative
Ron Paul of Texas, argued that given the absence of serious geopolitical challenges, the United States
could dramatically cut both military spending and foreign aid while continuing to benefit from the global
economic system.
After 9/11, President George W. Bush based his foreign policy on the belief that Middle Eastern terrorists
constituted a uniquely dangerous opponent, and he launched what he said would be a long war against
them. In some respects, it appeared that the world was back in the realm of history. But the Bush
administrations belief that democracy could be implanted quickly in the Arab Middle East, starting with
Iraq, testified to a deep conviction that the overall tide of events was running in Americas favor.
In very different ways, China, Iran, and Russia are all seeking to revise the status quo.
President Barack Obama built his foreign policy on the conviction that the war on terror was
overblown, that history really was over, and that, as in the Clinton years, the United States most
important priorities involved promoting the liberal world order, not playing classical geopolitics.
The administration articulated an extremely ambitious agenda in support of that order: blocking
Irans drive for nuclear weapons, solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, negotiating a global
climate change treaty, striking Pacific and Atlantic trade deals, signing arms control treaties with
Russia, repairing U.S. relations with the Muslim world, promoting gay rights, restoring trust with
European allies, and ending the war in Afghanistan. At the same time, however, Obama planned to
cut defense spending dramatically and reduced U.S. engagement in key world theaters, such as
Europe and the Middle East.
AN AXIS OF WEEVILS?
All these happy convictions are about to be tested. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin
Wall, whether one focuses on the rivalry between the EU and Russia over Ukraine, which led
Moscow to seize Crimea; the intensifying competition between China and Japan in East Asia; or the
subsuming of sectarian conflict into international rivalries and civil wars in the Middle East, the
world is looking less post-historical by the day. In very different ways, with very different objectives,
China, Iran, and Russia are all pushing back against the political settlement of the Cold War.
The relationships among those three revisionist powers are complex. In the long run, Russia fears the rise
of China. Tehrans worldview has little in common with that of either Beijing or Moscow. Iran and Russia
are oil-exporting countries and like the price of oil to be high; China is a net consumer and wants prices
low. Political instability in the Middle East can work to Irans and Russias advantage but poses large
risks for China. One should not speak of a strategic alliance among them, and over time, particularly if
they succeed in undermining U.S. influence in Eurasia, the tensions among them are more likely to grow
than shrink.

Hegemony Core
What binds these powers together, however, is their agreement that the status quo must be revised.
Russia wants to reassemble as much of the Soviet Union as it can. China has no intention of
contenting itself with a secondary role in global affairs, nor will it accept the current degree of U.S.
influence in Asia and the territorial status quo there. Iran wishes to replace the current order in the
Middle East -- led by Saudi Arabia and dominated by Sunni Arab states -- with one centered on Tehran.
Leaders in all three countries also agree that U.S. power is the chief obstacle to achieving their
revisionist goals. Their hostility toward Washington and its order is both offensive and defensive: not
only do they hope that the decline of U.S. power will make it easier to reorder their regions, but they also
worry that Washington might try to overthrow them should discord within their countries grow. Yet the
revisionists want to avoid direct confrontations with the United States, except in rare circumstances
when the odds are strongly in their favor (as in Russias 2008 invasion of Georgia and its occupation
and annexation of Crimea this year). Rather than challenge the status quo head on, they seek to chip
away at the norms and relationships that sustain it.
Since Obama has been president, each of these powers has pursued a distinct strategy in light of its own
strengths and weaknesses. China, which has the greatest capabilities of the three, has paradoxically been
the most frustrated. Its efforts to assert itself in its region have only tightened the links between the United
States and its Asian allies and intensified nationalism in Japan. As Beijings capabilities grow, so will its
sense of frustration. Chinas surge in power will be matched by a surge in Japans resolve, and
tensions in Asia will be more likely to spill over into global economics and politics.
Iran, by many measures the weakest of the three states, has had the most successful record. The
combination of the United States invasion of Iraq and then its premature withdrawal has enabled Tehran
to cement deep and enduring ties with significant power centers across the Iraqi border, a development
that has changed both the sectarian and the political balance of power in the region. In Syria, Iran, with
the help of its longtime ally Hezbollah, has been able to reverse the military tide and prop up the
government of Bashar al-Assad in the face of strong opposition from the U.S. government. This triumph
of realpolitik has added considerably to Irans power and prestige. Across the region, the Arab Spring has
weakened Sunni regimes, further tilting the balance in Irans favor. So has the growing split among Sunni
governments over what to do about the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and adherents.
Russia, meanwhile, has emerged as the middling revisionist: more powerful than Iran but weaker than
China, more successful than China at geopolitics but less successful than Iran. Russia has been
moderately effective at driving wedges between Germany and the United States, but Russian President
Vladimir Putins preoccupation with rebuilding the Soviet Union has been hobbled by the sharp limits of
his countrys economic power. To build a real Eurasian bloc, as Putin dreams of doing, Russia would have
to underwrite the bills of the former Soviet republics -- something it cannot afford to do.
Nevertheless, Putin, despite his weak hand, has been remarkably successful at frustrating Western projects
on former Soviet territory. He has stopped NATO expansion dead in its tracks. He has dismembered
Georgia, brought Armenia into his orbit, tightened his hold on Crimea, and, with his Ukrainian adventure,
dealt the West an unpleasant and humiliating surprise. From the Western point of view, Putin appears to
be condemning his country to an ever-darker future of poverty and marginalization. But Putin doesnt
believe that history has ended, and from his perspective, he has solidified his power at home and
reminded hostile foreign powers that the Russian bear still has sharp claws.

Hegemony Core
Obama now finds himself bogged down in exactly the kinds of geopolitical rivalries he had hoped to
transcend.
THE POWERS THAT BE
The revisionist powers have such varied agendas and capabilities that none can provide the kind of
systematic and global opposition that the Soviet Union did. As a result, Americans have been slow to
realize that these states have undermined the Eurasian geopolitical order in ways that complicate
U.S. and European efforts to construct a post-historical, win-win world.
Still, one can see the effects of this revisionist activity in many places. In East Asia, Chinas increasingly
assertive stance has yet to yield much concrete geopolitical progress, but it has fundamentally altered the
political dynamic in the region with the fastest-growing economies on earth. Asian politics today revolve
around national rivalries, conflicting territorial claims, naval buildups, and similar historical issues. The
nationalist revival in Japan, a direct response to Chinas agenda, has set up a process in which rising
nationalism in one country feeds off the same in the other. China and Japan are escalating their
rhetoric, increasing their military budgets, starting bilateral crises with greater frequency, and
fixating more and more on zero-sum competition.

Hegemony Core
Lead Now
US has an unprecedented lead
Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 12
(Robert, 1-11-12, The New Republic, "Not Fade Away: The Myth of Decline,"
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/99521/america-world-power-declinism?
passthru=ZDkyNzQzZTk3YWY3YzE0OWM5MGRiZmIwNGQwNDBiZmI&utm_source=Editors+and+
Bloggers&utm_campaign=cbaee91d9d-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email, accessed 7-6-12, CNM)
Less than a decade ago, most observers spoke not of Americas decline but of its enduring primacy.
In 2002, the historian Paul Kennedy, who in the late 1980s had written a much-discussed book on the
rise and fall of the great powers, America included, declared that never in history had there been such a
great disparity of power as between the United States and the rest of the world. Ikenberry agreed that
no other great power had held such formidable advantages in military, economic, technological,
cultural, or political capabilities.... The preeminence of American power was unprecedented. In
2004, the pundit Fareed Zakaria described the United States as enjoying a comprehensive unipolarity unlike anything seen since Rome. But a mere four years later Zakaria was writing about the
post-American world and the rise of the rest, and Kennedy was discoursing again upon the
inevitability of American decline. Did the fundamentals of Americas relative power shift so dramatically
in just a few short years?

Hegemony Core
Lead Now Military

Lead now military
Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 12
(Robert, 1-11-12, The New Republic, "Not Fade Away: The Myth of Decline,"
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/99521/america-world-power-declinism?
page=0,1&passthru=ZDkyNzQzZTk3YWY3YzE0OWM5MGRiZmIwNGQwNDBiZmI&utm_source=E
ditors%20and%20Bloggers&utm_campaign=cbaee91d9d-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email,
Military capacity matters, too, as early nineteenth-century China learned and Chinese leaders know
today. As Yan Xuetong recently noted, military strength underpins hegemony. Here the United
States remains unmatched. It is far and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known,
and there has been no decline in Americas relative military capacityat least not yet. Americans
currently spend less than $600 billion a year on defense, more than the rest of the other great powers
combined. (This figure does not include the deployment in Iraq, which is ending, or the combat forces in
Afghanistan, which are likely to diminish steadily over the next couple of years.) They do so, moreover,
while consuming a little less than 4 percent of GDP annuallya higher percentage than the other
great powers, but in historical terms lower than the 10 percent of GDP that the United States spent on
defense in the mid-1950s and the 7 percent it spent in the late 1980s. The superior expenditures
underestimate Americas actual superiority in military capability. American land and air forces are
equipped with the most advanced weaponry, and are the most experienced in actual combat. They
would defeat any competitor in a head-to-head battle. American naval power remains predominant
in every region of the world.
By these military and economic measures, at least, the United States today is not remotely like Britain
circa 1900, when that empires relative decline began to become apparent. It is more like Britain circa
1870, when the empire was at the height of its power. It is possible to imagine a time when this might
no longer be the case, but that moment has not yet arrived.

Hegemony Core
AT Challengers Now
Hegemony high everyone is declining
Gvodsdev, National Interest former editor, 12
(Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest and a frequent foreign policy
commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War
College. 6-15-12, World Politics Review, The Realist Prism: In a G-Zero World, U.S. Should Go
Minilateral, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12061/the-realist-prism-in-a-g-zero-world-u-sshould-go-minilateral, accessed 7-8-12, CNM)
This is not to argue that the United States has entered into a period of irreversible decline. Indeed, the
other major power centers that are often presented as future peer competitors are experiencing
their own shocks, from the eurozone crisis to economic stagnation in Japan to the protests rocking
Russia to the formidable challenges that Xi Jinping and the fifth generation of leadership in
China will have to confront. As a result, the United States is benefiting from the perception that it,
like the dollar, remains a safe haven. But though the U.S. is still a superpower, its current fiscal and
economic problems leave it in no position to finance a new global system or impose common standards
on the nations of the world, the way it did in the postwar period by rebuilding Western Europe and East
Asia and creating the institutional foundations that paved the way for globalization.
No major rival now but US must act to preserve its status

Beckley, Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, International Security Program Research Fellow, 12
(Michael, University of Virginias Miller Centers fellow, International Security, Volume 36, Issue 3,
Chinas Century? Why Americas Edge Will Endure, http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.mitpressjournals.org%2Fdoi%2Fpdf
%2F10.1162%2FISEC_a_00066&ei=zkvrT9T8E8q1rQHeorDwBQ&usg=AFQjCNGn9W7Ei82Wbsof4y
j6KORthY-71g, pg.78, accessed 6-27-12, FFF)
Order and prosperity, however, are unnatural. They can never be presumed. When achieved, they
are the result of determined action by powerful actors and, in particular, by the most powerful
actor, which is, and will be for some time, the United States. Arms buildups, insecure sea-lanes, and
closed markets are only the most obvious risks of U.S. retrenchment. Less obvious are transnational
problems, such as global warming, water scarcity, and disease, which may fester without a leader to
rally collective action.
Hegemony, of course, carries its own risks and costs. In particular, Americas global military presence
might tempt policymakers to use force when they should choose diplomacy or inaction. If the United

Hegemony Core
States abuses its power, however, it is not because it is too engaged with the world, but because its
engagement lacks strategic vision. The solution is better strategy, not retrenchment.
The first step toward sound strategy is to recognize that the status quo for the United States is
pretty good: it does not face a hegemonic rival, and the trends favor continued U.S. dominance. The
overarching goal of American foreign policy should be to preserve this state of affairs. Declinists
claim the United States should adopt a neomercantilist international economic policy and disengage
from current alliance commitments in East Asia and Europe.161 But the fact that the United States
rose relative to China while propping up the world economy and maintaining a hegemonic presence
abroad casts doubt on the wisdom of such calls for radical policy change.
No competitors they all have worse problems than the U.S.

Kagan, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow, 12
[Robert, Foreign Relations Council Member, and Foreign Policy Advisor, 1-1-12,
Brookings Institute, Not Fade Away: Against the Myth of American Decline,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/01/17-us-power-kagan, accessed: 7-614, JY]
It is also reasonable to expect that other nations will, as in the past, run into difficulties of their own.
None of the nations currently enjoying economic miracles is without problems. Brazil, India,
Turkey, and Russia all have bumpy histories that suggest the route ahead will not be one of simple
and smooth ascent. There is a real question whether the autocratic model of China, which can be so
effective in making some strategic decisions about the economy in the short term, can over the long
run be flexible enough to permit adaptation to a changing international economic, political, and
strategic environment.

Hegemony Core
AT China Threat Now

China is not a threat now US still has hegemony
Beckley, Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, International Security Program, Research Fellow, 12
(Michael, University of Virginias Miller Center, fellow, Chinas Century? Why Americas Edge Will
Endure, International Security, Volume 36, Issue 3, Pg. 42-43, http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.mitpressjournals.org%2Fdoi%2Fpdf
%2F10.1162%2FISEC_a_00066&ei=zkvrT9T8E8q1rQHeorDwBQ&usg=AFQjCNGn9W7Ei82Wbsof4y
j6KORthY-71g, accessed 6-27-12, FFF)
Resolving the debate between these two perspectives is imperative for prudent policymaking. If
proponents of the dominant, or declinist, perspective are correct, then the United States should contain
Chinas growth by [adopting] a neomercantilist international economic policy and subdue Chinas
ambitions by disengag[ing] from current alliance commitments in East Asia.4 If, however, the United
States is not in decline, and if globalization and hegemony are the main reasons why, then the United
States should do the opposite: it should contain Chinas growth by maintaining a liberal international
economic policy, and it should subdue Chinas ambitions by sustaining a robust political and military
presence in Asia.
With few exceptions, however, existing studies on the decline of the United States and the rise of
China suffer from at least one of the following shortcomings. 5 First, most studies do not look at a
comprehensive set of indicators. Instead they paint impressionistic pictures of the balance of power,
presenting tidbits of information on a handful of metrics. In general, this approach biases results in
favor of the declinist perspective because most standard indicators of national powerfor example,
gross domestic product (GDP), population, and energy consumptionconate size with power and
thereby overstate the capabilities of large but underdeveloped countries. For example, in a recent
study Arvind Subramanian contends that Chinas dominance is a sure thing based on an index of
dominance combining just three factors: a countrys GDP, its trade (measured as the sum of its exports
and imports of goods), and the extent to which it is a net creditor to the world.6 The United States and
China, however, are each declining by some measures while rising in terms of others. To distinguish
between ascendance and decline writ large, therefore, requires analyzing many indicators and
determining how much each one matters in relation to others.
Second, many studies are static, presenting single-year snapshots of U.S. and Chinese power. This
aw tends to bias results in favor of the alternative perspective because the United States retains a
significant lead in most categories. The key question, however, is not whether the United States is
more powerful than China at present, but whether it will remain so in the future. Without a
dynamic analysis, it is impossible to answer this question.

Hegemony Core
China rise is impossible now Chinas region is filled with American allies
Today, in the case of China, the situation is reversed. Although China is and will be much richer, and will
wield greater economic influence in the world than the Soviet Union ever did, its geostrategic position is
more difficult. World War II left China in a comparatively weak position from which it has been
working hard to recover ever since. Several of its neighbors are strong nations with close ties to the
United States. It will have a hard time becoming a regional hegemon so long as Taiwan remains
independent and strategically tied to the United States, and so long as strong regional powers such
as Japan, Korea, and Australia continue to host American troops and bases. China would need at
least a few allies to have any chance of pushing the United States out of its strongholds in the western
Pacific, but right now it is the United States that has the allies. It is the United States that has its troops
deployed in forward bases. It is the United States that currently enjoys naval predominance in the
key waters and waterways through which China must trade. Altogether, Chinas task as a rising
great power, which is to push the United States out of its present position, is much harder than
Americas task, which is only to hold on to what it has.

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Unsustainable/Cost
Claims that engagement is too expensive are flawed they mis-estimate costs
AN AFFORDABLE STRATEGY
Many advocates of retrenchment consider the United States' assertive global posture simply too
expensive. The international relations scholar Christopher Layne, for example, has warned of the
country's "ballooning budget deficits" and argued that "its strategic commitments exceed the resources
available to support them." Calculating the savings of switching grand strategies, however, is not so
simple, because it depends on the expenditures the current strategy demands and the amount
required for its replacement--numbers that are hard to pin down.
If the United States revoked all its security guarantees, brought home all its troops, shrank every branch
of the military, and slashed its nuclear arsenal, it would save around $900 billion over ten years,
according to Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan of the Cato Institute. But few advocates of
retrenchment endorse such a radical reduction; instead, most call for "restraint," an "offshore
balancing" strategy, or an "over the horizon" military posture. The savings these approaches would
yield are less clear, since they depend on which security commitments Washington would abandon
outright and how much it would cost to keep the remaining ones. If retrenchment simply meant
shipping foreign-based U.S. forces back to the United States, then the savings would be modest at best,
since the countries hosting U.S. forces usually cover a large portion of the basing costs. And if it meant
maintaining a major expeditionary capacity, then any savings would again be small, since the Pentagon
would still have to pay for the expensive weaponry and equipment required for projecting power abroad.
The other side of the cost equation, the price of continued engagement, is also in flux. Although the fat
defense budgets of the past decade make an easy target for advocates of retrenchment, such high levels of
spending aren't needed to maintain an engaged global posture. Spending skyrocketed after 9/11, but it has
already begun to fall back to earth as the United States winds down its two costly wars and trims its base
level of nonwar spending. As of the fall of 2012, the Defense Department was planning for cuts of just
under $500 billion over the next five years, which it maintains will not compromise national security.
These reductions would lower military spending to a little less than three percent of GDP by 2017, from
its current level of 4.5 percent. The Pentagon could save even more with no ill effects by reforming its
procurement practices and compensation policies.
Even without major budget cuts, however, the country can afford the costs of its ambitious grand strategy.
The significant increases in military spending proposed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate,

Hegemony Core
during the 2012 presidential campaign would still have kept military spending below its current share of
GDP, since spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would still have gone down and Romney s
proposed nonwar spending levels would not have kept pace with economic growth. Small wonder, then,
that the case for pulling back rests more on the nonmonetary costs that the current strategy supposedly
incurs.
No overstretch due to dramatic decreases in troops, low military funding and

overstretch is far better than military cuts
Again, these common assumptions require some examination. For one thing, how overstretched is the
United States? The answer, in historical terms, is not nearly as much as people imagine. Consider the
straightforward matter of the number of troops that the United States deploys overseas. To listen to the
debate today, one might imagine there were more American troops committed abroad than ever before.
But that is not remotely the case. In 1953, the United States had almost one million troops deployed
overseas325,000 in combat in Korea and more than 600,000 stationed in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.
In 1968, it had over one million troops on foreign soil537,000 in Vietnam and another half million
stationed elsewhere. By contrast, in the summer of 2011, at the height of Americas deployments in its
two wars, there were about 200,000 troops deployed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and
another roughly 160,000 troops stationed in Europe and East Asia. Altogether, and including other forces
stationed around the world, there were about 500,000 troops deployed overseas. This was lower even than
the peacetime deployments of the Cold War. In 1957, for instance, there were over 750,000 troops
deployed overseas. Only in the decade between the breakup of the Soviet empire and the attacks of
September 11 was the number of deployed forces overseas lower than it is today. The comparison is
even more striking if one takes into account the growth of the American population. When the
United States had one million troops deployed overseas in 1953, the total American population was only
160 million. Today, when there are half a million troops deployed overseas, the American population
is 313 million. The country is twice as large, with half as many troops deployed as fifty years ago.
What about the financial expense? Many seem to believe that the cost of these deployments, and of the
armed forces generally, is a major contributor to the soaring fiscal deficits that threaten the solvency
of the national economy. But this is not the case, either. As the former budget czar Alice Rivlin has
observed, the scary projections of future deficits are not caused by rising defense spending, much less
by spending on foreign assistance. The runaway deficits projected for the coming years are mostly the
result of ballooning entitlement spending. Even the most draconian cuts in the defense budget
would produce annual savings of only $50 billion to $100 billion, a small fractionbetween 4 and 8
percentof the $1.5 trillion in annual deficits the United States is facing.
In 2002, when Paul Kennedy was marveling at Americas ability to remain the worlds single
superpower on the cheap, the United States was spending about 3.4 percent of GDP on defense. Today it

Hegemony Core
is spending a little under 4 percent, and in years to come, that is likely to head lower againstill cheap
by historical standards. The cost of remaining the worlds predominant power is not prohibitive.
If we are serious about this exercise in accounting, moreover, the costs of maintaining this position
cannot be measured without considering the costs of losing it. Some of the costs of reducing the
American role in the world are, of course, unquantifiable. What is it worth to Americans to live in a world
dominated by democracies rather than by autocracies? But some of the potential costs could be measured,
if anyone cared to try. If the decline of American military power produced an unraveling of the
international economic order that American power has helped sustain; if trade routes and waterways
ceased to be as secure, because the U.S. Navy was no longer able to defend them; if regional wars
broke out among great powers because they were no longer constrained by the American
superpower; if American allies were attacked because the United States appeared unable to come to
their defense; if the generally free and open nature of the international system became less soif all
this came to pass, there would be measurable costs. And it is not too far-fetched to imagine that these
costs would be far greater than the savings gained by cutting the defense and foreign aid budgets by
$100 billion a year. You can save money by buying a used car without a warranty and without certain
safety features, but what happens when you get into an accident? American military strength reduces the
risk of accidents by deterring conflict, and lowers the price of the accidents that occur by reducing the
chance of losing. These savings need to be part of the calculation, too. As a simple matter of dollars and
cents, it may be a lot cheaper to preserve the current level of American involvement in the world than to
reduce it.

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Unsustainable
Neither relative nor absolute decline is inevitable but the US must choose to
maintain primacyreject their ahistorical analysis
Merry, The National Interest Editor, 12
[Robert W., 2/8/12, The National Interest, Understanding America's Fall,
nationalinterest.org/commentary/understanding-americas-fall-6473 , accessed 7/11/14, AC]
Kagan goes after the notion, put forth by Harvards Stephen Walt and others, that while American
power remains relatively strong, the country no longer has the capacity to have its way over as
much of the globe as in the past. Kagan argues that nothing much has changed there. Since 1945, he
writes, the challenge of maintaining Americas position in the world and fostering global stability
has always generated defeats, frustrations and embarrassments along with the triumphs. "We tend
to think back on the early years of the Cold War as a moment of complete American global
dominance," he writes. "They were nothing of the sort." He provides some pretty good history of
those years foreign tribulations, including the communist takeover of China, the Korean War
agony, the loss of Americas nuclear monopoly, Suez, the Vietnam debacle and Japans economic
rise. All of these things led many in America to decry the countrys loss of relative power in the world,
and yet America always managed to spring back.
And there certainly were times akin to today when America truly did lose standing in the world and
things could have gone badlymost notably the late 1970s, when the U.S. economy faltered, Soviet
adventurism was on the rise, Mideast oil politics was turning against America and the Iranian hostage
crisis was at full intensity. And yet American ingenuity and resilience once again prevailed, and under
Ronald Reagan the country came back with greater force than ever, remediating its faulty economy and
out-competing the Soviets into oblivion. "The difficulties in shaping the international environment in any
era are immense," writes Kagan. "Few powers even attempt it, and even the strongest rarely achieve all or
even most of their goals."
Thats why, he avers, "preserving the present world order requires constant American leadership
and constant American commitment." In the end, he says, the decision is in the hands of Americans.
"Decline, as Charles Krauthammer has observed, is a choice. It is not an inevitable fateat least not
yet."
Heres where the analysis gets a bit ragged. Contra Krauthammer, great powers never make a "choice" to
slip into decline. They may choose to accept the decline that fate forces upon them, as Britain eventually
did. But the choice is really over what kinds of policies a great power wishes to pursue on the global
stage and whether those policies will bolster or undermine its global status. Hence, Kagans catalogue
of Americas Cold War defeats and difficulties is instructive but perhaps not precisely as he intends. He
seems to be saying that all great powers experience such defeats and difficulties, so we should just
go for it. A better lesson is that such experiences suggest caution, a measured approach to foreign
policy that preserves power for when its really needed and places power bets that are
commensurate with the possible payoffand the risks involved.

Hegemony Core
Unipolarity is sustainable military and nuclear deterrence ensure it and no impact

to economic challengers
Monteiro, Yale Political Science Professor, 11
[Nuno P., April 25, 2011, Balancing Act: Why Unipolarity May Be Durable,
http://irworkshop.sites.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Monteiro_IRW.pdf, p. 24-25, accessed 7/6/13, WD]
Debate on unipolar durability has generated great controversy, placing it at the center of scholarship on
unipolarity. This prominent place stems from two factors driving scholarly concerns. First, having failed
to predict the end of the Cold War -- arguably the most momentous transformation of the international
system since the emergence of IR as a scientific discipline in the post-WWII years -- IR scholars are
determined to get it right next time. 69 Second, systemic theory has always placed a great emphasis on
balance-of-power mechanisms, creating an expectation that unipolarity (a systemic imbalance of power)
would last only briefly until other great powers (re)emerged. Accordingly, a durable unipolar system
poses a serious theoretical challenge, emphasizing the importance of the durability question. 70 In
response to this challenge, two views have emerged. Declinists predict the inevitable, nay, impending end
of our unipolar world. Primacists argue that, on the contrary, US-led unipolarity is here to stay. In this
paper, I make three central claims. First, I argue that neither declinists nor primacists -- both of which
focus on latent, economic power -- are looking at the right variable to predict the durability of a unipolar
world. Unipolarity is a description of the balance of military, not economic power. For as long as the
US military remains unchallenged, the world will remain unipolar regardless of the relative size of
the US economy. Second, I argue that the distribution of military power is independent from the
distribution of economic power . In other words, balancing will only result in a change in the
systemic balance of power when the latter is required to guarantee state survival. That is the case in
a conventional world. But in a nuclear world, possession of a small but robust nuclear arsenal virtually
guarantees survival. Therefore, rising economic powers may, in a nuclear world, achieve the primary
goal of balancing short of effecting a systemic balance of power. This means that , in a nuclear world,
unipolarity is in principle durable . Third, I argue that whether rising economic powers in a nuclear
world will continue to balance past the point at which their survival is ensured by a robust nuclear
deterrent depends on the strategy of the unipole towards their economic growth. If the unipole
accommodates their economic growth, rising powers have no incentive to continue balancing past
that point, making unipolarity durable. If, however, the unipole takes actions that contain their
economic growth, then rising powers have an incentive to continue balancing, ultimately leading to
the end of a unipolar world. My theory thus draws attention to the logical separation between theories of
balancing and balance-of-power theories. The goals of balancing may successfully be achieved without
any transformations in the systemic balance of power. Such is the case in a nuclear unipolar world. While
states will balance against a unipolar power regardless of its strategy by acquiring survivable nuclear
arsenals, the fact that they can guarantee their survival by doing so frees them from the need to pursue a
shift in the systemic balance of power in order to guarantee this aim. This argument has important policy
implications. First of all, it gives the unipole significant agency in determining the durability of a
unipolar world. Rather than being at the mercy of differential rates of economic growth, a unipole
in a nuclear world is fully in control of whether its military power preponderance lasts. Its policies
vis--vis major powers economic growth thus acquire a central place in the toolkit with which it

Hegemony Core
manages the systemic balance of military power. Second, my argument suggests that unipolarity
presents particular incentives for nuclear proliferation. But, as Robert Jervis has noted, the spread of
nuclear weapons -- the nuclear revolution -- brings with it a decreased salience for the systemic balance of
power. For a nuclear power, the systemic balance of power no longer necessarily determines its
chances of survival. On the transformational character of proliferation in a unipolar world, Jervis writes:
This raises the question of what would remain of a unipolar system in a proliferated world. The
American ability to coerce others would decrease but so would its need to defend friendly powers
that would now have their own deterrents. The world would still be unipolar by most measures and
considerations, but many countries would be able to protect themselves, perhaps even against the
superpower. How they would use this increased security is far from clear, however. They might intensify
conflict with neighbors because they no longer fear all-out war, or, on the contrary, they might be willing
to engage in greater co-operation because the risks of becoming dependent on others would be reduced. In
any event, the polarity of the system may become less important. Unipolarity -- at least under current
circumstances -- may then have within it the seeds if not of its own destruction, then at least of its
modification, and the resulting world would pose interesting challenges to both scholars and national
leaders. 71 More broadly, my theory highlights what is perhaps the key dilemma faced by a unipolar
power. It may attempt to contain the economic growth of other states, thus remaining the most
powerful state in terms of latent power, but triggering a balancing effort that may ultimately
undermine its preeminence in military power. Or it may accommodate other states economic
growth, thus avoiding a military challenge and maintaining its preeminence in military power, but
eventually losing its place as the most powerful economy in the system. In other words, military
unipolarity is durable only at the expense of economic hegemony.
Nuclear deterrence ensures that unipolarity is durable

To begin with proposition (2): an unmatched concentration of power in one state only threatens the
survival of other states under certain conditions, which are underspecified in balance-of-power theory.
Unmatched power threatens the survival of less powerful states only if survival depends on a
balance of power. This is the case in a conventional world. 21 In order to deter an attack launched by a
competitor, a state needs to possess matching conventional power. Conventional inferiority vis--vis
another state leads to military vulnerability and the inability to deter the adversary, ultimately
undermining the goal of state survival. But this is not the case in a nuclear world. Deterrence between
nuclear powers -- those with survivable nuclear arsenals -- is based on each state being unable to
avoid suffering horrendous cost at the hands of the other in the case of an all-out conflict. Since this
ability does not depend on a balance of conventional power, a nuclear power may deter any state -even states significantly more powerful in conventional terms -- from threatening its survival. This
conditioning of proposition (2) does not impact (3), the claim that states will balance against concentrated
power in order to improve their odds of survival. At least some states will balance against more
powerful states even in a nuclear world. Minor powers, particularly those not aligned with the

Hegemony Core
unipole, will try to develop a nuclear capability and ascend to the ranks of major powers, those states that
possess the capability to deter any state, including one possessing unmatched conventional power. But the
caveat to proposition (2) I introduced above does condition whether proposition (3) will indeed lead to
(4). In other words, the caveat that a nuclear power is able to deter any state despite being
conventionally inferior requires us to revise the view that states are able to guarantee their survival,
and therefore stop their balancing efforts, only once they have amassed as much power as any other
state. In a conventional world, that is in fact true. In the absence of nuclear weapons, states, in order to
guarantee their survival, will have to balance against more powerful states until they have matched or
even surpassed the latters military capabilities. Only at this point would threats to their survival be
minimized, as postulated by (4). In a nuclear world, however, the foremost goal of balancing (to
guarantee survival) can be achieved short of amassing as much power as any potential competitor,
thus violating proposition (4). States that acquire a nuclear arsenal have virtually guaranteed their survival
even though they may possess negligible relative conventional capability. Therefore, in a nuclear world,
proposition (4) must acquire a conditional character, becoming threats to survival may be minimized
short of amassing as much or more power than any other state. The reason for this is well-developed in
the literature. Basically, there is no defense against nuclear weapons . Their offensive advantage,
being insurmountable, places an emphasis on deterrence -- the avoidance of conflict because victory
is impossible, or meaningless. They therefore end up, in a counterintuitive way, providing an
overwhelming advantage to the defense. As Campbell Craig writes, [n]uclear weapons create stability
primarily because they give a decisive advantage to a nation defending itself over a nation wanting
to attack. 22 John Mearsheimer puts it with characteristic succinctness: no state is likely to attack the
homeland or vital interests of a nuclear-armed state for fear that such a move might trigger a
horrific nuclear response. 23 This realization that, in a nuclear world, threats to a states survival
can be minimized short of amassing as much power as any other state in the system in turn requires
us to revise proposition (5), decoupling balancing efforts from any necessary shift in the systemic
balance-of-power. As a result, proposition (6) must now accommodate the possibility that unmatched
concentrations of power in one state may last for long. In other words, unipolarity may be durable.
Hegemony is sustainable- its collapse would lead to transition wars and it solves for
relations with other countries
Thayer, Missouri State University Department of Defense and Strategic Studies
professor, 6
[Bradley A., December 2006, The National Interest, In Defense of Primacy, lexis, accessed 7-9-13,
MSG]
A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's
number one power--the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy
claim that the United States should retrench, either because the United States lacks the power to maintain
its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy
will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the previous issue of The National
Interest, Christopher Layne warned of these dangers of primacy and called for retrenchment.1

Hegemony Core
Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want
no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of
economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would
have the United States abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and
seapower to defend its interests.
But retrenchment, in any of its guises, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy,
it would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the
world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy.
There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the
dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain dominant due to its prodigious
military, economic and soft power capabilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the
first issue. The United States has overwhelming military capabilities and wealth in comparison to
other states or likely potential alliances. Barring some disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain
the case for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment
acknowledge this.
So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American primacy. Proponents of
retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action--but they fail to realize what is good about
American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that
stem from it are not.
A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the
U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical
resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and
that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to
the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see
NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor.
In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental
objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than
the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America
chooses to play in international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide
from threats. Whether they are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats
must be confronted. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its
commitments or making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that
others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and
emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak
rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If
there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United States, then the conventional
and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats.
And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies
overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far
from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks
against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be
achieved by offshore balancing.

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Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the
"global commons"--the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space--allowing the United States to
project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a
consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the
robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased.2 This
is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly.
A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly
and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of
course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use
the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater
influence.
Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties
and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers.
That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was
about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its
history has this country, or any country, had so many allies.
U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international
politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions.
Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded
states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN,
where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in
contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to
realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs
and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts
by the UN to halt proliferation.
You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five":
China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree
with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to
Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and actions of the
United States.
China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is
intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims
that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including
asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United
States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain
from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as
we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates.
The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran,
Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically
anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient
relations.

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THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was
a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long
recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics.
Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust
monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked
to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained
without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be
reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international
orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at
Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as
assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you
lose it)."
Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of
the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many
positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During
the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most
notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated
relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and
Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war.
Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax
Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars.
Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements
of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well
as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal
democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American
worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are
governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not
because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more
open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S.
leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing
the interests of the United States.
Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East,
labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to
explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers
from the argument, should not even be attempted.
Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on
America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more
opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought
democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical
October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were
held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path
to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and
the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like

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Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon,
Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has
been impressive.
Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the
growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an
economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for
international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and
prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit,
particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of
altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces
American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as
well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs
foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess.
Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former
Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the
socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now
recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is
through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated
through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the
strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides.
Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to
advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the
earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over
fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian
in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the world's
police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster,
earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the
countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in
the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond
with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South
and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S.
soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment
and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S.
military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications
capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations
depend on the United States to supply UN forces.
United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster,
and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In
October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three
million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on
Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States

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also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence
of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of
Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable,
while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money
was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the
War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a
humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As
the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States
humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.
Hegemony is sustainable the US still remains the top world hegemon

Kagan, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 6
(Robert, January 15, The Washington Post, Still the Colossus,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/13/AR2006011301696.html,
accessed 7/6/13, CBC)
The much-anticipated global effort to balance against American hegemony -- which the realists have
been anticipating for more than 15 years now -- has simply not occurred. On the contrary, in Europe the
idea has all but vanished. European Union defense budgets continue their steady decline, and even the
project of creating a common foreign and defense policy has slowed if not stalled. Both trends are
primarily the result of internal European politics. But if they really feared American power, Europeans
would be taking more urgent steps to strengthen the European Union's hand to check it.
Nor are Europeans refusing to cooperate, even with an administration they allegedly despise. Western
Europe will not be a strategic partner as it was during the Cold War, because Western Europeans no
longer feel threatened and therefore do not seek American protection. Nevertheless, the current trend is
toward closer cooperation. Germany's new government, while still dissenting from U.S. policy in Iraq,
is working hard and ostentatiously to improve relations. It is bending over backward to show support for
the mission in Afghanistan, most notably by continuing to supply a small but, in German terms,
meaningful number of troops. It even trumpets its willingness to train Iraqi soldiers. Chancellor Angela
Merkel promises to work closely with Washington on the question of the China arms embargo, indicating
agreement with the American view that China is a potential strategic concern. For Eastern and Central
Europe, the growing threat is Russia, not America, and the big question remains what it was in the 1990s:
Who will be invited to join NATO?
In East Asia, meanwhile, U.S. relations with Japan grow ever closer as the Japanese become increasingly
concerned about China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. China's (and Malaysia's) attempt to exclude
Australia from a prominent regional role at the recent East Asian summit has reinforced Sydney's desire
for closer ties. Only in South Korea does hostility to the United States remain high. This is mostly the
product of the new democracy's understandable historical resentments and desire for greater
independence. But even so, when I attended a conference in Seoul recently, the question posed to my

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panel by the South Korean organizers was: "How will the United States solve the problem of North
Korea's nuclear weapons?"
The truth is, America retains enormous advantages in the international arena. Its liberal, democratic
ideology remains appealing in a world that is more democratic than ever. Its potent economy
remains the driving wheel of the international economy. Compared with these powerful forces, the
unpopularity of recent actions will prove ephemeral, just as it did after the nadir of American Cold War
popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
There are also structural reasons why American indispensability can survive even the unpopularity of
recent years. The political scientist William Wohlforth argued a decade ago that the American unipolar
era is durable not because of any love for the United States but because of the basic structure of the
international system. The problem for any nation attempting to balance American power, even in
that power's own region, is that long before it becomes strong enough to balance the United States,
it may frighten its neighbors into balancing against it. Europe would be the exception to this rule were
it increasing its power, but it is not. Both Russia and China face this problem as they attempt to exert
greater influence even in their traditional spheres of influence.
It remains the case, too, that in many crises and potential crises around the world, local actors and
traditional allies still look primarily to Washington for solutions, not to Beijing, Moscow or even
Brussels. The United States is the key player in the Taiwan Strait. It would be the chief intermediary
between India and Pakistan in any crisis. As for Iran, everyone on both sides of the Atlantic knows that,
for all the efforts of British, French and German negotiators, any diplomatic or military resolution will
ultimately depend on Washington.
Even in the Middle East, where hostility to the United States is highest, American influence remains
remarkably high. Most still regard the United States as the indispensable player in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. The Bush administration's push for democracy, though erratic and inconsistent, has unmistakably
affected the course of events in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon -- never mind Iraq. Contrary to
predictions at the time of the Iraq war, Arab hostility has not made it impossible for both leaders and their
political opponents to cooperate with the United States.
This does not mean the United States has not suffered a relative decline in that intangible but important
commodity: legitimacy. A combination of shifting geopolitical realities, difficult circumstances and some
inept policy has certainly damaged America's standing in the world. Yet, despite everything, the
American position in the world has not deteriorated as much as people think. America still "stands
alone as the world's indispensable nation," as Clinton so humbly put it in 1997. It can resume an
effective leadership role in the world in fairly short order, even during the present administration and
certainly after the 2008 election, regardless of which party wins. That is a good thing, because given the
growing dangers in the world, the intelligent and effective exercise of America's benevolent global
hegemony is as important as ever.

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AT Empire Decline
Heg does not cause US decline empirics and actual military cost low
Another argument for retrenchment holds that the United States will fall prey to the same fate as
past hegemons and accelerate its own decline. In order to keep its ambitious strategy in place, the
logic goes, the country will have to divert resources away from more productive purposes-infrastructure, education, scientific research, and so on--that are necessary to keep its economy
competitive. Allies, meanwhile, can get away with lower military expenditures and grow faster than they
otherwise would.
The historical evidence for this phenomenon is thin; for the most part, past superpowers lost their
leadership not because they pursued hegemony but because other major powers balanced against
them--a prospect that is not in the cards today. (If anything, leading states can use their position to
stave off their decline.) A bigger problem with the warnings against "imperial overstretch" is that
there is no reason to believe that the pursuit of global leadership saps economic growth. Instead,
most studies by economists find no clear relationship between military expenditures and economic
decline.
To be sure, if the United States were a dramatic outlier and spent around A quarter of its GDP on defense,
as the Soviet Union did in its last decades, its growth and competitiveness would suffer. But in 2012, even
as it fought a war in Afghanistan and conducted counterterrorism operations around the globe,
Washington spent just 4.5 percent of GDP on defense--a relatively small fraction, historically speaking.
(From 1950 to 1990, that figure averaged 7.6 percent.) Recent economic difficulties might prompt
Washington to reevaluate its defense budgets and international commitments, but that does not
mean that those policies caused the downturn. And any money freed up from dropping global
commitments would not necessarily be spent in ways that would help the U.S. economy.
Likewise, U.S. allies' economic growth rates have nothing to do with any security subsidies they
receive from Washington. The contention that lower military expenditures facilitated the rise of Japan,
West Germany, and other countries dependent on U.S. defense guarantees may have seemed plausible
during the last bout of declinist anxiety, in the 1980s. But these states eventually stopped climbing up
the global economic ranks as their per capita wealth approached U.S. levels--just as standard
models of economic growth would predict. Over the past 20 years, the United States has maintained
its lead in per capita GDP over its European allies and Japan, even as those countries' defense
efforts have fallen further behind. Their failure to modernize their militaries has only served to
entrench the United States' dominance.

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Hegemony Core
AT Multipolar Transition
There is no risk of a transition to a multipolar world countries are not capable nor
willing to balance against the US
(Robert, July 17, Stanford University Hoover Foundation, End of Dreams, Return of History,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6136, Policy Review, Volume: 144,
These American traditions, together with historical events beyond Americans control, have
catapulted the United States to a position of pre-eminence in the world. Since the end of the Cold
War and the emergence of this unipolar world, there has been much anticipation of the end of
unipolarity and the rise of a multipolar world in which the United States is no longer the
predominant power. Not only realist theorists but others both inside and outside the United States have
long argued the theoretical and practical unsustainability, not to mention undesirability, of a world with
only one superpower. Mainstream realist theory has assumed that other powers must inevitably band
together to balance against the superpower. Others expected the post-Cold War era to be characterized by
the primacy of geoeconomics over geopolitics and foresaw a multipolar world with the economic giants
of Europe, India, Japan, and China rivaling the United States. Finally, in the wake of the Iraq War and
with hostility to the United States, as measured in public opinion polls, apparently at an all-time high,
there has been a widespread assumption that the American position in the world must finally be eroding.
Yet American predominance in the main categories of power persists as a key feature of the
international system. The enormous and productive American economy remains at the center of the
international economic system. American democratic principles are shared by over a hundred
nations. The American military is not only the largest but the only one capable of projecting force
into distant theaters. Chinese strategists, who spend a great deal of time thinking about these
things, see the world not as multipolar but as characterized by one superpower, many great
powers, and this configuration seems likely to persist into the future absent either a catastrophic
blow to American power or a decision by the United States to diminish its power and international
influence voluntarily. 11
Sino-Russian hostility to American predominance has not yet produced a concerted effort at balancing.
The anticipated global balancing has for the most part not occurred. Russia and China certainly share
a common and openly expressed goal of checking American hegemony. They have created at least one
institution, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, aimed at resisting American influence in Central
Asia, and China is the only power in the world, other than the United States, engaged in a long-term
military buildup. But Sino-Russian hostility to American predominance has not yet produced a concerted
and cooperative effort at balancing. China s buildup is driven at least as much by its own long-term
ambitions as by a desire to balance the United States. Russia has been using its vast reserves of oil and
natural gas as a lever to compensate for the lack of military power, but it either cannot or does not want to

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increase its military capability sufficiently to begin counterbalancing the United States. Overall, Russian
military power remains in decline. In addition, the two powers do not trust one another. They are
traditional rivals, and the rise of China inspires at least as much nervousness in Russia as it does in the
United States. At the moment, moreover, China is less abrasively confrontational with the United
States. Its dependence on the American market and foreign investment and its perception that the
United States remains a potentially formidable adversary mitigate against an openly
confrontational approach.
In any case, China and Russia cannot balance the United States without at least some help from
Europe, Japan, India, or at least some of the other advanced, democratic nations. But those
powerful players are not joining the effort. Europe has rejected the option of making itself a
counterweight to American power. This is true even among the older members of the European Union,
where neither France, Germany, Italy, nor Spain proposes such counterbalancing, despite a public opinion
hostile to the Bush administration. Now that the eu has expanded to include the nations of Central and
Eastern Europe, who fear threats from the east, not from the west, the prospect of a unified Europe
counterbalancing the United States is practically nil. As for Japan and India, the clear trend in recent years
has been toward closer strategic cooperation with the United States.

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Hegemony Good Impacts

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Laundry List
On balance, hegemony key to stable global order
In Defense of American Engagement

Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a single grand strategy: deep engagement. In
an effort to protect its security and prosperity, the country has promoted a liberal economic order and
established close defense ties with partners in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Its military bases
cover the map, its ships patrol transit routes across the globe, and tens of thousands of its troops stand
guard in allied countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
The details of U.S. foreign policy have differed from administration to administration, including the
emphasis placed on democracy promotion and humanitarian goals, but for over 60 years, every
president has agreed on the fundamental decision to remain deeply engaged in the world, even as
the rationale for that strategy has shifted. During the Cold War, the United States' security
commitments to Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East served primarily to prevent Soviet
encroachment into the world's wealthiest and most resource-rich regions. Since the fall of the Soviet
Union, the aim has become to make these same regions more secure , and thus less threatening to
the United States, and to use these security partnerships to foster the cooperation necessary for a
stable and open international order.
Now, more than ever, Washington might be tempted to abandon this grand strategy and pull back
from the world. The rise of China is chipping away at the United States' preponderance of power, a
budget crisis has put defense spending on the chopping block, and two long wars have left the U.S.
military and public exhausted. Indeed, even as most politicians continue to assert their commitment to
global leadership, a very different view has taken hold among scholars of international relations over
the past decade: that the United States should minimize its overseas military presence, shed its
security ties, and give up its efforts to lead the liberal international order.
Proponents of retrenchment argue that a globally engaged grand strategy wastes money by
subsidizing the defense of well-off allies and generates resentment among foreign populations and
governments. A more modest posture, they contend, would put an end to allies' free-riding and
defuse anti-American sentiment. Even if allies did not take over every mission the United States now
performs, most of these roles have nothing to do with U.S. security and only risk entrapping the United
States in unnecessary wars. In short, those in this camp maintain that pulling back would not only save
blood and treasure but also make the United States more secure.

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They are wrong. In making their case, advocates of retrenchment overstate the costs of the current
grand strategy and understate its benefits. In fact, the budgetary savings of lowering the United
States' international profile are debatable, and there is little evidence to suggest that an
internationally engaged America provokes other countries to balance against it, becomes
overextended, or gets dragged into unnecessary wars.
The benefits of deep engagement, on the other hand, are legion. U.S. security commitments reduce
competition in key regions and act as a check against potential rivals. They help maintain an open
world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations. And they make it easier for
the United States to secure cooperation for combating a wide range of global threats. Were the
United States to cede its global leadership role, it would forgo these proven upsides while exposing
itself to the unprecedented downsides of a world in which the country was less secure, prosperous,
and influential.
US retrenchment risks economic decline, collapse of cooperation and conflicts

THE DEVIL WE KNOW

Should America come home? For many prominent scholars of international relations, the answer is
yes--a view that seems even wiser in the wake of the disaster in Iraq and the Great Recession. Yet their
arguments simply don't hold up. There is little evidence that the United States would save much
money switching to a smaller global posture. Nor is the current strategy self-defeating: it has not
provoked the formation of counterbalancing coalitions or caused the country to spend itself into
economic decline. Nor will it condemn the United States to foolhardy wars in the future. What the
strategy does do is help prevent the outbreak of conflict in the world's most important regions,
keep the global economy humming, and make international cooperation easier. Charting a different
course would threaten all these benefits.
This is not to say that the United States' current foreign policy can't be adapted to new
circumstances and challenges. Washington does not need to retain every commitment at all costs, and
there is nothing wrong with rejiggering its strategy in response to new opportunities or setbacks. That is
what the Nixon administration did by winding down the Vietnam War and increasing the United
States' reliance on regional partners to contain Soviet power, and it is what the Obama
administration has been doing after the Iraq war by pivoting to Asia. These episodes of rebalancing
belie the argument that a powerful and internationally engaged America cannot tailor its policies to
a changing world.

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A grand strategy of actively managing global security and promoting the liberal economic order has
served the United States exceptionally well for the past six decades, and there is no reason to give it
up now. The country's globe-spanning posture is the devil we know , and a world with a disengaged
America is the devil we don't know. Were American leaders to choose retrenchment, they would in
essence be running a massive experiment to test how the world would work without an engaged and
liberal leading power. The results could well be disastrous.
Failure to maintain overall primacy leads to a laundry list of impacts in every region
-War (nuke/GPW), terrorism, humanitarian crises, prolif, economic collapse
Metz, Army War College Strategic Studies Institute Director, 13

[Steven, 10/22/13, World Politics Review, A Receding Presence: The Military Implications of
American Retrenchment, www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13312/a-receding-presence-themilitary-implications-of-american-retrenchment , accessed 7/11/14, AC]
So much for the regions of modest concern. The Middle East/North Africa region, by contrast, is a part
of the world where American retrenchment or narrowing U.S. military capabilities could have
extensive adverse effects. While the region has a number of nations with significant military capability,
it does not have a functioning method for preserving order without outside involvement. As U.S. power
recedes, it could turn out that American involvement was in fact a deterrent against Iran taking a more
adventurous regional posture, for instance. With the United States gone, Tehran could become more
aggressive, propelling the Middle East toward division into hostile Shiite and Sunni blocs and
encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons. With fewer ties between regional armed forces and the
United States, there also could be a new round of military coups. States of the region could increase
pressure on Israel, possibly leading to pre-emptive military strikes by the Israelis, with a risk of
another major war. One of the al-Qaida affiliates might seize control of a state or exercise outright
control of at least part of a collapsed state. Or China might see American withdrawal as an opportunity
to play a greater role in the region, particularly in the Persian Gulf.
The United States has a number of security objectives in the Middle East and North Africa: protecting
world access to the region's petroleum, limiting humanitarian disasters, preventing the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, limiting the operating space for al-Qaida and its affiliates, sustaining
America's commitment to long-standing partners and assuring Israel's security. Arguments that the U.S.
can disengage from the region and recoup savings in defense expenditures assume that petroleum
exports would continue even in the event of domination of the region by a hostile power like Iran or
a competitor like China, state collapse or even the seizure of power by extremists. Whoever exercises
power in the region would need to sell oil. And the United States is moving toward petroleum selfsufficiency or, at least, away from dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But even if the United States
could get along with diminished petroleum exports from the Middle East, many other nations
couldn't. The economic damage would cascade, inevitably affecting the United States. Clearly
disengagement from the Middle East and North Africa would entail significant risks for the United
States. It would be a roll of the strategic dice.

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South and Central Asia are a bit different, since large-scale U.S. involvement there is a relatively recent
phenomenon. This means that the regional security architecture there is less dependent on the United
States than that of some other regions. South and Central Asia also includes two vibrant, competitive
and nuclear-armed powersIndia and Chinaas well as one of the world's most fragile nuclear
states, Pakistan. Writers like Robert Kaplan argue that South Asia's importance will continue to grow, its
future shaped by the competition between China and India. This makes America's security partnership
with India crucial. The key issue is whether India can continue to modernize its military to balance
China while addressing its immense domestic problems with infrastructure, education, income inequality
and ethnic and religious tensions. If it cannot, the United States might have to decide between ceding
domination of the region to China or spending what it takes to sustain an American military
presence in the region.
Central Asia is different. After a decade of U.S. military operations, the region remains a cauldron
of extremism and terrorism. America's future role there is in doubt, as it looks like the United States
will not be able to sustain a working security partnership with Afghanistan and Pakistan in the future. At
some point one or both of these states could collapse, with extremist movements gaining control.
There is little chance of another large-scale U.S. military intervention to forestall state collapse, but
Washington might feel compelled to act to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons if Islamabad loses
control of them. The key decision for Washington might someday be whether to tolerate extremistdominated areas or states as long as they do not enable transnational terrorism. Could the United States
allow a Taliban state in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance, if it did not provide training areas
and other support to al-Qaida? Most likely, the U.S. approach would be to launch raids and long-distance
attacks on discernible al-Qaida targets and hope that such a method best balanced costs and risks.
The Asia-Pacific region will remain the most important one to the United States even in a time of
receding American power. The United States retains deep economic interests in and massive trade
with Asia, and has been a central player in the region's security system for more than a century.
While instability or conflict there is less likely than in the Middle East and North Africa, if it
happened it would be much more dangerous because of the economic and military power of the
states likely to be involved.
U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific has been described as a hub-and-spokes strategy "with the United States
as the hub, bilateral alliances as the spokes and multilateral institutions largely at the margins." In
particular, the bilateral "spokes" are U.S. security ties with key allies Australia, Japan and South Korea
and, in a way, Taiwan. The United States also has many other beneficial security relationships in the
region, including with Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. America's major security
objectives in the Asia-Pacific in recent years have been to discourage Chinese provocation or
destabilization as China rises in political, economic and military power, and to prevent the world's
most bizarre and unpredictable nuclear powerNorth Koreafrom unleashing Armageddon
through some sort of miscalculation.
Because the U.S. plays a more central role in the Asia-Pacific security framework than in any other
regional security arrangement, this is the region where disengagement or a recession of American
power would have the most far-reaching effect. Without an American counterweight, China might
become increasingly aggressive and provocative. This could lead the other leading powers of the
region close to Chinaparticularly Japan, South Korea and Taiwanto abandon their historical
antagonism toward one another and move toward some sort of de facto or even formal alliance. If

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China pushed them too hard, all three have the technological capability to develop and deploy
nuclear weapons quickly. The middle powers of the region, particularly those embroiled in disputes with
China over the resources of the South China Sea, would have to decide between acceding to Beijing's
demands or aligning themselves with the Japan-South Korea-Taiwan bloc.
Clearly North Korea will remain the most incendiary element of the Asia-Pacific system even if the
United States opts to downgrade its involvement in regional security. The parasitic Kim dynasty
cannot survive forever. The question is whether it lashes out in its death throes, potentially with
nuclear weapons, or implodes into internal conflict. Either action would require a significant
multinational effort, whether to invade then reconstruct and stabilize the nation, or for
humanitarian relief and peacekeeping following a civil war. Even if the United States were less
involved in the region, it would probably participate in such an effort, but might not lead it.
Across all these regions, four types of security threats are plausible and dangerous: protracted
internal conflicts that cause humanitarian disasters and provide operating space for extremists (the
Syria model); the further proliferation of nuclear weapons; the seizure of a state or part of a state
by extremists that then use the territory they control to support transnational terrorism; and the
old specter of major war between nations. U.S. political leaders and security experts once believed
that maintaining a full range of military capabilities, including the ability to undertake large-scale,
protracted land operations, was an important deterrent to potential opponents. But the problem with
deterrence is that it's impossible to prove. Did the U.S. military deter the Soviet seizure of Western
Europe, or did Moscow never intend to do that irrespective of what the United States did? Unfortunately,
the only way to definitively demonstrate the value of deterrence is to allow U.S. power to recede and see
if bad things happen. Until recently, the United States was not inclined to take such a risk. But now there
is increasing political support for accepting greater risk by moving toward a cheaper military without a
full range of capabilities. Many Americans are willing to throw the strategic dice.
The recession of American power will influence the evolution of the various regional security
systems, of which history suggests there are three types: hegemonic security systems in which a dominant
state assures stability; balance of power systems where rivals compete but do not dominate; and
cooperative systems in which multiple states inside and sometimes outside a region maintain security and
limit or contain conflict. Sub-Saharan Africa is a weak cooperative system organized around the African
Union. Even if there is diminished U.S. involvement, the sub-Saharan African security system is likely to
remain as it is. Latin America might have once been a hegemonic system, at least in the Caribbean Basin,
but today it is moving toward becoming a cooperative system with a diminished U.S. role. The same is
true of Europe.
Hegemony solves all the impacts Economy, Free Trade, Great Power, Nuclear,
Regional and Smaller Wars. Collapse triggers those impacts
Kagan, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate, 11
(Robert, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior Transatlantic
Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 7-17-07, End of Dreams, Return of History, Hoover Institution,
No. 144, August/September, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6136, Accessed
6/27/12, THW)

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Others have. For decades realist analysts have called for a strategy of offshore balancing. Instead
of the United States providing security in East Asia and the Persian Gulf, it would withdraw its forces
from Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East and let the nations in those regions balance one another. If
the balance broke down and war erupted, the United States would then intervene militarily until balance
was restored. In the Middle East and Persian Gulf, for instance, Christopher Layne has long proposed
passing the mantle of regional stabilizer to a consortium of Russia, China, Iran, and India. In
East Asia offshore balancing would mean letting China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others
manage their own problems, without U.S. involvementagain, until the balance broke down and
war erupted, at which point the United States would provide assistance to restore the balance and
then, if necessary, intervene with its own forces to restore peace and stability.
Before examining whether this would be a wise strategy, it is important to understand that this really is
the only genuine alternative to the one the United States has pursued for the past 65 years. To their credit,
Layne and others who support the concept of offshore balancing have eschewed halfway measures and
airy assurances that we can do more with less, which are likely recipes for disaster. They recognize that
either the United States is actively involved in providing security and stability in regions beyond the
Western Hemisphere, which means maintaining a robust presence in those regions, or it is not. Layne and
others are frank in calling for an end to the global security strategy developed in the aftermath of World
War II, perpetuated through the Cold War, and continued by four successive post-Cold War
administrations.
At the same time, it is not surprising that none of those administrations embraced offshore balancing as a
strategy. The idea of relying on Russia, China, and Iran to jointly stabilize the Middle East and
Persian Gulf will not strike many as an attractive proposition. Nor is U.S. withdrawal from East
Asia and the Pacific likely to have a stabilizing effect on that region. The prospects of a war on the
Korean Peninsula would increase. Japan and other nations in the region would face the choice of
succumbing to Chinese hegemony or taking unilateral steps for self-defense, which in Japans case
would mean the rapid creation of a formidable nuclear arsenal.
Layne and other offshore balancing enthusiasts, like John Mearsheimer, point to two notable occasions
when the United States allegedly practiced this strategy. One was the Iran-Iraq war, where the United
States supported Iraq for years against Iran in the hope that the two would balance and weaken each other.
The other was American policy in the 1920s and 1930s, when the United States allowed the great
European powers to balance one another, occasionally providing economic aid, or military aid, as in the
Lend-Lease program of assistance to Great Britain once war broke out. Whether this was really American
strategy in that era is open for debatemost would argue the United States in this era was trying to stay
out of war not as part of a considered strategic judgment but as an end in itself. Even if the United States
had been pursuing offshore balancing in the first decades of the 20th century, however, would we really
call that strategy a success? The United States wound up intervening with millions of troops, first in
Europe, and then in Asia and Europe simultaneously, in the two most dreadful wars in human history.
It was with the memory of those two wars in mind, and in the belief that American strategy in those
interwar years had been mistaken, that American statesmen during and after World War II
determined on the new global strategy that the United States has pursued ever since. Under Franklin
Roosevelt, and then under the leadership of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, American leaders
determined that the safest course was to build situations of strength (Achesons phrase) in strategic

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locations around the world, to build a preponderance of power, and to create an international
system with American power at its center. They left substantial numbers of troops in East Asia and in
Europe and built a globe-girdling system of naval and air bases to enable the rapid projection of force to
strategically important parts of the world. They did not do this on a lark or out of a yearning for global
dominion. They simply rejected the offshore balancing strategy, and they did so because they believed it
had led to great, destructive wars in the past and would likely do so again. They believed their new
global strategy was more likely to deter major war and therefore be less destructive and less
expensive in the long run. Subsequent administrations, from both parties and with often differing
perspectives on the proper course in many areas of foreign policy, have all agreed on this core strategic
approach.
From the beginning this strategy was assailed as too ambitious and too expensive. At the dawn of the
Cold War, Walter Lippmann railed against Trumans containment strategy as suffering from an
unsustainable gap between ends and means that would bankrupt the United States and exhaust its power.
Decades later, in the waning years of the Cold War, Paul Kennedy warned of imperial overstretch,
arguing that American decline was inevitable if the trends in national indebtedness, low productivity
increases, [etc.] were allowed to continue at the same time as massive American commitments of men,
money and materials are made in different parts of the globe. Today, we are once again being told that
this global strategy needs to give way to a more restrained and modest approach, even though the
indebtedness crisis that we face in coming years is not caused by the present, largely successful
global strategy.
Of course it is precisely the success of that strategy that is taken for granted. The enormous benefits
that this strategy has provided, including the financial benefits, somehow never appear on the
ledger. They should. We might begin by asking about the global security order that the United
States has sustained since Word War IIthe prevention of major war, the support of an open
trading system, and promotion of the liberal principles of free markets and free government. How
much is that order worth? What would be the cost of its collapse or transformation into another
type of order?
Whatever the nature of the current economic difficulties, the past six decades have seen a greater
increase in global prosperity than any time in human history. Hundreds of millions have been lifted
out of poverty. Once-backward nations have become economic dynamos. And the American
economy, though suffering ups and downs throughout this period, has on the whole benefited
immensely from this international order. One price of this success has been maintaining a sufficient
military capacity to provide the essential security underpinnings of this order. But has the price not been
worth it? In the first half of the 20th century, the United States found itself engaged in two world
wars. In the second half, this global American strategy helped produce a peaceful end to the greatpower struggle of the Cold War and then 20 more years of great-power peace. Looked at coldly,
simply in terms of dollars and cents, the benefits of that strategy far outweigh the costs.
The danger, as always, is that we dont even realize the benefits our strategic choices have provided.
Many assume that the world has simply become more peaceful, that great-power conflict has
become impossible, that nations have learned that military force has little utility, that economic
power is what counts. This belief in progress and the perfectibility of humankind and the institutions of
international order is always alluring to Americans and Europeans and other children of the
Enlightenment. It was the prevalent belief in the decade before World War I, in the first years after

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World War II, and in those heady days after the Cold War when people spoke of the end of
history. It is always tempting to believe that the international order the United States built and
sustained with its power can exist in the absence of that power, or at least with much less of it. This
is the hidden assumption of those who call for a change in American strategy: that the United States
can stop playing its role and yet all the benefits that came from that role will keep pouring in. This
is a great if recurring illusion, the idea that you can pull a leg out from under a table and the table
will not fall over.
Retrenchment will destroy global stability, cause terrorism, economic collapse,

rogue states, and war
Thayer, Baylor Political Science Professor, 2006
[Bradley A., November-December, The National Interest, In Defense of Primacy,
http://nationalinterest.org/article/in-defense-of-primacy-1300, 7-8-14, accessed: JY]
But retrenchment, in any of its guises, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it
would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the
world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy.
There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the
dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain dominant due to its prodigious
military, economic and soft power capabilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the first
issue. The United States has overwhelming military capabilities and wealth in comparison to other states
or likely potential alliances. Barring some disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the
foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this.
So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American primacy. Proponents of
retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action--but they fail to realize what is good about
American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that
stem from it are not.
A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the U.S.
homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like
oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's
worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in
part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or
the Australians in East Timor.
In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of
the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than the present grand
strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America chooses to play in
international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they
are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats must be confronted. Simply
by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making
unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect
American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In

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the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the
strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to
the threats that confront the United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the
United States is what protects the country from such threats.
And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies
overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far
from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks
against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be achieved
by offshore balancing.
American primacy provides free trade, democracy, stability, human rights, aid, and
peace
[Bradley A.., November-December, The National Interest, In Defense of Primacy,
http://nationalinterest.org/article/in-defense-of-primacy-1300, accessed: 7-8-14, JY]
Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust
monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked
to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without
the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one
of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The
Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without
U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and
western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)."
Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of
the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many
positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the
Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most
notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated
relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India
and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending
all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a
Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars.
Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements
of its ideology of liberalism: Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the
United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies
are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.(n3)
So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed
democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because
democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open,
more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S.

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leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the
interests of the United States.
Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East,
labeling such aft effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to
explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the
argument, should not even be attempted.
Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on
America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more
opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought
democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical
October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were
held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to
democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the
Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Westernstyle democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait,
the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive.
Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth
of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal
worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property
rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems
from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest
states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit
and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be
competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the
economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military
technology, helping to ensure military prowess.
Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former
Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the
socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes
that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption
of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.(n4)
As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents
of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides.
Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to
advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the
earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over
fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in
nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the
global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake,
flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On
the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near
Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington
followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia

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for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen
and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as
forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have
accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global
logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to
supply UN forces.
United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in
poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October
2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74 000 people and leaving three million
homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in
nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible To help those in need, the United States also
provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of
the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of
Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than
unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir,
the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact
on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a
humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the
War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian
missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.

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Deters Nuclear Crises

Hegemony deters conflict and nuclear crises
KEEPING THE PEACE

Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far below what advocates of
retrenchment claim, they would not be worth bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do.
The most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict.
The United States' security commitments deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from
contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from trying to solve security problems on their
own in ways that would end up threatening other states.
Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent
dangerous rivalries from erupting. They maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the
many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to prevent conflict. In
other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the American
pacifier.
But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would
likely expand their military capabilities and go nuclear, which could provoke a destabilizing
reaction from China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried
to obtain nuclear weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its
security commitments to restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to
leave the Middle East, the countries currently backed by Washington--notably, Israel, Egypt, and
Saudi Arabia--might act in ways that would intensify the region's security dilemmas.
There would even be reason to worry about Europe. Although it's hard to imagine the return of
great-power military competition in a post-American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee
governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political
costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing
itself from threats on its periphery, unable to join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might
want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers.
Given how easily a U.S. withdrawal from key regions could lead to dangerous competition,
advocates of retrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't
actually hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the United States could survive the return

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of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East--but at what cost? Were states in one or both of
these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military budgets,
arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the
United States, in part because its lead in military capabilities would narrow.
Greater regional insecurity could also produce cascades of nuclear proliferation as powers such as
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those
countries' regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals. Although nuclear deterrence
can promote stability between two states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the
United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple nuclear rivals with less robust
arsenals. As the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit transfers, irrational
decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up.

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Deters Regional Crises

Hegemony dampens competition, preventing regional crises
The case for abandoning the United States' global role misses the underlying security logic of the
current approach. By reassuring allies and actively managing regional relations, Washington
dampens competition in the worlds key areas, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse in
which countries would grow new military capabilities. For proof that this strategy is working, one need
look no further than the defense budgets of the current great powers: on average, since 1991 they have
kept their military expenditures as A percentage of GDP to historic lows, and they have not attempted to
match the United States' top-end military capabilities. Moreover, all of the world's most modern
militaries are U.S. allies, and the United States' military lead over its potential rivals .is by many
measures growing.
On top of all this, the current grand strategy acts as a hedge against the emergence regional
hegemons. Some supporters of retrenchment argue that the U.S. military should keep its forces over the
horizon and pass the buck to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing rising regional
powers. Washington, they contend, should deploy forces abroad only when a truly credible contender for
regional hegemony arises, as in the cases of Germany and Japan during World War II and the Soviet
Union during the Cold War. Yet there is already a potential contender for regional hegemony--China-and to balance it, the United States will need to maintain its key alliances in Asia and the military
capacity to intervene there. The implication is that the United States should get out of Afghanistan
and Iraq, reduce its military presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia. Yet that is exactly what the Obama
administration is doing.

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Deters Conflict
Hegemony is key to prevent great power wars
Zhang, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Researcher, et al. 11
[Yuhan, and Lin Shi, Columbia University, January 22, 2011, East Asia Forum, Americas decline: A
harbinger of conflict and rivalry, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-aharbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/, accessed 7/7/13, WD]
Over the past two decades, no other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military.
Under these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have
bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe,
India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a
status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts.
However, as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power
behind the US alliance. The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse,
American interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be
harder to avoid.
As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in
the late 19th century Americas emergence as a regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of
conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power and
waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain rules the
waves. Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western
Hemispheres security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with
democracy and rule of law.
Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights,
constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal
opportunities for broad segments of society. As a result of such political stability, free markets,
liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared . And, with this, many countries have
sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and cooperative relations.
However, what will happen to these advances as Americas influence declines? Given that Americas
authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central
and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer
to this question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way.
Public imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would return to
the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry . Furthermore,
multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to regional
organisations .

Hegemony Core
For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by Washingtons
withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free
markets would become more politicised and, well, less free and major powers would compete
for supremacy.
Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and
1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European
economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did
international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973).
A world without American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal
international system is supplanted by an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into
restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can forecast in a future
that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.
U.S. primacy solves war empirical and statistical data

McLean, Center for Security Policy research associate, 7
[Robert, 5-10-13, American Thinker, The Case for Hegemony,
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/05/the_case_for_hegemony.html, accessed 7-5-13, MSG]
With the growing level of agreement that the United States should abandon its role as world's lone
superpower, some questions must be asked. May Mearsheimer and his radical leftist counterparts have
been right? Is the Kremlin accurate in its assessment they we have indeed reached a time of
unprecedented conflict and global disorder? A rather simple exploration of history illustrates that, on
the contrary to those who disparage the preservation of American hegemony, the world has indeed
become significantly more peaceful since the end of the Cold War.
According to data compiled by the University of Maryland, an average of 52.5 wars occurred per decade
of the Cold War through 1984. As a result of those conflicts, an average of nearly 4.6 million people died
per decade. This is hardly peaceful. By contrast, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Sweden found that
state-based conflicts decreased by approximately 40% from 1992 to 2005. Battle deaths since 1990 make
up only a small fraction of those incurred through any decade during the Cold War, and the frequency of
attempted military coups has dropped significantly; an average of 12.8 occurred per year between 1962
and 1991, while just 5.9 were attempted per year from 1992 through 2006. From 1989 to 2005 the number
of genocides decreased by 90%.
A common misperception of the post-Cold War era maintains that while conventional battles
between states have decreased, globalization and the deterioration of stability have put civilian lives
at risk as the barriers between combatant and civilian have broken down from the growing number
terror attacks and civil conflicts. However, as the authors of the University of British Columbia's
Human Security Brief 2006 noted in their latest annual report: "notwithstanding the increase in terrorist
attacks, the number of civilian victims of intentional organized violence remains appreciably lower
today than it was during the Cold War years." Thus, all of the leading indicators - number of wars,

Hegemony Core
battle deaths, civilian lives lost - point to a more peaceful and stable world under American
primacy.
If the confrontation of the Cold War is not a correct paradigm for a peaceful future, perhaps one
resembling that of the Concert of Powers and the long held mutual goal of a balance of power that
prevailed in Europe between 1815 and 1914 would provide a greater blueprint for the 21st century. Such a
restructuring of the world order has been called for from analysts and commentators as diverse as Henry
Kissinger and Noam Chomsky. But was the world after the fall of Napoleon until the outbreak of World
War I really as peaceful as some of the advocates of balance of power would lead you to believe?
While a continent-spanning great power conflict was avoided until the outbreak of the First World
War, the peace established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 did not last long. By 1829, the RussoTurkish War had concluded leaving more than 130,000 dead. This was not the last time these two powers
would go to war as an approximate 200,000 died in further hostilities in 1877 and 1878. In the meantime,
the Russians faced the Polish Insurrection between 1830 and 1831 - they had been granted control of
much of Poland at the Congress of Vienna - leaving at least 20,000 dead, while the First Carlist War in
Spain ended only after more than 30,000 lost their lives. The Crimean War of 1854 to1856 resulted in
approximately 300,000 deaths; the Seven Weeks War in 1866 killed 35,000; and by the time the FrancoPrussian War concluded in 1871 more than 200,000 had lost their lives. Additional competition between
the European powers for empire and the influence and resources that go along with it was also not
without incident.
In fact, it was largely the example of the tumultuous environment of 19th century Europe that molded
America's earliest perceptions of a proper security environment. What was essentially conceived by
George Washington and was later refined by John Quincy Adams, American leaders have long sought
to avoid entangling the nation in any sort of foreign policy based on balance of power. Expressing his
deep seated reluctance for any type of balance of power in the Western Hemisphere, Adams noted in 1811
that were the United States not to emerge as the hegemon of the Americas, "we shall have an endless
multitude of little insignificant clans and tribe at eternal war with one another for a rock or a fish pond,
the sport and fable of European masters and oppressors." Multipolarity, in the absence of a global
congruence of interests and widespread cooperation, will inevitably lead to such a situation the
world over.
Critics of American efforts to maintain its primacy often point to the economic, political, and
military costs associated with such ambition. These concerns are not without merit, but they also
overlook the costs incurred when a peer competitor arises as was the case throughout much of the
Cold War. The average annual percentage of GDP spent on defense during the Cold War was roughly 7%
compared to less than 4% since 1991. Thus, the so-called "peace dividend" would be more
appropriately labeled the "primacy dividend" as the United States was not at war at until the
collapse of the Soviet Union, but rather was in a costly struggle to outlast a peer competitor.
Additional criticisms about the costs in American lives are also unfounded. During the Cold War an
average of about 18,000 American military personnel died as a result of hostile action per decade.
Even if we count the civilian lives lost on 9/11, that number has decreased a staggering 83% since
1990. Finally, the questions of the political consequences incurred as a result of hegemony are, at the
minimum, significantly exaggerated. It was the not so not-aligned Non-Aligned Movement that
emerged out of the Cold War, and even "Old Europe" is returning to the acknowledgement that there is a
pervasive parallel in values and interests with the United States.

Hegemony Core
Indeed, any future deterioration of American hegemony would be accompanied by catastrophic
consequences. History reveals that tragic violence inevitably follows newly created power vacuums.
The decline of the Ottoman Empire brought on a massacre of the Armenians, and the end of British rule
in India resulted in massive devastation in South Asia. As was persuasively illustrated in Niall Ferguson's
War of the World, the weakening and contraction of Western empires were indispensable
contributors to the unprecedented bloodshed of the 20th century. Make no mistake, history will
repeat itself - beginning in Iraq - should the United States loose its nerve and retract from its
responsibilities as the world's lone superpower. While it has become fashionable to proclaim that the
21st Century will emerge as the "Asian Century," the United States - and its many allies - should do
everything in their powers to insure that we are indeed at the dawn of a new American century.
Unipolarity prevents great power wars and economic collapse smaller conflicts
may be inevitable but hegemony keeps them from escalating
Tammen, Portland State University International Relations professor, and Kugler,
Elisabeth Helm Rosecrans World Politics professor, 6
[Ronald and Jacek, 2006, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Power Transition and ChinaUS
Conflicts, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/35.full.pdf, p. 37-44, accessed 7-5-13, MSG]
The sine qua non of the pre-eminent global powers foreign policy is global stability. Determined US
stewardship over the last half century has forged a stable international political and economic
system and a global regime that promotes, but does not absolutely insist upon, democracy, human
rights, free press and open economic practices. These fundamental institutional structures tend
to quell radical elements and help prevent tyranny by a minority or majority, regardless of
ideological or religious preferences. The US liberal economic and political leadership is designed to
utilize incentives (economic, financial and political) or, less often and less successfully, sanctions to align
other nations interests to those of our own. Where those interests cannot be aligned and a threat to global
stability is evident, the United States exercises the use of force. Force tends to be the last resort as it is
expensive.
When force is used effectively, it has fundamental consequences for the global system. For
example, following World War II, the United States recast the international system in a much
more successful manner than the British did following the previous great war, solidifying the role
of the United States in the world during the 20th century. Military occupation and the resulting
change in political and economic systems, aided in the transitions of Germany, Italy and Japan
into stable democratic members of the international community. Today, Germany is one of the
leading nations of the European Union (EU), and Japan is a major economic player in Asia and beyond.
The United States altered the political preferences and goals of populations in these countries to
one more consistent with the international norms instituted for the global hierarchy led by the
United States. The Cold War evidenced a similar end: the Soviet challenge was halted not because of
ideological or military confrontation, but because the Soviet Union dissolved due to its internal
bankruptcy and adopted an open market economy and an elementary democratic system. Experience
demonstrates that changing preferences is the path to stability and prosperity.

Hegemony Core
A unified strategic framework would provide a guide to the future of a complex evolutionary
process. Such a framework could lead to understanding world structures, because it allows
decision makers to anticipate periods of confrontation and cooperation. Knowing the likely
threats permits policy prioritization and timing. This kind of framework has been absent from US
foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. This article represents a first step towards using empirically
tested propositions to frame future world politics within a strategic perspective.
Dynamics of the Theoretical Framework
Figure 1 integrates and relates in a dynamic fashion the central variables of our strategic argument:
power, hierarchy, satisfaction and the probability of war or peace. It illustrates interactions among the
three key variables under the condition that the international hierarchy is dominated by one recognized
preponderant power.5
This theoretical framework, described in policy terms in the earlier paragraphs, draws many conclusions,
but one in particular stands out in its strategic importance: wars (in dark grey) occur at the global level
when a dissatisfied challenger sees an opportunity to take on the pre-eminent international
leader. Under an equal distribution of power, peace and integration (in light grey) may take place,
but only when major global participants all agree on the set of norms and rules that govern
world politics. From this perspective, the democratic peaceamong Germany, Britain and France
after the World War II and the subsequent evolution of the EUemerged precisely because the United
States imposed a common set of democratic institutions on Europe and forced the emergence of
liberal democracies. Thus, even though the power distribution in Europe was similar to that
preceding World Wars I and II, peace broke out and integration followed because nations shared
common institutions and norms as established by the United States. Following the collapse of the
Soviet Union it became clear, albeit slowly, that the theoretical proposition that a balance of power
guaranteed peace was inconsistent with the structural reality of the international system. Global
peace is maintained when there is one overwhelmingly powerful dominant country. Figure 1
intellectually turns the balance of power concept on its head.6
In Figure 2, by comparison, the region of cooperation and integration is vastly expanded. This
preponderant view of the world is now accepted explicitly by those who measure the probability of
wars, and implicitly by many in the policy community.7
The basic argument of power parity is that key contenders in the international system challenge
one another for dominance when they anticipate that the prospects of overtaking the regime
leader are credible. An important new insight emerges from Figure 1. Conflict can still take place
despite strong power asymmetry, but its severity will be much reduced. This deduction is
supported by empirical evidence. When the global hierarchy was uniform, the United States and
its allies were engaged in World War II. After 1945, the United States emerged as the
preponderant power. It continued to wage wars in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait and Iraq, but these wars
produced limited casualties (compared to World Wars), as did the attack on the US by Al Qaeda.
Despite US preponderance, these wars were not deterred but losses were reduced. This formally
derived figure also accounts for what Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman identify as a seeming
contradiction; the Seven Weeks War between Austria and Prussia occurred at parity, but both nations
were jointly satisfied producing a conflict of low intensity among contenders. The probability of conflict
under parity is high, thus the conflict, but the structural constraints imposed by satisfaction kept the
severity of that war limited.8

Hegemony Core
This new representation of the parity model also offers a formal answer to the argument of Choucri and
North that the theory is inconsistent in failing to account for the peaceful transfer of control over the
world hierarchy from England to the United States.9
As Figure 1 indicates, the condition required for peaceful overtaking between two major powers
includes agreement on the rules that guide the hierarchy. It is not just power relationsas realists
would arguethat lead nations to wage conflict. Agreement or disagreement with preferences, in
coordination with parity, leads to war and peace.10
This leads us to the final unexpected implication of the graphic that informs our political strategy. At the
bottom left corner, Figure 1 accounts for the process of integration. Integration is the most important new
phenomenon emerging since World War II. A comparison of Figures 1 and 2 shows that this process is
most likely in a post-overtaking asymmetric period. Deutsch et al. independently observed such a pattern
in 1957. They indicated that integration did not take place when nations were at parity. Rather,
integration occurred around cores of strength where a dominant nation provided the nucleus
for integration.11
A hierarchy dominated by a preponderant nation imposes high costs for conflict on smaller
challengers and reduces costs for integration. This produces a bias towards stability. The
dominant power desires to maintain the status quo. As Keohane correctly infers, preponderant
powers have the ability to absorb the costs of integration and allow smaller nations to free ride
because their actions are consistent with stable economic growth.12 In a uniform hierarchy (Figure
2), the probability of conflict and escalation to severe war increases, while prospects for
integrations are reduced. No single party is willing to carry the burden of integration, and
concurrently each member of the hierarchy is able to enhance individual growth by avoiding the
costs of the collective good. Thus, rather than supporting trade opportunities that lead to expansion
among all, large nations that can affect the market price of goods impose tariffs in a selfish
attempt to advance their own growth.13
Policy Implications
The internal mobilization of resources, and effective alliance formation or neutralization, can be
manipulated in response to policy changes. A reliable strategic perspective is needed to make choices
in world politics, particularly for the United States, as key decisions can sway the balance in
favour of either global stability or instability.
There is substantial empirical support for the power parity proposition throughout the conflict
literature.14 In other research environments, such formal and empirical evidence would have been
sufficient to challenge the fundamental assertion that a parity or balance of power preserves peace.
However, given the widely held belief among practitioners and academics that the underlying logic of
balance of power is correct, these two research directions continue to develop side by side. The collapse
of the Soviet Union is one such critical test that has awakened the need to reformulate long-held beliefs.
No one can argue today that Russia presents a direct threat to the Western world or that another
challenger of a similar magnitude is already in place; yet stability increased after the decline of the
Soviet Union. Further, the emergence of asymmetry in nuclear weapons combined with the retargeting of such weapons by both the United States and Russia make it difficult to argue that
Mutual Assured Destruction continues to preserve the existing stability in the international
system.

Hegemony Core
Probability of Conflict at the Global Level
Power parity provides the structural conditions for conflict and cooperation. While power is central
to the deductions of balance of power and power parity, the conditions that lead to war and peace
are very distinct. Moreover, each perspective provides different substantive policy advice. The parity
approach allows contenders to anticipate the choice of peace or war. When there is an extended dispute
in particular, a lasting territorial disputethat creates the underlying condition required for a
serious confrontation. Military buildups and arms races are predictors of the willingness of
contenders to choose war over peace when both parity and an extended dispute are present.
Werner and Kugler show that these conditions are associated historically with the overwhelming
number of choices to wage major war.15
Empirical Implications: The Asian Challenge
Applying the power parity logic to the Asian region permits us to determine which interactions have the
potential to escalate to a serious confrontation and possibly a major war. These interactions, while being
potentially dangerous, are not deterministically conflictual and can be resolved peacefully even though
they appear threatening at this time.
Figure 3 presents the relative power and income of the main international competitors compared with that
of the United States from 1950 extrapolated to 2070. The conditions for parity are met when a challenger
has over 80% of the capabilities of the dominant nation and cease when the challenger has exceeded the
dominant nations capability by 20%when it becomes the dominant nation. Previous research
strongly suggests that the period of greatest danger is when the challenger manages to overtake
the dominant nation and traverses the region between 100 and 120%.16 In order to address the Asian
region, first we will detail the global context in terms of structural power relations.17
At the global level, the lack of an open confrontation between the United States and Russia, so
feared by most analysts during the Cold War, is completely consistent with the power parity
perspective. The Cold War did not become hot because the USSR never approached parity with
the United States. Between 1945 and 1989, despite arms buildups and ideological confrontations, the
USSR did not approach or overcome US preponderance. Furthermore, following the breakup of the
Soviet Union the prospects for such an overtaking are remote. This means the probability of war
between the US and Russia well into the future is quite remote even if they have significant policy
disputes.
Next consider the USEuropean relationship. No challenger to the US is expected to arise here. No
single nation in EuropeGermany, UK, Italy or Francehas sufficient resources to become a
contender. The largest, Germany, even after re-unification only approaches the size of Japan. Again,
given the population base of major European nations, none can overcome the United States in the
foreseeable future, or challenge China or India. Thus, the probability of a confrontation between
any European country and the United States is very small and such a conflict would not be severe.
US hegemony and alliances deter arms races, security competition, and wars
Associate Professor, 6

Hegemony Core
[Bradley, American Empire: A Debate, p. 108-109, http://books.google.com/books?id=YgE1HjR70sC&pg=PT120&lpg=PT120&dq=
%22The+fourth+critical+fact+to+consider+is+that+the+security+provided+by+the+power+of+the+Unite
d+States+creates+stability+in+international+politics%22+%22Thayer
%22&source=bl&ots=Iis_jTPT73&sig=LXJVWPrRNhtXHZm-tgCsMKzLMo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R9rYUb_UGOG8jAKQ5IGABA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage
&q&f=false, accessed 7-6-13, MSG]
The fourth critical fact to consider is that the security provided by the power of the United States
creates stability in international politics. That is vitally important for the world, but easily
forgotten. Harvard professor Joseph Nye often compares the security provided by the United States
to oxygen. If it were taken away, a person would think of nothing else. If the security and stability
provided by the United States were taken away, most countries would be much worse off, and
arms races, vicious security competition, and wars would result. It would be a world without NATO
or other key U.S. alliances. We can imagine easily conflict between traditional rivals like Greece
and Turkey, Syria and Israel, India and Pakistan, Taiwan and China, Russia and Georgia,
Hungary and Romania, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and an intense arms race between China and
Japan. In that world, the breakup of Yugoslavia would have been a far bloodier affair that might
have escalated to become another European war. In contrast to what might occur absent U.S. power,
we see that the post-Cold War world dominated by the United States is an era of peace and
stability.
The United States does not provide security to other countries because it is altruistic. Security for other
states is a positive result (what economists call a positive externality) of the United States pursuing
its interests. Therefore, it would be a mistake to seek "benevolence" in great power politics. In
international politics, states advance their self-interest and, most often, what might appear to be
"benevolent" actions are undertaken for other reasons. To assist Pakistani earthquake refugees,
for example, is benevolent but also greatly aids the image of the United States in the Muslim world
so self-interest is usually intertwined with a humanitarian impulse.
The lesson here is straightforward: Countries align themselves with the United States because to do
so coincides with their interests, and they will continue to do so only as long as their interests are
advanced by working with Uncle Sam. In 1848, the great British statesman Lord Palmerston captured
this point best when he said: "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests
are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."2
The present world is structured around American interests and in a post-American

world, the current world order would be destructured. The lack of structure without
heg would lead to potential conflicts.
Kagan, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution 2012
(Robert W., February 11, Why the World Needs America, Wall Street Journal,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html, Accessed online
7/6/13, AX)

Hegemony Core
If all of this sounds too good to be true, it is. The present world order was largely shaped by American
power and reflects American interests and preferences. If the balance of power shifts in the
direction of other nations, the world order will change to suit their interests and preferences. Nor
can we assume that all the great powers in a post-American world would agree on the benefits of
preserving the present order, or have the capacity to preserve it, even if they wanted to. Take the issue
of democracy. For several decades, the balance of power in the world has favored democratic
governments. In a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the great-power
autocracies. Both Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If they
gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more
autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a new, multipolar world might be more favorable to
democracy if some of the rising democraciesBrazil, India, Turkey, South Africapicked up the slack
from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it.
What about the economic order of free markets and free trade? People assume that China and other
rising powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in preserving it.
They wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Unfortunately, they might not be able to help
themselves. The creation and survival of a liberal economic order has depended, historically, on
great powers that are both willing and able to support open trade and free markets, often with
naval power. If a declining America is unable to maintain its long-standing hegemony on the high
seas, would other nations take on the burdens and the expense of sustaining navies to fill in the
gaps?
Even if they did, would this produce an open global commonsor rising tension? China and India are
building bigger navies, but the result so far has been greater competition, not greater security. As
Mohan Malik has noted in this newspaper, their "maritime rivalry could spill into the open in a
decade or two," when India deploys an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and China deploys one in the
Indian Ocean. The move from American-dominated oceans to collective policing by several great
powers could be a recipe for competition and conflict rather than for a liberal economic order.
Hegemony key to check conflicts prevents the rise of hostile rivals

Khalilizad, Former US Ambassador to the UN, 95
[Zalmay, 3-22-95, Washington Quarterly, Losing the moment? The United States and the world after the
Cold War., http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-16781957/losing-moment-united-states.html,
accessed 7-9-13, MSG]
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the
rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best
long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a
world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the
global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values - democracy, free
markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing
cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional

Hegemony Core
hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude
the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another
global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S.
leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar
balance of power system.

Hegemony Core
Collapse Causes War

Hegemonic decline risks collapse of the liberal-democratic system and warmajor
action is needed to prevent global conflict
Gvosdev, Naval War College Strategic Studies Professor, 13
[Nikolas, 10/22/13, World Politics Review, Strategic Gambles: The Diplomatic Stakes of American
Retrenchment, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13317/strategic-gambles-the-diplomaticstakes-of-american-retrenchment, accessed 7/11/14, AC]
Predicting the future is always fraught with risk. Chinas rise, for instance, is neither guaranteed
nor foreordained, and 10 years from now, prophecies about China emerging as Americas peer may
look as overblown as the assertions in the early 1990s that Japan was poised to succeed the U.S. as
the globes dominant power. But assuming that current trends continue, what sort of world will
emerge in the next decade?
First, it will be one where other major powers have begun to close the gap in military capabilities
and economic and technological potential that currently underpin Americas dominance in the
international system. It will also be one in which a new normal has emerged in American politics of
highly polarized and fractious debate over how the countrys resources are to be utilized and spent.
American politics will also see an increasing reluctance to engage in international activism or
enforce norms and a renewed scrutiny of mutual defense obligations. Indeed, as Tom Nichols and
John Schindler have noted, the handling of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis might signal to
American allies and partnersas well as adversariesthat our commitments are based on
political expediency and short-term public opinion rather than principle.
One result of these shifts will be to change the dynamic of U.S. engagement with China and Russia.
For the past two decades, Washington limited its geopolitical competition with Moscow and Beijing each
to one specific regionEurasia and East Asia, respectively. Over the past several years, however, both
Russia and China have found ways to insert their influence in other parts of the world where the
United States has gotten used to having no challengers. Despite the formal existence of the Middle
East Quartet, consisting of Russia, the United States, the EU and the United Nations, Washington got
quite used to seeing itself as the sole major outside arbiter for resolving disputes in the region. The
agreement between John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov reached in Geneva in September on Syrian WMD,
however, represents a possible watershed where Russia asserts its claim to also be able to set some of the
Middle Easts diplomatic agendaand where Washington is forced to accept greater Russian input in the
disposition of the regions affairs.
In the Americas, Cuba is no longer the lone isolated outpost of anti-American sentiment. Growing
Chinese economic clout and Russias tentative efforts to restore even a limited capacity to project
military power into the Caribbean basin helped to give Venezuelas Hugo Chavez, and now Nicolas
Maduro, more confidence in setting up regional arrangements. These include the Bolivarian
Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) and the Community of Latin America and the Caribbean
(CELAC), which seek to limit U.S. influence in its own geopolitical backyard.

Hegemony Core
The Russia-China tandem at the United Nations is also poised to stand firmly athwart calls from
the West to institutionalize norms for humanitarian intervention, to implement Western preferences
for promoting liberal democratic systems or to acquiesce to further erosions in the principle of state
sovereignty. The future may be characterized more by the vetoes cast on resolutions to condemn Assad
rather than the abstentions on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized the Libya no-fly
zone.
A combination of the rise of other powers and domestically imposed limits on U.S. activism
elsewhere in the world will produce more deals like the Kerry-Lavrov accord on Syria, where the United
States has to engage in bargaining and be prepared to walk back from some of its own preferences and red
lines. This trend will be welcomed by some and deplored by others. It will not lead to a de-Americanized
world, but the world will be one where the exercise of U.S. power is checked and regulated, and where
the prospect of Washington being able to impose normsby military force if necessaryon recalcitrant
members of the international community is diminished. China, Russia and other like-minded powers are
also pushing for countries to settle disputes and reach accords without having to move through the hub
of Washington: Chinas counterproposal to Americas Trans-Pacific Partnership, for instance, is the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)pitched as an Asia-focused alternative for
economic development that requires no participation by the United States.
Growing uncertainty about the strength and credibility of U.S. commitments means that other
states that in the past depended on U.S. military, diplomatic and economic efforts to provide
regional and global security will be more inclined to take matters into their own hands. This trend
is already underway, as illustrated by Japans plans under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to increase
military spending. This creates new risks about possible regional arms races and an increase in the
potential for conflicts. It also creates a problem for the United States: As other countries acquire
greater capabilities, they also acquire the capacity for greater autonomy from Washington, leading
to a further diminution of U.S. global influence.
If forced to retrench from its global presence, Washington does not have the option of turning over
its responsibilities to another power that will maintain unchanged the regional and global
arrangements the U.S. has underwritten. All of this points to the world entering into a more
unstable period, validating Ian Bremmers and Nourel Roubinis prediction of the G-Zero world
where the U.S. no longer can provide the level of global public goods it was delivering and where no
other nation is prepared to step into that role. The result, according to Bremmer and Roubini?
Intensified conflict on the international stage over vitally important issues. Increasingly,
preventing those diplomatic disputes from flaring up into hot clashes will become the main task in the
coming yearsa task that the U.S. will participate in, but will no longer be able to lead.
No alternative to American hegemony collapse causes transition wars, economic

collapse, global instability and destroys all international cooperation no other
global power can fill the void
Brzezinski, Former National Security Advisor, 12

Hegemony Core
[Zbigniew, January/February 2012, Foreign Policy, After America: How does the world look in an age of
U.S. decline? Dangerously unstable. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/after_america,
accessed 7/5/13, WD]
Not so long ago, a high-ranking Chinese official, who obviously had concluded that America's
decline and China's rise were both inevitable, noted in a burst of candor to a senior U.S. official:
"But, please, let America not decline too quickly." Although the inevitability of the Chinese leader's
expectation is still far from certain, he was right to be cautious when looking forward to America's
demise.
For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not
even China . International uncertainty , increased tension among global competitors, and even
outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes.
While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system -- for instance, another financial crisis -would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder , a
steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam
would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor. No single power will be
ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the
United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a
protracted phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power, with no
grand winners and many more losers, in a setting of international uncertainty and even of
potentially fatal risks to global well-being. Rather than a world where dreams of democracy flourish, a
Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism,
and religion could ensue.
The leaders of the world's second-rank powers, among them India, Japan, Russia, and some
European countries, are already assessing the potential impact of U.S. decline on their respective
national interests. The Japanese, fearful of an assertive China dominating the Asian mainland, may be
thinking of closer links with Europe. Leaders in India and Japan may be considering closer political and
even military cooperation in case America falters and China rises. Russia, while perhaps engaging in
wishful thinking (even schadenfreude) about America's uncertain prospects, will almost certainly have its
eye on the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Europe, not yet cohesive, would likely be
pulled in several directions: Germany and Italy toward Russia because of commercial interests, France
and insecure Central Europe in favor of a politically tighter European Union, and Britain toward
manipulating a balance within the EU while preserving its special relationship with a declining United
States. Others may move more rapidly to carve out their own regional spheres: Turkey in the area of
the old Ottoman Empire, Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, and so forth. None of these countries,
however, will have the requisite combination of economic, financial, technological, and military
power even to consider inheriting America's leading role.
China, invariably mentioned as America's prospective successor, has an impressive imperial lineage and a
strategic tradition of carefully calibrated patience, both of which have been critical to its overwhelmingly
successful, several-thousand-year-long history. China thus prudently accepts the existing international
system, even if it does not view the prevailing hierarchy as permanent. It recognizes that success depends

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not on the system's dramatic collapse but on its evolution toward a gradual redistribution of power.
Moreover, the basic reality is that China is not yet ready to assume in full America's role in the world.
Beijing's leaders themselves have repeatedly emphasized that on every important measure of
development, wealth, and power, China will still be a modernizing and developing state several
decades from now, significantly behind not only the United States but also Europe and Japan in the
major per capita indices of modernity and national power. Accordingly, Chinese leaders have been
restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership.
At some stage, however, a more assertive Chinese nationalism could arise and damage China's
international interests. A swaggering, nationalistic Beijing would unintentionally mobilize a
powerful regional coalition against itself. None of China's key neighbors -- India, Japan, and Russia
-- is ready to acknowledge China's entitlement to America's place on the global totem pole. They
might even seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting
regional scramble could become intense, especially given the similar nationalistic tendencies among
China's neighbors. A phase of acute international tension in Asia could ensue. Asia of the 21st
century could then begin to resemble Europe of the 20th century -- violent and bloodthirsty.
At the same time, the security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional
powers also depends on the international status quo reinforced by America's global preeminence -- and
would be made significantly more vulnerable in proportion to America's decline. The states in that
exposed position -- including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Israel, and the greater Middle East -- are today's geopolitical equivalents of nature's most endangered
species. Their fates are closely tied to the nature of the international environment left behind by a waning
America, be it ordered and restrained or, much more likely, self-serving and expansionist.
A faltering United States could also find its strategic partnership with Mexico in jeopardy.
America's economic resilience and political stability have so far mitigated many of the challenges
posed by such sensitive neighborhood issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the
narcotics trade. A decline in American power, however, would likely undermine the health and good
judgment of the U.S. economic and political systems. A waning United States would likely be more
nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and
less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development. The worsening of relations between
a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous
phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial
claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents.
Another consequence of American decline could be a corrosion of the generally cooperative
management of the global commons -- shared interests such as sea lanes, space, cyberspace, and the
environment, whose protection is imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the
continuation of basic geopolitical stability . In almost every case, the potential absence of a
constructive and influential U.S. role would fatally undermine the essential communality of the
global commons because the superiority and ubiquity of American power creates order where there
would normally be conflict.
None of this will necessarily come to pass. Nor is the concern that America's decline would generate
global insecurity, endanger some vulnerable states, and produce a more troubled North American

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neighborhood an argument for U.S. global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in
the 21st century make such supremacy unattainable. But those dreaming today of America's collapse
would probably come to regret it. And as the world after America would be increasingly
complicated and chaotic, it is imperative that the United States pursue a new, timely strategic
vision for its foreign policy -- or start bracing itself for a dangerous slide into global turmoil.
Hegemonic decline causes global war unstable multipolarity, Chinese aggression,

and conflict escalation empirical evidence
Khalilzad, Former UN Ambassador, 11
[Zalmay, February 8, 2011, National Review, The Economy and National Security,
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/259024/economy-and-national-security-zalmay-khalilzad,
If U.S. policymakers fail to act and other powers continue to grow, it is not a question of whether but
when a new international order will emerge. The closing of the gap between the United States and its
rivals could intensify geopolitical competition among major powers, increase incentives for local
powers to play major powers against one another, and undercut our will to preclude or respond to
international crises because of the higher risk of escalation . The stakes are high. In modern history,
the longest period of peace among the great powers has been the era of U.S. leadership . By contrast,
multi-polar systems have been unstable, with their competitive dynamics resulting in frequent crises
and major wars among the great powers. Failures of multi-polar international systems produced both
world wars . American retrenchment could have devastating consequences. Without an American
security blanket, regional powers could rearm in an attempt to balance against emerging threats.
Under this scenario, there would be a heightened possibility of arms races, miscalculation, or other
crises spiraling into all-out conflict. Alternatively, in seeking to accommodate the stronger powers,
weaker powers may shift their geopolitical posture away from the United States. Either way, hostile
states would be emboldened to make aggressive moves in their regions. As rival powers rise, Asia in
particular is likely to emerge as a zone of great-power competition. Beijings economic rise has
enabled a dramatic military buildup focused on acquisitions of naval, cruise, and ballistic missiles, longrange stealth aircraft, and anti-satellite capabilities. Chinas strategic modernization is aimed, ultimately,
at denying the United States access to the seas around China. Even as cooperative economic ties in the
region have grown, Chinas expansive territorial claims and provocative statements and actions
following crises in Korea and incidents at sea have roiled its relations with South Korea, Japan,
India, and Southeast Asian states. Still, the United States is the most significant barrier facing
Chinese hegemony and aggression.
Collapse of hegemony guarantees multiple scenarios for nuclear war and extinction
within one year
Drezner, University of Chicago political science professor, 3

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[Daniel W., 1-6-03, Foreign Policy, The perils of hegemonic power,
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2003/01/06/the_perils_of_hegemonic_power, accessed 7-9-13,
MSG]
Michael Ignatieff's cover story on empirein yesterday's New York Times Magazine will be discussed in
the next few days, but I actually think James Dao's Week in Review piece on U.S. troops in Korea makes
many of the same points more concisely. The problem facing the U.S. is that even though critics on all
sides are currently attacking the U.S. right now for trying to dictate affairs across the globe, these
same critics are also likely to assail the U.S. for any retreat from its current positions. Imagine for a
second that the U.S. announced that it had decided to heed the calls to reign in its power. Say U.S.
troops were pulled out of Europe, Korea, and the Middle East. No change in our economic or
cultural policies, just a withdrawal of troops from the globe. What would happen? Undoubtedly,
some of the animus towards the U.S. would dissipate in the short run. However, within the next year: 1)
Japan would go nuclear. 2) The Balkans would be likely to erupt again, with Macedonia being the
trigger this time. 3) Afghanistan would implode. 4) India and Pakistan would likely escalate their
border skirmishes. 5) Israel would escalate its quasi-military actions in the occupied territories. 6)
Arab fury at the U.S. inaction in the Middle East would rise even further. 7) Anti-American
activists would criticize the U.S. for isolationism and inaction in the face of global instability. I don't
deny that the looming specter of U.S. hard power in Iraq and elsewhere is eroding our capital of soft
power. However, to paraphrase Churchill, the current policy is without question an awful one, until you
consider the alternatives. On the margins, I believe that more accommodating U.S. policies on trade
and the environment might buy an additional amount of good will from the developing and
developed world, respectively. But those changes will not conceal the overwhelming U.S. advantage
in military might, nor will it erase the natural emnity that comes with it.
Collapse of US hegemony causes apolar vacuum risking leads to terrorism,

economic collapse, disease, and nuclear wars
Ferguson, Stanford Universitys Hoover Foundation Senior Fellow, 4
[Niall, July 2004, Foreign Policy, A World Without Power,
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/afp/vac.htm, accessed 7-7-13, MSG]
Yet universal claims were also an integral part of the rhetoric of that era. All the empires claimed to rule
the world; some, unaware of the existence of other civilizations, maybe even believed that they did. The
reality, however, was not a global Christendom, nor an all-embracing Empire of Heaven. The reality was
political fragmentation. And that is also true today. The defining characteristic of our age is not a shift
of power upward to supranational institutions, but downward. With the end of states' monopoly on
the means of violence and the collapse of their control over channels of communication, humanity
has entered an era characterized as much by disintegration as integration.
If free flows of information and of means of production empower multinational corporations and
nongovernmental organizations (as well as evangelistic religious cults of all denominations), the free

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flow of destructive technology empowers both criminal organizations and terrorist cells. These
groups can operate, it seems, wherever they choose, from Hamburg to Gaza. By contrast, the writ of
the international community is not global at all. It is, in fact, increasingly confined to a few strategic cities
such as Kabul and Pristina. In short, it is the nonstate actors who truly wield global powerincluding
both the monks and the Vikings of our time.
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into
fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might
quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more
dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous
roughly 20 times moreso friction between the world's disparate tribes is bound to be more
frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on
freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite.
Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to
obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and
capitalhas raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves
off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalizationwhich a new Dark
Age would producewould certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the
United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it
would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or
do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU
would become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point.
An economic meltdown in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the
centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and
conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The
wealthiest ports of the global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould become
the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas,
targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically
concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate
numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending
catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in
Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and
malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply
suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded
safe havens to go there?
For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more
than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony
its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontierits critics at home and abroad
must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the
good old balance of power.

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Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would
be apolaritya global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers
would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.
The perception of American hegemony collapse causes transition wars

Friedberg, Princeton Professor of International Affairs, 11
[Aaron L., June 21, 2011, The National Interest, Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics,
http://nationalinterest.org/article/hegemony-chinese-characteristics-5439, accessed 7/6/13, WD]
THE UNITED States and the Peoples Republic of China are locked in a quiet but increasingly
intense struggle for power and influence, not only in Asia, but around the world. And in spite of what
many earnest and well-intentioned commentators seem to believe, the nascent Sino-American rivalry is
not merely the result of misperceptions or mistaken policies; it is driven instead by forces that are
deeply rooted in the shifting structure of the international system and in the very different domestic
political regimes of the two Pacific powers. Throughout history, relations between dominant and rising
states have been uneasyand often violent. Established powers tend to regard themselves as the
defenders of an international order that they helped to create and from which they continue to benefit;
rising powers feel constrained, even cheated, by the status quo and struggle against it to take what they
think is rightfully theirs. Indeed, this story line, with its Shakespearean overtones of youth and age, vigor
and decline, is among the oldest in recorded history. As far back as the fifth century BC the great Greek
historian Thucydides began his study of the Peloponnesian War with the deceptively simple observation
that the wars deepest, truest cause was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in
Sparta. The fact that the U.S.-China relationship is competitive, then, is simply no surprise. But these
countries are not just any two great powers: Since the end of the Cold War the United States has been
the richest and most powerful nation in the world; China is, by contrast, the state whose
capabilities have been growing most rapidly. America is still number one, but China is fast
gaining ground. The stakes are about as high as they can get, and the potential for conflict
particularly fraught . At least insofar as the dominant powers are concerned, rising states tend to be
troublemakers. As a nations capabilities grow, its leaders generally define their interests more
expansively and seek a greater degree of influence over what is going on around them. This means that
those in ascendance typically attempt not only to secure their borders but also to reach out beyond them,
taking steps to ensure access to markets, materials and transportation routes; to protect their citizens far
from home; to defend their foreign friends and allies; to promulgate their religious or ideological beliefs;
and, in general, to have what they consider to be their rightful say in the affairs of their region and of the
wider world. As they begin to assert themselves, ascendant states typically feel impelled to challenge
territorial boundaries, international institutions and hierarchies of prestige that were put in place
when they were still relatively weak. Like Japan in the late nineteenth century, or Germany at the
turn of the twentieth, rising powers want their place in the sun. This, of course, is what brings them
into conflict with the established great powersthe so-called status quo stateswho are the architects,
principal beneficiaries and main defenders of any existing international system. The resulting clash of
interests between the two sides has seldom been resolved peacefully. Recognizing the growing threat
to their position, dominant powers (or a coalition of status quo states) have occasionally tried to attack

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and destroy a competitor before it can grow strong enough to become a threat. Othershoping to avoid
warhave taken the opposite approach: attempting to appease potential challengers, they look for
ways to satisfy their demands and ambitions and seek to incorporate them peacefully into the existing
international order. But however sincere, these efforts have almost always ended in failure .
Sometimes the reason clearly lies in the demands of the rising state. As was true of Adolf Hitlers
Germany, an aggressor may have ambitions that are so extensive as to be impossible for the status quo
powers to satisfy without effectively consigning themselves to servitude or committing national suicide.
Even when the demands being made of them are less onerous, the dominant states are often either
reluctant to make concessions, thereby fueling the frustrations and resentments of the rising power, or too
eager to do so, feeding its ambitions and triggering a spiral of escalating demands. Successful policies of
appeasement are conceivable in theory but in practice have proven devilishly difficult to implement. This
is why periods of transition, when a new, ascending power begins to overtake the previously
dominant state, have so often been marked by war.

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Decline Hurts Russia-US Relations

Transitions away from hegemony lead the US to seek confrontation with Russia in
the Middle East
Friedman, Stratfor president, 8
[George. 4-1. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/rotating_focus Russia and Rotating the U.S. Focus.]
The global system is making a major shift now, as we have been discussing. Having gotten off
balance and bogged down in the Islamic world, the only global power is trying to extricate itself
while rebalancing its foreign policy and confronting a longer-term Russian threat to its interests.
That is a delicate maneuver, and one that requires deftness and luck. As mentioned, it is also a long shot.
The Russians have a lot of cards to play, but perhaps they are not yet ready to play them. Bush is
risking Russia disrupting the Middle East as well as increasing pressure in its own region. He either
thinks it is worth the risk or he thinks the risk is smaller than it appears. Either way, this is an important
moment.
US-Russia relations on the Middle East are key to preventing Russia collapse and
nuclear war
Suslov, Deputy Director on Research at the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy,
Moscow, Russia, 5
[Dmitry V., 2-28-5, US-Russia Relations Saved for Now, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?
id=5348]
Putin's appreciation of power - and his readiness to use it - could allow him to realize the objective
necessity to become a good US partner, but only if Russia's almost desperate domestic situation is
changed, or at least better managed. "Containing Putin's authoritarianism" is already off the Bush agenda.
Russia's domestic situation is so unstable and explosive, its state apparatus so ineffective, and the majority
of bureaucrats so frightened (and deaf at the same time), that an overt attempt to stop Putin would
produce an opposite result: a severe blowback on the part of the regime, which would finally
destabilize the situation altogether. However, a disaster might come even sooner should the US consider
a "regime change" in Russia itself. Most likely, the result would be either total chaos - with an
uncontrollable nuclear arsenal - or an authoritarian nationalist regime.
The outlet for the United States to strengthen Russian democracy is through continuing dialogue
with Putin, and cautious actions that disprove his advisors' arguments. Possibilities include real support to
stabilize the CIS, avoiding indirect help to Chechen separatists, easing access of Russian non-fuel goods
to the Western markets, and strengthening Russian civil society by intensified US-Russian civil society
dialogue. The Bush administration must convince Putin that it is truly interested in a stable, strong, and

Hegemony Core
integral Russia. As for the foreign policy agenda, its basis should be stabilization and governance
promotion in the broader Middle East.

Hegemony Core
Decline Causes China War

Hegemonic decline causes war with China over Taiwan
Kagan, Brookings Institute senior fellow, 2-14-12
(Robert, Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School,
Gideon Rachman is chief foreign-affairs commentator for the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, "The Rise
or Fall of the American Empire,"
The Chinese, as good historians, are acutely aware of the fate that befell these others and have worked
hard to avoid a similar fate, following as best they can Deng Xiaoping's advice to "keep a low profile
and never take the lead." As relative power shifts, however, that advice becomes harder and harder
to follow. We saw some early signs of what the future might hold in China's increasing assertiveness
in the South China Sea. The response of the United States, which swung in behind the nervous powers
in the region, has possibly convinced the Chinese that their moves were premature. They may have
themselves bought in too much to the widespread talk of America in decline. Were that decline to
become real in the coming years, however, it is a certainty that Chinese pressures and probes will
return. Greater relative power on China's part might also lead Beijing to become less patient with
Taiwan's lack of movement toward acquiescing to the mainland's sovereignty. A situation in which
U.S. power were declining, China's power were rising, and the Taiwan issue became fractious is
practically a textbook instance of how wars start -- even if neither side wants war. That is why some
have referred to Taiwan as East Asia's Sarajevo.

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Solves Stability
US hegemony is key to a stable international system and solving future challenges
Clark, ESRC Professorial Fellow and E H Carr Professor in Department of
International Affairs, 9
[Ian, 2009, International Affairs, Bringing hegemony back in: the United States and International Order,
http://gees.org/documentos/Documen-03250.pdf, accessed 7-6-13, MSG]
It has become fashionable enough across the past decade to refer to US hegemony as the defining feature
of the post-Cold War international order. Such claims seldom rest on anything more than a view of US
primacy, namely that the system is now unipolar, and the US enjoys an unprecedented preponderance of
material resources within it. There have more recently been premonitions of the possible end of this
hegemony, as the US is predicted to lose either its will or its nerve to sustain that role, or even more
importantly because of US decline in the face of the rise of the rest.1 This article stands that
conventional analysis on its head. It starts from a wholly different understanding of hegemony, as
rooted in social legitimacy.2 Accordingly, it rejects the contention that we are now experiencing,
or have recently experienced, any American hegemony at all. Appealing to the same logic, it
argues that evidence for the rise of others does not, by itself, amount to any decisive objection to
the development of hegemony in the near future. The key question, as Barry Buzan reminds us, is
whether the United States will prove capable of recruiting followers.3 Hegemony, as advanced here,
describes an international order project that confers on the United States a leading, but
circumscribed, role. Moreover, the possible textures of that role can better be grasped after closer
reflection on the relevant historical precedents.
What is meant by this hegemony? It does not refer simply to a set of material conditions in which one
state is predominant: it is not, in other words, primacy alone.4 Neither is it something that is unilaterally
possessed by the hegemon, nor something that the dominant state has in its pocket, to save or squander at
will. Rather, it is a status bestowed by others, and rests on recognition by them. This recognition is
given in return for the bearing of special responsibilities. In short, by hegemony is meant an
institutionalized practice of special rights and responsibilities conferred on a state with the
resources to lead.
This draws explicitly on the international society approach to international relations.5 International
society interpretations generally seek to negotiate an accommodation between systems of power
relations and shared normative frameworks. They take both equally seriously. This enables such recurrent
practices to be regarded as institutions. Classically, these theorists have specified a number of such
institutions of international society: international law, diplomacy, war, the balance of power andmost
directly relevant for this argumentthe role of the Great Powers.6 Historically, international society
has recognized the collective special role and status of the Great Powersthe permanent five
members of the United Nations Security Council provide one clear example. This has been done, it is
claimed, because it simplifies international life, and helps instil a degree of central direction to it.
So, in the past, international society has been able to institutionalize disparities of power and hierarchical
degrees. Can it now do so in the case of hegemony?

Hegemony Core
Once a hegemon? A hegemon still?
The present state of the hegemony debate is, to say the least, confusing. There are broadly three types
of story commonly told about US hegemony since 1945: the tale from continuity; the tale from structural
discontinuity in 1990; and the tale from agential discontinuity at the beginning of the 2000s. For some
analysts, American hegemony stretches back unbroken to 1945. Having emerged as a hegemon-inwaiting in the early decades of the twentieth century, the United States fully embraced this role after
1945, and has played it ever since. For the US power elite, being on top of the world has been a habit
for 60 years. Hegemony has been a way of life.7 From this perspective, it is unquestionable that
the United States remains a hegemon still, whatever the future may hold.
Bruce Cumings, among many, shares this note of continuity. Describing the postwar order, he insists
that it has been a hegemonic one, and it has hadand must havea hegemonic leader.8 Others
concur: If ever the term hegemony were appropriately applied, it is to what the United States became
in the latter half of the twentieth century and now remains.9 A surprisingly wide constituency of
analysts shares this perspective, even when having little else in common. Historian Eric Hobsbawm,
for example, speaks confidently of the US hegemony of the second half of the last century, resting
upon its enormous wealth.10 Chomsky meanwhile insists that there has been continuity in the basic
missions of global management since the end of the war, even if there has now emerged a new
declaratory strategy aimed at permanent global hegemony.11
The second perspective contrasts sharply, in some fundamental respects, with the above. It attests not to
continuity but to discontinuity. At some finite point around the early 1970s, the United States ceased to
be the hegemon. U.S. hegemony began during the Second World War, we are told, and peaked some
thirty years later.12 Elsewhere, Wallerstein agrees that we have to start in 1945 when the United States
became hegemonic, really hegemonic, but is of the view that this lasted only about twenty-five
years.13 It was only the new constellation of power consequent upon the end of the Cold War that
subsequently allowed it to resume its former, or new, hegemonic role. This is important because it
emphasizes a radical break between the 1970s and 1980s, taken together, and the following period from
the 1990s onwards. In short, there are two major ingredients in this perspective. One is that the
United States initially experienced a period of decline, such that its hegemonic position was
eroded; the second is that, under the new conditions of unipolarity after 1990, it became possible
for that role to be resumed, or reinvented.
This perspective then focuses upon the restoration of US hegemony after 1990. Whatever became of that
earlier hegemony during the 1970s and 1980s, it was the end of the Cold War that created the
opportunity for its renewal.14 The only interesting questions about this new hegemony, we were
told, concerned how stable and durable it might prove; whether it was so unnatural a condition
that it would evoke new forms of balancing behaviour to displace it.
Finally, those accounts that trace the origins of a new American hegemony after 2001 simply
extend the logic of the same arguments: the incoming Bush administration exploited the potential of
the system to a greater degree than had been attempted during the 1990s.15 However, the emphasis now
shifts away from hegemony as a structural product, and towards hegemony as an agential design.
Hegemony, in this latter understanding, needs to be approached as a policy choice, and the
emphasis shifts to the volition of the new Bush administration, especially in the aftermath of 9/11.
Hegemony is the new agency, not the new structure.

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Those who espouse this view locate it in a grand strategy aimed at preventing the emergence of new
great powers that could challenge US hegemony.16 Although already clearly articulated by previous
administrations, this policy became much more pronounced after 9/11, and for this reason it is
common enough to date a new phase of US hegemony from this period. Its centrepiece was the
Bush Doctrine in its various manifestations, which encapsulated a largely unilateral project of
hegemonic renewal and global transformation.17 At the very least, if not ushering in an entirely new
hegemony, the terms of that hegemony have been changed by the doctrine.18
Collectively, the administrations doctrinal statements were taken to represent a formal promulgation of
hegemony on the part of the United States.19 Above all, the National Security Strategy in 2002 was
understood as the declared intent of the most powerful state in history to maintain its hegemony
through the threat or use of military force.20 This was implicit also in the Nuclear Posture
Review, and its expressed intent to dissuade future competitors.21 Running through the Bush
Doctrine as a whole is a commitment to the establishment of American hegemony, within which the
dominant power behaves quite differently from the others.22 Others see the Bush Doctrine as giving
expression to a more deep-seated reorientation in US strategy whereby Americas temporary
Cold War hegemony in Western Europe and East Asia should be converted into permanent U.S.
global hegemony.23 Such an American hegemony, especially in its military sense, has been
considered unassailable for at least a decade.24
This all amounts to a terribly confusing history, and we might be well advised to abandon the term
hegemony at this point. However, in the specific terms advanced here, little of this history refers to any
kind of hegemony; it simply refers to stages in primacyits quest, realization, and possible loss.
Accordingly, we need a stricter concept. If we define hegemony such that a consensual legitimacy is a
necessary part of it rather than an optional extra, then the recent phase of US strategy represents no kind
of hegemony at all. At best, it is a tale of hegemony lost. In terms of a social theory of hegemony
whereby hegemony becomes an accepted institution of international societythere has then been no
recent American hegemony, its primacy in material power notwithstanding. The focus must
then shift away from the attributes of the putative hegemon, and the resources at its command,
towards the perceptions and responses of the followers.
The great paradox is that a US hegemony conceived of in these terms is now arguably ever more
necessary at a time when its primary conditions may be ever less attainable. The necessity arises
in the context of the challenges currently facing the international orderclimate change above all
and the need for consensual leadership to respond with a sense of urgency.25 Drawing his own
distinction between hegemony and empire, Schroeder concurs. He insists that, historically, real
advances in international order have been connected with choices leading powers have made
for durable, tolerable hegemony. Moreover, he thinks, recent trends in the contemporary system
have made hegemony more needed, and more potentially stable and beneficial.26 What light, if
any, can the history of past hegemonies shed on this?
Unipolarity good stratified hierarchy promotes stability

Wohlforth Dartmouth College Government Professor 9

Hegemony Core
[William C., January 2009, Unipolarity, Status Competition, And Great Power
War,http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf,
World Politics 61, no. 1, p. 40-41, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]
Unipolarity implies the most stratied hierarchy, presenting the starkest contrast to the other two
polar types. The intensity of the competition over status in either a bipolar or a multipolar system might
vary depending on how evenly the key dimensions of state capability are distributeda multipolar
system populated by states with very even capabilities portfolios might be less prone to status
competition than a bipolar system in which the two poles possess very dissimilar portfolios. But
unipolarity, by denition, is characterized by one state possessing unambiguous preponderance in
all relevant dimensions. The unipole provides the relevant out-group comparison for all other
great powers, yet its material preponderance renders improbable identity-maintenance strategies of
social competition. While second-tier states would be expected to seek favorable comparisons with
the unipole, they would also be expected to reconcile themselves to a relatively clear status
ordering or to engage in strategies of social creativity.
Unipolarity encourages stability psychological and sociological research proves

War,http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf, World Politics 61,
no. 1, p. 30, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]
Second, I question the dominant view that status quo evaluations are relatively independent of the
distribution of capabilities. If the status of states depends in some measure on their relative
capabilities, and if states derive utility from status, then different distributions of capabilities
may affect levels of satisfaction, just as different income distributions may affect levels of status
competition in domestic settings.6 Building on research in psychology and sociology, I argue that
even capabilities distributions among major powers foster ambiguous status hierarchies, which
generate more dissatisfaction and clashes over the status quo. And the more stratied the
distribution of capabilities, the less likely such status competition is.
Unipolarity thus generates far fewer incentives than either bipolarity or multipolarity for direct
great power positional competition over status. Elites in the other major powers continue to
prefer higher status, but in a unipolar system they face comparatively weak incentives to translate
that preference into costly action. And the absence of such incentives matters because social status is
a positional goodsomething whose value depends on how much one has in relation to others.7 If
everyone has high status, Randall Schweller notes, no one does.8 While one actor might increase its
status, all cannot simultaneously do so. High status is thus inherently scarce, and competitions for status
tend to be zero sum.

Hegemony Core
US hegemony key to global stability, empirical evidence prove

Kagan, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, 12
[Robert, Wall Street Journal, Why the world needs America
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html] accessed 7-713, WZ
History shows that world orders, including our own, are transient. They rise and fall, and the
institutions they erect, the beliefs and "norms" that guide them, the economic systems they support
they rise and fall, too. The downfall of the Roman Empire brought an end not just to Roman rule but
to Roman government and law and to an entire economic system stretching from Northern Europe to
North Africa. Culture, the arts, even progress in science and technology, were set back for centuries.
Modern history has followed a similar pattern. After the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century,
British control of the seas and the balance of great powers on the European continent provided
relative security and stability. Prosperity grew, personal freedoms expanded, and the world was knit
more closely together by revolutions in commerce and communication. With the outbreak of World
War I, the age of settled peace and advancing liberalismof European civilization approaching its
pinnaclecollapsed into an age of hyper-nationalism, despotism and economic calamity. The oncepromising spread of democracy and liberalism halted and then reversed course, leaving a handful
of outnumbered and besieged democracies living nervously in the shadow of fascist and totalitarian
neighbors. The collapse of the British and European orders in the 20th century did not produce a
new dark agethough if Nazi Germany and imperial Japan had prevailed, it might havebut the
horrific conflict that it produced was, in its own way, just as devastating.
If the U.S. is unable to maintain its hegemony on the high seas, would other nations fill in the gaps?
On board the USS Germantown in the South China Sea, Tuesday.
Would the end of the present American-dominated order have less dire consequences? A surprising
number of American intellectuals, politicians and policy makers greet the prospect with equanimity.
There is a general sense that the end of the era of American pre-eminence, if and when it comes,
need not mean the end of the present international order, with its widespread freedom,
unprecedented global prosperity (even amid the current economic crisis) and absence of war among
the great powers.
American power may diminish, the political scientist G. John Ikenberry argues, but "the underlying
foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive." The commentator Fareed Zakaria
believes that even as the balance shifts against the U.S., rising powers like China "will continue to live
within the framework of the current international system." And there are elements across the political
spectrumRepublicans who call for retrenchment, Democrats who put their faith in international law and
institutionswho don't imagine that a "post-American world" would look very different from the
American world. If all of this sounds too good to be true, it is. The present world order was largely shaped
by American power and reflects American interests and preferences. If the balance of power shifts in the
direction of other nations, the world order will change to suit their interests and preferences. Nor can we
assume that all the great powers in a post-American world would agree on the benefits of preserving the
present order, or have the capacity to preserve it, even if they wanted to.

Hegemony Core
Take the issue of democracy. For several decades, the balance of power in the world has favored
democratic governments. In a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the greatpower autocracies. Both Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If
they gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more
autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a new, multipolar world might be more favorable to
democracy if some of the rising democraciesBrazil, India, Turkey, South Africapicked up the slack
from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it.
What about the economic order of free markets and free trade? People assume that China and other rising
powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in preserving it. They
wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Unfortunately, they might not be able to help themselves. The creation and survival of a liberal
economic order has depended, historically, on great powers that are both willing and able to
support open trade and free markets, often with naval power.
A collapse of US hegemony would devolve world relations and bring chaos

Kagan, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, 12
[Robert, Wall Street Journal, Why the world needs America
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html accessed 7-7-13,
WZ]
If a declining America is unable to maintain its long-standing hegemony on the high seas, would other
nations take on the burdens and the expense of sustaining navies to fill in the gaps? Even if they did,
would this produce an open global commonsor rising tension? China and India are building bigger
navies, but the result so far has been greater competition, not greater security. As Mohan Malik has noted
in this newspaper, their "maritime rivalry could spill into the open in a decade or two," when India
deploys an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and China deploys one in the Indian Ocean. The move
from American-dominated oceans to collective policing by several great powers could be a recipe for
competition and conflict rather than for a liberal economic order.
And do the Chinese really value an open economic system? The Chinese economy soon may become
the largest in the world, but it will be far from the richest. Its size is a product of the country's
enormous population, but in per capita terms, China remains relatively poor. The U.S., Germany
and Japan have a per capita GDP of over $40,000. China's is a little over $4,000, putting it at the
same level as Angola, Algeria and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, China's per capita
GDP by 2030 would still only be half that of the U.S., putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece
are today.
As Arvind Subramanian and other economists have pointed out, this will make for a historically unique
situation. In the past, the largest and most dominant economies in the world have also been the richest.
Nations whose peoples are such obvious winners in a relatively unfettered economic system have less
temptation to pursue protectionist measures and have more of an incentive to keep the system open.

Hegemony Core
China's leaders, presiding over a poorer and still developing country, may prove less willing to open their
economy. They have already begun closing some sectors to foreign competition and are likely to close
others in the future. Even optimists like Mr. Subramanian believe that the liberal economic order will
require "some insurance" against a scenario in which "China exercises its dominance by either reversing
its previous policies or failing to open areas of the economy that are now highly protected." American
economic dominance has been welcomed by much of the world because, like the mobster Hyman Roth in
"The Godfather," the U.S. has always made money for its partners. Chinese economic dominance may get
a different reception.
Another problem is that China's form of capitalism is heavily dominated by the state, with the
ultimate goal of preserving the rule of the Communist Party. Unlike the eras of British and
American pre-eminence, when the leading economic powers were dominated largely by private
individuals or companies, China's system is more like the mercantilist arrangements of previous
centuries. The government amasses wealth in order to secure its continued rule and to pay for armies and
navies to compete with other great powers.
Although the Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open international economic order, they could end up
undermining it simply because, as an autocratic society, their priority is to preserve the state's control of
wealth and the power that it brings. They might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they can't
figure out how to keep both it and themselves alive. Finally, what about the long peace that has held
among the great powers for the better part of six decades? Would it survive in a post-American
world?
Most commentators who welcome this scenario imagine that American predominance would be
replaced by some kind of multipolar harmony. But multipolar systems have historically been neither
particularly stable nor particularly peaceful. Rough parity among powerful nations is a source of
uncertainty that leads to miscalculation. Conflicts erupt as a result of fluctuations in the delicate power
equation. War among the great powers was a common, if not constant, occurrence in the long periods of
multipolarity from the 16th to the 18th centuries, culminating in the series of enormously destructive
Europe-wide wars that followed the French Revolution and ended with Napoleon's defeat in 1815.
The 19th century was notable for two stretches of great-power peace of roughly four decades each,
punctuated by major conflicts. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was a mini-world war involving well over
a million Russian, French, British and Turkish troops, as well as forces from nine other nations; it
produced almost a half-million dead combatants and many more wounded. In the Franco-Prussian War
(1870-1871), the two nations together fielded close to two million troops, of whom nearly a half-million
were killed or wounded.
The peace that followed these conflicts was characterized by increasing tension and competition,
numerous war scares and massive increases in armaments on both land and sea. Its climax was World War
I, the most destructive and deadly conflict that mankind had known up to that point. As the political
scientist Robert W. Tucker has observed, "Such stability and moderation as the balance brought rested
ultimately on the threat or use of force. War remained the essential means for maintaining the balance of
power."
There is little reason to believe that a return to multipolarity in the 21st century would bring greater peace
and stability than it has in the past. The era of American predominance has shown that there is no better
recipe for great-power peace than certainty about who holds the upper hand. President Bill Clinton left

Hegemony Core
office believing that the key task for America was to "create the world we would like to live in when we
are no longer the world's only superpower," to prepare for "a time when we would have to share the
stage." It is an eminently sensible-sounding proposal. But can it be done? For particularly in matters of
security, the rules and institutions of international order rarely survive the decline of the nations that
erected them. They are like scaffolding around a building: They don't hold the building up; the building
holds them up. International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It will last only as long as those
who favor it retain the will and capacity to defend it. Many foreign-policy experts see the present
international order as the inevitable result of human progress, a combination of advancing science and
technology, an increasingly global economy, strengthening international institutions, evolving "norms" of
international behavior and the gradual but inevitable triumph of liberal democracy over other forms of
governmentforces of change that transcend the actions of men and nations. Americans certainly like to
believe that our preferred order survives because it is right and justnot only for us but for everyone. We
assume that the triumph of democracy is the triumph of a better idea, and the victory of market capitalism
is the victory of a better system, and that both are irreversible. That is why Francis Fukuyama's thesis
about "the end of history" was so attractive at the end of the Cold War and retains its appeal even now,
after it has been discredited by events. The idea of inevitable evolution means that there is no requirement
to impose a decent order. It will merely happen. But international order is not an evolution; it is an
imposition. It is the domination of one vision over othersin America's case, the domination of freemarket and democratic principles, together with an international system that supports them. The present
order will last only as long as those who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to
defend it. There was nothing inevitable about the world that was created after World War II. No
divine providence or unfolding Hegelian dialectic required the triumph of democracy and capitalism, and
there is no guarantee that their success will outlast the powerful nations that have fought for them.
Democratic progress and liberal economics have been and can be reversed and undone. The ancient
democracies of Greece and the republics of Rome and Venice all fell to more powerful forces or
through their own failings. The evolving liberal economic order of Europe collapsed in the 1920s
and 1930s. The better idea doesn't have to win just because it is a better idea. It requires great powers to
champion it. If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms that American power
has supported will decline, too. Or more likely, if history is a guide, they may collapse altogether as
we make a transition to another kind of world order, or to disorder. We may discover then that the
U.S. was essential to keeping the present world order together and that the alternative to American
power was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophewhich is what the world looked like
right before the American order came into being.

Hegemony Core
Solves Terrorism
Hegemony is crucial to preventing WMD terrorism that guarantees immediate
extinction
Korb, Council on Foreign Relations Council Policy Initiative Project Director, 3
[Lawrence, A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants, and Weapons of Mass
Destruction, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/National_Security_CPI.pdf, p. 5-6,
U.S. Dominance and Preventive Action. The most serious threats to American security come from
the combination of terrorism, rogue states, and WMD. The temptation to try using these weapons
against Americans is high for several reasons, including the fact that clearly identifying and punishing an
attacker is inherently difficult. We are not going to be able to talk others out of developing these weapons,
nor are we likely to be able to build an international coalition to help us get rid of these weapons.
Therefore we must have both the capability and the will to use force against those states and the groups
within them that represent the most serious threats to our security and way of life. And we should be
prepared to do this essentially with U.S. military power alone, unbound by the need for allies or UN
approval. In the longer term, we must undercut our potential adversaries by ensuring the spread of free
market democracy throughout the world.
Larger trends have conspired to make the threat posed by radicalism much greater in recent times. Given
the rapid dissemination of destructive technologies, sensitive information, and capital flows in todays
globalized world, threats from terrorist networks and rogue states can and will materialize more rapidly
than in the past. Moreover, any attacks promise to be much more devastating if and when these actors
get their hands on WMD. As the worlds leading military and economic power, the United States is the
most likely target of these terrorists and tyrants. In the face of, and in response to, these imminent
dangers, it has not only the duty but also the legal and moral right to launch preemptive attacks,
unilaterally if necessary. Common sense dictates that the government not stand idly by and wait to act
until catastrophic attacks are visited upon the American people.
The United States has the unrivaled military and economic capability to repel these challenges to
our security, but it must display the will to do so. To be able to carry out a strategy of preventive action,
taking preemptive military action when necessary, this country must be a hegemonic power. The United
States can protect its security and that of the world in the long run only by maintaining military
dominance. Only America can effectively respond to the perils posed by terrorists, regional thugs,
weapons proliferators, and drug traffickers. It can do the most to resolve problems created by failed
states before they fester into major crises. And it alone can ensure that the worlds sea lanes and skies are
kept safe and open for free trade. But the array of challenges in its path requires military dominance and
cannot be met on the cheap.
The ultimate goal of American foreign policy will be to use this power, alone if necessary, to extend freemarket democracy around the globe. This is the only way in which the United States can deal with the
long-term causes of terrorism. These terrorists come from countries that suffer from political repression,

Hegemony Core
economic incompetence, and a broad lack of respect for the rule of law. And, contrary to what some
believe, democracy and capitalism do not spread inexorably on their own. The United States
therefore needs to assume a leadership role in spreading and accelerating the growth of free-market
democracies that have been taking hold in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Hegemony solves nuclear terrorism, which would lead to US retaliation and

extinction
Kagan, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior associate, 7
(Robert, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior Transatlantic
Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 7-17-7, End of Dreams, Return of History, Hoover Institution,
No. 144, August/September, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6136, Accessed 711-13, AFB)
Throughout all these efforts, whose success is by no means guaranteed and certainly not any time soon,
the United States and others will have to persist in fighting what is, in fact, quite accurately called
the war on terrorism. Now and probably for the coming decades, organized terrorist groups will
seek to strike at the United States, and at modernity itself, when and where they can. This war will
not and cannot be the totality of America s worldwide strategy. It can be only a piece of it. But given the
high stakes, it must be prosecuted ruthlessly, effectively, and for as long as the threat persists. This will
sometimes require military interventions when, as in Afghanistan, states either cannot or will not deny the
terrorists a base. That aspect of the war on terror is certainly not going away. One need only
contemplate the American popular response should a terrorist group explode a nuclear weapon on
American soil. No president of any party or ideological coloration will be able to resist the demands
of the American people for retaliation and revenge, and not only against the terrorists but against
any nation that aided or harbored them. Nor, one suspects, will the American people disapprove
when a president takes preemptive action to forestall such a possibility assuming the action is not
bungled.
Hegemony is crucial to preventing WMD terrorism

Schmitt, American Enterprise Institute Program on Advanced Strategic Studies
director and resident scholar, 6
[Gary, Is there any alternative to U.S. primacy? The Weekly Standard, Books & Arts, Vol. 11 No. 22,
February, Lexis]
The core argument itself is not new: The United States and the West face a new threat--weapons of
mass destruction in the hands of terrorists--and, whether we like it or not, no power other than the
United States has the capacity, or can provide the decisive leadership, required to handle this and
other critical global security issues. Certainly not the United Nations or, anytime soon, the
European Union. In the absence of American primacy, the international order would quickly return

Hegemony Core
to disorder. Indeed, whatever legitimate concerns people may have about the fact of America's
primacy, the downsides of not asserting that primacy are, according to The American Era, potentially
far more serious. The critics "tend to dwell disproportionately on problems in the exercise of
[American] power rather than on the dire consequences of retreat from an activist foreign policy,"
Lieber writes. They forget "what can happen in the absence of such power.
Hegemony solves terrorism via deterrence

professor, 7
(Bradley A., Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State
University, American Empire, Routledge, page 16,
http://www.ewidgetsonline.com/dxreader/Reader.aspx?token=ngtpyRGJisBAPGQYv2lU8Q%3d
%3d&rand=1449293188&buyNowLink=&page=&chapter=, Accessed 6/27/12, THW)
Another critical question is not simply how much the United States spends on defense but what benefits it
receives from its spending: Is the money spent worth it? The benefits of American military power are
considerable, and I will elaborate on five of them. First, and most importantly, the American people
are protected from invasion and attack. The horrific attacks of 9/11 aremercifullyan
aberration. The men and women of the U.S. military and intelligence community do an outstanding
job deterring aggression against the United States.
Second, American interests abroad are protected. U.S. military power allows Washington to defeat its
enemies overseas. For example, the United States has made the decision to attack terrorists far from
Americas shores, and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks
against the United States itself. Its military power also gives Washington the power to protect its
interests abroad by deterring attacks against Americas interests or coercing potential or actual
opponents. In international politics, coercion means dissuading an opponent from actions America does
not want it to do or to do something that it wants done. For example, the United States wanted Libya to
give up the weapons of mass destruction capabilities it possessed or was developing. As Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said, I think the reason Muammar Qadhai agreed to give up his weapons of
mass destruction was because he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein.21

Hegemony Core
Solves Proliferation
Hegemony solves proliferation nuclear guarantees reduce demand
Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins American Foreign Policy Program Professor and
Director, 5
[Michael, The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first
Century, pg. 46, http://books.google.com/books?id=PXR5VZCFXqMC&dq=The+Case+for+Goliath:
+How+America+Acts+As+the+World%E2%80%--99s+Government+in+the+TwentyFirst+Century&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s, accessed 7-7-13, MSG]
By contributing in this way to the global public good of nuclear nonproliferation, the United States
functions as governments do within sovereign states. American nuclear guarantees help to secure
something that all countries want but would probably not get without the United States. The
military deployments and political commitments of the United States have reduced the demand for
nuclear weapons, and the number of nuclear-armed countries, to levels considerably below what
they would otherwise have reached. But American policies have not entirely eliminated the demand for
these armaments, and so the ongoing effort to restrict their spread must address the supply of them as
well.
Hegemony deters proliferation security commitments create a nuclear umbrella

Jo, University of Seoul Department of International Relations, & Gartzke,
Colombia University Department of Political Science, 7
[Dong-Joon and Erik, February 2007, Determinants of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Journal of
Conflict Resolution, Volume: 51, p. 170, JSTOR, accessed 7-7-13, MSG]
Conversely, states with security commitments from patrons with nuclear weapons may be less likely
to proliferate. The presence of a "nuclear umbrella" may be sufficient for many proteges to dampen
concerns about security risks, allowing nuclear ambitions to remain dormant. To make nuclear
deterrence more credible and in spite of pressure to accept a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons, the
four declared nuclear states besides China have consistently refused to rule out the possibility of relying
on nuclear weapons to protect their allies (see United Nations Security Council Resolution 984, April 11,
1995). South Korea, for example, abandoned its nuclear weapons program after receiving
assurances of nuclear protection from the United States, even though its own manufacture of
nuclear weapons would have been relatively easy (Mazarr 1995, 27).

Hegemony Core
United States leadership key to reverse reliance on nuclear weapons solves

proliferation and terrorism
Shultz, former Secretary of State, et. al. 7
[George, 1-4-7, The Wall Street Journal, A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,
http://disarmament.nrpa.no/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/A_WORLD_FREE.pdf, accessed 7-7-13, MSG]
Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S.
leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage -- to a solid consensus for reversing
reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into
potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.
Nuclear weapons were essential to maintaining international security during the Cold War because
they were a means of deterrence. The end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual SovietAmerican deterrence obsolete. Deterrence continues to be a relevant consideration for many
states with regard to threats from other states. But reliance on nuclear weapons for this purpose is
becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.
North Korea's recent nuclear test and Iran's refusal to stop its program to enrich uranium - - potentially to
weapons grade -- highlight the fact that the world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous
nuclear era. Most alarmingly, the likelihood that non-state terrorists will get their hands on
nuclear weaponry is increasing. In today's war waged on world order by terrorists, nuclear weapons
are the ultimate means of mass devastation. And non-state terrorist groups with nuclear weapons
are conceptually outside the bounds of a deterrent strategy and present difficult new security
challenges.
Apart from the terrorist threat, unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S. soon will be compelled
to enter a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and
economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence. It is far from certain that we can
successfully replicate the old Soviet-American "mutually assured destruction" with an increasing
number of potential nuclear enemies world-wide without dramatically increasing the risk that
nuclear weapons will be used. New nuclear states do not have the benefit of years of step-by-step
safeguards put in effect during the Cold War to prevent nuclear accidents, misjudgments or
unauthorized launches. The United States and the Soviet Union learned from mistakes that were
less than fatal. Both countries were diligent to ensure that no nuclear weapon was used during the
Cold War by design or by accident. Will new nuclear nations and the world be as fortunate in the
next 50 years as we were during the Cold War?

Hegemony Core
Cooperation
US leadership key to defusing global threats terrorism, pandemics, climate
CREATING COOPERATION
What goes for the global economy goes for other forms of international cooperation. Here, too,
American leadership benefits many countries but disproportionately helps the United States. In order
to counter transnational threats, such as terrorism, piracy, organized crime, climate change, and
pandemics, states have to work together and take collective action. But cooperation does not come
about effortlessly, especially when national interests diverge. The United States' military efforts to
promote stability and its broader leadership make it easier for Washington to launch joint
initiatives and shape them in ways that reflect U.S. interests. After all, cooperation is hard to come
by in regions where chaos reigns, and it flourishes where leaders can anticipate lasting stability.
U.S. alliances are about security first, but they also provide the political framework and channels of
communication for cooperation on nonmilitary issues. NATO, for example, has spawned new
institutions, such as the Atlantic Council, a think tank, that make it easier for Americans and Europeans to
talk to one another and do business. Likewise, consultations with allies in East Asia spill over into
other policy issues; for example, when American diplomats travel to Seoul to manage the military
alliance, they also end up discussing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Thanks to conduits such as this,
the United States can use bargaining chips in one issue area to make progress in others.
The benefits of these communication channels are especially pronounced when it comes to fighting
the kinds of threats that require new forms of cooperation, such as terrorism and pandemics. With
its alliance system in place, the United States is in a stronger position than it would otherwise be to
advance cooperation and share burdens. For example, the intelligence-sharing network within
NATO, which was originally designed to gather information on the Soviet Union, has been adapted to
deal with terrorism. Similarly, after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated surrounding
countries in 2004, Washington had a much easier time orchestrating a fast humanitarian response
with Australia, India, and Japan, since their militaries were already comfortable working with one
another. The operation did wonders for the United States' image in the region.
The United States' global role also has the more direct effect of facilitating the bargains among
governments that get cooperation going in the first place. As the scholar Joseph Nye has written,
"The American military role in deterring threats to allies, or of assuring access to a crucial resource
such as oil in the Persian Gulf, means that the provision of protective force can be used in

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bargaining situations. Sometimes the linkage may be direct; more often it is a factor not mentioned
openly but present in the back of statesmen's minds."
Maintaining hegemony key to stable global order

Under these circumstances, the United States should not give up its efforts to strengthen the liberal
order. The world that Washington inhabits today is one it should welcome. And the grand strategy
it should pursue is the one it has followed for decades: deep global engagement. It is a strategy in
which the United States ties itself to the regions of the world through trade, alliances, multilateral
institutions, and diplomacy. It is a strategy in which the United States establishes leadership not
simply through the exercise of power but also through sustained efforts at global problem solving
and rule making. It created a world that is friendly to American interests, and it is made friendly
because, as President John F. Kennedy once said, it is a world "where the weak are safe and the strong
are just."

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Solves Democracy
US hegemony is key to spread global democracy
[Bradley A., American Empire: A Debate, p. 42-43, http://libgen.info/view.php?id=515441, accessed
7/7/13, WD]
The American Empire gives the United States the ability to spread its form of government,
democracy, and other elements of its ideology of liberalism . Using American power to spread
democracy can be a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as for the United
States. This is because democracies are more likely to align themselves with the United States and
be sympathetic to its worldview. In addition, there is a chancesmall as it may bethat once states
are governed democratically, the likelihood of conflict will be reduced further. Natan Sharansky
makes the argument that once Arabs are governed democratically, they will not wish to continue the
conflict against Israel.58 This idea has had a big effect on President George W. Bush. He has said that
Sharanskys worldview is part of my presidential DNA.59
Whether democracy in the Middle East would have this impact is debatable. Perhaps democratic Arab
states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United
States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women,
voted in October 2004, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. Elections were held in Iraq
in January 2005, the first free elections in that countrys history. The military power of the United States
put Iraq on the path to democracy. Democracy has spread to Latin America, Europe, Asia, the
Caucasus, and now even the Middle East is becoming increasingly democratic. They may not yet
look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Morocco, Lebanon,
Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority, and Egypt. The march of democracy has been impressive.
Although democracies have their flaws, simply put, democracy is the best form of government .
Winston Churchill recognized this over half a century ago: Democracy is the worst form of
government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. The United States
should do what it can to foster the spread of democracy throughout the world .

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Solves Climate
The leadership of the US as the world hegemon is key to solving warming
Kim, president of the World Bank Group, 2013
(Jim, June 27, The Washington Post, U.S. takes key climate change steps, but the world must do
more, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-27/opinions/40233089_1_climate-changegreenhouse-gas-emissions-jim-yong-kim, accessed 7/9/13, CBC)
The world is starting to get serious about climate change. This is happening for one major reason:
leadership.
President Obamas announcement this week of a broad set of actions to reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions that are changing our climate was very welcome. His plan, largely based on executive
orders, will cut carbon pollution in the United States, prepare the country for the rising number of
extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts, invest more in clean-energy sources and
help lead international efforts to combat climate change and manage its effects.
These steps must be seen in the context of growing mobilization on climate change worldwide
because the United States is one part of a larger puzzle. Obama is joining the leaders of some of the
largest carbon emitters China, India and the European Union in committing to reduce harmful
emissions. The world can now see the potential for a global alignment of political leaders with
substantial power to stop the dangerous warming of our planet.
There must be a world hegemon that encourages efforts to combat climate change
its the only way to solve warming
Gupta, University of Amsterdam environment and development professor, 2012
(Joyeeta, Science Policy, Negotiating challenges and climate change,
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/readings/gupta_2012.pdf, accessed
7/7/13, CBC)
As argued, if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, the countries involved in climate change
negotiations need a leader to encourage them to move away from the use of defensive, hard bargaining
strategies and instead towards constructive, soft (integrative) bargaining strategies. Such a change in
strategy is depicted by a move from the bottom left-hand corner of Figure 2 to the top right-hand corner.
At least three objections might be raised against the preceding analysis. First, it might be claimed that the
issue of which norms should be adopted is a distributive issue which may lead to a situation in which one
involved party wins while another loses. Thus the adoption of the precautionary principle may require
countries that are emitting large quantities of GHGs to reduce their emissions while benetting others
who emit low quantities of GHGs but are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This,

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arguably, disqualies the issue from being addressed in the negotiations through the use of soft bargaining
strategies. However, as argued above, one need not view the climate change negotiations through this
frame. In the long term, using soft bargaining strategies can lead to the creation of win win
situations for all those concerned. This is because the system becomes predictable when there is
clarity about how responsibilities are to be shared between dened categories of countries based on
specic criteria. It also sends a long-term message to all concerned parties about how they should
develop in the future and, moreover, that the responsibilities of a country that graduates into a
different category of country will change. Such signals change the cost benet analyses of
governments and other social actors, and help with the process of planning new infrastructure, and
production and consumption patterns. If developed countries adopt targets, then all future developed
countries (based on clear criteria) will be on notice that they have to modify their development paths.
Thus, the question of the future emissions growth of developing countries becomes irrelevant. Even if
developed countries nd that such emissions reductions are not cost-effective in the short term, they will
become so because developing countries will have to (in a good faith) approachpacta sunt
servanda(agreements must be kept), follow suit, and indeed fairly soon.
The second objection is that the application of the precautionary principle when adopting a longterm
objective limits the size of the potential pie and as such would be part of a distributive strategy.
However, this would only limit the size of the GHG pie and not the development pie, which might be
enlarged inter alia through decarbonization, dematerialization, the green economy, sustainable
infrastructure, sustainable product chains, multiple land use, and sustainable procurement policies.
These options will only have the space to grow and become cost-effective when a long-term legally
binding GHG stabilization objective is adopted by all involved parties. Moreover, these may even be
promoted in alternative fora with new actors.
The third and perhaps most worrying objection is that countries can simply opt out of treaties.
Developing countries might follow the precedents of the US, Canada, and Russia, and simply decide not
to participate in a post-Kyoto regime. Currently, although there are many rules at the global level, global
governance is anarchic and, according to Annan (2000), there is a limited rule of law.
The rule of law implies that there is a common, normative framework and that there is a nondiscriminatory application of clear, consistent (and not arbitrary), equitable, and stable principles for all
countries, both of which provide for a certain degree of predictability about the evolution of law.
Some powerful nations reject the global rule of law because this makes them a mere subject (and not
creator) of international rules (cf. Whittell, 2002), presenting a clear risk to the extant distribution of
power between countries (Craig, 1997; Hager, 2000). However, promoting the global rule of law is
becoming increasingly important for at least ve reasons: (i) humanity is crossing global planetary
boundaries (Rockstrom et al., 2009); (ii) long-term problems need to be addressed in a consistent and
predictable manner as societies need to re-order their long-term production patterns and infrastructure;
(iii) powerful countries that currently see the rule of law and good governance as essential within
countries and as an objective of and condition for development assistance (Santiso, 2001, p. 1) cannot
subsequently and plausibly deny that it is not necessary at the global level (cf. Sandelius, 1993,
Fitzpatrick, 2003); (iv) politics needs the law to make it legitimate (Fitzpatrick, 2003), such that those
who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it; and those who invoke international law must
themselves submit to it (Annan, 2000); and (v) even if it has been in the past interest of some hegemons

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(such as the US) not to promote the rule of global law, it may be wiser as the global centre of power
shifts to Russia, China, India, and South Africa to promote it rather than to wait and see how the new
hegemons shape the new global (dis)order (Roberts, 2011). Indeed, further development of the legal
concept of obligations erga omnes (for all) that are owed to the global community may be able to deal
with the problem of free-riders (Gupta, 1997).

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Solves Trade
Hegemony is the key internal link to free trade prevents great power wars
Zhang, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Researcher, et al 11
[Yuhan, and Lin Shi, Columbia University, January 22, 2011, East Asia Forum, Americas decline: A
harbinger of conflict and rivalry, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-aharbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/, accessed 7/7/13, WD]
Over the past two decades, no other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military.
Under these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have
bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe,
India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a
status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts.
However, as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power
behind the US alliance. The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse,
American interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be
harder to avoid.
As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in
the late 19th century Americas emergence as a regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of
conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power and
waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain rules the
waves. Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western
Hemispheres security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with
democracy and rule of law.
Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights,
constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal
opportunities for broad segments of society. As a result of such political stability, free markets,
liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared . And, with this, many countries have
sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and cooperative relations.
However, what will happen to these advances as Americas influence declines? Given that Americas
authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central
and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer
to this question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way.
Public imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would return to
the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry . Furthermore,
multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to regional
organisations .

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For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by Washingtons
withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free
markets would become more politicised and, well, less free and major powers would compete
for supremacy.
Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and
1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European
economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did
international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973).
A world without American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal
international system is supplanted by an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into
restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can forecast in a future
that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.
US hegemony good protects global trade

Eaglen, National Security Analyst at American Enterprise Institute, McGrath,
Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, 11
(Mackenzie, Bryan, 5/16/11, The Heritage Foundation, Thinking About a Day Without Sea Power:
Implications for U.S. Defense Policy, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/thinking-abouta-day-without-sea-power-implications-for-us-defense-policy, accessed: 7/8/14, SM)
Implications of the Loss of Preponderant Sea Power

How the United States might replace its preponderant sea powerif that day ever comesseems less
straightforward. Indeed, the question seems almost ludicrous. The United States is a maritime nation,
bordered by two oceans and for much of its history protected by them. Over the past 60 years, the
oceans have been highways for worldwide trade that has helped to lift more than a billion people out of
poverty,[3] and those sea lanes have been patrolled by the U.S. Navy, the worlds preeminent naval
power.
The U.S. Navys global presence has added immeasurably to U.S. economic vitality and to the
economies of Americas friends and allies, not to mention those of its enemies. World wars, which
destroyed Europe and much of East Asia, have become almost incomprehensible thanks to the nuclear
taboo and preponderant American sea power. If these conditions are removed, all bets are off.
For more than five centuries, the global system of trade and economic development has grown and
prospered in the presence of some dominant naval power. Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the United
Kingdom, and now the U.S. have each taken a turn as the major provider of naval power to maintain the
global system. Each benefited handsomely from the investment:
[These navies], in times of peace, secured the global commons and ensured freedom of movement of
goods and people across the globe. They supported global trading systems from the age of mercantilism
to the industrial revolution and into the modern era of capitalism. They were a gold standard for

Hegemony Core
international exchange. These forces supported national governments that had specific global agendas for
liberal trade, the rule of law at sea, and the protection of maritime commerce from illicit activities such as
piracy and smuggling.[4]

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Solves Economy
US hegemony crucial to economic preeminence and stable global trade
MILITARY DOMINANCE, ECONOMIC PREEMINENCE

Preoccupied with security issues, critics of the current grand strategy miss one of its most
important benefits: sustaining an open global economy and a favorable place for the United States
within it. To be sure, the sheer size of its output would guarantee the United States a major role in the
global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the country's military dominance undergirds
its economic leadership. In addition to protecting the world economy from instability, its military
commitments and naval superiority help secure the sea-lanes and other shipping corridors that
allow trade to flow freely and cheaply. Were the United States to pull back from the world, the task
of securing the global commons would get much harder. Washington would have less leverage with
which it could convince countries to cooperate on economic matters and less access to the military
bases throughout the world needed to keep the seas open.
A global role also lets the United States structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular
economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington used its overseas security commitments to get
allies to embrace the economic policies it preferred--convincing West Germany in the 1960s, for
example, to take costly steps to support the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. U.S. defense
agreements work the same way today. For example, when negotiating the 2011 free-trade
agreement with South Korea, U.S. officials took advantage of Seoul's desire to use the agreement as
a means of tightening its security relations with Washington. As one diplomat explained to us
privately, "We asked for changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses, and the Koreans took
it all." Why? Because they feared a failed agreement would be "a setback to the political and security
relationship."
More broadly, the United States wields its security leverage to shape the overall structure of the
global economy. Much of what the United States wants from the economic order is more of the
same: for instance, it likes the current structure of the World Trade Organization and the
International Monetary Fund and prefers that free trade continue. Washington wins when U.S.
allies favor this status quo, and one reason they are inclined to support the existing system is
because they value their military alliances. Japan, to name one example, has shown interest in the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important free-trade initiative in the region,
less because its economic interests compel it to do so than because Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda
believes that his support will strengthen Japan's security ties with the United States.

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The United States' geopolitical dominance also helps keep the U.S. dollar in place as the world's
reserve currency, which confers enormous benefits on the country, such as a greater ability to
borrow money. This is perhaps clearest with Europe: the EU'S dependence on the United States for its
security precludes the EU from having the kind of political leverage to support the euro that the United
States has with the dollar. As with other aspects of the global economy, the United States does not
provide its leadership for free: it extracts disproportionate gains. Shirking that responsibility would
place those benefits at risk.
US withdrawal would collapse the global economy

Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, A World without Power July/August 4.
http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified
cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find
itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous
one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populousroughly 20 times
moremeaning that friction between the worlds disparate tribes is bound to be more frequent.
Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on fresh water
and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has
upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and
capitalhas raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves
off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalizationwhich a new Dark
Age would producewould certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the
United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or
Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to
work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europes Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists
infiltration of the E.U. would become irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle
East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system
into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western
investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default
abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The
wealthiest ports of the global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould become
the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas,
targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically
concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate
numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending
catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in
evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and
malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend

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services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens
to go there?
Collapse of hegemony leads to massive economic collapse that has a high probability
of nuclear escalation
Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins American Foreign Policy Program director and
professor, 5
[Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the Worlds Government in the Twenty-First
Century, p. 224]
At best, an American withdrawal would bring with it some of the political anxiety typical during the Cold
War and a measure of the economic uncertainty that characterized the years before World War II. At
worst, the retreat of American power could lead to a repetition of the great global economic failure
and the bloody international conflicts the world experienced in the 1930s and 194os. Indeed, the
potential for economic calamity and wartime destruction is greater at the outset of the new century
than it was in the first half of the preceding one because of the greater extent of international
economic interdependence and the higher levels of prosperitythere is more to lose now than there was
thenand because of the presence, in large numbers, of nuclear weapons.
US hegemony is key to global economic order Chinese alternative fails

Kagan, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies senior fellow, 12
(Robert W., 2-11-12, Why the World Needs America, Wall Street Journal,
7/6/13, AX)
enormous population, but in per capita terms, China remains relatively poor. The U.S., Germany
and Japan have a per capita GDP of over $40,000. China's is a little over $4,000, putting it at the same
level as Angola, Algeria and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, China's per capita GDP
by 2030 would still only be half that of the U.S., putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece are
today. As Arvind Subramanian and other economists have pointed out, this will make for a historically
unique situation. In the past, the largest and most dominant economies in the world have also been
the richest. Nations whose peoples are such obvious winners in a relatively unfettered economic system
have less temptation to pursue protectionist measures and have more of an incentive to keep the system
open.
China's leaders, presiding over a poorer and still developing country, may prove less willing to open
their economy. They have already begun closing some sectors to foreign competition and are likely

Hegemony Core
to close others in the future. Even optimists like Mr. Subramanian believe that the liberal economic
order will require "some insurance" against a scenario in which "China exercises its dominance by either
reversing its previous policies or failing to open areas of the economy that are now highly protected."
American economic dominance has been welcomed by much of the world because, like the mobster
Hyman Roth in "The Godfather," the U.S. has always made money for its partners. Chinese economic
dominance may get a different reception.
ultimate goal of preserving the rule of the Communist Party. Unlike the eras of British and American preeminence, when the leading economic powers were dominated largely by private individuals or
companies, China's system is more like the mercantilist arrangements of previous centuries. The
government amasses wealth in order to secure its continued rule and to pay for armies and navies
to compete with other great powers. Although the Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open
international economic order, they could end up undermining it simply because, as an autocratic
society, their priority is to preserve the state's control of wealth and the power that it brings. They
might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they can't figure out how to keep both it and
themselves alive.
American primacy is key to the global economy jobs, markets

Nau, George Washington Political Science Professor, 9
[Henry R., 2009, International Studies Review, Is American Hegemony Bad or Just Better than
Alternatives? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2008.01834.x/pdf, p. 185-186,
If American leadership has been so deficient, how did the Cold war end without a hot war and how has
the world enjoyed unprecedented prosperity since the Cold War ended? The volume seems
completely oblivious to the fact that this latest outburst of capitalism has raised the standard of
living of more people living under the poverty line than ever before. China and India, with most of the
worlds poorest population, are growing three or four times faster than Europe, Japan and America, and
have been for 20 years or more. Would this have happened under Soviet (if Moscow had won the Cold
War), European, Chinese, Indian or Japanese hegemony or consortium? Would these countries have
championed freer trade policies for East Asian and now Chinese, Indian and Latin American exporters, or
sympathized with the promotion of human rights in places such as Sudan and Zimbabwe, where Russian
and Chinese policies currently block international efforts to stop humanitarian atrocities?
The criticism of America is not the problem. A dominant power is fair game. But the criticism also
ironically takes for granted the benefits of American hegemony-the open markets and global
security provided by US foreign policy , the flexibility of Americas middle classes , which have
transitioned to better jobs in America so that more jobs could be created in poorer countries , and
the light footprint of American imperialism that since 1945 has nurtured not colonies but democratic selfgovernments in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Admittedly, Americas soft power is under a cloud, but the
relevant question is, compared to what. Some, if not much, of the opposition to America has little to do

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with America. It has to do with authoritarian ideologies in other countries, particularly in Asia and the
Middle East, that prefer elitist over middle-class economies and nationalist over liberal political
ideologies.
US hegemony is crucial to the global economy

Thayer, University of Minnesota political science professor, 7
[Bradley A. American Empire: A Debate. Routledge Press: Taylor and Francis Group, NY. Page 43]
Economic prosperity is also a product of the American Empire. It has created a Liberal International
Economic Order (LIED)a network of worldwide free trade and commerce, respect for intellectual
property rights, mobility of capital and labor marketsto promote economic growth. The stability
and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states
benefit, particularly states in the Third World. The American Empire has created this network not out of
altruism but because it benefits the economic well-being of the United States. In 1998, the Secretary of
Defense William Cohen put this well when he acknowledged that "economists and soldiers share the
same interest in stability"; soldiers create the conditions in which the American economy may
thrive, and "we are able to shape the environment [of international politics] in ways that are
advantageous to us and that are stabilizing to the areas where we are forward deployed, thereby
helping to promote investment and prosperity...business follows the flag.

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AT Hegemony Bad Args

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AT Criticisms of Hegemony
US heg is comparatively the most ethicalmilitary deployment is key to preventing
genocide and ensuring global libertyhistory is on our side
Talbot, Salon Founder & historian, 2
[David, experienced journalist; Salon is one of the internets leading news sites, 1/3/2, Salon,
The making of a hawk, http://www.salon.com/2002/01/03/hawk/, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
From the Gulf War on, the hawks have been on the right side in all the major debates about U.S.
intervention in the worlds troubles. The application of American military power to drive back
Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait, stop Slobodan Milosevics genocidal campaigns in the
Balkans, and destroy the terrorist occupation of Afghanistan has not just protected U.S. interests, it
has demonstrably made the world safer and more civilized. Because of the U.S.-led allied victory in
the Persian Gulf, Saddam the most blood-stained and dangerous dictator in power today was
blocked from completing a nuclear bomb, taking control of 60 percent of the worlds oil resources
and using his fearsome arsenal (including biological and chemical weapons) to consolidate Iraqs
position as the Middle Easts reigning force. Because of the U.S.-led air war against Milosevic, the
most ruthless ethnic cleansing program since the Holocaust was finally thwarted first in Bosnia
and then in Kosovo and the repulsive tyrant is now behind bars in the Hague. And in Afghanistan,
the apocalyptic master plan of the al-Qaida terror network was shattered by Americas
devastatingly accurate bombing campaign, along with the medieval theocracy that had thrown a
cloak of darkness over the country.
These demonstrations of Americas awesome firepower were clearly on the right side of history. In
fact, the countrys greatest foreign policy disasters during this period occurred because the U.S.
government failed to assert its power: when President George H. W. Bush aborted Operation Desert
Storm before it could reach Baghdad and finish off Saddam (whose army had only two weeks of bullets
left) and when he failed to draw a line against Milosevics bloody plans for a greater Serbia; and
when President Bill Clinton looked the other way while a genocidal rampage took the lives of a
million people in Rwanda and when he failed to fully mobilize the country against terrorism after
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the later attacks on American targets abroad a failure
that extended through the first eight months of Bush II.
Declinist rhetoric bad now decline now their arg risks self-fulfilling prophecy

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But there is a danger. It is that in the meantime, while the nation continues to struggle, Americans
may convince themselves that decline is indeed inevitable, or that the United States can take a timeout from its global responsibilities while it gets its own house in order. To many Americans, accepting
decline may provide a welcome escape from the moral and material burdens that have weighed on them
since World War II. Many may unconsciously yearn to return to the way things were in 1900, when the
United States was rich, powerful, and not responsible for world order.
The underlying assumption of such a course is that the present world order will more or less persist
without American power, or at least with much less of it; or that others can pick up the slack; or simply
that the benefits of the world order are permanent and require no special exertion by anyone.
Unfortunately, the present world orderwith its widespread freedoms, its general prosperity, and
its absence of great power conflictis as fragile as it is unique. Preserving it has been a struggle in
every decade, and will remain a struggle in the decades to come. Preserving the present world order
requires constant American leadership and constant American commitment.
In the end, the decision is in the hands of Americans. Decline, as Charles Krauthammer has observed, is
a choice. It is not an inevitable fateat least not yet. Empires and great powers rise and fall, and
the only question is when. But the when does matter. Whether the United States begins to decline
over the next two decades or not for another two centuries will matter a great deal, both to
Americans and to the nature of the world they live in.

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Causes Great Power War

No great power struggles US interests are based on proliferation and terrorism,
which Russia, India, China, and the EU also see as a threat cooperation in the War
on Terror proves; states that didnt cooperate dont have the will to challenge the
US
Lieber, University of Notre Dame Political Science Assistant Professor and Faculty
Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and Alexander
University of Virginia Politics Associate Professor, 5
(Keir A., Gerard, Summer 2005, International Security, Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not
Pushing Back, http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, pages 134-135, accessed
7/5/13, IC)
Great powers seek to organize the world according to their own preferences, looking for
opportunities to expand and consolidate their economic and military power positions. Our analysis does
not assume that the United States is an exception. It can fairly be seen to be pursuing a hegemonic
grand strategy and has repeatedly acted in ways that undermine notions of deeply rooted shared
values and interests. U.S. objectives and the current world order, however, are unusual in several
respects. First, unlike previous states with preponderant power, the United States has little incentive
to seek to physically control foreign territory. It is secure from foreign invasion and apparently sees
little benefit in launching costly wars to obtain additional material resources. More- over, the bulk
of the current international order suits the United States well. Democracy is ascendant, foreign
markets continue to liberalize, and no major revisionist powers seem poised to challenge U.S.
primacy. This does not mean that the United States is a status quo power, as typically defined. The
United States seeks to further expand and consolidate its power position even if not through territorial
conquest. Rather, U.S. leaders aim to bolster their power by promoting economic growth, spending
lavishly on military forces and research and development, and dissuading the rise of any peer
competitor on the international stage. Just as important, the confluence of the proliferation of WMD
and the rise of Islamist radicalism poses an acute danger to U.S. interests. This means that U.S.
grand strategy targets its assertive enmity only at circumscribed quarters, ones that do not include
other great powers. The great powers, as well as most other states, either share the U.S. interest in
eliminating the threats from terrorism and WMD or do not feel that they have a significant direct
stake in the matter. Regardless, they understand that the United States does not have offensive
designs on them. Consistent with this proposition, the United States has improved its relations with
almost all of the major powers in the postSeptember 11 world. This is in no small part because these
governmentsnot to mention those in key countries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, such as
Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are willing partners in the war on terror because they see
Islamist radicalism as a genuine threat to them as well. U.S. relations with China, India, and Russia,
in particular, are better than ever in large part because these countries similarly have acute reasons
to fear transnational Islamist terrorist groups. The EUs official grand strategy echoes that of the
United States. The 2003 European security strategy document, which appeared months after the U.S.-

Hegemony Core
led invasion of Iraq, identifies terrorism by religious extremists and the proliferation of WMD as the
two greatest threats to European security. In language familiar to students of the Bush administration,
it declares that Europes most frighten- ing scenario is one in which terrorist groups acquire weapons of
mass destruction.60 It is thus not surprising that the major European states, including France and
Germany, are partners of the United States in the Proliferation Security Initiative. Certain EU
members are not engaged in as wide an array of policies toward these threats as the United States and
other of its allies. European criticism of the Iraq war is the preeminent example. But sharp differences
over tactics should not be confused with disagreement over broad goals. After all, comparable
disagreements, as well as incentives to free ride on U.S. efforts, were common among several West
European states during the Cold War when they nonetheless shared with their allies the goal of
containing the Soviet Union.61 In neither word nor deed, then, do these states manifest the degree or
nature of disagreement contained in the images of strategic rivalry on which balancing claims are
based. Some other countries are bystanders. As discussed above, free-riding and differences over
tactics form part of the explanation for this behavior. And some of these states simply feel less threatened
by terrorist organizations and WMD proliferators than the United States and others do. The decision of
these states to remain on the sidelines, however, and not seek opportunities to balance, is crucial.
There is no good evidence that these states feel threatened by U.S. grand strategy. In brief, other
great powers appear to lack the motivation to compete strategically with the United States under
current conditions. Other major powers might prefer a more generally constrained America or, to
be sure, a world where the United States was not as dominant, but this yearning is a long way from
active cooperation to undermine U.S. power or goals.

Hegemony Core
AT Entanglements/Wars
No entanglement hegemony reduces likelihood of conflict
LED NOT INTO TEMPTATION

The costs of U.S. foreign policy that matter most, of course, are human lives, and critics of an
expansive grand strategy worry that the United States might get dragged into unnecessary wars.
Securing smaller allies, they argue, emboldens those states to take risks they would not otherwise
accept, pulling the superpower sponsor into costly conflicts--a classic moral hazard problem.
Concerned about the reputational costs of failing to honor the country's alliance commitments, U.S.
leaders might go to war even when no national interests are at stake.
History shows, however, that great powers anticipate the danger of entrapment and structure their
agreements to protect themselves from it. It is nearly impossible to find a clear case of a smaller
power luring a reluctant great power into war. For decades, World War I served as the canonical
example of entangling alliances supposedly drawing great powers into a fight, but an outpouring of new
historical research has overturned the conventional wisdom, revealing that the war was more the result of
a conscious decision on Germany's part to try to dominate Europe than a case of alliance entrapment.
If anything, alliances reduce the risk of getting pulled into a conflict. In East Asia, the regional
security agreements that Washington struck after World War II were designed, in the words of the
political scientist Victor Cha, to "constrain anticommunist allies in the region that might engage in
aggressive behavior against adversaries that could entrap the United States in an unwanted larger
war." The same logic is now at play in the U.S.Taiwanese relationship. After cross-strait tensions
flared in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, U.S. officials grew concerned that their
ambiguous support for Taiwan might expose them to the risk of entrapment. So the Bush
administration adjusted its policy, clarifying that its goal was to not only deter China from an
unprovoked attack but also deter Taiwan from unilateral moves toward independence.
For many advocates of retrenchment, the problem is that the mere possession of globe-girdling military
capabilities supposedly inflates policymakers' conception of the national interest, so much so that every
foreign problem begins to look like America's to solve. Critics also argue that the country's military
superiority causes it to seek total solutions to security problems, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, that could be
dealt with in less costly ways. Only a country that possessed such awesome military power and faced no
serious geopolitical rival would fail to be satisfied with partial fixes, such as containment, and instead
embark on wild schemes of democracy building, the argument goes.

Hegemony Core
Furthermore, they contend, the United States' outsized military creates a sense of obligation to do
something with it even when no U.S. interests are at stake. As Madeleine Albright, then the U.S.
ambassador to the UN, famously asked Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when
debating intervention in Bosnia in 1993, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always
talking about if we can't use it?"
If the U.S. military scrapped its forces and shuttered its bases, then the country would no doubt
eliminate the risk of entering needless wars, having tied itself to the mast like Ulysses. But if it instead
merely moved its forces over the horizon, as is more commonly proposed by advocates of
retrenchment, whatever temptations there were to intervene would not disappear. The bigger
problem with the idea that a forward posture distorts conceptions of the national interest, however,
is that it rests on just one case: Iraq. That war is an outlier in terms of both its high costs (it
accounts for some two-thirds of the casualties and budget costs of all U.S. wars since 1990) and the
degree to which the United States shouldered them alone. In the Persian Gulf War and the
interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. allies bore more of the burden,
controlling for the size of their economies and populations.
Besides, the Iraq war was not an inevitable consequence of pursuing the United States' existing
grand strategy; many scholars and policymakers who prefer an engaged America strongly opposed
the war. Likewise, continuing the current grand strategy in no way condemns the United States to
more wars like it. Consider how the country, after it lost in Vietnam, waged the rest of the Cold War
with proxies and highly limited interventions. Iraq has generated a similar reluctance to undertake
large expeditionary operations--what the political scientist John Mueller has dubbed "the Iraq
syndrome." Those contending that the United States' grand strategy ineluctably leads the country
into temptation need to present much more evidence before their case can be convincing.
The bandwagoning effect promotes cooperation and prevents proliferation

[Bradley A., November-December, The National Interest, In Defense of Primacy,
http://nationalinterest.org/article/in-defense-of-primacy-1300, accessed: 7-8-14, JY]
A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and
unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of
course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use
the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater
influence.
Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties
and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers.
That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was
about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its
history has this country, or any country, had so many allies.
U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international
politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions.

Hegemony Core
Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of likeminded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the
Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of
the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand
in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to
realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD
programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically
toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation.

Hegemony Core
AT Russia/China/Iran Alliance
Loss of U.S. hegemony would increase tensions among Russia, China, and Iran
Mead, Bard College Foreign Affairs and Humanities Professor, 14
[Walter Russell, May/June 2014, Foreign Affairs, The Return of Geopolitics,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141211/walter-russell-mead/the-return-of-geopolitics , accessed:
7-8-14, JY]
The relationships among those three revisionist powers are complex. In the long run, Russia fears the
rise of China. Tehran's worldview has little in common with that of either Beijing or Moscow. Iran
and Russia are oil-exporting countries and like the price of oil to be high; China is a net consumer and
wants prices low. Political instability in the Middle East can work to Iran's and Russia's advantage
but poses large risks for China. One should not speak of a strategic alliance among them, and over time,
particularly if they succeed in undermining U.S. influence in Eurasia, the tensions among them are
more likely to grow than shrink.

Hegemony Core
AT Counterbalancing
Balancing arguments false no meaningful balancing
UNBALANCED
One such alleged cost of the current grand strategy is that, in the words of the political scientist Barry
Posen, it "prompts states to balance against U.S. power however they can." Yet there is no evidence that
countries have banded together in anti-American alliances or tried to match the United States'
military capacity on their own-- or that they will do so in the future.
Indeed, it's hard to see how the current grand strategy could generate true counterbalancing. Unlike past
hegemons, the United States is geographically isolated, which means that it is far less threatening to
other major states and that it faces no contiguous great-power rivals that could step up to the task
of balancing against it. Moreover, any competitor would have a hard time matching the U.S.
military. Not only is the United States so far ahead militarily in both quantitative and qualitative terms,
but its security guarantees also give it the leverage to prevent allies from giving military technology to
potential U.S. rivals. Because the United States dominates the high-end defense industry, it can trade
access to its defense market for allies' agreement not to transfer key military technologies to its
competitors. The embargo that the United States has convinced the EU to maintain on military sales to
China since 1989 is a case in point.
If U.S. global leadership were prompting balancing, then one would expect actual examples of
pushback--especially during the administration of George W. Bush, who pursued a foreign policy that
seemed particularly unilateral. Yet since the Soviet Union collapsed, no major powers have tried to
balance against the United States by seeking to match its military might or by assembling a
formidable alliance; the prospect is simply too daunting. Instead, they have resorted to what
scholars call "soft balancing," using international institutions and norms to constrain Washington.
Setting aside the fact that soft balancing is a slippery concept and difficult to distinguish from everyday
diplomatic competition, it is wrong to say that the practice only harms the United States. Arguably,
as the global leader, the United States benefits from employing soft-balancing-style leverage more
than any other country. After all, today's rules and institutions came about under its auspices and
largely reflect its interests, and so they are in fact tailor-made for soft balancing by the United
States itself. In 2011, for example, Washington coordinated action with several Southeast Asian
states to oppose Beijing's claims in the South China Sea by pointing to established international law
and norms.

Hegemony Core
Lack of democracy cause instability in China, Iran, and Russia ruining effective
counterbalancing
Ikenberry, Princeton Political and International Affairs Professor, 2014
[John G., May, Foreign Affairs, The Illusion of Geopolitics,
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&sid=37552f35-a63a-4822-b8f087b9bfde0e63%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ
%3d%3d#db=bth&AN=95603432, 7-8-14, JY]
These political transformations have put China and Russia on the defensive. Consider the recent
developments in Ukraine. The economic and political currents in most of the country are inexorably
flowing westward, a trend that terrifies Putin. His only recourse has been to strong-arm Ukraine into
resisting the EU and remaining in Russia's orbit. Although he may be able to keep Crimea under
Russian control, his grip on the rest of the country is slipping. As the EU diplomat Robert Cooper has
noted, Putin can try to delay the moment when Ukraine "affiliates with the EU, but he can't stop
it." Indeed, Putin might not even be able to accomplish that, since his provocative moves may serve
only to speed Ukraine's move toward Europe.
China faces a similar predicament in Taiwan. Chinese leaders sincerely believe that Taiwan is part of
China, but the Taiwanese do not. The democratic transition on the island has made its inhabitants'
claims to nationhood more deeply felt and legitimate. A 2011 survey found that if the Taiwanese could
be assured that China would not attack Taiwan, 80 percent of them would support declaring
independence. Like Russia, China wants geopolitical control over its neighborhood. But the spread of
democracy to all corners of Asia has made old-fashioned domination the only way to achieve that,
and that option is costly and self-defeating.
While the rise of democratic states makes life more difficult for China and Russia, it makes the world
safer for the United States. Those two powers may count as U.S. rivals, but the rivalry takes place on
a very uneven playing field: the United States has the most friends, and the most capable ones, too.
Washington and its allies account for 75 percent of global military spending. Democratization has put
China and Russia in a geopolitical box.
Iran is not surrounded by democracies, but it is threatened by a restive pro-democracy movement at
home. More important, Iran is the weakest member of Mead's axis, with a much smaller economy and
military than the United States and the other great powers. It is also the target of the strongest
international sanctions regime ever assembled, with help from China and Russia. The Obama
administration's diplomacy with Iran may or may not succeed, but it is not clear what Mead would do
differently to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. U.S. President Barack Obama's
approach has the virtue of offering Tehran a path by which it can move from being a hostile regional
power to becoming a more constructive, nonnuclear member of the international community -- a potential
geopolitical game changer that Mead fails to appreciate.

Hegemony Core
No counterbalancing security threshold makes it impossible and causes states to

bandwagon
Fiammenghi, University of Bologna Department of Politics Fellow, 11
[Davide, Spring 2011, The Security Curve and the Structure of International Politics: A Neorealist
Synthesis, International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 136-137, EBSCOhost, accessed 7/9/13, WD]
Balancing makes sense as long as it has a theoretical possibility of success . When an aspiring
hegemons concentration of power becomes too great, however, balancing ceases to be possible. If a
state were to become so powerful that it no longer feared its rivals, even if they were in a coalition,
then opposing it would be useless. This hypothesis appears to drive William Wohlforths analysis of
U.S. unipolarity.39 I refer to this concept as the absolute security threshold,40 that is, the amount of
relative power beyond which negative security externalities revert to being positive because
balancing becomes impossible (see gure 1). One could argue that when rivals pool their efforts to
counter a hegemon, the hegemons relative power position should decline. Although this is probably true,
it is not always so. Sometimes the hegemons latent power is simply too great , as the Macedonians and
Romans demonstrated.41 Aware of their limitations in the face of such preponderant adversaries,
weaker states bandwagon with the hegemon , and the hegemons security increases rapidly in step
with its power. The security threshold is absolute because no state or group of states can impede
the hegemon. From a theoretical perspective, the structural incentives are ambiguous, because the
function that describes the relationship between power and security is not linear. Up to a certain point,
the maximization of power coincides with the maximization of security. But when an aspiring
hegemon crosses the security threshold, it must decide whether to aim for the absolute security threshold
or maintain a position of preeminence as a great power, though not as the hegemon. In neither case can it
be said that the state has disregarded structural constraints or that structural variables are the only
determinants of its behavior. In light of the security curve, scholars should reconsider the debate regarding
the strategy of maximization.
The US is past the security threshold which means that only a collapse in hegemony
risks conflict
Fiammenghi, University of Bologna Department of Politics Fellow, 11
[Davide, Spring 2011, The Security Curve and the Structure of International Politics: A Neorealist
Synthesis, International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 143, EBSCOhost, accessed 7/9/13, WD]
In principle, the absolute security threshold should not pose the same problem because of the logical
limits in determining it. Ideally, the absolute threshold should represent 50 percent of the
capabilities in the system, because at this level the sum of all the forces opposing the aspiring
hegemon is in - sufficient to successfully balance it. Still, it is useful to consider William Wohlforths
admonition: If balancing were the frictionless, costless activity assumed in some balance-of-power
theories, then the unipolar power would need more than 50 percent of the capabilities in the great

Hegemony Core
power system to stave off a counterpoise. . . . But such expectations miss the fact that alliance
politics always impose costs. 59 It is therefore reasonable to assume that the absolute security threshold
is around 45 percent of the military capabilities in the system. This is the figure William Thompson
suggests in describing a near- unipolar system. 60
In this light, the absence of balancing against the United States today appears less puzzling. The
United States has already moved beyond the absolute threshold, making balancing futile . 61 Levy
and Thompson raise the important question of why other states failed to balance against the United States
when it was a rising power but not yet a hegemon. 62 Part of the answer lies in the United States unusual
path to primacy. For decades, the Soviet Union maintained a rough balance with the United States. 63
U.S. primacy resulted from the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. It may be an exaggeration to
suggest that the United States became a hegemon by accident, but the outcome was not planned. 64 The
extraordinarily wide gap in capabilities created by the fall of the Soviet Union left other states with little
choice but to acquiesce. Countries such as China, Iran, Russia, and Syria, or even Brazil and
Pakistan, may not like U.S. primacy, but they lack the capabilities to challenge it . 65 Meanwhile,
other countries benefiting from U.S. primacy appear not to be worried about it. The next section
considers hegemonic strategies that can soften opposition.
Even if others want to counterbalance, the US is way too far ahead

[Bradley A., November 1, 2006, National Interest, In Defense of Primacy, p. 37, EBSCOhost, accessed
7/7/13, WD]
THERE IS no other state , group of states or international organization that can provide these
global benefits. None even comes close . The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts
and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on matters great and trivial. Thus it
lacks the ability to speak with one voice on salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is
reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect Russia or China to take up these
responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have the capabilities . Let's face it: for
the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only practical hope of solving the world's
ills.
500 years of statistical evidence is on our side no counterbalancing and simply

maintaining the status quo of US hegemony does not provoke coalitions
Levy, Rutgers University Professor, and Thompson, Indiana Political Science
Professor, 10
[Jack S., and William R., Summer 2010, Balancing on Land and at Sea, International Security, Vol. 35,
No. 1, p. 41-42, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00001, accessed 7/9/13, WD]

Hegemony Core
Our argument and our empirical findings have important implications for contemporary debates about
balancing behavior. The absence of a great power balancing coalition against the United States is not
the puzzle that some have claimed it to be, but it is consistent with at least five centuries of
behavior in the global system. This is not to say that balancing coalitions never form against
leading maritime or global powers, only that the threshold for balancing is both higher and
different. We can certainly imagine the United States behaving in such a way as to threaten the
interests of other great powers and eventually to provoke a balancing coalition, but the trigger
would have to involve specific behavior that threatens other great powers, not the fact of U.S.
power. Whereas dominant continental powers are inherently threatening because of their power and
system-induced uncertainties regarding their intentions, the threat from predominant global powers to
other great powers emerges primarily from their behavior and from what that signals about their
intentions.
No counterbalancing heg is sustainable

The post-Cold War empirical record is insufficient for a definitive test of my theory. Still, the absence of
militarization by China provides support for my qualified-durability thesis in contrast with
declinist views. Declinists have no good account for why a balancing effort has not taken place thus
far but is nevertheless guaranteed to take place in the future. Their argument that US competitors are
still too weak to put up a militarized challenge to US hegemony is unpersuasive. Japan challenged US
preponderance in the Pacific head-on in 1941 when it had only about 12% of US GDP. Chinas
GDP is today over 35% of the USs, or three times higher in comparison. 47 And yet, China has not
challenged US global preponderance militarily. But, by the same token, the history of the last twenty
years does not allow us to adjudicate between my theory and primacists views. After all , primacists can
only be refuted once a balancing effort against the United States is under way. Nonetheless, it is
possible to compare the two theories accounts of the reasons behind the absence of balancing. According
to my view, China has not balanced against the United States because its nuclear arsenal
guarantees its survival and its long-term economic prospects are facilitated by a US strategy of
accommodation. According to the primacist view, in contrast, the absence of a Chinese balancing
effort against the United States results from the insurmountable power gap between the two
countries. For primacists, the power gap between the United States and China heightens the difficulty -in terms of inefficiency, cost, and collective-action problems -- of balancing, beyond the point at which it
stops making sense. 48 But this cannot be the case. Again, if Japan challenged US preponderance in
1941 with one-third of the relative economic power China possesses today, something other than
insufficient economic power must account for the absence of a Chinese military challenge to the
United States . In order to show how the contemporary historical record matches the empirical

Hegemony Core
implications of my theory, the remainder of this section will establish four points. First, that Chinese
economic power has been increasing steadily and rapidly. Second, that the United States has
actively accommodated this rise in Chinese latent power , even at the expense of its own relative
power. Third, that Chinas survival is guaranteed by its nuclear arsenal. Fourth, that despite the
rapid rise in Chinese economic power, Beijing has thus far eschewed a strategy of militarization
and armed competition with the United States.
No threat to preeminence foreign policy allows for regional leaders without

counter-balancing threat
War,http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf, World Politics 61,
no. 1, p. 53, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]
Given its material dominance and activist foreign policy, the United States is a salient factor in the
identity politics of all major powers, and it plays a role in most regional hierarchies. Yet there is
scant evidence in U.S. foreign policy discourse of concerns analogous to late cold war perceptions of
a Soviet thrust to global preeminence or mid-nineteenthcentury British apprehensions about Tsar
Nicholass pretensions to be the arbiter of Europe. Even when rhetoric emanating from the other
powers suggests dissatisfaction with the U.S. role, diplomatic episodes rich with potential for such
perceptions were resolved by bargaining relatively free from positional concerns: tension in the
Taiwan Strait and the 2001 spy plane incident with China, for example, or numerous tense incidents
with Russia from Bosnia to Kosovo to more recent regional disputes in post-Soviet Eurasia.
On the contrary, under unipolarity U.S. diplomats have frequently adopted policies to enhance
the security of the identities of Russia, China, Japan, and India as great (though second-tier)
powers, with an emphasis on their regional roles. U.S. ofcials have urged China to manage the
six-party talks on North Korea while welcoming it as a responsible stakeholder in the system; they
have urged a much larger regional role for Japan; and they have deliberately fostered Indias status
as a responsible nuclear power. Russia, the country whose elite has arguably confronted the most
threats to its identity, has been the object of what appear to be elaborate U.S. status-management
policies that included invitations to form a partnership with NATO, play a prominent role in
Middle East diplomacy (from which Washington had striven to exclude Moscow for four decades), and
to join the rich countries club, the G7 (when Russia clearly lacked the economic requisites).
Statusmanagement policies on this scale appear to be enabled by a unipolar structure that fosters
condence in the security of the United States identity as number one. The United States is free to
buttress the status of these states as second-tier great powers and key regional players precisely
because it faces no serious competition for overall system leadership.

Hegemony Core
No balancing US rivals havent ramped up defense spending, nor have states

changed their policies towards the US relations with China, Russia, and India have
actually improved
Pushing Back, http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, p. 109, accessed 7/5/13, IC)
Many scholars and policy analysts predicted the emergence of balancing against the United States
following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Since then, however, great power
balancingwhen states seriously commit themselves to containing a threatening statehas failed to
emerge, despite a huge increase in the preponderant power of the United States. More recently, the
prospect and then onset of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 generated renewed warnings
of an incipient global backlash. Some observers claim that signs of traditional balancing by states
that is, internal defense buildups or external alliance formationcan already be detected. Others
suggest that such hard balancing may not be occurring. Instead, they argue that the world is
witnessing a new phenomenon of soft balancing, in which states seek to undermine and restrain U.S.
power in ways that fall short of classic measures. But in both versions, many believe that the wait is
over and that the world is beginning to push back.
This article argues, in contrast, that both lines of argument are unpersuasive. The past few years have
certainly witnessed a surge in resentment and criticism of specific U.S. policies. But great power
balancing against the United States has yet to occur, a finding that we maintain offers important insights
into states perceptions and intentions. The United States nearest rivals are not ramping up defense
spending to counter U.S. power, nor have these states sought to pool their efforts or resources for
counterbalancing. We argue, further, that discussion of soft balancing is much ado about nothing.
Defining or operationalizing the concept is difficult; the behavior typically identified by it seems
identical to normal diplomatic friction; and, regardless, the evidence does not support specific
predictions suggested by those advancing the concept.
Global interactions during and after the Iraq war have been filled with both a great deal of stasisas
many states leave their policies toward the United States fundamentally unchangedand ironies,
such as repeated requests by the United States for its allies to substantially boost their military
spending and capabilities, requests that so far have gone unfilled. Moreover, U.S. relations with
regional powers such as China, Russia, India, and other key states (e.g., Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and
Saudi Arabia) have improved in recent years. These revealing events and trends are underappreciated by
many, perhaps most, analyses in search of balancing

Hegemony Core
No reason that balancing would occur shared interests, limitations, and values
mean both realists and liberals agree
Pushing Back, http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, p. 133 accessed 7/5/13, IC)
Why Countries Are Not Balancing against the United States

The major powers are not balancing against the United States because of the nature of U.S. grand
strategy in the postSeptember 11 world. There is no doubt that this strategy is ambitious, assertive,
and backed by tremendous offensive military capability. But it is also highly selective and not
broadly threatening. Specifically, the United States is focusing these means on the greatest threats to
its intereststhat is, the threats emanating from nuclear proliferator states and global terrorist
organizations. Other major powers are not balancing U.S. power because they want the United States
to succeed in defeating these shared threats or are ambivalent yet understand they are not in its
crosshairs. In many cases, the diplomatic friction identified by proponents of the concept of soft
balancing instead reflects disagreement about tactics, not goals, which is nothing new in history. To be
sure, our analysis cannot claim to rule out other theories of great power behavior that also do not expect
balancing against the United States. Whether the United States is not seen as a threat worth balancing
because of shared interests in nonproliferation and the war on terror (as we argue), because of
geography and capability limitations that render U.S. global hegemony impossible (as some
offensive realists argue), or because transnational democratic values, binding international
institutions, and economic interdependence obviate the need to balance (as many liberals argue) is a
task for further theorizing and empirical analysis. Nor are we claiming that balancing against the United
States will never happen. Rather, there is no persuasive evidence that U.S. policy is provoking the
kind of balancing behavior that the Bush administrations critics suggest. In the meantime, analysts
should continue to use credible indicators of balancing behavior in their search for signs that U.S.
strategy is having a counterproductive effect on U.S. security. Below we discuss why the United States is
not seen by other major powers as a threat worth balancing. Next we argue that the impact of the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq on international relations has been exaggerated and needs to be seen in a broader
context that reveals far more cooperation with the United States than many analysts acknowledge. Finally,
we note that something akin to balancing is taking place among would-be nuclear proliferators and
Islamist extremists, which makes sense given that these are the threats targeted by the United States.

Hegemony Core
AT Soft Balancing
No evidence for soft balancing Iraq and Afghanistan prove. International
institutions actually bolster US hegemony
Pushing Back, http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, p. 125-128 accessed 7/5/13,
IC)
Evidence of a Lack of Soft Balancing

In the absence of evidence of traditional balancing, some scholars have advanced the concept of soft
balancing. Instead of overtly challenging U.S. power, which might be too costly or unappealing, states
are said to be able to undertake a host of lesser actions as a way of constraining and undermining it.
The central claim is that the unilateralist and provocative behavior of the United States is generating
unprecedented resentment that will make life difficult for Washington and may eventually evolve into
traditional hard balancing.38 As Walt writes, States may not want to attract the focused enmity
of the United States, but they may be eager to limit its freedom of action, complicate its diplomacy,
sap its strength and resolve, maximize their own autonomy and reaffirm their own rights, and
generally make the United States work harder to achieve its objectives.39 For Josef Joffe, Soft
balancing against Mr. Big has already set in.40 Pape proclaims that the early stages of soft balancing
against American power have already started, and argues that unless the United States radically changes
course, the use of international institutions, economic leverage, and diplomatic maneuvering to frustrate
American intentions will only grow.41 We offer two critiques of these claims. First, if we consider the
specific predictions suggested by these theorists on their own terms, we do not find persuasive
evidence of soft balancing. Second, these criteria for detecting soft balancing are, on reflection,
inherently flawed because they do not (and possibly cannot) offer effective means for distinguishing
soft balancing from routine diplomatic friction between countries. These are, in that sense,
nonfalsifiable claims.
Evaluating soft-balancing predictions Theorists have offered several criteria for judging the presence of
soft balancing. We consider four frequently invoked ones: states efforts (1) to entangle the dominant
state in international institutions, (2) to exclude the dominant state from regional economic cooperation,
(3) to undermine the dominant states ability to project military power by restricting or denying military
basing rights, and (4) to provide relevant assistance to U.S. adversaries such as rogue states.42
entangling international institutions. Are other states using international institutions to constrain or
undermine U.S. power? The notion that they could do so is based on faulty logic. Because the most
powerful states exercise the most control in these institutions, it is unreasonable to expect that their
rules and procedures can be used to shackle and restrain the worlds most powerful state. As
Randall Schweller notes, institutions cannot be simultaneously autonomous and capable of binding
strong states.43 Certainly what resistance there was to endorsing the U.S.-led action in Iraq did not

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stop or meaningfully delay that action. Is there evidence, however, that other states are even trying to use
a web of global institutional rules and procedures or ad hoc diplomatic maneuvers to constrain U.S.
behavior and delay or disrupt military actions? No attempt was made to block the U.S. campaign in
Afghanistan, and both the war and the ensuing stabilization there have been almost entirely
conducted through an international institution: NATO. Although a number of countries refused to
endorse the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, none sought to use international institutions to block or
declare illegal that invasion. Logically, such action should be the benchmark for this aspect of soft
balancing, not whether states voted for the invasion. No evidence exists that such an effort was
launched or that one would have succeeded had it been. Moreover, since the Iraqi regime was toppled, the UN has endorsed and assisted the transition to Iraqi sovereignty.44 If anything, other states
ongoing cooperation with the United States ex-plains why international institutions continue to
amplify American power and facilitate the pursuit of its strategic objectives. As we discuss below, the
war on terror is being pursued primarily through regional institutions, bilateral arrangements, and new
multilateral institutions, most obviously the Prolifera- tion Security and Container Security Initiatives,
both of which have attracted new adherents since they were launched.45 economic statecraft. Is post
September 11 regional economic cooperation increasingly seeking to exclude the United States so as
to make the balance of power less favorable to it? The answer appears to be no. The United States
has been one of the primary drivers of trade regionalization, not the ex- cluded party. This is not
surprising given that most states, including those with the most power, have good reason to want
lower, not higher, trade barriers around the large and attractive U.S. market. This rationale applies,
for instance, to suits brought in the World Trade Or- ganization against certain U.S. trade policies.
These suits are generally aimed at gaining access to U.S. markets, not sidelining them. For example,
the suits challenging agricultural subsidies are part of a general challenge by developing countries to
Western (including European) trade practices.46 Moreover, many of these disputes predate September
11; therefore, relabeling them a form of soft balancing in reaction to postSeptember 11 U.S.
strategy is not credible. For the moment, there also does not appear to be any serious discussion of a
coordinated decision to price oil in euros, which might undercut the United States ability to run
large trade and budget deficits without propor- tional increases in inflation and interest rates.47
restrictions on basing rights/territorial denial. The geographical isolation of the United States could
effectively diminish its relative power advantage. This prediction appears to be supported by Turkeys
denial of the Bush administrations request to provide coalition ground forces with transit rights for the
invasion of Iraq, and possibly by diminished Saudi support for bases there. In addition, Pape suggests that
countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea will likely impose new restrictions or reductions on
U.S. forces stationed on their soil. The overall U.S. overseas basing picture, however, looks brighter
today than it did only a few years ago. Since September 11 the United States has established new
bases and negotiated landing rights across Africa, Asia, Central Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
All told, it has built, upgraded, or expanded military facilities in Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Diego
Garcia, Djibouti, Georgia, Hungary, Iraq, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Poland, Qatar, Romania, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.48
No soft balancing basing and the US ability to shift troops liberally proves

Hegemony Core
IC)
The diplomatic details of the basing issue also run contrary to soft-balancing predictions. Despite
occasionally hostile domestic opinion surveys, most host countries do not want to see the
withdrawal of U.S. forces. The economic and strategic benefits of hosting bases outweigh purported
desires to make it more difficult for the United States to exercise power. For example, the Philippines
asked the United States to leave Subic Bay in the 1990s (well before the emergence of the Bush
Doctrine), but it has been angling ever since for a return. U.S. plans to withdraw troops from South
Korea are facing local resistance and have triggered widespread anxiety about the future of the
United States security commitment to the peninsula.49 German defense officials and businesses are
displeased with the U.S. plan to replace two army divisions in Germany with a single light armored
brigade and transfer a wing of F-16 fighter jets to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.50 (Indeed, Turkey recently
agreed to allow the United States expanded use of the base as a major hub for deliveries to Iraq and
Afghanistan.)51 The recently announced plan to redeploy or withdraw up to 70,000 U.S. troops from
Cold War bases in Asia and Europe is not being driven by host- country rejection, but by a
reassessment of global threats to U.S. interests and the need to bolster American power-projection
capabilities.52 If anything, the United States has the freedom to move forces out of certain countries
because it has so many options about where else to send them, in this case closer to the Middle East
and other regions crucial to the war on terror. For example, the United States is discussing plans to
concentrate all special operations and anti- terrorist units in Europe in a single base in Spaina country
presumably primed for soft balancing against the United States given its newly elected prime ministers
opposition to the war in Iraqso as to facilitate an increasing number of military operations in subSaharan Africa.53 the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Finally, as Pape asserts, if Europe, Russia,
China, and other important regional states were to offer economic and technological assistance to
North Korea, Iran, and other rogue states, this would strengthen these states, run counter to key
Bush administration policies, and demonstrate the resolve to oppose the United States by assisting
its enemies.54 Pape presumably has in mind Russian aid to Iran in building nuclear power plants (with
the passive acquiescence of Europeans), South Ko- rean economic assistance to North Korea, previous
French and Russian resistance to sanctions against Saddam Husseins Iraq, and perhaps Pakistans
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) assistance to North Korea, Iraq, and Libya. There are at least two
reasons to question whether any of these actions is evidence of soft balancing. First, none of this socalled cooperation with U.S. adversaries is unambiguously driven by a strategic logic of
undermining U.S. power. Instead, other explanations are readily at hand. South Korean economic
aid to North Korea is better explained by purely local motivations: common ethnic bonds in the
face of famine and deprivation, and Seouls fears of the consequences of any abrupt collapse of the
North Korean regime. The other cases of cooperation appear to be driven by a common
nonstrategic motivation: pecuniary gain. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistans nuclear program, was apparently motivated by profits when he sold nuclear technology and methods to several states.
And given its domestic economic problems and severe troubles in Chechnya, Russia appears far more
interested in making money from Iran than in helping to bring about an Islamic bomb.55 The quest for
lucrative contracts provides at least as plausible, if banal, an explanation for French cooperation with
Saddam Hussein. Moreover, this soft-balancing claim runs counter to diverse multilateral nonproliferation

Hegemony Core
efforts aimed at Iran, North Korea, and Libya (before its decision to abandon its nuclear program). The
Europeans have been quite vocal in their criticism of Iranian noncompliance with the Nonproliferation
Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines, and the Chinese and Rus- sians are actively
cooperating with the United States and others over North Korea. The EUs 2003 European security
strategy document declares that rogue states should understand that there is a price to be paid for their
behavior, including in their relationship with the EU.56 These major powers have a declared
disinterest in aiding rogue states above and beyond what they might have to lose by attracting the focused
enmity of the United States. In sum, the evidence for claims and predictions of soft balancing is poor.
Soft balancing is a flawed concept anti-Americanism can be present without

institutionalized balancing procedures
Pushing Back, http://people.virginia.edu/~ga8h/Waiting-for-Balancing.pdf, p.130-133, accessed 7/5/13,
IC)
There is a second, more important, reason to be skeptical of soft-balancing claims. The criteria they
offer for detecting the presence of soft balancing are conceptually flawed. Walt defines soft
balancing as conscious coordination of diplomatic action in order to obtain outcomes contrary to
U.S. preferences, outcomes that could not be gained if the balancers did not give each other some degree
of mutual support.57 This and other accounts are problematic in a crucial way. Conceptually,
seeking outcomes that a state (such as the United States) does not prefer does not necessarily or
convincingly reveal a desire to balance that state geostrategically. For example, one trading partner
often seeks outcomes that the other does not prefer, without balancing being relevant to the
discussion. Thus, empirically, the types of events used to operationalize definitions such as Walts do
not clearly establish the crucial claim of soft-balancing theorists: states desires to balance the
United States. Widespread anti-Americanism can be present (and currently seems to be) without that
fact persuasively revealing impulses to balance the United States. The events used to detect the
presence of soft balancing are so typical in history that they are not, and perhaps cannot be,
distinguished from routine diplomatic friction between countries, even between allies. Traditional
balancing criteria are useful because they can reasonably, though surely not perfectly, help distinguish
between real balancing behavior and policies or diplomatic actions that may look and sound like an
effort to check the power of the dominant state but that in actuality reflect only cheap talk,
domestic politics, other international goals not related to balances of power, or the resentment of
particular leaders. The current formulation of the concept of soft balancing is not distinguished from
such behavior. Even if the predictions were correct, they would not unambiguously or even
persuasively reveal balancing behavior, soft or otherwise. Our criticism is validated by the long list of
events from 1945 to 2001 that are directly comparable to those that are today coded as soft
balancing. These events include diplomatic maneuvering by U.S. allies and nonaligned countries
against the United States in international institutions (particularly the UN), economic statecraft aimed

Hegemony Core
against the United States, resistance to U.S. military basing, criticism of U.S. military interventions, and
waves of anti- Americanism. In the 1950s a West Europeonly bloc was formed, designed partly as a
political and economic counterweight to the United States within the so-called free world, and France
created an independent nuclear capability. In the 1960s a cluster of mostly developing countries organized
the Nonaligned Movement, defining itself against both superpowers. France pulled out of NATOs military structure. Huge demonstrations worldwide protested the U.S. war in Viet- nam and other U.S. Cold
War policies. In the 1970s the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries wielded its oil weapon to
punish U.S. policies in the Middle East and transfer substantial wealth from the West. Waves of extensive anti-Americanism were pervasive in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, and Europe and
elsewhere in the late 1960s and early 1970s and again in the early-to-mid 1980s. Especially prominent
protests and harsh criticism from intellectuals and local media were mounted against U.S. policies toward
Cen- tral America under President Ronald Reagan, the deployment of theater nuclear weapons in
Europe, and the very idea of missile defense. In the Reagan era, many states coordinated to protect
existing UN practices, promote the 1982 Law of the Sea treaty, and oppose aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.
In the 1990s the Philippines asked the United States to leave its Subic Bay military base; China continued
a long-standing military buildup; and China, France, and Russia coordinated to resist UN-sanctioned uses
of force against Iraq. China and Russia declared a strategic partnership in 1996. In 1998 the Euro- pean
troika meetings and agreements began between France, Germany, and Russia, and the EU announced the
creation of an independent, unified Euro- pean military force. In many of these years, the United States
was engaged in numerous trade clashes, including with close EU allies. Given all this, it is not surprising
that contemporary scholars and commentators periodically identified crises in U.S. relations with the
world, including within the Atlantic Alliance.58 These events all rival in seriousness the categories of
events that some scholars today identify as soft balancing. Indeed, they are not merely difficult to distinguish conceptually from those later events; in many cases they are impossible to distinguish
empirically, being literally the same events or trends that are currently labeled soft balancing. Yet they all
occurred in years in which even soft-balancing theorists agree that the United States was not being balanced against.59 It is thus unclear whether accounts of soft balancing have provided criteria for crisply
and rigorously distinguishing that concept from these and similar manifestations of diplomatic friction
routine to many periods of history, even in relations between countries that remain allies rather than strategic competitors. For example, these accounts provide no method for judging whether postSeptember
11 international events constitute soft balancing, whereas similar phenomena during Reagans presidency
the spread of anti- Americanism, coordination against the United States in international institutions,
criticism of interventions in the developing countries, and so ondo not. Without effective criteria for
making such distinctions, current claims of soft balancing risk blunting rather than advancing knowledge
about international political dynamics. In sum, we detect no persuasive evidence that U.S. policy is
provoking the seismic shift in other states strategies toward the United States that theorists of
balancing identify.

Hegemony Core
AT Hard Counterbalancing
Counter-balancing theory wrong it isnt occurring, defense spending in most places
other than the US has gone down, and the US isnt even preventing balancing
Europe, Russia, China, and India all could try but they dont want to
IC)
The lack of balancing behavior against the United States constitutes a genuine puzzle for many
observers, with serious implications both for theorizing and for U.S. foreign policy making, and so is a
puzzle worth explaining. The next section of this article reviews approaches that predict balancing under
current conditions. The second section presents evidence that classic forms of balancing are not occurring.
The third section argues that claims of soft balancing are unpersuasive because evidence for them is
poor, especially because they rely on criteria that cannot effectively distinguish between soft balancing
and routine diplomatic friction. These claims are, in that sense, nonfalsifiable. The fourth section proposes
that balancing against the United States is not occurring because the postSeptember 11 grand
strategy designed by the George W. Bush administration, despite widespread criticism, poses a
threat only to a very limited number of regimes and terrorist groups. As a result, most countries
either do not have a direct stake in the war on terror or, often, share the U.S. interest in the reduction of
threats from rogue states and terrorist groups. This line of argument refocuses analytic attention away
from U.S. relations with the entire world as a disaggregated whole and toward a sharp distinction
between, on the one hand, U.S. policy toward rogue states and transnational terrorist organizations and,
on the other, U.S. relations with other states.
Predictions of Balancing: International Relations Theory and U.S. Foreign Policy
The study of balancing behavior in international relations has deep roots, but it remains fraught with
conceptual ambiguities and competing theoretical and empirical claims.1 Rather than offer a review of the
relevant debates, we focus here on a specific set of realist and liberal predictions that states will balance
against U.S. power under current conditions. Although realists tend to see great power balancing as an
inevitable phenomenon of international politics and liberals generally see it as an avoidable feature of
international life, the arguments discussed below share the view that balancing is being provoked by
aggressive and imprudent U.S. policies. Traditional structural realism holds that states motivated by the
search for security in an anarchical world will balance against concentrations of power: States, if
they are free to choose, flock to the weaker side; for it is the stronger side that threatens them.2
According to Kenneth Waltz and other structural realists, the most powerful state will always appear
threatening because weaker states can never be certain that it will not use its power to violate their
sovereignty or threaten their survival. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States

Hegemony Core
was left with a preeminence of power unparalleled in modern history. The criteria for expecting balancing
in structural realist terms do not require that U.S. power meet a specific threshold; all that matters is that
the United States is the preeminent power in the system, which it was in 1990 and clearly remains
today. Consistent with earlier theorizing, prominent realists predicted at the end of the Cold War that
other major powers would balance against it.3 A decade later, Waltz identified balancing tendencies
already taking place and argued that it was only a matter of time before other great powers formed a
serious balancing coalition, although that timing is theoreti- cally underdetermined: Theory enables one
to say that a new balance of power will form but not to say how long it will take. . . . In our perspective,
the new balance is emerging slowly; in historical perspectives, it will come in the blink of an eye.4 John
Mearsheimers work is an important exception to the structural realist prediction of balancing against the
United States. He argues that geography specifically, the two oceans that separate the United States
from the worlds other great powersprevents the United States from projecting enough military power
to pursue global hegemony. Given this lack of capability, the United States must be content with regional
hegemony. This means that the United States is essentially a status quo power that poses little danger to
the survival or sovereignty of other great powers. Thus, according to Mear- sheimer, no balancing
coalition against the United States is likely to form. (For similar reasons, historys previous offshore
balancerGreat Britaindid not provoke a balancing coalition even at the height of its power in the
nineteenth century.)5 A distinctive strand of realist theory holds that states balance against perceived
threats, not just against raw power. Stephen Walt argues that perceived threat depends on a combination of
aggregate power, geography, technology, intentions, and foreign policy behavior.6 With this theoretical
modification, Walt and others seek to explain why the United States provoked less balancing in the last
half century than its sheer power would suggest.7 Although geography is important, as in Mearsheimers
explanation above, balance of threat theorists find the key to the absence of real balancing in the United
States distinct history of comparatively benign intentions and behavior, especially the absence of
attempts to conquer or dominate foreign lands. As Robert Pape argues, The long ascendancy of the
United States has been a remarkable exception to the balance of power prediction, and the main reason
for this is its high reputation for non-aggressive intentions.8 Given the United States long-standing
power advantages, this has been partly the result of self-restraint, which Walt believes can continue to
keep the rest of the world off- balance and minimize the opposition that the United States will face in
the future.9 Now, however, many balance of threat realists predict balancing based on what amounts to
an empirical claim: that U.S. behavior since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is sufficiently
threatening to others that it is accelerating the process of balancing. For these balance of threat theorists,
U.S. policies are undermining the reputation of the United States for benevolence. Walt compares the
position of the United States today with that of imperial Germany in the decades leading up to 1914,
when that countrys expansionism eventually caused its own encirclement. According to Walt, What we
are witnessing is the progressive self-isolation of the United States.10 Pape argues that Presi- dent
George W. Bush[s] strategy of aggressive unilateralism is changing Americas long-enjoyed reputation
for benign intent and giving other major powers reason to fear Americas power. In particular, adopting
and implementing a preventive war strategy is encouraging other countries to form counterweights to
U.S. power.11 Pape essentially suggests that the Bush administrations adoption of the preventive war
doctrine in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks converted the United States from a status quo power
into a revisionist one. He also suggests that by invading Iraq, the United States has become an on-shore
hegemon in a major region of the world, abandoning the strategy of off-shore balancing, and that it is
perceived accordingly by others.12 Traditional structural realists agree that U.S. actions are hastening the
balancing process. They argue that the United States is succumbing to the hegemons temptation to
take on extremely ambitious goals, use military force unselectively and excessively, overextend its power

Hegemony Core
abroad, and generally reject self-restraint in its foreign policyall of which invariably generate
counterbalancing. Christopher Laynes stark portrayal is worth citing at length: Many throughout the
world now have the impression that the United States is acting as an aggressive hegemon engaged in the
naked aggrandize- ment of its own power. The notion that the United States is a benevolent hegemon
has been shredded. America is inviting the same fate as that which has overtaken previous contenders for
hegemony.13 The Bush administrations decision to go to war against Iraq is singled out as a catalytic
event: In coming years, the Iraq War may come to be seen as a pivotal geopolitical event that heralded
the beginning of serious counter-hegemonic balancing against the United States.14 Liberal theorists
typically argue that democracy, economic interdependence, and international institutions largely obviate
the need for states to engage in balancing behavior.15 Under current conditions, however, many liberals
have joined these realists in predicting balancing against the United States. These liberal theorists share
the view that U.S. policymakers have violated a grand bargain of sortsone that reduced incentives to
balance against preponderant U.S. power. In the most detailed account of this view, John Ikenberry
argues that hegemonic power does not automatically trigger balancing because it can take a more
benevolent form. Specifically, the United States has restrained its own power through a web of binding
alliances and multilateral commitments infused with trust, mutual consent, and reciprocity. This U.S.
willingness to place restraints on its hegemonic power, combined with the open nature of its liberal
democracy, reassured weaker states that their interests could be protected and served within a U.S.-led
international order, which in turn kept their expected value of balancing against the United States low.
This arrangement allowed the United States to project its influence and pursue its interests with only
modest restraints on its freedom of action.16 Invoking a similar empirical claim, Ikenberry argues that
U.S. policies after September 11 shattered this order: In the past two years, a set of hard-line,
fundamentalist ideas have taken Washington by storm and have produced a grand strategy equivalent to
a geostrategic wrecking ball that will destroy Americas own half-century- old international
architecture.17 This has greatly increased the incentives for weaker states to balance.18 These claims
and predictions rest on diverse theoretical models with differ-ent underlying assumptions, and one
should not conclude that all realist or liberal theories now expect balancing. But there is unusual
convergence among these approaches on the belief that other countries have begun to en-gage in
balancing behavior against the United States, whether because of the U.S. relative power advantage, the
nature of its foreign policies (at least as those policies are characterized), or both.
Evidence of a Lack of Hard Balancing
The empirical evidence consistently disappoints expectations of traditional forms of balancing
against the United States. This section first justifies a focus on this evidence and then examines it.
Justifying a Focus on Hard Balancing
Some international relations theorists appear to have concluded that measurements of traditional
balancing behavior since September 11 are irrelevant to assessing the strength of impulses to balance
the United States. They have done so because they assume that other states cannot compete militarily with
the United States. Therefore, they conclude, any absence of hard balancing that may (well) be
detected would simply reflect structural limits on these states capabilities, and does not constitute
meaningful evidence about their intentions. Evidence of such an absence can thus be dismissed as
analytically meaningless to this topic. We dispute this and argue instead that evidence concerning
traditional balancing behavior is analytically significant. William Wohlforth argues that the United
States enjoys such a large margin of superiority over every other state in all the important

Hegemony Core
dimensions of power (military, economic, technological, geopolitical, etc.) that an extensive counterbalancing coalition is infeasible, both because of the sheer size of the U.S. military effort and the huge
coordination issues involved in putting together such a counterbalancing coalition.19 This widely cited
argument is invoked by theorists of soft balancing to explain, and explain away, the absence of
traditional balancing, at least for now.20 Wohlforths main conclusion on this matter is unconvincing
empirically. As a result, the claim that the absence of hard balancing does not reveal intentions is
unconvincing analytically. There is certainly a steep disparity in worldwide levels of defense
spending. Those levels fell almost everywhere after the end of the Cold War, but they fell more
steeply and more durably in other parts of the world, which resulted in a widening U.S. lead in
military capabilities. Even Europes sophisticated militaries lack truly independent command, intelligence, surveillance, and logistical capabilities. China, Russia, and others are even less able to match
the United States militarily. In 2005, for example, the United States may well represent 50 percent of
defense spending in the entire world. Although this configuration of spending might appear to be a
structural fact in its own right, it is less the result of rigid constraints than of much more mal- leable
budgetary choices. Of course, it would be neither cheap nor easy to balance against a country as
powerful as the United States. Observers might point out that the United States was able to project
enough power to help defeat Wilhelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan; it managed
to contain the Soviet Union in Europe for half a century; and most recently it toppled two
governments on the other side of the world in a matter of weeks (the Taliban in Afghanistan and the
Baathist regime in Iraq). But it is easy to exaggerate the extent and effectiveness of American power,
as the ongoing effort to pacify Iraq suggests. The limits of U.S. military power might be showcased if one
imagines the tremendous difficulties the United States would face in trying to conquer and control, say,
China. Whether considered by population, economic power, or military strength, various combinations of
Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, and Russiato name only a relatively small number of major
powerswould have more than enough actual and latent power to check the United States. These powers
have substantial latent capabilities for balancing that they are unambiguously failing to mobilize.
Consider, for example, Europe alone. Although the military resources of the twenty-five members of the
European Union are often depicted as being vastly overshadowed by those of the United States, these
states have more troops under arms than the United States: 1.86 million compared with 1.43 million.21
The EU countries also have the organizational and technical skills to excel at command, control, and
surveillance. They have the know-how to develop a wide range of high-technology weapons. And they
have the money to pay for them, with a total gross domestic product (GDP) greater than that of the United
States: more than $12.5 trillion to the United States $11.7 trillion in 2004.22 It is true that the Europeans
would have to pool resources and overcome all the traditional problems of coordination and collective
action common to counterbalancing coalitions to compete with the United States strategically. Even more
problematic are tendencies to free ride or pass the buck inside balancing coalitions.23 But numerous
alliances have nonetheless formed, and the EU members would be a logical starting point because they
have the lowest barriers to collective action of perhaps any set of states in history. Just as important, as
discussed below, the argument about coordination barriers seems ill suited to the contemporary context
because the other major powers are apparently not even engaged in negotiations concerning the
formation of a balancing coalition. Alternatively, dynamics of intraregional competition might forestall
global balancing. But this, too, is hardly a rigid obstacle in the face of a commonly perceived threat.
Certainly Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Sta- lin after World War II all induced strange bedfellows to
form alliances and permitted several regional powers to mobilize without alarming their neighbors. That
said, even if resources can be linked, there are typically limits to how much internal balancing can be
undertaken by any set of powers, even wealthy ones, given that they usually already devote a significant

Hegemony Core
proportion of their resources to national security. But historical trends only highlight the degree to which
current spending levels are the result of choices rather than structural constraints. The level of defense
spending that contemporary economies are broadly capable of sustaining can be assessed by comparing
current spending to the military expenditures that West European NATO membersa category of
countries that substantively overlaps with the EUmaintained less than twenty years ago, during the
Cold War. In a number of cases, these states are spending on defense at rates half (or less than half)
those of the mid- 1980s (see Table 1). Consider how a resumption of earlier spending levels would affect
global military expenditures today. In 2003 the United States spent approximately $383 billion on
defense. This was nearly twice the $190 billion spent by West European NATO members. But if these
same European countries had resumed spending at the rates they successfully sustained in 1985, they
would have spent an additional $150 billion on defense in 2003. In that event, U.S. spending would
have exceeded theirs by little more than 10 percent, well within historic ranges of international military
competition.24 Moreover, this underlying capacity to fully, if not immediately, match the United States
is further enhanced if one considers the latent capabilities of two or three other states, especially
Chinas manpower, Japans wealth and technology, and Russias extensive arms production
capabilities. In sum, it appears that if there were a will to balance the United States, there would be a
way. And if traditional balancing is in fact an option available to contemporary great powers, then
whether or not they are even beginning to exercise that option is of great analytic interest when one
attempts to measure the current strength of impulses to balance the United States. International relations
theorists have developed commonly accepted standards for measuring traditional balancing behavior.
Fairly strictly defined and relatively verifiable criteria such as these have great value because they reveal
behaviorcostly behavior signifying actual intentthat can be distinguished from the diplomatic friction
that routinely occurs between almost all countries, even allies. We use conventional measurements for
traditional balancing. The most important and widely used criteria concern internal and external
balancing and the establishment of diplomatic red lines. Internal balancing occurs when states invest
heavily in defense by transforming their latent power (i.e., economic, technological, social, and
natural resources) into military capabilities. External balancing occurs when states seek to form
military alliances against the predominant power.25 Diplomatic red lines send clear signals to the
aggressor that states are willing to take costly actions to check the dominant power if it does not respect
certain boundaries of behavior.26 Only the last of these measurements involves the emergence of open
confrontation, much less the outbreak of hostilities. The other two concern instead states investments in
coercive resources and the pooling of such resources.
Examining evidence of internal balancing
Since the end of the Cold War, no major power in the international system appears to be engaged in
internal balancing against the United States, with the possible exception of China. Such balancing
would be marked by meaningfully increased defense spending, the implementation of conscription
or other means of enlarging the ranks of people under arms, or substantially expanded investment
in military research and technology. To start, consider the region best positioned economically for
balancing: Europe. Estimates of military spending as a share of the overall economy vary because they
rely on legitimately disputable methods of calculation. But recent estimates show that spending by
most EU members fell after the Cold War to rates one-half (or less) the U.S. rate. And unlike in the
United States, spending has not risen appreciably since September 11 and the lead-up to the Iraq
war, and in many cases it has continued to fall (see Table 2). In the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain,
Greece, and Sweden, military spending has been substantially reduced even since September 11 and

Hegemony Core
the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Several recent spending upticks are modest and predomi-nantly
designed to address in-country terrorism. Long-standing EU plans to deploy a non-NATO rapid
reaction force of 60,000 troops do not undermine this analysis. This light force is designed for quick
deployment to local-conflict zones such as the Balkans and Africa; it is neither designed nor suited for
continental defense against a strategic competitor. In April 2003 Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and
Germany (the key player in any potential European counterweight) announced an increase in cooperation in both military spending and coordination. But since then, Germanys government has instead
trimmed its already modest spending, and in 200304 cut its military acquisitions and participation in
several joint European weapons programs. Germany is now spending GDP on the military at a rate
of under 1.5 percent (a rate that is declining), compared with around 4 percent by the United States
in 2003, a rate that is growing. Alternative explanations for this spending pattern only undercut the
logical basis of balancing predictions. For example, might European defense spending be constrained by
sizable welfare-state commitments and by budget deficit limits related to the common European
currency? Both of these constraints are self-imposed and can easily be construed to reveal stronger
commitments to entitlement programs and to technical aspects of a common currency than to the priority
of generating defenses against a supposed potential strategic threat.27 This contrasts sharply with the
United States, which, having unambiguously perceived a serious threat, has carried out a formidable
military buildup since September 11, even at the expense of growing budget deficits. Some analysts also
argue that any European buildup is hampered deliberately by the United States, which encourages
divisions among even traditional allies and seeks to keep their militaries deformed as a means of
thwarting efforts to form a balancing coalition. For example, Layne asserts that the United States is
actively discouraging Europe from either collective, or national, efforts to acquire the full-spectrum
of advanced military capabilities . . . [and] is engaged in a game of divide and rule in a bid to thwart the
E.U.s political unification process.28 But the fact remains that the United States could not prohibit
Europeans or others from developing those capabilities if those countries faced strong enough
incentives to balance. Regions other than Europe do not clearly diverge from this pattern. Defense
spending as a share of GDP has on the whole fallen since the end of the Cold War in sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, and it has
remained broadly steady in most cases in the past several years.29 Russia has slightly increased its share
of defense spending since 2001 (see Table 3), but this has nothing to do with an attempt to
counterbalance the United States.30 Instead, the salient factors are the continuing campaign to subdue
the insurgency in Chechnya and a dire need to forestall further military decline (made possible by a
slightly improved overall budgetary situation). That Russians are unwilling to incur significant costs to
counter U.S. power is all the more telling given the expansion of NATO to Russias frontiers and the U.S.
decision to withdraw from the Antiballistic Mis- sile Treaty and deploy missile defenses. China, on the
other hand, is engaged in a strategic military buildup. Al- though military expenditures are notoriously
difficult to calculate for that country, the best estimates suggest that China has slightly increased its
share of defense spending in recent years (see Table 3). This buildup, however, has been going on for
decades, that is, long before September 11 and the Bush administrations subsequent strategic
response.31 Moreover, the growth in Chi-nese conventional capabilities is primarily driven by the
Taiwan problem: in the short term, China needs to maintain the status quo and prevent Taiwan from
acquiring the relative power necessary to achieve full independence; in the long term, China seeks
unification of Taiwan with the mainland. China clearly would like to enhance its relative power vis-vis the United States and may well have a long-term strategy to balance U.S. power in the future.32 But
Chinas defense buildup is not new, nor is it as ambitious and assertive as it should be if the United
States posed a direct threat that required internal balancing. (For example, the Chinese strategic

Hegemony Core
nuclear modernization program is often mentioned in the course of discussions of Chinese balancing
behavior, but the Chinese arsenal is about the same size as it was a decade ago.33 More- over, even if
China is able to deploy new missiles in the next few years, it is not clear whether it will possess a
survivable nuclear retaliatory capability vis--vis the United States.) Thus, Chinas defense buildup is
not a persuasive indi- cator of internal balancing against the postSeptember 11 United States
specifically. In sum, rather than the United States postSeptember 11 policies inducing a noticeable shift
in the military expenditures of other countries, the latters spending patterns are instead characterized
by a striking degree of continuity before and after this supposed pivot point in U.S. grand strategy.
Assessing evidence of external balancing
A similar pattern of continuity can be seen in the absence of new alliances. Using widely accepted
criteria, experts agree that external balancing against the United States would be marked by the
formation of alliances (including lesser defense agreements), discussions concerning the formation of
such alliances or, at the least, discussions about shared interests in defense cooperation against the
United States. Instead of September 11 serving as a pivot point, there is little visible change in the
alliance patterns of the late 1990seven with the presence of what might be called an alliance
facilitator in President Jacques Chiracs France. At least for now, diplomatic resistance to U.S.
actions is strictly at the level of maneuvering and talk, indistinguishable from the friction routine to
virtually all periods and countries, even allies. Resources have not been transferred from some great
powers to others. And the United States core alliances, NATO and the U.S.-Japan alliance, have both
been reaffirmed. Walt recognized in 2002 that Russian-Chinese relations fell well short of formal
defense arrangements and hence did not constitute external balancing; this continues to be the
case.34 Russian President Vladimir Putins expressed hope that India becomes a great power to help
re-create a multipolar world hardly rises to the standard of external balancing. Certainly few would
suggest that the Indo-Russian strategic pact of 2000, the Sino-Russian friendship treaty of 2001, or
media speculation of a Moscow-Beijing- Delhi strategic triangle in 2002 and 2003 are as consequential
as, say, the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 or even the less-formal U.S.-Chinese balancing against the
Soviet Union in the 1970s.35 In 200203 Russia, China, and several EU members broadly
coordinated diplomatically against granting international-institutional approval to the 2003 Iraq
invasion, but there is no evidence that this extended at the time, or has extended since, to anything beyond that single goal. The EUs common defense policy is barely more developed than it was
before 2001. And although survey data suggest that many Europeans would like to see the EU
become a superpower comparable to the United States, most are unwilling to boost military spending
to accomplish that goal.36 Even the institutional path toward Europe becoming a plausible
counterweight to the United States appears to have suffered a major setback by the decisive rejection
of the proposed EU constitution in referenda in France and the Netherlands in the spring of 2005.
Even states with predominantly Muslim populations do not reveal incipient enhanced coordination
against the United States. Regional states such as Jor- dan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia cooperated
with the Iraq invasion; more have sought to help stabilize postwar Iraq; and key Muslim countries are
cooperating with the United States in the war against Islamist terrorists. Even the loosest criteria for
external balancing are not being met. For the moment at least, no countries are known even to be
discussing and debating how burdens could or should be distributed in any arrangement for coordinating defenses against or confronting the United States. For this reason, the argument (discussed further
below) that external balancing may be absent because it is by nature slow and inefficient and fraught with

Hegemony Core
buck-passing behavior is not persuasive. No friction exists in negotiations over who should lead or
bear the costs in a coalition because no such discussions appear to exist.
Unipolarity discourages military competition narrowing the gap would encourage

militarization and competition
War,http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf,
World Politics 61, no. 1, p. 57, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]
The evidence suggests that narrow and asymmetrical capabilities gaps foster status competition
even among states relatively condent of their basic territorial security for the reasons identied
in social identity theory and theories of status competition. Broad patterns of evidence are
consistent with this expectation, suggesting that unipolarity shapes strategies of identity
maintenance in ways that dampen status conict. The implication is that unipolarity helps explain
low levels of military competition and conict among major powers after 1991 and that a return
to bipolarity or multipolarity would increase the likelihood of such conict.
This has been a preliminary exercise. The evidence for the hypotheses explored here is hardly conclusive,
but it is sufciently suggestive to warrant further renement and testing, all the more so given the
importance of the question at stake. If status matters in the way the theory discussed here suggests, then
the widespread view that the rise of a peer competitor and the shift back to a bipolar or multipolar
structure present readily surmountable policy challenges is suspect. Most scholars agree with Jacek
Kugler and Douglas Lemkes argument: [S]hould a satised state undergo a power transition and catch
up with dominant power, there is little or no expectation of war. 81 Given that todays rising powers
have every material reason to like the status quo, many observers are optimistic that the rise of peer
competitors can be readily managed by fashioning an order that accommodates their material
interests.
Yet it is far harder to manage competition for status than for most material things. While
diplomatic efforts to manage status competition seem easy under unipolarity, theory and evidence
suggest that it could present much greater challenges as the system moves back to bipolarity or
multipolarity. When status is seen as a positional good, efforts to craft negotiated bargains about
status contests face long odds. And this positionality problem is particularly acute concerning the
very issue unipolarity solves: primacy. The route back to bipolarity or multipolarity is thus
fraught with danger. With two or more plausible claimants to primacy, positional competition and
the potential for major power war could once again form the backdrop of world politics.

Hegemony Core
AT China Rise
China rise isnt threatening empirically proven
Wohlforth, Dartmouth College Government Professor, 9
[William C., January 2009, Unipolarity, Status Competition, And Great Power War,
http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf, World Politics 61, no. 1,
p. 31, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]
First, if the material costs and benets of a given status quo are what matters, why would a state
be dissatised with the very status quo that had abetted its rise? The rise of China today naturally
prompts this question, but it is hardly a novel situation. Most of the best known and most
consequential power transitions in history featured rising challengers that were prospering mightily
under the status quo. In case after case, historians argue that these revisionist powers sought
recognition and standing rather than specic alterations to the existing rules and practices that
constituted the order of the day.
In each paradigmatic case of hegemonic war, the claims of the rising power are hard to reduce to
instrumental adjustment of the status quo. In R. Ned Lebows reading, for example, Thucydides account
tells us that the rise of Athens posed unacceptable threats not to the security or welfare of Sparta but
rather to its identity as leader of the Greek world, which was an important cause of the Spartan
assemblys vote for war.11 The issues that inspired Louis XIVs and Napoleons dissatisfaction with the
status quo were many and varied, but most accounts accord independent importance to the drive for a
position of unparalleled primacy. In these and other hegemonic struggles among leading states in
post-Westphalian Europe, the rising challengers dissatisfaction is often difcult to connect to the
material costs and benets of the status quo, and much contemporary evidence revolves around
issues of recognition and status.12
China is committed to economic growth within unipolar system.

[William C., January 2009, Unipolarity, Status Competition, And Great Power War,
http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/Uploads/Documents/IRC/Wohlforth%20(2009).pdf, World Politics 61, no. 1,
p. 54-55, accessed 7/3/13, ALT]
Chinas quest for great power status after the century of shame and humiliation is a staple of
foreign policy analysis . Its preference for multipolarity and periodic resentment at what it sees as the
United States assertion of special rights and privileges is also well established. Chinese analyses of
multipolarity explicitly reect the predicted preference for a at hierarchy over one in which a single
state has primacy; that is, they express a preference for a world in which no power has a special claim to
leadership.72 In the early 1990s Jiang Zemin attempted to act on this preference by translating Chinas

Hegemony Core
growing economic and military power into enhanced status in world affairs through competitive policies.
As Avery Goldstein shows, this more forward policy soon provoked a nascent U.S. backlash against the
perceived China threat.73 The signature event was Beijings decision to heighten tensions around the
Taiwan Strait in 199596 in order to curb Taiwanese president Lee Teng-huis independence policies and
punish Washington for encouraging them. This resulted in the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carrier groups
to the area and a dramatic upgrading of the U.S.-Japan security relationship, including potential
collaboration on a theater missile defense system covering the East China Sea (and possibly Taiwan).
According to many China watchers, the result was a clearer appreciation in Beijing of the costs and
benets of a competitive search for status under unipolarity. As Peter Gries puts it: While many
Chinese have convinced themselves that U.S. power predominance cannot last, they do
grudgingly acknowledge the worlds current unipolar nature.74 As a result, Beijing adopted a
peaceful rise strategy that downplays the prospect of direct competition for global parity with
or primacy over the United States.75 Thus, notwithstanding an underlying preference for a atter
global status hierarchy, in terms of concrete policies China remains a status quo power under
unipolarity, seeking to enhance its standing via strategies that accommodate the existing global
status quo.76

Hegemony Core
AT Hierarchy Bad
Status competition less likely with hegemony Resentment theory works in the
ambiguous theoretical, but in reality leaders account status in utility, make rational
decisions and constrain comparisons in highly consequential ways.
Wohlforth, Dartmouth Government Professor, 9
[William C., January 2009,World Politics Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War
Project Muse Accessed 7-3-2013 EJH]
Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt the relevance for states of SITs core finding that individual
preferences for higher status will affect intergroup interactions. Individuals who identify with a group
transfer the individuals status preference to the groups relations with other groups. those who act on
behalf of a statecan be expected to derive utility from its status in international society In addition,
there are no evident reasons to reject the theorys applicability to interstate settings that mimic
the standard SIT experimental setupnamely, in an ambiguous hierarchy of states that are
comparable in material terms. As Jacques Hymans notes: In the design of most SIT experiments there
is an implicit assumption of rough status and power parity. Moreover, the logic of SIT theory suggests
that its findings of ingroup bias may in fact be dependent on this assumption.29
Status conflict is thus more likely in flat, ambiguous hierarchies than in clearly stratified ones.
And there are no obvious grounds for rejecting the basic finding that comparison choice will tend
to be similar but upward (that is, people will compare and contrast their group with similar
but higher status groups).30 In most settings outside the laboratory this leaves a lot of room for
consequential choices, but in the context of great power relations, the set of feasible comparison
choices is constrained in highly consequential ways.

Hegemony Core
AT Unipolarity Bad
Empirically proven- countries will go to war over status- there will always be war
for primacy.
[William C., January 2009, World Politics Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War
Archives regarding this war have long been open and the historiography is vast. war was about
status.51 The issue at stake became whether Russia could obtain rights in the Ottoman Empire that the
other powers lacked. The diplomats understood well that framing the issue as one of status made war
likely, and they did everything they could in the slow run-up to military hostilities to engineer
solutions that separated the issues on the ground from matters of rank. But no proposed solution
(eleven were attempted) promised a resolution of the Russians status dissonance. The draft
compromises accepted by Russia yielded on all pointsexcept they included language that, however
vaguely, codified Russias rights vis--vis its coreligionists that the tsar and his ministers had demanded
at the outset. For Russia, these clauses symbolized the restoration of the status quo ante. For
Turkey, France, and Britain, they implied a dramatic increase in Russias status unwarranted by
any increase in its capabilities.
The U.S. checks primacy struggles carefully manages perceptual statuses.

[William C., January 2009, World Politics Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War
On the contrary, under unipolarity U.S. diplomats have frequently adopted policies to enhance the
security of the identities of Russia, China, Japan, and India as great (though second-tier) powers,
with an emphasis on their regional roles. U.S. officials have urged China to manage the six-party
talks on North Korea while welcoming it as a responsible stakeholder in the system; they have urged
a much larger regional role for Japan; and they have deliberately fostered Indias status as a
responsible nuclear power. Russia, the country whose elite has arguably confronted the most threats
to its identity, has been the object of what appear to be elaborate U.S. status-management policies
that included invitations to form a partnership with NATO, play a prominent role in Middle East
diplomacy (from which Washington had striven to exclude Moscow for four decades), and to join
the rich countries club, the G7 (when Russia clearly lacked the economic requisites). Status
management policies on this scale appear to be enabled by a unipolar structure that fosters confidence in
the security of the United States identity as number one. The United States is free to buttress the
status of these states as second-tier great powers and key regional play ers precisely because it
faces no serious competition for overall system leadership.

Hegemony Core
Unipolarity is sustainable and there is no chance of a counterbalance

[William, summer 1999, International Security volume 24, issue 1, The Stability of a Unipolar World,
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/wohlforthvol24no1.pdf, accessed: 7-7-14, pg. 5-49, FCB]
Unipolarity is a structure in which one states capabilities are too great to be counterbalanced.14
Once capabilities are so concentrated, a structure arises that is fundamentally distinct from either
multipolarity (a structure comprising three or more especially powerful states) or bipolarity (a
structure produced when two states are substantially more powerful than all others). At the same
time, capabilities are not so concentrated as to produce a global empire. Unipolarity should not be
confused with a multi- or bipolar system containing one especially strong polar state or with an imperial
system containing only one major power.15
Is the current structure unipolar? The crucial first step in answering this question is to compare the
current distribution of power with its structural predecessors. The more the current concentration
of power in the United States differs from past distributions, the less we should expect postCold
War world politics to resemble that of earlier epochs. I select two cases that allow me to compare
concentrations of power in both multipolar and bipolar settings: the Pax Britannica and the Cold War.16
Within these two cases, I highlight two specific periods186070 and 194555because they reect the
greatest concentrations of power in the system leader, and so have the greatest potential to weaken the
case for the extraordinary nature of the current unipolarity. I also include a second Cold War period in the
mid-1980s to capture the distribution of power just before the dramatic changes of the 1990s. quantitative
comparison To qualify as polar powers, states must score well on all the components of power: size of
population and territory; resource endowment; economic capabilities; military strength; and
competence, according to Kenneth Waltz.17 Two states measured up in 1990. One is gone. No new
pole has appeared: 2 1 = 1. The system is unipolar. The reality, however, is much more dramatic
than this arithmetic implies. After all, the two superpowers were hardly equal. Writing in the late
1970s, Waltz himself questioned the Soviet Unions ability to keep up with the United States.18 The last
time the scholarly community debated the relative power of the United States was the second half of the
1980s, when the United States was widely viewed as following Great Britain down the path of relative
decline. Responding to that intellectual climate, several scholars undertook quantitative analyses of the
U.S. position. In 1985 Bruce Russett compared the U.S. position of the early 1980s with that of the
British Empire in the mid-nineteenth century. His conclusion: The United States retains on all
indicators a degree of dominance reached by the United Kingdom at no point in the nineteenth
century.19

Hegemony Core
AT US Will Cling to Hegemony

No cling to heg war weariness and financial overstretch
Hirsh, National Journal chief correspondent, 13
[Michael, 06/11/13, The Atlantic, How America Lost Its Nerve Abroad,
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/how-america-lost-its-nerveabroad/276769/, accessed 07/08/14, ES]
According to a new Gallup Poll, 68 percent of Americans say the United States should not use military
force in Syria, even if diplomatic efforts to end the civil war fail. Sensitive to the war-weary mood,
the president has sought to explain in a series of speeches and actions --defying almost his entire
national security team, for example, in refusing to supply arms to Syria -- that he's paying close
attention to what the public wants. But in doing so, critics say, Obama may be relinquishing
American leadership in critical regions of the globe, and leaving a vacuum that more-aggressive
powers such as Russia and China are trying to fill.
Like Ike
What all this adds up to is an attitude that hasn't been seen in decades, perhaps as far back as the
Eisenhower era of the mid-1950s. That was a time when the fresh memories of World War II and
Korea, and fear of exacerbating the Cold War, drove Ike to avoid open conflict abroad (although, like
Obama, he was fond of covert action). Today, too, there is an inward lean to American foreign policy,
a listing homeward that appears to be a kind of neo-isolationism. Compared with the neoconservative
strain of a decade ago -- a belief in the aggressive projection of American power voiced most recently by
Mitt Romney early in the 2012 presidential campaign -- it is virtually a reversal of direction. The
reasons are obvious. According to surveys, we think we've been out too much in the world in recent
years, and we're feeling badly burned and spent, financially and emotionally. We want to come home.
Rightly or not, Obama is merely channeling these sentiments.
Back in the 1990s, the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke invented the term "Viet-malia" syndrome -a contraction of Vietnam and Somalia (the "Black Hawk Down" debacle) -- to explain President
Clinton's reluctance to intervene overseas. Clinton eventually got over it, going into Bosnia and Kosovo.
But what's shaping foreign policy decisions now feels more enduring. Call it "Iraq-ghazi-stan"
syndrome. It is the chilling effect of the terrible drain of the Iraq war, the long slog in Afghanistan,
and the bloody and embarrassing aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya -- both the Sept. 11, 2012,
Benghazi attack that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, and the spread of
Muammar el-Qaddafi's weapons caches across the region.
When you combine these traumas with the economic fallout of a lingering financial crisis,
compounded by the political paralysis in Washington that led to the sequester, the picture is complete.
It's just not as cool as we thought, being the lone superpower. Can't someone else spell us for a while?
"All these things are signaling a subtle change, a lower profile and more selective approach to the
world," says Gordon Adams, a scholar of international relations and defense expert at American

Hegemony Core
University. "I don't think [Obama] has stepped away from global involvement. There's no way you can
avoid it. Rather, he is backing away from the more assertive view that every issue is ours, that we've
got to push everybody else to do things, that we're the indispensable nation. That's morphing into
something else."

Hegemony Core
AT US Influence Fails
Even if countries do not follow US lock-step, influence effective
(Robert Kagan, 2-14-12, "The Rise or Fall of the American Empire" Foreign Policy,
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/14/the_rise_or_fall_of_the_american_empire?
page=full&wp_login_redirect=0, accessed 7-7-14, LAS)
China, in fact, has significant obstacles to overcome before it can become a global power on a par
with the United States -- above all, the fears and suspicions of neighbors who are themselves pretty
powerful and, in the case of India, rising almost as fast as China. It is a clich, but the United States
really was blessed with a favorable geographic situation. It has no great powers in its hemisphere
and faces no direct threat from any of its neighbors. China is surrounded by past and future
adversaries. Even the Soviet Union was in better shape during the Cold War.
This in part answers Dan's question about the state of America's allies. That India and Brazil may not
move in lock step with the United States is not all that important. U.S. influence does not derive
from being able to tell everyone what to do all the time; it never could, even in Europe at the height
of the Cold War. Rather, it is the overall balance of influence in the world that helps determine
America's position. In a future where the United States and China are likely to be competitors, a
powerful India strengthens the American hand no matter how friendly New Delhi and Washington
may be.
As to Europe, let's take a broader perspective, please. Compared with the devastated Europe that the
United States inherited as an ally in 1945, today's Europe, even with its economic crisis, is a megasuperpower and a very fine ally to have, indeed.

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Alternatives

Hegemony Core
AT Multipolarity Good
US heg is key to the survival of the liberal-democratic order and free tradeshift
away from US power leads to warmultipolar transition fails
Kagan, former State Department Foreign Policy Advisor, 12
[Robert, 2/11/12, Wall Street Journal, Why the world needs
America,online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448, accessed
7/11/14, AC]
Many of us take for granted how the world looks today. But it might look a lot different without
America at the top. The Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan talks with Washington bureau chief Jerry
Seib about his new book, "The World America Made," and whether a U.S. decline is inevitable.
Modern history has followed a similar pattern. After the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century,
British control of the seas and the balance of great powers on the European continent provided relative
security and stability. Prosperity grew, personal freedoms expanded, and the world was knit more closely
together by revolutions in commerce and communication.
With the outbreak of World War I, the age of settled peace and advancing liberalismof European
civilization approaching its pinnaclecollapsed into an age of hyper-nationalism, despotism and
economic calamity. The once-promising spread of democracy and liberalism halted and then reversed
course, leaving a handful of outnumbered and besieged democracies living nervously in the shadow of
fascist and totalitarian neighbors. The collapse of the British and European orders in the 20th century did
not produce a new dark agethough if Nazi Germany and imperial Japan had prevailed, it might have
but the horrific conflict that it produced was, in its own way, just as devastating.
Would the end of the present American-dominated order have less dire consequences? A surprising
number of American intellectuals, politicians and policy makers greet the prospect with equanimity. There
is a general sense that the end of the era of American pre-eminence, if and when it comes, need not mean
the end of the present international order, with its widespread freedom, unprecedented global prosperity
(even amid the current economic crisis) and absence of war among the great powers.
American power may diminish, the political scientist G. John Ikenberry argues, but "the
underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive." The
commentator Fareed Zakaria believes that even as the balance shifts against the U.S., rising powers
like China "will continue to live within the framework of the current international system." And
there are elements across the political spectrumRepublicans who call for retrenchment, Democrats
who put their faith in international law and institutionswho don't imagine that a "post-American
world" would look very different from the American world.
If all of this sounds too good to be true, it is. The present world order was largely shaped by
American power and reflects American interests and preferences. If the balance of power shifts in
the direction of other nations, the world order will change to suit their interests and preferences.

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Nor can we assume that all the great powers in a post-American world would agree on the benefits
of preserving the present order, or have the capacity to preserve it, even if they wanted to.
Take the issue of democracy. For several decades, the balance of power in the world has favored
democratic governments. In a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the
great-power autocracies. Both Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar alAssad. If they gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions
and more autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a new, multipolar world might be more
favorable to democracy if some of the rising democraciesBrazil, India, Turkey, South Africapicked
up the slack from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it.
What about the economic order of free markets and free trade? People assume that China and
other rising powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in
preserving it. They wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Unfortunately, they might not be able to help themselves. The creation and survival of a liberal
economic order has depended, historically, on great powers that are both willing and able to
support open trade and free markets, often with naval power. If a declining America is unable to
maintain its long-standing hegemony on the high seas, would other nations take on the burdens and the
expense of sustaining navies to fill in the gaps?
Even if they did, would this produce an open global commonsor rising tension? China and India
are building bigger navies, but the result so far has been greater competition, not greater security. As
Mohan Malik has noted in this newspaper, their "maritime rivalry could spill into the open in a decade or
two," when India deploys an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and China deploys one in the Indian
Ocean. The move from American-dominated oceans to collective policing by several great powers
could be a recipe for competition and conflict rather than for a liberal economic order.
enormous population, but in per capita terms, China remains relatively poor. The U.S., Germany and
Japan have a per capita GDP of over $40,000. China's is a little over $4,000, putting it at the same
level as Angola, Algeria and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, China's per capita GDP
by 2030 would still only be half that of the U.S., putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece are
today.
As Arvind Subramanian and other economists have pointed out, this will make for a historically unique
situation. In the past, the largest and most dominant economies in the world have also been the richest.
Nations whose peoples are such obvious winners in a relatively unfettered economic system have less
temptation to pursue protectionist measures and have more of an incentive to keep the system open.
China's leaders, presiding over a poorer and still developing country, may prove less willing to open
their economy. They have already begun closing some sectors to foreign competition and are likely
to close others in the future. Even optimists like Mr. Subramanian believe that the liberal economic
order will require "some insurance" against a scenario in which "China exercises its dominance by either
reversing its previous policies or failing to open areas of the economy that are now highly protected."
American economic dominance has been welcomed by much of the world because, like the mobster
Hyman Roth in "The Godfather," the U.S. has always made money for its partners. Chinese economic
dominance may get a different reception.

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ultimate goal of preserving the rule of the Communist Party. Unlike the eras of British and American
pre-eminence, when the leading economic powers were dominated largely by private individuals or
companies, China's system is more like the mercantilist arrangements of previous centuries. The
government amasses wealth in order to secure its continued rule and to pay for armies and navies to
compete with other great powers.
Although the Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open international economic order, they could
end up undermining it simply because, as an autocratic society, their priority is to preserve the
state's control of wealth and the power that it brings. They might kill the goose that lays the golden
eggs because they can't figure out how to keep both it and themselves alive.
The US, as the worlds hegemon, provides security and stability multipolarity
would cause a disruption in this security
(Robert, July 17, Stanford University Hoover Foundation, End of Dreams, Return of History,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6136, Policy Review, Volume: 144,
It is easy but also dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a
measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the United States is
the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their
home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of
international waterways and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil.
Even when the United States engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the
waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete
for naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between nations
would involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World
War i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible.
Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation
provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its
founding to American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt
secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europe s
stability depends on the guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States
could step in to check any dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely multipolar
world, that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world war.
People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American
predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys
today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American
power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But

Hegemony Core
that s not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped
by configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in
the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of
power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and
Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests
of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an
improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of
enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe.
Multipolarity is empirically proven to fail Unipolarity is key to prevent nuclear

war
Khalilzad, former US ambassador to the UN, 95
(Zalmay, Mar 22, The Washington Quarterly, Losing the moment? The United States and the
world after the Cold War, http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-16781957/losingmoment-united-states.html, accessed 7/6/13, CBC)
Finally, and most important, there is no guarantee that the system will succeed in its own terms. Its
operation requires subtle calculations and indications of intentions in order to maintain the balance while
avoiding war; nations must know how to signal their depth of commitment on a given issue without
taking irrevocable steps toward war. This balancing act proved impossible even for the culturally similar
and aristocratically governed states of the nineteenth-century European balance of power systems. It will
be infinitely more difficult when the system is global, the participants differ culturally, and the
governments of many of the states, influenced by public opinion, are unable to be as flexible (or cynical)
as the rules of the system require. Thus, miscalculations might be made about the state of the balance that
could lead to wars that the United States might be unable to stay out of. The balance of power system
failed in the past, producing World War I and other major conflicts. It might not work any better in
the future - and war among major powers in the nuclear age is likely to be more devastating.
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of
a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term
guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in
which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global
environment would be more open and more receptive to American values - democracy, free markets, and
the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the
world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states,
and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global
rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the
attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more
conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
Precluding the rise of a hostile global rival is a good guide for defining what interests the United
States should regard as vital and for which of them it should be ready to use force and put American

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lives at risk. It is a good prism for identifying threats, setting priorities for U.S. policy toward
various regions and states, and assessing needs for military capabilities and modernization.
Multipolarity bad resource wars, arms races, economic crises, and climate change
Layne, Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security at Texas A&M, 9
(Christopher, summer 2009, Texas A&M University, International Security, The Waning of U.S.
HegemonyMyth or Reality?,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v034/34.1.layne.html, accessed 7/9/13, CBC)
What will multipolarity mean? The NICs answer is equivocal. Although it predicts that, along with
Europe, new great powers will oppose a continuation of a U.S.-dominated unipolar system, Global Trends
2025 does not anticipate that the emerging great powers will seek to radically alter the international
system as Germany and Japan did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (p. 84).20 Still, there are
factors that could lead to a more fraught international environment, including: the declining
credibility of U.S. extended deterrence security guarantees, which could fuel new regional arms
races (p. 97); competition for control of natural resourcesespecially energywhich could drive
great power competitions (pp. 6366)21; and fallout from the financial and economic crisis, which
could cause the international economic system to become more mercantilist (pp. 9394). Finally, in a
multipolar world, established international institutions may not be able to deal with the challenges
posed by economic and financial turmoil, energy scarcity, and global climate change. In such a
world, a nonhegemonic United States will lack the capability to revitalize them (p. 81). Although no
one can be certain how events will unfold in coming decades, Global Trends 2025 makes a strong
argument that a multipolar world will be fundamentally different than the postCold War era of U.S.
preeminence. [End Page 154]
Multipolarity prompts miscalculation and reckless wars

Ye, Boston University International Relations Professor, 2004
(Min, September 2004, China Institute for Public Affairs, The U.S. Hegemony and Implication
for China, http://www.chinaipa.org/cpaq/v1i1/Paper_Ye.pdf, accessed 7/9/13, CBC)
In the wake of the Cold War, many scholars from Europe and quite a few in the United States have
argued that the world is heading toward a multipolar system and multipolarity is better for the stability of
system. To them, multipolarity enables flexible and efficient balancing and hence enhances stability,
according to classic realists like Kissinger. This argument is not tenable because, the more poles exist
in the system, the more unstable the balancing becomes. Minor powers have choices to change allies
readily. Besides, multipolarity makes miscalculations rather easy in international relations. States
can miscount their allies loyalty and their own material capabilities; reckless wars are rather easy
to occur.

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History proves multipolarity unstable collapse of hegemony risks wars.

Kagan, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies Senior Fellow, 12
7/6/13, AX)
Finally, what about the long peace that has held among the great powers for the better part of six
decades? Would it survive in a post-American world?
Most commentators who welcome this scenario imagine that American predominance would be replaced
by some kind of multipolar harmony. But multipolar systems have historically been neither
particularly stable nor particularly peaceful. Rough parity among powerful nations is a source of
uncertainty that leads to miscalculation. Conflicts erupt as a result of fluctuations in the delicate
power equation.
War among the great powers was a common, if not constant, occurrence in the long periods of
multipolarity from the 16th to the 18th centuries, culminating in the series of enormously
destructive Europe-wide wars that followed the French Revolution and ended with Napoleon's
defeat in 1815.
The 19th century was notable for two stretches of great-power peace of roughly four decades each,
punctuated by major conflicts. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was a mini-world war involving well
over a million Russian, French, British and Turkish troops, as well as forces from nine other
nations; it produced almost a half-million dead combatants and many more wounded. In the
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the two nations together fielded close to two million troops, of
whom nearly a half-million were killed or wounded.
The peace that followed these conflicts was characterized by increasing tension and competition,
numerous war scares and massive increases in armaments on both land and sea. Its climax was
World War I, the most destructive and deadly conflict that mankind had known up to that point. As
the political scientist Robert W. Tucker has observed, "Such stability and moderation as the balance
brought rested ultimately on the threat or use of force. War remained the essential means for
maintaining the balance of power."
There is little reason to believe that a return to multipolarity in the 21st century would bring
greater peace and stability than it has in the past. The era of American predominance has shown
that there is no better recipe for great-power peace than certainty about who holds the upper hand.
Without US presence, American ideals disappear and chaos is the result.

Kagan, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution 2012

Hegemony Core
7/6/13, AX)
Americans certainly like to believe that our preferred order survives because it is right and just
not only for us but for everyone. We assume that the triumph of democracy is the triumph of a
better idea, and the victory of market capitalism is the victory of a better system, and that both are
irreversible. That is why Francis Fukuyama's thesis about "the end of history" was so attractive at the end
of the Cold War and retains its appeal even now, after it has been discredited by events. The idea of
inevitable evolution means that there is no requirement to impose a decent order. It will merely happen.
But international order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision
over othersin America's case, the domination of free-market and democratic principles, together
with an international system that supports them. The present order will last only as long as those
who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to defend it.
There was nothing inevitable about the world that was created after World War II. No divine
providence or unfolding Hegelian dialectic required the triumph of democracy and capitalism, and
there is no guarantee that their success will outlast the powerful nations that have fought for them.
Democratic progress and liberal economics have been and can be reversed and undone. The ancient
democracies of Greece and the republics of Rome and Venice all fell to more powerful forces or
through their own failings. The evolving liberal economic order of Europe collapsed in the 1920s and
1930s. The better idea doesn't have to win just because it is a better idea. It requires great powers to
champion it.
If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms that American power has
supported will decline, too. Or more likely, if history is a guide, they may collapse altogether as we
make a transition to another kind of world order, or to disorder. We may discover then that the U.S.
was essential to keeping the present world order together and that the alternative to American
power was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophewhich is what the world looked like
right before the American order came into being.
Multipolarity theory fails- a multipolar future would be marked by violent bids for
primacy- the theory assumes a preference for equality.
Wohlforth, Dartmith Government Professor, 9
When applied to the setting of great power politics, these propositions suggest that the nature and
intensity of status competition will be influenced by the nature of the polarity that characterizes the
system. Multipolarity implies a flat hierarchy in which no state is unambiguously number one.
Under such a setting, the theory predicts status inconsistency and intense pressure on each state to resolve

Hegemony Core
it in a way that reflects favorably on itself. In this sense, all states are presumptively revisionist in
that the absence of a settled hierarchy provides incentives to establish one. But the theory expects
the process of establishing a hierarchy to be prone to conflict: any state would be expected to
prefer a status quo under which there are no unambiguous superiors to any other states
successful bid for primacy. Thus, an order in which ones own state is number one is preferred to the
status quo, which is preferred to any order in which another state is number one. The expected result
will be periodic bids for primacy, resisted by other great powers.
Cooperation doesnt solve security issues no consensus

Gvodsdev, National Interest former editor, 6-15-12
(Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest and a frequent foreign policy
commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War
College. 6-15-12, World Politics Review, The Realist Prism: In a G-Zero World, U.S. Should Go
Minilateral, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12061/the-realist-prism-in-a-g-zero-world-u-sshould-go-minilateral, accessed 7-8-12, CNM)
As for the possibility that the international community might play the collective role of system-enabler,
Bremmer is pessimistic, as am I. He anticipates no significant outcomes from the upcoming G-20
summit, for instance, because there is simply no consensus among the participating states on how to
cope with any of the problems topping the global agenda. No state, not even the United States, can
impose its will on the rest, while all the major powers can exercise effective vetoes to torpedo action.
The United Nations Security Council resolution that authorized the no-fly zone over Libya last year,
once considered a possible model of great power cooperation, looks more and more like an outlier.

Hegemony Core
AT Bipolarity Solves
Bipolarity theory fails- a bipolar future would be marked by violent bids for
primacy- the theory assumes submissive secondary states and a preference for
equality.
37 For its part, bipolarity, with only two states in a material position to claim primacy, implies a
somewhat more stratified hierarchy that is less prone to ambiguity. Each superpower would be
expected to see the other as the main relevant out-group, while second-tier major powers would compare
themselves to either or both of them. Given the two poles clear material preponderance, second-tier
major powers would not be expected to experience status dissonance and dissatisfaction, and, to
the extent they did, the odds would favor their adoption of strategies of social creativity instead of
conflict. For their part, the poles would be expected to seek to establish a hierarchy: each would
obviously prefer to be number one, but absent that each would also prefer an ambiguous status
quo in which neither is dominant to an order in which it is unambiguously outranked by the
other.
Overwhelming theory and evidence indicate that it is human nature to pursue

higher status- means that bipolarity or multipolarity will never solve.
Both theory and evidence demonstrate convincingly that competition for status is a driver of
human behavior, and social identity theory and related literatures suggest the conditions under
which it might come to the fore in great power relations. Both the systemic and dyadic findings
presented in large-N studies are broadly consistent with the theory, but they are also consistent with
power transition and other rationalist theories of hegemonic war. How much status competition matters
in light of the many competing explanations remains to be seen. The theory is distinguished chiefly by
its causal mechanisms rather than by its brute predictions mechanisms that continue to operate
in a world in which the mechanisms central to other theories do not. In experimental settings,
competition for status can be neatly distinguished from behavior motivated by instrumental
pursuit of material rewards. In actual world politics, by contrast, the quest for status is likely to be
intertwined with other aims in extremely complex ways. Substantial further refinement, ideally
informed by new experimental work, would be necessary to conduct convincing tests against aggregate
data.

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Hegemony Core
AT Retrenchment Solves/AT Posen

Posen is wrong the US will not willingly relinquish its power global engagement
is inevitable which means your turns dont matter and its only a question of
effectiveness
Ferguson, Oxford Senior Research Fellow, 7
[Niall, November/December 2007, The American Interest, The Case for Restraint, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=335, accessed 7/6/13, WD]
So much for the American predicament. What of Posens alternative grand strategy based on
American self-restraint? The terms he uses are themselves revealing. The United States needs to be
more reticent about its use of military force, more modest about its political goals overseas,
more distant from traditional allies, and more stingy in its aid policies. Good luck to the
presidential candidate who laces his next foreign policy speech with those adjectives: My fellow
Americans, I want to make this great country of ours more reticent, modest, distant and stingy!
Let us, however, leave aside this quintessentially academic and operationally useless rhetoric. What
exactly does Posen want the United States to do? I count six concrete recommendations. The United
States should:
1) Abandon the Bush Doctrine of preemption, which in the case of Iraq has been a policy of preventive
war. Posen argues that this applies even in cases of nuclear proliferation. By implication, he sees
preventive war as an inferior option to deterrence, though he does not make clear how exactly a nucleararmed Iran would be deterred, least of all if his second recommendation were to be implemented.
2) Reduce U.S. military presence in the Middle East (the abode of Islam) by abandoning its
permanent and semi-permanent land bases in Arab countries. Posen does not say so, but he appears to
imply the abandonment of all these bases, not just the ones in Iraq, but also those in, for example, Qatar. It
is not clear what would be left of Central Command after such a drastic retreat. Note that this would
represent a break with the policy not just of the last two Presidents, but with that of the last 12.
3) Ramp up efforts to provide relief in the wake of natural disasters, exemplified by Operation Unified
Assistance after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. No doubt the American military did
some good in the wake of the tsunami, but Posen needs to explain why a government that so miserably
bungled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina less than a year later should be expected to be consistently
effective in the wake of natural disasters.
4) Assist in humanitarian military interventions only under reasonable guidelines and in coalitions,
operating under some kind of regional or international political mandate. Does Posen mean that he
would favor sending American troops to Darfur at the same time as he is withdrawing them from other
abodes of Islam? He does not say.
5) Promote not democracy abroad but the rule of law, press freedom and the rights of collective
bargaining. Here again I am experiencing cognitive dissonance. The government that sought

Hegemony Core
systematically to evade the Geneva Conventions in order to detain indefinitely and torture suspected
terrorists as an upholder of the rule of law?
6) Stop offering U.S. security guarantees and security assistance, [which] tend to relieve others of the
need to do more to ensure their own security. This is in fact the most important of all Posens
recommendations, though he saves it until last. He envisages radical diminution of American support
for other members of NATO. Over the next ten years, he writes, the United States should gradually
withdraw from all military headquarters and commands in Europe. In the same timeframe it should
reduce U.S. government direct financial assistance to Israel to zero, as well as reducing (though not
wholly eliminating) assistance to Egypt. And it should reconsider its security relationship with Japan,
whatever that means. Again, this represents a break with traditional policy so radical that it would
impress even Noam Chomsky, to say nothing of Osama bin Laden (who would, indeed, find little
here to object to).
Posen, in other words, has proceeded from relatively familiar premises (the limits of American
hyperpower) to some quite fantastic policy recommendations, which are perhaps best summed up as
a cross between isolationism and humanitarianism. Only slightly less fantastic than his vision of an
American military retreat from the Middle East, Europe and East Asia is Posens notion that it
could be sold to the American electoratejust six years after they were the targets of the single
largest terrorist attack in historyin the language of self-effacement. Coming from a man who
wants to restart mainstream debate on American grand strategy, that is pretty rich.
Relative decline is inevitable absent major shiftsretrenchment failsthe US must

remain diplomatically engaged
Gvosdev, Naval War College Strategic Studies Professor, 13
[Nikolas, 10/22/13, World Politics Review, Strategic Gambles: The Diplomatic Stakes of American
Retrenchment, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13317/strategic-gambles-the-diplomaticstakes-of-american-retrenchment, accessed 7/11/14, AC]
In early September, the U.S. executed a stunning volte-face in its declared policy on dealing with the
use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. Backing away from enforcing a self-imposed
presidential red line with an already announced military intervention, Washington instead embraced
a Russian-developed diplomatic plan that turns Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from a military target
into an essential partner in ridding Syria of its WMD stockpiles. The reversal may not have marked the
worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began, as one retired British diplomat
saw it, but the shift definitely raised questions in world capitals about the reliability of U.S.
statements and commitments.
Exactly one month later, another disturbing picture was released to the world: The official portrait
of the Asia-Pacific Summit bleakly highlighted the fact that the U.S. president was absent to deal
with a political crisis at home that had literally shut down the government and called into question
Americas ability to pay its bills and meet its commitments. The absence of President Barack Obama
allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to take center stage, with the
U.S. secretary of state relegated, quite literally, to the sidelines.

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Together, these two events crystallized growing concerns that have been bubbling below the surface
for the past several years: that, after 70 years of global leadership, U.S. influence in the world has
begun to recede. As Steven Hurst of the Associated Press recently reported, diplomats are, behind
closed doors, voicing greater concern:
An unmistakable sense of unease is growing in global capitals as the U.S. government from afar
looks increasingly befuddled. America is shirking from a military confrontation in Syria, stymied at
home by a gridlocked Congress and in danger of defaulting on sovereign debt, which could plunge
the world's financial system into chaos. While each may be unrelated to the direct exercise of U.S.
foreign policy, taken together they give some allies the sense that Washington is not as firm as it
used to be in its resolve and its financial capacity, providing an opening for China or Russia to fill
the void.
Even before the most recent set of problems, there was already a robust debate in Washington over
the course and direction of U.S. foreign policy, with some questioning whether the United States could
continue to afford maintaining its position in global affairs. To some extent, the unipolar moment of the
1990s that enabled the United States to extend its influence at reasonably low cost occurred because
of a fortunate confluence of events. The Soviet Union had crumbled; China was focused on internal
affairs, especially economic development, in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square; the European Union
was in its infancy; and powers like Brazil and India had not yet begun their rise.
Conditions today, however, have changed.
Moreover, U.S. public opinion has become far less accepting of shouldering the burdens of
superpower status. The sentiment that the U.S. ought to engage in nation-building at home proved
to be a powerful subcurrent in U.S. domestic politics. With the discrediting of the Bush
administrations claims that massive overseas interventions were required to secure the U.S. homeland
from attack, the Obama team has been placed under severe pressure to limit the costs of any putative
U.S. operations. The 2011 Libya campaign sent a clear message around the world that U.S. priorities in
undertaking overseas action would be to limit costs and casualties.
The American public is far less interested in supporting what had been the major tools for
projecting American influence in earlier decades: long-term, far-reaching security commitments,
including lasting troop deployments overseas; and massive foreign aid programs along the lines of
the post-World War II Marshall Plan. Americans were pleased by the ouster of Libyan leader
Moammar Gadhafi, seen as a long-time U.S. foe despite a recent more constructive turn. But they were
not going to countenance a military occupation to secure a post-Gadhafi Libya for liberal democracy, nor
were they willing to shower the transitional government with aid.
In an attempt to gather these strands of foreign policy into an overarching strategy, the U.S.
released the Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) (.pdf) in January 2012. The DSG aimed to prioritize
American interests in the world, as well as to indicate where the U.S. would be willing to accept
greater risk by scaling back its presence and commitments. It was grounded in an approach that
had been labeled by foreign policy commentator Dan Drezner as retrench, revive and reassure
cutting down on the number of American commitments in order to reassure key partners of Americas
ability to continue to focus on maintaining the overall international system.
The DSG formally enshrined as U.S. government policy the so-called pivot to Asia as part of a
strategy of rebalance away from the Middle East, which had been the primary strategic focus of

Hegemony Core
U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Stripping away the hedging language that is now
common to official U.S. strategic documents, the 2012 DSG envisions a world where the bulk of U.S.
strategic attention and military might is concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region; where there is an orderly
drawdown of U.S. resources devoted to the Middle East; where the United States bolsters European
efforts to take primary responsibility for the continents security; and where the U.S. tinkers only at the
margins of the security arrangements for Africa and Latin America.
And even though the declarative language of the DSG retained all the sweeping grandeur of
previous U.S. statements about Americas global leadership and its indispensable status, reading
between the lines of the document made it clear that some of the outposts claimed by America
during the 1990s and 2000s were being abandoned. The focal points of U.S. foreign policy would be
concentrated on the Pacific Rim, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, in that order. This is still a
considerable swath of the globe, but the DSG seemed to acknowledge that the United States would no
longer necessarily compete for influence over every square inch of the world with other rising and
resurgent powers. The United States could no longer afford to do so in the aftermath of the
economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent cuts brought about by sequestration.
So far, the jury remains out on whether these gambles will turn out as expected. The rebalance to
Asia, the centerpiece of the strategy, can only occur if the United States has sufficient confidence
that a reduced presence in Europe and the Near East would not encourage new threats to vital U.S.
interests. European allies, however, do not appear to be filling capabilities gaps that surfaced during the
2011 Libya operation. Moreover, the siren song of the Middle East continues to pull the U.S. back to
try and undertake yet another concerted, renewed effort to sort out the regions problems.
Moreover, China and Russia are not prepared to accept U.S. predominance in the international
system. An Oct. 13, 2013, editorial in the Chinese state news agency Xinhua even used the shutdown
crisis to push for the development of a de-Americanized world, calling for new limits to be placed
on Washingtons freedom of maneuver because America had abused its superpower status.
Beijing and Moscow have also found that some of the other rising powers, including some of the
Southern democracies that Washington had assumed would become new stakeholders in upholding the
U.S.-defined international order, are sympathetic to this perspective. China has shown its willingness to at
least flirt with the possibility of gaining footholds in places where the U.S. has announced plans to
decrease its presence or operations, from Iceland to the Azores.
The DSGs implicit assumption that America would benefit from Chinese overreach initially
seemed to be validated by Beijings increasingly heavy-handed foreign policy approach, which became
more prominent during the last years of the Hu Jintao administration. But Xi and his team have been
working to correct this through a new charm offensive, particularly to reassure Beijings neighbors.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in September, sought
to reassure jittery neighbors that China is committed to working with others to establish a new
type of international relations based on win-win cooperation and seek peaceful resolution of
international and regional disputes, in an effort to reduce the impetus for other nations in the
region to support the U.S. pivot.
The United States still holds the preponderance of the worlds military and economic power, and any
retrenchment does not signal the abrupt departure of the U.S. as a major actor in the world or an inability
to continue setting the global agenda. Yet the initial signs have been difficult for many in the U.S.
foreign policy community to accept. First-time visits by Xi or Putin to countries that a few years

Hegemony Core
ago were seen as firmly in the U.S. camp, or Russian and Chinese naval vessels operating in waters
where the U.S. had grown accustomed to being the only game in town, raised questions as to
whether the U.S. was entering a period of decline. Certainly, earlier predictions that Russia, China and
other rising powers were on track to become responsible stakeholders in a U.S.-led and U.S.-defined
international system appeared to be premature. Moreover, the strategic prioritization of the DSG
opened the Obama administration up to charges that it was abandoning U.S. friends and allies,
leaving countries that refused to accept U.S. leadership and guidance in a position to extend their
own influence in their own geographic neighborhoods and elsewhere in the world.

Hegemony Core
AT Offshore Balancing Solves

Hegemony is key to solve conflictsoffshore balancing does not solve
Lind, New America Foundation Economic Growth Program Policy Director, 7
[Michael, May 2007, New America Foundation, Beyond American Hegemony,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2007/beyond_american_hegemony_5381, accessed 7-613, MSG]
Another option favored by some realists and libertarians, an offshore-balancing strategy, is unlikely
to be adopted and would be unwise. The offshore-balancing strategy would have the United States
intervene only at the last moment to "tip the balance" against one side in a contest among Eurasian
great powers -- China versus Japan, or Russia versus Germany or the European Union. It would be far
better for the United States to maintain a role in diplomacy and security in Europe, Asia and the
Middle East, in the hope of defusing conflicts and deterring aggressors, rather than to intervene
belatedly, as it did in the two world wars.
Offshore balancing fails to achieve international objectives and causes war

Schake, Hoover Institution Research Fellow, 10
[Kori, October 13, 2010, Limits of offshore balancing,
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/13/limits_of_offshore_balancing?wp_login_redirect=0,
The New America Foundation convened a conference this week to showcase the work of Robert Pape, in
the hopes that his policy prescriptions will be picked up as an alternative to our current strategy in
Afghanistan. This would be a terrible idea.
Pape's research shows that the majority of suicide bomb attacks occur in places occupied by U.S.
military forces; from this he concludes that we should adopt a strategy of "offshore balancing." By
which he means to remove U.S. forces and rely on military strikes into the countries, along with more
effective political and economic engagement. Neither the research nor the prescriptions are sound
bases for policy.
To say that attacks occur where U.S. forces are deployed is to say no more than Willy Sutton, who robbed
banks because "that's where the money is." Pape's approach ignores the context in which deployment
and stationing of U.S. forces occurs. We send troops to advance our interests, protect our allies, and
contest the political and geographic space that groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban are operating
in. Of course the attacks will stop if we cede those political objectives. But the troops are not the point,
the political objectives are the point.

Hegemony Core
The second important context Pape glosses over is that suicide attacks do not occur wherever in the world
U.S. troops are deployed. Troops stationed in Germany, Japan, or South Korea are not at risk of
suicide attacks from the people of those countries. This is not just about U.S. troops, but also about the
societies we are operating in. It is about a radical and violent interpretation of Islam that we are using
military force to contest.
The policy prescriptions Pape advances are also problematic. An offshore balancing approach
means that we will not be engaged with military forces on the ground, and yet what we have
learned in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan is that we achieve our objectives most fully when
indigenous forces are partnered with us and made able to take over the work of U.S. forces in the fight.
They have greater legitimacy, local knowledge, and make the outcome most durable. That was the Bush
administration's strategy in Iraq, and it is the purported approach of the Obama administration in
Afghanistan. Pape's policies have no way to achieve that improvement in the capacity of partner forces.
An offshore balancing approach is also inherently retaliatory and has been shown to increase the
resistance of affected populations to supporting our objectives . We threaten to use force from the safe
confines of distance; that use of force may have pinpoint accuracy but will often be less precise and
cause more civilian casualties than forces on the ground, which will again feed into public attitudes
about whether to support U.S. goals. Instead of working with the people most affected and helping
build their capacity to protect themselves, offshore balancing does little to change the problem in
positive ways.
Except for the "improved" political and economic activity. How that will be undertaken in a deteriorating
security environment is mysterious. Moreover, if we could do any better at the provision of political and
economic engagement, we'd already be doing that.
Convincing allies the U.S. will commit itself to fight unless we have troops stationed where we expect the
fight to occur has always been difficult. The history of the Cold War is replete with transatlantic
discussion of extended deterrence: would the United States really send the boys back over if Germany
were attacked? Would the United States really use nuclear weapons when our own homeland would be at
risk of retaliation? It seems unlikely those concerns would be attenuated in societies we are less
politically and culturally similar to than we are to Europeans.
In short, Robert Pape's " offshore balancing" approach would reduce violence by giving our enemies
what they want: our disengagement, the ability to terrorize with impunity the people of
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other places where the battle of ideas about Muslim modernity is
engaged.
Offshore balancing will never happen no support domestically or internationally

Taliaferro, Tufts University Associate Professor of Political Science, 7
[Jeffrey W., Summer 2007, Hegemonic Delusions: Power, Liberal Imperialism, and the Bush Doctrine,
p. 181, dl.tufts.edu/file_assets/tufts:UP149.001.00064.00015, accessed 7/9/13, WD]

Hegemony Core
Second, many of Layne's arguments about the feasibility of an offshore balancing strategy today
seem disconnected from political reality . He devotes only five pages in a 2 90-page book to a
discussion of how the United States ought to go about implementing his preferred strategy. He never
grapples with the tremendous sunk costs of U.S. forward deployment in Europe and East Asia, nor
does he consider the lack of support for such a radically different grand strategy among officials in
Washington or the American people . It is also difficult to imagine Washington's allies in the
Persian Gulf, East Asia, and even Western Europe openly advocating the withdrawal of all U.S.
forces in the near future, if for no other reason than that the American military presence dampens
the security dilemma in those three regions.
No debate offshore balancing is terrible destroys all US heg and causes regional
nuclear escalation
Kagan, Brookings Foreign Policy Senior Fellow, 11
[Robert, January 24, 2011, The Price of Power: The benefits of U.S. defense spending far outweigh the
costs, http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/price-power_533696.html?page=3, accessed 7/9/13, WD]
Others have. For decades realist analysts have called for a strategy of offshore balancing. Instead
of the United States providing security in East Asia and the Persian Gulf, it would withdraw its forces
from Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East and let the nations in those regions balance one another. If
the balance broke down and war erupted, the United States would then intervene militarily until balance
was restored. In the Middle East and Persian Gulf, for instance, Christopher Layne has long proposed
passing the mantle of regional stabilizer to a consortium of Russia, China, Iran, and India. In East
Asia offshore balancing would mean letting China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others manage
their own problems, without U.S. involvementagain, until the balance broke down and war erupted, at
which point the United States would provide assistance to restore the balance and then, if necessary,
intervene with its own forces to restore peace and stability.
Before examining whether this would be a wise strategy, it is important to understand that this really is
the only genuine alternative to the one the United States has pursued for the past 65 years. To their credit,
Layne and others who support the concept of offshore balancing have eschewed halfway measures and
airy assurances that we can do more with less, which are likely recipes for disaster. They recognize that
either the United States is actively involved in providing security and stability in regions beyond the
Western Hemisphere, which means maintaining a robust presence in those regions, or it is not. Layne and
others are frank in calling for an end to the global security strategy developed in the aftermath of World
War II, perpetuated through the Cold War, and continued by four successive post-Cold War
administrations.
At the same time, it is not surprising that none of those administrations embraced offshore balancing as a
strategy. The idea of relying on Russia, China, and Iran to jointly stabilize the Middle East and
Persian Gulf will not strike many as an attractive proposition. Nor is U.S. withdrawal from East
Asia and the Pacific likely to have a stabilizing effect on that region. The prospects of a war on the
Korean Peninsula would increase. Japan and other nations in the region would face the choice of

Hegemony Core
succumbing to Chinese hegemony or taking unilateral steps for self-defense, which in Japans case
would mean the rapid creation of a formidable nuclear arsenal.
Layne and other offshore balancing enthusiasts, like John Mearsheimer, point to two notable occasions
when the United States allegedly practiced this strategy. One was the Iran-Iraq war, where the United
States supported Iraq for years against Iran in the hope that the two would balance and weaken each other.
The other was American policy in the 1920s and 1930s, when the United States allowed the great
European powers to balance one another, occasionally providing economic aid, or military aid, as in the
Lend-Lease program of assistance to Great Britain once war broke out. Whether this was really American
strategy in that era is open for debatemost would argue the United States in this era was trying to stay
out of war not as part of a considered strategic judgment but as an end in itself. Even if the United States
had been pursuing offshore balancing in the first decades of the 20th century, however, would we
really call that strategy a success? The United States wound up intervening with millions of troops,
first in Europe, and then in Asia and Europe simultaneously , in the two most dreadful wars in
human history.
It was with the memory of those two wars in mind, and in the belief that American strategy in those
interwar years had been mistaken, that American statesmen during and after World War II determined on
the new global strategy that the United States has pursued ever since. Under Franklin Roosevelt, and then
under the leadership of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, American leaders determined that the safest
course was to build situations of strength (Achesons phrase) in strategic locations around the world,
to build a preponderance of power, and to create an international system with American power at its
center. They left substantial numbers of troops in East Asia and in Europe and built a globe-girdling
system of naval and air bases to enable the rapid projection of force to strategically important parts of the
world. They did not do this on a lark or out of a yearning for global dominion. They simply
rejected the offshore balancing strategy, and they did so because they believed it had led to great,
destructive wars in the past and would likely do so again. They believed their new global strategy
was more likely to deter major war and therefore be less destructive and less expensive in the long
run. Subsequent administrations, from both parties and with often differing perspectives on the proper
course in many areas of foreign policy, have all agreed on this core strategic approach.
From the beginning this strategy was assailed as too ambitious and too expensive. At the dawn of the
Cold War, Walter Lippmann railed against Trumans containment strategy as suffering from an
unsustainable gap between ends and means that would bankrupt the United States and exhaust its power.
Decades later, in the waning years of the Cold War, Paul Kennedy warned of imperial overstretch,
arguing that American decline was inevitable if the trends in national indebtedness, low productivity
increases, [etc.] were allowed to continue at the same time as massive American commitments of men,
money and materials are made in different parts of the globe. Today, we are once again being told that
this global strategy needs to give way to a more restrained and modest approach, even though the
indebtedness crisis that we face in coming years is not caused by the present, largely successful global
strategy.
Of course it is precisely the success of that strategy that is taken for granted. The enormous benefits that
this strategy has provided, including the financial benefits, somehow never appear on the ledger.
They should. We might begin by asking about the global security order that the United States has
sustained since Word War II the prevention of major war , the support of an open trading

Hegemony Core
system , and promotion of the liberal principles of free markets and free government . How much is
that order worth? What would be the cost of its collapse or transformation into another type of
order?
Whatever the nature of the current economic difficulties, the past six decades have seen a greater increase
in global prosperity than any time in human history. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty.
Once-backward nations have become economic dynamos. And the American economy, though suffering
ups and downs throughout this period, has on the whole benefited immensely from this international
order. One price of this success has been maintaining a sufficient military capacity to provide the essential
security underpinnings of this order. But has the price not been worth it? In the first half of the 20th
century, the United States found itself engaged in two world wars. In the second half, this global
American strategy helped produce a peaceful end to the great-power struggle of the Cold War and then 20
more years of great-power peace. Looked at coldly, simply in terms of dollars and cents, the benefits of
that strategy far outweigh the costs.
The danger, as always, is that we dont even realize the benefits our strategic choices have provided.
Many assume that the world has simply become more peaceful, that great-power conflict has become
impossible, that nations have learned that military force has little utility, that economic power is what
counts. This belief in progress and the perfectibility of humankind and the institutions of international
order is always alluring to Americans and Europeans and other children of the Enlightenment. It was the
prevalent belief in the decade before World War I, in the first years after World War II, and in those heady
days after the Cold War when people spoke of the end of history. It is always tempting to believe that
the international order the United States built and sustained with its power can exist in the absence
of that power, or at least with much less of it. This is the hidden assumption of those who call for a
change in American strategy: that the United States can stop playing its role and yet all the benefits
that came from that role will keep pouring in. This is a great if recurring illusion, the idea that you
can pull a leg out from under a table and the table will not fall over.

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Bad

Hegemony Core
1NC Hegemony Bad

A. Transition to multipolarity now
Etzioni, George Washington University International Relations Professor, 13
[Amitai, taught at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley,
currently George Washington University International Relations professor, Winter 2013, The Fletcher
Forum of World Affairs, The Devolution of American Power,
http://icps.gwu.edu/files/2013/02/Etzioni_Devolution_of_American_Power.pdf Accessed 7-12-14, JSH]
The theory that the world is moving from a unipolar order, dominated by the United States, to a
multipolar distribution of power has led to a robust debate concerning the consequences of this change on
the interntional order. However, the global power distribution is currently following a different pattern.
Instead of what is conventionally addressed as a global unipolar to multipolar shift, in fact rising powers
are mainly regional powers, not global ones, although they may have global reach. This pattern should be
expected to continue in the near future and should be accounted for in order to make sound policy.
It follows that the movement away from a unipolar world should not be equated with one in which more
global powers contend with each other; nor should it be equated with a world n which new powers take
over from an old, declining power. Moreover, it should not be assumed that the world will be less ordered.
Instead, to a significant extent, the change seems to be toward more regional autonomy, or increased
devolution, and greater variety in the relationships between the United States and regional powers. These
relationships may see regional powers serve as junior partners to the global power and assume some of
the global powers regional responsibilities. Or these relationships may produce junior adversarial
regional powers that seek greater relative regional control in defiance of the United States, but seek at
most limited realignment of power on the global stage.
In the process of devolution, the increase in regional self-government and pluralism are much less
challenging to the global power than the redistribution of power implied by multipolarity. Indeed, as
junior regional powers increasingly act as partners and assume regional responsibilities, they enable the
global power to scale back its global commitments without losing much of its weigh in international
developments. Similarly, the desire for regional control among rising powers can be more readily
accommodated than aspirations to challenge the United States as a global superpower.
B. Link [insert]
C. Prolonging transition risks global stability
Farley, University of Kentucky Diplomacy and International Commerce assistant
professor, 12
(Dr. Robert, 3-7-12, World Politics Review, "Over the Horizon: The Future of American Hegemony,"
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11696/over-the-horizon-the-future-of-american-hegemony,

Hegemony Core
What are the dangers? Hegemony has never meant the ability to achieve any outcome the United
States wants, whenever it wants. Indeed, hegemony may mean the luxury to make dreadful mistakes
without suffering dreadful consequences. However, as the gap between the United States and other
great powers declines, the margin for error narrows. The most dangerous steps for the United
States to take would involve projects that threaten fiscal capacity while also undercutting the U.S.sponsored system of global management. The invasion of Iraq, for example, is not an undertaking
that the United States would want to repeat in the future. It undermined global confidence in both
the international system of governance and the decision-making capacity of the United States
government, while damaging the fiscal health of the United States. Ironically, advocates of the war
believed that it would demonstrate not only American power, but also reinforce confidence in American
leadership.
For better or worse, the U.S. has imparted the character of the major formal and informal institutions that
have managed international life for the past 70 years. The shift from U.S. hegemony to multipolarity -or to unipolarity around another nation -- will change the nature of those institutions, likely leading
to a significant degree of upheaval and uncertainty. The great danger is that the United States will,
in an effort to prolong and maintain its hegemony, undertake policies that undermine the
foundations of Americans place in the world. It is not comforting that those who talk loudest of
U.S. exceptionalism and a new American Century consistently recommend policies that
misunderstand the relationship between U.S. power and the modern international system. Nothing
about the future is guaranteed; wise policies can revise and extend a globally acceptable American
Century, while foolish policies can cut it short.
D. Turns the case Hegemony causes econ collapse, backlash, and foreign
overstretch only retreat is sustainable
Posen, MIT political Science professor, 13
[Barry R., Jan/Feb 2013, Foreign Affairs, Pull Back, Vol. 92, Issue 1, Academic Search Complete,
Despite a decade of costly and indecisive warfare and mounting fiscal pressures, the long-standing
consensus among American policymakers about U.S. grand strategy has remained remarkably
intact. As the presidential campaign made clear, Republicans and Democrats may quibble over foreign
policy at the margins, but they agree on the big picture: that the United States should dominate the
world militarily, economically, and politically, as it has since the final years of the Cold War, a
strategy of liberal hegemony The country, they hold, needs to preserve its massive lead in the global
balance of power, consolidate its economic preeminence, enlarge the community of market democracies,
and maintain its outsized influence in the international institutions it helped create.
To this end, the U.S. government has expanded its sprawling Cold War-era network of security
commitments and military bases. It has reinforced its existing alliances, adding new members to
NATO and enhancing its security agreement with Japan. In the Persian Gulf, it has sought to
protect the flow of oil with a full panoply of air, sea, and land forces, a goal that consumes at least

Hegemony Core
15 percent of the U.S. defense budget. Washington has put China on a watch list, ringing it in with a
network of alliances, less formal relationships, and military bases.
The United States' activism has entailed a long list of ambitious foreign policy projects. Washington has
tried to rescue failing states, intervening militarily in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya,
variously attempting to defend human rights, suppress undesirable nationalist movements, and install
democratic regimes. It has also tried to contain so-called rogue states that oppose the United States,
such as Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, Syria. After 9/11, the
struggle against al Qaeda and its allies dominated the agenda, but the George W. Bush administration
defined this enterprise broadly and led the country into the painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although
the United States has long sought to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons, the prospect of nucleararmed terrorists has added urgency to this objective, leading to constant tension with Iran and
North Korea.
In pursuit of this ambitious agenda, the United States has consistently spent hundreds of billions of
dollars per year on its military -- far more than the sum of the defense budgets of its friends and far
more than the sum of those of its potential adversaries. It has kept that military busy: U.S. troops
have spent roughly twice as many months in combat after the Cold War as they did during it.
Today, roughly 180,000 U.S. soldiers remain stationed on foreign soil, not counting the tens of
thousands more who have rotated through the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of American
and allied soldiers have lost their lives, not to mention the countless civilians caught in the crossfire.
This undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security.
It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own
defense, and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans, further
raising the costs of carrying out its foreign policy. During the 1990s, these consequences were
manageable because the United States enjoyed such a favorable power position and chose its wars
carefully Over the last decade, however, the country's relative power has deteriorated, and
policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to fight and how to fight them.
What's more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its
current force structure -- levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States'
ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable.
It is time to abandon the United States' hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint. This
approach would mean giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national
security interests. It would mean transforming the military into a smaller force that goes to war
only when it truly must. It would mean removing large numbers of U.S. troops from forward bases,
creating incentives for allies to provide for their own security And because such a shift would allow
the United States to spend its resources on only the most pressing international threats, it would
help preserve the country's prosperity and security over the long run.

Hegemony Core
Uniqueness

Hegemony Core
Transition Now Key

Multipolarity is inevitable but transition now is key the alternative is political
turmoil and deadly transition wars
Posen, MIT Political Science Professor, 13
Shifting to a more restrained global stance would yield meaningful benefits for the United States,
saving lives and resources and preventing pushback, provided Washington makes deliberate and
prudent moves now to prepare its allies to take on the responsibility for their own defense. Scaling
down the U.S. military's presence over a decade would give partners plenty of time to fortify their
own militaries and develop the political and diplomatic machinery to look after their own affairs.
Gradual disengagement would also reduce the chances of creating security vacuums, which
opportunistic regional powers might try to fill.
U.S. allies, of course, will do everything they can to persuade Washington to keep its current
policies in place. Some will promise improvements to their military forces that they will then abandon
when it is convenient. Some will claim there is nothing more they can contribute, that their domestic
political and economic constraints matter more than America's. Others will try to divert the discussion to
shared values and principles. Still others will hint that they will bandwagon with strong neighbors rather
than balance against them. A few may even threaten to turn belligerent.
U.S. policymakers will need to remain cool in the face of such tactics and keep in mind that these
wealthy allies are unlikely to surrender their sovereignty to regional powers. Indeed, history has
shown that states more often balance against the powerful than bandwagon with them. As for potential
adversaries, the United States can continue to deter actions that threaten its vital interests by
defining those interests narrowly, stating them clearly, and maintaining enough military power to
protect them.
Of course, the United States could do none of these things and instead continue on its present track,
wasting resources and earning the enmity of some states and peoples while infantilizing others.
Perhaps current economic and geopolitical trends will reverse themselves, and the existing strategy will
leave Washington comfortably in the driver's seat, with others eager to live according to its rules. But if
the U.S. debt keeps growing and power continues to shift to other countries, some future economic
or political crisis could force Washington to switch course abruptly, compelling friendly and not-sofriendly countries to adapt suddenly. That seems like the more dangerous path.

Hegemony Core
Transition Now
Slow, measured retrenchment now war weariness and financial constraints
Carpenter, Cato institute senior fellow, 14,
[Ted Galen, March 17th, the Cato Institute, US Security Retrenchment: The First Effects of a Modest
Shift, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-security-retrenchment-first-effects-modest-shift,
Accessed 7-12-14, JSH]
There are abundant signs that the halcyon days of US military intervention around the world may be
coming to an end. Not only did Washington execute a complete withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, but the
seemingly endless war in Afghanistan is drawing to a close, and even the goal of keeping a small residual
force in that country appears to be fading. The Obama administrations latest defense budget proposal
ends the robust annual increases in spending that have been the norm since the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Indeed, the projected number of ground forces would be the lowest since the eve of World War II.
Those changes have led politicians and pundits in the United States and in many allied countries to
speculate, indeed fret, that America is about to embrace isolationism. As various foreign policy scholars
have pointed out, however, that term is a vacuous slur that has been used repeatedly over the decades to
stifle healthy debate about the nature of Americas role in the world. Contrary to the latest upsurge of such
fears and warnings, the United States is not about to become a hermit republic and wall itself off from the
rest of the world. A more selective, restrained role, however, is now highly probable, reflecting growing
financial constraints on the US government and the wishes of a war-weary public that has learned some
hard, painful lessons. That shift will affect various regions of the world in different ways.
One area where the US tendency to intervene militarily is already on the decline is the Middle
East/Southwest Asia. Washingtons frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful crusades in Iraq and
Afghanistan have had a noticeable impact on the attitudes of the American people. Public opinion surveys
over the past two years indicate that a majority of respondents now believe that both wars were a mistake.
That outcome is more surprising and significant regarding Afghanistan than Iraq. Once the intelligence
reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction proved false, Americans soon concluded
that the Iraq intervention was a war of choice and a bad choice at that. But the Afghanistan war was a
direct response to the 9-11 attacks. For the American people to turn against that mission suggests not only
war weariness, but a growing belief that putting the US military at risk in an attempt to change the
Muslim world is a fools errand. That same belief drove the overwhelming public opposition to the
Obama administrations proposed intervention in the Syrian civil war.
Just as the disastrous experience in Vietnam inoculated the American republic against similar
interventions in Southeast Asia, the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles will likely make both the public and
future administrations wary of extended missions in the Muslim world. Short, sharp punitive expeditions
in response to terrorist attacks will remain an option, but extended deployments, much less amorphous
nation-building missions, will be increasingly improbable. The surge of oil and gas production in the
United States is even making the petroleum justification for extensive US involvement in the Middle
East far less compelling than it seemed in the past.

Hegemony Core
U.S. losing influence and leverage Iran proves

Cunningham, International Affairs Expert Writer, 13
(Finian Cunningham is a Masters graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for
the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal
Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England , 4-13-13, PressTV, Iran deals deathblow to US global
hegemony, http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/04/12/297864/iran-key-to-us-global-defeat/, accessed 79-13, LLM)
The United States of America has become a byword for war. No other nation state has started as
many wars or conflicts in modern times than the USA - the United States of Armageddon.
Beneath the Western media faade of unpredictable and aggressive North Korea, the real source of
conflict in the present round of war tensions on the Korean Peninsula is the US. Washington is presented
as a restraining, defensive force. But, in reality, the dangerous nuclear stand-off has to be seen in the
context of Washingtons historical drive for war and hegemony in every corner of the world.
North Korea may present an immediate challenge to Washingtons hegemonic ambitions. However, as we
shall see, Iran presents a much greater and potentially fatal challenge to the American global
empire.
It is documented record, thanks to writers and thinkers like William Blum and Noam Chomsky, that the
US has been involved in more than 60 wars and many more proxy conflicts, subterfuges and coups
over the nearly seven decades since the Second World War. No other nation on earth comes close to
this American track record of belligerence and threat to world security. No other nation has so much blood
on its hands.
Americans like to think of their country as first in the world for freedom, humanitarian principles,
technology and economic prowess. The truth is more brutal and prosaic. The US is first in the world
for war-mongering and raining death and destruction down on others.
Since then we have seen the US become embroiled in more and more wars - sometimes under the
guise of coalitions of the willing, the United Nations or NATO. A variety of pretexts have also
been invoked: war on drugs, war on terror, Axis of Evil, responsibility to protect, the worlds
policeman, upholding global peace and security, preventing weapons of mass destruction. But
always, these wars are Washington-led affairs. And always the pretexts are mere pretty windowdressing for Washingtons brutish strategic interests.
Now it seems we have reached a phase of history where the world is witnessing a state of permanent war
prosecuted by the US and its underlings: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Libya, Pakistan, Somalia
(again), Mali and Syria, to mention a few. These theaters of criminal US military operations join a list
of ongoing covert wars against Palestine, Cuba, Iran and North Korea.
Iran, however, presents a greater and more problematic challenge to US global hegemony. The US
in 2013 is a very different animal from what it was in 1945. Now it resembles more a lumbering
giant. Gone is its former economic prowess and its arteries are sclerotic with its internal social

Hegemony Core
decay and malaise. Crucially, too, the lumbering American giant has squandered any moral strength it
may have had in the eyes of the world. Its veil of morality and democratic principle may have appeared
credible in 1945, but that cover has been torn asunder by the countless wars and nefarious intrigues over
the ensuing decades to reveal a pathological warmonger.
The American military power is still, of course, a highly dangerous force. But it is now more like a
bulging muscle hanging on an otherwise emaciated corpse. Iran presents this lumbering, dying
power with a fatal challenge. For a start, Iran does not have nuclear weapons or ambitions and it has
repeatedly stated this, thereby gaining much-reciprocated good will from the international
community, including the public of North America and Europe. The US or its surrogates cannot
therefore credibly justify a military strike on Iran, as it might do against North Korea, without
risking a tsunami of political backlash.
Secondly, Iran exerts a controlling influence over the vital drug that keeps the American economic
system alive - the worlds supply of oil and gas. Any war with Iran, if the US were so foolish to
embark on it, would result in a deathblow to the waning American and global economy.
A third reason why Iran presents a mortal challenge to US global hegemony is that the Islamic
Republic is a formidable military power. Its 80 million-strong people are committed to antiimperialism and any strike from the US or its allies would result in a region-wide war that would
pull down the very pillars of Western geopolitical architecture, including the collapse of the Israeli
state and the overthrow of the House of Saud and the other the Persian Gulf oil dictatorships.
US planners know this and that is why they will not dare to confront Iran head-on. But that leaves
the US empire with a fatal dilemma. Its congenital belligerence arising from in its capitalist DNA,
puts the US ruling elite on a locked-in stalemate with Iran. The longer that stalemate persists, the
more the US global power will drain from its corpse. The American empire, as many others have
before, could therefore founder on the rocks of the ancient Persian empire.

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Constrained Now

Heg declining now economy and China rise
Layne, Texas A & M Universitys George H. W. Bush School of Government and
Public Service national security professor, 12
[Christopher, 4-26-12, The Atlantic, The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline became
Inevitable, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/the-end-of-pax-americana-howwestern-decline-became-inevitable/256388/, accessed: 7-8-14, FCB]
Since the Cold War's end, America's military superiority has functioned as an entry barrier
designed to prevent emerging powers from challenging the United States where its interests are
paramount. But the country's ability to maintain this barrier faces resistance at both ends. First, the
deepening financial crisis will compel retrenchment, and the United States will be increasingly less
able to invest in its military. Second, as ascending powers such as China become wealthier, their
military expenditures will expand. The Economist recently projected that China's defense spending will
equal that of the United States by 2025.
Thus, over the next decade or so a feedback loop will be at work, whereby internal constraints on
U.S. global activity will help fuel a shift in the distribution of power, and this in turn will magnify the
effects of America's fiscal and strategic overstretch. With interests throughout Asia, the Middle East,
Africa, Europe and the Caucasus--not to mention the role of guarding the world's sea-lanes and protecting
U.S. citizens from Islamist terrorists--a strategically overextended United States inevitably will need to
retrench.
Further, there is a critical linkage between a great power's military and economic standing, on the
one hand, and its prestige, soft power and agenda-setting capacity, on the other. As the hard-power
foundations of Pax Americana erode, so too will the U.S. capacity to shape the international order through
influence, example and largesse. This is particularly true of America in the wake of the 2008 financial
crisis and the subsequent Great Recession. At the zenith of its military and economic power after
World War II, the United States possessed the material capacity to furnish the international system
with abundant financial assistance designed to maintain economic and political stability. Now, this
capacity is much diminished.
Hegemony is unsustainable hegemony constrained now realists agree

Snyder, University of Maryland Center for International Development and Conflict
Management Research Scholar, 12
(Quddus Z. Snyder, Fall 2009, University of Maryland, Systemic Theory in an Era of Declining US
Hegemony, http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/irworkshop/papers_fall09/snyder.pdf, pgs. 10-2, Accessed 77-13, LLM)

Hegemony Core
What the above suggests is that hegemony in the military-security context has been rather different
from US hegemony in the context of the world economic system. In the former, the US has
maintained important security ties with Europe and Japan; US involvement has probably worked to
manage regional security dilemmas. For instance, US security guarantees have played an important
role in German and Japanese decisions not to build military capability befitting of a great power,
developments that would certainly change regional security dynamics. In security affairs, the US
has tolerated free riders and shown a willingness to foot the bill.35 But in the economic realm,
since the 1970s, the US has become increasingly intolerant of asymmetry and unwilling to
underwrite the system. 36 This became evident when Nixon ended the gold standard and instituted an
import surcharge. US impatience with its allies was also apparent in the trade conflicts between the
US and Japan throughout the 1980s and into the 90s. Though the dollar is still the main reserve
currency, since the 1970s the economic order appears much less hegemonic when viewed from the
lens of political economy than it does when viewed with an eye toward security.
At the turn of the century it appeared as if we were living through a hegemonic age.37
But recent developments might justify a reevaluation of this conclusion.38 With its armed forces
over-extended, and resources stretched, the US appears much weaker today than it did five years
ago.39 The classic Gilpinian dilemma provides insight into the present predicament the US finds
itself in: This three-way struggle over priorities (protection, consumption, and investment)
produces a profound dilemma for society. If it suppresses consumption, the consequence can be
severe internal social tensions and class conflictIf the society neglects to pay the costs of
defense, external weakness will inevitably lead to its defeat by rising powers. If the society fails to
save and reinvest a sufficient fraction of its surplus wealth in industry and agriculture, the
economic basis of the society and its capacity to sustain either consumption or protection will
decline.40 Thus far the US has maintained a massive defense budget while consumption and
investment have been sustained by deficit spending. It is unclear how long this formula will work.
41 The problem does not only stem from fact that the US is bogged down in two wars, it is also in the
throes of a serious economic downturn. Of course, everyone is getting hit. Because all are suffering, the
US is still a giant in terms of relative power differentials.42 Relative power is important, but so is the
hegemons ability to actually do things. It is unlikely that the US will have either the political will
or capability to take on major international undertakings. It is unclear when the US will fully
withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan; however, these projects will gobble up massive amounts of
resources and treasure at a time when Americas own recovery is being partly bankrolled by foreign
powers like China.43 The point is simply that Americas unilateral assertiveness on the
international scene is changing. 44 US security guarantees may prove less credible than they once
were, leading allies to enhance their own military capabilities. The US may still be a giant, but one
that, for now at least, seems more bound.

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Hegemony Low No Leverage

US has no leverage Egypt proves
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/7805/the-u-s-and-egypt-the-limits-of-hegemony, accessed 77-13, LLM)
When U.S. President Barack Obama dispatched diplomat Frank Wisner to deliver a personal message
to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the symbolism was obvious to anyone who remembered
Ronald Reagan's message in 1986 to Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos, then in power for 20 years,
at the acme of the "People Power" movement in the Philippines: Yes, you have been among our most
loyal allies, but your time is up.
Either Mubarak didn't get the message or Wisner delivered a somewhat different one. The diplomat
waited in Cairo a day or two, then returned home while Mubarak continued to resist ever louder
calls for his resignation. A few days later Wisner spoke publicly in favor of keeping Mubarak in place.
Meanwhile Obama resorted to a long phone call and a subsequent public insistence that the
Egyptian ruler begin a "transition," repeated several times over the course of the week.
This was not to be, either, at least not right away, raising the question: If the U.S. can't compel the
leader of a country that is the second-largest recipient of direct assistance and whose welfare
depends in so many ways directly upon the United States to do as it wishes, then who can it compel?
What does this say about American power? Having graduated from the status of superpower to that of
hyperpower, has the U.S. still not moved beyond the Gulliver stereotype of the 1960s?
U.S. losing influence and leverage, rising powers like Brazil prove
Hakim, Senior fellow of International Economic and Political for the InterAmerican Dialogue, 12
(Peter, October 22, 2012, Inter-American Dialogue, Inter-American Discord: Brazil and the United
States http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=3115, accessed 7-7-13, LLM)
The US and Brazil have not had an easy time with each other in recent years. Although relations
between the two countries are by no means adversarial or even unfriendly, they have featured more
discord than cooperationboth regionally and globally. And there is little reason to expect
dramatic change any time soon.
At the 2005 summit meeting of hemispheric leaders, disagreements between the US and Brazil
brought a halt to the faltering negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). In 2009,

Hegemony Core
it was largely US-Brazilian differences that delayed resolution of the Honduran political impasse
for almost a year. Later in 2009, Brazil galvanized opposition across South America to block a USColombian military accord. Today, the two countries remain at loggerheads over Cubas
participation in hemispheric affairs, disagree on how to manage relations with Paraguay in the
aftermath of the impeachment and ouster of President Lugo, and continue to have sharply
diverging views on the appropriate roles of the Organization of American States and its InterAmerican Human Rights Commission.
Even more unsettling for US-Brazilian relations have been the clashes over global issues. Washington
has been especially troubled, and the bilateral relationship most bruised, by Brazils defense of
Irans nuclear program and its opposition to UN sanctions on Iran. The two countries have also
taken conflicting positions on nonproliferation questions, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
international responses to the uprisings in Syria and Libya. World trade negotiations have long
been a matter of contention for both nations.
Brazilian and US leaders often publicly assert that their bilateral relationship is as good or better than it
has ever been, and claim that it is continuing to improve. Although more commonly expressed by US
officials, it is not unusual for each of the two governments to refer to the other as a global or regional
partnerand to suggest that the two nations are working toward a more robust, even strategic
relationship. Yet, despite the continuing rhetoric, neither country has done much in recent years to
advance the development of deeper, more cooperative ties.
Relations are not getting worse, but they are not getting better either. The two countries are not
cooperating more today than they were a dozen years agoand their differences have extended to a
wider range of issues. They certainly have not found many areas for collaboration. The agreements
they have reached seem mostly to be insubstantial or peripheral to the relationship, or they have not been
effectively implemented. They have not led to any particularly productive collaboration. On most fronts,
relations seem to be drifting, propelled largely by inertia, without much direction or decision.
Even when the two nations have identified shared objectives that would advance the interests of both,
they have rarely developed the cooperation needed to pursue them. The US and Brazil clearly have an
array of common economic interests. Yet, they have not signed a single major economic pact in more than
two decadesa period when Washington has reached free trade accords with some 20 countries
worldwide, 11 in Latin America alone. In 2007, the two countries, which produce nearly 90 percent of the
worlds ethanol, agreed to work together to establish world markets for the fuel and develop improved
technologies for its production. But they have made little progress on either front.
More generally, as the worlds two largest agricultural exporters, Brazil and the US are well aware of
how much they would gain by diminishing global trade barriers to food products. But they have
never been able to collaborate effectively to achieve that goal. On the contrary, agricultural trade
issues remain a source of bitter dispute between the two countries. Cooperation has been equally
elusive and disappointing in many other areas of interest to both governments including, for
example, nuclear nonproliferation, transnational drug and crime challenges, and climate change.

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Hegemony Unsustainable
New challengers to US hegemony mean at best its only sustainable in the short term
The United States emerged from the Cold War as the single most powerful state in modern times, a
position that its diversified and immensely productive economy supports. Although its share of world
economic output will inevitably shrink as other countries catch up, the United States will continue
for many years to rank as one of the top two or three economies in the world. The United States'
per capita GDP stands at $48,000, more than five times as large as China's, which means that the
U.S. economy can produce cutting-edge products for a steady domestic market. North America is
blessed with enviable quantities of raw materials, and about 29 percent of U.S. trade flows to and from
its immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. The fortuitous geostrategic position of the United States
compounds these economic advantages. Its neighbors to the north and south possess only miniscule
militaries. Vast oceans to the west and east separate it from potential rivals. And its thousands of
nuclear weapons deter other countries from ever entertaining an invasion.
Ironically, however, instead of relying on these inherent advantages for its security, the United States has
acted with a profound sense of insecurity, adopting an unnecessarily militarized and forwardleaning foreign policy. That strategy has generated predictable pushback. Since the 1990s, rivals
have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing" -- low-grade diplomatic opposition. China and
Russia regularly use the rules of liberal international institutions to delegitimize the United States'
actions. In the UN Security Council, they wielded their veto power to deny the West resolutions
supporting the bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and more recently,
they have slowed the effort to isolate Syria. They occasionally work together in other venues, too, such as
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the Beijing-Moscow relationship is unimpressive
compared with military alliances such as NATO, it's remarkable that it exists at all given the long history
of border friction and hostility between the two countries. As has happened so often in history, the
common threat posed by a greater power has driven unnatural partners to cooperate.
American activism has also generated harder forms of balancing. China has worked assiduously to
improve its military, and Russia has sold it modern weapons, such as fighter aircraft, surface-to-air
missiles, and diesel-electric submarines. Iran and North Korea, meanwhile, have pursued nuclear
programs in part to neutralize the United States' overwhelming advantages in conventional fighting
power. Some of this pushback would have occurred no matter what; in an anarchic global system, states
acquire the allies and military power that help them look after themselves. But a country as large and as
active as the United States intensifies these responses.
Such reactions will only grow stronger as emerging economies convert their wealth into military power.
Even though the economic and technological capacities of China and India may never equal those
of the United States, the gap is destined to narrow. China already has the potential to be a serious
competitor. At the peak of the Cold War, in the mid-1970s, Soviet GDP, in terms of purchasing power

Hegemony Core
parity, amounted to 57 percent of U.S. GDP. China reached 75 percent of the U.S. level in 2011, and
according to the International Monetary Fund, it is projected to match it by 2017. Of course,
Chinese output must support four times as many people, which limits what the country can extract for
military purposes, but it still provides enough resources to hinder U.S. foreign policy Meanwhile, Russia,
although a shadow of its former Soviet self, is no longer the hapless weakling it was in the 1990s. Its
economy is roughly the size of the United Kingdom's or France's, it has plenty of energy resources
to export, and it still produces some impressive weapons systems.
US hegemony spending unsustainable

Macdonald, Wellesley College political science professor, & Parent, University of
Miami political science professor, 11
(Joseph M. Parent and Paul K. MacDonald, November/December 2011, Foreign Affairs, The Wisdom of
Retrenchment: America Must Cut Back to Move Forward, Vol. 90 Issue 6, p32-47, ebsco, accessed July
7, 2013, EK)
Today, however, U.S. power has begun to wane. As other states rise in prominence, the United States'
undisciplined spending habits and open-ended foreign policy commitments are catching up with the
country. Spurred on by skyrocketing government debt and the emergence of the Tea Party
movement, budget hawks are circling Washington. Before leaving office earlier this year, Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates announced cuts to the tune of $78 billion over the next five years, and the recent
debt-ceiling deal could trigger another $350 billion in cuts from the defense budget over ten years. In
addition to fiscal discipline, Washington appears to have rediscovered the virtues of multilateralism
and a restrained foreign policy. It has narrowed its war aims in Afghanistan and Iraq, taken NATO
expansion off its agenda, and let France and the United Kingdom lead the intervention in Libya.
But if U.S. policymakers have reduced the country's strategic commitments in response to a decline
in its relative power, they have yet to fully embrace retrenchment as a policy and endorse deep
spending cuts (especially to the military), redefine Washington's foreign policy priorities, and shift
more of the United States' defense burdens onto its allies. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
has warned that a cut in defense spending beyond the one agreed to in the debt-ceiling deal would be
devastating. "It will weaken our national defense," he said. "It will undermine our ability to maintain our
alliances throughout the world." This view reflects the conventional wisdom of generations of U.S.
decision-makers: when it comes to power, more is always better. Many officials fear that reducing the
country's influence abroad would let tyranny advance and force trade to dwindle. And various interest
groups oppose the idea, since they stand to lose from a sudden reduction in the United States' foreign
engagements.
U.S. heg is unsustainable- strategic flaws in underlying presumptions

Mazzar, U.S. National War College National Security Strategy professor, 12

Hegemony Core
(Michael J., Fall 2012, Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Risks of Ignoring Strategic
Insolvency, http://csis.org/files/publication/twq12FallMazarr.pdf, accessed 7/6/13, LLM)
Throughout history, major powers have confronted painful inflection points when their resources,
their national will, or the global geopolitical context no longer sustained their strategic postures.
The very definition of grand strategy is holding ends and means in balance to promote the security and
interests of the state.4 Yet, the post-war U.S. approach to strategy is rapidly becoming insolvent
and unsustainable not only because Washington can no longer afford it but also, crucially, because
it presumes an American relationship with friends, allies, and rivals that is the hallmark of a
bygone era. If Washington continues to cling to its existing role on the premise that the international
order depends upon it, the result will be increasing resistance, economic ruin, and strategic failure.
The alleged insolvency of American strategy has been exhaustively chronicled and debated since the
1990s. The argument here is that twenty years of warnings will finally come true over the next five
to ten years, unless we adjust much more fundamentally than administrations of either party
have been willing to do so far. The forces undercutting the U.S. strategic posture are reaching
critical mass. This is not an argument about decline as such; the point here is merely that
specific, structural trends in U.S. domestic governance and international politics are rendering
a particular approach to grand strategy insolvent. Only by acknowledging the costs of pursuing
yesterdays strategy, under todays constraints, will it be possible to avoid a sort of halfway adjustment
billed as true reform, forfeiting the opportunity for genuine strategic reassessment. That opportunity still
exists today, but it is fading.
The consensus of conventional wisdom today holds several specific tenets of U.S. national security
strategy dear. It is important to grasp the paradigm because existing trends are making a very specific
U.S. national security posture infeasible. The primary elements include: Americas global role was
central to constructing the post-war order and remains essential to its stability today;. American
military power, including the ability to project power into any major regional contingency, is
predominant and should remain so for as long as possible, both to reassure allies and to dissuade
rivals;. The stability of many regions has become dependent on a substantial U.S. regional presence
of bases, forward-deployed combat forces, and active diplomatic engagement; . That stability is also
inextricably linked to the security and well-being of the U.S. homeland;. The United States must
commit to the force structures, technologies, nonmilitary capacities, and geopolitical voice required to
sustain these concepts. This conventional wisdom is the core of the current administrations major U.S.
strategy documentsthe 2010 National Security Strategy and 2011 National Military Strategywhich
envision continued U.S. predominance and global power projection. In fact, it has been central to all postCold War U.S. foreign policy doctrines. It was Bill Clintons Secretary of State who called America the
indispensable nation,5 Clinton who decided to expand NATO to Russias doorstep and Clinton who
inaugurated the post-Cold War frenzy of humanitarian intervention.6 The George W. Bush administration
embraced a strategy of primacy and dissuading global competition. As Barry Posen has remarked, the
debate in post-Cold War U.S. grand strategy has been over what form of hegemony to seek, not whether
to seek it.7 A variety of powerful trends now suggest that the existing paradigm is becoming
unsustainable in both military and diplomatic terms, and that the United States will inevitably
have to divert from its current posture to a new, more sustainable role.

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Hegemony is unsustainable Overstretch

Snyder, University of Maryland Center for International Development and Conflict
Management Research Scholar, 12
(Quddus Z. Snyder, Fall 2009, University of Maryland, Systemic Theory in an Era of Declining US
Hegemony, http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/irworkshop/papers_fall09/snyder.pdf, pgs. 10-2, Accessed
7/6/13, LLM)
At the turn of the century it appeared as if we were living through a hegemonic age. But recent
developments might justify a reevaluation of this conclusion. With its armed forces over-extended, and
resources stretched, the US appears much weaker today than it did five years ago. The classic
Gilpinian dilemma provides insight into the present predicament the US finds itself in: This three-way
struggle over priorities (protection, consumption, and investment) produces a profound dilemma
for society. If it suppresses consumption, the consequence can be severe internal social tensions and
class conflictIf the society neglects to pay the costs of defense, external weakness will inevitably
lead to its defeat by rising powers. If the society fails to save and reinvest a sufficient fraction of its
surplus wealth in industry and agriculture, the economic basis of the society and its capacity to
sustain either consumption or protection will decline. Thus far the US has maintained a massive
defense budget while consumption and investment have been sustained by deficit spending. It is
unclear how long this formula will work. The problem does not only stem from fact that the US is
bogged down in two wars, it is also in the throes of a serious economic downturn. Of course,
everyone is getting hit. Because all are suffering, the US is still a giant in terms of relative power
differentials. Relative power is important, but so is the hegemons ability to actually do things. It is
unlikely that the US will have either the political will or capability to take on major international
undertakings. It is unclear when the US will fully withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan; however,
these projects will gobble up massive amounts of resources and treasure at a time when Americas
own recovery is being partly bankrolled by foreign powers like China.43 The point is simply that
Americas unilateral assertiveness on the international scene is changing. US security guarantees
may prove less credible than they once were, leading allies to enhance their own military
capabilities. The US may still be a giant, but one that, for now at least, seems more bound.
Heg collapse is inevitable by 2020 economic decline will prompt gradual military
retrenchment culminating in multipolarity
Layne, Texas A&M National Security Professor, 11
(Christopher, Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security at Texas A&Ms George H.W.
Bush School of Government & Public Service, 3/28/2011, The European Magazine, http://theeuropeanmagazine.com/223-layne-christopher/231-pax-americana, accessed 7-7-13, LLM)
The epoch of American hegemony is drawing to a close. Evidence of Americas relative decline is
omnipresent. According to the Economist, China will surpass the U.S. as the worlds largest economy
in 2019. The U.S. relative power decline will affect international politics in coming decades: the

Hegemony Core
likelihood of great power security competitions and even war will increase; the current era of
globalization will end; and the post-1945 Pax Americana will be replaced by a new international
order that reflects the interests of China and the other emerging great powers. American primacys end
is result of historys big, impersonal forces compounded by the United States own self-defeating policies.
Externally, the impact of these big historical forces is reflected in the emergence of new great powers like
China and India which is being driven by the unprecedented shift in the center of global economic power
from the Euro-Atlantic area to Asia. Chinas economy has been growing much more rapidly than the
United States over the last two decades and continues to do so. The US decline reflects its own
economic troubles U.S. decline reflects its own economic troubles. Optimists contend that current
worries about decline will fade once the U.S. recovers from the recession. After all, they say, the U.S.
faced a larger debt/GDP ratio after World War II, and yet embarked on a sustained era of growth. But
the post-war era was a golden age of U.S. industrial and financial dominance, trade surpluses, and
sustained high growth rates. Those days are gone forever. The United States of 2011 are different from
1945. Even in the best case, the United States will emerge from the current crisis facing a grave fiscal
crisis. The looming fiscal results from the $1 trillion plus budget deficits that the U.S. will incur for
at least a decade. When these are bundled with the entitlements overhang (the unfunded future
liabilities of Medicare and Social Security) and the cost of the ongoing wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, there is reason to worry about United States long-term fiscal stability and the role of
the dollar. The dollars vulnerability is the United States real geopolitical Achilles heel because the
dollars role as the international economys reserve currency role underpins U.S. primacy. If the
dollar loses that status Americas hegemony literally will be unaffordable. In coming years the U.S. will
be pressured to defend the dollar by preventing runaway inflation. This will require fiscal selfdiscipline through a combination of tax increases and big spending cuts. Meaningful cuts in federal
spending mean deep reductions in defense expenditures because discretionary non-defense domestic
spending accounts for only about 20% of annual federal outlays. Faced with these hard choices,
Americans may contract hegemony fatigue. If so, the U.S. will be compelled to retrench strategically
and the Pax Americana will end. The Pax Americana is already crumbling in slow motion The current
international order is based on the economic and security structures that the U.S. created after World War
II. The entire fabric of world order that the United States established after 1945 the Pax Americana
rested on the foundation of U.S. military and economic preponderance. The decline of American power
means the end of U.S. dominance in world politics and the beginning of the transition to a new
constellation of world power. Indeed, the Pax Americana is already is crumbling in slow motion.
U.S. heg waning and unsustainable Snowden proves

Taylor, Senior Analyst for the Examiner, 13
(Robert Taylor , 7-4-13, Examiner, Edward Snowden extradition battle puts spotlight on US tyranny
around the world, http://www.examiner.com/article/edward-snowden-extradition-battle-puts-spotlighton-us-tyranny-around-the-world, accessed 7-9-13, LLM)
As of this writing, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is currently hiding out in Moscow and is seeking
asylum in at least 20 countries as he continues to dodge U.S. extradition efforts. The fact that much of
the world is ignoring U.S. demands to extradite Snowden reveals that America's hegemonic power

Hegemony Core
may be waning and that this decline is a welcome development for the future of individual liberty
and international peace.
But global American power has been built on debt, borrowing, deficit-financing, heavy taxation, and
inflating away the American middle class, a combination that, like Rome's, can not be sustained forever.
As the U.S. not only continues this path, but expands upon it with ever increasing military budgets
and interventionism, the world is perhaps beginning to see that America's threats are empty.
Edward Snowden's Paul Revere-esque moves around the globe have helped confirm this loss of
hegemony. China ignored requests by the U.S. to extradite Snowden, and despite the hysterical calls
of Congress to "punish" Russia, Vladimir Putin while less than enthusiastic about holding
Snowden appears to enjoy annoying the U.S. and is doing nothing while Snowden waits in
Moscow.
While rumors of Ecuador granting Snowden asylum were a mistake, Ecuador has a recent history
of standing up to U.S. meddling. They have granted Wikileaks' Julian Assange, a man that American
officials have publicly desired to be assassinated, asylum and protection. When President George W.
Bush wanted to put a military base in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa agreed only on the
condition that Ecuador get to put one of their own in Florida. Bush quickly backed off.
Europe too is openly defying the American empire. While in Dar es Salaam yesterday, President
Obama defended the mass surveillance of European diplomats, arguing that is "standard practice"
and would continue despite protests by European leaders. This type of arrogance and
dismissiveness has led to political leaders in Germany and France to urge their countries to grant
Snowden asylum.
Even the U.S. government's domestic colonies are protesting, reaffirming their sovereignty, and
ignoring blatantly unconstitutional laws.
What Snowden has done is not only reveal the details of a massive, covert surveillance program, but
like a domino pushed just a bit too hard, is encouraging others to exhibit a similar type of courage.
Standing up to history's most expansive and hegemonic power takes the guts of a libertarian
whistleblower seeking justice and truth with little regard for the potentially deadly consequences, and
undoubtedly others are taking notice. The U.S. can huff-and-puff all it wants, but one can only bully
others for so long before others finally start to stand up and fight back.
Like the whistleblowers that have come before him, Snowden's defiance in the face of a government
that claims the right to kill anyone at any time around the world might just be the spark that
weakens America's imperial military power by urging others around the world to emulate
Snowden.
But didn't the American revolutionaries enlist the help of the French monarchy no friend of liberty
in their fight against the British Empire? Snowden is simply seeking safety from an even greater
hegemon in his desires to expose it. China and Russia are undoubtedly incredibly brutal regimes,
but their violence is limited mainly to their own borders. The U.S. is a global aggressor, proudly
disregarding international law while condemning others for lesser crimes. How can one not cheer on
Snowden and the withering of a tax-guzzling empire that threatens our liberty and prosperity?

Hegemony Core
Snowden's defiance and the near worldwide rejection of U.S. demands may well be seen as one of
the turning points in the future of American history. The American empire won't collapse, but poke
enough holes in something that bureaucratic and top-heavy, and it begins to lean. Our ancestors
fought for independence from a corrupt empire, and as the Fourth of July approaches, perhaps this
generation can begin their independence from one as well.

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Unsustainable Rising Powers

Decline in heg is inevitable challengers coming now
Bacevich, Boston University professor of history and international relations, 12
(Andrew J., professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is editor of The Short
American Century: A Postmortem, just published by Harvard University Press, 2-19-12, The Chronicle of
Higher Education, Good bye the American Century- Good Riddance, http://chronicle.com/article/TheAmerican-Century-Is/130790/, accessed 7-7-13, LLM)
Alas, the bracing future that Luce confidently foresaw back in 1941 has in our own day slipped into
the past. If an American Century ever did exist, it's now ended. History is moving onalthough
thus far most Americans appear loath to concede that fact.
Historians should be the first to acknowledge the difficulty of identifying historical turning points.
In the spring of 2003, around the time U.S. troops were occupying Saddam Hussein's various
palaces, President George W. Bush felt certain he'd engineered one. More than a few otherwisesober observers agreed. But "Mission Accomplished" turned out to be "Mission Just Begun." Those
who celebrated the march on Baghdad as a world-altering feat of arms ended up with egg on their faces.
Still, I'm willing to bet that future generations will look back on the period between 2006 and 2008 as the
real turning point. Here was the moment when what remained of the American Century ran out of
steam and ground to a halt. More specifically, when Bush gave up on victory in Iraq (thereby
abandoning expectations of U.S. military power transforming the Greater Middle East) and when the
Great Recession brought the U.S. economy to its knees (the consequences of habitual profligacy
coming home to roost), Luce's formulation lost any resemblance to reality.
Politicians insist otherwise, of course. Has the American Century breathed its last? Mitt Romney, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, leaves no room for doubt where he stands on the
matter:
I am guided by one overwhelming conviction and passion: This century must be an American Century.
In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the
world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire
world. ... This is America's moment. We should embrace the challenge, not shrink from it, not crawl into
an isolationist shell, not wave the white flag of surrender, nor give in to those who assert America's time
has passed. That is utter nonsense .
Foremost among those waving that white flag of surrender, according to Romney, is President Barack
Obama. Yet Obama's expressed views align closely with those of his would-be challenger. "America
is back," the president declared during his recent State of the Union address. "Anyone who tells
you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned,
doesn't know what they're talking about."

Hegemony Core
As with most contemporary political speeches, this qualifies as pure malarkey. Among the conjurers
of imperial dreams in Washington, the American Century might live on. In places like Newark or
Cleveland or Detroit, where real people live, it's finished.
As a member of the historical fraternity, count me among those more than content to consign the
American Century to the past. After all, what's past becomes our turfprecisely where the
American Century ought to be. Exploration of that myth-enshrouded territory has barely begun.
Grasping what this era actually signified and what it yielded promises to be an exciting enterprise,
one that may leave the reputations of heroes like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan a bit worse
for wear.
From the jaded, not to say cynical, observer of international politics, the passing of the American Century
elicits a more ambivalent response. I'd like to believe that the United States will accept the outcome
gracefully. Rather than attempting to resurrect Luce's expansive vision, I'd prefer to see American
policy makers attend to the looming challenges of multipolarity. Averting the serial catastrophes
that befell the planet starting just about 100 years ago, when the previous multipolar order began to
implode, should keep them busy enough.
But I suspect that's not going to happen. The would-be masters of the universe orbiting around the
likes of Romney and Obama won't be content to play such a modest role. With the likes of Robert
Kagan as their guide"It's a wonderful world order," he writes in his new book, The World America
Made (Knopf)they will continue to peddle the fiction that with the right cast of characters running
Washington, history will once again march to America's drumbeat. Evidence to support such
expectations is exceedingly scarcetaken a look at Iraq lately?but no matter. Insiders and would-be
insiders will insist that, right in their hip pocket, they've got the necessary strategy.
Strategy is a quintessential American Century word, ostensibly connoting knowingness and
sophistication. Whether working in the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon, strategists
promote the notion that they can anticipate the future and manage its course. Yet the actual events
of the American Century belie any such claim. Remember when Afghanistan signified victory over
the Soviet empire? Today, the genius of empowering the mujahedin seems less than self-evident.
Strategy is actually a fraud perpetrated by those who covet power and are intent on concealing
from the plain folk the fact that the people in charge are flying blind. With only occasional
exceptions, the craft of strategy was a blight on the American Century.
What does the passing of the American Century hold? To answer that question, inquisitive students of
international relations might turn for instruction to television commercials now being aired by Allstate
Insurance. The ads feature a character called Mayhem, who unbeknownst to you, hangs onto the side of
your car or perches on your rooftop concocting mischief. The message is clear. Be alert: Mayhem is
always lurking in your path.
Throughout the American Century, Mayhem mocked U.S. strategic pretensions. His agents
infiltrated the National Security Council, sowing falsehoods. Mayhem whispered in the ear of
whoever happened to occupy the Oval Office. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff met in the "Tank," he
had a seat at the table. Mayhem freely roamed the halls of the Capitol (although Congressional
dysfunction of our own day may have rendered such efforts redundant).

Hegemony Core
Having learned nothing from the American Century, present-day strategiststhe ones keen to
bomb Iran, confront China, and seize control of outer space as the "ultimate high ground"will
continue the practice of doing Mayhem's bidding. As usual, the rest of us will be left to cope with
the havoc that results, albeit this time without the vast reserves of wealth and power that once made
an American Century appear plausible. Brace yourself.
Challenges now
Patrick, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow, 11
(Stewart M., senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Director of the Program on
International Institutions and Global Governance, 7-3-11, CNNWorld, "Dont tread on me! July 4th and
U.S. sovereignty," http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/03/don%E2%80%99t-tread-on-mejuly-4th-and-u-s-sovereignty/, accessed 7-2-12, CNM)
The sovereignty of all nations is being challenged by a combination of forces, including deepening
global integration, rising security interdependence and developing international law. Multilateral
cooperation does pose dilemmas for traditional concepts of U.S. sovereignty. Its important to think
clearly about the implications of these trends, about what U.S. prerogatives must be protected and about
what circumstances might warrant adjustments in U.S. psychology and policy.
The place to begin is by getting clarity on whats at stake. The sovereignty debate actually encompasses
several categories of concern:
For some, the basic problem is a loss of U.S. freedom of action. As the nation becomes enmeshed in
multilateral institutions or treaties, it may well find its room for maneuver constrained, whether the
issue is the use of force (governed by the UN Security Council) or trade policy (where the U.S. has
accepted a binding WTO dispute resolution mechanism).

Hegemony Core
Naval Hegemony Declining

Naval hegemony declining; other branches getting more attention
Cropsey, Director, Center for American Seapower, 11
AA)
The change in direction of US strategy is more than a political and geographic refocus. Americas armed
forces are being reinvented to cope with the type of warfare they have experienced in the Middle
East. Under the current and previous administrations, the Defense Department has changed itself into a
massive counterinsurgency operation. Secretary of Defense Robert Gatess next budget emphasizes
rebalancing the force, an expression of the Pentagons shift in the direction of counterinsurgency
operations, and thus an expansion in Americas direct or indirect continental engagement. The budget
lists more robust funding for helicopters and air crews, special operations personnel and their
equipment, increases in electronic warfare capabilities, and the purchase and deployment of more
unmanned vehicles. Major conventional weapons systems, such as the Air Forces F-22 fifth
generation fighter or the building of a new class of Navy cruisers, have been abbreviated or cancelled
entirely.
Promotion policy has paralleled acquisition policy. Two years ago, General David Petraeus was brought
back from Iraq to head the board that selects Army officers for promotion from colonel to brigadier
general. Nearly half of those selected had been serving or would serve in the Middle Eastern warsa
clear indication that the Army sees future warfare as an image of todays conflict projected onto a larger
and more distant screen. Absent from the Pentagons calculation about the nations strategic future
are questions about whether Americans will tolerate a chain of small wars to prevent states from
failing, deny safe haven to small numbers of terrorists, and increase regional security and promote
democracy.
Jihadism in Afghanistan or Yemenor any of the other places to which it will surely migrate from
wherever it may be temporarily defeatedoffers no such prospect for American decline. Nonetheless, the
costs of combat operations in the Middle East now reach close to one-third of the entire annual defense
budget, and Congressional Budget Office predictions of American sea power show a significant
decline in the future size of the US combat fleet. As other conventional forces dedicated to the
western Pacific are increasingly supplanted by the Defense Departments emphasis on
counterinsurgency, our traditional, effective, and balanced grand strategy is at precisely the same
serious risk as our staying power in Asia.

Hegemony Core
China Rising Now

China is taking steps to become a global hegemon
AA)
Also virtually absent from strategic calculations is China. The Quadrennial Defense Review published
by the current administration early in 2010 mentions Chinas rise and its large population. Otherwise, the
report, which is supposed to survey the nations defenses and set its future course, remains silent about the
possibility of strategic competition with Asias largest state, whose oft-declared intent is to deny the US
access to the western Pacific.
The rise of a dominant power in Asia threatens what should be the major goal of Americas security
strategyi.e., promoting a world order that encourages political liberty and expanding commerce based
on free enterprise and such international norms as respect for sovereignty and untroubled transit through
international watersat least as much as the contest for European or Eurasian hegemony once did.
Chinas mercantilist economy based on exports and sustained by the manipulation of currency (which
also bolsters unproductive state-owned industries); its recent bullying of smaller neighbors over
sovereignty questions in the surrounding seas; its growing nationalism; its increasingly powerful
navyall of these factors demonstrate Beijings steely ambition to become the Asian hegemon.
If China should achieve these objectives, the consequences for America would be profound. The network
of US allianceswith democratic Asian states like Japan, the Republic of Korea, and whatever
remains of Taiwan after it is inevitably attackedwould splinter as these and other smaller Asian
states seek economic, diplomatic, and military accommodation with China. Denied access to the
region, the US would lose its century-old status as a major Pacific power, not to mention the bases
from which it can now project military force (both aerial and amphibious) as well as support naval
operations throughout the region. Chinas authoritarian economic and political systems would become
the model of governance and regional intercourse. Chinese influence underwritten by its unopposed
naval power would reach far; a diminished US Navy would find itself impotent in shielding India. With
Asias huge populationabout half the worlds peopleand growing wealth, Americas loss of status as
the major Pacific power would spell its demise as a great international force.

Hegemony Core
Offshore Balancing Now

US is pursuing offshore balancing now
Holmes, US Naval War College strategy professor, 14
[James R., defense analyst for The Diplomat, The Diplomat, Slouching Toward Offshore Balancing,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/slouching-toward-offshore-balancing/, accessed 7/8/14, GNL]
Is America slouching toward offshore balancing? Maybe so, if columnist Lee Smith has it right. Writing
over at Tablet, Smith claims that Harvard professor Stephen Walt is this generations George F. Kennan, a
foreign-policy intellectual whose appraisal of the geopolitical landscape, and of the proper methods for
managing it, captures the attention and allegiance of top policymakers.
Smith refers mainly to Walts commentary on Israel. To oversimplify, Walt maintains that the Israel
lobby wields outsized influence in Washington. Such influence, quoth he, deforms U.S. foreign policy
in favor of a small, beleaguered ally that contributes little to the alliance while ensnaring the United States
in disputes remote from its interests. To make decisions that truly suit the national interest, then,
officialdom should afford Israel no more deference than any other small Middle Eastern country.
But this is about more than Israel. Walt extrapolates his logic to all American allies under his doctrine
of offshore balancing. Taken to extremes, international relations realism is all about big powers.
Small fry mainly just get in the way. Though he doesnt couch it in such Clausewitzian terms, Walt
proclaims in effect that the United States attaches too much value to its overseas alliances. By
exaggerating the value of alliances, it takes on efforts of magnitude and duration far
disproportionate to its interests. In other words, it invests too heavily, and for too long, in
arrangements that provide dubious returns.
By extending security guarantees to allies like Japan or Taiwan, moreover, America exposes itself to
needless dangers in particular, war with a rival great power. Better to retire offshore, abjuring
overseas entanglements, than risk such a bloodletting. America should let Eurasian powers balance
against would-be hegemons meaning domineering powers like Iran or China on their own,
and only intervene directly if those regional powers cannot contain would-be hegemons on their
own. And by doing so the U.S. could undertake sweeping defense cuts, safeguarding its most basic
interests while aligning ends with means. Indeed, some offshore balancers say the United States
could slash defense spending by half. In effect, it would try to balance against predatory great
powers along the Eurasian rimlands from bases on American soil.
These are serious arguments made by serious people. They deserve to be aired thoroughly in policy
circles. (The Naval Diplomat rejects the concept on practical grounds.) The danger is that rather than
debate the merits of the strategy, decisionmakers could seize on offshore balancing as an easy way out
of todays budgetary dilemmas. Walts is a highfalutin theory, from a Harvard professor, that supplies a
convenient excuse to cut military forces. It supplies intellectual top cover for officials loath to be seen as
soft on defense.

Hegemony Core
Great Britain, it was said, acquired a peerless empire in a fit of absence of mind. The United States
must not relinquish its own forward posture absentmindedly, dismantling the means on which that
posture rests merely to balance the books. One imagines Kennan, the prophet of containing the Soviet
Union from forward outposts, would agree.
So might Admiral J. C. Wylie. Wylie observes that the U.S. government commonly puts the cart
before the horse in matters budgetary and strategic. In theory, policymakers work with strategists
the executors of policy to design plans to accomplish national goals with the resources available.
Thats the theory. In reality, Congress often makes strategic decisions through the dollars and cents it
allots. By capping certain expenditures on ships or aircraft, ammunition or spare parts,
underway or flight hours lawmakers may foreclose strategic, and thus foreign policy, options.
Thats why some of the navy-related news bubbling up from Washington is so worrisome. For example,
Admiral Bill Gortney recently unveiled an Optimized Fleet Response Plan that will slow the
operational tempo for navy carrier strike groups. Crews will doubtless welcome a more relaxed pace of
life. But the new deployment plan does signal that U.S. naval power is more likely to surge from
homeports in the United States than respond from overseas stations. Sounds rather offshore to me.
More troublingly, as the latest budgetary wrangling unfolds, arguments for reducing the U.S. Navys
carrier fleet appear to be gaining steam among both lawmakers and analysts. Now, there may be good
reason to scale back the number of flattops. For instance, the offense-defense balance may be skewing
against surface fleets as technology boosts the range and lethality of land-based weaponry. To all
appearances, though, the cuts being mulled over have little to do with modifying the composition of the
fleet to meet new operational realities. Its all about reducing the number of hulls in the water.
So theres a weird dualism here. It seems the debate over Americas global posture is taking place way
up in the airy-fairy realm of international relations theory, where ideas that may or not be actionable
are bruited about, and down in the grubby realm where dollars and cents are king. That leaves a void in
between, which operational and strategic thought needs to occupy. Lets fill in that void and stop
slouching around.
US is on the path to retrenchment White House signaling

Hirsh, National Journal chief correspondent, 13
[Michael, 06/11/13, The Atlantic, How America Lost Its Nerve Abroad,
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/how-america-lost-its-nerveabroad/276769/, accessed 07/08/14, ES]
What all this adds up to is an attitude that hasn't been seen in decades, perhaps as far back as the
Eisenhower era of the mid-1950s. That was a time when the fresh memories of World War II and Korea,
and fear of exacerbating the Cold War, drove Ike to avoid open conflict abroad (although, like Obama, he
was fond of covert action). Today, too, there is an inward lean to American foreign policy, a listing
homeward that appears to be a kind of neo-isolationism. Compared with the neoconservative strain of a
decade ago -- a belief in the aggressive projection of American power voiced most recently by Mitt
Romney early in the 2012 presidential campaign -- it is virtually a reversal of direction. The reasons are
obvious. According to surveys, we think we've been out too much in the world in recent years, and

Hegemony Core
we're feeling badly burned and spent, financially and emotionally. We want to come home. Rightly or not,
Obama is merely channeling these sentiments.
Back in the 1990s, the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke invented the term "Viet-malia" syndrome -- a
contraction of Vietnam and Somalia (the "Black Hawk Down" debacle) -- to explain President Clinton's
reluctance to intervene overseas. Clinton eventually got over it, going into Bosnia and Kosovo. But what's
shaping foreign policy decisions now feels more enduring. Call it "Iraq-ghazi-stan" syndrome. It is the
chilling effect of the terrible drain of the Iraq war, the long slog in Afghanistan, and the bloody and
embarrassing aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya -- both the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi
attack that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, and the spread of Muammar
el-Qaddafi's weapons caches across the region.
When you combine these traumas with the economic fallout of a lingering financial crisis,
compounded by the political paralysis in Washington that led to the sequester, the picture is complete. It's
just not as cool as we thought, being the lone superpower. Can't someone else spell us for a while?
"All these things are signaling a subtle change, a lower profile and more selective approach to the
world," says Gordon Adams, a scholar of international relations and defense expert at American
University. "I don't think [Obama] has stepped away from global involvement. There's no way you can
avoid it. Rather, he is backing away from the more assertive view that every issue is ours, that we've
got to push everybody else to do things, that we're the indispensable nation. That's morphing into
something else."
The idea of "humanitarian intervention" that dominated policy debates before 9/11 has become, for the
Obama team, the "notion that we shouldn't just do things to make us feel better," in the words of one
administration official. But are we preventing ourselves from doing things that the U.S. ought to be doing,
whether it's intervening to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe or checking the growth of Chinese or
Russian power?Obama administration officials say there is no retreat or retrenchment, simply a
"rebalancing" of the use of American power from "hard" to "soft" in the wake of failed military
interventions, especially in Iraq. As an example, they cite the funneling of $250 million of U.S. civilian
aid to the Syrian rebels for building an alternative political structure to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. "I
don't know what influence having troops in Iraq got us in Iraq," Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national
security adviser, told National Journal in an interview this week. "I actually would argue that we're more
actively engaged around the world today than we were 10 years ago ... because we were entirely focused
on Iraq 10 years ago."
"Obviously, we're in a time of austerity here," Rhodes adds. Yet he notes that the president is calling
actively for increases in civilian foreign aid. "In many respects, for whatever reason, the debate got
entirely distorted into one that says people who are for engagement around the world are for keeping
troops in Middle Eastern countries, and if you're not, you're somehow for isolationism.... It's a kind of
weird distortion."
In truth, what Obama's approach amounts to is the demilitarization of American foreign policy. This
week, the president reshuffled his national security team, naming U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to
succeed Tom Donilon as national security adviser and Samantha Power, whom Obama made the head of
his new Atrocities Prevention Board in 2012, to take over for Rice at the U.N. Both women have a
reputation for being aggressive advocates of intervention, and yet both have also moderated their views
on using military, as opposed to diplomatic, approaches and "moral suasion," to achieve this. In
appointing Power last year, Obama cautioned that "preventing mass atrocities ... does not mean that we

Hegemony Core
intervene militarily every time there's an injustice in the world. We cannot and should not." What's
missing is a clearer articulation of this. In a major speech in May at the National Defense University, the
president indicated that the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan will mark an end of an era. It's time
to narrow and de-emphasize the global war against al-Qaida, Obama said, the better to focus on
"nation-building at home," his favorite theme. The war against terrorism that has completely defined
America's posture to the world in the nearly 12 years since 9/11 will come to an end in the foreseeable
future. American deployments will go back to the meager presence we had pre-9/11, because, Obama
said, "the future of terrorism" will be a smaller-scale "threat that closely resembles the types of attacks we
faced before 9/11."
"Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror,' but rather as a
series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten
America," Obama said. He also is cutting back on drone strikes and narrowing the criteria for who's
defined as a strategic enemy, in part because "any U.S. military action in foreign lands risks creating more
enemies." The bottom line: Obama wants to turn terrorism into more of a law-enforcement and
intelligence problem than a war. America doesn't want any more enemies. America doesn't want any
more war.

Hegemony Core
Multipolarity Coming Now

Unipolarity decline is inevitable economic burden, China rise
Geeraerts, Solvay BS IR Professor, 10
[Gustaaf, 2010, European Review, China, the EU, and the New Multipolarity,
http://www.vub.ac.be/biccs/site/assets/files/apapers/China,%20the%20EU%20and%20Multipolarity2.pdf, accessed: 7-8-14, Pg. 2-9, FCB]
The structure of the international system is changing with the evaporation of Americas unipolar
moment. The decline of U.S. primacy and the subsequent transition to a multipolar world are
inevitable, Wang Jisi wrote in 2004.2 More recently John Ikenberry stated that The United States
unipolar moment will inevitably end.3 Not only has the influence of the lonely superpower
severely been affected by the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its economic clout too has
declined faster than ever before and its soft power is increasingly contested. At the same time,
China is undeniably becoming a global power. Since the cautious opening up of Chinas door by Deng
Xiaoping in 1978, her economy has quadrupled in size and some expect it to double again over the next
decade. China is about to become the second most important single economy in the world. At the most
recent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Hu Jintao, Chinas president was the only one to arrive at the head of a
major economy still enjoying strong growth, having the luxury of substantial financial reserves.
But China is not only growing economically, its military clout is also on the rise.4 In 2008 China
evolved into the worlds second highest military spender.5 It is the only country emerging both as a
military and economic rival of the US and thus generating a fundamental shift in the global distribution
of power and influence. Such power transitions are a recurring phenomenon in international politics and
have always constituted episodes of uncertainty and higher risk. They contain the seeds of fierce strategic
rivalry between the up-and-coming state and the residing leading power, thereby increasing the likelihood
of contention and conflict. No wonder that Chinas spectacular economic growth and increasingly
assertive diplomacy have incited other key-players to ponder how Beijing will seek to manage this
transition and even more how it will use its leverage afterwards. Notwithstanding that China still sees
itself partly as a developing country, it is becoming more confident in its rising power and status. As its
economic interests abroad are expanding rapidly, so will the pressure increase to safeguard them
more proactively. National security is no longer solely a matter of defending sovereignty and
domestic development. It also becomes necessary for China to back up its growing interests
overseas with a more robust diplomacy and security policy.
Multipolarity now, US decline is inevitable and has already begun


Hegemony Core
When great powers begin to experience erosion in their global standing, their leaders inevitably
strike a pose of denial. At the dawn of the twentieth century, as British leaders dimly discerned such an
erosion in their country's global dominance, the great diplomat Lord Salisbury issued a gloomy
rumination that captured at once both the inevitability of decline and the denial of it. "Whatever happens
will be for the worse," he declared. "Therefore it is our interest that as little should happen as possible."
Of course, one element of decline was the country's diminishing ability to influence how much or how
little actually happened.
We are seeing a similar phenomenon today in America, where the topic of decline stirs discomfort in
national leaders. In September 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed a "new American
Moment" that would "lay the foundations for lasting American leadership for decades to come." A year
and a half later, President Obama declared in his State of the Union speech: "Anyone who tells you
that America is in decline . . . doesn't know what they're talking about." A position paper from
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stated flatly that he "rejects the philosophy of decline in
all of its variants." And former U.S. ambassador to China and one-time GOP presidential candidate Jon
Huntsman pronounced decline to be simply "un-American."
Such protestations, however, cannot forestall real-world developments that collectively are
challenging the post-1945 international order, often called Pax Americana, in which the United States
employed its overwhelming power to shape and direct global events. That era of American dominance
is drawing to a close as the country's relative power declines, along with its ability to manage global
economics and security.
This does not mean the United States will go the way of Great Britain during the first half of the twentieth
century. As Harvard's Stephen Walt wrote in this magazine last year, it is more accurate to say the
"American Era" is nearing its end. For now, and for some time to come, the United States will remain
primus inter pares--the strongest of the major world powers--though it is uncertain whether it can
maintain that position over the next twenty years. Regardless, America's power and influence over the
international political system will diminish markedly from what it was at the apogee of Pax
Americana. That was the Old Order, forged through the momentous events of World War I, the
Great Depression and World War II. Now that Old Order of nearly seven decades' duration is
fading from the scene. It is natural that U.S. leaders would want to deny it--or feel they must finesse it
when talking to the American people. But the real questions for America and its leaders are: What will
replace the Old Order? How can Washington protect its interests in the new global era? And how much
international disruption will attend the transition from the old to the new?
The signs of the emerging new world order are many. First, there is China's astonishingly rapid rise
to great-power status, both militarily and economically. In the economic realm, the International
Monetary Fund forecasts that China's share of world GDP (15 percent) will draw nearly even with the
U.S. share (18 percent) by 2014. (The U.S. share at the end of World War II was nearly 50 percent.) This
is particularly startling given that China's share of world GDP was only 2 percent in 1980 and 6 percent as
recently as 1995. Moreover, China is on course to overtake the United States as the world's largest
economy (measured by market exchange rate) sometime this decade. And, as argued by economists
like Arvind Subramanian, measured by purchasing-power parity, China's GDP may already be greater
than that of the United States.

Hegemony Core
China rise makes multipolarity inevitable

Certainly, the Chinese have not forgotten. Now Beijing aims to dominate its own East and Southeast
Asian backyard, just as a rising America sought to dominate the Western Hemisphere a century
and a half ago. The United States and China now are competing for supremacy in East and Southeast
Asia. Washington has been the incumbent hegemon there since World War II, and many in the American
foreign-policy establishment view China's quest for regional hegemony as a threat that must be resisted.
This contest for regional dominance is fueling escalating tensions and possibly could lead to war. In
geopolitics, two great powers cannot simultaneously be hegemonic in the same region. Unless one of
them abandons its aspirations, there is a high probability of hostilities. Flashpoints that could spark a
Sino-American conflict include the unstable Korean Peninsula; the disputed status of Taiwan; competition
for control of oil and other natural resources; and the burgeoning naval rivalry between the two powers.
These rising tensions were underscored by a recent Brookings study by Peking University's Wang Jisi and
Kenneth Lieberthal, national-security director for Asia during the Clinton administration, based on their
conversations with high-level officials in the American and Chinese governments. Wang found that
underneath the visage of "mutual cooperation" that both countries project, the Chinese believe
they are likely to replace the United States as the world's leading power but Washington is working
to prevent such a rise. Similarly, Lieberthal related that many American officials believe their Chinese
counterparts see the U.S.-Chinese relationship in terms of a zero-sum game in the struggle for global
hegemony.
An instructive historical antecedent is the Anglo-German rivalry of the early twentieth century. The
key lesson of that rivalry is that such great-power competition can end in one of three ways:
accommodation of the rising challenger by the dominant power; retreat of the challenger; or war. The
famous 1907 memo exchange between two key British Foreign Office officials--Sir Eyre Crowe and Lord
Thomas Sanderson--outlined these stark choices. Crowe argued that London must uphold the Pax
Britannica status quo at all costs. Either Germany would accept its place in a British-dominated world
order, he averred, or Britain would have to contain Germany's rising power, even at the risk of war.
Sanderson replied that London's refusal to accommodate the reality of Germany's rising power was both
unwise and dangerous. He suggested Germany's leaders must view Britain "in the light of some huge
giant sprawling over the globe, with gouty fingers and toes stretching in every direction, which cannot be
approached without eliciting a scream." In Beijing's eyes today, the United States must appear as the
unapproachable, globally sprawling giant.
Multipolarity coming now rising powers economies, lingering effects of the

recession, globalization
Edelman, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Distinguished Fellow, 10

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(Eric S. Edelman, ambassador, 10/21/10, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
Understanding Americas Contested Primacy,
http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2010/10/understanding-americas-contested-primacy/1/, p. 1,
Accessed 7-7-13, LLM)
In November 2008, the National Intelligence Council released Global Trends 2025 which argued that the
international systemas constructed following the Second World Warwill be almost
unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, a historic
transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of
non-state actors. By 2025 the international system will be a global multipolar one with gaps in
national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries [emphasis in
original]. This conclusion represented a striking departure from the NICs conclusion four years earlier
in Mapping the Global Future 2020 that unipolarity was likely to remain a persistent condition of the
international system.
Between the two reports Americas zeitgeist had clearly shifted under the impact of persistent
difficulty in the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and increased questioning of
United States global leadership (at home and abroad), the seemingly inexorable rise of the newly
emerging economies (suggestively labeled as the BRICs by Goldman Sachs analysts), and the global
economic downturn and recession in the United States. The overall impact was the creation of a
new conventional wisdom that foresees continued decline of the United States, an end to the
unipolar world order that marked the post-Cold War world and a potential departure from the
pursuit of US primacy that marked the foreign policies of the three presidential administrations
that followed the end of the Cold War.
The debate over unipolarity and continued US primacy is not merely an academic debate. Perceptions of
US power will guide both American policymakers and other nations as they consider their policy
options. Primacy has underpinned US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War because no other
nation was able to provide the collective public goods that have upheld the security of the international
system and enabled a period of dramatically increased global economic activity and prosperity. Both the
United States and the global system have benefitted from that circumstance.
The arguments for US decline are not new but before they harden into an unchallenged orthodoxy it
would be good to carefully examine many of the key assumptions that undergird the emerging
conventional wisdom. Will the undeniable relative decline of the United States, in fact, lead to the end of
unipolarity? Do the BRIC countries really represent a bloc? What would multipolarity look like? How
does one measure national power anyhow, and how can one measure the change in the power distribution
globally? Is the rise of global competitors inevitable? What are some of the weaknesses that might
hamper the would-be competitors from staying on their current favorable economic and political
trajectory? Does the United States possess some underappreciated strengths that might serve as the basis
for continued primacy in the international system and, if so, what steps would a prudent government take
to extend that primacy into the future?
The history of straight-line projections of economic growth and the rise of challengers to the dominance
of the United States has not been kind to those who have previously predicted US decline. It is not
necessarily the case that the United States will be caught between the end of the unipolar moment of

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post-Cold War predominance and a global multipolar world. The emerging international environment is
likely to be different than either of the futures forecast by the NIC in Mapping the Global Future in 2004
or Global Trends 2025 in 2008. It would seem more likely that the relative decline of American power
will still leave the United States as the most powerful actor in the international system. But the
economic rise of other nations and the spread of nuclear weapons in some key regions are likely to
confront the US with difficult new challenges.
The revived notion of Americas decline has once again brought to the fore a question about the
purposes of United States power and the value of US international primacy. Seeking to maintain
Americas advantage as the prime player in the international system imposes costs on the US
budget and taxpayer. It is certainly fair to ask what the United States gets from exerting the effort
to remain number one. It is also worth considering what the world would look like if the United
States was just one power among many, and how such perceptions might affect the strategic and
policy choices national security decision-makers will face over the next twenty-odd years.
Unipolarity is collapsing in the status quo and will result in multipolarity

Layne, Texas A&M professor in national security, 4-25-12
(Christopher, professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security at Texas A & M Universitys
George H. W. Bush School of Government and Public Service, National Interest, The Global Power
Shift from West to East, http://nationalinterest.org/article/the-global-power-shift-west-east-6796,
accessed 7-7-13, LLM)
The signs of the emerging new world order are many. First, there is Chinas astonishingly rapid rise
to great-power status, both militarily and economically. In the economic realm, the International
Monetary Fund forecasts that Chinas share of world GDP (15 percent) will draw nearly even with
the U.S. share (18 percent) by 2014. (The U.S. share at the end of World War II was nearly 50 percent.)
This is particularly startling given that Chinas share of world GDP was only 2 percent in 1980 and 6
percent as recently as 1995. Moreover, China is on course to overtake the United States as the worlds
largest economy (measured by market exchange rate) sometime this decade. And, as argued by
economists like Arvind Subramanian, measured by purchasing-power parity, Chinas GDP may already be
greater than that of the United States. Until the late 1960s, the United States was the worlds dominant
manufacturing power. Today, it has become essentially a rentier economy, while China is the
worlds leading manufacturing nation. A study recently reported in the Financial Times indicates that
58 percent of total income in America now comes from dividends and interest payments. Since the Cold
Wars end, Americas military superiority has functioned as an entry barrier designed to prevent
emerging powers from challenging the United States where its interests are paramount. But the
countrys ability to maintain this barrier faces resistance at both ends. First, the deepening financial
crisis will compel retrenchment, and the United States will be increasingly less able to invest in its
military. Second, as ascending powers such as China become wealthier, their military expenditures
will expand. The Economist recently projected that Chinas defense spending will equal that of the
United States by 2025. Thus, over the next decade or so a feedback loop will be at work, whereby
internal constraints on U.S. global activity will help fuel a shift in the distribution of power, and this
in turn will magnify the effects of Americas fiscal and strategic overstretch. With interests

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throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Caucasusnot to mention the role of guarding
the worlds sea-lanes and protecting U.S. citizens from Islamist terroristsa strategically overextended
United States inevitably will need to retrench. Further, there is a critical linkage between a great
powers military and economic standing, on the one hand, and its prestige, soft power and agendasetting capacity, on the other. As the hard-power foundations of Pax Americana erode, so too will the
U.S. capacity to shape the international order through influence, example and largesse. This is
particularly true of America in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession.
At the zenith of its military and economic power after World War II, the United States possessed
the material capacity to furnish the international system with abundant financial assistance designed to
maintain economic and political stability. Now, this capacity is much diminished. All of this will
unleash growing challenges to the Old Order from ambitious regional powers such as China, Brazil,
India, Russia, Turkey and Indonesia. Given Americas relative loss of standing, emerging powers
will feel increasingly emboldened to test and probe the current order with an eye toward reshaping
the international system in ways that reflect their own interests, norms and values. This is particularly
true of China, which has emerged from its century of humiliation at the hands of the West to finally
achieve great-power status. It is a leap to think that Beijing will now embrace a role as responsible
stakeholder in an international order built by the United States and designed to privilege American
interests, norms and values.

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Economy Uniqueness

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Decline Now
Economic fragility makes decline inevitable now
Rachman, Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator, 12
(Gideon Rachman, 2-14-12, "The Rise or Fall of the American Empire" Foreign
Policy,www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/14/the_rise_or_fall_of_the_american_empire?
You are right that Bob and I agree on the importance of American power for the stability and prosperity of
the world. Where we differ is that I believe that we are witnessing a serious erosion of U.S. power.
This is part of a broader phenomenon: A world dominated by the West is giving way to a new order
in which economic and political power is much more contested.
You pose some excellent questions about how events since I completed the book, at the beginning of
2010, have affected my argument. Before I address them directly, I should briefly explain what I mean by
an "Age of Anxiety."
My book argues that globalization was not just an economic phenomenon. It was also the central
geopolitical development of the 30 years before the financial crisis. It created a web of common interests
between the world's major powers, replacing the divided world of the Cold War with a single world order
in which all the big powers were bound into a common capitalist system. If you had gone to Davos during
this period, you would have found the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, the European Union, and
the United States saying very similar things about the need to encourage world trade, foreign investment,
and so on. They shared important assumptions about how the world should be run.
I describe the period from 1991 to 2008 as an "Age of Optimism" because all the world's major powers
had reason to be satisfied with the way the globalized world system was working for them. India's
reforms began in 1991 and led to an economic boom and a palpable surge in national confidence. The
European Union more than doubled in size by incorporating the old Soviet bloc. Latin America had its
debt crises, but by the end of the period, Brazil was being taken seriously as a global power for the first
time in its history. For all their post-Soviet nostalgia, even the leaders of the new Russia were enthusiastic
participants in a globalized world.
Most importantly, 1991-2008 was an Age of Optimism for both China and the United States. During
this period, China's economy grew so rapidly that it was doubling in size every eight years or so.
Chinese people could see their country and their families becoming visibly more prosperous. Still,
the United States was the sole superpower. The growth of Silicon Valley and the rise of Google, Apple, et
al. reaffirmed American confidence in the unique creative powers of U.S. capitalism. American political
and economic ideas set the terms of the global debate. Indeed, the terms "globalization" and
"Americanization" almost seemed synonymous.
This American confidence was very important to the world system. It allowed the United States to
embrace a development that, in other circumstances, might have seemed threatening: the rise of China. In
the Age of Optimism, successive U.S. presidents welcomed China's economic development. The
argument they made was that capitalism would act as a Trojan horse, transforming the Chinese system

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from within. If China embraced economic freedom, political freedom would surely follow. But if China
failed to embrace capitalism, it would fail economically.
In 2008, there was indeed a massive economic and financial crisis, but it came in the West, not in
China. This unexpected development has accelerated a trend that was already in place: a shift in
economic power from West to East and, within that, from the United States to China. Since then, it
has become much harder to argue that globalization has created a win-win world. Instead,
Americans are beginning to wonder, with good reason, whether a richer and more powerful China
might mean a relatively poorer, relatively weaker United States. That is why I called my book ZeroSum Future.
Now, I know that Bob disputes the idea that there has been a shift in economic power. He says the U.S.
share of the world economy has stayed roughly steady at 25 percent. But that is not how I read the
figures. The Economist (my old employer) now projects that China will be the world's largest
economy, in real terms, by 2018. Writing in Feb. 9's Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs puts it well:
In 1980, the US share of world income (measured in purchasing power parity prices) was 24.6 per
cent. In 2011, it was 19.1 per cent. The IMF projects that it will decline to 17.6 per cent as of 2016.
China, by contrast, was a mere 2.2 per cent of world income in 1980, rising to 14.4 per cent in 2011,
and projected by the IMF to overtake the US by 2016, with 18 per cent.
If this isn't a world-altering shift, it's hard to imagine what would be.
I know battles of rival statistics can be mind-numbing, so let me just add that my experiences reporting
around the world strongly re-enforce this impression of growing Chinese influence based on surging
economic strength. In Brazil, I was told that President Dilma Rousseff was paying her first state
visit to Beijing, not Washington, because China -- her country's largest trading partner -- is now
more important to Brazil. In Brussels, they talk hopefully of China, not America, writing a large
check to alleviate the euro crisis. And, of course, China looms ever larger over the rest of Asia.
This shift in economic and political power has important implications for the world order. A weaker
United States is less willing and able to play a leading role in sorting out the world's economic and
political crises. There will be no Marshall Plan for Europe. There will not even be an American-led
"committee to save the world" as there was during the Asian and Russian crises. And when it comes
to the turmoil in the Middle East, the United States was more than happy to "lead from behind" on
Libya. Meanwhile, the United States has pulled out of Iraq and is pulling back from Afghanistan.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's perfectly sensible for Obama to try to reduce U.S. military
commitments around the world, especially given the grim budgetary outlook. But we are
unmistakably in a new era. No U.S. president can now say the country will "bear any burden" to
secure its goals.
US power already collapsing, their authors are in denial economy proves


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As U.S. power wanes over the next decade or so, the United States will find itself increasingly
challenged in discharging these hegemonic tasks. This could have profound implications for
international politics. The erosion of Pax Britannica in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries was an important cause of World War I. During the interwar years, no great power exercised
geopolitical or economic leadership, and this proved to be a major cause of the Great Depression and its
consequences, including the fragmentation of the international economy into regional trade blocs and the
beggar-thy-neighbor economic nationalism that spilled over into the geopolitical rivalries of the 1930s.
This, in turn, contributed greatly to World War II. The unwinding of Pax Americana could have similar
consequences. Since no great power, including China, is likely to supplant the United States as a true
global hegemon, the world could see a serious fragmentation of power. This could spawn pockets of
instability around the world and even general global instability.
The United States has a legacy commitment to global stability, and that poses a particular challenge
to the waning hegemon as it seeks to fulfill its commitment with dwindling resources. The fundamental
challenge for the United States as it faces the future is closing the "Lippmann gap," named for journalist
Walter Lippmann. This means bringing America's commitments into balance with the resources available
to support them while creating a surplus of power in reserve. To do this, the country will need to
establish new strategic priorities and accept the inevitability that some commitments will need to be
reduced because it no longer can afford them.
These national imperatives will force the United States to craft some kind of foreign-policy
approach that falls under the rubric of "offshore balancing"--directing American power and influence
toward maintaining a balance of power in key strategic regions of the world. This concept--first
articulated by this writer in a 1997 article in the journal International Security--has gained increasing
attention over the past decade or so as other prominent geopolitical scholars, including John Mearsheimer,
Stephen Walt, Robert Pape, Barry Posen and Andrew Bacevich, have embraced this approach.

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Unsustainable Debt
American debt crushes ability to sustainably deploy power- also causes allies to shift
towards China for due to economic incentives
Rachman, Financial Times chief foreign-affairs commentator, 2-14-12
(Gideon, Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, Daniel W. Drezner, professor of
international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School, Foreign Policy, "The Rise or Fall of the
American Empire,"
Furthermore, it is not just China that faces troubling questions. You are right to point out America's
enduring strengths. But the rapid growth of the U.S. national debt raises the prospect of a really nasty
fiscal crunch. When it comes to sovereign debt, we in Europe have just discovered the truth of that
old economists' joke that "things that can't go on forever, don't." The United States cannot
continue running up debts at its current rate. And even a controlled, rational effort to manage the
debt will have serious implications for U.S. spending -- and deployable power.
I agree that the balance of power between the United States and China will depend to a huge extent
on the choices made by other countries. You are right that I was probably overimpressed by the
Japanese tilt to China under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. That proved to be transient. Nonetheless,
it was an interesting episode because it underlined a central point about the emerging world order.
As China grows more powerful, the United States cannot assume that traditional allies or fellow
democracies will cleave to America. In the last U.S. presidential election, the candidates did a lot to
promote the idea of a "league of democracies." But in the intervening four years, we have seen that
democracies do not always stick together. At the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Brazil, India,
and South Africa were on China's side, not America's -- their identity as developing countries trumped
their identity as democracies. The same countries condemned the recent NATO-led intervention in
Libya as it developed into a real military campaign. Their suspicion of Western intentions trumped
their support for human rights.

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Military Spending Declining Now

Defense cuts and military sequestration are devastating military readiness
Eaglen, American Enterprise Institute Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at
the resident fellow, 14
[Mackenzie, 6-30-14, The National Interest, Why Americas Military Dominance is
Fading, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-america%E2%80%99s-militarydominance-fading-10772?page=2, 7-8-14, JY]
It is often said Congress hates to cut or cancel weapons systems, usually for reasons relating to jobs and
elections back home. But the record shows that Congress is much more likely to curtail new
equipment purchases for the military rather than get rid of or retire the old stuff.
This tendency is increasingly problematic for the U.S. military. In many capability sets and domains,
the traditional margins of U.S. military technological supremacy are declining across the services. Too
often, policy makers think of this as an emerging challenge that can be dealt with in the coming
years. But, as has been documented previously and stated by many senior Pentagon officials over
the past year, Americas declining military superiority is now a here-now problem.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, recently said, Im very
concerned about eroding technological superiority and where were headed. [] Weve had 20 years
since the end of the Cold War [and] sort of a presumption in the United States that we are
technologically superior militarily. I dont think that thats a safe assumption. In fact, I think that weve
gotten complacent about that and weve been distracted for the last ten years fighting
counterinsurgencies.
U.S. Pacific Command chief Admiral Sam Locklear reiterated the same point recently, noting Our
historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing, no question.
Now that defense budgets are in their fourth year coming down, this preference to fund the old is
increasingly coming at the expense of the new. Paying for yesterdays equipment is not a static or onetime bill. This is one that only grows as equipment ages and gets more expensive to maintain. These
restrictions are starting to hurt investment in innovation and tomorrows forces and their
battlefield edge.
Over the past decade, Congress has approved the truncation and early termination of many weaponsbig
and small. Letting go of legacy, or existing, equipment and assets has proven much trickier for Pentagon
leaders.
Look no further than the House-passed defense authorization bill for 2015 for example. The F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter is a key part of Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy modernization plans. Yet with nearsequestration budgets continuing, the Pentagon was forced to shrink its scheduled purchase from
last year of buying forty-two F-35s in 2015 to only requesting thirty-four in the presidents latest budget.
The House of Representatives signed off on this smaller lot of F-35s without any resistance in its NDAA,
and supported cutsalbeit to four aircraft instead of eightin its version of the 2015 defense
appropriations bill.

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The F-35 is a multirole fighter aircraft and is intended to replace many older airframes including the Air
Forces A-10 Warthog, which the service has been flying for nearly forty years. As with the F-35, the
Pentagon was forced to propose painful cuts to the A-10 due to near-sequestration-level budgets enacted
by Congress. Yet unlike with the F-35, proposed cuts to the A-10 have generated a hailstorm of debate
and Congressional action as lawmakers have pushed back against its proposed retirement. If Congress
prohibits the Pentagon from retiring the A-10, with budget caps looming, the Air Force will be forced to
shift money from other priorities, including other fleets of aircraft and perhaps even the F-35.
The very different Congressional reactions to proposed cuts to the A-10 and F-35 demonstrates that it is
faster and often politically easier to curtail, cancel or delay weapons in development or production than to
get rid of existing hardware. This bird in the hand approach by Congress ultimately feeds the need to
then shrink further, postpone or eliminate more newer programs to help pay for the older stuff getting
older.
Congress holds an important oversight role in budgeting for national security. Yet despite frequent
caricatures about Congress exclusively supporting expensive new weapons above all else, the reality is
that members are often skeptical of new programs and tend to instead circle the wagons of protection
around older systems the Pentagon has proposed shedding.
While versions of the latest defense spending bills have gained attention for blocking a variety of
military plansincluding the proposed retirement of the A-10s and U-2 spy planes, as well as the
temporary lay-up of eleven cruisers and three amphibious shipsCongressional skepticism of
proposed retirements is not a recent phenomenon.
In 2001, Congress prohibited the retiring of Los Angeles and Ohio-class submarines unless they were
deemed unsafe. In 2005, Congress blocked retirements to all F-117 stealth fighters that were in use in
2004, as well as all E models of the KC-135 tankers. Congress reinforced this position the next year,
again blocking all retirements of KC-135Es and F-117s.
In 2011, Congress prohibited the Navy from retiring the EP-3E spy aircraft. In 2013 and 2014, Congress
rejected Pentagon plans to retire Navy cruisers and amphibious dock landing ships (with one exception),
as well as the RQ-4 Block 30 Global Hawk aircraft. Other limiting actions by Congress to shed systems
since 2001 include C-5 and C-130E airlifters, along with B-52 and B-1 bombers.
To its credit, in many of the cases where Congress blocked proposed retirements, it gradually gave
ground. For instance, although it blocked all retirements to KC-135Es in 2005 and 2006, in 2007, it
authorized the Air Force to retire twenty-nine in 2007 and up to eighty-five in 2008, contingent upon
progress towards developing a next generation tanker. Similarly, while Congress prohibited all B-1
retirements in 2012, it relaxed its position in 2013 and authorized the Pentagon to retire up to six
bombers. These steps were welcome measures to give the Pentagon more authority over its own budget.
Yet delaying and limiting retirements came at a very real cost: the Pentagon was forced to find
dollar-for-dollar savings elsewhere in its budget, reducing other military capabilities and disrupting
the Department of Defenses plans.
Meanwhile, Congress has frequently given Pentagon leaders broader leeway to curtail and axe outright
newer equipment programs. Many of the most notable examples came in 2010 and 2011, when Secretary
of Defense Robert Gatesproposed cancelling or terminating production on weapons such as the F-22
fighter aircraft, the C-17 cargo airplane, the CG (X) cruiser, the F-136 alternate engine, the Air Forces

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combat search and rescue helicopter, the VH-71 Presidential helicopter and the Armys Future Combat
Systems.
Other high-profile terminated and truncated programs from recent years include the Comanche helicopter,
the EP-X reconnaissance aircraft, the Crusader self-propelled howitzer, the Expeditionary Fighting
Vehicle, the Advanced SEAL Delivery System and the C-27J airlifter. While in the case of the C-27J, the
Pentagon was able to at least salvage some value by transferring seven of the aircraft from the Air Force
to Special Operations Command and fourteen to the Coast Guard, all too often, such as with the
Comanche and EFV, the Defense Department has spent billions of dollars without fielding any
operational systems.
Missile defense systems have been especially hard hit, with cancellations or early ends to the Multiple
Kill Vehicle, the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, the Airborne Laser, the Navys Area Theater Ballistic Missile
Defense program and the Third Generation Infrared Surveillance program. Similarly, many satellite
systems have also been the targets of cuts, including the National Polar-Orbiting Operational
Environmental System and the Air Forces Transformational SATCOM system.
High-profile systems have not been the only programs in development or production targeted by the
Pentagon leadership and Capitol Hill. Even smaller systems have been shrunk, eliminated or killed,
including the Armys Aerial Common Sensor, the Navys Advanced Deployable System, the Precision
Tracking Space Sensor and the Surface-Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile.
While clearly some retirement prohibitions and even some weapons cancellations may have been prudent,
the long-standing misrepresentation that Congress has never met a new system it doesnt love is simply
not accurate. The reality is that Congress fights much harder as a bloc to protect equipment that has
been in use for years rather than pay for new equipment coming online.
While occasionally healthy, this knee-jerk instinct to oppose most plans to let go of the older
equipment threatens to hold back even further anemic U.S. military modernization plans. Worse,
this preference is increasingly funneling more dollars to what are often less survivable systems.
In the long-run, Congress inability to change the status quo is eroding the militarys readiness for the
next fight and mortgaging the future for the present. Eventually, policy makers will need to restore
balance across the Defense Department portfolio to adequately ensure tomorrows forces get the
very best equipment, just like those who served before them.

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China Taking Over

The United States is declining economically China is taking over after 08 crisis
American Empire,"
has become much harder to argue that globalization has created a win-win world. Instead,
Americans are beginning to wonder, with good reason, whether a richer and more powerful China
might mean a relatively poorer, relatively weaker United States. That is why I called my book ZeroSum Future.
figures. The Economist (my old employer) now projects that China will be the world's largest
economy, in real terms, by 2018. Writing in Feb. 9's Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs puts it well:
In 1980, the US share of world income (measured in purchasing power parity prices) was 24.6 per cent.
In 2011, it was 19.1 per cent. The IMF projects that it will decline to 17.6 per cent as of 2016.
China, by contrast, was a mere 2.2 per cent of world income in 1980, rising to 14.4 per cent in 2011,
and projected by the IMF to overtake the US by 2016, with 18 per cent.
Hegemony is unsustainable China economic rise

Freeman, Center for Strategic and International Studies Senior Adviser in Trade
and Economics, 11
(Charles, CSIS, Chinas innovation and competitiveness policies, http://csis.org/program/chinasinnovation-and-competitiveness-policies-lessons-us-and-japan, accessed 7/8/13, LLM)
Over the past few decades, Chinas rapid economic transformation into a global manufacturing hub
has attracted billions of dollars in foreign direct investment, and lifted hundreds of millions out of
poverty. The growth of the Chinese economy is astonishing. In 2000, Chinas GDP was just a quarter
of Japans but in 2010 China became the second largest economy in the world. In comparison with the

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U.S. GDP, Chinas GDP was a little more than a tenth in 2000 but reached two fifths in 2010. Standard
Chartered Bank issued a report in November 2010 stating that China would likely overtake the U.S. to
become the worlds largest economy by 2020.
Chinese companies have competitiveness in producing low-value, labor-intensive goods. Today,
Chinese competitiveness is not confined to traditional areas. China successfully absorbed foreign
technologies and has become a strong competitor to companies of the developed countries. The
Chinese leadership is trying to upgrade Chinese innovative capabilities; Beijing has set clear objectives
to promote indigenous innovations with the recently approved 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015),
which calls for bolder steps in reform and innovation.
The rise of China and the relative declines of the U.S. and Japan cause a risk of strategic miscalculation
among Beijing, Washington, and Tokyo. Hubris on its competitiveness and future prospects of
economic growth as well as strong nationalism serve as a basis of Chinese sentiments, policies, and
actions. On the other hand, as shown in several public opinion polls, the U.S. and Japan
overestimate Chinese strength and have excessive fears of decline. We should avoid the dj vu of
U.S.-Japan trade frictions in the late 1980s; an opinion poll in the U.S. showed Japanese economic
strength was a greater threat to the U.S. than Soviets military strength. Miscalculations among the
three are likely to produce serious obstacles to developing sound relationships among them.
The U.S., Japan, and China need a positive-sum game. Today, there is no need to explain how China is
important to U.S. and Japanese economies. At the same time, Chinese economic development, which is
a key to domestic political stability, has critical stakes in its relations with the U.S. and Japan.
Chinese companies still owe their innovative capabilities to U.S. and Japanese companies. Given Indias
rapid economic development, future decline of working-age population in China, and increasing
Chinese domestic attention to environment, there are many reasons for Chinese companies to
strengthen their ties with U.S. and Japanese companies.
It is imperative that the U.S. and Japan establish better understanding of the true nature and scope
of Chinas competitiveness in key technology areas, as well as current state of Chinese
competitiveness policies. Objective assessments of Chinese reliance on U.S. and Japanese capabilities
(such as FDI, technology and service trade, global business operation network, and so forth) will reduce a
risk of the miscalculation and serve as a basis of future development of their sound relations. Moreover,
identifying relevant U.S. and Japanese policies or strategies to encourage China to integrate into the
liberal and open market economies could enlarge possibilities of the world.

Hegemony Core
US Wont Play Leadership Role

The US wont play an economic leadership role
American Empire,"
This American confidence was very important to the world system. It allowed the United States to
embrace a development that, in other circumstances, might have seemed threatening: the rise of
China. In the Age of Optimism, successive U.S. presidents welcomed China's economic
development. The argument they made was that capitalism would act as a Trojan horse,
transforming the Chinese system from within. If China embraced economic freedom, political
freedom would surely follow. But if China failed to embrace capitalism, it would fail economically.
has become much harder to argue that globalization has created a win-win world. Instead, Americans are
beginning to wonder, with good reason, whether a richer and more powerful China might mean a
relatively poorer, relatively weaker United States. That is why I called my book Zero-Sum Future.
figures. The Economist (my old employer) now projects that China will be the world's largest economy, in
real terms, by 2018. Writing in Feb. 9's Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs puts it well:
In 1980, the US share of world income (measured in purchasing power parity prices) was 24.6 per cent. In
2011, it was 19.1 per cent. The IMF projects that it will decline to 17.6 per cent as of 2016.
China, by contrast, was a mere 2.2 per cent of world income in 1980, rising to 14.4 per cent in 2011, and
projected by the IMF to overtake the US by 2016, with 18 per cent.
I know battles of rival statistics can be mind-numbing, so let me just add that my experiences reporting
around the world strongly re-enforce this impression of growing Chinese influence based on surging
economic strength. In Brazil, I was told that President Dilma Rousseff was paying her first state visit
to Beijing, not Washington, because China -- her country's largest trading partner -- is now more
important to Brazil. In Brussels, they talk hopefully of China, not America, writing a large check to
alleviate the euro crisis. And, of course, China looms ever larger over the rest of Asia.

Hegemony Core
This shift in economic and political power has important implications for the world order. A weaker
United States is less willing and able to play a leading role in sorting out the world's economic and
political crises. There will be no Marshall Plan for Europe. There will not even be an American-led
"committee to save the world" as there was during the Asian and Russian crises. And when it comes to
the turmoil in the Middle East, the United States was more than happy to "lead from behind" on
Libya. Meanwhile, the United States has pulled out of Iraq and is pulling back from Afghanistan.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's perfectly sensible for Obama to try to reduce U.S. military commitments
around the world, especially given the grim budgetary outlook. But we are unmistakably in a new era.
No U.S. president can now say the country will "bear any burden" to secure its goals.

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Bad Impacts

Hegemony Core
Laundry List
Hegemony causes econ collapse, backlash, and foreign overstretch only retreat is
sustainable
Despite a decade of costly and indecisive warfare and mounting fiscal pressures, the long-standing
consensus among American policymakers about U.S. grand strategy has remained remarkably
intact. As the presidential campaign made clear, Republicans and Democrats may quibble over foreign
policy at the margins, but they agree on the big picture: that the United States should dominate the
world militarily, economically, and politically, as it has since the final years of the Cold War, a
strategy of liberal hegemony The country, they hold, needs to preserve its massive lead in the global
balance of power, consolidate its economic preeminence, enlarge the community of market democracies,
and maintain its outsized influence in the international institutions it helped create.
To this end, the U.S. government has expanded its sprawling Cold War-era network of security
commitments and military bases. It has reinforced its existing alliances, adding new members to
NATO and enhancing its security agreement with Japan. In the Persian Gulf, it has sought to
protect the flow of oil with a full panoply of air, sea, and land forces, a goal that consumes at least
15 percent of the U.S. defense budget. Washington has put China on a watch list, ringing it in with a
network of alliances, less formal relationships, and military bases.
The United States' activism has entailed a long list of ambitious foreign policy projects. Washington has
tried to rescue failing states, intervening militarily in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya,
variously attempting to defend human rights, suppress undesirable nationalist movements, and install
democratic regimes. It has also tried to contain so-called rogue states that oppose the United States,
such as Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, Syria. After 9/11, the
struggle against al Qaeda and its allies dominated the agenda, but the George W. Bush administration
defined this enterprise broadly and led the country into the painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although
the United States has long sought to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons, the prospect of nucleararmed terrorists has added urgency to this objective, leading to constant tension with Iran and
North Korea.
In pursuit of this ambitious agenda, the United States has consistently spent hundreds of billions of
dollars per year on its military -- far more than the sum of the defense budgets of its friends and far
more than the sum of those of its potential adversaries. It has kept that military busy: U.S. troops
have spent roughly twice as many months in combat after the Cold War as they did during it.
Today, roughly 180,000 U.S. soldiers remain stationed on foreign soil, not counting the tens of
thousands more who have rotated through the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of American
and allied soldiers have lost their lives, not to mention the countless civilians caught in the crossfire.

Hegemony Core
This undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security.
It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own
defense, and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans, further
raising the costs of carrying out its foreign policy. During the 1990s, these consequences were
manageable because the United States enjoyed such a favorable power position and chose its wars
carefully Over the last decade, however, the country's relative power has deteriorated, and
policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to fight and how to fight them.
What's more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its
current force structure -- levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States'
ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable.
It is time to abandon the United States' hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint. This
approach would mean giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national
security interests. It would mean transforming the military into a smaller force that goes to war
only when it truly must. It would mean removing large numbers of U.S. troops from forward bases,
creating incentives for allies to provide for their own security And because such a shift would allow
the United States to spend its resources on only the most pressing international threats, it would
help preserve the country's prosperity and security over the long run.
Hegemony fails liberal intervention causes backlash, terrorism, and instability

Iraq and Afghanistan prove
Just as emerging powers have gotten stronger, so, too, have the small states and violent substate
entities that the United States has attempted to discipline, democratize, or eliminate. Whether in
Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, the U.S. military seems to find itself fighting enemies
that prove tougher than expected. (Consider the fact that Washington spent as much in real terms on the
war in Iraq as it did on the war in Vietnam, even though the Iraqi insurgents enjoyed little external
support, whereas China and the Soviet Union lent major support to the Vietcong and the North
Vietnamese.) Yet Washington seems unable to stay out of conflicts involving substate entities, in part
because their elemental nature assaults the internationalist values that U.S. grand strategy is
committed to preserving. Having trumpeted the United States' military superiority, U.S. policymakers
have a hard time saying no to those who argue that the country's prestige will suffer gravely if the
world's leader lets wars great and small run their course.
The enduring strength of these substate groups should give American policymakers pause, since the
United States' current grand strategy entails open-ended confrontation with nationalism and other
forms of identity politics that insurgents and terrorists feed off of. These forces provide the
organizing energy for groups competing for power within countries (as in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and
Iraq), for secessionist movements (as in Kosovo), and for terrorists who oppose the liberal world
order (mainly al Qaeda). Officials in Washington, however, have acted as if they can easily undercut the

Hegemony Core
power of identity through democratic processes, freedom of information, and economic development,
helped along by the judicious application of military power. In fact, identity is resilient, and foreign
peoples react with hostility to outsiders trying to control their lives.
The Iraq war has been a costly case in point. Officials in the Bush administration convinced
themselves that a quick application of overwhelming military power would bring democracy to
Iraq, produce a subsequent wave of democratization across the Arab world, marginalize al Qaeda,
and secure U.S. influence in the region. Instead, Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds stoked the violence that
the United States labored to suppress, and Shiite and Sunni factions fought not only each other but also
the U.S. military. Today's Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has proved neither democratic
nor effective. Sunni terrorists have continued to carry out attacks. The Kurdish parts of Iraq barely
acknowledge their membership in the larger state.
By now, it is clear that the United States has worn out its welcome in Afghanistan, too. The Taliban
continue to resist the U.S. presence, drawing their strength largely from Pashtun nationalism, and
members of the Afghan security forces have, in growing numbers, murdered U.S. and other NATO
soldiers who were there to assist them. Instead of simply punishing the Taliban for their indirect role in
9/11 and hitting al Qaeda as hard as possible, true to its global agenda, the Bush administration pursued
a costly and futile effort to transform Afghanistan, and the Obama administration continued it.
Hegemony causes outsourcing which results in escalation of regional conflict and

destroys foreign relations
Another problematic response to the United States' grand strategy comes from its friends: freeriding. The Cold War alliances that the country has worked so hard to maintain -- namely, NATO
and the U.S. Japanese security agreement -- have provided U.S. partners in Europe and Asia with
such a high level of insurance that they have been able to steadily shrink their militaries and
outsource their defense to Washington. European nations have cut their military spending by
roughly 15 percent in real terms since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of the United
Kingdom, which will soon join the rest as it carries out its austerity policy. Depending on how one counts,
Japanese defense spending has been cut, or at best has remained stable, over the past decade. The
government has unwisely devoted too much spending to ground forces, even as its leaders have expressed
alarm at the rise of Chinese military power -- an air, missile, and naval threat.
Although these regions have avoided major wars, the United States has had to bear more and more of
the burden of keeping the peace. It now spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on defense, whereas its
European NATO allies collectively spend 1.6 percent and Japan spends 1.0 percent. With their high
per capita GDPS, these allies can afford to devote more money to their militaries, yet they have no
incentive to do so. And so while the U.S. government considers draconian cuts in social spending to

Hegemony Core
restore the United States' fiscal health, it continues to subsidize the security of Germany and Japan. This
is welfare for the rich.
U.S. security guarantees also encourage plucky allies to challenge more powerful states, confident
that Washington will save them in the end -- a classic case of moral hazard. This phenomenon has
caused the United States to incur political costs, antagonizing powers great and small for no gain
and encouraging them to seek opportunities to provoke the United States in return. So far, the
United States has escaped getting sucked into unnecessary wars, although Washington dodged a bullet
in Taiwan when the Democratic Progressive Party of Chen Shui-bian governed the island, from 2000
to 2008. His frequent allusions to independence, which ran counter to U.S. policy but which some Bush
administration officials reportedly encouraged, unnecessarily provoked the Chinese government; had he
proceeded, he would have surely triggered a dangerous crisis. Chen would never have entertained such
reckless rhetoric absent the long-standing backing of the U.S. government.
The Philippines and Vietnam (the latter of which has no formal defense treaty with Washington)
also seem to have figured out that they can needle China over maritime boundary disputes and then
seek shelter under the U.S. umbrella when China inevitably reacts. Not only do these disputes make it
harder for Washington to cooperate with Beijing on issues of global importance; they also risk
roping the United States into conflicts over strategically marginal territory.
Georgia is another state that has played this game to the United States' detriment. Overly confident
of Washington's affection for it, the tiny republic deliberately challenged Russia over control of the
disputed region of South Ossetia in August 2008. Regardless of how exactly the fighting began, Georgia
acted far too adventurously given its size, proximity to Russia, and distance from any plausible source of
military help. This needless war ironically made Russia look tough and the United States unreliable.
This dynamic is at play in the Middle East, too. Although U.S. officials have communicated time and
again to leaders in Jerusalem their discomfort with Israeli settlements on the territory occupied
during the 1967 war, Israel regularly increases the population and dimensions of those settlements.
The United States' military largess and regular affirmations of support for Israel have convinced Israeli
hawks that they will suffer no consequences for ignoring U.S. advice. It takes two to make peace in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the creation of humiliating facts on the ground will not bring a
negotiated settlement any closer. And Israel's policies toward the Palestinians are a serious
impediment to improved U.S. relations with the Arab world.

Hegemony Core
Prolonging Transition Causes War

Prolonging transition makes war inevitable
If the United States fails to adopt an offshore balancing strategy based on multipolarity and military
and ideological self-restraint, it probably will, at some point, have to fight to uphold its primacy,
which is a potentially dangerous strategy. Maintaining U.S. hegemony is a game that no longer is
worth the candle, especially given that U.S. primacy may already be in the early stages of erosion.
Paradoxically, attempting to sustain U.S. primacy may well hasten its end by stimulating more
intensive efforts to balance against the United States, thus causing the United States to become
imperially overstretched and involving it in unnecessary wars that will reduce its power. Rather than
risking these outcomes, the United States should begin to retrench strategically and capitalize on the
advantages accruing to insular great powers in multipolar systems. Unilateral offshore balancing,
indeed, is America's next grand strategy.
Try or die the longer the transition, the more dangerous the decline
Larison, American Conservative contributing editor, 9
[Daniel Larison has a PhD in Byzantine history and is a contributing editor at the American Conservative
and a columnist for The Week online. 12-12-9, Six questions for Daniel Larison,
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/six_questions_for_daniel_laris.
DIA: Do you think Barack Obama's conciliatory gestures to the rest of the world represent an
abandonment of American hegemony, or are they an effort to make the world more comfortable with
it?
Mr Larison: Most of his conciliatory gestures have been nothing more than just that, gestures. I
find this preferable to riding roughshod over allies and rivals, but it is undeniably a matter of
adopting a different tone and style rather than changing the nature of America's relations with
other nations. Mr Obama has no interest in abandoning American hegemony or, as he would
prefer to call it, American leadership, but he is attempting to exercise it under straitened conditions. To
that end he has made a number of speeches, and these have naturally been misunderstood and distorted
as "apologies". In reality, Mr Obama has not once apologised for anything America has done in the
past, but he is ridiculed this way because he does not engage in boastful triumphalism. In the zero-sum
reckoning of his extremely insecure domestic critics, any rhetorical or symbolic concession, no matter
how minor, is a defeat and an embarrassment for America. Even on those policies where he has

Hegemony Core
made a great show of changing course, such as engaging with Iran or "resetting" relations with
Russia, the substance of the policies has not changed much at all.
DIA: You are not a hegemonist. Is that a result of the way America has conducted itself abroad, or do
you think unipolarity is inherently bad?
Mr Larison: Unipolarity is abnormal and it is unsustainable, so I think it unwise to organize
American foreign policy around the preservation of something that is going to disappear sooner
or later. Because unipolarity never lasts, the chief means for preserving it is military power, and
this leads a government to entangle itself in a number of unnecessary, costly and ultimately
ruinous wars to keep hold of something that will slip away from it in any case. Indeed, the
strenuous effort to hold on to preeminence usually hastens an even steeper decline than would
have happened otherwise. The paradox is that it is the hegemonists who have done more to
undermine American hegemony than anything their opponents could have hoped to achieve, while
their opponents have called for husbanding America's resources responsibly and carefully rather than
frittering them away. Certainly, the frequent recourse to military force over the last 20 years has
deepened my antipathy to the constant and unnecessary projection of American power around
the world. The goal of maintaining hegemony seems to me a foolish one, but it is the means employed
to that end that I find indefensible and outrageous.
Heg causes instability

Although at first the conclusion may appear counterintuitive, states that seek hegemony invariably end
up being less, not more, secure. Being powerful is good in international politics, but being too
powerful is not. The reasoning behind this axiom is straightforward as well as the geopolitical
counterpart to the law of physics that holds that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction. Simply put, the response to hegemony is the emergence of countervailing power. Because
international politics is indeed a competitive, "self-help" system, when too much power is
concentrated in the hands of one state, others invariably fear for their own security. Each state
fears that a hegemon will use its overwhelming power to aggrandize itself at that state's expense
and will act defensively to offset hegemonic power. Thus, one of hegemony's paradoxes is that it
contains the seeds of its own destruction.
Risk is linear costs to maintaining heg will only escalate

Layne, Texas A&M University Bush School of Government and Public Services
international affairs professor, 6

Hegemony Core
(Christopher, Associate Professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University, 2006, The Peace of Illusions, p 190, Accessed 6/27/12, THW)
Advocates of hegemony claim that it is illusory to think that the United States can retract its
military power safely from Eurasia. The answer to this assertion is that the risks and costs of
American grand strategy are growing, and the strategy is not likely to work much longer in any
event. As other statesnotably Chinarapidly close the gap, U.S. hegemony is fated to end in the
next decade or two regardless of U.S. efforts to prolong it. At the same time, understandable doubts
about the credibility of U.S. security guarantees are driving creeping re-nationalization by
Americas Eurasian allies, which, in turn, is leading to a reversion to multipolarity. In this changing
geopolitical context, the costs of trying to hold on to hegemony are high and going to become higher.
Rather than fostering peace and stability in Eurasia, Americas military commitments abroad have
become a source of insecurity for the United States, because they carry the risk of entrapping the
United States in a great power Eurasian wars.

Hegemony Core
Causes Conflict
US invented the nuclear weaponfurther international leadership leads to war
Bacevich, Boston University professor of history and international relations, 9
[Andrew, April 30, 2009, Salon, Fairwell to the American Century
http://www.salon.com/writer/andrew_bacevich/. Accessed 7-7-13 BLE]
What flag-wavers tend to leave out of their account of the American Century is not only the
contributions of others, but the various missteps perpetrated by the United States missteps, it
should be noted, that spawned many of the problems bedeviling us today. The instances of folly and
criminality bearing the label made in Washington may not rank up there with the Armenian genocide,
the Bolshevik Revolution, the appeasement of Adolf Hitler, or the Holocaust, but they sure dont qualify
as small change. To give them their due is necessarily to render the standard account of the American
Century untenable. Here are several examples, each one familiar, even if its implications for the problems
we face today are studiously ignored: Cuba. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain for the
proclaimed purpose of liberating the so-called Pearl of the Antilles. When that brief war ended,
Washington reneged on its promise. If there actually has been an American Century, it begins here,
with the U.S. government breaking a solemn commitment, while baldly insisting otherwise. By
converting Cuba into a protectorate, the United States set in motion a long train of events leading
eventually to the rise of Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
even todays Guantnamo Bay prison camp. The line connecting these various developments may not be a
straight one, given the many twists and turns along the way, but the dots do connect. The Bomb. Nuclear
weapons imperil our existence. Used on a large scale, they could destroy civilization itself. Even now,
the prospect of a lesser power like North Korea or Iran acquiring nukes sends jitters around the
world. American presidents Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line declare the abolition of
these weapons to be an imperative. What they are less inclined to acknowledge is the role the United
States played in afflicting humankind with this scourge. The United States invented the bomb. The
United States alone among members of the nuclear club actually employed it as a weapon of
war. The U.S. led the way in defining nuclear-strike capacity as the benchmark of power in the
postwar world, leaving other powers like the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and China scrambling
to catch up. Today, the U.S. still maintains an enormous nuclear arsenal at the ready and adamantly
refuses to commit itself to a no-first-use policy, even as it professes its horror at the prospect of
some other nation doing as the United States itself has done. Iran. Extending his hand to Tehran,
President Obama has invited those who govern the Islamic republic to unclench their fists. Yet to a
considerable degree, those clenched fists are of our own making. For most Americans, the discovery of
Iran dates from the time of the notorious hostage crisis of 1979-1981 when Iranian students occupied the
U.S. embassy in Tehran, detained several dozen U.S. diplomats and military officers and subjected the
administration of Jimmy Carter to a 444-day-long lesson in abject humiliation.

Hegemony Core
Causes Terrorism
US hegemony triggers backlash, fostering terrorism
Layne, Texas A&M George Bush School of Government and Public Service
professor, 7
[Christopher, 2007 and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security, American Empire: A Debate//,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v031/31.2layne.html, accessed 7-6-13 BLE]
After 9/11, many foreign policy analysts and pundits asked the question, Why do they hate us? his
question missed the key point, however. No doubt, there are Islamic fundamentalists who do hate
the United States for cultural, religious, and ideological reasons. And, for sure, notwithstanding
American neoconservatives obvious relish for making it so, to some extent the War on Terrorism
inescapably has overtones of a clash of civilizations. Still, this isntand should not be allowed to
becomea replay of the Crusades. As Scheuer says, one of the greatest dangers for Americans in
deciding how to confront the Islamist threat lies in continuing to believeat the urging of senior
U.S. leadersthat Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we
do. The United States may be greatly reviled in some quarters of the Islamic world, but were the
United States not so intimately involved in the affairs of the Middle East, its hardly likely that this
detestation would have manifested itself as violently as it did on 9/11. Experts on terrorism understand
the political motives that drive the actions of groups like al Qaeda. In his important recent study of suicide
terrorists, Robert A. Pape found that what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a
specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from
territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Pape found that even al Qaeda fits this
pattern: although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, a principal
objective of Osama bin Laden is the expulsion of American troops from the Persian Gulf and the
reduction of Washingtons power in the region. This finding is seconded by Scheuer, who describes
bin Ladens objectives as: the end of U.S. aid to Israel and the ultimate elimination of that state; the
removal of U.S. and Western forces from the Arabian Peninsula; the removal of U.S. and Western military
forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim lands; the end of U.S. support for oppression of Muslims
by Russia, China, and India; the end of U.S. protection for repressive, apostate Muslim regimes in Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, et cetera; and the conservation of the Muslim worlds energy resources
and their sale at higher prices. Simply put, it is American primacy, and the policies that flow from it,
that have made the United States a lightning rod for Islamic anger.
US hegemony pursuit makes terrorist attacks more likely

Layne, professor at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at
Texas A&M University, 07
[Christopher, 2007 and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security, American Empire: A Debate//, pg. 6768, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v031/31.2layne.html, accessed 7-6-13 BLE]

Hegemony Core
Terrorism: When Over There Becomes Over Here 9/11was not a random act of violence visited upon the
United States. The United States was the target of al Qaeda's terrorist strikes because that group
harbored specific political grievances against the United States. If we step back for a moment from
our horror and revulsion at the events of September 11, we can see that the attack was in keeping with the
Clausewitzian paradigm of war: force was used against the United States by its adversaries to
advance their political objectives. AsMichael Scheurer, who headed the CIA analytical team monitoring
Osamabin Laden andal Qaeda,put it, "In the context of ideas bin Laden shares withhis brethren, the
military actions of al Qaeda and its allies are acts of war, notterrorism...meant to advance bin Laden's
clear, focused, limited, and widelypopular foreign policy goals..." Terrorism, Bruce Hoffman says, is
"about power: the pursuit of power, the acquisition of power, and use of power to achieve political
change.' As Clausewitz himself observed, "war is not anact of senseless passion but is controlled by its
political object ?'" Terrorism really is a form of asymmetric warfare waged against the United States
by groups that lack the military wherewithal to slug it out with the United Statest oe-to-toe. 9/11
was a violent counterreaction to America's geopoliticalandculturalprimacy. As Richard K. Betts
presciently observed in a 1998 For-eign Affairsarticle, "It is hardly likely that Middle Eastern radicals
would behatching schemes like the destruction of the World Trade Center if the UnitedStates had not been
identified so long as the mainstay of Israel, the shah ofIran, and conservative Arab regimes and the source
of a cultural assault onIslam." U.S. primacy fuels terrorist groups like al Qaeda and fans Islamic
fundamentalism, which is a form of "blowback" against America's preponderance and its world roles"As
long as the United States uses its global primacy to impose its imperial sway on regions like the
Persian Gulf, it will be the target of politically motivated terrorist groups likeal Qaeda.

Hegemony Core
Causes China Conflict

US hegemony leads to conflict with China and resource competition
Shor, historian at Wayne State University, 12
[Francis Shor, 1-1-2012, BRILL, Declining US Hegemony and Rising Chinese Power: A
Formula for Conflict? 7-6-13, JZ]
While the United States no longer dominates the global economy as it did during the first two decades
after WWII, it still is the leading economic power in the world. However, over the last few decades
China, with all its internal contradictions, has made enormous leaps until it now occupies the number
two spot. In fact, the IMF recently projected that the Chinese economy would become the worlds
largest in 2016. In manufacturing China has displaced the US in so many areas, including becoming
the number one producer of steel and exporter of four-fifths of all of the textile products in the world
and two-thirds of the worlds copy machines, DVD players, and microwaves ovens. Yet, a significant
portion of this manufacturing is still owned by foreign companies, including U.S. firms like General
Motors. [5]
On the other hand, China is also the largest holder of U.S. foreign reserves, e.g. treasury bonds. This
may be one of the reasons mitigating full-blown conflict with the U.S. now, since China has such a large
stake in the U.S. economy, both as a holder of bonds and as the leading exporter of goods to the U.S.
Nonetheless, the U.S. has blocked several large scale Chinese investments and buyouts of oil companies,
technology firms, and other enterprises. [6] In effect, there are still clear nation-centric responses to
Chinas rising economic power, especially as an expression of the U.S. governing elites ideological
commitment to national security.
At the same time, China is now the worlds largest consumer of essential metals (copper, zinc,
platinum) and one of the most voracious importers of hydrocarbons. Essential investment and trade
by China in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela, plus engagement with a host of Central Asian
countries, indicates Chinas growing need for oil and natural gas, as well as its growing challenge to
U.S. geostrategic interests in these aforementioned countries and regions. [7] With Chinas energy
consumption approaching 20% of the worlds total, it may well overtake the U.S. as the largest
hydrocarbon consumer in the next decade or so. It is already the number one producer of greenhouse
gasses although the U.S. is still the per capita leader. Nonetheless, as Michael Klare points out, the
scramble for more oil will lead to extracting what he calls tough oil, resulting in more expensive
and environmentally destructive production. [8]
Compounding the energy strains and resource competition are additional environmental
catastrophes in the form of global warming and desertification. As one skeptical analysis of Chinas
rise warns: By impinging on the very process of world-systemic reproduction itself, the mutually
interpenetrating character of energy resource bottlenecks and extreme climate perturbations should
make an already unlikely transition in world-systemic leadership between a declining U.S. and a
rising China even more inconceivable especially considering these bottlenecks and perturbations will

Hegemony Core
both compound Chinas well-documented explosion of peasant and worker protests and hamstring the
capacity of the Chinese state to respond to myriad crises. [9]
Beyond the internal and external environmental crises facing China and the United States, the
resource competition between these two powers will invariably lead to geostrategic conflicts. The
U.S. obsession over the growing Chinese economic and geopolitical threats deliberately obfuscates
those factors that have led to a declining global hegemony. James Petras captures the global
contradictions that flow from these differing geostrategic postures in the world:

Hegemony Core
Causes Russian-Chinese Alliance

US hegemonic stance causes Russia-China counter-balancing
Cohen & Tigay, writers for the Heritage Foundation, 13
[Ariel & Benjamin, March 1, 2013, Mr. Xi Goes to Moscow: For Chinas Leader, Its Russia First,
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/03/01/mr-xi-goes-to-moscow-for-chinas-leader-its-russia-first/, accessed 77-13 BLE]
Chinas new president, Xi Jinping, will make his first official foreign visit to Russia this month. Xis
decision to make his first visit abroad to Russia suggests an effort to improve relations and cement their
strategic partnership. Washington should pay attention to the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian and Chinese bilateral relations have vastly improved.
Currently, both countries would like to displace U.S. hegemony, especially along their borders.
Russia repeatedly demanded that the U.S. pull out of the air force base in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,
while China would like to keep the U.S. naval presence in the Pacific in check.
Russias anti-American foreign policy, often with shrill propaganda overtones, seeks to establish a
Russian pole in the global world order. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that Xis
upcoming visit is expected to add new impetus to the further development of the China-Russia
comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which
Moscow and Beijing founded, aims to fight the three evils: separatism, extremism, and terrorism.
However, SinoRussian cooperation is not just geopolitical but also ideological. Russia and China
want to halt the spread of democracy and keep the U.S. out of their internal affairs, as well as of
regimes friendly to them. They believe that any government has a right to crack down on internal dissent
or censure the press, including the Internet.
With these principles in mind, they have worked in concert to check U.S. efforts in the Middle East
and protect its own interests, such as legitimizing authoritarian regimes. They vetoed and stifled
sanctions and internationally supported peace plans for Syria. They enabled Iran to continue its
nuclear program by refusing to tighten sanctions.
China, which is the principal supporter of North Korea, condemns even the possibility of military action
against Pyongyangand so does Russia. They increasingly present an alternative to Western-style
democracy and are two stalwarts of the broad front against the U.S.
Russia and China are moving to publicize their economic ties. The two countries have already moved
to trade with each other using their own currenciesand excluding the dollar. The two countries have
promised to increase trade dramatically over the next decade, and they are working on finalizing a deal on
the most important sector of their bilateral trade: energy.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich is conducting negotiations in China on a natural gas
deal, saying that a significant breakthrough had been made over the past few months. This gas pipeline
will connect Russias abundant gas reserves with Chinas ever-growing need for energy.

Hegemony Core
However, Chinas rapid economic rise and desire for an enhanced global position could spell trouble for
the relationship down the road. Russias economy is lagging behind China, and Moscow can become
subservient to Beijing economically, turning into the natural resource appendage of Chinas continued
growth.
As China continues to expand its sphere of influence through military, economic, smart, and soft power,
Russia may become its junior partner in international affairs.
For now, mutual geopolitical and economic interests are drawing Russia and China together. Xis
first visit sends the clear message that China seeks to cement closer ties with its anti-American
northern neighborsand not with the U.S.
US hegemony provokes Russian and Chinese military alliancerisks nuclear

exchange
Roberts, American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate, 7
[Paul Craig, August 12, 2007, U.S. Hegemony Spawns Russian-Chinese Military Alliance ,
http://www.creators.com/opinion/paul-craig-roberts/u-s-hegemony-spawns-russian-chinese-militaryalliance.html, accessed 7-7-13 BLE]
This week the Russian and Chinese militaries are conducting a joint military exercise involving
large numbers of troops and combat vehicles. The former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgkyzstan
and Kazakstan are participating. Other countries appear ready to join the military alliance.
This new potent military alliance is a real world response to neoconservative delusions about U.S.
hegemony. Neocons believe that the United States is supreme in the world and can dictate its course.
The neoconservative idiots have actually written papers, read by Russians and Chinese, about why the
United States must use its military superiority to assert hegemony over Russia and China.
Cynics believe that the neocons are just shills, like Bush and Cheney, for the military-security complex
and are paid to restart the cold war for the sake of the profits of the armaments industry. But the fact is
that the neocons actually believe their delusions about American hegemony.
Russia and China have now witnessed enough of the Bush administration's unprovoked aggression
in the world to take neocon intentions seriously. As the United States has proven that it cannot
occupy the Iraqi city of Baghdad despite five years of efforts, it most certainly cannot occupy
Russia or China. That means the conflict toward which the neocons are driving will be a nuclear
conflict.
In an attempt to gain the advantage in a nuclear conflict, the neocons are positioning US antiballistic missiles on Soviet borders in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is an idiotic provocation
as the Russians can eliminate anti-ballistic missiles with cruise missiles. Neocons are people who
desire war, but know nothing about it.
Thus, the U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Reagan and Gorbachev ended the cold war. However, U.S. administrations after Reagan's have broken the
agreements and understandings. The United States gratuitously brought NATO and anti-ballistic missiles
to Russia's borders. The Bush regime has initiated a propaganda war against the Russian government of V.
Putin.
These are gratuitous acts of aggression. Both the Russian and Chinese governments are trying to
devote resources to their economic development, not to their militaries. Yet, both are being forced
by America's aggressive posture to revamp their militaries.
Americans need to understand what the neocon Bush regime cannot: a nuclear exchange between the
United States, Russia, and China would establish the hegemony of the cockroach.

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Causes Iran Conflict

American hegemonic pursuits in Middle East makes conflict with Iran inevitable
Layne, at Texas A&MGeorge Bush School of Government and Public Service
professor, 7
[Christopher, 2007 and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security, American Empire: A Debate//,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v031/31.2layne.html, accessed 7-6-13 BLE]
Iran Because of the strategy of primacy and empire, the United States and Iran are on course for a
showdown. The main source of conflictor at leastthe one that has grabbed thelion'sshare of the
headlinesis Tehran's evident determination to develop a nuclear weapons program. Washington's
policy, as President George W. Bush has stated on several occasionsin language that recalls his prewar
stance on Iraqis that a nuclear-armed Iran is"intolerable."Beyond nuclear weapons, however, there
are other important issues that are driving the United States and Iran toward an armed
confrontation.Chief among these is Iraq. Recently, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, has
accused Tehran of meddling in Iraqi affairs by providing arms and training to Shiite militias and
by currying favor with the Shiite politicians who dominate Iraq's recently elected government. With
Iraq teetering on thebrink of a sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, concerns about Ira-nian
interference have been magnified. In a real sense, however, Iran's nuclear program and its role in
Iraq are merely the tip of the iceberg. The fundamental cause of tensions between the United States
and Iran is the nature of America's ambitions in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. These are
reflected in currentU.S. grand strategywhich has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine. TheBush
Doctrine's three key components are rejection of deterrence in favor ofpreventive/preemptive military
action; determination to effectuate a radicalshake-up in the politics of the Persian Gulf and Middle East;
and gaining U.S.dominance over that region. In this respect, it is hardly coincidental that the
administration's policy toward Tehran bears a striking similarity to its policy during the run-up to
the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, not only on the nuclear weapons issue butominouslywith
respect to regime change and democ-ratization. This is because the same strategic assumptions that
underlay theadministration's pre-invasion Iraq policy now are driving its Iran policy. Thekey question
today is whether these assumptions are correct.

Hegemony Core
Causes Oil Dependence

US hegemony requires energy imperialism dependence on oil high
Foster, University of Oregon sociology professor, 5
(John Bellamy, editor of Monthly Review, 5-25-5, Monthly Review, "Peak Oil and
Energy Imperialism," http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/peak-oil-and-energyimperialism, accessed 7/7/13, AR)
The rise in overt militarism and imperialism at the outset of the twenty-first century can plausibly
be attributed largely to attempts by the dominant interests of the world economy to gain control
over diminishing world oil supplies. 1 Beginning in 1998 a series of strategic energy initiatives were
launched in national security circles in the United States in response to: (1) the crossing of the 50
percent threshold in U.S. importation of foreign oil; (2) the disappearance of spare world oil production
capacity; (3) concentration of an increasing percentage of all remaining conventional oil resources in the
Persian Gulf; and (4) looming fears of peak oil. The response of the vested interests to this world oil
supply crisis was to construct what Michael Klare in Blood and Oil has called a global strategy of
maximum extraction.2 This required that the United States as the hegemonic power, with the
backing of the other leading capitalist states, seek to extend its control over world oil reserves with
the object of boosting production. Seen in this light, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (the
geopolitical doorway to Western access to Caspian Sea Basin oil and natural gas) following the 9/11
attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the rapid expansion of U.S. military activities in the Gulf of
Guinea in Africa (where Washington sees itself as in competition with Beijing), and the increased
threats now directed at Iran and Venezuelaall signal the rise of a dangerous new era of energy
imperialism.
Oil dependence leads to superpower conflict with China

Luft, LA Times writer, 4
(Gal, Analysis of Global Security, 2/2/4 U.S., China Are on Collision Course Over Oil
http://www.iags.org/la020204.htm, accessed 7/9/13, AR)
Sixty-seven years ago, oil-starved Japan embarked on an aggressive expansionary policy designed to
secure its growing energy needs, which eventually led the nation into a world war. Today, another Asian
power thirsts for oil: China. While the U.S. is absorbed in fighting the war on terror, the seeds of
what could be the next world war are quietly germinating. With 1.3 billion people and an economy
growing at a phenomenal 8% to 10% a year, China, already a net oil importer, is growing
increasingly dependent on imported oil. Last year, its auto sales grew 70% and its oil imports were up
30% from the previous year, making it the world's No. 2 petroleum user after the U.S. By 2030, China is
expected to have more cars than the U.S. and import as much oil as the U.S. does today.

Hegemony Core
Dependence on oil means dependence on the Middle East, home to 70% of the world's proven
reserves. With 60% of its oil imports coming from the Middle East, China can no longer afford to sit on
the sidelines of the tumultuous region. Its way of forming a footprint in the Middle East has been
through providing technology and components for weapons of mass destruction and their delivery
systems to unsavory regimes in places such as Iran, Iraq and Syria. A report by the U.S.-China
Economic and Security Review Commission, a group created by Congress to monitor U.S.-China
relations, warned in 2002 that "this arms trafficking to these regimes presents an increasing threat to U.S.
security interests in the Middle East." The report concludes: "A key driver in China's relations with
terrorist-sponsoring governments is its dependence on foreign oil to fuel its economic development. This
dependency is expected to increase over the coming decade." Optimists claim that the world oil market
will be able to accommodate China and that, instead of conflict, China's thirst could create mutual desire
for stability in the Middle East and thus actually bring Beijing closer to the U.S. History shows the
opposite: Superpowers find it difficult to coexist while competing over scarce resources. The main
bone of contention probably will revolve around China's relations with Saudi Arabia, home to a
quarter of the world's oil. The Chinese have already supplied the Saudis with intermediate-range
ballistic missiles, and they played a major role 20 years ago in a Saudi-financed Pakistani nuclear
effort that may one day leave a nuclear weapon in the hands of a Taliban-type regime in Riyadh or
Islamabad. Since 9/11, a deep tension in U.S.-Saudi relations has provided the Chinese with an
opportunity to win the heart of the House of Saud. The Saudis hear the voices in the U.S. denouncing
Saudi Arabia as a "kernel of evil" and proposing that the U.S. seize and occupy the kingdom's oil fields.
The Saudis especially fear that if their citizens again perpetrate a terror attack in the U.S., there would be
no alternative for the U.S. but to terminate its long-standing commitment to the monarchy and perhaps
even use military force against it. The Saudis realize that to forestall such a scenario they can no longer
rely solely on the U.S. to defend the regime and must diversify their security portfolio. In their search for
a new patron, they might find China the most fitting and willing candidate. The risk of Beijing's
emerging as a competitor for influence in the Middle East and a Saudi shift of allegiance are things
Washington should consider as it defines its objectives and priorities in the 21st century . Without a
comprehensive strategy designed to prevent China from becoming an oil consumer on a par with the U.S.,
a superpower collision is in the cards. The good news is that we are still in a position to halt China's
slide into total dependency.

Hegemony Core
Causes Proliferation
Heg causes prolif and terrorism
Layne, Texas A&M University Bush School of Government and Public Services
international affairs professor, 7
(Christopher, Holder of the Mary Julia and George R. Jordan Professorship of
International Affairs at Texas A & M Universitys George H. W. Bush School of
Government and Public Service. 8/2/7, America's Middle East Grand Strategy after Iraq:
The Moment for Offshore Balancing has Arrived, Paper Prepared for the 2007 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 29 August-2
September 2007,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/1/0/9/7/pages21097
3/p210973-1.php, Accessed 7/7/13, AR)
In addition to soft balancing, asymmetric strategies are another type of nontraditional balancing
that is being employed to contest US primacy. When employed by states, asymmetric strategies
mean the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities. Regional powers
especially those on the US hit list like Iran and Saddam Husseins Iraq cannot slug it out toe-to-toe
against the US dominant high-tech conventional forces. Because they are threatened by the US,
however, these states seek other methods of offsetting American power, and dissuading Washington
from using its military muscle against them. WMD especially the possession of nuclear weapons
is one way these states can level the strategic playing field and deter the US from attacking them.
Terrorism is another asymmetric strategy one employed by non-state actors like Al-Qaeda and
similar jihadist groups to resist US dominance. The use of asymmetric strategies to oppose
American power especially in the Middle East where US policy has an imperial dimension
illustrates the dictum that empires inevitably provoke resistance.

Hegemony Core
Decline Good Counterbalancing

Pulling back solves counterbalancing and forces our allies to bear some of the
burden of their own defense.
Walt, Belfer Professor of IR at Harvard, 2013
(Stephen, 1/2/2013, More or Less: The Debate on US Grand Strategy, Foreign Policy,
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/01/02/more_or_less_the_debate_on_us_grand_strategy,
accessed 7/9/13, DVO)
Fourth, B, I, & W largely ignore the issue of opportunity cost. Advocates of restraint like Posen (and
myself) are not saying that the United States cannot afford to intervene in lots of overseas venues,
they are saying that the United States would be better off with a smaller set of commitments and a
more equitable division of labor between itself and its principal allies. If the United States were not
spending more than more of the world combined on "deep engagement," it could invest more in
infrastructure here at home, lower taxes, balance budgets more easily, provide more generous health or
welfare benefits, or do whatever combination of the above the public embraced.
Fifth, B, I, & W argue that deep engagement works because hardly anybody is actively trying to balance
American power. In their view, most of the world likes this strategy, and is eager for Washington to
continue along the same path. On the one hand, this isn't that surprising: why shouldn't NATO countries
or Japan prefer a world where they can spend 1-2% of GDP on defense while Uncle Sucker
shoulders the main burden? More importantly, advocates of restraint believe doing somewhat less
would encourage present allies to bear a fairer share of the burden, and also discourage some of
them from adventurist behavior encouraged by excessive confidence in U.S. protection (which
Posen terms "reckless driving"). If the U.S. played hard-to-get on occasion, it would discover that
some of its allies would do more both to secure their own interests and to remain eligible for future
U.S. help. Instead of bending over backwards to convince the rest of the world that the United
States is 100 percent reliable, U.S. leaders should be encouraging other states to bend over
backwards to convince us that they are worth supporting.
Moreover, even if most of the world isn't balancing U.S. power, the parts that are remain
troublesome. For instance, "deep engagement" in the Middle East has produced some pretty
vigorous balancing behavior, in the form of Iraq and Iran's nuclear programs, Tehran's support for
groups such as Hezbollah, and the virulent anti-Americanism of Al Qaeda. Indeed, the more deeply
engaged we became in the region (especially with the onset of "dual containment" following the first
Gulf War), the more local resistance we faced. Ditto our "deep engagement" in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And given that those two wars may have cost upwards of $3 trillion, it seems clear that
at least a few people have "balanced" against the United States with a certain amount of success.

Hegemony Core
Hurts the Economy

Hegemony hurts Americas fiscal health
Drezner, Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy international politics
professor, 13
[Daniel W., International Security, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2013, Military Primacy Doesnt Pay
(Nearly As Much As You Think)., Project Muse, accessed, 7-9-13, ]
There are two significant caveats to this body of evidence, however. The first reservation is that in all of
these theorieshegemonic stability, power transition, long cycleeventually the cost of maintaining
global public goods catches up to the sole superpower. Other countries free-ride off of the hegemon,
allowing them to grow faster. Technologies diffuse from the hegemonic power to the rest of the
world, facilitating catch-up. Chinese analysts have posited that these phenomena, occurring right
now, are allowing China to outgrow [End Page 72] the United States.95 The absence of burden
sharing is particularly acute on the military side of the public goods equation. Eugene Gholz and
Daryl Press argue that the costs of a forward military presence outweigh the gains accruing to the
United States from global stability.96 Nuno Monteiro observes that the United States has been at war in
thirteen of the twenty-two postCold War yearsa marked contrast to pre-1989 levels.97 These military
operations might have prevented wider wars from breaking out, but the United States continues to pay
the price in blood and treasure. The costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan operations have exacted a
significant toll on Americas fiscal healthmore than $3 trillion to date, with an estimated $4 trillion to
$6 trillion total projected for both conflicts.98
Attempts to bolster the economy through hegemony, allow other countries to

undermine hegemony.
professor, 13
The other hypothesized voluntary benefit comes from geopolitical favoritism, wherein other sovereign
jurisdictions provide voluntary economic concessions to the dominant security actor. Primacy allows the
hegemon to use its military power as a form of extended deterrence to protect multiple strategic
partners. In return, these allies and partners can confer economic benefits, helping to underwrite
military hegemony.41 If these countries give preferential treatment to the hegemons investors, support
its currency as the worlds reserve currency, buy hegemon-issued debt as a way to finance defense
spending, or subsidize the hegemons power projection through basing fees, arms purchases, or other
transfers, then the relationship between military power and pecuniary benefits comes into greater focus.
More generally, those actors who rely on the hegemons security umbrella are less likely to question

Hegemony Core
or subvert its economic [End Page 62] order. As Norrlof explains, The United States is obligated by
treaty to defend roughly fifty countries. These interventions, whether to push back aggressors, or
for humanitarian reasons, have purchased goodwill and provided Great Powers with an interest in
preserving an American-centered world order.42

Hegemony Core
Hegemony Alternatives

Hegemony Core
Offshore Balancing Solves

Offshore balancing is key to solve all global problems counterbalancing, terrorism,
and prolif allows small powers to solve regional problems while the US intervenes
only if necessary
The United States should replace its unnecessary, ineffective, and expensive hegemonic quest with a
more restrained grand strategy. Washington should not retreat into isolationism but refocus its
efforts on its three biggest security challenges: preventing a powerful rival from upending the
global balance of power, fighting terrorists, and limiting nuclear proliferation. These challenges are
not new, but the United States must develop more carefully calculated and discriminating policies to
address them.
For roughly a century, American strategists have striven to ensure that no single state dominated the giant
landmass of Eurasia, since such a power could then muster the resources to threaten the United States
directly. To prevent this outcome, the United States rightly went to war against Germany and Japan and
contained the Soviet Union. Although China may ultimately try to assume the mantle of Eurasian
hegemon, this outcome is neither imminent nor inevitable. China's economy still faces many pitfalls,
and the country is surrounded by powerful states that could and would check its expansion,
including India and Russia, both of which have nuclear weapons. Japan, although it underspends
on defense today, is rich and technologically advanced enough to contribute to a coalition of states
that could balance against China. Other maritime Asian countries, even without the United States
as a backstop, could also make common cause against China. The United States should maintain
the capability to assist them if need be. But it should proceed cautiously in order to ensure that its
efforts do not unnecessarily threaten China and thus encourage the very ambitions Washington hopes to
deter or prompt a new round of free-riding or reckless driving by others in Asia.
The United States must also defend itself against al Qaeda and any similar successor groups. Since
such terrorists can threaten Americans' lives, the U.S. government should keep in place the prudent
defensive measures that have helped lower the risk of attacks, such as more energetic intelligence
efforts and better airport security. (A less interventionist foreign policy will help, too: it was partly the
U.S. military's presence in Saudi Arabia that radicalized Osama bin Laden and his followers in the first
place.) When it comes to offense, the United States must still pursue terrorists operating abroad, so
that they spend their scarce resources trying to stay alive rather than plotting new attacks. It will
need to continue cooperating with other vulnerable governments and help them develop their own police
and military forces. Occasionally, the U.S. military will have to supplement these efforts with air strikes,
drone attacks, and special operations raids.
But Washington should keep the threat in perspective. Terrorists are too weak to threaten the country's
sovereignty, territorial integrity, or power position. Because the threat is modest, and because trying to

Hegemony Core
reform other societies by force is too costly, the United States must fight terrorism with carefully
applied force, rather than through wholesale nation-building efforts such as that in Afghanistan.
Finally, a restrained grand strategy would also pay close attention to the spread of nuclear weapons,
while relying less on the threat of military force to stop it. Thanks to the deterrence provided by its
own massive nuclear forces, the United States faces little risk of a direct nuclear attack by another
state. But Washington does need to keep nonstate actors from obtaining nuclear weapons or material. To
prevent them from taking advantage of lax safeguards at nuclear facilities, the U.S. government should
share best practices regarding nuclear security with other countries, even ones that it would prefer
did not possess nuclear weapons in the first place. The United States does already cooperate somewhat
with Pakistan on this issue, but it must stand ready to do more and ultimately to undertake such efforts
with others.
The loss of a government's control over its nuclear weapons during a coup, revolution, or civil war is a far
harder problem to forestall. It may be possible for U.S. forces to secure weapons in a period of
instability, with the help of local actors who see the dangers for their own country if the weapons
get loose. Conditions may lend themselves to a preventive military attack, to seize or disable the
weapons. In some cases, however, the United States might have to make do with less sure-fire responses.
It could warn those who seized the nuclear weapons in a period of upheaval that they would make
themselves targets for retaliation if the weapons were ever used by terrorists. And it could better surveil
international sea and air routes and more intensively monitor both its own borders for nuclear smuggling
and those of the potential source countries.
These measures may seem incommensurate with the terrible toll of a nuclear blast. But the
alternative strategy -- fighting preventive conventional wars against nascent nuclear powers -- is an
expensive and uncertain solution to proliferation. The Obama administration's oft-repeated warning
that deterrence and containment of a nuclear Iran is unacceptable makes little sense given the many ways
a preventive war could go wrong and in light of the redundant deterrent capability the United States
already possesses. Indeed, the more Washington relies on military force to halt proliferation, the
more likely it is that countries will decide to acquire the ultimate deterrent.
A more restrained America would also have to head off nuclear arms races. In retrospect, the size,
composition, doctrine, and highly alert posture of U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces during the Cold War
seem unduly risky relative to the strategic problem those weapons were supposed to solve. Nuclear
weapons act as potent deterrents to aggression, but significantly smaller forces than those the
United States now possesses, carefully managed, should do the job. To avoid a replay of Cold Warstyle nuclear competition, the United States should pursue a new multilateral arms control regime
that places ceilings on nuclear inventories and avoids hair-trigger force postures.

Hegemony Core
Retrenchment Solves
Retrenchment solves naval and air force can adequately address global issues
without foreign presence
A grand strategy of restraint would narrow U.S. foreign policy to focus on those three larger
objectives. What would it look like in practice? First, the United States would recast its alliances so
that other countries shared actual responsibility for their own defense. NATO is the easiest case; the
United States should withdraw from the military command structure and return the alliance to the
primarily political organization it once was. The Europeans can decide for themselves whether they want
to retain the military command structure under the auspices of the European Union or dismantle it
altogether. Most U.S. troops should come home from Europe, although by mutual agreement, the
United States could keep a small number of naval and air bases on the continent.
The security treaty with Japan is a more difficult problem; it needs to be renegotiated but not
abandoned. As the treaty stands now, the United States shoulders most of the burden of defending
Japan, and the Japanese government agrees to help. The roles should be reversed, so that Japan
assumes responsibility for its own defense, with Washington offering backup. Given concerns about
China's rising power, not all U.S. forces should leave the region. But the Pentagon should pare down its
presence in Japan to those relevant to the most immediate military problems. All U.S. marines could
be withdrawn from the country, bringing to an end the thorny negotiations about their future on the island
of Okinawa. The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force should keep the bulk of their forces stationed in and
around Japan in place, but with appropriate reductions. Elsewhere in Asia, the U.S. military can cooperate
with other states to ensure access to the region should future crises arise, but it should not seek new
permanent bases.
The military should also reassess its commitments in the Persian Gulf: the United States should
help protect states in the region against external attacks, but it cannot take responsibility for
defending them against internal dissent. Washington still needs to reassure those governments that fear
that a regional power such as Iran will attack them and hijack their oil wealth, since a single oil-rich
hegemon in the region would no doubt be a source of mischief. The U.S. military has proved adept at
preventing such an outcome in the past, as it did when it defended Saudi Arabia and repelled
Saddam's forces from Kuwait in 1991. Ground forces bent on invasion make easy targets for air attacks.
The aircraft and cruise missiles aboard U.S. naval forces stationed in the region could provide
immediate assistance. With a little advance notice, U.S. Air Force aircraft could quickly reinforce land
bases maintained by the Arab states of the Gulf, as they did during the Gulf War when the regional
powers opposed to Saddams aggression prepared the way for reinforcement from the U.S. military by
maintaining extra base capacity and fuel.

Hegemony Core
But U.S. soldiers no longer need to live onshore in Gulf countries, where they incite antiAmericanism and tie the U.S. government to autocratic regimes of dubious legitimacy. For example,
Bahrain is suffering considerable internal unrest, which raises questions about the future viability of
the United States' growing military presence there. The Iraq war proved that trying to install new
regimes in Arab countries is a fool's errand; defending existing regimes facing internal rebellion will
be no easier.
Under a restrained grand strategy, U.S. military forces could shrink significantly, both to save money
and to send allies the message that it's time they did more for themselves. Because the Pentagon
would, under this new strategy, swear off counterinsurgency, it could cut the number of ground forces
in half. The navy and the air force, meanwhile, should be cut by only a quarter to a third, since their
assets take a long time to produce and would still be needed for any effort to maintain the global balance
of power. Naval and air forces are also well suited to solving the security problems of Asia and the
Persian Gulf. Because these forces are highly mobile, only some need be present in key regions. The
rest can be kept at home, as a powerful strategic reserve.
The overall size and quality of U.S. military forces should be determined by the critical contingency
that they must address: the defense of key resources and allies against direct attack. Too often in the
past, Washington has overused its expensive military to send messages that ought to be left to diplomats.
That must change. Although the Pentagon should continue leading joint exercises with the militaries
of other countries in key regions, it should stop overloading the calendar with pointless exercises the
world over. Making that change would save wear and tear on troops and equipment and avoid
creating the impression that the United States will solve all the world's security problems.
Multipolarity allows for peaceful regional autonomy self-government, pluralism,

and international commitments
Etzioni, George Washington University international relations professor and Carter
White House senior advisor, 13
[Amitai, Winter 2013, The Devolution of American Power, The Fletcher Forum of
World Affairs, Volume: 37, http://www.fletcherforum.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/01/Etzioni_37-1.pdf, p.13-14, accessed 7-4-14, ES]
It follows that the movement away from a unipolar world should not be equated with one in which
more global powers contend with each other; nor should it be equated with a world in which new
powers take over from an old, declining power. Moreover, it should not be assumed that the world
will be less ordered. Instead, to a significant extent, the change seems to be toward more regional
autonomy, or increased devolution, and greater variety in the relationships between the United
States and regional powers. These relationships may see regional powers serve as junior partners to the
global power and assume some of the global powers regional responsibilities. Or these relationships may
produce junior adversarial regional powers that seek greater relative regional control in defiance of the
United States, but seek at most limited realignment of power on the global stage.

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In the process of devolution, the increase in regional self-government and pluralism are much less
challenging to the global power than the redistribution of power implied by multipolarity. Indeed, as
junior regional powers increasingly act as partners and assume regional responsibilities, they enable the
global power to scale back its global commitments without losing much of its weight in
international developments. Similarly, the desire for regional control among rising powers can be
more readily accommodated than aspirations to challenge the United States as a global
superpower.

Hegemony Core
Nuclear Deterrence Solves

Nukes solve all challenges to national security and deter great power warsUS heg
is unnecessary.
Sixth, reading B, I, & W, one would hardly know that the nuclear revolution had even occurred. Nuclear
weapons are not very useful as instruments of coercion, but they do make their possessors largely
unconquerable and thus reduce overall security requirements considerably. Because the United
States has a second-strike capability sufficient to devastate any country foolish enough to attack us,
the core security of the United States is not in serious question. The presence of nuclear weapons in
the hands of eight other countries also makes a conventional great power war like World War I or
World War II exceedingly unlikely. Yet despite this fundamental shift in the global strategic
environment, B, I & W believe the United States must remain "deeply engaged" in Europe, Asia, and
elsewhere in order to prevent a replay of the first half of the 20th century.

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Good Args

Hegemony Core
No Impact to Hegemony
No impact to hegemony no correlation between US activism and stability
Fettweis, Tulane University political science professor, 11
(Christopher, 9/26/11, Comparative Strategy, 30: 316332, Free Riding or Restraint? Examining
European Grand Strategy,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01495933.2011.605020#.U8Fu9vldWQx, accessed 7-5-14)
It is perhaps worth noting that there is no evidence to support a direct relationship between the
relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do have suggest
the opposite may be true. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly
substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms
than it had in 1990.51 To internationalists, defense hawks and believers in hegemonic stability, this
irresponsible peace dividend endangered both national and global security. No serious analyst of
American military capabilities, argued Kristol and Kagan, doubts that the defense budget has been cut
much too far to meet Americas responsibilities to itself and to world peace.52 On the other hand, if the
pacific trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, one
would not have expected an increase in global instability and violence. The verdict from the past two
decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state
seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable United States military, or at least
none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power
vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races, and no regional balancing occurred
once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the
threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. Most of
all, the United States and its allies were no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict
declined while the United States cut its military spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as
the Bush Administration ramped the spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be
necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. Military spending figures by themselves
are insufficient to disprove a connection between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once
again, one could presumably argue that spending is not the only or even the best indication of
hegemony, and that it is instead U.S. foreign political and security commitments that maintain
stability. Since neither was significantly altered during this period, instability should not have been
expected. Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather than
absolute spending is decisive in bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending
during the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered. However, even if it is true that either U.S.
commitments or relative spending account for global pacific trends, then at the very least stability can
evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words, even if one can be allowed to
argue in the alternative for a moment and suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement below which
the United States cannot drop without increasing international disorder, a rational grand strategist would
still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until that level is determined. Grand strategic
decisions are never final; continual adjustments can and must be made as time goes on. Basic logic
suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of its blood and treasure while

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seeking the maximum return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many
believe it to be, no increase in conflict would ever occur irrespective of U.S. spending, which would save
untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation. It is also perhaps worth noting that if opposite
trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S. defense spending with more
aggressive or insecure behavior, then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations
had been fulfilled. If increases in conflict would have been interpreted as proof of the wisdom of
internationalist strategies, then logical consistency demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a
problem. As it stands, the only evidence we have regarding the likely systemic reaction to a more
restrained United States suggests that the current peaceful trends are unrelated to U.S. military
spending. Evidently the rest of the world can operate quite effectively without the presence of a global
policeman. Those who think otherwise base their view on faith alone.

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AT Deterrence
US hegemonic deterrence failsquestionable credibility and ignored threats
Monteiro, Yale political science professor, 10
[Nuno, P., Spring/Summer 2010, Why U.S. Power Does Not Deter Challenges,
http://yalejournal.org/2010/07/20/why-u-s-power-does-not-deter-challenges/, accessed 7-3-13 BLE]
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has frequently threatened dire
consequences for states that pursue policies contrary to its interests. But despite the
formidable power that backs these threats, they are often ignored. When threatened with U.S.
military action, Milosevic did not fold, the Taliban did not give in, nor did Saddam roll
over. Similarly, Iran and North Korea continue to resist U.S. pressure to stop their nuclear
programs. Despite their relative weakness visvis the world's sole superpower, all these states
defied it. In contrast, during the Cold War, U.S. threats were taken seriously by the Soviet Union,
the world's other superpower. Despite their tremendous power, the Soviets were deterred from
invading Western Europe and coerced into withdrawing their missiles from Cuba. Why were
U.S. threats heeded by another superpower but are now disregarded by far less powerful
states? Two explanations are commonly offered. The first is that the United States is militarily
overextended and needs to make more troops available or to augment its own power for its
threats to be credible. The second is that while the Soviets were evil, they were also rational.
The enemies of today, alas, are not. Both these views are wrong. Despite being at war in
Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States is capable of badly damaging any regime that defies it
while suffering little itself. And America's new enemies are not more "irrational" than its old
ones. If U.S. threats were able to deter shoe-slamming "we will bury you" Soviet premier
Khrushchev with his 3,000 intercontinental nuclear weapons, why are we unable to stop Kim
Jong-Il and his handful of rudimentary warheadsnot to mention Ahmadinejad, who has none?
Because threats are not the problem. Deterrence and coercion do not only require credible
threats that harm will follow from defiance. They require credible assurances that no harm will
follow from compliance. In order for America to expect compliance with U.S. demands, it must
persuade its foes that they will be punished if and only if they defy us. During the Cold War, the
balance of power between the two superpowers made assurances superfluous. Any U.S. attack on
the Soviet Union would prompt Moscow to retaliate, imposing catastrophic costs on America.
The prospect of an unprovoked U.S. attack was therefore unthinkable. Soviet power meant
Moscow knew no harm would follow from complying with U.S. demands. But in today's world,
none of our enemies has the wherewithal to retaliate. U.S. threats, backed by the most
powerful military in history, are eminently credible. The problem is the very same power
advantage undermines the credibility of U.S. assurances. Our enemies feel vulnerable to an
American attack even if they comply with our demands. They are therefore less likely to

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heed them. As the world's most powerful state, the United States must work hard to assure other
states that they are not at the mercy of an unpredictable behemoth.
American hegemony is impossible to support and administer

Freeman, American Diplomat, 12
[Chas Freeman, 2-23-12, The National Interest, The China Bluff,
http://nationalinterest.org/print/commentary/the-china-bluff-6561, 7-6-13, JZ]
Actually, we have a much bigger problem than that presented by the challenge of dealing with a
rising China. We cannot hope to sustain our global hegemony even in the short term without levels
of expenditure we are unprepared to tax ourselves to support. Worse, the logic of the sort of
universal sphere of influence we aspire to administer requires us to treat the growth of others'
capabilities relative to our own as direct threats to our hegemony. This means we must match any
and all improvements in foreign military power with additions to our own. It is why our militaryrelated expenditures have grown to exceed those of the rest of the world combined. There is simply
no way that such a militaristic approach to national security is affordable in the long term, no
matter how much it may delight defense contractors.

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AT Asia Pivot Good

Asia Pivot wont solve hegemony- Asian interdependence and EU fragility
undermines US influence
Let me now deal with the questions that you raise. The early stages of the euro crisis feature in my book.
Its later stages further strengthen my argument. The European Union is a classic example of an
organization built around a "win-win" economic logic. The idea of the EU's founding fathers was that
economic cooperation and shared prosperity would create a positive political dynamic. And for 50
years it worked beautifully. But that win-win logic has gone into reverse. Instead of feeling stronger
together, EU countries increasingly worry they are pulling each other down. The result is a surge in
political tensions inside Europe and, in particular, an outbreak of anti-German sentiment. This has
global implications; for one, America's pivot to Asia is posited on the idea that Europe will no
longer require attention -- a premise I somehow doubt.
As for the U.S. pivot to Asia, I think it's a predictable and rational response to rising Chinese power. But
I'm not sure it will work. America's allies in the region face an interesting dilemma. Japan, India,
Australia, and South Korea have their most important trading relationship with China -- and their
most important strategic relationship with the United States. Unless China grossly overplays its
hand and terrifies its neighbors, over time those economic ties will weigh more heavily than the
military relationship with the United States. As a result, China's influence in Asia will steadily
increase -- at the expense of the United States.

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AT Hegemony Solves Conflict

American hegemony does not solve conflict
Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato institute, 13
[Doug Bandow, special assistant to President Reagan, editor of political magazine Inquiry, 7-5-13, Egypt
and American Hubris, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/egypt-american-hubris-8692, 7-7-13, JZ]
American foreign policy is a wreck. The presumption that Washington controls events around the
globe has been exposed to all as an embarrassing illusion.
Egypt teeters on the brink, again. Syria worsens by the day. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are
dead, with another intifada in the wind. North Korea threatens to nuke the world. Violence grows in
Nigeria. The Europeans have gone from disillusioned to angry with President Barack Obama.
Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela reject U.S. leadership in Latin America. Even Iranian
reformers support Irans nuclear program. Zimbabwes vicious Robert Mugabe is likely to retain
power in upcoming elections. Iraq is friendly with Iran and supporting Bashar al-Assad. The Afghan
government remains corrupt, incompetent, and without legitimacy. Bahrain cracks down on
democracy supporters with Washingtons acquiescence. China and Russia resist U.S. priorities in
Syria and elsewhere. Venezuela without Chavez looks like Venezuela with Chavez.
It wasnt supposed to be this way. America was the unipower, the hyperpower, the sole superpower,
the essential nation. Washington was the benevolent hegemon. Only members of the axis of evil had
something to fear from the United States. All the U.S. government had to do was exercise leadership
and all would be well.
That U.S. pride swelled with the end of the Cold War is hardly a surprise. But what unfortunately
emerged was a rabid arrogance, the view that what we say goes. It was the very hubris about which
the ancient Greeks warned.
Alas, this all proved to be a world of illusion, filled with smoke and mirrors. On 9/11 a score of angry
young Muslims brought war to America, destroying the World Trade Center and damaging the
Pentagon. A bunch of ill-equipped and ignorant Afghan fundamentalists refused to admit that they
were defeated, and more than a decade later still resist the United States backed by a multitude of
allies and a covey of local elites. The invasion of Iraq was met by IEDs instead of flowers, and
created an ally in name only, with Baghdad ready to thwart U.S. military objectives when it saw fit.
American pleading, threats, promises and sanctions had no effect on the course of events in North
Korea. Civil and military conflicts ebbed and flowed and political contests waxed and waned in
Congo, Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe with Washington but an ineffective bystander.
Russias Vladimir Putin ignored U.S. priorities both before and after the fabled reset in relations.
China protected North Korea and bullied its other neighbors, despite diplomatic pleadings and
military pivots.
As for succeeding events, where is the evidence that Morsi, Egypts generals and the Egyptian people
sat around awaiting the opinion of U.S. policymakers? Washingtons support for the odious Mubarak

Hegemony Core
left it with little credibility. Maybe the generals can be bought with the promise of more military aid,
but even they know that the U.S. cannot protect them if their soldiers refuse their orders. Morsis
fate was decided in Cairo, not Washington.
Americans understandably pine for a simpler world in which Washington is the center of the world
and the U.S. orchestrates international events. Alas, that world never really existed. It certainly
does not exist today.
Instead of embracing the illusion of Washingtons omniscience, Washington officials should
acknowledge the limitations on their power and influence. They should reflect on events spinning
out of control in Egypt. Its time for the more humble foreign policy that candidate George W.
Bush promised in what seems to be a lifetime ago.

Hegemony Core
AT Transition Wars
Hegemony is not key to stability and no transition wars empirics prove the theory
false
Fettweis, Naval War College, Professor of Security Studies, 10
(Christopher J., Tulane Universitys Assistant Professor of Political Science, October 27, 2010,
Dangerous Times?: The International Politics of Great Power Peace, p.173-4, accessed 7/5/12, YGS)
Simply stated, the hegemonic stability theory proposes that international peace in only possible when
there is one country strong enough to make and enforce a set of rules. At the height of Pax Romana
between 27 BC and 180 AD, for example, Rome was able to bring unprecedented peace and security to
the Mediterranean. The Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century brought a level of stability to the high
seas. Perhaps the current era is peaceful because the United States has established a de facto Pax
Americana where no power is strong enough to challenge its dominance, and because it has established a
set of rules that are generally in the interests of all countries to follow. Without a benevolent hegemon,
some strategists fear, instability may break our around the globe.70 Unchecked conflicts could cause
humanitarian disaster and, in todays interconnected world, economic turmoil that would ripple
throughout global financial markets. If the United States were to abandon its commitments abroad, argued
Art, the world would become a more dangerous place and, sooner or later, that would redound to
Americas detriment.71 If the massive spending that the United States engages in actually provides
stability in the international political and economic systems, then perhaps internationalism is worthwhile.
There are good theoretical and empirical reasons, however, to believe that U.S hegemony is not the
primary cause of the current era of stability. First of all, the hegemonic-stability argument
overstates the role that the United States plays in the system. No country is strong enough to police
the world on its own. The only way there can be stability in the community of great power is if selfpolicing occurs, if states have decided that their interests are served by peace. If no pacific normative shift
had occurred among the great powers that was filtering down through the system, then no amount of
international constabulary work by the United States could maintain stability. Likewise, if it is true that
such a shift has occurred, then most of what the hegemon spends to bring stability would be wasted. The
5 percent of the worlds population that live in the United States simply could not force peace upon an
unwilling 95. At the risk of beating the metaphor to death, the United States may be patrolling a
neighborhood that has already rid itself of crime. Stability and unipolarity may be simply coincidental. In
order for U.S. hegemony to be the reason for global stability, the rest of the world would have to expect
reward for good behavior and fear punishment for bad. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States
has not always proven to be especially eager to engage in humanitarian interventions abroad. Even rather
incontrovertible evidence of genocide has not been sufficient to inspire action. Hegemonic stability can
only take credit for influencing those decisions that would have ended in war without the presence,
whether physical or psychological, of the United States. Ethiopia and Eritrea are hardly the only states
that could go to war without the slightest threat of U.S. intervention. Since most of the world today is free
to fight without U.S. involvement, something else must be at work. Stability exists in many places
where no hegemony is present. Second, the limited empirical evidence we have suggests that there is
little connection between the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. During the

Hegemony Core
1990s the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998 the United States
was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990.72 To internationalists,
defense hawks, and other believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible peace dividend endangered
both national and global security. No serious analyst of American military capabilities, argued Kristol
and Kagan, doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet Americas responsibilities
to itself and to world peace.73 If the pacific trend were due not the U.S. hegemony but a strengthening
norm against interstate war, however, one would not have expected an increase in global instability and
violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while
the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a lesscapable Pentagon, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were
enhanced to address power vacuums; no security dilemmas drove mistrust and arms races; no
regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The
rest of the world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the
reduction in U.S. capabilities. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the
United States cut its military spending under President Clinton, and it kept declining as the Bush
Administration ramped spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be necessary to
reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. It is also worth noting for our purposes that the
United States was no less safe.
Transition from unipolarity will be to multipolarity that ensures stability through

international institutions
Ikenberry, Princeton Politics and International Affairs professor, 11
(G. John, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, The
Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011,
lexis, accessed 6/28/12, THW)
There is no longer any question: wealth and power are moving from the North and the West to the East
and the South, and the old order dominated by the United States and Europe is giving way to one
increasingly shared with non-Western rising states. But if the great wheel of power is turning, what
kind of global political order will emerge in the aftermath? Some anxious observers argue that the
world will not just look less American -- it will also look less liberal. Not only is the United States'
preeminence passing away, they say, but so, too, is the open and rule-based international order that
the country has championed since the 1940s. In this view, newly powerful states are beginning to advance
their own ideas and agendas for global order, and a weakened United States will find it harder to defend
the old system. The hallmarks of liberal internationalism -- openness and rule-based relations enshrined in
institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism -- could give way to a more
contested and fragmented system of blocs, spheres of influence, mercantilist networks, and regional
rivalries. The fact that today's rising states are mostly large non-Western developing countries gives force
to this narrative. The old liberal international order was designed and built in the West. Brazil, China,
India, and other fast-emerging states have a different set of cultural, political, and economic experiences,
and they see the world through their anti-imperial and anticolonial pasts. Still grappling with basic
problems of development, they do not share the concerns of the advanced capitalist societies. The recent

Hegemony Core
global economic slowdown has also bolstered this narrative of liberal international decline. Beginning in
the United States, the crisis has tarnished the American model of liberal capitalism and raised new doubts
about the ability of the United States to act as the global economic leader. For all these reasons, many
observers have concluded that world politics is experiencing not just a changing of the guard but also a
transition in the ideas and principles that underlie the global order. The journalist Gideon Rachman, for
example, says that a cluster of liberal internationalist ideas -- such as faith in democratization, confidence
in free markets, and the acceptability of U.S. military power -- are all being called into question.
According to this worldview, the future of international order will be shaped above all by China, which
will use its growing power and wealth to push world politics in an illiberal direction. Pointing out that
China and other non-Western states have weathered the recent financial crisis better than their Western
counterparts, pessimists argue that an authoritarian capitalist alternative to Western neoliberal ideas has
already emerged. According to the scholar Stefan Halper, emerging-market states "are learning to
combine market economics with traditional autocratic or semiautocratic politics in a process that signals
an intellectual rejection of the Western economic model." But this panicked narrative misses a deeper
reality: although the United States' position in the global system is changing, the liberal
international order is alive and well. The struggle over international order today is not about
fundamental principles. China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic
rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and
leadership within it. Indeed, today's power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its
ultimate ascendance. Brazil, China, and India have all become more prosperous and capable by
operating inside the existing international order -- benefiting from its rules, practices, and
institutions, including the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the newly organized G-20. Their
economic success and growing influence are tied to the liberal internationalist organization of world
politics, and they have deep interests in preserving that system. In the meantime, alternatives to an
open and rule-based order have yet to crystallize. Even though the last decade has brought
remarkable upheavals in the global system -- the emergence of new powers, bitter disputes among
Western allies over the United States' unipolar ambitions, and a global financial crisis and recession -the liberal international order has no competitors. On the contrary, the rise of non-Western powers
and the growth of economic and security interdependence are creating new constituencies for it. To
be sure, as wealth and power become less concentrated in the United States' hands, the country will be
less able to shape world politics. But the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will
survive and thrive. Indeed, now may be the best time for the United States and its democratic partners to
update the liberal order for a new era, ensuring that it continues to provide the benefits of security and
prosperity that it has provided since the middle of the twentieth century.
No transition wars rising powers will integrate into international institutions with
no incentives for aggression
Ikenberry, Princeton Politics and International Affairs professor, 11
(G. John, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, The
Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America, Foreign Affairs, May/June, lexis,
accessed 6/28/12, THW)

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REASON FOR REASSURANCE Rising powers will discover another reason to embrace the existing
global rules and institutions: doing so will reassure their neighbors as they grow more powerful. A
stronger China will make neighboring states potentially less secure, especially if it acts aggressively
and exhibits revisionist ambitions. Since this will trigger a balancing backlash, Beijing has
incentives to signal restraint. It will find ways to do so by participating in various regional and global
institutions. If China hopes to convince its neighbors that it has embarked on a "peaceful rise," it will need
to become more integrated into the international order. China has already experienced a taste of such a
backlash. Last year, its military made a series of provocative moves -- including naval exercises -- in the
South China Sea, actions taken to support the government's claims to sovereign rights over contested
islands and waters. Many of the countries disputing China's claims joined with the United States at the
Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in July to reject Chinese
bullying and reaffirm open access to Asia's waters and respect for international law. In September, a
Chinese fishing trawler operating near islands administered by Japan in the East China Sea rammed into
two Japanese coast guard ships. After Japanese authorities detained the trawler's crew, China responded
with what one Japanese journalist described as a "diplomatic 'shock and awe' campaign," suspending
ministerial-level contacts, demanding an apology, detaining several Japanese workers in China, and
instituting a de facto ban on exports of rare-earth minerals to Japan. These actions -- seen as
manifestations of a more bellicose and aggressive foreign policy -- pushed ASEAN, Japan, and South
Korea perceptibly closer to the United States. As China's economic and military power grow, its
neighbors will only become more worried about Chinese aggressiveness, and so Beijing will have
reason to allay their fears. Of course, it might be that some elites in China are not interested in
practicing restraint. But to the extent that China is interested in doing so, it will find itself needing to
signal peaceful intentions -- redoubling its participation in existing institutions, such as the ASEAN
Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit, or working with the other great powers in the region to build
new ones. This is, of course, precisely what the United States did in the decades after World War II. The
country operated within layers of regional and global economic, political, and security institutions and
constructed new ones -- thereby making itself more predictable and approachable and reducing the
incentives for other states to undermine it by building countervailing coalitions. More generally, given
the emerging problems of the twenty-first century, there will be growing incentives among all the
great powers to embrace an open, rule-based international system. In a world of rising economic
and security interdependence, the costs of not following multilateral rules and not forging
cooperative ties go up. As the global economic system becomes more interdependent, all states -- even
large, powerful ones -- will find it harder to ensure prosperity on their own. Growing interdependence in
the realm of security is also creating a demand for multilateral rules and institutions. Both the
established and the rising great powers are threatened less by mass armies marching across borders than
by transnational dangers, such as terrorism, climate change, and pandemic disease. What goes on in one
country -- radicalism, carbon emissions, or public health failures -- can increasingly harm another
country. Intensifying economic and security interdependence are giving the United States and other
powerful countries reason to seek new and more extensive forms of multilateral cooperation. Even
now, as the United States engages China and other rising states, the agenda includes expanded
cooperation in areas such as clean energy, environmental protection, nonproliferation, and global
economic governance. The old and rising powers may disagree on how exactly this cooperation
should proceed, but they all have reasons to avoid a breakdown in the multilateral order itself. So
they will increasingly experiment with new and more extensive forms of liberal internationalism.

Hegemony Core
AT Loss of Alliances Causes Violence

Loss of allies doesnt cause violence 1960s France proves
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/7805/the-u-s-and-egypt-the-limits-of-hegemony, accessed 78-12, CNM)
Some of today's big powers resemble hegemons; others are more imperial. But all, to one degree or
another, find their responses toward smaller powers driven by circumstance and not merely by
inclination. The United States, for example, has invaded and occupied several countries over the
years. But when former President Charles de Gaulle of France withdrew that country from NATO's
military command in 1966, then-President Lyndon Johnson did not lead an armed overthrow of the
French government. In fact, he barely did more than wish the French a bon voyage. Here, too,
gradations of influence and power mattered: France never defected from the North Atlantic alliance itself,
but merely from its military organization. If it had joined the Soviet bloc, or declared itself to be
genuinely neutral, Johnson may have reacted differently.
The French case offers a useful comparison in another respect. To what extent does world order
require the semblance of tolerance among allies? Among the many grievances against Mubarak held
by own people was that he has been too loyal to his American backers, to the detriment of Egypt's
interests. A certain respect for independence, and not just codependence, can have a certain utility
in sustaining order. It preserves the voluntary character of hegemony, tempers the tendency of the
superpower to overcommit itself and enhances the perception among allies that they are not mere
satraps.

Hegemony Core
AT Withdrawal Causes Economic Decline

US withdrawal wont collapse the economy global trade will continue
Layne, Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service professor, 6
[Christopher, Associate Professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University 2006, http://nationalinterest.org/article/the-global-power-shift-west-east-6796, accessed 7-6-13
BLE]
Advocates of hegemony (and selective engagement) also seem to have a peculiar understanding of
international economics and convey the impression that international trade and investment will come to
a grinding halt if the United States abandons its current grand strategyor if a Eurasian great power war
occurs. This is not true, however. If the United States abandons its current grand strategic role as the
protector of international economic openness, international economic intercourse will not stop, even
in time of great power war.110 If the United States were to adopt an offshore balancing grand
strategy, its own and global markets would adapt to the new political and strategic environment.
Finns and investors would reassess the risks of overseas trade and investment, and over time investment
and trade flows would shift in response to these calculations. Instead of being diminished, international
trade and investment would be diverted to more geopolitically secure regions, and these "safe
havens"especially the United Stateswould be the beneficiaries. Finally, the assumption that a
Eurasia dominated by a hegemon would be closed economically to the United States is dubious. A
Eurasian hegemon would have a stake in its own economic well-being (bothfor strategic and domestic
political reasons), and it would be most unlikely to hive itself off completely from international trade.
U.S. primacy is unaffordable

Layne, Ph. D. Political Science, 12
[Christopher Layne, 4-26-12, The Atlantic, The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline
Became Inevitablehttp://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/the-end-of-paxamericana-how-western-decline-became-inevitable/256388/?single_page=true, 7-5-13, JZ]
But even during the Cold War's last two decades, the seeds of American decline had already been
sown. In a prescient--but premature--analysis, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger believed that the bipolar Cold War system would give way to a pentagonal multipolar
system composed of the United States, Soviet Union, Europe, China and Japan. Nixon also confronted
America's declining international financial power in 1971 when he took the dollar off the Bretton Woods
gold standard in response to currency pressures. Later, in 1987, Yale's Paul Kennedy published his
brilliant Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which raised questions about the structural, fiscal and
economic weaknesses in America that, over time, could nibble away at the foundations of U.S.
power. With America's subsequent Cold War triumph--and the bursting of Japan's economic bubble-Kennedy's thesis was widely dismissed.

Hegemony Core
Now, in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown and ensuing recession, it is clear that Kennedy and
other "declinists" were right all along. The same causes of decline they pointed to are at the center
of today's debate about America's economic prospects: too much consumption and not enough
savings; persistent trade and current-account deficits; deindustrialization; sluggish economic
growth; and chronic federal-budget deficits fueling an ominously rising national debt.
Indeed, looking forward a decade, the two biggest domestic threats to U.S. power are the country's
bleak fiscal outlook and deepening doubts about the dollar's future role as the international
economy's reserve currency. Economists regard a 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio as a flashing
warning light that a country is at risk of defaulting on its financial obligations. The nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has warned that the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio could exceed that level
by 2020--and swell to 190 percent by 2035. Worse, the CBO recently warned of the possibility of a
"sudden credit event" triggered by foreign investors' loss of confidence in U.S. fiscal probity. In
such an event, foreign investors could reduce their purchases of Treasury bonds, which would force
the United States to borrow at higher interest rates. This, in turn, would drive up the national debt
even more. America's geopolitical preeminence hinges on the dollar's role as reserve currency. If
the dollar loses that status, U.S. primacy would be literally unaffordable. There are reasons to be
concerned about the dollar's fate over the next two decades. U.S. political gridlock casts doubt on the
nation's ability to address its fiscal woes; China is beginning to internationalize the renminbi, thus
laying the foundation for it to challenge the dollar in the future; and history suggests that the
dominant international currency is that of the nation with the largest economy. (In his piece on the
global financial structure in this issue, Christopher Whalen offers a contending perspective,
acknowledging the dangers posed to the dollar as reserve currency but suggesting such a change in the
dollar's status is remote in the current global environment.)
Americas fiscal predicament constrains international influence

Neu, Senior Economist at RAND, 13
[C. Richard Neu, 1-31-13, US News, U.S. 'Soft Power' Abroad Is Losing Its Punch
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/01/31/us-soft-power-abroad-is-losingits-punch, 7-6-13, JZ]
This is a small example of what may be a troubling trend: America's fiscal predicament and the
seeming inability of its political system to resolve these matters may be taking a toll on the
instruments of U.S. "soft power" and on the country's ability to shape international developments
in ways that serve American interests.
The most potent instrument of U.S. soft power is probably the simple size of the U.S. economy. As the
biggest economy in the world, America has a lot to say about how the world works. But the
economics profession is beginning to understand that high levels of public debt can slow economic
growth, especially when gross general government debt rises above 85 or 90 percent of GDP.
The United States crossed that threshold in 2009, and the negative effects are probably mostly out in
the future. These will come at a bad time. The U.S. share of global economic output has been falling

Hegemony Core
since 1999by nearly 5 percentage points as of 2011. As America's GDP share declined, so did its
share of world trade, which may reduce U.S. influence in setting the rules for international trade.
Investors may be growing skittish about U.S. government debt levels and the disordered state of
U.S. fiscal policymaking.
And what about unmet needs at homehealthcare costs, a foundering public education system,
deteriorating infrastructure, and increasing inequality? A strained fiscal situation that limits
resources for action and absorbs so much political energy cannot be helping with any of these
matters. But without progress on such things, what becomes of the social cohesion necessary for
unified action abroad or the moral authority to lead other nations by example?
Putting U.S. government financing on a sustainable path will require painful adjustments over a number
of yearsincreased government revenue and painful reductions in government outlays, almost certainly
including outlays for defense and international affairs. During the necessary period of fiscal
adjustment and constrained government resources, U.S. international influence may decline yet
further.

Hegemony Core
AT Military Hegemony Key to the Economy

Hegemony doesnt affect the economy
professor, 13
(Nearly As Much As You Think)., Project Muse, accessed, 7-9-13, EK]
Each of these arguments is less empirically persuasive than is commonly articulated in policy circles.
There is little evidence that military primacy yields appreciable geoeconomic gains. The evidence for
geopolitical favoritism is much more robust during periods of bipolarity than it is under unipolarity,
which suggests that primacy in and of itself does not yield material transfers. The evidence for public
goods benefits is strongest, but military predominance plays a supporting role in that causal logic; it is
only full-spectrum unipolaritya condition in which a single actor is universally acknowledged to
be the dominant actor across a variety of power dimensionsthat yields appreciable economic
gains. The economic benefits from military predominance alone seem, at a minimum, to have been
exaggerated in policy and scholarly circles. While there are economic benefits to possessing a great
power military, diminishing marginal returns are evident well before achieving military primacy.
The principal benefits that come with military primacy appear to flow only when coupled with
economic primacy. These findings have significant implications for theoretical debates about the
fungibility of military power, and should be considered when assessing U.S. fiscal options and grand
strategy for the coming decade.
Hegemony is not key to the economy

professor, 13
The evidence for geoeconomic favoritism is mixed. To be sure, some measure of military power is
generally acknowledged to be a prerequisite for developing a reserve currency.26 There has been a
powerful correlation between states with significant amounts of military power and economic wealth.27
Since the beginning of the modern Westphalian state system, leaders have equated military power
with economic plenty.28 The direction of causality in this relationship is much more difficult to
ascertain, however. It is possible that military power generates greater economic benefits, but most
researchers draw the opposite conclusion: the primary causal arrow moves from economic vitality
toward a strong military. This was Kennedys conclusion in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,
matching the general consensus of most scholars who work on hegemonic stability, power transition, or
long cycles.29 Realists such as Barry Posen have reached a similar conclusion: If the United States

Hegemony Core
were not [End Page 59] the dominant economic and technological power, it would not be the
dominant military power.30
For the causal logic of geoeconomic favoritism to hold up, military power must generate concomitant
economic gains rather than vice versa. There is modest evidence for this assertion. At a base level,
geoeconomic favoritism clearly exists. As a necessary condition, a states ability to defend its borders
determines its ability to develop its economy, capital markets, and regional economic ties.31 Thus,
military capabilities can help to reduce political risk, which is a significant explanatory factor for
cross-border capital flows.32 The necessary condition for this relationship is not military
predominance, but some sufficient level of great power military capabilities. For geoeconomic favoritism
to occur, military primacy and deep engagement must generate greater inflows of capital than would
otherwise be the case.
U.S. hegemony no longer key to global economy

Mandelbaum, John Hopkins International Relations Program Director, 11
(Michael Mandelbaum, the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of American Foreign Policy at the
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, August 9, 2011, Foreign Affairs, America's
Coming Retrenchment, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68024/michael-mandelbaum/americascoming-retrenchment, accessed July 6, 2013, EK)
Yet the 2008 economic crash was an unmistakable reminder that worldwide monopoly production is
no longer stable. Rivalry between banks and hedge funds over investment in the most profitable
companies destabilized the financial system, as one bubble after another burst. In the coming years,
as Chinese economic growth and south-south economic ties begin to overtake U.S. leadership, the
role of U.S. military might will also come into question internationally as an increasing number of
countries and movements seek to arrange matters differently.
The crash also raised questions in the minds of millions about the ability of the world capitalist
economic system to deliver jobs, life, and prosperity to them. People are scrutinizing the desirability
of capitalism and globalization as never before. Among the more than 99 percent of Americans who
dont own global companies, the question is there, waiting to be asked, of whether U.S. foreign policy
actually serves their interests. The time is therefore ripe for the peace movement to offer a new foreign
policy which serves the interests of the domestic and global 99 percent better than the hegemonic order.
Increased defense spending is unsustainable and kills the US economy

Macdonald and Parent, Wellesley College and University of Miami Political Science
Assistant Professors, 11
(Joseph M. Parent and Paul K. MacDonald, November/December 2011, Foreign Affairs, The Wisdom of
Retrenchment: America Must Cut Back to Move Forward, Vol. 90 Issue 6, p32-47, ebsco, accessed July
7, 2013, EK)

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Beyond these challenges to the country's military dominance, a weakened economic condition is
contributing to the decline of U.S. power. The U.S. economy remains the largest in the world, yet its
position is in jeopardy. Between 1999 and 2009, the U.S. share of global GDP (measured in terms of
purchasing power parity) fell from 23 percent to 20 percent, whereas China's share of global GDP jumped
from seven percent to 13 percent. Should this trend continue, China's economic output will surpass the
United States' by 2016. China already consumes more energy than the United States, and calls are
growing louder to replace the dollar as the international reserve currency with a basket of
currencies that would include the euro and the yuan.
The fiscal position of the United States is alarming, whether or not one believes that Standard & Poor's
was justified in downgrading U.S. Treasury bonds. Between 2001 and 2009, U.S. federal debt as a
percentage of GDP more than doubled, from 32 percent to 67 percent, and state and local governments
have significant debts, too. The United States' reliance on imports, combined with high rates of
borrowing, has led to a considerable current account deficit: more than six percent of GDP in 2006.
Power follows money, and the United States is leaking cash.

Hegemony Core
AT Hegemony Key to Oil Stability

US hegemony not key to preventing oil shocks
professor, 13
Furthermore, direct evidence exists that the exercise of military power to protect sea-lanes boosts global
trade flows (though the magnitude of the effect [End Page 70] is disputed). The presence of naval forces
during times of militarized disputes has reduced market expectations of supply disruptions.84 It could be
argued, however, that concerns about energy disruptions have been overstated; even in instances when
U.S. military intervention was absent, world oil markets have rapidly adjusted to price spikes.85 A
similar story can be told when analyzing the naval reaction to the post-2008 surge in Somali piracy.
Attacks spiked after the financial crisis and peaked in 2011. Attacks remain at an elevated level after
peaking in 2011, but their success rate has fallen markedly. Between 2011 and 2012, the number of
successful global piracy attacks declined by 67 percent. The presence of multinational naval patrols
including the U.S. Navyin the most vulnerable sea-lanes has helped matters, but the improved
private security on board the commercial tankers appears to have helped even more.86

Hegemony Core
AT China Decline
Economic weakness doesnt undermine Chinese influence-history proves
All this, of course, is posited on the continuing growth of the Chinese economy. So what about those
"hints that China's economic growth is slowing down"? I wouldn't be at all surprised. Indeed, I would
go further and suggest that both the Chinese economy and the Chinese political system are unstable
and crisis-prone. If a crisis hits, plenty of people in the United States and elsewhere will eagerly
proclaim that the rise of China was a mirage. They will be wrong. This is a long-term process of
huge historical significance, comparable with the rise of the United States in the 19th century. U.S.
history should tell you that it is perfectly possible to combine political turmoil with the rise of a
dynamic, continental economy. After all, America fought a civil war and still emerged as "No. 1" by
the early 20th century.
Even if China has an economic crisis it will still be number one

Drezner, Tufts Fletcher School international politics professor, et al., 12
(Daniel W., Gideon Rachman, Financial Times chief foreign-affairs commentator, Robert Kagan, senior
fellow at the Brookings Institute, Foreign Policy, "The Rise or Fall of the American Empire,"
As for the U.S. pivot to Asia, I think it's a predictable and rational response to rising Chinese power.
But I'm not sure it will work. America's allies in the region face an interesting dilemma. Japan, India,
Australia, and South Korea have their most important trading relationship with China -- and their
most important strategic relationship with the United States. Unless China grossly overplays its
hand and terrifies its neighbors, over time those economic ties will weigh more heavily than the
military relationship with the United States. As a result, China's influence in Asia will steadily
increase -- at the expense of the United States.
All this, of course, is posited on the continuing growth of the Chinese economy. So what about those
"hints that China's economic growth is slowing down"? I wouldn't be at all surprised. Indeed, I
would go further and suggest that both the Chinese economy and the Chinese political system are
unstable and crisis-prone. If a crisis hits, plenty of people in the United States and elsewhere will
eagerly proclaim that the rise of China was a mirage. They will be wrong. This is a long-term
process of huge historical significance, comparable with the rise of the United States in the 19th

Hegemony Core
century. U.S. history should tell you that it is perfectly possible to combine political turmoil with the
rise of a dynamic, continental economy. After all, America fought a civil war and still emerged as
"No. 1" by the early 20th century.

Hegemony Core
AT Military Primacy Key

Military primacy not key China proves
professor, 13
(Nearly As Much As You Think)., Project Muse, accessed 7-9-13]
This observation is problematic for the present and the future. As previously noted, there is a broadbased consensus that the military primacy of the United States will remain uncontested for the next
decade at least; indeed, even extrapolating current trends, it is far from clear whether Chinese military
spending will catch up with that of the United States in the next generation.102 U.S. economic
primacy is another matter entirely. Multiple private- and public-sector estimates suggest that China
will overtake the United States within the next decade. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects
that Chinas gross domestic product will overtake U.S. gross domestic product, as measured using
purchasing power parity, by the year 2016. At least one estimate posits that China has already overtaken
the U.S. economy in terms of purchasing power parity.103 China has been increasingly willing to use
its economic power to influence its near neighbors, such as withholding rare earth exports to Japan
after it seized a Chinese fishing boat captain in disputed territorial waters.104 It has also attempted to
use its economic power to influence U.S. economic policy.105
Chinas economic rise has reintroduced uncertainty into assessments about the global distribution of
power. This perceptual gap is revealed in the different national responses to the April 2012 Pew Global
Attitudes survey.106 [End Page 74] When asked to name the worlds leading economic power, only
Turkey and Mexico had majorities of respondents name the United States. On the other hand, in five of
the original Group of Seven economies, strong majorities or pluralities named China as the worlds
leading economic power. In other words, an increasing proportion of the developed and developing
world thinks that economic primacy has shifted to China. One could argue that elite policymakers are
immune from mass misperceptions; U.S. policymaking elites interpret Chinas rise differently.107
Nevertheless, both public rhetoric and private diplomatic discourse suggest that U.S. policymakers
share this view of Chinas new economic status with the global public.108
This perception is wrong. By any objective assessment, the United States remains the worlds largest
and most powerful economy; it is also more appropriate to measure economic power using market
exchange rates rather than purchasing power parity.109 Furthermore, there are excellent reasons to
doubt the straight-line extrapolation of Chinas economic ascent.110 Still, according to Wohlforths logic,
the shift in perceptions alone should lead to increases in status-seeking behavior by China. And, indeed,
this argument parsimoniously explains the Sino-American relationship since the start of 2009.111 In the
aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, China challenged the security status quo. In early 2009, Chinese
ships engaged in multiple skirmishes with U.S. surveillance vessels in an effort to hinder American naval
intelligence-gathering efforts.112 Beijing responded angrily and forcefully to the awarding of the 2010
Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo. China reacted to routine U.S. arms sales to Taiwan
with extremely hostile rhetoric and threats to sanction [End Page 75] U.S. firms. China refused to

Hegemony Core
condemn North Korea for the sinking on the South Korean ship Cheonan, frustrating Japan and South
Korea. In response to push-back from the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
on the South China Sea at the 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi
responded angrily, bluntly lecturing other participants that China is a big country and other countries are
small countries, and thats just a fact.113
The policy responses to Chinas post-2008 policy shifts have been particularly interesting for the
argument that military primacy generates stability. On the American side, the fall of 2011 saw a
widely reported pivot or re-balancing by the United States toward the Pacific Rim that included a range
of security-related statements and actions.114 The United States signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation and began attending the East Asia Summit; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that
the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes in the South China Sea to be in the U.S. national interest; the
State Department averred that the U.S. defense treaty with Japan covered the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands; and the U.S. Navy ramped up activity in the region and announced that a greater preponderance
of naval assets would be allocated to the Pacific. Washington facilitated or enhanced security dialogues
and military exercises with friends and partners in the region; five hundred U.S. Marines were stationed
in Darwin, Australia. In addition, the Obama administration fostered a diplomatic, economic, and security
opening with Myanmar, a longtime ally of China. Although there have been economic components to
the rebalancing toward East Asia, the most prominent elements have been military.115
Furthermore, most of Chinas neighbors warmly embraced the U.S. pivot.
If the public goods logic of military unipolarity held true, then these actions should have deterred
China from further aggressive actions. Yet, despite the flexing of U.S. military power, China did not
ratchet down its behavior in the region. As Wu Xinbo observed, [G]iven the comprehensive rise in
its national power in recent years, China feels more confident in confronting the U.S. rebalancing
strategy.116 Indeed, if anything, Beijing increased its aggressive [End Page 76] behavior. China
ratcheted up tensions with the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal in the spring and summer of 2012.
In the fall of 2012, it escalated tensions with Japan over the latters claim of ownership of islands in the
East China Sea. The pacifying effects of unipolarity appear to have dissipated. Instead, Chinese behavior
is consistent with predictions of great power behavior under status uncertainty. Within the Chinese
policymaking and scholarly communities, there is a growing obsession with measuring and comparing
Chinese power to U.S. power.117 In one recent assessment, Wang Jisi summarized the worldview of the
top Chinese leadership: The rise of China, with its sheer size and very different political system, value
system, culture, and race, must be regarded in the United States as the major challenge to its superpower
status.118

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Heg Authors Wrong

Proponents of deep engagement are wrongthey ignore the collapse of the Soviet
Union which should have dramatically altered our understanding of international
relations.
Second, there is something deeply puzzling about B, I & W's devotion to what Ikenberry used to
called "liberal hegemony," and what he and his co-authors now prefer to call "deep engagement."
B, I & W argue that deep engagement has been America's grand strategy since World War II and they
believe it was the optimal strategy for the bipolar Cold War, when the United States faced a global
threat from a major great-power rival. Not only was the USSR a formidable military power, but it was
also an ideological rival whose Marxist-Leninist principles once commanded millions of loyal followers
around the world.
Here's the puzzle: the Soviet Union disappeared in 1992, and no rival of equal capacity has yet
emerged. Yet somehow "deep engagement" is still the optimal strategy in these radically different
geopolitical circumstances. It's possible that U.S. leaders in the late 1940s hit on the ideal grand
strategy for any and all structural conditions, but it is surely odd that an event as significant as the
Soviet collapse can have so few implications for how America deals with the other 190-plus
countries around the globe.
Proponents of deep engagement attempt to divorce it from all of its disastrous

consequenceswars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan prove its bad.
Third, B, I, & W give "deep engagement" full credit for nearly all the good things that have
occurred internationally since 1945 (great power peace, globalization, non-proliferation, expansion of
trade, etc.), even though the direct connection between the strategy and these developments remains
contested. More importantly, they absolve the strategy from most if not all of the negative
developments that also took place during this period. They recognize the events like the Indochina
War and the 2003 war in Iraq were costly blunders, but they regard them as deviations from "deep
engagement" rather than as a likely consequence of a strategy that sees the entire world as of

Hegemony Core
critical importance and the remaking of other societies along liberal lines as highly desirable if not
strategically essential.
The problem, of course, is that U.S. leaders can only sell deep engagement by convincing Americans
that the nation's security will be fatally compromised if they do not get busy managing the entire
globe. Because the United States is in fact quite secure from direct attack and/or conquest, the only way
to do that is by ceaseless threat-mongering, as has been done in the United States ever since the
Truman Doctrine, the first Committee on the Present Danger and the alarmist rhetoric of NSC-68.
Unfortunately, threat-mongering requires people in the national security establishment to
exaggerate U.S. interests more-or-less constantly and to conjure up half-baked ideas like the
domino theory to keep people nervous. And once a country has talked itself into a properly
paranoid frame of mind, it inevitably stumbles into various quagmires, as the United States did in
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Again, such debacles are not deviations from "deep engagement";
they are a nearly inevitable consequence of it.

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Terminal Impacts

Hegemony Core
Free Trade

Hegemony Core
Free Trade Good Impact

Collapse of free trade risks nuclear war
Copley News Service, 99
[12-1-99, Commentary, Lexis]
For decades, many children in America and other countries went to bed fearing annihilation by
nuclear war. The specter of nuclear winter freezing the life out of planet Earth seemed very real.
Activists protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle apparently have forgotten that
threat. The truth is that nations join together in groups like the WTO not just to further their own
prosperity, but also to forestall conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has traded in the
threat of a worldwide nuclear war for the benefit of cooperative global economics . Some Seattle
protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the mold of nuclear disarmament or anti-Vietnam War
protesters of decades past. But they're not. They're special-interest activists, whether the cause is
environmental, labor or paranoia about global government. Actually, most of the demonstrators in Seattle
are very much unlike yesterday's peace activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or philosopher Bertrand
Russell, the father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged people and nations to
work together rather than strive against each other. These and other war protesters would probably
approve of 135 WTO nations sitting down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might
have been settled by bullets and bombs. As long as nations are trading peacefully, and their economies
are built on exports to other countries, they have a major disincentive to wage war . That's why
bringing China, a budding superpower, into the WTO is so important. As exports to the United States and
the rest of the world feed Chinese prosperity, and that prosperity increases demand for the goods we
produce, the threat of hostility diminishes. Many anti-trade protesters in Seattle claim that only
multinational corporations benefit from global trade, and that it's the everyday wage earners who get hurt.
That's just plain wrong. First of all, it's not the military-industrial complex benefiting. It's U.S. companies
that make high-tech goods. And those companies provide a growing number of jobs for Americans. In
San Diego, many people have good jobs at Qualcomm, Solar Turbines and other companies for whom
overseas markets are essential. In Seattle, many of the 100,000 people who work at Boeing would lose
their livelihoods without world trade. Foreign trade today accounts for 30 percent of our gross domestic
product. That's a lot of jobs for everyday workers. Growing global prosperity has helped counter the
specter of nuclear winter. Nations of the world are learning to live and work together, like the
singers of anti-war songs once imagined. Those who care about world peace shouldn't be protesting
world trade. They should be celebrating it.
Free trade checks global nuclear conflict

Miller & Elwood, International Society for Individual Liberty, President and Vice
President, 88

Hegemony Core
[Vincent and James, Founder and President of the International Society for Individual Liberty, and VicePresident of the ISIL, FREE TRADE OR PROTECTIONISM? The Case Against Trade Restrictions,
http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/free-trade-protectionism.html]
WHEN GOODS DON'T CROSS BORDERS, ARMIES OFTEN DO

History is not lacking in examples of cold trade wars escalating into hot shooting wars:
* Europe suffered from almost non-stop wars during the 17th and 18th centuries, when restrictive
trade policy (mercantilism) was the rule; rival governments fought each other to expand their empires
and to exploit captive markets.
* British tariffs provoked the American colonists to revolution, and later the Northern-dominated US
government imposed restrictions on Southern cotton exports - a major factor leading to the American
Civil War.
* In the late 19th Century, after a half century of general free trade (which brought a half-century of
peace), short-sighted politicians throughout Europe again began erecting trade barriers. Hostilities
built up until they eventually exploded into World War I.
* In 1930, facing only a mild recession, US President Hoover ignored warning pleas in a petition by 1028
prominent economists and signed the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised some tariffs to 100%
levels. Within a year, over 25 other governments had retaliated by passing similar laws. The result? World
trade came to a grinding halt, and the entire world was plunged into the "Great Depression" for the rest of
the decade. The depression in turn led to World War II.
THE #1 DANGER TO WORLD PEACE
The world enjoyed its greatest economic growth during the relatively free trade period of 19451970, a period that also saw no major wars. Yet we again see trade barriers being raised around the
world by short-sighted politicians. Will the world again end up in a shooting war as a result of these
economically-deranged policies? Can we afford to allow this to happen in the nuclear age?

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Democracy

Hegemony Core
Democracy Good Impact

Global democracy solves multiple scenarios for extinction
Diamond, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, 95
[Larry, December 1995, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors
and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives,
http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/Promoting%20Democracy%20in%20the%201990s
%20Actors%20and%20Instruments,%20Issues%20and%20Imperatives.pdf, p. 9, accessed 7/7/13, WD]
The experience of this century offers important lessons . Countries that govern themselves in a truly
democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors
to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically
cleanse their own populations , and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies
do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to
use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more
environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to
protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties
since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach
agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil
liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which
a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built .

Hegemony Core
AT Democracy Peace Theory

Democratic peace theory false
[Christopher Layne, 5-1-10, The American Conservative, Graceful Decline,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/graceful-decline/, 7-8-13, JZ]
We attempt to tame the world by exporting democracy becausewe are tolddemocracies do not
fight each other. We export our model of free-market capitalism becausewe are toldstates that
are economically interdependent do not fight each other. We work multilaterally through
international institutions becausewe are toldthese promote cooperation and trust among states.
None of these propositions is self-evident. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that they are
wrong. But they are illusions that express the deepest beliefs which Americans, as a nation, hold about
the world. So we cling to the idea that our hegemony is necessary for our own and everyone elses
security. The consequence has been to contribute to the very imperial overstretch that is accelerating
the United States decline.

Hegemony Core
Terrorism

Hegemony Core
Terrorism Retaliation Bad Impact

Terrorist retaliation causes nuclear war draws in Russia and China
Ayson, Victoria University strategic studies professor, 10
(Robert, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at
the Victoria University of Wellington, July, After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic
Effects, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via InformaWorld)
A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by the country attacked in
the first place, would not necessarily represent the worst of the nuclear worlds imaginable. Indeed, there
are reasons to wonder whether nuclear terrorism should ever be regarded as belonging in the category of
truly existential threats. A contrast can be drawn here with the global catastrophe that would come from a
massive nuclear exchange between two or more of the sovereign states that possess these weapons in
significant numbers. Even the worst terrorism that the twenty-first century might bring would fade into
insignificance alongside considerations of what a general nuclear war would have wrought in the Cold
War period. And it must be admitted that as long as the major nuclear weapons states have hundreds
and even thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, there is always the possibility of a truly
awful nuclear exchange taking place precipitated entirely by state possessors themselves. But these two
nuclear worldsa non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchangeare not
necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear
terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons
between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, todays and tomorrows terrorist
groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small
nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers
started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew
about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. t may require a considerable amount of
imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such
a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United
States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the
picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or
encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that
sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however
remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or
discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian stocks,40
and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of
that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation
by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be spread over a
wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth
of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and,
most important some indication of where the nuclear material came from.41 Alternatively, if the act
of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a

Hegemony Core
terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state
possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel
and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North
Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia
and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of
nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in Washingtons relations with Russia
and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major powers, would
officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring
would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed
conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war,
as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too:
should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or
even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise
domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack?
Washingtons early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise the possibility
of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise
and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president
might be expected to place the countrys armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of
alert. In such a tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just
possible that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force
(and possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might
grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating
response.

Hegemony Core
AT Nuclear Terrorism Impact

No chance of a state-sponsored nuclear terrorist attackattribution to the terrorist
organization and state sponsor is almost guaranteed
Lieber, Georgetown School of Foreign Service professor, & Press, Dartmouth
Government professor, 2013
[Keir A., & Daryl G., International Security, Volume 38, No. 1, Summer 213, Why States Wont Give
Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists, Project Muse, p.82-84 accessed 7/9/13, CB]
This article assesses the risk that states would give nuclear weapons to terrorists. We examine the logical
and empirical basis of the core proposition: that a state could surreptitiously transfer a nuclear
weapon to a like-minded terror group, thus providing the means for a devastating attack on a common
enemy while remaining anonymous and avoiding retaliation. The strategy of nuclear attack by proxy
hinges on one key question: What is the likelihood that a country could sponsor a nuclear terror
attack and remain anonymous? We examine this question in two ways. First, having no data on the
aftermath of nuclear terrorist incidents, we use the ample data on conventional terrorism to discover
attribution rates. We examine the fraction of terrorist incidents attributed to the perpetrating terrorist
organization and the patterns in the rates of attribution. Second, we explore the challenge of tracing
culpability for a nuclear terror event from the guilty terrorist group back to its state sponsor. We ask: How
many suspects would there be in the wake of a nuclear detonation? How many foreign terrorist
organizations have state sponsors? Of those that do, how many state sponsors do they typically
have? And how many state sponsors of terrorism have nuclear weapons or sufficient stockpiles of
nuclear materials on which to base such a concern?
We conclude that neither a terror group nor a state sponsor would remain anonymous after a
nuclear terror attack. We draw this conclusion on the basis of four main findings. First, data on a
decade of terrorist incidents reveal a strong positive relationship between the number of fatalities
caused in a terror attack and the likelihood of attribution. Roughly three-quarters of the attacks that
kill 100 people or more are traced back to the perpetrators. Second, attribution rates are far higher for
attacks on the U.S. homeland or the territory of a major U.S. ally97 percent (thirty-six of thirtyseven) for incidents that killed ten or more people. Third, tracing culpability from a guilty terrorist
group back to its state sponsor is not likely to be difficult: few countries sponsor terrorism; few
terrorist groups have state sponsors; each sponsored terror group has few sponsors (typically one);
and only one country that sponsors terrorism, Pakistan, has nuclear weapons or enough fissile material to
manufacture a [End Page 83] weapon. In sum, attribution of nuclear terror incidents would be easier than
is typically suggested, and passing weapons to terrorists would not offer countries an escape from the
constraints of deterrence.12
This analysis has two important implications for U.S. foreign policy. First, the fear of terrorist transfer
seems greatly exaggerated and does notin itselfseem to justify costly measures to prevent
proliferation. Nuclear proliferation poses risks, so working to prevent it should remain a U.S. foreign
policy goal, but the dangers of a state giving nuclear weapons to terrorists have been overstated, and
thus arguments for taking costly steps to prevent proliferation on those groundsas used to justify

Hegemony Core
the invasion of Iraq and fuel the debate over attacking Iranrest on a shaky foundation. Second,
analysts and policymakers should stop understating the ability of the United States to attribute
terrorist attacks to their sponsoring states. Such rhetoric not only is untrue, but it also undermines
deterrence. States sometimes exaggerate their capabilities to deter an enemys attacks;13 but U.S.
analysts and leaders, by understating U.S. attribution capabilities, inadvertently increase the odds of
catastrophic terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies.
State-sponsored nuclear terrorism is deterred attribution rates, lack of control

over the outcome, unwillingness to deplete small arsenals, and possibility of
discovery
Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists, Project Muse, p. 86 accessed 7/9/13, CB]
Some analysts are skeptical about such sponsored nuclear terrorism, arguing that a state may not be
willing to deplete its small nuclear arsenal or stock of precious nuclear materials. More important,
a state sponsor would fear that a terrorist organization might use the weapons or materials in ways
the state never intended, provoking retaliation that would destroy the regime.14 Nuclear weapons
are the most powerful weapons a state can acquire, and handing that power to an actor over which
the state has less than complete control would be an enormous, epochal decisionone unlikely to be
taken by regimes that are typically obsessed with power and their own survival.
Perhaps the most important reason to doubt the nuclear-attack-by-proxy scenario is the likelihood
that the ultimate source of the weapon might be discovered.15 One means of identifying the state
source of a nuclear terrorist attack is through nuclear forensicsthe use of a bombs isotopic
fingerprints to trace the fissile material device back to the reactors, enrichment facilities, or uranium
mines from which it was derived. In theory, the material that remains after an explosion can yield
crucial information about its source: the ratio of uranium isotopes varies according to where the
raw uranium was mined and how it was processed, and the composition of weapons-grade
plutonium reveals clues about the particular reactor used to produce it and how long the material
spent in the reactor.16 The possibility that the covert plot could be discovered [End Page 85] before
being carried out also acts as a deterrent. For these and other reasons, some analysts argue that nuclear
terrorism is unlikely.

Hegemony Core
AT Loose Nukes
Investigators would see through an excuse that nukes were stolen with ease- most
countries have secure fissile material, and those that dont have small, well
documented arsenals
Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists, Project Muse, p. 97-99, accessed 7/9/13, CB]
The first strategygiving nuclear weapons to terrorists and then pleading guilty to the lesser charge
of maintaining inadequate stockpile securityis highly dubious. Any state rational enough to seek
to avoid retaliation for a nuclear attack would recognize the incredible risk that this strategy
entails. In the wake of an act of nuclear terrorism, facing an enraged and vindictive victim, would the
state sponsor step forward to admit that its weapons or materials were used to attack a staunch enemy,
with the hope that the victim would believe a story about theft and grant clemency on those grounds? If
that logic does not appear implausible enough, recall that no state would be likely to give its nuclear
weapons or materials to a terrorist organization with which it did not have a long record of
cooperation and trust. Thus, a state sponsor acknowledging that it was the source of materials used
in a nuclear attack would be doing so in light of its enemies knowledge that the terrorists who
allegedly [End Page 96] stole the materials happened to have been its close collaborators in prior
acts of terrorism. This strategy would be nearly as suicidal as launching a direct nuclear attack.37
The second strategygiving nuclear weapons to terrorists and then hiding behind the possibility that they
were stolen from some unspecified insecure foreign sourcedeserves greater scrutiny. The list of
potential global sources of fissile material seems long. Nine countries possess nuclear weapons, and
eleven more have enough fissile material to fashion a crude fission device.38 In 2011 the worlds
stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the fissile material most likely to be sought by terrorists,39
was about 1.3 million kilograms, meaning that the material needed for a single crude weapon could be
found within the rounding error of the rounding error of global stocks. Perhaps, therefore, nearly all
twenty countries with sufficient stocks of fissile material would need to join the lineup of suspects
after a terrorist nuclear attack, not as possible sponsors but as potential victims of theft. And if
enough fissile material to make a nuclear weapon could be purloined from any of these countries, [End
Page 97] then perhaps the victim would be unable to rule out all possible sources and thus be unable to
punish the real culprit.
This gloomy picture overstates the difficulty of determining the source of stolen material after a
nuclear terrorist attack. In the wake of a detonation, the possibility of stolen fissile material
complicates the task of attributionbut only marginally. At the end of the Cold War, several countries
particularly in the former Soviet Unionconfronted major nuclear security problems, but great
progress has been made since then.40 Although no country has perfect nuclear security, today the
greatest concerns surround just five countries: Belarus, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa.41 In
addition, not all of those states are equally worrisome as potential sources of nuclear theft.

Hegemony Core
Substantial concerns exist about the security of fissile materials in Pakistan and Russia (the latter if
simply because of the large size of its stockpile), but Belarus, Japan, and South Africa would likely be
quickly and easily ruled out as the source of stolen fissile material. Belarus has a relatively small
stockpile of fissile materialapproximately 100 kilograms of HEU42so in the wake of a nuclear
terrorist attack, it would be easy for Belarus to show that its stockpile remained intact.43 Similarly,
Japan (one of the United States closest allies) and [End Page 98] South Africa would be keen to allow
the United States to verify the integrity of their full stocks of materials. (In the wake of a nuclear
terror attack, a lack of full cooperation in showing all materials accounted for would be highly revealing.)
Iran is not believed to have any weapons-usable nuclear material to steal,44 although that could
change. In short, a nuclear handoff strategy disguised as a loose nukes problem would be very
precarious.45

Hegemony Core
AT Harder to Attribute
Nuclear terrorism is easier to attribute than conventional terrorism is- massive
investigations, international assistance, high rate of attribution, restricted suspect
list, and difficulty in hiding the plans
There are at least five reasons, however, to expect that attributing a nuclear terrorist attack would be
easier than attributing a conventional terrorist attack. First, no terrorism investigation in history has
had the resources that would be deployed to investigating the source of a nuclear terror attack
particularly one against the United States or a U.S. ally. Rapidly attributing the attack would be
critical, not merely as a first step toward satisfying the rage of the victims but, more importantly, to
determine whether additional nuclear attacks were imminent. The victim would use every resource at its
disposalmoney, threats, and forceto rapidly identify the source of the attack.47 If necessary, any
investigation would go on for a long time; it would never blow over from the victims standpoint.
The second reason why attributing a nuclear terror attack would be easier than attributing a conventional
terrorist attack is the level of international assistance the victim would likely receive from allies,
neutrals, and even adversaries. An attack on the United States, for example, would likely trigger
unprecedented intelligence cooperation from its allies, if for no other reason than the fear that
subsequent attacks might target them. Perhaps more important, even adversaries of the United States
particularly those with access to fissile materialswould have enormous incentives to quickly
demonstrate their innocence. To avoid being accused of sponsoring or supporting the attack, and thus to
avoid the wrath of the United States, these countries would likely go to great lengths to demonstrate
that their weapons were accounted for, that their fissile materials had different isotopic properties than
the type used in the attack, and that they were sharing any information they had on the [End Page 100]
attack. The cooperation that the United States received from Iran and Pakistan in the wake of the
September 11 attacks illustrates how potential adversaries may be motivated to help in the aftermath of an
attack and stay off the target list for retaliation.48 The pressure to cooperate after an anonymous nuclear
detonation on U.S. soil would be many times greater.49
Third, the strong positive relationship between the number of fatalities stemming from an attack
and the rate of attribution (as depicted in figures 1 to 3 above) suggests that the probability of
attribution after a nuclear attackwith its enormous casualtiesshould be even higher. The 97
percent attribution rate for attacks that killed ten or more people on U.S. soil or that of its allies is
based on a set of attacks that were pinpricks compared to nuclear terrorism. The data in those
figures suggest that our conclusions understate the actual likelihood of nuclear attribution.
Fourth, the challenge of attribution after a terrorist nuclear attack should be easier than after a
conventional terrorist attack, because the investigation would begin with a highly restricted suspect

Hegemony Core
list. In the case of a conventional terror attack against the United States or an ally, one might begin the
investigation at the broadest level with the U.S. Department of States list of fifty-one foreign terrorist
organizations. In the case of a nuclear terror attack, only fifteen of these FTOs have state sponsorsand
only one sponsor (Pakistan) has either nuclear weapons or fissile materials. (If Iran acquires nuclear
weapons, that number will grow to two, but there is no overlap between the terror groups that Pakistan
supports and those that Iran assists.)
Finally, any operation to detonate a nuclear weapon would involve complex planning and
coordinationsecuring the weapon, learning to use it, planning the time and location of detonation,
moving the weapon to the target, and conducting the attack. Even if only a small cadre of operatives
knew the nuclear nature of the attack, the planning of a spectacular operation would be hard to keep
[End Page 101] secret.50 For example, six months prior to the September 11 attacks, Western intelligence
detected numerous indications that al-Qaida was planning a major attack. The intelligence was not
specific enoughor the agencies were not nimble enoughto prevent the operation, but the indicators
were blinking red for months, directing U.S. attention to al-Qaida as soon as the attacks began.51
Even the weakest data shows that terrorist attacks are easily traced
To explore the history of terrorist attribution, we use the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), a widely
referenced dataset compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism, which includes incidents dating back to 1970.22 The version employed here ends in 2008 and
includes more than 87,000 terrorist events. We use a subset of the GTD data that includes 18,328 terrorist
incidents that occurred from 1998 to 2008.23 We rely on this portion of the data because GTD first started
recording whether terror groups claimed responsibility for an attack in 1998, an important consideration
in assessing the data on attribution rates.24
Figure 1 shows the number of terror incidents that occurred from 1998 to 2008, and the rate of attribution,
organized by the number of fatalities. The [End Page 88] solid line, corresponding to the logarithmic scale
along the right y-axis, indicates the number of terrorist incidents for each level of fatalities.25 The
columns, corresponding to the left y-axis, reveal the rate of attribution per fatality.
The data in figure 1 yield two key findings. First, of the 18,328 attacks conducted from 1998 to 2008,
GTD researchers identified the attacker 42 percent of the time. That estimate of the attribution
rate, however, implies greater precision than is warranted, because the researchers who coded the
data did not have all the information then or currently available to intelligence and law
enforcement agencies. Therefore, some cases that the researchers coded as un-attributed may, in fact,
have been attributed; and on the other hand, some of the perpetrators identified in the GTD data set may
have been incorrectly accused. Despite the possibility of errors in both directions, the data suggest
that the perpetrators of terror attacks are identified slightly less than half the time.

Hegemony Core
The implication of a 4045 percent attribution rate is subject to competing interpretations. On the one
hand, states that seek to retaliate after terrorist attacks may desire a much higher rate of attribution. On the
other hand, from the perspective of a potential perpetrator, knowing that a covert nuclear terror
attack has only about a 60 percent chance of remaining anonymous should be sobering.
The second principal finding reflected in figure 1 is that the rate of attribution is strongly tied to the
number of fatalities caused by the attack. Most terror attacks kill relatively few people. In fact, most
of the incidents in the sample caused 0 to 4 deaths; and only 40 percent of those were attributed by GTD
to the perpetrator. But as fatalities increase, so does the rate of attribution. Of the 49 attacks that
killed more than 100 people, the guilty party was identified 73 percent of the time. Based on these
data, a terror group contemplating a mass casualty attack should not expect to remain anonymous.
While figure 1 reveals a link between the level of fatalities and the likelihood of attribution, most of the
underlying data are derived from events unlike the kind of incident that drives U.S. fears about
proliferation and terrorism: an anonymous nuclear terror strike on the United States or a U.S. ally.
The 18,000-plus cases in the dataset are mostly failed attacks, in foreign lands, against target
countries with less-capable intelligence agencies than those of the United States and many key U.S.
allies.
Extremely high risk of failure and ease of tracing terrorist organizations back to
state sponsors mean leaders would never arm a terrorist organization with nuclear
weapons
Taken together, the data on conventional terrorism suggest that nuclear attacksespecially those
that target countries with sophisticated intelligence agencieswould not remain anonymous for
long. In fact, both because of its shocking nature and because of fears of an additional follow-up nuclear
terror attack, any instance of nuclear terror would trigger an unprecedented global investigation.
The data in this section, therefore, likely understate the probability of attribution. For a state leader
contemplating giving a nuclear weapon to terrorists, the implication is clear: your proxy will very
likely be identified.
Linking Terrorists to Their Sponsors
The data presented above reveal that devastating attacks are usually attributed to the responsible
terrorist organization. But to deter states from passing nuclear weapons or materials to terrorists, one
must also be able to connect the terrorists to their state sponsor. How difficult would it be to do this?
Passing nuclear weapons or material to a terrorist group under any circumstances would be a
remarkably risky act. A leader who sponsored nuclear terrorism [End Page 91] would be wagering his
life, the lives of family members, his regime, and his countrys fate on the hope that the operation

Hegemony Core
would remain anonymous. If the terror group used the weapon against a different enemy or
revealed the source of the weapon, or if the terror groups operatives or senior leadership were
penetrated by foreign intelligence, the consequences could be catastrophic for the sponsor.
Click for larger view
Figure 3.
Attribution after Unclaimed Attacks
Given the enormous risks involved, it is difficult to imagine a states leaders placing so much faith in
a terrorist organization unless they already had a long-running, close, and trusting relationship
with that group, and unless that group had repeatedly demonstrated its reliability, competence, and
ability to maintain secrecy. Furthermore, leaders considering giving nuclear weapons to terror groups
would need to find a group with the demonstrated capability to conduct complex operations across
international borders.27 Many violent nonstate groups can plant roadside bombs or conduct smallscale ambushes against unsuspecting targets, but those relatively simple attacks do not imply an
ability to conduct complex international operations involving training, [End Page 92] travel, visas,
finances, and secure communications.28 In short, both the complexities of the mission and the need for
unwavering trust mean that a state seeking to orchestrate a nuclear attack by proxy would be limited to
collaborations with well-established terrorist organizations with which it has existing relationships,
simplifying the task of connecting terrorist perpetrators to their state sponsors.
To assess the difficulty of connecting terrorists to their sponsors, we compiled a list of terror
organizationsfocusing on those with close relationships to one or more countries. We began with the
U.S. State Departments list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), which we then adjusted, as
described below, to account for potential omissions.29 The adjustments generally involved adding statesponsored terror groups to the State Departments list, which, by itself, would make it harder to establish
our claim that victims could trace attacks from guilty terrorists to their sponsors.
According to the State Department, there are fifty-one FTOs, only nine of which have state
sponsors.30 Furthermore, according to the State Department, only four countries actively sponsor
terror groups: Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Syria.
Tracing an attack back to a state sponsor would not be hard because there are so
few sponsors
Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists, Project Muse, p. 95, accessed 7/9/13, CB]
Table 1 appears to present a daunting list of FTOs and states, but the data show that tracing an attack
from a terror group to its sponsor would be relatively simple. First, nearly all of the terror groups
listed have only one or two sponsors: nine FTOs have a single sponsor; five have two sponsors; and

Hegemony Core
only onethe Abu Nidal Organizationhas three (and it might soon have only a single sponsor).36
Furthermore, only one of the sponsors has nuclear weapons or bomb quantities of fissile material
(Pakistan). If Pakistan were to consider giving a weapon to terrorists, it would not turn to Hezbollah or
Hamas, with which it has weak connections. Nor, for the same reason, would Iran give nuclear
weapons or material to Jaish-e-Mohammed. The implication is clear: if a terrorist group is
identified in a nuclear attack, the list of possible sponsors will be short. In almost every conceivable
case, a single nuclear-armed suspect will stand out.
Finally, table 1 does not capture the momentous changes under way in the Middle East. It is unclear
whether post-Qaddafi Libya will continue to sponsor terrorism or whether Syria (currently
enmeshed in civil war) will remain a sponsor for long. If those two states were to cease supporting
FTOs, then no FTO would have more than a single sponsormaking it simple to trace an attack from
an identified group to the country that supplied it.

Hegemony Core
AT Deterrence Doesnt Apply

Deterrence still applies to state-sponsored nuclear terrorist attacks
There are two problems with this counterargument. First, while attribution uncertainty might restrain
a state from responding to an act of nuclear terror with a major nuclear retaliatory strike, that
option is not the only devastating response available to a country such as the United States or one of
its allies. Indeed, regardless of the level of attribution certainty, a nuclear strike might not be the
preferred response. For example, in the wake of a nuclear terror attack against the United States thought
to be sponsored by Pakistan, Iran, or North Korea, U.S. leaders might not feel compelled to determine
those countries guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or to narrow down the suspect list further;
Washington might simply decide that the era in which rogue states possessed nuclear weapons
must end, and threaten to conquer any country that refused to disarm or that was less than
forthcoming about the terror attack.52
Second, this counterargument would be unlikely to carry much weight with a leader contemplating
nuclear attack by proxy. A leader tempted to attack because of the prospect of residual attribution
uncertainty and the hope that such uncertainty would restrain his victim from lashing out in
retaliation would need enormous confidence in the humaneness of his enemy, even at a time [End
Page 102] when that enemy would be boiling over with rage. For example, could one really imagine an
Iranian aide convincing the supreme leader that if Iran gave a nuclear bomb to Hezbollah, knowing that
Israel would strongly suspect Iran as the source, Israels leaders would be too restrained by their deep
humanity and lingering doubts about sponsorship to retaliate harshly against Tehran?
In fact, the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
indicates a willingness to retaliate strongly against those directly culpable (al-Qaida), their
associates (the Taliban), and others simply deemed to be troublemakers in the neighborhood (Iraq).
There was debate in the United States over the strategic wisdom of invading Iraq, but none of Saddam
Husseins crimeseither known, suspected, or fabricatedwere held to an evidentiary standard even
close to certainty.53 States that consider giving nuclear weapons to terrorists cannot be certain how the
victim will react, but basing ones hope for survival on a victims reluctance to act on partial evidence of
culpability would be a tremendous gamble.

Hegemony Core
Proliferation

Hegemony Core
Proliferation Bad Impact

Proliferation escalates into nuclear war hegemon key to stop it
Utgoff, Institute for Defense Analysis Strategy, Forces and Resources Division
deputy director, 11
[Victor, 2-15-11, Proliferation, missile defence and American ambitions, Survival, Volume: 44, pg. 8790, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00396330212331343352#.UdoiFfmsiSo, accessed 7-713, MSG]
Escalation of violence is also basic human nature. Once the violence starts, retaliatory exchanges of
violent acts can escalate to levels unimagined by the participants before hand. Intense and blinding
anger is a common response to fear or humiliation or abuse. And such anger can lead us to impose
on our opponents whatever levels of violence are readily accessible. In sum, widespread proliferation
is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have
a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at
hand. Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the
American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear six-shooters on
their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we
will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations. This kind of world is
in no nations interest. The means for preventing it must be pursued vigorously. And, as argued
above, a most powerful way to prevent it or slow its emergence is to encourage the more capable states to
provide reliable protection to others against aggression, even when that aggression could be backed with
nuclear weapons. In other words, the world needs at least one state, preferably several, willing and
able to play the role of sheriff, or to be members of a sheriffs posse, even in the face of nuclear
threats.
Unfettered nuclear tech development risks global war

Sokolski, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center director, 9
(Henry, 6/1/9, Policy Review, Avoiding a Nuclear Crowd, No. 155,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/5534, accessed 7/7/13, AR)
Finally, several new nuclear weapons contenders are also likely to emerge in the next two to three
decades. Among these might be Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Iran, Algeria, Brazil
(which is developing a nuclear submarine and the uranium to fuel it), Argentina, and possibly Saudi
Arabia (courtesy of weapons leased to it by Pakistan or China), Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. All of
these states have either voiced a desire to acquire nuclear weapons or tried to do so previously and have
one or more of the following: A nuclear power program, a large research , or plans to build a large power
reactor by 2030.

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With a large reactor program inevitably comes a large number of foreign nuclear experts (who are
exceedingly difficult to track and identify) and extensive training, which is certain to include
nuclear fuel making.19 Thus, it will be much more difficult to know when and if a state is acquiring
nuclear weapons (covertly or overtly) and far more dangerous nuclear technology and materials
will be available to terrorists than would otherwise. Bottom line: As more states bring large
reactors on line more will become nuclear-weapons-ready i.e., they could come within months of
acquiring nuclear weapons if they chose to do so.20 As for nuclear safeguards keeping apace,
neither the iaeas nuclear inspection system (even under the most optimal conditions) nor technical
trends in nuclear fuel making (e.g., silex laser enrichment, centrifuges, new South African aps
enrichment techniques, filtering technology, and crude radiochemistry plants, which are making
successful, small, affordable, covert fuel manufacturing even more likely)21 afford much cause for
optimism.
This brave new nuclear world will stir existing security alliance relations more than it will settle
them: In the case of states such as Japan, South Korea, and Turkey, it could prompt key allies to go
ballistic or nuclear on their own.
Nuclear 1914
At a minimum, such developments will be a departure from whatever stability existed during the
Cold War. After World War II, there was a clear subordination of nations to one or another of the two
superpowers strong alliance systems the U.S.-led free world and the Russian-Chinese led Communist
Bloc. The net effect was relative peace with only small, nonindustrial wars. This alliance tension and
system, however, no longer exist. Instead, we now have one superpower, the United States, that is capable
of overthrowing small nations unilaterally with conventional arms alone, associated with a relatively
weak alliance system ( nato) that includes two European nuclear powers (France and the uk). nato is
increasingly integrating its nuclear targeting policies. The U.S. also has retained its security allies in Asia
(Japan, Australia, and South Korea) but has seen the emergence of an increasing number of nuclear or
nuclear-weapon-armed or -ready states.
So far, the U.S. has tried to cope with independent nuclear powers by making them strategic partners
(e.g., India and Russia), nato nuclear allies (France and the uk), non-nato allies (e.g., Israel and
Pakistan), and strategic stakeholders (China); or by fudging if a nation actually has attained full nuclear
status (e.g., Iran or North Korea, which, we insist, will either not get nuclear weapons or will give them
up). In this world, every nuclear power center (our European nuclear nato allies), the U.S., Russia, China,
Israel, India, and Pakistan could have significant diplomatic security relations or ties with one another but
none of these ties is viewed by Washington (and, one hopes, by no one else) as being as important as the
ties between Washington and each of these nuclear-armed entities (see Figure 3).
There are limits, however, to what this approach can accomplish. Such a weak alliance system, with its
expanding set of loose affiliations, risks becoming analogous to the international system that failed
to contain offensive actions prior to World War I. Unlike 1914, there is no power today that can
rival the projection of U.S. conventional forces anywhere on the globe. But in a world with an
increasing number of nuclear-armed or nuclear-ready states, this may not matter as much as we
think. In such a world, the actions of just one or two states or groups that might threaten to disrupt
or overthrow a nuclear weapons state could check U.S. influence or ignite a war Washington could
have difficulty containing. No amount of military science or tactics could assure that the U.S. could
disarm or neutralize such threatening or unstable nuclear states.22 Nor could diplomats or our

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intelligence services be relied upon to keep up to date on what each of these governments would be likely
to do in such a crisis (see graphic below):
Combine these proliferation trends with the others noted above and one could easily create the
perfect nuclear storm: Small differences between nuclear competitors that would put all actors on
edge; an overhang of nuclear materials that could be called upon to break out or significantly ramp
up existing nuclear deployments; and a variety of potential new nuclear actors developing weapons
options in the wings.
In such a setting, the military and nuclear rivalries between states could easily be much more
intense than before. Certainly each nuclear states military would place an even higher premium
than before on being able to weaponize its military and civilian surpluses quickly, to deploy forces
that are survivable, and to have forces that can get to their targets and destroy them with high
levels of probability. The advanced military states will also be even more inclined to develop and
deploy enhanced air and missile defenses and long-range, precision guidance munitions, and to
develop a variety of preventative and preemptive war options.
Certainly, in such a world, relations between states could become far less stable. Relatively small
developments e.g., Russian support for sympathetic near-abroad provinces; Pakistani-inspired
terrorist strikes in India, such as those experienced recently in Mumbai; new Indian flanking activities
in Iran near Pakistan; Chinese weapons developments or moves regarding Taiwan; state-sponsored
assassination attempts of key figures in the Middle East or South West Asia, etc. could easily
prompt nuclear weapons deployments with strategic consequences (arms races, strategic miscues,
and even nuclear war). As Herman Kahn once noted, in such a world every quarrel or difference of
opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.23 In short, we
may soon see a future that neither the proponents of nuclear abolition, nor their critics, would ever want.
None of this, however, is inevitable.

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Russia War

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Russia-US War Bad Impact

Russia-US war risks extinction
Bostrom, Oxford philosophy professor, 2
(Nick, March 2002, The Journal of Evolution and Technology, Existential Risks: Analyzing Human
Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html, accessed
7-8-13)
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An
all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences
that might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among
those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur
and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US
retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or
deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note
however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential
risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankinds potential permanently. Such a war might however
be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear
Armageddon and comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter
in the 21st century.

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Asia

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China War Impact

US-China conflict escalates to nuclear war
Glaser, George Washington University Political Science Professor, 11
(Charles, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Security
and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.,
Foreign Affairs, Mar/April 2011, "Will China's Rise Lead to War? ", Vol. 90, Issue 2, Ebsco, accessed 7-913)
The prospects for avoiding intense military competition and war may be good, but growth in China's
power may nevertheless require some changes in U.S. foreign policy that Washington will find
disagreeable- particularly regarding Taiwan. Although it lost control of Taiwan during the Chinese Civil
War more than six decades ago, China still considers Taiwan to be part of its homeland, and
unification remains a key political goal for Beijing. China has made clear that it will use force if
Taiwan declares independence, and much of China's conventional military buildup has been
dedicated to increasing its ability to coerce Taiwan and reducing the United States' ability to
intervene. Because China places such high value on Taiwan and because the United States and
China-whatever they might formally agree to-have such different attitudes regarding the legitimacy of
the status quo, the issue poses special dangers and challenges for the U.S.-Chinese relationship,
placing it in a different category than Japan or South Korea.
A crisis over Taiwan could fairly easily escalate to nuclear war, because each step along the way
might well seem rational to the actors involved. Current U.S. policy is designed to reduce the
probability that Taiwan will declare independence and to make clear that the United States will not come
to Taiwan's aid if it does. Nevertheless, the United States would find itself under pressure to protect
Taiwan against any sort of attack, no matter how it originated. Given the different interests and
perceptions of the various parties and the limited control Washington has over Taipei's behavior, a
crisis could unfold in which the United States found itself following events rather than leading them.
Such dangers have been around for decades, but ongoing improvements in China's military
capabilities may make Beijing more willing to escalate a Taiwan crisis. In addition to its improved
conventional capabilities, China is modernizing its nuclear forces to increase their ability to survive
and retaliate following a large-scale U.S. attack. Standard deterrence theory holds that
Washington's current ability to destroy most or all of China's nuclear force enhances its bargaining
position. China's nuclear modernization might remove that check on Chinese action, leading
Beijing to behave more boldly in future crises than it has in past ones. A U.S. attempt to preserve its
ability to defend Taiwan, meanwhile, could fuel a conventional and nuclear arms race. Enhancements to
U.S. offensive targeting capabilities and strategic ballistic missile defenses might be interpreted by China
as a signal of malign U.S. motives, leading to further Chinese military efforts and a general poisoning of
U.S.-Chinese relations.

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Escalation will spiral out of control

Swaine, Carnegie Endowment senior associate & University California-Berkeley
Asia Program postdoctoral fellow, 4
(Dr. Michael, Trouble in Taiwan, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/?fa=view&id=1460,
accessed 11-8-11, CMM)
A war with China over Taiwan would, of course, be far more dangerous than any of the United States'
post-Cold War operations. Although not a match for the United States, China is nonetheless a
continental power with very large conventional ground, naval, and air forces, as well as a nuclear
weapons arsenal capable of reaching any target in the United States and beyond. Taiwan's proximity
to China, the difficulty involved in interdicting Chinese attacks without directly striking the
Chinese mainland, and the historical inclination of both sides to display resolve in a crisis through
decisive -- and sometimes rapid -- military action suggest that escalation might prove extremely
difficult to control.

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Asian Instability Bad Impact

Asian instability leads to nuclear war
Landay, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 00
[Jonathan, 3-10-00, Knight Ridder, Top administration officials warn stakes for U.S. are high in Asian
conflicts, Lexis]
Few if any experts think China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, or India and Pakistan are
spoiling to fight. But even a minor miscalculation by any of them could destabilize Asia, jolt the
global economy, and even start a nuclear war. India, Pakistan, and China all have nuclear weapons,
and North Korea may have a few, too. Asia lacks the kinds of organizations, negotiations, and diplomatic
relationships that helped keep an uneasy peace for five decades in Cold War Europe.
Nowhere else on Earth are the stakes as high and relationships so fragile, said Bates Gill, director
of northeast Asian policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. We see the
convergence of great power interest overlaid with lingering confrontations with no institutionalized
security mechanism in place. There are elements for potential disaster.
In an effort to cool the regions tempers, President Clinton, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and
National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger all will hopscotch Asias capitals this month.
For America, the stakes could hardly be higher.
There are 100,000 U.S. troops in Asia committed to defending Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, and
the United States would instantly become embroiled if Beijing moved against Taiwan or North
Korea attacked South Korea. While Washington has no defense commitments to either India or
Pakistan, a conflict between the two could end the global taboo against using nuclear weapons and
demolish the already shaky international nonproliferation regime.

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India-US Relations Good Impact

India-US relations reduce the risk of South Asian nuclear war
Schaffer, Center for Strategic and International Security South Asia Program
director, 2
(Teresita, Washington Quarterly, Spring, Building a new partnership with India, p. Lexis)
Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and
position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As
a result, both giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation. For Washington, the
advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly,
as well as a stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region.
Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S. relations
with India. For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to
maintain an economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the
United States.

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India-Pakistan Nuclear War Impacts

India-Pakistan nuclear war risks extinction
Caldicott, Physicians for Social Responsibility founder, 2
[Helen, Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, The
New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bushs Military-Industrial Complex, p. xiii]
The use of Pakistani nuclear weapons could trigger a chain reaction. Nuclear-armed India, an
ancient enemy could respond in kind. China, Indias hated foe, could react if India used her nuclear
weapons, triggering a nuclear holocaust on the subcontinent. If any of either Russia or Americas
2,250 strategic weapons on hair-trigger alert were launched either accidentally or purposefully in
response, nuclear winter would ensue, meaning the end of most life on earth.
South Asian nuclear war risks extinction

Hundley, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting senior editor, 12
(Tom, 9-5-12, Foreign Policy, Race to the End,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/05/race_to_the_end?page=0,3, accessed 7/7/13,
AR)
The arms race could make a loose nuke more likely. After all, Pakistan's assurances that its nuclear
arsenal is safe and secure rest heavily on the argument that its warheads and their delivery systems
have been uncoupled and stored separately in heavily guarded facilities. It would be very difficult for
a group of mutinous officers to assemble the necessary protocols for a launch and well nigh
impossible for a band of terrorists to do so. But that calculus changes with the deployment of
mobile battlefield weapons. The weapons themselves, no longer stored in heavily guarded bunkers,
would be far more exposed. Nevertheless, military analysts from both countries still say that a
nuclear exchange triggered by miscalculation, miscommunication, or panic is far more likely than
terrorists stealing a weapon -- and, significantly, that the odds of such an exchange increase with the
deployment of battlefield nukes. As these ready-to-use weapons are maneuvered closer to enemy lines,
the chain of command and control would be stretched and more authority necessarily delegated to field
officers. And, if they have weapons designed to repel a conventional attack, there is obviously a
reasonable chance they will use them for that purpose. "It lowers the threshold," said Hoodbhoy.
"The idea that tactical nukes could be used against Indian tanks on Pakistan's territory creates the
kind of atmosphere that greatly shortens the distance to apocalypse." Both sides speak of the
possibility of a limited nuclear war. But even those who speak in these terms seem to understand
that this is fantasy -- that once started, a nuclear exchange would be almost impossible to limit or
contain. "The only move that you have control over is your first move; you have no control over the
nth move in a nuclear exchange," said Carnegie's Tellis. The first launch would create hysteria;
communication lines would break down, and events would rapidly cascade out of control. Some of

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the world's most densely populated cities could find themselves under nuclear attack, and an
estimated 20 million people could die almost immediately. What's more, the resulting firestorms
would put 5 million to 7 million metric tons of smoke into the upper atmosphere, according to a new
model developed by climate scientists at Rutgers University and the University of Colorado. Within
weeks, skies around the world would be permanently overcast, and the condition vividly described
by Carl Sagan as "nuclear winter" would be upon us. The darkness would likely last about a
decade. The Earth's temperature would drop, agriculture around the globe would collapse, and a
billion or more humans who already live on the margins of subsistence could starve. This is the real
nuclear threat that is festering in South Asia. It is a threat to all countries, including the United
States, not just India and Pakistan. Both sides acknowledge it, but neither seems able to slow their
dangerous race to annihilation.

Hegemony Core
AT China War
Economic interdependence checks war
Menon, Lehigh University international relations professor & New America
Foundation fellow, 8
(Rajan, Jan/Feb 2008, The National Interest, "The Changing of the Guard,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/changing_guard_6586, accessed 9-4-9)
The possibility of conflict is all the more unpalatable for Beijing because China's economic miracle
is the result of shedding autarky and embracing economic interdependence or, in its turbocharged
variant, globalization. For example, if China were to unload its dollar holdings and opt for the euro as its
main reserve currency, it would damage the American economy (the U.S. government would have to
hike interest rates to keep attracting dollars). But Beijing would also wound itself. While Americans
certainly benefit from the relatively inexpensive goods that U.S. companies export from China, it is no
less true that a reliable American market is important to China. Its exports to the United States
totaled $287 billion in 2006, making the United States the number one foreign destination for
Chinese goods; on top of that, the United States is the fifth-largest source of foreign direct investment
in China.
So, the costs of willfully creating instability--indeed, of upheaval unrelated to Chinese actions--have
risen now that China's economic engine is powered by capital inflows, global markets and reliable
energy supplies. And the constraints imposed by such dependence will not diminish even though
China will be less susceptible to economic sanctions as rising incomes expand the internal market.
Interdependence is inevitable and solves war
Deudney, John Hopkins Political Science professor & Ikenberry, Princeton Politics
and International Affairs professor, 9
[Daniel, G. John, Jan/Feb 2009, Foreign Affairs, "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival,"
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20090101faessay88106/daniel-deudney-g-john-ikenberry/the-myth-of-theautocratic-revival.html?mode=print, accessed 7-8-13]
Finally, there is an emerging set of global problems stemming from industrialism and economic
globalization that will create common interests across states regardless of regime type. Autocratic
China is as dependent on imported oil as are democratic Europe, India, Japan, and the United States,
suggesting an alignment of interests against petroleum-exporting autocracies, such as Iran and Russia.
These states share a common interest in price stability and supply security that could form the basis for a
revitalization of the International Energy Agency, the consumer association created during the oil turmoil
of the 1970s. The emergence of global warming and climate change as significant problems also
suggests possibilities for alignments and cooperative ventures cutting across the autocratic-democratic

Hegemony Core
divide. Like the United States, China is not only a major contributor to greenhouse gas accumulation but
also likely to be a major victim of climate-induced desertification and coastal flooding. Its rapid
industrialization and consequent pollution means that China, like other developed countries, will
increasingly need to import technologies and innovative solutions for environmental management.
Resource scarcity and environmental deterioration pose global threats that no state will be able to
solve alone, thus placing a further premium on political integration and cooperative institution
building.
Analogies between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first are based on a severe mischaracterization
of the actual conditions of the new era. The declining utility of war, the thickening of international
transactions and institutions, and emerging resource and environmental interdependencies together
undercut scenarios of international conflict and instability based on autocratic-democratic rivalry
and autocratic revisionism. In fact, the conditions of the twenty-first century point to the renewed value of
international integration and cooperation.
Chinas integration in the Western political and economic order checks conflict
Ikenberry, Princeton University International Affairs professor, 8,
[G. John, Jan/Feb 2008, Foreign Affairs, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West ," Foreign Affairs,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87102/g-john-ikenberry/the-rise-of-china-and-the-futureof-the-west.html?mode=print, access 9-4-9)
The Western order's strong framework of rules and institutions is already starting to facilitate
Chinese integration. At first, China embraced certain rules and institutions for defensive purposes:
protecting its sovereignty and economic interests while seeking to reassure other states of its peaceful
intentions by getting involved in regional and global groupings. But as the scholar Marc Lanteigne
argues, "What separates China from other states, and indeed previous global powers, is that not only is it
'growing up' within a milieu of international institutions far more developed than ever before, but
more importantly, it is doing so while making active use of these institutions to promote the country's
development of global power status." China, in short, is increasingly working within, rather than
outside of, the Western order.
China is already a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a legacy of Roosevelt's
determination to build the universal body around diverse great-power leadership. This gives China the
same authority and advantages of "great-power exceptionalism" as the other permanent members. The
existing global trading system is also valuable to China, and increasingly so. Chinese economic
interests are quite congruent with the current global economic system -- a system that is open and
loosely institutionalized and that China has enthusiastically embraced and thrived in. State power
today is ultimately based on sustained economic growth, and China is well aware that no major
state can modernize without integrating into the globalized capitalist system; if a country wants to be
a world power, it has no choice but to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). The road to global
power, in effect, runs through the Western order and its multilateral economic institutions.

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War

Hegemony Core
Escalation Likely
Interdependence makes risk of escalation high
Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins American Foreign Policy Program director and
professor, 5
[Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the Worlds Government in the Twenty-First
Century, p. 224]
At best, an American withdrawal would bring with it some of the political anxiety typical during the Cold War and a
measure of the economic uncertainty that characterized the years before World War II. At worst, the
retreat of American power could lead to a repetition of the great global economic failure and the
bloody international conflicts the world experienced in the 1930s and 194os. Indeed, the potential for
economic calamity and wartime destruction is greater at the outset of the new century than it was
in the first half of the preceding one because of the greater extent of international economic
interdependence and the higher levels of prosperitythere is more to lose now than there was thenand because of the
presence, in large numbers, of nuclear weapons.

Hegemony Core
Cant Solve War

Its impossible to plan for every worst case scenario
Greenblatt, NPR, 2-15-12
(Alan, NPR, As Wars Wind Down, What Are U.S. Security Needs?,
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146892853/as-wars-wind-down-what-are-u-s-security-needs, accessed 629,12, FFF)
It's impossible to plan for every scenario. There's no amount of military spending that would keep
the nation completely safe.
"We could spend the entire federal budget on the military and we wouldn't be able to eliminate
every risk to U.S. national security," Bensahel says.
That leaves open the question of how much risk policymakers are willing to tolerate. That's
inevitably a political question, Feaver says, and one that never gets fully resolved.
After the Cold War, Washington was too complacent about U.S. security, he says. After Sept. 11,
many politicians exaggerated the threat that terrorism posed, he adds.
"The al-Qaida threat was and to a certain extent is very, very serious, but it was not the Soviet Union with
tens of thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles on hair-trigger alert," Feaver says. "So it's a categorically
different threat."

Hegemony Core
Risk of War Low

Threat of war and terrorism exaggerated
Greenblatt, NPR writer, 12
(Alan, 2-15-12, NPR, As Wars Wind Down, What Are U.S. Security Needs?,
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146892853/as-wars-wind-down-what-are-u-s-security-needs, accessed 629-12, FFF)
Wars are less frequent and far less deadly than they were even a few decades ago. The U.S.
has built up a military apparatus that dwarfs any potential rivals spending nine times as much
as China on defense, for instance.
Even terrorist attacks pose little threat to most Americans, Zenko and Cohen argue. They are
fellows, respectively, at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Foundation.
They note that in 2010, 13,186 people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide, but only 15 of them
were Americans. In other words, Americans face greater risk from drowning in a bathtub.
"The world that the United States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place," Zenko
and Cohen write. "It is a world with fewer violent conflicts and greater political freedom than at
virtually any other point in human history."
Even with budget cuts the military still remains high and war is unlikely
Greenblatt, NPR, 12
(Alan, 2-15-12, NPR, As Wars Wind Down, What Are U.S. Security Needs?,
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146892853/as-wars-wind-down-what-are-u-s-security-needs, accessed 629,12, FFF)
Even Obama's budget, despite its significant cuts, assumes U.S. troop levels will remain higher than
they were before 2001. Figuring out just how much military force and spending is enough is going to
remain a primary argument in Washington.
It's "preposterous" to worry that the U.S. can't afford to cut defense spending because of threats
that might arise years down the road, says Jack Snyder, an international relations professor at
Columbia University.
On the other hand, Snyder says, a good deal of the security the U.S. enjoys today is the byproduct of its
military resolve.
U.S. strategy hasn't always been flawless, he says, but the country has made it clear it won't tolerate
aggression across internationally recognized borders and has had the wherewithal to back that
policy up.

Hegemony Core
"War is less likely and the U.S. is certainly more secure now than it has been in a long, long time,"
Snyder says. "But some of the reasons for the decline of war have to do with the power of the
United States and the other liberal advanced democracies."

Hegemony Core
Risk of Missile Attack Low

Missile attacks pose no threat, interceptors and relations check
Pak, Medill National Security zone writer, 12
(Susanna, 6-9-12, Medill National Security zone, U.S. more secure today despite growing ballistic
missile threat, 6-9-12, http://nationalsecurityzone.org/site/u-s-more-secure-today-despite-growingballistic-missile-threat/, accessed 6-28-12, FFF)
The situation today is radically different, said Stephen Rademaker, a former Bush administration
arms control and nonproliferation official, in a phone interview. Ten years ago, America was
completely defenseless against the threat of missile attack.
Rademaker says the U.S. now has about 45 interceptors in Alaska and California, which is more
than enough to defend against accidental launches from Russia, as well as attacks from Iran and
North Korea. He adds that tensions between the U.S. and Russia have relaxed since the Cold War, so
that intentional launches are unlikely and accidental launches pose the greatest threat.
The improved relationship with Russia and the technological advances allowing the U.S. to build a
stronger defense system come years after the U.S. walked away from an agreement to stop building
missile defenses.

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Military Counterplans

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Army Corps of Engineers CP

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Army Corps of Engineers = Military

Army Corps of Engineers is a military branch of the army
US Army Corps of Engineers No Date Given
(Mission Overview, US Army Corps of Engineers, http://www.usace.army.mil/Missions.aspx, Accessed:
7/8/14, CD)
The Corps story began more than 200 years ago when Congress established the Continental Army with a
provision for a chief engineer on June 16, 1775. The Army established the Corps of Engineers as a
separate, permanent branch on March 16, 1802, and gave the engineers responsibility for founding and
operating the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Hegemony Core
Wind Siting Solvency

The CP solves siting Army Core of Engineers primary regulatory agency for wind
farms and their development
Firestone et al, University of Delaware College of Marine Studies professor, 5
( Jeremy, Willett Kempton is a professor in the University of Delaware's School of Marine Science and
Policy within the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and Andrew Krueger University of
Delaware, College of Marine and Earth Studies doctoral student , Christen E. Loper University of
Delaware doctoral candidate, February 25, REGULATING OFFSHORE WIND POWER AND
AQUACULTURE: MESSAGES FROM LAND AND SEA, Cornell JL & Pub.,
https://www.ceoe.udel.edu/windpower/resources/WindAquaRegCJP.pdf, pg 2, Accessed: 7/6/14, CD)
At present in the United States, any attempt to develop the promise of these new uses requires the
government to spin together a hodgepodge of laws enacted prior to the development of these
technologies and applications without the benefit of having them in mind. Such a regulatory void can
be seen in attempts to regulate offshore aquaculture: an entrepreneur must obtain a U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers (Army Corps) permit to place a structure in U.S. navigable waters, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the discharge of effluents from the aquaculture facility,
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asserts jurisdiction over aquaculture
based on the premise that aquaculture operations may negatively impact wild fish stocks,3 yet no agency
has the authority to lease ocean space for the pur-poses of aquaculture.4 A similar hodgepodge exists for
offshore wind power. While public debate over offshore wind power and aquaculture is likely to be
centered on environmental and aesthetic issues, the governments present offshore framework
places both decisions in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineersa regulatory agency whose
primary foci are navigation and national security, thus mismatching public concerns with
regulatory priorities.
Wind farms and the power cables that come from them need Army Corps of
Engineers permits in order to be built
Firestone et al, University of Delaware College of Marine Studies professor, 5
( Jeremy, Willett Kempton is a professor in the University of Delaware's School of Marine Science and
Policy within the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and Andrew Krueger University of
Delaware, College of Marine and Earth Studies doctoral student , Christen E. Loper University of
Delaware doctoral candidate, February 25, REGULATING OFFSHORE WIND POWER AND
AQUACULTURE: MESSAGES FROM LAND AND SEA, Cornell JL & Pub.,
https://www.ceoe.udel.edu/windpower/resources/WindAquaRegCJP.pdf, pg 13, Accessed: 7/6/14, CD)
As noted above, a dredge-and-fill permit under the Clean Water Act (CWA)34 also may be needed
(Table 1, item 1a). The decision to grant such a permit would depend on whether or not the action

Hegemony Core
occurred within three miles of the shore, such as the cable running from a wind tower through state
waters to the shore, and whether or not the action is considered to be dredging or filling. Some
methods of laying cable or sinking wind towers (piles) would not trigger agency jurisdiction,
although placing rip-rap around the pile base would. In the event such a permit was needed, it
presumably would be handled together with the RHA permit, as the Army Corps of Engineers
serves as the lead agency on both permitting processes.
The Army corps controls all regulatory power in regards to wind farms on the ocean
Kaplan, counsel and Chief Sustainability Officer for Nixon Peabody 2004
(Carolyn S., January, 1, , Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Congress, the Courts, and
the Army Corps: Siting the First Offshore Wind Farm in the United States,
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1135&context=ealr&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3D%2522Coast
%2Bguard%2522%2Band%2Boff%2Bshore%2Bwind%2Bfarm%26btnG%3D%26as_sdt
%3D1%252C48%26as_sdtp%3D#search=%22Coast%20guard%20off%20shore%20wind%20farm%22,
Accessed: 7/6/14, CD)
The Corps asserted its jurisdiction over the Cape Wind data tower and wind farm pursuant to
section 10 of the RHA, as extended by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA).126 The RHA
requires a Corps permit for installation of a structure in navigable waters of the United States.127
The Corps took the position that its jurisdiction over navigable waters of the United States is
extended by the OCSLA to include all submerged lands seaward of state coastal waters which are
under U.S. jurisdiction-those lands from 3 to 200 nautical miles offshore. 128
As the issuing authority for a federal permit under section 10, the Corps is the lead agency in
preparing an EIS for the wind farm project under NEPA.129 In that capacity the Corps coordinates
interagency review of the project, incorporating the input of a number of federal regulatory
authorities.130 A portion of the wind farm project is also located in state waters,131 triggering
thresholds for environmental review under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA).132
To avoid duplication of efforts, the Corps is working with Massachusetts to conduct a concurrent
environmental review.133 On the regional level, the Cape Cod Commission is authorized to review
Developments of Regional Impact that present regional issues or potential impacts to the resources
of Cape COd.134 Issues relevant to the Commission's review will be incorporated into the
environmental review process.135

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Energy Extraction Solvency

Army Corps controls all resource extracting devices in the navigable waters of the
US
Kaplan, Nixon Peabody counsel and Chief Sustainability Officer, 4
(Carolyn S, ., January, 1, , Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Congress, the Courts, and
the Army Corps: Siting the First Offshore Wind Farm in the United States
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1135&context=ealr&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3D%2522Coast
%2Bguard%2522%2Band%2Boff%2Bshore%2Bwind%2Bfarm%26btnG%3D%26as_sdt
%3D1%252C48%26as_sdtp%3D#search=%22Coast%20guard%20off%20shore%20wind%20farm%22,
Accessed: 7/6/14, CD)
In addressing the Corps's authority to issue a section 10 permit for the data tower, the district court
found that the case law has "evolved in such a way that, today 'a permit from ... the Corps ... is
required for the installation of any structure in the navigable waters' of the United States. "178 The
court went on to explore the extent of the Corps's section 10 authority over OCS lands, considering
the language of the OCSLA as it was originally drafted, the 1978 amendments to the act, the
legislative history of those amendments, and the Corps's interpretation of its own authority,l79 The
district court rejected the Plaintiffs' argument that Congress, in amending the OCSLA in 1978, had
restricted the Corps's authority to issue section 10 permits on the OCS to "those structures erected for
the purpose of extracting resources. "ISO Rather, the court upheld the Corps's interpretation of the
relevan t statutory language, finding that its section 10 authority extends to "all 'artificial islands,
installations, and other devices located on the seabed, to the seaward limit of the [OCS],' induding,
but not limited to, those that' may be' used to explore for, develop, or produce resources. "181

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Reef Solvency
Army Corps of Engineers solves reef preservation Hawaii proves
Kershner, U.S. Army Pacific Public Affairs, 12
( Angela E., 9/11/12, US Army Corps Of Engineers, " DLNR and Corps of Engineers sign agreement to
kick-off West Maui "Ridge to Reef" initiative",
www.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsArchive/StoryArticleView/tabid/232/Article/477947/dlnr-and-corps-ofengineers-sign-agreement-to-kick-off-west-maui-ridge-to-reef.aspx, 7/6/14, aven)
HONOLULU -- The Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, Honolulu District (Corps) signed a $3 million cost-share agreement today to develop a
watershed plan to support the West Maui "Ridge to Reef" Initiative. The Initiative is one of the
first efforts in the state to implement a comprehensive management strategy to address impacts to
coral reefs across multiple watersheds. The watershed plan will be funded 75-percent by the Corps and
25-percent by DLNR.
West Maui has some of the most severely impacted coral reefs in the state. In West Maui, nearly onefourth of all living corals have been lost in the last thirteen years. Without dramatic steps to restore
favorable conditions, reefs statewide risk rapid degradation. Causes of coral reef decline are complex
and not yet fully understood. However, land-based pollution is known to be a serious threat to coral reef
ecosystems. Increased sedimentation associated with loss of forest land, historical agriculture practices,
stream channelization, and rapid development has clearly impacted coral reef health.
"The islands and reefs are connected; what we do on land affects the reef," said William J. Aila, Jr.,
DLNR chairperson. "Recognizing this relationship, the State understands that an integrated and
comprehensive approach to reduce land-based sources of pollution is one of the most important steps to
help restore coral reef ecosystems. Healthy coral reefs are vital to our island lifestyle, economy, and a
thriving Native Hawaiian culture."
The West Maui Ridge to Reef Initiative will engage various federal and state agencies and
organizations in the implementation of a strategy to reduce the threats of land-based pollution to
coral reefs in West Maui. As an initial step, a number of federal agencies and organizations are funding
technical studies and public education efforts to support the DLNR- and Corps-funded watershed plan.
DLNR and other agencies will implement priority "on-the-ground" actions as they are identified, while
the DLNR- and Corps-funded watershed plan is developing the comprehensive strategy.
"Through its support of the West Maui Ridge to Reef Initiative, the Corps is continuing its
commitment to improving the stewardship and sustainability of Hawai'i's watersheds and near
shore habitats. The signing of this cost share agreement represents more than a decade of hard
work and tireless efforts made by federal, state, local leaders and the community to preserve and
protect the `aina," said Lt. Col. Thomas D. Asbery, commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu
District.

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The West Maui Ridge to Reef Initiative expands on the 2011 U.S. Coral Reef Task Force designated
priority partnership for the K'anapali to Kahekili area. The proposed 24,000-acre West Maui Watershed
study area extends from K'anapali northward to Honolua and from the summit of Pu'u Kukui to the outer
reef. It includes the watersheds of Wahikuli, Honokwai, Kahana, Honokahua and Honolua.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture -Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the State of Hawai'i Department of Health, the West
Maui Mountains Watershed Partnership, and K'anapali Makai Watch are all providing assistance as part
of the initiative to improve the health of West Maui's reefs.
"We have been working in the mauka watershed since 1998. We are happy to see this initiative start to
expand conservation from mauka to makai," said Chris Brosius, coordinator for the West Maui Mountains
Watershed Partnership.
Corps in charge of the placement of artificial reefs

Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, no date
[Decommissioning and Rigs to Reefs in the Gulf of Mexico FAQ, http://www.bsee.gov/Explorationand-Production/Decomissioning/FAQ/, accessed 7-10-14, AFB]
The National Artificial Reef Plan provides guidance on various aspects of artificial reef use,
including types of construction materials, and planning, siting, designing, and managing of artificial reefs
for the benefit of aquatic life.
The Department of Commerce, under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), developed the National Artificial Reef Plan in order to guide understanding
of the many facets of artificial reef development and use, including the roles of Federal, State, and
local governments. Required under the National Fishing Enhancement Act of 1984, NOAA most recently
updated the Plan in 2007 (in coordination with Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific States Marine Fisheries
Commissions, as well as interested State and Federal agencies).
The Plan is intended to respond to the information needs of a wide variety of users, including reef
regulators, fishery and environmental managers, prospective donors of reef material, government
officials, and the general public by facilitating effective artificial reef programs and performance
monitoring. The Plan emphasizes the use of the most recent and best information available, establishes
standard terminology to improve communication between parties interested in reefs, and assists in
developing more uniform permitting procedures and clear guidance on materials acceptable for
construction of marine artificial reefs. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for
permitting the placement of decommissioned platforms as artificial reefs under section 10 of the
Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. The Plan also encourages the States to develop plans for artificial
reefs in State waters and to participate in the planning for reefs in nearby Federal waters.

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Dredging Solvency
USACE removes corals in order to dredge port
Alvarez, New York Times Miami Bureau Chief, 14
(Lizette, 6/5/14, New York Times, "Researchers Race to Save Coral in Miami",
www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/us/researchers-race-to-save-coral-before-dredging-starts-in-miami.html?
_r=0, 7/6/14, aven)
MIAMI -- With dredging set to begin this weekend in the Port of Miami, researchers are scrambling
to salvage a much larger than expected trove of delicate corals that were not in the original marine
life rescue plan for the undersea area.
The researchers must be out of the shipping channel known as Government Cut by Friday, a much
narrower window than expected for salvaging the coral. They have asked for an extension to complete
their work, but so far have been denied one.
In the past few days, researchers say they have found thousands more specimens along sections of
the channel beyond where the Army Corps of Engineers was obligated to remove large, important
corals in preparation for the dredging. Most of those corals have been removed by the Army Corps
of Engineers and, for the most part, have been transplanted onto other reefs.
But researchers recently secured permits for a second sweep of the channel, including outside the
designated areas, in the hope of collecting smaller corals for scientific and educational purposes. During
their dives, they said, they found much larger colonies of large, healthy stony corals than expected along
the busy shipping channel. The colonies are important, researchers said, because they show resilience and
offer insight that could help save South Florida's ailing coral reefs.
''They were allowed to go out and see what was left over,'' said Rachel Silverstein, the executive director
of Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper, which brought the original lawsuit to protect corals in Government Cut.
''We realized that there is a lot still there. And we realized how much the permit was missing in terms of
mitigation and how much reef will be destroyed by this dredging.''
The Army Corps of Engineers has announced that it will begin dredging the port to allow access for
larger vessels this weekend, six weeks sooner than researchers had expected. Because of contractual
obligations, any delays will cost the corps $50,000 to $100,000 a day, said Susan J. Jackson, the
spokeswoman for the corps' Jacksonville, Fla., district. ''To cause a construction delay would be fiscally
irresponsible,'' Ms. Jackson added.
Researchers said they had hoped to begin the difficult work, which involves coping with cruise ships,
freighters, tides and poor visibility, earlier this year and finish in July. But because of fluctuations in the
Army Corps of Engineers' construction schedule, the researchers were not issued a permit until
May 26 and now have been told to clear out by Friday. Their efforts have also been hampered by bad
weather.

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Colin Foord, a marine biologist and one of the founders of Coral Morphologic, which combines art and
science, said he and other divers had come across large specimens of coral that should have been removed
by the Army Corps of Engineers. (The University of Miami also was issued a permit to collect corals.)
''We should not have been finding those,'' Mr. Foord said.
The Army Corps of Engineers said that it had removed, as required, specifically listed corals larger than
10 centimeters, or just under 4 inches, from designated areas that had not previously been dredged. ''We
have some of the best scientists in the world on our team,'' Ms. Jackson said, ''and we're abiding by law
and permit requirements.''
The goal now is to try to safely transplant as much of the corals as possible by Friday, Mr. Foord said,
adding that divers had not even reached a second reef. With many of the reefs in South Florida faltering -more than 90 percent of Miami's coral has disappeared -- there is new urgency in transplanting corals and
researching why they are dying and how to help them thrive.
''The corals are living in an industrial shipping lane,'' Mr. Foord said. ''We see them as perhaps being ideal
research projects to find out why these corals are so adaptive.''

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AFF v Army Corps of Engineers CP

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AFF Army Corps of Engineers = Non-Military

USACE is provides both military and non-military support, so the counterplan
could be a way the plan is done
Federal Register, no date
(The Daily Journal of the United States Government, https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies/engineerscorps, accessed 7/8/14,aven)
USACE provides support directly and indirectly to the warfighting effort.[24] They build and help
maintain much of the infrastructure that the Army and the Air Force use to train, house, and
deploy troops. USACE built and maintained navigation systems and ports provide the means to
deploy vital equipment and other material. Corps Research and Development (R&D) facilities help
develop new methods and measures for deployment, force protection, terrain analysis, mapping,
and other support.
USACE directly supports the military in the battle zone, making expertise available to commanders
to help solve and/or avoid engineering (and other) problems. Forward Engineer Support Teams,
FEST-A's or FEST-M's, may accompany combat engineers to provide immediate support, or to
reach electronically into the rest of the Corps for the necessary expertise. A FEST-A team is an eightperson detachment; a FEST-M is approximately 36. These teams are designed to provide immediate
technical-engineering support to the warfighter or in a disaster area. Corps professionals use the
knowledge and skills honed on both military and civil projects to support the U.S. and local
communities in the areas of real estate, contracting, mapping, construction, logistics, engineering, and
management experience. This work currently includes support for rebuilding Iraq, establishing
Afghanistan infrastructure, and supporting international and interagency services.
Army Corps of Engineers includes civilian capabilities Iraq and Afghanistan

prove civilians conduct non-military missions
USACE, no date
(US Army Corps of Engineers, "Deployment Pay and Incentives",
www.usace.army.mil/Careers/CivilianDeployment/DeploymentPay.aspx, 7/8/14, aven)
The USACE mission to Support the Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) is unprecedented in size and
scope. USACE plays a large role in rebuilding Iraq's and Afghanistans infrastructures.
We have deployed approximately 9000 civilian employees to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, and
more are deploying every week to fill positions critical to the success of our missions.

Hegemony Core
This article, with the accompanying chart, details the additional compensation and benefits that
civilians can expect if they volunteer for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The information contained in
this article and chart are current as of 1 June 2010, and are updated periodically.
Current Federal employees may be placed in a Temporary Duty (TDY) status for up to one year.
Employees may receive temporary, non-competitive promotions not to exceed 120 days or they may
apply for longer-term promotions for longer tours.
Most current Federal employees who are TDY in Iraq or Afghanistan are temporarily reassigned from
their home stations to the Transatlantic Division (TAD). While in TDY status and assigned to TAD, an
employees duty station remains the same and base and locality pay are not affected.
For longer tours of duty, current Federal employees may serve in Iraq or Afghanistan on a Temporary
Change of Station (TCS) either six months or one year long. Unlike TDY, employees who opt for a TCS
do not receive locality pay for the period of time they are on assignment, and will only receive the basic
pay for their position as determined by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Due to the nature of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, additional compensation is also given
to staff that serve there.
Employees who are hired from outside the Federal government (i.e., not current Federal employees) are
eligible for many of the same benefits and entitlements as current Federal employees. However, the tour
lengths and entitlements are dependent on the country to which the employee is deployed. Questions on
benefits for employees outside the Federal government will be explained in detail at the time a tentative
job offer is made.
Coastal management proves Corps does ocean operations like the plan
USACE and NOAA work together to solve plan
Memorandum of Understanding between Defense and Commerce, 10
(MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING PURSUANT TO THE ECONOMY ACT THROUGH
WHICH THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS IS
PURCHASING SOCIAL SCIENCE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FROM U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
COMMERCE NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION COASTAL
SERVICES CENTER, 9/30/10, p 2, www.usace.army.mil/Portals/2/docs/MILCON/MOAUSACE
%20%20NOAA.pdf, accessed: 7/8/14, aven)
1. PARTIES AND PURPOSE

This Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishes an agreement between the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (US ACE) and NOAA Coastal Services Center (NOAA CSC), U.S. Department of Commerce
(DOC), through which USACE will pay NOAA CSC for providing new social science products and
services to support the improved management of natural resources along our nation's coasts. This
includes, but is not limited to, specialized economic studies (valuation of non-market goods and
services, benefit-cost analysis, assessment of economic impacts, benefits, and costs), needs
assessments, survey development, and social impact assessments.

Hegemony Core
This MOU is established pursuant to the Memorandum of Agreement between the U.S. Department of
Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
dated May 19, 2008 (NOS Agreement Code: MOA-2008-01717630, Attachment 1).
2. BACKGROUND
US ACE and NOAA CSC serve complementary mission in promoting the wise use of our nation's
coasts. In accomplishing these missions, social scientists from both agencies often apply common
data and tools to address a common suite of coastal management issues. This agreement will allow
USACE to build on work already completed by NOAA CSC to reduce redundancy and will allow both
agencies to share the cost of mutually beneficial projects.

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Coast Guard CP

Hegemony Core
Coast Guard = Military

Coast Guard is a military branch of the US armed forces
U.S. Code
(14 U.S. Code 1, Establishment of Coast Guard, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/14/1, CD)
The Coast Guard, established January 28, 1915, shall be a military service and a branch of the
armed forces of the United States at all times.
Coast Guard is considered a military service of the United States

Military.com, No Date Given
(Answers To the Top Coast Guard Questions, Military.com, http://www.military.com/join-armedforces/coast-guard-recruiting-faqs.html, Accessed: 7/8/14, CD)
The Coast Guard does not fall under the Department of Defense. Until recently, the Coast Guard was
under the Department of Transportation. Recent legislation has move the Coast Guard to the newly
created Department of Homeland Defense. However, the Coast Guard is considered a military
service, because, during times of war or conflict, the President of the United States can transfer any
or all assets of the Coast Guard to the Department of the Navy. In fact, this has been done in almost
every single conflict that the United States have ever been involved in. The Coast Guard is
commanded by a 4-star admiral, known as the Coast Guard Commandant.
US Coast Guard is a military force of the United States

US Coast Guard 14
(March 20, Overview of the United States Coast Guard, United States Coast Guard,
http://www.uscg.mil/top/about/ , Accessed: 7/8/14, CD)
The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the five armed forces of the United States and the only military
organization within the Department of Homeland Security. Since 1790 the Coast Guard has safeguarded
our Nation's maritime interests and environment around the world. The Coast Guard is an adaptable,
responsive military force of maritime professionals whose broad legal authorities, capable assets,
geographic diversity and expansive partnerships provide a persistent presence along our rivers, in
the ports, littoral regions and on the high seas. Coast Guard presence and impact is local, regional, national
and international. These attributes make the Coast Guard a unique instrument of maritime safety, security and
environmental stewardship.

Hegemony Core
EEZ Solvency
US Coast guard has jurisdictional control over all fishing and maritime activities in
its EEZ including preventing overfishing and protecting endangered species
US Coast Guard 11
(10-3, Living Marine Resources, United States Coast Guard,
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg531/LMR.asp, Accessed: 7/8/14, CD)
Protecting the U.S. EEZ and key areas of the high seas is an important mission for the Coast
Guard. The Coast Guard enforces fisheries laws at sea, as tasked by the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries
Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA). Our fisheries priorities are, in order of importance:
1. Protecting the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone from foreign encroachment: The MSFCMA of 1976
extended U.S. fisheries management authority out to the full 200 miles authorized by international
law. The U.S. EEZ is the largest in the world, containing 3.4 million square miles of ocean and
90,000 miles of coastline. Foreign fishers operating illegally in this area are, effectively, stealing
resources from the U.S., and our fisheries managers have no way of measuring or accounting for
this loss.
2. Enforcing domestic fisheries law: U.S. Domestic Fisheries support a $24 billion dollar industry.
Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs), to ensure the sustainability of these fisheries are developed by
regional Fisheries Management Councils, each of which have a non-voting Coast Guard member.
The Coast Guard is responsible for enforcing these FMPs at sea, in conjunction with NOAA
Fisheriesenforcement ashore. In addition to FMP enforcement, we enforce laws to protect marine
mammals and endangered species.
3. International fisheries agreements: Realizing that fish do not recognize national boundaries, the
Coast Guard works closely with the Department of State to develop and enforce international
fisheries agreements. Most notably, the Coast Guard enforces the United Nations High Seas
Driftnet Moratorium in the North Pacific, where illegal drift netters may catch U.S. origin salmon.

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Environmental Protection Solvency

US Coast Guard is responsible for environmental protection in the USs EEZ
US Coast Guard, 11
(10-3, United States Coast Guard, Living Marine Resources,
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/cg531/LMR.asp, Accessed: 7/8/14, CD)
Coast Guard marine protected species program efforts must be closely aligned with the NMFS and
the FWS management goals. The goal of the Coast Guard's marine protected species program is to
assist the NMFS and the FWS in the development and enforcement of those regulations necessary
to help recover and maintain the countrys marine protected species and their marine ecosystems.
Further, as a leader in living marine resource stewardship, the Coast Guard must be a model of
compliance and awareness in its internal actions. Coast Guard objectives include assisting in
preventing the decline of marine protected species populations, promoting the recovery of marine
protected species and their habitats, partnering with other agencies and organizations to enhance
stewardship of marine ecosystems and ensuring internal compliance with appropriate legislation,
regulations and management practices.
While the Coast Guard shares enforcement responsibility with the NMFS and the FWS, their
agents primarily focus on investigations ashore. The Coast Guard is the foremost agency with the
maritime infrastructure, capability and authority to project a federal law enforcement presence
into the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and upon the high seas. The Coast Guard's strategic
plan for marine protected species is called OCEAN STEWARD.

Hegemony Core
OTEC Solvency
The US Coast Guard has full jurisdictional control over all OTEC facilities in US
waters
US Code
(42 USC 9153, Enforcement, http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title42section9153&num=0&edition=prelim, accessed 7-8-14, CD)
(a) Enforcement responsibility of Administrator of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
Coast Guard
Except where a specific section of this chapter designates enforcement responsibility, the provisions of
this chapter shall be enforced by the Administrator. The Secretary of the department in which the
Coast Guard is operating shall have exclusive responsibility for enforcement measures which affect
the safety of life and property at sea, shall exercise such other enforcement responsibilities with
respect to vessels subject to the provisions of this chapter as are authorized under other provisions
of law, and may, upon the specific request of the Administrator, assist the Administrator in the
enforcement of any provision of this chapter. The Administrator and the Secretary of the department in
which the Coast Guard is operating may, by agreement, on a reimbursable basis or otherwise, utilize the
personnel, services, equipment, including aircraft and vessels, and facilities of any other Federal agency
or department, and may authorize officers or employees of other departments or agencies to provide
assistance as necessary in carrying out subsection (b) of this section. The Administrator and the Secretary
of the department in which the Coast Guard is operating may issue regulations jointly or severally as may
be necessary and appropriate to carry out their duties under this section.
(b) Enforcement activities of authorized officers
To enforce the provisions of this chapter in or on board any ocean thermal energy conversion facility
or plantship or any vessel subject to the provisions of this chapter, any officer who is authorized by
the Administrator or the Secretary of the department in which the Coast Guard is operating may(1) enter or board, and inspect, any ocean thermal energy conversion facility or plantship or any
vessel which is subject to the provisions of this chapter;
(2) search the vessel if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that the vessel has been used or
employed in the violation of any provision of this chapter;
(3) arrest any person subject to section 9151 of this title if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that
the person has committed a criminal act prohibited by sections 9151 and 9152(d) of this title;
(4) seize the vessel together with its gear, furniture, appurtenances, stores, and cargo, used or employed
in, or with respect to which it reasonably appears that such vessel was used or employed in, the violation
of any provision of this chapter if such seizure is necessary to prevent evasion of the enforcement of this
chapter;
(5) seize any evidence related to any violation of any provision of this chapter;

Hegemony Core
(6) execute any warrant or other process issued by any court of competent jurisdiction; and
(7) exercise any other lawful authority.

Hegemony Core
Icebreakers Solvency
Coast Guard controls the only US icebreakers
US Coast Guard, 14
(3-20-14, United States Coast Guard, Ice Operations,
http://www.uscg.mil/top/missions/iceoperations.asp, Accessed: 7/8/14, CD)
The Coast Guard conducts icebreaking services to assist vessels and communities in emergency
situations and facilitate essential commercial maritime activities in the Great Lakes and Northeast
regions. In 2008, the Coast Guard, in concert with the Government of Canada and the commercial
icebreaking industry, sustained navigable waterways for commercial traffic and assisted with 680
ice transits, representing the transport of over $2B (U.S.) of cargo.
Beyond domestic operations, the Coast Guard operates the only U.S.-flagged heavy icebreakers
capable of providing year-round access to the Polar regions. In 2008, the busiest iceberg season in a
decade, the International Ice Patrol facilitated commerce by broadcasting position information on
1,029 icebergs crossing south of 48 degrees north latitude.
Need to significantly increase Coast Guard presence in the Artic in order to

maintain leadership in the area
Slattery & Coffey, Heritage Foundation Defense Studies research assistant &
Margaret Thatcher Fellow, 13
(Brian and Luke, April 2, Heritage Foundation, Strengthen the Coast Guards Presence in the Arctic,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/strengthen-the-us-coast-guard-in-the-arctic, Accessed:
7/8/14, CD)
More Than Breaking the Ice

The USCG should plan to extend its reach in the Arctic not only with its icebreakers but also with
operating bases, aviation assets, and vessels hardened to withstand the harsh conditions of the
region. Currently, the USCG operates only one forward-operating location (FOL)in Barrow,
Alaska, and then only during the summer season. This location currently has a helicopter hangar in
need of serious repair.[5] For the USCG to field a more serious presence above the Arctic Circle will
require updated facilities.
The USCG has already decided that its new National Security Cutter (NSC) will manage an
increase in traffic and activity in the region.[6] In the fiscal year 2013 presidential budget request,
long-lead funding for the seventh and eighth NSCs was removed, which would effectively halt
production of these vessels. The Administration has given no explanation for this reduction, and the
USCG has not reduced its required fleet size of eight NSCs.

Hegemony Core
The NSC platform brings a diverse set of capabilities and can perform a broad range of missions from
blue-water patrolling to search and rescue. While these vessels cannot penetrate ice-covered water, they
can deploy helicopters and unmanned rotary-wing aircraft to perform surveillance and search-and-rescue
missions at a distance.[7] This ability to operate at a distance is imperative, as the USCGs abilities
are severely limited by the location of its assets below the Arctic Circle.
The U.S. Cannot Afford to Dither
The U.S. should catch up with the other Arctic nations and field a presence that can legitimately
protect U.S. sovereignty in the region. In order to do this, the U.S. should:
Develop a new strategy for icebreaking capability. The USCG should explore options such as
buying commercial icebreakers with similar capabilities. Privately operated icebreakers could
make way for commercial vessels and be called upon to support the USCG in emergency scenarios.
This would in turn require a reevaluation of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (also known as the Jones
Act).[8]
Build the entire required fleet of national security cutters. The U.S. should ensure that the USCG is
properly funded to meet its fleet requirements.
Provide permanent stationary assets in the Arctic region. Due to the increase in maritime traffic,
there will be a great need for helicopters, as well as communication and maintenance personnel,
based in the Arctic region for longer periods of time. Congress should work to fund Arctic
operations at a level sufficient to make FOL Barrow a more capable base.
Continuing to strengthen cooperation between the USN and the USCG. Combined with the blue-watercentric missions of the NSC, the joint operations between the sea services will become more significant in
the future in the Arctic. Furthermore, the USCG cooperates effectively with the USN in its drug
interdiction missions. The sea services should look to find lessons learned and apply them in the
Arctic.
Interest in the Arctic region will only increase in the years to come. As other nations direct
resources and assets there, America cannot afford to fall behind. As an Arctic nation, the U.S. needs
to field a strong Arctic presence. In order to make this a reality, the USCG will require adequate
funding and resources.
Improving Coast Guard icebreaker assets key to maritime domain awareness which
is key to solve Arctic scenarios

Hegemony Core
At present, the USCG and other U.S. military branches are not able to implement the objectives that
President Obama's recent Executive Order 13547 requires, specifically the call to "support sustainable,
safe, secure, and productive access to, and uses of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes . . . ." n60
This inability to perform the required objectives is due to severe deficiencies in maritime domain
awareness of the Arctic, inefficient Arc-tic maritime assets, a lack of suitable assets, a lack of permanent
infrastructure, and the ambiguity and confusion that would result from the ratification of UNCLOS with
the inclusion of Article 76. n61
The USCG is the main U.S. military branch operating in the Arctic because of their specialized
training, as-sets equipped to operate in the Arctic, and because Executive Order 7521 assigns the
USCG with sole responsi-bility for icebreaker operations. However, the USCG cannot perform the
required objectives from the E.O. due to a lack of maritime domain awareness which is the direct
result of inappropriate and inefficient Arctic assets. The recent 2010 Government Accountability
Office (GAO) assessment of the USCG capabilities and progress in the Arctic revealed that "the
[*182] Coast Guard does not currently have Arctic maritime domain awareness - a full
understanding of variables that could affect the security, safety, economy, or environment in the
Arctic . . . ." n62 This lack of MDA impacts on the entire future progress of the USCG's role in the
Arctic as detailed information is important for securing the required assets, projecting planning for
policy issues, and funding for infrastructure development. The USCG responded to the calls from E.O.
13547 for heightened U.S. presence in the Arctic by conducting the 2010 High Latitude Study. This
study "provide[d] a more comprehensive analysis of current and future USCG mission needs as
well as asset requirements to support national policy objectives." n63 The High Latitude Study was
presented to Congress during July 2011. n64 However, despite this study, the USCG still does not have
complete MDA due to deficiencies in enabling maritime assets. More specifically,
The Coast Guard does not have the necessary budgetary control over its [polar] icebreakers, nor
does it have a sufficient number of icebreakers to accomplish its missions in the Polar Regions.
Currently, the Coast Guard has only one operational [polar] icebreaker [i.e., Healy]. . . . Without
the necessary budgetary control and a sufficient number of icebreaking assets, the Coast Guard will
not have the capability to perform all of its missions, will lose critical icebreaking expertise, and
may be beholden to foreign nations to perform its statutory missions. n65
This lack of MDA is the Achilles heel for future U.S. Arctic operations and planning, as evident by
the recent 2012 Congressional vote that the U.S. not ratify UNCLOS. This vote reveals that the U.S. is
not yet ready to ratify UNCLOS due to the fear that the U.S. will provide too much maritime sovereignty
to the United Nations. Many members of Congress believe that the Arctic benefits do not outweigh the
costs. n66 Lack of proper assets to ob-tain the proper evidence and MDA has hindered the process
of the United States leading and participating in universal maritime laws and engagement.
Coast Guard icebreakers solve


Hegemony Core
3. Recommendation # 3: Significantly increase and modernize the USCG Ice Breaker Fleet: recommend using Canadian and Russian future fleet projects as models for U.S. development.
The current Arctic assets of the U.S. military lack the modem capabilities and infrastructure
support for op-erations in the harsh Arctic climate. Although the medium icebreaker HEALY is
currently operational, its me-chanical and operational difficulties, together with the age of the only
functional heavy icebreaker, POLAR STAR, render these assets obsolete for future operations. The
National Security Cutters and small response boats, in addition to the Coast Guard HC-130 cargo
planes, are not currently capable of operating year-round in the harsh Arctic environment. Even
though the U.S. possesses nuclear submarines and satellite imagery, both of which help provide
information for MDA and security issues, the need for active, human responses to activities in the
Arctic requires that the modernization [*193] of the U.S. Arctic asset fleet start now. Once the
funding has been procured from Congress, construction of icebreakers can take up to ten years.
n117 A significant in-crease and modernization of the USCG Ice Breaker and Response Fleet is
imperative to America's national inter-ests.
In an effort to anticipate future development needs and models for the USCG fleet, this analysis
recommends referencing the current asset projects being developed in Canada and Russia. Russia
projects the future develop-ment of a port and harbors along the North Sea Route and the establishment of
several third-generation icebreak-ers. n118 Although international interest and internal investment in
Russia's infrastructure is materializing slowly at this time, Russia's future projections can serve as
a good model for the U.S. to follow. Canada has also recog-nized the need for an Arctic presence
and the modernization of their Arctic fleet. The newly projected Canadian Polar Class Icebreaker
Fleet will be able to operate near the Arctic Canadian Archipelagos for up to three seasons per year,
which is longer than the current Canadian icebreaker CCGS Saint-Laurent. n119 In addition, the
new Canadian Polar fleet will be able to break 2.5 meters of ice, will house a crew of sixty with extra
supplies for fifty extra crew members in case of emergencies, and will have the capability to house a
helicopter. This Canadian Polar fleet is expected to cost $ 720 million. n120
The U.S. should develop an icebreaker fleet using Canada's Polar Class as a model. The ability of
the U.S. military to point to a specific asset model allows Congress to anticipate the specific future
needs and funding. Therefore, using Canada's Polar Class as a model for future USCG ice-breaker
construction enables the develop-ment process to start more quickly. Results from the recent
American High Latitude Study reveal that the U.S. Coast Guard would require six heavy and four
medium icebreakers in order to conduct Arctic operations and maintain a solid U.S. presence in the
Arctic. n121 Furthermore,
[t]he Coast Guard estimated in February 2008 that new replacement ships might cost $ 800 million to $
925 million each in 2008 dollars, and that the alternative of extending the service lives of Po-lar Sea and
Polar Star for 25 years might cost about $ 400 million per ship. In August 2010, the Commandant of the
Coast Guard, Admiral Robert Papp, reportedly estimated [*194] the cost of extending . . . [the Polar Sea
and Polar Star] . . . lives at about $ 500 million per ship. n122

Hegemony Core
As Canada's future Polar Class cost less at $ 720 million and will operate well in the Arctic, the U.S.
should apply the Polar Class Model to its anticipated needed assets. In addition, as Russia has planned to
establish long-term provisions for ice breakers with the projected construction of third-generation
icebreakers, the U.S. should also not only develop icebreakers for use in the next decade, but also ensure
continuous icebreaker con-struction to secure U.S. forward presence in the Arctic for many years to come.
To also secure a continued U.S. forward presence, the U.S. must establish a permanent northern
port. n123 Lastly, the U.S. should continue to use U.S. Navy submarines for Arctic reconnaissance
operations. This analysis recommends using the U.S. Navy to aid the USCG in enhancing MDA of
the Arctic.

Hegemony Core
AFF v Coast Guard CP

Hegemony Core
Aff Overstretch
Overstretching the Coast Guard undermines ability to fulfill its missions
Sorcher, National Journal, 12
(Sara, April 24, Government Executive, Coast Guard not ready for national-security mission, insiders say,
http://www.govexec.com/defense/2012/04/coast-guard-not-ready-national-security-mission-insiderssay/55358/, Accessed: 7/9/14, CD)
A large majority of National Journal's National Security Insiders agreed with Coast Guard Commandant
Robert Papp, who broke ranks with his fellow military chiefs to condemn President Obama's
proposed budget restrictions, arguing they would leave his service overstretched and outdated.
Though the Joint Chiefs of Staff have all backed the president's budget request for their services,
Papp last week said the $10 billion budget for the Coast Guard presents a challenge to cut 1,000
people from his 42,000-member force. The admiral even suggested that the nation would have to cut
back on Latin American drug interdiction in order to have enough resources to protect Alaskan oil
interests in the north.
"Papp's statement reflects the reality that the Coast Guard has been under-resourced for growing,
vital missions for at least the past decade," one Insider said. "Hopefully, Papp's statement will wake up
the congressional and executive branches."
Papp oversees a declining fleet of obsolete Coast Guard ships, one Insider said. Another added:
"[These are] ships that would qualify for Social Security. If he had said his service was in good
shape--that would have been news."
One Insider said a recent tour of a Coast Guard facility in Florida revealed Coast Guard personnel
with well-maintained but old equipment. "We have never provided for these men and women as
well as we have DoD uniformed military," the Insider said.
Another Insider said the problem goes beyond the Coast Guard, which falls under the Department of
Homeland Security. The Office of Management and Budget and the appropriators, the Insider said, do
not support funding national-security capability for the Coast Guard. "This has been true since the
creation of DH and even before. It needs to be fixed."
Others disagreed with Papp's tough stand. "Despite Adm. Papp's mutiny, he has missed the boat," one
Insider said. "The ship carrying the trillions for the overhyped wars on terror and drugs has already
sailed, leaving behind a country largely bankrupt."
Over the past decade, the Coast Guard has expanded its overseas operations, another Insider said.
"These properly should be carried out by the Navy, which indeed needs more ships."

Hegemony Core
Coast Guard overstretch undermines security, increasing the likelihood of a

terrorist attack
Associated Press 8
(January 9, Associated Press, Coast Guard stretched too thin,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22580256/ns/us_news-security/t/gao-coast-guard-stretched-toothin/#.U71oJ_ldWDo, Accessed: 7/9/14, CD)
WASHINGTON The Coast Guard lacks the resources to adequately protect tankers carrying
liquefied petroleum or crude oil from a possible terrorist attack, congressional auditors reported
Wednesday.
The report by the Government Accountability Office said the Coast Guard is stretched too thin in some
cases "to meet its own self-imposed security standards such as escorting ships carrying liquefied
natural gas."
Also, said the report, some ports visited by the government auditors did not have the resources
needed to promptly respond to a terrorist attack on a crude oil or LNG tanker, including a shortage
of fire boats and inadequately trained people.
The GAO report said past incidents overseas have shown that fuel-carrying tankers are significant
terrorist targets, with the biggest concern being a suicide attack. The report noted the 2002 suicide boat
attack on a tanker off the coast or Yemen, for example.
Threat likely to persist
While the GAO cited no specific terrorist threat to a vessel or U.S. port, the report said "the threat
of seaboard terrorist attacks on maritime energy tankers and infrastructure is likely to persist,"
with the greatest risks at shipping chokepoints far from U.S. shores.
But it also said the United States "has limitations" in its ability to head off a terrorist plot overseas and
that actions taken in U.S waters and ports "carry increased importance."
The Coast Guard has the primary responsibility for maritime security. It monitors arriving ships, boards
vessels before they reach port and conducts escort patrols of incoming LNG tankers.
But the GAO auditors said Coast Guard documents show that at some ports a lack of resources has
hindered some Coast Guard units from meeting their security duties, including vessel escorts and
boarding. It said the Coast Guard has sought to prioritize its security activities to focus on the most
risky shipments such as LNG, but that may have reduced security involving other commodities
such as crude oil.
Looking for the weakest link
"We know that terrorists are looking for the weakest link in our security efforts, and this GAO report is a
timely reminder that LNG and oil tankers are serious targets," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who
long has been concerned about security for LNG tankers going into Boston harbor.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would
support more money for the Coast Guard for these security activities.

Hegemony Core
"If there is an attack on an energy tanker or terminal in a U.S. port there could be significant
economic environmental and public safety consequences," Dingell said.
Tankers carrying liquefied petroleum now account for 3 percent of U.S. natural gas supplies and that is
expected to grow significantly in the coming years. LNG imports now are equal to two large tankers
arriving at a U.S. port every three days. There are four onshore LNG terminals operating, but federal
regulators have approved construction of at least 11 new facilities, and dozens more have been proposed.
Fire from a terrorism attack against a tanker ship carrying LNG could ignite so fiercely it would
burn people one mile away, according to various government studies.
Heat seen as biggest threat
A report by the GAO in March concluded that further research is needed to understand the
consequences of an LNG inferno. But it also examined six unclassified studies about the effects of a
major spill and fire aboard a double-hulled LNG tanker, concluding that fierce heat from the
intense fire not explosions would be the biggest threat to the public.
LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to minus 260 degrees, so that it becomes a liquid that can be
transported in a tanker. Once brought ashore it is warmed so that it again becomes natural gas.
The GAO report was requested by Dingell, Markey and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.
Barton said in a statement that most LNG safety experts surveyed by the GAO said the protection zones
required for LNG tankers and terminals will protect the public.
"Who can disagree that in an age of suicide bombers and America-haters, the vessels which deliver
energy to Americans warrant protection," Barton said. "We'll need to protect the tankers, but we'll
require far fewer of them if we can summon the political will to produce our own energy from our
own reserve."

Hegemony Core
Aff Icebreakers
Icebreaker overstretch reduces leadership
Slattery & Coffey, Heritage Foundation Defense Studies research assistant &
Margaret Thatcher Fellow, 13
(Brian and Luke, April 2, Heritage Foundation, Strengthen the Coast Guards Presence in the Arctic,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/strengthen-the-us-coast-guard-in-the-arctic, Accessed:
7/8/14, CD)
In 1965, the U.S. Navy (USN) transferred its fleet of eight icebreakers to the Coast Guard. Since
that time, the Coast Guards polar assets have atrophied severely. Currently, the USCG is operating
one icebreaker, the USCGC Healy, which serves primarily as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration research vessel.
Other Arctic nations (such as Russia, Norway, and Canada) continue to field robust icebreaking
capabilities with many heavy-duty icebreakers and assets in the region.[1] Americas icebreaking
capabilities are lagging behind. While the self-declared requirement for U.S. icebreakers is three
heavy-duty and three medium-duty vessels,[2] the USCG currently operates only one heavy-duty
icebreaker (the USCGC Polar Star) and one medium-duty icebreaker (the Healy). Furthermore, the
Polar Star requires significant maintenance to return to operational status, leaving the Healy as the
only functioning polar icebreaker fielded by the U.S.[3]
The lack of icebreaker presence in the Arctic greatly inhibits the USCGs ability to achieve its
objectives in the polar regions without the help of foreign nations.[4] Reliance on foreign nations,
especially those with which the United States has an unsteady relationship, should be unacceptable
when it comes to matters of national security.

Hegemony Core
Navy CP

Hegemony Core
Exploration Solvency
Navy can explore the ocean have the experience
National Academies, 11
[National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, National
Research Council, 8/24/2011, Ocean Exploration, Highlights of National Academies Reports,
http://oceanleadership.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Ocean_Exploration.pdf, page 13-14, accessed:
7/6/14, TYBG]
Before researchers had the vehicles to transport them to the deep ocean, they relied on samples pulled to
the surface by dredge or trawl yielding sea creatures that were typically damaged, misshapen, and out of
their element on dry land. Development of deep submergence vehicles by the U.S. Navy helped meet
the scientific need to visit the deep ocean systematically sample and obtain intact specimens,
conduct experiments, and view animal behavior or habitat in real time. Since World War 11, more
than 200 human-occupied vehicles, known as HOVs for short, have been built, although only a few of
them are dedicated to scientific research. Alvin is the best-known HOV both in the United States and
abroad. Built in 1964 with funding from the US Navys Office of Naval Research, it is now operated
as a research vessel by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as part of the National Deep
Submergence Facility (NDSF) located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. For about the past 20 years, the
facility has been cooperatively funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research,
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Hegemony Core
MH-370 Solvency
Navy can find MH-370, they have the tech
Cummins, Clarion Ledger Writer, 14
(Ruth Ingram Cummins, 11:15 p.m. CDT March 14, 2014, Clarion Ledger, Mapping ocean key in search
for missing plane, USM expert says,
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/2014/03/15/mapping-ocean-key-in-search-for-missingplane-usm-expert-says/6443925/, Accessed 7/8/14, AA)
The whereabouts of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could be, a Mississippi expert in charting and mapping
large bodies of water says, the most mind-boggling disappearance of a plane since the ill-fated 1937 flight
of Amelia Earhart.
This is very much a mystery, said Maxim Van Norden, coordinator of the hydrographic science masters
program in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Southern Mississippi, one of only two
programs of its kind in the nation. Every time I look at the news, theres a new theory.
The Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 passengers was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it
disappeared March 8. What happened to the plane is the focus of a massive search being conducted by
multiple countries pooling their resources.
Van Norden, whose USM program is operated out of the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, is an
expert in hydrographic science, which involves charting and mapping large bodies of water such as
oceans or seas. Search crews, including ships from the U.S. Navy, for the past week have been sailing
in a number of sites, both near and far from the missing planes intended flight path.
The theories on what happened to the plane range from a hijacking, explosion, pilot suicide, the plane
somehow landing safely or crashing on an island, to the plane for some reason falling from the sky and
deep into one of the oceans on either side of Malaysia.
Those looking for the airliner simply dont know the direction in which it was traveling when it ceased
communication, or how far it may have gotten after that point. That makes it that much harder to search
for it, said Van Norden, whose expertise lies not in why the plane went missing but how best to search for
it if it went under water.
If its on land, you should be able to spot it from satellite imagery. But, that wont penetrate more
than a couple of meters under water, said Van Norden, who began work at USM in 2009 after retiring
with 36 years service at the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office.
Generally, searchers spot debris or some other clue that tells them where to start a search, he said.
In the search for the Malaysian airline, no confirmed debris has been spotted or black box detected.
Recovering a planes black box is not easy, even if they know where it is, Van Norden said of search
crews. The deeper the water, the greater the technology needed to retrieve it.

Hegemony Core
A Naval oceanography ship from the Stennis Space Center in 2007 discovered debris from an Adam
Air jet carrying 102 people that went down off the Indonesian coastline after suddenly disappearing from
radar while flying at 35,000 feet.
Even though it was in a remote area, they found a debris field debris washing up ashore some of
the islands in that area, Van Norden said. By following the debris path backwards, he said, searchers
were able to figure out the general location where the plane went down.
Searchers on Friday concentrated on the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
That part of the world is not as covered with radar, but Im surprised no ones radar has picked it up,
Van Norden said.
But, hes hopeful.
I think the U.S. Navy has some of the best technology available, Van Norden said. Once you find it,
you have to recover parts of it, and there are American companies that have the best technology to recover
objects in deep areas.
Navy has the most advanced desalination capabilities

Office of Naval Research, 9
[9/23/2009, Desalination Technology Increases Naval Capabilities, http://www.onr.navy.mil/MediaCenter/Press-Releases/2009/desalination-water-purification.aspx, accessed: 7/8/14, TYBG]
The next generation of technology to turn saltwater into a fresh resource is on tap for the Navy. The
Office of Naval Research (ONR) is sponsoring the development of an innovative solution for
generating potable water at twice the efficiency of current production for forces afloat, Marine
Corps expeditionary forces and humanitarian missions ashore.
"Saving energy and producing clean water is a tactical issue for the Navy," said Dr. J. Paul Armistead, an
ONR program officer with interests in water purification. "We plan to build prototype desalination
units that will use 65 percent less energy and be 40 percent smaller by weight and by volume relative
to current Navy reverse osmosis systems. They should require roughly 75 percent less maintenance."
Delivering drinkable water for ships at sea and Marines ashore for less cost and less energy became an
ONR priority in 2004 under the Expeditionary Unit Water Purification Program, or EUWP.
Before the advent of modern desalinization plants, mariners relied on the fresh water they collected from
rain and stowed while at sea. Today, Sailors and Marines benefit from high-tech, reverse osmosis (RO)
desalinization plants aboard most U.S. Navy ships.
It takes energy to make water, and that energy comes from burning fuel to spin turbine generators that
produce electricity necessary for ship systems, including RO plants. A more efficient desalinization plant
translates into a more efficient ship, which uses less fuel, extends combat capability and reduces its
carbon footprint.

Hegemony Core
Since its inception, the EUWP program has produced advances in desalinization capability. The first
generation EUWP technology demonstrator was designed as a deployable high water production unit
more easily transported by the military and used for a variety of missions.
In fact, the EUWP Gen 1 demonstrator has been used in a number of humanitarian missions. In 2005, it
was deployed in support of the Navys response to Hurricane Katrina where it delivered safe drinking
water to Gulf Coast residents being treated at a hospital in Biloxi, Miss. In this case, the EUWP Gen 1
was trucked in and set up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, approximately four blocks from the
hospital. The Gen 1 unit desalted and purified about 100,000 gallons of water per day from the
turbid Gulf of Mexico, replacing the daily caravan of 18 tankers needed to keep the hospital running.
The second generation EUWP Gen II technology demonstrator, built with shipboard constraints imposed
on the design, is a larger, more stationary demonstration unit, and has potential for use by isolated
communities. It has been tested successfully at the Seawater Desalination Test Facility at the Naval
Facilities Engineering Service Center in Port Hueneme, Calif.
Armistead anticipates increased capabilities from the newer demonstration unit. "From current Navy
desalination systems we only get 20 percent product water," he said. "That means for 1,000 gallons of
feed water, we would get only 200 gallons product water. These new systems will likely double that."

Hegemony Core
Dredging Solvency
Navy can environmentally dredge ports Virginia proves
Port of Virginia, 9
[9/9/2009, Navy Announces Dredging Project in the Elizabeth, http://blog.portofvirginia.com/myblog/2009/09/navy-announces-dredging-project-in-the-elizabeth.html, accessed: 7/8/14, TYBG]
The Navy announced on Wednesday, Sept. 9, its decision to deepen approximately five miles of the
Norfolk Harbor Channel in the Elizabeth River. This action will allow the continuous safe and
expeditious travel of aircraft carriers to and from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the Lamberts Point
Deperming Station.
Dredging this heavily-used waterway, which is the federal navigation channel within the Elizabeth River
in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Chesapeake, will extend from the Lamberts Point Deperming Station in the
Lamberts Bend Reach, south to the shipyard in the Lower Reach. The dredging will take place completely
within the existing Army Corps of Engineers-maintained federal navigation channel.
The action is necessary because there is not enough space between the keel of transiting aircraft carriers
and the bottom of the channel. This causes mud and other debris from the river bottom to be drawn into
the engine cooling and firefighting systems, creating the potential for engine damage, costly delays and
unsafe conditions.
To avoid these conditions, aircraft carrier movements into and out of the deperming station and the
shipyard are now limited to high tide periods. These conditions must be alleviated in order for the Navy to
meet the requirement of maintaining the combat readiness of its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and
effectively and efficiently perform its national defense mission.
The Navys decision conforms to the process outlined in the National Environmental Protection Act,
which requires analysis of the environmental consequences of federal actions. The Navy consulted
with state and federal regulatory agencies throughout the environmental impact statement (EIS)
process, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and the Virginia Department of Historic
Resources. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was a cooperating agency in this EIS.

Hegemony Core
Geospatial Technology Solvency

Navy leads in geospatial technology
Ball, Sensor & Systems, Informed Infrastructure Founder, 4/14
(Matt, 4/8/14, Sensor & Systems, Is innovation of geospatial technology destined to always be driven by
military budgets? http://www.sensorsandsystems.com/dialog/perspectives/33571-is-innovation-ofgeospatial-technology-destined-to-always-be-driven-by-military-budgets.html, Accessed 7/8/14, AA)
Many of the roots of innovation in the geospatial toolbox come from military initiatives, including
the Global Positioning System (GPS), many earth observation satellites and sensors, unmanned
aerial vehicles, and a phenomenal push in the last decade away from paper-based maps and toward
global map databases. Innovation follows investment, and the budget and market for military geospatial
technology has been leading in procurements for quite some time, if not always.
The worlds premiere mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, has a name that says it all in terms of its
origin. This organization continually updates map details for the country with surveying-grade accuracy
for precise locations from building footprints down to such seemingly mundane details as mail boxes.
This level of accuracy is a Holy Grail for all geospatial data users from the military to municipalities to
marketers. Yet, it was the military that provided the mandate back in 1746 when a national military
survey was first conducted. Such large-scale mapping at national and even global scale provides the
impetus for automation and new technologies and approaches that simplify the mapping process,
and many of these projects of such scope are driven by geopolitical frictions and a defense and
security mandate.
Foundational Instability
Its hard to imagine a decrease in military spending for mapping with todays global connectivity
and political instability. Its too important to know what factors and factions are at play. Escalating
security threats lead to better sensors and systems to collect, map and model for an improved global
understanding. That this better global understanding also aids all other applications isnt necessarily an
ancillary benefit, since certainly many non-military initiatives exist, but security is often an overriding
imperative over any other application.
Mapping for military rests on the need for insights into complex scenarios for tactical advantage. The
world is only increasing in its complexity, aided by technology in the hands of both warfighters and their
adversaries. As connectivity and map access grows globally, both sides gain insights and vie for
advantage. This constant friction and technology escalation fuels further investments, particularly in
light of a reduction in force that means fewer will need to know more.
Predictive Intelligence
The foundation for any foray, whether responding to a natural disaster or ferreting out bad actors,
is a map, and its best if its current and accessible. Just a short while ago, the map was a paper sheet
that had to be printed, warehoused and distributed, with maps in the hands of a few to communicate to the

Hegemony Core
many. Now with smartphones, and soon heads-up displays, geospatial information is in the hands of so
many more users to provide the necessary context for accessing information and sharing what they see.
The future promises even more of an app-based delivery on devices that are soon leading toward an
augmented reality where what we see is overlaid with intelligence to guide action in unfamiliar territory.
The vision is for a rich data set for the globe, where terrain and infrastructure are presented in great detail
and overlain with details on the populace, their political leanings, beliefs and historical frictions. With
such a geoanalytic map that is filled with dynamic information, the user will have the ability to
detect and anticipate needs and actions based on changing conditions.
Military geospatial tech goes public

Ball, Sensor & Systems, Informed Infrastructure Founder, 14
(Matt, 4/8/14, Sensor & Systems, Is innovation of geospatial technology destined to always be driven by
military budgets? http://www.sensorsandsystems.com/dialog/perspectives/33571-is-innovation-ofgeospatial-technology-destined-to-always-be-driven-by-military-budgets.html, Accessed 7/8/14, AA)
The innovator always gives back by raising technology standards and introducing new tools for the
betterment of their trade. For many innovations, this is a passive benefit of the visionaries that saw an
advantage and reaped a financial reward, with the top tools slowly filtering down to more users. For
military intelligence, the advancements are aimed at an ongoing goal to know more, and to act before
disruption or to even eliminate the disruption before it takes hold. The innovation occurs upon this
continuum, and the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has given back by helping
to break down barriers to make geospatial tools work more seamlessly across scale, devices, and
enterprise databases.
The NGA has been a champion of open standards, and more recently open source, with advancements
helping to spread functionality and ease integration. As their core databases grow to encompass an
increasing mandate for information, we can expect innovation in data warehousing, distribution,
communication, and map-based collaboration. Todays military intelligence rests on a far more open and
interoperable platform, with far fewer silos or information dead ends, and this vision and underpinning
standards and protocols helps all users.
The benefits of accurate and detailed maps in military hands is an informed understanding and a
decisive advantage for the policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals and first responders
that use this information. Yes, much of geospatial innovation is pinned to military objectives, but we
all benefit from an improved and shared understanding.

Hegemony Core
Ocean Mapping Solvency

Navy says yes already performing ocean mapping
Ohab, Naval Research Lab PA Specialist, 9
(John, Jan 30, 2009, US Dept. of Defense Navy Hydrographers Provide Critical Mapping of Ocean
Floor, http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=52886, Accessed 7/8/14, AA)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2009 Advanced ocean-bottom mapping technologies have enhanced the
Navys ability to navigate safely throughout the world and have helped support disaster assistance and
humanitarian relief operations, the Navys oldest active diver said.
Michael Jeffries, a Navy hydrographer and technical director of the Fleet Survey Team, was interviewed
on Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military on BlogTalkRadio.com
Jan. 28 about the science of hydrography and the tools and techniques used to develop precise nautical
navigation charts.
Hydrography focuses on measurements and descriptions of the physical characteristics of oceans, seas
and coastal areas, including lakes and rivers. The primary purpose of collecting hydrographic
information is to support the production of nautical charts, graphical representations of the
maritime environment and adjacent coastal regions.
The most important information contained on a nautical chart is the depiction of soundings, or the
water depths.
Whether the user is a fisherman or a captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, knowing the depths of the
water you are navigating is paramount to maintaining the safety of the vessel and all of its crew, Jeffries,
a hydrographer for more than 30 years, said.
The Fleet Survey Team, a subordinate command to the Naval Oceanographic Office at Stennis Space
Center in Mississippi, supports Navy and Marine Corps global operations by conducting hydrographic
surveys that provide critical nautical information, including water depth, tide levels, and the location of
navigational aids like buoys, lighthouses, beacons, shipwrecks, rocks and reefs.
The team also conducts expeditionary hydrographic surveys using personal watercraft called
expeditionary survey vessels, or ESVs, to identify underwater hazards during amphibious landing
exercises.
Teams conduct surveys in advance of our amphibious landing forces to determine the most suitable
beach landings for the military exercise, Jeffries said.
An estimated 89 percent of Earths waters have not been adequately charted, and some nautical charts still
contain source data from the 19th century, Jeffries said. Furthermore, the marine environment and
seafloor are constantly changing due to natural events like hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes, and
manmade events like shipwrecks and construction. For these reasons, emerging navigation and
positioning equipment play an important role in developing the most accurate and up-to-date
nautical charts, he said.

Hegemony Core
One of the most remarkable technological advances for the science of hydrography is the use of
satellites for positioning and navigation, Jeffries said. With our current technology, we can refine
[positioning] to less than 1 centimeter.
The Fleet Survey Team employs a variety of high resolution sonar systems to define the topographic
characteristics of the seafloor. Portable sensors known as single beam echo sounders can be outfitted
on ESVs to provide depth information. A specialized sensor called side-scan sonar is the main tool used
by the Naval mine warfare community to locate mine-like objects and other obstructions on the seafloor.
The key to accurate hydrographic surveying is precise positioning of your vessel and the sensors that
collect information about the seafloor, Jeffries said.
Comprising 65 military and civilian personnel, the Fleet Survey Team plays a critical role in support of
disaster assistance and humanitarian relief operations. After the 2004 tsunami that struck the coastal town
of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, teams surveyed for underwater hazards and cleared waterways for relief ship
traffic. Recently, it conducted joint hydrographic surveys with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that waterways were
clear in Texas and Louisiana after hurricanes Ike and Gustav.
Whether here in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, our fly-away teams comprised of three or four
Fleet Survey Team members hand-carry suites of sonar sensors with them, Jeffries said. Upon arriving
at their mission location, the teams install these sensors onboard any platform that is made available to
them.
The Fleet Survey Team also supports joint hydrographic survey operations with more than 20
international partners.
Partnership building with other countries contributes to the security and stability of the maritime domain,
and this most certainly benefits all of us, Jeffries said.
(John Ohab holds a doctorate in neuroscience and works for the New Media directorate of the Defense
Media Activity.)
Navy solves seafloor mapping

Ohab, Special to American Forces Press Service 2009
[John Ohab Special to American Forces Press Service, Navy Hydrographers Provide Critical Mapping of
Ocean Floor, 1/30/2009, http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=42238, accessed 7-8-14, MH]
WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Advanced ocean-bottom mapping technologies have enhanced the Navy's
ability to navigate safely throughout the world and have helped support disaster assistance and
humanitarian relief operations, according to the Navy's oldest active diver.
Michael Jeffries, a Navy hydrographer and technical director of the Fleet Survey Team, was interviewed
on "Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military" on BlogTalkRadio.com
Jan. 28 about the science of hydrography and the tools and techniques used to develop precise nautical
navigation charts.

Hegemony Core
Hydrography focuses on measurements and descriptions of the physical characteristics of oceans,
seas and coastal areas, including lakes and rivers. The primary purpose of collecting hydrographic
information is to support the production of nautical charts, graphical representations of the
maritime environment and adjacent coastal regions.
The most important information contained on a nautical chart is the depiction of soundings, or the water
depths.
"Whether the user is a fisherman or a captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, knowing the depths of
the water you are navigating is paramount to maintaining the safety of the vessel and all of its
crew," Jeffries, a hydrographer for more than 30 years, said.
The Fleet Survey Team, a subordinate command to the Naval Oceanographic Office at Stennis Space
Center in Mississippi, supports Navy and Marine Corps global operations by conducting hydrographic
surveys that provide critical nautical information, including water depth, tide levels, and the location of
navigational aids like buoys, lighthouses, beacons, shipwrecks, rocks and reefs.
The team also conducts expeditionary hydrographic surveys using personal watercraft called
"expeditionary survey vessels," or ESVs, to identify underwater hazards during amphibious landing
exercises.
"Teams conduct surveys in advance of our amphibious landing forces to determine the most suitable
beach landings for the military exercise," Jeffries said.
CP solves- the Navy has the technology readily available

Ohab, Special to American Forces Press Service 2009
[John Ohab Special to American Forces Press Service, Navy Hydrographers Provide Critical Mapping of
Ocean Floor, 1/30/09, http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=42238, accessed 7-8-14, MH]
An estimated 89 percent of Earth's waters have not been adequately charted, and some nautical
charts still contain source data from the 19th century, Jeffries said. Furthermore, the marine
environment and seafloor are constantly changing due to natural events like hurricanes, tsunamis
and earthquakes, and manmade events like shipwrecks and construction. For these reasons,
emerging navigation and positioning equipment play an important role in developing the most
accurate and up-to-date nautical charts, he said.
"One of the most remarkable technological advances for the science of hydrography is the use of satellites
for positioning and navigation," Jeffries said. "With our current technology, we can refine [positioning] to
less than 1 centimeter."
The Fleet Survey Team employs a variety of high resolution sonar systems to define the topographic
characteristics of the seafloor. Portable sensors known as "single beam echo sounders" can be outfitted on
ESVs to provide depth information. A specialized sensor called "side-scan sonar" is the main tool
used by the Naval mine warfare community to locate mine-like objects and other obstructions on
the seafloor.

Hegemony Core
"The key to accurate hydrographic surveying is precise positioning of your vessel and the sensors that
collect information about the seafloor," Jeffries said.
Comprising 65 military and civilian personnel, the Fleet Survey Team plays a critical role in support of
disaster assistance and humanitarian relief operations. After the 2004 tsunami that struck the coastal town
of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, teams surveyed for underwater hazards and cleared waterways for relief ship
traffic. Recently, it conducted joint hydrographic surveys with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that waterways were
clear in Texas and Louisiana after hurricanes Ike and Gustav.
"Whether here in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, our 'fly-away teams' comprised of three or
four Fleet Survey Team members hand-carry suites of sonar sensors with them," Jeffries said. "Upon
arriving at their mission location, the teams install these sensors on board any platform that is made
available to them."
The Fleet Survey Team also supports joint hydrographic survey operations with more than 20
international partners.
"Partnership building with other countries contributes to the security and stability of the maritime
domain, and this most certainly benefits all of us," Jeffries said.

Hegemony Core
Energy Innovation Solvency

The Navy is a major mover in new forms of energy
(Siddhartha M., Spring 2014, Major, United States Marine Corps Reserve, THE ENERGY PIVOT:
A. Historical Perspective--Global Presence Fueling Innovation

Throughout history, great navies have been at the center of energy innovation. n23 Commanders seeking
even incremental advantages on the seas [*679] led the transitions from oar power to canvas sails,
from sails to coal, from coal to oil, and from oil to nuclear power. n24 In the 1850s, it was the United
States Navy that led the transition from wind power to coal. After World War II, Navy Admiral Hyman
Rickover and his team, in just seven years, developed the technology, engineered, and built the first
nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. n25
Today, the U.S. Navy is again at the forefront of energy innovation, sailing the Great Green Fleet, a
carrier strike group fueled by alternative sources of energy, including nuclear power and advanced
biofuel blends. The Great Green Fleet demonstrated its technology during the 2012 Rim of the Pacific
exercise, the world's largest international maritime exercise. The Navy's quest for greater operational
flexibility is lessening its reliance on petroleum and changing the way we think about energy. As we
wade into the second decade of the 21st century, the United States Navy finds itself on a path blazed one
hundred years ago by a daring First Lord of the Admiralty.

Hegemony Core
Green Tech Solvency

Navy key to solving green tech
[*678] This global presence takes a tremendous amount of energy to fuel. The Defense Department is the
single largest energy consumer in the nation, responsible for just under two percent of total consumption.
n20 In 2012, the U.S. military used 4.3 billion gallons of fuel at a cost of approximately $ 20 billion. n21
Oil is a globally traded commodity. Due to spikes in the global market, in 2012 alone, the Department of
Defense had $ 3 billion in unbudgeted fuel costs. n22
Energy is an essential element of the United States' global presence, and for precisely that reason,
the Department of Defense is at the center of energy innovation. Military leaders, informed by the
longest sustained conflict in American history, are finding that military forces are far more agile as
energy efficiency increases and the tether of liquid fuel diminishes.
This Defense-led energy innovation, managed effectively, can be shared through both formal treaty
mechanisms and informal networks to globalize the demand for unconventional energy and drive
the development of new technology and effective regulation. Our allies will be strong partners, able to
localize the benefits of a more efficient and lethal military force. The global demand and innovation will
spill over into the commercial market, making new technology available to private citizens across the
globe. This defense-led energy innovation has the power to unite the once bespoke approaches to address
climate change, energy policy, and national security. The unconventional energy arms race will result
in a more efficient fighting force, more diverse sources of energy, and a more stable world order.

Hegemony Core

Hegemony Core
Renewables Solvency
Navy has the technology and commitment to develop renewable energy
Miller, Naval District Washington Public Affairs, 14
[Shawn, 3/26/14, Navy News Service, NDW Expands Renewable Energy and Alternative Fuel Projects,
http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=79911, accessed: 7/8/14, CM]
WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Beyond efforts in Naval District Washington (NDW) to reduce traditional
energy consumption and become more efficient, two of the key factors to building a sustainable future
are renewable energy and alternative fuels.
As technology advances and these utilities become more financially accessible, NDW and Naval
Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) plan to develop and implement various projects at
installations throughout the region.
"These opportunities will produce utility cost savings and support energy security while integrating and
diversifying utility distribution systems to include increasing Smart Grid and Micro Grid capabilities," the
NDW/NAVFAC Washington Energy Program states. "Similar to our traditional energy project portfolios,
we will create renewable energy portfolios based on approaches that identify the best locations for
renewable generation, and public and private financing options."
Navy energy leaders are evaluating a number of renewable and alternative energy sources
including wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and alternative fuel non-tactical vehicles. Additionally,
the Navy has set a goal of making half of all installations net zero energy consumers.
Net zero refers to buildings that produce as much or more energy than they consume on an annual basis.
In Naval Support Activity (NSA) Washington, the Washington Navy Yard Visitor Center recently became
certified as a net zero building through the use of geothermal and micro-wind turbines, along with LED
lighting and cellulose insulation.
Two micro-wind turbines on the neighboring parking deck help provide electricity into a battery system
which can be used in the event of a power failure.
Beyond the net zero project at the visitors' center, NDW is also exploring alternative fuel non-tactical
vehicle options. Several electric cars and charging stations are located on the first floor of the parking
deck.
Lt. Cmdr. Keith Benson, NDW energy director, said NDW is in the process of collecting electric vehicle
and alternative fuel data important to future decisions on how vehicles and fuel are used. NDW and
NAVFAC have set a goal to reduce petroleum usage and to annually increase alternative fuel usage by 10
percent.
Benson said NDW has been conducting numerous studies on renewable energy capabilities in the last
year to support Task Force Energy and the 1-Gigawatt Task Force, a Department of the Navy (DON)chartered project to oversee implementation of the Navy energy strategy.

Hegemony Core
"We have partnered with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) to expand our renewable
energy capabilities and determine the sites that we want to invest in," Benson explained. "We
specifically focused on photovoltaic and found that we have more than 40 megawatts of capability
within NDW that need further analysis and development."
With the Washington, D.C. Solar Renewable Energy Certificate (SREC) market offering incentive credits
for solar projects, Benson said Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB) was identified as a good location to
explore photovoltaic options.
"JBAB presents the best opportunity and has a current capability of 10 megawatts over two sites, Bolling
and Anacostia," Benson said.
Expanding use of renewable energy and alternative fuels represents one of the five energy "pillars"
identified to achieve goals laid out in the 2013 NDW Energy Policy Statement, working in conjunction
with energy efficiency, security, information, and building a positive energy culture.
In 2009, Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus set five energy goals for DON: increase
alternative energy use Navywide, increase alternative energy ashore, reduce non-tactical petroleum
use, sail the "Great Green Fleet," and acquire energy efficiency, according to a 2012 DON Strategy
for Renewable Energy report.

Hegemony Core
Algae Biofuels Solvency

Navy is interested in investing in biofuels and already have the technology
Mason, Communications Specialist at Arizona State University, 14
[Sarah, 5/17/14, ASU News, US Navy supports ASU's development of algae-based biofuels,
https://asunews.asu.edu/20140527-navy-visits-asu-algae-test-bed, accessed: /6/14, CM]
The similarities between the U.S. Navy and civilian cities and industry may not be readily apparent, said
Dennis McGinn, U.S. Navy Assistant Secretary for Energy, Installations and Environment, but in the
realm of energy use and reliability, there are often parallel problems to be solved. Where there are
overlapping issues, such as cost, sustainability, efficiency and energy security, McGinn said the Navy
is interested in working with research institutions and industry to improve the energy outlook for
all.
We are thinking about energy in three different ways: first in technology terms; biofuels, wind and
solar energy storage, power grid systems and more, McGinn said during a visit to Arizona State
University. But it takes two other critical elements to achieve our energy goals: partnerships and culture.
This is why were interested in forging and strengthening relationships with outstanding organizations
like ASU.
While the Department of the Navy broadly funds energy research, another key aspect is its
considerable influence in setting purchasing standards for their operations. The Navy is using its authority
under the Defense Production Act, which allows the Navy, in partnership with the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to invest in industries that are determined
critical to national security; in this case, biofuels. McGinn said that the Navy has already invested
millions in projects with the DOE and USDA in order to bring down the cost of producing biofuel.
The Navy wants to buy anywhere between 10 and 50 percent biofuel blends for our ships, he said. We
want it to be a cost-competitive program. We are working specifically with the USDA to bring down
biofuel costs to $3.50 a gallon or less at the commercial scale of 170 million gallons a year by 2016.
As part of his visit to ASU, McGinn toured the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation
(AzCATI) at the Polytechnic campus in Mesa. As the largest university-based algae facility on the globe,
AzCATI leads the DOE-funded national algae testbed, the Algae Testbed Public-Private Partnership
(ATP3). The Navy has interest in the work done by AzCATI and ATP3, especially if the cost of
creating algae biofuels can shrink to compete with traditional fuel markets, McGinn said.
The Department of the Navy is very interested in developing alternative transportation fuel to power our
fleets, he said. Algae biofuel represents great potential in that it is sustainable and scalable. Thats
why were interested in working with ASU and the industry to advance this technology."
The use of U.S.-made, renewable fuels may not only assist the Navy in becoming more sustainable and
independent, but it may also help the nation achieve even better national and economic security.

Hegemony Core
Seawater Fuel Tech Solvency

The Navy has developed a way to turn seawater to fuel
Naval Research Lab, 12
(Naval Research Laboratory, 09/24/2012, nrl.navy.mil, Fueling the Fleet, Navy Looks to the Seas,
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas, Accessed
7/6/14, AA)
Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are developing a process to extract carbon dioxide
(CO2) and produce hydrogen gas (H2) from seawater, subsequently catalytically converting the
CO2 and H2 into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. "The potential payoff is the ability to produce
JP-5 fuel stock at sea reducing the logistics tail on fuel delivery with no environmental burden and
increasing the Navy's energy security and independence," says research chemist, Dr. Heather
Willauer. NRL has successfully developed and demonstrated technologies for the recovery of CO2
and the production of H2 from seawater using an electrochemical acidification cell, and the conversion
of CO2 and H2 to hydrocarbons (organic compounds consisting of hydrogen and carbon) that can be
used to produce jet fuel. "The reduction and hydrogenation of CO2 to form hydrocarbons is
accomplished using a catalyst that is similar to those used for Fischer-Tropsch reduction and
hydrogenation of carbon monoxide," adds Willauer. "By modifying the surface composition of iron
catalysts in fixed-bed reactors, NRL has successfully improved CO2 conversion efficiencies up to 60
percent."
Seawater Conversion Gas is key to stopping naval foreign reliance

7/6/14, AA)
A Renewable Resource
CO2 is an abundant carbon (C) resource in the air and in seawater, with the concentration in the
ocean about 140 times greater than that in air. Two to three percent of the CO2 in seawater is
dissolved CO2 gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97
percent is bound in bicarbonate. If processes are developed to take advantage of the higher weight per
volume concentration of CO2 in seawater, coupled with more efficient catalysts for the heterogeneous
catalysis of CO2 and H2, a viable sea-based synthetic fuel process can be envisioned. "With such a
process, the Navy could avoid the uncertainties inherent in procuring fuel from foreign sources
and/or maintaining long supply lines," Willauer said.

Hegemony Core
NRL has made significant advances developing carbon capture technologies in the laboratory. In the
summer of 2009 a standard commercially available chlorine dioxide cell and an electro-deionization cell
were modified to function as electrochemical acidification cells. Using the novel cells both dissolved and
bound CO2 were recovered from seawater by re-equilibrating carbonate and bicarbonate to CO2 gas at a
seawater pH below 6. In addition to CO2, the cells produced H2 at the cathode as a by-product.
These completed studies assessed the effects of the acidification cell configuration, seawater composition,
flow rate, and current on seawater pH levels. The data were used to determine the feasibility of this
approach for efficiently extracting large quantities of CO2 from seawater. From these feasibility studies
NRL successfully scaled-up and integrated the carbon capture technology into an independent skid to
process larger volumes of seawater and evaluate the overall system design and efficiencies. The major
component of the carbon capture skid is a three-chambered electrochemical acidification cell. This cell
uses small quantities of electricity to exchange hydrogen ions produced at the anode with sodium
ions in the seawater stream. As a result, the seawater is acidified. At the cathode, water is reduced to H2
gas and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) is formed. This basic solution may be re-combined with the
acidified seawater to return the seawater to its original pH with no additional chemicals. Current
and continuing research using this carbon capture skid demonstrates the continuous efficient
production of H2 and the recovery of up to 92 percent of CO2 from seawater. Located at NRL's
Center for Corrosion Science & Engineering facility, Key West, Fla., (NRLKW) the carbon capture skid
has been tested using seawater from the Gulf of Mexico to simulate conditions that will be encountered in
an actual open ocean process for capturing CO2 from seawater and producing H2 gas. Currently NRL is
working on process optimization and scale-up. Once these are completed, initial studies predict that jet
fuel from seawater would cost in the range of $3 to $6 per gallon to produce.
Cost-competitive seawater fuels are key to insulate the Navy from oil shocks thats
key to preserve naval power
Woody, Forbes Environmental Issues Writer, 12
(Todd Woody, 7/19/2012, Forbes, "the navy's great green fleet strikes back,"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2012/07/19/the-navys-great-green-fleet-strikes-back/, Accessed
7/4/12, AA)
If you look at the reasons were doing it, were not doing it to be faddish, were not doing it to be
green, were not doing it for any other reason except it takes care of a military vulnerability that we
have, Mabus says at a news conference in the Nimitzs hanger, noting that the Navy got stuck with a
billion-dollar bill in May because of rising oil prices. We simply have to figure out a way to get
American made homegrown fuel that is stable in price, that is competitive with oil that we can use to
compete with oil. If we dont were still too vulnerable .
Mabus notes that biofuel prices have fallen dramatically since the Navy began the renewable energy
program in 2009. But he says, Were not going to buy large amounts of any kind of fuel until its
cost competitive.

Hegemony Core
Naval power independently solves great power war

Conway, Marine Corps General, et al 7
(James T., General, U.S. Marine Corps, Gary Roughead, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Thad W. Allen, Admiral,
U.S. Coast Guard, October 07, navy.mil, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,
http://www.navy.mil/maritime/MaritimeStrategy.pdf, Accessed 7/6/14, AA)
No other disruption is as potentially disastrous to global stability as war among major powers.
Maintenance and extension of this Nations comparative seapower advantage is a key component of
deterring major power war. While war with another great power strikes many as improbable, the nearcertainty of its ruinous effects demands that it be actively deterred using all elements of national power.
The expeditionary character of maritime forcesour lethality, global reach, speed, endurance, ability
to overcome barriers to access, and operational agilityprovide the joint commander with a range of
deterrent options. We will pursue an approach to deterrence that includes a credible and scalable ability
to retaliate against aggressors conventionally, unconventionally, and with nuclear forces. Win our
Nations wars. In times of war, our ability to impose local sea control, overcome challenges to access,
force entry, and project and sustain power ashore, makes our maritime forces an indispensable element of
the joint or combined force. This expeditionary advantage must be maintained because it provides
joint and combined force commanders with freedom of maneuver. Reinforced by a robust sealift
capability that can concentrate and sustain forces, sea control and power projection enable extended
campaigns ashore.
Seawater Transformation Tech key to refueling jets without interruption

7/6/14, AA)
How it Works: CO2 + H2 = Jet Fuel NRL has developed a two-step process in the laboratory to
convert the CO2 and H2 gathered from the seawater to liquid hydrocarbons. In the first step, an ironbased catalyst has been developed that can achieve CO2 conversion levels up to 60 percent and decrease
unwanted methane production from 97 percent to 25 percent in favor of longer-chain unsaturated
hydrocarbons (olefins). In the second step these olefins can be oligomerized (a chemical process that
converts monomers, molecules of low molecular weight, to a compound of higher molecular weight by a
finite degree of polymerization) into a liquid containing hydrocarbon molecules in the carbon C9-C16
range, suitable for conversion to jet fuel by a nickel-supported catalyst reaction.
This in-house refueling is key to military readiness

ROMAIN, Editor at Scholastic, 14

Hegemony Core
(Hailee, 5/2/14, Scholastic, Jets Powered by the Sea,
http://magazines.scholastic.com/news/2014/05/Jets-Powered-by-the-Sea, Accessed 7/6/14, AA)
Unlike cars, Navy planes and ships cant simply stop by a gas station to refuel. Large boats called
oilers replenish the fuel supply mid-ocean. This takes a lot of time and money. Naval engineers hope
that the new development will eliminate (get rid of) or cut down on the amount of time each ship
spends away from missions.
The development gives the Navy another advantage. Currently, the United States relies on foreign
countries for much of its fuel. By making its own fuel, the Navy will not need to rely as heavily on
these countries to keep its ships sailing.
Vice Admiral Philip Cullom explains, Developing a game-changing technology like thisseawater
to fuelreally is something that reinvents [how] we can do business when you think about
readiness.

Hegemony Core
OTEC Solvency
Navy can solve OTEC theyre at the forefront of the field
Jean, National Defense Industrial Association writer, 10
[Grace V., April 2010, National Defense Industrial Association, Navy Taps Oceans for Power,
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/April/Pages/NavyTapsOceansforPower.aspx,
accessed: 7/6/14, CM]
As the Navy dives headlong into the challenge of meeting its alternative energy goals within the next
decade, technologists are striving to help the service harness solar power trapped in ocean waters to
generate electricity for its shore-side bases.
Facilities ashore consume a quarter of the Navys annual energy resources. Most are powered by the U.S.
electrical grid, which relies on fossil fuel generators. In addition to being tied to the turbulent prices of
foreign oil, the grid infrastructure is vulnerable to hacker attacks, says R. James Woolsey, senior advisor
at Vantage Point and former co-chair of the Defense Science Boards study on energy and defense.
Naval installations are shifting to grids powered by renewable energy sources, says Rear Adm. Philip
Cullom, director of the Navys fleet readiness division. Within the next 10 years, officials plan to
generate half of the services shore-based installation energy requirements from alternative sources.
This is where renewables make a huge difference, says Cullom, who is leading the Navys task force on
energy. Officials intend to boost the use of solar, wind, ocean and geothermal energy sources on bases and
in some cases also supply power to the U.S. grid.
At China Lake Naval Station, Calif., a geothermal plant produces 270 megawatts of power. A megawatt
powers about 1,000 homes.
Solar and wind power too have become sources of renewable energy. But there are limitations: The sun
does not always shine and the wind does not blow constantly. Grids that are powered by these resources
often have to supplement the system with electricity made by conventional fuel-burning generators.
Thermal energy from the ocean is gaining interest because seawater is readily available around the clock
to provide utilities with a consistent output of power, experts say.
Ocean thermal energy is a form of solar energy that is trapped in the upper layers of the sea. In
tropical areas of the world, the water temperatures can be as warm as 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Several
thousand feet below the surface, the water temperature drops below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
The warm and cold waters can be used in an energy conversion system that drives turbine generators to
produce electricity.
The Navy last fall awarded an $8.1 million contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. to continue
development of a 10-megawatt ocean thermal energy conversion pilot plant.
OTEC is essentially a very large heat pump, explains Robert Varley, program manager of the contract,
which was awarded through the naval facilities engineering support center in Port Hueneme, Calif. Warm
ocean water drawn up through a pipe evaporates liquid ammonia. The gaseous ammonia turns the turbine

Hegemony Core
generators that produce electricity. Cold ocean water condenses the generator exhaust back into liquid
form. The ammonia is pumped back to the evaporator to start the cycle anew.
We need to pump a lot of water to extract enough energy to produce a utility-scale power plant, says
Varley. Unlike fossil fuel plants, the fuel is free and carbon dioxide is not produced as a byproduct.
The company is not a newcomer to the field. In 1979, it demonstrated a floating 50-kilowatt OTEC
plant off Hawaiis big island. The plant ran for three months and produced net power of 15 kilowatts.
The Department of Energy had planned to initiate the construction of a pilot plant afterwards, but
government funding for renewable energy took a hit and the industry fell dormant.
In recent years, renewed interest in clean energy has spurred a resurrection of the industry. Lockheed
Martin in 2008 won a grant from the Energy Department to develop and demonstrate the tooling
necessary to build a large cold water pipe to suck up ocean water from depths of several thousand feet
below the surface, says Dennis Cooper, OTEC business manager for Lockheed Martin. Funding for that
project concludes in September, and the team plans to demonstrate some of the key components later this
year.
Cooper says the team has spent the last three years developing a conceptual design for a 10megawatt pilot plant. In the design, the plant is roughly the size of an offshore oil platform. Hanging off
the platforms 150-foot long sides are 16 cylinders containing heat exchangers that are about the size of
shipping containers 10 feet by 10 feet by 30 feet long. To produce the electricity, approximately 10,000
gallons of warm and cold seawater would be pumped up through the system per second. Moored about
seven miles offshore, the plant would send electricity to the shore via underwater cables. That power then
would be transferred to the local grid.

Hegemony Core
Wave Power Solvency

Navy can develop wave power the already have the expertise
Casey, Staff Writer, 12
[Tina, 6/24/2012, CleanTechnica, Utility-Scale Wave Power, Thanks to U.S. Navy,
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/06/24/navy-helps-develop-wave-power/, accessed: 7/6/14, CM]
Ocean waves could soon be powering thousands of homes and businesses in the Reedsport, Oregon
area, and a good part of the credit will be due to the U.S. Navy. The Ocean Power Technologies
technology, called PowerBuoy, underwent two years of development at the Navys wave power
test facility in Hawaii, and this is just the beginning. The Navy recently announced that it will be
upgrading and expanding the site to provide more opportunities for innovators to test commercialscale wave power devices.
Power from Waves
Ocean Power calls its utility-scale version of the PowerBuoy the PB150. As the buoy bobs up and down
on offshore waves, it produces a mechanical stroking motion. That movement is transferred to a power
take-off unit that drives an on-board generator. The resulting electrical power gets transmitted to shore
by cable.
In this latest step along the way to deployment, Ocean Power has completed factory testing off the takeoff unit, and it is being installed into the buoy.
The take-off unit represents a step up from the companys initial efforts. It is scaled up from earlier
versions, and its direct drive system has greater efficiency compared to a hydraulic drive that was used in
the first PowerBuoy designs.
Thanks for the Wave Power, U.S. Navy
When Ocean Power began testing the PowerBuoy a couple of years ago, the device served as the
countrys first grid-connected wave energy system. It provided electricity to Marine Corps Base Hawaii in
Oahu.
The Navys wave power test site, at Kaneohe Bay, actually dates back to the Bush Administration as
part of the Navys long term partnership with the University of Hawaiis National Marine
Renewable Energy Center.
The new test site upgrade will enable wave power companies to test larger buoys, which can be
positioned at greater depths.
Its also worth noting that DARPA, the Pentagons cutting-edge research agency, has been funding
research into wave power, though its main focus is on small-scale devices that would be used to provide
power for surveillance buoys and other remote devices.

Hegemony Core
Wind Solvency
Navy has advanced tech to make off-shore wind ultra-efficient
Offshorewind.biz, 5/29/14
[AXYS Pre-Commissions WindSentinel for U.S. Navy Project,
http://www.offshorewind.biz/2014/05/29/axys-pre-commissions-windsentinel-for-u-s-navy-project/,
accessed: 7/8/14, TYBG]
AXYS teamed up with Sound & Sea Technology (SST) as well as DNV GL to secure the US Navy
contract and supply the system. The LiDAR underwent an initial six month side by side testing process
overseen by DNV GL in 2013. Upon passing this test the LiDAR was integrated onto the WindSentinel
platform.
AXYS and SST personnel assisted in the commissioning of the WindSentinel platform the week of May
12th in Port Hueneme, California. The WindSentinel is now ready for deployment and waiting the
final deployment location to be determined by the US Navy.
AXYS supplied the WindSentinel floating LiDAR system, which accurately measures offshore wind
speed and direction up to the blade-tip heights of 200m. The WindSentinel has recorded a number of
world firsts, including the first commercial deployment and the most remote LiDAR offshore wind
resource assessment ever conducted, 36 miles offshore.

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 1

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Links & Internal Links

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Non-Military Tradeoff Link

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Non-Military Tradeoff Link Scenario

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Tradeoff Link/Military CP Solvency

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Military retrenchment failsthe US must make a concerted effort to maintain

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Readiness key to stopping terror, global instability, and genocide

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Readiness is key to credible deterrence absence risks great power wars

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Power Projection Key

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accessed 7/8/13, AC]

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AT Soft Power Solves

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Navy Key to Hegemony

Naval power is the single most important part to hegemonic presence

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Naval presence is the base of overall US grand strategy

Empirically proven naval power key to winning wars

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Naval power is key to US global influence

http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2012/10/19/power-projection-and-warfighting/, accessed 7/8/14, AC]

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Aircraft Carriers Key to Power Projection

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Aircraft carriers are a prerequisite to hegemonymultiple warrants

accessed 7/8/13, AC]

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Navy Solves Piracy

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