Wiki Doc

1NC
 1NC – T Its
Alliance commitments are obligations to aid a partner in the event of military conflict.
Leeds, Brett Ashley, Jeffrey M. Ritter, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Andrew G. Long. 2002. Alliance
Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815-1944. International Interactions 28: 237-260.

Most of our attention in designing the ATOP coding scheme was directed toward collecting information
about two aspects of alliance agreements. First, we wanted to specify precisely the obligations
undertaken by alliance members. We wanted to be able to describe (and ultimately explain) what states
promise to do under what conditions. Second, we wanted to identify provisions of alliances designed to
manage cooperation among the allies. For example: Do leaders include discussion of burden sharing? Do
they create organizations to manage the alliance? Do they require peacetime military contacts? Do they
combine military alliance agreements with agreements on other aspects of international cooperation,
for instance economic relations or territorial settlements? Do they commit to alliances of long duration,
or do they provide frequent opportunities for renegotiation? The ATOP data provide detailed
descriptions of the obligations accepted by alliance members, the conditions under which these
obligations are activated, and the provisions related to institutional design and alliance management.

Below we describe the process by which we collected and coded the data, defining key terms as
necessary. In section 2, we describe the varying forms in which we release ATOP data and provide
explanations of the coding of each variable included in the dataset. A copy of the ATOP codesheet and a
summary of the values each variable can take are provided as appendixes.

1.2 Defining “Alliance”

We conceive of our key concept, alliance, in the following way: An alliance is a formal agreement among
independent states to cooperate militarily in the face of potential or realized military conflict. There are
several parts of this conceptual definition that deserve further elaboration.

First, we require alliances to be formal agreements . Toscano (1966: 21) defines formal international
agreements as follows: “those acts which authorized organs of the respective states exchange with each
other in their reciprocal contacts in the name of, and on behalf of, the states as members of the
international community.” Alliances must be written agreements with legal force. We thus distinguish
alliances from alignments; while any states that share policy positions and coordinate their actions
might be called aligned, only those who have formalized their commitments with a written agreement
may be called allied. 3

Alliances are most commonly formed through treaties, but there are less formal written agreements
that also qualify as legal documents binding upon states; we accept these as well. Examples of such
agreements are official exchanges of notes (see Toscano, 1966: 22), conventions, executive agreements,
and statements verbales if they have been signed by all parties.

Second, alliances are agreements among independent states . At least two states must sign the
agreement, and each member must retain its sovereignty and independence. Unilateral guarantees
(e.g., the Monroe Doctrine), even if they are in writing, do not qualify as alliances under this definition.
Empires and other colonial relationships also do not qualify (see section 1.3 below regarding the
identification of independent states). This requirement in no way suggests that the member states must
accept equal obligations, or even that all states must commit to specific obligations; commitments may
be asymmetric. What is crucial, however, is that the alliance is negotiated and agreed upon formally by
at least two legally independent states.

Third, we are concerned with military alliances, specifically those that promise cooperation in
addressing military threats . The promised cooperation must extend beyond simply providing supplies,
leasing territory, or sharing information; there must be a commitment for cooperative action in the
event of conflict. Thus, arms sales agreements, military aid agreements, basing agreements, border
delimitation agreements, intelligence sharing agreements, etc., do not meet the definition of alliances
unless they include additional obligations requiring cooperation in the event of military conflict.

From this conceptual definition, we develop the following operational definition: alliances are “ written
agreements, signed by official representatives of at least two independent states, that include
promises to aid a partner in the event of military conflict , to remain neutral in the event of conflict, to
refrain from military conflict with one another, or to consult/cooperate in the event of international
crises that create a potential for military conflict” (Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, and Long, 2002: 238).

Violation Its means belonging to

Oxford English Dictionary, 2013 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/100354?
redirectedFrom=its#eid
its, adj. and pron. Pronunciation: /ɪts/

A. adj. As genitive of the pronoun, now possessive adjective.

Of or belonging to it, or that thing (Latin ejus); also refl., Of or belonging to itself, its own (Latin
suus).The reflexive is often more fully its own, for which in earlier times the own, it own, were used: see
own adj. and pron.

B. pron. As possessive pronoun.

[Compare his pron.2] The absolute form of prec., used when no n. follows: Its one, its ones. rare.

Key to limits – their interpretation allows any changes to Asian commitments to the
US in the war on terror, cyber or CBW.
 1NC – Activation PIC
The United States federal government should clarify it will not activate its Mutual
defense treaty for attacks on the US.
 1NC – Secret CP
Text: The United States federal government should reduce its alliance commitments
with the Republic of Korea by at least substantially limiting the conditions under
which its defense pact can be activated by attacks on the United States in secret

Secret commitments solve- reassure alliances and mitigate tensions

Deeks ’17 (Ashley S. Deeks, Associate Professor, University of Virginia Law School, Arizona State Law
Journal, “A (QUALIFIED) DEFENSE OF SECRET AGREEMENTS”, http://arizonastatelawjournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Deeks_Pub.pdf, September 2017)
Secret international agreements have a bad reputation. Ever since states misused secret agreements during World War I, commentators have been quick to
condemn these agreements as pernicious and destabilizing to international peace and security. As that war wound down, the prevailing view—crystallized most
prominently by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points—was that the use of secret agreements exacerbated the war’s violence and should be
abandoned. Many of the secret agreements of that era also undercut notions of self-determination and revealed hypocritical policies by democratic governments.
The concerns triggered by secret agreements were so salient that states crafting the League of Nations Covenant and then the United Nations Charter included
provisions intended to eliminate the use of these agreements. Conventional wisdom holds that the Charter has largely achieved this goal. As a descriptive matter,
commentators today commonly assert that the use of secret agreements is rare, due in part to the norms in the Charter that favor the publication of international
agreements and disfavor secrecy.1 Many international legal scholars seem implicitly to accept this descriptive claim, and focus their work almost entirely on the
public products of state-to-state interactions (such as international agreements and resolutions produced by international organizations).2 Those who study foreign
relations and the Executive’s powers within the U.S. legal system likewise tend to focus on the Executive’s public behavior and outputs; they spend much less time
exploring how the Executive conducts international relations behind the curtain. It is almost enough to make one believe that secret agreements have disappeared
from the international stage. Many would celebrate this disappearance. Various scholars argue that secret agreements inhibit peaceful relations among states and
that their use signals that states are pursuing substantive goals that violate international law.3 This normative perspective on secret agreements finds its genesis in
the specific historical context of World War I, but a range of secrecy scholars today have limned more contemporary critiques of secret law.4 There the story has
stood: secret agreements are rare, and that is something to celebrate. But the story is wrong, descriptively and normatively. Secret
international
commitments, it turns out, are pervasive today. An entire ecosystem of these commitments permeates
U.S. foreign policy. The United States concludes about a dozen legally binding secret international
agreements a year.6 There is reason to think it concludes many more politically binding secret
arrangements as well. Glimpses of these commitments are seen infrequently, but in the past dozen years numerous secret commitments have come to
light. For example, Pakistan secretly authorized the United States to conduct lethal strikes from Pakistani airspace against terrorist groups.7 Other states have
entered into non-public agreements with the United States in which they affirm that they will treat humanely people the United States transfers to them.8 Tunisia
secretly has agreed to allow the United States to fly drones from a base in Tunisia to combat ISIS,9 and Libya and the United States have concluded a secret
agreement on defense contacts and cooperation.10 Other examples of secret commitments related to military, intelligence, and nuclear cooperation abound. The
apparent proliferation of secret commitments among states raises several key questions: First, how did we transition from the post-war era’s apparent aversion to
secret agreements to a widespread use of secret agreements and arrangements today? Were the Charter’s framers overly optimistic or simply hypocritical? Second,
how worried should we be about the contemporary proliferation of secret commitments? Do the concerns that prompted the Charter’s framers to be wary of secret
agreements still apply? This article sets out to describe and defend—with certain qualifications— the use of secret commitments in contemporary practice, with a
focus on those to which the United States is a party. Secret
commitments should not always be viewed with suspicion and
hostility. Notwithstanding their opacity, these commitments perform a critical role in shaping legal and
strategic interactions between the United States and other states . Further, the evidence belies the idea that states
predominately resort to secrecy when they intend to violate international norms. Most of those commitments that have come to light are—counter-intuitively,
perhaps—consistent with the U.N. Charter, and in some cases actually advance the Charter’s purposes. The article proceeds as follows. Part I establishes what we
know about the secret commitment landscape. It identifies the types of international commitments covered by this article and introduces evidence about the
volume of secret commitments that exist today. It then turns the clock back, offering a brief history of secret agreements to excavate the roots of the public
aversion to them and the steps states subsequently took in the League of Nations Covenant and the U.N. Charter to minimize their use. A close study of how those
provisions developed reveals that the norm against secret agreements was shaky from the beginning. Taking that as a starting point, Part II explores and defends
the contemporary use of secret commitments. It argues that even though states have not stanched their use of inter-state secrecy, the commitments they conclude
raise fewer concerns than in the World War I era. Although some of the earlier era’s concerns about the use of secret agreements endure today, the international
landscape has changed in ways that renders a number of the early concerns anachronistic. One key change—perhaps the key change— that helps account for this
shift is the adoption and entrenchment of the U.N. Charter, with its rules against aggression, its preservation and clarification of the right of self-defense, and its
norms promoting sovereignty, international law, and human rights. To support the argument that secret commitments often are defensible, Part II examines
concrete categories of commitments that have come to light, including commitments related to military and intelligence cooperation and the deployment of nuclear
and conventional weapons. It then steps back to explore the nature of these secret commitments along two axes of potential criticism: the reasons that states use
secrecy in the commitments, and the contents and goals of the secret commitments themselves. It distills from the available evidence five reasons why states
employ secrecy in their international commitments and argues that most (though not all) of these reasons are legitimate. Using
secrecy can advance
international peace and security by facilitating private transparency between states, protecting state
sovereignty, fostering non-obvious bilateral relationships , and mitigating tensions among states.
Further, as a substantive matter, many of these commitments are intended to enhance self-defense,
avoid interstate conflict, or promote norms of international law, and thus advance—or at least
operate consistently with—the substantive goals of the Charter. Certain secret commitments remain
troubling or deeply opaque, however, and so Part III shifts to the normative, identifying various existing
dynamics in the U.S. system that might assuage concerns about the abuse of secret commitments and
proposing some procedural protections that all states might develop to minimize the democratic
challenges that secret commitments pose. Although Congress can play a helpful role here, even altering
procedures within the executive branch itself can diminish some of these persistent concerns. Secret
commitments are worth studying in their own right, but a more complete understanding of secret
commitments also provides new insights into the literature on executive power and lawmaking,
government secrecy, and compliance with international agreements. The executive power scholarship
explores how much authority the executive branch does or should have in the national security area,
how the other branches may serve as checks, and the extent to which the Executive makes and is bound
by law. A growing body of literature on government secrecy focuses—often critically—on the use of secrecy by the Executive, Congress, and the courts to shape
domestic rules out of the view of the public.11 And international legal scholars have long considered why states conclude international commitments, the extent to
which the binding or non-binding nature of those commitments matters, and why states comply with or violate their commitments. But none of these three bodies
of literature takes into account secret commitments in framing its inquiries and conclusions. Part IV explores how taking account of secret commitments can deepen
our understandings in each of these areas. First, in the executive power realm, the fact that secret commitments are largely consistent with domestic and
international law strongly suggests that the Executive perceives itself to be bound by law, even in the absence of external checks by Congress and the courts.
Second, secret commitments challenge the traditional approach in secrecy literature that treats Congress as the dominant check on the Executive; the U.S. partners
to secret commitments also may serve as a crucial check on abuses of secrecy. Third, secret commitments complicate the treaty literature, which tends to treat a
state’s reputation as an important driver of compliance and often views political commitments as far less stable than legal commitments. A
state’s
reputation as law-compliant plays a much diminished role in stimulating compliance with secret
commitments; nevertheless, secret political commitments appear to be about as stable as legally
binding ones. Secret commitments thus offer important test cases against which to press our existing
understandings of how the Executive behaves individually and how states behave collectively in their
international relations. This article does not argue that all secret commitments are beneficial; indeed, some secret commitments that have come to
light are troubling. It also is true that we only have visibility into a small sample of these commitments, and therefore must be cautious in drawing broad
Indeed, the
conclusions. Nevertheless, many secret commitments of which we are aware advance substantive principles contained in the U.N. Charter.

overall consistency of modern secret commitments with Charter norms suggest that states have
internalized those norms more deeply than we might have predicted.
 1NC – Korea CP
The Republic of Korea should substantially limit the defense conditions under which
its defense pact can be activated by attacks on the United States
 1NC – Elections DA
Trump win --- vetted models over snapshot polls
Payne 9/16/20 [Daniel Payne is a writer and editor based in Virginia. He graduated with honors from
Virginia Commonwealth University, where he was an English major. He is an assistant editor at The
College Fix, a daily news website that trains young college students in the craft of journalism. Model that
predicted 5 of past 6 presidential elections has Trump in 2020 by 'landslide'. September 16, 2020.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/model-predicted-5-last-6-presidential-elections-says-
trump-will-win-2020]

A prof essor of political science whose controversial election model has correctly called five of the last six
U.S. presidential elections says President Trump will win reelection in 2020 in a " landslide ."

Helmut Norpoth, who teaches at Stony Brook University, is giving Trump "a 90-percent chance of being re-
elected in a landslide," the Long Island, N.Y., school said in a recent press release.

Norpoth's " Primary Model " has correctly predicted nearly every presidential election since 1996 ,
missing only George Bush's 2000 victory over Al Gore. (When the model is " applied to previous
elections ," Stonybrook said, it " correctly predicts an impressive 25 of the last 27 .")
The model utilizes data from presidential primaries to help predict who will win.

"I focus on early primaries and the way the candidates perform in those early contests ," Norpoth said in the
press release. "It's a very good predictor , and a leading indicator of what's going to happen in November."
The professor said he was unsurprised at the model's prediction this year, citing Trump's performance in the primaries earlier in the winter.

"When I looked at New Hampshire and I saw that Donald Trump got 85 percent of the votes ... I was pretty sure what the model was going to
predict," he said in the release.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, pulled

down only 8.4% in New Hampshire, Norpoth said, a number that is
" unbelievable for a candidate with any aspirations of being president ," he stated.

Going tough on China is Trump’s only route to reelection –messaging is key

Mead 20 [Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the
Humanities at Bard College, the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship
at the Hudson Institute, and The Wall Street Journal's Global View columnist. "Trump’s Best Re-Election
Bet: Run Against China." https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-best-re-election-bet-run-against-china-
11587573159]

November may still be a long way away , and the coronavirus has thoroughly scrambled American politics .
But it’s increasingly clear that President Trump’s likeliest path to re-election runs through Beijing . With the
economy in shambles and the pandemic ravaging the country, making the election a referendum on
China is perhaps Mr. Trump’s only chance to extend his White House tenure past January 2021.
Why Beijing? In the first place, because Americans increasingly disapprove of its behavior. In 2019, before the coronavirus stormed out of
Wuhan to shake the world, 57% of Americans already had an unfavorable opinion of Beijing. The most recent Gallup poll, in February 2020, put
that at figure at 67%.
But Americans go
beyond distrust of the Chinese government . In a recent Pew poll, 68% of Republicans and
62% of Democrats considered China’s power and influence a major threat to the U.S .

Second, the issue plays to Mr. Trump’s strengths . The core of the president’s appeal has always been his
ability to portray himself as an antiestablishment outsider come to drain the swamp and put the
country back on the right track. This is harder to do as an incumbent running for re-election, but the
foreign-policy and business establishment’s long romance with China gives Mr. Trump something to run
against .
For decades, he can say, corporations outsourced American jobs to China, while the political establishment permitted Beijing to cheat in its
economic competition with the U.S. China kept its markets closed, funneled state aid to Chinese companies, even stole intellectual property—
while the establishment said Beijing was democratizing and learning to play by the rules.

The result? Millions of American jobs have been lost; China has become more hostile and more communist; and, to add insult to injury, the U.S.
must now scramble to produce medical supplies and personal protective equipment it previously sourced from China to fight a virus that
Beijing’s deception unleashed on the world.

The U.S. failure to recognize and respond to the danger posed by rising Chinese power was, Mr. Trump can plausibly say, one of the greatest
strategic blunders in world history. The president’s supporters can concede he sometimes get the details wrong, while arguing that on China he
—and not the establishment—got the big picture right.

Mr. Trump’s penchant for out-of-the-boxthinking and unconventional policy moves could mesh well with an
election on China policy. Mr. Trump will be able to control the campaign narrative through dramatic
actions like setting draconian tariffs , imposing sanctions on high-profile Chinese figures involved in questionable activities,
proposing measures to force U.S. companies to return production from China, and providing additional
support to Taiwan.

Biden pursues heavy footprint unilateralism – that escalates globally

Ashford 8/25/18 [Emma Ashford (@EmmaMAshford) is a research fellow in defense and foreign
policy at the Cato Institute. "Biden Wants to Return to a ‘Normal’ Foreign Policy. That’s the Problem.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/opinion/biden-foreign-policy.html]

The campaign’s talk on foreign policy is, to be fair, vague. It

is full of invocations of American leadership and global challenges
— the boilerplate you might expect. But it pledges an extremely wide-ranging set of foreign policy goals , from advancing
human rights and confronting autocrats and populists to ensuring that the United States military remains the strongest in the world.

These aren’t just platitudes. They signal a reversion to the post-Cold War view that America can and
should be everywhere and solve every problem . It’s the kind of approach that could commit the United States to more
years of high military spending, an even longer “global war on terror ” currently fought in over a dozen countries, further humanitarian
interventions that turn into quagmires and a more confrontational approach to China and Russia.
In short, Mr. Biden’s vision looks less like a better approach to foreign policy and more like a rerun. As Paul Musgrave, a political scientist at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, put it: “His positions are so familiar as to seem more like a retelling of the conventional wisdom than a
foreign policy platform.”

But this “familiar” approach has led again and again to failure in recent years. Whether in Iraq , Libya , Ukraine
or elsewhere, the United States has encountered problems that can’t be solved with a more “muscular approach” or more “American
leadership” (to use two favorite clichés of the foreign policy establishment). Mr. Biden
is ignoring the one positive aspect of Mr.
Trump’s presidency: that it has pushed Americans to question whether our traditional foreign policy
approach actually makes us safer.
Of course, a Biden administration wouldn’t necessarily replicate past failures. Campaign documents and stump speeches aren’t always good
guides to how a president will act. And Mr. Biden’s record is decidedly mixed. For every substantive failure of judgment — like his support for
the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — there are times where he’s been a surprising voice for restraint, as when he argued against the overthrow of
Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011.

For now, the best way to understand where Mr. Biden stands today is to look at the people with whom he has surrounded himself. If personnel
is policy, so far it looks like we’ll be getting little more than a rehash of the Beltway consensus.

Jake Sullivan , the vice president’s former national security adviser, is now senior adviser to his campaign. Writing in The
Atlantic last year, Mr. Sullivan argued that the United States must re-embrace American exceptionalism ,
returning to a foreign policy of global leadership with “a renewed belief in the power of American values in the world.”

Many of Mr. Biden’s other advisers also seem to want to return America to the pre-Trump interventionist consensus. Nicholas Burns — a
formal campaign adviser — was a strong proponent of the 2003 Iraq War . And Antony J. Blinken, who preceded Mr.
Sullivan as Vice President Biden’s national security adviser and is now a top foreign policy aide on the campaign, co-authored an essay in 2019
with the neoconservative Robert Kagan condemning Mr. Trump’s willingness to consider removing troops from Afghanistan and criticizing
Barack Obama’s decision not to intervene in Syria. (Mr. Blinken was also previously a contributing Opinion writer for The Times.)

Other former Obama hands are involved in more informal campaign roles: Samantha Power is well known for advocating intervention in Libya,
Syria and elsewhere. And Michèle Flournoy, widely touted as a possible secretary of defense, argued just a few weeks ago that the United
States must make “big bets” with military spending to maintain our military capabilities.

Progressive voices — including those from the Obama administration — seem to have been left out of the campaign. That’s a shame, not least
because this year’s Democratic primary was notable for its debates on foreign policy. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren helped
push important conversations on key issues like military spending and the use of force, reflecting the hunger of the Democratic base for
something new. (And it’s not just the Democratic base. Mr. Trump’s antiwar rhetoric in 2016 was popular with Republican voters, too.)

By seeking to restore American leadership, Mr. Biden is also likely to miss the opportunity to build a more
constructive, less militarized foreign policy that sees allies as real partners, not just as followers. Such an approach
would push to increase burden sharing , something Mr. Trump has championed , if inelegantly. It would focus on
multilateral diplomacy — rather than simply pushing American demands — wherever possible. And it would seek to dial down
tensions with China rather than intensify them through increased military presence or sanctions.
 1NC – China Appeasement DA
Reduction in South Korean commitments is appeasement that sets a precedent
Sankaran 17 [Jaganth Sankaran, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, University
of Maryland, USA. Bryan Leo Fearey, National Security Office, Los Alamos National Laboratories, USA.
4/11/17. “Missile Defense and Strategic Stability: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South
Korea.” https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1352416]

While the need to limit provoking China will continue to influence South Korea defense decisions, China
should not possess a veto over South Korean defense choices . It is worthwhile to note that “it is highly
possible that China considers [South] Korea as the weakest link among the Northeast Asian allies of the
United States and, in this context, believes it could weaken the U.S.- South Korea alliances” (Jung-Yeop
& Block, 2015). If China were able to influence the security decisions of South Korea unduly, it could set
an unfortunate precedent. Such a precedent could effectively demonstrate China’s influence in political-
military decisions to other regional players, giving it significant leverage. It is not in South Korea’s (or the
United States’) interest to provide such leverage to China.

Chinese revisionism collapses hegemony, causes global prolif, and ensures Taiwan war
Kapila 19 [Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, with a Masters in
Defence Science (Madras University) and a PhD in Strategic Studies (Allahabad University) Combines a
rich experience of Army (Brigadier) and diplomatic assignments in major countries."United States’
Potent Existential Crisis: The China Threat – Analysis." https://www.eurasiareview.com/18012019-
united-states-potent-existential-crisis-the-china-threat-analysis/]

The ‘China Threat ‘emerging in 2018 in comprehensive and diverse manifestations poses an existential crisis
challenging not only the continuance of U nited S tates as the global unipolar Superpower but also targeted
with intended consequences of prompting the U nited S tates to retreat into isolation within its continental
confines.
The United States has long ignored the China Threat to the detriment of United States own national security but also to the security of US Allies
and strategic partners. The acid test of a nations’ strategic greatness lies not only in checkmating a threat in existence to its national security
but also being vigilant to a ‘Threat in the Making’, as I would put it. The United States is guilty of the latter in relation to China.

China has reached this stage of posing a potent existential challenge to the United States mainly due to United States own acts of strategic
omission and commission. United States misreading of China’s long range intentions has not only facilitated the
emergence of a China Threat to United States but also U nited S tates permissive attitudes on China facilitated
to create two ‘rogue nuclear weapons state’ of Pakistan and North Korea as its proxy cats-paws
against US Allies and strategic partners .
China is unlikely to succeed in achieving ‘strategic equivalence’ that it seeks with the United States in the foreseeable future nor are the Major
Powers of the world, including Japan and India, likely to accede ‘American Exceptionalism’ to China despite its burgeoning military power. This
for the simple reason that I have been stressing in my writings for two decades and that is China has no Natural Allies like the United States.

For detailed analysis on the subject, kindly read my Book, “China-India Military Confrontation: 21st Century Perspectives” (2015) Chapter 13
‘China’s Giant Leap for Superpower Status in 21st Century: Geopolitical Implications’.

However, China will in the 21st Century with great persistence, and unmindful of the prevailing reality, that China is besieged today from both
within and without, China will continue to challenge United States global predominance and specifically Indo Pacific predominance with greater
potency.
The U nited S tates has belatedly woken upto the reality that what they attempted to market globally for
decades that China can be co-opted as a responsible stakeholder in global security and stability was a
mirage . Long years of United States ‘China Hedging Strategy’ and ‘ Risk Aversion Strategy’ made China only more
recalcitrant and fed Chinese misperceptions that U nited S tates global power is on the decline.
United States policy formulations of this decade of a ‘Strategic Pivot to Asia Pacific’ and the recent emphasis on Indo Pacific Security Blueprint
are seemingly belated but welcome steps to checkmate China’s unrestrained flexing of its military muscle as evident in the South China Sea.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call on Chinese Armed Forces to prepare for an all- out war are not defensive
calls by a besieged nation but like Hitlerian Germany , these are offensive calls of a revisionist power .
Annexation of Taiwan by use of military force seems to be China’s aim today. This has a larger aim of
challenging U nited S tates resolve and determination to maintain its Superpower status. China has placed the
United States on the horns of a strategic dilemma where the U nited S tates will be damned if it does not militarily
intervene to defend Taiwan and if it does so it risks a full-fledged war with China. China is gambling on the
United States shying away from the latter option.

Right from the turnover of the 19th Century till today no major power, not even Nazi Germany, has dared to challenge the United States
predominance, geopolitically and strategically, as China is now engaged in doing so. Even at the height of the Cold War 1945-91 when the
United States and the Former Soviet Union were involved in a bitter ideological struggle one did not witness the unfolding of the type of China’s
‘Grand Strategy Blueprint’ decades in the making and operationalising, to initially unravel United States security architecture in Asia Pacific, and
graduated now to a more vividly clear reality in 2019 that China is on the avowed path of emerging as the ‘sole challenger ‘of United States
predominance and exceptionalism. That China could geopolitically and strategically engage in the execution of such a blueprint unchallenged
arose fundamentally from United States flawed policy decisions spread over many US Administrations. Such flawed US policy decisions sprung
from misconceived American readings of China’s long range strategic intentions and short-term American geopolitical expediency subjugating
and distorting United States strategic vision of the ‘China Threat’ to United States national security. The United States ‘original sin’ in relation to
the latent China Threat to US national security can be placed on shoulders of US President Truman who ignored General MacArthur’s dire
warnings on China and petulantly dismissed General MacArthur from the command of UN Forces in Korea. If Japan today after decades since
1945 continues as the United States most enduring and steadfast Ally, it has a lot to do with General MacArthur’s visionary zeal. The second
most serious sin in relation to flawed US policy decisions was inflicted by US President Richard Nixon in 1972 egged by his Sinophiles Secretary
of States Henry Kissinger. To spite the Former USSR the United States in 1972 endowed an unwarranted international legitimacy on China
despite its disruptive credentials and thereafter followed as to what could be termed as a China Appeasement policy. The third sin was
committed at the turn of the Millennium when US President Bush in his messianic zeal to tame President Saddam’s Iraq left untended both
Afghanistan and more significantly Asia Pacific security. China made full use of the decade ending 2010 for its exponential military power
expansion and with emphasis on a well-calibrated buildup of Chinese naval power for ‘naval operations in distant seas’.

China’s latest strategic-economic enterprises of O ne B elt O ne R oad and Maritime Silk Route are nothing but an attempt
to control maritime chokepoints along the global commons to U nited S tates disadvantage and as strategic
pressure points against regional peer competitors .

Scaling back the alliance causes NK aggression, global nuclear prolif, and China war
Auslin 17 [Michael Auslin is the author of The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks
to the World’s Most Dynamic Region. Is It Time to Reassess the U.S.-South Korea Alliance? June 29,
2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/south-korea-alliance-north-korea-
kim-moon-trump/532113/]

But if, on the other hand, the U nited S tates decided that the risk to its interests was prohibitively high, abrogating or
scaling back the alliance would potentially destabilize Asia and beyond . It would hand the Kim regime
a major strategic victory , removing the single greatest deterrent to its aggression. Pyongyang would be
emboldened to continue trying to blackmail the U nited S tates, So uth Ko rea, and Japan , leading to future
crises. Stripped of the assurance provided by America’s support, South Korea might wind up capitulating to the North’s demands for open-
ended economic assistance, or even stand down some of its forces. Japan would worry that it may be the next to be
abandoned by America. Even worse, in the face of a U.S. withdrawal, both Seoul and Tokyo would immediately
begin considering developing their own nuclear and missile programs , instigating a nuclear-arms race
that would spill over to China , Taiwan , and possibly beyond . In the event of a reduced American presence in northeast
Asia, China would emerge the big winner. Beijing almost certainly would offer Seoul an alliance of its own, further undermining America’s
regional web of alliances, likely tipping the Philippines and Malaysia fully into the Chinese camp. Japanese government officials I spoke to
expressed their fears that, in the event of the collapse of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, Beijingmay even base Chinese warships in
Busan, the southern port closest to Japan, giving China a foothold on the territory closest to the Japanese home islands— historically,
Japan’s major geopolitical fear . Access to the southern Korean coastline would enhance China’s ability to
control the strategic waterways from the S outh C hina Sea through the East China Sea and into the Sea of Japan .
The Japanese would consider this a grave threat. In response, the U.S. resources diverted from the Korean peninsula might be
redeployed to blunt China’s expansion, including a beefing-up of the U.S. Navy in Japan, which would increase Sino-
U.S. tensions and the potential for a maritime confrontation in the narrow, strategic Tsushima Strait. Cutting South
Korea adrift would likely also have global repercussions for America. Other nuclear or potential nuclear states
would learn from Pyongyang’s success , opening America up to future nuclear blackmail . Just as significantly,
walking away from a long-term ally would make the U nited S tates seem capricious and untrustworthy ; attempting
to maintain America’s worldwide alliance system might become impossible , as no reassurances would
be sufficient for jittery partners.
 1NC – Trilat DA
Ending commitments causes friction between Japan and South Korea that makes
trilateral coop impossible – they will overcome tensions now but its contingent on the
strength of American assurances
Botto 3/20 (Kathryn, research analyst in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Her research focuses on Asian security issues, with particular emphasis on the
Korean Peninsula and U.S. defense policy towards East Asia. “Overcoming Obstacles to Trilateral US-
ROK-Japan Interoperability”)

the incentives for Japanese–South Korean

These issues are deep-seated and unlikely to be resolved in the near term, yet
cooperation remain and are growing more pressing as North Korea continues to expand its nuclear and
ballistic missile programs. If Tokyo and Seoul allow bilateral and trilateral cooperation (with the United States) to
weaken, the opportunity costs will be significant. The limited level of cooperation the two countries have today
has taken decades to build and is still lacking. The shaky foundations of cooperation in Japan-ROK relations
means that if engagements or agreements are terminated , the two countries will be left with few
institutionalized processes to fall back on, and previous progress made would likely be lost and
difficult to recover.

The trilateral alliance would then be left with little recourse other than to rely on ad hoc mechanisms of
cooperation if conflict broke out, mechanisms that would not be coherent or efficient enough to facilitate
genuine interoperability. The vulnerabilities this creates in the relationships between Tokyo, Seoul, and Washington
could lead to miscalculation, wasted resources, and greater loss of life . For these reasons, it is imperative
that the three nations work to insulate security cooperation from historical grievances , even as the thorny
underlying issues remain unresolved.

Tensions make sovereignty disputes increasingly likely---they’ll go to war

Wirth, ’15 Christian Wirth, a research fellow at the Griffith University Asia Institute in Brisbane,
Australia, 2015, “ ‘Power’ and ‘stability’ in the China–Japan–South Korea regional security complex”, The
Pacific Review, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09512748.2015.1012538, EO

Even though South Korean presidents since at least 1998 have all vowed to improve relations with Japan, ties
remain tenuous. Epitome is the sovereignty dispute over the barren rocks called Dokdo in Korea and
Takeshima in Japan. On the background of a generally bad climate due to Prime Minister Koizumi’s Yasukuni Shrine
visits, tensions had by 2005 reached new heights. In part due to dissatisfaction with the way in which the central government in Tokyo handled
fishery issues, the Shimane prefectural government in March 2005 asserted its claim to the features by proclaiming
a ‘near-miss at armed conflict’
February 22 as Take-shima Day (Japan Times2007). In April 2006 what Midford (2011,p.78) termed
demonstrated the seriousness of the problem. In response to Tokyo preparing two coast guard vessels
survey the area around the islets, accompanied by stern warning from the then foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, and bipartisan
political support, President Roh sent 20 coast guard vessels and a reconnaissance plane to the area (Xinhua2006).
Later revealed details confirm that the Korean side was not mere sabre-rattling and would have used
force to defend its position (Park2011).
Draws in Russia and China
Joseph Trevithick 19 {Joseph Trevithick is an Fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, specializing in defense and
security research and analysis. 7-23-2019. “Moscow Disputes Seoul's Account Of Unprecedented Aerial
Altercation Over Sea Of Japan.” https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29118/moscow-disputes-
seouls-account-of-unprecedented-aerial-altercation-over-sea-of-japan}//JM

This new incident comes as China, in particular, is stepping up its routine aerial and naval activity in
Northeast Asia, as well as in the more hotly disputed South China Sea, demonstrating an increasing ability to project
power beyond the mainland. In recent years, Russia has also increased its own routine, long-distance aerial
patrols in the Pacific Region, including off the coast of the United States. At the same time, military-to-military ties between
Russia and China have been steadily growing. Beyond the disputed incident over the islets in the Sea of Japan, this mission
reflected the first time Russian and Chinese bombers had flown a joint long-range aerial patrol. This increased Russian-Chinese
cooperation is an important development for both South Korea and Japan . Its impact has already been felt with
regards to how Moscow and Beijing have been expanding their ties with North Korea. But the incident over Dokdo/Takeshima
islets shows that the ramifications extend well beyond the geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula. While
neither Russia nor China make claim to those islets, China, in particular, has other ongoing territorial disputes with both
South Korea and Japan. The Kremlin and Japanese authorities also remain locked in a disagreement over the Kuril Islands, which has
prevented the two countries from ever signing a formal World War II peace deal. So, while it is unclear why Russia might have violated the
airspace over Dokdo/Takeshima in this instance, it, along with China, certainly have reasons for wanting to assert their respective
authorities in the region. They have also routinely demonstrated their desire to challenge South Korean and Japanese
claims, as well as the ability of their premier ally, the United States, to respond to these sorts of
provocations. The U.S. Department of Defense has since expressed its support for both of its allies and their responses to the airspace
violations. South Korea's reported decision to fire actual warning shots at the A-50 is an unprecedented show of
force, by any standards. It would certainly seem to reflect how serious Seoul feels about the evolving
geopolitical situation in the region. By every indication, Russia and Chinese aerial patrols, including joint long-range missions, will
continue to be a routine occurrence near disputed areas and may even increase. It remains to be seen whether South Korea's assertive
response, in this case, will also increasingly become the norm.

A strong trilateral relationship is key to maintaining US leadership – solves the aff

better
Park et. al. 18 (John S., Director of the Korea Working Group and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard
Kennedy School. He is also a Senior Advisor for Political and Security Affairs at the National Bureau of
Asian Research. National Bureau of Asian Research #70 “the case for u.s.-rok-japan trilateralism:
Strengths and Limitations” p. 5-6)

Some scholars emphasize the intrinsic value of the trilateral relationship as a legitimate form of regional
cooperation that bestows benefits to all participating parties. According to this view, trilateralism is the most minimized
form of multilateral grouping and therefore inherits some of the basic advantages of traditional multilateralism
while avoiding its most serious problems. Muhui Zhang argues that “due to the relatively small number of total cooperative
partners, minilateralism is widely known for its efficiency, given that complications and transaction costs
are expected to be proportional to the number of actors involved in any multilateral arrangement.”9 It is not uncommon
for high bureaucratic burdens and administrative costs to stall multilateral cooperation among member states
with vastly divergent interests. Trilateralism also offers many of the same benefits as traditional multilateral
cooperation. In the first place, it ensures a stable and effective flow of communication by institutionalizing
points of contact for the partners. Trilateral cooperation also facilitates long-term policy planning and
fosters institution building among the involved nations. In this process, the parties can reap the benefits of
shared norms and closer coordination in broad issue areas.10 On the other hand, trilateral relationships can
also be portrayed as a purely strategic move in power politics.11 This line of thinking pays special attention to the
pronounced role of the United States as a hegemonic leader in Asia after the end of World War II as the basis of trilateral cooperation. The
United States’ special position and interests prompted the country to establish bilateral alliances to further its own strategic goals.12 According
to this view, trilateral
groupings in Asia represent an extension of embedded bilateral alliances to form
regional blocs as a part of the U.S. security balancing act.13 Understood as such, trilateralism works less as a “truly mature
form of minilateral or multilateral arrangement.”14 Trilateral cooperation is no more than the sum of the separate, two-way alliances, rather
than producing a full-fledged trilateral institution in which three-way cooperation creates a greater whole. Thisarrangement enables
the United States to extend the benefits of preexisting bilateral partnerships and maximize its own strategic
position . U.S.-led trilateralism more effectively ensures the credibility of the United States’ commitments
to its allies and partners and strengthens extended deterrence based on better coordination and
combined resources. In addition, trilateral relations can safeguard traditional alliances and partnerships
against other regional challengers attempting to undermine them.
A1
 AT: Noko War
MAD checks and ROK can unilaterally deter
Bandow, Stanford JD, ‘20 [Doug, Senior Fellow @ Cato Institute, JD @ Stanford University, BA in
Economics @ Florida State University, “How the Coronavirus Shows North Korea Doesn’t Matter That
Much to America,” 3/25/20, National Interest, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/how-
coronavirus-shows-north-korea-doesn%E2%80%99t-matter-much-america-137032, DFU | AS]

More fundamentally, however, Washington policymakers should reflect on how the coronavirus pandemic illustrates
Pyongyang’s essential irrelevance . The North cannot launch a nuclear attack on America without
ensuring its own destruction . Furthermore, the ROK is well able to confront the North’s numerous but antiquated
conventional forces. And economically the DPRK will matter only if it reforms .

Pyongyang remains a disruptive actor in Northeast Asia, but that is a problem for the North’s neighbors, not America. The regime
mattered during the Cold War because it was allied with the Soviet Union , a hegemonic competitor to the United
States at the time. A North Korean victory could have reverberated all the way to Europe. But that world of bipolar competition

has disappeared .

Formal doctrine proves Noko is defensive

Léonie Allard et al. 17, Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations; Mathieu Duchâtel,
Senior Policy Fellow and Deputy Director of the Asia and China Programme at the European Council of
Foreign Relations; François Godement, director of ECFR's Asia & China programme and a senior policy
fellow at ECFR, "Pre-empting defeat: In search of North Korea’s nuclear doctrine," European Council on
Foreign Relations, 11/22/2017,
https://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/pre_empting_defeat_in_search_of_north_koreas_nuclear_
doctrine.

It has become almost a cliché in policy cir cles to state that No rth Ko rea is a rational, strategic actor . But, with
many in the media still describing Pyongyang as “crazy” or “suicidal”, it bears repeating. No rth Ko rea ’s nuclear and ballistic
weapons programmes are the product of a rational cost-benefit analysis. They are founded on the
regime’s calculated assessment of the threats to its survival, and their high risks have been taken into
account. Still, some in Europe base their policy towards Pyongyang on misplaced ideas. They question Kim Jong Un ’s
rationality , and cling to the illusion that the country’s nuclear weapons are a bargaining chip rather than
a non-negotiable national goal. Of course, rationality does not mean that war will always be avoided.
Miscalculations and misperceptions happen. And, in some cases, war can be a rational choice.
Unlike other nuclear-armed states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has not published a clear official statement setting out its
nuclear doctrine – the circumstances under which it would launch a strike. To predict Pyongyang’s response to different
scenarios , and to avoid war, the international community needs to understand how the regime sees its
nuc lear weapon s , and when it would use them. This offers an insight into the conflict scenarios envisaged by the regime, its goals, and
the options it may be willing to consider if it judges that deterrence has failed.

For Europe, where many see North Korea as a remote and intractable problem, understanding Pyongyang’s strategic thinking on nuclear weapons is an essential step towards determining how
European governments and European Union institutions can contribute to talks on crisis management. It can also help to form a realistic assessment of the results that can be expected from
Europe’s current approach, which centres on sanctions. If the EU and European governments are to have a real impact on the crisis, European policymakers must accept the fact that
Pyongyang is a rational actor and that there is no prospect of talks on unilateral disarmament. While Europe should continue to push strongly for nuclear disarmament as the ultimate goal in
interactions with North Korea and leave no space for ambiguity, it should also explore the role it could play to prevent international divisions regarding how to respond to North Korean
proliferation activities.

This paper sets out to piece together North Korea’s nuclear doctrine, drawing on original, open-source material published by the country’s official news outlets KCNA and Rodong Shinmun in
the five years since Kim Jong Un came to power. These statements are aimed primarily at the domestic audience. Of course, North Korea knows that these sources are studied by intelligence
services elsewhere, and so they vary between propaganda for domestic consumption and messages aimed at enemies abroad. They nonetheless include valuable information and offer a
window into Pyongyang’s strategic thinking.

The paper starts by asking how far North Korea can be considered to have a nuclear doctrine, and analyses the key texts where the regime’s position can be found. It concludes that, though
there is no fully-fledged doctrine, North Korea’s strategic thinking is clear and internally coherent.

The paper then maps out the key components of the emerging nuclear doctrine. First, the doctrine centres on the idea that Pyongyang is prepared to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike in
response to an imminent attack on the country. Second, the regime presents its nuclear arsenal as part of a defensive, rather than offensive, strategy: it frames the programme as a response
to the risk of a decapitation strike mounted by the United States and its allies, especially South Korea. Third, North Korea lacks a clear distinction between the use of nuclear weapons against
military targets and their use against civilian targets, or any plan for a gradual escalation from attacking military bases to striking cities. Moreover, the regime seems to lack any defined
endgame to its use of nuclear weapons, or evaluation of the consequences of using them. In other words, it does not envisage military victory.

The paper goes on to consider how Kim Jong Un has changed his country’s nuclear policy. The current leader has ended any ambiguity around North Korea’s intention to remain a nuclear
power, and has made it clear that he will not consider disarming. Under Kim Jong Un, official statements place increasing emphasis on diversification of the nuclear arsenal – crucially, this
would increase the arsenal’s chances of surviving a first strike and achieve credible deterrence. North Korea’s nuclear doctrine is determined to a great extent by its technological limitations.
Without certainty that its arsenal could survive a first strike by its enemies, Pyongyang’s deterrence relies on the threat of launching the first strike itself.

Finally, the paper offers suggestions for how European governments and EU institutions can reduce the risk of war. They should strengthen sanctions on North Korea, and take steps to prevent
sanctions evasion in third countries, so as to make clear the cost of illegal proliferation. At the same time, they should offer to host “track 2” crisis management talks between non-
governmental actors in countries facing North Korea’s nuclear programme. European “track 2” diplomacy with North Korea already exists. What is needed is a platform to explore crisis
scenarios to lessen the chance of misunderstanding between the other parties.

ELEMENTS OF A NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

Military doctrines exist to make clear – both internally and to adversaries – the circumstances under which a state will
resort to various forms of military action. Unlike other states that have developed a nuclear arsenal, No rth Ko rea lacks
any official document that sets out its nuclear doctrine to the outside world, such as China’s defence white paper,
Russia’s official military doctrine, or the United States’ nuclear posture review reports.

However, Pyongyang communicates regularly on its nuclear arsenal through the official media , mostly in
the form of statements from the leadership , and more often than not in the name of Kim Jong Un. It has also passed
legislation on nuclear weapons that includes elements that come close to a doctrine.

In contrast to much Western media coverage – where Pyongyang’s statements on its nuclear weapons are portrayed as crazed threats –
there is a strong internal coherence to the information parcelled out in Korean-language open source
material . This suggests a high degree of clarity in the government’s strategic thinking , though, of course,
there is likely to be a large amount of bluff mixed in with more credible information.
Kim Jong Un has set out to modernise and professionalise government communications. Compared to the era of his father, Kim Jong Il (1994-
2011), the circle of “nuclear narrators” – those making statements on North Korea’s nuclear policies – has widened somewhat. These now
include military leaders such as the chief of staff of the Korean People’s Army, his deputy, the minister of the armed forces, senior officials from
the State Council, and the heads of academic research centres.

The official term that is closest to the concept of a nuclear doctrine (핵정책) can be translated as “nuclear policy” – a broader term that is not
limited to the circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be used. The regime’s statements on this nuclear policy set out
scenarios and circumstances for the use of nuc lear weapon s on a level that almost qualifies as a doctrine. The
official document that comes closest is the 2013 “ Law on Consolidating the Position of Nuclear Weapons
State ”.[1] Its primary goal was to formalise North Korea’s claim to nuclear power status , translating into
domestic law an April 2012 revision to the constitution, which declares that the country is a nuclear power.[2]

The law provides a broad framework to understand the circumstances under which North Korea envisages using nuclear weapons. First, it
makes no distinction between conventional and nuclear attacks against the country, stating that nuclear weapons would be employed in
response to an attack with conventional weapons. Second, it characterises the nuclear arsenal’s role as “ deterring and
repelling the aggression and attack of the enemy” and as a means to strike “deadly retaliatory blows at the
strongholds of aggression until the world is denuclearised”.[3] If deterrence fails, and another nuclear state launched an attack
against North Korea, a nuclear strike would be used to “ repel invasion or attack from a hostile nuclear weapons state and
make retaliatory strikes”.[4] Third, the law states that North Korea rules out nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states “unless they join a
hostile nuclear weapons state in [an] invasion and attack on the DPRK”.[5] This is a threat aimed at South Korea and Japan, and any other US
allies who might join an international coalition in case of war.[6]

THE CHOICE OF A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE

The sources make clear that North Korean thinking on nuclear weapons centres on the concept of a pre-
emptive strike. North Korean publications and official statements have consistently referred to this option
since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2012. However, the approach is not entirely new. A 2008 article in KCNA emphasised that pre-emptive
strikes are “not a monopoly of the United States, we also have the option […] if we feel the need, we will go to that option.”[7]

The sources make a clear distinction between preventive and pre-emptive strikes: in general, while a pre-emptive strike is aimed at stopping an
imminent attack, a preventive strike aims to prevent an enemy developing, or using, certain military capacities. The latter is never mentioned in
the sources as a strategic option. Instead, the key term used in North Korean official statements and media articles is “pre-emptive
attack/attack of our style” (우리 식의 핵선제타격).[8]

The sources do not define the exact nature of such a “ pre-emptive attack ”, but make clear that it is linked
to two of the greatest threats that No rth Ko rea considers itself to be facing. These are the US refusal to
rule out a first nuclear strike, and the discussions between So uth Ko rea and the US on the possibility of
a decapitation strike against the regime.[9] According to media reports, a plan jointly adopted by the South Korean and US
militaries in 2015 – Operations Plan 5015 – sets out operations against the North Korean leadership, and discusses pre-emptive responses to
any signs of a North Korean attack.[10] South Korea and the US have rehearsed elements of the plan in joint military exercises.

The North Korean narrative emphasises pre-emptive nuclear strikes as a response to an imminent attempt
to destroy No rth Ko rea. For example, Li Yong Pil, director of the foreign ministry’s Research Centre on the United States, states that
“a pre-emptive nuclear strike is not something the US has a monopoly on. If we see that the US would do it to us, we would do it first. We have
the technology”.[11]

In February 2016, the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army published an “operational scenario” that again emphasises pre-
emption.[12] It states: “From this moment all the powerful strategic and tactical strike means of our revolutionary armed forces will go into
pre-emptive and [justice] operation” against “the enemy”. Though the document does not use the term “nuclear”, there is calculated
ambiguity. It mentions a “strategic strike”, which is an indirect reference to nuclear weapons. It also states that a first strike would target the
presidential Blue House in Seoul, again without making clear whether this would involve nuclear weapons. Instead, that first strike is called a
“crucial warning” before a “second operation to totally eliminate [the enemy] at its source.” The document also names US bases in the Asia-
Pacific region, from which attacks on North Korea would be conducted, and the US mainland as targets for a “second strike.”

The strategy of pre-emption is particularly dangerous given the country’s limited intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities, which North
Korean sources indirectly acknowledge. It does not take much reading between the lines to conclude that large-scale US-South Korean military
exercises could lead to a disastrous miscalculation by North Korea. Lacking reliable intelligence, the Korean People’s Army could easily conclude
that military operations by the US around the peninsula were the first step in an imminent attack to achieve regime change and nuclear
disarmament, resulting in a pre-emptive nuclear strike by Pyongyang. US-South Korean joint exercises are particularly risky because they
include units that would likely be involved in any decapitation strike.

PRE-EMPTION IN PRACTICE

From the North Korean sources, one can compile a list of possible targets for a nuclear strike. There is no preference for “counterforce” strikes
against military targets, as opposed to “countervalue” strikes against civilian targets – both are mentioned in official statements and media
reports. Pyongyang repeatedly threatens both US bases in the Asia-Pacific and cities on the US mainland, while the media repeats the threat
that North Korean “strategic forces” are ready at any time to strike “the US mainland, their stronghold, their military bases in the operational
theatres in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea.”[13]

Japanese and South Korean cities are also designated as targets. Japanese cities are more explicitly targeted, including in a list that names
“Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto.”[14] More recent statements include the vague notion of reaching “major strike objects in the
operation theatres of South Korea.”[15]

North Korea has also released maps of its targets, as exemplified by the infamous photo, published in March 2013, that shows Kim Jong Un with
a target map corresponding to cities and bases in the US mainland.[16] In addition, a July 2016 picture of Kim Jong Un during a ballistic test
launch shows him looking at a map of the US military base in Busan.[17] Numerous video-montages presented Guam as a target, before
Pyongyang designated the waters around the island as a target for missile exercises in August 2017.

DETERRENCE OR AGGRESSION?

TheNorth Korean sources consistently refer to nuclear weapons as part of a defensive, rather than an
offensive, strategy. They never mention the possibility of using the country’s nuclear capacity for blackmail – to coerce or intimidate
South Korea and Japan – or to carry out acts of terrorism. Nor does the literature discuss using nuclear weapons as cover to carry out
conventional strikes without facing retaliation. A scenario under which No rth Ko rea uses conventional weapons to
change the territorial status quo on the peninsula by force, shielded by its nuclear capacity , is never mentioned.
This does not mean that the option is not under discussion in Pyongyang: in 2010, after sinking a South Korean navy ship and shelling an island,
Pyongyang threatened massive retaliation if South Korea conducted any hard reprisal: in other words, it
used its deterrence as a
shield for aggression when its nuclear programme was much less advanced than today. But this has not
entered the official discourse , which is focused on deterrence . Indeed, the regime often deploys a quasi-moral argument –
that its nuclear weapons are merely a defence against regime change – and uses the term “pre-emptive nuclear strike of justice”.
North Korea leaves some aspects of its policy vague. The sources do not make a distinction between deterrence by punishment (carrying out retaliatory strikes to raise the cost of any attack on North Korea) and deterrence by denial (persuading the US and South Korea that they would
not achieve their objectives in a war - i.e. the fall of the current regime). This might be because the latter is not considered credible, given a balance of power that is overwhelmingly in favour of the US-South Korea alliance.

The sources distinguish between tactical and strategic weapons, but do not place them in a hierarchy or sequence. There is no universally accepted definition of tactical as opposed to strategic nuclear weapons, but the terms are most often used to describe counterforce strikes on the
battlefield, in contrast to countervalue strikes against civilian targets. Some analysts define tactical weapons on the basis of their smaller yield or shorter range. North Korean sources do not offer a clear definition of the distinction. By contrast, France’s cold war doctrine, for example,
stated that there would first be a warning tactical nuclear strike targeting invading conventional forces from the Soviet Union, before escalating to a strategic countervalue strike against civilian targets, if the first did not halt the aggression.

In North Korea’s literature there is no such notion of gradual retaliation.[19] The only element that comes close is an assertion that North Korea will show its military power “step by step”. But the literature does not set out any clear sequencing of either conventional weapons or weapons
of mass destruction.[20] The sources never explicitly mention the existence of a stockpile of biological and chemical weapons, or how these might be integrated into the country’s military operations. Yet the use of a VX nerve agent in the February 2017 assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-
brother in Malaysia can be seen as evidence that such a stockpile exists.

Strikingly, the sources do not identify a political endgame to the use of nuclear weapons. They bluff by referring to the destruction of the US, but never discuss the reunification by force of the Korean peninsula. Missing from the open source material is any evaluation of the consequences
of striking the US or its allies with nuclear weapons, or of a clear threshold between a nuclear strike against a military base and a nuclear strike against a city.

In sum, North Korea has no clearly defined concept of tactical use of nuclear weapons, though the distinction between striking military bases and cities is very much present. Arguably, given the geographic configuration of the Korean peninsula and the location of US bases in South Korea
and Japan, no use of nuclear weapons could be considered as merely tactical. There is no way to target military forces without killing civilians, and there would be little difference in the political effects.

In addition, Pyongyang refuses to make a clear choice in its official communications between retaliatory nuclear strikes and deterrence by denial, or to define a sequence of escalation from strikes against military facilities to destruction of cities. In theory, any attack against the country
could therefore result in nuclear strikes against military or civilian targets. This looks like an attempt to strengthen deterrence by leaving all options on the table.

WHAT KIM JONG UN HAS CHANGED

In just over five years in power, Kim Jong Un has already placed his personal imprint on the country’s nuclear programme. He has not only increased the frequency of nuclear and missile tests, but has also fundamentally altered the strategic thinking and communications around nuclear
weapons.

Kim Jong Un has ended the ambiguity around the nature of the country’s nuclear programme: its arsenal “is not a bargaining chip to be put on a negotiating table.”[21] One of his first moves was to formalise the country’s status as a nuclear power in 2012, adding the following sentence
to the constitution: “Kim Il Sung … turned our fatherland into an invincible state of political ideology, a nuclear armed state and an indomitable military power”. Nor does anyone in the international community still seriously consider the programme as mere leverage to obtain mutual
recognition with the US or to extract economic concessions and security guarantees.

The official language used under Kim Jong Un marks a clear break with his father’s era. Under Kim Jong Il, denuclearisation was still mentioned as a possible outcome of diplomatic talks. For example, a 2010 foreign ministry reference document on the “nuclear policy of North Korea”
explained that “the realisation of denuclearisation requires mutual trust”.[22] In contrast, under Kim Jong Un the country has clearly expressed its determination to make no concessions on its status as a nuclear power. Official sources often mention regime change and war in Libya, Iraq,
and Ukraine as being a result of these countries abandoning their nuclear arsenals. They brush aside the Iran nuclear deal, arguing that North Korea’s situation is “completely different from Iran”, because it “is a nuclear weapons state in both name and reality” with its “own interests.”[23]

On the foreign policy front, Kim Jong Un has made clear that he wants international recognition of North Korea as a nuclear state. In 2016, he stated: “Now that our Republic has the status of a dignified and independent nuclear power, we should develop our foreign relations
accordingly.”[24] North Korea’s insistence on independence leads it to reject all other models, or to conceal their influence. Pakistan, for example, could serve as a model of a state rebuilding its ties with the international community after illicitly gaining nuclear power status, but is never
cited.

It is well known that the ballistic programme has accelerated under Kim Jong Un. The increased frequency of tests is the most visible aspect, but it is also noteworthy that the country is now developing multiple types of missiles. Fifteen types have been tested under Kim Jong Un,
compared to five under Kim Jong Il, and five further types have been spotted in official photographs.[25]

Three key concepts that have appeared in state media under Kim Jong Un are at the centre of the regime’s nuclear strategy. These are: the hydrogen bomb, also known as a thermonuclear weapon, which is more powerful than the traditional atomic bomb; miniaturisation – the ability to
make weapons small enough to fit on to a long-range missile; and diversification of the types of nuclear weapons. Of the three, diversification is the most important in terms of its impact on North Korea’s military options. The other two relate to the construction of a deliverable nuclear
weapon, while diversification could increase the arsenal’s ability to survive a first strike or attempts to intercept it in flight. This “survivability” is crucial if North Korea is to achieve its goal of deterrence by punishment.

Diversification often appears in the sources. They refer to the goal of achieving the “three components of nuclear deterrence” – namely the nuclear triad at the core of other countries’ doctrines, made up of land-, air-, and sea-based means of launching missiles.[26] Kim Jong Un speaks of
“all possible military actions as a nuclear power”,[27] and states that the diversification of delivery vehicles allows “the realisation of our military objectives, we need diversified nuclear weapons… Depending on the destructive power and maximal range, the weapon is tactical or strategic.
Depending on the shape or use of nuclear munitions, the weapon can be classified as nuclear warheads, nuclear bomb, nuclear torpedoes, nuclear mines etc.”[28] While there is no evidence yet that the country is pursuing nuclear torpedoes and mines, it would not be surprising given the
emphasis on diversification.

THE LOGIC OF PRE-EMPTION

Pyongyang’s official statements show that it is prepared to carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike, that it would consider strikes against both military and civilian targets, and that it is focused on deterrence by punishment, but dreams of achieving deterrence by denial. This does not
constitute a fully formed doctrine, but the beginning of doctrinal thinking. Taken together, these elements evoke the model of “asymmetric escalation” described by nuclear scholar Vipin Narang. For Narang, asymmetric escalation is a posture adopted by states trying to deter more
powerful adversaries from launching conventional or nuclear attacks by threatening to use nuclear weapons first.[29]

However, North Korea is not a perfect manifestation of the asymmetric escalation model. The model requires two elements that are not present in the North Korean posture: transparency on strike capacities, in order to give credibility to the threat of first use; and delegation of command
and control, so that missiles would still be launched in the event of the leadership being destroyed.[30]

However, the model highlights how far the unfavourable balance of power determines Pyongyang’s choice of pre-emption. One element has particular importance: the uncertainty around whether the arsenal could survive a first strike by the US. As Donald Trump stated in his September
2017 speech at the UN General Assembly, the US military has the capacity to “completely destroy” North Korea.[31] This overwhelming nuclear and conventional superiority of the US must be the starting point for understanding North Korea’s emphasis on pre-emption.

By contrast, China’s strategic depth – its large size and population – led it to adopt a doctrine of “no first use”, because it believed that neither
its government nor its nuclear arsenal could be eliminated in a first strike by a hostile power. Over time, China has expanded its second strike
capabilities, to enable what Beijing calls “nuclear counterstrike campaigns”.[32] No rth Ko rea currently has no significant
second strike capability , and the government is concerned that a first strike could destroy it. The
credibility of its deterrence therefore lies in the capacity to inflict unacceptable damage on an enemy at a
very early stage of a military conflict, before the regime can be destroyed. This results in a policy of nuclear pre-
emption .

Kim Jong Un was responsible for adopting, or at least publicising, the policy of pre-emption . But there is a degree
of continuity in the country’s approach to deterrence between its nuclear and its longer-standing weapons of mass
destruction. Pyongyang developed biological and chemical weapons with a similar strategy before Kim Jong Un came to power, and the nuclear
missiles threatening Seoul follow from the same logic, even if the outcome of any military conflict would be the defeat of North Korea and most
probably the end of the current regime. This was described under previous leader Kim Il Sung as a “scorpion strategy” – in a war, North Korea
would only be able to strike once before defeat.[33]
 Alt Causes
Alt causes – they have different policy priorities
1AC Chapman ’15 [Justin, Former Executive Assistant @US Department of State, IR MA @American
University (Candidate while Writing), Poli Sci BA @College of Wooster, "For the US-ROK Alliance, Less is
More," Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (2015): 1, DFU | AS]

Furthermore, although both countries agree on the importance of managing the North Korean
challenge, they often prefer different approaches . The United States generally prioritizes
denuclearization and wants to lead with that demand during negotiations. Washington further likes to
demand nuclear concessions from North Korea in exchange for increased political and economic
engagement (Cha 2009, 22). Seoul understands Washington’s concerns about nuclear proliferation, but
because it already views North Korea’s conventional forces as an existential threat , Pyongyang’s
nuclear program does not create the same heightened sense of urgency among South Korean policy
makers as it does among their US counterparts (Sheen 2003, 98). As such, Seoul prefers to treat nuclear
and economic issues separately , reflecting its higher level of trade and economic cooperation with the
North. Finally, Washington has a history of discussing human rights issues with Pyongyang while Seoul
prefers to avoid that subject altogether (Cha 2009, 22). The case of North Korea demonstrates that
even when allies agree on an issue’s importance, their policy preferences do not always align .
A2
 Econ
Stopping growth solves extinction from eco collapse – decoupling is impossible even
under perfect conditions, and transition dangers are overhyped
Hickel 18 [Jason Hickel is an anthropologist, author, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Why
Growth Can’t Be Green. Foreign Policy Magazine. September 12, 2018.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/12/why-growth-cant-be-green/]

Warnings about ecological breakdown have become ubiquitous. Over the past few years, major newspapers, including
the Guardian and the New York Times, have carried alarming stories on soil depletion , defo restation, and the collapse of
fish stocks and insect populations . These crises are being driven by global economic growth , and its
accompanying consumption, which is destroying the Earth’s biosphere and blowing past key
planetary boundaries that scientists say must be respected to avoid triggering collapse .

Many policymakers have responded by pushing for what has come to be called “ green growth .” All we need to do,
they argue, is invest in more efficient technology and introduce the right incentives , and we’ll be able to keep
growing while simultaneously reducing our impact on the natural world, which is already at an unsustainable level. In technical terms, the goal
is to achieve “ absolute decoupling ” of GDP from the total use of natural resources, according to the U.N. definition.

It sounds like an elegant solution to an otherwise catastrophic problem. There’s just one hitch: New evidence suggests that green
growth isn’t the panacea everyone has been hoping for. In fact, it isn’t even possible .
Green growth first became a buzz phrase in 2012 at the United Nations Cosnference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro. In the run-
up to the conference, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the U.N. Environment Program all
produced reports promoting green growth. Today, it is a core plank of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

But the promise of green growth turns out to have been based more on wishful thinking than on evidence. In the years since the Rio
conference, three major empirical studies have arrived at the same rather troubling conclusion : Even
under the best conditions , absolute decoupling of GDP from resource use is not possible on a global
scale.

A team of scientists led by the German researcher Monika Dittrich first raised doubts in 2012. The group ran a sophisticated
computer model that predicted what would happen to global resource use if economic growth
continued on its current trajectory, increasing at about 2 to 3 percent per year. It found that human consumption of
natural resources (including fish, livestock, forests, metals, minerals, and fossil fuels) would rise from 70 billion metric tons
per year in 2012 to 180 billion metric tons per year by 2050. For reference, a sustainable level of resource use is
about 50 billion metric tons per year—a boundary we breached back in 2000.

The team then reran the model to see what would happen if every nation on Earth immediately adopted
best practice in efficient resource use (an extremely optimistic assumption). The results improved; resource
consumption would hit only 93 billion metric tons by 2050. But that is still a lot more than we’re consuming today. Burning
through all those resources could hardly be described as absolute decoupling or green growth.

In 2016, asecond team of scientists tested a different premise : one in which the world’s nations all agreed to go above and
beyond existing best practice. In their best-case scenario, the researchers assumed a tax that would raise the global
price of carbon from $50 to $236 per metric ton and imagined technological innovations that would double the efficiency with which we
use resources. The results were almost exactly the same as in Dittrich’s study. Under these conditions, if the global economy kept
growing by 3 percent each year, we’d still hit about 95 billion metric tons of resource use by 2050. Bottom line: no
absolute decoupling.

Finally, lastyear the U.N. Environment Program—once one of the main cheerleaders of green growth theory—weighed in on the
debate. It tested a scenario with carbon priced at a whopping $573 per metric ton, slapped on a resource

extraction tax , and assumed rapid tech nological innovation spurred by strong government support .
The result? We hit 132 billion metric tons by 2050. This finding is worse than those of the two previous
studies because the researchers accounted for the “ rebound effect ,” whereby improvements in
resource efficiency drive down prices and cause demand to rise —thus canceling out some of the
gains .

Study after study shows the same thing . Scientists are beginning to realize that there are physical limits to how efficiently we can
use resources. Sure, we might be able to produce cars and iPhones and skyscrapers more efficiently, but we can’t produce them out of thin air.
We might shift the economy to services such as education and yoga, but even universities and workout studios require material inputs. Once
we reach the limits of efficiency, pursuing any degree of economic growth drives resource use back up.

These problems throw the entire concept of green growth into doubt and necessitate some radical rethinking. Remember that each of the
three studies used highly optimistic assumptions. We are nowhere near imposing a global carbon tax today, much less one of nearly $600 per
metric ton, and resource efficiency is currently getting worse, not better. Yet the studies suggest that even if we do everything right, decoupling
economic growth with resource use will remain elusive and our environmental problems will continue to worsen.

Preventing that outcome will require a whole new paradigm. High taxes and technological innovation will help, but they’re not going to be
enough. The only realistic shot humanity has at averting ecological collapse is to impose hard caps on resource use, as the economist Daniel
O’Neill recently proposed. Such caps, enforced by national governments or by international treaties, could ensure that we do not extract more
from the land and the seas than the Earth can safely regenerate. We could also ditch GDP as an indicator of economic success and adopt a more
balanced measure like the genuine progress indicator (GPI), which accounts for pollution and natural asset depletion. Using GPI would help us
maximize socially good outcomes while minimizing ecologically bad ones.

But there’s
no escaping the obvious conclusion . Ultimately, bringing our civilization back within planetary
boundaries is going to require that we liberate ourselves from our dependence on economic growth —
starting with rich nations . This might sound scarier than it really is . Ending growth doesn’t mean
shutting down economic activity—it simply means that next year we can’t produce and consume more
than we are doing this year. It might also mean shrinking certain sectors that are particularly damaging to our ecology and that are
unnecessary for human flourishing, such as advertising, commuting, and single-use products.

But ending growth doesn’t mean that living standards need to take a hit. Our planet provides more than enough for all of us; the problem is
that its resources are not equally distributed. We can improve people’s lives right now simply by sharing
what we already have
more fairly, rather than plundering the Earth for more. Maybe this means better public services. Maybe it means basic
income. Maybe it means a shorter working week that allows us to scale down production while still delivering full employment. Policies such as
these—and countless others—will be crucial to not only surviving the 21st century but also flourishing in it.

Warming causes extinction – a confluence of nonlinear and unpredictable effects will

make human and natural systems inhospitable while increasing escalatory conflicts –
even if the impacts are far off, only drastic action now solves
Melton 19 [Michelle Melton is a 3L at Harvard Law School. Before law school, she was an associate
fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
where she focused on climate policy. Climate Change and National Security, Part II: How Big a Threat is
the Climate? January 7, 2019. https://www.lawfareblog.com/climate-change-and-national-security-part-
ii-how-big-threat-climate]
At least until 2050, and possibly for decades after, climate change will remain a creeping threat that will exacerbate
and amplify existing, structural global inequalities . While the developed world will be negatively affected by climate
change through 2050, the consequences of climate change will be felt most acutely in the developing world. The national security threats posed
by climate change to 2050 are likely to differ in degree, not kind, from the kinds of threats already posed by climate change. For the next few
decades, climate change will exacerbate humanitarian crises —some of which will result in the deployment
of military personnel , as well as material and financial assistance. It will also aggravate natural resource constraints ,
potentially contributing to political and economic conflict over water , food and energy .
The question for the next 30 years is not “can humanity survive as a species with 1.5°C or 2°C of warming,” but, “how much will the existing
disparities between the developed and developing world widen, and how long (and how successfully) can these widening political/economic
disparities be sustained?” The urgency of the climate threat in the next few decades will depend, to a large degree, on whether and how much
the U.S. government perceives a widening of these global inequities as a threat to U.S. national security.

By contrast, if emissions continue to creep upward (or if they do not decline rapidly), by 2100 climate-related national security
threats could be existential . The question for the next hundred years is not, “are disparities politically and
economically manageable?” but, “can the global order , premised on the nation-state system , itself based on
territorial sovereignty, survive in a world in which substantial swathes of territory are potentially
uninhabitable ?”
National Security Consequences of Climate Change to 2050

Scientists can predict the consequences of climate change to 2050 with some measure of certainty. (Beyond that date, the pace and magnitude
of climate change—and therefore, the national security threat posed by it—depend heavily on the level of emissions in the coming years, as I
have explained.) There is relative agreement across modeled climate scenarios that the world will likely warm, on average, at least 1.5°C above
pre-industrial levels by about 2050—but perhaps as soon as 2030. This level of warming is likely to occur even if the world succeeds in
dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as even the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report implicitly admits.
In other words, a certain amount of additional warming—at least 1.5°C, and probably more than that—is presumptively unavoidable.

Looking ahead to 2050, it can be said with relative confidence that the national security consequences of climate change will vary in degree, not
in kind, from the national security threats already facing the United States. This is hardly good news. Even small differences in
global average temperatures result in significant environmental changes , with attendant social ,
economic and political consequences . By 2050, climate change will wreak increasing havoc on human
and natural systems —predominantly, but not exclusively, in the developing world—with attenuated but profound
consequences for national security .

In particular, changes in temperature , the hydrological cycle and the ranges of insects will impact food
availability and food access in much of the world, increasing food insecurity . Storms , flooding ,
changes in ocean pH and other climate-linked changes will damage infrastructure and negatively
impact labor productivity and economic growth in much of the world. Vector-borne diseases will also
become more prevalent , as climate change will expand the geographic range and intensity of
transmission of diseases like malaria, West Nile, Zika and dengue fever, and cholera . Rising public
health challenges , economic devastation and food insecurity will translate into an increased demand
for humanitarian assistance provided by the military , increased migration —especially from tropical and
subtropical regions—and geopolitical conflict .
Long-term trends such as declining food security, coupled with short-term events like hurricanes, could sustain unprecedented levels of
migration. The 2015 refugee crisis in Europe portends the kinds of population movements that will only accelerate in the coming decades:
people from Africa, Southwest and South Asia and elsewhere crossing land and water to reach Europe. For the United States, this likely means
greater numbers of people seeking entry from both Central America and the Caribbean. Such influxes are not unprecedented, but they are
unlikely to abate and could increase in volume over the next few decades, driven in part by climate change-related food insecurity, climate
change-related storms and also by economic and political instability. Food insecurity, economic losses and loss of human life are also likely to
exacerbate existing political tensions in the developing world, especially in regions with poor governance and/or where the climate is
particularly vulnerable to warming (e.g., the Mediterranean basin). While the Arab Spring had many underlying causes, it also coincided with a
period of high food prices, which arguably contributed to the protests. In some situations, food insecurity , economic losses and
public health crises , combined with weak and ineffectual governance , could precipitate future
conflicts of this kind—although it will be difficult to know where and when without more precise local studies of both underlying political
dynamics and the regionally-specific impacts of climate change.

2100 and Beyond

While the national security impacts of climate change to 2050 are likely to be costly and disruptive for the U.S. military—and devastating for
many people around the world—at some point after 2050, if warming continues at its current pace, changes to the climate could
fundamentally reshape geopolitics and possibly even the current nation-state basis of the current global order.
To be clear, both the ultimate level of warming and its attendant political consequences is highly speculative, for the reasons I explained in my
last post. Nonetheless, we do know that the planet is currently on track for at least 3-4°C of warming by 2100. The “known knowns” of higher
levels of warming—say, 3°C—are frightening. At that 3°C of warming, for example, scientists project that there will be a nearly 70
percent decline in wheat production in Central America and the Caribbean, 75 percent of the land
area in the Mid dle East and more than 50 percent in South Asia will be affected by highly unusual heat, and
sea level rise could displace and imperil the lives hundreds of millions of people, among other consequences.

But evenhigher levels of warming are physically possible within this century . At these levels of warming, some
regions of the world would be literally uninhabitable , likely resulting in the depopulation of the tropics, to say
nothing of the consequences of sea-level rise for economically important cities such as Amsterdam
and New York. Even if newly warmed regions of the far north could theoretically accommodate the
resulting migrants , this presumes that the political response to this unprecedented global
displacement would be orderly and conflict-free borders on fantasy .
The geopolitical consequences of significant levels of warming are severe, but if these changes occur in a linear way, at least there will be time
for human systems to adjust. Perhaps more
challenging for national security is the possibility that the until-now
linear changes give way to abrupt and irreversible ones . Scientists forecast that, at higher levels of warming—
precisely what level is speculative—humanity could trigger catastrophic , abrupt and unavoidable consequences
to the ecosystem . The IPCC has considered nine such abrupt changes; one example is the potential
shutting down of the Indian summer monsoon . Over a billion people are dependent upon the Indian
monsoon, which provides parts of South Asia with about 80 percent of its annual rainfall ; relatively minor
changes in the monsoon in either direction can cause disasters. In 2010, a wetter monsoon led to the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, which
directly affected 20 million people; a drier monsoon in 2002 led to devastating drought. Studies suggest that the Indian summer monsoon has
two stable states: wet (i.e., the current state) and dry (characterized by low precipitation over the subcontinent). At some point, if warming
continues, the monsoon could abruptly shift into the second, “dry” state, with catastrophic consequences for over a billion people dependent
on monsoon-fed agriculture. The IPCC suggests that such a state-shift is “unlikely”—that is, there is a 10 to 33 percent chance that a state-shift
will happen in the 21st century—but scientists also have relatively low confidence in their understanding of the underlying mechanisms in this
and other large-scale natural systems.

The consequences of abrupt, severe warming for national security are obvious in general, if unclear in the specifics. In 2003, the Defense
Department asked a contractor to explore such a scenario. The resulting report outlined the offensive and defensive national security
strategies countries may adopt if faced with abrupt climate change, and highlighted the increased risk of inter- and intra-

state conflict over natural resources and immigration . Although the report may be off in its imagined timeframe (positing
abrupt climate change by 2020), the world it conjures is improbable but not outlandish. If the Indian monsoon were to switch to dry state, and
a billion people were suddenly without reliable food sources, for example, it is not clear how the Indian government would react, assuming it
would survive in its current form. Major wars or low-intensity proxy conflicts seem likely, if not inevitable, in such a scenario.

This is not to say that a parade of climate horribles is certain—or even likely—to come to pass. Scientific understanding of the sensitivities in the
climate system are far from perfect. It is also possible that emissions will decline more rapidly than anticipated, averting the worst
consequences of climate change. But this outcome is far from guaranteed. And even if global emissions decline precipitously, humanity cannot
be sure when or whether the planet has crossed a climate tipping point beyond which the incremental nature of the current changes shifts
from the current linear, gradual progression to a non-linear and abrupt process.

Within the next few decades, the most likely scenario involves manageable, but costly, consequences on infrastructure, food security and
natural disasters, which will be borne primarily by the world’s most impoverished citizens and the members of the military who provide them
with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. But while the head-turning national security impacts of climate
change are probably several decades away , the nature of the threat is such that waiting until these
changes manifest is not a viable option . By the time the climate consequences are severe enough to
compel action, there is likely to be little that can be done on human timescales to undo the changes to
environmental systems and the human societies dependent upon them .
 Econ D
Interdependence can just as easily cause more war even between nuclear states
Spaniel and Malone 3/5/19 [William Spaniel, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
Iris Malone, Department of Political Science, Stanford. The Uncertainty Tradeoff: Re-Examining
Opportunity Costs and War. March 5, 2019. https://wjspaniel.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/uncertainty-
tradeoff-final.pdf]

This paper’s main contribution is to identify the precise conditions under which the probability of war
increases despite rising opportunity costs . We show that, unlike other mechanisms, rising opportunity costs may
counter-intuitively make war more likely because it also increases the difference between reservation
points for unresolved versus resolved opponents. As a result, these info rmational asymmetries can lead
states to screen their opponents and risk war . This new finding reshapes our understanding about the
relationship between opportunity costs and war . It introduces a more nu-anced mechanism about when and how this relationship
operates, sometimes contrary to expectations .
Our work advances economic interdependence theories of war in several ways. First, it provides new insight on the causes of war at odds with
traditional cases where opportunity costs increased, yet conflict still erupted. Second, it demonstrates how and when competing effects of
economic instruments predominate, driving changes in the probability of conflict. In contrast to previous work, we identify specific conditions
under which increasing opportunity costs shifts the probability of conflict, consistent with the empirical evidence. Finally, it demonstrates the
important, but subtle, effects of changing instruments, like trade flows, in the presence of uncertainty. The model advances a growing line of
research that various sources of uncertainty have disparate effects on crisis bargaining.

This paper has more general implications for trade-conflict research. It complements growing calls to disaggregate the
effects of instruments like trade (Martin et al. 2008). Empirical analyses must carefully trace what precisely parties do not know about
each other to draw the correct inference. It also suggests states should be careful in interpreting how other states value or benefit from mutual
trade flows. A free trade agreement championed by one state may be perceived as relatively less
beneficial in another state . This uncertainty may undermine the credibility to abide by the
agreement in the long-run .
We also highlight the need for future research to consider screening incentives in trade deals themselves. Although the proposer benefits from
greater trade—both from the direct economic benefit and indirect ability to steal more surplus from the receiver— trade can harm
unresolved receivers and incentivize screening . This could generate some constraints in the deals a state is willing to sign, in
fear that the rearranged incentives under uncertainty could hurt its ability to effectively bluff later. A more unified approach to trade and crisis
negotiations would yield additional interesting insights.

Moving forward, the results speak to other lines of research in international relations theory predicated on changing costs of conflict. We
couched our results in the interdependence literature due its clear application. However, the comparative static speaks to cases where the
receiver’s costs increase more generally.23 Framed this way, the results have clear implications for other literatures. For example, standard
nuclear deterrence theory argues that possessing nuclear weapons increases the costs of war for
potential challengers due to the risk of a retaliatory nuclear response (Morgenthau 1961, 280; Gilpin 1983, 213-219). The
logic of
alliance formation similarly relics on the assumption that entering these pacts induces peace by raising
an opponent’s costs of conflict (Morrow 1994). Together , these mechanisms assume raising the costs of
war should decrease conflict . Our results demonstrate this effect is likely more conditional than previously
realized. We find increased costs of conflict can exacerbate issues with uncertainty over resolve even if
both states possess destructive weaponry . This promises to shed new insights into how raising costs affects deterrence and
coercive bargaining in other contexts.
 Internal
ROK contributions and effective ROK diplomacy aren’t zero sum
Snyder 15
( senior fellow for Korea studies and director of U.S.-Korea policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations,
February 2015, “U.S. Rebalancing Strategy and South Korea’s Middle Power Diplomacy,”
http://www.eai.or.kr/data/bbs/eng_report/2015030618362920.pdf )

The United States and South Korea both share an interest in strengthening of institutions and norms within
East Asia, as well as a more energetic application of existing global norms to the regional environment. On the premise that U.S. and South
Korean interests are well-aligned and that shared interests have strengthened alliance-based cooperation, the United
States is likely to welcome and encourage these sorts of South Korean contributions. We can see evidence
of this in U.S. encouragement to South Korea to take an active role in offshore post-conflict stabilization in
Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf of Aden , in U.S. willingness to cooperate with South Korea in
international development projects in Africa and in strengthening review and evaluation of existing development projects, and
in U.S. expectations for South Korea as an advanced nation with shared interests to contribute to
international stability through policy coordination on a range of global and non-traditional security
issues from counter-terrorism to shared objectives in global health and implementation of sanctions
against Iran and North Korea.¶ South Korea’s middle power concept has in many respects been a great boon
to enhanced U.S.-ROK alliance cooperation and to the idea of building a comprehensive security
alliance between the United States and South Korea. On many of the subject areas where South Korea has carved
out a hosting or catalyst role as a middle power, its policies have already been closely aligned with those of
the United States. On the G-20, South Korea strongly supported anti-protectionist stances in the midst of the
global financial crisis. And South Korea’s development agenda, objectives, and example are generally in concert
with U.S. views. South Korea hosted the Nuclear Security Summit, a special project of the Obama administration, at the behest of
President Obama himself, and South Korea worked closely with the United States to forward nuclear security objectives defined in the first
summit despite South Korean interests in broadening the scope of the agenda to also include nuclear safety issues post-Fukushima. Given
South Korea’s diplomatic orientation and interest in perpetuation of conditions and rules that reinforce
the current global order, South Korean activism in international affairs would not likely conflict with
U.S. interests through the alliance in most areas, although U.S. flexibility may be required to accommodate creative South Korean
contributions to the global order.

No forced choice now – it requires both South Korea to change policy and US to force
the choice – we’ll insert yellow
Lee 20 [Dr. Ji-Young, Associate Professor, School of International Service at American University,
political scientist who studies East Asian security at the intersection of history, area studies, and IR, PhD
in Government and MA in Security studies from Gtown; MA in Political Science from Seoul National U;
From the Chapter: “South Korea’s Strategic Nondecision and Sino-U.S. Competition” From the Book:
Strategic Asia 2020: U.S.-China competition for Global Influence. Edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Alison
Szalwinski, and Michael Wills page 100-101]

Conclusions
South Korea’s foreign and security policy choices, despite having the potential to have a direct impact on U.S.-China security competition and to
shape the future of the Asian regional order, have not led to the formation of a clear South Korean strategy for Asia. This strategic
nondecision reflects Seoul’s concerns that making a clear strategic choice between Washington and
Beijing will come with unacceptable costs to its national security, relations with North Korea, and economy. Given that
the U.S.-China strategic rivalry is expected to intensify for the foreseeable future, Seoul’s strategic nondecision
will not likely be sustainable . What, then, are the best policy options for South Korea and the United States?

First, South
Korea should take a more proactive yet gradual approach to the shifting security environment
in Asia and clearly articulate what its strategic choices are on important issues in U.S.-China relations.
South Korea’s strategic nondecision was designed to create room for Seoul to alter its decision-making depending on changes in the power
balance and other circumstances in Northeast Asia. The risk of this strategy, however, is that South Korea could be marginalized or left out
altogether from the process of shaping a new order in Asia. Further, this strategy works well only when both Washington and Beijing do not
believe their national interests are negatively affected by Seoul’s refusal to take sides.

Second, as Seoul works to make this policy change on its own, Washington should not force a choice but instead work
with South Korean policymakers by empowering them politically, especially in their pursuit of the goals related to reunification and
peace on the peninsula. Typically, alliances are stronger when allies identify the same country as their common enemy. However, due to the
phenomena of split interests and split politics in South Korea, a U.S.-ROK alliance that focuses only on the military role of deterring and
defending against North Korea as an enemy will turn the alliance into a crisis-management mechanism. Alliance managers should discuss the
broader role that the alliance can play in creating peace and security in the region while promoting reunification and the peace process on the
peninsula, in addition to the denuclearization and deterrence of North Korean military power.

It is important for U.S. policymakers to remember that the kind of threats that So uth Ko reans feel from
China are political rather than military in nature. One of the strongest arguments that can be made in support of South
Korea’s embrace of the alliance with the United States is geopolitical.64 That is, the alliance is best understood as a
mechanism to enhance South Korea’s position and political leverage to deal with its neighbors, including
China. Seoul and Washington could redefine and reinterpret the concept of a comprehensive strategic alliance by
making it a geopolitical alliance tailored to the Korean context. This would be a reasonably good option for
the United States, which could rely on Seoul as a solid, as opposed to a reluctant, partner in Sino-U.S. strategic
competition without excessively provoking China. This approach would also take full advantage of the South

Korean public’s and policymakers’ natural affinity toward the United States over China. This soft power–based approach is
more likely to succeed and would be more sustainable than focusing only on approaching South Korea in a
military sense, especially given the public’s strong desire for autonomy and sovereignty.
 Leadership D
Status quo solves Korean regional leadership
Vio 14
PhD, National Chengchi University, January 2014

(Jose Guerra, “South Korea's Leadership in East Asia: A Middle Power Advancing Regionalism,”
https://www.academia.edu/10174771/South_Koreas_Leadership_in_East_Asia_A_Middle_Power_Advancing_R
egionalism)

Seoul's aspirations and increasing confidence as a middle power in the region are clearly underlined in
this new approach to NEA integration, and in this period it becomes more evident the crystallization of Korea's
middlepowermanship as a foreign policy option. During President Roh - and later on during Lee Myung-bak's administration -

regional cooperation among the CKJ countries became much more institutionalized thanks to the Trilateral Cooperation
Mechanism. This shift in focus back to NEA does not contradict previous efforts, as many point out, but it responded mainly to strategic and security concerns and to
the necessity of institutionalizing the relations between the great regional powers. (Choo, 2009; Lee, 2008; Kim, 2009) This shift also illustrates the realization that
occurred among regional leaders who perceived the institutionalization of NEA as a necessary step to advance the East Asian-wide regional community-building.
Fueled particularly by their interdependent economies, these efforts soon included other trans-boundary issues that became increasingly problematic, like

environmental concerns.¶ When President Roh proclaimed the idea of Korea as a 'hub' for NEA he set up the guidelines for a
new phase in Seoul's strategy of positioning itself as a middle power in the region , highlighting the
strategic message that South Korea should be that bridge and the catalyzing factor for a regional
community of peace and prosperity . (Kim, 2009: 2) In this sense, President Roh was also a visionary, although perhaps he did not have the
stature and regional recognition of his predecessor. Nevertheless, this important shift was perhaps the most appropriate response of Korean leaders in face of the
stalemate in the regional power structure that became evident due to the Sino-Japanese rivalry and their two different views in regards to the path of East Asian
integration. Indeed, while Japan pushed and finally succeeded in 2005 with its approach for a broader East Asian Summit (EAS) based on the ASEAN Plus Six formula
(the 13 APT members plus Australia, New Zealand and India); China decided to put its focus on the East Asian-exclusive APT framework arguing it should remain as
the only medium in the establishment of a regional community. This created a thorn and division that persist until today in East Asian regionalism, and it only
confirmed the great regional powers inability to co-lead the process.
 Cyber D
No cyber war – exaggeration
Guo 12, IT and legal consultant with a JD from University of Miami
(Tony, "Shaping Preventive Policy in “Cyber War” and Cyber Security: A Pragmatic Approach" Cyber
Security and Information Systems Information Analysis Center, Vol 1 Num 1, October 2012,
https://www.thecsiac.com/journal_article/shaping-preventive-policy-“cyber-war”-and-cyber-security-
pragmatic-approach#.UhP31JLvuSo)

“Cyber war” today exists only in the hypothetical, and its disastrous impacts are often exaggerated. For instance,
the Estonia incident is a commonly cited example by proponents of “cyber war,” where a number of Estonian government websites
were temporarily disabled by angry Russian citizens. A crude distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was used to temporarily keep users
from viewing government websites. To borrow an analogy, the attack was akin to sending an army of robots to board a
bus, filling the bus so that regular riders could not get on. A website would fix this the same way a bus company would, by identifying
the difference between robots and humans, and preventing the robots from getting on. A following MSNBC article dressed up the Estonia
incident and asked the question, could a cyber skirmish lead the U.S. to actual war? Imagine this scenario: Estonia, a NATO
member, is cut off from the Internet by cyber attackers who besiege the country’s bandwidth with a devastating denial of service attack. Then,
the nation’s power grid is attacked, threatening economic disruption and even causing loss of life as emergency services are overwhelmed . . .
outside researchers determine the attack is being sponsored by a foreign government and being directed from a military base. Desperate and
outgunned in tech resources, Estonia invokes Article 5 of the NATO Treaty -- an attack against one member nation is an attack against all. The
article claimed that “half of this fictional scenario occurred in 2007.” In reality, a lot less than half of it occurred , most Estonian sites
immediately cut off access to international traffic soon after the increased bandwidth consumption, and botnet IP addresses were soon filtered
out. Most of the attackers could not be traced, but one man was later arrested and fined £830 for an attack which blocked the website of the
Prime Minister’s Reform Party. “Cyber war” has been a source of confusion due to the ubiquitous application of
the terminology, inclusive of cyber crimes and cyber espionage. Cyber warfare comes with many faulty premises, for
instance, proponents argue that it might allow terrorists to successfully attack a much larger target and do disproportionate
damage. However, the reality is that any sufficiently effective attack will invite disproportionate retaliation . For instance,
one nation may be able to make the claim that any number of nations is harboring “cyber terrorists” and invoke the right of preemptory self-
defense. However, “cyber war” as it exists today is not kinetic warfare and should not be confused with
traditional notions of war. “Cyber war” is about how to prevent or respond to a DDoS attack , and how to
secure systems and information. Short of “re-engineering the Internet,” one could simply maintain government networks
and critical infrastructure on closed-networks using proprietary software or protocols. If an organization has all its systems on a closed
circuit, the only threats left are its users. Recent data suggests that problems of attribution may not be the major issue, but having reasonable
security is. For instance, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently ran a test in 2011 where staff secretly dropped USB drives and CDs
in the parking lots of government buildings and private contractors. Of those who picked up the media, an overwhelming 60% plugged them
into office computers to see what they contained. If the drive or CD had an official logo, 90% were installed. “The test showed something
computer security experts have long known: Humans are the weak link in the fight to secure networks against
sophisticated hackers.” Moving forward, legislation and international treaties should focus on the immediate concern regarding cyber
security, not on hypothetical accounts of “war.” Addressing security is practical--attacks are less likely to succeed on secured systems and
networks with diligent operators, especially given that the majority of breaches today are as a result of system failures and employee
negligence.
2NC
 Advantage 2
(1) Risk calculus – climate change can’t fit within conventional risk management
and is ignored by social values – guarantees extinction and ruins the economy
in the process
Dunlop 17 [Ian Dunlop chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the Australian
Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000 and was CEO of the Australian
Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He has a particular interest in the interaction of
corporate governance, corporate responsibility and sustainability. An engineer by qualification, he holds
an MA (Mechanical Sciences) degree from the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the Australian
Institute of Company Directors, the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and the Energy
Institute (UK), and a Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME (USA). He also chairs the
Australian National Wildlife Collection Foundation. David Spratt is a Research Director for Breakthrough
and co-author of Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action (Scribe 2008). His recent reports
include Recount: It’s time to “Do the math” again; Climate Reality Check and Antarctic Tipping Points for
a Multi-metre Sea-level Rise. A Failure of Imagination on Climate Risks. July 26, 2017.
www.resilience.org/stories/2017-07-26/a-failure-of-imagination-on-climate-risks/]

Climate change is an existential risk that could abruptly end human civilisation because of a catastrophic
“failure of imagination” by global leaders to understand and act on the science and evidence before them.

At the London School of Economics in 2008, Queen Elizabeth questioned: “Why did no one foresee the timing, extent and severity of the Global
Financial Crisis?” The British Academy answered a year later: “A psychology of denial gripped the financial and corporate world… [it was] the
failure of the collective imagination of many bright people… to understand the risks to the system as a whole”.

A “failure of imagination” has also been identified as one of the reasons for the breakdown in US intelligence around the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

A similar failure is occurring with climate change today.

The problem is widespread at the senior levels of government and global corporations. A 2016 report, Thinking the unthinkable, based on
interviews with top leaders around the world, found that:

“A proliferation of ‘unthinkable’ events… has revealed a new fragility at the highest levels of corporate and public service leaderships. Their
ability to spot, identify and handle unexpected, non-normative events is… perilously inadequate at critical moments… Remarkably, there
remains a deep reluctance , or what might be called ‘executive myopia’, to see and contemplate even the possibility
that ‘unthinkables’ might happen, let alone how to handle them.
Such failures are manifested in two ways in climate policy. At the political, bureaucratic and business level in underplaying the high-end risks
and in failing to recognise that the existential risk of climate change is totally different from other risk categories. And at the research
level in underestimating the rate of climate change impact and costs, along with an under-emphasis
on, and poor communication of, those high-end risks .
Existential risk

An existential risk is an adverse outcome that would either annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. For
example, a big meteor impact, large-scale nuclear war, or sea levels 70 metres higher than today.

Existential risks are not amenable to the reactive (learn from failure) approach of conventional risk
management , and we cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, or social attitudes developed
from our experience with managing other sorts of risks . Because the consequences are so severe —
perhaps theend of human global civilisation as we know it — researchers say that “even for an honest, truth-
seeking, and well-intentioned investigator it is difficult to think and act rationally in regard to…
existential risks”.

Yet the evidence is clear that climate change already poses an existential risk to global economic and
societal stability and to human civilisation that requires an emergency response . Temperature rises that are
now in prospect could reduce the global human population by 80% or 90%. But this conversation is taboo, and the few who speak out
are admonished as being overly alarmist .

Prof. Kevin Anderson considers that “a

4°C future [relative to pre-industrial levels] is incompatible with an organized global
community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’ , is devastating to the majority of ecosystems , and has a
high probability of not being stable”. He says: “If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4°C, 5°C or 6°C, you
might have half a billion people surviving”. Asked at a 2011 conference in Melbourne about the difference between a 2°C world and a 4°C
world, Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber replied in two words: “Human civilisation”.

(2) Timeframe – only immediate, drastic reductions solve – there’s no cost to too
much dedev, but falling short guarantees extinction – vote neg if there’s any
risk the aff prolongs emissions
Roberts 10/8/18 [David Roberts, climate expert and energy politics reporter for Vox…but I swear
Callahan wrote this. What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like. October 8,
2018. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/5/7/17306008/climate-change-global-
warming-scenarios-ambition]

In the end, perhaps the most important conclusion in the Nature Climate Change paper is the simplest and
the one that we already knew : “a rapid transformation in energy consumption and land use is needed
in all scenarios .”

At this point, whether it’s possible to hit various targets is almost beside the point . All the science and
modeling are saying the same thing , which is that humanity faces serious danger and needs to reduce
carbon emissions to zero as quickly as possible .
The chances of us getting our collective shit together and accomplishing what these scenarios describe are ... slim. There are so many vested
interests and so much public aversion to rapid change, so many governments to be coordinated, so many economic and technology trends that
must fall just the right way. It’s daunting.

Conversely, the chances of us overdoing it — trying too hard , spending too much money, reducing
emissions too much or too fast — are effectively nil .

So the climate policy that really matters is: go as hard and fast as possible,
only rule of
forever and ever, amen .
Korea middle power key to Asian financial governance - neutrality is essential
Ramon Pacheco Pardo 17 {Ramon Pacheco Pardo is the KF-VUB Korea Chair at Vrije Universiteit
Brussel and Reader in International Relations at King's College London. 9-13-2017. “East Asia’s Regional
Financial Governance: Assessing Korea’s Centrality.”
http://keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_aps_pacheco_pardo_final_1.pdf}//JM
Korea and East Asia’s Financial Governance Seoul has been supportive of East Asia’s regional financial governance
since its inception. Dating back to the Kim Dae-jung administration that assumed office in February 1998 – shortly after Korea and the
IMF agreed to the country’s bailout package – successive Korean governments have sought to strengthen the regional

financial safety net . In the aftermath of the GFC, this support has translated into Seoul taking a leading role in the strengthening of this
safety net that has supported its institutionalization.12 Concurrently, Seoul has also become more active in the global financial safety net.13
Nonetheless, it has had a bigger impact on the regional layer, in which Korea’s economic and diplomatic
clout is obviously stronger . There are three key reasons why Korea has sought to play a central role in East
Asia’s financial governance: an increasing reliance on financial markets as the role of the banking sector in
fostering economic growth declines; Korea’s self-perception and increasing activity as a middle-power;
and unwavering support for ASEAN+3 integration concurrent to the decline of ASEAN centrality. Growing role of financial markets in the
domestic economy Korea’s contemporary, high-tech economy is very capitalintensive. The development model based on stringent controls over
credit allocation by the banking sector no longer works for the modern economy. From the 1960s until the 1980s, it served the purpose of
catch-up growth. By the 1990s, this model of credit allocation had become inadequate. Seoul thus started a very swift and aggressive capital
liberalization process, leading to a hot money-induced bubble that resulted in the 1997 crisis.14 Following the crisis, successive Korean
governments initiated a more cautious financial liberalization process.15 As a result, financial markets are increasingly central to the Korean
economy. Korea’s move towards a market-based credit allocation model is necessary and unlikely to be reversed. To begin with, the
economy is dominated by capital-intensive industries such as electronics, shipbuilding, automotive or
machinery. New growth engines such as robotics, biotechnology or telecommunication also require
large investments. In addition, Korea has actively sought to foster entrepreneurship and start-ups since the late
1990s. The Park Geun-hye government made this a centerpiece of its economic strategy with the “Creative
Economy” plan.16 President Moon Jae-in has indicated that he will continue to support entrepreneurs.17 Start-ups tend to have
difficulties in accessing bank credit, relying on financial markets in their early stages. To this end and among other measures, Seoul launched
KONEX in July 2013 – a stock exchange specifically for start-ups and SMEs.18 Furthermore, the EAFC acted as a catalyst for Korea to seek better-
quality foreign direct investment, as a means not only to limit the impact of hot money but also to weaken the links between government, the
banking sector, and chaebols. The Foreign Investment Promotion Act of September 1998, amended and adapted several times since, has been
the main conduit to achieve this goal.19 Korea
has significantly boosted overseas investment since the act was first
passed.20 Meanwhile, Korea has also become increasingly attractive for portfolio investors. The KOSPI index
hit new record highs in July 2017.21 This was the result of foreign ownership of KOSPI stocks reaching all-time highs – over one third are now
owned by non-Korean investors.22 Despite the Park Geun-hye impeachment process, foreign investors showed faith in Korea’s financial sector
due to its increasing competitiveness and openness. There is no indication that this trend will be reversed under Moon Jae-in. The growing role
of financial markets in the Korean economy might be welcomed news for an increasingly diverse economy, but it comes with associated risks
such as credit or asset bubbles. The IMF and foreign investors blamed the 1997 crisis on an alleged lack of sophistication among emerging East
Asian economies.23 They were considered unable to manage capital account liberalization and financial inflows in the same way that more
mature markets could. The GFC put an end to the idea that developed countries have graduated from financial crises. Even
the biggest
and most sophisticated financial market in the world – the U.S. – is susceptible to a bubble in a particular
sector bursting and affecting the whole economy. In fact, recurrent financial crises have been a feature
of the world economy since the end of the Bretton Woods system.24 A strong regional financial safety
net is one of the means to reduce the risks associated with capital account openness and increasing
financial interconnectedness.25 CMIM is a source of emergency liquidity: Korea has ready access to $38.4 billion – 30 per cent of
which is available without the need of an agreement with the IMF.26 Even though Korea is the third largest contributor and unlikely to draw
from this facility, the fact that the country has access to it would also be helpful to calm investors in the event of a crisis .
Moreover, and equally important, AMRO and CMIM are useful to prevent a crisis elsewhere in the region and to prevent contagion in case one
takes place. The EAFC began in Thailand before spreading to other countries in the region – including Korea. AMRO is tasked with monitoring
economic conditions in each ASEAN+3 country as well as at the regional level.27 This should be helpful for crisis prevention, allowing Korea to
understand regional macroeconomic trends as they develop.28 The CMIM precautionary line would be equally useful if an East Asian country
were on the brink of suffering liquidity shortages. Meanwhile, the initiative’s credit lines would be of use if a crisis had already hit a country in
the region. From a Korean perspective, avoiding contagion in an increasingly integrated region is an important reason for supporting the
ASEAN+3 financial safety net.29 Self-perception and increasingly active role as a middle power Korea sees itself as a middle power.
Throughout the Cold War and until the end of the Kim Dae-jung government, Korea’s foreign policy was very much
focused on inter-Korean relations and closely followed American priorities . The Roh Moo-hyun
government moved away from this narrow focus and decisively introduced a middle power agenda . This
had a regional focus, seeking to make Korea a balancer between China and Japan while putting the country at the center of Northeast Asian
security cooperation. The Lee Myung-bak government later launched an ambitious middle power agenda. His administration sought to make
Korea a global player, serving as a bridge between developed and developing countries while becoming an agendasetter in areas such as
development assistance. The Park Geun-hye government might have been more reluctant to openly promote Korea’s middle power agenda,
but her government sought to position Korea between China and the U.S. and supported the MIKTA grouping.30 Park also
launched the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative – or NAPCI – again positioning Korea at the center of a regional security regime.
In his inauguration speech, Moon Jae-in also talked about a Northeast Asian peace regime.31 Financial governance is one of the
areas in which Korea has sought to project its middle power status .32 Most notably, the Lee government lobbied for
Korea to host the first G20 summit outside of a Western country, which it did in November 2010. Fitting its self-perception as a
bridge between developed and developing countries , the Lee government moved the G20 agenda away from a narrower
focus on post-GFC recovery to also include development issues and global imbalances in the agenda. More generally, Korea has been
very supportive of the G20 and has successfully acted as a mediator and coordinator among members
with different view s.33 Korea sees the G20 as an opportunity to reinforce its credentials as a middle power
involved in agenda-setting. Less talked-about but equally important in terms of projecting itself as a middle power, Korea joined the
BCBS in March 2009.34 Differently from the G20, Korea does not have an agenda-setter or even mediator role in the BCBS.35 This is
understandable, considering that other members such as the U.S. or Western European countries have more developed financial systems and
much longer experience in this committee. Nonetheless, Korea is deemed to be largely compliant with the Basel III accord on capital
adequacy.36 This is the third iteration of the original Basel accord, designed to prevent a bank from collapsing and a financial crisis from
happening through a set of minimum capital requirements. Implementation of international agreements is necessary for Korea to be seen as a
responsible stakeholder in international affairs. Seoul is thus keen to be part of BCBS to have first-hand knowledge of new trends in financial
governance.37 It is in
East Asia, however, that Korea has taken a more active role in financial governance. Most
notably, Seoul has sought to present itself as a middle point between China and Japan on the one hand

and ASEAN on the other, acting as an honest broker and bridge builder .38 This is clearest in CMIM. There were
disagreements between China and Japan regarding their respective financial contributions , and between
these two defacto lenders and the de facto borrowers in ASEAN. Korea was instrumental in the equitable allocation of
contribution and borrowing ratios, while also ensuring that voting power was also fairly distributed.39
This role fits Korea well insofar it has no regional financial domination ambitions . China and Japan might be in
competition to become the dominant financial player in the region,40 but Korea is not. Also, ASEAN countries hold suspicions

about Chinese and Japanese intentions, which is not the case with Korea.41 For Seoul, taking a leading role in
regional financial governance serves a second purpose in terms of its projection as a middle power. The Lee government was interested in IMF
reform, and indeed played
an important mediation role as the voting power of Korea and other non-Western
countries was increased in the 2010 quota reform .42 Yet, this change has been insufficient to grant Seoul a meaningful say in
IMF decisions. In sharp contrast, Korea has played an instrumental role in CMIM. Similarly, Seoul plays a leading role in AMRO and was
instrumental in the organization legally becoming an international institution.43 Also, at least one of the senior management roles and several
group head positions are de facto held by Korean officials,44 placing Korea at the center of the organization’s strategic
direction. Since Korea does not seem determined to take the directorship of AMRO – thus far only held by Chinese or Japanese nationals – it
can again be an honest broker and bridge builder, which would be more difficult to do if Seoul had greater aspirations. Support for ASEAN+3
institutionalization concurrent to the weakening of ASEAN centrality The creation of ASEAN+3 was the direct result of the EAFC, as previously
stated. Members launched this cooperation mechanism due to two factors related to this crisis. The first factor was the contagion of the crisis
from Thailand to the rest of the region. This prompted East Asian countries to establish ASEAN+3 institutions as support mechanisms to
strengthen their financial sectors, prevent future crises, and solve any crisis that might hit the region.45 The second factor was displeasure with
the way in which the IMF handled the crisis, as well as with the stringent conditionality attached to its bailout packages. ASEAN+3 institutions
were thus set up to prevent future reliance on the IMF and the associated stigma of accessing IMF credit lines.46 Successive Korean
governments have also supported ASEAN+3 institutionalization due to growing trade and financial regionalization. Following China’s entry into
the WTO, a Sino-centric regional trade network has emerged. Trade in intermediate goods for final assembly and export from China has
boomed, creating strong economic links across East Asia.47 Even though intra-regional financial flows are not as integrated as trade links,
investment from Korea and other developed countries in the region into the five largest ASEAN states and China is steadily growing.48 The
result of growing trade and investment integration is that the economies of the region are becoming
more intertwined . They have become more dependent on each other than they were when the EAFC took place. Conscious of this
growing integration, Seoul is aware that there is a need for regional financial institutions that can help to prevent a loss in confidence towards
the region. Trade and investment interconnectedness means that markets losing faith in one East Asian
country could affect the other s – as the Global Financial Crisis showed, intra-East Asia crisis contagion
results from trade and investment links .49 ASEAN+3 institutions are helpful in this respect. These institutions have an
important signaling effect , indicating that countries in the region are working together to make sure that trade and
investment does not suffer from a sudden stop.

Spills over
UNCTAD 98 [“THE FINANCIAL CRISIS IN EAST ASIA”,
https://unctad.org/en/pages/PressReleaseArchive.aspx?ReferenceDocId=3271]
A positive adjustment to the crisis should include a number of components. First, loans should be rolled over and rescheduled to allow the countries concerned to
service them from future export earnings and not through increased external borrowing at penalizing rates. This should be combined with the provision of external
liquidity to support the exchange rate and enable a more accommodating monetary policy to be pursued while restructuring of the financial sector is under way. In
this respect, there are important lessons to be learned from the policy response of the US Federal Reserve Board to the debt deflation of the early 1990s - a
response which played a major role in bringing about one of the country´s longest recoveries following one of its deepest post-war recessions. Finally, it is necessary
to raise global growth to provide markets in which Asian countries can earn the foreign exchange needed to pay off their foreign currency debt. Thus, an important
component of the solution is to remove the deflationary bias in the macroeconomic policies in those areas of the developed world running large trade surpluses.
Until the surplus countries initiate domestic demand-led growth and reduce their external surpluses ,
the global economy will continue to be
vulnerable to the risk of financial instability and recession, and the crisis in South East Asia will continue
to contribute to the decline in global growth and to trade frictions. 8. Will the Asian financial crisis dampen world economic
growth? On the eve of the crisis, there was already a major imbalance in the world economy: virtually all major industrial countries except the US were expecting
faster growth on the basis of increased exports. The surplus countries (Europe and Japan) were employing restrictive fiscal policies and attempting to increase their
export surpluses to preserve growth. With the notable exceptions of China and Taiwan Province of China, the fast-growing economies of East Asia were major
contributors to global demand, running large deficits financed by private capital inflows. Perhaps the single positive contribution of the East Asian crisis is that it has
halted the tendency towards monetary restriction and higher interest rates in the US and Europe, and hence prevented the global deflationary gap from deepening
further. It has eased the concern of central bankers over the risk of inflation, leading Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, to talk of
deflation. Japan has also been spurred to take steps to reflate its economy, while alleviating the drag on activity resulting from the weakness of its banking sector.
However, the crisis in East Asia will still mean slower growth of global demand and output . This is recognized by the
IMF and by the OECD, which have revised (downward) their growth estimates.

Korea middle power diplomacy is key since Bretton Woods

Ramon Pacheco Pardo 17 {Ramon Pacheco Pardo is the KF-VUB Korea Chair at Vrije Universiteit
Brussel and Reader in International Relations at King's College London. 9-13-2017. “East Asia’s Regional
Financial Governance: Assessing Korea’s Centrality.”
http://keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_aps_pacheco_pardo_final_1.pdf}//JM

Korea and East Asia’s Financial Governance Seoul has been supportive of East Asia’s regional financial governance
since its inception. Dating back to the Kim Dae-jung administration that assumed office in February 1998 – shortly after Korea and the
IMF agreed to the country’s bailout package – successive Korean governments have sought to strengthen the regional

financial safety net . In the aftermath of the GFC, this support has translated into Seoul taking a leading role in the strengthening of this
safety net that has supported its institutionalization.12 Concurrently, Seoul has also become more active in the global financial safety net.13
Nonetheless, it has had a bigger impact on the regional layer, in which Korea’s economic and diplomatic
clout is obviously stronger . There are three key reasons why Korea has sought to play a central role in East
Asia’s financial governance: an increasing reliance on financial markets as the role of the banking sector in
fostering economic growth declines; Korea’s self-perception and increasing activity as a middle-power;
and unwavering support for ASEAN+3 integration concurrent to the decline of ASEAN centrality. Growing role of financial markets in the
domestic economy Korea’s contemporary, high-tech economy is very capitalintensive. The development model based on stringent controls over
credit allocation by the banking sector no longer works for the modern economy. From the 1960s until the 1980s, it served the purpose of
catch-up growth. By the 1990s, this model of credit allocation had become inadequate. Seoul thus started a very swift and aggressive capital
liberalization process, leading to a hot money-induced bubble that resulted in the 1997 crisis.14 Following the crisis, successive Korean
governments initiated a more cautious financial liberalization process.15 As a result, financial markets are increasingly central to the Korean
economy. Korea’s move towards a market-based credit allocation model is necessary and unlikely to be reversed. To begin with, the
economy is dominated by capital-intensive industries such as electronics, shipbuilding, automotive or
machinery. New growth engines such as robotics, biotechnology or telecommunication also require
large investments. In addition, Korea has actively sought to foster entrepreneurship and start-ups since the late
1990s. The Park Geun-hye government made this a centerpiece of its economic strategy with the “Creative
Economy” plan.16 President Moon Jae-in has indicated that he will continue to support entrepreneurs.17 Start-ups tend to have
difficulties in accessing bank credit, relying on financial markets in their early stages. To this end and among other measures, Seoul launched
KONEX in July 2013 – a stock exchange specifically for start-ups and SMEs.18 Furthermore, the EAFC acted as a catalyst for Korea to seek better-
quality foreign direct investment, as a means not only to limit the impact of hot money but also to weaken the links between government, the
banking sector, and chaebols. The Foreign Investment Promotion Act of September 1998, amended and adapted several times since, has been
the main conduit to achieve this goal.19 Korea
has significantly boosted overseas investment since the act was first
passed.20 Meanwhile, Korea has also become increasingly attractive for portfolio investors. The KOSPI index
hit new record highs in July 2017.21 This was the result of foreign ownership of KOSPI stocks reaching all-time highs – over one third are now
owned by non-Korean investors.22 Despite the Park Geun-hye impeachment process, foreign investors showed faith in Korea’s financial sector
due to its increasing competitiveness and openness. There is no indication that this trend will be reversed under Moon Jae-in. The growing role
of financial markets in the Korean economy might be welcomed news for an increasingly diverse economy, but it comes with associated risks
such as credit or asset bubbles. The IMF and foreign investors blamed the 1997 crisis on an alleged lack of sophistication among emerging East
Asian economies.23 They were considered unable to manage capital account liberalization and financial inflows in the same way that more
mature markets could. The GFC put an end to the idea that developed countries have graduated from financial crises. Even
the biggest
and most sophisticated financial market in the world – the U.S. – is susceptible to a bubble in a particular
sector bursting and affecting the whole economy. In fact, recurrent financial crises have been a feature
of the world economy since the end of the Bretton Woods system.24 A strong regional financial safety
net is one of the means to reduce the risks associated with capital account openness and increasing
financial interconnectedness.25 CMIM is a source of emergency liquidity: Korea has ready access to $38.4 billion – 30 per cent of
which is available without the need of an agreement with the IMF.26 Even though Korea is the third largest contributor and unlikely to draw
from this facility, the fact that the country has access to it would also be helpful to calm investors in the event of a crisis .
Moreover, and equally important, AMRO and CMIM are useful to prevent a crisis elsewhere in the region and to prevent contagion in case one
takes place. The EAFC began in Thailand before spreading to other countries in the region – including Korea. AMRO is tasked with monitoring
economic conditions in each ASEAN+3 country as well as at the regional level.27 This should be helpful for crisis prevention, allowing Korea to
understand regional macroeconomic trends as they develop.28 The CMIM precautionary line would be equally useful if an East Asian country
were on the brink of suffering liquidity shortages. Meanwhile, the initiative’s credit lines would be of use if a crisis had already hit a country in
the region. From a Korean perspective, avoiding contagion in an increasingly integrated region is an important reason for supporting the
ASEAN+3 financial safety net.29 Self-perception and increasingly active role as a middle power Korea sees itself as a middle power.
Throughout the Cold War and until the end of the Kim Dae-jung government, Korea’s foreign policy was very much
focused on inter-Korean relations and closely followed American priorities . The Roh Moo-hyun
government moved away from this narrow focus and decisively introduced a middle power agenda . This
had a regional focus, seeking to make Korea a balancer between China and Japan while putting the country at the center of Northeast Asian
security cooperation. The Lee Myung-bak government later launched an ambitious middle power agenda. His administration sought to make
Korea a global player, serving as a bridge between developed and developing countries while becoming an agendasetter in areas such as
development assistance. The Park Geun-hye government might have been more reluctant to openly promote Korea’s middle power agenda,
but her government sought to position Korea between China and the U.S. and supported the MIKTA grouping.30 Park also
launched the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative – or NAPCI – again positioning Korea at the center of a regional security regime.
In his inauguration speech, Moon Jae-in also talked about a Northeast Asian peace regime.31 Financial governance is one of the
areas in which Korea has sought to project its middle power status .32 Most notably, the Lee government lobbied for
Korea to host the first G20 summit outside of a Western country, which it did in November 2010. Fitting its self-perception as a
bridge between developed and developing countries , the Lee government moved the G20 agenda away from a narrower
focus on post-GFC recovery to also include development issues and global imbalances in the agenda. More generally, Korea has been
very supportive of the G20 and has successfully acted as a mediator and coordinator among members
with different view s.33 Korea sees the G20 as an opportunity to reinforce its credentials as a middle power
involved in agenda-setting. Less talked-about but equally important in terms of projecting itself as a middle power, Korea joined the
BCBS in March 2009.34 Differently from the G20, Korea does not have an agenda-setter or even mediator role in the BCBS.35 This is
understandable, considering that other members such as the U.S. or Western European countries have more developed financial systems and
much longer experience in this committee. Nonetheless, Korea is deemed to be largely compliant with the Basel III accord on capital
adequacy.36 This is the third iteration of the original Basel accord, designed to prevent a bank from collapsing and a financial crisis from
happening through a set of minimum capital requirements. Implementation of international agreements is necessary for Korea to be seen as a
responsible stakeholder in international affairs. Seoul is thus keen to be part of BCBS to have first-hand knowledge of new trends in financial
governance.37 It is in
East Asia, however, that Korea has taken a more active role in financial governance. Most
notably, Seoul has sought to present itself as a middle point between China and Japan on the one hand

and ASEAN on the other, acting as an honest broker and bridge builder .38 This is clearest in CMIM. There were
disagreements between China and Japan regarding their respective financial contributions , and between
these two defacto lenders and the de facto borrowers in ASEAN. Korea was instrumental in the equitable allocation of
contribution and borrowing ratios, while also ensuring that voting power was also fairly distributed.39
This role fits Korea well insofar it has no regional financial domination ambitions . China and Japan might be in
competition to become the dominant financial player in the region,40 but Korea is not. Also, ASEAN countries hold suspicions

about Chinese and Japanese intentions, which is not the case with Korea.41 For Seoul, taking a leading role in
regional financial governance serves a second purpose in terms of its projection as a middle power. The Lee government was interested in IMF
reform, and indeed played
an important mediation role as the voting power of Korea and other non-Western
countries was increased in the 2010 quota reform .42 Yet, this change has been insufficient to grant Seoul a meaningful say in
IMF decisions. In sharp contrast, Korea has played an instrumental role in CMIM. Similarly, Seoul plays a leading role in AMRO and was
instrumental in the organization legally becoming an international institution.43 Also, at least one of the senior management roles and several
group head positions are de facto held by Korean officials,44 placing
Korea at the center of the organization’s strategic
direction. Since Korea does not seem determined to take the directorship of AMRO – thus far only held by Chinese or Japanese nationals – it
can again be an honest broker and bridge builder, which would be more difficult to do if Seoul had greater aspirations. Support for ASEAN+3
institutionalization concurrent to the weakening of ASEAN centrality The creation of ASEAN+3 was the direct result of the EAFC, as previously
stated. Members launched this cooperation mechanism due to two factors related to this crisis. The first factor was the contagion of the crisis
from Thailand to the rest of the region. This prompted East Asian countries to establish ASEAN+3 institutions as support mechanisms to
strengthen their financial sectors, prevent future crises, and solve any crisis that might hit the region.45 The second factor was displeasure with
the way in which the IMF handled the crisis, as well as with the stringent conditionality attached to its bailout packages. ASEAN+3 institutions
were thus set up to prevent future reliance on the IMF and the associated stigma of accessing IMF credit lines.46 Successive Korean
governments have also supported ASEAN+3 institutionalization due to growing trade and financial regionalization. Following China’s entry into
the WTO, a Sino-centric regional trade network has emerged. Trade in intermediate goods for final assembly and export from China has
boomed, creating strong economic links across East Asia.47 Even though intra-regional financial flows are not as integrated as trade links,
investment from Korea and other developed countries in the region into the five largest ASEAN states and China is steadily growing.48 The
result of growing trade and investment integration is that the economies of the region are becoming
more intertwined . They have become more dependent on each other than they were when the EAFC took place. Conscious of this
growing integration, Seoul is aware that there is a need for regional financial institutions that can help to prevent a loss in confidence towards
the region. Trade and investment interconnectedness means that markets losing faith in one East Asian
country could affect the others – as the Global Financial Crisis showed, intra-East Asia crisis contagion results from
trade and investment links.49 ASEAN+3 institutions are helpful in this respect. These institutions have an important
signaling effect , indicating that countries in the region are working together to make sure that trade and investment
does not suffer from a sudden stop.
Only a crash solves catastrophic climate change and forces a mindset shift – that
outweighs recession, but they’re structurally inevitable in the long term from financial
volatility and warming
Holthaus 12/27/18 [Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and columnist for Grist, covering climate science,
policy, and solutions. He has previously written for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and a variety of other
publications. What the stock market crash means for the climate. December 27, 2018.
https://grist.org/article/what-the-stock-market-crash-means-for-the-climate/]

Let’s talk about the stock market . Pretty terrifying, huh? The big Christmas Eve dip plunged the U.S. markets into “bear” territory — with
declines of over 20 percent in the past three months alone. The day after Christmas followed with the largest rally in market history, half of
which evaporated at one point on Thursday, but then entirely came back by the afternoon. That’s a lot of volatility in a time when the future is
pretty volatile already — that’s right, I’m talking about the climate.

For those of us with more of a planetary perspective , what are we supposed to make of this financial
rollercoaster ?
Politicians have long presented the economy and the environment as competing issues. And on the surface, the vast majority of people in the
world don’t care about the stock market. Nearly half the people in the world live on less than $5.50 per day, and it’s them who’ll bear the brunt
of climate change. When asked, they care much more about climate change than the economy.

There’s evidence that an economic downturn could be good for the planet . The rare times the world has
successfully temporarily stabilized or decreased annual emissions were during economic recessions like
1990-93 and 2008-09.

Recessions can force a rethink of the status quo ; they demand efficiency and innovation . In short, during
a recession, the economy must figure out how to do more with less . That’s exactly the challenge we
face now that the science is absolutely clear that radical change is our only hope to stop climate change
before irreversible tipping points kick in.
But while our capitalistic, growth-based economy is still closely tied to fossil-fuel use and a sustained downturn would likely reduce emissions,
the whole truth is not so simple. Economic hardship doesn’t just hurt the rich, who are (by far!) the world’s biggest carbon emitters. Economic
downturns hit hard in places with large inequality like Miami and Puerto Rico, which are also slated to bear some of the biggest burdens of
climate change.

Not only would another recession impact unemployment, it could result in a shift in priority away from long-term challenges (like climate
change) and onto short-term survival. And because governments have a bad habit of choosing austerity as a tool for cutting spending, it’s likely
the rich will try to pass off the burden of their mistakes on the backs of the working class.

It’s impossible to know whether a future economic downturn in the U.S. would result in a widening gap between rich and poor, popular revolt
(as we recently saw with France’s yellow vests), or something else entirely. But according to the Trump administration’s own climate reports,
there is a strong possibility of long-term global warming-related GDP shrinkage . Even though many people
(including me) have argued that the human costs of climate change are more important than the monetary ones, that doesn’t mean
environmentalists can afford to ignore a possible market downturn. Those hurricanes are going to keep on coming, and someone has to pay the
bills.

Climate change is much more terrifying than a potential recession . Still, we SHOULD care about the volatility
of the stock market and a looming recession — at the very least, it should make us pay attention to the
fragility of our current system and provide excuses for rethinking the way things work.
Interdependence can just as easily cause more war even between nuclear states –
spaniel
Spaniel and Malone 3/5/19 [William Spaniel, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
Iris Maone, Department of Political Science, Stanford. The Uncertainty Tradeoff: Re-Examining
Opportunity Costs and War. March 5, 2019. https://wjspaniel.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/uncertainty-
tradeoff-final.pdf]

This paper’s main contribution is to identify the precise conditions under which the probability of war
increases despite rising opportunity costs . We show that, unlike other mechanisms, rising opportunity costs may
counter-intuitively make war more likely because it also increases the difference between reservation
points for unresolved versus resolved opponents. As a result, these info rmational asymmetries can lead
states to screen their opponents and risk war . This new finding reshapes our understanding about the
relationship between opportunity costs and war . It introduces a more nu-anced mechanism about when and how this relationship
operates, sometimes contrary to expectations .
Our work advances economic interdependence theories of war in several ways. First, it provides new insight on the causes of war at odds with
traditional cases where opportunity costs increased, yet conflict still erupted. Second, it demonstrates how and when competing effects of
economic instruments predominate, driving changes in the probability of conflict. In contrast to previous work, we identify specific conditions
under which increasing opportunity costs shifts the probability of conflict, consistent with the empirical evidence. Finally, it demonstrates the
important, but subtle, effects of changing instruments, like trade flows, in the presence of uncertainty. The model advances a growing line of
research that various sources of uncertainty have disparate effects on crisis bargaining.

This paper has more general implications for trade-conflict research. It complements growing calls to disaggregate the
effects of instruments like trade (Martin et al. 2008). Empirical analyses must carefully trace what precisely parties do not know about
each other to draw the correct inference. It also suggests states should be careful in interpreting how other states value or benefit from mutual
trade flows. A free trade agreement championed by one state may be perceived as relatively less
beneficial in another state . This uncertainty may undermine the credibility to abide by the
agreement in the long-run .
We also highlight the need for future research to consider screening incentives in trade deals themselves. Although the proposer benefits from
greater trade—both from the direct economic benefit and indirect ability to steal more surplus from the receiver— trade can harm
unresolved receivers and incentivize screening . This could generate some constraints in the deals a state is willing to sign, in
fear that the rearranged incentives under uncertainty could hurt its ability to effectively bluff later. A more unified approach to trade and crisis
negotiations would yield additional interesting insights.

Moving forward, the results speak to other lines of research in international relations theory predicated on changing costs of conflict. We
couched our results in the interdependence literature due its clear application. However, the comparative static speaks to cases where the
receiver’s costs increase more generally.23 Framed this way, the results have clear implications for other literatures. For example, standard
nuclear deterrence theory argues that possessing nuclear weapons increases the costs of war for
potential challengers due to the risk of a retaliatory nuclear response (Morgenthau 1961, 280; Gilpin 1983, 213-219). The
logic of
alliance formation similarly relics on the assumption that entering these pacts induces peace by raising
an opponent’s costs of conflict (Morrow 1994). Together , these mechanisms assume raising the costs of
war should decrease conflict . Our results demonstrate this effect is likely more conditional than previously
realized. We find increased costs of conflict can exacerbate issues with uncertainty over resolve even if
both states possess destructive weaponry . This promises to shed new insights into how raising costs affects deterrence and
coercive bargaining in other contexts.
Here’s a figure that explains the conflicting effects of trade on conflict
Spaniel and Malone 3/5/19 [William Spaniel, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
Iris Malone, Department of Political Science, Stanford. The Uncertainty Tradeoff: Re-Examining
Opportunity Costs and War. March 5, 2019. https://wjspaniel.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/uncertainty-
tradeoff-final.pdf]

Figure 1 : The causal pathways governing the opportunity cost-conflict relationship . The solid black line
represents conventional wisdom that opportunity costs directly decreases the probability of conflict . The
dashed line represents our new mechanism by which opportunity costs indirectly increase the
probability of war by increasing uncertainty over resolve . We show that when the direct effect is less than
the indirect effect, increased opportunity costs raise the risk of war .

There are empirical inconsistencies, and increasing interdependence causes

uncertainty about state resolve which raises conflict risk – it’s offense because the
uncertainty effect is stronger than peaceful effects
Spaniel and Malone 3/5/19 [William Spaniel, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
Iris Malone, Department of Political Science, Stanford. The Uncertainty Tradeoff: Re-Examining
Opportunity Costs and War. March 5, 2019. https://wjspaniel.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/uncertainty-
tradeoff-final.pdf] Italics in original

However, not all scholars believe opportunity costs are a panacea for war .2 The historical record
contains empirical inconsistencies in this relationship. At times, conflicts have arisen despite increased
economic interdependence between parties, fueling concerns over when and whether opportunity costs reduce conflict. We
therefore ask a simple question: holding all else equal, does increasing opportunity costs for war decrease the probability of conflict?3

In this paper, wedevelop a model that reconciles this puzzle by showing both proponents and skeptics of the opportunity
cost mechanism are right. Instruments like trade have competing effects on the probability of war . How is this true?
Despite raising the price of war , opportunity costs also have an indirect , second-order effect of
exacerbating uncertainty about a state’s resolve , which is among the most popular mechanisms that
explain war .4 Which effect is stronger ? We show that the latter effect can dominate in equilibrium —
that is, the probability of war increases despite raising opportunity costs .

As economic costs of war grow, they incentivize more aggressive negotiation

strategies that exploit leverage – that makes conflicts more likely
Spaniel and Malone 3/5/19 [William Spaniel, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
Iris Malone, Department of Political Science, Stanford. The Uncertainty Tradeoff: Re-Examining
Opportunity Costs and War. March 5, 2019. https://wjspaniel.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/uncertainty-
tradeoff-final.pdf]

The intuition falls back on screening models where a proposer is uncertain about its opponent’s willingness
to fight . Broadly, the uninformed state can pursue two strategies under these conditions. First, it can offer a
generous amount that resolved types would accept. This has the benefit of avoiding the costs of war. Alternatively, it can
propose a stingy settlement and screen the opponent’s willingness to fight , causing unresolved types to accept
while inducing resolved types to reject. The latter benefits the proposer by giving it a large share of the settlement when the
opponent accepts, but also forces it to pay the costs of war if its screening offer backfires .

When the difference between the costs of war for types is small, the proposing state has less incentive to
screen. Why? Screening still forces the proposer to risk war, but the prospective gains from such a settlement are
minimal. However, as the costs of conflict grow , a state is more likely to issue more aggressive demands
because of a divergence in relative valuations among types. As the difference in relative costs between types increases, stingy offer
strategies become more attractive. For the proposer, the increased screening incentives can outweigh the
increased opportunity cost of conflict . This causes the proposer to risk war and trade breakdown by making
more aggressive demands . Thus, increasing opportunity costs can have a countervailing effect of raising
the risk of war even though these costs are common knowledge.

Our model verifies this counterintuitive relationship . It also generates comparative statics on when the
uncertainty effect dominates over the opportunity cost effect . We focus on the role of opportunity costs in economic
interdependence theory given its popularity. To preview, the effect arises as trade flows increase because a state cannot observe how its
opponent weighs the benefits of trade relative to the costs of fighting. The probability of war increases when the state facing this uncertainty
internalizes a larger portion of the military costs than the benefits of trade relative to their opponent’s internalization. The conditional effect
introduced here suggests caution in making broad claims about the relationship between trade and war, though the scope conditions the
model generates provide a straightforward substantive interpretation that scholars can exploit.

(1) Recessions cause conflict when they’re caused by warming because they’re
coupled with resource shortages and state capacity weakness
Koubi 17 [Vally Koubi is Professor (Titular) and Senior Scientist at the Center for Comparative and
International Studies (CIS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), and a professor at
the Institute of Economics at the University of Bern. Climate Change, the Economy, and Conflict. First
online October 23, 2017. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40641-017-0074-x]
The relationship between climate change and violent conflict has been the subject of intense academic as well as policy debate over the past
few decades. Adverse economic conditions constitute an important channel linking the two phenomena. Here, I
review the
theoretical arguments and recent empirical evidence connecting climate-driven adverse econ omic
conditions to conflict .
Recent Findings

Climate-induced adverse economic conditions could lead to conflict by lowering the opportunity cost
of violence , weakening state capacity , and exacerbating political and economic
inequalities /grievances. The empirical literature does not provide robust evidence for a “direct” climate-economy-conflict
relationship.

Summary
Recent empirical research offers considerable suggestive evidence that climate-driven econ omic
downturns lead to conflict in ag riculture- dependent regions and in combination and interaction with
other socioeconomic and political factors . Future research should further examine the context(s) in which climate-induced
adverse economic conditions led to conflict, and also identify and test the precise empirical implications of the theoretical mechanisms through
which these adverse economic conditions lead to conflict using disaggregated data and appropriate estimation procedures.

(2) Warming still outweighs – wars from climate change are inherently more
escalatory – it wipes out territory, causes migration that exacerbates existing
tensions, and green tech competition causes worse resource conflicts
Busby 18 [Joshua Busby is Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin,
Warming World Why Climate Change Matters More Than Anything Else , July/August]

Since 1945, although some states have split or otherwise failed, very few have disappeared. In the coming century,
climate change may make state deaths a familiar phenomenon as salt-water intrusion and storm
surges render a number of island countries uninhabitable . Although most of the islands threatened by climate
change have small populations, the disorder will not be contained . Even in other countries , declining
ag ricultural productivity and other climate risks will compel people to move from the countryside to the
cities or even across borders. Tens of thousands of people will have to be relocated . For those that cross borders, will
they stay permanently, and will they become citizens of the countries that take them in? Will governments that acquire territory inside other
countries gain sovereignty over that land? New Zealand has taken tentative steps toward creating a new visa category for small numbers of
climate refugees from Pacific island states, but there are no international rules governing those forced to leave home by climate change. The
urgency of these questions will only grow in the coming years .

As well as creating new crises , climate factors will exacerbate existing ones. Some 800,000 of Myanmar's
Rohingya minority group have fled to Bangladesh, driven out by ethnic cleansing. Many of the refugee camps they
now occupy are in areas prone to flash floods during the monsoon. To make matters worse, much of the land surrounding
the camps has been stripped of its forest cover, leaving tents and huts vulnerable to being washed away.
Although the world has gotten much better at preventing loss of life from weather emergencies, climate change will test humanitarian- and
disaster response systems that are already stretched thin by the seemingly endless conflicts in Somalia ,
South Sudan , Syria , and Yemen .
CLIMATE WARS

Climate change will also make international tensions more severe . Analysts have periodically warned of impending
water wars, but thus far, countries have been able to work out most disputes peacefully. India and Pakistan, for
example, both draw a great deal of water from the Indus River, which crosses disputed territory. But although the two countries
have fought several wars with each other, they have never come to blo ws over water sharing, thanks to the 1960 Indus

Waters Treaty, which provides a mechanism for them to manage the river together. Yet higher demand
and increasing scarcity have raised tensions over the Indus. India's efforts to build dams upstream have
been challenged by Pakistan, and in 2016, amid political tensions, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi temporarily
suspended India's participation in joint meetings to manage the river. Peaceful cooperation will be harder in the
future.

Partnerships among other countries that share river basins are even more fragile. Several Southeast
Asian countries cooperate over the Mekong River through the Mekong River Commission, but China, the largest of the
six countries through which the river flows and where the river originates, is
not a member. The Chinese government and other
upstream countries have built dams on the Mekong that threaten to deprive fishing and agricultural communities in
Vietnam and other downstream countries of their livelihoods. Competition over the river's flow has only gotten worse as
droughts in the region have become more frequent.

Similar dynamics are at play on the Nile . Ethiopia is building a vast dam on the river for irrigation and to generate power, a
move that will reduce the river's flow in Egypt and Sudan. Until now, Egypt has enjoyed disproportionate rights to the Nile (a colonial-era
legacy), but that is set to end, requiring delicate negotiations over water sharing and how quickly Ethiopia will fill the reservoir behind the dam.

Violence is far from inevitable, but tensions over water within and between countries will create new flash
points in regions where other resources are scarce and institutional guardrails are weak or missing .

The ways countries respond to the effects of climate change may sometimes prove more consequential than
the effects themselves. In 2010, for example, after a drought destroyed about one-fifth of Russia's wheat
harvest, the Russian government banned grain exports . That move, along with production declines in
Argentina and Australia, which were also affected by drought, caused global grain prices to spike . Those
price rises may have helped destabilize some already fragile countries . In Egypt, for example, annual food-price inflation hit 19
percent in early 2011, fueling the protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak .

State responses to other climate phenomena have also heightened tensions. Melting sea ice in the Arctic has opened
up new lanes for shipping and fields for oil and gas exploration, leading Canada , Russia , the U nited S tates, and other Arctic
nations to bicker over the rights to control these new resources.

Moreover, the push to reduce carbon emissions, although welcome, could also drive competition . As demand for
clean energy grows, countries will spar over subsidies and tariffs as each tries to shore up its position in the new green
economy. China's aggressive subsidies for its solar power industry have triggered a backlash from the makers of solar
panels in other countries, with the United States imposing tariffs in 2017 and India considering doing something similar.

As climate fears intensify, debates between countries will become sharper and more explicit. Since manufacturing
the batteries used in electric cars requires rare minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, and nickel, which are found largely in conflict ridden places
such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the rise of battery powered vehicles could prompt a dangerous new
scramble for resources . Although manufacturers will innovate to reduce their dependence on these minerals, such pressures will
become more common as the clean energy transition progresses. Companies and countries that depend heavily on fossil fuels, for example, will
resist pressure to keep them in the ground.

There are myriad potentially contentious policies governments might enact in response to changing climate conditions. Banning
exports
of newly scarce resources, acquiring land overseas, mandating the use of biofuels, enacting rules to
conserve forests, and a thousand other choices will all create winners and losers and inflame domestic and
international tensions . As fears grow of runaway climate change, governments will be increasingly
tempted to take drastic unilateral steps, such as geoengineering , which would prove immensely
destabilizing .
Their space col ev is garbage and says status quo companies like space x and blue star
solve- none of it says growth is key to that
Also their ev says
Everett 16 (Sean, CEO of Prome Biological Intelligence, a global biotechnology company, editor of Medium’s news outlet dedicated to
space colonialization titled “The Mission”, BS Mathematics & Actuarial Science, MBA from UChicago,“Humanity’s Extinction Event Is
Coming ” https://medium.com/the-mission/humanitys-extinction-event-is-coming-c0f84f1803f)

But the reality is that an asteroid impact, a change in our magnetic field , or the rising temperature of
Earth’s climate are all events that we currently cannot escape. There is no back-up plan. We are, for better or
worse, tied to the fate of this planet . As history has shown, that’s not a good fate to be tied to. In fact on September

7, 2016 a 30-foot asteroid flew between the Earth and the Moon. Our most powerful instruments only

detected it with two days notice. Two days . If the asteroid was only 1000-foot wide, it would destroy all human life and
we’d have no back-up to get out of it. Even the White House is worried about it. Five, yes five, major extinction events have
occurred on our planet that we know about. We’re due for another . And when that happens, what’s our alternative? You can’t move
to another house. You can’t buy survival, even with a billion dollars in the bank. The only way out, is up. We must find a way to become

multi-planetary if we want to save humanity , your family, and yes, even yourself. Only this can restore the honor we seemed to have lost from the brave
days of the 60s, while also ensuring our survival. It’s for the species, folks. And as a species, we have not allowed ourselves the opportunity to blast off for the stars. Only the space race in the
60s when we were afraid enough of a self-inflicted global extinction event (read: nuclear) that we put forth the funding required to launch into orbit and onto our moon. We didn’t have
calculators back then, and now we have supercomputers in our pocket, but no one is allowed out of our atmosphere, save for a few communication and spy satellites. Doesn’t that make you
mad? It’s not some oppressive government that tells us no. It’s us. We pay our taxes. We elect leaders. Those leaders choose Defense as the primary budget line item, but forget about
defending against the forthcoming apocalypse. Funding for NASA in the United States has decreased from 4% of the national budget in the 60s to about 0.5% from 2010 onwards. That’s just

But in order to move past this threshold from our home planet to space and then onto other
the money side.

planets, we need to do two things: Travel there. Survive. Luckily, we can simplify the problem of passing this barrier by sending
machines in our place. Like TARS from Interstellar, they can go places humans cannot and explore the environment for habitability and resources, even in particularly hostile conditions. Maybe

not black hole hostile, but definitely Mars hostile, as the Curiosity Rover has shown. Only now, with a few bold, private startups are we beginning to
see a re-emergence of the space industry . We are about to pass a few very important tests that allow us to explore and visit the cosmos. The first is launching
physical things into space. This is the catalyst that will jump start a new space race. Prices of sending cargo are falling dramatically, down to nearly $500 per pound of payload with SpaceX’s
Falcon 9 heavy re-usable rocket. Note that the re-usable part is key. We can’t throw away our “space car” every time we Uber it. And once that becomes standard and cost-optimized we might
be able to get that down to $10 per pound. Imagine what could happen when it costs the same amount to ship something across town as it does into space. The second, and this is just as
important, is the wave of autonomous machines. Tesla has popularized the notion of self-driving cars. SpaceX lands their rocket onto a small barge in the ocean autonomously. Companies are
buying startups in the space. Self-driving will be our gift, our talisman, on the quest to save the species by becoming multi-planetary. II. Shipping Ourselves to Space The graph below is from
the Founders Fund manifesto, showing the decreasing cost of launching something into space. It begins with the 1960s US-versus-Russia space race and extends to the present day SpaceX-
versus-Blue Origin reusable rocket race. The cheapest method we have today is SpaceX’s Falcon series rockets. With the Falcon 9 Heavy, it’s predicted launching cargo into space will be
cheaper than ever before, at $750 per pound of payload delivered to low earth orbit (LOE)on an expendable rocket. You have to note here, however, that these statistics are as cheap as
possible. It costs more to deliver payload on a non-reusable rocket, and on something that’s further out than LEO, like geosynchronous orbit, or to Mars. For example, based on SpaceX’s
published pricing, it would be at least 4x more expensive to deliver far less cargo to Mars. So what happens when we reduce that cost to $10 per pound? Namely, an explosion of startups,
much like iOS. Instead of pushing to production for your continuously deployed web and mobile app, we will see future developers push to production by deploying physical things into space.

That’s
“STAGE” takes on an entirely new meaning for software developers when it means your automated regression tests fail, it could blow up a rocket and hurt people on board.

why SpaceX and Blue Origins exist. To make this continuous-deployment-to-space process as cheap and
fast as possible. By Elon’s calculations, every 15 minutes. III. Self-Driving Space Explorers The most successful products for space, at least in the beginning, will make money by
pushing this stuff into orbit. Things like science experiments and new 3D printers. A company called Made in Space creates a number of these products, including the empty box you see below
used for sending things up with Blue Origin. The box shown in gray is a specialized 3D printer that works in zero gravity. Remember how most 3D printers work. It squeezes out a single layer of
liquid ooze, and then another, over and over again until it builds up enough vertically that it creates an object. This can be simple plastic or more esoteroic metals. But when you’re “dripping”
something, held down in place by gravity, the entire process has to be re-imagined for space. Things in zero-G would just float away. Enter these chaps. There’s also the very real need for
oxygen, food, water, and shelter from the harsh elements. Funny how we will end up recreating Maslow’s Heirarchy in every new voyage or planetoid we want to colonize. And space mining is
off to the races with the recent announcement of Deep Space Industry’s Prospector-1: Their vision is to extract water from asteroids and use the chemical components to hydrate us, but also
as oxygen (breathing) and hydrogen (fuel). To do that, you have to identify candidate asteroids, physically get to them, land and attach, and then do surveying, prospecting, and extraction. In
short, you’re going to need some level of self-driving capabilities to make this happen. And wouldn’t it be nice if it “just worked” right out of the box. Unfortunately, in space you don’t have
fleets of these space craft, millions of miles of training data, maps, or an internet connection to the cloud so how the heck are deep learning algorithms going to work? I don’t think they will.
And that’s what I believe we need a better approach.
Colonization doesn’t reduce existential risk – Earth-bound threats outweigh even in
long term risk management
 Short- and long-term risk assessment should focus on protecting earth
 Earth gets riskier as tech advances which raises the risk that our impact happens before
colonization
 Even if tech gets there, future social and economic context prevents missions
 Risk Dynamics Paradox – existential risks are rooted in human psychology, so they’ll follow us to
space – Bostrom agrees!

Szocik 19 [Konrad Szocik, University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow,

Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Should and could humans go to Mars? Yes, but not
now and not in the near future. Futures Volume 105, January 2019, Pages 54-66.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001632871830199X]

I argue, following other authors (Baum, 2009; Baum, Denkenberger, & Haqq-Misra, 2015; Jebari, 2015;
Sandberg, Matheny, & Ćirković, 2008; Turchin & Green, 2017) that human space settlement is not able
to reduce and/or to exclude the risk of human extinction . For this reason, it should not be perceived
in terms of space refuge . In terms of both short-term and long-term perspectives of risk assessment ,
it would be better to protect humans on Earth .5 I reject the supportive role which could be played by
human space settlement after a catastrophe on Earth, i.e., a recovery coordination mission. Due to so-
called the paradox of technological progress discussed in the last section, further putative progress in
space technology will be counterbalanced by increasing anthropogenic risks including, among others,
overpopulation and limited resources (these anthropogenic threats are unavoidable in near future, in
contrast to other risks that are only more or less probable but not unavoidable). Permanent lack of
strong rationale for human mission to Mars – both now and in the near future – leads to paradoxical
situation. Even if in some point in the future the minimum level of advancement in human deep-space
technologies will be achieved, social , political , and economic contexts will gradually decrease the
chances for real preparation of this mission. Another paradox, let’s call it the risk dynamics paradox , is
that the most probable threats in the near future are, as Bostrom and Cirkovic (2008) argue,
anthropogenic threats caused by civilizational and technological progress . The paradox lies in the fact
that humans are not able to run from these kinds of risks that are rooted in their way of thinking ,
style of life , and population dynamics , risks implied by Malthus’ law. The human species can try to
protect against natural disaster but not against deleterious effects of its own technological progress. In
regard to possible future existential risks, I assume that their deleterious power is a little bit
exaggerated, and, in any event, human space settlement is not a right way to cope with them. However,
in any case, it is hard to speculate if any human space settlement must repeat the same path of human
expansion as it was the case on Earth. It is unclear if human technological expansion and exploration
must always lead to deleterious and self-destructive effects. In this paper, I do not discuss ethical and
moral concerns which are traditionally considered when discussing the human place in space. They
include such topics as the human right to explore space (it means both right to intervene in any
extraterrestrial object, and human duty and rationale for space expansionism, mostly in the context of
the idea of space refuge and possible catastrophic scenarios on Earth), or the value of human life and
space objects.
Growth is terminally unsustainable – all efficiency is limited, any even green tech
causes pollution and resource depletion – we need to directly end growth
Heinberg 19 [Richard William Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written
extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13
books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. The End of Economic
Growth Is Inevitable. Let’s Plan for It. January 15, 2019. https://undark.org/2019/01/15/economic-
growth/]

The trouble is, a bigger economy uses more stuff than a smaller one , and we happen to live on a finite planet .
So, an end to growth is inevitable . Ending growth is also desirable if we want to leave some stuff ( minerals ,
forests , biodiversity , and stable climate ) for our kids and their kids. Further, if growth is meant to have anything to do with
increasing quality of life, there is plenty of evidence to suggest it has passed the point of diminishing returns: Even though the U.S. economy is
5.5 times bigger now than it was in 1960 (in terms of real GDP), America is losing ground on its happiness index.

So how do we stop growth without making life miserable — and maybe even making it better?

To start with, there are two strategies that many people already agree on. We should substitute good consumption for bad, for example using
renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. And we should use stuff more efficiently — making products that last longer and then repairing and
recycling them instead of tossing them in a landfill. The reason these strategies are uncontroversial is that they reduce growth’s environmental
damage without impinging on growth itself.

But renewable energy tech nology still requires materials (aluminum, glass, silicon, and copper for solar panels;
concrete, steel, copper, and neodymium for wind turbines). And efficiency has limits . For example, we can reduce the time
required to send a message to nearly zero, but from then on, improvements are infinitesimal . In other words, substitution
and efficiency are good, but they’re not sufficient . Even if we somehow arrive at a near-virtual economy ,
if it is growing , we’ll still use more stuff, and the result will be pollution and resource depletion . Sooner
or later, we have to do away with growth directly .

Globalization causes inequality that strengthens backlash to growth – that makes

recessions inevitable, but maintaining growth causes warming
Brady 16 [David W. Brady is a professor of political science at Stanford University and the Davies
Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Globalization and Political Instability. March 8, 2016.
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/03/08/globalization-and-political-instability/]

Major transformations or convergences of economic systems generate great efficiencies and wealth , and the
larger the global market, the bigger the payouts to winners.4 Unfortunately, these benefits come with the costs of changes in
jobs , markets , and ways of life . The current convergence of world economies is more difficult than the
first not only because vastly more people and polities are involved, but also because climate change
calls into question the sustainability of growth .
A standard measure of political instability used by European political scientists takes the same parties’ vote totals from election to election and calculates the swings in the vote, adds them across parties, divides by 2, and voila!—an instability index, as shown below.

Those data show that in both large and small European democracies, as in the United States, political instability has risen since the 1970s and especially after 2008. What, to return to the main question, could account for this increase?

One answer is, of course, the upheaval caused by the transformation or convergence of economies, especially in social and economic structures. But the changes wrought by the current transformation are not the same as those of the 19th century, due to differences in a number of conditions. By 1900 a new class had come to prominence: the blue-collar industrial worker. While the
two most common types of workers in 1900, farm workers and household servants, were geographically scattered and therefore hard to organize, factory employees worked and lived together in large towns, such as in St. Denis, outside Paris, in the valleys of Pennsylvania and Germany, and in Manchester, England. They were not, contra Marx, a majority, but through their ability to
organize, they would come to dominate politics in the industrial world.

These workers of the early 20th century did not get overtime, pensions, vacations, sick days, or health insurance, and they had no job security. By 1950, however, industrial workers were the largest single group in every Western democratic country and, by and large, unionized workers had attained middle-class living standards. They enjoyed job security, pensions, paid vacations,
unemployment insurance, and health plans. And they had, in large part, attained these things because they had gained political power, either by forming parties composed of trade unions, such as Labour in Britain, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany, and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) in France, or by using their union base to influence left-of-center parties,
such as in the United States.

Sixty years later, the number of industrial workers in the United States has declined from more than 40 percent to less than 20 percent. The disappearance of blue-collar jobs has been slower in most other Western democracies, but by the 1980s others showed declines similar to the United States. Thus, in Europe today, the percentage of the labor force in blue-collar or industrial
jobs is well below half of what it was in the 1950s. In short, industrial workers no longer dominate political parties. They have become just another interest group.

Economists differ on when the shift began, but it seems clear that in the 1970s the loss of blue-collar industrial jobs accelerated. American companies automated everything they could and exported capital overseas where production costs were lower. Other countries faced a choice: keep the jobs by fiat and lose out on productivity, making the economy worse off; or allow
automation and export, enjoy increased productivity, and suffer the wage problems that afflicted the United States. The effects of their choices had profound consequences for political parties and systems.
By the 1950s, manufacturing workers across Europe and the United States were well organized, and political parties revolved around them. In the United States, Harry Truman could win re-election in 1948 by campaigning against section 14B of the Taft-Hartley Act (which permits states to pass right-to-work laws), while in the United Kingdom politics was divided into two categories:
Labour and anti-Labour. From 1945 through 1957, the French Left, both Communists and Socialists, never fell below 40 percent popularity and averaged about 45 percent of the vote for the six elections of the post-World War II Fourth Republic. In Italy, labor-based parties never had less than 35 percent of the vote and rose to 40 percent in the late 1950s. Their main rival, the anti-
Left-labor Christian Democrats, went from 36 percent in 1946 to 49 percent in 1948, and throughout the 1950s never fell below 40 percent or failed to be in government. In Sweden, Socialists and Communists had majorities in every post-World War II election until 1973. The politics of Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and other European countries were essentially contests
between labor-Left parties versus Christian Right parties. In West Germany, the first postwar election in 1949 yielded a narrow win—by less than 2 percent—for Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). Socialist Party leader Kurt Schumacher refused a grand coalition, thus putting the leftist parties in opposition, where they remained
throughout the 1950s. Again, politics could be described as Left-labor versus Christian Democratic conservative. At present, leftist parties are quite different. They can no longer be elected largely by their base of manufacturing workers and thus have had to accommodate some conservative market principles: witness Gerhard Schroeder, the most recent SPD Prime Minister, on
reforming the German economy.

Because the labor/anti-labor divide no longer dominates political systems in Europe, parties have to build majorities by adding other constituencies. In the United States, the Democratic Party added minorities, cultural liberals, and others, but in the process created Reagan Democrats as pro-labor but socially conservative voters abandoned the Party. In Britain, the Labour Party lost
voters overall from 2010 to 2015, but gained among voters aged 18 to 30, especially if they were urban and socially liberal. They also did well with minorities and non-native UK voters. Labour paid a price, however, losing voters over 65, who have the highest turnout rates (about 80 percent), to the Tories. Labour also lost votes to UKIP, the Liberals, and the Greens. In short, putting
majorities together is difficult in a diverse, heterogeneous economy, because economic interests diverge while social and lifestyle issues now matter a good deal more than they once did.

In France, the Socialist Party has been undergoing a similar change. In 2015, activist François Sabado called it “an acceleration in the bourgeois transformation of social democracy . . . [T]he socialist parties have become less and less working class and more and more bourgeois.”5 As is the case in the United States, Britain, and other Western countries, these bourgeois, socially liberal,
urban partisans don’t always see eye-to-eye with their blue-collar fellow leftists. In Spain and Greece, parties of the Left have seen revivals: Podemos in the former and Syriza in the latter. Both parties seek to renegotiate their countries’ debt structure and to ease the austerity requirements imposed by the European Union, and both draw support from younger, urban voters. Syriza
managed to take power in Greece and even retained it despite failing to persuade the European Union to abandon its austerity program.

The globalization of economies has generated changes in parties on the Right as well. Buoyed by the election of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, right-wing parties gained ascendance in the 1980s. In Germany, Helmut Kohl and the CDU dominated national politics from 1982 to 1996; they liberalized the political agenda and put moral issues up for debate. In France, the Right
lost the presidency to François Mitterand in 1981 but won departmental, municipal, and European parliamentary elections in 1982, 1983, and 1984 respectively. In 1986, it won the National Assembly. Moreover, while Mitterand followed a radical economic policy from 1981 to 1983—which included nationalizing some key industries, increasing the minimum wage, and establishing a
five-week vacation period, among other reforms—he made a “tournant de la rigeur” (shift to the right) when the economy worsened.

In Italy, according to scholar Paolo Morisi, “the turn from the mass to a catchall party was the result of the blurring of class divisions under the unprecedented economic growth of the 1960s. Both working class and conservative parties lost their raison d’etre as unique representatives of particular social groups.”6 The Socialists, under Bettino Craxi, kept the Communists out of
government and formed the governments of the 1980s with the Christian Democrats. The conservative, anti-centralization Lega Nord came to the fore in the 1990s, and Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia came to prominence in 1994.

The turn away from the Left was not, of course, universal, and differed from country to country. However, as the labor base of industrial workers declined, the basic premises of politics shifted, and the parties of both Left and Right had to find new majorities in a changing economic and political reality. Parties of the Left from Sweden to Germany to Italy had to adjust their policies to
keep their economies competitive, in light of capital’s growth in prominence relative to labor. On the Right, parties had to deal with rising inequality and job losses in the new sharing economy, and some began favoring government aid. Overall, the changing economy has driven many Socialist parties in Europe to support economic programs that differ only slightly from those of
conservative parties. Conversely, European conservative parties, while generally defending markets, have endorsed comprehensive welfare programs (see the CDU/CSU in Germany and France’s neo-Gaullists, for example). Since no party, country, or individual leader has discovered the policy path to achieve economic growth while substantially mitigating the ills such growth
engenders, we should expect to see political instability grow, not decline, and with it distrust of government.

Such instability will vary depending on economic well-being. Though political instability has risen across Europe and the United States, some have it worse than others:.

The contrast between the relatively healthy economies of Switzerland, Norway, Germany, and Denmark and the less prosperous economies of France, Greece, Italy, and Spain is obvious. Political instability has risen in the prosperous economies since the late 1970s, but not nearly as steeply as it did in the four poorer economies. This is unsurprising: Since employment opportunities,
expendable income, and job stability are more prevalent in good economies, voters are more likely to stick to their traditional political preferences. Where unemployment levels are high and expendable income is lower, voters shift preferences, looking for alternatives to provide economic stability in their lives.

In sum, as economic modernization decreased the number of manufacturing jobs that paid middle-class wages, political stability declined. Over time, the Left could not win with its labor base alone and had to modify its appeal in order to create majorities. Parties on the Right benefited early on, but over time also had problems creating majorities with old policies. The type of
political system and electoral rules affected the strategy of political parties. In first-past-the-post, two-party systems like that of the United States, parties have to scramble for majorities. Thus, in the United States, Republicans picked up some blue-collar workers who had guns and traditional values, as well as voters who opposed abortion. Democrats picked up minorities and pro-
choice voters who had been Republican, but neither party has created a stable majority. In multiparty systems, with forces opposed to globalization, the new economies, and the free flow of immigrants, movements like the People’s Party in Denmark and the Front Nationale in France arise. In Italy, the neo-fascists came and went and came again, while Lega Nord rose to prominence
on a platform of separating the non-productive South from the efficient North.

One burning issue that arises under increasing globalization in both Europe and the United States is immigration. When the economy is shifting and inequality is rising, the influx of outsiders generates controversy. In the United States, a Donald Trump tries to capture the anti-immigrant vote through the Republican Party primaries, while in France an entire party, the Front Nationale,
represents this view. In Italy, Lega Nord has increased its vote shares by focusing on immigration. However, anti-immigration voters and movements, regardless of the specific arrangements, need not be right-wingers on other issues, as attested by the Front Nationale’s position on social welfare and protection for French workers, or the Danish People’s Party’s position on cruelty to
animals, school funding, and aid for the elderly and the needy. Other examples abound, but suffice it to say that the political instability observable in Europe and the United States takes multiple forms depending on the nature of the political system and the electoral rules that obtain in it.

However, the cause is the same: the transformation of the world economy . As we move toward ever more
interconnectedness , an economy in which employees take their skills from one company to the next
and both parents work, the challenge of forming coherent, stable political parties is magnified . Those
countries able to keep unemployment and inequality within bounds will be more stable. The greater the levels of inequality and
unemployment, the greater the political instability and the smaller the chance of achieving stable
economic growth .

Global economic contraction is the only way to come even close to meeting the 2-
degree target---we’ll blow through the carbon budget in any other scenario
David Roberts 16, climate and energy writer for Vox, formerly for Grist, “No country on Earth is taking
the 2 degree climate target seriously,” 10/4/16, http://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-
no-more-fossil-fuels

[The bottom of the card contains statements from Pete Smith and Kevin Anderson, from 0:00 to 1:22 of
the video embedded in the article, transcribed by Chris Callahan]

[Figures omitted]

The more you understand the brutal logic of climate change — what it could mean, the effort necessary to forestall it —
the more the intensity of the situation seems out of whack with the workaday routines of day-to-day
life. It’s a species-level emergency , but almost no one is acting like it is. And it’s very, very difficult to be the only one acting like
there’s an emergency, especially when the emergency is abstract and science-derived, grasped primarily by the intellect.

This psychological schism is true for individuals, and it’s true for nations. Take the Paris climate agreement.

In Paris, in 2015, the

countries of the world agreed (again) on the moral imperative to hold the rise in global
average temperature to under 2 degrees Celsius , and to pursue "efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees." To
date, 62 countries, including the United States, China, and India, have ratified the agreement.

Are any of the countries that signed the Paris agreement taking the actions necessary to achieve that target?

No . The US is not. Nor is the world as a whole.

The actions necessary to hold to 2 degrees, much less 1.5 degrees, are simply outside the bounds of
conventional politics in most countries . Anyone who proposed them would sound crazy, like they were
proposing, I don’t know, a war or something.

So we say 2 degrees is unacceptable. But we don’t act like it is.

This cognitive dissonance is brought home yet again in a new report from Oil Change International (in collaboration with a bunch of green
groups). It’s about fossil fuels and how much of them we can afford to dig up and burn, if we’re serious about what we said in Paris. It’s mostly
simple math, but the implications are vast and unsettling.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Staying beneath 2 degrees means immediately and rapidly declining emissions

Scientists have long agreed that warming higher than 2 degrees will result in widespread food, water, weather, and sea level stresses, with
concomitant immigration, conflict, and suffering, inequitably distributed.

But 2 degrees is not some magic threshold where tolerable becomes dangerous . A two-year review of the latest
science by the UNFCCC found that the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees means heat extremes, water shortages, and falling crop yields.
"The ‘guardrail’ concept, in which up to 2°C of warming is considered safe ," the review concluded, "is
inadequate."

The report recommends that 2 degrees be seen instead as "an upper limit, a defense line that needs to
be stringently defended , while less warming would be preferable."

This changing understanding of 2 degrees matters , because the temperature target we choose , and the
probability with which we aim to hit it, establishes our " carbon budget ," i.e., the amount of CO2 we can still emit before blowing it.

Many commonly used scenarios (including the International Energy Agency’s) are built around a 50 percent chance of hitting 2 degrees. But if
2 degrees is an "upper limit" and "less warming would be preferable," it seems we would want a higher than 50-50
chance of stopping short of it.
So the authors of the Oil Change report choose two scenarios to model. One gives us a 66 percent chance of stopping short of 2 degrees. The
other gives us a 50 percent chance of stopping short of 1.5 degrees. Here’s what they look like:

This image should terrify you. It should be on billboards.

As you can see, in either scenario, global

emissions must peak and begin declining immediately . For a medium chance
to avoid 1.5 degrees, the world has to zero out net carbon emissions by 2050 or so — for a good chance of avoiding 2
degrees, by around 2065.

After that, emissions have to go negative . Humanity has to start burying a lot more carbon than it throws up
into the atmosphere. There are several ways to sequester greenhouse gases, from reforestation to soil enrichment to cow backpacks, but the
backbone of the envisioned negative emissions is BECCS, or bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration.

BECCS — raising, harvesting, and burning biomass for energy, while capturing and burying the carbon emissions — is unproven at
scale. Thus far, most demonstration plants of any size attaching CCS to fossil fuel facilities have been over-budget disasters. What if we can’t
rely on it? What if it never pans out?

"If
we want to avoid depending on unproven technology becoming available ," the authors say, "emissions
would need to be reduced even more rapidly ."
You could say that. This is from climate researcher Glen Peters, based on a scenario with a 66 percent chance of avoiding 1.5 degrees.
Check out that middle graphic. If
we really want to avoid 1.5 degrees, and we can’t rely on large-scale carbon sequestration, then
the global community has to zero out its carbon emissions by 2026.

Ten years from now .

There’s no happy win-win story about that scenario, no way to pull it off while continuing to live US
lifestyles and growing the global economy every year . It would require immediate, radical shifts in
behavior worldwide, especially among the wealthy — a period of voluntary austerity and contraction .
That seems unlikely. So instead, let’s assume copious negative emissions technology will be available in the latter half of the century, just to
give ourselves the most room possible.

In those scenarios, how much of the world’s fossil fuels can we burn? How much more can we find and dig up?

That math is daunting.

Staying beneath 2 degrees means ceasing all new fossil fuel development

First, a quick tour of terminology. There are fossil fuel resources (what is ultimately recoverable), reserves (what is known and economically
recoverable), and developed reserves (what is known and recoverable in currently operating mines and fields). Here’s a handy guide:

Now let’s compare some numbers. It’s pretty straightforward. Roughly 95 percent of the carbon contained in fossil fuels gets released into the
atmosphere, so a ton dug up means a ton emitted, more or less.

How do our carbon budgets compare with our fossil fuel reserves?

Another terrifying image.

On the left is global developed fossil fuel reserves. Remember the terminology: That’s what we can likely get out of currently operating fields
and mines. On the right are our carbon budgets, for the 2 degree and 1.5 degree scenarios respectively. Existing developed reserves exceed the
2 degree budget, and oil and gas alone break the 1.5 degree budget.

If we are serious about what we said in Paris, then no more exploring for new fossil fuels. No new mines,
wells, or fossil fuel infrastructure. And rapid, managed decline in existing fossil fuels .
We are betting our species’ future on our ability to bury carbon

An important note: The analysts at Oil Change assume that there will be BECCS from midcentury onward, but assume that CCS will not come
online fast enough to substantially delay the decline of fossil fuels before then.

Obviously, that assumption could be wrong on either end. CCS could develop faster than expected or turn out to be utterly impractical and too
costly on any time scale. It’s too soon to know.

What is clear is that we

are betting our collective future on being able to bury millions of tons of carbon. It’s a
huge and existentially risky bet — and maybe one out of a million people even know it’s being made.
Humanity is in a desperate situation

There are modeling scenarios that show us hitting our climate targets. But we should take no comfort from them. The fact is, we
have
waited until perilously late to act on climate change, and our range of options has narrowed. We face three
choices:

1) In the event that massive carbon sequestration proves infeasible, avoiding

dangerous climate change will require an
immediate and precipitous decline in global carbon emissions over a decade or two. Given that most
present-day economic activity is driven by fossil fuels, it would mean, at least temporarily, a net decline in
economic activity . No one wants to discuss this, except climate scientist Kevin Anderson:
Professor Pete Smith: So I think the 1.5 degrees target is something we should aim at. Whether we get there or not is partly academic, and it’s
the fact that we’re aiming for 1.5 degrees which is the important thing. If we’re breaking our back to get to 1.5 and we end up at 1.8 or 2, that’s
better than aiming at 2 and ending up at 4 degrees Celsius.

Professor Kevin Anderson: From

a carbon budget point of view, I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to
hold to 1.5 degrees Centigrade. I am very skeptical of the negative emissions technologies, particularly BECCS – the biomass
energy carbon capture and storage. I do think we should research them; I think it’s very important that we progress our understanding of these
technologies, but I actually think we should assume they do not work when we develop emission scenarios. So I think it’s very unlikely we’ll
hold to 1.5 degrees Centigrade, and to be honest I
think it’s very unlikely we’ll hold to a reasonable probability of 2
degrees Centigrade now. My concern with an event like this is we are prepared to rely on utopian technologies
that do not yet exist, but we’re not prepared to look at actual mitigation today, which sort of has profound
challenging questions for the current economic paradigm. Until we are prepared to actually open up
that Pandora’s box, in which we’ll actually ask questions about how we live our lives today, I think we are unlikely to hold to
even 2 degrees Centigrade.
1NR
 1NR—Elections
Trump removal causes civil war
Fredman 8/3/20 [David Freedman, Newsweek. "How Trump Could Turn the Most Challenging Election
Since the Civil War into an Unprecedented Disaster." https://www.newsweek.com/how-trump-could-
turn-most-challenging-election-since-civil-war-unprecedented-disaster-1521831]

Trump may be weak politically but the office of the president commands enormous power . As commander
in chief, Trump is already using armed federal agents against American citizens in cities run by mayors and
governors of the opposition party, over their objections. His tweets and comments erode public trust in the upcoming election.
Past elections, no matter how divisive, have ended with both sides honoring the process. The bitter 2000 election deadlock between
George W. Bush and Al Gore did not end with the Supreme Court's ruling over Florida ballots; it ended when Al Gore, out of respect
for the U.S. democratic system, conceded. What happens if one of the candidates—the incumbent— doesn't
concede ?

Even in the best of times, a president who threatens to disrespect election norms and laws would
be cause for alarm. These are not the best of times . The number of things likely to go wrong in
this election is unprecedented . Polls are vulnerable to hacking from China, Russia and North Korea. Efforts
to block voter registration and other forms of suppression are rampant, particularly in Republican-controlled states. Skyrocketing
COVID-19 infections are likely to keep people from the polls. In states including California, Texas and Washington, protesters have
flooded the streets for weeks; in Portland, Oregon, they have clashed with federal troops, all of which could disrupt polling. The
electoral college is uniquely positioned this year to collapse, leaving
the election deadlocked and plunging the
nation into a constitutional crisis . Taken together, these factors make it more likely than at any
other time in more than a century that a U.S. election will fail to produce a winner who is
accepted by a large majority as legitimate.

How would Americans react if one of the most polarizing presidential elections in history leads
to confusion and wild accusations? Heightened levels of anger, doubt and fear mean that disruption in the days
following November 3rd is all too likely. Groups of citizens have in recent months brandished (and some
have fired) semi-automatic weapons in the streets and other public places simply to protest
pandemic-control measures. "What I'm most worried about is 36 hours of chaos after the
election when [Joe] Biden says he won and Trump says he won," says Clint Watts , a former FBI
special agent specializing in information warfare and now a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "You
almost know that's what's going to happen . Then you have people showing up with AR-15s.
Maybe it's not a full-scale insurrection , but it will be easy for everything to get out of control ."
For Trump, that might be further cause to call for armed intervention .

It draws in great powers

Hillsman 17, (award-winning author, journalist and former candidate for Congress, Imagining Another
American Civil War, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/imagining-another-american-civil-
war_us_59650818e4b0911162fc2f26)

What about military resources? The left would have certain advantages because of their wealth, their
larger population and their control of both coasts. While there are federal military installations scattered
around the country, the initial conflicts would probably be between the national guards of the various
states, since the federal government would be largely stalemated in the face of such a conflict.

What would be the role of the federal government in a civil war? Oddly enough, the government might
find itself fairly powerless. While one or more of the branches of government might be controlled by
left-leaning or right-leaning factions, it would be politically difficult for the government to control either
side. Although Washington, DC is smack in the middle of the “left” territory, the government itself would
still be divided in its loyalties. Unlike the first Civil War, in which the North presented itself as preserving
the Union, both sides in the second civil war would be determined to dissolve the Union and to gain as
much power and territory as possible for its side.

The best that the federal government could do in a second civil war would be to keep the most
dangerous weapons – nuclear weapons and ICBMs – out of the hands of the combatants. Because of the
intermingling of right and left throughout the country, the flow of refugees would be enormous , and
the impact on the economy and infrastructure would clearly be devastating .

There would also be serious danger of foreign intervention. Countries like China , Russia – even
Mexico and Canada – would be tempted to carve out either territory or spheres of influence , and a
weakened federal government would be ill-equipped to stop them . The ultimate partition of the
country would also provide the global community opportunities for exploitation. Whatever the final
resolution, a divided America would pay a steep price in resources and territory .

Reelection solves commitment clarity and entanglement

Terry 20 [SUE MI TERRY is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She
served as a Senior CIA Analyst on Korean issues and worked on Korea policy at the National Security
Council in the Bush and Obama administrations. "The Unraveling of the U.S.-South Korean Alliance."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2020-07-03/unraveling-us-south-korean-alliance]

The U.S.–South Korean alliance has endured many ups and downs over the decades —including popular protests against
U.S. support for South Korea’s military rulers and an uproar over President Jimmy Carter’s talk of withdrawing U.S. troops. But the
relationship may be facing its worst crisis yet . Over the last three and a half years, South Korean officials have seldom been in
sync with the mercurial U.S. president—as Bolton’s book drives home. Trump’s erratic approach to North Korea—which evolved
from threats of “fire and fury” to professions of love for Kim—has left Seoul baffled, bewildered, and questioning its faith

in Washington . Like a long-term marriage, the alliance is likely to survive , but South Korea’s trust in the U nited S tates
has been so badly shaken that the relationship may never be the same.

Going hard on China is Trump’s path to victory – it’s key to deflecting COVID backlash
and weathering the recession
Kapur 20 [Sahil Kapur is a national political reporter for NBC News. "Coronavirus turns China into a
2020 election issue as Trump and Biden clash." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-
election/coronavirus-turns-china-2020-election-issue-trump-biden-clash-n1186611]

The back-and-forth shows the extent to which the

deadly virus, which experts say originated in the city of Wuhan, has turned
China into a powerful election-year issue , with both major party candidates scrambling to get on the
right side . It isn’t just about outsourcing labor this time. It’s about an economic calamity and life-or-death consequences for
voters looking to hold China accountable for allegedly concealing information about and failing to contain the virus.

The COVID -19 crisis has rocketed to the forefront of voter concerns as the official U.S. death toll tops 33,000 and
sets up a battle over which candidate, Trump or Biden, can address public concerns about China as favorable
opinions of the country nosedived in Gallup tracking polls .

A Harris poll taken April 3-5 found that 72 percent of Americans believe China inaccurately reported the impacts
of the coronavirus. It found that 69 percent favor Trump's trade policies against China and most want him
to take a tougher position with that nation. A majority of Americans even said China should be required to
pay other countries to compensate for damage and suffering caused by the spread of the virus.

In the 2016 election, Trump successfully weaponized misgivings about China's trade practices, insisting that
previous U.S. presidents, including his opponent Hillary Clinton's husband, had allowed the country to rip off
Americans. He has slapped tariffs on Chinese products, which have at times drawn public resistance, in pursuit of overhauling trade
relations with the country.

Trump's strategy is to place a simple contrast in the minds of voters. In a recent fundraising email to supporters, he
proclaimed, "I am TOUGH ON CHINA and Sleepy Joe Biden is WEAK ON CHINA." His campaign has also highlighted past remarks from Biden
questioning whether China represents serious economic "competition" for the U.S.

"China wants Sleepy Joe sooo badly," the president tweeted Saturday. "They want all of those billions of dollars that they have been paying to
the U.S. back, and much more. Joe is an easy mark, their DREAM CANDIDATE!"

(China has not paid the U.S.; the cost of the tariffs are assumed by businesses and consumers.)

Biden has slammed Trump for his slow response to the crisis and for eliminating mechanisms to get ahead of pandemics, by cutting Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention staff in China and scrapping a preparedness program called "Predict" that was launched by the Obama
administration.

"The uncomfortable truth is that this president left America exposed and vulnerable to this pandemic. He ignored the warnings of health
experts and intelligence agencies, and put his trust in China’s leaders instead. And now, we're all paying the price," Biden said in the video
message, accusing Trump of being so eager to ink a trade deal with China he failed to act on the virus.

In recent days, Biden has said that if elected president he would re-establish the Obama-era global health pandemic office, but elevate it to a
Cabinet-level position.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

An Economist/YouGov poll taken this week found Biden leading Trump by a 5-point margin, 48 percent to 43 percent, in a trial heat among
American registered voters.

Asked about their views on Trump's handling of the virus outbreak, 38 percent of U.S. respondents said they were confident, while 50 percent
said they were uneasy, and 12 percent weren't sure.

Whether or not the president can gain ground on the question of how he's handled the federal
response to the virus , his allies are expressing confidence that he has the edge on public views of his
response to the nation where it originated .

“A key issue of the 2020 election is going to be getting tougher on China and holding them accountable
for the pandemic they started,” former Rep. Jim Renacci, R-Ohio, said on Twitter.
 1. China messaging melts Biden
Mead 20 [Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the
Humanities at Bard College, the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship
at the Hudson Institute, and The Wall Street Journal's Global View columnist. "Trump’s Best Re-Election
Bet: Run Against China." https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-best-re-election-bet-run-against-china-
11587573159]

Finally, a China campaign would create real problems for the Democrats. Some of this would be personal for Joe Biden
—the Trump campaign is already doing everything it can to highlight Hunter Biden’s business ties to
China . But plenty of other senior Democrats have made money there, supported trade policies that gave
away too much without holding Beijing accountable , or praised China’s government in ways that would make painful
viewing in a campaign ad today.

Even if they take a harsher tone on China, Democrats

will have a difficult time differentiating themselves from Mr.
Trump. Caught between wanting to criticize the president for what many will believe is a dangerously
hawkish and simplistic approach to China on the one hand and wanting to appear tough on national
security on the other, they’ll likely come off sounding soft or naive .

The link turns case – it forces Biden right on China, which collapses future coop and
undermines foreign policy if he wins
Pesek 20 [William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What
the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades." https://archive.is/xXbwM#selection-3789.0-3789.72,
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Donald-Trump-and-Joe-Biden-are-competing-to-see-who-is-harshest-
on-China]

Yet Bidenrisks repeating Trump's mistake of losing sight of the bigger picture when it comes to dealing
with an ascendant China.
There were few surprises in recommendations made in a joint report by Biden and progressive U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. Biden's desire to
rebuild U.S. supply chains and promote buy-American procurement policies seem more aspirational than actionable. Doing so, after all, would
irk Japan, the EU and other key U.S. allies. It would risk a rebuke from the World Trade Organization while raising costs for Americans.

Here lies the risk of a Trump-Biden race to the bottom . Trump's efforts to color his opponent as soft on
China clearly pushed the Biden campaign's efforts to out China-bash Trump .

China deserves it, too. Xi's chilling clampdown on Hong Kong, his exploits in the South China Sea, his appalling treatment of the Uighur
Muslim minority in Xinjiang and clampdowns on the media have won Beijing little goodwill. A Group of Seven nation like the U.S. should help to
ensure the world's second-biggest economy plays by the rules.

Biden's team must understand that returning to a multilateralist approach will not boost productivity
and innovation among U.S. companies. It will not help Silicon Valley relocate its innovative moj o. America's tech
giants once disrupted society with game-changing gadgets. Nowadays, they mostly exist to devise better ways to sell internet ads. Nor will it
increase America's stable of tech unicorns.

Taking on China alone will not build American economic muscle nor will it suddenly restore the
manufacturing sector to its 1980s heyday or end the struggle to compete with Asia's low wages. It will not magically improve
crumbling infrastructure nor reduce inequality or improve the education system.
So will building a more equitable and collaborative trade relationship with China . Trump's approach has
been starting economic food fights. A President Biden will have to work with Xi , not just hurl platitudes . As
an American, I for one hope he gets the chance .

2. It splits the dem base – that’s enough

Mead 20 [Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the
Humanities at Bard College, the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship
at the Hudson Institute, and The Wall Street Journal's Global View columnist. "Trump’s Best Re-Election
Bet: Run Against China." https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-best-re-election-bet-run-against-china-
11587573159]

A China campaign may also drive some wedges into the Democratic coalition . Many Bernie Sanders voters
share Mr. Trump’s critique of establishment policy toward Beijing. Blue-collar voters of all races would
welcome proposals to “ reshore ” American factories now in China. Yet many establishment Democrats close
to Joe Biden will fear the economic and political costs of confronting the Chinese Communist Party too
harshly.

2020 is a referendum on China – Trump is ahead now but broadcasting weakness ruins
messaging
Pesek 20 [William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What
the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades." https://archive.is/xXbwM#selection-3789.0-3789.72,
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Donald-Trump-and-Joe-Biden-are-competing-to-see-who-is-harshest-
on-China]

The U.S. election is shaping up as a contest between which candidate hates China more : President Donald
Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden?

For now, the advantage is Trump's , who on Tuesday ended Hong Kong's special status with the U.S., which allowed
the city direct access to key U.S. sectors like technology and defense. He also signed legislation requiring sanctions against
Chinese officials involved in Beijing's crackdown in the former British colony and the banks they deal
with.

Trump's actions demonstrate the extent to which November 3 will be a race to the bottom to see who can be
harsher toward China . Your move, Joe.
The central question for this election should be who has the best plan to keep the U.S. on top of the great power struggle. Americans trying to
decide might consider why China's President Xi Jinping seems to fear Biden more than another four years of Trump.

Xi's Chinese Communist Party loathes the trade war, the Twitter tantrums and Trump's racist remarks about the coronavirus' origins. But the
more Trump damages America's global standing, the closer China is to realizing its hegemonic aspirations.

In sharp contrast, a Biden presidency promises

a return to the Democratic Party's traditional approach toward
Beijing. That means using a multilateral approach that puts human rights, environmental concerns and
government censorship at the front end of trade talks, not as retaliatory cudgels to bash China .

Xi 's party, remember, rejoiced in 2017 when Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. TPP
grouped 12 nations in a shared desire to curb China's fast-growing influence. By reneging on the deal, Trump made Xi's year.
Targeting China may be great politics , but Biden must not overplay his hand . He is not an economic
guru . Foreign policy is his comfort zone and he will need some semblance of a relationship for his approach
to work.

COVID makes foreign policy uniquely timely – China is the key issue
Baer 20 [Dan Baer is a senior fellow in the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. "Coronavirus is Adding to Voters’ Concerns with Trump’s Erratic Foreign Policy."
4/20. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/04/20/coronavirus-is-adding-to-voters-concerns-with-
trump-s-erratic-foreign-policy-pub-81609]

The conventional wisdom about political campaigns is that voters don’t care about foreign policy .

Political consultants advise their clients to focus on “kitchen table ” issues like jobs , health care , education and
safe neighborhoods and schools.
I’ve long believed that this piece of campaign orthodoxy was based on a false premise: the problem isn’t that voters don’t care about
international issues, it’s that so few of our candidates have the expertise and communications skills to talk about foreign policy in a way that
connects to those kitchen table issues.

Voters are smarter than political consultants think they are; candidates aren’t as smart on foreign policy as they should
be, given the world we live in today.

The success — or failure — of American foreign policy has an impact on every kitchen table issue.

Thecoronavirus pandemic is both a foreign policy and a public health issue — and the Trump administration’s
mismanagement on both fronts has cost tens of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars to
our economy. It is dominating our conversations with friends and family — it is, in most American households, quite literally a kitchen
table issue.