I affirm Resolved: The United States is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop

human rights abuses.

I would like to stipulate a few definitions to clarify the round: Robert A. Pape 12 defines intervention to stop human rights abuses as When Duty Calls International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Summer 2012), pp. 41 80 Humanitarian intervention is the use of military force by one or more states within the jurisdiction of another, without its permission, to protect innocent people from violence by the target states government. In this situation, the International Security of innocent is normally understood as morally innocentthat is, people who themselves are not engaged in unjust violence. Thus, it commonly applies to unarmed protesters, noncombatants in internal wars, and virtually all those called civilians in popular language (i.e., people who have done nothing to lose their right to life). As such, humanitarian intervention is a distinct category of international moral action; the dening feature is that it advances a moral principle rather than a selsh interest (e.g., the intervening states wealth or power).

Obs: Craner 04 stated that the US intends to stop human rights abuses when it intervenes. Lorne W. Craner, Department of State, 2004, House Hearings: US Support of Human Rights and Democracy, Committee on International Relations, July 7, [http://wwwc.house.gov/international%5Frelations/108/94707.pdf], p. 7 This is why we continue to construct a legacy that promotes democracy and human rights overseas. In places like Darfur and Burma and Zimbabwe and Belarus and elsewhere, who would benefit and who would pay the price if we self consciously turned inward and ignored human rights abuses outside of our country? I am, therefore, very pleased today to formally present to Congress our report on supporting human rights and democracy. It provides examples of how we are engaged worldwide with people and institutions dedicated to answering the question: What are we doing about all those abuses in the Country Reports? The value for the round is Life. Life is the most basic and necessary human right. Although other rights do matter the right to life supersedes all other rights because it is a prerequisite to all other rights. The aggregate total of life promoted under affirming versus negating is the way to realize which side maximizes life. The debater that Maximizes Utilitarianism in the round will increase life most effectively therefore this is my criterion. My sole contention for the round is that intervention in other countries leads to increasing US hegemony which leads to a multitude of other beneficial impacts. A: Hegemony is increased by US unilateral and multilateral intervention. Bradley A. Thayer, Professor Defense & Strategic Studies, Missouri State University, 2006 , The National Interest, November/December, p.149 A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and

monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America chooses to play in international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that thr3eats must be confronted. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the
United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats. And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore

U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global commons"--the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space--allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased. This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly.
balancing. Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted,

Therefore the United states must intervene in other countries to increase its hegemony. B: Increasing US hegemony will stop nuclear conflict and proliferation. Utgoff 02 writes that nuclear proliferation will lead to nuclear war:
(Victor A., Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of the Institute for Defense Analysis, Survival Vol 44 No 2 Proliferation, Missile Defence and American Ambitions, p. 87-90)

widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear proliferation
In sum, is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear 'six-shooters' on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations.

Thayer 06 writes that US primacy halts proliferation and in turn nuclear war:
(Bradley A., associate professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, National Interest, In Defense of Primacy, 11/06, Proquest)

U.S. primacy and the bandwagoning effect has also given us extensive influence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation

through the Proliferation security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars
in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military

The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation.
campaign to realize the goals of its charter.

C: US hegemony promotes human rights Thayer 06 writes

Bradley A. Thayer, Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2007 ["The Case For The American Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 44-46] Humanitarian Missions

There is no other state or international organization that can provide these benefits. The United Nations certainly cannot because it lacks the military and economic power of the United States. It is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on small matters [end page 45] as well as great ones. Thus, it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on important issues and to act as a unified force once a decision has been reached. Moreover, it does not possess the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. Simply put, there is no alternative to the leadership of the United States. When the United States does not intervene, as it has not in the Darfur region of Sudan and eastern Chad, people die. In this conflict, Arab Muslims
belonging to government forces, or a militia called the Jingaweit, are struggling against Christian and animist black Africans who are fighting for independence. According to the State Department, 98,000 to 181,000 people died between March 2003 and March 2005 as a result of this struggle. The vast majority of these deaths were caused by violence, disease, and malnutrition associated with the conflict.

D: American hegemony prevents war

Michael

Hirsh, Newsweek Editor, AT WAR WITH OURSELVES, pp. 10-11, 2003 writes:
What if we could all be granted, like Jimmy Stewarts George Baliey, a look at the world without us? It think its useful to apply the same

Suppose, with the end of the Soviet Union, American had mysteriously disappeared as well or, more realistically, had retreated to within its border, as it had wanted to do ever since the end of World War II. What would a Jeffersonian American, withdrawn behind its oceans, likely see unfolding overseas? Probably a restoration of old power jostle that has sent mankind back to war for many millennia. One possible scenario: Japan would have reacquired a full-scale military and nuclear weapons, and would have bid for regional hegemony with China. Europe would have had no counterbalance to yet another descent into
conceit to one-uberpower world. intraregional competition, and, lacking the annealing structure of the postwar Atlantic alliance, may never have achieved monetary

Russia would have bid for Eurasian dominance, as it has throughout its modern history. Most important of all, the global trading system, which the United States virtually reinvented after World War II (with some help from John Meynard Keynes and others), would have almost certainly have broken down amid all these renewed rivalries, killing globalization before it even got started. That in turn would have accelerated many of the above developments. A war of some kind would have been extremely likely. And given the evidence of the last century, which shows that American has been increasingly draw into global conflicts, the U.S. president would be
union.

pulled in Again, but this time in a high-tech, nuclearized, and very lethal age of warfare. America has a unique opportunity to thwart historys most ruthless dictate: that nations are ever fated to return to a state of anarchy and war. It has a unique opportunity to do what no great power in history has ever done to perpetuate indefinitely the global system we have created, to foster an international community with American power at its center that is so secure that it may never be challenged. But this can be done only through a delicate balancing of all our tools of power and influence. E: International system will be worse without US hegemony. Nye 02 writes:
Joseph Nye, Dean, JFK School of Government, Harvard, 2002 (THE PARADOX OF AMERICAN POWER, pp. 12-13)
America's power-hard and soft-is only part of the story. How others react to American power is equally important to the question of stability and governance in this global information age. Many realists extol the virtues of the classic nineteenth-century European balance of power, in which constantly shifting coalitions contained the ambitions of any especially aggressive power. They urge the United States to rediscover the virtues of a balance of power at the global level today. Already in the 1970s, Richard Nixon argued that "the only time in the history of the world that we have had extended periods of peace is when there has been a balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely

whether such multipolarity would be good or bad for the United States and for the world is debatable. I am skeptical. War was the constant companion and crucial instrument of the multipolar balance of power. The classic European balance provided stability in the sense of maintaining the independence of most countries, but there were wars among the great powers for 60 percent of the years since 1500. Rote adherence to the balance of power and multipolarity may prove to be a dangerous approach to global governance in a world where war could turn nuclear.
more powerful in relation to its potential competitors that the danger of war arises. But

F: Hegemony promotes democracy

Diamond, 1996 (Larry, Senior researcher fellow at Hoover Institution, Orbis, Beyond the Unipolar Moment: Why the United States Must Remain Engaged, p. 405-413)
In the past, global power has been an important reason why certain countries have become models for emulation by others. The global power of the United States, and of its Western democratic allies, has been a factor in the diffusion of democracy around the world, and certainly is crucial to our ability to help popular, legitimate democratic forces deter armed threats to their overthrow, or to return to power (as in Haiti) when they have been overthrown. Given the linkages among democracy, peace, and human rights-as well as the recent finding of Professor Adam Przeworski (New York University) that democracy is more likely to survive in a country when it is more widely present in the region-we should not surrender our capacity to diffuse and defend democracy. It is not only intrinsic to our ideals but important to our national security that we remain globally powerful and engaged-and that a dictatorship does not rise to hegemonic power within any major region.