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I affirm
The standard is net benefits
/Gary Woller, June 1997 (BYU Prof.), An Overview by Gary Woller, A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, pg. 10/
Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that
public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify
inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public only general guidance to ethical
dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a
regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making
it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any
way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the
environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent
with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of
deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of
environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of
regulatory enforcement and the often perverse out- comes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most diehard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy
decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an

It therefore follows that in a democracy,

policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems
they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing
problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty
rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a
democracy
imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12).

Contention 1: A Post Sanctions World

_____ Sanctions are one of three foreign policy tools
/Jesse Helms 1999 (fmr US Senator R NC; Chair of the Foreign Relations Cmte) What Sanctions Epidemic? Foreign
Affairs Vol 78 No 1, pg. Online/
Jefferson is right. There are, indeed, three tools in foreign policy: diplomacy, sanctions, and war. Take away
sanctions and how can the United States deal with terrorists, proliferators, and genocidal dictators? Our
options would be empty talk or sending in the marines. Without sanctions, the United States would be virtually
powerless to influence events absent war. Sanctions may not be perfect and they are not always the answer,
but they are often the only weapon. Unilateral sanctions, in fact, are the linchpin of our nonproliferation policy.
According to a recently declassified analysis by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "the history of U.S.China relations shows that China has made specific nonproliferation commitments only under the threat or
imposition of sanctions." Short of war, sanctions are the main leverage the United States has over China

Text: The United States federal government should remove all current and proposed economic
sanctions to achieve foreign policy objectives

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Contention 2: Constructive Engagement

a. It Solves
_____ Positive engagement via diplomacy is key to peace
/Philippe Le Billon and Eric Nichols 2007 (Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia with the Department of
Geography and the Liu Institute for Global Issues) "Ending 'Resource Wars': Revenue Sharing, Economic Sanction, or Military
Intervention?" International Peacekeeping Vol 13 No 5, pg. 613-632
Positive incentives can address the linkages between resources and wars. Rather than seeking to curtail
revenue access to belligerents, revenue can be made accessible to former belligerents. Sharing resource
revenues, in other words, can buy peace. This type of positive incentive encompasses a broad range of options.
Resources constitute divisible goods, especially in terms of revenues and to a lesser degree in terms of
ownership (especially if considering state sovereignty), and are thus amenable to self-enforcing sharing
agreements. Divisibility can be arranged according to territorial, organizational, or commercial criteria. A rst option
is to simply leave the armed group in at least partial control of the territory and resources it is holding, for
example as part of a local autonomy or secession agreement or even as part of a sanction regime, as in the
case of the oil-for-food program in Iraq. A second option is to offer the armed group new resource concessions,
the control of resource businesses, or lucrative government positions overseeing resource sectors. A third
option is to establish a broad sharing agreement for resources through scal legislation. In this regard, any
conict settlement could be considered as involving a sharing of resource revenues as long as opposing
parties are allowed to have an input into governing. However, in this analysis we consider only the cases in
which natural resources constituted a major nancial stake in the conict and in which agreements had an important
resource dimension (although not always incorporated into formal documents, see below). These agreements can
take place at various levels, concerning an entire rebel movement as part of a comprehensive peace
agreement, or only regional units as part of a local ceasere or defection process.

And, This is empirically verified

/VOA News 2008 Economic Rewards Obtain Better Results than Sanctions, Some Experts Say pg. Onlin /
Policymakers often view economic sanctions as an attractive middle option between doing nothing, or intervening
directly to change an intractable government's behavior. But sometimes providing the 'carrot' of economic
rewards, rather than the 'stick' of economic sanctions, can be more effective in persuading a government to
change its policies. VOA's Bill Rodgers takes a look at some alternatives to sanctions. Declaring war is usually the last resort for policymakers pressing a government to change its practices. That is why they often turn to sanctions to
pressure a country's leaders, as is the case currently with Iran, where the United States and other western nations want Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But Ted Galen Carpenter of the CATO Institute in Washington says sanctions often do not work. "The
historical record of sanctions, whether unilateral or ad hoc or multilateral, show that they rarely work," Carpenter said. "They fail more often than they succeed, and they especially don't work very often when they're trying to get the target regime to give up on a high-

The United States slapped sanctions on Pakistan after it carried out a

nuclear test in 1998. The sanctions were aimed at stopping a nuclear arms race on the Indian subcontinent.
Pakistanis resented the sanctions and found ways to circumvent them. Retired Pakistani Major General
Jamshed Ayaz Khan heads the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad. "I was in the Defense Production Division
when you had these sanctions," he said. "They have an effect, but not an immediate effect, because there is always
somebody there to sell the things. But we did manage to survive and survive pretty well." Washington lifted the
sanctions after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, in hopes of enlisting Pakistan's
help in the war on terrorism. Military and economic aid flowed in, and Pakistan began to cooperate in hunting
down extremists. Sanctions expert Gary Hufbauer at the Peterson Institute for International Economics says the new policy better served U.S. interests. "Pakistan has done a lot, maybe not as much as we've wanted, but it has done a lot in
priority policy." But what can sometimes work is the offer of economic incentives or rewards.

this battle against al-Qaida and the problems going on in Afghanistan," Huftbauer said. "And, if you consider the alternative, which is that we had a hostile Pakistan even today, with this instability, things are so much better than they would have been, if we'd had a
hostile Pakistan." Libya is an example where the prospect of lifted international sanctions and resumed commercial ties helped change government behavior. International sanctions were imposed on Libya when it became clear it was responsible for the 1988
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, and other terrorist attacks. Washington strengthened those sanctions in 1996. But Libya eventually agreed to make restitution payments to the relatives of the victims killed in the Pan Am bombing and other

, in 2003, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also agreed to to end his weapons of mass destruction
program. Libya's ambassador to Washington Ali Aujali says the WMD program no longer made sense in the face of
the prospect of having sanctions lifted. "This was a priority of the Libyan government, to get rid of these
sanctions," he said. "Not only because that in daily life we felt it, but because also of the political complications and...
I think both sides realize that we've been able to achieve nothing in 25 years of hostile relations, but we've been
able to achieve a lot in three or four years of our new relations."
attacks. And

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b. Its net beneficial

_____ Economic freedom is key to reducing tyranny
/Daniel T. Griswold January 4, 2004 (Associate Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute) Trading Tyranny for
Freedom: How Open Markets Till the Soil for Democracy, CATO TRADE POLICY ANALYSIS No 26, pg 2-3/
Economic freedom and trade provide a counterweight to governmental power. A free market diffuses
economic decision making among millions of producers and consumers rather than leaving it in the hands of a
few centralized government actors who could, and often do, use that power to suppress or marginalize political
opposition. Milton Friedman, the Nobel-prize-winning economist, noted the connection between economic and political freedom in his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom: Viewed as a means to the
end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly,
namely competitive capitalism, also pro- motes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other. This dispersion of economic control,
in turn, creates space for nongovernmental organizations and private-sector alternatives to political leadershipin short, civil society. A thriving private economy creates sources of funding for non-state
institutions, which in turn can provide ideas, influence, and leadership outside the existing government. A more pluralistic social and political culture greatly enhances the prospects for a more pluralistic and

Theologian and social

thinker Michael Novak identified this as the Wedge Theory, in which capitalist practices bring contact with the
ideas and practices of the free societies, generate the economic growth that gives political confidence to a
rising middle class, and raise up successful business leaders who come to represent a political alternative to
military or party leaders. In short, capitalist firms wedge a democratic camels nose under the authoritarian tent.4
Just as important, economic freedom and openness encourage democracy indirectly by The faster growth and
greater wealth that accompany trade promote democracy by creating an economically independent and
politically aware middle class. A sizeable or dominant middle class means that more citizens can afford to be
educated and take an interest in public affairs. As citizens acquire assets and establish businesses and careers in
the private sector, they prefer the continuity and evolutionary reform of a democratic system to the sharp turns and
occasional revolutions of more authoritarian systems. People who are allowed to successfully manage their daily
economic lives in a relatively free market come to expect and demand more freedom in the political and social
realms.
representative political system. Private- sector corporations, both domestic and foreign-owned, create an alternate source of wealth, influence, and leadership .

And, Tyranny is the biggest source of human rights abuses

/Cherif Bassiouni 1996 (Distinguished research law prof emeritus at Depaul Univ) Searching for Peace and Achieving
Justice: The Need for Accountability Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 59, No. 4, pg. Jstor/
Since World War II, the number of conflicts of an international character declined as did their harmful impact, in comparison to other types of conflicts whose harmful

Indeed, the occurrence of conflicts of a non-international character and purely internal conflicts
has dramatically increased in number, intensity, and victimization. In addition, tyrannical regimes produced
systematic and large scale-victimization far exceeding quantitatively and qualitatively the harmful results
generated by all other types of conflicts. Conflicts of a non-international character, purely internal conflicts, and
tyrannical regime victimization have occurred all over the world. That victimization has included genocide, crimes
against humanity, and war crimes, along with, inter alia, extra-judicial executions, torture, and arbitrary arrest and
detention, all of which constitute serious violations of fundamental human rights protected by international human
rights law.3 During the course of the twentieth century it is estimated that conflicts of a non-international
character, internal conflicts, and tyrannical regime victimization have resulted in more than 170 million deaths.
consequences increased.

This is compared with an estimated 33 million military casualties.5 It is estimated that since World War II, more than 250 conflicts of a non-international character, internal conflicts, and tyrannical regime
victimization have occurred. These situations have resulted in an estimated 86 million casualties.

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Contention 3: War
A. It Solves
/Philippe Le Billon and Eric Nichols 2007 (Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia with the Department of
Geography and the Liu Institute for Global Issues) "Ending 'Resource Wars': Revenue Sharing, Economic Sanction, or Military
Intervention?" International Peacekeeping Vol 13 No 5, pg. 613-632
Among the 26 armed conflicts examined over the period 1989 2006, external military intervention was the
most frequent, followed by revenue sharing and UN sanctions. Two conflicts were addressed through all three
types of instruments, and nine through two types of initiatives. To assess their potential effectiveness in terms of
conflict settlement in general, we use three criteria: effective implementation, status of the conflict after one
year, and status after five years. Implementation success represents the achievement of operational objectives,
specifically: the institutionalization of the agreement in the case of sharing; curtailment of trade in the case of
sanctions; and control of resource production area in the case of military interventions. Effectiveness has been
assessed through a review of UN situation reports and expert panel investigations, as well as think tank,
civil society and press reports. As such these assessments remain tentative and at times subjective. The one and
five year lags assess the immediacy and sustainability of a potential effect on conflict termination. We do not argue
that peace is the result of the implementation of instruments, but simply assess the occurrence of both events. We
find that among the different types of instruments, those most successfully implemented were military
interventions (89 per cent) and revenue sharing mechanisms (83 per cent), while sanctions were lagging at
57 per cent (see Table 5).17 This result is not surprising since sharing involves willing if sometimes duplicitous
parties; military intervention is generally used when there are reasonable chances of success, especially in the case
of military interventions by western powers; and sanctions represent a limited instrument of coercion which has
furthermore been criticized for being poorly enforced and used as a default policy option. When

b. It's net beneficial

Sanctions cause more damage than war Normand & Wilcke 01
Roger Normand & Christoph Wilcke (Wilcke completed his degree of Master of Philosophy at the University
of Oxford in Modern Middle Eastern Studies in the summer of 2001. Roger Normand is co-founder and
Executive Director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), a human rights group that
advocates against poverty and economic injustice both at home and abroad.) Transnational Law &
Contemporary Problems Fall, 2001 Norm Human Rights, Sanctions, and Terrorist Threats: The United
Nations Sanctions Against Iraq
The first argument is either factually wrong or is a remnant of the short-lived belief after the end of the Cold War that
the international community found a form of "peaceable enforcement." Starvation and epidemics during war
generally kill more people than guns and bombs. Sanctions have killed a far higher number of civilians in Iraq
than the Allied bombing campaign. n37 Death, therefore, is the extreme potential harm flowing from sanctions.
The prospects of regaining an adequate standard of living after sanctions are much worse than those
following the destruction caused by war because sanctions force people to adjust to a life without basic
provisions, rather than bridge a temporary emergency. This is not to argue in favor of war, but rather to destroy
the myth of "velvet" sanctions. Sanctions are intended to harm and kill. The generational effect of malnutrition and
skill depletion makes them a particularly despicable tool of torture, through which suffering, and not death,
is the main goal. The argument that concerns for the greater good warrants the preventive infliction of harm
through sanctions is simply illogical. It is absurd to violate [*309] international norms and human rights in
order to protect them. Such arguments encourage impunity for human rights violations that some leaders may
enjoy, and encourage a mentality of retribution. If asked to choose between two cases of civilian harm, one
should refuse on ethical grounds because the harm of sanctions is real.

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_____ We must embrace war in order to have any chance at stopping it from occuring in the future
Hillman, 2004 (James, Internationally renowned psychologist, has taught at Yale, Syracuse, and the University of Chicago, A
Terrible Love of War, p. 1-3)
One sentence in one scene from one film, Patton, sums up what this book tries to understand. The general
walks the field after a battle. Churned earth, burnt tanks, dead men. He takes it up a dying officer, kisses him,
surveys the havoc, and says: God help me I do love it so. I love it more than my life. We can never prevent
war or speak sensibly of peace and disarmament unless we enter this love of war. Unless we move our
imaginations into the martial state of soul, we cannot comprehend its pull. This means going to war, and this book
aims to induct our minds into military service. We are not going to war in the name of peace as deceitful rhetoric so often
declares, but rather for wars own sake: to understand the madness of its love. Our civilian disdain and pacifist
horror-all the legitimate and deep-felt aversion to everything to do with the military and the warrior-must be
set aside. This is because the first principle of psychological method holds that any phenomenon to be
understood must be sympathetically imagined. No syndrome can be truly dislodged from its cursed
condition unless we first move imagination into its heart. War is first of all a psychological task, perhaps the
first of all psychological tasks because it threatens your life and mine directly, and the existence of all living
beings. The bell tolls for thee, and all. Nothing can escape the thermonuclear rage, and if the burning and its
aftermath are unimaginable, their cause, war, is not. War is also a psychological task because philosophy and
theology, the fields supposed to do the heavy thinking for our species have neglected wars overriding importance.
War is the father of all, said Heraclitus at the beginnings of Western thought, which Emmanuel Levinas restates in
recent Western thought as being reveals itself as war. If it is primordial component of being, then war fathers the
very structure of existence and our thinking about it: our ideas of the universe, of religion, of ethics; war
determines the thought patterns of Aristotles logic of opposites, Kants antinomies, Darwins natural
selection, Marxs struggle of classes, and even Freuds repression of the id by the ego and superego. We
think in warlike terms, feel ourselves at war with ourselves, and unknowingly believe predation, territorial
defense, conquest and the interminable battle of opposing forces are the ground rules of existence.

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