Kritik Imperialism CNDI

2016
1NC Shell
 Link
Forcing deviant nations like china to abide by western laws
and/or trade deals enables imperialist violence and reinforces
a hierarchical model of geopolitics
Lalkar 15 (British Newspaper Lalkar, US Imperialism stokes war in the SCS,
Lalkar) JA
With imperialism gripped by its worst ever crisis of overproduction, events from
Greece, through Ukraine and the Middle East, to East Asia confirm again and again
the Leninist thesis that imperialism means domination and leads inexorably to
aggression and war a fact that is only accentuated the deeper and more
thoroughgoing the crisis becomes. In recent years, China has become the worlds
second biggest economy. It is increasingly a pole of attraction, and an alternative,
for many other countries, from Russia to Venezuela to South Africa, and even for
many imperialist powers, as witnessed by Britains recent decision to join the
Chinese-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a move rapidly
followed by numerous other close US allies, but one which met with fury in
Washington. (See article in Proletarian, No 65, April 2015). In the wake of the
collapse of the former Soviet Union and the east European peoples democracies,
and the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War, the US proclaimed more brazenly than
ever that its goal was nothing short of unrivalled global hegemony. A Pentagon
report leaked to the New York Times in March 1992 asserted that Americas political
and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival
superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the
former Soviet UnionThe classified document makes the case for a world
dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive
behaviour (sic) and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations
from challenging American primacy. (US strategy plan calls for insuring no rivals
develop, by Patrick E Tyler, 8 March 1992). It is within this overall context that US
imperialism is increasingly pressurising the Peoples Republic of China on a whole
range of fronts, from international trade agreements to cyberspace. But it is
currently in the South China Sea where the US is behaving in the most brazenly
provocative fashion, creating a very real danger of an armed clash, something
which, if it transpired, could lead to unpredictable, even catastrophic consequences.
Territorial disputes have existed in the South China Sea, involving China and a
number of its neighbouring countries, for many years, but the region was essentially
tranquil until, in 2010, as part of the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, which
aims to curtail the rise of China, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, at a
regional conference in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, that the US had a strategic
interest in ensuring freedom of navigation in these waters something which,
needless to say, no regional power had threatened. In fact, it is above all China that
relies on freedom of navigation in the region, and especially through such key sea-
lanes as the Straits of Malacca, to secure its vital imports of energy and raw
materials, as well as for its exports. Since Clintons speech, the US has abandoned
any pretence of neutrality, attempting to construct regional alliances against China,
challenging the legitimacy of Chinas claims and engaging in a massive military
build-up in the area, edging closer and closer to Chinas sovereign territory in the
process. On 12 May 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US was
considering deploying military aircraft and warships within 12 nautical miles of
territory claimed by China in the disputed Spratly Islands, specifically targeting
islands where China has engaged in reclamation work, dredging sand from the sea-
bottom to expand the land mass of rocks and shoals it controls in the South China
Sea. The provocative nature of US activity can be seen from the fact that Vietnam,
Taiwan and the Philippines also have military and civilian forces stationed on
disputed islands in the South China Sea. Vietnam and Taiwan, like Beijing, are also
actively engaged in reclamation activity. But China is the sole and exclusive target
of Washingtons verbal rebukes and military posturing. The total land mass
reclaimed by China for the purposes of legitimate infrastructure development
related not least to search and rescue and other humanitarian relief operations
amounts to two square kilometres, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency
Initiative run by the US think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS). This is the equivalent of approximately two golf courses. The Wall Street
Journal quoted an anonymous US defence department official as stating: Ultimately
no matter how much sand China piles on top of a submerged reef or shoal it is
not enhancing its territorial claim. You cant build sovereignty. With these words,
this spokesperson for US imperialism makes clear that they will not allow small
matters like material reality to stand in the way of the course they have set, namely
escalated confrontation with Peoples China. On 31 March, Admiral Harry Harris,
commander of the US Pacific Fleet, denounced Chinas reclamation activity in the
South China Sea as the construction of a great wall of sand. On 22 April, the CSIS
published an article calling on Washington to have a US Navy ship transit within 12
nautical miles of one of these reclaimed features. With a view to defusing the
tensions stoked by Washington, China offered the United States and other countries
joint use of its facilities in the South China Sea for humanitarian rescue and disaster
relief. On 30 April, Chinese Naval Admiral Wu Shengli extended this offer to his US
counterpart, Admiral Jonathan Greenert. Wu added that Chinese activities will not
threaten freedom of navigation and overflight. However, US State Department
acting deputy spokesperson Jeff Rathke said the US was not interested and then
called on China to reduce tensions in the region! In a commentary entitled US
gambit risks conflict with China, Andrew Browne wrote in the Wall Street Journal
that the US is contemplating an option fraught with danger: limited, but direct,
military action. Such a confrontation had already nearly occurred in the waters
immediately outside the 12-nautical mile radius of the reclaimed land. On 11 May,
the USS Fort Worth, a littoral combat ship on a freedom of navigation patrol, was
closely followed by the Yancheng, a Chinese navy guided-missile frigate. The USS
Fort Worth radioed the Yancheng to claim that it was in international waters. If a
confrontation had occurred within the territorial waters of the islands claimed by
China and the Chinese forces had not backed down, there could have been a
military showdown between two heavily armed gunboats. Such a clash could all too
easily spark a far wider war between two nuclear-armed powers, something fraught
with catastrophic consequences. Responding to Washingtons intended
deployment, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated: The
Chinese side advocates the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, yet this
freedom definitely does not mean that foreign military vessels and aircrafts can
enter one countrys territorial waters and airspace at will. China will stay firm in
safeguarding territorial sovereignty. We urge parties concerned to be discreet in
words and actions, avoid taking any risky and provocative actions and safeguard
regional peace and stability. The Beijing-based Global Times was less circumspect,
stating, although war is the last thing they want to see, both nations are actually
considering the possibility. An editorial in the newspaper called on Washington to
keep in mind that China is a major power with nuclear weapons, and there is no way
that US forces can take reckless actions in the South China Sea . The US response
has been to step up its aggressive posturing. On 20 May, the TV channel CNN was
invited to send its news team to accompany a US P8-A Poseidon surveillance aircraft
on a reconnaissance mission near Chinese-controlled islets. Their report made clear
that such operations routinely take place and provoke Chinese warnings eight in
this case even without entering the 12-mile limit. The CNN report claimed that
Chinas alarming creation of entirely new territory in the South China Sea was part
of a broader military push that some fear is intended to challenge US dominance
in the region. US surveillance flights as well as naval patrols have become routine
since January, but the presence of a news team for the first time, providing
breathless coverage of the flight, along with the unprecedented release of video
footage, was clearly aimed at stoking war fever against China among US and
international public opinion. The US sought to further up the ante with the
approach of the Shangri-La Dialogue, held over the last weekend of May. Shangri-La
is an annual defence-related forum held in Singapore under the auspices of the
London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). In recent years, it
has been the setting for some fierce Sino-US exchanges. Speaking in Hawaii days
before the dialogue, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, calling on China to cease
its land reclamation activities, which he insisted were for military purposes,
declared: There should be no mistake about this. The United States will fly, sail,
and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the world. In
other words, under the pretext of freedom of navigation, the US navy and air force
will continue to provocatively intrude into Chinese territorial waters even at the risk
of conflict. On 30 May, Carter repeated the same threat at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
Branding China as the source of tension in the region, he demanded an
immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation in the South China Sea, adding:
We also oppose the further militarisation of disputed features. During question
time following Carters speech, Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Senior
Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo challenged his accusations against China, calling them
groundless and not constructive. He pointed out that freedom of navigation and
overflight had never been at issue in the South China Sea and insisted that Chinas
land reclamation was legitimate and justified. Carter brushed aside these
comments, falsely declaring that the US was doing nothing new in the South China
Sea. During the conference, Carter further condemned China for supposedly being
out of step with international rules and norms and declared that he was
personally committed to the next phase of the US military rebalance, aimed at
encircling China. The Defence Department, he said, will deepen longstanding
alliances and partnerships, diversify Americas force posture, and make new
investments in key capabilities and platforms . He continued: The Department is
investing in the technologies that are most relevant to this complex security
environment, such as new unmanned systems for the air and sea, a new long-range
bomber, and other technologies like the electromagnetic railgun, lasers, and new
systems for space and cyberspace, including a few surprising ones. Carter
emphasised that the US would bring the best platforms and people forward to the
Asia-Pacific. These include the latest Virginia-class [nuclear] submarines, the
Navys P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft, the newest stealth destroyer, the
Zumwalt, and brand-new carrier-based E-2D Hawkeye early-warning-and-control
aircraft . Having outlined this dangerous military build-up, Carter went on,
apparently without a trace of irony, to declare that the US opposed any further
militarisation of disputed features in the South China Sea a reference to two small
mobile artillery guns that the US claims China has placed on one of the islets. While
Washington has worked hard to draw regional countries to its side, clearly some are
prepared to not simply play the US game but rather are aghast at the very real
prospect of conflict. For example, Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin
Hussein warned: If we are not careful it would escalate into one of the deadliest
conflicts of our time, if not our history. However, no such compunction has been
displayed by the Philippines, which has positioned itself as the most loyal and
servile US ally in the region and the most aggressively hostile to China. On 1 June,
speaking to a gathering of Japanese businessmen in Tokyo, Philippine President
Benigno Aquino III outrageously compared Chinas actions with those of Nazi
Germany against Czechoslovakia, repeating almost verbatim comments he made in
a February 2014 interview with the New York Times. However, the only real
comparison to be made with Nazi Germany is US imperialisms unceasing quest for
global hegemony, a quest that increasingly has China, as well as Russia, in its sights
and which therefore carries with it the terrible prospect of a third, nuclear world war.
The working class movement and all anti-imperialists throughout the world have an
absolute duty to stand resolutely alongside the Peoples Republic of China in its just
struggle against US imperialism and in defence of its sovereignty, independence
and the hard-won gains of the Chinese people. In this context, at its Congress held
in November 2014, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (CPGB-
ML) passed the following resolution: Defend the Peoples Republic of China against
US-led imperialist aggression. This congress notes that US imperialism today
openly takes the Peoples Republic of China as its main potential and strategic
adversary. Hence the US war drive against China, as well as Russia, is a
fundamental aspect of the contemporary world situation and many localised
conflicts and crises need to be viewed against this strategic background. This
congress believes that it is the US war drive against China that lies behind the
proclamations by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of a so-called pivot to Asia a
policy that is being aggressively pursued by US imperialism. Congress notes that as
part of this pivot, US imperialism is increasingly attempting to mobilise as many
neighbouring countries, and Asian-Pacific countries in general, as possible to
oppose, harass and encircle China. Congress believes that it is in this context that
US imperialism has aggressively and increasingly intervened in the territorial
disputes among some Asian countries concerning the South China Sea, thereby
seeking to turn bilateral issues into an international crisis so that they might fish in
troubled waters. This congress notes that US imperialism rolled out this approach
with a speech by Hillary Clinton at an international conference in Hanoi, where she
declared that the US had a national interest in maintaining the freedom of
navigation in the South China Sea this despite the fact that no Asian nation has
ever threatened such freedom of navigation. This congress believes that the most
important feature, therefore, of the disputes in the South China Sea is the US drive
to war against socialist China and hence Chinas need and right to take whatever
steps are necessary in its self-defence. Congress notes that China has consistently
maintained that any disputes among the neighbouring countries of the South China
Sea region can and must be resolved peacefully by means of bilateral negotiations,
excluding outside interference, and that, pending a final settlement, the countries
concerned should cooperate to develop and utilise natural resources for mutual
benefit. This congress supports this principled and fair position of the Peoples
Republic of China. In contrast to this, congress notes that US imperialism has
promoted policies of division and confrontation, instigating and extending its
backing, in particular, to the Philippines, as well as, to a somewhat lesser extent,
Vietnam. This congress considers the current discord between China and Vietnam
to be particularly regrettable. China and Vietnam are both socialist countries under
the leadership of the communist party. Both the Chinese and Vietnamese
revolutions were mighty and heroic struggles against imperialism, which greatly
inspired working and oppressed people throughout the world. Congress expresses
its sincere hope that any disputes among socialist countries be resolved peacefully
and amicably on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism,
and that the socialist countries should always cooperate closely in the anti-
imperialist struggle and for the defence and building of socialism. Any discord
among the socialist countries can only benefit our common enemy. This congress
calls on all the Asian countries and peoples to reject imperialist divide and rule, to
resolve any disputes peacefully and to unite in struggle against the common enemy
of all socialist and oppressed nations. This congress renews our partys consistent
defence of the Peoples Republic of China against US-led imperialist moves towards
aggression and war.
 Impact
Imperialist expansion of globalization ensures mass structural violence and
inequality but local acts of resistance can combat global capitalism.
Pilisuk 1 (Marc, earned his PhD in 1961 from the University of Michigan in Clinical
and Social Psychology. A Professor Emeritus at the University of California, he
currently serves on the faculty at the San Francisco-based Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Center where he has taught extensively on conflict resolution,
globalization, ecological psychology and sustainability. Christie, D. J., Wagner, R. V.,
& Winter, D. A. (Eds.). (2001). Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology for
the 21st Century. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.) CTD
Sometimes in history we witness so dramatic a change in the way human beings
live that it affects almost every aspect of how we define what it means to be
human. Globalism is such a phenomena. I have chosen the term globalism to
emphasize the condition of a highly interdependent planet. One aspect of globalism
refers to a global culture in which all people are exposed to similar ideas through
the media. Globalism leads people to wear Western-style clothing, seek greater
consumption regardless of what they already have, and to work hard to get money.
Under globalisms influence, people learn to equate the process of holding elections,
however biased, with democracy, and equate corporate expansion and
technological development with progress. As I shall argue in this paper, globalism
is a pernicious form of structural violence which creates poverty,
diminishes the human sense of agency or control, and harms the
environment. The chapter begins with a review of one of the most vital of human
characteristics, our ca-pacity for making attachments to other people and to the
settings where we live. I show first how the capacity for human bonding, essential to
human development, has evolved historically and how the settings for such
development have changed. I then focus upon those aspects of globalization that
have the most profound effects on us, including structural violence in the
workplace, in womens health, and in domestic terrorism. Finally, I point to the
striking resiliency of people trying to retain and protect the values of caring for each
and for their planet in a growing global community. To understand globalism, it is
useful to examine the opposite condition of localism. For most of human history,
meaningful social interactions occurred in a limited geographic area among a small
local band. People in these groups were typically linked to each other by kinship, but
also economically, socially, and spiritually (Demos, 1970). People valued the lives of
others and the ecology in which they lived because they were directly sustained by
kin and local resources. Connection to other people and to a special place produces
a sense of identity and of security (Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1995; Winter,
1998). The mechanism that assured fulfillment of their ties was caring (Pilisuk &
Parks, 1986). Families and local communities created norms limiting violence that
might undermine their continuity. These pre-industrialized groups should not be
romanticized. These societies were often rigid, highly stratified, and characterized
by the exploitation of the majority for the few. Close living and scarce resources
sometimes resulted in some anger and violence. Local units often preclude privacy
and demand conformity from their members. Those who found themselves in
oppressive families or communities often had no way to leave or to improve their
lot. Some families did not survive. But those kinship groupings that best provided
for the care and safety of their members were able to endure and pass on
theirmethods of assuring supportive behavior. As corporations become the social
group commanding major portions of the waking day, the mechanism that assures
interactive behavior is not caring, but rather marketability. Individual identities
are no longer created solely in small units. Increasingly, identities and measures of
success become the ability to sell oneself to a large corporate entity. Although
family and community life are still retained outside of the corporation, participation
in the marketplace often weakens the feeling of belonging and meaning (Bellah,
Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985; Pilisuk & Parks, 1986). One anthropologist
writing in 1936 expressed the hope that growing industrialization would not further
transform society into a collection of rootless individuals searching in vain for the
bands they had lost (Linton, 1936). HUMAN COSTS OF GLOBALIZATION The
weakening of ties to special people and places has produced more than a nostalgia
for simpler times. First, globalization has come with serious violence to
health and well-being. The change from caring to marketability is harmful first
because it has increased poverty and social marginality. The poor are at a greater
risk for every form of affront to physical health and mental well-being (Browne &
Bassuk, 1997; Syme & Berkman, 1976). Second, globalization harms us
psychologically. The cultural capacities that evolved to provide people with
particular human identities and attachments to other people were developed and
passed on largely in direct, face-to-face contacts. The study of how people learn to
make bonding attachments is one of the major themes both of developmental
psychology (Ainsworth, 1982; Bowlby, 1973) and of feminist theories of
psychological identity (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, 4 & Tarule, 1986). Appreciation
of special people and of special places is still a human need, but such needs are
increasingly met by what corporations will sell us for recreation, leisure, and escape.
These alternatives cater to a basic narcissism, or seeking of pleasure for oneself
(Kanner & Gomes, 1995). For most people, these marketed outlets are not
sufficient. They provide only temporary respite from the pressured activity of the
competitive workplace, and they fail to address the need for intimate social ties, or
for finding creativity in the activities of everyday life. Third, globalization
devastates the natural environment. While global corporations require growth,
the resources of the earth are finite. Corporate growth and the consumption
patterns create harmful accumulations of waste, jeopardizing health and local
communities. For example, toxic wastes from more than 40 countries are shipped to
a single company, Chemical Waste Management in Emelle, Alabama, where the
contamination takes a toll on the mostly AfroAmerican and extremely poor citizens
who live in the area. (Political Ecology Group, 1994). While contaminated
environments have been most harsh for impoverished people of color, problems of
ozone depletion, global warming, depletion of rainforests, loss of fish and other
wildlife, diminished access to clean water, and the presence of airborne
contaminants are problems affecting all people. Solutions to these environmental
dangers are no longer possible within a single country. POVERTY: ITS PSYCHOLOGY
AND ITS DISTRIBUTION The global market has created winners and losers, a
polarization of income greater than at any time since records have been kept. In
1997, the worlds 477 billionaires (up from 358 the year before) had combined
earnings greater than the poorer half of the entire worlds population (Korten,
1999). Corporate growth increased 11 percent, and CEOs from the major
corporations in-creased their incomes by 50 percent. Of the 100 largest economies
in the world, 51 are now corporations rather than nation-states (Hacker, 1997;
Korten, 1995). Between 1950 and 1997, the world economy grew six-fold, to a total
of $29 trillion. Yet each year, twelve million children under five years of age
die33,000 per daythe overwhelming majority from preventable illnesses. An
equal number survive with permanent disabilities that could have been prevented
(U.N. Development Programme, 1997). Wealthy nations like the United States are
not immune from devastating economic polarization. In 1996, the top 5 percent of
U.S. households collected 21.4 percent of the national income, the highest level
ever recorded. The income of the lowest 20 percent decreased by 11 percent
(Hacker, 1997; U.S. Census, 1997a). In that time period, approximately 20 million
Americans did not have enough to eata 50 percent rise since 1985 (U.S. Census,
1997b). Twenty-one million people used food banks or soup kitchens, but 70,000
people were turned away when supplies ran out (Alaimo, Briefel, Frongillo, & Olson,
1988; Lamison-White, 1997). Close to 2 million people become homeless each year
(Fagan, 1998). Limited material resources are not the only plight of poor people.
Poverty inflicts psychological scars as well; it is an experience of scarcity
amidst affluence. For many reasons, such as those discussed by Opotow (this
volume), poverty produces the scorn of others and the internalized scorn of oneself.
Indigence is not just about money, roads, or TVs, but also about the power to
determine how local resources will be used to give meaning to lives. The power of
global corporations in local communities forces people to depend on benefits from
afar. Projected images of the good life help reduce different cultural values to the
one global value of money. Meanwhile, money becomes concentrated in fewer
hands. The world is dividing into a small group ofhaves and a growing group of
paupers. This division of wealth inflicts a level of structural violence that
kills many more persons than have died by all direct acts of violence and
by war. STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN THE WORKPLACE Modern trade
agreements have released giant corporations to move where environmental
restrictions are absent, taxes low, and labor cheap. As a result, workers suffer. For
example, in an Indonesian factory contracting for Nike, the working conditions are
hot and crowded, yet drinking water is rationed. A worker must get a permission slip
to use the bathroom. She also has to come in when sick to get permission from the
company doctor to stay home. If she cannot do soeven with a note from her own
doctorshe is forced upon her return to undergo a two-hour public scolding. A
worker of 28 is considered old for the work and can expect to be dismissed. The
women suffer sexual harassment from guards touching their bodies to verify that
they are not stealing shoe parts (Rhodes, 1997a). People who have no other
alternative seek these jobs in Indonesia. Bad as the situation is, people suffer even
more as these jobs are being lost to people who will work for even less in Vietnam,
Haiti, China, and Pakistan. For example, of the 1,000 employees of the Keyhinge
Toys factory in Da Nang, Vietnam, 90 percent are women 17 to 20 years old. They
make the giveaway toy characters from Disney films for McDonalds Happy Meals.
These workers are exposed to acetone fumes, while management refuses to pay
health insurance. Women at Keyhinge received six to eight cents an hour in 1997.
Wages failed to cover 20 percent of the daily food and travel costs for a single
worker, let alone her family (Pilisuk, 1998). The CEO of Disney, by contrast, earned
$203 million in the same year (Rhodes, 1997b). Like most of the countries
permitting sweatshops, Indonesia forbids independent unions. The official
government union, run by retired military officers, deducts dues from paychecks
and suppresses workers who express grievances. When conditions become
intolerable, massive walkouts occur. After the workers negotiate an agreement and
return to work, the police interrogate suspected leaders. For example, Cicih, a
young woman, worked at a Nike contractor factory in Indonesia. In 1992, she and
several others led almost all of the 6,500 workers to strike over wages and working
conditions. The normal work day was ten and a half hours with forced overtime
three times a week. Pay was about $2.10 a day in U.S. dollars (Bissel, 1997). These
workers were fired and blacklisted so they cannot find further employment (Rhodes,
1997c). The neutral position taken by Nike was to leave such matters to the
Indonesian Supreme Court, meaning that Cicih may not live to see her case
decided. In 1997, the Court ruled on only 24 cases out of 2,000. Nike claims to pay
above the minimum wage. But to attract investment, Indonesia, like many other
nations, sets the minimum wage below the poverty line (Rhodes, 1997c). Here,
structural violence is appalling but insidious: The global corporations do not inflict
the harsh treatment directly. They merely encourage harm by investing capital
where such conditions bring the best returns. Dehumanizing Work in Developed and
Developing Countries Free trade agreements affect community well-being on both
sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. In 1997, U.S. President Clinton paid a visit to
Mexico on Cinco de Mayo to promote the next phase of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He spoke to thousands of Mexican businessmen about
the success of free trade. Like the United States, Mexico has a new group of
millionaires. Unemployment, however, has reached an all-time high. The Mexican
military needed massive numbers of soldiers to buttress police efforts in clearing
out a protest that appeared immense enough to bring Mexico City, the largest city
in the world, to a close. Military backup and virtual press blackouts are not
surprising when one considers the corporate stakes on both sides of the border.
Real wages in Mexico have dropped since the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs was signed in 1995. The number of workers, called maquiladoras, working
just over the border has increased by 45 percent, while their average earnings have
dropped from one dollar an hour to 70 cents. The extent of desperation leads to
violence. Within the past decade, the peasants of Northern Tabasco organized a
hunger strike until death, while the Zapatistas arose to rebel against harsh military
suppression of displaced workers in Chiapas and Guerara (Harvey, 1998).
Meanwhile, the Alfred Angelo Company, founded in 1940 in Philadelphia,
demonstrates the ugly brutality of structural violence produced by
globalism. For generations, a skilled and dedicated workforce helped the Piccione
family become a premiere bridal gown company, supplying the best-known labels
and marketing through the J.C. Penney catalog. Annual sales for this company rose
from $45 million in 1985, when Piccione acquired the license to produce and market
Christian Dior bridal gowns, to $59 million in 1996. The company eliminated most
of its U.S. jobs, including the 70 workers in the unionized Philadelphia-area cutting
and handling center, and over 200 workers in shops in New York City (Rhodes,
1997d). Some of the gowns made with the Alfred Angelo label are being sewn in
Guatemala and China. It is difficult to know the conditions under which the clothes
were made in China. However, in April 1997, a survey of three factories in
Guatemala producing for Alfred Angelo revealed widespread violations of that
countrys laws, including use of child labor, illegal wage and hour schedules, and
life-threatening safety conditions. Fourteen- and 15-year-olds worked ten and eleven
hours a day, earning less than minimum wage. Some worked until 2:00 A.M. and
had to return at 7:00 A.M. the same day for a full shift. This schedule violated Alfred
Angelos own code of conduct for foreign vendors as well as Guatemalan laws
requiring time off for children to go to school. Two years earlier, workers in one
factory attempted to organize and there were mass firings (Rhodes, 1997d). The
company claimed business reasons to explain its elimination of jobs in the United
States. The reason is similar to that offered by Phillips Van Heusen (PVH), a major
producer of apparel for export, for choosing to close the only factory in Guatemala
that had finally secured a collective bargaining agreement after a six-year struggle.
PVH is the leading U.S. marketer of mens shirts, and owns not only the Van Heusen
label but also Izod, Gant, Geoffrey Beene, Bass, and others. In neither the PVH nor
the Angelo case were the labor cuts needed to stay in business. The cuts were
made because the companies could make more profit through contractors and
because their competition could be expected to do the same. The PVH situation has
resulted in protests across the United States. Some of the Philadelphia community
rallied behind the Alfred Angelo workers. Local newspapers have written editorials in
support of the workers fight to save their jobs. In speeches and rallies, Alfred
Angelo employees have allied themselves with the exploited workers in Guatemala
and China, demanding an end to exploitation of workers in sewing factories in the
United States and abroad. But the people of Philadelphia will not be able to find
legal support for economic pressure to keep their jobs when restrictions on trade are
eliminated. The rights of municipalities to engage in boycotts, like those which
helped to end apartheid in South Africa, or which oppose brutal dictatorial practices
in Burma, are currently being viewed as restrictions on trade. The
MultilateralAgreement on Investments is soon likely to make nations and local
governments liable for any restrictions upon foreign investments that might result
from such protective regulations as environmental safety or living wage
requirements (Campaign for Labor Rights, 1998; Rauber, 1998). GLOBALIZATIONS
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE ON WOMENS HEALTH Wherever the global economy
expands into poor areas and replaces the means for local livelihood, HIV spreads
among poor women (Daily, Farmer, Rhatigan, Katz, & Furin, 1995). Lacking decent
legal employment, the women become involved with drug traffickers and
prostitution. Prostitution is an outgrowth of structural violence. The United Nations
estimates that in 1997, there were 57 million women and child prostitutes. Thirty
thousand hospitality girls are registered in the Philippines, but the actual number
of prostitutes is about 75,000 (Rosenfeld, 1997). Originally, these prostitutes served
two large American military bases, welcomed in the Philippines under the dictatorial
regime of Ferdinand Marcos. After Marcos was forced from power, Subic Air Force
Base was turned into a free-trade zone, bringing in 150 large corporations (Barry,
1995; Rosenfeld, 1997). The AsiaPacific Economic Forum considered the Philippines
the best place for investment among ten Asian Pacific countries. The benefits,
however, have not reached the women, who continue to sell their bodies even with
the increased risk of HIV infection. Meanwhile, the Ukraine has surpassed Thailand
as the center of the global business in trafficking women. Young European women
are in demand, and the Ukraine, economically devastated by its entrance into the
global economy, has provided the supply. Thirty applicants compete for every job in
the Ukraine. The average salary today is less than thirty dollars a month, but
onlyhalf that in the small towns where criminal gangs recruit women with promises
of employment in other countries (Specter, 1998). In Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan
Africa, and U.S. cities, the livelihood choices open to poor women are restricted. The
HIV epidemic is spreading rapidly among poor women of color. The incidence is high
wherever the global economy replaces the means for local livelihood (Daily et al.,
1995). The increase is combined with minimal access to treatment, which is also
limited by the low tax base needed to lure global capital. Since 1987, AIDS has
been the leading cause of death among 1545-year-old Black and Latina women in
NYC (Simmons, Farmer, & Schoepf, 1995, pp. 4243). Between seven and ten
thousand American children are orphaned each year when their mothers die from
AIDS (Gardner & Preator, 1996). GLOBAL FACTORS IN DOMESTIC TERRORISM When
decent working-class jobs move from the United States to countries with cheap
labor and less environmental regulation, displaced workers seek scapegoats. This
loss has led to acts of terrorism. People like Timothy McVeigh, charged with the
1995 bombing of a U.S. Federal Building in Oklahoma, and bombers of Black
churches, are depicted by the media as deranged. This portrayal conceals
similarities in their ideologies and in their options. Many of these former workers
blame the governments affinity for racial minorities and immigrants, who are
getting jobs deserved by true Americans. One common view is that wealthy
Jewish bankers control government policies in a conspiratorial effort to create a
world government that would prevent people from defending themselves (Abanes,
1996; Lamy, 1996). But for the fact that some of 12 these extremists have guns and
military training, one might dismiss them as sociopaths unable to find a useful
purpose. There is, however, no useful purpose open to them. Half the U.S. working
population has suffered falling or stagnant wages for about 20 years. The media tell
us that the good life can be purchased on credit. But millions lack the education to
participate in a global economy. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich confronted
the inability of government to provide such education. However, his Putting People
First, the populist plan to train people for skilled jobs, has been sacrificed.
Balancing the budget, setting interest rates to satisfy Wall Street, and reducing
trade barriers are policies that require cutting the safety net (Reich, 1997a; 1997b).
In many cases, corporation lobbyists write legislation, manage press releases, and
establish as much access as can be bought in Washington (Domhoff, 1971; Seager,
1994; Silverstein, 1998). Hence we can see why the Senate has yet to ratify the
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, a worldwide treaty
that has been ratified by 136 other countries, including the G-7 nations. The treaty
outlines a range of civil and human rights principles, including fair wages, right to
work, and nondiscriminationall constraints upon economic expansion (Rauber,
1998). Corporation-friendly laws do not reflect an evil scheme. They are
consequences of the limited place left for government in a global economy. A
GLOBAL MONOCULTURE OF THE MIND Perhaps the greatest challenge posed by
globalism is how to retain the vital diversity of human voices and communities.
Factory piece-workers do the same assembly work the world over. One can buy
identical products from similar chain stores around the globe. Uniform standards for
people and products increase profitability. Standardization yields low overhead
costs, less customer service, and greater profits. The benefits of this efficiency are
not well-distributed. Three-quarters of the money spent locally for a universally
marketed fast food hamburger will leave the community, subsidizing global
corporations with local resources (Gour & Gunn, 1991; Hanauer, 1998).
Centralized control of the media contributes to skepticism that local voices can be
heard (Pilisuk, Parks, & Hawkes, 1987). Similar global economic factors are
considered important in explaining the lack of involvement by adolescents in social
issues (Damon, 1998). Under globalization, the opportunity for distinctive
voices to be heard is reduced, yet the voices of local residents are needed
to address issues raised by global expansion.
 Alternative
The alternative is an intellectual challenge to the geopolitical
knowledge of the affirmative which reinforces the worldview of
the powerful by making room for histories of resistance to the
global order
Routledge 03 (Paul, Researcher at the School of Geography, A Companion to
Political Geography, BlackWell Publishing) JA
Geopolitical knowledge tends to be constructed from positions and
locations of political, economic, and cultural power and privilege. Hence, the
histories of geo-politics have tended to focus upon the actions of states and their
elites, understating rebellion and overemphasizing statemanship. However, the
geopolitical policies enacted by states, and the discourses articulated by their
policy-makers have rarely gone without some form of contestation by those who
have faced various forms of domination, exploitation, and/or subjection which result
from such practices. As Foucault has noted, "there are no relations of power without
resistances...like power, resistance is multiple and can be integrated in global
strategies" (1980, p. 142). Indeed, myriad alternative stories can be recounted
which frame history from the perspective of those who have engaged in resistance
to the state and the practices of geopolitics. These histories keep alive the memory
of people's resistances, and in doing so suggest new definitions of power that are
not predicated upon military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, and
cultural control (Zinn, 1980). These histories of resistance can be
characterized as a "geopolitics from below" emanating from subaltern (i.e.
dominated) positions within society that challenge the military, political,
economic, and cultural hegemony of the state and its elites. These
challenges are counter-hegemonic struggles in that they articulate
resistance to the coercive force of the state - in both domestic and foreign
policy - as well as withdrawing popular consent to be ruled "from above."
They are expressions of what I would term "anti-geopolitics." Drawing upon Konrad's
(1984) notion of antipolitics, anti-geopolitics can be conceived as an ethical,
political, and cultural force within civil society - i.e. those institutions and
organizations which are neither part of the processes of material production
in the economy, nor part of state-funded or state-controlled organizations
(e.g. religious institutions, the media, voluntary organizations, educational
institutions, and trades unions) - that challenges the notion that the interests
of the state's political class are identical to the community's interests.
Anti-geopolitics represents an assertion of permanent independence from the
state whomever is in power, and articulates two interrelated forms of counter-
hegemonic struggle. First, it challenges the material (economic and military)
geopolitical power of states and global institutions ; and second, it
challenges the representations imposed by political and economic elites
upon the world and its different peoples, that are deployed to serve their
geopolitical interests. Anti-geopolitics can take myriad forms, from the
oppositional discourses of dissident intellectuals to the strategies and
tactics of social movements (although the former may frequently be speaking on
behalf of the latter). While anti-geopolitical practices are usually located within the
political boundaries of a state, with the state frequently being the principal
opponent, this is not to suggest that anti-geopolitics is necessarily localized. For
example, with the intensity of the processes of globalization, social movements are
increasingly operating across regional, national and international scales, integrating
resistance into global strategies, as they challenge elite international institutions
and global structures of domination.' Historically, anti-geopolitics has been
articulated against both colonialism and the Cold War. Resistances posed to
colonialism took two forms. First, there were challenges to the (mis)representation
of other cultures and places as primitive, savage, and uneducated, in need of
Western civilization and enlightenment. For example, in the classic text
Orientalism, Edward Said (1978) shows how such representations were
"imaginative geographies" or fictional realities, that shaped the West's
perception and experience of other places and cultures. Through an analysis of
various texts written by Westerners during colonial times, Said shows how these
representations were constructed around essentialist conceptions of (non-
Western) others that equated difference with inferiority, and served to
inform and legitimate geopolitical strategies of control and colonization by
the Western countries, as they subjected other territories to military conquest and
commercial exploitation. Second, there were material challenges to colonialism,
through violent and nonviolent struggle waged by national liberation movements
(e.g. in India and Kenya against the British, and in Vietnam and Algeria against the
French). Writing about the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, Fanon (1963, 1965) has
argued that decolonization entails both the physical removal of the occupier from
one's territory and the decolonization of the mind (see also Ngugi, 1986). This
involves opposition to power, and articulates two interrelated forms of counter-
hegemonic struggle. First, it challenges the material (economic and military)
geopolitical power of states and global institutions; and second, it challenges the
representations imposed by political and economic elites upon the world and its
different peoples, that are deployed to serve their geopolitical interests. Concerning
the Cold War, there were challenges to the domination by the USA and the Soviet
Union of their respective "spheres of influence" - Latin America and Western Europe,
in the case of the USA, and Eastern Europe in the case of the Soviet Union - and to
their military interventions in the Third World (e.g. US intervention in Vietnam, and
Soviet intervention in Afghanistan). Such challenges took intellectual and material
forms. A prominent intellectual challenge to US interventions was
conducted by a group of scholars known as "dependency theorists," who
variously sought to analyze the extent to which the political economy of
developing countries was influenced by a global economy dominated by
the advanced capitalist countries (e.g. see Amin, 1976; Cardoso and Faletto,
1979; Frank, 1967). Material challenges took the form of numerous peasant guerrilla
movements which emerged throughout Central and Latin America that attempted to
challenge authoritarian regimes and allieviate poverty - such as the Cuban
Revolution of 1959, and the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 (see Armstrong and
Shenk, 1982; Dixon and Jonas, '1 984; Pearce, I981 ) - and national liberation
struggles against US intervention such as in Vietnam (e.g. see Chailand, 1977,
1982). These struggles were often supported by anti-war and solidarity movements
in the USA and Western Europe. Despite Soviet military dominance within Eastern
Europe, popular uprisings against Soviet occupation and control periodically
surfaced within its "satellites" - in the German Democratic Republic in 1953, in
Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and in Poland in 1981. Although these
expressions of opposition proved unsuccessful, they were indicative of broader
counter-hegemonic currents within the Soviet bloc. What first came to the notice of
the West as "dissent" - articulated by dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov (in the
USSR), and Vaclav Havel (1985) in Czechoslovakia - was symptomatic of the
development within the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries of various
independent initiatives that emerged "from below." These sought to extend the
space available within society for autonomous action out of the control and
discipline of state political culture, articulating a "second culture." Moreover, such
dissent set up parallel - and frequently underground - organizational forms that
challenged the state's claims to truth and sought to strengthen the development of
an independent civil society (e.g. the Czechoslovakia-based human rights group
Charter 77). The dissident movements in Eastern Europe also forged links
with what proved to be the largest popular resistance against the Cold
War itself, the Peace Movement, which opposed the deployment of Cruise and
Pershing missiles in Europe by NATO and S5205 by the Soviet Union. The movement
comprised a variety of anti-nuclear and anti-militarist groups, including the Nuclear
Freeze in the USA, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Britain, and the
European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement. This movement posed both
representational and material challenges to the Cold War. Material
challenges took the form of a variety of nonviolent direct actions,
demonstrations, and peace camps throughout Western Europe and the USA (e.g.
see Harford and Hopkins, 1984. McAllister, 1988]. Representational challenges
articulated a theoretical critique of the Cold War, voicing opposition to the
superpower arms race and the division of Europe into ideological and
militarized blocs. For example, 15.1'. Thompson (1985) argued that the
expansionist ideologies of the USA and the Soviet Union were the driving
force of the Cold War, each legitimated through the threat of a demonized
other (communism and capitalism respectively). Thompson also argued that in
reality the principle threat of the Cold War was not the demonized other, but
rather was within each of the superpower blocs, i.e. the peace movements of the
Western bloc, and the dissident movements of the Eastern bloc. These
movements articulated both material challenges to superpower militarism
- through direct action, underground organizations, etc. - and an intellectual
challenge to the geopolitical othering that the Cold War was predicated
upon. Their calls for international solidarity, rather than antagonism, were seen as
a threat to the power of political elites within each bloc to determine geopolitical
spheres of influence. Moreover, by attempting to revitalize spaces of public
autonomy, these movements challenged each superpower's ability to
control public opinion (see Albert and Dillenger, 1983; Smith and Thompson,
1987).
Links
 Diplomacy
Diplomacy and geopolitics are imperialist strategies towards
the same end.
Callincos 9(Alex, Professor of European Studies (social theory and international
political economy at kings college, IMPERIALISM AND GLOBAL POLITICAL
ECONOMY p. 15-16)SDL
The thought is, then, that capitalist imperialism is constituted by the intersection of
two forms of competition, namely economic and geopolitical. Economic competition
we have already encountered as one of the two interconnected relations
constitutive of capital. Geopolitical competition compromises the rivalries among
states over security, territory, influence, and the like. Let me mention what seem to
me three merits of this way of conceptualizing imperialism. First, it is historically
open. Geopolitical competition plainly antedates capitalism: the Greek city-states
and the absolute monarchs of early modern Europe pursued it with great gusto. The
historical moment of capitalist imperialism is when the interstate rivalries become
integrated into the larger processes of capital accumulation - something that
happens as the selective advantage of having a capitalist economic base imposes
itself on states, but which takes several centuries - starting with the Dutch Revolt,
but becoming inescapable in the late nineteenth century. Secondly, it is a non-
reductionist treatment of imperialism. The Marxist theory of imperialism, and indeed
of the state more generally, is sometimes caricatured as reducing the motivations
behind public policy to direct economic interests. It is tempting to say that the Bush-
Cheney administration - memorably described by Mike Davis as the executive
committee of the American Petroleum Institute - showed that the caricature is
sometimes true. Nevertheless, the idea that imperialism involves the convergence
of geopolitical and economic competition opens the door to a much more nuanced
approach to the formation of state policy. Even under Bush, the US wasn't driven
primarily by the desire to put money in the coffers of Halliburton. Indeed, the
preoccupations of Paul Wolfowitz, now disgraced but once the key neocon, involved
a much more complex analysis of the potentially destabilizing impact of economic
changes - in particular, the expansion of East Asian capitalism - on the global
distribution of power. Clobbering Iraq, on this perspective, was about warning off
potential 'peer competitors', as well as tightening Washington's grasp on the oil
supplies on which all its rivals depend more than it does. More generally, the
simultaneous operation of both economic and geopolitical determinations
introduces a degree of indeterminacy into INTRODUCTION the formation of state
policy, one that has the merit of allowing some free play to other dimensions of the
social. For example, scope is allowed for ideology - plainly a key topic, given the
importance of a Wilsonian conception of a global liberal capitalist order in shaping
US foreign policy over the past century. It is here also perhaps that the issues
highlighted by the so-called 'neo-Gramscian' school in international relations - the
effort by an actual or aspiring hegemonic power culturally and politically to
integrate the ruling classes of other states - might find some purchase.
 Econ
FTA expansionism is imperialist institutions crack open
markets for western powers.
Callincos 9 (Alex, Professor of European Studies (social theory and international
political economy at kings college, IMPERIALISM AND GLOBAL POLITICAL
ECONOMY p. 6)SDL
This phrase very accurately captures a key feature of how the world is presently
organized. The imperialism of free trade is exactly what the EU, as well as the US,
have been pressing on other countries, particularly since the establishment of the
World Trade Organization in the mid-1990s. Boosters of the flat world of globalized
capitalism, such as Friedman, are effectively propagandizing for this very aggressive
attempt to crack open the markets of the world for the capital and commodities of
the North. But, although Brussels has been a very active partner in this process of
forcing trade liberalization through globally, this has been a much longer-term
project for Washington. The Imperialism of the Open Door is the name that William
Appleman Williams gave to the project on which American economic and political
elites converged at the beginning of the twentieth century. 2 3 Formal colonies can
be expensive and difficult to run, as the US discovered when it annexed the
Philippines after the Spanish-American War, only to be confronted with a pattern of
national resistance, imperial atrocity and domestic opposition that was to be
repeated in Vietnam and Iraq. Far better to leave the locals to run themselves, so
long as they don't interfere INTRODUCTION with the free movement of capital and
goods, with military power - preferably in the form of offshore aerial and naval
bombardment - in the background to deal with anyone who fails to respect the
sacred flows of money and commodities. It is when we confront this updated version
of the Victorian imperialism of free trade that we get closer to what makes modern
imperialism distinctive. Max Horkheimer wrote in his famous essay 'The Jews and
Europe', first published in 1940, that 'those who do not wish to speak of capitalism
should be silent about fascism'. 2 4 I think Horkheimer was right about fascism, but
his remark could be applied to imperialism: modern imperialism is capitalist
imperialism. Of course, this is very far from being news. As I have already noted, the
Marxist theory of imperialism has been defined, since its initial formulation before
and during the First World War, by the claim that the geopolitical struggles among
the Great Powers for global domination were a consequence of changes in the
structure of capitalism at the end of the nineteenth century - in particular, the
increasing concentration of economic power and its interweaving with the state.

Economic engagement with developing countries is the oldest

form of imperialism the aff is a reproduction of the Monroe
doctrine.
Slater 10 (David Slater (2010) Rethinking the Imperial Difference: towards an
understanding of USLatin American encounters, Third World Quarterly, 31:2, 185-
206)
For example, in his study of imperialism at the beginning of the 20th century,
Hobson argued that in the case of the US, the American mission of civilisation, and
spirit of adventure were clearly less important in explaining imperialism than
the driving force of the economic factor .16 Similarly, Hannah Arendt
contended that economic expansion was the central political idea of
imperialism, and that imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist
production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion.17 It is
certainly the case that economic expansion cannot be ignored, especially if we
include the ever-pressing need for resources, outlets for US goods, sources of direct
investment and overall macroeconomic stability. In the late 19th century the Open
Door Policy was the first clear expression of an indirect imperialism of free trade,
whereby the USs preponderant economic strength entered and dominated the
underdeveloped areas of the world, a policy which continued into the 20th century.
It still needs to be argued, however, that our understanding of imperial power has to
be more multilayered. Imperial power requires a geopolitical discourse which comes
to be rooted in society as a whole, and which is disseminated by influential sectors
of that society. Along these lines, Williams suggests that it is quite possible for
people to act on the basis of a broad, inclusive integration of information and
desires, wherein a framing conception of the world interprets data in such a way
that political, religious or cultural values may be held to be key, whereas in other
instances economic factors may be central.18 At the beginning of the 19th century
the US was already characterised by an imperial mentality. In 1809, for example,
Thomas Jefferson commented that, no constitution was ever before as well
calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government (quoted in Williams
2007, p 60). The idea of the United States as a nation with an imperial destiny was
expressed by a host of writers, politicians, and business leaders during the
nineteenth century and beyond; Thomas Paine, for example, remarked that we
have it in our power to begin the world over again.19 And in a somewhat more
restrained manner Senator Henry Cabot Lodge declared in 1895 that we must be
the leaders in the Western Hemisphere.20 Throughout and beyond the 19th
century the emerging imperial power of the US was codified through, inter alia, the
Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the concept of Manifest Destiny, which surfaced in the
1840s at the time of the USMexico war, the Open Door Policy of the 1890s and
the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904. The Monroe Doctrine was a statement of
differentiation from Europe, and of leadership of the Americas, with the newly
emerging republics of Latin America referred to as the southern brethren. The
notion of manifest destiny captured the sense in which the US was envisaged as
possessing a geopolitically predestined role of becoming a global power, and the
Open Door Policy, as noted above, was designed to open the worlds and in
particular Chinas market to American manufactured goods. The Roosevelt Corollary
assigned to the US a role of international police power; wherever there was
considered to be chaos and disorder, or threats to civilisation in the countries to the
south of the US, intervention would be justified. We may want to add to these four
signposts of emerging imperial power President Woodrow Wilsons Fourteen Points
speech at the end of the First World War, which emphasised the significance of self-
determination, freedom of the seas, economic openness, non-intervention and
disarmament. The result for Wilson would be a world of sovereign states committed
to the principles of liberal democracy and free enterpriseWilson declared, as a
clear example of US universalism, that these are American principles, American
policies . . . and they are the principles of mankind and must prevail.21

Forcing Developing economies into the global economic order

is the textbook example of modern imperialism.
Routledge 03 (Paul, Researcher at the School of Geography, A Companion to
Political Geography, BlackWell Publishing) JA
With the revolutions of 1989, the demise of the Soviet Union, and the Gulf War of
1990-91, the geopolitical discourse of the USA in particular, and the West in
general, has shifted from that of the Cold War to that of the so-called "new world
order." The Gulf War provided the rationale for this new discourse, which has
geopolitical and geoeconomic dimensions. The geopolitical dimension involves
the maintenance of the US national security state, and the legitimation of
(continued) US military and economic intervention around the world in order
to ensure "freedom" and "democracy." The geoeconomic dimension of the
new world order involves the doctrine of transnational liberalism or, as it is
also called, neoliberalism. The fundamental principal of this doctrine is
"economic liberty" for the powerful: that is, that an economy must be free from
the social and political "impediments," "letters." And "restrictions" placed upon it by
states trying to regulate in the name of the public interest. These "impediments" -
which include national economic regulations, social programs, and class
compromises (i.e. national bargaining agreements between employers and trade
unions, assuming these are allowed) - are considered barriers to the free flow
of trade and capital, and the freedom of transnational corporations to
exploit labor and the environment in their best interests. Hence, the
doctrine argues that national economies should be deregulated (e.g. through the
privatization of state enterprises) in order to promote the allocation of resources by
"the market" which, in practice, means by the most powerful. As a result of the
power of international organizations like the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to enforce the
doctrine of neo- liberalism upon developing states desperately in need of the
finances under their control, there has been a drastic reduction in
government spending on health, education, welfare, and environmental
protection across the world. This has occurred as states strive to reduce inflation
and satisily demands to open their markets to transnational corporations and capital
inflows from abroad. Trans- national liberalism celebrates capital mobility and "fast
capitalism," the decentral- ization of production away from developed states and
the centralization of control of the world economy in the hands of transnational
corporations and their allies in key government agencies (particularly those of the
seven most powerful countries, the (5-7), large international banks, and institutions
like the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. As transnational corporations have
striven to become "leaner and meaner" in this highly competitive global
environment, they have engaged in massive cost-cutting and "downsizing,"
reducing the costs of wages, health care provisions, and environmental
protections in order to make production more competitive.The US empire is
on its way to collapse. The Roman Empire and USSR prove.

Globalization necessitates the creation of subaltern groups

destroys the value to life
Behrman 16 (Simon Behrman joined the Law School from Birkbeck, University of
London, where he completed his LLB and MRes. He has recently successfully
completed his PhD. Migration and Neoliberalism: Creating Spaces of Resistance.
Historical Materialism 24(1) (2016) 217231) CTD
The insecurities of neoliberalism give rise to attempts at reassertion of the
sovereign subject through performative acts of border control and distinctions
between citizens and non-citizens. For McNevin, Irregular migrants have become
scapegoats for a series of rapid transformations that rupture long-held certainties
about where and with whom our political cleavages and affiliations lie. (p. viii.) The
rapid rise of far-right nationalist parties such as Pauline Hansons One Nation in
Australia is an expression of an anxious population insecure in the face of an
apparently unstoppable globalizing trajectory and in need of reassurance about
more familiar forms of territorial control. (p. 76.) Post-9/11, these economically-
driven insecurities were joined with anxieties associated with border security
against terrorist outsiders. Both of the elements thus combined in framing the
uncertain shape of a deterritorialized world (p. 77). At the same time, what
McNevin refers to as the neoliberal state is faced with its own dilemma. State
sovereignty is grounded in territorial control and its duties to those who are
themselves rooted within that space the citizenry. But the rise of neoliberal
globalisation, with its emphases on the free movement of capital and the inevitable
trumping of domestic norms by global markets, creates tensions at the heart of the
traditional ideas of sovereignty and citizenship. Territorial control begins to leak in
the face of multinational and finance-capitals ability to disrupt the smooth
functioning of domestic orders. For workers, the sense that their state will act to
protect jobs and the standard of living in the face of competition from other states
has been seriously eroded. One solution to this is the reassertion of the
border. The frontier remains an entity over which the nation-state, by definition,
retains absolute control. Thus the policing of this line always re-establishes the fact
of sovereign authority what McNevin refers to as the performance of sovereignty.
Each act of interdiction, arrest, incarceration, and deportation helps to re-establish
the meaningfulness of territory in spite of a globalizing age and to reinforce the
naturalness of the citizen-state-territory constellation. (p. 59.) At the same time,
such performances play to the desire of workers to see their state protect their
space. Thus governments make a play at demonstrating loyalty to their own citizen-
workers and, simultaneously, creating a greater sense of us through the
reassertion of the border as keeping the alien them out (p. 78). The result of this is
that the tide of globalisation is kept, at least partially, at bay. The fact that these
performances are merely fictional representations of reality, i.e. the impossibility of
absolutely controlling borders, especially those such as the USAs 3000-mile frontier
with Mexico, and the false notion that restrictions on immigration lead to better
conditions for indigenous workers, does not detract from the fact that such
performances create useful narratives to counteract the fears engendered by
rampant neoliberalism
 Tokenization
Chinese economists get censored and are tokenized
Wei 16 (Lingling, Writer for the Washington Journal, 5-3, China Presses
Economists to Brighten Their Outlooks, http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-presses-
economists-to-brighten-their-outlooks-1462292316) JW

BEIJINGChinese
authorities are training their sights on a new set of targets:
economists, analysts and business reporters with gloomy views on the
countrys economy. Securities regulators, media censors and other government officials have issued
verbal warnings to commentators whose public remarks on the economy are out of step with the governments
The
upbeat statements, according to government officials and commentators with knowledge of the matter.
stepped-up censorship, many inside and outside the ruling Communist Party
say, represents an effort by Chinas leadership to quell growing concerns
about the countrys economic prospects as it experiences a prolonged
slowdown in growth. As more citizens try to take money out of the country, officials say, regulators and
censors are trying to foster an environment of what party officials have dubbed zhengnengliang, or positive
energy. In the past, Chinese authorities have targeted mainly political dissidents while commentary about the
economy and reporting on business has been left relatively unfettered in a tacit acknowledgment that a freer flow
But Beijing has moved to reassert control of the
of information serves economic vitality.
countrys economic story line after policy stumbles that contributed to
selloffs in Chinas stock markets and its currency last year fed doubts among
investors about the governments ability to navigate the slowdown. Lin Caiyi, chief
economist at Guotai Junan Securities Co. who has been outspoken about rising corporate debt, a glut of housing
and the weakening Chinese currency, received a warning in recent weeks, officials and commentators said. It was
her second. The first came from the securities regulator, and the later one, these people said, from her state-owned
firms compliance department, which instructed her to avoid making overly bearish remarks about the economy,
particularly the currency. Pressured by financial regulators bent on stabilizing the market, stock analysts at
At least one Chinese
brokerage firms are becoming wary of issuing critical reports on listed companies.
think tank, meanwhile, was told by propaganda officials not to cast doubt on
a planned government program to help state companies reduce debt,
economists familiar with the matter say. While evidence of the clampdown is
anecdotal, it appears widespread. Government departments didnt respond
to requests for comment or declined to comment. During the past two
months, the Communist Party leadership has been talking up the economy to
try to reassure global markets. This message control risks further constraining information about the
worlds second-largest economy, thereby deepening the anxieties of investors who already doubt the reliability of
official statistics and statements.

Chinese economists are censored and get tokenized

Wei 16 (Lingling, Writer for the Washington Journal, 5-3, China Presses
Economists to Brighten Their Outlooks, http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-presses-
economists-to-brighten-their-outlooks-1462292316) JW
Vigorous debate among economists and public confidence in this conversation is critical if China is to successfully
navigate the choppy economic waters, said Scott Kennedy, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington think tank.
If the party and government only want to
hear good news, then theyd be better off hearing nothing because the value
of the words would be less than zero. A broad-ranging tightening of controls
on society has been under way in recent years as President Xi Jinping tries to gird the party and
Targets thus far have
build public support for a rocky economic transition after decades of growth.
included activist lawyers, social media personalities, foreign nonprofit groups
and party members who criticize policies. While restrictions on foreign media
have always been tight, they are becoming tighter; a growing list of foreign publications
have had their websites blocked from view within China, including The Wall Street Journal. Some lower-level
government officials describe a siege mentality that took hold among
Chinese leaders and senior officials as international financiers like George
Soros expressed gloom about the economic outlook early this yea r. At high-level
meetings the past few months in the walled Zhongnanhai compound where the leaders work, some senior officials
called for quashing any criticism that might encourage foreigners to short Chinaor bet against the prospects for
growthofficials with knowledge of the discussions say. You
can see theyre not happy when
you tried to tell them foreign speculators are not your biggest problem, said
one of the officials who attended the meetings. Early this year, Mr. Xi visited the countrys three big state news
organizationsXinhua, the Peoples Daily and China Central Televisionto lecture them on the need to toe the
That, Chinese
party line, tell Chinas stories well and enhance the nations influence in the world.
journalists said, has resulted in pressure not only to stay away from critical
topics but to produce positive stories about the economy. Reporters covering the
countrys stock markets, for example, have been told to focus their reports largely on the official statements issued
by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the stock market regulator, according to Chinese journalists. As a
Chinese reporter, you can do anything but journalism these days, said a senior editor at a state-owned media
outlet. One colleague, the editor said, was forced by the outlet to take a leave of absence over what senior editors
The
considered the reporters aggressive investigation into the causes of last summers stock market crash.
clampdown on criticism is reaching beyond publicly available news and
comments at investor forums to include policy research and market analysis .
That potentially could skew the information that leaders, officials and
investors rely on to make decisions. In February, the central bank abruptly stopped releasing data
on foreign-exchange purchases by commercial bankslong viewed by market analysts as a key snapshot of Chinas
capital flowsa move some analysts attributed to growing worries over more money leaving its shores. In a
statement days later, the central bank said it took the step because the data were no longer a true reflection of
Chinas capital flows. Ms. Lin, the economist at Guotai Junan, said she started getting guidance last fall to tone
down her public remarks about the Chinese currency, the yuan or renminbisomething she acknowledged at an
economic forum held at Shanghais Fudan University in October. I was told by regulators not to recommend
shorting the renminbi, Ms. Lin told the gathering, so Im just going to recommend buying the dollar. Neither Ms.
Lin nor her firm responded to inquiries for comment, nor did the regulator. In the financial hub of Shanghai, the
citys propaganda department recently instructed a local think tank to stop researching a planned debt-for-equity
swap program aimed at helping big state companies reduce debt, according to economists familiar with the matter.
The reason, these economists said, is that officials dont want the research to turn up unfavorable evidence after
The information office of the Shanghai
Premier Li Keqiang and others have endorsed the swaps.
government didnt respond to requests for comment. Many analysts have said the plan,
which would allow banks to exchange bad loans for equity in companies they lend to, could risk keeping companies
afloat when they should sink while leaving banks more strapped for capital. Given the climate, some are changing
their tone.In mid-April, a well-known Chinese economist gave investors in Hong
Kong a grim assessment of the economy. Despite recent signs of a rebound, Gao Shanwen,
chief economist at brokerage Essence Securities Co., told investors that a lot of the official data
arent reliable and the economy still faces big problems, according to people who attended the closed-
door event. Word of those remarks crackled across social media. Two days later, Mr. Gao issued a clarification on his
those remarks were made
public account in the popular Chinese messaging app, WeChat, saying
up. He then released a report on the economy shorn of critical commentary .
Mr. Gao and representatives at his firm didnt return requests to comment.
 Threat Con
Conceptions of China as an object of study that is fluid and
unknowable reproduces American exceptionalism because
America is seen as the definitive scientific tool necessary to
control and reveal the truth of China
Pan 04 [Chengxin, Senior Lecturer In International Relations @ Deaking Univ,
2004, Alternatives, The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The
Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics]-DD
While U.S. China scholars argue fiercely over "what China precisely is," their
debates have been underpinned by some common ground, especially in terms of a
positivist epistemology. Firstly, they believe that China is ultimately a knowable
object, whose reality can be, and ought to be, empirically revealed by scientific
means. For example, after expressing his dissatisfaction with often conflicting
Western perceptions of China, David M. Lampton, former president of the National
Committee on U.S.-China Relations, suggests that "it is time to step back and look
at where China is today, where it might be going, and what consequences that
direction will hold for the rest of the world."2 Like many other China scholars,
Lampton views his object of study as essentially "something we can stand back
from and observe with clinical detachment."^ Secondly, associated with the first
assumption, it is commonly believed that China scholars merely serve as
"disinterested observers" Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts,
Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. Chengxin.Pan@anu. edu.au 305 306 The "China
Threat" in American Self-Imagination and that their studies of China are neutral,
passive descriptions of reality. And thirdly, in pondering whether China poses a
threat or offers an opportunity to the United States, they rarely raise the question of
"what the United States is." That is, the meaning of the United States is believed to
be certain and beyond doubt. I do not dismiss altogether the conventional ways of
debating China. It is not the purpose of this article to venture my own "observation"
of "where China is today," nor to join the "containment" versus "engagement"
debate per se. Rather, I want to contribute to a novel dimension of the China debate by questioning the
seemingly unproblematic assumptions shared by most China scholars in the mainstream IR community in the
United States. To perform this task, I will focus attention on a particularly significant component of the China
U.S. conceptions of
debate; namely, the "China threat" literature. More specifically, I want to argue that
China as a threatening other are always intrinsically linked to how U.S.
policymakers/mainstream China specialists see themselves (as
representatives of the indispensable, security-conscious nation, for
example). As such, they are not value-free, objective descriptions of an
independent, preexisting Chinese reality out there, but are better
understood as a kind of normative, meaning-giving practice that often
legitimates power politics in U.S.-China relations and helps transform the
"China threat" into social reality. In other words, it is self-fulfilling in
practice, and is always part of the "China threat" problem it purports
merely to describe. In doing so, I seek to bring to the fore two interconnected themes of self/other
constructions and of theory as practice inherent in the "China threat" literaturethemes that have been overridden
and rendered largely invisible by those common positivist assumptions. These themes are of course nothing new
nor peculiar to the "China threat" literature. They have been identified elsewhere by critics of some conventional
fields of study such as ethnography, anthropology, oriental studies, political science, and international relations.*
Yet, so far, the China field in the West in general and the U.S. "China threat" literature in particular have shown
remarkable resistance to systematic critical refiection on both their normative status as discursive practice and
their enormous practical implications for international politics.^ It is in this context that this article seeks to make a
contribution

The affirmative conception of a rogue other is an attempt to

revitalize the dying empire of US imperialism
Johnson 3 (Chalmers, President of Japan Policy Research Institute,
http://www.americanempireproject.com/johnson/johnson_interview.htm, Johnson
interview, accessed: 6/30/2016) KAB

The United States is embarked on a path not so dissimilar from

that of the former Soviet Union a little more than a decade ago. The Soviet Union
collapsed for three reasons -- internal economic contradictions, imperial
overstretch, and an inability to reform. In every sense, we are by far the wealthier of
the two Cold War superpowers, so it will certainly take longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But the
equivalent of the economic sclerosis of the former USSR is to be found in our corrupt corporations, the regular
looting by insiders of workers' pension funds, the revelations that not a single financial institution on Wall Street
Imperial
can be trusted, and the massive drain of manufacturing jobs to other countries.
overstretch is implicit in our empire of 725 military bases abroad ,
in addition to the 969 separate bases in the fifty states. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet system
The United
before it collapsed but he was stopped by entrenched interests in the Cold War system.
States is not even trying to reform, but it is certain that vested
interests here would be as great or greater an obstacle. It is
nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire
dominating the world, must go on forever. The blowback from the second half of
the twentieth century has only just begun. The few optimistic trends in the U.S. include the development of the
powerful anti-globalization coalition that came into being in Seattle in November 1999 and that has
subsequently evolved into an anti-war movement. The percentage of the public that does not get its information
from network television but from the Internet and foreign newspapers is growing. Our wholly volunteer armed
forces are composed of people who see the military as an opportunity, but they do not expect to be shot at.
Now that the president and his advisers are ordering them into
savagely dangerous situations, it is likely that many soldiers will not
reenlist. And civil society in the United States remains strong and influential. Nonetheless, it is only
prudent to estimate that these trends may not be sufficient to
counter the forces of militarism and imperialism in the country.
The main prospect for the future of the world is that perpetual war waged by the
United States against small countries it declares to be "rogue states"
will lead to the slow growth of a coalition of enemies of the United States
who will seek to weaken it and hasten its inevitable bankruptcy.
This is the way the Roman Empire ended. The chief problem is that the only way
an adversary of the United States can even hope to balance or deter the enormous American concentration of
military power is through what the Pentagon calls asymmetric warfare ("terrorism") and nuclear weapons.
American belligerence has deeply undercut international efforts to control the nuclear weapons that already
exist and has rendered the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty more or less moot (the U.S., in particular, has failed
to take any actions it contracted to do under article 6, the reduction of stockpiles by the nuclear armed nations).
The only hope for the planet is the isolation and neutralization of the United States by the international
community. Policies to do so are underway in every democratic country on earth in quiet, unobtrusive ways. If
the United States is not checkmated and nuclear war ensues, civilization as we know it will disappear and the
United States will go into the history books along with the Huns and the Nazis as a scourge of human life itself.
 SCS
US involvement in the SCS is an imperial attempt to contain
Chinas growth the US doesnt confront other island builders.
Leupp 15 [Gary, Professor of History @ Tufts University, 11-6-2015, Imperialism?
Understanding US military maneuvers in the South China Sea,
http://www.kasamaproject.org/2015/11/imperialism-understanding-us-military-
maneuvers-in-the-south-china-sea/]-DD
A Freedom of Navigation Operation What was the purpose of this display of
intimidating naval force in waters so far from U.S. shores? It wasnt, after all, exactly
a routine exercise. The Department of Defense reports that in 2014 the U.S. Navy conducted so-called
freedom of navigation operations FONOdesigned to assert its navigation
rights in waters claimed by 20 countries. But the last similar FONO foray by U.S.
forces into the South China Sea was three years ago. According to the Washington
Post, this latest move followed months of deliberation at the Pentagon . So this
was a very deliberate signal. The purpose, according to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, was
to demonstrate that the U.S. will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the
world, and the South China Sea is not and will not be an exception. It was specifically a challenge to Chinas
interpretation of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as it pertains to territorial waters.
UNCLOSeveryone should be awarewas signed in 1994 and ratified by 163 countries
(including China). It is the fundamental set of documents establishing
international laws pertaining to international or contested waters. The
convention has not however been ratified by the U.S. so the U.S. remains
a non-signatory. Nevertheless, when it criticizes Chinas actions in the
South China Sea it tends to reference UNCLOS. (Repeat: The U.S. has not
committed to the observance of UNCLOS. But it demands others do so. This is a
good example of the U.S. exceptionalism Obama actively champions .) The Law of the
Sea states, as the U.S. notes: artificial islandsdo not enjoy the status of islands. But it does distinguish between
artificial islands built on submerged formations and those built on coral reefs that had (originally) been submerged
The U.S.s
in water only part of the time. The latter type, the Chinese assert, can claim the 12-mile limit.
provocations (what else can you call them?) in the South China Sea are
based on the principle that China has no right to enforce either the 12-
mile territorial waters principle or the 200-mile EEZ claim around any
artificial island it claims. (And based too on the principle that Washington has the right to
challenge such claims with warships and surveillance aircraft, to show its allies and the world that it has the will to
do so and to prevent China from getting too arrogant in asserting its claims in its own backyard.) Admiral Harry B.
Harris, Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, referred last May to Chinas preposterous claims to [lands] and
this is not really about Chinas claims to
land reclamation activities in the South China Sea. But
various islands. If we want to talk about preposterous ones, we should note that
Vietnam also claims nearly all of the Paracel and Spratly Islands. The Philippines lay
claim to some of both, and Malaysia and Brunei both claim some of the Spratlys.
And in any case, the U.S. officially has no position on the island territorial
conflicts, which are obviously none of its business. (The 1951 mutual defense treaty between
the U.S. and the Philippines however does appear to commit the U.S. to assist the Philippines if the latter are
attacked in the islands Manila claims in the Spratlys. Similarly the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty apparently obliges the
U.S. to support Japan should it come to blows with China over the Daioyutai/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.)
Despite Washingtons affectation of indifference towards a far-off tangle of claims over reefs, atolls, shoals, lagoons,
uninhabited islets without fresh water, the U.S. State Department and Pentagon have been acting surprised and
shocked about the PRCs extensive claims land reclamation activities on and around the isles in recent years.
Transgressions: from Ukraine to the Spratly Islands In June Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, addressing
something called the Center for a New American Security, called Chinas island-building activities a transgression.
He called on the world to unite against Chinas island building, and
demanded its cessation in accordance with the rule of law. But there is in
fact nothing illegal about building up maritime possessions you claim as your own .
Another nation may challenge you, as when PRC warships clashed with Vietnamese transport ships in the Spratlys in 1988. (Right was established by might; 70 Vietnamese died and some reefs changed hands.) But if you can acquire
control over reefs you can surround them with as much concrete as you want. Washington and some of its regional allies see all this construction as provocative. Blinkenas though striving to conjure up memories of the Sino-
Soviet alliance of the 1950s strangely oddly compared it in his think tank speech to Putins imagined provocations in Ukraine! Think about that for a minute. What did happen in Ukraine? A democratically elected president was
toppled in a violent putsch in Kiev on February 22, 2014. The U.S. had devoted $ 5 billion to support the opposition, including prominently the Svoboda Party and the Right Faction, openly neo-fascist organizations. There is good
evidence that sniper fire on civilians and security forces in the course of the coup came from the neo-fascists and was intended to generate panic. When President Yanukovich fled in terror, the handpicked choice of the State
Department Victoria Nuland Arseniy Yatsenyuk was sworn into power as prime minister in violation of the Ukrainian constitution. Among the first acts of the new regime was to revoke the longstanding law protecting the linguistic
rights of Russian-speakers who predominate in the Donbass region. It should surprise no one that a secessionist movement arose, (although you notice Russia is discouraging hopes for the separatist regions incorporation into the
Russian Federation). Historical, linguistic, economic, family and other ties link eastern Ukraine to Russia, so there is naturally Russian input into the separatist forces in Ukraine. It would not require any provocation from Moscow to
make that happen. The early attack on linguistic rights was enough to alienate the Donbass, along with the nakedly anti-Russian declarations of the neo-fascists. It should also surprise no one that the overwhelmingly ethnic Russian
population of Crimea, which was Russian territory from 1783 to 1954, and has been the center of the Russian Black Sea Fleet ever since, would favor reunification with Russia. After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Russia had
retained control of the naval base at Sevastopol by agreement with Kiev. But the new Ukrainian leadership favored by the U.S. wanted to both join NATO and to expel the Russians from their only southern port. Sevastopol could then
become a U.S. naval base and the Black Sea a NATO lake. In acting to contain the new regime in Kiev, and to secure control over Sevastopol, was Moscow transgressing? If you follow Blinken in supposing so, then perhaps youll
find similar transgression in the actions of some people reclaiming land from the sea, in waters their ancestors frequented, and where they face no violent oppositionlike around Subi Reef. Lots of Nations Are Building on South

youll also find multiple parties building on (formerly) uninhabited rocks in

China Sea Islands But then,

the South China Sea. In fact, the Peoples Republic of China started to act on long-
standing claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands desultorily, and only joined in
South China Sea island construction projects late in the game. Mira Rapp-Hooper of the Asia Maritime Transparency
Initiative notes that the Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia had all built airstrips on previously uninhabited islands in the sea before Beijing even got started. The largest natural Spratly island, Itu Aba, is occupied by the
Republic of China (Taiwan) and has been since 1946, when the Japanese left. The only island in the archipelago blessed with a fresh water supply, it has hosted a permanent military base since 1956. 100 ROC Coast Guard troops are
there year round; it boasts a 12,000 meter runway for cargo planes and will soon be able to accommodate frigates and coast guard cutters. Washington has been silent about such construction. Vietnam seized Southwest Cay from
the Philippines in 1975 and has since built a harbor there. The Philippines has occupied Thitu island since the 1970s, building bunkers, an airport and pier. Malaysia occupied Swallow Reef in 1983 and has engaged in considerable
construction and reclamation activity. Again, Washington has had no comment. Aside from Subi Reef, the PRC controls Fiery Cross Reef, which due to reclamation beginning in 2014 has grown to three times the size of Itu Aba. It is
now the largest Spratly island. Beijing stations 200 troops there, maintaining a surveillance facility, and is constructing an airstrip for a military base. The U.S. is upset. On Gaven Reef, China has placed a troop and supply garrison
since 2003. Here too reclamation has expanded the islands territory, and it now features a supply platform with gun emplacements, radar and communications equipment and docking facilities. On Johnson South Reefa submerged
reef built up into an artificial islandthere is another concrete platform housing a communications facility connected to a pier. Yongxing or Woody Island in the Paracel (or Xisha) Islands is inhabited by 1000 Chinese fishermen and
military personnel and has an artificial harbor, airport, school, school, bank, hospital, post office, shops and budding tourism industry. These are modest PRC achievements, comparable to those of other nations in the region that are
using the South China Sea islands for various economic, recreational and military purposes. I noticed in the Sunday paper that the aforementioned Deputy Secretary of State Blinkenwho again, sees transgression hereprovided
further evidence of his qualities of mind and judgment in an interview on Syria with the French press. He was quoted as declaring that the Russians cannot win in Syria and that there is no military solution in Syria. He supports,
however, the announced dispatch of 30 U.S. Special Forces to Syria to direct, train and assist certain Syrian armed forces in that country. These forces are perhaps arriving as we speak, without receiving the permission of the
internationally recognized government of Syria (the Syrian foreign minister has indeed denounced the deployment) nor that of the United Nations Security Council; nor even a Congressional resolution authorizing the use of U.S.
military force in Syria. In other words, while Moscow is assisting an internationally recognized sovereign state at its governments request, to preserve it against the worst imaginable Islamist terrorists, the U.S. is helping anti-
government armed groups (including those aligned with the al-Qaeda chapter al-Nusra), to fight the professional Syrian state forces that have so far been the most effective against the terrorists. Without the authorization of the
Damascus government or a UNSC resolution, U.S. military actions in Syria are all illegal. If Blinken does not see transgression here, it is perhaps natural for him to find it instead in Chinas South China Sea building activities. This is

what, if any of this island construction, threatens world trade, global

true Foggy Bottom thinking. But really :
security or even the U.S. power structure? Have there been any reports that China
is threatening the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea? Does the U.S.
really fear that Beijing wants to thoroughly militarize the islands? Didnt President
Xi Jinping just reiterate to Obama the other day at the White House that this is not
the Chinese plan? Containing the Chinese Competitor I dont think island militarization
is the issue. I think the cause of mounting South China Sea (and East
China Sea) tension is more fundamental. The U.S. is not concerned with
the construction of artificial islands (in a broader or narrower
definition), or even with Chinas claims to a 12-mile territorial waters limit
around some islands, so much as with Chinas rise as a global economic
competitor. In 1950 China had around 4% of the worlds GDP, and the U.S. around 28%. In 1980 the figures
were around 5% and 22% respectively. In 2014 they were 13% and 22%. China, having eclipsed
Japan several years ago, is expected to eclipse the U.S. as the number one
economy by 2030 if not 2021. I imagine this frightens some people in the
U.S. ruling class, especially those most infected by nationalism and
residual phobias about a (long gone) Red China. Some remember the policy of
containment of China after the 1949 Revolution, surrounding it with bases in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the
Philippines, South Vietnam, and Guam. They remember when there were vigorous communist insurgencies in
Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, backed by Beijing (but gradually suppressed with U.S. assistance).
You know how some people cant seem to accept the fact that the Soviet Union dissolved itself in 1991, and that
todays Russia is a multiparty parliamentary democracy with an oligarchic form of capitalism controlled by the top
one-tenth of Russias top One Percent? (In other words, a country much like our own and surely no ideological or
geopolitical threat to it.) You know how such people keep slipping up and saying Soviet Union when they mean to
say Russia, because they have an emotional need to posit Russia as an enduring enemy? You know who Im
talking about: the Cold War Russophobes who just cant get the suspicion and enmity out of their systems. Similarly,
there are people who have a hard time letting go of Cold War-era images of an
aggressively expanding Red China. In the 1960s we were warned that China, already bordered by other
Asian communist bloc countriesNorth Korea, Mongolia, North Vietnamwould, if South Vietnam were to fall, be
able to expand communism to all those fellow-Asians in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, etc. (This
sensationalistic prediction, recalling the Yellow Peril Kaiser Wilhelm II had warned of in 1895, was called the
domino effect.) State Department functionaries who have been to China repeatedly know that its a capitalist
country much like the U.S. It has been for some decades now. It competes with the U.S.but not in the realm of
ideology. Its certainly not trying to spread communism anywhere; its leadership has indeed been won over by the
teachings of Harvard Business School. And Beijing is not interested in jeopardizing its international trade and
investment ties by incautious behavior. Still, even people who grasp this with one part of their minds are so plagued
with an us vs. them mentality in the other part that it just seems right to send an Arleigh Berke-class guided
missile destroyer with all the accoutrements into Chinese-claimed waters, if only to annoy, show these people whos
boss and keep them in line. On the other hand, there are surely also within this the ten-percent of the one-percent
of the people who steer U.S. policy alongside the Sinophobic war mongerssome so personally invested in China
and the preservation of its status quo that they would never want to provoke confrontation in the South China Sea.
The U.S. ruling class does not speak with one voice on China. And there is no single western voice either. Hasnt
British Prime Minister Cameron, welcoming President Xi on a state visit, just proclaimed a Golden Age in Sino-
British relations? And hasnt the U.K., the U.S.s best friend, eagerly joined the China-led Asian Infrastructure
The role of the nation-state and its ruling
Investment Bank, resisting Washingtons strong pressure?
cabinet in committing nations to war is changing due to globalization. Lenins
famous pamphlet on Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was written
almost a century ago, in 1916. In it, he depicted modern war as a result of
contending blocs of bourgeois-led states, driven by the logic of capitalist
competition, to re-divide the worlds markets and resources from time to time. It has been
indispensable reading for a century. It certainly helped shape my understanding, as a young man, of the Vietnam War and U.S. wars and interventions that followed. But its hard to understand the recent conflicts in the Middle East in
terms of inter-imperialist competition. The incipient proxy war in Syria is not fundamentally about U.S.-Russia contention over Syrian markets and resources. Nor is it, and the other ongoing conflicts from Afghanistan to Libya, rooted
in a struggle between capitalism and socialism. It is about State Department plans (which despite the embarrassments and career setbacks of their authors, never die) for regime change in the Middle East versus primarily secular
forces. But maybe whats going on in the South China Sea is best understood in terms of old-fashioned capitalist competition. Theres a lobby in Washington urging confrontation with China as a good in itself. Chinas now the number
one investor in African mineral resources. Its arguably morphed from a socialist republic into a capitalist-imperialist state different from, but in some ways fundamentally similar to, the U.S. Charles W. Freeman, a former U.S.
ambassador to China, told the American Prospects Robert Dreyfuss in 2006 that Stephen Yates, Dick Cheneys top China advisor, saw in China the solution to enemy deprivation syndrome after the Cold War. Dreyfuss reported
that top Defense Department officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith agreed with this assessment. (This should not surprise anyone; the two are career fear mongers. And their careers demonstrate how energetic ideologues
operating as a cabal can lead this particular imperialist country to launch wars that dont actually even very well serve the One Percent.) (And the fact that the neocons, these two among them, so deeply responsible for the public
packaging of the Iraq Waras one to seize the [non-existent] weapons of mass destruction, and to end Iraqs [non-existent] al-Qaeda tiescan still teach at universities, receive appointment as fellows in tiny think-tanks and thus
in such officious capacity get interviewed by the media as an expert on this or that, and get elder-statesman treatment just shows you: They can get away with anything.) Imagine if people (including Yates, say, appointed to a key
State Department post) wanting to ratchet this up a notch higher planned an incident designed to make China appear (like Russia in Ukraine) an aggressor. Most people would probably buy the media pabulum, at least initially: Russia
over here, invading Ukraine; China over here, threatening our freedom of navigation. (Damn its a dangerous world. And then theres the Middle East too!) If there are crazies keen to make the Asian pivot a pivot from Middle East
chaos and failure to Southeast/East Asia chaos and failure, heres their chance. This Will Be a Regular Occurrence Why? Because the Pentagon has committed itself to making these freedom of navigation exercises routine. This
is something that will be a regular occurrence, not a one-off event, an official told the press. That greatly exacerbates the prospects for an incident. Modern Chinese history is replete with numerous such episodes, including the
Manchurian Incident (1931), Shanghai Incident (1932), and Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937) in which Japanese forces incited local nationalistic responses that were used as pretexts for more Japanese land-grabbing. In preparations
for such incidents, and explosions of Chinese nationalist sentiment, the Pentagon and State Department are pursuing a concerted propaganda campaign centering around the term Great Wall of Sand in the South China Sea. This
Great Wall of Sand is of course supposed to call to mind the Great Wall of China constructed over centuries in a vain attempt to keep the barbarian peoples of the northern steppes at bay. Its supposed to convey an image of
exclusion: a chain of artificial islands dubiously claimed by an aggressive (or paranoid) China, militarized to keep out unwanted shipping from its claimed waters. The freedom of navigation operations are all about sending
unwanted warships into waters China claims as its own. Although they might also pass through waters claimed by the Philippines or Vietnam (to convey an impression of impartiality) make no mistake: these operations are designed
to contain China. Chinas Caribbean But think about it this way. To the south of the continental United States theres a large body of water called the Caribbean Sea. It covers about a million square miles. For over two hundred years
the rulers of this country have seen this as their backwater, their sphere of influence. Few countries governments have seriously contested the U.S. insistence on Caribbean hegemony, questionable though it may be from the
standpoint of international law or just commonsense morality. And its occasionally been resisted, as when Spain sought to hang onto Cubathe pearl of its declining empireand Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War in
1898. (You remember, that war based on the lie that Spaniards had blown up the USS Maine docked in Havana Harbor?) But opponents in that sea have been smitten, time and time again. Within my own lifetime alone the U.S.
military has intervened to achieve its aims in the Caribbean region, directly or through proxies, in Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, and Haiti (and I am probably leaving
some out). Effecting regime change in the Caribbean (to protect U.S. agri-businesses and to prevent the spread of communism), wreaking regional havoc and spreading suffering among brown people, is a time-honored feature of
U.S. imperialist culture. In 1983, in something called Operation Urgent Fury the U.S. military invaded the tiny island nation of Grenada. Washington had accused the islands left-leaning government of building a runway designed to
service Soviet military aircraft. No matter that there were already ten other runways of equal capacity in the Caribbean; or that the runway had been suggested by the former colonial power, Great Britain; or that the financing for the
Canadian-designed airport came from Britain, among other nations. No matter that a Congressional fact-finding mission had determined that the runway was for civilian, not military use. The Reagan administration wanted regime
change on the island, made a big deal about a supposed Soviet threat, and took advantage of a coup to announce that U.S. medical students lives were in danger such that some U.S. fury was urgently required. By comparison: to
the south of Chinaa great and vast nation for over 2,200 yearsis a body of water a bit larger than the Caribbean. The South China Sea (as its generally called) covers about 1.4 million square miles. Like the Caribbean, its dotted
with islands. Not big ones; large islands such as those constituting the Philippines, and the Indonesian archipelago, border it but are not considered within it by geographers. They are its boundaries. For over two thousand years the
rulers of China have seen this South China Sea as their backwater, their sphere of influenceyou might say, their Caribbean. But they have rarely used military force in this sea, feeling no need to do so. As of 1947, the Republic of
China (led by Chiang Kai-shek, thenonce againbattling the Chinese Communist Party headed by Mao Zedong) asserted its sovereignty over most of the South China Sea Islands. The claim was based, as it happens, on maps
prepared earlier by western geographers who had given the seaway its very name. This is when the nine-dashed line map indicating Chinese territorial claims, constituting a U-shape encompassing most of the South China Sea,
was first officially presented to the world, clarifying Chinas claims. At the time the map adduced little comment from Chinas western allies. The U.S. was keen on nurturing a close friendship with Chiang Kai-shek, building up China
as its great postwar Asian ally, and looking forward to exploiting the boundless Chinese marketplace. That all changed, of course, with Maos triumph in 1949. Thereafter China became Red China, targeted and vilified along with
the USSR for its audacity in rejecting capitalism, and for its attempts to build a socialist alternative. But the Peoples Republic merely reiterated the claims that the Republic of China had made it 1947. And Beijing and Taipei remain

Today sovereignty over some of these islands and atolls

united in asserting these claims. Contested Islands and the Pivot to Asia

is contested between China (within which, at least for this purpose, we must include
Taiwan), the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The two main island clusters are referred to in English as the Paracel Islands
and the Spratly Islands. (Lets omit discussion of the three Pratas islands off Hong Kong, occupied by Taiwan; the small sunken atoll called the Macclesfield Bank or Zhongsha Islands east of the Paracels, claimed by China and Taiwan
but unoccupied for now; and the Scarborough Shoal claimed by China and the Philippines.) The Paracels and Spratlys extend from the zone just south of Chinas Hainan Island, adjacent central Vietnam, to the waters west of the
Philippines Visayas island group, north of Borneo. Againthis area is about the size of the Caribbean. If China successfully presses its case for sovereignty, these possessions could push its southern boundary from around 20
degrees north latitude to around 5 degrees north latitude. They would also allow China, by the terms of UNCLOS, to claim 200 nautical miles around each formation recognized as an island as an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
There are major economic stakes herenot that Chinas economy is hurting that badly, or that Beijing is in any rush to exploit the potential riches of these claims. And there are also military applications of the islands if China firmly
grasps them. This is what most concerns the U.S. State Department and Pentagon, and the reason they are making a stink, challenging every Chinese claim to sovereignty with an implicit endorsement of the opponents claim,
whether the latter be Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia or Brunei. As Antiwar.coms Jason Ditz put it Nov. 1: The U.S. usually doesnt get involved in those [territorial] disputes unless one of the parties involved in China, in which
case the U.S. always [has] backed the other party. Concern about Chinas supposed expansion into the South China Seaas well as the East China Sea, where it confronts Japan over rival claims of island sovereigntyis a key
reason for the Obama administrations vaguely conceived pivot to Asia. (This pivot is widely understood to be an expression of exasperation with expensive, unfruitful and failed military ventures in the Middle East and the will to
focus on retaining hegemony over regions of greater import. That does not make it any less dangerous.) The South China Sea is of extraordinary geostrategic importance. Ships from the Indian Ocean enter through the Strait of
Malacca. To the northwest lies the long coast of Vietnam, then the China coast; to the northeast, the Philippines archipelago and Taiwan. Further north, Korea, Russia, and Japan. Ships from Australia (the worlds twelfth largest

. This sea is a hub of the world economy.

economy) reach China (Australias number one trading partner) through the South China Sea

Fully one-third of the worlds shipping transits the South China Sea. Half
of the worlds liquefied natural gas exports, around a third of crude oil
exports, and about $ 5 trillion in trade pass through it every year.
Indonesian and Australian coal reach China and Japan through this body of
water. The area is rich in fisheries and contains huge gas and oil reserves
beneath its seabed. By one estimate, there are some 17 billion tons of
natural gas and oil reserves here, as compared with 13 billion in Kuwait.
Its no wonder that Washington would insist on the U.S.s right to traverse
this zone at willnot that China contests that, or that this is really the
issue. The issue for China is to establish Chinese sovereignty over islands,
atolls and shoals that Chinese have visited, described, mapped, used,
sometimes inhabited and claimed as theirs for centuries. After the century
of humiliation, from the Opium Wars to Liberation in 1949, Chinese
naturally aspire to more militantly assert sovereignty over what most
perceive as long-claimed territory. In the northern part of the sea, the Paracel (or Xisha) Islands constitute an archipelago of 130 tiny isles and reefs scattered
over 6000 square miles. Beijing has established control over almost the entire chain, and 1000 fishermen and military personnel inhabit the main island (Yongxing or Woody Island). This island has an artificial harbor, airport, school,
school, bank, hospital, post office, shops and budding tourism industry. Vietnam also claims this territory. But while Chinese references to the islands date to the third century BCE, Vietnamese references apparently begin in the
fifteenth century, and the Chinese record of visitation and mapping seems much more extensive. The Li dynasty of Vietnam asserted sovereignty over the islands in 1686, 1753 and 1816; Qing China reasserted its claim in 1885; the
French colonialists having taken Vietnam claimed it in 1887. As noted above, the Republic of China repeated its assertion of sovereignty in 1947. In 1956 North Vietnam announced its acceptance of Beijings claims that the Paracels
as well as the Spratlys were historically Chinese. (Hanoi has subsequently backtracked on this position.) The following year Beijing transferred sovereignty over one of the Paracel islands (Nightingale Island or Bach Long Vi Island)
to Vietnam. This now hosts a fishery operated by a cooperative of 93 people. There is no real sovereignty dispute about this island with Beijing at this point. But Beijing has since taken control of all the other Paracels. The Spratly
(Nansha) islands, located over 300 miles to the south of the Xisha archipelago cover a much greater expanse (164,000 square miles). Some of their 750 isles and reefs are claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
And as noted above, Vietnam as boldly as China and Taiwan claim them all. Some Deep Historical Perspective The Chinese argue, with good evidence, that the Paracel Islands were inhabited by Chinese (subjects of the Tang and
Song empires), between the seventh and thirteenth centuries CE. They were patrolled by the Chinese navy in the eleventh century. The Mongol emperor of China, Kubilai Khan, dispatched a geographer to map the islands in 1279.
Thereafter the islands were always included on maps of the Chinese empire. Some of the Spratlys served as Chinese fishing grounds from the Han period (206 BCE to 220 CE). Many of them were named by the Chinese from at least
the first century of the Common Era. By the third century a Chinese Buddhist monastery was established on one of the islands. An administrative map of Chinese Empire during the Tang Dynasty, dated 789, includes these islands.
Both the Paracels and Spratlys were referred to as Chinese territories in a twelfth century Chinese text, and appear on at least five Chinese maps dating from 1724 to 1817. (In contrast, the record of Vietnamese visitation and
cartography seems to date to the seventeenth century at the earliest.) The South China Sea sovereignty claims of the Philippines and Malaysia were presented in the late twentieth century, and based upon the (western) legal
principle of res nullius. (This term, which means nobodys property in Latin, is used to justify the seizure of unprotected and supposedly unclaimed land.) To this claim the Nation of Brunei adds the argument that some of the islets
fall upon its continental shelf and hence belong to it. Its not up to me, and I dont want to deny the claims of countries more proximate than China to some of the rocks they covet. Butthere being no general applicable law
governing such mattersit seems to me that claims to earliest documented visitation, and evidence for historical awareness unmatched by others, trump claims based on shared continental shelf or assertions of sovereignty based
on the res nullius principle. You might object: but there IS applicable law, in the form of the Law of the Sea we keep invoking. But the documents of this convention are quite vague, and do not address some relevant questions.
UNCLOS does not, for example, forbid building up reefs that you claim, forming artificial islets suitable for such things as runway construction. It does say that by claiming a reef (such as a coral reef that is submerged in water part of
the time, and incapable of sustaining life) a nation acquires the right to claim the surrounding 12 miles as territorial waters and 200 miles as an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). But its not clear on what happens after a submerged
formation becomes an island through human agency. The U.S.s provocations in the South China Sea are based on the principle that China, having created artificial islands over submerged reefs and shoals, has no right to enforce
either the 12-mile territorial waters principle or the 200-mile EEZ claim. Thus the U.S. Navy has the right to breach Chinas 12-mile claim and test its willingness to defend rights that Beijing (plausibly) believes ascribed to it under the
UNs Law of the Sea. In any case, as you know, the Peoples Republic of China and indeed all the nations quarreling over islands in the South China Sea are parties to the Law of the Sea. The U.S., however (repeat!), is not a signatory,
sharing that distinction with a mere handful of nations including Peru, Uganda, and Kazakhstan. Think about that the next time you hear a Pentagon or State Department spokesperson invoking the Law of the Sea to criticize China.
Diplomacy before Western Imperialism: the Sinocentric Tribute System Looking at the big picture: China has for over two thousand years been known as the Central Country (Zhongguo). This is the literal meaning of the term used
throughout East Asia to refer to China. It has in fact always been the center of East Asian civilization, spreading out from its inception in the Yellow River basin over three thousand years ago in all directions. China expanded through
a mix of conquest, the cultural transformation of numerous tribes who would come to comprise the Han nationality, and the absorption of non-Han peoples who embraced the Chinese written language and accompanying culture. Its
territory reached the coast of the South China Sea by the third century BCE, and during the Han period (206 BCE-220 CE) it came to govern the whole northern coast of the sea including part of what is now Vietnam. By the first
century CE this China had a population of some 50 million, about that of the Roman Empire. The Chineseand not just Chinese of Han ethnicity but Chinese Dais who pressed from Yunnan into what is now Thailand, and Yue people
from Zhejiang who wandered down to establish Yue-south or Vietnamwere always seeking to expand to the south. While the Han Empire incorporated Hainan Island, Chinese fishermen ventured further south to islands that
Chinas rulers have claimed ever since. During these two millenia, the rulers of the countries surrounding Chinaincluding Korea, the Vietnamese kingdoms, the Ryukyuan kingdom, Southeast and Central Asian states, and
(intermittently) Japangenerally viewed themselves as tributary states of the Central Country. That was the theory of international relations then: there was one acknowledged center of wealth, power and legitimacy; trade relations

were governed by the Chinese court, so it behooved the trading nation to maintain cordial relations with the court; and in a bilateral disagreement with a third state, Chinas support or opposition could be significant .
Before the nineteenth century and the arrival in force of western
imperialism there was no international diplomacy in this region. There
was merely the general, practical recognition of Chinas staggering size,
wealth, power, military prowess, scientific superiority and general
intellectual leadership. Kings from Korea to Annam to Central Asia sought the Chinese emperors seal of approval; it was the premise for trade and friendship. Slavish
acknowledgment of the Chinese emperors preeminent status (as Son of Heaven) brought many advantages in a geopolitical system totally unlike the early modern European concept of equal states. The current rulers in Beijing
unlike the emperors of olddo not feel the need to confer legitimacy upon anyone else; on the contrary, they emphasize Chinas principle of non-interference in other countries affairs. But they have surely inherited the expectation
that other, neighboring nations so indebted to China culturally would defer to China on territorial issues andas a matter of courserecognize Chinas maritime boundary as indicated in the nine-dash map of 1947,endorsed by
the Republic of China (Taiwan) as well as the Peoples Republic. It might in part reflect Han chauvinism and the history of (bullying) Chinese interactions with Vietnam and with Malay peoples. But theres no doubting Beijings
contention that the Chinese claims have the deepest historical roots. In her fine book, When China Ruled the Seas, Louise Levathes describes the voyages undertaken by colossal Chinese fleets of Zheng He between 1405 and 1433,
which reached the coasts of India and Africa. They also of course visited the Paracels and Spratlys. The South China Sea was then, more than ever, unquestionably ruled by the (Ming) Empires maritime forces, its islands frequented

: if any country has a legitimate,

and sometimes settled by its subjects. China did, in fact, once rule the seas. That is the undoubted and relevant history. So in short

historically rooted rationale to lay claim to these mostly uninhabited islets and reefs
in this vast stretch of ocean, it is China . Why should this surprise anyone? Calls for Peace and Stability Echoing the Pentagon, Hillary Clintons State Department
harped on peace and stability, respect for international law, freedom of navigation, [and] unimpeded lawful commerce in the South China Sea. (As though China has actually been impeding commercial navigation or provoking
confrontation.) It warned that Beijing threatened commercial shipping in the region. In 2012 the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)one of those innumerable think tanks easy to set up and sell to the media as the
source of expert commentarycalled for the U.S. warship number to expand from 285 to 346. The story got attention, not because anyone knew what CNAS was, but because it combined its hawkish recommendation with the
statement, Diplomacy and economic engagement with China will work better when backed by a credible military posture. So the U.S. is to strengthen its military posture in the South China Seato augment peace and stability
there? There, where the U.S. has no territorial claims. There in that sea, where the PRC, ROC, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all occupy and claim islands. Therewhere the PRC and Vietnam have both converted reefs to
islands through reclamation, in order to build structures including military runwaysthe U.S. wants to strengthen its military posture. Why? There has not, in fact, actually been a huge naval buildup (such as suggested by CNAS)
since 2012. But from that year the U.S. has maintained a military base in Australias Northern Territory, facing the South China Sea. 2500 troops are currently stationed here. Lim Lobe calls this deal with Australia the first long term
expansion of the US military presence in the Asia/Pacific region since the Vietnam War. In April 2014 Daniel Russel, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, threatened the PRC with sanctions (like those the U.S. had
applied to Russia) to put more pressure on China to demonstrate that it remains committed to the peaceful resolution of the problems in the South China Sea. In May 2015 Obama accused China of using its sheer size and muscle
to pursue its South China Sea claims versus Vietnam and the Philippines. In the same month a CNN team was given exclusive access to join a surveillance flight over contested waters in the South China Sea which the Pentagon
allowed for the first time in order to raise awareness about the challenge posed by the islands and the U.S. response. Think of that. The Pentagon was letting the free press tell you about how important these islands are to the U.S.,
where the Chinese are so intent on challenging us. The breathless embedded reporterhonored no doubt by the Pentagons trustadded: They have learned that the Chinese are themselves displeased by this U.S. pushback. So:
here CNN glorifies U.S. aerial surveillance over Chinese-claimed territory, embraces (unthinkingly) the notion that China challenges the U.S. in the South China Sea, and depicts these flights as a U.S. pushbacksome sort of
rational response to a provocation. How many hundreds of years ago did this provocation (by China, of the United States) begin? With that Buddhist monastery during the Han period, when the ancestors of what became North
American Anglo-Saxons were worshipping Wodin in the German forests? When did the Chinese start getting uppity with the U.S. over the South China Sea? The need for pushbacks occurred only recently, as it turns out. As China
presses its claimsso far mainly through PR exercisesWashington has adopted the policy of what Beijing used to call fishing in troubled waters.) The Making of an Alliance? Washingtons closest allies are doing likewise. Japan,
which occupies the Senkaku (Diaoyutai) Islands in the East China Sea claimed by China, is seeking support from Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei in its clash with the PRC. In June 2014 Japans Prime Minister Abe Shinzo told
ASEAN countries that Japan would (in turn) back them in their own territorial disputes with Beijing. (Presumably this meant that regardless of the historical documentation China might adduce, Tokyo would take the others side simply
as a matter of policy.) A year earlier Abe had written an op-ed in which he warned about the South China Sea becoming Lake Beijing and advocated a diamond alliance between Japan, Australia, India and U.S. to prevent China
from building upon its claims. In July Philippines president Beningo Aquino requested the U.S. to conduct surveillance flights in the South China Sea on Manilas behalf. The U.S. State Department announced at the time it supported
the Philippines in enhancing its maritime domainal awareness. (Read: The U.S. encouraged Manila to proclaim as national domain more Spratly islands claimed by the PRC thus becoming more aware of how it can help the

The pivot to Asia is indeed a pushback against China, a rising economy

U.S. test Chinas limits.)

and aso far restrained and conservativere-ascendant military power. Its a

preposterous pushback, an effort to represent the PRCs reclamation and island-
building activities in the region as illegal and as some sort of threat to the freedom
of navigation in the South China Sea. Repeat: the U.S. itself is not a signatory of the UNs Law of the
Sea. Its freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has never been impeded by Chinese claims or construction
activity. This
is about the exertion of naval military power pitting a rising
regional power with an actual interest in developing territorial islands and
an external imperialist with regional allies pressing competing territorial
claims fishing once again, dangerously, in troubled waters.
US Military posturing in the South China Sea is a hypocritical,
imperialist attempt to exert dominance over all of Asia
CPP 11 (Communist Party of the Philippines.
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20110702_oppose-us-interference-
in-the-south-china-sea-conflict-build-people-s-solidarity-to-seek-a-peaceful-
resolution-of-spratlys-conflict. 7/2/11) CTD
Long before the Aquino government resparked the Spratly Islands diplomatic
conflict by accusing China of "intrusion", the US government had already set its
sights on pushing to intensify its "power projection operations" in the South China
Sea in order to counter what they call "China's aggressive action" in the region
which the US imperialists view as an "anti-access environment" which threaten "the
integrity of US alliances and security partnerships" and "reduces US security and
influence." Armed with a basic understanding of the imperialist thrusts of US
military and defense strategies, one becomes acutely aware that in sparking the
South China Sea dispute and the sudden and unprecedented vigorousness in
asserting Philippine claims of sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, the Aquino
government is only actively serving as a pawn of the US imperialists in its
determined drive to impose its hegemony in the region. Aquino is playing its US-
assigned role to the hilt in exchange for a few scraps of metal. Since Aquino was
summoned to the US warship Carl Vinson in May, his foreign affairs, security and
military officials have engaged China in a diplomatic and political wrestling match.
They have sparked diplomatic hostilities by accusing China of "intrusion" and
issuing such bellicose statements as threatening to "fire back if attacked." Aquino
politicians, certain political groups, and opinion writers are whipping up anti-China
sentiments, even as they issue appeals for the US government to help the
Philippines confront the "misbehaving bully". All these help to boost the US
objective of justifying its increased political, diplomatic and military
involvement in the South China Sea. Citing provisions of the Mutual Defense
Treaty, the US State Department recently declared that it would "provide needed
material and equipment that may be needed by the Philippine military to defend its
territory." Aside from granting the Aquino regime access to second-hand war
materil under the the US military's Excess Defense Articles program, the Pentagon
also said it was studying options for the Philippines to acquire "newer US military
assets" at "costeffective" rates. American security policy makers have long
proposed "leasing" to the Philippines modern military weaponry including a F-16
fighter aircrafts, C-12 twinengine aircrafts outfitted for martime patrol and
counterinsurgency surveillance, helicopters and FFG-7 guided-missile frigates.
American security officials are also pushing to forge a commercial agreement to
allow the US military access to logistic support facilities in Subic Bay. The US also
vowed to share intelligence information gathered from radar and satellite
surveillance of the conflict area. In a blatant display of gunboat diplomacy, US naval
forces belonging to the US Pacific Command and the AFP conducted "joint planning
exercises" last March and a "joint naval exercise" a few days ago off the western
coast of Palawan which faces the South China Sea. A few months ago, a Hamilton-
class Weather High Endurance Cutter from the US was deployed in the same area.
Promises of US military, intelligence and diplomatic assistance were welcomed by
the sycophant officials of the Aquino regime who were effusive with their praise and
gratitude to the US government. With the US being portrayed in the mainstream
media as a "friend" that is "standing by" the Philippines, US spinmeisters appear to
have succeeded in achieving a publicity coup. The Filipino people must
vigorously expose and oppose the US scheme to exacerbate the South
China Sea conflict and justify US intervention. US claims that it is helping
defend Philippine sovereignty is plain hogwash. In reality, it is the Philippine puppet
Aquino regime that is standing by its US imperialist master in stoking the fires of the
Spratly Islands dispute in order to provide justification for the US to extend its
military might in the South China Sea, ensure the " freedom of navigation" of US
commodities to the Southeast Asian region and perpetuate US global
hegemony. The US imperialists have long been wary of the strategic rise of China
as an economic and military giant. For the past four decades, the US has worked
with the anti-communist and revisionist forces in the Communist Party of China and
the Chinese goverment in order to subvert the ruling party and state. They have
overseen the degeneration of China from a prosperous socialist country to a rotten
capitalist nation. However, to the chagrin of the US imperialists, the Chinese
government continues to exercise a large measure of independence economically,
militarily and in the field of foreign policy. The US unilaterally considers itself as the
only country that has the right to extend its hegemony beyond its national
boundaries. All others who harbor such imperialist ambitions are condemned as
"anti-access powers", i.e. forces that try to deny the US "the ability to project power
into a region." Thus, China's efforts to build up its naval and air forces and extend
its economic interests are denounced by the US as "threats to freedom of
navigation." In extending its military tentacles towards the South China Sea, the US
specifically seeks to counterbalance China's effort to develop and field large
numbers of advanced medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles, new attack
submarines equipped with advanced weapons, increasingly capable long-range air
defense systems, electronic warfare and computer network attack capabilities,
advanced fighter aircraft, and counter-space systems. It seeks to neutralize China's
Hainan island naval base which it believes hosts underground submarine pens
which can support both strategic and tactical nuclear attack submarines. The US
trembles at the prospect of China having control over the South China Sea lanes, a
crucial international trade route, in the same way that the US imperialists controls
crucial sea lanes in other parts of the world. The CPP and the Filipino people
condemn the puppet Aquino regime for kowtowing to its imperialist master and to
the US foreign policy of global hegemony by hyping up the Spratly Islands conflict,
issuing undiplomatic and agitative statements against China and allowing the US to
deploy its military machinery in the conflict area in the guise of "coming to the
defense" of the Philippines. At the same time, the Filipino people condemn the
arrogance of China's sole claim over the disputed island, its refusal to recognize the
claims of other nations and its refusal to engage in multilateral negotiations

SCS engagement is neo-imperialism

Mauzy and Job 7 (Diane K. Mauzy is Professor of Political Science at the
University of British Columbia. Brian L. Job is Professor of Political Science and
Interim Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British
Columbia. Asian Survey, 47(4), pp. 622641. 2007) CTD
The U.S. invasion of Iraq struck a twin blow to diplomatic relations and to the
attitudes of Southeast Asian populations. By proceeding without U.N. approval,
American actions undercut the norms of sovereignty, territoriality, and non-
interference that were seen by Southeast Asian states as fundamental to legitimacy.
Second, by fostering the impression of having mounted a campaign against Islam,
Washington angered the moderate Muslim populations of key Southeast Asian
states such as Indonesia and Malaysia. The overall impact of the Iraq war, despite
Washingtons distribution of assistance and smoothing of relations with Southeast
Asian leaders, has been to alienate, confuse, and frustrate. In the words of one
prominent analyst from the region, Simon Tay, The U.S. post-9/11 agenda has
complicated existing international conflicts and insurgencies in Southeast Asia. He
characterizes Washington as having embarked on a neo-imperialist
strategy to use and reinforce U.S. primacy, with policies of benign
selfishness driven by domestic priorities and thus impermeable to outside
influence.22 The strong ambivalence of Washington toward multilateralism and its
eschewing of diplomatic approaches have led Asians to consider new arrangements.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rices decision to skip the ASEAN foreign ministers
meeting and the ARF in 2005 pointed to a lack of American interest and no doubt
stimulated an already growing interest in a wider Asian grouping. Belatedly, the
Bush administration has said it intends to appoint an ambassador to ASEAN, while
hinting at a U.S.-ASEAN FTA down the road.23 Washington continues to view the
ARF, on the other hand, as an overly large, underperforming talk shop that does
not merit significant bolsteringeven though it is the only region-wide security
institution that includes the U.S.24
 Democracy Promotion
Promotion of democracy turns democracy, causes
totalitarianism and white supremacy
Itwaru 09 (Arnold, psychotherapist, educator, and editorial consultant on the
project named Researching Caribbean Teaching and Learning at the University of
the West Indies, Jamaica Master Race, Murder and Gory Globalization in The
White Supremacist State: Eurocentrism, Imperialism, Colonialism, Racism Arnold H.
Itwaru, ed. 2009 p. 25-79)
Democracy" is the globalization credo of the new Western imperialism. It resounds
with the incessant chant of freedom. It talks of liberating the world. This is its
totalitarian thrust. It is about global control. This means reducing the entire world
into a Western capitalist monopoly and the destruction of other and more
humanizing forms of the organization of political and economic livelihood. But this
seems lost to those who are caught the clamor for democracy. We have a situation
where capitalist White Supremacist Western liberal democracies are invading and
destroying people and countries to increase their exploitative control while the
chant for democracy goes on in other places. This is an ideologized chant. It is
where "democracy" is erroneously seen as a panacea for the resolution of the forms
and practices of oppressive rule everywhere. The spread of "democracy" is the
restructuring of target societies, the re-organization of political and economic
formation in the world to accommodate the interests of the White supremacist
West, united under capital. Democracy is used as the medium for the brutal
globalization of capitalism, and its insertion is enforced by the most undemocratic of
measures - authoritarian, command-obedience violent totalitarian military control.
The use of the concept "democracy" both romanticizes and violates its Greek
ordinary, demos which idealizes the notion of people's rule - which has never
happened in the history of Greek imperial state culture. We should note that in its
political inception in Greece women were not included in the state craft of
"Democracy." Democracy was the purview of the male order of state power. It was
the phallocentric elitist politics of the state rule of people through select male
representatives who constituted the echelon of political power. Far from being
people's rule, it was rather the ruling of people by giving them the illusion that they
had a significant say in the rule of the state over them. And its contemporary
Western deployment is. about the regulation of the lives of peoples to ensure their
exploitation. But there is a great deal of dissembling going on. Eurocentric master
race culture has attempted to sanitize itself of the odiousness of racism and the
smear of racial mastery in its development of the discourse of "democracy" which it
thinks is the best way to organize the politics of representationally in state power
for the good of all peoples everywhere on earth. This is presented as being sensible,
practical, and "civilized," in fact as the only way to organize political life. This is the
reification of imperialism. It is where the ordinary Western citizen resolutely believes
this and sees it as commonsense and does not understand what all the fuss is
about. We have here the leveling absorption of the imperial patriot-subject who is
now passionately committed and ready to defend and spread Western political
control in the enforcement of "democracy" every where. And if you go along with it,
you are likely to conclude that there is no racism here and that it is simply the best
culture on earth, doing the right thing. Armored to the point of having the capacity
to kill everyone in the world several times over, the West has wrapped itself in
discourses of democratizing imperializing "peace"- while it manufactures and
exports arms and other weapons of mass destruction, much of which it has used
against many of the racialized peoples of the world. It organizes, supports and
wages war to construct the peace required to facilitate its repressive order. It talks
of freedom when it has been the historical destroyer of the freedoms of the millions
it has used, abused, deprived of their independence, tortured, worked to death,
robbed and killed to acquire wealth. It upholds liberty and fraternity - but only
among its own kind - and even here this civic ideal is differentially implemented.
Liberty and fraternity are not meant for the inferiorized Other. It is for the privileged
in the order of White solidarity. And this order of things is disturbed when its
designated inferior tries to change the terms and parameters of the discourse of the
West's claim superiority.
Impacts
 Imperialism Bad
Causes war
Buell 18 (Raymond,
taught history and government atseveral colleges during the 1920s. He was the res
earch director (192733) and then president (193339) of the ForeignPolicy Associat
ion. The North American Review, 207(746) (Jan., 1918)) CTD
This argument, thoroughly sound in its conclusion, provided its prem ises are just, is
a very fine re-enunciation of that economic imperialism which has, in part at least,
brought about not only the present war, but all the great wars of modern history. An
economic imperialism caused the scramble for concessions in China in 1898 and
1899, partly check mated by Secretary Hay's two notes proclaiming the policy of the
Open Door; brought about the clash between Russia and Japan in the Orient in
1904; and apparently moved Japan in the present war to occupy Tsingtau and to
enforce upon China her famous Twenty-one Demands. The same motives caused
France to quarrel with Germany at Algeciras and Agadir over the economic
penetration of Morocco. It has been the desire of Germany and Russia to mutually
exclude each other from the markets of the Balkans which culminated in the murder
at Sera j evo. It has been the Drang nach Osten which led to the Teutonic
visualization of a Mitteleuropa extending from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf; which
led to an unholy alliance with the Turk, and attempted the construction of the
Bagdad railroad: all in a scramble for protected markets, trade concessions, and
economic monopolies.

US attempts to constrain the rise of China are premised in a

will to control that reproduces ressentiment and inevitably
culminates in total war- engaging in policy prior to questioning
imperialism results in error replication and fuels the
aggression at the heart of all their scenarios.
Peter 13 [No Last Name, Blogger, Reactionary, Armchair Philosopher, US
SECURITY DISCOURSE: PHYSICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS,
http://www.petersaysstuff.com/2013/06/us-security-discourse-physical-and-
ontological-implications/, Peter Says Stuff: Philosophizing Without a Purpose]-DD
But while all that is important, there is something more important, and that is the effect of discourse on the actions of other nations.
What happens when the US denounces other nations, places them in the
Axis of Evil, or even makes subtle military hints? Well, the answer can
most easily be seen in the supposed Rise of China (although not in the Axis of Evil, many
on the right think they are untrustworthy and thus bad eg. Donald Trump and Mitt Romney). When the US badmouths
a superpower, or makes subtle military actions against them, they will retaliate, that
is just a simple fact of life, and yet we act shocked when this happens in the context
of China. During the late 90s and early 2000s, the US displayed itself as the shinning beacon of freedom, the sole benevolent
hegemon in a world of terror and thus defined all those not directly under our nuclear umbrella eg. Japan, the EU, etc. as other.
China thus felt alienated, they were defined as the other simply because of the legacy of Mao Zedong (although China today can
the
hardly be considered Maoist even by the most lax of definitions) and thus they displayed aggressive rhetoric. But thats not all:
creation of new missile defenses near China to protect the homeland and new
troop movements also made China weary about what the US was going to do and
thus they started militarizing in reaction (Pan). This militarization is not unexpected
in the slightest and is perfectly justifiable in the wake of US offensive rhetoric and
actions. Chengxin Pan sums up Chinas reaction best when he says: For instance, as
the United States presses ahead with a missile-defence shield to guarantee its
invulnerability from rather unlikely sources of missile attacks, it would be almost
certain to intensify Chinas sense of vulnerability and compel it to expand its current
small nuclear arsenal so as to maintain the efficiency of its limited deterrence. In
consequence, it is not impossible that the two countries, and possibly the whole
region, might be dragged into an escalating arms race that would eventually make
war more likely (Pan). In part two, I discussed the physical, that is to say geopolitical, implications of security discourse
and specifically, US discourse. This section of the paper however will be a little more nuanced and not so intuitive. Here, I shall
examine security discourse and how it relates to ontology which is the study of being. Before I jump right in, I must first explain what
being mean. Being is a semi-intuitive but very hard to describe concept. It is basically who you are as a person, your supposed
Ontology is an
worth in the world, and most importantly, your identity as an individual whilst still part of a group.
almost always overlooked subject in the field of geopolitics but I would
argue that determining value, meaning, and being are a priori issues to
any policy action. And here is where we break with part two entirely, we take a turn toward the absurd.
Politicians, scientists, and in fact most people are under the assumption that the
universe is understandable, quantifiable, knowable . I mean, we have math to help explain natural
phenomena right? Wrong. Math is an attempt to make sense of a senseless universe . Yes,
we got pretty damn lucky and found out that some numbers seem to represent natural events but those are few and far between
and even when they do, competing theories dont work out.[6]More importantly though, and more relevant to our studies of the
The
political, is the question of the supposed order of social structures and institutions as well human interaction.
assumption that all of politics is founded upon is that humans are inherently
controllable and orderable and thus governmental institutions can be, and are,
successful. But unfortunately, that is not the case . According to the fictitious research group The
Institute for Somehow Managing to Hold it All Together, this is just not the case. In fact, they conclude that everything appears to
be falling completely apart and getting way out of hand(Onion). But all kidding aside, the universe as well as human interaction is
jumble of half-truths, screwed up friendships, ruined lives, and incoherent sentences (similar to this one). We have dreams of chaos
and disorder and then wake up to (hopefully) find meaning and order in the world. Well, philosopher Kerry Gordon takes a different
approach. According to Gordon, when one looks around at social institutions, they all fail, our carefully constructed truths about
the universe are shattering with each advancement in the fields of science and philosophy (Gordon). In fact, this is what Gordon
himself has to say on the issue: Making my way through the day, I am indeed overwhelmed by a sea of detail that I cant ever seem
to get a handle onall the variables of my life rushing toward me in flood of chaotic uncertainty. This is not my beautiful life. Where
are the security and order that was promised me? All my carefully constructed truths, everything I have counted on and identified
with, seems suddenly false or lost or changing. And when I pick up the morning newspaper, theres more. Not only my life but the
But so what?
whole world seems to be deconstructing. Im back in my dreamdrowning in a sea of uncertainty (Gordon).
Whats the big deal if we try to order a chaotic universe? Isnt that a good
thing? Well the answer is a simple no. Attempts to order and constrain
human behavior via appeals to threats, war, social collapse, etc. are just
ploys used by those in power to gain an even bigger foothold. In fact,
some of historys worst atrocities were committed in the name of order
and security[7]. When one has a desire to impose order on a disordered
world, any kind of self-regulation is removed. Gordon cites four main
examples of this running its course in history: Stalinism, Nazism,
McCarthyism, and fundamentalism of all stripes are examples of the kind
of irrationality of which institutions and governments are capable in the
name of order (Gordon). In fact, Gordon takes it a step further: it is precisely our resistance to chaos and uncertainty
and our almost pathological need to impose order where there may, in fact, be none at all, that is the cause of so much of our
disease (Gordon). So here one may be asking a few questions: Why is this section so chaotic?, How does this relate to being?,
and When will this end?. The answers lie in the winding road ahead. This section is chaotic precisely because I am writing about
how does disorder
chaos and disorder and, compared to other authors, this is pretty sane.[8] So thus the question arises,
and the attempt to structure it relate to being? The answer lies simply in two
assumptions that all of science is founded upon: that the universe is rational and
that experiments are repeatable and demonstrate things. Although scientists dont
like to think about it, all of their work rests on the aforementioned assumptions and
science too has its limits. The issue then comes when science, or more specifically, scientists, reach those limits,
those limits from which they gaze into what defies illumination(Seigfried). When this happens, the scientist wonders whats
wrong, Why cant I pierce the veil?. The scientist thought the universe was understandable, knowable, quantifiable, so why then
can they not understand it. This is the issue that has plagued many a scientist has driven just as many to despair and nihilism
from which they shant emerge (Seigfried). This denial of the self arises from an internalization of the absurd universe. When people
believe that the universe is understandable and controllable, they subconsciously create a utopian ideal: a world in which all truth is
known and everything is just dandy and peachy. The issue with this is when one becomes confronted with the beast of absurdism.
When one eventually sees that the world is not orderable, understandable, and even to some extent, knowable (as indicated by the
Gordon and Seigfried evidence above), this leads one to question oneself. Because here one is confronted with something that is
different. Humans have always been told that the universe is rational, knowable, understandable, etc. and when one doesnt reach
one of those utopian ideals, the individual doesnt look to the actual explanation (the absurdity of the universe), but rather towards
In addition however,
oneself. This leads to a feeling of constant anxiety, self doubt, and worthlessness (Gordon).
when the utopian idea of understandability is not met, when the goals to be
perfectly safe, perfectly ordered, etc. are not achieved, one then blames themselves
leading to what Nietzsche calls ressentiment (pronounced res-an-ti-ma) or, a hatred of the self. This
ressentiment leads one to fundamentally deny themselves and their place
in this world (Nietzsche). This denial of the self and the question of
ordering the absurd being placed prior to policy action should, even to
some innate degree, be self evident but nevertheless, everythings an
argument. The French philosopher and writer Albert Camus posited in 1942 that [t]here is but one truly serious
philosophical problem, and that is suicide (Camus). (I would normally put this in a footnote but this is such an important concept
that I must address it here; when Camus speaks of suicide he speaks of it as a way of coping with the disorder in the world, a kind of
cop-out, and thus the question of whether or not we should kill ourselves is fundamentally a question of how to deal with the
this is thequestion that all of humanity must answer for the
absurd.) For Camus,
question of making meaning out of the universe is fundamentally a
question of accepting ourselves and living in this chaotic world. Until this
matter is sorted out, all policy will be in a state of constant error-
replication and self-hatred (Camus) (Campbell and Dillon). So where does this leave us? The rise of
total war saw with it the rise of the so called new threat that was not
only unpredictable, but everywhere. This new threat meant that a new
form of threat calculation and thus securitization had to be created in
which everyone and everything is a possible enemy to the state. This
posture not only has destroyed civil liberties as we know them in America,
but has actually fueled the supposed Chinese aggression that politicians
are worried about. Our very act of defining an other in an attempt to place blame leads to that others retaliation and
produces a cycle of endless violence. But more importantly, governmental institutions that seek to shape and control human life by
way of imposing order and structure are not only doomed to fail because of the inherent chaos in the universe, but are actually the
roots of oppression and totalitarianism. In addition, this desire leads to the creation of utopian ideals which, when not met, leads one
to question oneself and in turn, turn upon the self in hatred and confusion. The question of discourse, specifically in this case,
discourse designed to secure the populace, must come first and foremost because
without addressing this issue we are left to stray as through an infinite nothing
(Nietzsche).
 Globalization Bad

The invisible hand of the global economic order becomes the

visible fist of the neoliberal military order. This spurs mass
violence and discrimination across the globe.
Springer 15 (Simon, PhD from U British Columbia. Associate Professor of
geography at University of Victoria. "The violence of neoliberalism." Handbook of
Neoliberalism (2015)) CTD
The ascent of neoliberalism can be understood as a particular form of anxiety, a
disquiet born in the wake of the Second World War when the atrocities of Nazi
Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union fostered a belief that government
intervention trampled personal freedoms and thereby unleashed indescribable
slaughter (Mirowski and Plehwe 2008). There is some truth to be found in this
concern, but the response that followed has exhibited its own violent tendencies.
The Mont Pelerin Society, the originary neoliberal think-tank, responded by
resurrecting classical liberalisms three basic tenets. First, a concentrated focus on
the individual, who was viewed as the most qualified to communicate his or her
desires, whereby society should be reoriented towards removing obstacles that
hinder this goal. Second, free markets were considered the most proficient means
for advancing self-reliance, 2 whereby individuals could pursue their needs through
the mechanism of price. Finally, a faith in a non-interventionist state that would
emphasize and maintain competitive markets and guarantee individual rights
shaped around a property regime (Hackworth 2007; Plehwe and Walpen 2006).
From the geopolitical context of the wars aftermath, the origins of neoliberalism as
a political ideology can be understood as reactionary to violence. In short,
neoliberals conceived that violence could be curbed by a return to Enlightenment
thinking and its explicit basis in advancing the merits of individualism. This
historical context is ironic insofar as structural adjustment, fiscal austerity, and
free trade, the basic principles of neoliberalism, are now augmented by the
direct use of military force (Roberts et al. 2003), where the invisible hand
of the global free market is increasingly clenched into the visible fist of
the United States military. The relationship between capital accumulation and
war is of course longstanding (Harvey 1985), and the peaceful division that early
neoliberals pursued for their economic agenda demonstrated a certain naivety.
While not all wars are decidedly capitalist, it is difficult to envisage conditions
wherein an economic ideology like neoliberalism could not come attendant to
violence insofar as it seeks a global domain, supports universal assumptions, and
suppresses heterogeneity as individuals are remade according to the normative
image of neoliberal proper personhood (Kingfisher 2007). Either the lessons of
colonialism were entirely overlooked by the Mont Pelerin Society, or they uncritically
embraced its narrative appeal to the supposed higher purpose of the white mans
burden. Just as colonialism paved a road to hell with ostensibly good intentions, the
neoliberal imagination of an eventual harmonious global village now demonstrates
much the same. Embedded within such promises of utopia are the dystopian
realities that exist in a number of countries, where neoliberalization has not
produced greater peace, but a profound and often ruinous encounter with violence.
3 The historical record indicates that the years under neoliberalism have been
characterized by recurrent crises and deepening divisions between and within the
worlds nations on ethno-religious grounds. Although in some instances poverty has
arguably been alleviated or at least not gotten any worse under neoliberalism, in
many more contexts poverty remains painfully acute, while inequality has
undeniably increased both within and between cities, states, and regions (Wade
2003; Harvey 2005). There is nascent literature that is quickly gathering
momentum, which attempts to make these connections between neoliberalism and
violence more explicit (Auyero 2000; Borras and Ross 2007; Chatterjee 2009;
Coleman 2007; Collier 2008; Goldstein 2005; Marchand 2004). From this growing
concern comes increasing recognition for the idea that the imposition of neoliberal
austerity measures may actually promote conditions of increased impoverishment
that subsequently provide multiple opportunities for violent conflict (Bourdieu 1998;
Bourgois 2001; Farmer 2004; Uvin 2003; Wacquant 2009). Within my own work I
have attempted to demonstrate an urgent need to build linkages between the
violence occurring in various sites undergoing neoliberalization, and to identify
threads of commonality within these diverse spaces so that an emancipatory
agenda of transnational scope may potentially begin to emerge (Springer 2015).
Although acknowledgement for the violence of neoliberalism continues to grow, it is
important to recognize how simplistic and problematic it is to assume uniformity
across the various constellations of violent geographies that are occurring in
neoliberalizing contexts. Such an approach serves to reinforce the authority of
neoliberal discourse by continuing to circulate the idea that neoliberalism as a
particular model of statecraft is unavoidable, a criticism Gibson-Graham (1996)
make more generally with regard to capitalism. Likewise, to treat the material
expression of violence only through its directly observable manifestation is 4 a
reductionist appraisal. This view disregards the complexity of the endless
entanglements of social relations, and further ignores the future possibilities of
violence (Nordstrom 2004). When we bear witness to violence, what we are seeing
is not a thing, but a moment with a past, present, and future that is determined by
its elaborate relations with other moments of social process (Springer 2011). The
material act of violence itself is merely a confluence in the flows of oppressive
social relations, and one that is persistently marked with absolutist accounts of
space and time, when instead violence should be recognized as being temporally
dispersed through a whole series of troubling geographies (Gregory 2006).
Nonetheless, understanding the resonances of violence within the now orthodox
political economic model of neoliberalism however disparate, protean, and
variegated is of critical importance to social justice. Only through a
conceptualization of fluidity and process can we begin to recognize how violence
and neoliberalism might actually converge. I begin this chapter by identifying how
processes of othering coincide and become a central component of neoliberal logic
by providing it with the discursive tools to realize its heterogeneous ideals. In the
following section I describe how attention to the relationality of space and time
allow us to recognize neoliberalism and violence as mutually reinforcing moments of
social process where it becomes very difficult to disentangle these two phenomena.
I then turn my attention towards the exclusions of neoliberalism, where I consider
how the exceptional violence of this process comes to form the rule. Here I identify
neoliberalism having produced a state of exception through its particular version of
sovereign authority and dire consequences this results in for the downtrodden and
dispossessed. I then conclude on hopeful note by insisting that collectively we are
powerful actors who have the radical potential to resist, transform, and ultimately
undo neoliberalism. 5 Neoliberal Othering Although mainstream examinations of
conflict theory have a tendency to focus on local origins by invoking the idea of
backward cultural practices as the most suitable explanations for violence (see
Huntington 1996; Kaplan 2000), this reading problematically overlooks the influence
of ideology and economics. The geographical imagination of violence vis--vis
neoliberalism treats violence as an externality, a wrong-headed vision that
engenders Orientalist ideas. Such othering discourses insidiously posit local
cultures as being wholly responsible for any ensuing bloodshed following
neoliberalization, thus ignoring the mutability and relationality of the global
political economy of violence. Here we can look for guidance to the influence of Said
(2003), who has made significant contributions to a broader interest in how
geographical representations and practices produced notions of us and them, or
Self and Other. In a contemporary sense, othering licenses further neoliberal
reforms, as neoliberalization is positioned as a civilizing enterprise in the face of
any purported savagery (Springer 2015). Neoliberalism is rarely interrogated and
is typically either openly endorsed (see Fukuyama 1992) or tacitly accepted (see
Sen 1999) as both the sine qua non of human development and the cure-all for
violence. Such othering places neoliberalism under erasure, where we are
encouraged to approach neoliberal ideas without a critical lens. Popular
geopolitics has repeatedly imagined African, Asian and Islamic cultures as being
somehow ingrained with a supposedly natural inclination towards violence, a
tendency that has intensified in the context of the ongoing war on terror. The
public performance of such ideas feeds into particular geostrategic aims, thus
allowing them to gather momentum and develop a certain form of
commonsense validity. The imaginative geographies of such Orientalism are
creations that meld difference and distance through a 6 sequence of spatializations
that not only assign particular people as Other, but construct our space of the
familiar as distinct and separate from their unfamiliar space that lies beyond
(Gregory 2004; Said 2003). This is the exact discourse that colonialism rallied to
erect its authority in the past, and in the current conjuncture, Orientalism can be
considered as neoliberalisms latitude insofar as othering enables a powerful
discursive space for promoting the ideals of the free market . Such a
connection between neoliberalism and Orientalism may appear counter-intuitive
when neoliberalism is accepted at face value. After all, the neoliberal doctrine
envisages itself as the champion of a liberal internationalism centered around the
vision of a single human race peacefully united by a common code of conduct
featuring deregulated markets, free trade, shared legal norms and states that
feature civic liberties, electoral processes, and representative institutions (Gowen
2001). Nonetheless, an appreciation for neoliberalizations capacity to
promote inequality, exacerbate poverty, license authoritarianism, and
advance a litany of other social ills is growing (Bourdieu 1998; Dumnil and
Lvy 2011; Giroux 2004; Goldberg 2009; MacEwan 1999; Springer 2008). Such
recognition hints at the numerous erasures neoliberal ideologues have attempted
to engage through neoliberalisms discursive concealment. Klein (2007) has
persuasively argued that natural disasters have been used as opportunities to push
through unpopular neoliberal reforms on peoples and societies too disoriented to
protect their interests. In their absence, othering lays the necessary foundation for
manufactured shocks in procuring openings for neoliberalism. Similar to the
originary state-level neoliberal trial run in Chile (Challies and Murray 2008), the
current sequence of imperialism-cum-neoliberalization in the Middle East is
exemplary of American geopolitical intervention and a variety of militarism rooted in
the Orientalist idea of folding distance into difference. Would the mere presence of
ISIS, as problematic as this organization is, have 7 been enough to galvanize
Americas authorization of air strikes had their fragmented activities and threats
occurred on Canadian soil rather than in Iraq and Syria? We can only speculate, but
given the wholesale devastation that ensues, without a significant dose of
Orientalism the idea of launching missiles and dropping bombs on a country in all
probability would not get off the ground and a different strategy would be devised
to ensure minimal civilian casualties. Similarly, it was unknown/faraway Santiago
and not familiar/nearby Ottawa that played host to Washingtons subversions in
the lead up to the other 9/11 in 1973, when the neoliberal experiment was first
realized with the installation of Pinochet. Attention to how particular geographies,
including imaginative ones, are produced by multiple, often unnoticed, space-
making and space-changing processes is of critical importance (Sparke 2005).
Sparke (2007) argues that such appreciation is itself an ethical commitment to
consider the exclusions which can be read in the double sense of under erasure
and othering in the production of any given geographical truth claims. The
geography of neoliberalism involves recognizing its variegated expressions (Peck
and Tickell 2002), imperialist impulses (Escobar 2004; Hart 2006), and authoritarian
responses (Canterbury 2005; Springer 2009), all of which dispel the theoretical tall-
tales of a smoothspace, flat-earth where neoliberalism rolls-out across the globe
without friction or resistance. To deal with the inconsistencies between these
material interpretations and a doctrine allegedly premised on peace, othering
practices are employed to indemnify aberrant, violent, and local cultures in
explaining away any failings of neoliberalism, thereby leaving its class project
unscathed (Springer 2015). Orientalism is used to legitimize the doublespeak
neoliberal proponents invoke in the global distribution of violence (Sparke
2007), to code the violence of anti-neoliberal resistance, and to geographically
allocate and place blame for 8 violence by asserting that violence sits in particular,
Oriental places (Springer 2011). The responsibility of critical theory under this
new imperialism (Harvey 2003) is thus to illuminate such erasures so that the
othering of neoliberalism is laid bare and therein may be refused. Momentous
Violence In my attempt to link neoliberalism to violence one might be inclined to
ask if the former actually causes the latter and how that could be proven. My
response is that the question itself is largely irrelevant. The empirical record reveals
a noticeable upswing in inequality under neoliberalism (Wade 2003), which Harvey
(2005) regards as neoliberalisms principal substantive achievement. Inequality
alone is about measuring disparity, however qualified, while the link between
inequality and violence is typically considered as an appraisal of the validity of a
causal relationship, where the link may or may not be understood to take on
multiple dimensions including temporally, spatiality, economics, politics, culture and
so forth. The point is that violence and inequality are mutually constitutive.
Inequality precipitates violence, and violence gives rise to further inequalities.
Accordingly, if we wish to attenuate the devastating and disaffecting effects of
either, we need to rid ourselves of a calculative model and instead consider
violence and inequality as an integral system or particular moment. Thinking in
terms of moments, Hartsock (2006: 176) argues, can allow scholars to take
account of discontinuities and incommensurabilities without losing sight of the
presence of a social system within which these features are embedded. Although
the enduring phenomenon of violence is fragmented by variations, strains and
aberrations as part of its processual nature, within the current moment of
neoliberalism, violence is all too often a reflection of the chaotic landscapes
of globalized capitalism. 9 At different moments capitalism creates particular
kinds of agents who become capable of certain kinds of violence dependent upon
both their distinctive geohistorical milieu and their situation within its hierarchy. It is
in this distinction of moments that we can come to understand the correlations
between violence and neoliberalism. By exploring the particular histories and
distinctive geographies that define individual neoliberalizations, scholars can begin
to shed light on the phantasmagoria of violence that is projected within
neoliberalisms wider rationality of power. In other words, it is important to
recognize and start working through how the moment of neoliberalism and the
moment of violence converge. The intention here is not to produce a Cartesian map,
wherein the same interpretation is replicated in each and every context of
neoliberalization. Neoliberalism should not be read as an all-powerful and self-
reproducing logic. Lending such an infallible appearance serves to empower the
idea that neoliberalism is beyond reproach. It is imperative to contest the
neoliberalism-as-monolithism argument for failing to recognize space and time as
open and always becoming (Springer 2014). In focusing solely on an externally
constructed neoliberalism we neglect the local geographies of existing political
economic circumstances and institutional frameworks, wherein the vagaries of
societal influences and individual agency play a key role in the circulation and
to focus exclusively on
(re)production of neoliberalism. In short,
external forces is to risk producing over-generalized
accounts of a singular and omnipresent neoliberalism .
 Global Order Failing Now
Without the alt economic stagnation is the only outcome
Palley 11 (Thomas S., is an American economist and is currently a Schwartz
Economic Growth Fellow with the New American Foundation in Washington D.C.
The End of Export-led Growth: Implications for Emerging Markets and the Global
Economy. FES Briefing Paper 6. March 2011) CTD
1.SUMMARY For the past three decades emerging market (EM) economies have
relied heavily on export-led growth as a driver of their development. Now, as the
global economy struggles to escape the trauma of the Great Recession, many EM
economies are hoping for a resumption of that pattern. That hope stands to be
disappointed, however, because the conditions that supported export-led growth
are exhausted. The global economy is now characterized by a structural shortage of
demand and intense competition between EM economies. In such an environment,
export led growth cannot work for EM economies as a whole. The solution is to shift
to domestic demand-led growth but there are major political obstacles that
make such a shift unlikely. 2. THE CURRENT AND FUTURE STATE OF THE GLOBAL
ECONOMY The global economy is still struggling in the wake of the financial crash of
2008 and the Great Recession. The new overarching condition is one of global
demand shortage. In the US, early talk of a V- or U-shaped recovery has given
way to talk of an L-shaped future, where L stands for long stagnation. The principal
problems are a debt-saturated household sector and extreme income inequality.
Europe also faces a future of stagnation once the temporary stimulus of the post-
crash recovery in international trade fades and permanent fiscal austerity bites.
Likewise, Japan is confronted by stagnation because of the strong yen and
structurally weak domestic demand conditions that have prevailed for almost
twenty years. One area of strength in the global economy has been EM economies.
Given their export-led orientation these economies benefitted significantly from the
recovery of trade that began in the second half of 2009. They have also benefitted
from the interest rate compression the crisis has produced, with EM economies
being rerated upward, while developed economies have been rerated downward.
Lastly, many EM economies have benefitted from high commodity prices that have
bounced back with trade. Commodity prices also now embed a speculative
inflation hedge component owing to the easy money/low interest rate policies
adopted to fight the recession. The relatively strong conditions in EM economies
have encouraged hopes that they can grow rapidly evenif the developed economies
stagnate, and that the EM economies might even act a global locomotive which
pulls the developed economies. Were this to happen, it would mark a historic
role reversal. As shown in Table 1, the EM and developing economies (identified as
the non-OECD economies) have been steadily increasing their share of global GDP
and now constitute approximately 50 percent of global economy.1 However,
despite this increased size there are two fundamental structural reasons
why the EM economies will not be able to drive the global economy. First,
they remain heavily dependent on the industrialized economies to provide demand
for their exports. This is illustrated in Table 2 which shows the OECDs current
account deficit and industrialized Asias current account surplus.2 The formers
deficit is significantly the result of the latters surplus. Second, because of their
increased size and continued reliance on exports, the EM economies risk
undermining economic recovery in the industrialized economies. Evidence to this
effect has emerged in the US, and Table 3 shows how the increased US trade deficit
has lowered quarterly GDP growth since the recession ended in June 2009. In effect,
the EM economies are locked in a structural trap whereby they depend significantly
for growth on the developed economies, but their growth undermines the developed
economies. Putting the pieces together, the prognosis is stagnation. The
current export success of EM economies is aggravating economic weakness in the
developed economies. This weakness in turn stands to undermine the EM
economies because of their continued export dependence, and when that happens
many of the current strengths of the EM economies will disappear. The postcrash
bounce in international trade is likely to prove temporary, while the realization of
the prospect of stagnation will take the inflation premium out of commodity
prices. Globalization has diversified global economic activity. Consequently, it is no
longer possible for a single country or region to act as the lone locomotive of global
growth. A diversified global economy requires that all regions have to pull together,
and that calls for a new structure in which EM and developed economies pull each
other.

Sustainable growth is an oxymoron we must radically rethink

our current consumption and economic order
Bartlett 11 (Albert A., Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, University of
Colorado at Boulder. The Meaning of Sustainability. TEACHERS CLEARINGHOUSE
FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY EDUCATION NEWSLETTER 31(1), Winter 2012, Pg. 1-5)
CTD
We must be clear on the meaning of sustainability before we make any more use
the term. A very commonly used definition of sustainability is implied in the
following definition of sustainable development which is found in the report of the
Brundtland Commission of the United Nations (4): Sustainable development is
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs. We must note two important things.
First, future generations (plural) implies for a very long time, where long means
long compared to a human lifetime. Second, the arithmetic of steady growth shows
that steady growth of populations or of rates of resource consumption for modest
periods of time leads to sizes of these quantities that become so large as to be
impossible. The combination of these two observations leads us to the First Law of
Sustainability (5): Population growth and/or growth in the rates of
consumption of resources cannot be sustained. The First Law is based on
arithmetic so it is absolute. Science is not democratic, so the First Law of
Sustainability is not debatable; it can not be modified or repealed by
professional societies, by congresses or by parliaments. The First Law implies that
the term Sustainable Growth is an oxymoron. This is true when this term is
used by an untutored person on the street, by an economics professor, or by the
President of the United States. (6) The Brundtland Definition of Sustainability The
Brundtland definition of sustainability is appealing because it has both virtue and
vagueness. It is virtuous to give the impression that one is thinking of the wellbeing
of future generations, but the definition itself is vague; it gives no specifics or hints
about the nature of a sustainable society or about how we must conduct our society
in order to become sustainable. This vagueness of definition opens the door for
people to use the term sustainability to mean anything they want it to mean. Its
straight from Alice in Wonderland where Humpty Dumpty proclaims (7), When I use
a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. With the
freedom supplied by the vagueness, anyone can become an expert on
sustainability. Unfortunately, the Brundtland definition contains a flaw. It focuses
first on the needs of the present, which have nothing to do with sustainability, and
secondarily it mentions the needs of future generations which are vital for
sustainability. This sets the stage for intergenerational conflict in which the present
generation wins and future generations lose. We need to rephrase the Brundtland
definition as follows: Sustainable development is development that does not
compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Peak
Petroleum Production and Global Climate Change Today we face two major global
threats to our way of life: the two threats are related and both are predictable
consequences of a single cause; overpopulation. The first threat is the peaking of
the production (tons per year) of fossil fuels, particularly petroleum. The second
threat is the rapidly developing global climate change. As these threats develop,
each will have a profound effect on life as we know it. To understand the first threat
we need to know about the Hubbert Curve. The Hubbert Curve Back in the 1950s
the geophysicist M. King Hubbert noted that a couple of centuries ago the
production (in tons per year) of a finite non-renewable resource, such as petroleum,
was essentially zero. He reasoned that production would rise to one or more
maxima after which it would decline back to zero in another century or two. No
matter how erratic the production turns out to be, the curve of production (tons per
year) vs. time (years) can be approximated by the Gaussian Error Curve which
starts at zero, rises to a maximum and then returns to zero. The area under the
curve from zero to infinity is equal to the ultimate size R of the recoverable resource
measured in tons. This curve is known at the Hubbert Curve. The important
parameter of the curve is the date of the maximum. In the case of petroleum
production in the U.S., the peak occurred in 1971, just as Hubbert had predicted
years earlier. The mathematical exercise of fitting a Gaussian Curve to the world
petroleum production data shows that if the worlds ultimate recoverable quantity of
conventional petroleum is 2000 billion barrels, then the peak of world petroleum
production could be expected around the year 2004 and the peak moves to a later
date at the rate of 5.5 days for every billion barrels that is added to the estimated
world supply.(8), (9) In the case of world petroleum today (2012), there is debate
among petroleum experts as to whether or not the world peak may have already
passed. (10) The passing of the world peak of petroleum production will be a major
milestone for human life on Earth because it will mean that the tons per year of
petroleum being produced world-wide will start to decline in its inevitable but erratic
descent toward zero. At the same time the world population is projected to be
increasing and the world per capita demand for petroleum can also be expected to
be increasing. Supplies are decreasing but demand is increasing. Almost all aspects
of our industrial society depend on petroleum, so that, as Richard Heinberg has
pointed out, peak petroleum will be quickly followed by Peak Everything.
(11) In particular, modern agriculture is completely dependent on petroleum, so the
peak of world petroleum production will be followed by the peak of world food
production. We will then be facing the specter of declining world food production
while at the same time the world population is expected to continue to grow. This is
a recipe for famine and conflict.

Best ev long cite, super qualified authors

Jones et al 14 (Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and the director of the Project on International Order and Strategy (IOS) in the Foreign
Policy program at the Brookings Institution. He is a Consulting Professor at Stanford Universitys Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and
Chair of the Advisory Council of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics,
and was previously a Hamburg fellow in conflict prevention at Stanford University. Thomas Wright is a fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Project on
International Order and Strategy (IOS). Previously, he was executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a lecturer at the Harris
School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and senior researcher for the Princeton Project on National Security. Wright has a Ph.D. from
Georgetown University, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University and a B.A. and M.A. from University College Dublin. Jeremy Shapiro is a visiting fellow in the
Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Shapiro graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in computer science and received his M.A. in
international relations and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is a Ph.D. candidate in political
science at MIT. Robert Keane is a research assistant for the Project on International Order and Strategy (IOS) in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings
Institution. Keane received his B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington Universitys Elliott School of International Affairs and his M.A. in

The State of the International

International Relations from the University of Chicagos Committee on International Relations.

Order. Brookings Institute. Policy paper number 33. Feb 2014) CTD
The Global Economic Order Survived the Crisis but Fault-lines Remain The
international financial crisis of 200708 was the most severe shock to hit the world
economy since the 1930s. By many metrics, for the first few months the crisis was
as bad, or worse, than the Great Depression. Unemployment in the United States
reached 10 percent and in the eurozone it hit, and stayed at, 12 percent. The global
equity loss in 2008 was approximately $50 trillion or 80 percent of global GDP. 3 In
the first phase of the crisis, as Daniel Drezner has argued, international institutions
responded quite well to the crisis, particularly when compared with the (disastrous)
response in the 1930s. 4 The Western countries immediately turned to the G-20
rather than the G-8 or even the G-7, none of which had existed during the
Depression. The G-20 coordinated a crisis response that included emergency
liquidity and a massive stimulus. Shortly thereafter, the trend lines improved and it
became clear that the world had averted another Great Depression. That the world
economy is experiencing a slow recovery should not be a surprise. The recovery
from recessions caused by financial crises is nearly always worse than recessions
caused by the normal business cycle. By many measures, we are beating the clock
when compared with previous crises. But, what is much more worrying is the fact
that the underlying causes of the crisis have not been addressed. When
assessing the global economy since the crisis, it is important to distinguish between
the institutions and rules that govern the economic order, and the economic order
more generally. The first includes organizations like the IMF, the WTO, and the G-20,
formal and informal cooperation between industrialized states, and rules like Basel II
and Basel III. The second encompasses all of that and much more: the way major
states operate in the global economy (including unilaterally), the general principles
underlying global economic activity, and patterns that may arise advertently or
inadvertently. Thus, financial imbalances, deregulation of the financial sector in the
United States and elsewhere, and too-big-to-fail banks are all a part of the order as
a whole, even if they are largely outside of the governance structures. This is an
important distinction that explains why some eminent analysts believe the global
economic order remains fundamentally broken while others believe that the
system largely worked post-2008. For instance, one could argue that the financial
imbalances in the system as a whole are destabilizing without blaming international
institutions for this because the imbalances are largely the result of unilateral
decisions taken by some of the major states. Domestic choices are hardly the fault
of the IMF or G-20, particularly given their current design and mandate. It is the
order more generally where the real problems lie. As then-University of Chicago
Professor and now head of Indias Central Bank Raghuram Rajan put it, There are
deep faultlines in the global economy, faultlines that have developed
because in an integrated economy and in an integrated world, what is best
for the individual actor or institution is not always best for the system.5
Sometimes the solutions are clear-cut but the political will is lacking. Unfortunately,
this does not apply to the post-crisis economic order, where experts disagree
profoundly about how to handle existential dangers. Take one of the greatest
challenges to a healthy global economy: too big to fail banks. The major banks have
grown since the crisis. They are now so large and systemically important that no
government would allow them to fail, thus enabling them to engage in more risky
behavior. That much is generally agreed upon but what is the solution? Is it to break
up the banks and, if so, how would this be achieved? Or, as Lawrence Summers
argued, would it be better to insist on sufficiently high capital, liquidity, loss
reserves, and debt that can be bailed in so that firms are impregnable even against
a once-in-a-century event.6 While the globally integrated economy created
enormous prosperity, it has also introduced greater volatility into the system with
the Mexico crisis of 1994, the East Asia financial crisis of 1997, and the international
financial crisis of 2008, among others. The latter two shocked the global economy to
its core. The root causes of these crises were rising oil prices, financial imbalances,
badly capitalized banks, large capital flows, and financial innovation and
deregulation. All of these remain in place, and there is no reason to believe that
they do not continue to function as hairline fractures in the global economy.
Through this lens, we are in for a prolonged period of volatility. The proposition that
the modern international economic order is flawed is generally acknowledged in the
rest of the world but is still largely ignored in the United States, where the crisis is
seen as an accident or a function of avoidable bad decisions in the packaging of
sub-prime mortgages. As Jonathan Kirshner wrote, Americans regard the financial
crisis as a black swan, but to the rest of the world it is a learning moment.7 The
lesson for many outside the United States is that increased volatility and crisis
are inevitable consequences of how the order is designed and structured.
This has sapped the legitimacy of the American model and has also led countries to
hedge, insofar as is practicable, against the risks of the economic order. Thus, we
are seeing a degree of re-nationalization of the financial sector in major states, and
consideration of restrictions on capital flows. There have also been repeated
warnings of hedging against the use of the dollar as the key currency, though in
practice weve seen very little of this behavior. More recently, as we shall show in
this report, massive energy innovation in the American market is causing something
of a corrective to the earlier phase of Chinese triumphalism about its state-capitalist
model.
 Turns China Rels

Mutual suspicion ensures serial policy failure turns the relations

advantage
Zhu 15 (Zhiqun Zhu is Director of the China Institute and an Associate Professor
of Political Science and International Relations at Bucknell University. Dispel
Distrust: Start From North Korea. International Affairs Review. 23(3). Summer 2015)
CTD
Historically, rising powers and reigning powers have feared challenges and threats
from each other. As China gains economic and military power, some have noted that
the United States and China seem to be becoming increasingly mutually distrustful
despite public statements to the contrary, which has undermined the success of
cooperative initiatives between the two. China and the United States have
repeatedly reassured each other of their benign intentions as a way to avert the
conflict often associated with a global power transition; the United States has
publicly welcomed Chinas peaceful rise, and China has indicated that it does not
intend to replace the United States or expel it from the Asia-Pacific region. Scholars
such as David M. Lampton have characterized the U.S.-Chinese relationship as one
of competition and cooperation.1 It is in both countries interests to manage their
differences and expand areas of cooperation if they wish to avoid conflicts. The two
sides major current efforts to accomplish this can be summarized as Americas
pivot to Asia and Chinas new type of great power relations framework. Through
these initiatives, both the United States and China hope to promote cooperation so
as to avoid the historical tragedy of Thucydides trap. Unfortunately, so far each
side has poorly interpreted the others policy initiative, which highlights the
existence of deep-rooted distrust between the two countries. While U.S. allies and
most countries in Asia support the United States rebalance or pivot to Asia in
the context of Chinas rapid resurgence, China remains suspicious of U.S.
intentions. The key components of this pivot include strengthening U.S. ties with
Asian allies, deepening the United States working relationships with emerging
powers, engaging with regional multilateral institutions, expanding trade and
investment, forging a broad-based military presence, and advancing democracy and
human rights. Though Obama administration officials have reiterated that the
United States does not and will not contain China, many believe that the pivot
strategy was at least partially designed to counter Chinas growing power.2 Chinese
leaders feel deeply uncomfortable that the United States has strengthened ties with
most of Chinas neighbors, especially those that have territorial disputes with China;
that the United States has begun shifting more naval and air forces to Asia even
though it already has forward troops in Japan and South Korea; and that the United
States has claimed that the U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty covers the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands without maintaining a position regarding sovereignty over
the islands. Chinese leaders also fear that these U.S. policies are emboldening and
encouraging the adventurist behaviors of some politicians in Japan, the Philippines,
and Vietnam as evidenced by these politicians confrontational approaches towards
China. The Chinese leadership wonders what Washington has done to improve U.S.-
China relations while consolidating the United States presence in the AsiaPacific
region. These concerns may not sound interesting or sensible in Washington, but
they are real and serious for many Chinese analysts and policymakers. The bottom
line is the distrust between the United States and China has not declined as a result
of the pivot.

Mutual frustration increases mutual mistrust.

Harding 15 (Harry, PhD in Polisci from Stanford. Professor of Public Policy and
Politics at Virginia. Has U.S. China Policy Failed?. The Washington Quarterly 38(3)
pp. 95122) CTD
The immediate stimulus for the current debate over U.S. China policy is a growing
and widespread dissatisfaction with Chinas evolution both domestically and
internationally, especially after the end of the global financial crisis and the
emergence of Xi Jinping as Chinas president and Party general secretary. A number
of observers have analyzed the sources of the increasing U.S. displeasure with
China, as well as the grounds for Chinas corresponding unhappiness with the
United States.2 Both are importantwhat the United States regards as
disappointing Chinese behavior, Beijing and some Western analysts portray as a
response to provocative conduct by the United States or its allies. However one
assigns responsibility for the problem, the sense of mutual frustration has led to
increasing mutual mistrust, at both the elite and popular levels.3 In the United
States, the displeasure with China has reached the point that an avalanche of
books, reports, and essays has appeared, all of them challenging some aspects of
present U.S. China policy and proposing change. Many, although not all, of those
analyses demand a tougher stand toward Beijing. Even at this relatively early stage
in the debate, therefore, some analysts believe that the two countries may be
reaching a tipping point at which their relationship will assume a fundamentally
competitive character, even turning into an outright strategic rivalry.4
Alt
 Intellectual Challenge Solvency
Institutional knowledge is not enough to challenge hegemonic regimes-
a bottom up epistemology can be a counterhegemonic epistemology
and much more effective
Lowe 12 (Max Manning, MSc Globalisation and Development (Dist.) and BA Development Studies
and Politics, Impoverished Citizens? A Social Movement of the Urban Poor in a Global City, p. 38) SDL

As far as I have identified, there are limitations to Abahlalis movement. By using

institutional structures, and building upon the language of their
domination/hegemony, their counter-hegemonic discourse is theoretically limited to
restructuring the hegemonic formation (Mouffe 1988). However, Abahlalism-Ubuntu
goes further than this and is directly opposed to the philosophy of neoliberalism,
escaping the bounds of discourse and language. More importantly, this is based
upon experiential, rather than theoretical, reasoning, and is founded upon
accessibility and experience as primary sources. As it is enacted, produced, and
reshaped through epistemological praxis and developed organically, it moves
beyond a reactive nature. The doing of Abahlalism moves beyond resistance, and
beyond being a counterhegemonic construct. It is a proactive epistemology, and as
such, negative, oppositional descriptions appear inadequate; it is revolutionary in its
truest sense, an instigation of difference. I stated at the beginning that I did not
wish to treat Abahlali as studied objects, testing grander theories using their
actions, but I believe they have a potentially grander philosophy than they realise,
and in its experiential and people-scale foundations, a particularly durable one. This
is not to suggest that Abahlalism-Ubuntu will necessarily challenge liberalism
globally in the way that other philosophies such as socialism did, nor that it will gain
a tiny percentage of that traction; they have a long struggle ahead. However, by
starting from their local knowledge and experience, they have constructed a
bottom-up epistemology which is an important map for social change.
 Movements Solvency
Bottom up movements are able to address root cause
problems and can cause liberation
Richmond 13 (oliver, Professor of International Relations, Peace & Conflict Studies at university
of Manchester, Failed statebuilding versus peace formation)SDL

It is from contextual and mediated local, state, regional and international legitimacy
that the agency for peacebuilding (and peace formation) arises in parallel.
International actors have long been aware of the legitimacy of such a move with
their appeals for local participation, local ownership, community peacebuilding and
bottom-up approaches, even if they were mainly only rhetorical. Informal and social
agencies, translated into formal institutions, are emerging in post-conflict
environments, in practical ways. They offer signals as to how internationals might
facilitate the development of peace. The signals lie in critique, demands or
resistance to certain strategies, and acceptance or attempts to modify them,
expressed through local leaders, NGOs, identity and religious groups, trade unions,
professional groups, religious communities, media, peacebuilding and human rights
organisations, womens groups, veterans groups and so on. But the mere existence
of such signals indicates that there are local peace formational agencies already in
operation. In Guatemala, South Africa and Northern Ireland, the importance of civil
society actors, NGOs and local leaders were paramount in the peace process, as
was their support by international donors and/or the UN system (Fischer, 2006:
291). Factors that were crucial to such processes include alternative media venues
for reporting; monitoring elections, human rights and the political process;
community work; educational support; supporting cultures of peace; gender issues;
disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform
(SSR); documenting war crimes; dealing with trauma; dialogue; and reconciliation.
None of these factors can be carried without local participation and support, and,
perhaps more importantly, local consent and legitimacy. This indicates the most
obvious form of peace formation, but one that is mainly internationally scripted,
providing opportunities and space for local actors and processes to connect with
them. Peace formation also has an indigenous and locally based character, which
may either connect with these or maintain its autonomy. These aspects should be
represented in the formation of political institutions, whether state or international.
There has long been hints of this in related literatures, from Chambers Rural
Development, Cerneas Putting the Last First in development studies, Burtons focus on
Basic Human Needs in International Relations, to earlier Marxist literatures focusing
on class and ownership issues, and general shifts in anthropology from cataloguing
the exotic for the benefit of power to an understanding of social dynamics and
alterity for their own sake (Asad, 1973; Burton, 1990; Cernea, 1985; Chambers,
1983). Studies on peace matters have also long been aware of the needs of bottom-
up approaches, including issues related to custom and society. UN and World Bank
policy, setting an example followed by many donors in the 1990s, also adopted
such discourses. Reaching further back in time, policies and writings about the
creation of peace and order have long recognised the basic capacities of individual
agency, group mobilisation and their tendency to be concerned with rights and
needs, governance and international order. It is surprising, therefore, that
appropriate conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches have not
emerged as distinct to those which already engage with the international as a
construct of states, norms, power and resources. Such an approach would deal with
the root causes of conflict that impact on everyday life as well as enabling
responses constructed by those suffering the consequences, with assistance by
external actors. It would need to be able to build relationships with citizens,
subjects, the oppressed and marginalised on their own terms, offering them a form
of peace as emancipation or liberation which they would recognise and cooperate
with. This would mean bottom-up, rather than merely top-down, empowerment of
local and marginal actors, communities and individuals, caution about institutional
and state power and their ideologies and biases unintended consequences for
rights and needs, and an attempt to connect with local epistemologies of peace. It
would be a process of enablement and liberation rather than a process of
intervention and governance (or governmentality in Foucaultian terms) (Foucault,
1991: 87104).

Grassroots movements have the potential to change national

and international institutions
Visoka 15 (Gezim, , PhD in Politics and International Relations from Dublin City University, has
an MA in European Politics from the University of Sussex in the UK, and a BA in Political Science from
the University of Prishtina in Kosovo. The Promise of New Epistemologies of Peace, Journal of
Intervention and Statebuilding, p. 544)SDL

The most interesting part of Failed Statebuilding is the second half, which explores
the dynamics of peace formation and international peace enablement. In exploring
the proponents of peace formation, Richmond considers the agency of people and
social groups operating in the forms of NGOs and networks that are concentrated on
grassroots levels as crucial for maintaining peace and stability in their everyday
lives (p. 135). The agential properties of these actors are solidarity, participation,
and empathy, and, most importantly, they are a source of local legitimacy (p. 136).
Through numerous examples from Bosnia, Guatemala, Cyprus, Kosovo, Solomon
Islands, and Haiti, Richmond illustrates the power of local agencies and their impact
in shaping peace processes. He further asserts that these localized agencies and
peace formers have the potential to reform state, regional, and international
institutions through their bottom-up campaigns and initiatives. Evidently, Failed
Statebuilding seeks to reach out to the liberal peacebuilding supporters and policy
makers, which represents an interesting, pragmatic navigation of critical scholarship
committed to both critique and emancipation beyond the ivory tower. Richmond
seeks to speak truth to power, but also to engage it in dialogue, in an attempt to
change the existing mind-sets in the peacebuilding and statebuilding industry.

The alternative solves the Zapatistas prove

Routledge 03 (Paul, Researcher at the School of Geography, A Companion to
Political Geography, BlackWell Publishing) JA

the Zapatistas engaged in a "war

Through their spokesperson, Subcommandante Marcos,
of words" with the Mexican government, fought primarily with rebel communiques (via
newspapers and the Internet), rather than bullets. Through their guerrilla insurgency and this war of words the
Zapatistas have attempted to raise awareness concerning the
unequal distribution of land, and economic and political power in
Chiapas; challenge the neoliberal economic policies of the Mexican
government; articulate an indigenous worldview which promotes Indian political autonomy; and articulate a
call for the democratization of civil society. They have also been able to forge an international solidarity network of
groups and organizations. They have thus posed both material and representational challenges. The
success of the Zapatista struggle has lain in its ability, with limited resources
and personnel, to disrupt international financial markets , and their investments within
Mexico, while exposing the inequities on which development and
transnational liberalism are predicated (Harvey, 1995; Ross, 1995).
The alternative makes good environmental policy possible
Routledge 03 (Paul, Researcher at the School of Geography, A Companion to
Political Geography, BlackWell Publishing) JA
However, despite certain successes, the movement has been faced with repression from the Mexican government.
Over 15,000 army personnel have been deployed in Chiapas; villages suspected of being sympathetic to the
Zapatistas have been bombed; and peasants suspected of being Zapatistas have been arrested and tortured. At
present an uneasy cease-fire is in place between the Zapatistas and the government and peace-talks between them
the Zapatistas have attempted to pose a
are stalled. Since its emergence in 1994,
political challenge to the Mexican state. In their demands for
equitable distribution of land, their calls for indigenous rights and ecological
preservation [i.e. an end to logging, a program of reforestation, an
end to water contamination of the jungle, preservation of remaining
virgin forest), they also articulate an economic, ecological, and
cultural struggle.
Framework
 Bottom Up Epistemology
a bottom-up epistemology allows for a more diverse
understanding of the world incorporating individual power and
agency
Lowe 12 (Max Manning, MSc Globalisation and Development (Dist.) and BA Development Studies
and Politics, Impoverished Citizens? A Social Movement of the Urban Poor in a Global City, p. 31) SDL

As such, a case continues to be made for the subordination of the state to society
(AbM & RN, 17), reflecting the opening salvo of the Freedom Charter that The
People Will Govern! (ANC 1955). Furthermore, as Abahlali make clear, the
perception that planning has always been a top down mechanism is not supported
by the actual existence of cities, particularly in the way the spatial logic and racial
separation of Apartheid was challenged. All the cities in the world were built by
the work of the poor They have also done a lot of the planning of the development
of our cities. It was the poor who decided that black and white and rich and poor
shouldnt live separately and who took unused land so that everyone could live
together in our cities (AbM 2007b). For some, as Taylor summarises, cities [are]
treated as winners in the emerging global era (Taylor 2007, 134). The situation
for those in Durban, however, has not been that straightforward. Often claims are
made about the extent of rapid globalisation in the neoliberal era, with proponents
contending that the reality of transnationalization can no longer be disputed
(Robinson 2007, 9) and that hypermobile global capital is leaving all national
governments impotent in the face of global finance (Weiss 1997, 13). This
bankers boast conception of globalisation (Cooper 2005, 93) suggests a rescaling
of governance away from the national state, and, with the emergence of a grid of
global cities defined by their importance as economic nodes of command and
control (Sassen 2000), towards the local as well as the global scale. It is argued that
capacities have been reduced and transferred to institutions operating primarily at
global or local scales (Harriss, Stokke and Tornquist 2004, 1), something which has
been furthered by the good governance agenda and focus on participation
(Abrahamsen 2000). Swyndedouws (2004) articulation of glocalisation, however,
avoides the territorial trap (Agnew and Corbridge 1995) by constructing scales not
as Russian dolls (Brenner 2009) or as a zero-sum equation, but as constantly
contested and altering topography. Abahlalis refuse globally paradigmatic forms of
representation, utilise hegemonic narratives regarding participation, and focus on
people-centred development. In light of this, the contests regarding space also
concern space for thought, consciousness and praxis linked to issues of agency, and
the contests over space blur into contests over scales of governance and
responsibility. The construction of scales as contested, particularly in an era of
global flux, is important therefore for understanding Abahlalis people-scaled
protest. By utilising the variety of narratives regarding globalisation, individual
power and participation and basing this on a living politics which starts from the
bottom (AbM & RN 2009b, 3-7) they challenge the subordination of city planning to
globalisation by subordinating all governance to society
A bottom up epistemology is more accessible and allows for a
more effective method of deconstructing established regimes
Lowe 12 (Max Manning, MSc Globalisation and Development (Dist.) and BA Development Studies
and Politics, Impoverished Citizens? A Social Movement of the Urban Poor in a Global City, p. 40-41)
SDL

Finally, we have considered their epistemology, the coherent, albeit evolving,

philosophy which structures all their actions. This encompasses five elements,
foreshadowed in the previous sections; the importance of experience, learning and
subjectivity; an axiom of equality and related dignity and mutual respect; an
acceptance of the consciousness and agency of all, based in their equality and
experience; the collectivity of humanity, through; and the importance on
nonmonetary conditions, founded in all the preceding points, for determining the
value of things, people and places. This is partly a consequence of their changing
relationship with God, and their similar relationship with the ANC. Overall, their
epistemology goes beyond challenging the crystallisation of biopolitical
governmentality on urban governance as a massified level of the population. They
contest this massification through their singularity and agency. Similarly, they
challenge the constructed notion of homo economicus and the concurrent
governmental regulation of the market framework by opposing to this collective
rights and non-economic values in particular from their epistemology. Their
foundation in experiential knowledge and memories, and based in accessible
language offers the possibilities of the movement transcending institutionalisation
by challenging the philosophical basis of liberalism. Abhalalism, mixed with and
influenced by the African philosophy of ubuntu, as a consequence of its
epistemological praxis has the potential to expand outside of simply resistance, to
become an instigator of revolution.

A bottom up approach is proffered by indigenous intellectuals and

incorporates a culturally appropriate epistemology
Hwang 5 (Kwang-Kuo, obtained his PhD in social psychology at the University of Hawaii,
Honolulu. He is currently National Chair Professor at National Taiwan University, A philosophical
reflection on the epistemology and methodology of indigenous psychologies, p. 6) SDL

The imposition of a Western research paradigm on non-Western countries can be

viewed as a kind of cultural imperialism or colonialism (Ho, 1998). Findings derived
from such an approach are mostly irrelevant to or inadequate for understanding the
mentality of people in non-Western countries (Enriquez, 1981; Mehryar, 1984;
Sinha, 1986). Hence, most Western theories of social psychology are culturally
bound. Replication of the Western paradigm in non-Western countries may cause
neglect of important cultural factors that have profound influence on the
development and manifestation of human behavior in that particular culture.
Therefore, many indigenous psychologists advocate the scientific study of human
behavior and mental process within a culturally meaningful context (Adair et al.,
1993; Kim & Berry, 1993; Ho, 1998; Kim et al., 2000) using a bottom-up model-
building paradigm (Kim, 2000) in order to develop a culturally appropriate
psychology (Azuma, 1984), a psychology based on indigenous realities (Enriquez,
1993), or a psychology that relies on native values, concepts, belief systems,
problem methods and other resources (Adair et al., 1993; Ho, 1998). The
epistemological goals as well as the methodological approach of indigenous
psychology have been criticized by mainstream psychologists. For example, Triandis
(2000) pointed out that a similar approach has been used by anthropologists for
years, and that accumulating idiosyncratic data with an anthropological approach
may not provide much contribution to the development of scientific psychology.

Unless the aff can explain all of metaphysics you prefer our
epistemology. Bottom up epistemologies are the only way to
even evaluate this debate unless you know everything there is
to know.
Roca-Royes 7 (Sonia, is a senior lecturer in philosophy at University of Stirling.
Mind Independence and Modal Empiricism. Latin Meeting in Analytic Philosophy
Genova 20-22 September 2007 CEUR-WS Proceedings ISSN 1613-0073. pp.117-135)
CTD
3.1 Top-down vs. bottom-up epistemology The first taxonomical distinction I will
focus on can be labelled the bottom-up vs. top-down epistemology. When applied
to the modal case, this distinction is basically the same that Bob Hale (2003) draws
between a possibility-based approach and a necessity-based approach: This
suggests a distinction between two broadly opposed asymmetrical approaches to
our problemnecessity-based approaches, which treat knowledge of necessities as
more fundamental, and possibility-based approaches, which accord priority to
knowledge of possibilities. (Hale 2003, 5-6) A bottom-up epistemology would
take possibility knowledge to be more fundamental , and, from here, necessity
knowledge (knowledge of the metaphysical laws) would be inferred. By contrast, a
top-down epistemology would take knowledge of the metaphysical laws (knowledge
of necessities) to be more basic and, from them, possibility knowledge would be
deductively acquired. There is no doubt that a top-down epistemology (whether
rationalist or empiricist) is a very attractive strategy. If we could make it work, it
would be an extremely powerful story in terms of its elucidatory power. One would
only need to elucidate our epistemic access to the axioms of the modal realm, and
the rest would thereby be automatically covered. However, it is precisely
because of this potentiality that they are in turn very fragile. If we are to
endorse a top-down strategy and take it seriously, we should be ready to commit
ourselves to the knowability of all metaphysical laws. In other words, the overall
successfulness of a top-down epistemology directly depends on how successful the
proposal is in elucidating the knowability conditions of the metaphysical laws. The
reason is as follows. Consider the everyday life modal fact that my table could be
broken. Whether we know it or not depends, on top-down strategies, on whether we
know this possibility fact to be permitted by the (set of all) metaphysical laws.
Unless we know (and have elucidated the knowability conditions of) all
metaphysical laws, our claims of knowledge of possibility facts are epistemically
deficient. For, if we only know some of them, but not all (or we know them all but do
not know them to be all), the following situation cannot be theoretically ruled out. It
could be that the modal fact that my table could be broken is not ruled out by any
of the known metaphysical laws, but it could still be that, amongst the unknown
essentialist principles, there is one implying that my table is (essentially)
unbreakable. Given this, in order to claim knowledge of possibilities, in top-down
strategies, we need to know that they are not ontologically ruled out by any of the
metaphysical laws. Therefore, top-down epistemologists, to the extent that they
want to assert knowability of possibility facts, need to commit themselves to the
epistemic access to all metaphysical laws. Is this bad for top-down strategies? I
think it is. Not because this is a very strong commitment (which it is), but, more
importantly, because it is highly controversial. The epistemic accessibility to
conceptual necessities may not appear to be especially problematic to most of us.
We may agree that we know most conceptual necessities like necessarily, there are
no married bachelors. 3 However, among the metaphysical axioms, there are
(perhaps!) essentialist principles like Essentiality of Origin, or Essentiality of Kind,
and both their truth (if true) and their knowability conditions are far from being
epistemically unproblematic. An important contrast to be stressed here is that,
whereas most of us would find essentialist principles epistemically problematic,
everyday life claims like my table could be broken have a much better claim to be
known (and therefore knowable). This contrast is important here because it
suggests that the best strategy for us to follow is to endorse an epistemology such
that, the elucidation of the knowability conditions of the later do not depend on the
elucidation of the knowability conditions of the former. A bottom-up
epistemology, unlike a top-down one, is such a strategy. Because of this, and
despite the fact that bottom-up strategies are not as initially attractive as top-down
ones, we may want to explore the prospects of a bottom-up strategy and see how
far we can get with it. In the next sub-section, I will focus on the second taxonomical
distinction; the epiricism/rationalism one. Before that, however, let us advance that
the two distinctions cut across each other. Even though they technically do so,
rationalism tends to go with top-down strategies, whereas empiricism matches
much better with bottom up ones. Empirical sciences illustrate very clearly how a
bottom-up epistemology goes. From empirically known data, knowledge of the laws
of nature is acquired by ampliative methodology, and epistemic doubts about our
knowledge of the laws of nature amount neither to epistemic doubts about our
knowledge of the data nor to doubts about their knowability conditions. If we try to
apply a bottom-up epistemology in the modal case, we should start by attempting
to elucidate the knowability conditions of those everyday life modal claims we all
seem to agree to be knowable. Of course, nothing guarantees that the data we have
available will be enough to uniquely determine the metaphysical laws. However, to
the extent that the knowability conditions of the everyday life claims have been
elucidated, the unknowability of metaphysical laws (or, if knowable, their puzzling
knowability) will not be as problematic as in the top-down strategies, since it will not
amount to the unknowability of everyday life claims. Although not theoretically
mandatory, rationalist proposals, when asymmetrical, tend to be top-down. Hale
himself (2003) is a rationalist who favours a necessity based approach. The same is
true of Peacockes rationalist proposal.4 To defend the same in the case of
conceivability approaches is more complicated. To begin with, it is not clear that
conceivabilists would agree that their epistemology is asymmetrical in the sense
pointed out by Hale (2003). Second, if it were asymmetrical, it would prima facie
seem that they are possibility-based rather than necessity-based, since their
strategy is best understood as inferring in the first place possibility knowledge from
knowledge about conceivability facts. For reasons I cannot elaborate on now,
however, conceivability strategies can be said to work only if they beg the question
at a crucial point, where they would need to assume the availability of essentialist
principles, which would make them implement, contrary to appearances, a top-
down strategy. Even if not a very strong one, I take the failure of the top-down
rationalist proposals5 as an inductive reason to suspect that their overall
strategy is not on the right track. This, however, needs qualification. It turns out
that the weakest point of topdown rationalism concerns, at first, the knowability
conditions of essentialist principles, and, derivatively, the knowability conditions of
de re possibilities. By contrast, they seem to be working fine when it comes to
conceptual necessities and conceptual possibilities. This contrast makes me
consider, as a working hypothesis, that a nonuniform epistemology should be the
one we need to attempt at: top-down (rationalism) for the case of de dicto modality,
whereas bottom-up (empiricism) for de re modality. In the next section, I will
elaborate on some independent reasons for this working hypothesis (and for
qualifying it) by focusing on the empiricism/rationalism distinction. 3.2. Rationalist
vs. Empiricist Epistemology The general tendency among modal epistemologists is
to go for (top-down) rationalism. Intuitions govern modal judgement and, although
not always explicitly enough, they play an important epistemic role in rationalist
accounts of modal knowledge. Efforts have been made to clarify the notion of
intuition, and alternative notions (though not necessarily clearer) have been
introduced in the literature in an attempt to clarify and dignify its epistemic
significance. As a result, rational insight, intellectual seeming or rational
intuition are semantically close labels trying to emphasize the epistemically
significant part of intuitions (their probative force, as Sosa (2007) puts it). It is no
aim of this paper to clarify this notion. I will, nonetheless, talk about intuitions,
especially in this section. The only thing about intuitions that should be of interest
to us now is that they lie at the heart of a priori reasoning, and, in particular, as
pieces of evidence grounding a priori principles. This is how Bealer puts it: Intuition
is the source of all non-inferential a priori knowledge except, of course, for
that which is merely stipulative. (Bealer 2004, 12)
Affirmative Answers
 No link
The US isnt imperialist
Ikenberry 4 (G. John Ikenberry, Prof. of Geopolitics, Illusions of Empire: Defining
the New American Order Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004)
Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson's liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson's
military empire. But ultimately, the notion of empire is misleading -- and misses the distinctive aspects of the global
The United States has pursued imperial
political order that has developed around U.S. power.
policies, especially toward weak countries in the periphery. But U.S. relations
with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when
"neo" or "liberal" modifies the term. The advanced democracies operate
within a "security community" in which the use or threat of force is
unthinkable. Their economies are deeply interwoven. Together, they form a political
order built on bargains, diffuse reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental institutions and ad hoc working
This is not empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that has
relationships.
no name or historical antecedent. To be sure, the neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted
their own imperial vision: an era of global rule organized around the bold unilateral exercise of military power,
gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to spread freedom and
democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to appreciate the role of cooperation and
rules in the exercise and preservation of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its legitimacy as the
preeminent global power and severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the
neoconservatives are silent on the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And
as Ferguson notes,
the American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a
global empire. Thus, there are limits on American imperial pretensions even
in a unipolar era. Ultimately, the empire debate misses the most important
international development of recent years: the long peace among great
powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of great-power war.
Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so
too does the unique way in which the United States has gone about the business of building an international order.
The United States' success stems from the creation and extension of international institutions that have limited and
legitimated U.S. power.

Globalization is not the same thing as imperialism dont let

them get away with you globalize or trade links.
Machan, 02 (Tibor R. research fellow at Hoover institution, Monday, February 11,
2002, Globalization versus Imperialism
http://www.hoover.org/research/globalization-versus-imperialism

Globalization, some say, is a form of imperialism. Along with the supposed invasiveness of
American culturevia Hollywood movies, McDonald hamburgers, and Coca Cola products globalization is
seen by some as the equivalent of international aggression. A similar charge was
made some years ago at a United Nations conference in Vienna; representatives of some nondemocratic
nations complained that the idea of human rights was intrusive and
imperialistic and thus threatened the sovereignty of their countries. Some serious
political thinkers still object to the very notion of universal ethical and political principles, as if human beings as
such didn't share some basic attributes that imply certain guidelines for how they should live . To charge that
globalization is imperialistic is like claiming that liberating slaves imposes a
particular lifestyle on the former slaves. Globalization, in its principled
application, frees trade. Barriers are removed and restraint on trade is
abolished, both the opposite of any kind of imposed imperialism. The idea
that economic principles are culturally relative confuses highly variable
human practices with ones that are uniform across all borders. The
production and exchange of goods and services are universal. The political
contingencies of various societies, born often of power, not reason, distort such universality by imposing arbitrary
impediments. Slavery, the subjugation of women, and the prohibition of wealth transfer from parents to offspring
American
are examples of conditions not natural to human liferather they are artifacts of ideologies.
intellectuals often fail to appreciate the country's goal of establishing a
political ideal for human beings in general, not for blacks, whites, women,
Catholics, or Muslims. This ideal, when exported, is the farthest thing from
imperialism. It is, in fact, the closest we have ever come to bona fide human liberation (a term
inappropriately adopted by Marxists who mean to impose a one-size-fits-all regime). Globalization has thus not been
effectively linked with what is at its heart, namely, human liberation. Because some schemes have been mislabeled
as cases of "globalization," the genuine article has tended to acquire a bad reputation. But those are exceptions. To
globalize has been to spread freedom, particularly in commerce but also in politics and civil life. Genuine
globalization should be supported not only because it is economically prudent but also because it is consistent with
a basic human aspiration to be free. This is no threat to cultural diversity, religious pluralism, or the great variety of
benign human differences with which globalization can happily coexist. Only those who wish to impose their
particular lifestyle on the rest of us would fear globalization and the spread of human freedom.

No link: we arent the type of imperialism they criticize

Kaplan 14 (Robert D., senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security,
In Defense of Empire, TheAltantic) JA
Nevertheless, the critique that imperialism constitutes bad American foreign policy
has serious merit: the real problem with imperialism is not that it is evil, but rather
that it is too expensive and therefore a problematic grand strategy for a country like
the United States. Many an empire has collapsed because of the burden of
conquest. It is one thing to acknowledge the positive attributes of Rome or
Hapsburg Austria; it is quite another to justify every military intervention that is
considered by elites in Washington. Thus, the debate Americans should be having is
the following: Is an imperial-like foreign policy sustainable? I use the term imperial-
like because, while the United States has no colonies, its global responsibilities,
particularly in the military sphere, burden it with the expenses and frustrations of
empires of old. Caution: those who say such a foreign policy is unsustainable are not
necessarily isolationists. Alas, isolationism is increasingly used as a slur against
those who might only be recommending restraint in certain circumstances. Once
that caution is acknowledged, the debate gets really interesting. To repeat, the
critique of imperialism as expensive and unsustainable is not easily dismissed. As
for the critique that imperialism merely constitutes evil: while that line of thinking is
not serious, it does get at a crucial logic regarding the American Experience. That
logic goes like this: America is unique in history. The United States may have
strayed into empire during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the resultant war
in the Philippines. And it may have become an imperial Leviathan of sorts in the
wake of World War II. At root, however, the United States was never meant to be an
empire, but rather that proverbial city on a hill, offering an example to the rest of
the world rather than sending its military in search of dragons to slay. This, as it
happens, is more or less the position of the Obama administration. The first post-
imperial American presidency since World War II telegraphs nothing so much as
exhaustion with world affairs. Obama essentially wants regional powers (such as
Japan in Asia, and Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East) to rely less on the
United States in maintaining local power balances. And he wants to keep Americas
enemies at bay through the use of inexpensive drones rather than the deployment
of ground forces. Secretary of State John Kerrys energetic diplomacy vis--vis Iran
and Israel-Palestine might seem like a brave effort to set the Middle Easts house in
order, thereby facilitating the so-called American pivot to Asia. And yet, Kerry
appears to be neglecting Asia in the meantime, and no one believes that Iran,
Israel, or Palestine will suffer negative consequences from the U.S. if negotiations
fail. Once lifted, the toughest sanctions on Iran will not be reinstated. Israel can
always depend on its legions of support in Congress, and the Palestinians have
nothing to fear from Obama. The dread of imperial-like retribution that accompanied
Henry Kissingers 1970s shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East is nowhere apparent.
Kerry, unlike Kissinger, has articulated no grand strategy or even a basic strategic
conception. Rather than Obamas post-imperialism, in which the secretary of state
appears like a lonely and wayward operator encumbered by an apathetic White
House, I maintain that a tempered imperialism is now preferable. No other power or
constellation of powers is able to provide even a fraction of the global order
provided by the United States. U.S. air and sea dominance preserves the peace,
such as it exists, in Asia and the Greater Middle East. American military force,
reasonably deployed, is what ultimately protects democracies as diverse as Poland,
Israel, and Taiwan from being overrun by enemies. If America sharply retrenched its
air and sea forces, while starving its land forces of adequate supplies and training,
the world would be a far more anarchic place, with adverse repercussions for the
American homeland. Rome, Parthia, and Hapsburg Austria were great precisely
because they gave significant parts of the world a modicum of imperial order that
they would not otherwise have enjoyed. America must presently do likewise,
particularly in East Asia, the geographic heartland of the world economy and the
home of American treaty allies. This by no means obliges the American military to
repair complex and populous Islamic countries that lack critical components of civil
society. America must roam the world with its ships and planes, but be very wary of
where it gets involved on the ground. And it must initiate military hostilities only
when an overwhelming national interest is threatened. Otherwise, it should limit its
involvement to economic inducements and robust diplomacydiplomacy that
exerts every possible pressure in order to prevent widespread atrocities in parts of
the world, such as central Africa, that are not, in the orthodox sense, strategic. That,
I submit, would be a policy direction that internalizes both the drawbacks and the
benefits of imperialism, not as it has been conventionally thought of, but as it has
actually been practiced throughout history.
 Imperialism good
US imperialism is key to prevent ethnic cleansing
Boot 03 (Max, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, US Imperialism: a
force for good, CFR, 5/13) JA
What is the greatest danger facing America as it tries to rebuild Iraq: Shiite
fundamentalism? Kurdish separatism? Sunni intransigence? Turkish, Syrian, Iranian
or Saudi Arabian meddling? All of those are real problems, but none is so severe
that it can't readily behandled. More than 125,000 U.S. troops occupy Mesopotamia.
They are backed up by the resources of the world's richest economy. In a contest for
control of Iraq, America can outspend and outmuscle any competing faction. The
greatest danger is that America won't use all of its power for fear of the "I" word --
imperialism. When asked on April 28 on al-Jazeera whether the United States was
"empire building," Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld reacted as if he'd been
asked whether he wears women's underwear. "We don't seek empires," he replied
huffily. "We're not imperialistic. We never have been." That's a fine answer for
public consumption. The problem is that it isn't true. The United States has been an
empire since at least 1803, when Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana
Territory. Throughout the 19th century, what Jefferson called the "empire of liberty"
expanded across the continent. When U.S. power stretched from "sea to shining
sea," the American empire moved abroad, acquiring colonies ranging from Puerto
Rico and the Philippines to Hawaii and Alaska. While the formal empire mostly
disappeared after the Second World War, the United States set out on another bout
of imperialism in Germany and Japan. Oh, sorry -- that wasn't imperialism; it was
"occupation." But when Americans are running foreign governments, it's a
distinction without a difference. Likewise, recent "nation-building" experiments in
Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan are imperialism under another
name. Mind you, this is not meant as a condemnation. The history of American
imperialism is hardly one of unadorned good doing; there have been plenty of
shameful episodes, such as the mistreatment of the Indians. But, on the whole, U.S.
imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past
century. It has defeated the monstrous evils of communism and Nazism and lesser
evils such as the Taliban and Serbian ethnic cleansing. Along the way, it has helped
spread liberal institutions to countries as diverse as South Korea and Panama. Yet,
while generally successful as imperialists, Americans have been loath to confirm
that's what they were doing. That's OK. Given the historical baggage that
"imperialism" carries, there's no need for the U.S. government to embrace the term.
But it should definitely embrace the practice. That doesn't mean looting Iraq of its
natural resources; nothing could be more destructive of the goal of building a stable
government in Baghdad. It means imposing the rule of law, property rights, free
speech and other guarantees, at gunpoint if need be. This will require selecting a
new ruler who is committed to pluralism and then backing him or her to the hilt.
Iran and other neighbouring states won't hesitate to impose their despotic views on
Iraq; we shouldn't hesitate to impose our democratic views. The indications are
mixed as to whether the United States is prepared to embrace its imperial role
unapologetically. Rumsfeld has said that an Iranian-style theocracy "isn't going to
happen," and U.S. President George Bush has pledged to keep U.S. troops in Iraq as
long as necessary to "build a peaceful and representative government." After
allowing a temporary power vacuum to develop, U.S. troops now are moving
aggressively to put down challenges to their authority by, for example, arresting the
self-declared "mayor" of Baghdad. That's all for the good. But there are also some
worrisome signs. Bush asked for only US$2.5-billion from Congress for rebuilding
Iraq, even though a study from the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A.
Baker III Institute for Public Policy estimates that US $25-billion to US$100-billion will
be needed. Iraq's oil revenues and contributions from allies won't cover the entire
shortfall. Bush should be doing more to prepare the U.S. public and Congress for a
costly commitment. Otherwise, Iraqis quickly could become disillusioned about the
benefits of liberation. The cost of U.S. commitment will be measured not only in
money, but also in troops. While Bush and Rumsfeld have wisely eschewed any talk
of an early "exit strategy," they still seem to think U.S. forces won't need to stay
more than two years. Rumsfeld even denied a report that the U.S. armed forces are
planning to open permanent bases in Iraq. If they're not, they should be. That's the
only way to ensure the security of a nascent democracy in such a rough
neighbourhood. Does the U.S. administration really imagine that Iraq will have
turned into Switzerland in two years' time? Allied rule lasted four years in Germany
and seven years in Japan. American troops remain stationed in both places more
than 50 years later. That's why these two countries have become paragons of liberal
democracy. It is crazy to think that Iraq -- which has less of a democratic tradition
than either Germany or Japan had in 1945 -- could make the leap overnight. The
record of nation-building during the past decade is clear: The United States failed in
Somalia and Haiti, where it pulled out troops prematurely. Bosnia, Kosovo and
Afghanistan show more promise because U.S. troops remain stationed there.
Afghanistan would be making even more progress if the United States and its allies
had made a bigger commitment to secure the countryside, not just Kabul. If we
want Iraq to avoid becoming a Somalia on steroids, we'd better get used to U.S.
troops being deployed there for years, possibly decades, to come. If that raises
hackles about American imperialism, so be it. The United States is going to be
called an empire whatever it does. It might as well be a successful empire.

US imperialism is key to protect nations from instability and

inside threats
Boot 03 (Max, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Enlightened
imperialism could save Lybia, CFR, 5/13) JA
Once the civil war is over, the problem of peacekeeping arises. Nation building is a
massive commitment, and the United States barely has the resources to handle
Iraq, much less any other spot. The British Empire again provides the answer: Turn
Liberia and other failed states into international protectorates. Bring in a foreign
administration, probably under United Nations auspices, of the kind used in Bosnia,
Kosovo, East Timor and Cambodia during the past decade. Keep the Special Forces
there to train a Liberian military able to preserve stability. This sort of enlightened
imperialism, dressed up in multilateral clothing, is the only thing that can protect
the people of Liberia, and many other countries, from the predations of local
warlords. And it needn't be a huge commitment. A few professional soldiers can
make a big difference against ragtag opposition. The Taiping Rebellion ravaged
China from 1851 to 1864. The Manchu government was unable to end the
onslaught, so merchants hired mercenaries. It took only a few years for the "Ever-
Victorious Army," led by Charles Gordon, an officer loaned by Her Majesty's Army, to
rout the Taipings. Liberia doesn't need the 82nd Airborne today. It needs its own
"Chinese" Gordon.

Imperialism breeds democratic self-rule

Kurtz 3 (Stanley, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, available:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6426,A just empire?
accessed: 7/1/2016) KAB
Our commitment to political autonomy sets up a moral paradox. Even the mildest imperialism will be
experienced by many as a humiliation. Yet imperialism as the midwife of democratic
self-rule is an undeniable good. Liberal imperialism is thus a moral and logical
scandal, a simultaneous denial and affirmation of self-rule that is impossible either
to fully accept or repudiate. The counterfactual offers a way out. If democracy did not depend on
colonialism, we could confidently forswear empire. But in contrast to early modern colonial
history, we do know the answer to the counterfactual in the case of Iraq. After many
decades of independence, there is still no democracy in Iraq. Those who attribute
this fact to American policy are not persuasive, since autocracy is pervasive in the
Arab world, and since America has encouraged and accepted democracies in many
other regions. So the reality of Iraqi dictatorship tilts an admittedly precarious moral balance in favor of liberal
imperialism.

American imperialism K2 world peace

Elshtain 3 (Jean, Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of
Chicago Divinity School, available: http://www.religionconflictpeace.org/volume-2-
issue-1-fall-2008/critique-jean-bethke-elshtains-just-war-against-terror-and-advocacy
Just War Against Terrorism pg. 169 accessed: 7/1/2016)KAB

The heavy burden being imposed on the United States does not require that
the United States remain on hair-trigger alert at every moment. But it does
oblige the United States to evaluate all claims and to make a determination
as to whether it can intervene effectively and in a way that does more good
than harmwith the primary objective of interdiction so that democratic civil
society can be built or rebuilt. This approach is better by far than those strategies of evasion and
denial of the sort visible in Rwanda, in Bosnia, or in the sort of "advice" given to Americans by some of our
At this point in time the possibility of international peace and
European critics.
stability premised on equal regard for all rests largely, though not
exclusively, on American power. Many persons and powers do not like this fact, but it is
inescapable. As Michael Ignatieff puts it, the "most carefree and confident empire in history now grimly confronts
America's fate is tied
the question of whether it can escape Rome's ultimate fate."9 Furthermore,
inextricably to the fates of states and societies around the world. If large
pockets of the globe start to go badhere, there, everywhere (the infamous
"failed state" syndrome)the drain on American power and treasure will
reach a point where it can no longer be borne.

Imperialism prevents war interdependence, institution-

building, and democracy promotion
Ikenberry 4 (John, Prof. of Geopolitics @ Georgetown, available:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2004-03-01/illusions-empire-
defining-new-american-order Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American
Order Foreign Affairs, accessed: 7/1/2016)
Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson's liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson's
the notion of empire is misleading -- and misses the
military empire. But ultimately,
distinctive aspects of the global political order that has developed around U.S. power. The
United States has pursued imperial policies, especially toward weak countries in the periphery. But
U.S. relations with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when "neo" or "liberal"
modifies the term. The advanced democracies operate within a "security
community" in which the use or threat of force is unthinkable. Their economies are
deeply interwoven. Together, they form a political order built on bargains, diffuse
reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental institutions and ad hoc working
relationships. This is not empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that has no name or
historical antecedent. To be sure, the neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted their own
imperial vision: an era of global rule organized around the bold unilateral exercise of
military power, gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to
spread freedom and democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to
appreciate the role of cooperation and rules in the exercise and preservation
of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its legitimacy as the preeminent global power and
severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the neoconservatives are silent on
the
the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And as Ferguson notes,
American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a global empire . Thus,
there are limits on American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era. Ultimately, the
empire debate misses the most important international development of recent
years: the long peace among great powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of great-power war.
Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so
too does the unique way in which the United States has gone about the business of building an
international order. The United States' success stems from the creation and extension of international
institutions that have limited and legitimated U.S. power.

Turn: Imperialism is key to protection of minorities

Kaplan 14 (Robert, Senior fellow at center for American security, available:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/in-defense-of-
empire/358645/ In defense of the empire accessed: 7/1/2016)KAB
Ancient empires such as Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Mauryan India, and Han China
may have been cruel beyond measure, but they were less cruel and delivered more
predictability for the average person than did anything beyond their borders .
Who says imperialism is necessarily reactionary? Athens, Rome, Venice, and Great Britain
were the most enlightened regimes of their day. True, imperialism has often
been driven by the pursuit of riches, but that pursuit has in many cases resulted
in a hard-earned cosmopolitanism. The early modern empires of Hapsburg
Austria and Ottoman Turkey were well known for their relative tolerance and
protection of minorities, including the Jews. Precisely because the Hapsburg imperialists
governed a mlange of ethnic and religious groups stretching from the edge of the Swiss Alps to central Romania,
and from the Polish Carpathians to the Adriatic Sea, they abjured ethnic nationalism and sought a universalism
What followed the Hapsburgs were mono-ethnic states
almost postmodern in its design.
and quasi-democracies that persecuted minorities and helped ease the path
of Nazism. All of these empires delivered more peace and stability than the
United Nations ever has or probably ever could. Consider, too, the American
example. The humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the
absence of such interventions in Rwanda and Syria, show American
imperialism in action, and in abeyance.
 Globalization good
Globalization is making the world better
Sorman 08 (Guy, Professor, columnist, author, and public intellectual in
economics and philosophy, Globalization is making the world a better place, Index
of Economic Freedom) JA
What we call globalization, one of the most powerful and positive forces ever to
have arisen in the history of mankind, is redefining civilization as we know it. This is
one of my hypotheses. To be more specific, I will try to describe what globalization
is, its impact on world peace, and the freedom it brings from want, fear, and misery.
Globalization has six major characteristics: economic development, democracy,
cultural enrichment, political and cultural norms, information, and
internationalization of the rule of law. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Usually,
globalization is described in terms of intensified commercial and trade exchanges,
but it is about more than just trade, stock exchanges, and currencies. It is about
people. What is significant today is that through globalization many nations are
converging toward enhanced welfare. This convergence is exemplified by the 800
million people who, in the past 30 years, have left poverty and misery behind. They
have greater access to health care, schooling, and information. They have more
choices, and their children will have even more choices. The absolutely remarkable
part is that it happened not by accident but through a combination of good
economic policy, technology, and management. Of course, not all nations are
following this path, but since the fall of the Berlin Wall, more and more are coming
closer. Only Africas nations have yet to join, but who would have hoped and
predicted 30 years ago that China and India, with such rapidity and efficiency,
would pull their people out of misery? There is no reason why Africa, when its turn
comes, will not do the same. Convergence should be a source of hope for us all.
DEMOCRACY In general, since 1989, the best system to improve the welfare of all
peoplenot only economically, but also in terms of access to equality and freedom
appears to be democracy, the new international norm. As more and more
countries turn democratic or converge toward democratic norms, respect for other
cultures increases. Democracy has guaranteed welfare far better than any
dictatorship ever could. Even enlightened despots cannot bring the kind of safety
democracy is bringing. Sometimes a trade-off between economic allotment and
democracy occurs. Sometimes the economy grows more slowly because of
democracy. Let it be that way. Democracy brings values that are as important for
the welfare of the human being as economy is. After all, as history shows, the
chance of international war diminishes step by step any time a country moves from
tyranny to democracy, as democracies do not war against one other. That more and
more nations are turning democratic improves everyones way of life. CULTURAL
ENRICHMENT Critics of globalization frequently charge that it results in an
Americanization of culture and concomitant loss of identity and local cultural
values. I would propose a more optimistic view, and that is that globalization leads
to never-ending exchange of ideas, especially through popular culture, since it
affects the greatest number of people. Through popular culture, people from
different backgrounds and nations discover one another, and their otherness
suddenly disappears. For example, a popular Korean television sitcom now popular
in Japan has shown its Japanese viewers that, like them, Koreans fall in love, feel
despair, and harbor the same hopes and fears for themselves and for their children.
This sitcom has transformed the image Japanese have of the Korean nation more
profoundly than any number of diplomatic efforts and demonstrates that
globalization can erode prejudices that have existed between neighboring countries
for centuries. Furthermore, this process of better understanding allows us to keep
our identity and add new identities. The Koreans absorb a bit of the American
culture, a bit of the French, a bit of other European societies. Perhaps they have
become a different sort of Korean, but they remain Korean nonetheless. It is quite
the illusion to think you can lose your identity. And it goes both ways. When you
look at the success of cultural exports out of Koreathis so-called new wave
through music, television, movies, and artKorea becomes part of the identity of
other people. Now, as a Frenchman, I am a bit Korean myself. This is how
globalization works. We do not lose our identity. We enter into the world that I call
the world of multi-identity, and that is progress, not loss. POLITICAL AND CULTURAL
NORMS One of the most significant transformations in terms of welfare for the
people in the globalized world is the increased respect given to the rights of women
and minorities. In many nations, to be a woman or to belong to a minority has not
been easy. In the past 30 years, however, women and minorities everywhere have
become better informed and have learned that the repression they suffered until
very recently is not typical in a modern democracy. Let us consider India, where a
strong caste system historically has subjugated women and untouchables. Thanks
to the globalization of democratic norms, these minorities are better protected;
through various affirmative action policies, they can access the better jobs that
traditionally were forbidden to them. This transformation has positive consequences
for them, of course, and also creates better outcomes for their childrens welfare
and education. We are entering into a better world because of their improved
status, thanks to the cultural and democratic exchanges generated by globalization.
INFORMATION Through legacy media and, more and more, through the Internet and
cellular phones, everyone today, even in authoritarian countries, is better informed.
For one year, I lived in the poorest part of China, and I remember well how a farmer,
in the most remote village, knew exactly what was happening not only in the next
village, but also in Beijing and New York because of the Internet and his cellular
phone. No government can stop information now. People know today that, as they
say, knowledge is power. Now let us imagine if the genocide in Darfur had
happened 20 or 30 years ago. The Darfur population would have been annihilated
by the Sudanese government, and no one would have known. Today we all know
about the genocide. The reason why the international community has been forced
to intervene is because of the flood of information. Knowledge is proving to be the
best protection for oppressed minorities and, thus, one of the most vital aspects of
globalization. INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE RULE OF LAW Internationalization of
rule of law, of course, has limitations. The institutions in charge of this emerging
rule of law, whether the United Nations or the World Trade Organization, are
criticized. They are not completely legitimate. They are certainly not perfectly
democratic, but you cannot build a democratic organization with non-democratic
governments. It becomes a trade-off. In spite of all the weaknesses of international
organizations, the emergence of a real international rule of law replaces the pure
barbarism that existed before, which had consisted of the most powerful against the
weak. Even though globalization cannot suppress war, it is remarkably efficient at
containing war. If you examine the kinds of wars we have today, compared to the
history of mankind, the number of victims and number of nations involved are very
few. We are all safer because of both this emerging rule of law and the flow of
information provided by globalization. INVENTED BY ENTREPRENEURS We also need
to remember that globalization is not some historical accident but has been devised
and built by those who wanted it. Diplomats did not invent it. Entrepreneurs did. Let
us look at Europe. After World War II, the Europeans discovered that they had been
their own worst enemies. For 1,000 years, we were fighting each other. Why? We do
not remember very well. Every 30 years, we went to war. The French killed the
Germans. The Germans killed the French. When you try to explain this history to
your children, they cannot understand. Diplomats and politicians from the 18th
century onward unsuccessfully made plans to avoid this kind of civil war within
Europe. Then, in the 1940s, a businessman came along named Jean Monnet. His
business was to sell cognac in the United States, and he was very good at it. The
idea Jean Monnet had was that perhaps the unification process of Europe should not
be started by diplomats. Maybe it should be started by business people. He
proceeded to build the European Union on a foundation of commerce. He started
with coal and steel in 1950, and it was through the liberation of that trade that he
conceived the unification of Europe, which has played a crucial role in the
globalization process. Monnets guiding principle was that commercial and financial
ties would lead to political unification. The true basis of European solidarity has
come through trade. Through this method, all of the benefits of globalization have
been made possible, because free trade has been at the root level. An attack on
free trade is an attack on both globalization and the welfare of the peoples of the
world, so we must be very cautious when we discuss trade, as it is the essential key
allowing the rest to happen. None of this is to imply that trade is easy. In the case of
Europe, it was made easier because all of the governments were democratic. It is
much more complicated to build free trade with non-democratic governments, but
because globalization starts with the construction of this materialistic solidarity,
ideals must come afterwards.

Globalization makes war less likely and benefits the poorest of

nations
Pirie 12 (Dr. Madsen, researcher, founder and current President of the Adam
Smith Institute, Ten very good things 9: Globalization, Adam Smith Institute,
10/12) JA
Over the course of decades, globalization is turning the world into an integrated
economy instead of what it has been for most of its history, a series of relatively
isolated economies. The more trading that takes place, the more wealth is created,
and global trade across international frontiers has created more wealth than ever
before in human history, and had helped lift more people out of mere subsistence
than ever before. To poorer countries globalization brings the chance to sell their
relatively low cost labour onto world markets. It brings the investment that creates
jobs, and although those jobs pay less than their counterparts in rich economies,
they represent a step up for people in recipient countries because they usually pay
more than do the more traditional jobs available there. To people in richer countries
globalization brings lower cost goods from abroad, which leaves them with spending
power to spare and a higher standard of living. It also brings opportunities for
productive investment in high growth industries in developing countries. Those
adversely affected by the global exchanges are the people in rich countries whose
output is now undercut by the cheaper alternatives from abroad. They often need
to find new jobs or to be retrained to do work that adds higher value. The extra
wealth generated by globalization has brought an increase in service sector
employment, which provides many of the new jobs needed. Competition from
abroad forces firms to become more efficient and to use resources more efficiently.
Often they choose to go upmarket, seeking higher added value products that face
less competition from relatively unskilled labour. Thus firms which once sold cheap
textiles move into fashion and design, and find customers among the rising middle
classes in developing countries. The integration of the world economy has brought
with it an interdependence. As countries co-operate in trade with each other, they
get to know each other and grow into the habit of resolving disputes by negotiation
and agreement instead of by armed conflict. The 19th Century French economist
Frederic Bastiat expressed this pithily: "Where goods do not cross frontiers, armies
will."

Capitalism and Globalization are making the world a better

place
Iacono 16 (Corey, student at the University of Rhode Island studying
Pharmaceutical Science and Economics, How Capitalism and Globalization have
made the world a better place, Quillette Economics, Politics, 1/16) JA
Throughout this week, the hashtag #ResistCapitalism was trending on Twitter. Using
this hashtag, activists have aired their grievances against an economic system
which they deem to be destructive, unfair, and immoral. In their view, the growth of
global capitalism experienced over the last few decades has been only detrimental
to human well-being. Indeed, since the early 1990s, global capitalism has lapsed
into its most savage form, according to progressive populist Naomi Klein. In fact,
the expansion of capitalism and freer international trade has coincided with an era
of slow economic growth, high unemployment, increased child labor, skyrocketing
inequality, and grinding poverty. Just kidding, thats not what happened at all. In
fact, as the world has become more capitalist and more globalized, the quality of
life for the average person, and especially for the average poor person, has
increased substantially. In 1990, 37% of the global population lived on less than
$1.90 per day. By 2012, that number had been reduced to 12.8%, and in 2015 it
was under 10%. The source of this progress isnt a massive wealth redistribution
program; its massive wealth creation that is, economic growth. Economists
David Dollar and Aart Kraay found that, in a global sample of over 100 countries,
changes in the income growth of the bottom 40% of the worlds income earners are
highly correlated with economic growth rates. On the other hand, changes in
inequality contributed relatively little to changes in social welfare of the poor over
the last few decades. There is good reason to believe that the expansion of free
trade, facilitated by international organizations like the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
have had a considerable impact in accelerating the economic development of
developing countries. In the 1990s GATT facilitated reforms which moved 125
countries towards freer trade by reducing the burden of government imposed trade
barriers like tariffs. This was the first serious attempt at trade reform for most
developing countries at the time, and arguably presents a unique natural
experiment on the economic effects of trade reform. In fact, a paper published by
the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), specifically examined how trade
reforms facilitated by GATT affected the economic development of the reforming
countries. In the paper, the authors compared the trends in economic growth before
and after trade reform in the reforming countries. Then they compared those results
to trends in economic growth of a control group of countries which didnt undergo
trade reform. What they found was very encouraging for proponents of free trade.
Prior to reform, the economic development of reformers and non-reformers was
practically identical, but after reform, the economic development of reforming
countries accelerated while non-reforming countries saw their economies stagnate
and decline. The results suggest that the reforms towards freer trade lead to an
increase in income per capita of around 20% in the long-run, an effect so large that
it almost certainly had a positive and non-trivial impact on poverty reduction.
Similarly, other research has shown that more free market trade policies result in
lower rates of extreme poverty and child mortality in developing countries. There
are other benefits as well. One study on trade reform in Indonesia found that
reductions of import tariffs led to an increase in disposable income among poor
households, which allowed them to pull their children out of the labor force, leading
to a strong decline in the incidence of child labor. Unfortunately, many activists
have reflexively taken up the cause of opposing the expansion of global capitalism,
for a number of reasons. Western anti-sweatshop activists, for example, will often
argue in favor of government imposed barriers to trade with poor countries because
their working conditions are terrible in comparison to those in developed Western
nations. In their view, western consumers should not be promoting a cycle of
capitalist exploitation by buying products made in Vietnamese sweat-shops. But
satisfactory working conditions arent the natural state of mankind; they are a
consequence of decades of economic development. Erecting barriers to trade with
poor countries is surely a large impediment to their development, in fact, research
suggests that existing developed world tariffs depress economic growth rates in the
developing world by 0.6 to 1.6 percent per person, a considerably large effect.
Moreover, the sweat-shops which produce clothing for Westerners are often much
better than alternative forms of domestic employment. In poor countries like
Bangladesh, China, and Vietnam, the apparel industry consistently pays more than
most other domestic industries. According to research by economist Ben Powell, in
poor countries most sweatshop jobs provide an above average standard of living
for their workers. Notably, a paper published in the Journal of Development
Economics found that the expansion of the garments industry in Bangladesh lead to
an increase in employment and income among young women, giving them the
means to finance their own education. Remarkably the authors found that, the
demand for education generated through manufacturing growth appears to have a
much larger effect on female educational attainment compared to a large-scale
government conditional cash transfer program to encourage female schooling.
Foreign investment is also more desirable than opponents of capitalism and
globalization give it credit for. The conventional wisdom among activists in wealthy
countries is that multinational corporations exploit poor workers in third world
countries for cheap labor, profiting off people working in sweatshop conditions. It
should come as a surprise to the individuals who hold this view to learn that 85% of
people in developing countries believe that foreign companies building factories in
their countries is a good thing, according to Pew Research. In fact, for all the talk of
exploitative multinational corporations, research shows that, in general, these
corporations provide higher wages and better working conditions than domestic
employers in developing countries. Additionally, when multinational corporations
build factories in poor countries, it raises the demand for low-skilled workers,
resulting in higher wages for local workers. Consistent with this fact, recent
empirical evidence demonstrates that investment by foreign companies in
developing countries reduces both poverty and income inequality by raising the
incomes of low-skilled workers. Foreign investment can also make people in
relatively low-income countries better off by providing better or more inexpensive
products. A recent analysis published by the NBER found that foreign retailers like
Wal-Mart greatly reduce the cost of living for both the rich and poor in Mexico,
making everyone along the income distribution better off. Global capitalism is by
no means a perfect phenomenon. Many businesses do have questionable labor
practices that are worthy of contempt. And free market policies may in many
instances lead to socially undesirable outcomes, sometimes on a large scale.
However, the one-dimensional, automatic denunciation of capitalism and the
accompanying refusal to give it any credit for its successes as social media
activists have done reflects an uncompromising, and quite frankly ignorant
worldview. It is one in which capitalism is always bad, no matter what the evidence
tells us.

The world is getting better because of globalization, especially

in developing nations
Massie 13 (Alex, contributor to The Spectator, The miracle of Globalization:
Most of the world has never had it so good, The Spectator, 4/30)
Could life in Bangladesh be better? Of course it could. Is life in Bangladesh getting
better? Of course it is. The horrific death toll after a factory building collapsed in
Dhaka last week encourages us to forget this second point. But we should still try
and remember it. Sensible advocates for reform and improvement know that
globalisation has made an enormous difference to Bangladesh just as it has in many
other poor countries. That more could be done to provide safer working conditions is
scarcely in doubt. Similarly, you can be in favour of globalisation and still think
Bangladeshi textile workers should be able to organise themselves in Trade Unions.
Sweatshops are not Bangladeshs destination but they are a staging-post on the
road to wealth just as comparably hard working conditions were once a feature of
working life in this country. In the context of a country in which opportunity is in
short supply factory-working, however grim, is surely preferable to a realistic
alternative which in many cases is likely to be little more than subsistence farming.
Bangladesh has few cards to play. Cheap labour is its competitive and comparative
advantage. So while are good moral reasons for wishing to see working conditions
improve in Bangladesh there are also good moral reasons for resisting calls
foolish in the extreme to make doing business in Bangladesh a hugely more
expensive matter. Because the people most likely to be penalised by that are the
people of Bangladesh, not western clothing companies. It is also true that, despite
this and other tragedies, the world is becoming a better place. Globalisation is a
great and transformational force for good across most of the planet. This is not a
matter of opinion, it is a fact. As Justin Forsyth, Chief Executive of Save the Children,
writes (): Investment from the private sector is a big cause of growth in poor
countries and has played [a] powerful part in creating jobs, lifting people out of
poverty and improving the prosperity of countries such as Bangladesh, where
headline rates of poverty have fallen from 57 per cent in 1992 to 31.5 per cent in
2009. That means a child born in 2008 can expect to live to 66, while in 1970 it was
44. Economic growth has also provided tax revenues that have led to investment in
healthcare and education: there has been an impressive rise in girls attending
school, to as much as 82.5 per cent in 2009. Thats the power of trade. It cannot be
stressed too often that trade, not foreign aid is the path to prosperity in the
developing world just as it was and is in the developed world. Globalisation is a
creator, not a destroyer, of worlds. And not just in asia either. There are signs of
hope even in Africa. As Mohamed El-Erian points out in an article for Foreign Policy,
sub-Saharan economies have grown at an average of 4.8% in the past five years.
Granted, that is growth from a low base but it is at least growth. Theres more:
Now, from bonds to private equity, new vehicles are emerging to channel foreign
investments into more of the most promising African economies. How real is the
boom? Foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa has leapt from $6 billion in
2000 to $34 billion in 2012. In just the past couple of years, several African
countries among them Angola, Namibia, Senegal, and Zambia have issued
external debt for the first time, allowing them to invest for the future. [] An
expanding set of small- and medium-sized enterprises is bringing real economic
diversification. According to World Bank statistics, these firms add some 20 percent
to the continents GDP and contribute roughly 50 percent of the new jobs in sub-
Saharan Africa. These successful businesses are giving rise to internationally
competitive companies, thereby providing access to global markets, new business
models and technologies, and higher wages and salaries.

Globalization ensures peace because of promotion of

democracy, prosperity, promotes growth in 3rd world countries,
and bilateral trade
Weede 4 (Erich, is professor of sociology at the University of Bonn, Germany, The Diffusion of
Prosperity and Peace by Globalization p. 168-171)SDL

Although neither realist theorizing about interstate politics (Waltz 1979;

Mearsheimer 2001) nor critical treatments of globalization (Gray 1998; Kapstein
1999) recognize it, a strong and beneficial link exists between globalization and the
avoidance of war. In my view, the economic benefits of globalization and free trade
are much less important than the international security benefits. The quantitative
literature (summarized by Weede 1996, chap. 8, and 2000, chap. 11) comes fairly
close to general agreement on the following four propositions from economics,
political sociology, and international relations. First, democracies rarely fight each
other (Russett 1993; Russett and Oneal 2001). This finding does not necessarily
imply that democracies fight fewer wars than do other regimes. It is even
compatible with the view widely shared until recently that the risk of war between
democracies and autocracies might be even higher than the risk of war between
autocracies. I agree with critics of the democratic peace that we do not yet
understand fully why democracies rarely fight each other and whether normative or
institutional characteristics of democracies matter most. Explaining the democratic
peace between Western democracies as an imperial peace based on American
power (Rosato 2003, 599) is not justified, however. Admittedly, I held this view
thirty years ago (Weede 1975). Then I explained peace among U.S. allies by their
common ties or even by their subordination to the United States. Later, however, I
discovered that autocratic U.S. allies, in contrast to democratic U.S. allies, fought
each other or against democratic U.S. allies, as the football war in Central America
and the Falklands War illustrate. Thus, I became a convert to the democratic-peace
proposition. John Oneal, in unpublished analyses carried out in Bonn in 2003, found
that although the democratic-peace proposition consistently calls the imperial-
peace proposition into question, controlling for an imperial peace does not subvert
the democratic-peace proposition. Second, prosperity, or high income per capita,
promotes democracy (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Lipset 1994; Przeworski et al.
2000; Boix and Stokes 2003; Rajapatirana 2004). Third, export orientation in poor
countries and open markets in rich countries (that is, trade between rich and poor
countries) promote growth and prosperity where they are needed most, in poor
countries (Greenaway and Nam 1988; Dollar 1992; Edwards 1998; Lindert and
Williamson 2001, 37; Dollar and Kraay 2002; Rajapatirana 2004). Fourth, bilateral
trade reduces the risk of war between dyads of nations (Oneal and Russett 1997,
1999; Russett and Oneal 2001). As to why trade contributes to the prevention of
war, two ideas come to mind. First, war is likely to disrupt trade. The higher the
level of trade in a pair (dyad) of nations is, the greater the costs of trade disruption
are likely to be. Second, commerce might contribute to the establishment or
maintenance of moral capital (Ratnapala 2003), which has a civilizing and pacifying
effect on citizens and statesmen. In the context of this article, however, answering
the question of why trade affects conflict-proneness or providing the answer with
some microfoundation is less important than establishing the effect itself in
empirical research. Although some writers have questioned or even rejected the
peace by trade proposition, their criticisms are not convincing. Beck, Katz, and
Tucker (1998) raised the serious technical issue of time dependence in the time-
series cross-section data, but Russett and Oneal (2001; see also Oneal 2003 and
Oneal and Russett 2003b) responded to the objections raised against their earlier
work and demonstrated that those objections do not affect their substantive
conclusions. For a while, Hegres (2000) study seemed to necessitate a qualification
of the peace by trade proposition. He found that the pacifying effect of trade is
stronger among developed countries than among less-developed countries. More
recently, however, Mousseau, Hegre, and Oneal corrected this earlier finding and
reported: Whereas economically important trade has important pacifying benefits
for all dyads, the conflict-reducing effect of democracy is conditional on states
economic development (2003, 300). Gelpi and Grieco (2003) suggested another
qualification. In their view, trade no longer pacifies relations between autocratic
states. According to Mansfield and Pevehouse (2003), another modification of the
peace by trade proposition might be required. The institutional setting, such as
preferential trade agreements, matters. It is even conceivable that other forms of
economic interdependence, such as crossborder investments, exercise some
pacifying impact. Foreign direct investment (FDI) certainly promotes prosperity,
growth, and democracy (de Soysa and Oneal 1999; de Soysa 2003), but the
conceivable pacifying impact of FDI still lacks sufficient empirical investigation. The
most radical criticism comes from Barbieri (2002), according to whom bilateral trade
increases the risk of conflict. As outlined by Oneal and Russett (2003a, 2003b;
Oneal 2003; Russett 2003), her conclusion results from disregarding the military
power of nationsthat is, their different capabilities to wage war across
considerable distances. Should we really proceed on the presumption that war
between Argentina and Iraq is as conceivable as between the United States and Iraq
or between Iran and Iraq? Of course, trade has no pacifying effect on international
relations wherever the risk of conflict is extremely close to zero to begin with. Even
this inadequate Russett and Oneal (2001) refer instead to a Kantian peace, which is
composed of three components: the democratic peace, peace by trade, and peace
by collaboration in international governmental organizations (IGOs). In their
research, the IGO element of the Kantian tripod is the weakest and least robust one.
I do not know who invented the term capitalist peace. I have heard it spoken more
frequently than I have seen it in print, but in any event it is a felicitous term.
handling of the power and distance issue by itself does not suffice to support her
conclusions. If the military-conflict variable is restricted to those conflicts that
resulted in at least one fatality, then trade is pacifying, whether power and distance
are adequately controlled or not. Moreover, Barbieri (2003) herself found some
pacifying effect of economic freedom and openness to trade on the war involvement
of nations. In spite of the attempted criticism of Russett and Oneals findings, the
peace by trade proposition stands and enjoys powerful empirical support. Another
issue also must be considered. Barbieris (2002) measures are based on dyadic
trade shares relative to national trade, whereas Russett and Oneals measures are
based on dyadic trade shares relative to the size of national economies. Gartzke and
Li (2003) have demonstratedarithmetically as well as empiricallythat trade
shares relative to national trade may rise when nations are disconnected from world
trade. Nations may concentrate most of their trade on a few partners and remain
rather closed economies. If Barbieris and Oneal and Russetts measures of bilateral
trade and their effects are simultaneously considered, then Barbieris trade shares
exert a conflictenhancing effect and Oneal and Russetts trade dependence exerts a
conflict-reducing effect. This finding of Gartzke and Lis study not only replicates the
substantive findings of both main contenders in the debate about trade and conflict,
but it remains robust whether one relies on the Oneal and Russett data or on the
Barbieri data, whether one includes all dyads or only dyads for which there is some
risk of military conflict to begin with. If one is interested in finding out whether more
trade is better or worse for the avoidance of military conflict, then it seems more
meaningful to focus on a measure that is related to openness at the national level of
analysis, as Oneal and Russett (1997, 1999, 2003a, 2003b; Russett and Oneal 2001)
have done, than on a measure that may be high for fairly closed economies, as
Barbieri (2002) has done. Actually, the pacifying effect of trade might be even
stronger than the pacifying effect of democracy (Oneal and Russett 1999, 29, and
2003a, 160; Gartzke 2000, 209), especially among contiguous pairs of nations,
where conflict-proneness is greater than elsewhere. Moreover, trade seems to play
a pivotal role in the prevention of war because it exerts direct and indirect pacifying
effects. In addition to the direct effect, there is the indirect effect of free trade as
the consequent growth, prosperity, and democracy reduce the risk of militarized
disputes and war. Because the exploitation of gains from trade is the essence or
purpose of capitalism and free markets, I label the sum of the direct and indirect
international security benefits the capitalist peace, of which the democratic
peace is merely a component.1 Even if the direct peace by trade effect were
discredited by future research, economic freedom and globalization would still
retain their crucial role in overcoming mass poverty and in establishing the
prerequisites of the democratic peace. For that reason, I (Weede 1996, chap. 8)
advocated a capitalist-peace strategy even before Oneal and Russett (1997, 1999)
convinced me of the existence of a directly pacifying effect of trade. An Asian
statesman understood the capitalist peace intuitively even before it was
scientifically documented and established. According to Lee Kuan Yew, The most
enduring lesson of history is that ambitious growing countries can expand either by
grabbing territory, people or resources, or by trading with other countries. The
alternative to free trade is not just poverty, it is war (qtd. in Survey: Asia 1993,
24)

Even if they win that globalization is bad in some instances,

the negs studies dont account for the international security
benefits from globalization
Weede 4 (Erich, is professor of sociology at the University of Bonn, Germany, The Diffusion of
Prosperity and Peace by Globalization p. 181)SDL

On the one hand, globalization promises to enlarge the market and therefore to
increase the division of labor and to speed productivity gains and economic growth.
On the other hand, it remains under attack from special-interest groups and
misguided political activists. Critics of globalization not only forget both the benefits
of free trade and globalization for developing countries and for their poor and
underemployed workers and the benefits of free trade to consumers everywhere,
but they know almost nothing about the international-security benefits of free trade.
Quantitative research has established the viability and prospect of a capitalist peace
based on the following causal links between free trade and the avoidance of war:
first, there is an indirect link running from free trade or economic openness to
prosperity and democracy and ultimately to the democratic peace; second, trade
and economic interdependence by themselves reduce the risk of military conflict.
By promoting capitalism, economic freedom, trade, and prosperity, we
simultaneously promote peace. Conceivable instruments to promote capitalism,
economic freedom, free trade, and prosperity include advice about the institutional
and legal foundations of capitalism and economic policies. Such advice is more
likely to be persuasive if Western societies provide models for emulation to poor and
conflict-prone countries. Open markets in rich countries for exports from poor
countries generate credibility for free-market institutions and policies. They
complement export-oriented growth strategies in poor countries. FDI by private
enterprises and even donations from private Western sources to poor countries are
more likely to have a positive effect on the growth path of poor countries than will
official development aid, which tends to strengthen the state at the expense of free
markets. The more capitalist the rich counties become, the more they provide an
effective model for emulation to poor countries as well as a market and a source of
technology and investment. By resistance to protectionism and to the creeping
socialism of the welfare state, Western nations may simultaneously strengthen their
own economies, improve the lot of the poor in the Third World, and contribute to the
avoidance of conflict and war.
 Alt solvency
Even if you conclude the state is trash, learning about how to
create legal alternatives creates effective advocates. Focus on
symbolic resistance cements the status quo.
Murray 14, PhD Candidate in the Program in Modern Thought & Literature at
Stanford University, Prefiguration or Actualization? Radical Democracy and Counter-
Institution in the Occupy Movement,
http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/11/prefiguration-or-actualization-radical-democracy-
and-counter-institution-in-the-occupy-movement/
The Occupy movement emerged in response to a devastating economic crisis,
bringing economic inequality to the center of political discourse. But it also emerged
in response to a wave of social movements around the world that toppled dictators,
asserted the power of the people and demonstrated their desire to take control of
the decisions that affect their lives. In Occupy, as in all of these movements, the
economic and the political were linked. Participants did not merely demand an end
to foreclosures or new redistributive policies to address economic inequality; they
also saw these grievances as symptomatic of a fundamentally undemocratic
political system. Though the interests and motivations of participants in the Occupy
movement were highly diverse, at the core it can be read as a movement for radical
democracy the underlying goal was to actualize the ideal of self-organizing
communities of free and equal persons, expand and deepen democratic participation in all
spheres of life, and increase individuals and communities power over social, economic
and political institutions.[1] But in many ways, Occupy also sought to be a movement
of radical democracy. Rather than petitioning politicians to bring about
democratizing reforms or building a party that would hopefully instate democracy
after the revolution, activists hoped to bring about a radically democratic society
through radical democratic practice. They sought to prefigure a democracy-to-
come, by actualizing radical democracy in the movement itself. They claimed public
spaces as venues in which experiments in radical democracy could be developed,
tested, and propagated. They were spaces in which to organize political action and
in which all were free to participate in agenda-setting, decision-making, and political
education through the process itself. Based on fourteen months of participant-
research in two Occupy sites Occupy Wall Street and an outgrowth of the
movement called Occupy the Farm this paper evaluates the different forms
prefigurative politics has taken within the movement.[2] Many commentators have
lauded the movement as an example of prefigurative politics, which they see as the cutting
edge of contemporary radical politics.[3] However, an overemphasis on the value of
prefiguration can be debilitating, leading to a focus on internal movement
dynamics at the expense of building a broader movement, and a focus on
symbolic expressions of dissent as opposed to the development of
alternatives to actually replace existing political, economic and social
institutions. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) suffered this fate, partly due to the perception
that the encampment and the decision-making procedures were prefigurative, and the
perception that prefigurative politics itself will lead to revolutionary transformations
in the political, economic and social structure. While Occupy Wall Street foundered
on the prefigurative obsession with movement process , a group of activists,
students and local residents in the San Francisco Bay Area have sought to overcome
these challenges . Since 2012, they have worked under the banner of Occupy the Farm
(OTF) to create an agricultural commons on a parcel of publicly owned land . Unlike OWS,
OTF has worked to establish a counter-institution grounded in material resources
and production, that is ultimately meant to increase participants autonomy from
the state and capitalism. In this way it has been able to link radical democracy and
economic justice in a material way, rather than merely symbolically. As it is
generally practiced and conceptualized today, prefigurative politics is an
inadequate framework for developing radical democratic political
strategy . Instead of prefiguration, we should redirect our efforts toward developing and
linking democratic counter-institutions that produce and manage common
resources. Occupy the Farm illustrates some of the potential and the challenges of such a
strategy.

Bottom up politics create a feeling of utopianism this fosters

complacency within movements and cements the status quo.
Smucker 14 (Jonathan Matthew Smucker is a long-time organizer and theorist in
grassroots movements for social, economic and ecological justice. He has trained
thousands of change agents in campaign strategy, framing and messaging, direct
action, and other skills, and is currently a doctoral student of sociology at UC
Berkeley. Can Prefigurative Politics ever Replace Political Strategy?. Berkeley
Journal of Sociology. http://berkeleyjournal.org/category/forum/power-prefiguration/
10/7/14) CTD
Before delving into the question of whether the concept of prefigurative politics is
genuinely descriptive of OWSlet alone of the broader wave of global uprisingslet
us first clarify what we even mean by politics. The words politics and political are
often thrown around casually and without precision. What does it mean for
something to be political or, for that matter, apolitical? For Antonio Gramsci,
whether a certain tendency is political or not ultimately comes down to its
engagement with extant power relations and structures. When Gramsci calls certain
tendenciesapoliticism,[1] his argument is not that these tendencies are not
informed by or in reaction to political events or structural relationships, or that their
adherents have no political opinions. He is asserting, rather, that the actions of
some ostensibly political groups are not genuinely intended as political
interventions, i.e., strategic attempts to shift relationships of power as well as the
outcomes of those relationships. Here we see an important distinction: between
actions (or opinions) that are informed by or in reaction to a political situation, on
the one hand, and actions that are designed to be political interventions to reshape
the world, on the other. The expression of ones values or opinions, while
informed by political realities, will not automatically amount to political
interventioneven if expressed loudly and dramatically . To be political, then,
is not merely to hold or to express political opinions about issues, either as
individuals or in groups. Rather, to be political, requires engagement with the
terrain of power, with an orientation towards the broader society and its structures.
With such a political understanding, Gramsci saw the essential task of aspiring
political challengers was the formation of a national-popular collective will, of
which the modern Prince is at one and the same time the organiser and the active,
operative expression.[2] With the term modern Prince Gramsci was referring to a
revolutionary party that must operate as both the unifying symbol and the agent of
an articulated collective will, i.e., an emerging alternative hegemony that brings
disparate groups into alignment. How does Occupy Wall Street measure up to
Gramscis political vision? OWS did not have a revolutionary party, in the sense that
Gramsci elaborated. Indeed, Occupy shared many features with the anarchist
movement that Gramsci criticized.[3] Yet, despite this anarchismwith all of its
ambivalence and hostility towards the notion of building and wielding power,
leadership, and organizationOWS did, in its first few months of existence, step
partially into this dual role of operative expression and organiser of a newly
articulated national-popular collective will. Indeed, OWSs initial success in the
realm of contesting popular meanings was remarkable. Practically overnight the
nascent movement broke into the national news cycle and articulated a popular,
albeit ambiguous, critique of economic inequality and a political system rigged to
serve the one percent. Moreover, OWS managed momentarily to align remnants
of a long-fragmented political Left in the United States, while simultaneously striking
a resonant chord with far broader audiences. Its next logical political step, had it
followed a Gramscian political roadmap, would have been to build and consolidate
its organizational capacity by (1) constructing a capable and disciplined
organizational apparatus, and (2) activating the above-mentioned latent and
fragmented organizations and social bases into an alternative hegemonic alignment
capable of shifting political outcomes (i.e., winning). Occupy, however, was deeply
ambivalent about even attempting such operations. Nonetheless, it is important to
mention that a tendency within OWS did make such attempts, and even enjoyed
notable successes, however localized or limited these may have been. Broadly
speaking, and certainly oversimplifying for the sake of clarity, there were two main
overarching tendencies within the core of OWS. One tendency leaned toward
strategic politics and the other toward prefigurative politics.[4] To follow a
Gramscian roadmap, the former tendency would have had to build a mandate
within the movement for strategic political intervention, to a greater extent than it
did. As for the prefigurative politics tendency, Gramsci would likely not have
considered much of its politics to be politics at all. This latter tendency viewed
decision-making processes and the physical occupation of public space as
manifestations of a better future now (i.e., prefiguration), rather than as tactics
within a larger strategy of political contestation. The prefigurative politics tendency
confused process, tactics, and self-expression with political content and was often
ambivalent about strategic questions, like whether Wall Street was the named
target or most anything else in its place.[5] It celebrated the act for the acts
sake, struggle for the sake of struggle, etc.[1]; Gramsci may well have called it
apoliticism. Among other related phenomena that Gramsci criticized, Occupys
prefigurative politics tendency resembled his descriptions of voluntarism,
marginalism, and especially utopianism. The attribute utopian does not apply to
political will in general, he argued, but to specific wills which are incapable of
relating means to end, and hence are not even wills, but idle whims, dreams,
longings, etc.[7] Gramscis elaboration of utopianism goes further than the popular
notion of rosy-eyed visions of how the world could one day be. He dismisses
utopianists not for the content of their vision of the future, but for their lack of a
plan for how to move from Point A to Point B, from present reality to realized vision.
In other words, dreaming about how the world might possibly someday be is not the
same as political struggleeven when the dreams are punctuated with dramatic
prefigurative public spectacles. Lifeworld I want to suggest that in the
prefigurative politics on display at Zuccotti Park, Gramscis negative concept of
utopianism interacted with Jrgen Habermas theory of the lifeworldspecifically
the latter theorists discussion of subcultural tendencies oriented towards the
revitalization of the lifeworld. Again, prefigurative politics purports to be about
modeling or prefiguring visions of utopian futures here and now. Indeed, such
prefigurative spectacles did seem to create a palpable feeling of utopianism at
Zuccotti Park. Utopianism as a feeling is hardly about the future; rather, it is felt
here and now. During my time as an active participant and organizer at Zuccotti
Park, I began to wonder if the heightened sense of an integrated identity was the
utopia that many of my fellow participants were seeking. What if the thing we were
missing, the thing we were lackingthe thing we longed for mostwas a sense of
an integrated existence in a cohesive community, i.e., an intact lifeworld?What if
this longing was so potent that it could eclipse the drive to affect larger political
outcomes? Habermas argues that under a system of advanced capitalism and
bureaucracy, both bureaucratic and capitalist logics have penetrated and colonized
thelifeworld, encroaching upon, and even annihilating, the realm of traditional and
organic social practice and organization. In such contexts, social movements have
dramatically shifted in their political contents, forms, demographics, and the
motivations of their participants. Social movement participants in advanced
capitalist nations may be more likely to emphasize fine distinctions between their
own groups and the broader society than they are to look for commonalities. That is,
they are more likely to marginally differentiate themselves and their groups as a
means of finding and deepening a sense of solidarity and belonging that they feel
themselves lacking. Habermas writes: For this reason, ascriptive characteristics
such as gender, age, skin color, neighborhood or locality, and religious affiliation
serve to build up and separate off communities, to establish subculturally protected
communities supportive of the search for personal and collective identity. The
revaluation of the particular, the natural, the provincial, of social spaces that are
small enough to be familiar, of decentralized formsall this is meant to foster the
revitalization of possibilities for expression and communication that have been
buried alive.[8] My point here is not to diminish the importance of a groups internal
life and the sense of community, meaning, and belonging experienced by
participants. I would even posit that such spaces are indispensible to social
movements ability to deepen political analysis and foster the level of solidarity and
commitment that oppositional struggle requires. The problem here is a matter of
imbalance: when a groups internal life becomes a more important
motivator than what the group accomplishes as a vehicle for change. To
the extent that a group becomes self-contentencapsulated in the project of
constructing its particularized lifeworld what motivation will participants have
to strategically engage broader society and political structures? Why would
group members want to claim and contest popular meanings and symbols if the
groups individuated lifeworld can be further cultivated by an explicit rejection of
such contests? If participants are motivated by hope of psychic completionby
community and a strong sense of belongingand such motivation is insufficiently
grounded in instrumental political goals, their energies will likely go into deepening
group identity over bolstering the groups external political achievements. The
problem is that the groups particularized lifeworld can be strengthened
without it ever having to actually winanything in the real world. Indeed, this
may help to explain why some ostensibly political groups have been able to
maintain a committed core of participants for decades without ever achieving a
single measurable political goal.

Bottom-up politics dont work OWS proves

Naim 14 (Moises, Writer at the Atlantic, 4-7, Why Street Protests Don't Work,
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/why-street-protests-dont-
work/360264/) JW
Street protests are in. From Bangkok to Caracas, and Madrid to Moscow, these days
not a week goes by without news that a massive crowd has amassed in the streets
of another of the worlds big cities. The reasons for the protests vary (bad and too-
costly public transport or education, the plan to raze a park, police abuse, etc.).
Often, the grievance quickly expands to include a repudiation of the government, or
its head, or more general denunciations of corruption and economic inequality.
Aerial photos of the anti-government marches routinely show an intimidating sea of
people furiously demanding change. And yet, it is surprising how little these crowds
achieve. The fervent political energy on the ground is hugely disproportionate to the
practical results of these demonstrations. Notable exceptions of course exist: In
Egypt, Tunisia, and Ukraine, street protests actually contributed to the overthrow of
the government. But most massive rallies fail to create significant changes in
politics or public policies. Occupy Wall Street is a great example. Born in the
summer of 2011 (not in Wall Street but in Kuala Lumpurs Dataran Merdeka), the
Occupy movement spread quickly and was soon roaring in the central squares of
nearly 2,600 cities around the world. The problem is what happens after the march.
The hodgepodge groups that participated had no formal affiliation with one another,
no clear hierarchy, and no obvious leaders. But social networks helped to virally
replicate the movement so that the basic patterns of camping, protesting,
fundraising, communicating with the media, and interacting with the authorities
were similar from place to place. The same message echoed everywhere: It is
unacceptable that global wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elite 1 percent
while the remaining 99 percent can barely scrape by. Such a global, massive, and
seemingly well-organized initiative should have had a greater impact. But it didnt.
Though the topic of economic inequality has gained momentum in the years since,
in practice it is hard to find meaningful changes in public policy based on Occupys
proposals. By and large the Occupy movement has now vanished from the
headlines. In fact, government responses usually amount to little more than
rhetorical appeasement, and certainly no major political reforms. Brazilian President
Dilma Rousseff, for example, publicly validated the frustrations of those who took to
the streets of her country, and promised that changes would be made, but those
changes have yet to materialize. The reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan to the protests in his country was more aggressive. He accused the
opposition and protesters of plotting a sophisticated conspiracy against him, and
tried to block Twitter and YouTube. Earlier this month, Erdogan scored a huge victory
in Turkeys local elections. The same dynamic has played out during demonstrations
against violence in Mexico City and corruption in New Delhi: massive marches, scant
results. Why? How can so many extremely motivated people achieve so little? One
answer might be found in the results of an experiment conducted by Anders
Colding-Jrgensen of the University of Copenhagen. In 2009, he created a Facebook
group to protest the demolition of the historic Stork Fountain in a major square of
the Danish capital. Ten thousand people joined in the first week; after two weeks,
the group was 27,000 members-strong. That was the extent of the experiment.
There was never a plan to demolish the fountainColding-Jrgensen simply wanted
to show how easy it was to create a relatively large group using social media. Anti-
government protesters wake up in their encampment in Bangkok. (Reuters/Damir
Sagolj) In todays world, an appeal to protest via Twitter, Facebook, or text message
is sure to attract a crowd, especially if it is to demonstrate against something
anything, reallythat outrages us. The problem is what happens after the march.
Sometimes it ends in violent confrontation with the police, and more often than not
it simply fizzles out. Behind massive street demonstrations there is rarely a well-
oiled and more-permanent organization capable of following up on protesters
demands and undertaking the complex, face-to-face, and dull political work that
produces real change in government. This is the important point made by Zeynep
Tufekci, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton
University, who writes that Before the Internet, the tedious work of organizing that
was required to circumvent censorship or to organize a protest also helped build
infrastructure for decision making and strategies for sustaining momentum. Now
movements can rush past that step, often to their own detriment. Clicktivism and
slacktivism create a feel-good illusion that undermines the activism that effects
change. There is a powerful political engine running in the streets of many cities. It
turns at high speed and produces a lot of political energy. But the engine is not
connected to wheels, and so the movement doesnt move. Achieving that motion
requires organizations capable of old-fashioned and permanent political work that
can leverage street demonstrations into political change and policy reforms. In most
cases, that means political parties. But it doesnt necessarily mean existing parties
that demonstrators dont trust to be change agents. Instead, as I have written
elsewhere, we need new or deeply reformed parties that can energize both idealists
who feel politically homeless and professionals who are fully devoted to the daily
grind of building a political organization that knows how to convert political energy
into public policies. As many have noted, social media can both facilitate and
undermine the formation of more effective political parties. We are familiar with the
power of social media to identify, recruit, mobilize, and coordinate supporters as
well as to fundraise. But we also know that clicktivism and slacktivism undermine
real political work by creating the feel-good illusion that clicking like on a
Facebook page or tweeting incendiary messages from the comfort of ones
computer or smartphone is equivalent to the activism that effects change. What
weve witnessed in recent years is the popularization of street marches without a
plan for what happens next and how to keep protesters engaged and integrated in
the political process. Its just the latest manifestation of the dangerous illusion that
it is possible to have democracy without political partiesand that street protests
based more on social media than sustained political organizing is the way to change
society.

Bottom-up politics doesnt spill up the state destroys it

Freiwald 01 (Susan, a professor of law at the University of San Fransico.
Comparative Institutional Analysis in Cyberspace: The Case of Intermediary
Liability for Defamation 14 Harv. J. Law & Tec 569, Spring)JW

The fight over social policy goal choice often leads analysts to neglect to
consider which institution is best situated to realize a particular social
policy goal. 43 Much cyberspace legal scholarship ignores the institutional mechanism by which particular
legal changes should be made. 44 Once the author has described how the new cyberspace
technologies affect operation of the law in practice and has advocated the legal changes required to
marry the ideals of the law with the reality of cyberspace, he or she usually leaves unspecified how
the change should come about or else assumes without discussion that
Congress could and should make the change. 45 But ignoring institutional
choice often means creating inferior public policy. In fact, because the
different institutions vary so significantly in their ability to resolve legal
conflicts, when a less preferred institution decides a legal question, the
results can be [*582] disastrous. 46 For example, not only may Congress be ill-
suited to make a change, but, once it does, that decision may compromise
the ability of other institutions to solve the problem. The case study tells such a story
of institutional failure and the deplorable intermediary immunity from defamation liability that resulted.
 Perm
Only the perm can balance top-down and bottom-up
approaches to epistemological theorizing, which is key to
solvency
Pollock & Cruz 1999 (John L., Joseph, American philosopher known for
influential work in epistemology, philosophical logic, cognitive science, and artificial
intelligence, and Professor of Philosophy, Chair of Cognitive Science Program,
Contemporary Theory of Knowledge, Rowman & LittleField Publishers, inc.) JA
Epistemology is driven by attempts to answer the question, "How do you know?" In
the last chapter we pointed out that this gives investigations on several different
levels. At the lowest level, philosophers investigate particular kinds of knowledge
claims. At an intermediate level, topics are investigated that pertain to all or most of
the specific kinds of knowledge discussed at the lowest level. At the highest level
we find general epistemological theories that attempt to explain how knowledge in
general is possible. One can be doing epistemology by working at any of these
levels. The levels cannot be isolated from each other, however. Work at any level
tends to presuppose something about the other levels. For example, work on
inductive reasoning at least presupposes that reasoning plays a role in the
acquisition or justification of beliefs and normally presupposes something about the
structure of defeasible reasoning. Reflection on high-level epistemological theories
has typically proceeded in rather abstract fashion. Defenders of theories like
coherentism or probabilism have formulated their theories in very general terms,
and have usually made only half-hearted attempts to show how they can
accommodate the specific kinds of epistemic cognition required for knowledge of
concrete subject matters. This can be regarded as a kind of top-down
epistemological theorizing. Concentration on low-level theories is a kind of bottom-
up theorizing. Neither top-down nor bottom-up theorizing can be satisfactory by
itself. A necessary condition for the correctness of a low-level theory (e.g., a theory
of inductive reasoning, or a theory of inference from perception) is that it must fit
into a correct high-level theory. Focusing on the low-level theory by itself, without
reference to a high-level theory into which it must fit, is theorizing in a relative
vacuum and imposes too few constraints. Conversely, it is equally a necessary
condition for the correctness of a high level theory that it be possible to fill out with
low-level theories of specific kinds of epistemic cognition, and the only way to verify
that this can be done is to do it. To be ultimately satisfactory, epistemological
theorizing must combine top-down and bottom-up theorizing.

Perm solves, we can acknowledge our imperialism and act to

change it. They can coincide together.
Ferguson, 05 (Niall, Spring 2005 'We're an Empire Now': The United States
Between Imperial Denial and Premature Decolonization, Niall Ferguson, Harvard
University)

Were an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while
youre studying that realityjudiciously, as you willwell act again, creating
other new realities, which you can study too, and thats how things will sort
out. Were historys actorsand you, all of you, will be left to just study what
we do. A senior adviser to President Bush, as quoted by Ron Suskind1 History, [Bush] said, shrugging, taking
his hands out of his pockets, extending his arms and suggesting with his body language that it was so far off. We
Is the United States an
wont know. Well all be dead. Bob Woodward, quoting President Bush2
empire? It is, I have discovered, acceptable to say that it isprovided that
you deplore the fact. At the same time, it is permitted to say that American
power is potentially beneficent provided that you do not describe it as
imperial. What is not allowed is to say that the United States is an empire
and that this might not be wholly bad. My book Colossus set out to do this, and thereby
succeeded in antagonizing both conservative and liberal critics. Conservatives repudiated my contention that the
United States is and, indeed, has always been an empire. They prefer to think of it as a hegemon, a superpower, a
Liberals were dismayed by my suggestion that the
world leaderanything but an empire.
American empire might have positive as well as negative attributes. For
them, American imperialism can have no redeeming features. It has been
and must remain one of historys Bad Things. As in Gilbert and Sullivans Iolanthe, so in the
United States today, it seems to be expected, That every boy and every gal / Thats born into the world alive / Is
either a little Liberal, / Or else a little Conservative! But I am afraid my book is neither. Here, in a simplified form, is
The United States has always been,
what it says: 3 Macalester International Vol. 16 4 1.
functionally if not self-consciously, an empire; 2. a self-conscious
American imperialism might well be preferable to the available
alternatives, but 3. financial, human, and cultural constraints make
such self-consciousness highly unlikely, and 4. therefore the
American empire, insofar as it continues to exist, will remain a
somewhat dysfunctional entity. The case for an American empire in Colossus is therefore
twofold. First, there is the case for its functional existence; second, the case for
the potential advantages of a self-conscious American imperialism. By self-
conscious imperialism, please note, I do not mean that the United States
should unabashedly proclaim itself an empire and its president an emperor.
Perish the thought. I merely mean that Americans need to recognize the
imperial characteristics of their own power today and, if possible, to learn
from the achievements and failures of past empires. It is no longer possible to maintain
the fiction that there is something wholly unique about the foreign relations of the United States. The dilemmas
America faces today have more in common with those faced by the later Caesars than with those faced by the
Founding Fathers.3 At the same time, however, the book makes clear the grave perils of being an empire in
denial. Americans are not wholly oblivious to the imperial role their country plays in the world. But they dislike it. I
think were trying to run the business of the world too much, a Kansas farmer told the British author Timothy
Garton Ash in 2003, like the Romans used to.4 To such feelings of unease, American politicians respond with a
categorical reassurance. Were not an imperial power, declared President George W. Bush last April, Were a
liberating power.5