US Hegemony and Global Leadership Assessment

ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 1/311

Heg High [1/6].............................................................................................................................................6
Heg High – AT: Russia [1/3]..............................................................................................................................12
Heg High – AT: Iraq [1/1]..................................................................................................................................15
Heg High – Nuclear Primacy [1/1].....................................................................................................................16
Heg High – Capabilities Gap [1/1]......................................................................................................................17
Heg High – Air Force [1/1].................................................................................................................................18
Readiness High..........................................................................................................................................19
Readiness Up – $ing Up.....................................................................................................................................20
Readiness Up – General (A2: Iraq) [1/1]............................................................................................................21
Military Recruitment High........................................................................................................................22
Hard Power High.......................................................................................................................................23
Soft Power High........................................................................................................................................26
US Soft Power High – Asia................................................................................................................................27
Soft Power High – A2: Unilateralism/Bush........................................................................................................28
Soft Power High – A2: China (1/2).....................................................................................................................29
Soft Power High – A2: China (2/2).....................................................................................................................30
Heg Sustainable.........................................................................................................................................31
Heg Sustainable – Economy...............................................................................................................................42
Heg Sustainable – Innovation.............................................................................................................................43
Heg Sustainable – Latent Power.........................................................................................................................44
Heg Sustainable – China.....................................................................................................................................45
Heg Sustainable – Obama...................................................................................................................................47
Heg Sustainable – AT: Financial Crisis..............................................................................................................48
Heg Sustainable – AT: Iraq.................................................................................................................................52
Heg Sustainable – Structural Superiority............................................................................................................53
Heg Sustainable – A/T: Obama...........................................................................................................................54
Heg Sustainable – AT: Multipolarity Inevitable.................................................................................................55
Heg Sustainable – AT: Transition Now Better....................................................................................................57
Heg Sustainable – AT: Realism..........................................................................................................................59
Heg Sustainable – AT: Decline Inevitable................................................................................................60
AT: Counterbalancing...............................................................................................................................61
AT: Counterbalancing.........................................................................................................................................62
AT: Counterbalancing – China...........................................................................................................................69
AT: Counterbalancing – China/Russia................................................................................................................71
AT: Counterbalancing – Russia..........................................................................................................................72
AT: Counterbalancing – Venezuela, Iran, Russia...............................................................................................74
AT: Counterbalancing – Benign Heg..................................................................................................................75
AT: Counterbalancing – Capabilities Gap..........................................................................................................77
AT: Counterbalancing – Interdependence...........................................................................................................78
AT: Counterbalancing – EU...............................................................................................................................79
AT: Counterbalancing – India.............................................................................................................................80
AT: Counterbalancing – Asia Generic................................................................................................................81
AT: Counterbalancing – Too Costly...................................................................................................................82
AT: Offshore balancing.............................................................................................................................83
AT: Offshore balancing.............................................................................................................................85
AT: Offshore Balancing............................................................................................................................86
ICWest 09-10 Xue
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AT: Offshore Balancing Fails....................................................................................................................87
Heg Internals – Human Rights Leadership................................................................................................89
Heg Internals – Immigration reform..........................................................................................................90
Heg Internals – Poverty.............................................................................................................................91
Heg Internals – Competitiveness...............................................................................................................93
Heg Internals – Highways.........................................................................................................................94
Heg Internals – Soft Power........................................................................................................................96
Heg Good – Caspian Stability...................................................................................................................99
Heg Good – Chinese Containment..........................................................................................................101
Heg Good – Democracy..........................................................................................................................102
Heg Good – Deter Rogue States..............................................................................................................103
Heg Good – East Asian Stability.............................................................................................................104
Heg Good – Global Economy..................................................................................................................105
Heg Good – Iraq Stability........................................................................................................................106
Heg Good – Laundry List........................................................................................................................107
Heg Good – Middle East Stability...........................................................................................................108
Heg Good – South China Sea..................................................................................................................110
Heg Good – Space Dominance................................................................................................................111
Heg Good – Warming..............................................................................................................................112
Heg Good – War......................................................................................................................................113
Unipolarity Good – War..........................................................................................................................114
AT: Heg Bad – Imperialism....................................................................................................................115
Thayer 1/3................................................................................................................................................116
Heg Good – Khalilzad.............................................................................................................................119
Heg Good–Long Khalilzad......................................................................................................................120
Heg Good-Long Khalilzad......................................................................................................................121
Ferguson..................................................................................................................................................122
Heg Good – Economy.............................................................................................................................124
Heg Good – Prolif....................................................................................................................................125
Heg Bad Inevitable..................................................................................................................................126
Heg Bad Inevitable..................................................................................................................................127
1AC – Heg Good.....................................................................................................................................128
2AC Heg Outweighs Overview...............................................................................................................131
A/T: Isolationism Good...........................................................................................................................132
A/T: Off Shore Balancing........................................................................................................................133
A/T: Russia – China Alliance..................................................................................................................134
A/T: U.S. – China War............................................................................................................................136
A/T: U.S. – Iran War...............................................................................................................................139
A/T: Heg  Prolif...................................................................................................................................140
A/T: Heg  Terrorism............................................................................................................................142
Primacy deters terrorism..........................................................................................................................143
A/T: Multipolarity...................................................................................................................................144
Hegemony  Democracy.......................................................................................................................145
Heg K/T: Global Econ.............................................................................................................................146
Heg K/T: Humanitarianism.....................................................................................................................147
No Balancing OR Interventionism..........................................................................................................148
Collapse Bad – No one CAN Counterbalance.........................................................................................149
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 3/311
Kagan – There are no Alternatives to U.S. Hegemony...........................................................................151
Heg Good–Peace/Stability.......................................................................................................................157
Heg Good-Walt........................................................................................................................................158
Heg Good-Kagan.....................................................................................................................................159
Heg Good-Kagan.....................................................................................................................................159
Heg Good-Laundry List...........................................................................................................................160
Heg Good-War.........................................................................................................................................161
Heg Good-War.........................................................................................................................................162
Heg Good-War.........................................................................................................................................163
Heg Good-War.........................................................................................................................................163
Heg Good-Prolif Shell.............................................................................................................................164
Heg Good-Japan Rearm Shell 1/2...........................................................................................................165
Heg Good-Japan Rearm Shell 2/2...........................................................................................................166
Heg Good-Japan Rearm Ext....................................................................................................................167
Heg Good-Japan Rearm Ext....................................................................................................................168
Heg Good-Trade Shell 1/3.......................................................................................................................169
Heg Good-Trade Ext................................................................................................................................172
Heg Good-Trade Ext................................................................................................................................173
Heg Good-Terrorism Shell......................................................................................................................174
Heg Good-Terrorism Ext.........................................................................................................................175
AT: Layne/Econ Turn..............................................................................................................................176
AT: Offshore Balancing..........................................................................................................................177
AT: Heg causes resentment.....................................................................................................................178
AT: EU Counterbalancing.......................................................................................................................179
AT: China Counterbalancing...................................................................................................................180
AT: Russia-China War............................................................................................................................181
AT: EU Counterbalancing.......................................................................................................................182
AT: Counterbalancing.............................................................................................................................183
AT: All Heg Bad Args.............................................................................................................................186
Multipolarity Bad: War............................................................................................................................187
Multipolarity Bad: War............................................................................................................................188
Hege Checks Global War........................................................................................................................189
Soft Power High......................................................................................................................................190
Internal Links – Human Rights Credibility Kt Heg.................................................................................191
Heg Impact Authors – Kagan..................................................................................................................192
Heg Impact Authors – Kagan..................................................................................................................193
Heg Impact Authors – Thayer.................................................................................................................195
Heg Impact Authors – Brookes...............................................................................................................197
Heg Impact Authors – Lieber..................................................................................................................198
Heg Good – Transition Wars...................................................................................................................199
Heg Good – Transition Wars...................................................................................................................201
Heg Good – Decline  Reintervention...................................................................................................203
Heg Good – Prolif Shell..........................................................................................................................204
Ext. Heg Solves Prolif.............................................................................................................................205
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Heg Good – Terrorism Shell....................................................................................................................207
Ext. Heg Solves Terrorism......................................................................................................................209
AT: Heg Causes Terrorism......................................................................................................................210
Ext. Heg Solves Democracy....................................................................................................................212
Heg Good – Economy.............................................................................................................................213
Ext. Heg Solves Economy.......................................................................................................................214
Heg Good – China War...........................................................................................................................216
Decline Causes Asian Instability.............................................................................................................217
A2: Heg Bad – Intervention.....................................................................................................................218
Regional blocks.......................................................................................................................................219
Regional blocks.......................................................................................................................................220
China module...........................................................................................................................................221
China module...........................................................................................................................................222
Sino-Russian Module...............................................................................................................................223
Corporations module...............................................................................................................................224
***HEG GOOD***.................................................................................................................................225
Heg good- relations..................................................................................................................................226
Heg good- relations..................................................................................................................................227
Heg good- solves extinction....................................................................................................................228
Heg good- solves war..............................................................................................................................230
soft power recoverable.............................................................................................................................235
at: iraq permanently ended soft power.....................................................................................................238
SP key to hegemony / at: hegemony resilient..........................................................................................239
SP key to hegemony................................................................................................................................240
SP key to hegemony................................................................................................................................241
SP key to coalition building.....................................................................................................................242
at: hegemony d/n solve post iraq.............................................................................................................243
at: hard power is sufficient......................................................................................................................244
combo key................................................................................................................................................245
at: hegemony bad – terrorism..................................................................................................................246
impact – global nuclear war.....................................................................................................................247
impact – middle east................................................................................................................................252
impact – asian stability............................................................................................................................253
impact – terrorism....................................................................................................................................254
Heg Good – War (General)......................................................................................................................254
Heg Good – Laundry List........................................................................................................................256
Heg Good – Peace/Stability.....................................................................................................................257
Heg Good – Warming..............................................................................................................................258
Heg Key to South China Sea – First Line................................................................................................259
Heg Key to South China Sea...................................................................................................................260
Heg Key to East Asian Stability – First Line..........................................................................................261
Heg Key to Caspian Stability – First Line (1/2)......................................................................................262
Heg Key to Caspian Stability – First Line (2/2)......................................................................................263
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 5/311
Caspian Module – AT: No Military Deployments in Caspian................................................................264
Caspian Module – AT: No Risk Of Russian Hegemony.........................................................................265
Heg Key to Prevent Japanese Rearm.......................................................................................................266
Japan Module – AT: Heg Doesn’t Solve Rearm.....................................................................................267
Heg Key to Stop German and Japan Rearm............................................................................................268
Heg Key to Global Economy – First Line...............................................................................................269
Heg Key to Global Economy...................................................................................................................270
Heg Key to Democracy – First Line........................................................................................................271
Heg Key Prevent War with China...........................................................................................................272
Heg Key to Deter Rogue States – First Line (1/2)...................................................................................273
Heg Key to Deter Rogue States – First Line (2/2)...................................................................................274
Heg Key to Middle East Stability – First Line (1/2)...............................................................................275
Heg Key to Middle East Stability – First Line (2/2)...............................................................................276
Heg Key to Middle East Stability............................................................................................................277
Heg Key to Iraq Stability (1/2)................................................................................................................278
Heg Key to Iraq Stability (2/2)................................................................................................................279
Heg Key to Asian Arms Control.............................................................................................................280
Heg Key to Chinese Containment – First Line........................................................................................281
Heg Key to Chinese Containment...........................................................................................................282
Heg Key to Space Dominance – First Line.............................................................................................283
U.S. Space Dominance Key to Prevent Conflicts....................................................................................284
Leadership Key to Solve Global Problems (1/2).....................................................................................285
Leadership Key to Solve Global Problems (2/2).....................................................................................286
Unipolarity Key to Solve War (1/3)........................................................................................................287
Heg K Asian Stability, Democracy.........................................................................................................290
AT: Heg  China War – Cooperation (1/2)...........................................................................................291
AT: Heg  China War – Cooperation (2/2)...........................................................................................292
AT: Heg  China War – Heg K Check China........................................................................................293
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 6/311
Heg High [1/6]
America is the global hegemon – multiple warrants: dollar, military, NATO, UN, pop culture
International Herald Tribune 08 (5/1, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/01/news/30oxan.php)
Instead of describing US 'imperialism' it is more apposite to refer to Washington's position as a hegemonic power in a number of dimensions, such as its
dominant position in international political and economic organisations, its cultural reach, and its relative military prowess. Wellsprings of power. US
hegemonic power is exercised globally through several key institutions and mechanisms:· Economic power. Following the Second World War, US economic
dominance was so great that it was able to help reconstruct post-war Western Europe via the Marshall Plan. Although its relative advantage has since
declined, Washington continues to play a key role in global economic affairs; its intervention helped halt the
spiralling depreciation of the Mexican peso in 1994. The dollar also remains the world's dominant reserve, or
'numeraire', currency.· Military might. US defence spending continues massively to overshadow the
military outlays of other societies. Substantial elements of the US armed forces are still
permanently based in many areas abroad. While this overseas basing is, in part, a residue of the old Cold War security apparatus,
many areas of the world welcome these troops as the guarantors of stability and the regional
balance of power.· Post-1945 legacy. The United States had a major role in structuring post-1945
political and social systems. For example, both the German Basic Law of 1949 and Japan's 1947 constitution reflected significant US input.
Both countries were subject to US influence directly through occupation forces, but also
intellectually and culturally as their new governments operated under US-influenced
constitutional systems. While such influence is today much diminished, it has not entirely vanished.· International
organisations. Washington dominates key international organisations, notably NATO and the UN.
NATO, which once had a limited collective security role centred around defending Western Europe from a Soviet attack, is slowly moving
towards an expanded 'out of area' mission under US prodding. Despite President George Bush's
occasionally confrontational stance towards the UN, the United States remains highly influential there
due to the size of its financial contribution and Security Council veto. · Aligning allies. The United States works
assiduously to promote its interests by influencing how other states align or realign. For example, it has promoted Turkey's candidacy for EU membership,
as a means of promoting political and economic reform. · Ideas and culture. US
ideas and popular culture, from jazz to art and
cinema, have infectiously spread -- rendering 'Americanisation' among the most significant and
disputed phenomena of the contemporary era. Americanisation has its antinomy, 'anti-Americanism', and this cleavage operates
globally. 'Globalisation' both overlaps with, and is distinct from, Americanisation, but the two phenomena are often conjoined in political analysis and
popular discourse.
The US is dominant now against those who oppose it, remaining strong against forces such as Iran
and North Korea
NYT July 10, 2009. New York Times [Finding the Limits of U.S. Power] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/world/europe/11iht-letter.html?
_r=1&pagewanted=2
Consider for a moment how power is acquired and exercised: through economic might and
military strength, through demographic resilience and access to natural resources, through the ability to display
resolve and instill fear without showing it. By all those measures, the United States is so much more
powerful than those who taunt Washington with impunity, demanding to know why Washington
countenances a nuclear Israel but denies others the same trust. If this were a game of poker rather than a deadly debate,
it would be seem oddly asymmetric. North Korea and Iran test-fire missiles, calculating that no one will fire
back. Iran’s clerical hierarchy, its legitimacy drawn from a revolution 30 years ago defined by twin poles of faith and anti-Americanism,
senses that Mr. Obama’s commitment to engagement strips him of the bully’s power to enforce.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
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Heg High [2/6]
Even if the world became more multipolar, US would still be the hegemon
Sui 08 (Yu, Researcher with the Research Center of Contemporary World, 3/11, http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in-the-press/march-2008/us-still-
committed-to-unilateralism/)
The status of the U.S. as a superpower reached its zenith after the Cold War as it single-mindedly
pursued a unilateralist global strategy and there seemed to be only one pole left in the world; while in
fact the world was in a relatively long transitional phase from a "bipolar" to "multi-polar" structure. The transition to a multi-polar is continuing. Multi-
polarization is a development trend, which does not mean we are already there. There is a
relatively lengthy period of transition when a new one is finally established. The basic situation
during this transitional period is that the US will enjoy the "sole superpower" edge unchallenged
for a rather long time within "a setup featuring one superpower and multiple major powers", but
none of the major powers are strong enough to rival the US and therefore have to find solace in statements such as
"superpowers" no longer exist. If we see "the sole superpower" the US as one pole, then we probably should view the "multiple major powers" as a
collective "para-pole". It is these "pole" and "para-pole" that form the multi-polar world structure, while the ideas of "unipolar world" and "non-polar world"
do not reflect the reality of today's world. The number of "multiple major powers" is growing and the new comers are developing nations or their alliances
only, such as certain members of the BRIC nations and VISTA countries and perhaps the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The ongoing
accumulation and advancement of regional multi-polarization will complement and enrich the multi-polarization of the world. Today's America
is hurting but remains a superpower nonetheless. The international situation in 2007 showed it was a year when the regional hot
spots set on fire by the US sought a way out and achieved limited success amid malignant escalation. Last year major powers tried to adjust their relations,
with the US as the main cause of everything that was wrong, only to further complicate them. Last year the US neo-conservatism was forced to make tactical
adjustments with certain strategic implications after serious setbacks and under pressure to win the next presidential election. The growing seriousness and
complexity of the world situation last year was, in many ways and to a significant degree, a strong rejection of US unilateralism. With the war in Iraq as a
mark, the US has been relegated from hegemonic unilateralism to head-of-the-pack unilateralism. That means it is still committed to unilateralism but cannot
do it on its own and has to rely on cooperation by other major powers, including former arch rival Russia, in a "multilateral manner". The embarrassing
situation is evident in the war on terror and even more so in the anti-proliferation campaign. However, this situation does not mean the US will give up
unilateralism in favor of multilateralism, but rather it has been forced to go along with the latter. The same is true with multi-polarization, which the US
would very much not have but cannot get rid of at the moment. Because the gap between the "sole superpower" and "multiple major powers" is narrowing by
the day, the idea of the world entering the era of "relative major powers" in the next 30 to 40 years sounds original, but it is far from confirming the word
"superpower" is already obsolete. The debate over the question of world structure has been going on since day one, because the international situation has
been complicated and changing all the time. Some people say multi-polarization will "cause instability", whereas things are easier to do in a unipolar world
with one voice. American
advocates of unipolarism have time and again advertised the US as a "benign
hegemony" capable of delivering order to the world community that will keep it mutually
beneficial. And the US government has validated this notion repeatedly through its involvement in
the Balkans and Middle East wars.
U.S. Hegemony high now with no apparent decline – Iraq proves.

U.S. Occupation of Iraq Continues Unabated. Dahr Jamail 6/7/2009 http://dahrjamailiraq.com/us-occupation-of-iraq-continues-unabated.
We have passed the June 30 deadline that, according to a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between US Ambassador
Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on November 17, 2008, was the date all US forces were to have been
withdrawn from all of Iraq's cities. Today, however, there are at least 134,000 US soldiers in Iraq - a
number barely lower than the number that were there in 2003. In addition, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
testified on June 9 that the United States would maintain an average of at least 100,000 troops in
Iraq through fiscal year 2010. The SOFA is a sieve, and the number of US military personnel in Iraq is
remaining largely intact for now. Add to the 134,000 US soldiers almost the exact number of military contractors
(132,610 and increasing), 36,061 of which, according to a recent Department of Defense report, are US citizens. While the military
and most corporate media would like you to believe that from now on no US soldiers will step foot
in Iraqi cities, US military patrols in them are ongoing and will continue .
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 8/311
Heg High [3/6]
America’s military power is unprecedented

Shapiro 08 (Robert J, Sonecon LLC co-founder, 6/12, http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=7049)
America’s global military power is so commonplace that it’s easy to overlook how historically unique it is. What’s so
unusual and world-changing is not the extent of America’s military, political and economic
capacities — but the absence of countries that come anywhere close. America’s historically
anomalous position as a sole superpower with no near peer ended the balance-of-power geopolitics that organized much of world
affairs for more than a thousand years — and will fundamentally shape a new geopolitics for at least the next
generation. Sources of power The United States also derives geopolitical power from its singular capacity
to develop new technologies and other valuable intellectual property in large volumes, especially in
the software and Internet areas that drive so much economic change and the processes of globalization itself. In
2006, the United States spent about $570 billion on defense, or roughly as much as the rest of the
world combined volumes. Other countries now lead in producing and improving the basic
manufactures that American companies dominated a few generations ago — steel, consumer electronics,
automobiles — and much more. This capacity enhances America’s global position not because it increases the
profits that U.S. companies earn on their foreign sales. Much more far-reaching, it subtly aligns
the economic paths of other countries with the United States and — whether or not they like it —
makes them a little more like America.
Hegemony sky high - US leads militarily and economically. NO challengers in sight.

Brzezinski 04 (Zbigniew, The Former Sect. Of State, Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Perseus, New York, lexis)
At the outset of the twenty_first century, America’s power is unprecedented in its global military
reach, in the centrality of America’s economic vitality for the well_being of the world economy, in
the innovative impact of America’s technological dynamism, and in the worldwide appeal of the
multifaceted and often crass American mass culture. All of these give America matchless global
political clout. For better or worse, America is the global pacesetter, and there is no rival in sight.
Europe might be competitive economically, but it will be a long time before Europe acquires the
degree of unity that would enable it to compete politically. Japan, once seen as the next superstate,
is out of the race, while China, despite its economic progress, is likely to remain relatively poor for at least two
generations and in the meantime may encounter severe political difficulties. Russia is no longer in the running. In brief, America does
not have, and will not soon face, a global peer. There is thus no realistic alternative to the
prevailing American hegemony and the role of U.S. power as the indispensable component of
global security. At the same time, American democracy—and the example of American success—disseminates economic, cultural, and
technological changes that promote growing global interconnections over and above national frontiers. These changes can undermine the very stability
thatAmerican power seeks to ensure, and can even breed anti-American hostility. [P. vii-viii]
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 9/311
Heg High [4/6]
US Heg is unrivaled - all trends indicate it’ll stay that way.

Krauthammer 03 (Charles, columnist, The National Interest, Winter, p. online lexis)
There is little need to rehearse the acceleration of unipolarity in the 1990s. Japan, whose claim to power
rested exclusively on economics, went into economic decline. Germany stagnated. The Soviet Union ceased to
exist, contracting into a smaller, radically weakened Russia. The European Union turned inward toward the great project of integration and
built a strong social infrastructure at the expense of military capacity. Only China grew in strength, but coming from so far
behind it will be decades before it can challenge American primacy-and that assumes that its current growth continues
unabated.The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen . Even at its height Britain could
always be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. Britain had a smaller army than the land powers of Europe and its navy was equaled by the next
two navies combined. Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries
combined. Its navy, air force and space power are unrivaled. Its technology is irresistible. It is
dominant by every measure: military, economic, technological, diplomatic, cultural, even
linguistic, with a myriad of countries trying to fend off the inexorable march of Internet-fueled mtv English. American dominance has not gone
unnoticed. During the 1990s, it was mainly China and Russia that denounced unipolarity in their occasional joint communique s. As the new century dawned
it was on everyone's lips. A French foreign minister dubbed the United States not a superpower but a hyperpower. The
dominant concern of
foreign policy establishments everywhere became understanding and living with the 800-pound
American gorilla.
American power is unmatched in any category.

Nye 04 (Joseph, Dean, JFK School of Government at Harvard, “The Decline of America’s Soft Power”, Foreign Affairs,
May/June 2004, Proquest)
Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others. In the words of The Economist, “the
United States bestrides the globe like a colossus. It dominates business, commerce and
communications; its economy is the world’s most successful, its military might second to none.”
French foreign minis- ten Hubert Védnine argued in 1999 that the United States had gone beyond its superpower status of the twentieth century. “U.S.
supremacy today extends to the economy, currency, military areas, lifestyle, language and the
products of mass culture that inundate the world, forming thought and fascinating even the
enemies of the United States.” Or as two American triumphalists put it, “Today’s international system is built not
around a balance of power but around American hegemony.” As global interdependence has increased, many have
argued that globalization is simply a disguise for American imperialism. The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that “American idols and icons
are shaping the world from Katmandu to Kinshasa, from Cairo to Caracas. Globalization wears a ~Made in USA’ label.”
The US has the most power in the world and will continue to do so for decades
Haas 08 (Richard, CFR pres., May/June, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87304/richard-n-haass/the-age-of-nonpolarity.html)
In this world, the

United States is and will long remain the largest single aggregation of power. It
spends more than $500 billion annually on its military -- and more than $700 billion if the
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are included -- and boasts land, air, and naval forces that are
the world's most capable. Its economy, with a GDP of some $14 trillion, is the world's largest. The
United States is also a major source of culture (through films and television), information, and
innovation. But the reality of American strength should not mask the relative decline of the United States' position in the world -- and with this
relative decline in power an absolute decline in influence and independence. The U.S. share of global imports is already down to 15 percent. Although U.S.
GDP accounts for over 25 percent of the world's total, this percentage is sure to decline over time given the actual and projected differential between the
United States' growth rate and those of the Asian giants and many other countries, a large number of which are growing at more than two or three times the
rate of the United States.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 10/311
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 11/311
Heg High [5/6]
Heg is high— the US leads militarily and economically with no challengers.

Brzezinski (Former Sect. Of State) 2004 [Zbigniew, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Perseus, New York // wyo-tjc]
At the outset of the twenty_first century, America’s power is unprecedented in its global military
reach, in the centrality of America’s economic vitality for the well_being of the world economy, in
the innovative impact of America’s technological dynamism, and in the worldwide appeal of the
multifaceted and often crass American mass culture. All of these give America matchless global
political clout. For better or worse, America is the global pacesetter, and there is no rival in sight. Europe
might be competitive economically, but it will be a long time before Europe acquires the degree of
unity that would enable it to compete politically. Japan, once seen as the next superstate, is out of the race,
while China, despite its economic progress, is likely to remain relatively poor for at least two generations and in
the meantime may encounter severe political difficulties. Russia is no longer in the running. In brief, America does not have, and
will not soon face, a global peer. There is thus no realistic alternative to the prevailing American
hegemony and the role of U.S. power as the indispensable component of global security . At the same
time, American democracy—and the example of American success— disseminates economic, cultural, and technological changes that promote growing
global interconnections over and above national frontiers. These changes can undermine the very stability that American power seeks to ensure, and can
even breed anti-American hostility. [P. vii-viii]
Military bases prove US leadership

Topolanek 08 (Mirek, Czech prime minister, 4/14, http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/hl1076.cfm)
Fourteen European countries currently host bases of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the
U.S. Navy. This is evidence of American leadership. The American military presence in Europe
ensures that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries on both sides of the Atlantic will be
equally defended against any conventional threats. This military presence is a result of a strengthened will to
provide defense after the two World Wars and the Cold War. That is why it was accepted, and
appreciated, as evidenced by the complete absence of referenda, which we are now unfortunately asked to hold in
regard to the radar site.
American power is unmatchable all in categories—military, economic, and cultural leadership.

Nye 04 (Joseph, Dean, JFK School of Government at Harvard, “The Decline of America’s Soft Power”, Foreign Affairs,
May/June 2004, Proquest)
How great is the disparity between our power and that of the rest of the world? In military power, we are the only country with
both nuclear weapons and conventional forces with global reach. Our military expenditures are greater than those of
the next eight countries combined, and we lead in the informationbased “revolution in military affairs.” Economically, we have a 27
percent share of world product, which (at market prices) was equal to that of the next three
countries combined (Japan, Germany, France). We are the home of fifty-nine of the hundred largest companies in the world by market value
(compared to thirtyone for Europe and seven for Japan.) Of the Financial Times’ listing of the 500 largest global companies, 219 were American, 158
European, and 77 Japanese.” In direct foreign investment, we invested and received nearly twice as much as the next ranking country (Britain) and
accounted for half of the top ten investment banks. American e-commerce was three times that of Europe, and we are the home of seven of the top ten
software vendors. Forty-two of the top seventy-five brands were American, as well as nine of the top ten business schools .” In terms of soft
power, the United States is far and away the number one film and television exporter in the world,
although India’s “Bollywood” actually produces more movies per year.” We also attract the most foreign students each year
to our institutions of higher education, followed by Britain and Australia. In addition to students, over 500,000
foreign scholars were in residence at American educational institutions in 2000.”~ In the words of the Financial Times, “ the U.S. is the
dominant economic model for the rest of the developed world and much of the developing world.”
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[P. 35-36]
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Heg High [6/6]
The sustainability and enhancement of American primacy is inevitable

Liber, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georetown University, 2002 (Robert J., “Foreign Policy and American Primacy,” Eagle Rules?
Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert J. Liever, M. Villaplana
American primacy has been sustained and even enhanced, and it is likely to continue. The dimensions of
this primacy include, inter alia, military strength, the capacity to project power at great distance,
technology, economic dynamism, and culture (broadly defined to include lifestyle and entertainment). These dimensions
appear to be reinforced by the revolution in information technology, which is having an economic and a social
impact comparable in many respects to the industrial revolutions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some have suggested that technological
change will erode U.S. primacy and sovereignty by globalizing commerce and communications in ways that no state can control. However, a strong
because of the advantages accruing to the United States through its esarly lead in
argument can be made that
information technologies, as well as economies of scale and the dynamism of American cultural,
economic, political, and social structures in accommodating technological change, both U.S.
preponderance and U.S. sovereignty are likely to endure.
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Heg High – AT: Russia [1/3]
Obama in Russia attempting to “reset” relations with Russia

NYT July 4, 2009. New York Times[In Russian Trip, Obama to Take On Power Equation]
MOSCOW — The summit meeting here this week revolves around two men with some notable
affinities. Presidents Obama and Dmitri A. Medvedev are relatively young leaders who represent a
new generation of post-cold-war leadership, who once taught law and embrace the Internet. (Mr. Medvedev even has a video blog.
One difference stands out, though: Mr. Obama is the undisputed head of his nation. Mr. Medvedev? Well,
that is a bit more complicated, and is a significant problem for the Obama administration as it prepares for discussions on Monday. Mr. Obama
himself waded into the issue on Thursday when he made a pointed remark about Prime Minister
Vladimir V. Putin, who is Mr. Medvedev’s mentor and is widely assumed to be Russia’s real ruler. Mr. Obama said that Mr. Putin, the
former president, had “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.” Mr. Obama
said that it was time to move forward and that Mr. Medvedev “understands that.” The comment suggested that Mr. Obama was
trying to build up Mr. Medvedev, who the Americans say they believe may be easier to deal with than
Mr. Putin. American officials said that Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev met at the Group of 8 summit meeting in London in April and that they seemed
to hit it off. But the officials said they feared that Mr. Putin stood in the way. Mr. Obama also may have been trying to protect his own domestic political
flank, anticipating criticism that he is too easy on the Kremlin. Mr.
Putin, who is often quick with a retort when criticized,
seemed to go out of his way on Friday not to take offense at Mr. Obama’s comment. “We stand
firmly on our feet and always look to the future,” Mr. Putin said. He said he was awaiting Mr. Obama’s visit with “very warm
feelings.” Still, the strategy of empowering Mr. Medvedev might be difficult to carry out, and it might
even backfire. Mr. Medvedev might respond by emphatically moving closer to Mr. Putin to avoid
the appearance of being influenced by Mr. Obama.

Obama heads toward dream of non-nuclear world by securing Russian relations
The Economist July 9, 2009 [The Russia/America summit: Barack, Dmitry—and (offstage)
Vladimir]http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13993072&fsrc=rss
THE body language said it all. When Barack Obama arrived in Moscow for his first summit with the Russian president on July 6th, he sat on the edge of his
chair, his eyes fixed on his host, Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Medvedev sat back, revealing a mix of reserve and polite attention to what Mr Obama had to offer.
But Mr Obama came to Moscow for business, not love. He managed to do as much as could have been
expected. The two sides agreed in principle to cut their nuclear arsenals by roughly a quarter in
seven years. For Mr Obama this was part of a vision of a non-nuclear world. For the Russians, it
was an opportunity to preserve some semblance of nuclear parity. Given that Russia’s stockpile is aging fast, it will
not have to do much to reach the target. The Russians and Americans also agreed to renew military co-operation
and work on non-proliferation. A dozen American aircraft a day will fly through Russian airspace carrying troops and equipment to
Afghanistan. This will save time and money, but also make Russia’s southern border more secure. “They are real things, not fluff,” says Michael McFaul,
Mr Obama’s top Russia adviser. Yet the bigger test will come over Iran, missile-defense plans and countries in
the former Soviet space. The improvement in relations is so fragile that it may not withstand the
strain of potential Western action in Iran. Russia does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, but
nor does it want to lose influence for America’s sake. “Russia does not want to fight with America, but it is
not prepared to make concessions to America either. Moscow’s general policy is one of disengagement,”
says Ivan Safranchuk, an adviser on disarmament and foreign relations. Mr Obama’s speech at the New Economic School in
Moscow was an attempt to engage Russian society without trying to lecture it. He addressed the more neuralgic
elements in Russia’s self-perception. He praised the Russian people for ending the cold war. He insisted that
America wanted “a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia”. But he stressed that “pursuit of
power is no longer a zero-sum game” and that Georgia and Ukraine were entitled to their
sovereignty. He talked up the rule of law and freedom of speech “because they are moral, but also because they work”. And he added
pointedly that “governments which serve their own people survive and thrive. Governments which
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serve only their own power do not.”
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Obama influencing Russian president that the US is changing its views on Russia
The Economist July 9, 2009 [The Russia/America summit: Barack, Dmitry—and (offstage)
Vladimir]http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13993072&fsrc=rss
Mr Obama’s speech was broadcast live by only one cable TV channel with limited reach. The main channels highlighted his endorsement of a “great Russia”
and managed to turn his comments about “dominating and demonising other countries”, a reference to Russia’s behaviour to its former republics, into a case
of American self-criticism. Even
students remained largely indifferent to Mr Obama’s speech. “I take what
he said on board, but I am not going jump to a conclusion,” said one.
Such a reaction reflects the culture of cynicism and nationalism that has flourished in Russia in
recent years. But it is also the result of Russian disillusionment with America. Vladimir Putin, Mr
Medvedev’s prime minister, spent much of his two-hour breakfast with Mr Obama venting
Russia’s grievances over America’s policy. He blamed George Bush for letting Mikheil Saakashvili,
Georgia’s president, twist American support into a green light for a war. But he allowed his talks
with Mr Obama to be twisted by his own side. According to Yury Ushakov, Mr Putin’s chief foreign-policy
adviser, “President Obama pledged to consider the regional significance of these countries for us.”
This line was amplified by Russia’s main TV channel, which presented it as America’s concession
and Russia’s victory. It quoted Vyacheslav Nikonov, Russia’s main pro-Kremlin commentator, as saying:
“All the sanctions that were imposed against Russia after the war in August 2008 are in the past.
This shows that America realises the necessity to work together with the Russian Federation. America
has understood what was going on last August. Today nobody in Washington would shake Saakashvili’s hand.”
Mr Obama has few illusions about Mr Putin. “I found him tough, smart, shrewd, very unsentimental, very
pragmatic. And on areas where we disagree, like Georgia, I don’t anticipate a meeting of minds
anytime soon.” By the same token, Mr Obama said he trusted Mr Medvedev and found him
“straightforward and professional”.

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Obama trying to gain the trust of, and rebuild Russian power to work together as one strong force
NYT July 10, 2009. New York Times [Finding the Limits of U.S. Power] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/world/europe/11iht-letter.html
But, beyond the nuclear arsenals, the notion of parity was always flawed. In so many ways, Moscow
was not the economic, political or social equal of the United States. And, 20 years after the
crumbling of the Soviet empire, that imbalance has not been redressed any more than diplomacy has devised a new
set of global rules. “What kind of future are Russia and America going to have together?” Mr. Obama
asked in Moscow. “What world order will replace the Cold War? Those questions still don’t have
clear answers.” In other words, who will police the planet at a time when the nuclear debate
entwines worries about terrorism and the resurgence of what was once described as a crescent of
crisis stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran and the Gulf to the Horn of Africa?
Arguably, Mr. Obama is seeking a return to an older equilibrium after the roller-coaster years of
Russia’s economic turmoil in the 1990s and its bullish nationalism under Vladimir V. Putin — a
partnership, he said, that “will be stronger if Russia occupies its rightful place as a great power.”
Indeed, without the support of Russia and China in the international politics of nuclear enforcement,
the United States cannot hope for the leverage it needs to pressure Pyongyang or Tehran.
“If we fail to stand together” to press for nuclear nonproliferation, Mr. Obama said in Moscow,
“international law will give way to the law of the jungle.”
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Heg High – AT: Iraq [1/1]
Iraq has strengthened the US strategic position and boosted leadership.

Australian 08 (4/26, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23599516-7583,00.html)
THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and
the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray. Mike Green holds the
Japan chair at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies and was for several years the Asia director at the National Security Council. He is
also one of America’s foremost experts on Japan and northeast Asia generally. His thesis, applied strictly to the US position in Asia, is correct. First, Green
states and acknowledges the negatives. He writes: “The Iraq war has had one important, pernicious impact on US interests in Asia: it has consumed US
attention.” This has prevented the US from following up in sufficient detail on some positive developments in Asia. Green also acknowledges that the US’s
reputation has taken a battering among Muslim populations in Asia. Yet Green’s positive thesis is fascinating. The US’s three most
important Asian alliances - with Australia, Japan and South Korea - have in his view been
strengthened by the Iraq campaign. Each of these nations sent substantial numbers of troops to
help the US in Iraq. They did this because they believed in what the US was doing in Iraq, and also because
they wanted to use the Iraq campaign as an opportunity to strengthen their alliances with the US. More
generally, in a world supposedly awash in anti-US sentiment, pro-American leaders keep winning
elections. Germany’s Angela Merkel is certainly more pro-American than Gerhard Schroeder, whom she
replaced. The same is true of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. More importantly in terms of Green’s analysis, the same is also
true of South Korea’s new President. Lee Myung-bak, elected in a landslide in December, is vastly more pro-American
than his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun. Even in majority Islamic societies, their populations allegedly radicalised
and polarised by Bush’s campaign in Iraq and the global war on terror more generally, election
results don’t show any evidence of these trends. In the most recent local elections in Indonesia, and in national
elections in Pakistan, the Islamist parties with anti-American rhetoric fared very poorly . Similarly Kevin Rudd
was elected as a very pro-American Labor leader, unlike Mark Latham, with his traces of anti-Americanism, who was heavily defeated. Even with
China, the Iraq campaign was not a serious negative for the US. Beijing was far more worried by the
earlier US-led NATO intervention into Kosovo because it was based purely on notions of human rights in Kosovo. Such notions
could theoretically be used to justify action (not necessarily military action) against China over Taiwan and Tibet. Iraq, on the other hand, was
justified on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, a justification with which the Chinese were
much more comfortable. More generally, it is American values, or more accurately the universal values of
democracy to which the US adheres, that are more popular and receive greater adherence in Asia
than before, in the politics and civil societies of Asian nations such as Indonesia, India, Japan and many others.
Iraq doesn’t tank US predominance

Kagan, 07 – a fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Robert, senior associate
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) End of Dreams, Return of History, 7/19/07, Real Clear Politics
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/end_of_dreams_return_of_histor.html)
By the same token, foreign

policy failures do not necessarily undermine predominance. Some have
suggested that failure in Iraq would mean the end of predominance and unipolarity. But a
superpower can lose a war -- in Vietnam or in Iraq -- without ceasing to be a superpower if the
fundamental international conditions continue to support its predominance. So long as the United
States remains at the center of the international economy and the predominant military power, so
long as the American public continues to support American predominance as it has consistently
for six decades, and so long as potential challengers inspire more fear than sympathy among their
neighbors, the structure of the international system should remain as the Chinese describe it: one
superpower and many great powers.
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Heg High – Nuclear Primacy [1/1]
The US has nuclear primacy

Judd 08 (Brothers Judd review agency co-founder, 6/17, http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2008/06/when_you_have_superiority_use.html)
But little about the emerging nuclear balance between the United States and China should lead anyone to assume a similar stabilizing effect . The
United States is pursuing capabilities that are rendering MAD obsolete, and the resulting nuclear imbalance of
power could dramatically exacerbate America’s rivalry with China. In the 1990s, with the Cold War receding, nuclear
weapons appeared to be relics. Russian and Chinese leaders apparently thought so. Russia allowed
its arsenal to decline precipitously, and China showed little interest in modernizing its nuclear
weapons. The small strategic force that China built and deployed in the 1970s and early 1980s is
essentially the same one it has today. But meanwhile, the United States steadily improved its
“counterforce” capabilities—those nuclear weapons most effective at targeting an enemy’s nuclear
arsenal. Even as it reduced the number of weapons in its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. made its remaining weapons more lethal
and accurate. The result today is a global nuclear imbalance unseen in 50 years. And nowhere is U.S. nuclear
primacy clearer—or potentially more important—than in the Sino-U.S. relationship. China has approximately 80 operationally deployed nuclear warheads,
but only a few of them—those assigned to single-warhead DF-5 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—can reach the continental United States. (There
is no definitive, unclassified count of China’s DF-5 ICBMs, but official U.S. statements have put the number at 18.) China has neither modern nuclear
ballistic-missile submarines nor long-range nuclear bombers. Moreover, China’s ICBMs can’t be quickly launched; the warheads are stored separately, and
the missiles are kept unfueled. (Unlike the solid fuel used in U.S. missiles, the liquid fuel used to propel Chinese ICBMs is highly corrosive.) Finally, China
lacks an advanced early-warning system that would give Beijing reliable notice of an incoming attack. This small arsenal fulfilled China’s strategic
requirements in the 20th century, but it is now obsolete. The current Chinese force was designed for a different era:when China was a poor nation with a
limited role on the world stage, and when U.S. and Soviet missiles were too inaccurate to carry out a disarming strike—even against Beijing’s small force.
But China’s international presence is expanding, and America’s counterforce capabilities have soared. Moreover, one of the biggest
constraints that would deter American leaders from contemplating a disarming strike is fading
away. In the past, a U.S. preemptive attack would have generated horrific civilian casualties, but
that may soon cease to be the case. How the United States achieved nuclear dominance after the
Soviet Union collapsed is an open secret. The Navy refitted its entire fleet of nuclear-armed
submarines with new, highly accurate Trident II missiles and replaced many of the 100-kiloton W76
warheads on these missiles with 455-kiloton W88 warheads. (One kiloton is the explosive energy released by 1,000 tons of TNT.) The result is
an unprecedented combination of accuracy and destructive power, essential for an attack on
hardened silos. The Navy also recently tested a GPS guidance system that would dramatically
boost the accuracy, and thus lethality, of the submarine missile arsenal. For its part, the Air Force has
improved the guidance systems of land-based Minuteman III missiles. Many of these missiles are
also being “retipped” with more-powerful warheads—and more-accurate reentry vehicles —taken from
recently retired MX (“Peacekeeper”) missiles. The Air Force has also upgraded the avionics on B-2 bombers. These nuclear-mission-
capable bombers are already “stealthy,” but the upgrades improve the planes’ ability to penetrate
enemy airspace secretly, by flying very low and using the terrain to shield them from radar. Perhaps
as important, the United States is pursuing a slew of nonnuclear weapons that will provide officials
options they may find more palatable if they decide to attack an adversary’s nuclear arsenal.
These include precision “bunker buster” conventional bombs, high-speed long-range cruise missiles,
and conventionally armed ballistic missiles—each of which could be used to destroy enemy missile
silos. Furthermore, Washington is undertaking initiatives—including advances in antisatellite warfare
and in wide-area remote sensing, designed to find “relocatable” mobile missile launchers—that
will make China’s nuclear forces vulnerable. Even a missile-defense system substantially boosts
U.S. offensive counterforce capabilities. Critics of this system are right in claiming that it could not shield America from even a
modest nuclear attack (e.g., 25 warheads), because it would be easily overwhelmed by decoy warheads and the “penetration aids” that would accompany an
adversary’s missiles. But it
could enhance offensive nuclear capabilities, by “mopping up” a small number
of incoming warheads that survived a U.S. first strike.
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Heg High – Capabilities Gap [1/1]
The US military is far above all others due to unprecedented military intelligence
Odierno, Brooks, and Mastracchio 08 (Raymond, Nichoel, and Francisco, lt. general, lt. col., and Intelligence Deputy G2 for III Corps,
p. 52, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/i50.htm)
We have seen a significant metamorphosis of intelligence operations in Iraq. Indeed, we still have
much to learn, but we are on the right track. The capacity and capability of our intelligence
systems have improved greatly in just 3 years. The successes enjoyed by Multi-National Corps–Iraq (MNC–I) are
clearly demonstrated in the ability to leverage the sophistication of intelligence operations ongoing
in Iraq today at the lowest levels of command. Employment of ISR, according to the current counterinsurgency
(COIN) doctrine, sets the conditions for the initial success of the surge in Iraq. Decentralization of ISR
assets allowed BCT and regimental combat team (RCT) commanders (faced with vastly different problem sets) to gain and
maintain contact with the enemy. ISR evolved along with the fight. The robust ISR currently
available at the brigade level provides commanders with an unprecedented level of situational
awareness. Commanders now have the flexibility to push ISR assets to the lowest tactical echelon,
which is one of the most powerful enablers on the battlefield today.
The US navy is unchallengable.

King and Berry 8 (Douglas and John, Marine Corps Combat Development Command Director of Operations and Plans and sr. analyst, p. 45-46,
http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/i50.htm)
In recent years, this network of bases has been dramatically reduced, even as the United States is confronted by a variety of strategic challenges and locked
in a global struggle for influence. The ability to overcome geographic, political, and military impediments to
access has reemerged as a critical necessity for extending U.S. influence and power overseas.
Fortunately, the United States possesses an asymmetric advantage in that endeavor: seapower. The
American ability to cross wide expanses of ocean and to remain offshore at a time and place and
for a duration of its own choosing cannot be contested today to the degree it was in previous eras. Although small in
historical terms—and often stretched thin by current operational commitments— the U.S. Navy is, for the foreseeable future, a
navy without peer. This asymmetric advantage means that the Navy-Marine team can use the sea
as both maneuver space and a secure operating area to overcome impediments to access. This
seabased force—particularly its aircraft carriers and amphibious ships with embarked Marines—
is capable of projecting influence and power ashore without reliance on ports and airfields in the
objective area. It can do so in a selectively discrete or overt manner to conduct a range of operations—from conducting security cooperation activities, to
providing humanitarian assistance, to deterring and, when necessary, fighting wars. This significant advantage does not extend to the joint force as a whole,
however. The sealift that transports the preponderance of joint force materiel is still dependent upon secure infrastructure in a potential objective area. Just as
the amphibious innovations championed by the Navy and Marine Corps during the 1920s and 1930s benefited the entire joint and Allied force in World War
II, the seabasing initiatives being pursued by the Navy-Marine\ team today are intended to benefit joint, interagency, and multinational teammates.
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Heg High – Air Force [1/1]
Heg is high – The US Air Force is the strongest

Moseley 08 (T. Michael, USAF Chief of Staff, p. 13, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/i49.htm)
Ends: Protect Democracy and Guard Freedom. The

Air Force’s nonnegotiable commitment to America’s joint team is to provide forces
proficient across the full spectrum of military operations to protect the United States, its interests, values,
and allies; deter conflict and prevent surprise; and, should deterrence fail, prevail against any
adversary. Airmen deliver global surveillance, global command and control, and the requisite
speed, range, precision, persistence, and payload to strike any target, anywhere, anytime, in any
domain—and to assess the results. Global vigilance, global reach, and global power grant joint
and combined force commanders the ability to safeguard the homeland, assure allies, dissuade
opponents, and inflict strategic dislocation and paralysis on adversaries—all while minimizing the
loss of life associated with land warfare.
Heg is high – Air Force proves.

Moseley 8 (T Michael, USAF Chief of Staff, JFQ, p. 14, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/i49.htm)
America’s strategic partnerships are more important than ever. Our Air Force will strengthen and broaden coalitions,
capitalizing on the global community of like-minded Airmen, while attending to interoperability
between allies and partners. Building these relationships not only expands, extends, and strengthens global vigilance, global reach, and
global power, but also leverages airpower’s value as an instrument of America’s diplomacy in an increasingly interconnected world. The Air Force
is formulating innovative operational concepts to anticipate, adapt to, and overcome challenges . We
are transforming our thinking from considering the space and cyber domains as mere enablers of air operations to a holistic approach that factors in their
interdependence and leverages their unique characteristics. We
must continue to push this conceptual envelope—and
expand the boundaries of existing tactics, techniques, and procedures—to fully exploit the
synergies of cross-domain dominance. We will accelerate the deployment of evolutionary and disruptive technologies as are address
the urgent need to recapitalize and modernize. We must bolster our advantage through continued investment in our own science and technology, as well as
outreach and integration with industry, academia, and think tanks. We will reform our procurement and acquisition system to ensure full transparency, open
competition, and adherence to operational timelines.
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Readiness High
Readiness high – the US can respond to any challenge despite responsibilities in Iraq.
Gates 08 (Robert, US sec. of defense, 5/13, http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1240)
But in a world of finite knowledge and limited resources, where we have to make choices and set priorities, it makes sense to lean toward the most likely and
lethal scenarios for our military. And it
is hard to conceive of any country confronting the United States directly in
conventional terms – ship to ship, fighter to fighter, tank to tank – for some time to come. The record of the past quarter century is clear: the
Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israelis in Lebanon, the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Smaller, irregular forces – insurgents, guerrillas,
terrorists – will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and neutralize the advantages of larger, regular militaries. And even nation-states will try to
exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths. Overall, the kinds of capabilities we will most likely
need in the years ahead will often resemble the kinds of capabilities we need today. The implication, particularly for America’s ground forces, means we
must institutionalize the lessons learned and capabilities honed from the ongoing conflicts. Many of these skills and tasks used to be the province of the
Special Forces, but now are a core of the Army and Marine Corps as a whole. For example, at West Point last month, I told the cadets that the most
important assignment in their careers may not necessarily be commanding U.S. soldiers, but advising or mentoring the troops of other nations.What we must
guard against is the kind of backsliding that has occurred in the past, where if nature takes it course, these kinds of capabilities – that is counter-insurgency –
tend to wither on the vine. There is a history here. During the 1980s, a Princeton graduate student noted in his dissertation that, about a decade after the fall
of Saigon, the Army’s 10-month staff college assigned 30 hours – about four days – for what is now called low-intensity conflict. This was about the same as
what the Air Force was teaching at the time. That grad student was then-Army Major David Petraeus. Going forward we must find, retain, and promote the
right people – at all ranks, whether they wear stripes, bars, or stars – and put them in the right positions to see that the lessons learned in recent combat
become rooted in the institutional culture. Similarly, we shouldn’t let personnel policies that were developed in peacetime hurt our wartime performance.
For years to come, the Air Force and the Navy will be America’s main strategic deterrent. We need to
modernize our ageing inventory of aircraft, and build out a fleet of ships that right now is the smallest we’ve had since the late 1930s. These forces
provide the strategic flexibility we need to deter, and if necessary, respond to, other
competitors.The American people have been generous when it comes to funding their Armed
Forces over the past seven years, and they are likely to be supportive in the future . What we should expect,
though, is a heightened level of scrutiny in the Congress, and by the public, for how this money is being spent – particularly when supplemental war funds
are no longer available for modernization purposes. Two points on the subject of procurement: First, I believe that any major weapons program, in order to
remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to the kind of irregular campaigns that, as I mentioned, are most likely to engage America’s
military in the coming decades. In Texas, I had an opportunity to see a demonstration of the parts of the Army’s Future Combat Systems that have moved
from the drawing board to reality. A program like FCS – whose total cost could exceed $200 billion if completely built out – must continue to demonstrate
its value for the types of irregular challenges we will face, as well as for full-spectrum warfare.Second, I would stress that the perennial procurement cycle –
going back many decades – of adding layer upon layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build must
come to an end. Without a fundamental change in this dynamic, it will be difficult to sustain support for these kinds of weapons programs in the future. A
few words about global risk – the threats we face elsewhere in the world while America’s ground forces are concentrated on Iraq. This is an understandable
concern. I remember being a Second Lieutenant at Whiteman Air Force base in the late 1960s. There I caught a glimpse of the impact of the Vietnam War on
America’s overall strategic strength: White-haired lieutenant colonels were being reassigned to Southeast Asia to make up for our pilot losses there. Some
people have made similar comparisons to the impact of Iraq on the Army. Today’s strategic context is completely different. While America’s military was
being bled in Vietnam, a superpower with vast fleets of tanks, bombers, fighters, and nuclear weapons was poised to overrun Western Europe – then the
central theater in that era’s long twilight struggle. Not so today. It is true that we
would be hard-pressed to launch a major
conventional ground operation elsewhere in the world at this time – but where would we sensibly do
that? The United States has ample and untapped combat power in our naval and air forces, with
the capacity to defeat any – repeat, any – adversary who committed an act of aggression – whether in the Persian
Gulf, on the Korean Peninsula, or in the Straits of Taiwan. There is a risk – but a prudent and manageable one. The last point I’d like to address is the strain
placed on our ground forces, especially the Army. Along with Fort Bliss, I’ve visited a number of other military installations over the past year, including
Fort Hood and Camp Pendleton – the largest Army and Marine bases respectively. It is a difficult thing to look a family member in the eye whose father or
son or daughter is being deployed again – sometimes on a second or third tour. And it’s even harder to do with the families of those who have been killed or
wounded. This is the second longest war in American history since our Revolution, and the first to be fought with an all-volunteer force since independence.
To be sure the stress is real. There are metrics that need to be watched – such as the number of waivers granted to new recruits, suicides, as well as incidents
of divorce and other signs of wear on military families.There are a number of measures underway and trends that should ease the strain on this small sliver of
our population who have borne the burden of this conflict: • More and better programs to improve the quality of life for soldiers and their families; • The
ground forces are growing by more than 90,000 over the next five years – with a bigger rotational pool of troops and units individual soldiers and Marines
will deploy less frequently; and • U.S. force levels in Iraq will decline over time – the debate taking place is mostly over the pacing. As I mentioned before,
the discussion about the stress on the Army today is informed by the Vietnam experience – and the terrible shape of the service afterwards, where there was
a loss of nearly a generation of NCO leadership and rampant discipline problems. So far, none of those ailments are present today. Overall, our
service
men and women and their families have shown extraordinary resilience. Morale is high, as is
recruiting and retention – particularly among units either in or just returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldier for soldier, unit for unit,
the Army is the best trained, best led, and best equipped it has ever been – skilled and experienced in the arduous
complexities of irregular warfare.
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Readiness Up – $ing Up
U.S. military spending is high now

Johnson 08 (President and Co-founder of Japan Policy Research Institute, http://mondediplo.com/2008/02/05military
There are three broad aspects to the US debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money
on “defence” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the US. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment
of the population at strikingly low levels.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive
military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean
the mistaken belief that public
policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and
munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The
opposite is actually true.
U.S. military spending is high now

Johnson 08 (President and Co-founder of Japan Policy Research Institute, http://mondediplo.com/2008/02/05military)
It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the
military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger
than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the
current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defence budget, is itself larger than
the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defence-related spending for fiscal 2008 will
exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The US has become the largest single seller of arms
and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush’s two on-going wars,
defence spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defence budget for fiscal 2008 is the
largest since the second world war.
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Readiness Up – General (A2: Iraq) [1/1]
The US military can overcome any military challenge with appropriate resources – surge proves.
Kagan 7 (Robert, Carnegie Endowment for Internatoinal Peace sr. associate, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901839.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns)
Four months later, the

once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent
troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue,
there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of
new forces, is having a significant effect. Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely
respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes
in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone
shifted the dynamic. As the Fadhils report, "Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases
fled the country." The most prominent leader to go into hiding has been Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mahdi Army has been instructed to avoid clashes with
American and Iraqi forces, even as coalition forces begin to establish themselves in the once off-limits Sadr City. Before
the arrival of Gen.
David Petraeus, the Army's leading counterinsurgency strategist, U.S. forces tended to raid
insurgent and terrorist strongholds and then pull back and hand over the areas to Iraqi forces,
who failed to hold them. The Fadhils report, "One difference between this and earlier -- failed -- attempts
to secure Baghdad is the willingness of the Iraqi and U.S. governments to commit enough
resources for enough time to make it work." In the past, bursts of American activity were followed by withdrawal and a return of
the insurgents. Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a
better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the
Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying." A
greater sense of confidence
produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide
has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian
violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by
optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself." Apparently some American
journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport
more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start
talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back
-- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed." It is no coincidence that as the
mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The
Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing
coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence. There
is still violence, as
Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda seek to prove that the surge is not working. However, they are
striking at more vulnerable targets in the provinces. Violence is down in Baghdad. As for Sadr and the
Mahdi Army, it is possible they may reemerge as a problem later. But trying to wait out the American and Iraqi effort may be hazardous if the public
becomes less tolerant of their violence. It could not be comforting to Sadr or al-Qaeda to read in the New York Times that the United States plans to keep
higher force levels in Iraq through at least the beginning of 2008. The only good news for them would be if the Bush administration in its infinite wisdom
starts to talk again about drawing down forces.
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Military Recruitment High
Bad economy makes it easy for the military to recruit

Broder et al, CQ Staff, 3/16/09 Jonathan Broder, John M. Donnelly and Matthew Johnson, CQ Staff Congressional Quarterly Weekly, 3/16/09,
“Military Readiness in Rough Times”
military recruiting is getting easier, in large part due to the

While the government eyes ways to scale back the defense budget,
struggling economy. In these tough times, the armed forces are finding they can be more selective and can
reduce enlistment and retention bonuses that have ballooned in recent years. The Defense Department released figures in February
showing that all branches of the active-duty military met or exceeded their recruiting goals for
January. Furthermore, they all met or exceeded their goals for re-enlistments. Both the active-
duty Army and the Army Reserve -- both hard-hit by the extended conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan --
exceeded recruiting goals from October through January, which hasn't been done since before the Iraq War began. Over
the past several years, as the Army struggled to fill its barracks, it was forced to lower standards for new recruits. In many cases, the Army took in recruits
without high school diplomas, with the lowest scores on the armed forces qualification test, or with criminal histories. But with the struggling
economy, the Defense Department is getting better troops for less money.
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Hard Power High
American hard power is absolute.

The core business of geopolitics is national security — and the other critical geopolitical fact about
U.S. economic dominance is that it will indefinitely finance America’s position as the world’s sole
military superpower. America’s historically anomalous position as a sole superpower will fundamentally shape a new geopolitics for at least the
next generation superpower. In 2006, the United States spent about $570 billion on defense, or roughly as much
as the rest of the world combined. This asymmetry in military spending is also historically
unprecedented. In fact, the U.S. military spends more on research and development into new defense
systems — some $73 billion in 2007 — than the entire defense budgets of every other country except China. All
this spending has bought the United States its remarkable military dominance as the first military
superpower in more than a millennium with no near peer in sight. Other nations have armies, air forces and
navies capable of protecting their borders from just about anyone else. Projecting worldwide With some
considerable lead time, a few of them could send their soldiers, sailors and pilots to fight in other countries in their own regions. But the United
States alone has a blue-water navy capable of operating in and across the world’s vast oceans —
and a blue-sky air force that with little notice can project forces any where from U.S. bases and
those around the world. When they arrive, they wield technologies at least two generations more
advanced than anyone else’s, including China, Britain and Russia. Geographical advantage These forces can
prevent others from using their own militaries beyond their own borders and — as Saddam
Hussein learned — no government can survive for long against their serious assault. Much of the world
now embraces the United States' basic approach to organizing economies and doing business serious assault. Geography reinforces America’s awesome
military advantages. The
United States is the only country with thousands of miles of ocean separating it
from anyone else with an army, navy or air force to speak of. And the oceans and the air space
above them and above every other country are part of America’s military territory, since only its
navy and air force can roam them freely. Most wars begin in conflicts that in some way arise out of geographical proximity — and
even today, the proximity of Russia, China and India, for example, will make it harder for them to work
together to balance America’s military advantages.
America’s military power is unprecedented.

America’s global military power is so commonplace that it’s easy to overlook how historically unique it is. What’s so
unusual and world-changing is not the extent of America’s military, political and economic
capacities — but the absence of countries that come anywhere close. America’s historically
anomalous position as a sole superpower with no near peer ended the balance-of-power geopolitics that organized much of world
affairs for more than a thousand years — and will fundamentally shape a new geopolitics for at least the next
generation. Sources of power The United States also derives geopolitical power from its singular capacity
to develop new technologies and other valuable intellectual property in large volumes, especially in
the software and Internet areas that drive so much economic change and the processes of globalization itself. In
2006, the United States spent about $570 billion on defense, or roughly as much as the rest of the
world combined volumes. Other countries now lead in producing and improving the basic
manufactures that American companies dominated a few generations ago — steel, consumer electronics,
automobiles — and much more. This capacity enhances America’s global position not because it increases the
profits that U.S. companies earn on their foreign sales. Much more far-reaching, it subtly aligns
the economic paths of other countries with the United States and — whether or not they like it —
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makes them a little more like America.
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Hard Power High
American hard power is the greatest in history – surge proves.

Barone 07 Michael, senior writer with US News and World Report. http://www.creators.com/conservative/michael-barone/lessons-from-the-
surge.html
There are lessons to be learned from the dazzling success of the surge strategy in Iraq. Lesson one
is that just about no mission is impossible for the United States military. A year ago it was widely
thought, not just by the new Democratic leaders in Congress but also in many parts of the Pentagon, that containing the violence in
Iraq was impossible. Now we have seen it done. We have seen this before in American history. George Washington's forces
seemed on the brink of defeat many times in the agonizing years before Yorktown. Abraham Lincoln's generals seemed so unsuccessful in the Civil War that
in August 1864 it was widely believed he would be defeated for re-election. But finally Lincoln found the right generals. Sherman took Atlanta and marched
to the sea; Grant pressed forward in Virginia. Franklin Roosevelt picked the right generals and admirals from the start in World War II, but the first years of
the war were filled with errors and mistakes. Even Vietnam is not necessarily a counterexample. As Lewis Sorley argues persuasively in "A Better War: The
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam," Gen. Creighton Abrams came up with a winning strategy by 1972. South
Vietnam fell three years later when the North Vietnamese army attacked en masse, and Congress refused to allow the aid the U.S. had promised. George W.
Bush, like Lincoln, took his time finding the right generals. But it's clear now that the forward-moving
surge strategy devised by Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno has succeeded where the stand-aside strategy
employed by their predecessors failed. American troops are surely the most capable military force
in history. They just need to be given the right orders.
The US has supremacy in hard power – military technology.

CAAT 8 (6/20, www.caat.org.uk/publications/economics/MakingArmsExec.php - 30k -)
A hierarchy of production exists, with the United States maintaining clear supremacy in first-tier
sophisticated military platforms based on its massive procurement and R&D programmes,
including the most advanced fighter aircraft and weapons such as satellite-guided missiles. This
ensures its domination of the global arms trade and provides a form of technological leverage with
client states to gain support for its over-arching strategic goals. Second-tier suppliers include the UK, France, and
Russia offer other large platforms and weapons but with lesser capabilities. However, there are emerging nations including South Africa, South Korea,
Brazil and India that have used their role as subcontractors in the international structure to modernise their own manufacturing capacity and now seek to
challenge existing second-tier suppliers in their export markets. Below this is a much larger group of countries supplying basic, mass-produced weapons
including sub-machine guns and rifles.
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Hard Power High
The US is the absolute leader in hardpower

Lind 07 (Michael, New America Foundation, Beyond American Hegemony,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2007/beyond_american_hegemony_5381)
Dissuasion -- directed at actual or potential challengers to the United States -- commits the United States to outspend all other
great military powers, whether friend or foe. This policy’s goal -- in the words of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance draft leaked from
then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney’s Pentagon -- is the dissuasion or "deterring [of] potential competitors from even
aspiring to a larger regional or global role." By the end of the 1990s, as Charles Krauthammer noted in these pages four years ago:
"The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. Even at its height
Britain could always be seriously challenged by the next greatest powers. Britain had a smaller
army than the land powers of Europe and its navy was equaled by the next two navies combined.
Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries combined. Its navy,
air force and space power are unrivaled."
US hard power is unmatched:

1) More resources than any other nation
2) Is more specialized than any other nation
3) Can project power at any to time to anywhere on the globe
Cohen 2K4
(Eliot, Director, Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced
International Studies “History and the Hyperpower”, Foreign Affairs, July/August, lexis)
U.S. military power is of a different order entirely. The United States now accounts for between 40
and 50 percent of global defense spending, more than double the total spending of its European allies (whose budgets are so riddled
with inefficiencies that, aside from territorial defense, peacekeeping, and some niche capabilities, the European pillar of NATO is militarily irrelevant). In
virtually every sphere of warfare, the United States dominates, an unprecedented phenomenon in
military history. On and above the earth and on and below the sea, U.S. military technology far
surpasses that of any potential opponent. No other power has the ability to move large and
sophisticated forces around the globe; to coordinate and direct its own forces and those of its allies; to keep troops equipped, fed, and
healthy; and to support those troops with precision firepower and unsurpassed amounts of information and intelligence. Viewed from within, of course, the
picture looks very different. U.S. soldiers know all too well their own deficiencies and vulnerabilities: they grouse about aging trucks, jammed rifles, and
intermittent data links. Viewed from the outside, however, the world has seen nothing like the U.S. military . British infantrymen
in 1900 shot more accurately than their continental European counterparts but did not differ all that much from them in terms of equipment and unit skills
(and the Tommies found themselves inferior to Boer citizen-soldiers equipped with German-made rifles). Today, an average U.S. battalion has better kit--
from body armor to night vision devices--than any comparable unit in the world; with a few exceptions (mostly allies of the United States), it trains more
effectively in the field; and it has officers and sergeants groomed by a military schooling system more thorough than any in history. This qualitative
advantage looms even larger at the higher levels of the armed forces. No other military has the B-2 bombers
or the satellite constellation, the aircraft carriers or the long-range unmanned aircraft afforded by a $400
billion defense budget or the accumulated military-industrial capital of years of spending on construction and infrastructure. No other research establishment
can match that of the United States, which receives more money than the entire defense budget of its largest European ally.of the U.S. Navy and Air Force .
No other country is remotely close to having the resources.
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Soft Power High
US soft power high, and will continue with new president

Fullilove 08 (Michael, Director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute, Visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, 6/17,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/17/opinion/edfullilove.php)
In terms of soft power, too - the ability to get others to want what you want - the case for America's decline is easily
overstated. America retains its hold on the world's imagination. For most non-Americans around
the world, America's politics are, at some level, our politics as well. Why is the world so interested?
America's bulk is only part of the answer. Ultimately, it is not really the size of the U.S. economy
that draws our attention. It is not even America's blue-water navy or its new bunker-
busting munitions. Rather, it is the idea of America which continues to fascinate: a superpower
that is open, democratic, meritocratic and optimistic; a country that is the cockpit of global
culture; a polity in which all candidates for public office, whether or not they are a Clinton, seem to come from
a place called Hope. It's worth noting that the declinist canon has emerged at the nadir of the Bush
years; America's soft power account will look much healthier the instant the next president
is inaugurated.
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US Soft Power High – Asia
US Soft power with Asian countries highest in 10 years

Chicago Council on Global Affairs 08 (6/18, http://www.epicos.com/epicos/portal/media-
type/html/user/anon/page/default.psml/js_panename/News+Information+Article+View;jsessionid=9C89C76560E5E50DC787AA67D8E3A9ED.tomcat5?
articleid=106756&showfull=false)
The report, which is based on public

opinion surveys in five East and Southeast Asian countries and the
United States, reveals that perceptions of China's "soft power" - the ability to wield influence by indirect, non-military
means - generally trail those of the United States and Japan. These perceptions persist despite China's strong economic relationships
in Asia and around the world, and concerted efforts by Beijing to leverage the Olympic Games to bolster its public image. But, at the same time, sizeable
majorities in all the countries surveyed agreed that hosting the games will ultimately increase China's prestige. "The findings of this report clearly illustrate
that China is recognized by its neighbors as the undisputed future leader of Asia, but it still has real work to do to win hearts and minds in the region. To
enhance its credibility in Asia, China will need to invest more resources in building up its soft power, especially in the diplomatic, social and cultural
spheres," said Marshall M. Bouton, president of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The report also reveals that contrary to
other polls taken since the United States invaded Iraq which reflected negative views of the United States, a majority
of Asians in the surveyed countries still admire the United States on many fronts, including
economic, diplomatic, cultural and educational, and see its military presence in Asia as a
stabilizing force, notably preventing an arms race between China and Japan. "Considering
negative perceptions of the United States elsewhere in the world, it was somewhat surprising to see
such strongly positive feelings about the United States among the Asian countries we surveyed," said
Christopher Whitney, executive director for studies at The Chicago Council. "It is clear that the United States still has a strong
foundation upon which to build in the region." Another unexpected finding of the report focuses on the complex relationship
between the United States and China. American feelings towards China have deteriorated since similar surveys were taken by The Chicago Council in '04
and '06 and a significant number of those questioned expressed general unease about the future of the relationship. In contrast, Chinese
perceptions of the United States have grown noticeably warmer compared to the 2006 survey and
Chinese demonstrate consistently positive attitudes towards U.S. influence in Asia. The Chicago
Council on Global Affairs and EAI conducted more than 6,000 interviews in China, Vietnam,
Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and the United States in January and February 2008, before the unrest in
Tibet and the Sichuan earthquake placed a spotlight on events inside China. The survey asked between 40 and 60 questions in each country designed to
gauge how citizens of these five Asian nations and the United States view each country's popular culture, commercial prowess and brands, intellectual
influence and appeal, universities, diplomatic reputations, different political systems, and more. The results were organized to produce indexes of the pillars
of soft power: economic, cultural, human capital, diplomatic and political. The five indexes were averaged to produce an overall Soft Power Index. Change
was measured on a few key questions that were also asked in a 2006 Chicago Council survey. Among the key findings: On China: -- Majorities or pluralities
in every country are at least "somewhat worried" that China could become a military threat to their country in the future (Vietnamese were not asked this
question). -- China trails the United States in perceptions of its diplomatic, political, and human capital power in Asia, though perceptions are more positive
in Southeast Asia than East Asia. China is also seen as less effective than the United States in promoting its policies to people in Asia by all surveyed publics
-- On the question of whether China builds trust and cooperation among Asian countries, it receives low ratings on a 0-10 scale from Americans (3.5),
Japanese (4.6) and South Koreans (4.9), ranking China third or fourth among the group -- But when asked whether China will increase its prestige by hosting
the 2008 Summer Olympics pluralities or majorities in all countries surveyed - U.S. (49%), China (86%), Japan (56%), South Korea (82%), Indonesia (65%)
and Vietnam (85%) - agree that it would. On the United States: -- The
United States ranks at or near the top of every
category in the Soft Power Index. -- Pluralities or majorities in China (44%), Japan (47%), South
Korea (42%) and Indonesia (58%) all agree that U.S. influence in Asia has increased over the last
10 years. Majorities in China, Japan, Vietnam and South Korea see overall U.S. influence and U.S. cultural influence in Asia as positive. -- The United
States is given the highest mean score for importance as a trade and investment partner by South Koreans (8.5 on a 0-10 scale), Japanese (8.0) and
Vietnamese (8.0). Chinese give both the United States and the EU the same score (7.6), significantly ahead of Japan (6.7) and South Korea (6.8).
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Soft Power High – A2: Unilateralism/Bush
Asia proves leadership is high despite Bush policy and credibility loss.
Tama 08 (Jordan, Princeton IR prof., 6/24, http://blog.psaonline.org/2008/06/24/declarations-of-american-decline-are-premature/)
The Bush administration’s unilateralism and incompetence, typified by its reckless invasion of
Iraq, have damaged perceptions of the United States in much of the world. By many accounts, China has taken
advantage of this lapse in U.S. leadership by bolstering its own influence across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
But a new study of perceptions in Asia suggests that favorable opinions of the U.S. will outlast the
Bush years and that China still has a long way to go before it can match America’s soft power. This
offers grounds for optimism that forecasts of America’s global decline are premature and that a new U.S.
president with a more multilateral foreign policy will find many overseas partners who seek and
support his leadership. The new study is a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the East Asia Institute of
more than 6,000 people in China, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United States .
The survey, conducted before this year’s unrest in Tibet and the devastating Sichuan earthquake, asked ordinary citizens questions about how they view each
country’s culture, economy, politics, and influence. The findings are striking: majorities
in every country except Indonesia see
U.S. influence in Asia as positive, and Asians have more positive perceptions of America’s
diplomatic, political, and human capital power than they do of China’s. Even Chinese views of
America’s soft power are quite favorable: 44% of Chinese would pick the U.S. as their first choice
for their children’s higher education. What’s more, pluralities or majorities in most countries state that
U.S. influence in Asia has increased over the last 10 years. All of this suggests that, despite the many failings of the Bush
administration’s foreign policy, the underpinnings of America’s standing in Asia remain strong.
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Soft Power High – A2: China (1/2)
China has low soft power – 2 reasons: 1) China has hard work to do till it gains soft power 2) The
U.S. will always dominate China in soft power
US Newswire 8 [Washington, China Lags Behind U.S. in Using Non-Military 'Soft Power' to Gain
Influence in Asia, http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS152332+17-Jun-
2008+PRN20080617, June 17, 2008]
"The findings of this report clearly illustrate that China is recognized by its neighbors as the undisputed future leader of Asia, but it still has real
work to do to win hearts and minds in the region. To enhance its credibility in Asia, China will need to
invest more resources in building up its soft power, especially in the diplomatic, social and cultural spheres," said Marshall M.
Bouton, president of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The report also reveals that contrary to other polls taken since the United States invaded Iraq
which reflected negative views of the United States, a majority of Asians in the surveyed countries still admire the United States on many fronts, including
economic, diplomatic, cultural and educational, and see its military presence in Asia as a stabilizing force, notably preventing an arms race between China
and Japan. "Considering negative perceptions of the United States elsewhere in the world, it was somewhat surprising to see such strongly positive feelings
about the United States among the Asian countries we surveyed," said Christopher Whitney, executive director for studies at The Chicago Council. "It is
clear that the United States still has a strong foundation upon which to build in the region." Another unexpected finding of the report focuses on the complex
relationship between the United States and China. American feelings towards China have deteriorated since similar
surveys were taken by The Chicago Council in '04 and '06 and a significant number of those questioned expressed general unease about the future of the
relationship. In contrast, Chinese perceptions of the United States have grown noticeably warmer compared to the 2006 survey and Chinese
demonstrate consistently positive attitudes towards U.S. influence in Asia. The Chicago Council on Global
Affairs and EAI conducted more than 6,000 interviews in China, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and the United States in January and February
2008, before the unrest in Tibet and the Sichuan earthquake placed a spotlight on events inside China. The survey asked between 40 and 60 questions in each
country designed to gauge how citizens of these five Asian nations and the United States view each country's popular culture, commercial prowess and
brands, intellectual influence and appeal, universities, diplomatic reputations, different political systems, and more. The results were organized to produce
indexes of the pillars of soft power: economic, cultural, human capital, diplomatic and political. The five indexes were averaged to produce an overall Soft
Power Index. Change was measured on a few key questions that were also asked in a 2006 Chicago Council survey. Among the key findings: On
China: -- Majorities or pluralities in every country are at least "somewhat worried" that China could become a
military threat to their country in the future (Vietnamese were not asked this question). -- China trails the United
States in perceptions of its diplomatic, political, and human capital power in Asia, though perceptions are more
positive in Southeast Asia than East Asia. China is also seen as less effective than the United States in promoting
its policies to people in Asia by all surveyed publics
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Soft Power High – A2: China (2/2)
China doesn’t have the ability to improve soft power – Its own citizens even admire other
countries more
Parameswaran 8 [P, Writer for the China Post, China's soft power trails U.S., Japan in Asia, http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/regional
%20news/2008/06/18/161478/China's-soft.htm, June 18, 2008]
The United States in particular remains highly regarded in all five key areas of soft power addressed in the survey: economics, culture, human capital,
diplomacy, and politics, said the report by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the East Asia Institute of South Korea. " China's
growing
economic and military might have not yet been fully translated into the elements of soft power that
help a nation wield indirect influence in its region and the world," said the report based on public opinion surveys in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam,
Indonesia, China and the United States. It
revealed that perceptions of China's soft power -- the ability to wield
influence by indirect, non-military means -- "generally trail those of the United States and
Japan." These perceptions persist despite China's strong economic relationships in Asia and around the world, and concerted efforts by Beijing to
leverage the upcoming summer Olympic Games to bolster its public image, the report said. "The findings of this report clearly illustrate that China is
recognized by its neighbors as the undisputed future leader of Asia, but it still has real work to do to win hearts and minds in the region," said Marshall
Bouton, president of The Chicago Council. "To
enhance its credibility in Asia, China will need to invest more
resources in building up its soft power, especially in the diplomatic, social and cultural spheres ," he
said. According to the poll, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesians all believe that China has the greatest economic influence of any nation in Asia.
South Koreans and Vietnamese see it trailing only the United States. More than 6,000 interviews were conducted in January and February 2008 during the
survey in the six nations. It was held before the unrest in Tibet and the Sichuan earthquake placed a spotlight on events inside China. The report also said
that contrary to other polls taken since the unpopular U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a majority of Asians
in the surveyed countries still
"admire" the United States on many fronts, including economic, diplomatic, cultural and educational. They see U.S.
military presence in Asia as a stabilizing force, notably preventing an arms race between China and Japan, it said. "Considering
negative perceptions of the United States elsewhere in the world, it was somewhat surprising to see such strongly positive feelings about the United States
among the Asian countries we surveyed," said Christopher Whitney, executive director for studies at The Chicago Council. "It is clear that the
United States still has a strong foundation upon which to build in the region," it said. Another "unexpected"
finding showed that American feelings towards China had deteriorated since similar surveys were taken by The Chicago
Council in 2004 and 2006.
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Heg Sustainable
Their authors are wrong – the world is still unipolar and hegemony is sustainable – no challenge
to American power.
Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Senior Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund, 2007 [Robert, “End of
Dreams, Return of History”, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html#n10, August/September]
These American traditions, together with historical events beyond Americans’ control, have catapulted the United States to a position of pre-eminence in the
world. Since
the end of the Cold War and the emergence of this “unipolar” world, there has been much
anticipation of the end of unipolarity and the rise of a multipolar world in which the United States is no longer the
predominant power. Not only realist theorists but others both inside and outside the United States have long argued the theoretical and practical
unsustainability, not to mention undesirability, of a world with only one superpower. Mainstream
realist theory has assumed that
other powers must inevitably band together to balance against the superpower . Others expected the post-Cold
War era to be characterized by the primacy of geoeconomics over geopolitics and foresaw a multipolar world with the economic giants of Europe, India,
Japan, and China rivaling the United States. Finally, in the wake of the Iraq War and with hostility to the United States, as measured in public opinion polls,
apparently at an all-time high, there has been a widespread assumption that the American position in the world must finally be eroding. Yet American
predominance in the main categories of power persists as a key feature of the international system.
The enormous and productive American economy remains at the center of the international
economic system. American democratic principles are shared by over a hundred nations. The
American military is not only the largest but the only one capable of projecting force into distant
theaters. Chinese strategists, who spend a great deal of time thinking about these things, see the world not as multipolar
but as characterized by “one superpower, many great powers,” and this configuration seems likely
to persist into the future absent either a catastrophic blow to American power or a decision by the United States to diminish its power and
international influence voluntarily. The anticipated global balancing has for the most part not occurred. Russia and China
certainly share a common and openly expressed goal of checking American hegemony. They have created
at least one institution, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, aimed at resisting American influence in Central Asia, and China is the only power in the
world, other than the United States, engaged in a long-term military buildup. But
Sino-Russian hostility to American
predominance has not yet produced a concerted and cooperative effort at balancing. China’s buildup
is driven at least as much by its own long-term ambitions as by a desire to balance the United States. Russia has been using its vast reserves of oil and natural
gas as a lever to compensate for the lack of military power, but it either cannot or does not want to increase its military
capability sufficiently to begin counterbalancing the United States. Overall, Russian military power
remains in decline. In addition, the two powers do not trust one another. They are traditional rivals, and the rise of China
inspires at least as much nervousness in Russia as it does in the United States. At the moment, moreover, China is less abrasively confrontational with
the United States. Its dependence on the American market and foreign investment and its perception that
the United States remains a potentially formidable adversary mitigate against an openly
confrontational approach.
No foreseeable enemy to US supremacy; counterbalancing won’t occur

Brooks and Wohlforth, 02, prof gov Dartmouth, 2002 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Assistant professor and associate
professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College, July/August 2002, “American Primacy in Perspective”, Foreign Affairs pg lexis //EM
These are not just facts about the current system; they are recognized as such by the major players involved. As a result, no
global challenge to
the United States is likely to emerge for the foreseeable future. No country, or group of countries, wants to maneuver
itself into a situation in which it will have to contend with the focused enmity of the United States. Two of the prime causes of past
great-power conflicts -- hegemonic rivalry and misperception -- are thus not currently operative in
world politics. At the dawn of the twentieth century, a militarily powerful Germany challenged the United Kingdom's claim to leadership. The result
was World War I. In the middle of the twentieth century, American leadership seemed under challenge by a militarily and ideologically strong Soviet Union.
The result was the Cold War. U.S. dominance today militates against a comparable challenge, however, and hence against a comparable global conflict.
Because the United States is too powerful to balance, moreover, there is far less danger of war
emerging from the misperceptions, miscalculations, arms races, and so forth that have
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traditionally plagued balancing attempts. Pundits often lament the absence of a post -- Cold War Bismarck. Luckily, as long as
unipolarity lasts, there is no need for one.
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Heg Sustainable
Heg sustainable – even if power shifts, the US will take a long time to collapse
Kennedy 08 J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University (Paul “Is this the end of the American era?” Times of London, 10/12)
Well, slow down a minute. It

is one thing to argue that the United States has been weakened by fiscal
extravagance and military overstretch. It is a separate thing to recall that, regardless of regime follies, from century to century
economic and military balances do shift gradually from one country or part of the world to another. Right now both of
those developments – American political incompetence and geopolitical shifts – have joined in time
to make the world a less easy place for the United States. But one of the “rise and fall” lessons of
history is that great powers (the Ottomans, the Hapsburgs, the British) take an awful long time to collapse. They
take knocks on the head, they suffer a defeat and humiliation here or there, plus a bankruptcy or
two. But they hold on, a trifle diminished although not mortally wounded. Often they hold on because the rising powers
don’t know how to replace them. They hold on, too, because they have massive resources. The Hapsburgs held on
because they had an army that could operate in 14 languages. The British held on because of the City of London and a lot of useful naval bases. The short-
America’s back-up systems
lived 20th-century empires – Nazi, Japanese, Soviet – had no such back-up systems. They came, they went.
are enormous. It is a super-great-power, with about 20% of the world’s product, 50% of its
military expenditures and most of its top research universities, massive R&D spending, a highly
sophisticated services industry to complement its industrial base, an extremely strong
demographic profile and the best agricultural acreage-to-population ratio among all the large
nations. This is not an imperium that will tumble into the sand overnight.
Multipolarity is impossible to predict – the US will remain the unipolar power

Wohlforth, 07 – Olin Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale (William, “Unipolar Stability” Harvard International Review, Spring 07
http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1611/1/)
The potentialfor the rise of a multipolar world order certainly seems far more plausible now than it
did several years ago. In 2003, pundits considered the term “unipolar” to be too modest; only “empire” could capture the extraordinary position
of power that the United States appeared to occupy. Indeed, in the eyes of the foreign policy commentariat, the United States has fallen from global empire
to hapless Gulliver in a mere four years. When Charles Krauthammer—the columnist who originally coined the term “unipolar moment”—has announced
Perceptions of rapid polarity shifts of this sort
the end of unipolarity, it is hardly a leap to suggest that multipolarity is nigh.
are not unusual. In the early 1960s, only a decade after analysts had developed the notion of bipolarity, scholars were already
proclaiming the return of multipolarity as postwar recoveries in Europe and Japan took off. After
the fall of Saigon in 1975, they again announced the advent of multipolarity . The most influential scholarly book
on international relations of the past generation, Kenneth N. Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, was written in part to dispel these flighty views and
show that bipolarity still endured. If
one looks past the headlines to the deep material structure of the world,
Waltz argued, one will see that bipolarity is still the order of the day. Yet in the early 1990s, Waltz
himself proclaimed that the return of multipolarity was around the corner. Such perceived
polarity shifts are usually accompanied by decline scares—concern that as other powers rise, the
United States will lose its competitive edge in foreign relations. The current decline scare is the
fourth since 1945—the first three occurred during the 1950s (Sputnik), the 1970s (Vietnam and
stagflation), and the 1980s (the Soviet threat and Japan as a potential challenger). In all of these
cases, real changes were occurring that suggested a redistribution of power. But in each case,
analysts’ responses to those changes seem to have been overblown. Multipolarity—an international system marked by
three or more roughly equally matched major powers—did not return in the 1960s, 1970s, or early 1990s, and each decline scare ended with the United
It is impossible to know for sure whether or not the scare is for
States’ position of primacy arguably strengthened.
real this time—shifts in the distribution of power are notoriously hard to forecast. Barring geopolitical
upheavals on the scale of Soviet collapse, the inter-state scales of power tend to change slowly. The trick is to determine when subtle quantitative shifts will
lead to a major qualitative transformation of the basic structure of the international system. Fortunately, there are some simple rules of power analysis that
can help prevent wild fluctuations in response to current events. Unfortunately, arguments for multipolarity’s rapid return usually run afoul of them.
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Heg Sustainable
Heg sustainable-no competitors

Gray, prof IR Reading, 09 Colin S. Gray, professor of International Relations at Reading, 1/2009, “After Iraq: The Search for a Sustainable National
Security Strategy,” http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubid=902
The long list of U.S. problems in Afghanistan and Iraq should not be misinterpreted. It
would be mistake to conclude that: (1) the
United States should cease to act hegemonically; (2) U.S. values (i.e., culture) are flawed, for Americans and some others; (3)
the U.S. armed forces have been demonstrably incompetent. A more sensible interpretation of events would be the following: (1) the United States
is the only candidate for contemporary hegemon, and world order needs a hegemon willing and
able to serve as world policeman, even one that makes some policy errors 9 ; (2) in major respects U.S. culture is
highly attractive, which is fortunate since it is not easily alterable, but it does need to be advertised and applied with care and restraint abroad; (3) Americans
have become very competent at warfighting, but that prowess has not extended across the whole of the conflict spectrum. In common with all great powers
in the past, the United States has to learn to cope with occasional policy failure. Failure
through human error or sheer
incompetence, friction, and bad luck should not be mistaken for precipitate decline. Too many
commentators today are proclaiming the end of American hegemony. It is true that there are visible Page
206 trends hostile to U.S. hegemony, the well-announced “rise of “ China and India, and one day,
just possibly, the EU/Europe, and even a long-delayed Japan and Brazil. But for the time being
and for many years to come, the United States will be the hegemon. This is to say that it will be the global
leader, certainly the most important player, in any matter of grave significance for international
security. This will be what one might call a default reality. It is, and will be, a consequence of conscious American choice
and effort. Also, U.S. leadership, notwithstanding the exception of its behavior towards Iraq, will rest upon a base provided by broad global consent, albeit
not always of an enthusiastic kind.
No one can take our place and no one wants us gone

Ajami 08 Majid Khadduri professor in Middle East Studies and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. (Fouad, Oct 29, The Resilience of American Power)
There can be no doubt that we were due for our moment of reckoning. But Edward Gibbon wannabes should proceed with caution. It is not yet
time to pen The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. Rome was long dead and buried when Gibbon, working in
London, published his first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776. The destiny of the American
empire is still unfolding. The bailout package, a staggering $700 billion, is only 5 percent of our national
output; the country could afford it. While some may seek to write the obituaries of the American imperial republic, a survey of
universities placing in the top 500 globally, conducted by Shanghai University, gave the United
States a huge lead in such institutions: 159 versus 31 in Japan, 30 in China (the data include Hong Kong and Taiwan), and 2 in India.
For all the talk about the rise of China and India, these societies, long mired in poverty and squalor and handicapped
by dominant traditions of inequality and caste, are in no position to inherit the American place in
the order of nations. They lack the openness of the United States, its sense of obligation to other lands, its willingness
to defend the global order. After the partisanship in our country subsides, Americans know that the alternative to the American order in the world is not the
hegemony of China or Russia or India but rather outright anarchy. The Chinese, shrewd about the ways of the world, acknowledge this. They are
content to work and prosper, and move large numbers of their people out of poverty, under American primacy and tutelage. The
Chinese hold well over a trillion dollars in American treasury securities. They are not about to bring the house down. The Chinese
know Asia's bloody history. American hegemony has been benign, and the alternatives to it are infinitely
worse. Likewise in the volatile Persian Gulf: The commerce of that vital region and the traffic of its oil depend upon the American Navy. No one in that
tinderbox wants a Pax Iranica, and the Indians and the Europeans are not contenders to assume what has been America's role.
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Heg Sustainable
Heg is sustainable due to our economy and military – and counterbalancing won’t happen – rising
powers just balance against each other
Kagan 08 Senior Associate @ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Robert, Make no mistake America is thriving, NYT Nov 1, 2008)
Yet the evidence of American decline is weak. Yes, as Zakaria notes, the world's largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore and the largest
casino in Macau. But by more serious measures of power, the United States is not in decline, not even
relative to other powers. Its share of the global economy last year was about 21 percent, compared
with about 23 percent in 1990, 22 percent in 1980 and 24 percent in 1960. Although the United States is suffering
through a financial crisis, so is every other major economy. If the past is any guide, the adaptable American
economy will be the first to come out of recession and may actually find its position in the global
economy enhanced. Meanwhile, American military power is unmatched. While the Chinese and
Russian militaries are both growing, America's is growing, too, and continues to outpace them
technologically. Russian and Chinese power is growing relative to their neighbors and their regions,
which will pose strategic problems, but that is because American allies , especially in Europe, have
systematically neglected their defenses. America's image is certainly damaged, as measured by global polls,
but the practical effects of this are far from clear. Is America's image today worse than it was in the
1960s and early 1970s, with the Vietnam War; the Watts riots; the My Lai massacre; the assassinations of John F.
Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy; and Watergate? Does anyone recall that millions of anti-American
protesters took to the streets in Europe in those years? Today, despite the polls, President Bush has managed to
restore closer relations with allies in Europe and Asia, and the next president will be able to improve them even further.
Realist theorists have consistently predicted for the past two decades that the world would "balance" against the United States.
But nations such as India are drawing closer to America, and if any balancing is occurring, it is
against China, Russia and Iran. Sober analysts such as Richard Haass acknowledge that the United States remains "the single
most powerful entity in the world." But he warns, "The United States cannot dominate, much less dictate, and expect that others will
follow." That is true. But when was it not? Was there ever a time when the United States could dominate, dictate and always have its
way? Many declinists imagine a mythical past when the world danced to America's tune . Nostalgia
swells for the wondrous American-dominated era after World War II, but between 1945 and 1965 the United States actually
suffered one calamity after another. The "loss" of China to communism; the North Korean
invasion of South Korea; the Soviet testing of a hydrogen bomb; the stirrings of postcolonial
nationalism in Indochina -- each proved a strategic setback of the first order. And each was
beyond America's power to control or even to manage successfully. No event in the past decade,
with the exception of Sept. 11, can match the scale of damage to America's position in the world. Many would say,
"But what about Iraq?" Yet even in the Middle East, where America's image has suffered most as a result of that war, there
has been no fundamental strategic realignment. Longtime American allies remain allies, and Iraq, which
was once an adversary, is now an ally. Contrast this with the strategic setbacks the United States suffered
during the Cold War. In the 1950s and 1960s, the pan-Arab nationalist movement swept out pro-American
governments and opened the door to unprecedented Soviet involvement, including a quasi-alliance between
Moscow and the Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser, as well as with Syria. In 1979, the central pillar of American strategy toppled when the pro-American Shah
of Iran was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. That produced
a fundamental shift in the strategic balance
from which the United States is still suffering. Nothing similar has occurred as a result of the Iraq
war. So perhaps a little perspective is in order. The danger of today's declinism is not that it is
true but that the next president will act as if it is. The good news is that I doubt either nominee
really will. And I'm confident the American people would take a dim view if he tried.
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Heg Sustainable
Declinists are wrong – US power is underestimated

Omestad 08 Former Associate Editor of Foreign Policy, Winner of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Journalism
(Thomas, Is America Really on the Decline? US News and World Report, 10/29)
And yet, for all the deflating news, the time-tested ability of American society to assess and overcome problems should interject caution about proclaiming
the American century over and done with. The restorative capacity of America, reasons Thérèse Delpech, a leading French strategic
thinker, "is constantly underestimated abroad and even sometimes at home." Those who contend American decline is being exaggerated--or
not happening--say that the unipolar moment was never destined to last and that the degree of deference actually accorded to Washington in happier days
was never as much as is portrayed. Take, for instance, the disfavor visited on the United States because of its racial segregation and bigotry and a polarizing
war in Vietnam. Nor
are doubts about American competence a new factor. Blunders, errors of
judgment, the warping of policy by partisan politics, and intemperate rhetoric all are recurring
features of U.S. policymaking; nevertheless, American leadership persists. "The U.S. is no good at foreign
policy," asserts Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and
How It Changed the World. He likens the robustness of America's global standing to the muddling through of the comic bumbler Mr. Magoo. "The Bush
administration has danced with the world in the worst way," Mead says--but the damage is mostly reversible. " The
fundamentals of
America's power position in the world," he says, "are probably as strong as they were in 2001." Rising to the
occasion. Further, the current credit crash follows in a long tradition of occasional panics and meltdowns in both the British Empire and the United States.
"Those crises haven't sunk us in 300 years," reasons Mead. "We seem to find a way to manage them." Skeptics of U.S. decline believe
that other weaknesses are exaggerated and that the U.S. economy remains central. Says George Schwab, president
of the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy, "When Wall Street coughs, the rest of the world catches a cold." No other
currency, including the euro and the Chinese renminbi, is yet ready to replace the dollar. The
economic burdens of leadership are said to be manageable. U.S. defense expenditures today equal
4.2 percent of the nation's GDP, compared with 9 percent in the Vietnam War. Nor, in general, should the rise
of others stir angst, say the anti-declinists. It reflects, by contrast, the near globalization of the U.S.-initiated postwar system, whose very
openness should accommodate the peaceful rise of newer powers. "It was American strategy to see them get stronger,"
says Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The interdependence
woven into the existing system creates mutual vulnerabilities that might deter efforts to weaken
the United States directly. John Bruton, the European Union ambassador in Washington, says, "If the West goes into decline, so
do they." U.S. policy aims to make China a "responsible stakeholder." If China were to sell off its trove of U.S. public debt,
it would undercut the value of its own assets. More likely, Beijing sees buying treasury bills as both a
good investment and a way to balance a relationship in which it has to sell to the American market
to make its long climb out of poverty. "The Asians are not happy about America being so weakened," says Mahbubani. The anti-declinists,
meanwhile, also count America's demographics as a key source of vigor. Through its acceptance of immigration and its
higher birthrates, America's population is projected not only to grow but to avoid taking on the aging
profiles of China, Russia, and Western Europe. Russia's population is shrinking by 720,000 people
per year--hardly the way to great-power status. China is also graying quickly, in part because of its one-child policy. They both
face underdevelopment in their vast countrysides, ethnic tensions, environmental constraints, and the perhaps
inevitable return of political pressures for democratic change. Neither country will find that its
path to restored greatness is clear and smooth. Nor, in the end, is America without geopolitical options. It has forged
a strategic tie to the South Asian giant of India that reflects democratic and multicultural affinities. But it is also a de facto hedge
against the strengthening of still-authoritarian China. U.S. strategists welcome a closer relationship with
moderate Brazil, in part as more hedging, this time against anti-U.S. leaders in Latin America. Bush and a new set of more pro-
American European leaders have been setting aside scraps over Iraq and other issues, and East European
countries are looking to Washington for reassurance against a more assertive Russia. In East Asia, the United
States remains the ultimate balancer to China. "We are still the glue that holds things together,
despite the opinion polls," reckons Kagan. Few doubt that America's global position will experience "relative shifts," to use the
diplomatic language of State's Cohen. But, he insists, "there is no other country's hand I'd rather play." Says a senior U.N.
diplomat, "Bet against America at your peril." Even so, in the 21st century, it might be prudent to spread a few wagers on others as well.
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Heg Sustainable
Heg is sustainable – qualitative and quantitative advantages in all areas

Jerusalem Post 08 (Amotz Asa-El, Middle Israel: Barack Obama and the decline of America, Nov 13)
Decline is by definition a relative term, and America's many eulogizers were never short of choices to anoint as Uncle Sam's successors. Two decades ago,
when Japan was the eulogizers' toast, all were impressed, and rightly, with its foreign aid program, which by the late '80s reached an annual $50 billion and
surpassed America's. In the '60s it was Sputnik's launch into outer space, an achievement that shocked the West and made many suspect that the Soviets had
become scientifically superior to America. And now it is the so-called BRIC powers - Brazil, Russia, India and China - that are turning America's eulogizers
on with their new economic vitality. The Obama presidency will indeed be measured by the state of the gap between America's clout and these emerging
powers' sway. Yet this doesn't at all mean America is on its way out. THE SUBSTANCE of superpowers, scholars now agree, is
first of all military reach. A superpower must by definition possess the capacity to arrive quickly
anywhere with troops that can impose their government's will. That rules out, for now, Brazil, India and Japan, but
Russia and China sure can throw their weight around, and this is while America's delivery in its two current wars has not been decisive. Then there
is the economy. As Kennedy concluded already before the USSR's downfall, superpowers must also be financially super. That obviously calls into
question America's current condition, considering that its entire investment-banking industry is now lying in the middle of Wall Street as fallen and broken
as the Twin Towers on 9/12. Has the US lost its financial superpower status, as German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck
argued last month in the Bundestag? Is the American superpower itself history? Not quite. First of all, the economic crisis has not
given rise to an alternative power; everyone is in it together. And if there is no rising alternative
then there is no declining superpower, only a superpower in crisis. In fact, all the would-be successors have
themselves been exposed as economically ill by the crisis, from China with its overproduction of cheap goods to Russia and
its overreliance on extraction of raw materials, all of which now face drastically reduced demand. And that is also why the military abilities of
Russia and China must also be seen in the light of their economic weaknesses. They too will need
money should they fight long and distant wars, and the difference between them and America is
that they will have even less of it. Beyond this, the American superpower has advantages that transcend war and economics.
Culturally, none of America's rivals offers even a fraction of its originality. The world still rotates
around an axis made of American inventions, from the airplane, the motorcar and the computer to the motion picture, the
skyscraper and spaceship. There is no sign for now of a Russian, Indian, Japanese or Chinese Alexander Graham
Bell, Orville Wright, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Now add to this America's social power. America has just
tapped into deep social aquifers in a way that none of its rivals will do any time soon. China
distances its masses from civic leadership, Russia abandons millions to the devices of organized
crime, Brazil has even more millions teeming in favelas, India still has pariahs who can only
dream of American blacks' acceptance, and Europe keeps at arm's length vast immigrant
populations. America, with all its problems, is socially healthier than all of them.
Although US hard power may face tensions, US hegemony will not collapse
Ömer Kurtba, Professor in Ankara University, ‘Empire in the Age of Globalisation: US Hegemony and Neoliberal Disorder’ Journal of International
Relations and Development. Jun 2007 http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=07-09-2014&FMT=7&DID=1288558801&RQT=309
Here, although accepting that each perspective on its own merits has provided a convincing argument, Kiely gives his own account of the future state of
American hegemony: while
its willingness to exert its hard power in new territories such as Iran and Syria
alongside Iraq may have left the US overstretched, its domestic weaknesses and tensions in the
world economy are likely to force the administration to constrain itself. Nonetheless, despite these
sources of weakness, an imminent collapse of US hegemony appears, for him, out of question. If
alternatives to this hegemonic order are to come about, he argues, these are likely to be progressive and emerge from the bottom up rather than come from
above. Among the possible global agents capable of challenging to US are the anti-globalization movement and Habermasian European social democrats,
each of which offers its own alternative to US-led globalization. To him, although these alternatives might be inconsistent in themselves, they would also
provide possible ways of restoring control over the market economy. However, he notes in
the end that this anti-American
reactionism is not necessarily progressive in challenging the existing world order as in the case of
Europe's tactical rather than challenging opposition to the Iraq war.
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Heg Sustainable
Hegemony is sustainable – this card assumes all their arguments.

Drezner 8 (Daniel W, associate IR prof. @ Tufts U, 2/20, http://www.newsweek.com/id/114011/page/2)
If it's Tuesday then it's time to bemoan the waning of American hegemony yet again. This topic has been a growth industry among the commentariat in
recent weeks—and for good reason. Using standard metrics of power, the United States is in a relative decline .
Militarily, this is the last year of a deeply unpopular administration that has exhausted U.S. armed forces in the Middle East. Economically, the United States
seems headed for a recession—or worse. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States has constipated other financial markets and
contributed to the fall in the dollar. Last month the Federal Reserve sprang into action to avert a panic—but not before U.S. financial institutions were forced
to rely on bailouts from sovereign wealth funds to retain their solvency. In a recent cover story in the New York Times Magazine titled "Waving Goodbye to
Hegemony," the author, Parag Khanna,
asserted that rising powers like Venezuela and India would be
playing the United States, the European Union and China off each other to advance their aims . As if
on cue, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez announced last week that his country was contemplating a cutoff of oil sales to the United States. America's decline is
matched with growing buzz over the rise of the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India and China .
Are we already living in a multipolar
world? Not so fast. There is a difference between forming expectations about future trends and believing that the future is now. If anything,
recent events reaffirm the primacy of American power. American consumer and capital markets
are still the primary engine of global economic growth. In the recent rash of health and safety
scares revolving around products made in China, Beijing blustered in a way that suggested it held the upper hand. Six months
later, however, China announced plans to overhaul health and safety inspections of Chinese exports,
including improving its information database on all exports. Chinese diplomats demonstrated
greater contrition in private negotiations with Western officials. Publicly officials began opening
up more factories to inspection by Western journalists. In December of last year China signed two bilateral
agreements with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services widening access to Chinese factories. One Chinese
academic concluded that the agreements represented "a very big response to U.S. demands."
Contrary to popular perception, China's productive power remains less salient on the world stage
than the market power of the United States. The effect of uncertainty in America's mortgage
market had ripple effects across the globe. These market jitters revealed two facts. First, for all the talk about
waning American power, markets stabilized only when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced
an emergency interest rate cut. Second, an underlying cause behind the worldwide financial hiccup is
that producers across the globe rely on the American consumer to purchase their wares. This even
applies to sovereign wealth funds. To be sure, the United States needs the money to finance its large current account deficit. However,
most other asset markets are neither big enough nor open enough to cater to large-scale sovereign wealth investments. Indeed, the very countries ginning up
sovereign wealth funds at the moment are the most protectionist when it comes to foreign direct investment. The
ability of rising states to
play the United States off Europe and China is also open to question. Consider Venezuela again. This
past Sunday Chávez backed down from his threat, saying, "We don't have plans to stop sending
oil to the United States." Clearly Chávez wishes he could carry out the threat—but the only
refineries that can process Venezuelan oil into a useful commodity are based in the United States.
Chávez has been in power for close to a decade, and the United States remains Venezuela's largest export market. ongtime observers of international
relations will have a sense of déjà vu in reading about America's decline. Two decades ago international-relations scholars were enmeshed in a debate about
American decline. Replace
China with Japan, and the current gnashing of teeth sounds like a replay of
debates from the 1980s. Over the long term, however, the demographic and economic vitality of
the American economy is difficult to dispute compared with possible peer competitors. For
decades to come, the United States will be first among equals. So don't believe the hype. By most
measures, the United States is still the hegemon. This does not mean, of course, that the declinists don't have a point. Power is a
relative measure, and the robust growth of the BRIC nations guarantees that U.S. influence will decline in the future. The really important question for
America—and the world—is how Americans will manage this adjustment.
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Heg is completely sustainable – The U.S. dominates all power categories.

Brooks & Wohlforth 08 Associate Professors of Government at Dartmouth College (Stephen G. & William C., World Out of Balance, p. 27-
31)
“Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing,” historian Paul Kennedy observes: “I have returned to all of
the comparative defense spending and military personnel statistics over the past 500 years that I compiled in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and no
other nation comes close.” Though assessments of U.S. power have changed since those words were written in 2002, they remain true. Even when
capabilities are understood broadly to include economic,
technological, and other wellsprings of national power,
they are concentrated in the United States to a degree never before experienced in the history of the modern
system of states and thus never contemplated by balance-of-power theorists. The United spends more on
defense that all the other major military powers combined, and most of those powers are its allies.
Its massive investments in the human, institutional, and technological requisites of military power,
cumulated over many decades, make any effort to match U.S. capabilities even more daunting that the
gross spending numbers imply. Military research and development (R&D) may best capture the scale of the long-term investment
that give the United States a dramatic qualitative edge in military capabilities . As table 2.1 shows, in 2004 U.S. military R&D
expenditures were more than six times greater than those of Germany, Japan, France, and Britain combined. By some estimates over half the military R&D
expenditures in the world are American. And this disparity has been sustained for decades: over the past 30 years, for example, the
United States has invested over three times more than the entire European Union on military R&D. These vast commitments have created a preeminence in
military capabilities vis-à-vis all the other major powers that is unique after the seventeenth century. While other powers could contest U.S. forces near their
homelands, especially over issues on which nuclear deterrence is credible, the United States is and will long remain the only
state capable of projecting major military power globally. This capacity arises from “command of
the commons” – that is, unassailable military dominance over the sea, air, and space. As Barry Posen puts
it, Command of the commons is the key military enabler of the U.S global power position. It allows the United States to exploit more fully
other sources of power, including its own economic and military might as well as the economic and military might of
its allies. Command of the commons also helps the United States to weaken its adversaries, by restricting their access to economic, military, and
political assistance….Command of the commons provides the United States with more useful military
potential for a hegemonic foreign policy than any other offshore power has ever had. Posen’s study of
American military primacy ratifies Kennedy’s emphasis on the historical importance of the economic foundations of national power. It is the
combination of military and economic potential that sets the United States apart from its
predecessors at the top of the international system. Previous leading states were either great commercial and naval powers or
great military powers on land, never both. The British Empire in its heyday and the United States during the Cold War, for example, shared the world with
other powers that matched or exceeded them in some areas. Even at the height of the Pax Britannica, the United Kingdom was outspent, outmanned, and
outgunned by both France and Russia. Similarly, at the dawn of the Cold War the United States was dominant economically as well as in air and naval
capabilities. But the Soviet Union retained overall military parity, and thanks to geography and investment in land power it had a superior ability to seize
territory in Eurasia. TheUnited States’ share of world GDP in 2006, 27.5 percent, surpassed that of any
leading state in modern history, with the sole exception of its own position after 1945 (when World War II had temporarily depressed
every other major economy). The size of the U.S economy means that its massive military capabilities
required roughly 4 percent of its GDP in 2005, far less than the nearly 10 percent it averaged over the peak years of the
Cold War, 1950-70, and the burden borne by most of the major powers of the past. As Kennedy sums up, “Being Number
One at great cost is one thing; being the world’s single superpower on the cheap is astonishing.”
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Heg Sustainable
Military, economic and technological power ensure that US hegemony is sustainable

Brooks and Wohlforth ‘8 (Stephen G. Brooks & William C. Wohlforth 08 Associate Professors in the Department of Government @
Dartmouth College, (World Out of Balance, p. 27-31))
capabilities are understood broadly to include economic, technological, and other wellsprings of national power, they
are concentrated in the United States to a degree never before experienced in the history of the modern system
of states and thus never contemplated by balance-of-power theorists. The United States spends more on defense that all the
other major military powers combined, and most of those powers are its allies. Its massive investments in the human,
institutional, and technological requisites of military power, cumulated over many decades, make any effort to match
U.S. capabilities even more daunting that the gross spending numbers imply. Military research and
development (R&D) may best capture the scale of the long-term investment that give the United States
a dramatic qualitative edge in military capabilities. As table 2.1 shows, in 2004 U.S. military R&D expenditures were more
than six times greater than those of Germany, Japan, France, and Britain combined. By some estimates over half the military R&D expenditures in the world
are American. And this disparity has been sustained for decades: over the past 30 years, for example, the United States has invested over three times more
than the entire European Union on military R&D. These vast commitments have created a preeminence in military
capabilities vis-à-vis all the other major powers that is unique after the seventeenth century. While other powers could contest U.S. forces near their
homelands, especially over issues on which nuclear deterrence is credible, the United States is and will long remain the only state capable of projecting
major military power globally. This
capacity arises from “command of the commons” – that is, unassailable
military dominance over the sea, air, and space. As Barry Posen puts it, Command of the commons is the key military enabler of
the U.S global power position. It allows the United States to exploit more fully other sources of power, including its own economic and military might as
well as the economic and military might of its allies. Command of the commons also helps the United States to weaken its adversaries, by restricting their
access to economic, military, and political assistance….Command of the commons provides the United States with
more useful military potential for a hegemonic foreign policy than any other offshore power has ever had. Posen’s study
of American military primacy ratifies Kennedy’s emphasis on the historical importance of the economic foundations of national power . It is the
predecessors at the top of the international system. Previous leading states were either great
commercial and naval powers or great military powers on land, never both. The British Empire in its heyday
and the United States during the Cold War, for example, shared the world with other powers that matched or exceeded them in some areas. Even at
the height of the Pax Britannica, the United Kingdom was outspent, outmanned, and outgunned
by both France and Russia. Similarly, at the dawn of the Cold War the United States was dominant economically as well as in air and naval
required roughly 4 percent of its GDP in 2005, far less than the nearly 10 percent it averaged over the
peak years of the Cold War, 1950-70, and the burden borne by most of the major powers of the past. As Kennedy sums up, “Being Number
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The US has the most power in the world and will for decades
In this world, the United States is and will long remain the largest single aggregation of power. It
spends more than $500 billion annually on its military -- and more than $700 billion if the
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are included -- and boasts land, air, and naval forces that are
the world's most capable. Its economy, with a GDP of some $14 trillion, is the world's largest. The
United States is also a major source of culture (through films and television), information, and
innovation. But the reality of American strength should not mask the relative decline of the United States' position in the world -- and with this
relative decline in power an absolute decline in influence and independence. The U.S. share of global imports is already down to 15 percent. Although U.S.
GDP accounts for over 25 percent of the world's total, this percentage is sure to decline over time given the actual and projected differential between the
United States' growth rate and those of the Asian giants and many other countries, a large number of which are growing at more than two or three times the
rate of the United States.
Heg is completely sustainable – The U.S. dominates all power categories.

Brooks & Wohlforth 08 Associate Professors of Government at Dartmouth College (Stephen G. & William C., World Out of Balance, p. 27-31)
capabilities are understood broadly to include economic,
technological, and other wellsprings of national power,
they are concentrated in the United States to a degree never before experienced in the history of the modern
system of states and thus never contemplated by balance-of-power theorists. The United spends more on
defense that all the other major military powers combined, and most of those powers are its allies.
Its massive investments in the human, institutional, and technological requisites of military power,
cumulated over many decades, make any effort to match U.S. capabilities even more daunting that the
gross spending numbers imply. Military research and development (R&D) may best capture the scale of the long-term investment
that give the United States a dramatic qualitative edge in military capabilities . As table 2.1 shows, in 2004 U.S. military R&D
expenditures were more than six times greater than those of Germany, Japan, France, and Britain combined. By some estimates over half the military R&D
expenditures in the world are American. And this disparity has been sustained for decades : over the past 30 years, for example,
the United States has invested over three times more than the entire European Union on military R&D. These vast commitments have created a preeminence
in military capabilities vis-à-vis all the other major powers that is unique after the seventeenth century. While other powers could contest U.S. forces near
their homelands, especially over issues on which nuclear deterrence is credible, the United States is and will long remain the only
state capable of projecting major military power globally. This capacity arises from “command of
the commons” – that is, unassailable military dominance over the sea, air, and space. As Barry Posen puts
it, Command of the commons is the key military enabler of the U.S global power position. It allows the United States to exploit more fully
other sources of power, including its own economic and military might as well as the economic and military might of
its allies. Command of the commons also helps the United States to weaken its adversaries, by restricting their access to economic, military, and
political assistance….Command of the commons provides the United States with more useful military
potential for a hegemonic foreign policy than any other offshore power has ever had. Posen’s study of
American military primacy ratifies Kennedy’s emphasis on the historical importance of the economic foundations of national power. It is the
predecessors at the top of the international system. Previous leading states were either great commercial and naval powers or
great military powers on land, never both. The British Empire in its heyday and the United States during the Cold War, for example, shared the world with
other powers that matched or exceeded them in some areas. Even at the height of the Pax Britannica, the United Kingdom was outspent, outmanned, and
outgunned by both France and Russia. Similarly, at the dawn of the Cold War the United States was dominant economically as well as in air and naval
required roughly 4 percent of its GDP in 2005, far less than the nearly 10 percent it averaged over the peak years of the
Cold War, 1950-70, and the burden borne by most of the major powers of the past. As Kennedy sums up, “Being Number
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The U.S. is too far ahead in primacy for our primacy to fail.
Zakaria, Foreign Affairs Expert, 2008 Fareed Zakaria, American journalist, columnist, author, editor, commentator, and television
host specializing in international relations and foreign affairs, May/June 2008, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501facomment87303-p80/fareed-
zakaria/the-future-of-american-power.html
U.S. military power is not the cause of its strength but the consequence. The fuel is the United
States' economic and technological base, which remains extremely strong. The United States does face larger,
deeper, and broader challenges than it has ever faced in its history, and it will undoubtedly lose some share of global GDP. But the process will look nothing
like Britain's slide in the twentieth century, when the country lost the lead in innovation, energy, and entrepreneurship. The
United States will
remain a vital, vibrant economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science, technology,
and industry. In trying to understand how the United States will fare in the new world, the first thing to do is simply look around: the future is
already here. Over the last 20 years, globalization has been gaining breadth and depth. More countries
are making goods, communications technology has been leveling the playing field , capital has been free to
move across the world -- and the United States has benefited massively from these trends. Its economy has
received hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, and its companies have entered new
countries and industries with great success. Despite two decades of a very expensive dollar, U.S. exports have held ground,
and the World Economic Forum currently ranks the United States as the world's most competitive
economy. GDP growth, the bottom line, has averaged just over three percent in the United States for 25 years, significantly
higher than in Europe or Japan. Productivity growth, the elixir of modern economics, has been over 2.5 percent for a decade
now, a full percentage point higher than the European average . This superior growth trajectory might be petering out, and
perhaps U.S. growth will be more typical for an advanced industrialized country for the next few years. But the general point -- that the
United States is a highly dynamic economy at the cutting edge, despite its enormous size -- holds.
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Hegemony is sustainable – other countries are forced to adopt US economics and identify with US
economic and social philosophies.
The Internet’s software infrastructure developed in a typically American way — by entrepreneurs

working in areas largely untouched by government regulation — into a radically open and
decentralized system. As a result, the Internet has become essentially “American” wherever it is, and not
just because U.S. companies dominate its development and content. Free flow of ideas Much more than that, it creates American-style
opportunities wherever it reaches, disseminating information without restriction and spurring the
development of new services and products by newly formed companies in new ways. There are no
credible alternatives anywhere in the world to America’s basic take on the limits of the
government’s role in the economy and how businesses should run. services and products by newly formed companies
operating in new ways. That can produce geopolitical benefits for America, as tens or hundreds of
thousands of newly successful people around the world associate their success with its continuing
technological achievements. The heart of the geopolitical clout that America derives from its economic preeminence, however, is that so
much of the world now embraces its basic approach to organizing their economies and doing
business. In less than a generation, the alternative models that much of the world had followed for
decades have been discredited — and largely discarded. The American alternative This reaches past the
epochal collapse of Soviet collectivism and China’s startling conversion to capitalism. The appeal
of the more mixed models of a private economy with heavy government direction also has waned,
after Asia’s bumper economies melted down or stagnated and Europe’s entered a decade of
disappointing growth. Some leaders in Europe and Japan may deny it, but for the first time there are no credible,
grand alternatives anywhere in the world to America’s basic take on the limits of the
government’s role in the economy and how businesses should run. In sync with current demands This doesn’t make
the American economic approach “right” in an objective sense, like the composition of the atom. Rather, it’s What’s so unusual and world-changing is not
the extent of America’s military, political and economic capacities — but the absence of countries that come anywhere close. very broadly preferred right
now, because it’s in sync with the current demands of globalization. For a long time, the European and Japanese approaches — not to mention what passed
for an economic model in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China — produced more equality and economic security for individuals than American-
style capitalism. But for nearly a generation, globalization has crippled the capacity of those approaches to generate strong, sustained growth — and greater
equality and security are less appealing when people also face a prospect of growing poorer. International systems This simply is a time when growth in both
advanced and developing economies depends on governments not only stepping up to invest in education, health and modern infrastructure, but also
Almost every
stepping back from protections and regulations that slow or muck up the era’s massive transfers of technologies, capital and expertise.
country also now supports the international institutions that enforce American-style rules of
globalization, especially the World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization — but also the older International Monetary
Fund, World Bank and Paris Club (which deals with sovereign debt default issues among countries).
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America’s matrix of innovation ensures sustainability.

AAU 8 (association of American universities, March, p. 3, http://www.aau.edu/reports/SAAS_08.pdf)
The next President will make decisions that determine our nation’s place in the 21st century. We
remain the world’s military and
economic superpower, yet at home and abroad we face economic and national security challenges
to our leadership with serious consequences for future generations of Americans. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Americans will judge
candidates on their ability to lead the nation in addressing these challenges. As each candidate considers the resources on
which his or her administration might draw for ideas and talent, few are as valuable as the people
and organizations that comprise America’s matrix of innovation. The elements of this matrix—
universities, businesses, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individual innovators
—are seeking and creating real solutions for the challenges we face. It is this innovation matrix—
decentralized, networked, cross-disciplinary, and sparked by the intellectual genius of Americans
and people from around the world—that can ensure America’s national and economic security and world
leadership in the 21st century. At the core of this great national innovation matrix is our system of
higher education and research. This system sets the standard for the world, in part because of the
autonomy and extraordinary diversity of its 4,000 institutions. Our colleges and universities educate the men and
women who, in turn, create the ideas that spark innovation. Among these institutions, America’s research universities serve
particularly as drivers of innovation because they fully integrate research with education. With
strong government support, these institutions have made America the world’s leading incubator
of innovators and innovation.
Hegemony is sustainable – American innovation allows us to continuously recreate our leadership.

Martino 7 (foreign policy research institute, www.fpri.org/orbis/5102/martino.innovationamericanleadership.pdf)
The United States of course faced great challenges to its security and economy in the past, most obviously
from Germany and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century and from the Soviet Union in the second half. Crucial to America’s ability
to prevail over these past challenges was our technological and industrial leadership, and
especially our ability to continuously recreate it. Indeed, the United States has been unique among
great powers in its ability to keep on creating and recreating new technologies and new industries ,
generation after generation. Perpetual innovation and technological leadership might even be said to be the
American way of maintaining primacy in world affairs. They are almost certainly what America
will have to pursue in order to prevail over the contemporary challenges involving economic competitiveness and
energy dependence.
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US has large wellsprings of “latent power” it can tap

Wohlforth 07 Olin Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University (William, Unipolar Stability: The Rules of Power Analysis, A Tilted
Balance, Vol. 29 (1) - Spring 2007)
US military forces are stretched thin, its budget and trade deficits are high , and the country continues to finance
its profligate ways by borrowing from abroad—notably from the Chinese government. These developments have prompted many analysts to warn that the
United States suffers from “imperial overstretch.” And if
US power is overstretched now, the argument goes,
unipolarity can hardly be sustainable for long. The problem with this argument is that it fails to
distinguish between actual and latent power. One must be careful to take into account both the level
of resources that can be mobilized and the degree to which a government actually tries to mobilize them.
And how much a government asks of its public is partly a function of the severity of the challenges that it faces. Indeed, one can never know for sure what a
state is capable of until it has been seriously challenged. Yale historian Paul Kennedy coined the term “ imperial overstretch” to describe the
situation in which a state’s actual and latent capabilities cannot possibly match its foreign policy commitments. This situation should be
contrasted with what might be termed “self-inflicted overstretch”—a situation in which a state lacks the
sufficient resources to meet its current foreign policy commitments in the short term, but has
untapped latent power and readily available policy choices that it can use to draw on this power .
This is arguably the situation that the United States is in today. But the US government has not
attempted to extract more resources from its population to meet its foreign policy commitments. Instead, it has moved strongly in the
opposite direction by slashing personal and corporate tax rates. Although it is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and claims to be fighting a global “war”
on terrorism, the United States is not acting like a country under intense international pressure. Aside from the volunteer servicemen and women and their
families, US citizens have not been asked to make sacrifices for the sake of national prosperity and
security. The country could clearly devote a greater proportion of its economy to military
spending: today it spends only about 4 percent of its GDP on the military, as compared to 7 to 14 percent during the peak years of the Cold War. It
could also spend its military budget more efficiently, shifting resources from expensive weapons
systems to boots on the ground. Even more radically, it could reinstitute military conscription, shifting resources
from pay and benefits to training and equipping more soldiers. On the economic front, it could raise taxes in a number of ways,
notably on fossil fuels, to put its fiscal house back in order. No one knows for sure what would happen if a US president undertook such drastic measures,
but thereis nothing in economics, political science, or history to suggest that such policies would be
any less likely to succeed than China is to continue to grow rapidly for decades. Most of those who study US politics would argue that the
likelihood and potential success of such power-generating policies depends on public support, which is a function of the public’s perception of a threat. And
as unnerving as terrorism is, there is nothing like the threat of another hostile power rising up in opposition
to the United States for mobilizing public support. With latent power in the picture, it becomes
clear that unipolarity might have more built-in self-reinforcing mechanisms than many analysts
realize. It is often noted that the rise of a peer competitor to the United States might be thwarted by the counterbalancing actions of neighboring powers.
For example, China’s rise might push India and Japan closer to the United States—indeed, this has already happened to some extent. There is also
the strong possibility that a peer rival that comes to be seen as a threat would create strong
incentives for the United States to end its self-inflicted overstretch and tap potentially large
wellsprings of latent power.
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Heg Sustainable – China
China’s rise makes heg sustainable – preserves dollar heg and prevents regionalization
Yiwei 07 Assistant Dean at the Fudan University Institute of International Studies and Associate Professor at Fudan's Center for American Studies.
(Wang, A, China's Rise, An Unlikely Pillar of US Hegemony, A Tilted Balance, Vol. 29 (1) - Spring 2007)
It is important to extend the discussion beyond platitudes regarding “US decline” or the “rise of China” and the invective-laden debate over threats and
security issues that arises from these. We must step out of a narrowly national mindset and reconsider what Chinese development means for the United
States. One of the consequences of globalization has been that countries such as China, which depend on exporting to US markets, have
accumulated large dollar reserves. This has been unavoidable for these countries, as they must purchase dollars in
order to keep the dollar strong and thus avoid massive losses. Thus, the United States is bound to
bear a trade deficit, and moreover, this deficit is inextricably tied to the dollar’s hegemony in today’s
markets. The artificially high dollar and the US economy at large depend in a very real sense on
China’s investment in the dollar. Low US inflation and interest rates similarly depend on the
thousands of “Made in China” labels distributed across the United States. As Paul Krugman wrote in The New York
Times, the situation is comparable to one in which “the American sells the house but the money to buy the house comes from China.” Former US treasury
secretary Lawrence Summers even affirms that China and the United States may be in a kind of imprudent “balance of financial terror.” Today, the US trade
deficit with China is US$200 billion. China holds over US$1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and US$350 billion in US bonds. Together, the Chinese
and US economies account for half of global economic growth. Thus,
a fantastic situation has arisen: China’s rise is
actually supporting US hegemony. Taking US hegemony and Western preeminence as the starting point, many have
concluded that the rise of China presents a threat. The premise of this logic is that the
international system predicated on US hegemony and Western preeminence would be destabilized
by the rise of a second major power. But this view is inconsistent with the phenomenon of one-way
globalization. The so-called process of one-way globalization can more truly be called Westernization. Today’s globalization is still in
large part driven by the West, inasmuch as it is tinged by Western unilateralism and entails the dissemination of essentially Western
standards and ideology. For example, Coca Cola has become a Chinese cultural icon, Louis Vuitton stores crowd high-end shopping districts in Shanghai,
and, as gender equality progresses, Chinese women look to Western women for inspiration. In contrast, Haier, the best-known Chinese brand in the United
States, is still relatively unknown, and Wang Fei, who is widely regarded in China as the pop star who was able to make it in the United States, has less
This sort of globalization must change; otherwise it will be
name-recognition there than a first-round American Idol cut.
replaced by a system marked by a number of autonomous, regional free trade areas.
Regionalization, which is encouraged by cultural diversity and political ambitions in addition to economic reasons, is more efficient
than globalization in coming to agreements and improving international competitiveness. Nascent free trade areas have already
been established and have also promoted regional security integration goals. The effect of this has been that after the Cold War a
once-united world has parted to follow separate paths. The World Social Forum’s slogan “Another World Is Possible” has been
taken up by some Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia. Bolivia has proposed the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
(ALBA) in opposition to the American Free Trade Zone. Thus, regionalization is a prominent trend in the post-Cold War world. The perception of
globalization as a one-way process has generated a great deal of resistance, which has found an
outlet in the creation of regional free trade areas and blocs. Because of this, global hegemony is
becoming less and less feasible. If this trend of regionalization continues, the United States, while it will remain the
preeminent North American power, will begin to have an increasingly less influential voice in world politics. The
“concert of democracies,” NATO, or a trans-Atlantic free trade association (TAFTA) cannot fundamentally reverse this trend. Thus, for the United
States to remain powerful on a global scale, a more traditional international system must be
preserved, as opposed to a system that emphasizes regional alternatives. China, because it is
providing an additional focal point to the West in a globalizing world, is assuaging disgruntled anti-
globalizationalists and thus, rather paradoxically, supporting the traditional international order of a
globally interconnected world and market, rather than a system of autonomous regional blocs. In this
way, China is providing, rather than destabilizing, the foundations of US hegemony . A Policy of Mutual
Cooperation As I have previously noted, if Chinese foreign policy in the short run seeks to prevent the rapid decline of the United States, eventually the
United States will not only give up its illusions of global grandeur, but will realize that China
is an important player in the world
order and indeed the one that can best guarantee the United States’ hold on power . The United States’
ultimate strategy should be one of cooperation with China in order to ensure that they both become strong regional powers. It should stop dealing with China
in the same way that it dealt with Japan during the majority of the last century: as a rising power that threatens US hegemony and must be contained. So,
when considering the risks and opportunities of Chinese development, one must consider not only strength and intent, but global power structures and the
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macro-level implications of change in economic arenas. China presents a successful model for other developing
countries to follow, not to fight but to embrace globalization in order to bring about a more just, reasonable, and harmonious international order
and to avoid isolation. Regionalization cannot be sustainable in the long run, and could result in a far more
unstable world than one marked by a power-sharing arrangement between China and the United
States. Thus, the greatest threat to the continuation of the stable world order of the present is not a rising China, but the failure of China to develop
further. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson described the situation well: “the biggest risk we face is not that China will overtake the United States, but
that China won’t move ahead with the reforms necessary to sustain its growth and to address the very serious problems facing the nation.” And
China
intends to use reform and liberalization to realize its peaceful rise. Despite regional quibbles and the occasional
ruffled diplomatic feathers, it is China’s rise—through peace and for peace—that promises to sustain US global
hegemony.
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Heg Sustainable – Obama
Obama gives us breathing room to improve leadership

The Canberra Times 08 (SEUMAS MILNE. Those who want real change will have to fight for it, 3/11)
Of course, whoever the president, the US will remain a global colossus, with a military presence in 130 of the
world's 195 countries. But it is also a power in unmistakable relative decline and an Obama
presidency offers the US a breathing space to re-order its relations with the rest of the world
accordingly. The benefit of the doubt that will be given to Obama in the early period of a new administration in Europe that's
likely to stretch to defence of the indefensible, as in the Clinton years potentially gives the US extra room for manoeuvre . Economic failure
may yet force military cutbacks, despite Obama's pledge to expand the armed forces. But, as in the domestic arena, if
expectations of change are dashed, the reaction may end up being all the sharper. What seems certain is that
Obama's election will be a catalyst that creates political opportunities both at home and abroad. The
Obama campaign grew out of popular opposition to the Iraq War and its success has been based on the mobilisation
of supporters who will certainly want to go further and faster than their candidate. Economic conditions are also likely to demand
a more decisive response. And even if conditions are very different from those which led to the New Deal of the 1930s not least the lack of a
powerful labour movement Obama could yet, like Roosevelt, be propelled by events to adopt more radical positions. In any case, if Obama is to
begin to fulfill the confidence invested in him, hope will not be enough.
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Heg Sustainable – AT: Financial Crisis
Financial collapse won’t constrain military spending – US military is not obsolete, it still provides
stability. No one can take our place despite all our problems
Caryl 08 Newsweek Web Exclusive( Christian, Long Live U.S. Imperialism, Oct 31)
Conventional wisdom has it that the George Washington is soon to become an empty symbol. According to everyone from Hamas to
Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, the American Empire is over. The era of U.S. hegemony is done for, finito. The reason is
simple enough: the financial and economic crisis is already tipping the United States into
recession. The huge amounts of money now being spent on reviving the banking system will crimp America's leading role in the world. Whoever the
next president is, he'll find it hard to push-through dramatic tax increases; and without additional revenue, the already huge U.S. budget deficit can only get
bigger. Aircraft carriers like the George Washington cost $4.5 billion a pop, and keeping them afloat isn't much cheaper. In 2007, the Department of Defense
budget was about $440 billion—and that didn't include additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which add more to the bill .
Surely the
sheer lack of cash will end up restraining Washington's ambitions to remake the world . There's
just one problem with this thesis: The United States was short on cash long before this latest crisis
hit, but that didn't stop it from continuing to build up the world's most formidable military.
(According to one estimate, the U.S. accounted for 47 percent of the world's defense spending in 2003.) Many people may not have noticed, but for the past
few years the United States has paid for its policies by borrowing money from other countries—primarily Japan, China, and other East Asian economic
giants who have America buy their stuff by loading themselves down with U.S. Treasury debt. This is something that those neo-conservative theoreticians
who rejoiced at America's new spirit of foreign policy activism after 9/11 didn't like to talk about much. It's also one of many reasons why the 21st century
Today's great powers
usually turns out to be more complicated than talk of 19th-century statecraft and balance of power politics would allow.
are economically linked in all sorts of ways that make big wars a lot less likely. So does that mean
that the military factor is irrelevant in today's globalized world? Not at all. Let's go back to the USS George
Washington. Since it arrived in Japan this September, it's the only one of the U.S. Navy's 11 carriers to be permanently stationed ("homeported") in a foreign
country. Why is that? Just take a look at the map. The George Washington is the biggest ship of the 50-some-odd vessels that make up America's
Seventh Fleet, whose area of responsibility extends from the western Pacific to the Indian Ocean. That includes, for example, the
Strait of Malacca. Every year a quarter of the world's oil sails through that narrow chokepoint from its source in the Persian Gulf to the
economies of East Asia—one of the world's three major economic centers of gravity, along with the United States and the European Union. The problem
with East Asia, though, is that none of its countries trust each other. If, let us say, the Seventh Fleet were to evaporate tomorrow, China would suddenly get
very nervous about protecting what strategists call its "sea-line of communications." Four-fifths of China's entire supply of oil comes through the Strait of
Malacca. Were China to beef up its military presence there, though, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—all dependent on the same oil—would immediately
have to confront similar concerns. And because China hardly offers a model of transparent government, they would find themselves having to do a lot of
guessing. Unpredictability is a very dangerous thing when the vital national interests of states are involved. Just to make it more interesting, China, for its
part, has good historical reasons to worry about the motives of Japan, while South Korea is intensely paranoid about both Japan and China. Like it or not,
the Seventh Fleet is a powerful insurance policy that ensures more or less stable rules of the game.
The same principle applies around the world. Just to cite one example, the Balkan Wars of the 1990s
happened in the European Union's backyard, but they ended only when the United States—
belatedly and reluctantly—applied its military leverage. It's entirely true that, as my colleague Fareed Zakaria has argued,
America's pseudo-imperial role is being diluted as more and more countries embrace their own forms of market-oriented democracy, which helps them to
build confidence in each other. That's a good thing and undoubtedly serves the cause of general stability. And I readily concede that America's intense belief
in the rightness of its own system sometimes tempts it into destabilizing adventures. Yet, on balance, the world would still be a much more dangerous place
without America around. In a world of intensifying competition for natural resources, trust is still the rarest commodity of all. U.S. influence will
undoubtedly wane as more and more countries build confidence in each other. But that's going to take a long time. No question about it, America
is
overstretched. As economic turbulence hits home, U.S. voters are already less inclined to pay for
overseas adventures. Yet to an extent, they don't have much choice. For the reasons I've described above, the world will probably
need someone to play the role of arbiter, enforcer, hegemon—call it what you will—for a long while to come. ("Hegemony," by the
way, is a Greek word that means "leadership.") Americans may not want to play that role, and the rest of the world
doesn't always like the United States when it does. Yet I don't see anyone around who's ready to
take its place. The European Union? It can't even forge a common foreign policy, much less a
strategy for regional security and defense. China? Many of its neighbors are unlikely to be
enthusiastic. Russia? Give me a break. Both McCain and Obama have talked about the greater need for cooperation with U.S. allies
and placed far less emphasis on Bush-style unilateralism. Both have talked about overarching challenges that unite the international community. And there's
certainly a lot of work to be done in all these respects. But I have a feeling that someone, somehow, is going to go on paying for the Seventh Fleet.
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American economy is still the most powerful – other countries still rely on it
Takadoro 08 Keio University Professor of International Political Science and Economics (Masayuki, Financial crisis marks end of US as hyper
power, Mainchini, Nov 5)
it is very difficult for me to imagine any alternative to the leadership of the U.S., which
Having said that,
will play special roles in managing the globalized economy after the current financial crisis and
economic slump that will inevitably follow it, unless the world is divided into several spheres of influence. It is impossible for not only
Japan but also China to sever their relations with the U.S. economy without triggering major
economic dislocation. Viewing world order from a more comprehensive standpoint, not only Japan but also Europe has no ability
or coordinated will to replace Pax Americana. World order led by either Russia or China, even if
possible, will not be attractive. Thus, Japan's basic approach should be to make clear both internally and externally that it will support moderate
and sensible leadership by the U.S. while trying to enhance its own ability to act independently. This is not tantamount to blindly obeying the U.S. At this
time of crisis, discord between nations could threaten not only the global economy but world order as a whole Japan now has a good chance to persuade
Washington, which may be prepared to listen to the friendly counsel of its ally, to revert to sensible leadership as Japan's financial system is relatively stable
and sound. A United States that behaves in an excessive manner is a threat to Japan, to the world and above all to the U.S. itself. However, a shaky U.S.
While it is easy to
would also be a threat to Japan, which relies on it for national security and the international economic order it provides.
criticize the United States, its sensible leadership is still the best hope for the world to create a
liberal and open world order.
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Despite the financial crisis, heg is still sustainable

Subacchi, Research Director of international economics at Chatham House, ’08 (Dr. Paola Subacchi, “THE END OF US ECONOMIC
HEGEMONY?” Foresight, October 2008, http://www.foresightproject.net/publications/articles/article.asp?p=3522)
Despite the rise of China and India, the US is set to remain a first amongst equals - at least for now What
does the current financial crisis mean for the standing of the US in the world? Will it mark the end of US hegemony and superpowerdom? For many
commentators the crisis represents "a true global watershed" between a world dominated by the American brand, epitomised, in Francis Fukuyama's words,
by capitalism and liberal democracy, and the post-American world in which the US is no longer the world's only superpower and economic hegemon. For
Peer Steinbrück, Germany's finance minister, it is not even a matter of time: "The United States is no longer a financial superpower", he said in a recent
interview. Large empires, from ancient Rome to Great Britain, declined at least in part as a result of economic weakness. Financial meltdown and recession
in the US may act as a catalyst to the ongoing shift of the world economic order by dramatically rupturing the credibility of and respect for the American
model. Such a shift has been prophesised for some time. China's rapid economic growth and the potential for other emerging market economies to expand
substantially over the next three to five decades, due to their large population, strong economic expansion and integration in the world economy, seem to
indicate the emergence of a new world order. New players could use their recently acquired economic might to gain influence and challenge established
powers, notably the US. Can the crisis accelerate this "shift of power"? Structural weaknesses and reduced scope for policies The global financial turmoil is
huge in scale, worthy of comparison to the Great Depression in the 1930s where stress in financial markets led to prolonged recession. After
several
weeks of market turmoil there is no doubt that the world economy is taking a "synchronised
dive", the recovery from which promises to be slow. In the case of the US economy, the latest IMF
outlook predicts the return to potential growth in 2010. But there are many risks that could derail the recovery: the credit
crunch could be worse than feared, house prices may not climb until after 2010, a higher unemployment rate and low confidence could constrain domestic
demand growth. The critical point here, and the one which could bear significant consequences, is the existence, within the US economy, of structural
weaknesses that enhance the current distress and limit the scope for future policy action. The US has an almost zero national savings rate, increasing
indebtedness and bloated budget deficit. In addition to the cost of the $700bn bailout (and an additional $100bn of tax provisions for businesses and the
middle class), will be the rising cost of healthcare programmes that are under strain due to an increase in the ageing population. The increase in expenditure
means, in the short term, limited scope for loose fiscal policy and continuous reliance on foreign lenders. In the longer term, it implies tighter fiscal policy
and constraints on policy in a number of areas, from military intervention to discretionary international aid and projects. "Primus inter pares" and the
emerging economies The crisis certainly exacerbates the economic weaknesses that could be ignored over the last decade because of foreign investors'
willingness to invest in the US. It also constrains policy initiatives in a way that will be felt in years to come. All this will accelerate the relative decline of
the US. However, cries
for the end of US economic hegemony may be premature, as are predictions of
China's takeover. Despite being badly hit by the credit crisis, the US may still show great
resilience. It is the economy best endowed with the flexibility and resources needed to get past
present difficulties. Moreover, the US dollar will continue to lead the international monetary
system-as the euro is far from having a global role and hence able to seriously challenge the
greenback's dominance. In spite of all the talk about decoupling, the US remains the engine of the
world's economic growth, with no economy left immune from the current trouble. Following years
of high growth, emerging market economies are surely more "self-reliant" than before and so far
better insulated from the effects of the financial crisis, partly because their financial sector is still
relatively small and disconnected from the real economy. However, their growth depends on
demand from developed countries, notably the US, so the effects of the financial crisis in the west
are inevitably spilling over into the emerging economies. The US is due to remain at the helm of
the international economic and monetary system - at least for some years to come.
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Despite the Financial crisis the U.S. is STILL the only superpower out there
Hirsh, ’08
(Micheal Hirsh, Washington Correspondent for Newsweek, October 2nd 2008, “The Making of America 2.0”, http://www.newsweek.com/id/161990)
True enough. It's also true that other financial-market centers, like London, Hong Kong and Singapore, are looking to grab as much new business for
themselves as they can while the former titans that ruled Wall Street—like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—are focused inward in cleaning up their
balance sheets and remaking themselves into more conservative commercial banks. But let's be blunt: there is no other country or
market that is even within sight of replacing the United States and the money masters of Manhattan island. The rising
power of China or Russia or the European Union has always been more alleged than real. The EU
actually has bigger banking and financial problems than we do—one reason the euro hit its lowest point against the
dollar in 13 months on Thursday—and Europe remains a hopelessly fractious cacophony of voices. As for China, the never-relenting
hype about its imminent rise to superpowerdom would make P. T. Barnum blush. The Beijing Olympics in
August were an impressive shout to the world: we're ready! But as Washington Post editor John Pomfret, one of the journalism world's most astute observers
of China, wrote last July, theChinese really aren't ready. "For four big reasons—dire demographics, an
overrated economy, an environment under siege and an ideology that doesn't travel well—China
is more likely to remain the muscle-bound adolescent of the international system than to become
the master of the world." To the north, Russia is riding high now thanks to soaring energy prices.
But with Vladimir Putin's KGB pals in charge of increasingly powerful state companies, Russia is scarcely even an open-market
economy any longer. Fascism, anyone? As for Singapore—yes, it's a very impressive little place.
But it's a city-state that owes its calm prosperity to the U.S. defense umbrella in Asia, as does
Japan. Let's reiterate that latter point, because it's an important one. When times really get tough,
when there are belligerent rising powers or threats, the dollar is still the world's safe haven
because America is still the only reliable great power out there. Set aside for the moment the deeply unpopular invasion
of Iraq. Every foreign government knows that America is still the main stabilizer of the international
system—American power overlays every region of the planet and supplies the control rods that
restrain rogues, hostile states and arms races from East Asia to Latin America, enabling
globalization to proceed apace. This status quo is unlikely to change over our lifetimes. Sure, we've
suffered a lot of self-inflicted damage over the last eight years. Conan O'Brien didn't have to explain himself when he
joked the other day, after the Dow's record one-day 778-point drop, that "as a result, President Bush was able to cross off the 10th and final item on his
administration's bucket list." So devoid of credibility and influence is Bush today that the bailout package seemed to move forward in spite of, rather
because of, his support. So, yes, as a country we've slowed to a crawl in the great global race. But we're still lapping everyone else.
We've got time.
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Heg Sustainable – AT: Iraq
Foreign policy failures don’t undermine hegemony – US Heg is sustainable even with Iraq
Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Senior Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund, 2007 [Robert, “End of
Dreams, Return of History”, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html#n10, August/September]
By the same token, foreign policy failures do not necessarily undermine predominance. Some have suggested
that failure in Iraq would mean the end of predominance and unipolarity . But a superpower can lose a war — in
Vietnam or in Iraq — without ceasing to be a superpower if the fundamental international conditions continue to support its predominance. So long as
the United States remains at the center of the international economy and the predominant military
power, so long as the American public continues to support American predominance as it has
consistently for six decades, and so long as potential challengers inspire more fear than sympathy
among their neighbors, the structure of the international system should remain as the Chinese describe it:
one superpower and many great powers.
Iraq doesn’t show decline – any other country would fail. Vietnam also proves
But the example of Iraq exhibits a balance of power dynamic between states and non-state insurgents, not
one between several different states. There is no reason to believe that China, Russia, India, or the
European Union would perform any better if faced with the challenges that the US military confronts in Iraq. Some scholars argue
that Iraq demonstrates new information about the state versus non-state balance . They contend that
counterinsurgency campaigns have become much more difficult to execute than what used to be the case. But if
this is so, then it applies to all the great powers, not just the United States. According to numerous recent studies conducted by the US
military and independent scholars, this argument is not correct. Insurgency has always been difficult to thwart. Once an
insurgency takes root, governments rarely prevail. When they do—as in the case of Britain in South Africa at the turn of the last century
and more recently, Russia in Chechnya—it is usually the result of deploying very large military forces willing to use ferocious violence on a mass scale
against innocent civilians. With a comparatively small force in a large and populous country, the United
States’ inability to foster
stability in Iraq is tragic, but not surprising. The bottom line is that the world did not suddenly become
multipolar when the United States’ counterinsurgency in Vietnam failed. And simply because high-technology weaponry
has not altered the centuries-old power balance between governments and armed insurgents, it
does not necessarily follow that unipolarity is about to end.
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Heg Sustainable – Structural Superiority
U.S. Hegemony is sustainable – The U.S. is dominant in every single sector

Kreft, Senior Policy Advisor at CDU, ’09 (Heinrich Kreft, senior foreign policy advisor to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the german bundestag,
The World Today, February 2009, p. 11)
During the presidential election campaign, both Barack Obama and his Republican opponent John McCain expressed the view that the
United States was and ought to remain the guarantor of international stability and the
indispensable stabilising power. Against the backdrop of the present financial and economic crisis
and rekindled discussion about the decline of US power, it is easy to overlook the fact that
America is structurally superior to all other countries and will remain so for the foreseeable
future. THE GEOGRAPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE UNITED States, its material resources
and human capital, its military strength and economic competitiveness as well as its liberal
political and economic traditions, are the ingredients of superiority. It has the capacity to heal its own wounds like
no other country. STRENGTHS The US not only possesses large deposits of natural resources and vast
areas of productive farmland, but also enjoys favourable medium- and long-term demographic
trends. Thanks to immigration and a high birth rate, it has a young population compared to
Europe, Japan, Russia as well as China. This makes the burden of providing for an ageing population far less onerous. In spite of
the present crisis, the economy, which accounts for more than a quarter of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), is essentially
vibrant. Over the past twenty five years, its growth has been significantly higher than Europe's and
Japan's; the economy is adaptable and more innovative than any other. It is the most competitive
globally, with particular strengths in crucial strategic areas such as nanotechnology and
bioengineering. The US has the best universities and research institutes and trains more engineers in relation to its
population than any other major economy. It invests 2.6 percent of its GDP in higher education, compared with 1.2 percent in Europe and 1.1 percent in
Japan. President
Barack Obama's plan for more educational investment aims to maintain this
advantage also against China, which is increasing its higher education investments. In the military
domain too, no other country comes close to matching the capability of the US to project its power
globally. America accounts for almost half of global military spending, six times more than China,
its only potential rival. Current defence spending, however, at 4.2 percent of GDP, is still far below the double-digit Cold War peak. Even if the
cost of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan runs at an annual figure of $125 billion, this is less than one per cent of GDP and hence considerably lower than
the cost of the Vietnam war. In contrast to the 'hard power' of military strength, Iraq and the Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib problems have severely
dented the image and thereby diminished its 'soft power'. Nevertheless ,
the structural components of soft power remain
intact, from US mass culture - the dominance of American global communications such as the
internet and television - to the unfailing appeal of its universities.
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Heg Sustainable – A/T: Obama
The Obama administration is sticking to Bush’s foreign policy despite media claims
Kagan, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ’09 (Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 9-07, “Obama’s Foreign Policy” Special to the Washington Post,
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2009/03/09/20090309WP-kagan0309.html)
President Obama's foreign policy team has been working hard to present its policies to the world
as constituting a radical break from the Bush years. In the broadest sense, this has been absurdly easy: Obama had the world
at hello. When it comes to actual policies, however, selling the pretense of radical change has required
some sleight of hand - and a helpful press corps. Thus The New York Times reports a dramatic "shift" in
China policy to "rigorous and persistent engagement," as if the previous two administrations had
been doing something else for the past decade and a half. Another Times headline trumpeted a new "softer tone on North
Korea," based on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's suggestion that the United States would have a "great openness to working with" Pyongyang - as soon
as it agrees to "verifiable and complete dismantling and denuclearization." Startling. The media have also reported a dramatic
shift in the Obama administration's approach to conducting the Activity Formerly Known as the
War on Terror. "Bush's War' on Terror Comes to Sudden End," The Post announced on Jan. 23, and subsequent stories have
proclaimed a transformation from "hard power" to "soft power," from military action to
diplomacy - even as the Obama administration sends 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, significantly
expands Predator drone attacks in Pakistan and agrees to a timetable for drawing down troops in
Iraq scarcely distinguishable from what a third Bush administration (with the same defense secretary) might have
ordered. So, too, the administration's insistence on linking proposed missile defense installations in
Europe to the "threat" posed by Iran, or its offer to negotiate Russia's acquiescence to this plan
and even to share missile defense technology. All this is widely celebrated as new. But Defense
Secretary Robert Gates began these negotiations with Moscow more than a year ago. On Iran, the
emphasis on carrots, in the form of a global political and economic embrace if Tehran stops pursuing nuclear weapons, and sticks, in the
form of international sanctions and isolation if it doesn't, is not exactly novel. Add to this the administration's justifiable
hesitancy, campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, to jump into direct, high-level negotiations but to
focus instead on mid-level contacts or multilateral meetings on other subjects such as Afghanistan
and Iraq, and it's no surprise if Iranian officials wonder what's the big deal. This is all to the good.
So far, President Obama has made generally sound decisions on Afghanistan, Iraq, missile defense
and Iran. Along with the language of unclenched fists and reset buttons, the basic goals and
premises of U.S. policy have not shifted. If the world views this as a revolution, so much the better.
Whatever works. Yet there is another area where the administration claims to depart from the Bush legacy but really hasn't, and I wish that it
would. That is the issue of democracy and human rights. Ever since Clinton's confirmation hearing, where she talked about three D's - defense, diplomacy
and development - but not a fourth - democracy - the press has made much of this allegedly sharp departure from the Bush administration's "freedom
agenda."
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Heg Sustainable – AT: Multipolarity Inevitable
Multipolarity is impossible to predict

Perceptions of rapid polarity shifts of this sort are not unusual. In the early 1960s, only a decade after analysts had
developed the notion of bipolarity, scholars were already proclaiming the return of multipolarity as postwar recoveries in Europe and Japan took off. After
the fall of Saigon in 1975, they again announced the advent of multipolarity. The most influential scholarly book on international relations of the past
generation, Kenneth N. Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, was written in part to dispel these flighty views and show that bipolarity still endured. If one
looks past the headlines to the deep material structure of the world, Waltz argued, one will see that bipolarity is still the order of the day. Yet in the early
1990s, Waltz himself proclaimed that the return of multipolarity was around the corner. Such perceived polarity shifts are usually accompanied by decline
scares—concern that as other powers rise, the United States will lose its competitive edge in foreign relations. The current decline scare is the fourth since
1945—the first three occurred during the 1950s (Sputnik), the 1970s (Vietnam and stagflation), and the 1980s (the
Soviet threat and Japan as a potential challenger). In all of these cases, real changes were occurring that suggested a
redistribution of power. But in each case, analysts’ responses to those changes seem to have been
overblown. Multipolarity—an international system marked by three or more roughly equally matched major powers—did not return
in the 1960s, 1970s, or early 1990s, and each decline scare ended with the United States’ position of primacy
arguably strengthened. It is impossible to know for sure whether or not the scare is for real this time—
shifts in the distribution of power are notoriously hard to forecast. Barring geopolitical upheavals on the scale of
Soviet collapse, the inter-state scales of power tend to change slowly. The trick is to determine when subtle quantitative shifts will lead
to a major qualitative transformation of the basic structure of the international system. Fortunately, there are some simple rules of power
analysis that can help prevent wild fluctuations in response to current events. Unfortunately,
arguments for multipolarity’s rapid return usually run afoul of them.
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Heg Sustainable – AT: Multipolarity Inevitable
Predictions of hegemonic decline and multipolarity are flawed

Wohlforth, 07 – Olin Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale (William, “Unipolar Stability” Harvard International Review, Spring 07
http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1611/1/)
The better the

The larger problem with conflating power-as-resources with power-as-influence is that it leads to a constant shifting of the goalposts.
United States becomes at acquiring resources, the greater the array of global problems it is
expected to be able to resolve, and the greater the apparent gap between its material capabilities
and the ends it can achieve. The result is an endless raising of the bar for what it takes to be a
unipolar power. Samuel Huntington defined a unipolar state as one able “effectively to resolve all
important international issues alone, and no combination of other states would have the power to
prevent it from doing so.” This is an extraordinary standard that essentially conflates unipolarity with universal empire. Great
European powers did not lose great power status when they failed to have their way, in, for example, the
Balkans in the nineteenth century. In turn, the United States did not cease to be a superpower when it failed to
overthrow Fidel Castro in the 1960s. The fact that Washington cannot prevent Hugo Chavez from thumbing his nose at US power is
interesting and perhaps even important, but it does not have bearing on the polarity of the international system. Defining power as the
ability to solve whatever global problem is currently in the headlines virtually guarantees highly
volatile prognostications about polarity. This sort of headline chasing led to talk of “empire” in 2002 and 2003, just as it feeds
today’s multipolar mania. Assessing active attempts by the United States to employ its power capabilities
may well be the most misleading way to think about power. This approach inevitably leads to a
selection bias against evidence of the indirect, “structural” effects of US power that are not
dependent upon active management. Many effects that can be attributed to the unipolar
distribution of power are developments that never occur: counter-balancing coalitions, Cold War-
scale arms races, hegemonic rivalry for dominance, security dilemmas among Asian powers, and
decisions by Japan and others to nuclearize. Clearly, assessing unipolarity’s potential effects involves weighing such non-events
against the more salient examples in which active attempts to use power resources are stymied. But the selection bias goes much further . Not only
are non-events downplayed in comparison to salient events that appear to demonstrate the
powerlessness of the United States, but patterns of events that do go its way are often missed.
Consider, for example, how often Washington’s failure to have its way in the United Nations is cited as
compared to its experience in the IMF. And, even in the United Nations, a focus on highly contested issues, such as the attempt at a second resolution
authorizing the invasion of Iraq, fails to note how the institution’s entire agenda has shifted to address concerns,
such as terrorism, that are particularly important to the United States.
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Heg Good 67/311
Heg Sustainable – AT: Transition Now Better
Arguments about transitioning early and showing restraint now are wrong – the US would never
do it, and it shouldn’t anyways. Best to maximize power’s benefits while we have it.
Schweller 2K1
(Randall Assoc. Professor Political Science at Ohio State, “The Problem of International Order Revisted”, International Security, Summer, p. lexis)
First, although
hegemonic decline may be inevitable, it is not self-evident that a policy of strategic
restraint better serves the hegemon's longrun interests than simply taking advantage of its power
position to grab immediate gains. Indeed there is no a priori reason to conclude that instant postwar benefits (e.g., increases in the size of
the new hegemon's territorial boundaries, spheres of influence, colonial possessions, etc.) will not continue to accrue significant future gains and thereby
better serve to arrest the pace of hegemonic decline than Ikenberry's alternative of a constitutional peace settlement. Because one can make an equally
impressive logical case to support either position, theoretical arguments alone will not tell us whether the choice to transform is more likely to benefit the
hegemon over the long run than is the decision to dominate. It is ultimately an empirical question. In
practice, there has been a strong
relationship between the growth in power of a state and its desire to extend its territorial control,
political influence, and domination of the international economy.[25] Great powers have tended to
expand when they can. They have done so not necessarily to satisfy an innate lust for power, prestige, and glory—though history is
replete with such cases—but rather because anarchy compels states to enhance their security and influence over
others and their environment whenever it is possible and pragmatic for them to do SO.[26] Hegemonic postwar
junctures are precisely when great powers, especially the leading state, can be expected to expand,
not bind, their power. Because nature and politics abhor a vacuum, the victors will move quickly
to fill the political vacuums left behind by the defeated great powers. This is predictable behavior because, when presented with such
an extraordinary opportunity to expand the state's territory and influence, political leaders “can be said to act under external compulsion rather than in
accordance with their preferences”:[27] That is, their actions are driven by irresistible temptation. Second,
even if decisionmakers
believe that hegemonic decline is inevitable, there are plenty of reasons why they would not and
should not act on that belief. First, leaders have few if any domestic incentives to abandon policies
of autonomy and unilateralism in favor of multilateralism and self-restraint. The incentive
structure of elites, even foreign policy ones, is primarily a function of domestic, not international,
politics. No matter how much internationalists may champion multilateral solutions, elected
officials must answer to a domestic audience, and unelected bureaucrats must serve and promote the autonomy and interests of the
bureaucratic organization to which they belong. Second, Ikenberry's claim rests on an unrealistic assumption about
the time horizons of democratic leaders. Even if we concede the point that the creation of a
constitutional order is a wise long-term investment for the new hegemonic state, history records
few decisionmakers who acted in such a farsighted manner. This is particularly true for leaders of
democratic states, because the primary goal for most elected officials is to ensure reelection. Why, then, should we expect democratically elected
policymakers of a newly hegemonic state to forgo immediate gains for long-run payoffs that may or may not be reaped decades later—long after they have
left office? Finally,
the deliberate choice to restrain the exercise of power now because of the
possibility (but not certainty) of exerting relatively less power later is like committing suicide for
fear of death. The key question for postwar leaders is not whether but when decline will come and
how much deterioration can be expected. Had American policymakers, for example, been persuaded by the chorus of scholars in the
1970s to late 1980s proclaiming that U.S. power was in terminal decline, the Cold War might have continued for decades longer; and it surely would noth
ave ended in total victory for the West. Thankfully, instead of constraining American power and preparing for inevitable decline, the Reagan administration
began ramping up U.S. power capabilities in the 1980s, arresting America's relative decline through bold policy choices.[28] Consequently, as Ikenberry
himself acknowledges, “American power in the 1990s is without historical precedent” (p. 270).It
is worth pointing out that even in
the late 1980s, few if any foreign policy experts forecasted America's current supremacy in a
unipolar world. This predictive failure, however, is not proof of the impoverishment of international relations theories, as many have claimed.[29]
The (painful for some) truth is that the future power position of the United States or any other country is
simply beyond prediction. This is because the power trajectories of nations, especially powerful
ones, are not structurally determined; they are the result of wise or imprudent policy choices.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 68/311
Heg Sustainable – AT: Transition Now Better
Transition would be slow – reigning in the US would spread instability.
Kupchan 2K2
(Charles, Professor of International Relations @ Georgetown, The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, lexis)
America’s diminishing internationalism is not the product of political decay. Nor does it mark the return of the dark and illusory brand of isolationism that so
sorely misguided the nation in the past. It is the logical consequence of the times, of America’s location, and of a strategic environment in which terror
attacks against the homeland, not hegemonic wars in Europe or Asia, represent the most immediate threat to the country’s well-being. The nation’s politics
are in the process of catching up with geopolitical realities.
At the same time, a
waning internationalism does have the potential to turn into a dangerous
isolationism. Especially because of the natural security afforded by America’s location, the allure
of preserving that security by pulling back from commitments that may compromise it, and the
isolationist strains that have influenced U.S. foreign policy since the founding of the republic, a reduction of the country’s global role does have the potential
to go too far. A
reining in of America’s overseas commitments is one thing. It is inevitable and can be
done gradually and with adequate preparation so as to minimize the attendant risks. An American
withdrawal from global affairs is another matter altogether. It would have dire consequences pre-
cisely because global stability is at present so dependent on American power and purpose. [P. 65]
And, Drawing out early leads to massive instability in the gulf and the Balkans
Kupchan 2K2
(Charles, Professor of International Relations @ Georgetown, The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, lexis)
If America’s politics soon come to rein in its foreign policy; the United States might well bow out
before others are prepared to fill the void. With no one around to mind the store, incremental
threats of the sort that recently emerged in the Middle East and the Balkans would go unchecked.
No other country has the combination of military capability and political clout needed to put together a campaign of the size that drove Iraqi troops from
Kuwait or the Yugoslav army from Kosovo. Had
the United States chosen not to contain Saddam Hussein in the
early i99os, Iraq today could well be in control of not just Kuwait, but also of Saudi Arabia and its
massive oil reserves. And the Balkan Peninsula could be in turmoil, doing irreversible damage to
southeastern Europe and calling into question the relevance and legitimacy of NATO and the EU.
[P. 205-206]
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Heg Good 69/311
Heg Sustainable – AT: Realism
The unipolar system does not follow realist predictions. We must look to other theories
William Wohlforth, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. International
Security, Summer 19 99. "The Stability of a Unipolar World."
Today's distribution of power is unprecedented, however, and power-centric theories naturally

expect politics among nations to be different than in past systems. In contrast to the past, the
existing distribution of capabilities generates incentives for cooperation. The absence of hegemonic
rivalry, security competition, and balancing is not necessarily the result of ideational or
institutional change. This is not to assert that realism provides the best explanation for the
absence of security and prestige competition. Rather, the conclusion is that it offers an explanation
that may compete with or complement those of other theoretical traditions. As a result, evaluating
the merits of contending theories for understanding the international politics of unipolarity
presents greater empirical challenges than many scholars have acknowledged.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 70/311
Heg Sustainable – AT: Decline Inevitable
Turn – It’s IMPOSSIBLE to predict when America will collapse and even if Hegemonic decline is
inevitable withdrawing from the international system prematurely will create a global power
vacuum and Great Power Wars
Schweller, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University, ’01 (Randall Schweller, He is currently a member of the editorial board
of International Security, In 1993, he received a John M. Olin Post-Doctoral Fellowship in National Security at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard
University, “The Problem of International Order Revisited”, International Security,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v026/26.1schweller.html)
First, although hegemonic decline may be inevitable, it is not self-evident that a policy of strategic restraint better serves the hegemon's long- run interests
than simply taking advantage of its power position to grab immediate gains. Indeed there is no a priori reason to conclude that instant post-war benefits (e.g.,
increases in the size of the new hegemon's territorial boundaries, spheres of influence, colonial possessions, etc.) will not continue to accrue significant
future gains and thereby better serve to arrest the pace of hegemonic decline than Ikenberry's alternative of a constitutional peace settlement. [End Page 173]
Because one can make an equally impressive logical case to support either position, theoretical arguments alone will not tell us whether the choice to
transform is more likely to benefit the hegemon over the long run than is he decision to dominate. It is ultimately an empirical question. In practice, there
has been a strong relationship between the growth in power of a state and its desire to extend its territorial control, political influence, and domination of the
international economy. 25 Great powers have tended to expand when they can. They have done so not necessarily
to satisfy an innate lust for power, prestige, and glory--though history is replete with such cases--but rather because anarchy compels
states to enhance their security and influence over others and their environment whenever it is possible and
pragmatic for them to do so. 26 Hegemonic postwar junctures are precisely when great powers,
especially the leading state, can be expected to expand, not bind, their power. Because nature and
politics abhor a vacuum, the victors will move quickly to fill the political vacuums left behind by
the defeated great powers. This is predictable behavior because, when presented with such an extraordinary
opportunity to expand the state's territory and influence, political leaders "can be said to act
under external compulsion rather than in accordance with their preferences ": 27 That is, their actions are
driven by irresistible temptation. Second, even if decisionmakers believe that hegemonic decline is inevitable,
there are plenty of reasons why they would not and should not act on that belief. First, leaders
have few if any domestic incentives to abandon policies of autonomy and unilateralism in favor of
multilateralism and self-restraint. The incentive structure of elites, even foreign policy ones, is primarily a function of domestic, not
international, politics. No matter how much internationalists may champion multilateral solutions, elected officials must answer to a domestic audience, and
unelected bureaucrats must serve and promote the autonomy and interests of the bureaucratic organization to which they belong. Second, Ikenberry's claim
rests on an unrealistic assumption about the time horizons of democratic leaders. Even if we concede the point that the creation of a constitutional order is a
wise long-term investment for the new hegemonic [End Page 174] state, history records few decisionmakers who acted in such a farsighted manner. This is
particularly true for leaders of democratic states, because the primary goal for most elected officials is to ensure reelection. Why, then, should we expect
democratically elected policymakers of a newly hegemonic state to forgo immediate gains for long-run payoffs that may or may not be reaped decades
later--long after they have left office? Finally, the
deliberate choice to restrain the exercise of power now because of
the possibility (but not certainty) of exerting relatively less power later is like committing suicide for fear
of death. The key question for postwar leaders is not whether but when decline will come and how
much deterioration can be expected. Had American policymakers, for example, been persuaded by
the chorus of scholars in the 1970s to late 1980s proclaiming that U.S. power was in terminal decline, the Cold War
might have continued for decades longer; and it surely would not have ended in total victory for
the West. Thankfully, instead of constraining American power and preparing for inevitable decline, the
Reagan administration began ramping up U.S. power capabilities in the 1980s, arresting
America's relative decline through bold policy choices. 28 Consequently, as Ikenberry himself acknowledges, "American
power in the 1990s is without historical precedent" (p. 270). It is worth pointing out that even in the late 1980s, few if any foreign policy experts forecasted
America's current supremacy in a unipolar world. This predictive failure, however, is not proof of the impoverishment of international relations theories, as
many have claimed. 29 The (painful for some) truth is that the future power position of the United States or any other country is simply beyond prediction.
This is because the power trajectories of nations, especially powerful ones, are not structurally determined; they are the result of wise or imprudent policy
choices. Hence it
is impossible to tell whether the United States has currently reached its power zenith,
or is only halfway there, or is anywhere in between. 30 What can be said is that if current U.S.
policymakers [End Page 175] act on the belief that Pax Americana is an artificial moment, they run the
risk of achieving a foolish, self-fulfilling prophecy. More to the matters at hand, after fifty-six
years of American leadership of the free world and still counting, it would have been a terrible
mistake for U.S. policymakers to have acted on this assumption of inevitable decline in 1945, in
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 71/311
accordance with Ikenberry's prescription
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 72/311
Heg Sustainable - AT: Isolationism Good
Turn - U.S. isolationism causes world war

Mandelbaum, Professor of American Foreign Policy at JHU, ’06
(Michael Mandlebaum, Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University “THE CASE FOR GOLIAATH: HOW AMERICA ACTS AS
THE WORLD’S GOVERNMENT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY”, 2006, pp. 186-7)
If public pressure within the United States were to compel the American government to withdraw most or all of the military
forces stationed beyond North America and to do far less than it had become accustomed to doing to discourage the spread of
nuclear weapons, to cope with the consequences of fiscal crises outside its borders, and to help keep global markets open to trade, what impact
would this have on the rest of the world? The last occasion on which the United States placed itself on
the periphery rather than at the center of international affairs, the period between the two world wars,
was not a happy one. Indeed, the antecedents of the American twenty- first-century role as the
world's government lie in the fear, after World War II, that in the absence of an expansive American
international presence the world would experience repetitions of the two global disasters of the
1930s and the I940s-the Great Depression and World War II.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 73/311
AT: Counterbalancing
Others aren’t counterbalancing – they are siding with US to prevent the rise of other powers
Kagan 08 senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Robert, Why we need the 800-pound gorilla, National Post July 25,
2008)
As it happens, American
predominance is unlikely to fade anytime soon, largely because much of the world
does not really want it to. Despite the opinion polls, America's relations with both old and new allies have actually strengthened in recent
years. China and Russia have been working together to balance against the United States. But there are obstacles
to a lasting strategic alliance between the two powers. They have entered into an arms alliance, if not a formal strategic
alliance, with Russia selling billions of dollars' worth of advanced military technology and weaponry to the Chinese for use against the United States in any
conflict that may arise. They have strengthened the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an increasingly military as well as political institution. Yet they
also remain traditional rivals. Russians continue to fear that the massive and productive Chinese
population will quietly overrun Russia's sparsely populated Siberian and far eastern territory .
China's manufacturing economy, meanwhile, is more dependent on the American market than is
the oil-exporting Russia. Another problem for China and Russia is that the world's other great powers -- the democratic powers of
Europe, Japan, and India--are drawing closer to the United States geopolitically. The most striking change has occurred in
India, a former ally of Moscow that today sees good relations with the United States as essential to achieving its broader strategic
and economic goals. Japanese leaders came to a similar conclusion a decade ago. In the mid-1990s, the Japanese-American alliance was in
danger of eroding. But since 1997, the strategic relationship between the two countries has grown stronger, partly because of Japan's escalating
concerns about China and North Korea, and partly as a means of enhancing Japan's own position in East Asia and the world. In Europe there is also an
unmistakable trend toward closer strategic relations with the United States. A few years ago, Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac flirted with drawing
closer to Russia as a way of counterbalancing American power. But now France, Germany, and the rest of Europe have been moving in the other direction.
This is not out of renewed affection for the United States. It is a response to changing international circumstances and to lessons learned from the past. The
more pro-American foreign policies of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are not only a matter of their unique personalities but also reflect a reassessment
of French, German and European interests. Close but not uncritical
relations with the United States, they believe, give a
boost to European power and influence that Europe cannot achieve on its own. "If you asked me which of the
[two] countries France will have closer relations with-- the United States or Russia," French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said, " 'the U.S.' would be my
answer … The friendship between Europe and the United States is a cornerstone of world stability, period." Even
in the Middle East, where
anti-Americanism runs hottest, the strategic balance has not shifted very much. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco
continue to work closely with the United States, despite somewhat greater pressure emanating from Washington for political
reform of these autocracies. So, too, do the nations of the Persian Gulf organized in the Gulf Cooperation Council, who are worried about Iran. Libya has
moved from being squarely in the anti-American camp to a more ambiguous posture. Lebanon remains a battleground but is arguably closer to the United
States today than it was when more fully under Syria's thumb a few years ago. Iraq has shifted from implacable anti-Americanism under Saddam Hussein to
dependence on the United States. This favourable strategic balance could shift suddenly and dramatically. If Iran obtains a nuclear weapon and the means to
deliver it, that will transform the strategic equation in the region. In the meantime, however, like Russia and China, Iran itself faces
some
regional balancing. An alliance of Sunni states worries about the expanding Iranian and Shiite influence in the Middle East. Along with Israel,
and backed by the American superpower, this anti-Iranian coalition seems stronger than any anti-American
coalition Iran has been able to assemble. This lack of fundamental realignment in the Middle East contrasts sharply with the major
strategic setbacks the United States suffered during the Cold War. In the 1950s and 1960s, the pan-Arab nationalist movement swept across the region and
opened the door to unprecedented Soviet involvement, including a quasi-alliance between Moscow and the Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser, as well as Syria.
In 1979, a key pillar of the American strategic position in the region toppled when the pro-American shah of Iran was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini's
virulently anti-American revolution. That led to a fundamental shift in the strategic balance in the region from which the United States is still suffering.
Nothing similar has yet occurred as a result of the Iraq War. Meanwhile, the
number of overseas American military bases
continues to grow in the Middle East and elsewhere. Since September 11, 2001, the United States has built or expanded bases
in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia; in Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Poland and Romania in Europe; as well as
in the Philippines, Djibouti, Oman, Qatar and of course, Iraq. Chinese
strategists believe the present international
configuration is likely to endure for some time, and they are probably right. So long as the United States
remains at the center of the international economy, the predominant military power, and the
leading apostle of the world's most popular political philosophy; so long as the American public
continues to support American predominance, as it has consistently for six decades; and so long as
potential challengers inspire more fear than sympathy among their neighbours, the structure of
the international system should remain as it has been, with one superpower and several great
powers.
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Heg Good 74/311
Liberal internationalism protects the US from counterbalancing

Colin Dueck, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 2004, “New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy: A
Review Essay” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v028/28.4dueck.html#authbio
New developments in the literature on American grand strategy represent an important and intriguing challenge to structural realism. A decade
ago,
structural realists predicted that the United States would soon be counterbalanced by other major
powers. New research on the subject suggests that such great power counterbalancing is far from
inevitable, and that the United States may be able to prevent this contingency through the exercise
of a prudent grand strategy. In particular, a number of recent authors suggest that by following a strategy of liberal
internationalism, the United States will avoid becoming the target of counterbalancing coalitions .
Yet the question still remains as to whether this approach will actually render the United States immune to the fate of previous hegemons. If anything, the
liberal internationalist tradition seems in the past to have encouraged a persistent gap between commitments and capabilities in U.S. foreign policy.
Moreover, the new literature fails, in most cases, to explain patterns of adjustment in American grand strategy in a theoretically informed manner. Future
research will need to integrate policy, history, and theory—including causal variables at both the domestic and international level—to provide a more
complete, convincing, and predictive model of changes in American grand strategy.
No one is going to balance against US hegemony. They want the goodies.

Clifford Kupchan, Vice President of the Nixon Center, Fall, 2004 (Real Democratik. The National Interest. Lexis | SWON)
Unipolarity is the primary reason that other great powers have not and will not soon balance against
America's preponderant power. Formal balancing can take two forms: organized anti-U.S. alliances or internal military buildups to counter America. Balance
of power theory predicts that preponderant power should give rise to opposing power, because preponderance makes lesser powers feel threatened. However,
less powerful states should be expected to balance only when they believe that doing so can be effective. The
current unipolar structure
strongly deters balancing, primarily because no coalition of states could expect to rival America's
dominance. In effect, the balance of power has been suspended. The gap between the United States and other states is
just too big for competition to be fruitful. Balancing is suspended for several other reasons as well. The U.S.-dominated order
provides goods to other nations which they value. America's military presence in Asia, especially in Japan, plays the
key role in sustaining regional stability, and the United States is the central actor in maintaining an
open international trading system. States are reluctant to balance against an order that provides
them significant returns. Additionally, America's geographic position as an offshore power reduces the
perceived threat by regional powers, most of which lie in Eurasia. Finally, all regional powers face constraints on
balancing from within their region; were China, for example, to increase its power to balance against the United States, India would feel
threatened and respond. For all these reasons, but especially because of America's overwhelming material predominance, American
unipolarity will last for at least the next several decades and is the structure within which U.S. foreign policy will be
formed.
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Heg Good 75/311
Counter balancing not happening.

Kagan 2006 (Robert, Alexander Hamilton Fellow at American Univ., The Washington Post, “Still the Colossus”, January 15)
The much-anticipated global effort to balance against American hegemony -- which the realists
have been anticipating for more than 15 years now -- has simply not occurred . On the contrary, in Europe the
idea has all but vanished. European Union defense budgets continue their steady decline, and even the
project of creating a common foreign and defense policy has slowed if not stalled. Both trends are
primarily the result of internal European politics. But if they really feared American power,
Europeans would be taking more urgent steps to strengthen the European Union's hand to check
it. Nor are Europeans refusing to cooperate, even with an administration they allegedly despise. Western Europe will not be a
strategic partner as it was during the Cold War, because Western Europeans no longer feel threatened and therefore do not seek American protection.
Nevertheless, the current trend is toward closer cooperation. Germany's new government, while still dissenting from U.S. policy
in Iraq, is working hard and ostentatiously to improve relations. It is bending over backward to show support for the mission in Afghanistan, most notably by
continuing to supply a small but, in German terms, meaningful number of troops. It even trumpets its willingness to train Iraqi soldiers. Chancellor Angela
Merkel promises to work closely with Washington on the question of the China arms embargo, indicating agreement with the American view that China is a
potential strategic concern. For Eastern and Central Europe, the growing threat is Russia, not America, and the big question remains what it was in the
1990s: Who will be invited to join NATO? In East Asia, meanwhile, U.S.
relations with Japan grow ever closer as the
Japanese become increasingly concerned about China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. China's (and
Malaysia's) attempt to exclude Australia from a prominent regional role at the recent East Asian summit has reinforced Sydney's desire for closer ties. Only
in South Korea does hostility to the United States remain high. This is mostly the product of the new democracy's understandable historical resentments and
desire for greater independence. But even so, when I attended a conference in Seoul recently, the
question posed to my panel by the
South Korean organizers was: "How will the United States solve the problem of North Korea's
nuclear weapons?" The truth is, America retains enormous advantages in the international arena.
Its liberal, democratic ideology remains appealing in a world that is more democratic than ever.
Its potent economy remains the driving wheel of the international economy. Compared with these
powerful forces, the unpopularity of recent actions will prove ephemeral, just as it did after the nadir of American
Cold War popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Soft power prevents balaninng – keeps states from forming coalitions which remedies their
weaknesses
Joseph Nye, Distinguished Professor at Harvard and Former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, “Recovering American Leadership,” Survival,
March 2008
At the moment, the United States is unlikely to face a challenge to its pre-eminence from other states
unless it acts so arrogantly that it helps the others to overcome their incompatibilities and work
together. The greater challenge for the United States will be to learn how to work with other countries to better
control the non-state actors that will increasingly share the stage with nation-states. How to control the bottom chessboard in a three-
dimensional game and how to make hard and soft power reinforce each other are the key foreign policy
challenges for American leadership.
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Heg Good 76/311
American Military Dominance is sustainable in the squo – No Counter Balancing

Nye, Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard, ’08 (Joseph S. Nye, PhD in political science from Harvard. He has served
as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Under Secretary of State for
Security Assistance, Science and Technology, Survival, vol. 50 no. 1, March 2008, pp. 55–68)
Because of its leading edge in the information revolution and its past investment in traditional
power resources, the United States will likely remain the world's single most powerful country in
military, economic and so-power terms well into the twenty-first century. While potential coalitions
to check American power could be created, countries like Russia, China and India have differing goals and
priorities, and it is unlikely that they would become from military allies unless the United States used its
hard, coercive power in an overbearing, unilateral manner that undermined its soft or attractive power. Because soft power is
particularly important in dealing with issues arising from the boom chessboard of transnational relations, America's resources in this area are increasingly
important. While polls show that American soft power has declined in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, they also show that the cause of the decline is
government policies, not American culture and values. This is important because policies can change relatively quickly, while culture and values change
more slowly. In the early s, American policies in Vietnam led to low ratings in polls, but the country regained much of its so power within a decade.
Americans cannot achieve all their international goals alone. For example, international financial stability is vital to the prosperity of Americans, but the
United States needs the cooperation of others to attain it. Likewise, global climate change will affect Americans' quality of life, but the United States cannot
manage the problem by itself. Last year China, which adds two new coal-fired generating plants each week, may have overtaken the United States as the
largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And in a world where borders are becoming more porous than ever to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to
terrorism, Washington must work with others and mobilize international coalitions to address these new security threats. Isolationism and unilateralism after
Iraq? The dramatically decreased cost of communication, the rise of transnational domains (including the Internet), and the 'democratization' of technology
that puts massive destructive power, once the sole preserve of governments, into the hands of groups and individuals all add new dimensions to global
politics. In the last century, men like Hitler, Stalin and Mao needed the power of the state to wreak great evil. Today, if transnational terrorists were to obtain
nuclear materials and use them to cause great destruction or great disruption of society, they could bring about enormous changes to the United States and
the world, though the direction of such change is difficult to predict. Faced with such a threat, a certain degree of unilateral action, such as the war in
Afghanistan, is justified if it produces global goods. Afer all, the British navy reduced the scourge of piracy well before international conventions were
signed in the middle of the nineteenth century. But isolationism or extreme unilateralism are not promising options for the world's largest state. In light of
these new circumstances, how will the only superpower guide its foreign policy aer the experience of the Iraq war? Will it provide global leadership or
conclude that the best course in world afairs is to remain uninvolved? Some
Americans are tempted to believe that the
United States could reduce its vulnerability if it withdrew its troops, curtailed its alliances and
followed a more isolationist foreign policy. But isolationism would not remove the vulnerability.
Even if Washington had a more inward-looking foreign policy, radical groups would resent the
power of the American economy that would still reach well beyond its shores.
Soft power solves counterbalancing.

Fakiolas, PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, currently working as a strategy and southeastern European affairs analyst
at ATEbank, and Fakiolas, PhD from IMEMO, Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences and is a special adviser on Russian and east European affairs for a
Greek business firm, 2007 Efstathios T. and Tassos E., “Pax Americana or Multilateralism? Reflecting on the United States’ Grand Strategic Vision of
Hegemony in the Wake of the 11 September Attacks”, Project Muse]
The other reason is because abusing preponderance might provoke counterbalancing. Instead, manipulating
primacy and hegemonic pretensions with prudence and sense of restraint is most effective in
mustering loyalty and sustaining international support. In essence, this is meant to imply that “balancing
behavior will be less likely if foreign elites hold positive images of the United States, share similar
outlooks on most global problems, and in general regard US preponderance as benevolent,
beneficial, and legitimate.”111 Besides the broader question of the power ability, it is herein that stands the Achilles heel of Bush’s
grandiose pursuit of Pax Americana. His vision of hegemony in the form of a Pax Americana triggers widespread opposition
due to the fact that it is portrayed as aggressive and colonial by other states’ policy makers and
public opinion. Obviously, he has devalued the fact that the effectiveness of grand strategy
“increasingly becomes a function of how well one is able to manipulate symbols to create or
reinforce images.”112 In other words, George W. Bush has drawn little attention to the need to articulate, deploy, and socialize great powers other
than Britain and Japan in a frame of reference compatible with their interests — that is, to inculcate in them US beliefs, values orientation, and vision in such
a way as to correspond with their national preferences.
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Theoretical arguments about inevitable decline are bunk – they are just a self-fulfilling prophecy –
we should still act to preserve US power
Schweller 01 Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University (Randall, The Problem of International Order Revisited International
Security 26.1)
First, although hegemonic decline may be inevitable, it is not self-evident that a policy of strategic
restraint better serves the hegemon's long-run interests than simply taking advantage of its power
position to grab immediate gains. Indeed there is no a priori reason to conclude that instant post-war benefits
(e.g., increases in the size of the new hegemon's territorial boundaries, spheres of influence, colonial possessions, etc.) will not continue to
accrue significant future gains and thereby better serve to arrest the pace of hegemonic decline than
Ikenberry's alternative of a constitutional peace settlement. [End Page 173] Because one can make an equally impressive logical case to support either
position, theoretical arguments alone will not tell us whether the choice to transform is more likely to
benefit the hegemon over the long run than is the decision to dominate. It is ultimately an
empirical question. In practice, there has been a strong relationship between the growth in power of a state and its desire to extend its territorial
control, political influence, and domination of the international economy. 25 Great powers have tended to expand when they
can. They have done so not necessarily to satisfy an innate lust for power, prestige, and glory--though history is replete with such cases--but rather
because anarchy compels states to enhance their security and influence over others and their environment whenever it is possible and pragmatic for them to
do so. 26 Hegemonic postwar junctures are precisely when great powers, especially the leading state, can be expected to expand, not bind, their power.
Because nature and politics abhor a vacuum, the victors will move quickly to fill the political vacuums left behind by the defeated great powers. This is
predictable behavior because, when presented with such an extraordinary opportunity to expand the state's territory and influence, political leaders "can be
said to act under external compulsion rather than in accordance with their preferences": 27 That is, their actions are driven by irresistible temptation. Second,
even if decisionmakers believe that hegemonic decline is inevitable, there are plenty of reasons
why they would not and should not act on that belief. First, leaders have few if any domestic
incentives to abandon policies of autonomy and unilateralism in favor of multilateralism and self-
restraint. The incentive structure of elites, even foreign policy ones, is primarily a function of domestic, not international, politics. No matter how much
internationalists may champion multilateral solutions, elected officials must answer to a domestic audience, and unelected bureaucrats must serve and
promote the autonomy and interests of the bureaucratic organization to which they belong. Second, Ikenberry's claim rests on an unrealistic assumption
about the time horizons of democratic leaders. Even if we concede the point that the creation of a constitutional order is a wise long-term investment for the
new hegemonic [End Page 174] state, history records few decisionmakers who acted in such a farsighted manner. This is particularly true for leaders of
democratic states, because the primary goal for most elected officials is to ensure reelection. Why, then, should we expect democratically elected
policymakers of a newly hegemonic state to forgo immediate gains for long-run payoffs that may or may not be reaped decades later--long after they have
left office? Finally, the deliberate choice to restrain the exercise of power now because of the possibility
(but not certainty) of exerting relatively less power later is like committing suicide for fear of
death. The key question for postwar leaders is not whether but when decline will come and how much deterioration can be expected. Had
American policymakers, for example, been persuaded by the chorus of scholars in the 1970s to late 1980s
proclaiming that U.S. power was in terminal decline, the Cold War might have continued for
decades longer; and it surely would noth ave ended in total victory for the West. Thankfully, instead of constraining American power and preparing
for inevitable decline, the Reagan administration began ramping up U.S. power capabilities in the 1980s, arresting America's relative decline through bold
policy choices. 28 Consequently, as Ikenberry himself acknowledges, "American power in the 1990s is without historical precedent" (p. 270). It is worth
pointing out that even in the late 1980s, few if any foreign policy experts forecasted America's current
supremacy in a unipolar world. This predictive failure, however, is not proof of the impoverishment of international relations theories, as
many have claimed. 29 The (painful for some) truth is that the future power position of the United States or any other
country is simply beyond prediction. This is because the power trajectories of nations, especially powerful
ones, are not structurally determined; they are the result of wise or imprudent policy choices. Hence
it is impossible to tell whether the United States has currently reached its power zenith, or is only
halfway there, or is anywhere in between. 30 What can be said is that if current U.S. policymakers
[End Page 175] act on the belief that Pax Americana is an artificial moment, they run the risk of
achieving a foolish, self-fulfilling prophecy. More to the matters at hand, after fifty-six years of American
leadership of the free world and still counting, it would have been a terrible mistake for U.S.
policymakers to have acted on this assumption of inevitable decline in 1945, in accordance with Ikenberry's
prescription
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The U.S.’s Innovation will keep the U.S. the hegemon for the 21st century.
AAU, Organization of universities that do research on current events, 2008
Association of American Universities, The Association of American Universities (AAU) is a nonprofit organization of 62 leading public and private research
universities in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1900 to advance the international standing of U.S. research universities, AAU today focuses on
issues that are important to research-intensive universities, such as funding for research, research policy issues, and graduate and undergraduate education,
march 2008, http://www.aau.edu/reports/SAAS_08.pdf
The next President will make decisions that determine our nation’s place in the 21st century. We
remain the world’s military and
economic superpower, yet at home and abroad we face economic and national security challenges
to our leadership with serious consequences for future generations of Americans. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Americans will judge
candidates on their ability to lead the nation in addressing these challenges. As each candidate considers the resources on
which his or her administration might draw for ideas and talent, few are as valuable as the people
and organizations that comprise America’s matrix of innovation. The elements of this matrix—
universities, businesses, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individual innovators
—are seeking and creating real solutions for the challenges we face. It is this innovation matrix—
decentralized, networked, cross-disciplinary, and sparked by the intellectual genius of Americans
and people from around the world—that can ensure America’s national and economic security
and world leadership in the 21st century. At the core of this great national innovation matrix is
our system of higher education and research. This system sets the standard for the world, in part
because of the autonomy and extraordinary diversity of its 4,000 institutions. Our colleges and
universities educate the men and women who, in turn, create the ideas that spark innovation. Among
these institutions, America’s research universities serve particularly as drivers of innovation
because they fully integrate research with education. With strong government support, these
institutions have made America the world’s leading incubator of innovators and innovation.
Alliances cannot counterbalance as they are not as strong as the members acting individually
Alliances are not structural. Because alliances are far less effective than states in producing and
deploying power internationally, most scholars follow Waltz in making a distinction between the distribution of
capabilities among states and the alliances states may form.46 A unipolar system is one in which a
counterbalance is impossible. When a counterbalance becomes possible, the system is not
unipolar. The point at which this structural shift can happen is determined in part by how
efficiently alliances can aggregate the power of individual states. Alliances aggregate power only to
the extent that they are reliably binding and permit the merging of armed forces, defense
industries, R&D infrastructures, and strategic decisionmaking. A glance at international history shows how difficult it
is to coordinate counterhegemonic alliances. States are tempted to free ride, pass the buck, or
bandwagon in search of favors from the aspiring hegemon. States have to worry about being
abandoned by alliance partners when the chips are down or being dragged into conflicts of others'
making.47 The aspiring hegemon, meanwhile, has only to make sure its domestic house is in order.
In short, a single state gets more bang for the buck than several states in an alliance. To the extent
that alliances are inefficient at pooling power, the sole pole obtains greater power per unit of
aggregate capabilities than any alliance that might take shape against it. Right away, the odds are
skewed in favor of the unipolar power.
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The U.S. hegemony is the highest in the world due to a superior military, economy, education, and
culture, there is no other country close to replacing the U.S. hegemony.
Walt, Professor of international affairs at Harvard, 2002, Stephen M Walt, Professor of international affairs at Harvard, 2002,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JIW/is_2_55/ai_88174226/
The end of the Cold War left the United States in a position of power unseen since the Roman
Empire. The U.S. economy produces about 25 percent of the world's goods and services; it is more
than twice as big as that of Japan, the world's number-two economic power. The United States
spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined, and because seven of those nine
countries are its close allies, the effective advantage is even larger. The United States is the world
leader in higher education and information technology, and its cultural shadow--in music, cinema,
television, and other arts--is enormous. America's position in the world is not perfect, perhaps, but
Americans could hardly ask for much more. (1) This position of primacy is partly due to good
fortune and especially to having been founded on a continent rich in resources yet far from other
major powers. But the United States is also number one because its leaders have deliberately
sought to achieve and maintain that position. During the nineteenth century the United States gradually expanded to become a
continental power, encouraged immigration and foreign investment, and sought to exclude other major powers from the Western Hemisphere. As the
Monroe Doctrine and the concept of Manifest Destiny symbolized, the guiding star of U.S. foreign policy was the goal of making the nation a hegemon in its
own neighborhood. (2)
Even if alliances have counterbalanced in the past, the position of the US, separate from Eurasia,
makes it invulnerable
The key, however, is that the

countercoalitions of the past-on which most of our empirical knowledge of
alliance politics is based-formed against centrally located land powers (France, Germany, and the Soviet Union)
that constituted relatively unambiguous security threats to their neighbors. Coordinating a
counterbalance against an offshore state that has already achieved unipolar status will be much
more difficult.48 Even a declining offshore unipolar state will have unusually wide opportunities to
play divide and rule. Any second-tier state seeking to counterbalance has to contend with the
existing pro-U.S. bandwagon. If things go poorly, the aspiring counterbalancer will have to
confront not just the capabilities of the unipolar state, but also those of its other great power allies.
All of the aspiring poles face a problem the United States does not: great power neighbors that
could become crucial U.S. allies the moment an unambiguous challenge to Washington's
preeminence emerges. In addition, in each region there are smaller "pivotal states" that make natural
U.S. allies against an aspiring regional power.49 Indeed, the United States' first move in any counterbalancing game of this sort
could be to try to promote such pivotal states to great power status, as it did with China against the Soviet Union in the latter days of the Cold War.
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No nation can effectively balance—even if multipolarity it inevitable, it is vastly long-term

Brighenti 7 Olivier, PhD. Candidate University of Geneva, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, “Power Maximization, US Grand
Strategy and the Unipolar International Structure,”
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/7/8/7/3/pages178731/p178731-2.php
Thus we are years away from any balancing coalition and even more remote from the emergence of
a new pole. Within the international relations scholarly community most of the debate on unipolarity has focused on the stability of the system, in
other words if a unipolar world configuration is peaceful or more prone to instability and war. 7 Realists have also paid attention to
the durability of a unipolar configuration, i.e. if unipolarity was only a “moment” in history, a
structural anomaly or if this type of configuration could be sustained at length. 8 Until the beginning of the new millennium, it
was widely believed that the unipolar world configuration would not last and that the balance
would be restored. Kenneth Waltz echoes this view: “Theory enables us to say that a new balance of power will
form but not to say how long it will take. National and international conditions determine that. Those who refer to the unipolar
moment are right. In our perspective, the new balance of power is emerging slowly, in historical perspectives it
will come in a blink of an eye.” 9 Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War and Krauthammer’s path-breaking article, 10 there is no sign
of a balancing tendency and we are still in a unipolar world order comprising one sole superpower. First of all, the unipolar structure of
world politics is not a temporary setback due to vanish only because international politics abhors
unbalanced power. It is an uncontested reality and no one can predict when the disrupted balance
will be restored.
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AT: Counterbalancing – China
China’s wont catch up – haters use flawed statistical analysis and crappy measures of economic
growth
When analysts forecast the coming of multipolarity, they often talk of how the rising BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) will alter the global
balance of power. If we carefully examine the numbers, what drives most of these projections is China. And if examined even more closely, we will
likely see that one indicator alone is being used to project China’s rise: the growth of its gross domestic
product (GDP). China’s global clout will certainly rise with the relative size of its economy. But economic size is only one indicator of power, and
it can be a misleading one. When a huge number of poor people are gathered together in one country,
they can create a large economy that is much less capable of generating power than the raw
numbers would suggest. After all, India is estimated to have had a much larger economy than the British Isles when it was colonized in the
nineteenth century. Studies of national power in the post-industrial age find that what matters most today is not
just economic size, but wealth and technological development. Indeed, even if China’s overall GDP
did come to equal that of the United States, its per-capita GDP would still be only one-quarter that of the
United States. Current projections of China’s economic rise may well be overstated. Iraq aside, what is most responsible
for the virtual shift to multipolarity is not a word but an acronym: PPP. PPP stands for the “purchasing power parity”
estimate of countries’ exchange rates—the size of their economies in dollar terms. Although the prices of
many manufactured products tend to be equalized by international trade, the price of labor is not, and therefore labor-intensive products and services tend to
be relatively cheap in poor counties. PPP corrects for this discontinuity by using prices for a locally selected basket of goods to adjust the exchange rate for
converting local currency into dollars. As University of Pennsylvania professor Avery Goldstein notes, “the World Bank’s decision in 1994 to shift to a PPP
estimate for China’s economy was crucial in propelling perceptions of that country’s imminent rise to great power status.” Economists universally agree
that, properly applied, this method provides better estimates of comparative living standards. But forecasts about China’s rise should
not be based on predictions of its living standards. They should discuss China’s presence as a great power in international
politics—its ability to use money to purchase goods and influence matters abroad. PPP clearly exaggerates this sort of power. No one knows how
much to discount the PPP numbers for the purposes of making comparisons of national power . What
is certain, economist Albert Keidel notes, is that one should not “use projections of national accounting
growth rates from a PPP base. This common practice seriously inflates estimates of China’s future economic
size—exaggerating the speed with which China’s economy will overtake that of the United States in
total size.” Projections must take into account the fact that growth will cause prices to converge with international norms, and thus the PPP to converge
with the market exchange rate. Using such a methodology, Keidel estimates that it will take until 2050 for China’s total economic size to equal the United
States. National power is a complex phenomenon. We all know that relying
on one simple indicator of power is not a good
idea. Yet research by political scientists, psychologists, and historians continues to demonstrate that
decisionmakers and analysts tend to break this basic rule. Projections of China’s rise are a case in
point. Even setting aside the manifold challenges that this country faces on the road to
superpowerdom—including a looming demographic crisis, a shaky financial system, and the
political challenges inherent in a capitalist country ruled by a communist party—extrapolating its
rise based on GDP and PPP estimates of its current size is a dubious analytical exercise.
China doesn’t threaten counterbalancing

Council on Foreign Relations 08 Michael Moran March 16, 2008. “China Reaps Benefits from our 5-Year War with Iraq”
http://www.cfr.org/publication/15765/china_reaps_benefits_from_our_5year_war_in_iraq.html
It is important to emphasize that Chinese

power has not taken the aggressive military form that simplistic
scaremongers like to stoke. China’s armed forces remain second-tier in quality, the report says,
primarily defensive in their posture. What’s more, Beijing’s military spending is still relatively low even
if the highest American estimate—$137 billion in 2007—is accepted. By comparison, the U.S.
spent $450 billion on defense in the same fiscal year, not including another $120 billion spent on
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Iraq and Afghanistan.
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AT: Counterbalancing – China/Russia
Russia and China won’t balance the US – they’ll balance each other out of fear
Summers 08 Former British Diplomat, Researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
(“Are China-Russia ties cooling off?” 10-25)
There is evidence too of Russian concerns both over the balance within the SCO and that Russia's
resource-rich east is being left too close to a rising China. Part of this jockeying for strategic influence is the very practical
issue of access to the region's rich energy and other natural resources, and Russia has sponsored an alternative central Asian
organisation which does not include China, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. If one of the purposes of the SCO for
Beijing is to enhance its strategic influence in central Asia, then this implicitly at least encroaches on an area that Moscow has traditionally seen as within its
sphere of influence. Shortly after the Georgian incident, Russian President Medvedev
said that Russia should have a
privileged sphere of influence in Asia, though it is not clear exactly where, nor what the Chinese response to that statement has been.
So any signs of a change in Russian policy towards its periphery do not only have the potential to
affect states on its European borders, but could apply in a similar way to its eastern periphery. The geopolitics
here are different: Nato does not impinge on Russia's eastern borders, there is no evidence that Moscow is currently concerned by a military threat from
China (or Japan for that matter) in the east, and it tolerated the US's post-9/11 presence in central Asia. China's
economic interests, its
soft power diplomacy, and its posited long-term eyeing up of the strategic vacuum in central Asia
left by the USSR's demise may at some point in the future prompt some pushback from a Russian government which
appears to be looking to grow back into its role as a major global power. China's opposition to
Russia's action in Georgia should therefore be seen against this backdrop. Future tension in Central
Asia may not be limited to the part that borders Europe.
China and Russia lack cohesion to balance the US.

CNN 8 (5/23, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/23/china.russia.ap/index.html)
China and Russia have built a relationship intended to serve as a counterweight to U.S.
dominance, but continued friction remains -- especially over oil and gas -- in Central Asia.
Medvedev's trip to Kazakhstan was apparently intended to send a message to both Beijing and the
West that Moscow continues to see the former Soviet Central Asia as its home turf. "Russia is
worried by China's quiet expansion in Central Asia," said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs
magazine. "Moscow has grown accustomed to viewing Central Asia as its backyard, but China doesn't share this view." China already has won
a cut of the region's riches, reaching an oil pipeline deal with Kazakhstan and negotiating a gas
agreement with Turkmenistan. "China has been actively seeking to secure energy supplies from Central Asia and they have gone quite
far," said Alexander Konovalov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for Strategic Assessment. There is also rich symbolism in Medvedev's choice of China
as the main destination of his first foreign trip. When his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, went abroad for the first time as president in 2000, he traveled to
London -- via Belarus -- with a message Russia wanted closer ties to the West. In recent years, China
and Russia have made highly
symbolic political overtures to one another, holding joint military maneuvers and engaging in high-level talks on creating a "multi-
polar world." They have taken a coordinated stance on several global issues, sharing opposition to Kosovo's independence and U.S. missile defense plans,
and taking a similar approach to the Iran nuclear issue. Putin greatly strengthened relations with China, reaching a long-delayed agreement on demarcation
of the 2,700 mile border. However,
economic ties have lagged behind. Bilateral trade rose by about one-
third last year to some $48 billion, but still accounts for only 2 percent of China's global trade.
China does more than eight times as much business with the United States
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Russia and China Counterbalancing fails – not strong enough and Russia is scared of China
Kagan, Senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior
transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, ’08
(Robert Kagan, is author, most recently, of Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
He is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September, October, Policy Review, and senior transatlantic fellow at the German
Marshall Fund. A version of this essay will appear in Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro, eds., To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush
Doctrine, Oxford University Press, 2008, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html)
Sino-Russian hostility to American predominance has not yet produced a concerted effort at
balancing. The anticipated global balancing has for the most part not occurred. Russia and China
certainly share a common and openly expressed goal of checking American hegemony. They have created
at least one institution, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, aimed at resisting American influence in Central Asia, and China is the only power in the
world, other than the United States, engaged in a long-term military buildup. But
Sino-Russian hostility to American
predominance has not yet produced a concerted and cooperative effort at balancing. China ’s
buildup is driven at least as much by its own long-term ambitions as by a desire to balance the
United States. Russia has been using its vast reserves of oil and natural gas as a lever to
compensate for the lack of military power, but it either cannot or does not want to increase its
military capability sufficiently to begin counterbalancing the United States. Overall, Russian military power
inspires at least as much nervousness in Russia as it does in the United States. At the moment, moreover, China
is less abrasively confrontational with the United States. Its dependence on the American market and foreign investment and its perception that the United
States remains a potentially formidable adversary mitigate against an openly confrontational approach.
In any case, China and Russia
cannot balance the United States without at least some help from Europe, Japan, India, or at least
some of the other advanced, democratic nations. But those powerful players are not joining the
effort. Europe has rejected the option of making itself a counterweight to American power. This is true
even among the older members of the European Union, where neither France, Germany, Italy, nor Spain proposes such counterbalancing, despite a public
opinion hostile to the Bush administration. Now that theeu has expanded to include the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, who fear threats from the east,
not from the west, the prospect of a unified Europe counterbalancing the United States is practically nil. As
for Japan and India, the clear
trend in recent years has been toward closer strategic cooperation with the United States. If
anything, the most notable balancing over the past decade has been aimed not at the American
superpower but at the two large powers: China and Russia. In Asia and the Pacific, Japan, Australia, and even South
Korea and the nations of Southeast Asia have all engaged in “hedging” against a rising China. This has led them to seek closer relations with Washington,
especially in the case of Japan and Australia. India has also drawn closer to the United States and is clearly engaged in balancing against China. Russia ’s
efforts to increase its influence over what it regards as its “near abroad,” meanwhile, have produced tensions and negative reactions in the Baltics and other
parts of Eastern Europe. Because these nations are now members of the European Union, this has also complicated eu-Russian relations. On balance,
traditional allies of the United States in East Asia and in Europe, while their publics may be more anti-American than in the past, nevertheless pursue
policies that reflect more concern about the powerful states in their midst than about the United States. 12 This has provided a cushion against hostile public
opinion and offers a foundation on which to strengthen American relations with these countries after the departure of Bush. As
for Russia and
China, their hostility to the United States predates the Iraq War and, indeed, the Bush
administration.
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Russia and China won’t balance the US – they’ll balance each other out of fear
Summers, Former British Diplomat, Researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, ’08 (“Are China-
Russia ties cooling off?” 10-25)
There is evidence too of Russian concerns both over the balance within the SCO and that Russia's
resource-rich east is being left too close to a rising China. Part of this jockeying for strategic influence is the very practical
issue of access to the region's rich energy and other natural resources, and Russia has sponsored an alternative central Asian
organisation which does not include China, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. If one of the purposes of the SCO for
Beijing is to enhance its strategic influence in central Asia, then this implicitly at least encroaches on an area that Moscow has traditionally seen as within its
sphere of influence. Shortly after the Georgian incident, Russian President Medvedev
said that Russia should have a
privileged sphere of influence in Asia, though it is not clear exactly where, nor what the Chinese response to that statement has been.
So any signs of a change in Russian policy towards its periphery do not only have the potential to
affect states on its European borders, but could apply in a similar way to its eastern periphery. The geopolitics
here are different: Nato does not impinge on Russia's eastern borders, there is no evidence that Moscow is currently concerned by a military threat from
China (or Japan for that matter) in the east, and it tolerated the US's post-9/11 presence in central Asia. China's
economic interests, its
soft power diplomacy, and its posited long-term eyeing up of the strategic vacuum in central Asia
left by the USSR's demise may at some point in the future prompt some pushback from a Russian government which
appears to be looking to grow back into its role as a major global power. China's opposition to
Russia's action in Georgia should therefore be seen against this backdrop. Future tension in
Central Asia may not be limited to the part that borders Europe.
No Risk of a Russia-China Alliance or Global Alliances Directed To The U.S.

Brzezinski, Former Diplomat, ’04 (Zbigniew Brzezinski, famous geostrategist, former diplomat, John’s Hopkins & CSIS, “THE CHOICE: GLOBAL
DOMINATION OR GLOBAL LEADERSHIP”, 2004, 149)
The contemporary world may not like American preeminence, may distrust it, resent it, even at
times others conspire against it. But as a practical matter, it cannot oppose it directly. The last decade has seen
occasional attempts at such opposition, but to no avail. The Chinese and the Russians flirted with a strategic
partnership to promote global "multipolarity," a term easily decoded as "anti-hegemony:' Not much came of that,
given Russia's relative weakness vis-a-vis China, as well as China's pragmatic recognition that
right now, most of all, it needs foreign capital and technology. Neither of these would be forthcoming if China's
relations with the United States were antagonistic. In the last year of the twentieth century, the Europeans, and especially the French, grandly announced that
Europe would shortly acquire "an autonomous global security capability:' The war in Afghanistan quickly revealed this commitment to be reminiscent of the
once famous Soviet assertion that the historical victory of Communism "is on the horizon;' an imaginary line that recedes as one walks toward it.
No Risk of a Russia-China Axis

Brooks & Wohlforth, Associate Professor at Dartmouth and Olin Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale, ’02 (Stephen G. Brooks and
William C. Wohlforth, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/brooks0702.html)
Consider the Sino-Russian "strategic partnership," the most prominent instance of apparent
balancing to date. The easy retort to overheated rhetoric about a Moscow-Beijing "axis" would involve pointing out how it failed to slow,
much less stop, President Vladimir Putin's geopolitical sprint toward Washington in the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks. More telling, however, is just how tenuous the shift was even before it was thrown off track. At no point did
the partnership entail any costly commitment or policy coordination against Washington that
might have risked a genuine confrontation. The keystone of the partnership -- Russia's arms sales to China --
reflects a symmetry of weaknesses, rather than the potential of combined strengths. The sales partially
offset China's backward military technology while helping to slow the decline of Russia's defense industries. Most of the arms in question are legacies of the
R&D efforts of the Soviet military-industrial complex, and given Moscow's paltry R&D budget today, few of these systems will long remain competitive
with their U.S. or NATO analogues.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Russia
Russia can’t balance – military sucks, their population is declining, and others balance
Bandow 08 Robert A. Taft Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance
(“The Russian Hangover” The National Interest Online 10-27)
Even then it was obvious that Russia’s offensive power was limited. Its conventional forces have improved over their nadir following
the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the Russian military remains no match for that of the United States and only
at great cost could Moscow defeat a state with reasonably modern armed forces. Jane’s Strategic Advisory Services recently
pointed to weaknesses exposed by the August war, concluding: “Improvements in command, training levels and the
employment of flexible, modern weapons systems are required before the Russian military can face any opponents
larger or better equipped than the Georgian military.” Moscow’s nuclear force, including a substantial number of tactical
warheads, is its principal power tool. However, Russia could ill afford to use nuclear weapons as a substitute for inadequate conventional forces against any
of the countries lining its border. Rather, Moscow has a deterrent that would turn any Western response into a dangerous game of geopolitical chicken. Yet
relying on nuclear weapons to counter conventional intervention by other nations would be as dangerous for Moscow as for the United States or European
states. Moreover, despite the nationalistic adrenaline rush following Moscow’s triumph, Russia’slong-term prospects remain
bleak. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has suffered not just a birth dearth, but a sharp rise in
mortality rates and drop in life expectancy, what Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute calls a “great leap
backwards.” Russia’s population was 145 million in 2002, but fell to 142 million this year. The United Nations figures that Russia’s
population is going to drop another 10 million by 2020. Obviously, demographic and health trends can change, but
Moscow’s problems are systematic and fundamental. Any turnaround likely will take years. As Eberstadt puts it, “this is
not the portrait of a successfully and rapidly developing economy—much less an emerging
economic superpower.” A declining population will have serious geopolitical consequences as well. For
instance, the relative depopulation of Siberia, adjoining far more populous China, could leave Russia’s expansive
eastern territory at risk. But we need not wait until 2020 for evidence of Russian weakness. Economic uncertainty and
falling energy prices have combined to deflate Russia’s pretensions of being a great power again.
The stock market is down 70 percent from May, with one-time billionaire oligarchs scurrying to the Kremlin begging for relief.
The ruble has lost two year’s worth of appreciation as anxious citizens, so recently celebrating their new
prosperity, change their savings into dollars and euros. Heretofore abundant foreign exchange reserves have
dissipated as oil prices have fallen by more than half and the government has attempted to prop up the ruble. Investment
rating services are threatening to downgrade Russian debt. As its economy weakens, Russia is less
able to threaten its neighbors and the West—by cutting off energy shipments, for instance—should its demands not be met.
Moreover, declining revenues will crimp the Kremlin’s plans to sharply enhance its military . Not only will
there be less money available overall, but more funds will have to be plowed into business investment and social
programs. Economic growth has been the foundation of Vladimir Putin’s popularity. He will be loath to risk popular displeasure by allowing the
economy to continue sinking. Indeed, Russia’s present financial difficulties are likely to force Moscow to
accelerate economic integration with the West, which will force the Kremlin to moderate its
foreign policy. Last year, then–President Putin issued an updated economic development strategy for 2020, which envisioned Russia as sporting one
of the globe’s five largest economies and acting as an international financial center and technological leader. Those are challenging goals under any
circumstances, but almost certainly will be impossible to achieve without abundant Western investment, trade and
cooperation. The image of a new Russian colossus threatening neighbors, Western Europe and the United
States never reflected reality. Moscow’s ambitions always were much more limited—ensuring border
security and international respect, not reestablishing the Soviet empire. So, too, were its abilities limited, even before the
ongoing economic crunch.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Russia
Russia can’t balance – its headed for disappearance.
Khanna 8 (Parag, America Strategy Program sr. fellow, 1/27, p. 1, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

In exploring just a small sample of the second world, we should start perhaps with the hardest case: Russia. Apparently stabilized and resurgent under the
Kremlin-Gazprom oligarchy, why is Russia not a superpower but rather the ultimate second-world swing state? For all its
muscle flexing, Russia is also disappearing. Its population decline is a staggering half million
citizens per year or more, meaning it will be not much larger than Turkey by 2025 or so — spread
across a land so vast that it no longer even makes sense as a country. Travel across Russia today, and
you’ll find, as during Soviet times, city after city of crumbling, heatless apartment blocks and neglected
elderly citizens whose value to the state diminishes with distance from Moscow. The forced Siberian migrations of the
Soviet era are being voluntarily reversed as children move west to more tolerable and modern
climes. Filling the vacuum they have left behind are hundreds of thousands of Chinese, literally
gobbling up, plundering, outright buying and more or less annexing Russia’s Far East for its timber and
other natural resources. Already during the cold war it was joked that there were “no disturbances on the Sino-Finnish border,” a prophecy that seems ever
closer to fulfillment. Russia
lost its western satellites almost two decades ago, and Europe, while
appearing to be bullied by Russia’s oil-dependent diplomacy, is staging a long-term buyout of
Russia, whose economy remains roughly the size of France’s. The more Europe gets its gas from
North Africa and oil from Azerbaijan, the less it will rely on Russia, all the while holding the lever
of being by far Russia’s largest investor. The European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development provides the kinds of loans that help build an alternative, less corrupt private sector
from below, while London and Berlin welcome Russia’s billionaires, allowing the likes of Boris Berezovsky to openly campaign against Putin. The
E.U. and U.S. also finance and train a pugnacious second-world block of Baltic and Balkan
nations, whose activists agitate from Belarus to Uzbekistan. Privately, some E.U. officials say that
annexing Russia is perfectly doable; it’s just a matter of time. In the coming decades, far from
restoring its Soviet-era might, Russia will have to decide whether it wishes to exist peacefully as an
asset to Europe or the alternative — becoming a petro-vassal of China.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Venezuela, Iran, Russia
Oil prices are dominating oil exporters

NYT 08 (“3 Oil-Rich Countries Face a Reckoning” 10-21)
As the price of oil roared to ever higher levels in recent years, the leaders of Venezuela, Iran and Russia
muscled their way onto the world stage, using checkbook diplomacy and, on occasion, intimidation. Now, plummeting oil
prices are raising questions about whether the countries can sustain their spending — and their bids to
challenge United States hegemony. For all three nations, oil money was a means to an ideological
end. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela used it to jump-start a socialist-inspired revolution in his country and to back a cadre of like-
minded leaders in Latin America who were intent on eroding once-dominant American influence. Iran extended its
influence across the Middle East, promoted itself as the leader of the Islamic world and used its petrodollars to help defy the
West’s efforts to block its nuclear program. Russia, which suffered a humiliating economic collapse in the 1990s after the fall
of communism, recaptured some of its former standing in the world. It began rebuilding its military, wrested control of oil
and gas pipelines and pushed back against Western encroachment in the former Soviet empire. But such
ambitions are harder to finance when oil is at $74.25 a barrel, its closing price Monday in New York, than when it is at
$147, its price as recently as three months ago.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Benign Heg
Other governments don’t counterbalance the US - we’re viewed as benign

Colin Dueck, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 2004, “New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy: A
Review Essay” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v028/28.4dueck.html#authbio
The structural realist post-Cold War prediction was that other major powers would arise and form
counterbalancing coalitions against the United States. America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power is a collection
of essays, edited by John Ikenberry, on the subject of how and why this prediction has failed to come true.5 The essays fall into two broad
schools of thought, liberal and realist, although there are important differences within each camp. The liberal view, as articulated by Ikenberry himself, is
that American hegemony has persisted—at least until now—because of the distinctly restrained and
institutionalized nature of American diplomacy. Ikenberry fears that the Bush administration has departed from this tradition of
self-restraint. But he suggests that insofar as America has avoided the fate of other hegemons, it has been because of the multilateral and self-binding nature
of its foreign policy.6 According to Ikenberry, the
United States has traditionally been a reluctant hegemon,
uninterested in playing the role of empire. Its political system is open and transparent, offering other nations a direct voice in the
formation of foreign policy. And the postwar, American-led order has been highly institutionalized. The global institutions created by Americans in the
1940s helped to [End Page 199] encourage cooperation and overcome the fear of exploitation on the part of other countries. These institutions have bound
not only America's allies, but the United States itself; thus, other nations have had less reason to fear American power.7 Similar arguments are laid out in
essays by John Owen and Thomas Risse. According to Owen, transnational liberal elites worldwide identify with the United
States and view it as essentially benign.8 Where these elites hold office, as in Western Europe and
Japan, governments see no reason to counterbalance American hegemony. Only in China is there a clear case of
a major power in which the forces of political liberalism are weak. For Risse, the roots of great power peace go even deeper. Certainly within the
Western world, and even beyond it, conditions of deep interdependence, together with a profound
sense of shared values, have created a security community in which war has become quite literally
unthinkable.9 The realist authors in America Unrivaled, predictably, look to international conditions rather than America's domestic norms or
institutions for clues as to the future of American hegemony. But interestingly, the realists reach radically different conclusions from one another. For
Kenneth Waltz, the answer is essentially the same as it was ten years ago: Unipolarity is untenable, other great powers will soon begin to balance against the
United States, and it is only amatter of time.10 A very different and more convincing realist perspective comes from the essay by William Wohlforth.
According to Wohlforth, it is precisely international conditions that prevent any balance of power from forming
against the United States, because the United States is simply too powerful to be balanced. Other nations
realize the futility of attempting to do so and instead jump on the bandwagon of American hegemony.
America's geographical location also puts it in a uniquely favorable position, unlikely to be too
threatening to major European or Asian powers. The result is that it is simply too costly to
balance against the United States, especially when it poses no immediate threat.11 Other realist authors in the volume, including Stephen Walt,
Josef Joffe, and Michael Mastanduno, agree that the United States can and generally has prevented
counterbalancing from occurring by behaving in a nonthreatening way toward other countries .
They also agree that the United [End Page 200] States will provoke greater resistance and even counterbalancing overseas, if it follows a more aggressive
grand strategy. America Unrivaled is an excellent primer on the sources of today's seemingly unipolar international order, and on the relevance (or
irrelevance) of balance of power theory in explaining that order. The authors embody a broad range of perspectives, and Ikenberry introduces and concludes
the volume with a lucid pair of essays on the issue of unipolarity. The volume does not explain precise patterns of change and continuity in American grand
strategy, nor does it attempt to do so. But Ikenberry clearly believes, as do a number of the other authors, that America's liberal democratic system of
government has had a profound impact on the broad contours of American grand strategy, for the better. Indeed, a major theme that recurs in this volume—
especially in Ikenberry's own essays—is that the
liberal nature of U.S. grand strategy has made American power
less provocative or threatening to other nations, thus reducing the odds of counterbalancing. In spite
of their diverse theoretical perspectives, the authors of these essays are actually in remarkable agreement over the policy implications of their arguments. The
sense of the book, overall, is that the United States should remain engaged overseas, providing a stabilizing role in critical regions and playing the part of
benevolent hegemon. At the same time, most of the authors—liberal and realist alike—agree that if the United States acts in an aggressive, unilateralist
manner (as the Bush administration supposedly has in Iraq), it will undermine the sources of its own success.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Benign Heg
No counterbalancing – benign hegemony means other nations don’t perceive a threat.

The fact that classic great-power rivalry has not come to pass and is unlikely to arise anytime soon is also
partly a result of the United States' behavior, which has not stimulated such a response. This is not to say
that the United States under the leadership of George W. Bush has not alienated other nations ; it
surely has. But it has not, for the most part, acted in a manner that has led other states to conclude
that the United States constitutes a threat to their vital national interests. Doubts about the
wisdom and legitimacy of U.S. foreign policy are pervasive, but this has tended to lead more to
denunciations (and an absence of cooperation) than outright resistance.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Capabilities Gap
No balancing – disparities in power between the US and other states are too great.
But this has not happened. Although anti-Americanism is widespread, no great-power rival or set of rivals
has emerged to challenge the United States. In part, this is because the disparity between the
power of the United States and that of any potential rivals is too great. Over time, countries such as China may
come to possess GDPs comparable to that of the United States. But in the case of China, much of that wealth will necessarily
be absorbed by providing for the country's enormous population (much of which remains poor)
and will not be available to fund military development or external undertakings. Maintaining
political stability during a period of such dynamic but uneven growth will be no easy feat. India
faces many of the same demographic challenges and is further hampered by too much
bureaucracy and too little infrastructure. The EU's GDP is now greater than that of the United States, but the EU does not
act in the unified fashion of a nation-state, nor is it able or inclined to act in the assertive fashion of
historic great powers. Japan, for its part, has a shrinking and aging population and lacks the political
culture to play the role of a great power. Russia may be more inclined, but it still has a largely cash-crop
economy and is saddled by a declining population and internal challenges to its cohesion .
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AT: Counterbalancing – Interdependence
No balancing – interdependence makes the cost of disrupting geopolitical order too great.
A further constraint on the emergence of great-power rivals is that many

of the other major powers are dependent on the
international system for their economic welfare and political stability. They do not, accordingly, want to
disrupt an order that serves their national interests. Those interests are closely tied to cross-
border flows of goods, services, people, energy, investment, and technology -- flows in which the
United States plays a critical role. Integration into the modern world dampens great-power competition and conflict.
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AT: Counterbalancing – EU
The EU won’t counterbalance the US – France proves.
Newsweek 8 (6/30, http://www.newsweek.com/id/142565)

The spectacle of Sarkozy's grandstanding as he gets ready for the big parade may be reminiscent of many a French president who struggled to show that he
and his country were still relevant players. But unlike his predecessors, Sarkozy has put a lot of new pieces on the board, he's moving them all at once, and
he's breaking precedents the French thought were immutable. What they are witnessing may not be a revolution on a par with the storming of the Bastille,
but it is about as radical a change in foreign-policy and national-security doctrine as they've seen in decades. Gone
is the geopolitical
posturing of French presidents who wanted to act as a counterbalance to American power . Instead,
speaking the week after the Irish voted down the Treaty of Lisbon, Sarkozy promised that France would remain "a great military power," and presented
collective defense as the key to greater unity. The clearest outline of Sarkozy's foreign-policy and defense ambitions came in the speech he delivered to the
French military elite last week, in which he shifted priorities away from resisting invasion, which ceased to be a threat 15 years ago, and emphasized
flexibility in an uncertain world where dangers have become "diverse and ever-changing." By slashing the number of soldiers to 225,000 over the next half-
dozen years and focusing on a smaller, lighter military, he hopes to be able to finance better intelligence gathering that anticipates threats, whether from
terrorists, failed states, nuclear proliferators, cyberwarriors or climate change. Rather than manning garrisons left over from colonial days in Francophone
Africa, France will prepare for action in what Defense Minister Hervé Morin has called "an arc of crisis going from Mauritania to Afghanistan." And with
more modern equipment, Sarkozy wants to be able to deploy 30,000 combat forces quickly and efficiently to the far corners of the world while dealing
effectively with catastrophic events at home. "The French are realizing that not even they are able to go it alone, and he is putting the French military back in
the business of dealing with threats that really matter," says Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform. Sarkozy
has also made it
clear that next year France will rejoin NATO's integrated command structure for the first time since
President Charles De Gaulle pulled out of it in 1966. As part of his plan for greater EU defense cooperation both inside and outside NATO, Sarkozy
proposed a complete restructuring and unification of Europe's defense industries, a vast exchange program for officer training, perhaps even a European
military college and unified headquarters. Sarkozy
telegraphed his contempt for geopolitical game-playing in the
style of his predecessors well before his election last year. He has praised the United States
unabashedly, and embraced Israel enthusiastically, unlike previous French presidents who tended to worry about the sensibilities of rich Arab
tyrants. "All democracies are accountable for Israel's security, which is nonnegotiable," Sarkozy wrote in 2006, and since he took office, relations with
Jerusalem have looked like a love-in. "You are a great and positive gush of wind in French politics," Israeli President Shimon Peres told him on a visit in
March.
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AT: Counterbalancing – India
India can’t balance the US – socio-economic problems prevent it’s ascendence.
Nielsen 8 (Jens, poli-sci Ph.D., 2/18, http://kaalhauge.weblogs.asb.dk/2008/02/18/india-will-rise-%E2%80%93-but-how-far-can-one-rise-on-clay-feet/)

The basic problem is that the current boom doesn’t touch on the basic structural fallacies in India .
Of these fallacies, there are two, which is most devastating. The first is the deplorable elementary school system in India.
The second is that the boom has not triggered any major grow of a low-skilled labour intensive
industry in India, which are strongly needed if the huge unskilled masses in India shall find
appropriate employment. Generally, India is characterized by low labour-elasticity vis-a-vis its growth rate, which means that India is a
very “jobless” economy. However, in a country, where approximately 13 million is added to the
workforce every year, this is a problem of the highest cardinal importance. The relative few jobs, which are
created during the current boom, are generally job for higher educated professionals or higher skilled workers. In other words the job-pattern of
the current boom has nothing or little to offer the majority of Indian workers, including the wave
of the coming generation of low-skilled workers, which multiply every year in alarming numbers. The problem is that there
is nothing, which really indicates that India seriously is trying to deal with these two cardinal
problems. The much talk about India’s becoming urbanization ignores the fact that the jobs, which should facilitate this process of urbanization is
simply not there. It is true that the new financial budget is allocating more money to the elementary school level but the problem of the
elementary school system is entangled in cultural attitudes, caste-habits, teacher-privileges and
fundamental institutional weaknesses and its solutions is not simply a matter of financing. So before India begin to dream of racing
with China, it will be well advised to start solving those basic structural problems, which India so far have ignored for the last 60 years. India will
not be able to establish any sustainable growth before it has solved these fundamental problems.
Naturally, the current boom in India is “real” in the sense that a few Indian states and some segments
of the population experience real growth. (It is not the growth, which is in question but the issue regarding its institutional and
structural functions). But the function of this growth will not be an answer for India as a whole and will
increasing split India into two radically separated worlds, which have little other than the noun “India” in common. Do
not believe in the hype of India’s as the next economic superpower; it is a play on empty rhetoric.
The current appearance of progress is misleading. The reality is that India cannot find jobs to its rapid growing masses and the majority of these masses is –
and will remain – low-skilled and to a large degree illiterates. The number of main workers out of the total Indian population is constantly falling although
the Indian population become younger and younger. Since more and more Indian factories are increasingly automating, then it is clear that the solution to the
problem hardly comes from the established industry. Indeed, Stephen Roach of the Morgan Stanley, once, wondered how India would create jobs, when its
factories are “more heavily populated by robots than human workers.” Indeed, from 1991-2001, the fraction of Indians in the actual workforce is supposed to
have fallen from approximately 34 to 30% (so much for the “demographic dividend”). Especially, the number of women in the workforce in India is record
low. Jobless India is also a tale of an increased gender-bias, which again is reflected in the relative few women who take a higher education in India. India is
increasingly squeezed between its growing masses of unemployed (and underemployed) and its inability to produce the necessary low-skilled labour
intensive industries. In other words, India
is marching down the path of major social conflicts, and the lack of a
sufficient elementary school-system has make sure that there is no end to the supply of this misery .
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AT: Counterbalancing – Asia Generic
Asia is not countering US leadership
Twining 7 (Transatlantic Fellow based in Oxford and New Delhi and concurrently the Fulbright/Oxford Scholar at the University of Oxford. The
Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Washington Quarterly. “America’s Grand Design in
Asia”)
U.S. policy seeks to build and bind together friendly centers of power in Asia to help maintain a
regional balance that preserves U.S. interests and values as China rises. “We want to encourage the rise
of friendly, independent Asian powers, but we also want to bind their interests to ours,” says
former National Security Council official Michael Green. The United States is trying to build
strength in its Asian partners, not subordinate or contain them in Cold War– type alliance
structures in which the United States institutionalizes its own dominance. This policy is attractive
to Asian leaders who want to build national capabilities and increase their respective country’s
room to maneuver in the emerging Asian order and who recognize that cooperation with the
United States to strengthen their economic and military capabilities will accelerate this process,
enhance their autonomy, and countervail growing Chinese influence. Yet, U.S. policy rekindles traditional wariness
in India, Indonesia, and Vietnam about perceived U.S. hegemonic designs. Ironically, although U.S. leaders welcome these countries’ determination to
protect their autonomy as China rises, thereby helping to preserve a pluralistic Asian security order, their very independence also means that they are wary of
U.S. dominance. Nonetheless, the United States values its key Asian partners for their growing strength. As former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran
notes, “If there is a greater focus today on India in the [United States], it is not because India is weak but because India is strong. We are being recognized as
a country which has [an] array of capabilities and has the potential to emerge as a very important power in the future.” Former Japanese prime minister
Junichiro Koizumi controversially maintained that building Japanese strength within the U.S. alliance would actually improve Tokyo’s relations with
Beijing. Washington’s policy of building new centers of power in Asia is premised on a congruence of
interests with states such as India and Japan in strengthening their national capabilities and
expanding their security horizons to shape the emerging order of the new century. The United
States is not pursuing this design to contain China but to shape its geopolitical options as a country at a
“strategic crossroads.” Washington is limiting China’s potential strategic choices by strengthening and cultivating friendly Asian powers along
its periphery that will constrain and constructively channel Beijing’s regional and international ambitions. “It is very useful to remind China,” says one U.S.
official, “that there are other emerging powerful countries, such as India, who are setting standards we agree with. This is very different from containment; it
is more about encouraging or shaping China’s view of the international system in a constructive way.”
Rising Asian influence doesn’t constrain the US

Twining 7 (Transatlantic Fellow based in Oxford and New Delhi and concurrently the Fulbright/Oxford Scholar at the University of Oxford. The
Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Washington Quarterly. “America’s Grand Design in
Asia”)
Accelerating the rise of friendly, independent centers of power in Asia may allow the United States
to maintain its privileged position within an “asymmetrically multipolar” Asian security order
characterized by multiple power centers—China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and
ASEAN—that makes it naturally resistant to Chinese domination. Nonetheless, the implications
for the United States of trends in Asia are inescapable. Relative U.S. power will wane as China
and India rise. “It’s not possible to pretend that [China] is just another player,” said Singapore’s
former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in 1993. “This is the biggest player in the history of man.
… The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new
balance” within a few decades. The United States is pursuing a grand design to shape that new
balance in ways that preserve its interests in a pluralistic security order that is dominated by no
one regional power and that aligns it increasingly closely with democratic and like-minded centers
of strength is a rising Asia.
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AT: Counterbalancing – Too Costly
Countries won’t balance – no economic capabilities

Nye, 08 – Professor at Harvard and Former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government (Joseph “Recovering American Leadership,” Survival, March
2008)
A number of realists have expressed concern about America’s staying power as well. Throughout history,
coalitions of countries have arisen to balance dominant powers, and the search for new state actors that might challenge the United States and shift the
balance of power is well underway. Some see China as the new enemy; others envisage a Russia–China–India
coalition. But even if China maintains its high growth rate of 9%, while the United States achieves
only 2–3%, China will not equal the United States in per capita income (a measure of the sophistication of an
economy) until near the end of the century . In contrast, Germany’s industrial production had surpassed the United Kingdom’s well
before open conflict between the two erupted in 1914. Others see India becoming a major challenger to the United
States, but despite recent impressive growth, economically India lags behind China, and will have
incentives to cooperate with the United States to balance rising Chinese power. Russia is
sometimes cited as a great power, but its recent resurgence is based on a single commodity, energy,
and it faces serious health and demographic problems. Others see a uniting Europe as a potential
federation that will challenge the United States for primacy, but this forecast depends on a high degree
of European political unity, a willingness of European populations to spend heavily on defence,
and poor conditions in transatlantic relations. While realists raise an important point about the economic rise of new powers
in the international arena, their quest to identify traditional challengers who will surpass the United States or
form coalitions to balance American military power misses a larger point by ignoring the deeper
changes that are occurring in the distribution and nature of power in this century.
No counter balancing – countries find it too costly

Brooks and Wohlforth, 08 – Associate professor of government at Dartmouth, Professor of government at Dartmouth (Stephen G., William
C., “World out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy” Princeton University Press, 22-24)
In this chapter, we show that the theory does not predict and historical
experience does not imply there will be efforts to
counterbalance the United States today. Balance-of-power theory predicts that states try to prevent the rise
of a hegemon. While scholars debate the historical evidence for this proposition, they fail to register a point important for constraints on U.S. power
today: Even if a potential hegemon must be concerned about counterbalancing, the theory yields no
such implication for one that has already established its material primacy. We argue that once a country
achieves such a position, it has passed a threshold, and the effect of increasing power is reversed:
the stronger the leading state and the more entrenched its dominance, the more unlikely and thus less constraining
are counterbalancing dynamics. Our explanation for the absence of counterbalancing against the
United States emphasizes a simple point: counterbalancing is and will long remain prohibitively costly
for other major powers. Because no country comes close to matching the comprehensice nature of U.S. power, an attempt to
counterbalance would be far more expensive than a similar effort in any previous international
system. Matching U.S. capabilities could become even more formidably costly, moreover, if the United States decided to increase its defense
expenditures (currently around 4 percent of GDP) to Cold War levels (which averaged 7.5 percent of GDP). General patterns of evidence since the advent of
unipolarity are consistent with our argument and inexplicable in traditional balance-of-power terms. The principal change in alliances since the demise of the
Soviet Union had been the expansion of NATO, and the biggest increases in defense spending have been on behalf of the Pentagon. The other great powers
have not attempted to constrain the United States by allying together: No
counterhegemonic coalition has taken shape, and
none is on the horizon. Nor have they balanced increases in U.S. military power through internal
spending. Notwithstanding increased expenditures by a few great powers (notably China), in aggregate their commitments to
defense have declined compared to the United States: the U.S. share of total defense spending by
the major powers grew from 47 percent in 1991 to 66 percent in 2006. No major power has
exhibited any propensity to use military capabilities directly to contain U.S. power. This is not the
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pattern of evidence balance-of-power theory predicts. Were the theory not already popular with scholars and pundits, nothing
about the behavior of the major powers since 1991 would have called it to mind.
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AT: Offshore balancing
U.S. primacy must continue- Offshore Balancing uniquely fails.

Thayer 2006 (Bradley A., Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, The National Interest, November-December,
“In Defense of Primacy”)
A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's
number one power--the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy
claim that the United States should retrench, either because the United States lacks the power to
maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the
maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the
previous issue of The National Interest, Christopher Layne warned of these dangers of primacy and called for
retrenchment. (1) Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include
isolationists, who want no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S.
military commitments to centers of economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified
form of selective engagement that would have the United States abandon its landpower presence
abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its interests. But retrenchment, in
any of its guises, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it would be a
profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil
American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy. There are two critical
issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain
dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power capabilities. The totality of that
equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military
capabilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances. Barring some
disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future, With few exceptions,
even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this. So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining
American primacy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action--but they
fail to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the
benefits that stem from it are not. A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point
the protection of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include
ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary
regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected.
Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus,
it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not
be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United
States less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America
chooses to play in international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide
from threats. Whether they are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats
must be confronted. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or
making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will
respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens
aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the
anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United
States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the
country from such threats. And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy
focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush
Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in
other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a
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physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore balancing. Indeed, as Barry Posen has
noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global commons"--the
oceans, the world's airspace and outer space--allowing the United States to project its power far
from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs
of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the
United States' conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased . (2) This is not an
advantage that should be relinquished lightly.
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AT: Offshore balancing
Balancing results in economic collapse and nuclear war.

Khalilzad 95 (Zalmay, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War”, Spring
Washington Quarterly)
It is possible that in a balance of power system the United States would be in a relatively privileged position as compared to the other great powers. Given
the relative distance of the
United States from other power centers, it might be able to mimic the former British role of an
offshore balancer. As in the nineteenth century, the United States and other great powers would compete and cooperate to avoid hegemony and
global wars. Each great power would protect its own specific interests and protect common interests cooperatively. If necessary, the United States would
intervene militarily to prevent the emergence of a preponderant power. But
there are also several serious problems with this
approach. First, there is a real question whether the major powers will behave as they should under
the logic of a balance of power framework. For example, would the West European powers respond appropriately to a resurgent
Russian threat, or would they behave as the European democracies did in the 1930s? The logic of a balance of power system might well require the United
States to support a non-democratic state against a democratic one, or to work with one undesirable state against another. For example, to contain the power
of an increasingly powerful Iran, the United States would have to strengthen Iraq. The United States may, however, be politically unable to behave in this
fashion. For example, after the Iraqi victory against Iran in 1988, balance of power logic indicated that the United States should strengthen Iran. However,
because of ongoing animosity in U.S.Iranian relations, the nature of Iran's regime, and moral concerns, the United States could not implement such a
strategy. There are many other examples. To
expect such action is therefore probably unrealistic. Second, this system implies
that the major industrial democracies will no longer see themselves as allies. Instead, political, and possibly even
military, struggle among them will become not only thinkable but legitimate. n5 Each will pursue its own
economic interest much more vigorously, thereby weakening such multilateral economic institutions as the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the liberal world trading order in general. This would increase the
likelihood of major economic depressions and dislocations. Third, the United States is likely to face more competition from other
major powers in areas of interest to it. For example, other powers might not be willing to grant the United States a sphere of influence in the Americas, but
might seek, as Germany did in World War I, to reach anti-U.S. alliances with Latin American nations. Similarly, as noted above, another great power might
decide to support a potential hegemon in the Persian Gulf. Finally, and most important, there
is no guarantee that the system will
succeed in its own terms. Its operation requires subtle calculations and indications of intentions in
order to maintain the balance while avoiding war; nations must know how to signal their depth of commitment on a given issue without taking irrevocable
steps toward war. This balancing act proved impossible even for the culturally similar and aristocratically governed states of the
nineteenth-century European balance of power systems. It will be infinitely more difficult when the
system is global, the participants differ culturally, and the governments of many of the states, influenced by public opinion, are unable to be as
flexible (or cynical) as the rules of the system require. Thus, miscalculations might be made about the state of the balance
that could lead to wars that the United States might be unable to stay out of. The balance of power system failed in the past, producing World
War I and other major conflicts. It might not work any better in the future -- and war among major powers in the nuclear age
is likely to be more devastating.
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AT: Offshore Balancing
Ground presence is key to reassure our allies, sustain global coalitions, and deter potential
adversaries.
Crane 02 Research Fellow @ Strategic Studies Institute and Former Prof of History @ US Military Academy
Conrad C. Crane, FACING THE HYDRA: MAINTAINING STRATEGIC BALANCE WHILE PURSUING A GLOBAL WAR AGAINST TERRORISM,
SSI, May
Future Army missions like those in Bosnia and Kosovo should not be accepted lightly. However, there will be times even in the midst of the war against
terrorism when national interests will require humanitarian assistance, nation-building, and secure peace operations that only American military forces can
provide. Effective
and efficient peace-building efforts must remain an important element of any
national security strategy. The current situation in Afghanistan highlights again that post-conflict societies can become breeding grounds for
crime and terrorism if some sort of order is not imposed. Influential members of Congress have already called for American peacekeepers there, and major
newspapers irrespective of their political inclinations are advocating a significant U.S. role in nation-building. One project they have proposed is the
reconstruction of Afghanistan’s ring road, which is so vital to the restoration of trade. This task, especially in such a precarious security environment, is
perfectly suited to the capabilities of the U.S. Army and its engineers.27 To prevent peacekeeping assignments from dragging on and tying up scarce assets,
the Army and supporting agencies must become better at nation-building. Though the Bush administration, as well as the Army leadership, remain reluctant
to accept such a mission, long-term
solutions to create a more stable world will require the United States to
perform it. Only the Army not the Air Force, Navy, or Marines can really do it in an environment of
questionable security. Success in stabilization operations and strategic success in the war against terrorism will be closely linked because of the
cause-effect relationship that exists between them. The Army should be daunted by and prepare for the responsibilities it might assume to help stabilize and
rebuild Afghanistan and other countries after bin Laden and his supporters are rooted out. This effort should be accompanied by the development of
appropriate doctrine for such peace-building missions. Though the U.S. burden in these operations can be lessened by relying as much as possible on allied
participation, there
is no substitute for the presence of ground forces from the most powerful nation in
the world to reassure friends, sustain coalitions, and deter potential adversaries . If stability in a region such
as the Balkans is determined to be a vital American interest, then it cannot be allowed to return to chaos because of the distractions of the war on terrorism.
Months before September 11, the Center for Army Analysis predicted the United States would face a future of 25 to 30 ongoing SSCs each month.28
Though it discusses SSCs only briefly, the QDR Report does state DoD will ensure that it has sufficient numbers of specialized forces and capabilities to
ensure that it does not overstress elements of the force when it is involved in smaller-scale contingencies. Achieving this goal will require modifying the AC
Army force structure, and will almost certainly involve increasing its size. In a recent speech, Rumsfeld admitted that the existence of low-density, high-
demand assets that have been so overworked by SSCs signified that our priorities were wrong, and we didn’t buy enough of what we need. He advocated
adding them as part of his transformation efforts.29 There is no reason still to have such force shortfalls, and they must be addressed. Major Combat
Operations. The Army must also retain its ability to deter and fight other wars besides the global war on terrorism.
Cross-border wars of aggression are not the most likely type of conflict predicted for the future,
but they are certainly not impossible and clearly require forces ready to fight them. In fact, it is precisely because U.S. forces are so
ready to fight them that they are so unlikely. Even in the war on terrorism, where major ground forces have initially had only
limited utility, they will still be essential if operations expand to take on other states that support terrorism and are more robust than Afghanistan. The
most powerful military force on the planet remains a joint force based around a heavy corps, and these units must not be
allowed to atrophy. Cross border incursions remain a threat in Asia and the Middle East. The Bush
administration’s stern warning to Iraq not to take advantage of America’s concentration on terrorism
would not be an effective deterrent without the joint force, including landpower, to back it up. The primary focus of the
QDR Report is on dissuading and deterring potential adversaries from threatening the interests of America and its allies, and on winning wars if deterrence
fails. The document’s new force-sizing paradigm still envisions swiftly defeating attacks in two theaters of operation in overlapping timeframes, but only
one of those campaigns will involve a decisive defeat including the occupation of territory or a possible regime change.30 Combined with the perception of
some Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) officials that the campaign in Afghanistan was won by airpower and allies, this new force-sizing construct
has the potential to bring calls for a reduction of heavy land combat forces.31 Critics may accept the need to keep such forces for the decisive defeat, but will
argue for Army force structure cuts in the allocation for the second conflict. However, the larger Army that fought and won Operation DESERT STORM is
already long gone. The current active force is probably too small to fight a major land war against a state like Iraq without even more coalition landpower
augmentation than was received in the Gulf War. Additionally, adequate funding must be found to modernize the legacy forces which will have to fight near
and mid-term wars.32 And the
paradox of deterrence is that the weaker a nation’s armed forces are
perceived to be, the more likely it is to have to employ them. In the long-run, taking risk in this mission area has the most
significant impact on the ability of the United States to protect its interests and achieve the goals outlined in the QDR Report
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AT: Offshore Balancing Fails
Troops are key to deter rogue state aggression that will cause conflict and collapse hegemony
Kagan 06 Military historian @ West Point, Resident scholar @ American Enterprise Institute
The new approaches that the administration has pursued in the traditional area of nuclear nonproliferation are also leading to disaster. North Korea has
openly avowed its possession of nuclear weapons--violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty it
signed--and is now testing missiles of increasing range on which to place those weapons. The United States has been
apathetic and helpless in the face of this growing threat, now made even worse with Pyongyang's recent claim to have
conducted an underground nuclear test. Iran has violated international norms and agreements repeatedly in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is a
particularly interesting case to test the virtues of new-think against the old. In traditional realpolitik terms, the United States should be in a good position to
pressure the Iranians to abandon their program. We have allies on both sides of Iran and hundreds of thousands of troops near both Iranian borders. We
should have an enormous advantage. But
the Bush administration does not think in terms of traditional power
politics. Instead, we have declared our determination to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan as
quickly as possible, which, combined with internal collapses in both countries resulting in part
from our flawed strategies, have given the Iranians leverage over us. Tehran holds Washington hostage by
threatening to destabilize Iraq further, and the United States responds with fear and appeasement. Past as Future The result of all of this new-think is
impending disaster on many fronts. Iraq and Afghanistan are in danger of failing. North Korea already has nuclear weapons and
will soon be able to deploy them against the continental United States. Iran is well on its way to nuclear
capability. Somalia is falling into the hands of militant Islamists, and the situation there may well destabilize the entire region. Why are we doing so
badly in the world? The answer is that the world did not change as much in 2001--or in 1991, for that matter--as many observers thought. Our enemies did
not, in fact, abandon traditional power politics. Misconceived though it might have been, Saddam Hussein fought a conventional war in 2003. Even Osama
bin Laden rallied his terrorists to fight as conventional soldiers in 2001, digging trenches and setting up machine guns as the Taliban lost a lopsided
conventional campaign. Iran maintains a large conventional army, which it has been modernizing as rapidly
as possible. So does North Korea. Both are pursuing nuclear weapons in the most conventional
way possible--not as terrorist-style suitcase bombs, but as Soviet-style missile-mounted warheads. Far from being impressed by our adoption of novel
strategies--withdrawal from South Korea on the one hand and a small footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan on the other--the Iranians have seized the advantage
in a very traditional way. They
have seen that we are bogged down and distracted, that our conventional
forces are overstretched, and that the danger of a U.S. attack is therefore very small. Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seizing the moment with traditional diplomatic delaying tactics while his scientists race to give him the weapons he desires. There
is absolutely nothing novel in any of this. It is time to wake up from the dream world of the 1990s. If history ended with the end of the Cold War, it has
since started up again with a vengeance. Beyond
al Qaeda, the United States today faces a host of traditional
challenges. Large conventional militaries in Iran and North Korea support regimes seeking to
develop nuclear arsenals. These threats can be deterred or defeated for certain only through the
use or convincing threat of using conventional forces, because these regimes recognize no
restraints on their behavior other than those imposed by superior power. The seizure of territory in Somalia by
groups ideologically tied to our primary foe is reminiscent of Communist insurgencies in the Third World, which we fought during the Cold War with
varying degrees of success. The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are unusual in some ways, but share common features with many other past
insurgencies. Basic lessons from past counterinsurgencies should inform our approach to these challenges. Above all, America's conventional
military strength remains critical, traditional power politics continue to control the world, and the lessons of thousands of years of
human history still apply. In counterinsurgencies, the first requirement of success is the establishment of security
throughout the country or region. This task is manpower-intensive and incompatible with a small footprint approach.
Political, economic, and reconciliation tracks are not sustainable without security, as countless historical examples show. Success in Iraq--and Afghanistan--
Military
requires a heavier deployment of U.S. forces with orders not just to train indigenous soldiers, but also to bring peace to those troubled lands.
strength and the visible will to use it is also essential to persuading regimes like those in Tehran
and Pyongyang to abandon programs they wish to pursue. We have been trying the diplomatic
approach, unsupported by meaningful military threat, for nearly fifteen years with North Korea, and the result has been utter
failure. A similar approach in Iran will not be more successful. It may not be necessary to attack those two states to force them to give up their weapons
of mass destruction programs, but there is no hope of convincing them to do so if they do not believe that we
can and will defeat them. Nor is there any likelihood that a "small footprint" (almost a "no footprint") approach in the Horn of Africa will
contain the Islamist threat there. The United States is at war, and the enemy is the same one we have been fighting for sixty years. A totalitarian regime
controls North Korea. Totalitarian ideologues hold power in Iran, have just seized power in southern Somalia, and seek power throughout the Middle East.
Their goals are subtly different, but they share several key features: the destruction of democracy, which they hate; the elimination of liberalism and
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religious toleration; and the destruction of the United States. Victory will require a mobilization of America's military
might and the willingness to use it. Adaptive and unpredictable enemies like al Qaeda will require us to change part of our approach and
some of our forces constantly. Winning throughout the Muslim world will require economic, political, and cultural initiatives alongside the use of military
power. But nothing
will be possible without adequate military force, which the United States is currently lacking. If we
do not begin the necessary mobilization of our resources now, then our military power will become
irrelevant, our strategies will fail, and our security will falter
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Heg Internals – Human Rights Leadership
Restoring U.S. Human Right’s Credibility is key to sustaining U.S. Leadership

Powell, Associate Law Prof., ’08
(Catherine, American Constitutional Society, October) http://www.acslaw.org/files/C%20Powell%20Blueprint.pdf [Abhik])
First, human rights principles are at the core of America’s founding values, and Americans (as well as
others within our borders or in U.S. custody), no less than others around the world, are entitled to the full benefit of these basic
guarantees. That can hardly be open to debate. The second reason is perhaps less obvious, but equally compelling. When the
United States fails to practice at home what it preaches to others, it loses credibility and undermines
its ability to play an effective leadership role in the world. Leading through the power of our
example rather than through the example of our power3 is particularly critical now, at a juncture when the United
States needs to cultivate international cooperation to address pressing issues – such as the current
economic downturn – that have global dimensions. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, an
overwhelming majority of Americans strongly embrace the notion of human rights:
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Heg Internals – Immigration reform
Immigration reform is key to sustaining U.S. capabilities

Slaughter, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton, ’09
(Anne-Marie Slaughter,The Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Dean of the Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton, Foreign Affairs, January- February 2009, “America's Edge Subtitle: Power in the Networked
Century,” p. 94)
At the moment, the United States' edge in this new world is more potential than actual. The country
will face a vast amount of work in digging itself out of the many holes it has gotten itself into, both at
home and abroad. In the process, the United States must adopt five policies and postures that will seize on its edge and sharpen it. First, the
United States must adopt comprehensive immigration reform that will make it easier for immigrants
and guest workers to move across borders, regularize the status of the millions of illegal
immigrants currently in the United States, and increase the number of visas for the world's most talented individuals. Part of
changing U.S. attitudes toward immigration must include a recognition that because of their ties
to their home countries, immigrants are potential engines of economic growth. New economic policies could
offer subsidies or tax incentives to immigrants who create businesses based on connections they have cultivated to markets and talent in their home
countries. Instead of a one-way, outgoing flow of remittances, the United States needs a two-way flow of goods, services, and people. Second, as part of
overhauling its educational system, the United States must come to see overseas study as an essential asset for all Americans. Indeed, organizations such as
the BrownBell Foundation promote opportunities to study abroad for students at historically black colleges and universities, where such programs have
traditionally been lacking. Just as important, the United States must see the children of immigrants who grow up learning Arabic,
Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish, and other foreign languages as huge assets. Government programs and private initiatives should encourage them to study
abroad in the countries of their parents or grandparents and, assuming they keep their U.S. passports, to gain dual citizenship. A networked world
requires a genuinely networked society, which means fostering economic and social equality.
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Heg Internals – Poverty
Eliminating Poverty is crucial to and sustaining effective U.S. Leadership

Edwards, U.S. Senator, ’07
(Senator John Edwards, Spring 2007, Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, “Restoring the American Dream: Fighting Poverty and Strengthening the Middle
Class p. 390-1)
But there is another reason why it is important that we do something about poverty in America. That
picture that you saw on your television screens, the picture coming out of New Orleans? You are
not the only ones who saw it - the entire world saw it. I do a lot of traveling these days, and everybody knows what happened
on the Gulf Coast all around the world. Here is their reaction: "How can it be, in the richest nation on the planet, the most
powerful nation on the planet, that those conditions existed in New Orleans? What are you going
to do about it?" If we actually want to be the model for the rest of the world, then we have to do
something about poverty in America, because the world knows about it now. It is no secret. They know
about it, and they want to know: "What are you going to do about it? Are you actually going to do something about it?" I saw a publication overseas right
after the hurricane hit, and it had pictures of victims of the hurricane from the Lower Ninth Ward. The headline read "The Shaming of America." If
we
want to be the country that represents the model for the rest of the world - and we used to be - if
we want to be the light - and we used to be the light - then we have to demonstrate what we care
about, what our priorities are, and that we patriotically about something other than war. We need
to be willing to act patriotically about what is good for our country and not just out of self-
interest. America is better than this - and you know it. We did not use to be the country of Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo. We were the country that everybody looked up to and respected. They
wanted to be like the United States of America. They wanted to be like the American people. That
is who we are at our best. What do we do about the millions of Americans who are living in
poverty? What do we do about the forty-six, nearly forty-seven million people who do not have health care coverage? Our actions demonstrate to the
world what we care about. And I want to add - it is not specifically on topic, but it fits into the bigger context of how all these things are connected - look at
what is happening on your television screens today. The Hezbollah fighting the Israelis and Hamas launching missiles out of Gaza into Israel. The President
of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, going before the United Nations to denounce the United States. The same man is doing everything in his power to get a
nuclear weapon. The North Koreans are testing nuclear weapons and testing missiles. Over the last five or six years, we see Russia going from a democracy
to an autocracy. All of this is happening right in front of us. It is right in front of us. And we react. What is so important for us to understand as a nation is
that we are the most powerful nation on this planet. We
are the preeminent power in the world today. We are the only
superpower. But you cannot lead simply by being powerful. It is not enough. You have to be
powerful, but you have to be something else. You have to be moral and just. You have to be the nation that the rest of the world
looks up to. You have to have the moral authority to lead. And you do not have to take my word for
this - it is clear. If anything demonstrates this, it is the last six years. You look at what is
happening in the world today. You look at every single crisis, like the Hezbollah fighting the
Israelis that I mentioned a few minutes ago or Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon. We go to the
United Nations Security Council, to try to get consensus, but people do not rally around the
United States of America. And when they do not, there is no leadership. There is no natural leader
in the world, except us. And when we do not show that we care not only about ourselves but that
we actually, as the most powerful nation on the planet, care about humanity, then people in other
countries will not rally around us. They will not. This is not a feel-good thing. If you want your
children to grow up in a safe America, in a safe world, then you want to live in a world where
America is the great, shining example. A world where we are the place everyone looks to. A world
where everyone says, "The United States of America - they are the ones that come to the rescue of
the downtrodden." When an earthquake hits, here comes the United States. Uganda, which I just came back
from, has an extraordinary humanitarian crisis. There has been a civil war for twenty years. Between one and two million people are housed in less-than-
humane camps in northern Uganda. Kids are being abducted and forced into the military, the resistance army, the Lord's Resistance Army - a great name -
and forced to kill their parents and their brothers and sisters. This genocide continues to go on in Darfur and western Sudan. The United States declares it a
genocide and does nothing.
We have so many opportunities to show who we really are. We can demonstrate
who we are at home by not turning our backs on millions of our own people who live in poverty. But
we have lots of chances around the world to show what the character of the United States is. There will be lots of children born in Africa with AIDS because
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their mothers cannot afford a four dollar dose of medicine. How can we let that happen? How can we call ourselves moral and just and allow that to happen?
Right in front of us, we know what is going on, and we turn our backs. It is not right. We are better than this. And you know it. You do not need me to say it.
You know it. The world needs to see our better side, and it matters to us. In a very selfish way, it matters to us. Will
there always be people
who denounce us? Of course. There are dangerous human beings. There are extremists in the
world, and there are dangerous nation-states. That is not the question. The question is: "When
bad things happen, when crises occur, will the rest of the world rally around the United States of
America?" Because they believe in us; because they believe in what we represent - both what we
do at home and what we do in the rest of the world? There is an awful lot at stake. It is not
hyperbole to say that the future of the world is at stake, because it is.
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Heg Internals – Competitiveness
Competitiveness key to sustaining U.S. hegemony and the economy – Asia is catching up now
Segal, Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, ’04
(Adam, Foreign Affairs, “Is America Losing Its Edge?” November / December 2004, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20041101facomment83601/adam-
segal/is-america-losing-its-edge.html)
The United States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and
industries faster than anyone else. For the last five decades, U.S. scientific innovation and technological
entrepreneurship have ensured the country's economic prosperity and military power. It was Americans
who invented and commercialized the semiconductor, the personal computer, and the Internet; other countries merely followed the
U.S. lead. Today, however, this technological edge-so long taken for granted-may be slipping, and the
most serious challenge is coming from Asia. Through competitive tax policies, increased investment in research and development
(R&D), and preferential policies for science and technology (S&T) personnel, Asian governments are improving the quality of their science and ensuring the
exploitation of future innovations. The percentage of patents issued to and science journal articles published by scientists in China, Singapore, South Korea,
and Taiwan is rising. Indian companies are quickly becoming the second-largest producers of application services in the world, developing, supplying, and
managing database and other types of software for clients around the world. South Korea has rapidly eaten away at the U.S. advantage in the manufacture of
computer chips and telecommunications software. And even China has made impressive gains in advanced technologies such as lasers, biotechnology, and
advanced materials used in semiconductors, aerospace, and many other types of manufacturing. Although the United States' technical
dominance remains solid, the globalization of research and development is exerting considerable
pressures on the American system. Indeed, as the United States is learning, globalization cuts both
ways: it is both a potent catalyst of U.S. technological innovation and a significant threat to it. The United States will never be able
to prevent rivals from developing new technologies; it can remain dominant only by continuing to
innovate faster than everyone else. But this won't be easy; to keep its privileged position in the
world, the United States must get better at fostering technological entrepreneurship at home.
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Heg Internals – Highways
Transportation Infrastructure key to effective mobilization of troops – independently key to Heg

Cox, L.A. County Transportation Commission member and chair of national committees on
energy conservation and urban transit planning; and Love editor of comprehensive public policy
manual, ’96
Wendell Cox L.A. County Transportation Commission member and chair of national committees on energy conservation and urban transit planning; and
Jean Love editor of comprehensive public policy manual June 1996
http://www.publicpurpose.com/freeway1.htm#intro
One of the
principal reasons for building the interstate highway system was to support national
defense. When the system was approved --- during one of the most instable periods of the Cold War, national security dictated
development of an efficient national highway system that could move large numbers of military
personnel and huge quantities of military equipment and supplies. The interstate highway system effectively
performs that function, but perhaps more importantly, its availability provides the nation with a potential resource that could have been reliably called upon
if greater military conflict had arisen. Throughout the Cold War (and even to today), America's strategic advantage in effective surface transportation was
unchallenged. Even today, no constituent nation of the late Soviet Union has begun to develop such a comprehensive surface transportation system. In the
post-communist world, it may be tempting to underestimate the role of the interstate highway system in national defense. But the
interstate
highway system continues to play a critical role. The U.S. military's Strategic Highway Corridor
Network (STAHNET) relies primarily on the interstate highway network, which represents 75 percent of
network mileage. The U.S. Army cited the system as being critical to the success of the 1990-1991
"Desert Shield-Desert Storm operation (the U.S. led operation to free Kuwait from Iraq): Much of the success of the operation was
due to our logistical ability to rapidly move troops to the theater. The capacity of the U.S. highway system to support the
mobilization of troops and to move equipment and forces to U.S. ports of embarkation was key to
successful deployment. The Army also noted the "modal redundancy" of the highway system, which provided rapid and effective movements
of a military division when difficulties with a rail line precluded the planned transport by rail. This illustrates the fact that the
interstate highway system continues to play an important role in national defense, even in the
post-Cold War era.
A Strong Infrastructure system is crucial to rapid troop deployment and hegemony

FHA, 3-27
(Federal Highway Administration, “Introduction to Current Military Deployment Concepts”, March 27th 2009,
http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop05029/chapter_1.htm)
The U.S. military has changed significantly to meet the challenges of our uncertain world. An
understanding of the evolving international environment, the national security strategy, and the
capabilities required for full-spectrum dominance have guided the military's transformation from
a forward-deployed Cold War force to a capabilities-based, power-projection force located largely
in the United States. The military has reduced its size, redistributed its forces, closed and realigned
bases, reorganized its overseas equipment prepositioned, and improved active and reserve
component integration to become leaner, more versatile, and more deployable. Increased
deployment activity has become the normal operational standard within the continental United States,
which may regularly affect the planning and operations for State Departments of Transportation (SDOT). As a consequence, all States are
experiencing increased cross-State movements of military assets with destinations beyond State
borders. Within a State with major military installations, such as those with power projection
platforms (PPP), current deployment strategies may require 24x7 operations with enhanced security for increased equipment and personnel
movements. This chapter provides a broad overview of current military doctrine and policies relevant to military deployments on public roads. The range of
size and scope for deployments is discussed, including preferred travel modes and recent lessons learned. The major agencies and organizations are
introduced, with greater definition of roles and responsibilities to be examined in chapter 2. Finally, the role of advisory systems and implications for
military deployment are presented.[1] Strategic mobility and readiness are keys to the military’s ability to project power worldwide. Each of the military
services—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, as well as their component Reserve, National Guard, and Coast Guard counterparts—has made great
strides in implementing the specific recommendations of the congressionally mandated 2001 Mobility Requirements Study and more recent findings from
Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF) as well as the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The ability to deploy
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equipment and personnel rapidly is an imperative of the national military strategy. That strategy
expects the military to defend the homeland, deter aggression in four regions of the world, swiftly
defeat adversaries in two other conflicts, and conduct a limited number of small operations.
Implied in these missions is the requirement to deploy forces within the United States and from the
United States to anywhere in the world. To assist the military services in their planning and better
prepare for future operations, the Department of Defense has established an objective of being able to
deploy to a theater within 10 days sufficient combat power to defeat an enemy during the next 30
days and be ready for the next fight within another 30 days. Key to meeting these deployment
goals is the capability of units to move rapidly from their installations to land, sea, and aerial ports
of embarkation or to designated locations within the United States. Military units use various methods
to move equipment and personnel to seaports. Heavy equipment usually will be shipped by rail; however, some
equipment must be deployed on public roads, either driven by military personnel or consigned to
commercial carriers, to arrive at the seaport on specific dates and times for loading onto ships.
When the military uses public roads, it organizes the equipment into convoys for control and
protection. Appendix B provides detailed information about the military's organization of convoys and standard highway procedures for convoys.
Insights from OIF highlight the dynamic and changing nature of military deployment needs. During the spring of 2003, shipment volumes of military assets
from military installations through the nation to strategic seaports increased 29 percent. This increase created a 15 percent increase in required truck capacity
just for military needs.[2] For certain States with destination ports, the increase in truck volume was greater than 15 percent because vehicles were traveling
from multiple States to a designated port within a State. Consequently, some States with PPPs became concerned about regional and local roadway
congestion and extended hours of operation involving greater than average volumes. Rail carriers experienced similar volume increases. While most rail
carriers accommodated the increased demand for their services between military installations (with rail connections) and ports, logistical and operational
issues in selected regions of the country prevented certain equipment from moving by rail. For example, some military installations did not have rail
accessibility but needed to move assets. Also, the special rail cars used for transporting military assets ("X-cars") were not always available in convenient
locations, creating additional shortfalls in rail capacity. Figure 1 illustrates a typical use of DoD X-cars. While rail operations were generally successful,
operational and capacity shortfalls required truck carriers to complete the deployment mission, resulting in the addition of commercial carriers on the public
roadways.
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Heg Internals – Soft Power
Soft power is key to sustaining Heg

Armitage & Nye, ’07
(Richard L., Deputy Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 and Joseph S., former assistant secretary of defense, teaches political science at Harvard, they co-
chaired the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Smart Power, The Tennessean, “Time for Smart Power”,
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071216/NEWS08/712160370/1025/NEWS)
The world is dissatisfied with American leadership. Shocked and frightened after 9/11, we put forward an
angry face to the globe, not one that reflected the more traditional American values of hope and optimism, tolerance and opportunity. This
fearful approach has hurt the United States' ability to bring allies to its cause, but it is not too late
to change. The nation should embrace a smarter strategy that blends our "hard" and "soft"
power — our ability to attract and persuade, as well as our ability to use economic and military might. Whether it is ending
the crisis in Pakistan, winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, deterring Iran's and North
Korea's nuclear ambitions, managing China's rise or improving the lives of those left behind by globalization, the
United States needs a broader, more balanced approach. Lest anyone think this approach is weak or naive, remember that
Defense Secretary Robert Gates used a major speech on Nov. 26 "to make the case for strengthening our
capacity to use `soft' power and for better integrating it with 'hard' power. " We — one Republican, one
Democrat — have devoted our lives to promoting American pre-eminence as a force for good in the world. But the United States cannot
stay on top without strong and willing allies and partners. Over the past six years, too many people have confused sharing the
burden with relinquishing power. In fact, when we let others help, we are extending U.S. influence, not
diminishing it. Since 9/11, the war on terrorism has shaped this isolating outlook, becoming the central focus of U.S. engagement with the world.
The threat from terrorists with global reach is likely to be with us for decades. But unless they have weapons of mass destruction, groups such as al-Qaeda
pose no existential threat to the United States — unlike our old foes Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.In fact, al-Qaida and its ilk hope to defeat us by
using our own strength against us. They hope we will blunder, overreact and turn world opinion against us. This is a deliberately set trap, and one whose
grave strategic consequences extend far beyond the costs this nation would suffer from any small-scale terrorist attack, no matter how individually tragic and
collectively painful. We cannot return to a nearsighted pre-9/11 mindset that underestimated the al-Qaida threat, but neither can we remain stuck in a narrow
post-9/11 mindset that alienates much of the world.More broadly, when our words do not match our actions, we demean our character and moral standing.
We cannot lecture others about democracy while we back dictators. We cannot denounce torture and waterboarding in other countries and condone it at
home. We cannot allow Cuba's Guantanamo Bay or Iraq's Abu Ghraib to become the symbols of American power. The United States has long
been the big kid on the block, and it will probably remain so for years to come. But its staying
power has a great deal to do with whether it is perceived as a bully or a friend. States and non-
state actors can better address today's challenges when they can draw in allies; those who alienate
potential friends stand at greater risk. The past six years have demonstrated that hard power
alone cannot secure the nation's long-term goals. The U.S. military remains the best in the world,
even after having been worn down from years of war. We will have to invest in people and materiel to maintain
current levels of readiness; as a percentage of gross domestic product, U.S. defense spending is actually well below Cold War levels. But
an extra dollar spent on hard power will not necessarily bring an extra dollar's worth of
security.After all, security threats are no longer simply military threats. China is building two coal-fired power plants each week. U.S. hard power will
do little to curb this trend, but U.S.-developed technology can make Chinese coal cleaner, which helps the environment and opens new markets for American
industry. In
a changing world, the United States should become a smarter power by once again
investing in the global good — by providing things that people and governments want but cannot
attain without U.S. leadership. By complementing U.S. military and economic strength with
greater investments in soft power, Washington can build the framework to tackle tough global
challenges. We call this smart power. Smart power is not about getting the world to like us. It is
about developing a strategy that balances our hard (coercive) power with our soft (attractive) power.
During the Cold War, the United States deterred Soviet aggression through investments in hard
power. But as Gates noted late last month, U.S. leaders also realized that "the nature of the conflict required
us to develop key capabilities and institutions — many of them non-military." So the United States
used its soft power to rebuild Europe and Japan and to establish the norms and institutions that
became the core of the international order for the past half-century. The Cold War ended under a
barrage of hammers on the Berlin Wall rather than a barrage of artillery across the Fulda Gap
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precisely because of this integrated approach.
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Heg Bad Inevitable
Their heg-bad arguments are irrelevant when we control the uniqueness debate – history proves
that the United States has and will always trigger the link to their heg bad arguments by being
neocons
Kagan 07 Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [Robert “End of Dreams, Return of History” Policy Review
(http://www.hoover.org/publications/p...512.html#n10)]
The first illusion, however, is that Bush really changed anything. Historians will long debate the decision
to go to war in Iraq, but what they are least likely to conclude is that the intervention was wildly
out of character for the United States. Since the end of World War ii at least, American presidents of both parties have
pursued a fairly consistent approach to the world. They have regarded the United States as the
“indispensable nation”2 and the “locomotive at the head of mankind.”3 They have amassed power and influence and deployed them in ever-
widening arcs around the globe on behalf of interests, ideals, and ambitions, both tangible and intangible. Since 1945 Americans have
insisted on acquiring and maintaining military supremacy, a “preponderance of power” in the world rather than a balance
of power with other nations. They have operated on the ideological conviction that liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government and that
other forms of government are not only illegitimate but transitory. They have declared their readiness to “support free
peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation” by forces of oppression, to “pay any price, bear
any burden” to defend freedom, to seek “democratic enlargement” in the world, and to work for the “end of
tyranny.” 4 They have been impatient with the status quo. They have seen America as a catalyst for change in human
affairs, and they have employed the strategies and tactics of “maximalism,” seeking revolutionary rather than gradual solutions to problems. Therefore,
they have often been at odds with the more cautious approaches of their allies. 5 When people talk about a Bush Doctrine, they
generally refer to three sets of principles — the idea of preemptive or preventive military action; the promotion
of democracy and “regime change”; and a diplomacy tending toward “unilateralism,” a
willingness to act without the sanction of international bodies such as the United Nations Security Council or the
unanimous approval of its allies. 6 It is worth asking not only whether past administrations acted differently but also which of these any
future administration, regardless of party, would promise to abjure in its conduct of foreign policy. As scholars from Melvyn P.
Leffler to John Lewis Gaddis have shown, the idea of preemptive or preventive action is hardly a novel concept in
American foreign policy. 7 And as policymakers and philosophers from Henry Kissinger to Michael Walzer have agreed, it is impossible in the
present era to renounce such actions a priori.8 As for “regime change,” there is not a single
administration in the past half-century that has not attempted to engineer changes of regime in
various parts of the world, from Eisenhower ’s cia-inspired coups in Iran and Guatemala and his planned overthrow of Fidel
Castro, which John F. Kennedy attempted to carry out, to George Herbert Walker Bush ’s invasion of Panama to Bill
Clinton’s actions in Haiti and Bosnia. And if by unilateralism we mean an unwillingness to be
constrained by the disapproval of the un Security Council, by some of the nato allies, by the oas, or by any other
international body, which presidents of the past allowed themselves to be so constrained? These qualities
of American foreign policy reflect not one man or one party or one circle of thinkers. They spring from the
nation ’s historical experience and are a characteristic American response to international circumstances. They are underpinned, on the one hand, by old
beliefs and ambitions and, on the other hand, by power. So long as Americans elect leaders who believe it is the role of the United States to improve the
world and bring about the “ultimate good,”10 and so long as American power in all its forms is sufficient to shape the behavior of others, the broad
direction of American foreign policy is unlikely to change, absent some dramatic — indeed, genuinely revolutionary —
effort by a future administration.
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Heg Bad Inevitable
Obama will continue to intervene as a hegemon

Kagan 7 Robert Kagan Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace “Obama the Interventionist”
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042702027.html)
America must "lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good." With those words, Barack Obama put an end to
the idea that the alleged overexuberant idealism and America-centric hubris of the past six years is about to give way to a new
realism, a more limited and modest view of American interests, capabilities and responsibilities. Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs last week was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. It had a deliberate New Frontier feel,
including some Kennedy-era references ("we were Berliners") and even the Cold War-era notion that the United States is the "leader of the free world." No
one speaks of the "free world" these days, and Obama's insistence that we not "cede our claim of leadership in world affairs" will sound like an anachronistic
conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow and Beijing it will confirm suspicions about
America's inherent hegemonism. But Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we restore our worthiness to lead.
Personally, I like it. All right, you're thinking, but at least he wants us to lead by example, not by meddling everywhere and trying to transform the world in
America's image. When he said, "We have heard much over the last six years about how America's larger
purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom," you probably expected him to distance himself from this
allegedly discredited idealism. Instead, he said, "I agree." His critique is not that we've meddled too much but that we haven't
meddled enough. There is more to building democracy than "deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box." We must build societies
with "a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force." We must build
up "the capacity of the world's weakest states" and provide them "what they need to reduce poverty, build
healthy and educated communities, develop markets, . . . generate wealth . . . fight terrorism . . . halt the proliferation of deadly
weapons" and fight disease. Obama proposes to double annual expenditures on these efforts, to $50 billion, by 2012. It's
not just international do-goodism. To Obama, everything and everyone everywhere is of strategic concern to the United States. "We cannot hope to shape a
world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is ta ught to build and not to destroy." The
"security of
the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people." Realists, call your doctors. Okay, you say,
but at least Obama is proposing all this Peace Corps-like activity as a substitute for military power. Surely he intends to cut or at least
cap a defense budget soaring over $500 billion a year. Surely he understands there is no military answer to terrorism.
Actually, Obama wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add 65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To fight
terrorism. He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar," and he believes that
"the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face." He wants to ensure that we continue to
have "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world." Obama never once says that military force should be used
only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever hesitate to use force --
unilaterally if necessary," not only "to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked," but also to protect "our vital ia It won't reassure
those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a "vital interest" is and when it is "imminently threatened." Nor will they
be comforted to hear that "when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation
of others." Make every effort? Conspicuously
absent from Obama's discussion of the use of force are four words: United
Nations Security Council. Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular
alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks about how we need to "seize"
the "American moment." We must "begin the world anew." This is realism? This is a left-liberal foreign policy?
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A/T: Off Shore Balancing
Primacy is comparatively superior to off-shore balancing—Layne's grand strategy would prompt

global conflict.
Thayer, Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, ’07
(Bradley A. Thayer, Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2007, "The Case For The
American Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 116-117)
There is no viable alternative grand strategy for the United States than primacy. Primacy is the best and
most effective means to maintain the security and safety of the United States for the reasons I argued in chapter
1. However, it is also the best because every other grand strategic “alternative” is a chimera and can only
weaken the United States, threaten the security and safety of the American people, and introduce
great peril for the United States and for other countries. A large part of what makes primacy such a success is that
other countries know where the United States stands, what it will defend, and that it will be
involved in disputes, both great and small. Accordingly, other countries have to respect the interests of the
United States or face the consequences. Offshore balancing incurs the risks of primacy without its
benefits. It pledges that the United States will defend its interests with air power and sea power,
but not land power. That is curious because we could defend our interests with land power but choose not to, suggesting our threat to defend is
not serious, which weakens our credibility and invites challenges to the interests of the United States.
Offshore balancing increases the probability of conflict for the United States. It raises the danger
that the interests of the United States will be challenged not only from foes like China and Iran,
but, perversely, also from countries now allied with the United States like Japan and Turkey.
The fact that hegemony will one day end is not a reason to accelerate its decline – Layne is wrong
about the sustainability and desirability of primacy.
American Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 104)
Each country knows it will never be perfectly secure, but that does not detract from the necessity
of seeking security. International politics is a dangerous environment in which countries have no
choice but to participate. Any involvement—from the extensive involvement of the United States to the narrow activity of
Switzerland—in this dangerous realm runs the risk of a backlash. That is simply a fact of life in
international politics. The issue is how much participation is right. Thankfully, thus far the United
States recognizes it is much better to be involved so that it may shape events, rather than to
remain passive, having events shaped by other countries, and then adjusting to what they desire. In
contrast to Layne’s argument, maximizing the power of the United States aids its ability to defend itself from attacks and to advance its interests. This
argument is based on its prodigious economic, ideological, and military power. Due to this power, the
United States is able to defeat its
enemies the world over, to reassure its allies, and to dissuade states from challenging it. From this
power also comes respect and admiration, no matter how grudging it may be at times. These
advantages keep the United States, its interests, and its allies secure, and it must strive to maintain
its advantages in international politics as long as possible. Knowing that American hegemony will
end someday does not mean that we should welcome or facilitate its demise; rather the reverse.
The United States should labor to maintain hegemony as long as possible—just as knowing that
you will die someday does not keep you from planning your future and living today. You strive to
live as long as possible although you realize that it is inevitable that you will die. Like good health,
Americans and most of the world should welcome American primacy and work to preserve it as
long as possible.
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1AC – Heg Good
U.S hegemony solves extinction --- multiple scenarios

transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, ‘07
(Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, 9-07, “End
of Dreams, Return of History,” Stanford University Policy Review, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html)
This is a good thing, and it should continue to be a primary goal of American foreign policy to perpetuate this relatively benign international configuration of
power. The unipolar order with the United States as the predominant power is unavoidably riddled with flaws and
contradictions. It inspires fears and jealousies. The United States is not immune to error, like all other nations, and because of its size and importance in the
international system those errors are magnified and take on greater significance than the errors of less powerful nations. Compared to the ideal Kantian
international order, in which all the world 's powers would be peace-loving equals, conducting themselves wisely, prudently, and in strict obeisance to
international law, the unipolar system is both dangerous and unjust. Compared to any plausible alternative in the real world,
however, it is relatively stable and less likely to produce a major war between great powers. It is also
comparatively benevolent, from a liberal perspective, for it is more conducive to the principles of economic and political liberalism that Americans and
many others value. American predominance does not stand in the way of progress toward a better world, therefore. It stands in the
way of regression toward a more dangerous world. The choice is not between an American-dominated
order and a world that looks like the European Union. The future international order will be shaped by those who have the power to shape it. The
leaders of a post-American world will not meet in Brussels but in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington .
The return of great powers and great games If the world is marked by the persistence of unipolarity, it is nevertheless also being shaped by the reemergence
of competitive national ambitions of the kind that have shaped human affairs from time immemorial. During the Cold War, this historical tendency of great
powers to jostle with one another for status and influence as well as for wealth and power was largely suppressed by the two superpowers and their rigid
bipolar order. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not been powerful enough, and probably could never be powerful enough, to suppress by
itself the normal ambitions of nations. This does not mean the world has returned to multipolarity, since none of the large powers is in range of competing
several large powers are now competing for regional
with the superpower for global influence. Nevertheless,
predominance, both with the United States and with each other. National ambition drives China's
foreign policy today, and although it is tempered by prudence and the desire to appear as unthreatening as possible to the rest of the world, the
Chinese are powerfully motivated to return their nation to what they regard as its traditional
position as the preeminent power in East Asia. They do not share a European, postmodern view that power is passé; hence their
now two-decades-long military buildup and modernization. Like the Americans, they believe power, including military power, is a good thing to have and
that it is better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more significant is the Chinese perception, also shared by Americans, that status and honor, and not just
wealth and security, are important for a nation. Japan, meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an aspiring postmodern power -- with its
pacifist constitution and low defense spending -- now appears
embarked on a more traditional national course. Partly this is
in reaction to the rising power of China and concerns about North Korea’s nuclear weapons. But it
is also driven by Japan's own national ambition to be a leader in East Asia or at least not to play second fiddle or
"little brother" to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest with each trying to augment its own status and power
and to prevent the other 's rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as well as an economic and political component. Their
competition is such that a nation like South Korea, with a long unhappy history as a pawn between the two powers, is once again worrying both about a
"greater China" and about the return of Japanese nationalism. As Aaron Friedberg commented, the East Asian future looks more like Europe's past than its
present. But it also looks like Asia's past. Russian
foreign policy, too, looks more like something from the nineteenth century. It is being
driven by a typical, and typically Russian, blend of national resentment and ambition. A postmodern Russia simply
seeking integration into the new European order, the Russia of Andrei Kozyrev, would not be troubled by the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO,
would not insist on predominant influence over its "near abroad," and would not use its natural resources as means of gaining geopolitical leverage and
enhancing Russia’s international status in [is] an attempt to regain the lost glories of the Soviet empire
and Peter the Great. But Russia, like China and Japan, is moved by more traditional great-power considerations, including
the pursuit of those valuable if intangible national interests: honor and respect. Although Russian leaders complain about threats to their security from
NATO and the United States, the Russian sense of insecurity has more to do with resentment and national identity than with plausible external military
threats. 16 Russia's complaint today is not with this or that weapons system. It is the entire post-Cold War settlement of the 1990s that Russia resents and
wants to revise. But that does not make insecurity less a factor in Russia 's relations with the world; indeed, it makes finding compromise with the Russians
all the more difficult. One could add others to this list of great powers with traditional rather than postmodern aspirations. India
's regional
ambitions are more muted, or are focused most intently on Pakistan, but it is clearly engaged in
competition with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean and sees itself, correctly, as an emerging
great power on the world scene. In the Middle East there is Iran, which mingles religious fervor
with a historical sense of superiority and leadership in its region. 17 Its nuclear program is as much
about the desire for regional hegemony as about defending Iranian territory from attack by the United States. Even the
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European Union, in its way, expresses a pan-European national ambition to play a significant role in the
world, and it has become the vehicle for channeling German, French, and British ambitions in what
Europeans regard as a safe supranational direction. Europeans seek honor and respect, too, but of a postmodern variety. The honor they seek is to occupy the
moral high ground in the world, to exercise moral authority, to wield political and economic influence as an antidote to militarism, to be the keeper of the
global conscience, and to be recognized and admired by others for playing this role. Islam is not a nation, but many Muslims express a kind of religious
nationalism, and the leaders of radical Islam, including al Qaeda, do seek to establish a theocratic nation or confederation of nations that would encompass a
wide swath of the Middle East and beyond. Like national movements elsewhere, Islamists have a yearning for respect, including self-respect, and a
desire for honor. Their national identity
has been molded in defiance against stronger and often oppressive outside
powers, and also by memories of ancient superiority over those same powers. China had its "century of humiliation." Islamists have more than a century
of humiliation to look back on, a humiliation of which Israel has become the living symbol, which is partly why even Muslims who are neither radical nor
fundamentalist proffer their sympathy and even their support to violent extremists who can turn the tables on the dominant liberal West, and particularly on a
dominant America which implanted and still feeds the Israeli cancer in their midst. Finally,
there is the United States itself. As a matter
of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal and
conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle
East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal
after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and
continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward
across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its
position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic competitions in these
regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia, and
with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than
a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global
place as "No. 1" and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic
reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in their own image. They profess indifference
to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The jostling for
status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system.
Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for
power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from
intensifying -- its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its
influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle
disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often
through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a
multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars between
them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also dangerous to underestimate
the role the United States plays in providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability.
For instance, the United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations
cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the
guarantor of international waterways and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when
the United States engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more
genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance at
least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between nations would involve struggles
on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War I and other
major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests
not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle,
owes its founding to American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii
would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the
thought, but even today Europe’s stability depends on the guarantee, however distant and one
hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any dangerous development on the
continent. In a genuinely multipolar world, that would not be possible without renewing the
danger of world war. People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to
the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world
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enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American power was
diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But that’s not
the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of
power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since
World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar
world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its
own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states
that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for
Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current
order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the world 's great powers. Even under the
umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between
China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European
allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict
between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such
conflicts
may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to
erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is
especially true in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a
stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of China 's neighbors. But even China,
which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the
dilemma that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist
Japan. In Europe, too, the departure of the United States from the scene -- even if it remained the world's most
powerful nation -- could be destabilizing. It could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and
potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on its periphery. Although some realist theorists
seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of
confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history suggests that
conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet communism. If the United States
withdrew from Europe -- if it adopted what some call a strategy of "offshore balancing" -- this
could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its near neighbors, which
could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that
a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, "offshore" role would lead to greater stability there. The
vital interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that
American leaders could or would stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more "even-handed" policy
toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel 's aid if its
security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically
ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground.
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2AC Heg Outweighs Overview
Hegemony has existed for the past FIFTY years – means all of your impacts are empirically
denied
U.S. interventionism is inevitable because as one of the world’s largest nations we need resources –
This is empirically proven by the gulf war. This is why all their hackish alternatives and
inevitability arguments are wrong
Even if the alternative to hegemony is better Kagan indicates that the withdraw of the U.S. from
the international order would create a global power vacuum and transition wars that will result in
extinction
And in the event that Heg does collapse, the U.S. will latch onto its hegemonic power and lash out
during the transition to any alternatives to the status quo, guaranteeing extinction
Kagan indicates that a lack of U.S. hegemony will lead to Wars in Asia due to competition by
Japan and China, Russian expansionism and subsequent European war, Indian expansionism
and South Asia War, Iranian expansionism and subsequent Middle East conflict, A collapse of
trade because the U.S.’s naval superiority is critical to keep trade root opens and this in turn is
key to the economy, and Proliferation due to a lack of U.S. presence in the international order.
[Soft Power Only] Their indicts of our heg advantage isn’t specific to our type of heg, by
increasing U.S. soft power we solve for all their offense because the root cause of all their turns are
other countries disliking the U.S. for being a bully, by maintaining both soft power and hard
power we ensure that we can quell violent conflicts efficiently and diplomatically – That’s
Armitage and Nye in ’07
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Heg Good – Caspian Stability
First, American leadership in the Caspian key to stability: boosts American hegemony, contains
Russia and is key to checking terrorism and smuggling
Kalicki 1 (Jan, Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, “Caspian Energy at the Cross-Roads”, Foreign Affairs,
Sept/Oct, p. lexis)
The countries surrounding the Caspian Sea -- Russia to the north, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to the east, Iran to the south, and
Azerbaijan to the west -- hold some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. And together with neighboring Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, and
Uzbekistan, they represent important economic, political, and strategic interests for the United States. To
advance those interests, Washington should strengthen its policy toward the Caspian by giving the highest level of support to the cooperative development of
regional energy reserves and pipelines. In particular, it should encourage the construction of multiple pipelines to ensure diverse and reliable transportation
of Caspian energy to regional and international markets.Although the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will continue to dominate the global
energy market for decades to come, oil and gas development in the Caspian basin could help diversify, secure, and stabilize world energy supplies in the
future, as resources from the North Sea have done in the past. The proven and possible energy reserves in or adjacent to the Caspian region -- including at
least 115 billion barrels of oil -- are in fact many times greater than those of the North Sea and should increase significantly with continuing exploration.
Such plentiful resources could generate huge returns for U.S. companies and their shareholders. American firms have already acquired 75 percent of
Kazakhstan's mammoth Tengiz oil field, which is now valued at more than $10 billion. Over time, as the capital generated from Caspian energy
development spreads to other sectors, U.S. firms in other industries -- from infrastructure to telecommunications to transportation and other services -- could
also benefit. In addition to these energy-related and commercial interests, the
United States has important political and
strategic stakes in the Caspian region -- including a NATO ally in Turkey, a former adversary in
Russia, a currently turbulent regime in Iran, and several fragile new states. Located at the
crossroads of western Europe, eastern Asia, and the Middle East, the Caspian serves as a trafficking area for weapons
of mass destruction, terrorists, and narcotics -- a role enhanced by the weakness of the region's
governments. With few exceptions, the fledgling Caspian republics are plagued with pervasive corruption, political repression, and the virtual
absence of the rule of law. Even if they can muster the political will to attempt reform themselves, the
attempt will fail so long as they lack the resources to build strong economic and political
institutions. And until they build close, substantive relations with the West, they will remain
vulnerable to Russia's hegemonic impulses. The cooperative development of regional energy
reserves and pipelines -- independent of their huge neighbors to the north and the south -- thus represents not only a boon
for the United States and the world at large, but also the surest way to provide for the Caspian
nations' own security and prosperity.
Second Failure to contain Russian would destabilize all of Eurasia, spark nuclear wars and put a
stranglehold on the west.
Cohen 96 (Ariel, PhD, Heritage Foundation, “The New Great Game: Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia”, Backgrounder, no. 1065, p. lexis)
Much is at stake in Eurasia for the U.S. and its allies. Attempts to restore its empire will doom
Russia’s transition to a democracy and free-market economy. The ongoing war in Chechnya alone has cost Russia $6
billion to date (equal to Russia’s IMF and World Bank loans for 1995). Moreover, it has extracted a tremendous price from Russian society. The wars
which would be required to restore the Russian empire would prove much more costly not just for
Russia and the region, but for peace, world stability, and security. As the former Soviet arsenals
are spread throughout the NIS, these conflicts may escalate to include the use of weapons of mass
destruction. Scenarios including unauthorized missile launches are especially threatening. Moreover, if successful, a
reconstituted Russian empire would become a major destabilizing influence both in Eurasia and
throughout the world. It would endanger not only Russia’s neighbors, but also the U.S. and its
allies in Europe and the Middle East. And, of course, a neo-imperialist Russia could imperil the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf.15
Domination of the Caucasus would bring Russia closer to the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Middle East. Russian imperialists, such as radical
nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, have resurrected the old dream of obtaining a warm port on the Indian Ocean. If
Russia succeeds in
establishing its domination in the south, the threat to Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, and Afganistan will
increase. The independence of pro-Western Georgia and Azerbaijan already has been undermined by pressures from the Russian armed forces and
covert actions by the intelligence and security services, in addition to which Russian hegemony would make Western political and economic efforts to stave
off Islamic militancy more difficult. Eurasian oil resources are pivotal to economic development in the early
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21st century. The supply of Middle Eastern oil would become precarious if Saudi Arabia became
unstable, or if Iran or Iraq provoked another military conflict in the area. Eurasian oil is also key to the economic
development of the southern NIS. Only with oil revenues can these countries sever their
dependence on Moscow and develop modern market economies and free societies. Moreover, if these vast oil
reserves were tapped and developed, tens of thousands of U.S. and Western jobs would be created. The U.S. should ensure free access
to these reserves for the benefit of both Western and local economies.
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Heg Good – Chinese Containment
First, strong American capabilities and the containment of China is critical to prevent aggression
and war over Taiwan.
Khalilzad 95 (Zalmay, US Ambassador to the United Nations. “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War.” The Washington
Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2. pg. 84 Spring 1995)
Third, the United States should seek to strengthen its own relative capabilities and those of its
friends in East Asia to deter possible Chinese aggression and deal effectively with a more
powerful, potentially hostile China. China's military leaders are considering the possibility of a
conflict with the United States. They recognize the overall superiority of the U.S. military but
believe there are weaknesses that could be exploited while preventing the United States from
bringing its full power to bear in case of a conflict over Taiwan. According to the Chinese, U.S. weaknesses include
vulnerability of U.S. bases to missile attacks, heavy U.S. reliance on space, America's need to rapidly reinforce the region in times of conflict, susceptibility
of U.S. cities to being held hostage, and America's sensitivity to casualties. According to the emerging Chinese doctrine, the local balance of power in the
region will be decisive because in this new era wars are short and intense. In a possible Taiwan conflict China would seek to create a fait accompli, forcing
the United States to risk major escalation and high levels of violence to reinstate the status quo ante. China might gamble that these risks would constrain the
U.S. response. Such an approach by China would be extremely risky and could lead to a major war. Dealing
with such possible
challenges from China both in the near and long term requires many steps. Burden-sharing and
enhanced ties with states in East and Southeast Asia will be important. New formal alliance
relationships--which would be the central element of a containment strategy--are neither
necessary nor practical at this time, but it would be prudent to take some preparatory steps to
facilitate the formation of a new alliance or the establishment of new military bases should that
become necessary. They would signal to China that any attempt on their part to seek regional hegemony would be costly. The steps we should
take now in the region must include enhancing military-to-military relations between Japan and South Korea, encouraging increased political- military
cooperation among the ASEAN states and resolving overlapping claims to the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea; fostering a Japanese-Russian
rapprochement, including a settlement of the dispute over the "northern territories;" and enhancing military-to-military cooperation between the United
States and the ASEAN states. These steps are important in themselves for deterrence and regional stability but they can also assist in shifting to a much
tougher policy toward China should that become necessary. Because
of the potential for conflict between the United
States and China over issues such as Taiwan, the U.S. military posture in general should take this
possibility into account. Measures should be taken to correct the Chinese belief that they can confront the world with a fait accompli in
Taiwan. The United States needs expanded joint exercises with states in the region. Ensuring access to key facilities in countries such as the Philippines, pre-
positioning stocks in the region, and increasing Taiwan's ability to defend itself would also be prudent. The
large distances of the East
Asian region also suggest that a future U.S. force-mix must emphasize longer-range systems and
stand-off weapons. The United States must develop increased capabilities to protect friendly
countries and U.S. forces in the region against possible missile attacks.
Second, failure to deter an invasion sparks a global nuclear war.
Chicago Tribune 96 (staff, “China Prepares New Show of Strength”, Feb. 6, p. lexis)
While a peaceful solution remains a priority, both the politburo and the Peoples Liberation Army
have pledged to use force if necessary to regain the island on which the Nationalists settled after losing the civil war to
Mao Tse-tung in 1949.A PLA analysis--leaked to Western media--suggests that in the event of war with Taiwan, the U.S. would not intervene
because U.S. commercial interests in China would be damaged and any intervention could lead to a new Sino-Russian alliance.The document, circulated
among officers, concludes
that even if the U.S. intervened, Washington could only retard--but not
reverse--the defeat of Taiwan, and a Sino-U.S. conflict might lead to a global nuclear holocaust.
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Heg Good – Democracy
First, leadership is critical to democratization effects.
Albright 97 (Madeleine, Secretary of State, “Building a framework for American leadership in the 21st Century - U.S. Secretary of State” Statement
before the House International Relations Committee, Washington, DC.
http://findarticles.co m/p/articles/mi_m1584/is_n2_v8/ai_19538680/pg_9)
Mr. Chairman, more than seven years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and five years since the demise of the Soviet Union. Today,
America is secure, our economy vibrant, and our ideals ascendant. Across the globe, the movement towards open
societies and open markets is wider and deeper than ever before. Democracy's triumph is neither accidental nor
irreversible; it is the result of sustained American leadership. It would not have been possible
without the power of our example, the strength of our military, or the constancy and creativity of
our diplomacy. That is the central lesson of the twentieth century -- and this lesson must continue to guide us if we are to safeguard our interests as
we enter the twenty-first. Make no mistake: the interests served by American foreign policy are not the abstract
inventions of State Department planners; they are the concrete real, ties of our daily lives. Think about
it. Would the American people be as secure if weapons of mass destruction, instead of being controlled, fell into the wrong hands? That is precisely what
would have happened if the Administration and Congress had not acted to ensure the dismantling of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, the freezing of North
Korea's, and the securing of Russia's.
Second, democratic consolidation is key to preventing nuclear war.
CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON PREVENTING DEADLY CONFLICT 95 (staff, “Promoting Democracy in the

1990’s”, Oct, p. online: http://www.carnegie.org/sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html lexis)
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears
at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have
made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear,
chemical, and
biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem,
appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for
legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this
century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to
war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic
governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass
destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer
to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they
respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of
international security and prosperity can be built.
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Heg Good – Deter Rogue States
First, Strong Hegemony and force projection is the only way to deal with rogue states.
HENRIKSON 99 (Thomas, Sr. Fellow at Hoover Institute, “Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal with Rogue States”, p. online:
http://www.hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/94/94a.html //wyo-tjc)
In today's globally interconnected world, events on one side of the planet can influence actions on the other side, meaning that how
the United
States responds to a regional rogue has worldwide implications. Rogue leaders draw conclusions
from weak responses to aggression. That Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, escaped unpunished for his invasion of Kuwait no doubt
emboldened the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, in his campaign to extirpate Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina in pursuit of a greater Serbia.
Deterring security threats is a valuable mechanism to maintain peace, as witnessed by the cold war, and it may afford the only realistic option available. But
in dealing with rogue states deterrence and containment may not be enough. Before NATO intervened in the Bosnia imbroglio in 1995, to take one example,
the ethno-nationalist conflict raised the specter of a wider war, drawing in the neighboring countries of Greece, Turkey, and Russia. Political
inaction creates vacuums, which can suck in states to fill the void. Although the United States does
not want to be the world's sheriff, living in a world without law and order is not an auspicious
prospect. This said, it must be emphasized that the United States ought not intervene militarily in every conflict
or humanitarian crisis. Indeed, it should pick its interventions with great care. Offering Washington's good
offices to mediate disputes in distant corners is one thing; dispatching armed forces to far-flung deserts, jungles, or mountains is quite another. A global
doctrine setting forth all-inclusive guidelines is difficult to cast in stone. Containment, the doctrine articulated in response to Soviet global ambitions, offered
a realistic guideline for policymakers. A similar response to rogue states cannot be easily cloned for each contingency but may require the United States to
corral allies or partners into a unified policy, as circumstances dictate. But watching rogue behavior with complacency or relying on the United Nations
courts disaster in the age of weapons of mass destruction. Most incidents of civil turmoil need not engage U.S. military forces. Regrettable as the bloody
civil war in Sri Lanka is, it demands no American intervention, for the ethnic conflict between the secessionist Tamil minority and the Sinhalese majority is
largely an internal affair. Political turmoil in Cambodia is largely a domestic problem. Even the civil war in the Congo, which has drawn in small military
forces from Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, and Zimbabwe, is a Central African affair. Aside from international prodding, the simmering Congolese fighting is
better left to Africans to resolve than to outsiders. In the case of the decades-long slaughter in southern Sudan, the United States can serve a humanitarian
cause by calling international attention to Khartoum's genocide of Christian and animist peoples. These types of conflicts, however, do not endanger U.S.
strategic interests, undermine regional order, threaten global commercial relationships, or, realistically, call for direct humanitarian intervention. No weapons
of mass destruction menace surrounding peoples or allies. Thus, there is no compelling reason for U.S. military deployment. Terrorist rogue
states, in contrast, must be confronted with robust measures, or the world will go down the same
path as it did in the 1930s, when Europe and the United States allowed Nazi Germany to
propagate its ideology across half a dozen states, to rearm for a war of conquest, and to intimidate
the democracies into appeasement. Rogue states push the world toward anarchy and away from
stability. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, cited preventing global anarchy as one of the two goals of
"America's global engagement, namely, that of forging an enduring framework of global geopolitical cooperation." The other key goal is "impeding the
emergence of a power rival."(4)
Second, Failure to deter Rogues sparks a nuclear crises and war
Boot 4 (Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, “Neocons. (Think Again),” FOREIGN POLICY, January/February 2004, n. 140 p. 20
lexis)
True. The
greatest danger to the United States today is the possibility that some rogue state will
develop nuclear weapons and then share them with terrorist groups. Iran and North Korea are
the two likeliest culprits. Neither would be willing to negotiate away its nuclear arsenal; no treaty would be any trustworthier than the 1994
Agreed Framework that North Korea violated. Neocons think the only way to ensure U.S. security is to topple the tyrannical regimes in Pyongyang and
Tehran. This objective does not mean, however, that neocons are agitating for preemptive war. They do not rule out force if necessary. But their preferred
solution is to use political, diplomatic, economic, and military pressure, short of actual war, to bring down these dictators--the same strategy the United
States followed with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Iranian and North Korean peoples want to be free; the United States should help them by
every means possible, while doing nothing to provide support for their oppressors. Regime
change may seem like a radical policy
but it is actually the best way to prevent a nuclear crisis that could lead to war. Endless
negotiating with these governments--the preferred strategy of self-described pragmatists and
moderates--is likely to bring about the very crisis it is meant to avert.
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Heg Good – East Asian Stability
First, US withdrawal from Asia sparks Japan into rapid nuclear armament, attack on Taiwan and
North Korean proliferation.
Dao 3 (James, staff , “Why Keep US Troops?”, The New York Times, Jan. 5, p. l lexis)
Deciding if now is the time depends on how well the United States is able to project power across the Pacific, as well as on its responsibilities as the globe's
presumptive supercop. Withdrawing forces in Korea would reverberate powerfully in Tokyo, Beijing,
Taipei and beyond, raising questions in an already jittery region about Washington's willingness to maintain stability
in Asia. "In the present mood, the Japanese reaction could be quite strong," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national
security adviser to Jimmy Carter. "And under those circumstances, it's hard to say how the Chinese might respond." In the
1970's, Mr. Brzezinski took part in the last major debate over reducing American forces in Korea, when President Carter, motivated by post-Vietnam doubts
about American power, proposed withdrawing ground forces from the peninsula. He faced resistance from the South Korean government, the Pentagon and
the Central Intelligence Agency. The arguments against withdrawal then still apply today, Mr. Brzezinski says .
A secure Korea makes
Japan more confident, he contends. An American withdrawal from Korea could raise questions about
the United States' commitment to the 40,000 troops it has in Japan. And that could drive anxious
Japanese leaders into a military buildup that could include nuclear weapons, he argues. "If we did it, we
would stampede the Japanese into going nuclear," he said. Other Asian leaders would be likely to
interpret a troop withdrawal as a reduction of American power, no matter how much the United States asserts its
commitment to the region. China might take the opportunity to flex its military muscle in the Taiwan Straits
and South China Sea. North Korea could feel emboldened to continue its efforts to build nuclear
arms. "Any movement of American forces would almost certainly involve countries and
individuals taking the wrong message," said Kurt Campbell, a deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton administration.
"The main one would be this: receding American commitment, backing down in the face of irresponsible North Korean behavior. And frankly, the ultimate
beneficiary of this would be China in the long term." "Mind-sets in Asia are profoundly traditional," he said. "They calculate political will by the numbers of
soldiers, ships and airplanes that they see in the region."
Second, increasing Asian nuclearization runs the risk of wild-fire proliferation and arms-racing,
leading to miscalculation and nuclear war.
Friedburg 94 (Aaron, Professor of International Relations at Princeton University International Security, Winter, p. 8, p. lexis)
Assuming, for the moment that an Asia with more nuclear powers would be more stable than one
with fewer, there would still be serious difficulties involved in negotiating the transition to such a
world. As in other regions, small, nascent nuclear forces will be especially vulnerable to
preemption. In Japan the prevailing “nuclear allergy” could lead first to delays in acquiring
deterrent forces and then to a desperate and dangerous scramble for nuclear weapons. In Asia,
the prospects for a peaceful transition may be further complicated by the fact that the present and
potential nuclear powers are both numerous and strategically intertwined. The nuclearization of
Korea (North, South or, whether through reunification or competitive arms programs, both together) could lead to a similar
development in Japan, which might cause China to accelerate and expand its nuclear programs,
which could then have an impact on the defense policies of Taiwan, India (and through it,
Pakistan) and Russia (which would also be affected by events in Japan and Korea). All of this would influence the behavior of the United
States. Similar shockwaves could also travel through the system in different directions (for example, from
India to China to Japan to Korea). A rapid, multifaceted expansion in nuclear capabilities could increase the
dangers of misperception, miscalculation, and war.
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Heg Good – Global Economy
First, Hegemony is key to trade and interdependence—stability opens conditions necessary for
growth.
Walt 2 (Stephen, JFKSchool of Government Professor at Harvard Univiversity Naval War College Review, Spring,
www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm)
By facilitating the development of a more open and liberal world economy, American primacy
also fosters global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world
peace, but it is more accurate to say that peace encourages interdependence-by making it easier
for states to accept the potential vulnerabilities of extensive international intercourse. Investors are more
willing to send money abroad when the danger of war is remote, and states worry less about being dependent on others when they are not concerned that
these connections might be severed. When states are relatively secure, they will also be less fixated on how the gains from cooperation are distributed. In
particular, they are less likely to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a relative disadvantage over time. By
providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U.S. primacy has created political
conditions that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment. Indeed, American primacy was a
prerequisite for the creation and gradual expansion of the European Union, which is often touted as a triumph of economic self-interest over historical
rivalries. Because the United States was there to protect the Europeans from the Soviet Union and from each other, they could safely ignore the balance of
power within Western Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The expansion of world trade has been a major
source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars upon which that system rests. The United States also played a leading
role in establishing the various institutions that regulate and manage the world economy. As a number of commentators have noted, the current era of
“globalization” is itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas Friedman puts it, “Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.”
Second, A global economic collapse would escalate to full scale conflict and rapid extinction
Bearden 2k (Thomas, “The Unnecessary Energy Crisis”, Free Republic, June 24, lexis)
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the
stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where
the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released.
As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal
response. Or suppose a desperate China-whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-attacks Taiwan. In
addition to
immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other
nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme
stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then
compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this
side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-
bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to
full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States
itself. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of
the biosphere, at least for many decades.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 129/311
Heg Good – Iraq Stability
US hegemony in Iraq prevents Iraqi collapse
Washington Post 7 (“IF Leave, Regional War and ‘Shiastan’”,

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/leon_krauze/2007/04/keep_foot_on_or_chaos_and_shia.html, April 30, 2007)
For a while now, there have been only two possible outcomes in Iraq: the bad and the worse. Which is the latter and how to avoid it? The worst
outcome for Iraq would be a full-scale civil war that ends in the country’s partition. There is little question
that, once the American forces leave, the country will become a far bloodier and more lawless
battleground than it is now. Once that happens, I see no reason why Moqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite strongmen
would seek any kind of compromise with Sunni leaders in a pluralist government. Outright Shia domination
of Iraq should never be allowed. Given the recent history of both the Middle East and Islam, secularity is a precious asset. In fact, Saddam’s pragmatic view
of religion was perhaps the man’s only virtue. It wasn’t an insignificant attribute, especially given the aggressive expansionist theocracy next door. America
(and the world) should make sure that Iraq remains a diverse multicultural federation rather than become three isolated and weak enclaves. So the bad but
not the worst is a state more like India than the former Yugoslavia. But is this even possible? Can this be achieved without a violent, revolutionary period?
The stakes are too high to wait and find out. The consequences of an enormous “Shiastan” right in the heart of the Middle East could prove to be disastrous.
Saudi Arabia, Israel and Syria would stretch out their own claws soon enough. Regional conflict
would be, literally, around the corner.
Iraqi instablity spills over and causes terrorism.
The National Interest 7 (“Keeping the Lid On”, Lexisnexis, May-June 2007)
THE COLLAPSE of Iraq into all-out civil war would mean more than just a humanitarian
tragedy that could easily claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and produce millions of
refugees. Such a conflict is unlikely to contain itself. In other similar cases of all-out civil war the resulting spillover has
fostered terrorism, created refugee flows that can destabilize the entire neighborhood, radicalized
the populations of surrounding states and even sparked civil wars in other, neighboring states or
transformed domestic strife into regional war. Terrorists frequently find a home in states in civil
war, as Al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan. However, civil wars just as often breed new terrorist groups-Hizballah, the
Palestine Liberation Organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat of Algeria, and
the Tamil Tigers were all born of civil wars. Many such groups start by focusing on local targets
but then shift to international attacks-starting with those they believe are aiding their enemies in
the civil war.
Terrorism risks extinction
Kirkus Reviews, 99 (Book Review on “The New Terrorism: Fanatiscism and the Arms of Mass Destruction”, http://www.amazon.com/New-
Terrorism-Fanaticism-Arms-Destruction/dp/product-description/0195118162)
Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a ``nuisance'' to ``one of the gravest dangers facing
mankind.'' First terroristsbe they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible permutationsseem
to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for
their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are willing to do, who and
how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of
mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or
biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless
fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted
society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world
scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in
the future may threaten the very foundations of modern civilizations.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 130/311
Heg Good – Laundry List
Heg is necessary to prevent WMD prolif, promote human rights, and promote democracy.
Walt 2 (Stephen, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls." Naval
War College Review, Vol. 55, Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages) Spring 2002.
Proquest)
Thus, anyone who thinks that the United States should try to discourage the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, promote human rights, advance the cause of democracy, or pursue any other positive
political goal should recognize that the nation's ability to do so rests primarily upon its power. The
United States would accomplish far less if it were weaker, and it would discover that other states were
setting the agenda of world politics if its own power were to decline. As Harry Truman put it over fifty years ago,
"Peace must be built upon power, as well as upon good will and good deeds."17 The bottom line is clear.
Even in a world with nuclear weapons, extensive economic ties, rapid communications, an
increasingly vocal chorus of nongovernmental organizations, and other such novel features, power
still matters, and primacy is still preferable. People running for president do not declare that their main goal as commander in chief
would be to move the United States into the number-two position. They understand, as do most Americans, that being number one is a luxury they should try
very hard to keep.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 131/311
Heg Good – Middle East Stability
US leadership is key to Middle Eastern stability and prevent escalation.
Frontiers of Freedom 7 (“Democrats and Some Republicans Ignore Reality in Iraq”,

http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/jbell_20070709.html, 7/9/07)
It not only seems contradictory, it is contradictory - indeed, it
is delusional - to believe that a reliance on international
cooperation and foreign aid will soothe the ire of Iran, al Qaeda in Iraq and their ideological supporters and pave
the way for political and social progress. Absent active and engaged U.S. leadership Iraq will become a long-term
failed state and a terrorist sanctuary. With respect to Iraq, the Democrats have always preferred to plow the easy field of political
expediency instead of laboring in the difficult field of policy. Now the party of the donkey is being joined by some Republicans who are prepared to ignore
reality in favor of mythical rhetoric. On July 5, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote, “As evidence mounts that the ‘surge’ is failing to make Iraq more
secure, we cannot wait until the Administration’s September report before we change course. President Bush and the Iraqis must move now to finally accept
a measure of accountability for this war … transition the mission for our combat troops and start bringing them home from an intractable civil war.” First,
Reid and his political brethren have spent far too much time trying to make the case that what is transpiring in Iraq is a civil war. However one defines the
conflict it is a key battleground and the aftermath of the fighting will dictate what forces sink their roots deep into the Middle East’s future. Second, despite
Reid’s hyperventilating, there is no “evidence” that the surge is failing. In fact, U.S. commanders on the ground report the opposite.
On July 6, the day after Reid’s misguided missive, Army Major General Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division Center and the 3rd Army
Division said U.S. and Iraqi forces are making “significant progress” in destroying insurgent sanctuaries.
General Lynch said the “surge forces are giving us the capability we have now to take the fight to
the enemy. The enemy only responds to force and we now have that force.” Lynch explained, “We can conduct detailed kinetic
strikes, we can do cordon and searches, and we can deny the enemy sanctuaries. If those surge
forces go away that capability goes away and the Iraqi security forces aren’t ready yet to do that
(mission).” The general said if U.S. forces begin an untimely departure, “You’d find the enemy regaining
ground, reestablishing sanctuaries, building more IEDs (and) carrying those IEDs to Baghdad,
and the violence would escalate.”
Middle Eastern instability sky rockets oil prices, causing economic collapse.
Islam Online.Net 6 (“Frequently Asked Questions About Iraq”, http://www.islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/topic_15.shtml,

March 21, 2006)
Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy. The Middle East has about 65% of the world’s total oil
resources. With this in mind, it becomes clear that any instability in the Middle East would threaten the global oil
trade. If the global oil trade were disrupted, it would cause a shortage in supply which would cause oil prices to
skyrocket. Skyrocketing oil prices hamper global economic growth and threaten the world’s
economies. At worst, it could cause a recession in many of the world’s oil dependent countries.
Economic collapse causes global nuclear war and extinction.
Bearden 2k (Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, 2000, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, 2000,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-Medicine/message/642) (PDAF0842)
Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As
the
collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations
as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History
bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will
have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a
starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S.
forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the
United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will
quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for
decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 132/311
potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's
adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance
a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible.
As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed .
The resulting
great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at
least for many decades.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 133/311
Heg Good – South China Sea
First, forward military presence in the pacific deters China and leads to stabilization allowing a
political solution to be brokered.
Odgaard 1 (Liselotte, Asst Prof, of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “Deterrence and Co-operation in the South China Sea”,
Contemporary Southeast Asia, Aug 1, lexis)
The South China Sea constitutes a first line of defence for the littoral states of Southeast Asia. As a
consequence, they cannot afford to ignore the worst-case scenario of conflict involving China. The
majority of the Southeast Asian states have embarked on a modernization of their naval
capabilities, aimed at developing a deterrent force as well as a force capable of engaging in military operations at sea. However, the
financial crisis of the late 1990s delayed some of these efforts, making the Southeast Asian states
more reliant on bilateral defence arrangements, in particular with the United States. The main countries in
the U.S. network of military co-operation agreements are Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. In substitution of the permanent base arrangements
In general, the military agreements
during the Cold War, U.S. troops have resumed joint exercises with the Philippines from 2000.
facilitate training, exercises, and interoperability, permitting the United States to be seen to be
engaged in Southeast Asia as a flexible regional balancer. The United States shares the widespread
perception within Southeast Asia that China's moves in the South China Sea indicate that it might
have expansionist intentions. Thus, the United States has maintained its strategy of forward
deployment. However, China is a power of second rank compared with the United States, and as such, is no immediate threat to the latter. Therefore,
Washington prefers that the regional states settle their disputes without its involvement as long as these do not pose a threat to U.S. interests. Although the
United States looks at China's Spratly policy as an indication of its possible bid for regional hegemony, it is not prepared to play an active part in the Spratly
dispute unless freedom of navigation through Southeast Asian waters is threatened. At the same time, the United States maintains its support for the ASEAN
position on the non-use of force concerning dispute settlement in the South China Sea. Thus, the U.S. policy on the Spratlys may be characterized as guarded
non-involvement. American reservations about direct involvement in the Spratly dispute do not imply that cordial relations between the United States and
China are on the agenda. On the contrary, since 1999, the relationship between the two powers has suffered a downturn because of Chinese opposition to the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strikes in Yugoslavia, the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and accusations of Chinese
military espionage in the United States. The Administration of George W. Bush is unlikely to call for a revival of the idea of a strategic partnership with
China. Bush describes China as a strategic competitor. [4] In line with this hardening of U.S. policy towards China, Bush has voiced strong support for a
theatre missile defence (TMD) system covering Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Technological constraints are likely to force Bush to moderate his position
on such defence plans. However, U.S. reassurances that research and development on the TMD will continue only leaves China with the option of
proceeding with military modernization to build up its deterrence capabilities. This geostrategic picture suggests that co-
operation on managing the regional balance of power is not on the cards. Instead, a structure of
deterrence appears to be in the making. Deterrence is directed at the intentions of opponents: if the
existence of deterrent forces are seen to prevent the opponent from achieving gains through aggression, the opponent will refrain from attack. Thus, the
power-projection capabilities of the various states are constrained by a mutual display of force
between the United States and the Southeast Asian states on the one hand, and China on the other.
A structure of deterrence does not operate on the basis of cooperation between opposing powers.
Nor can deterrence be equated with violence and volatility. On the contrary, the consolidation of a
structure of deterrence in the South China Sea may provide Southeast Asia with the level of
military security and reassurance necessary to allow for the development of stronger co-operative
ties with China.
Second, conflict in the SCS culminated into a global nuclear war.
Strait Times 95 (staff, “Choose Your Own Style of Democracy”, May 21, p. proquest)
In his speech, Dr Mahathir also painted three scenarios for Asia. In the first -the worst possible scenario -Asian countries would go to war against each other,
he said. It might start with clashes between Asian countries over the Spratly Islands because of China's
insistence that the South
China Sea belonged to it along with all the islands, reefs and seabed minerals. In this scenario, the
United States would offer to help and would be welcomed by Asean, he said. The Pacific Fleet
begins to patrol the South China Sea. Clashes occur between the Chinese navy and the US Navy.
China declares war on the US and a full-scale war breaks out with both sides resorting to nuclear
weapons.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 134/311
Heg Good – Space Dominance
First, it is crucial that the United States maintain leadership in Space to deter conflicts and
prevent other count
Everett 5(Dolman, C. "Strategy Lost: Taking the Middle Road to Nowhere." High Frontier Journal. Vol. 3, No. 1 Winter, 2K5)
Common to all hedging strategy proponents is the fear that placing weapons in space will spur a new arms race. Unfortunately, such a strategy increases the
likelihood of a space arms race if and when space weapons are ultimately deployed, as the only plausible response by the US would be to at least match the
opposing capabilities. This dithering approach blatantly ignores the current real world situation. At present, the US has no peer competitors in space. For
the US to refrain from weaponizing until another state proves the capacity to challenge it allows
for potential enemies to catch up to American capabilities. At a minimum, there is no risk for
potential peer competitors to try. On the other hand, should the US reject the hedging strategy and unilaterally
deploy weapons in space, other states may rationally decide not to compete. The cost of entry will
simply be too great; the probability of failure palpable. In other words, the fear of an arms race in
space, the most powerful argument in favor of the hedging plan, is most likely if the US follows its
counsel.
Second, this leads to global nuclear war.
Hitchens 3 (Theresa, Editor of Defense News, Director of Center for Defense Information, Former director of British American Security Information
Council -think tank based in Washington and London. October 2. http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1745)
The negative
consequences of a space arms race are hard to exaggerate, given the inherent offense-
dominant nature of space warfare. Space weapons, like anything else on orbit, are inherently vulnerable and, therefore, best exploited as
first-strike weapons. Thus, as Michael Krepon and Chris Clary argue in their monograph, “Space Assurance or Space Dominance,” the hair-trigger postures
of the nuclear competition between the United States and Russia during the Cold War would be elevated to the “ultimate high ground” of space.
Furthermore, any conflict involving ASAT use is likely to highly escalatory, in particular among nuclear weapons states, as the
objective of an attacker would be to eliminate the other side’s capabilities to respond either in
kind or on the ground by taking out satellites providing surveillance, communications and
targeting. Indeed, U.S. Air Force officials participating in space wargames have discovered that war in space rapidly deteriorates into all-out nuclear
war, precisely because it quickly becomes impossible to know if the other side has gone nuclear. Aviation Week and Space Technology quoted one gamer as
saying simply: “[If]
I don’t know what’s going on, I have no choice but to hit everything, using
everything I have.” This should not be surprising to anyone – the United States and the Soviet Union found this
out very early in the Cold War, and thus took measures to ensure transparency, such as placing
emphasis on early warning radars, developing the “hotline” and pledging to non-interference with
national technical means of verification under arms control treaties.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 135/311
Heg Good – Warming
US military power and leadership is key to solve climate change.
Maybee 8 (Sean C, US Navy commander, p. 98, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/i49.htm)

For the purpose of this essay, national security is defined as the need to maintain the safety, prosperity, and survival of the nation-state through the use of
instruments of national power: diplomatic,
military, economic, and informational power will be the drivers of
GCC responses as they provide the needed resources ideas and technology. It will be through
invoking military and diplomatic power that resources are used and new ideas are implemented to
overcome any GCC challenges. In addition to fighting and winning the nation’s wars, the US military has a long
history of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, but the potential impacts of GCC should lead national security
policymakers to consider how environmental security will play a role in the future.
US leadership is key to solve warming.

The national security implications of GCC pose unique challenges for the United States in part
because it is best suited to lead counter-GCC efforts. The Nation has the economic and
informational power to develop and resource effective methods and the international status to
foster global cooperation and implementation. The U.S. military already has a robust capacity to
respond and could continue to develop and use it to help other nations to build that capacity. In
addition, by addressing environmental security, the United States may foster trust and cooperation
while beginning to anticipate some GCC effects.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 136/311
Heg Good – War
US primacy prevents the outbreak of global hegemonic war.
Walt 2 (Stephen, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls." Naval
War College Review, Vol. 55, Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages) Spring 2002.
Proquest)
A second consequence of U.S. primacy is a decreased danger of great-power rivalry and a higher
level of overall international tranquility. Ironically, those who argue that primacy is no longer important, because the danger of war
is slight, overlook the fact that the extent of American primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of
great-power war is as low as it is. For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major
powers have been intensely competitive, often punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-
out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of the twentieth century, for example, great-power wars killed over eighty million people.
Today, however, the dominant position of the United States places significant limits on the possibility
of great-power competition, for at least two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so far
ahead, other major powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position. Not only is there no
possibility of a "hegemonic war" (because there is no potential hegemon to mount a challenge), but the risk of war via
miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the United States and the other major
powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides can convince
themselves that they might be able to win. When the balance of power is heavily skewed, however, the leading
state does not need to go to war and weaker states dare not try.8 The second reason is that the continued
deployment of roughly two hundred thousand troops in Europe and in Asia provides a further
barrier to conflict in each region. So long as U.S. troops are committed abroad, regional powers
know that launching a war is likely to lead to a confrontation with the United States . Thus, states
within these regions do not worry as much about each other, because the U.S. presence effectively
prevents regional conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe has termed the "American pacifier" is not the only barrier to
conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one. This tranquilizing effect is not lost on America's allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S.
dominance and dislike playing host to American troops, but they also do not want "Uncle Sam" to leave.9 Thus, U.S.
primacy is of benefit to
the United States, and to other countries as well, because it dampens the overall level of
international insecurity. World politics might be more interesting if the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete
with each other more actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better one. A comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for
genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than "interesting" decades like the 1930s or 1940s.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 137/311
Unipolarity Good – War
Unipolarity prevents power balancing wars
Wohlforth 99 (William, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. International
Security, Summer 19 99. "The Stability of a Unipolar World.")
Unipolarity favors the absence of war among the great powers and comparatively low levels of
competition for prestige or security for two reasons: the leading state's power advantage removes
the problem of hegemonic rivalry from world politics, and it reduces the salience and stakes of
balance-of-power politics among the major states. This argument is based on two well-known realist theories: hegemonic
theory and balance-of-power theory. Each is controversial, and the relationship between the two is complex.35 For the purposes of this analysis, however,
the key point is that both theories predict that a unipolar system will be peaceful.
Unipolarity, by design, avoids conflict
To appreciate the sources
of conflict that unipolarity avoids, consider the two periods already discussed in which leading states
scored very highly on aggregate measures of power: the Pax Britannica and the Cold War. Because those concentrations
of power were
not unipolar, both periods witnessed security competition and hegemonic rivalry . The Crimean War is a case
in point. The war unfolded in a system in which two states shared leadership and three states were
plausibly capable of bidding for hegemony.41 Partly as a result, neither the statesmen of the time nor historians over the last
century and a half have been able to settle the debate over the origins of the conflict. The problem is that even those who agree that the war arose from a
threat to the European balance of power cannot agree on whether the threat emanated from France, Russia, or Britain. Determining
which state
really did threaten the equilibrium-or indeed whether any of them did-is less important than the
fact that the power gap among them was small enough to make all three threats seem plausible at
the time and in retrospect. No such uncertainty-and hence no such conflict-is remotely possible in
a unipolar system.
Unipolarity solves the roots of the worlds issues, security and competition
Third, we should not exaggerate the costs. The
clearer the underlying distribution of power is, the less likely it is
that states will need to test it in arms races or crises. Because the current concentration of power
in the United States is unprecedentedly clear and comprehensive, states are likely to share the
expectation that counterbalancing would be a costly and probably doomed venture. As a result, they face
incentives to keep their military budgets under control until they observe fundamental changes in
the capability of the United States to fulfill its role. The whole system can thus be run at
comparatively low costs to both the sole pole and the other major powers. Unipolarity can be made
to seem expensive and dangerous if it is equated with a global empire demanding U.S. involvement
in all issues everywhere. In reality, unipolarity is a distribution of capabilities among the world's great
powers. It does not solve all the world's problems. Rather, it minimizes two major problems-
security and prestige competition-that confronted the great powers of the past. Maintaining unipolarity does not
require limitless commitments. It involves managing the central security regimes in Europe and Asia, and
maintaining the expectation on the part of other states that any geopolitical challenge to the United States is futile. As long as that is the expectation,
states will likely refrain from trying, and the system can be maintained at little extra cost.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 138/311
AT: Heg Bad – Imperialism
The US is not an empire.
Nye 4 (Joseph S, “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy”, Harvard IR prof., vol. 119, no. 2, p. 255-256)
In many ways, the metaphor of empire is seductive. The American military has a global reach, with bases around the world, and its regional commanders
sometimes act like proconsuls. English is a lingua franca, like Latin. The Ameri- can economy is the largest in the world, and American culture serves as a
mag- net. But it is a mistake to confuse the politics of primacy with the politics of empire. Although
unequal relationships certainly exist between the United States and weaker powers and can be conducive to
exploitation, absent formal political control, the term "imperial" can be misleading. Its acceptance would be a
disastrous guide for American foreign policy because it fails to take into account how the world has changed. The
United States is certainly not an empire in the way we think of the European overseas empires of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because the core feature of such imperialism was direct political control.^"*
The United States has more power resources, compared to other countries, than Britain had at its
imperial peak. On the other hand, the United States has less power, in the sense of control over the
behavior that occurs inside other countries, than Britain did when it ruled a quarter of the globe. For example, Kenya's
schools, taxes, laws, and elections—not to mention external relations—were controlled by British officials. Even where Brit- ain used
indirect rule through local potentates, as in Uganda, it exercised far more control than the United States
does today. Others try to rescue the metaphor by referring to "informal empire" or the "imperialism of free
trade," but this simply obscures important differences in degrees of control suggested by comparisons
with real historical empires. Yes, the Americans have widespread influence, but in 2003, the United
States could not even get Mexico and Chile to vote for a second resolution on Iraq in the UN
Security Council. The British empire did not have that kind of problem with Kenya or India.
US Military too overstretched for empire

Economist 8 (3/29, Power and Peril, 00130613, 3/29/2008, Vol. 386, Issue 8573)
What a difference a bungled war makes. These days the word "imperial" is usually followed by "overstretch". The
bookshops are full of titles cautioning against the folly of empire (Cullen Murphey's "Are We Rome?", Amy Chua's "Day of Empire"). Nobody
doubts America's unparalleled ability to project its military power into every corner of the world,
but blowing things up is not the same as establishing an "imperium". Enthusiasm for empire has
been replaced by worries about exhaustion and vulnerability. Americans are concerned that the
army has been stretched to breaking point, and that their country remains a terrorist target. If
George Bush wanted to "fight them over there" so that Americans do not have to "fight them over here", his successor will have to face the possibility that,
in fighting them over there, America has overstrained its army while leaving the home front vulnerable.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 139/311
Thayer 1/3
Heg is sustainable and critical to international stability
Thayer 06 – Professor of Defense and Strategic Studies @ Missouri State University
[Thayer, Bradley A., “In Defense of Primacy.,” National Interest; Nov/Dec2006 Issue 86, p32-37]edlee
Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want no foreign
military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of
economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would have the United States
abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its interests. But retrenchment, in any of its guises, must be
avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it would be a profound strategic mistake that would
lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy. There are two
critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this?
America can remain dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power
capabilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military
capabilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances . Barring some disaster or
tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment
acknowledge this. So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American primacy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal
on the costs of U.S. action—but they fail to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every
day; the benefits that stem from it are not. A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the U.S. homeland
and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary
regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United
States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the
Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these
fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than
the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America chooses to play in international politics.
Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they are terrorists,
rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats must be confronted. Simply by declaring
that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests
and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a
declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to
eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats
that confront the United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats. And
when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies
overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they
use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be
achieved by offshore balancing. Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global commons"—
the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space—allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues
to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States'
conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased. (2) This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly. A remarkable fact about
international politics today—in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display—is
that countries want to align themselves with the United States . Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most
cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes—their own protection, or to
gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America—their security is tied to the United States through
treaties and other informal arrangements—and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to
five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never
before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy—and the
bandwagoning effect—has also given us extensive influence in international politics , allowing the United
States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is
America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation
through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of
the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the
people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD
programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can
count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course,
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countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to
Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States. Chinais clearly the most
important of these states because it is a
rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States
and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will , if necessary, resort to
other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites
upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is
likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's
power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates. The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang
of Five" cases—Venezuela, Iran, Cuba—it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American.
Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability
have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power—Rome, Britain or the
United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics.
Everything we think of when we consider the current international order—free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing
respect for human rights, growing democratization is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment
proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount
of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things
happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order
established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will
end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is
important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within
the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a
more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably
France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships
aligned—between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and
Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where
Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood,
particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States
the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good
for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006
issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the
American worldview. (3) So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once
states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced.
This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more
transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general,
democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the
Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation
of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be
attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to
question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought
democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban
forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to
democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly
democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the
Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic
states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide
network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The
economic
stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states
benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic
well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes
efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense
burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest
testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and
researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth,
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Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is
through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated
through American primacy. (4) As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of
American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been
willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all
over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty
operations since the end of the Cold War—and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the
earth's "911 force"—it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural
disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in
2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000
people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and
deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors,
airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the
bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or
global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. American generosity has
done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of
Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable
opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive
views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless.
The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help
those in need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States,
it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the
United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level . Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the
money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim
world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on
Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg. THERE
IS no other state, group of states or international organization that can provide these global
benefits. None even comes close. The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts and major cleavages
that divide the international body time and again on matters great and trivial. Thus it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on
salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect
Russia or China to take up these responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have
the capabilities. Let's face it: for the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only
practical hope of solving the world's ills.
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Heg Good – Khalilzad
Hegemony prevents global nuclear war.

Khalilzad, US Ambassador to UN, 1995
Zalmay Khalilzad, US Ambassador to the United Nations. “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War.” The Washington
Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2. pg. 84 Spring 1995
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the
indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a
world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the
global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a
world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such
as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts.
Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the
United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers,
including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global
stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system. Precluding the rise of a hostile global rival is a good guide for defining
what interests the United States should regard as vital and for which of them it should be ready to use force and put American lives at risk. It is a good prism
for identifying threats, setting priorities for U.S. policy toward various regions and states, and assessing needs for military capabilities and modernization.
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Heg Good–Long Khalilzad
A withdrawal of US hegemony would cause multiple scenarios for war that could become global,
destroy US economic viability, and lead to widespread WMD proliferation.
Khalilzad, US Ambassador to UN, 1995

Realistically and over the longer term, however, a

neo-isolationist approach might well increase the danger of major
conflict, require a greater U.S. defense effort, threaten world peace, and eventually undermine U.S. prosperity. By
withdrawing from Europe and Asia, the United States would deliberately risk weakening the institutions and
solidarity of the world's community of democratic powers and so establishing favorable conditions
for the spread of disorder and a possible return to conditions similar to those of the first half of
the twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. isolationism had disastrous consequences for world peace. At that time, the United States
was but one of several major powers. Now that the United States is the world's preponderant power, the shock of a U.S. withdrawal could be even greater.
What might happen to the world if the United States turned inward? Without
the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), rather than cooperating with each other, the West European nations might compete with each other for
domination of East-Central Europe and the Middle East. In Western and Central Europe, Germany -- especially since
unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either in cooperation or competition with Russia, Germany might seek influence over the territories
located between them. German efforts are likely to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival powers.
Britain and France fear such a development. Given the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with absorbing the former East Germany,
European concerns about Germany appear exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to assume that U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the
renationalization of Germany's security policy. The same is also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan
would have to look after its own security and build up its military capabilities. China, Korea, and
the nations of Southeast Asia already fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is
likely to increase its military capability dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and
still-significant Russian forces. This could result in arms races, including the possible acquisition
by Japan of nuclear weapons. Given Japanese technological prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the
development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also
build long-range missiles and carrier task forces. With the shifting balance of power among
Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional powers such as India, Indonesia, and a united
Korea could come significant risks of preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European
competition for regional dominance could lead to major wars in Europe or East Asia. If the
United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could become
dominated by a hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to
exclude the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of Europe or East
Asia, such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more
catastrophic than the last. In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional
domination. Iran and Iraq have, in the past, both sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak
oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be unlikely to retain their independence. To preclude this development, the
Saudis might seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear weapons. If either Iraq or Iran controlled the region
that dominates the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any country that gained hegemony
would have vast economic resources at its disposal that could be used to build military capability as well as gain leverage over the United States and other oil
importing nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran or Iraq would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East under its influence and domination
because of the shift in the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and the peace process would be fundamentally
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Heg Good-Long Khalilzad
undermined, increasing the risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis. Theextension of instability, conflict,
and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the
United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and
conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the
United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal
to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of necessary adjustments might be high. The
higher level of turmoil in the world
would also increase the likelihood of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and
means for their delivery. Already several rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are seeking
nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. That danger would only increase if the United States
withdrew from the world. The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many
states possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase accordingly.
If this happened, the security of every nation in the world, including the United States, would be
harmed.
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Ferguson
Multipolarity is unlikely – the alternative to the unipolar system is apolarity – Heg solves the
economy, PRC collapse, terrorism, and nuke war.
Ferguson 04 Niall Ferguson 04 Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History @ Harvard University, Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution
(When Empires Wane, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005244)
Yet universal claims were an integral part of the rhetoric of that era. All the empires claimed to rule the world; some, unaware of the existence of other
civilizations, maybe even believed that they did. The reality, however, was political fragmentation. And that remains true today. The
defining
characteristic of our age is not a shift of power upward to supranational institutions, but
downward. If free flows of information and factors of production have empowered multinational corporations and NGOs (to say nothing of
evangelistic cults of all denominations), the free flow of destructive technology has empowered criminal
organizations and terrorist cells, the Viking raiders of our time. These can operate wherever they choose, from
Hamburg to Gaza. By contrast, the writ of the international community is not global. It is, in fact, increasingly confined to a few strategic cities such as
Kabul and Sarajevo. Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into
fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might find
itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than
the one of the ninth century. For the world is roughly 25 times more populous, so that friction between the world's
"tribes" is bound to be greater. Technology has transformed production; now societies depend not merely on
freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of mineral oil that are known to be finite. Technology has changed destruction, too:
Now it is possible not just to sack a city, but to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalization has been raising
living standards, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. Deglobalization--which is
what a new Dark Age would amount to--would lead to economic depression. As the U.S. sought to
protect itself after a second 9/11 devastated Houston, say, it would inevitably become a less open
society. And as Europe's Muslim enclaves grow, infiltration of the EU by Islamist extremists could become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic
tensions over the Middle East to breaking point. Meanwhile, an economic crisis in China could plunge the
Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that have undermined previous
Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out, and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of
default abroad. The worst effects of the Dark Age would be felt on the margins of the waning great
powers. With ease, the terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers and cruise liners while we
concentrate our efforts on making airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions,
beginning in Korea and Kashmir; perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. The prospect of an apolar world should
frighten us a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the U.S. is to retreat
from the role of global hegemon--its fragile self-belief dented by minor reversals--its critics must not pretend that they are ushering in a
new era of multipolar harmony. The alternative to unpolarity may not be multipolarity at all. It may be a
global vacuum of power. Be careful what you wish
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US hegemony is essential democracies

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

Larry Diamond 1995, staff, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s”, Oct, p. online: http://www.carnegie.org/sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html lexis
made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and
unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality,
accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons.
Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize
themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic
insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another.
Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment.
They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments.
They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach
agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies
are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
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Heg Good – Economy
Heg prevents global economic collapse

Starobin – writer at national journal – 2006 (Paul Starobin. “Beyond Hegemony.” National Journal. 12/1/06.
http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/1201nj1.htm.)
ChaosIn his 2005 book "The Case for Goliath," Mandelbaum's core thesis is that America acts not as a kind of
empire, bullying lesser subjects purely for its own selfish ends, but as a world government for the society of nations,
providing necessary "public goods." The most important such good is security. Mandelbaum is not arguing
that America is motivated by altruism -- he is saying that America, in following its own global interests, is benefiting everyone. He offers
this analogy: "The owner of a large, expensive, lavishly furnished mansion surrounded by more-
modest homes may pay to have security guards patrolling his street, and their presence will serve
to protect the neighboring houses as well, even though their owners contribute nothing to the costs of the guards. That is what
the United States does in the world of the 21st century." Mandelbaum does not dwell on what an American withdrawal from this role would
mean for the world, except to say, "The world would become a messier, more dangerous, and less prosperous
place," perhaps yielding "a repetition of the great global economic failure and the bloody international
conflicts the world experienced in the 1930s and 1940s." Whatever the "life span" of America's role as the world's government, he writes in the book's
last sentence, other countries "will miss it when it is gone.
Economic collapse causes World War Three

Mead, 9 – Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (Walter Russell, “Only Makes You Stronger,”
The New Republic, 2/4/09, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8&p=2)
History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If
financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of
the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold
war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the
Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might
start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy
back on track, we may still have to fight.
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Heg Good – Prolif
Heg solves prolif – international organizations

Thayer 06 – Professor of Defense and Strategic Studies @ Missouri State University
[Thayer, Bradley A., “In Defense of Primacy.,” National Interest; Nov/Dec2006 Issue 86, p32-37]
Never before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy—and the bandwagoning effect—has also given us extensive
influence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many
forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation
through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by
opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any
military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan
proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to
the United States.
Proliferation leads to extinction.

Victor A Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of Institute for Defense Analysis, Summer 2002, Survival, p.87-90
In sum, widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot outs will have a substantial
probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed towards a
world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear “six shooters” on their hips, the world may
even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather together on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole
nations.
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A/T: U.S. – China War
U.S. Hegemony is necessary to prevent Chinese invasion of Taiwan that will lead to U.S. China
War
Marquardt, Senior Editor with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, ’04
(July 28, Erich Marquardt, “Beijing Tests Washington’s Resolve in East Asia, http://www.pinr.com/report.php?
ac=view_report&report_id=189&language_id=1)
Additionally, the failure of Washington to successfully pacify Iraq has

demonstrated the limits of American power.
While Washington retains a tremendous military advantage over other states in the world, that
advantage is primarily technological, and only extends to the point of when an occupation of a foreign country becomes necessary
The perceived erosion of American power has led to a loss of U.S. power since other states
potentially hostile to U.S. interests now believe that Washington will be less likely to directly
challenge them. This belief is evident in China's recent posturing over Taiwan, where Beijing is
challenging American resolve in East Asia by intensifying its threats toward Taipei. Taiwan,
which China considers a renegade province, may become the location where China will conduct a
test of U.S. resolve. Beijing has continued to direct some 500 short-range missiles toward the
island. One objective of this missile deployment is to increase Beijing's chances of executing a successful "decapitation
strike" where, in one opening salvo, China would be able to neuter Taipei's military and political
structure, effectively forcing the island to comply with China's demands of reunificationTo
highlight its seriousness, China last week conducted its eighth annual military exercises in the
Taiwan Strait on an island only 174 miles from Taiwanese territory. The exercises consisted of
some 18,000 Chinese troops, involving land, air and sea maneuvers. Beijing quite bluntly
announced that the purpose of the exercises was to simulate an invasion of Taiwan. Even more
candidly, Jiang Zemin, the chief of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission,
promised that China would recover Taiwan by 2020, through the use of force if necessary. Beijing's recent
posturing reflects Taipei's continued flirts with independence. Chen Shui-bian, the Taiwanese president who was recently reelected, held as his central
campaign theme the importance of an independent Taiwan. Chen also announced that he would be revising the Taiwanese constitution, a move that could
attempt to institutionalize Taiwan as a sovereign state, permanently separated from the mainland. Chen's reelection and subsequent controversial actions
explain why Beijing is flaunting its military might; the one issue it does not seem capable of negotiating on is the status of Taiwan. Furthermore, in light of
the U.S. being overburdened in the Middle East, China now considers it the ideal time to test Washington's resolve in the region. Certainly,
the
U.S. still retains the military ability to engage Chinese forces should they attempt to invade
Taiwan; nevertheless, the fact that U.S. forces are so embroiled in other areas of the world means
that any such engagement would be risky for the United States, and therefore less likely to occurBeijing no doubt
recognizes this and is now testing to see how far Washington will go to protect the small Taiwanese island from invasion by a state as large and potentially
powerful as China. Since China is becoming such a force to contend with in the region, it seems a natural development that Taiwan will soon be engulfed by
the mainland; it
is not clear how beneficial it would be for the United States to risk a military
engagement to impede such efforts. If Taiwan continues to flirt with independence, it is uncertain
how long China will continue to refrain from taking serious action against the island. Similar to
how the United States effectively prevented European powers from exploiting the markets in the
Americas by establishing the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, China will follow its own doctrine to
prevent the United States from exploiting markets in East Asia. It will be important for the United
States, which benefits tremendously -- strategically and economically -- from its immense
influence in East Asia, to prevent China from gaining hegemony over the area. In order to stunt
this possibility, Washington will need to devise methods and strategies to meet increased Chinese
regional influence.
China won't challenge the U.S.

American Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 32-33)
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Although its continued economic growth is impressive, China faces major problems that will
hinder its ability to replace the United States as the world’s hegemon. The first of these is a
rapidly aging population beginning in 2020. Nearly 400 million Chinese will be over sixty-five years old by 2020. This could
be a source of unrest and economic stagnation. Younger generations will be pressed to care for the
older population. There will be a great discrepancy between the numbers of young people and the
elderly, and China lacks the pension and health care infrastructure characteristic of Western
societies. Many Chinese will have to work far into old age and will not be able to care for
themselves should they fall sick or be too old to earn a wage. As we see with Japan, economic
productivity will peak.This situation is the direct result of the “one child” policy adopted in 1979 to halt
explosive population growth. When China took its first countrywide census in 1953, its population was 600 million. By 1970, it was approximately 800
million. As a result of the “one child” policy, the Chinese birthrate has fallen from 5.8 children per woman in 1970 to fewer than 2 per woman in 2000. The
“one child” policy is believed to have resulted in 300 million fewer Chinese. A
second big problem stemming from the “one
child” policy is the imbalance between the sexes. For social and economic reasons, if only one child
is permitted, most Chinese parents will choose a son. This has led to widespread abortion, female
infanticide, and female adoption out of China. Simply put, there are too few females in China. The
normal worldwide divergence between the number of boys to girls is about 103 males to 107 females. In China, about [end page 32] 119 boys are born for
every 100 girls. In rural areas, where the preference for sons is the strongest, the imbalance is even greater, about 133 to 100.” There
are an
estimated 40 million more men than women in China’s population. The declining birth rates that
flow from this will hinder economic growth in the long run. China eventually will face other major
economic and social problems as well, including those related to the economic fragility of its
financial system and state-owned enterprises, economic malaise brought on by widespread
corruption, ubiquitous environmental pollution, HIV/AIDS and other epidemic diseases like
SARS, and the high energy costs, which stifle economic growth. In addition, unlike the United
States, China is not a model for other countries. Chinese political values are inferior to those of the
United States because China is repressive. The Chinese do not respect human rights, including
religious and political freedom. There is also the wildcard of potential conflict over Taiwan. A war
with Taiwan would retard China’s economic progress and scare neighboring states. The fact that
China has so many territorial and other disputes with its major neighbors, Japan, India, Russia,
and Vietnam, means that many countries see it as a threat and will want to ally with the United
States against Chinese power. The rise of China is ripe for potential conflict with its neighbors,
and this constitutes a big danger in international politics.
China will not engage in armed conflict with the U.S.

Van Ness, Lecturer of International Relations at Australian National University, ’05
(Peter Van Ness is a visiting fellow in the Contemporary China Centre and lectures on security in
the Department of International Relations at Australian National University, WORLD POLICY
JOURNAL, Winter 2004/2005)
Clearly, China wants to avoid a conflict with the United States . The Japanese journalist Funabashi Yoichi quotes one Chinese
think tank researcher as saying: “We are studying the origin of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Why did it happen? Was there no way to prevent it? Some see that
a U.S.-China cold war is inevitable, but what can we do to prevent it?” China’s
strategic response to the Bush Doctrine is not
confrontational toward the United States and does not require China’s Asian neighbors to choose
between Beijing and Washington, something none of them wants to have to do.26 Though it is not a design
for what realists would call “balancing” against the United States, it challenges Washington to think and act in ways quite different from the policies
prescribed by the Bush Doctrine when trying to resolve problems in international relations.
U.S.-China confrontation is unlikely

Van Ness, Lecturer of International Relations at Australian National University, ’05
(Peter Van Ness is a visiting fellow in the Contemporary China Centre and lectures on security in
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the Department of International Relations at Australian National University, WORLD POLICY
JOURNAL, Winter 2004/2005)
China, for its part, is concerned about Japanese participation in the U.S. missile defense system, new legislation to permit Japanese forces to play a larger
supporting role in Bush initiatives, and the possible revision of Japan’s constitution to facilitate a more substantial military modernization but except for
possible miscalculation over the issue of Taiwan, there
appears to be little likelihood of direct confrontation between
the United States and China. Beijing and Washington understand each other much better today
than they did in 1995–96 when China launched its “missile exercises” in a failed effort to influence
the presidential elections in Taiwan, and since then, they have established a variety of
communication links in order to avoid misperception and miscommunication if tensions in the
Taiwan Strait should reemerge.
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A/T: U.S. – Iran War
Iran will not go to war with the U.S. – Iranian leaders

Press TV, ’08
(Press TV, “Iran will not engage in war with U.S.”, December 9th 2008, http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=77906&sectionid=351020101)
Chairman of Iran's Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says that the Islamic Republic does
not intend to engage in a war with the US. "We have no intention to involve in a conflict with the
US. Iran only intends to stand on its two feet and set a role model for regional countries to uphold
their independence and freedom," Rafsanjani said Tuesday addressing prayers of Eid Al-Adha in Tehran. He criticized the US
President-elect Barack Obama for following the same policies adopted by the outgoing President George W. Bush on Iran. He said, "It is not appropriate for
Obama to use such words [similar to those of Bush]." Obama's election as the next US president has opened prospects of Tehran-Washington
rapprochement. His recent comments, however, suggest the former Illinois senator is already backtracking on campaign promises of 'a clean break from the
Bush administration's policies'. Obama said on Sunday that he would exercise "direct but tough diplomacy" in a bid to dissuade Tehran from enriching
uranium. In an interview with NBC's Meet the Press, Obama said he is prepared to offer 'carrots' in the form of generous economic incentives to persuade
the Islamic Republic to wrap up its nuclear program. He warned that Iran's refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program would subject the country to
tougher sanctions - or 'sticks'. Iranian officials have repeatedly called on the Obama administration to live up to world expectations and forgo Washington's
age-old carrot and stick policies. Rafsanjani recommended US leaders to confirm Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy and act rationally.
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A/T: Heg  Prolif
US forces check nuclear proliferation in Asia and the EU

Mendalbaum, ’05
(Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns Hopkins, 2005, Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the
World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century, p. 39-41)
American forces remained in Europe and East Asia because the countries located in these two regions wanted them there, even if they did not always say so
clearly or even explicitly. They wanted them there because the American presence offered the assurance that these regions would remain free of war and, in
the case of Europe, free of the costly preparations for war that had marked the twentieth century. The
American military presence was
in both cases a confidence-building measure, and if that presence were with-drawn, the countries
in both regions would feel less confident that no threat to their security would appear. They
would, in all likelihood, take steps to compensate for the absence of these forces. Those steps would surely not
include war, at least not in the first instance. Instead, since the American forces serve as a hedge against uncertainty, some of the countries of East Asia and
Europe might well seek to replace them with another source of hedging. A
leading candidate for that role would be nuclear
weapons of their own.9 The possession of nuclear weapons equips their owner with a certain
leverage, a geopolitical weight that, unless somehow counterbalanced, can confer a political
advantage in dealing with countries lacking them. Like the relationship between employer and
employee, the one between a nuclear-weapon state and a non-nuclear-weapon state has inequality
built into it, no matter how friendly that relationship may be. During the Cold War, the American military presence, and
the guarantee of protection by the mighty nuclear arsenal of the United States that came with it, neutralized the nuclear weapons that the Soviet Union and
the People's Republic of China accumulated. Russia and China retain nuclear stock-piles in the wake of the Cold War, and with the end of the American
military presence in their regions, several of their non-nuclear neighbors—Germany, Poland, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example—might feel the
need to off-set those stockpiles with nuclear forces of their own. Perhaps the process of replacing American nuclear armaments with those of other countries,
if this should take place, would occur smoothly, with Europe and East Asia remaining peaceful throughout the transition. But this is not what most of the
world believes. To the contrary, the
spread of nuclear weapons to countries that do not already have them is
widely considered to be the single greatest threat to international tranquillity in the twenty-first
century. The United States has made the prevention of nuclear proliferation one of its most
important foreign policies, and its efforts to this end constitute, like reassurance, a service to the other members of the international system.
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Heg checks the threat of nuclear proliferation

Rosen, Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard, ’03
(Stephen, “An Empire, If you can keep it”, The National Interest, Spring)
Rather than wrestle with such difficult and unpleasant problems ,

the United States could give up the imperial mission, or
pretensions to it, now. This would essentially mean the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the
Middle East, Europe and mainland Asia. It may be that all other peoples, without significant exception, will then turn to their own
affairs and leave the United States alone. But those who are hostile to us might remain hostile, and be much less
afraid of the United States after such a withdrawal. Current friends would feel less secure and, in
the most probable post-imperial world, would revert to the logic of self-help in which all states do
what they must to protect themselves. This would imply the relatively rapid acquisition of
weapons of mass destruction by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Iran, Iraq and perhaps Algeria,
Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia and others. Constraints on the acquisition of biological
weapons would be even weaker than they are today. Major regional arms races would also be very
likely throughout Asia and the Middle East. This would not be a pleasant world for Americans, or anyone else. It is difficult to
guess what the costs of such a world would be to the United States. They would probably not put the end of the United States in prospect, but they would not
be small. If the logic of American empire is unappealing, it is not at all clear that the alternatives are that much more attractive.
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A/T: Heg  Terrorism
Hegemony is critical to deterring terrorist attacks - Multipolarity Fails

Brooks & Wohlforth, Associate Professor at Dartmouth and Olin Fellow in International Security
Studies at Yale, ’02
(Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, Associate Professors in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, July, 2002 /
August, 2002)
Some might question the worth of being at the top of a unipolar system if that means serving as a lightning rod for the world's malcontents. When there was
a Soviet Union, after all, it bore the brunt of Osama bin Laden's anger, and only after its collapse did he shift his focus to the United States (an indicator of
the demise of bipolarity that was ignored at the time but looms larger in retrospect). But terrorism
has been a perennial problem in
history, and multipolarity did not save the leaders of several great powers from assassination by
anarchists around the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, a slide back toward multipolarity
would actually be the worst of all worlds for the United States. In such a scenario it would
continue to lead the pack and serve as a focal point for resentment and hatred by both state and
nonstate actors, but it would have fewer carrots and sticks to use in dealing with the situation. The
threats would remain, but the possibility of effective and coordinated action against them would be reduced.
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Primacy deters terrorism
Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard, ’02
(Stephen, “American Primacy” http://www.nwc .navy.mil/press/review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm)
Perhaps the most obvious reason why states seek primacy—and why the United States benefits from its current position—
is that international politics is a dangerous business. Being wealthier and stronger than other states does not guarantee that a state will survive, of course,
and it cannot insulate a state from all outside pressures. But the strongest state is more likely to escape serious harm than
weaker ones are, and it will be better equipped to resist the pressures that arise. Because the United States is so powerful, and because its society is
so wealthy, it has ample resources to devote to whatever problems it may face in the future. At the beginning of the Cold War, for example, its power
enabled the United States to help rebuild Europe and Japan, to assist them in developing stable democratic orders, and to subsidize the emergence of an open
international economic order.7 The United States was also able to deploy powerful armed forces in Europe and Asia as effective deterrents to Soviet
expansion. When the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf increased in the late 1970s, the United States created its Rapid Deployment Force in order to
deter threats to the West’s oil supplies; in 1990–91 it used these capabilities to liberate Kuwait. Also, when
the United States was
attacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in September 2001, it had the wherewithal to oust the
network’s Taliban hosts and to compel broad international support for its campaign to eradicate
Al-Qaeda itself. It would have been much harder to do any of these things if the United States had
been weaker. Today, U.S. primacy helps deter potential challenges to American interests in virtually
every part of the world. Few countries or nonstate groups want to invite the “focused enmity” of
the United States (to use William Wohlforth’s apt phrase), and countries and groups that have done so (such as Libya,
Iraq, Serbia, or the Taliban) have paid a considerable price. As discussed below, U.S. dominance does provoke opposition in a number of
places, but anti-American elements are forced to rely on covert or indirect strategies (such as terrorist bombings)
that do not seriously threaten America’s dominant position. Were American power to decline
significantly, however, groups opposed to U.S. interests would probably be emboldened and overt
challenges would be more likely.
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A/T: Multipolarity
Multipolarity can’t solve global conflict

Nye, Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard, ’02
(Joseph S. Nye, PhD in political science from Harvard. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the
National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, 2002, THE PARADOX OF AMERICAN POWER, pp. 12-13)
America's power-hard and soft-is only part of the story. How others react to American power is equally important to the question of stability and governance
in this global information age. Many realists extol the virtues of the classic nineteenth-century European balance of power, in which constantly shifting
coalitions contained the ambitions of any especially aggressive power. They urge the United States to rediscover the virtues of a balance of power at the
global level today. Already in the 1970s, Richard Nixon argued that "the only time in the history of the world that we have had extended periods of peace is
when there has been a balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitors that the danger of war
arises.
But whether such multipolarity would be good or bad for the United States and for the world
is debatable. I am skeptical. War was the constant companion and crucial instrument of the
multipolar balance of power. The classic European balance provided stability in the sense of
maintaining the independence of most countries, but there were wars among the great powers for
60 percent of the years since 1500. Rote adherence to the balance of power and multipolarity may
prove to be a dangerous approach to global governance in a world where war could turn nuclear.
U.S. Hegemony is critical to spur international cooperation

Brooks & Wohlforth, Associate Professor at Dartmouth and Olin Fellow in International Security
Studies at Yale,, 09
(Stephen G. Brooks & William Wohlforth, government professors, Dartmouth, Foreign Affairs; March/April 2009, p49-63)
Creating a league of democracies, revamping the UN Security Council, revitalizing the nuclear nonproliferation regime--proposals for revising international
institutions are all the rage these days. And for good reason:
no one sitting down to design the perfect global framework
for the twenty-first century would come up with anything like the current one. The existing
architecture is a relic of the preoccupations and power relationships of the middle of the last
century--out of sync with today's world of rising powers and new challenges, from terrorism and nuclear
proliferation to financial instability and global warming. It is one thing to agree that change is needed, but quite another to settle on its specifics. As soon as
the conversation shifts to brass tacks, competing visions begin to clash. In
an anarchic world of self-interested states--that is
to say, in the real world--the chances that those states will cooperate are best when a hegemon
takes the lead.
Multiateral action is too slow to prevent escalation

Schuller & Grant, Professors of Political Science, ’03
(Fran Schuller and Thomas Grant, Professors of Political Science, 2003, INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS, No. 79, p. 39)
The opposing principle that of multilateralism, equally miscasts international policy in a world where circumstances may indeed warrant unilateral
decisiveness. In
the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations nurtured multilateral discussions,
producing only futility. Rather than mounting individual effective actions against the provocations
of Japanese empire-building in China, Italian aggression against Ethiopia or Nazi trial runs for Blitzkrieg and Holocaust,
European leaders endlessly consulted one another, grasping for a common denominator that no
consultation would ever achieve. In current circumstances, some unilateral actions override
soothing diplomatic nattering. The attacks of 11 September on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon count as an incident deserving of response regardless of the sentiments and sympathies
of other nations. The United States, as the superior power in the world, must assume the
responsibility of deploying its might for the benefit and welfare of itself and the rest of the world.
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Hegemony  Democracy
Heg is key to global democracy promotion

American Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 42-43, Spreading Our Form of Government)
The American Empire gives the United States the ability to spread its form of government,
democracy, and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Using American power to spread
democracy can be a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as for the United
States. This is because democracies are more likely to align themselves with the United States and be
sympathetic to its worldview. In addition, there is a chance—small as it may be—that once states are
governed democratically, the likelihood of conflict will be reduced further. Natan Sharansky makes the argument
that once Arabs are governed democratically, they will not wish to continue the conflict against Israel. This idea has had a big effect on President George W.
Bush. He has said that Sharansky’s woridview “is part of my presidential DNA. Whether democracy in the Middle East would have this impact is debatable.
Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy
to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in October 2004, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them.
Elections were held in Iraq in January 2005, the first free elections in that country’s history. The military power of the United States put Iraq on the path to
democracy. Democracy has spread to Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Caucasus, and now even the Middle East is becoming increasingly democratic. They
may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority, and
Egypt. The march of democracy has been impressive.
Although democracies have their flaws, simply put, democracy
is the best form of government. Winston Churchill recognized this over half a century ago:
“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried
from time to time.” The United States should do what it can to foster the spread of democracy
throughout the world.
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Heg K/T: Global Econ
Extend Kagan from the 1AC, Kagan indicates that American Hegemony is key to our Navy and
the U.S. Navy is key to keeping global water wars open which are essential to International Trade
Hegemony is key to the global economy – free trade and globalization.

Economic prosperity is also a product of the American Empire. It has created a Liberal
International Economic Order (LIEO)—a network of worldwide free trade and commerce, respect
for intellectual property rights, mobility of capital and labor markets—to promote economic
growth. The stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good
from which all states benefit, particularly states in the Third World. The American Empire has created this network not out of altruism but
because it benefits the economic well-being of the United States. In 1998, the Secretary of Defense William Cohen put this well when he acknowledged that
“economists and soldiers share the same interest in stability”; soldiers create the conditions in which the American economy may thrive, and “we are able to
shape the environment [of international politics] in ways that are advantageous to us and that are stabilizing to the areas where we are forward deployed,
thereby helping to promote investment and prosperity... business follows the flag.” Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the American Empire
comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat, researcher at the World Bank, prolific author, and now a professor who started his career
confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India that strongly condemned empire. He has abandoned the position of his youth and is now one
of the strongest proponents of the American Empire. Lal has traveled the world and, in the course of his journeys, has witnessed great poverty and misery
due to a lack of economic development. He realized that free markets were necessary for the development of poor countries, and this led him to recognize
that his faith in socialism was wrong. Just as a conservative famously is said to be a liberal who has been mugged by reality, the hard “evidence and
experience” that stemmed from “working and traveling in most parts of the Third World during my professional career” caused this profound change.61 Lal
submits that the
only way to bring relief to the desperately poor countries of the Third World is
through the American Empire. Empires provide order, and this order “has been essential for the
working of the benign processes of globalization, which promote prosperity.” 62 Globalization is the
process of creating a common economic space, which leads to a growing integration of the world
economy through the increasingly free movement of goods, capital, and labor. It is the
responsibility of the United States, Lal argues, to use the LIEO to promote the well-being of all economies, but particularly those in the
Third World, so that they too may enjoy economic prosperity.
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Heg K/T: Humanitarianism
Hegemony is key to humanitarianism – only U.S. leadership solves.

If someone were to ask “How many humanitarian missions has the United States undertaken since the end of the Cold War?”, most Americans probably
have to think for a moment and then answer “three or four.” In fact, the number is much larger. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations
since the end of the Cold War, and while wars like the invasion of Panama or Iraq received considerable attention from the world’s media, most of the fifty
actions were humanitarian in nature and received almost no media attention in the United States. The
U.S. military is the earth’s “911
force”—it serves as the world’s police; it is the global paramedic, and the planet’s fire
department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, typhoon, or tsunami, the
United States assists the countries in need. In 1991, when flooding caused by cyclone Marian killed almost 140,000 people and left
5 million homeless in Bangladesh, the United States launched Operation Sea Angel to save stranded and starving people by supplying food, potable water,
and medical assistance. U.S. forces are credited with saving over 200,000 lives in that operation. In 1999, torrential rains and flash flooding in Venezuela
killed 30,000 people and left 140,000 homeless. The United States responded with Operation Fundamental Response, which brought water purification and
hygiene [end page 44] equipment saving thousands. Also in 1999, Operation Strong Support aided Central Americans affected by Hurricane Mitch. That
hurricane was the fourth-strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic and the worst natural disaster to strike Central America in the twentieth century. The
magnitude of the devastation was tremendous, with about 10,000 people killed, 13,000 missing, and 2 million left homeless. It is estimated that 60 percent of
the infrastructure in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala was destroyed. Again, the U.S. military came to the aid of the people affected. It is believed to
have rescued about 700 people who otherwise would have died, while saving more from disease due to the timely arrival of medical supplies, food, water,
blankets, and mobile shelters. In the next phase of Strong Support, military engineers rebuilt much of the infrastructure of those countries, including bridges,
hospitals, roads, and schools. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra and
killed 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. More importantly, Washington not only contributed a large amount of aid, $350
million, plus another $350 million provided by American citizens and corporations, but also—only days after the tsunami struck—used its military to help
those in need. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention,
as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort, and it is
important to keep in mind that its costs were separate from the $350 million provided by the U.S. government and other money given by American citizens
and corporations to relief organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent. The
generosity of the United
States has done more to help the country fight the war on terror than almost any other measure.
Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of the United States. In
October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving 3 million homeless. The U.S. military responded
immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the war on terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United
States provided about $156 million in aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the generosity of the United States, it left a lasting
impression about the United States. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also
had a real impact on the war on terror. There
is no other state or international organization that can provide
these benefits. The United Nations certainly cannot because it lacks the military and economic
power of the United States. It is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the
international body time and again on small matters [end page 45] as well as great ones. Thus, it lacks
the ability to speak with one voice on important issues and to act as a unified force once a decision
has been reached. Moreover, it does not possess the communications capabilities or global
logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United
States to supply UN forces. Simply put, there is no alternative to the leadership of the United
States. When the United States does not intervene, as it has not in the Darfur region of Sudan and
eastern Chad, people die. In this conflict, Arab Muslims belonging to government forces, or a militia called the Jingaweit, are struggling
against Christian and animist black Africans who are fighting for independence. According to the State Department, 98,000 to 181,000 people died between
March 2003 and March 2005 as a result of this struggle. The vast majority of these deaths were caused by violence, disease, and malnutrition associated with
the conflict.
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No Balancing OR Interventionism
Effective foreign policy solves balancing and interventionism

Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University, ’07
(G. John “The Case for Restraint: Comments and Responses” The American Interest, December (http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?
Id=337&MId=16))
Second, in conflating these alternatives, Posen misses the same point that his neoconservative rivals miss—namely, that America
can best
pursue its global interests with a functioning governance system that facilitates cooperation in
world politics. Posen acknowledges the importance of such governance mechanisms when he talks about the need for a revived Non-Proliferation
Treaty and other security regimes. Indeed, the world is thirsting today for a revived system of rules and tools for
collective action. Posen notes the troubling way in which the world has pushed back in the face of the unbridled exercise of American power, but
it is precisely Washington’s commitment to rules and institutions of governance that reduces the
incentives for these soft balancing moves. Hence Posen’s third mistake is that he narrowly associates “restraint” with the retraction
of America’s security commitments in Europe and Asia. The argument he makes is that these alliance partnerships create a moral hazard. Relying on
American commitments, other countries shirk their responsibilities, while the United States finds itself intervening everywhere and getting into trouble. But
these alliances—as well as America’s commitment to a wider array of multilateral institutions—
are actually an essential tool for the establishment of American strategic restraint. These
institutions provide mechanisms for other countries to engage Washington, and they establish
constraints and obligations that at least partly inhibit American unilateralism. The lesson of the
Iraq war is not for America to “come home”, but to tie itself more tightly to its allies. Yes, there
are dangers that this extended security system will provide opportunities for strategic blunders
and overextension. But the solution is better collective decision-making, not the wholesale
scrapping of the postwar system. Finally, to pull back from a liberal internationalist grand
strategy is to lose the opportunity to lay down the institutional foundations for a global order that
serves American interests in future years, when it is likely to be relatively less powerful. Think of it as
investing in the future. We should be working at this moment to shape the global system so that the
institutional legacies of today’s actions put the United States in the best position possible to secure its
interests when the wheel of power turns and other countries loom larger. This requires activism, of a certain sort.
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Collapse Bad – No one CAN Counterbalance
Transition away from hegemony will be worse - no one can counterbalance us

Brzezinski, National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration, Professor of Foreign Policy at
Johns Hopkins University, ’05
(Zbigniew “The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership”, p. 2-4)
History is a record of change, a reminder that nothing endures indefinitely. It can also remind us, however. That some
things endure for a long time, and when they disappear, the status quo ante does not reappear. So
it will be with the current American global preponderance. It, too, will fade at some point, probably
later than some wish and earlier than many Americans take for granted. The key question is: What will replace it? An abrupt
termination of American hegemony would without doubt precipitate global chaos, in which
international anarchy would be punctuated by eruptions of truly massive destructiveness. An
unguided progressive decline would have a similar effect, spread out over a long time. But a gradual and
controlled devolution of power could lead to an increasingly formalized global community of shared interest, with supranational arrangements increasingly
assuming some of the special security roles of traditional nation-states. In any case the
eventual end of American Hegemony will
not involve a restoration of multipolarity among the familiar major powers that dominated world
affairs for the last two centuries. Nor will it yield to another dominant hegemony that would
displace the United States by assuming a similar political, military, economic, technological, and
sociocultural worldwide preeminence. The familiar powers of the last century are too fatigued or
too weak to assume the role the United States now plays. It is noteworthy that since 1880, in a comparative ranking of world
powers (cumulatively based on their economic strength, military budgets and assets, populations, etc.), the top five slots at sequential twenty-year intervals
have been shared by just seven states: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and China. Only in the United States,
however, unambiguously earned inclusion among the top five in every one of the twenty-year intervals, and the gap in the year 200 between the top-ranked
United States and the rest was vastly wider than ever before. The former major European powers––Great Britain, Germany and
France––are too weak to step into the breach. In the next two decades, it is quite unlikely that the
European Union will become sufficiently united politically to muster the popular will to compete with
the United States in the politico––military arena. Russia is no longer an imperial power, and its
central challenge is to recover socioeconomically lest it lose its far eastern territories to China.
Japan’s population is aging and its economy has slowed; the conventional wisdom of the 1980s that Japan is destined to be
the next “superstate” now has the ring of historical irony. China, even if it succeeds in maintaining high rates of
economic growth and retains its internal political stability (both are far from certain), will at best be a
regional power still constrained by an impoverished population, antiquated infrastructure, and
limited appeal worldwide. The same is true of India, which additionally faces uncertainties regarding its
long-term national unity. Even a coalition among the above––a most unlikely prospect, given their historical
conflicts and clashing territorial claims–would lack the cohesion, muscle, and energy needed to push both
America off its pedestal and sustain global stability. Some leading states, in any case, would side with
America if push came to shove. Indeed, any evident American decline might precipitate efforts to
reinforce America’s leadership. Most important, the shared resentment of American hegemony
would not dampen the clashes of interest among states. The more intense collisions––in the event
of America’s decline––could spark a wildfire of regional violence, rendered all the more
dangerous by the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction. The bottom line is twofold: For the next two
decades, the steadying effect of American power will be indispensable to global stability, while the
principal challenge to American power can come only from within––either from the repudiation of
power by the American democracy itself, or from America’s global misuse of its own power.
American society, even though rather parochial in its intellectual and cultural interests, steadily
sustained a protracted worldwide engagement against the threat of totalitarian communism, and
it is currently mobilized against the threat of totalitarian communism, and it is currently
mobilized against international terrorism. As long as that commitment endures, America’s role as
the global stabilizer will also endure. Should that commitment fade––because terrorism has faded, or because
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Americans tire or lose their sense of common purpose––America’s global role could rapidly terminate. That role could
also be undermined and delegitimized by the misuse of U.S. power. Conduct that is perceived
worldwide as arbitrary could prompt America’s progressive isolations, undercutting not
America’s power to defend itself as such, but rather its ability to use that power to enlist others in
a common effort to shape a secure international environment.
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Kagan – There are no Alternatives to U.S. Hegemony
U.S. Heg is necessary to avert global conflict – Counterbalancing is a lie, Offshore balancing and
multipolarity EPICALLY FAIL
transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, ’08
(Robert Kagan, is author, most recently, of Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
He is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September, October, Policy Review, and senior transatlantic fellow at the German
Marshall Fund. A version of this essay will appear in Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro, eds., To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush
Doctrine, Oxford University Press, 2008, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html)
The world has become normal again. The years immediately following the end of the Cold War offered a
tantalizing glimpse at a new kind of international order, with nations growing together or disappearing altogether,
ideological conflicts melting away, cultures intermingling through increasingly free commerce and communications. But that was a mirage, the
hopeful anticipation of a liberal, democratic world that wanted to believe the end of the Cold War did not end just one strategic and ideological conflict but
all strategic and ideological conflict. People and their leaders longed for “a world transformed.” 1 Today
the nations of the West still
cling to that vision. Evidence to the contrary — the turn toward autocracy in Russia or the growing military ambitions of China —
is either dismissed as a temporary aberration or denied entirely. The world has not been
transformed, however. Nations remain as strong as ever, and so too the nationalist ambitions, the
passions, and the competition among nations that have shaped history. The world is still
“unipolar,” with the United States remaining the only superpower. But international competition
among great powers has returned, with the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, Iran, and others vying for regional
predominance. Struggles for honor and status and influence in the world have once again become key features of the international scene. Ideologically, it is a
time not of convergence but of divergence. The competition between liberalism and absolutism has reemerged, with the nations of the world increasingly
lining up, as in the past, along ideological lines. Finally, there is the fault line between modernity and tradition, the violent struggle of Islamic
fundamentalists against the modern powers and the secular cultures that, in their view, have penetrated and polluted their Islamic world. CREATING AND
SUSTAINING THE UNIPoLAR WORLD How will the United States deal with such a world? Today there is much discussion of the so-called Bush
Doctrine and what may follow it. Many prefer to believe the world is in turmoil not because it is in turmoil but because Bush made it so by destroying the
new hopeful era. And when Bush leaves, it can return once again to the way it was. Having glimpsed the mirage once, people naturally want to see it and
believe in it again. The
first illusion, however, is that Bush really changed anything. Historians will long
debate the decision to go to war in Iraq, but what they are least likely to conclude is that the
intervention was wildly out of character for the United States. Since the end of World War ii at
least, American presidents of both parties have pursued a fairly consistent approach to the world.
They have regarded the United States as the “indispensable nation”2and the “locomotive at the
head of mankind.”3 They have amassed power and influence and deployed them in ever-widening
arcs around the globe on behalf of interests, ideals, and ambitions, both tangible and intangible.
Since 1945 Americans have insisted on acquiring and maintaining military supremacy, a
“preponderance of power” in the world rather than a balance of power with other nations. They
have operated on the ideological conviction that liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of
government and that other forms of government are not only illegitimate but transitory. They have
declared their readiness to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation” by forces of oppression, to “pay any price, bear any burden” to
defend freedom, to seek “democratic enlargement” in the world, and to work for the “end of tyranny.” 4 They have been impatient with the status quo. They
have seen America as a catalyst for change in human affairs, and they have employed the strategies and tactics of “maximalism,” seeking revolutionary
rather than gradual solutions to problems. Therefore, they have often been at odds with the more cautious approaches of their allies. 5 When people talk
about a Bush Doctrine, they generally refer to three sets of principles — the idea of preemptive or preventive military action; the promotion of democracy
and “regime change”; and a diplomacy tending toward “unilateralism,” a willingness to act without the sanction of international bodies such as the United
Nations Security Council or the unanimous approval of its allies. 6 It is worth asking not only whether past administrations acted differently but also which
of these any future administration, regardless of party, would promise to abjure in its conduct of foreign policy. As scholars from Melvyn P. Leffler to John
Lewis Gaddis have shown, the idea of preemptive or preventive action is hardly a novel concept in American foreign policy. 7 And as policymakers and
philosophers from Henry Kissinger to Michael Walzer have agreed, it is impossible in the present era to renounce such actions a priori.8 As for “regime
change,” there is not a single administration in the past half-century that has not attempted to engineer changes of regime in various parts of the world, from
Eisenhower ’s cia-inspired coups in Iran and Guatemala and his planned overthrow of Fidel Castro, which John F. Kennedy attempted to carry out, to
George Herbert Walker Bush ’s invasion of Panama to Bill Clinton’s actions in Haiti and Bosnia. And if by unilateralism we mean an unwillingness to be
constrained by the disapproval of the un Security Council, by some of the nato allies, by the oas, or by any other international body, which presidents of
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the past allowed themselves to be so constrained? 9 These qualities of American foreign policy reflect not one man or
one party or one circle of thinkers. They spring from the nation ’s historical experience and are a
characteristic American response to international circumstances. They are underpinned, on the
one hand, by old beliefs and ambitions and, on the other hand, by power. So long as Americans
elect leaders who believe it is the role of the United States to improve the world and bring about
the “ultimate good,”10 and so long as American power in all its forms is sufficient to shape the
behavior of others, the broad direction of American foreign policy is unlikely to change, absent
some dramatic — indeed, genuinely revolutionary — effort by a future administration. Realist theory has
assumed that other powers must inevitably band together to balance against the superpower.
These American traditions, together with historical events beyond Americans’ control, have
catapulted the United States to a position of pre-eminence in the world. Since the end of the Cold
War and the emergence of this “unipolar” world, there has been much anticipation of the end of
unipolarity and the rise of a multipolar world in which the United States is no longer the
predominant power. Not only realist theorists but others both inside and outside the United States have long argued the theoretical and practical
unsustainability, not to mention undesirability, of a world with only one superpower. Mainstream realist theory has assumed that other powers must
inevitably band together to balance against the superpower. Others expected the post-Cold War era to be characterized by the primacy of geoeconomics over
geopolitics and foresaw a multipolar world with the economic giants of Europe, India, Japan, and China rivaling the United States. Finally, in the wake of
the Iraq War and with hostility to the United States, as measured in public opinion polls, apparently at an all-time high, there has been a widespread
assumption that the American position in the world must finally be eroding. Yet
American predominance in the main
categories of power persists as a key feature of the international system. The enormous and
productive American economy remains at the center of the international economic system.
American democratic principles are shared by over a hundred nations. The American military is
not only the largest but the only one capable of projecting force into distant theaters. Chinese strategists,
who spend a great deal of time thinking about these things, see the world not as multipolar but as characterized by “one superpower, many great powers,”
and this configuration seems likely to persist into the future absent either a catastrophic blow to
American power or a decision by the United States to diminish its power and international
influence voluntarily. 11 Sino-Russian hostility to American predominance has not yet produced a
concerted effort at balancing. The anticipated global balancing has for the most part not occurred.
Russia and China certainly share a common and openly expressed goal of checking American
hegemony. They have created at least one institution, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, aimed at resisting American influence in Central Asia,
and China is the only power in the world, other than the United States, engaged in a long-term military buildup. But Sino-Russian hostility
to American predominance has not yet produced a concerted and cooperative effort at balancing.
China ’s buildup is driven at least as much by its own long-term ambitions as by a desire to
balance the United States. Russia has been using its vast reserves of oil and natural gas as a lever
to compensate for the lack of military power, but it either cannot or does not want to increase its
military capability sufficiently to begin counterbalancing the United States. Overall, Russian military power
inspires at least as much nervousness in Russia as it does in the United States. At the moment, moreover, China
is less abrasively confrontational with the United States. Its dependence on the American market and foreign investment and its perception that the United
States remains a potentially formidable adversary mitigate against an openly confrontational approach.
In any case, China and Russia
cannot balance the United States without at least some help from Europe, Japan, India, or at least
some of the other advanced, democratic nations. But those powerful players are not joining the
effort. Europe has rejected the option of making itself a counterweight to American power. This is true
even among the older members of the European Union, where neither France, Germany, Italy, nor Spain proposes such counterbalancing, despite a public
opinion hostile to the Bush administration. Now that theeu has expanded to include the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, who fear threats from the east,
not from the west, the prospect of a unified Europe counterbalancing the United States is practically nil. As
for Japan and India, the clear
trend in recent years has been toward closer strategic cooperation with the United States. If
anything, the most notable balancing over the past decade has been aimed not at the American
superpower but at the two large powers: China and Russia. In Asia and the Pacific, Japan, Australia, and even South
Korea and the nations of Southeast Asia have all engaged in “hedging” against a rising China. This has led them to seek closer relations with Washington,
especially in the case of Japan and Australia. India has also drawn closer to the United States and is clearly engaged in balancing against China. Russia ’s
efforts to increase its influence over what it regards as its “near abroad,” meanwhile, have produced tensions and negative reactions in the Baltics and other
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parts of Eastern Europe. Because these nations are now members of the European Union, this has also complicated eu-Russian relations. On balance,
traditional allies of the United States in East Asia and in Europe, while their publics may be more anti-American than in the past, nevertheless pursue
policies that reflect more concern about the powerful states in their midst than about the United States. 12 This has provided a cushion against hostile public
opinion and offers a foundation on which to strengthen American relations with these countries after the departure of Bush. As
for Russia and
China, their hostility to the United States predates the Iraq War and, indeed, the Bush
administration. The Iraq War has not had the effect expected by many. Although there are reasonable-sounding
theories as to why America ’s position should be eroding as a result of global opposition to the war
and the unpopularity of the current administration, there has been little measurable change in the
actual policies of nations, other than their reluctance to assist the United States in Iraq. In 2003 those who claimed the U.S. global position
was eroding pointed to electoral results in some friendly countries: the election of Schr öder in Germany, the defeat of Aznar’s party in Spain, and the
election of Lula in Brazil.13 But if elections are the test, other more recent votes around the world have put relatively pro-American leaders in power in
Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Canberra, and Ottawa. As for Russia and China, their hostility to the United States predates the Iraq War and, indeed, the Bush
administration. Russia turned most sharply anti-American in the late 1990s partly as a consequence of nato enlargement. Both were far more upset and
angered by the American intervention in Kosovo than by the invasion of Iraq. Both began complaining about American hegemonism and unilateralism and
calling for a multipolar order during the Clinton years. Chinese rhetoric has been, if anything, more tempered during the Bush years, in part because the
Chinese have seen September 11 and American preoccupation with terrorism as a welcome distraction from America’s other preoccupation, the “China
threat.” The
world’s failure to balance against the superpower is the more striking because the
United States, notwithstanding its difficult interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, continues to
expand its power and military reach and shows no sign of slowing this expansion even after
the 2008 elections. The American defense budget has surpassed $500 billion per year, not
including supplemental spending totaling over $100 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan. This level of
spending is sustainable, moreover, both economically and politically.14 As the American military
budget rises, so does the number of overseas American military bases. Since September 11, 2001, the United States
has built or expanded bases in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia; in Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, and
Romania in Europe; and in the Philippines, Djibouti, Oman, and Qatar. Two decades ago, hostility to the American military presence began forcing the
United States out of the Philippines and seemed to be undermining support for American bases in Japan. Today, the Philippines is rethinking that decision,
and the furor in Japan has subsided. In places like South Korea and Germany, it is American plans to reduce the U.S. military
presence that stir controversy, not what one would expect if there was a widespread fear or hatred
of overweening American power. Overall, there is no shortage of other countries willing to host
U.S. forces, a good indication that much of the world continues to tolerate and even lend support to American geopolitical primacy if only as a
protection against more worrying foes. 15 Predominance is not the same thing as omnipotence. Just because the United States has more power than everyone
else does not mean it can impose its will on everyone else. American predominance in the early years after the Second World War did not prevent the North
Korean invasion of the South, a communist victory in China, the Soviet acquisition of the hydrogen bomb, or the consolidation of the Soviet empire in
Eastern Europe — all far greater strategic setbacks than anything the United States has yet suffered or is likely to suffer in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does
predominance mean the United States will succeed in all its endeavors, any more than it did six decades ago. By the same token, foreign policy failures do
not necessarily undermine predominance. Some
have suggested that failure in Iraq would mean the end of
predominance and unipolarity. But a superpower can lose a war — in Vietnam or in Iraq — without ceasing
to be a superpower if the fundamental international conditions continue to support its
predominance. So long as the United States remains at the center of the international economy
and the predominant military power, so long as the American public continues to support
American predominance as it has consistently for six decades, and so long as potential challengers
inspire more fear than sympathy among their neighbors, the structure of the international system
should remain as the Chinese describe it: one superpower and many great powers. This is a good
thing, and it should continue to be a primary goal of American foreign policy to perpetuate this
relatively benign international configuration of power. The unipolar order with the United States as
the predominant power is unavoidably riddled with flaws and contradictions. It inspires fears and jealousies. The United States is not immune
to error, like all other nations, and because of its size and importance in the international system those errors are magnified and take on greater significance
than the errors of less powerful nations. Compared to the ideal Kantian international order, in which all the world 's powers would be peace-loving equals,
conducting themselves wisely, prudently, and in strict obeisance to international law, the unipolar system is both dangerous and unjust. Compared
to
any plausible alternative in the real world, however, it is relatively stable and less likely to produce a major
war between great powers. It is also comparatively benevolent, from a liberal perspective, for it is more conducive to the principles of
economic and political liberalism that Americans and many others value. American predominance does not stand in the way of progress
toward a better world, therefore. It stands in the way of regression toward a more dangerous world. The choice
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is not between an American-dominated order and a world that looks like the European Union. The future international order will be
shaped by those who have the power to shape it. The leaders of a post-American world will not meet in Brussels but in
Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. The return of great powers and great games If the world is marked by the persistence of unipolarity,
it is nevertheless also being shaped by the reemergence of competitive national ambitions of the kind that have shaped human affairs from time immemorial.
During the Cold War, this historical tendency of great powers to jostle with one another for status and influence as well as for wealth and power was largely
suppressed by the two superpowers and their rigid bipolar order. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not been powerful enough, and
probably could never be powerful enough, to suppress by itself the normal ambitions of nations. This does not mean the world has returned to multipolarity,
several large powers are
since none of the large powers is in range of competing with the superpower for global influence. Nevertheless,
now competing for regional predominance, both with the United States and with each other. National
ambition drives China's foreign policy today, and although it is tempered by prudence and the desire to appear as unthreatening as
possible to the rest of the world, the Chinese are powerfully motivated to return their nation to what they
regard as its traditional position as the preeminent power in East Asia. They do not share a European, postmodern
view that power is passé; hence their now two-decades-long military buildup and modernization. Like the Americans, they believe power, including military
power, is a good thing to have and that it is better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more significant is the Chinese perception, also shared by Americans,
that status and honor, and not just wealth and security, are important for a nation. Japan, meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an
aspiring postmodern power -- with its pacifist constitution and low defense spending -- now appears
embarked on a more traditional
national course. Partly this is in reaction to the rising power of China and concerns about North
Korea’s nuclear weapons. But it is also driven by Japan's own national ambition to be a leader in
East Asia or at least not to play second fiddle or "little brother" to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest
with each trying to augment its own status and power and to prevent the other 's rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as
well as an economic and political component. Their competition is such that a nation like South Korea, with a long unhappy history as a pawn between the
two powers, is once again worrying both about a "greater China" and about the return of Japanese nationalism. As Aaron Friedberg commented, the East
Asian future looks more like Europe's past than its present. But it also looks like Asia's past. Russian
foreign policy, too, looks more like
something from the nineteenth century. It is being driven by a typical, and typically Russian, blend of national resentment
and ambition. A postmodern Russia simply seeking integration into the new European order, the Russia of Andrei Kozyrev, would not be troubled
by the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO, would not insist on predominant influence over its "near abroad," and would not use its natural resources
as means of gaining geopolitical leverage and enhancing Russia’s
international status in [is] an attempt to regain the lost
glories of the Soviet empire and Peter the Great. But Russia, like China and Japan, is moved by more traditional great-
power considerations, including the pursuit of those valuable if intangible national interests: honor and respect. Although Russian leaders
complain about threats to their security from NATO and the United States, the Russian sense of insecurity has more to do with resentment and national
identity than with plausible external military threats. 16 Russia's complaint today is not with this or that weapons system. It is the entire post-Cold War
settlement of the 1990s that Russia resents and wants to revise. But that does not make insecurity less a factor in Russia 's relations with the world; indeed, it
makes finding compromise with the Russians all the more difficult. One could add others to this list of great powers with traditional rather than postmodern
aspirations. India's regional ambitions are more muted, or are focused most intently on Pakistan, but it is
clearly engaged in competition with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean and sees itself,
correctly, as an emerging great power on the world scene. In the Middle East there is Iran, which
mingles religious fervor with a historical sense of superiority and leadership in its region. 17 Its nuclear
program is as much about the desire for regional hegemony as about defending Iranian territory from attack by the
United States. Even the European Union, in its way, expresses a pan-European national ambition to play a
significant role in the world, and it has become the vehicle for channeling German, French, and
British ambitions in what Europeans regard as a safe supranational direction. Europeans seek honor and respect, too, but of a postmodern variety.
The honor they seek is to occupy the moral high ground in the world, to exercise moral authority, to wield political and economic influence as an antidote to
militarism, to be the keeper of the global conscience, and to be recognized and admired by others for playing this role. Islam is not a nation, but many
Muslims express a kind of religious nationalism, and the leaders of radical Islam, including al Qaeda, do seek to establish a theocratic nation or
confederation of nations that would encompass a wide swath of the Middle East and beyond. Like national movements elsewhere, Islamists have a
yearning for respect, including self-respect, and a desire for honor. Their national identity has been molded in defiance against
stronger and often oppressive outside powers, and also by memories of ancient superiority over those same powers. China had its "century of
humiliation." Islamists have more than a century of humiliation to look back on, a humiliation of which Israel has become the living symbol, which is partly
why even Muslims who are neither radical nor fundamentalist proffer their sympathy and even their support to violent extremists who can turn the tables on
the dominant liberal West, and particularly on a dominant America which implanted and still feeds the Israeli cancer in their midst. Finally,
there is
the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations,
Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance
in East Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central
Asia. This was its goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with
the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its
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influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even
as it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic
competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East
and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United
States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they
generally prefer their global place as "No. 1" and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a
region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in
their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of
people around the globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new
post-Cold War international system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is
international competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance
prevents these rivalries from intensifying -- its regional as well as its global predominance. Were
the United States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the
other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through
diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and
destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear
weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is
easy but also dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of
stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the United States is the dominant naval power
everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They either
happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways and trade routes, of international
access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United States engages in a war, it is able to play its
role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not.
Nations would compete for naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond.
Conflict between nations would involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed
embargos, of the kind used in World War I and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows
in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided
by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to American power, for
without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt secure enough to
reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europe’s stability
depends on the guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could
step in to check any dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely multipolar world,
that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world war. People who believe greater
equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often
succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They
imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order
that they like would remain in place. But that’s not the way it works. International order does not rest
on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power. The international order we know today
reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold
War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia,
China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with different rules
and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it.
Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that
it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no
Even under the umbrella of unipolarity, regional
guarantee against major conflict among the world 's great powers.
conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States
and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the
consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern
states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such
conflicts may be unavoidable no matter
what policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States weakens
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or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is especially true in East Asia, where
most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the
region. That is certainly the view of most of China 's neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the
United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal
could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. In Europe, too, the departure of the
United States from the scene -- even if it remained the world's most powerful nation -- could be destabilizing. It could tempt
Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on its
periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet
Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent
American role in Europe, history suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even
without Soviet communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe -- if it adopted what some call
a strategy of "offshore balancing" -- this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving
Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable
circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more
passive, "offshore" role would lead to greater stability there. The vital interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access
open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the
region battle it out. Nor would a more "even-handed" policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the
Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel 's aid if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect
strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground.
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Heg Good–Peace/Stability
Unipolarity promotes peace and stability – others want to follow US leadership
Wohlforth, prof IR Georgetown

William Wohlforth, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. International Security,
Summer 1999. "The Stability of a Unipolar World"
Second, the
current unipolarity is prone to peace. The raw power advantage of the United States
means that an important source of conflict in previous systems is absent: hegemonic rivalry over
leadership of the international system. No other major power is in a position to follow any policy that depends for its success on
prevailing against the United States in a war or an extended rivalry. None is likely to take any step that might invite the focused enmity of the United States.
At the same time, unipolarity minimizes security competition among the other great powers. As the system leader, the
United States has the
means and motive to maintain key security institutions in order to ease local security conflicts and
limit expensive competition among the other major powers. For their part, the second-tier states
face incentives to bandwagon with the unipolar power as long as the expected costs of balancing
remain prohibitive.
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Heg Good-Walt
US primacy prevents the outbreak of global hegemonic war.
Walt, prof IA Harvard, 2002

Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Spring 2002 "American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls."
Naval War College Review, Vol. 55, Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages)
A second consequence of U.S. primacy is a decreased danger of great-power rivalry and a higher level of overall international tranquility. Ironically,
those who argue that primacy is no longer important, because the danger of war is slight, overlook
the fact that the extent of American primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of great-
power war is as low as it is. For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major powers have been intensely competitive, often
punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of the twentieth century, for
example, great-power wars killed over eighty million people. Today, however, the dominant position of
the United States places significant limits on the possibility of great-power competition, for at least
two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so far ahead, other major
powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position. Not only is there no possibility of a
"hegemonic war" (because there is no potential hegemon to mount a challenge), but the risk of
war via miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the United States and the
other major powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war when the balance of power is
fairly even, because in this situation both sides can convince themselves that they might be able to
win. When the balance of power is heavily skewed, however, the leading state does not need to go to war and weaker states dare not try.8 The
second reason is that the continued deployment of roughly two hundred thousand troops in
Europe and in Asia provides a further barrier to conflict in each region. So long as U.S. troops are
committed abroad, regional powers know that launching a war is likely to lead to a confrontation
with the United States. Thus, states within these regions do not worry as much about each other, because the U.S. presence effectively prevents
regional conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe has termed the "American pacifier" is not the only barrier to conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an
important one. This tranquilizing effect is not lost on America's allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S. dominance and dislike playing host to American
troops, but they also do not want "Uncle Sam" to leave.9 Thus, U.S.
primacy is of benefit to the United States, and to
other countries as well, because it dampens the overall level of international insecurity. World politics
might be more interesting if the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete with each other more actively, but a more exciting
world is not necessarily a better one. A comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more
pleasant to live in than "interesting" decades like the 1930s or 1940s.
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Heg Good-Kagan
American Hegemony is the best world option for all nations, key to economic growth and
democracy, and stability
Kagan, associate Carnegie, 1998

Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director of its U.S. Leadership Project, Summer 1998, “The
Benevolent Empire” http://www.jstor.org/stable/1149376
Today's call for "multipolarity" in international affairs, in short, has a history, as do European yearnings for unity as a counterweight to American power.
Neither of these professed desires is a new response to the particular American hegemony of the last nine years. And neither of them, one suspects, is very
seriously intended. For the truth about America's dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed international observers. And the truth is that the
benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world's
population. It is certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives . To
undermine it would cost many others around the world far more than it would cost Americans-and far sooner. As Samuel Huntington wrote five years ago,
before he joined the plethora of scholars disturbed by the "arrogance" of American hegemony: "A
world without U.S. primacy will be
a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world
where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country shaping global
affairs." The unique qualities of American global dominance have never been a mystery, but these days they are more and more forgotten or, for
convenience' sake, ignored. There was a time when the world clearly saw how different the American superpower was from all the previous aspiring
hegemons. The difference lay in the exercise of power. The strength acquired by the United States in the aftermath of World War II was far greater than any
single nation had ever possessed, at least since the Roman Empire. America's share of the world economy, the overwhelming superiority of its military
capacity-augmented for a time by a monopoly of nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them-gave it the choice of pursuing any number of global
ambitions. That the American people "might have set the crown of world empire on their brows," as one British statesman put it in 1951, but chose not to,
was a decision of singular importance in world history and recognized as such. America's self-abnegation was unusual, and its uniqueness was not lost on
peoples who had just suffered the horrors of wars brought on by powerful nations with overweening ambitions to empire of the most coercive type. Nor was
it lost on those who saw what the Soviet Union planned to do with its newfound power after World War II. The uniqueness persisted. During the Cold War,
America's style of hegemony reflected its democratic form of government as much as Soviet hegemony reflected Stalin's approach to governance. The
"habits of democracy," as Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis has noted, made compromise and mutual accommodation the norm in U.S.-Allied
relations. This approach to international affairs was not an example of selfless behavior. The Americans had an instinctive sense, based on their own
experience growing up in a uniquely open system of democratic capitalism, that their power and influence would be enhanced by allowing subordinate allies
a great measure of internal and even external freedom of maneuver. But in practice, as Gaddis points out, "Americans so often deferred to the wishes of
allies during the early Cold War that some historians have seen the Europeans- especially the British-as having managed them." Beyond the style of
American hegemony, which, even if unevenly applied, undoubtedly did more to attract than repel other peoples and nations, American grand strategy in the
Cold War consistently entailed providing far more to friends and allies than was expected from them in return. Thus, it was American strategy to raise up
from the ruins powerful economic competitors in Europe and Asia, a strategy so successful that by the 1980s the United States was thought to be in a state of
irreversible "relative" economic decline-relative, that is, to those very nations whose economies it had restored after World War II. And it was American
strategy to risk nuclear annihilation on its otherwise unthreatened homeland in order to deter attack, either nuclear or conventional, on a European or Asian
ally. This strategy also came to be taken for granted. But when one considers the absence of similarly reliable guarantees among the various European
powers in the past (between, say, Great Britain and France in the 1920s and 1930s), the willingness of the United States, standing in relative safety behind
two oceans, to link its survival to that of other nations was extraordinary. Even more remarkable may be that the United States has attempted not only to
preserve these guarantees but to expand them in the post-Cold War era. Much is made these days, not least in the American defense budget now being
several times higher than that of every other major power. But on what is that defense budget spent? Very little funding goes to protect national territory.
Most of it is devoted to making good on what Americans call their international "commitments." Even in the absence of the Soviet threat, America
continues, much to the chagrin of some of its politicians, to define its "national security" broadly, as encompassing the security of friends and allies, and
even of abstract principles, far from American shores. In the Gulf War,
Heg Good-Kagan
more than 90 percent of the military forces sent to expel Iraq's army from Kuwait were American. Were 90 percent of the interests threatened American? In
almost any imaginable scenario in which the United States might deploy troops abroad, the primary purpose would be the defense of interests of more
immediate concern to America's allies-as it has been in Bosnia. This can be said about no other power. Ever since the United States emerged as a great
power, the identification of the interests of others with its own has been the most striking quality of American foreign and defense policy. Americans seem to
have internalized and made second nature a conviction held only since World War II: Namely, that their own well-being depends fundamentally on the well-
being of others; that American prosperity cannot occur in the absence of global prosperity; that American freedom depends on the survival and spread of
freedom elsewhere; that aggression anywhere threatens the danger of aggression everywhere ; and that American
national security is impossible without a broad measure of international security. Let us not call this conviction selfless: Americans are as self-interested as
any other people. But for at least 50 years they have been guided by the kind of enlightened self-interest that, in practice, comes dangerously close to
resembling generosity. If that generosity seems to be fading today (and this is still a premature judgment), it is not because America has grown too fond of
power. Quite the opposite. It is because some Americans have grown tired of power, tired of leadership, and, consequently, less inclined to demonstrate the
sort of generosity that has long characterized their nation's foreign policy. What many in Europe and elsewhere see as arrogance and bullying may be just
irritability born of weariness. If fatigue is setting in, then those
nations and peoples who have long benefited, and still
benefit, from the international order created and upheld by American power have a stake in
bolstering rather than denigrating American hegemony. After all, what, in truth, are the
alternatives?
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Heg Good-Laundry List
Walt, prof IA Harvard, 2002
Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Spring 2002 "American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls."
Naval War College Review, Vol. 55, Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages)
Thus, anyone who thinks that the United States should try to discourage the spread of weapons of
mass destruction, promote human rights, advance the cause of democracy, or pursue any other
positive political goal should recognize that the nation's ability to do so rests primarily upon its
power. The United States would accomplish far less if it were weaker, and it would discover that other states were
setting the agenda of world politics if its own power were to decline. As Harry Truman put it over fifty years ago, "Peace must be built upon
power, as well as upon good will and good deeds."17 The bottom line is clear. Even in a world with nuclear weapons,
extensive economic ties, rapid communications, an increasingly vocal chorus of nongovernmental
organizations, and other such novel features, power still matters, and primacy is still preferable .
People running for president do not declare that their main goal as commander in chief would be to move the United States into the number-two position.
They understand, as do most Americans, that being number one is a luxury they should try very hard to keep.
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Heg Good-War
Hegemony solves great power wars and extinction

Lovelace, director SSI, 2009 Douglas Lovelace, director Strategic Studies Institute, 1/20/2009,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB902.pdf.
A sustainable national security strategy is feasible only when directed by a sustainable national security policy. In the absence of policy guidance, strategy
has to be meaningless. The only policy that meets both the mandates of American culture and the challenges of the outside world is one that seeks to
promote the necessary mission of guarding and advancing world order. Dr. Colin Gray considers and rejects a policy that would
encourage the emergence of a multipolar structure for global politics. He argues that multipolarity not
only would fail to maintain order, it would also promote conflict among the inevitably rival great
powers. In addition, he suggests that Americans culturally are not comfortable with balance-of-power politics and certainly would not choose to promote
the return of such a system. The monograph identifies the various “pieces of the puzzle” most relevant to national security strategy; surfaces the leading
assumptions held by American policymakers and strategists; considers alternative national security policies; and specifies the necessary components of a
sustainable national security strategy. Dr. Gray concludes that America
has much less choice over its policy and strategy
than the public debate suggests. He warns that the country’s dominant leadership role in global security
certainly will be challenged before the century is old.
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Heg Good-War
Heg is the only option-multipolarity causes great power wars

Gray, prof IR Reading, 09 Colin S. Gray, professor of International Relations at Reading, 1/2009, “After Iraq: The Search for a Sustainable
National Security Strategy,” http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubid=902
U.S. policy to provide purpose and political guidance to U.S. strategy in the future is usefully approachable by identifying four fairly distinctive
alternative American roles in the world. These are readily characterized as follows: 1. Hegemon-leader for
global guardianship 2. Anti-hegemonial offshore balancer and spoiler 3. Disengaged lone wolf 4.
Moderate competitor and partner in a multipolar world. Of the four nominal choices, only the first is truly
practicable at present and in the near-term future. The partnership in multipolarity, an idea that appeals to
many scholars, is flawed in that the non-American “poles” are not yet ready for prime time. Furthermore, even if this
were not the case, a genuinely multipolar world would be prone to great power wars. The rich strategic
history of multipolarity is far from encouraging. The role of “disengaged lone wolf” simply could
not work. The United States is engaged in world affairs by economic, environmental, and hence
political and potentially strategic, globalization. To be disengaged would be to decline to protect one’s vital interests. Moreover,
America’s national culture, though marked by a longing for disengagement, also strongly favors political missionary behavior. This latter value rises and
falls irregularly, but it always rises again. The
United States could try to effect a transition from its current on-
shore Eurasian strategy of forward deployment, to an off-shore posture keyed to a policy role as
“spoiler” of potential grand continental coalitions. As maritime-air-space balancer of large Eurasian menaces, the United States
would both retain its political discretion over belligerency and favor its national strength in the higher technology features of its armed forces. The problem
is that this off-shore role would not suffice to defend the national interest.
The country would not be trusted, since it would
eschew the firm commitments that require local presence. As much to the point, U.S. influence would be certain to
diminish as a consequence of a process of withdrawal, no matter how impressive the reach of America’s weapons through the several geographies of the
great “commons.”
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Heg Good-War
Multipolarity causes war-unipolarity solves poverty and security-there’s no world where heg is
bad becase the end result of multipolarity is a violent struggle that culminates in unipolarity
HCGP 06
Harvard College Globalization Project, 2006 http://www.harvardglobalization.com/
A unipolar world order is susceptible to criticism because limitless discretion granted to a single state is intuitively troublesome; hence, the international
outcry at a prevailing system of global justice that lacks the democratic ideals for which it declaratively stands. The United States’ essentially unilateral
overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq serves as a prime example here. Just as autocratic rule is a dangerous model for the state, so is it a dangerous model for
international affairs; yet, it is the dominant model of the ages. Great
powers have classically been pitted against each
other until a single state prevails. And, in this sense, a multipolar world is a world in conflict until the
dominant pole emerges. The stakes don’t necessarily have to be global domination, as regional power struggles show similar patterns of
competition. In the Franco-Prussian War, France attempted but failed to mend a shattered balance of power in Europe by weakening a territorially expanded
the First
Prussia. In the Russo-Japanese War, Russia and Japan fought to maintain and extend spheres of influence in Korea and Manchuria. Both
and Second World Wars were essentially fought to keep a rapidly growing German power at bay.
And the bipolarity that marked the Cold War years was a dangerous sprint to a unipolar finish line,
which was finally crossed in 1989. Past instances of aggression demonstrate that multiple poles,
instead of promoting a more peaceful world, in fact promote violent competition. The threat associated with a
large accumulation of power in a single entity is that the welfare of the entire citizenry is contingent upon the integrity of one player. So if US unipolarity is
to be deemed universally prosperous, the United States must be established as an honorable state with ambitions deviant from those of great empires before
it, that is, ambitions marked by neither the bloodlust of the ancient Romans nor the taste for conquest of the imperial British. In assessing US integrity,
however, an historical basis for argument is only sufficient insofar as it is balanced. Rather than attempt a balanced historical record, which could fall prey to
subjectivity and convenient counter-examples of impropriety, the delicate task of weighing history in a moral light can be avoided by ignoring altogether the
United States’ actions during the 20th Century. Forget that it liberated Europe in two World Wars; detractors will just cite Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and
Japanese internment. Forget that it defeated communism without splitting the atom; detractors will cite Vietnam, McCarthy, and nuclear proliferation. Forget
that it has responsibly mediated peace accords and managed with relative decency a string of international conflicts in the modern age; detractors will surely
cite economic exploitation in Latin America, the ills of globalization, melting glaciers, and war in Iraq. Only after its feats are disregarded—after the moral
ambivalence of US history is conceded—can the present and the future of US dominance in world affairs be accurately assessed as either progressive or
otherwise, the desired end being maximum human welfare.
Then what is the present state of the world under US tyranny? It is as interconnected as it has ever been in human history. Thomas Friedman describes this
effect as the “flattening of the world,” a phenomenon in which technology and liberal ideals are bringing the global citizenry together in degree and form that
were unimaginable just fifteen years ago. Free markets and modern innovation are fostering human progress. While certain problems associated with
globalization leave US economic policy morally culpable, no state is free from the motivation of its own interests, and the
magnitude of good
caused by the US-driven economic revolution poses an ethically worthy counterbalance to any
negative side-effects (of which, admittedly, there are several of grave concern). War, poverty, and preventable disease still exist today, but history
has yet to provide proof that these evils can be eliminated altogether in the first place. And the rapid economic expansion
experienced by China and India within the last fifteen years has done much to alleviate human
suffering, having brought millions of families in these two countries out of their deep-rooted
struggles with poverty. This influx of wealth to the poorest regions of the world is a significant
development for global welfare and telling of the universal economic opportunities that exists for
states, even those in the developing world. This environment has been framed by a world
leadership typified by US power. Modern times dictate that the best possible structure—that
which
Heg Good-War
comes nearest to ideal global conditions of peace and prosperity—is a world under the leadership
of the United States. US primacy is here to stay, and as long as its leadership in the world
continues, so will the global progress and human security that marked its rise to power.
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Heg Good-Prolif Shell
Heg solves proliferation in the hands of allies, rogue states, and terrorist groups
Mandelbaum ’05
Michael Mandelbaum, professor and director of the American foreign policy program at Johns Hopkins, “The Case for Goliath” pg 149-150
The greatest threat to their security that the members of the international system did face in the new century, one that the United States had devoted
considerable resources and political capital to containing and that a
serious reduction in the American global rule would
certainly aggravate, was the spread of nuclear weapons. Nuclear proliferation poses three related dangers. The first is
that, in the absence of an American nuclear guarantee, major countries in Europe and Asia will feel
the need to acquire their own nuclear armaments. If the United States withdrew from Europe and East Asia, Germany
might come to consider it imprudent to deal with a nuclear-armed Russia, and Japan with a
nuclear-armed China, without nuclear arms of their own. They would seek these weapons in order to avoid an imbalance
in power that might work to their disadvantage. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by such affluent, democratic, peaceful
countries would not, by itself, trigger a war. It could, however, trigger arms races similar to the one between the
United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It would surely make Europe and East Asia less comfortable places, and
relations among the countries of these regions more suspicious, than was the case at the outset of the twenty-first century.
The spread of nuclear weapons poses a second danger, which the United States exerted itself to
thwart to the extent of threatening a war in North Korea and actually waging one in Iraq and that the recession of American power
would increase: the possession of nuclear armaments by "rogue" states, countries governed by
regimes at odds with their neighbors and hostile to prevailing international norms. A nuclear-armed Iraq,
an unlikely development after the over-throw of Saddam Hussein's regime, or a nuclear-armed Iran, a far more plausible prospect, would make the
international relations of the Persian Gulf far more dangerous. That in turn would threaten virtually every country in the world because so much of the oil on
which they all depend comes from that region.' A nuclear-armed North Korea would similarly change the international relations of East Asia for the worse.
Especially if
the United States withdrew from the region, South Korea and Japan, and perhaps
ultimately Tai-wan, might well decide to equip themselves with nuclear weapons of their own.
A North Korean nuclear arsenal would pose yet a third threat: nuclear weapons in the hands of a
terrorist group such as al Qaeda. Lacking the infrastructure of a sovereign state, a terrorist organization probably could not construct a
nuclear weapon itself. But it could purchase either a full-fledged nuclear explosive or nuclear material that could form the basis for a device that, while not
actually exploding, could spew poisonous radiation over populated areas, killing or infecting many thousands of people.' Nuclear materials are
potentially available for purchase not only in North Korea but elsewhere as well.
Extinction
Utgoff 02
Victor Utgoff, Deputy fo Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division, Institute for Defense Analysis, 2002 (Survival) http://survival.oupjournals.org
Widespread proliferation
is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons and that such
shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible
with the weapons at hand.
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Heg Good-Japan Rearm Shell 1/2
US hegemony is critical to preventing a German or Japanese rearmament
Lind, NAF, 07
Michael Lind, New America Foundation, Beyond American Hegemony,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2007/beyond_american_hegemony_5381
High levels of defense expenditures are not merely to overawe potential challengers. (In outlining possible competitors, Krauthammer noted, "Only China
grew in strength, but coming from so far behind it will be decades before it can challenge American primacy -- and that assumes that its current growth
continues unabated.") To again quote from the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, "we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial
nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order." Reassurance,
the
second prong of the hegemonic strategy, entails convincing major powers not to build up their
military capabilities, allowing the United States to assume the burdens of ensuring their security
instead. In other words, while outspending allies like Germany and Japan on defense, the United
States should be prepared to fight wars on behalf of Germany and Japan, sparing them the
necessity of re-arming -- for fear that these countries, having "renationalized" their defense policies and
rearmed, might become hostile to the United States at some future date. For example, even though the threats
emanating from the spillover of the Balkan conflicts affected Germany and its neighbors far more than a geographically far-
removed United States, Washington took the lead in waging the 1999 Kosovo war -- in part to
forestall the emergence of a Germany prepared to act independently. And the Persian Gulf War
was, among other things, a reassurance war on behalf of Japan -- far more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than the
United States -- confirmed by the fact that Japan paid a substantial portion of the United States’ costs in that conflict. Today, the great question is whether or
not two other Asian giants -- India and China -- will eschew the development of true blue-water navies and continue to allow the United States to take
responsibility for keeping the Gulf open.
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Heg Good-Japan Rearm Shell 2/2
And, this leads to nuclear war
Cerincione, director NPP at Carnegie, 2000

Jospeh Cerincione Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Spring 2008, Foreign Policy, “The Asian
nuclear reaction chain”
The blocks would fall quickest and hardest in Asia, where proliferation pressures are already
building more quickly than anywhere else in the world. If a nuclear breakout takes place in Asia,
then the international arms control agreements that have been painstakingly negotiated over the
past 40 years will crumble. Moreover, the United States could find itself embroiled in its fourth
war on the Asian continent in six decades--a costly rebuke to those who seek the safety of Fortress America by hiding behind
national missile defenses. Consider what is already happening: North Korea continues to play guessing
games with its nuclear and missile programs; South Korea wants its own missiles to match
Pyongyang's; India and Pakistan shoot across borders while running a slow-motion nuclear arms
race; China modernizes its nuclear arsenal amid tensions with Taiwan and the United States;
Japan's vice defense minister is forced to resign after extolling the benefits of nuclear weapons;
and Russia-whose Far East nuclear deployments alone make it the largest Asian nuclear power-
struggles to maintain territorial coherence. Five of these states have nuclear weapons; the others
are capable of constructing them. Like neutrons firing from a split atom, one nation's actions can trigger
reactions throughout the region, which in turn, stimulate additional actions. These nations form
an interlocking Asian nuclear reaction chain that vibrates dangerously with each new
development. If the frequency and intensity of this reaction cycle increase, critical decisions taken
by any one of these governments could cascade into the second great wave of nuclear-weapon
proliferation, bringing regional and global economic and political instability and, perhaps, the
first combat use of a nuclear weapon since 1945.
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Heg Good 180/311
Heg Good-Japan Rearm Ext.
The instability from re-arms fuels wildfire proliferation, a series of wars and eventual emergence
of hostile Asian rival to the US
Khalilzad & Lesser 1998

(Rand analyst & permanent UN ambassador & Vice President and director of studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy, Zalmay & Ian, editors,
Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century, RAND Books, p. 13 lexis)
China in world III eschews democratization and normalization for an accelerated program of military modernization, especially air and naval power-
projection capabilities (Tellis et al., 1996). Japan might choose to go in one of several directions in the face of China’s drive for regional superiority. Tokyo
might decide to ally itself with Beijing; it might seek U.S. support in balancing China; or it might compete with China for Asian leadership. In
the
worst case—our world III—Japan loses faith in U.S. security guarantees and chooses the latter path.
Tokyo begins converting its economic power into military strength and deploys a small nuclear
arsenal to defend itself and its interests against what it perceives as malign Chinese designs. In the
rest of Asia, the second-tier powers jockey for position alongside one or another of the competitors
within a complex context of border and resource disputes. In this world, NBC proliferation proceeds at
a rapid clip, as actors see nuclear weapons in particular as insurance policies against the dangers
around them. Power relations are fluid to the point of instability as small countries seek protectors
and larger powers recruit clients. And in this world, it seems likely that a global competitor to the
United States could emerge, perhaps as a result of an alliance of convenience between one of the
Asian competitors and Russia.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 181/311
Heg Good-Japan Rearm Ext.
Sustained American hegemony prevents Japan from both rearming and nuclearizing
Lind, NAF, 07
Michael Lind, New America Foundation, Beyond American Hegemony,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2007/beyond_american_hegemony_5381
In the case of North Korea, for example, U.S. policy is motivated largely, although not solely, by the fear that if
Japan loses confidence in
America’s willingness to protect it, Japan may obtain its own nuclear deterrent and renationalize
its foreign policy, emerging from the status of a semi-sovereign U.S. protectorate to that of an
independent military great power once again. But no president can tell the American public that the United States must be willing
to lose 50,000 or more American lives in a war with North Korea for fear that Japan will get nuclear weapons to defend itself. Therefore the public is told
instead that North Korea might give nuclear weapons to non-state actors to use to destroy New York, Washington and other American cities, or that North
Korean missiles can strike targets in North America.
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Heg Good 182/311
Heg Good-Trade Shell 1/3
growth.
WALT, Prof gov Harvard, 2002

Stephen Walt, JFKSchool of Government Professor at Harvard Univiversity Naval War College Review, Spring,
www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm
also fosters global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world peace,
but it is more accurate to say that peace encourages interdependence-by making it easier for states to accept the potential vulnerabilities of extensive
international intercourse. Investors are more willing to send money abroad when the danger of war is remote, and states worry less about being dependent on
others when they are not concerned that these connections might be severed. When states are relatively secure, they will also be less fixated on how the gains
from cooperation are distributed. In particular, they are less likely to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a
relative disadvantage over time. By
providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U.S. primacy has
created political conditions that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment. Indeed,
American primacy was a prerequisite for the creation and gradual expansion of the European
Union, which is often touted as a triumph of economic self-interest over historical rivalries . Because the
United States was there to protect the Europeans from the Soviet Union and from each other, they could safely ignore the balance of power within Western
Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The
expansion of world trade has been a major
source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars upon which
that system rests. The United States also played a leading role in establishing the various
institutions that regulate and manage the world economy. As a number of commentators have
noted, the current era of “globalization” is itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas
Friedman puts it, “Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.”
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Heg Good 183/311
Collapse of trade leads to great power wars, terror, and poverty
Panitchpakdi, secretary-general UNCTD, 2004

Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, 2/26/2004, American Leadership and the World Trade
Organization, p. http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spsp_e/spsp22_e.htm
The second point is that strengthening the world trading system is essential to America's wider global objectives. Fighting
terrorism,
reducing poverty, improving health, integrating China and other countries in the global economy
— all of these issues are linked, in one way or another, to world trade. This is not to say that trade is the answer to
all America's economic concerns; only that meaningful solutions are inconceivable without it . The world trading
system is the linchpin of today's global order — underpinning its security as well as its prosperity. A successful WTO is an
example of how multilateralism can work. Conversely, if it weakens or fails, much else could fail with it. This is something which the US — at the epicentre
of a more interdependent world — cannot afford to ignore. These priorities must continue to guide US policy — as they have done since the Second World
War. America has been the main driving force behind eight rounds of multilateral trade
negotiations, including the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the creation of the
WTO. The US — together with the EU — was instrumental in launching the latest Doha Round two years ago. Likewise, the recent initiative,
spearheaded by Ambassador Zoellick, to re-energize the negotiations and move them towards a successful conclusion is yet another example of how
essential the US is to the multilateral process — signalling that the US remains committed to further liberalization, that the Round is moving, and that other
countries have a tangible reason to get on board. The reality is this: when the US leads the system can move forward; when it withdraws, the system drifts.
The fact that US leadership is essential, does not mean it is easy. As WTO rules have expanded, so too has as the complexity of the issues the WTO deals
with — everything from agriculture and accounting, to tariffs and telecommunication. The WTO is also exerting huge gravitational pull on countries to join
— and participate actively — in the system. The WTO now has 146 Members — up from just 23 in 1947 — and this could easily rise to 170 or more within
a decade. Emerging powers like China, Brazil, and India rightly demand a greater say in an institution in which they have a growing stake. So too do a rising
number of voices outside the system as well. More and more people recognize that the WTO matters. More non-state actors — businesses, unions,
environmentalists, development NGOs — want the multilateral system to reflect their causes and concerns. A decade ago, few people had even heard of the
GATT. Today the WTO is front page news. A more visible WTO has inevitably become a more politicized WTO. The sound and fury surrounding the
WTO's recent Ministerial Meeting in Cancun — let alone Seattle — underline how challenging managing the WTO can be. But these challenges can be
exaggerated. They exist precisely because so many countries have embraced a common vision. Countries the world over have turned to open trade — and a
rules-based system — as the key to their growth and development. They agreed to the Doha Round because they believed their interests lay in freer trade,
stronger rules, a more effective WTO. Even in Cancun the great debate was whether the multilateral trading system was moving fast and far enough — not
whether it should be rolled back. Indeed, it is critically important that we draw the right conclusions from Cancun — which are only now becoming clearer.
The disappointment was that ministers were unable to reach agreement. The achievement was that they exposed the risks of failure, highlighted the need for
North-South collaboration, and — after a period of introspection — acknowledged the inescapable logic of negotiation. Cancun showed that, if the
challenges have increased, it is because the stakes are higher. The bigger challenge to American leadership comes from inside — not outside — the United
States. In America's current debate about trade, jobs and globalization we have heard a lot about the costs of liberalization. We need to hear more about the
opportunities. We need to be reminded of the advantages of America's openness and its trade with the world — about the economic growth tied to exports;
the inflation-fighting role of imports, the innovative stimulus of global competition. We need to explain that freer trade works precisely because it involves
positive change — better products, better job opportunities, better ways of doing things, better standards of living. While it is true that change can be
threatening for people and societies, it is equally true that the vulnerable are not helped by resisting change — by putting up barriers and shutting out
competition. They are helped by training, education, new and better opportunities that — with the right support policies — can flow from a globalized
economy. The fact is that for every job in the US threatened by imports there is a growing number of high-paid, high skill jobs created by exports. Exports
supported 7 million workers a decade ago; that number is approaching around 12 million today. And these new jobs — in aerospace, finance, information
technology — pay 10 per cent more than the average American wage. We especially need to inject some clarity — and facts — into the current debate over
the outsourcing of services jobs. Over the next decade, the US is projected to create an
average of more than 2 million new services jobs a year — compared to roughly 200,000 services jobs that will be outsourced. I am well aware that this
issue is the source of much anxiety in America today. Many Americans worry about the potential job losses that might arise from foreign competition in
services sectors. But it’s worth remembering that concerns about the impact of foreign competition are not new. Many of the reservations people are
expressing today are echoes of what we heard in the 1970s and 1980s. But people at that time didn’t fully appreciate the power of American ingenuity.
Remarkable advances in technology and productivity laid the foundation for unprecedented job creation in the 1990s and there is no reason to doubt that this
country, which has shown time and again such remarkable potential for competing in the global economy, will not soon embark again on such a burst of job-
creation. America's openness to service-sector Trade — combined with the high skills of its workforce — will lead to more growth, stronger industries, and a
shift towards higher value-added, higher-paying employment. Conversely, closing the door to service trade is a strategy for killing jobs, not saving them.
Americans have never run from a challenge and have never been defeatist in the face of strong competition. Part of this challenge is to create the conditions
for global growth and job creation here and around the world. I believe Americans realize what is at stake. The process of opening to global trade can be
disruptive, but they recognize that the US economy cannot grow and prosper any other way. They recognize the importance of finding global solutions to
shared global problems. Besides, what is the alternative to the WTO? Some argue that the world's only superpower need not be tied down by the constraints
of the multilateral system. They claim that US sovereignty is compromised by international rules, and that multilateral institutions limit rather than expand
US influence. Americans should be deeply sceptical about these claims. Almost none of the trade issues facing the US today are any easier to solve
unilaterally, bilaterally or regionally. The reality is probably just the opposite. What sense does it make — for example — to negotiate e-commerce rules
bilaterally? Who would be interested in disciplining agricultural subsidies in a regional agreement but not globally? How can bilateral deals — even dozens
of them — come close to matching the economic impact of agreeing to global free trade among 146 countries? Bilateral and regional deals can sometimes be
a complement to the multilateral system, but they can never be a substitute.
There is a bigger danger. By treating some countries preferentially, bilateral and regional deals exclude others — fragmenting global trade and distorting the
ICWest 09-10 Xue
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world economy. Instead of liberalizing trade — and widening growth — they carve it up. Worse, they have a domino effect: bilateral deals inevitably beget
more bilateral deals, as countries left outside are forced to seek their own preferential arrangements, or risk further marginalization. This is precisely what we
see happening today. There are already over two hundred bilateral and regional agreements in existence, and each month we hear of a new or expanded deal.
There is a basic contradiction in the assumption that bilateral approaches serve to strengthen the multilateral, rules-based system. Even when intended to spur
free trade, they can ultimately risk undermining it. This is in no one's interest, least of all the United States. America
led in the creation of
the multilateral system after 1945 precisely to avoid a return to hostile blocs — blocs that had
done so much to fuel interwar instability and conflict. America's vision, in the words of Cordell Hull, was that
“enduring peace and the welfare of nations was indissolubly connected with the friendliness,
fairness and freedom of world trade”. Trade would bind nations together, making another war
unthinkable. Non-discriminatory rules would prevent a return to preferential deals and closed alliances. A network of multilateral initiatives and
organizations — the Marshal Plan, the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT, now the WTO — would provide the institutional bedrock for the international
rule of law, not power. Underpinning all this was the idea that freedom — free trade, free democracies, the free exchange of ideas — was essential to peace
and prosperity, a more just world. It is a vision that has emerged pre-eminent a half century later. Trade has expanded twenty-fold since 1950. Millions in
Asia, Latin America, and Africa are being lifted out of poverty, and millions more have new hope for the future. All the great powers — the US, Europe,
Japan, India, China and soon Russia — are part of a rules-based multilateral trading system, greatly increasing the chances for world prosperity and peace.
There is a growing realization that — in our interdependent world — sovereignty is constrained,
not by multilateral rules, but by the absence of rules.
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Heg Good 185/311
Heg Good-Trade Ext.
Heg is key to free trade and communication and ensures that other powers will band wagon
Posen, prof poli sci MIT, 2003

Barry R. Posen, Professor of political science at MIT and member of Security Studies Program, Summer 2003, International Security “Command of the
Commons; The Military Foundations of U.S. Hegemony” pg lexis //EM
Command of the commons creates additional collective goods for U.S. allies. These collective goods help connect U.S. military
power to seemingly prosaic welfare concerns. U.S. military power underwrites world trade, travel,
global telecommunications, and commercial remote sensing, which all depend on peace and order in the commons. Those nations most
involved in these activities, those who profit most from globalization, seem to understand that they
benefit from the U.S. military position -- which may help explain why the world's consequential
powers have grudgingly supported U.S. hegemony.
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Heg Good 186/311
Heg Good-Trade Ext.
US heg is key to the global economy and free trade
Mandelbaum ’05
Michael Mandelbaum, professor and director of the American foreign policy program at Johns Hopkins, “The Case for Goliath” pg 149-150
It is satisfying because if the strings that manipulate events the world over lead back to Washington and New York, then the world may be seen as
intelligible, coherent, and rational, if not benign. It is plausible because, as
by far the most powerful member of the system of
sovereign states, the United States surely does exercise considerable influence. Globalization—the
spread around the world of cross-border economic transactions—is not an American invention,
nor does the United States control the trade and investment that enriches some, harms others, and alters the daily
routines of tens of millions; but American-based firms certainly do conduct a large part of the world's trade and investment, American economic policies do
affect conditions in the rest of the world and the
system of global market relations within which these often
disruptive transactions take places does rest on the military might and the economic strength of
the international system's most powerful member.
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Heg Good 187/311
Heg Good-Terrorism Shell
US leadership is necessary to prevent terrorist use of WMDs
Schmitt, director at AEI, 2006
Gary Schmitt, Resident scholar and director of the Program on Advanced Strategic Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, February 2006, “Is there
any alternative to U.S. primacy?” The Weekly Standard
The core argument itself is not new: The United States and the West face a new threat--weapons of mass
destruction in the hands of terrorists--and, whether we like it or not, no power other than the United
States has the capacity, or can provide the decisive leadership, required to handle this and other critical
global security issues. Certainly not the United Nations or, anytime soon, the European Union. In the
absence of American primacy, the international order would quickly return to disorder . Indeed,
whatever legitimate concerns people may have about the fact of America's primacy, the downsides of not asserting that primacy
are, according to The American Era, potentially far more serious. The critics "tend to dwell
disproportionately on problems in the exercise of [American] power rather than on the dire
consequences of retreat from an activist foreign policy," Lieber writes. They forget "what can happen
in the absence of such power."
Extinction
Sid-Ahmed, political analyst, 2004

Mohamed Sid-Ahmed 04 Political Analyst, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm
A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far
from certain – the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to
capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except
for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have
been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely
changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a
terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as
What would be the consequences of a nuclear
well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded.
attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are
now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense
of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would
proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type
of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack
succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a
conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When
nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
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Heg Good 188/311
Heg Good-Terrorism Ext.
Threats inevitably exist-only in unipolar world will we be able to deal with terrorists
Brooks and Wohlforth 02

Stephen, Assistant Professor, and William, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth, Foreign Affairs, “American Primacy in
Perspective”, Volume 81, Issue 4
Some might question the worth of being at the top of a unipolar system if that means serving as a
lightning rod for the world's malcontents. When there was a Soviet Union, after all, it bore the brunt of Osama bin Laden's anger,
and only after its collapse did he shift his focus to the United States (an indicator of the demise of bipolarity that was ignored at the time but looms larger in
retrospect). But terrorismhas been a perennial problem in history, and multipolarity did not save the
leaders of several great powers from assassination by anarchists around the turn of the twentieth
century. In fact, a slide back toward multipolarity would actually be the worst of all worlds for the
United States. In such a scenario it would continue to lead the pack and serve as a focal point for
resentment and hatred by both state and nonstate actors, but it would have fewer carrots and
sticks to use in dealing with the situation. The threats would remain, but the possibility of effective
and coordinated action against them would be reduced.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 189/311
AT: Layne/Econ Turn
Layne is a hack-his theories are nonsense, heg saves money long term, and offshore balancing
doesn’t solve anything
Schmitt, executive director PNAC, 07 Gary Schmitt, current executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), June 2007, “To
Be or Not To Be…An Empire,” http://www.aei.org/outlook/26387
International security specialists will quibble that Thayer’s and Layne’s two grand strategies are not the sum total of strategies available to the “American
empire.” Nor will they be satisfied with the authors’ loose use of the term “empire.” That Thayer and Layne both admit the United States is not an empire in
the traditional sense seems to suggest that the country is not, in fact, an empire. Hegemony and empire are not one and the same, although their attributes can
at times overlap. That said, the book provides plenty of fodder for debate and thought. Its biggest problem, however, lies in Layne’s
dyspeptic analysis of current policy opponents. Rather than taking the opposing argument as
seriously as Thayer takes his, Layne resorts to unsubstantiated claims about “neocons,” White
House lies, and cabals (the “Blue Team”) trying to foment a “preventive” war with China.4Similarly, his
dismissal of the democratic peace theory is equally over-the-top. Even if one thinks that the theory is at times oversold,
to claim that it has absolutely no merit leaves readers with the sense that there is as much anger as argument in Layne’s case .
An additional problem, perhaps tied to the way the book is structured, is that Layne spends the majority of his time criticizing
the argument for primacy without giving the reader much of a handle on the particulars of his
own preferred strategy. As a result, we do not know whether his model of “offshore balancing” is more
British in style—that is, fairly active in playing the decisive power broker among the other competing states—or more passive in
content, such as the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. If the former, a key problem with the strategy is that
it requires a far more calculating style of statecraft than the United States has ever had. And even
if we had Henry Kissinger upon Henry Kissinger to carry it out, would the American people really
let their government play this particular game of international politics, shifting partners based
on power relations rather than on the character of the states themselves? The disappearance of
the United States as a security guarantor is likely to lead to more competition among states and to
the creation of amore chaotic and fluid international environment. Britain had a hard enough time playing this role in its
day, finding itself in numerous conflicts regardless. If the latter, the passive offshore balancing approach leads to the
question of whether such a strategy results in putting off a security challenge until it may be far more difficult
to deal with. Layne’s bet, at least in the case of Iran and China today, is that if the United States would only get out of the way, other powers would
naturally begin to meet the challenge. It is possible, but doing so might create even more destabilizing competition
among other regional powers or lead those same powers to acquiesce to China or Iran’s new
hegemony, fueling their ambitions rather than lessening them. The history of international relations suggests that
most great crises result from neglecting to address more minor ones early on. As Thayer argues, it
is probably less costly to nip these threats in the bud to than wait for them to become full-blown
security crises. And speaking of money, Layne’sargument about looming imperial overstretch is itself a
stretch. Even with all the problems in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, and an emerging hedging strategy
vis-à-vis China, the defense burden is still barely over 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic
product. The United States has had far higher defense burdens in the past while still retaining its
status as the world’s economic juggernaut. There may be plenty of reasons to worry about the
U.S. economy, but “guns over butter” is not one of them. Moreover, while pulling back from a forward-leaning defense
strategy would undoubtedly save money, offshore balancing would still require the United States to have a major military establishment in reserve if it
wanted to be capable of being a decisive player in a game of great power balancing.
Is the $100 billion or so saved—or, rather, spent by
Congress on “bridges to nowhere”— really worth the loss in global influence that comes from adopting Layne’s strategy?
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Heg Good 190/311
AT: Offshore Balancing
Offshore balancing is impossible-cultural pressures make heg or withdrawal the only options
When considered over the longer term, as in this monograph, U.S. foreign policy, national security policy, and strategy must reconcile the demands of a
domestic culture that can have dysfunctional consequences abroad, with the objective circumstances of the outside world .
It is almost entirely
useless for American or other scholars to write books and articles urging a U.S. policy that affronts American
culture. The beginning of wisdom has to be with Sun-tzu’s dictum on the necessity for knowledge of the enemy and of oneself. To be sustainable,
American policy and strategy must be broadly compatible with American values. Perhaps not all
American values, and not all of the time. But any policy vision that is plainly un- Page 24 10 American is
certain to fail at home eventually. Foreign policy is born at home and has to succeed there if it is to
succeed abroad. The current debate to which this monograph relates is replete with arguments about anticipated features of the 21st century that
will prove desperately challenging to American national culture. It may well be that this century will see a return of multipolar balance-of- power politics on
a global scale. But when one considers this possibility, even probability, one
needs to remember that American culture
wants to reject what it regards as the cynical balance-of-power politics of expediency. Americans
believe it is a mission of their unique country to improve the world. If thwarted in this noble, even (in
the opinion of many) divine, mission, they are likely to insist that the country withdraw, adopting a
minimalist foreign policy. Controversialist Christopher Layne speaks for many Americans when he writes: “Precisely because of its power
and geography, there is very little the United States needs to do in the world in order to be secure.”
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Heg Good 191/311
AT: Heg causes resentment
Heg requires consent from other countries-this argument checks itself

Almost by default, the

United States should choose, perhaps simply accept, the role of hegemon-leader for a world
order that serves both its own most vital interests as well as those of a clear majority of members
of the world community, such as it is. Contrary to the sense of much of the contemporary debate, Americans have no prudent
alternative other than to play the hegemonic role. But for the role to be sustainable, it has to rest
upon the formal or tacit consent of other societies. Only with such consent will America be able to
exercise a national security strategy geared successfully to the ordering duty.
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Heg Good 192/311
AT: EU Counterbalancing
EU not a serious contender for multipolarity

HCGP 06 Harvard College Globalization Project, 2006 http://www.harvardglobalization.com/
Should the world’s balance of power shift to a multipolar environment, a nation must first surface
that possesses dual superiority on both the military and economic fronts. Outside the United Nations,
emerging rivals to US dominance are the European Union and China. The collective states of Europe outpace the
United States economically, and China’s potential for greatness is staggering given its population size, vast natural resources, and increasingly evolving
market-oriented economy. Yet, neither of these power structures is realistically poised to counter US
supremacy anytime soon. The European Union may have a strong economy, but it possesses
neither the interstate unity nor, correspondingly, the military strength to seriously challenge the
United States for global influence. Although united to a degree unprecedented in the history of the continent, Europe is still
comprised of individual states, each with its own interests and unique perspective on the proper
direction of the world. This clash of cultures makes the prospect of a collective European military
front highly improbable, not to mention the fact that since World War II Europe has continuously cut military spending in order to sustain its
expensive welfare states. Unless the European Union can form a strengthened military alliance beyond its already existing economic alliance , it is
destined to operate under the shadow of NATO and US power.
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Heg Good 193/311
AT: China Counterbalancing
China can’t counterbalance-unsustainable growth and sociopolitical problems
HCGP 06
Harvard College Globalization Project, 2006 http://www.harvardglobalization.com/
China, on the other hand, poses a more realistic, long-term threat to the maintenance of a unipolar world. China is currently the world’s fourth largest
economy and serves as a serious rival to US influence in Asia. But the prospect that China, even in the distant future, can
attain a global status comparable to the United States or, in fact, can replace US dominance is unlikely. Currently,
competition has taken a back seat to mutual financial gain, as both countries benefit from their reciprocal trade
arrangements—China through the profitable sale of its goods and the United States through the consumption of cheaper goods. But should the
United States ever stumble, China would not be far behind and could easily overtake it . While the Asian
giant has both the natural resources and manpower to eventually hold the status of a superpower , it is still years behind the West in its
technological and financial developments. This discrepancy has rendered the Chinese economy
vulnerable. It remains dependent on Western capital, a notion exemplified by China’s favorable trade balance with the
United States. Recent grumbling in US congressional halls, heightened by the rise of a more protectionist-minded Democratic House and Senate, suggests
that the grossness of the trade imbalance is unlikely to last forever. Surely, the
United States would suffer an economic blow
from a weakened China, but the effect would be marginal compared to that experienced by China
should the doors to US markets be shut. China consistently records double-digit annual growth
rates, but this phenomenal economic expansion is simply unsustainable. A true test of national
power will come when things inevitably slow down. As growth assumes a more sustainable pace,
China’s significant sociopolitical shortcomings will come to light. Modernization is sure to usher in liberal ideals of
rights, equality, and democracy and foster a Chinese population discontented with the repressive nature of its single-party political system, a system that has
orchestrated a history of rule ripe with human rights abuses and government censorship. In January 2006, the world took note when internet search engine
Google was forced to censor certain information on the Chinese version of its site prior to launch. It
is difficult to imagine world
leadership today emanating from a Chinese regime that shows little regard for mankind’s basic
rights. Modernization will also reveal the extent to which China suffers from economic inequality. Capitalist reforms of prior decades have brought the
country great wealth but also severe economic inequality. World leadership requires domestic stability, and the Chinese
government will have to confront a series of potentially crippling domestic conflicts before it can
assume a global leadership role. Nonetheless, one can be certain that China does possess the resources to eventually rival US power.
Resources, however, are not enough—world primacy is attained through a host of correctly aligned
circumstances, namely a power void, skilled diplomacy, and favorable, stable domestic political
institutions. These circumstances typify the conditions that saw the United States’ rise to
prominence following World War II and the fall of the Soviets, but China does not have the benefit of a world war or a
collapsing superpower by which it may scale the ladder of global leadership . Rather, China’s road to
the top only becomes more obstacle-ridden as development increases and as its society modernizes.
Progress, China’s greatest ally at the moment, will soon become her greatest foe. Until these
internal crises are resolved, US power will remain unthreatened.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 194/311
AT: Russia-China War
Russia and China will inevitably ally-however they are commited to stability and peace
preservation because it’s key to growth
Leonard, director ECFR, 2007

Mark Leonard, Executive Director of European Council on Foreign Relations, 1/2007,
www.cer.org.uk/pdf/e_707_eu2020_divided_world_leonard.pdf
However, they will not do this by overt h rowing the existing international order. It is a paradox that the
strongest supporters of the
American post-war order are the losers rather than the winners of the Cold War. Although China and
Russia suffer from lawlessness at home, they have been staunch defenders of the letter of the law at the UN Security Council. They have opposed
interventions in Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo and Sudan, citing the Charter of the UN to support their decisions. Increasingly, they will play on the European
attachment to the international rule of law in an attempt to split European countries from their American allies. Russiaand China will
compete with each other – not least for influence in Central Asia – but they will inevitably be driven together by
their shared belief in the kind of rules which should govern the global order . China and Russia as status quo
powers Between now and 2020, China and Russia are both likely to be status quo powers. But they will
support the existing international system for different reasons. China, the most self-aware rising power in history, does not want to upset
the status-quo, because it wants a peaceful external environment to allow its economy to continue
expanding rapidly. It will support international institutions in order to avoid being seen as a threat. Russia’s attachment to
international institutions has more to do with managing its relative decline. It sees the UN as a
useful forum for balancing US power. Chinese and Russian support for the UN also has much to do with their internal politics. Both
opposed interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo because they were worried about creating a precedent for international intervention in their own secessionist
struggles in Chechnya and Tibet. For
the Chinese – and to an extent Russian policy-makers – being a responsible
global player means accepting the status-quo: not invading other countries, not trying to
overthrow regimes, and above all not interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states without
obtaining the regime’s consent. European policy-makers have been particularly concerned by China’s and Russia’s policy of offering unconditional political
support, economic aid, cheap energy or weapons to regimes that might otherwise collapse or be susceptible to international pressure (including Angola,
Belarus, Burma, Iran, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Sudan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe).
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 195/311
AT: EU Counterbalancing
EU won’t counterbalance-politics and economics too similar
Thayer 07
Bradley A. Thayer, Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2007 "The Case For The American
Empire," American Empire: A Debate, Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415952034, p. 34
Yet unlike China, the

EU simply does not pose a great danger to the American Empire for two major
reasons—political and socioeconomic. The political similarities between the EU and the United
States are enormous. In essence, the political values of EU are largely those of the United States. This is not
a surprise, in many respects; the United States is the daughter of Europe, and that may be excellent news for future warm relations between them. In
addition, if the “clash of civilizations” argument made famous by Samuel Huntington is correct (that is, that future major conflicts will be between
civilizations), then as
other civilizations become more powerful—such as the Chinese or Islamic—Europe
and the United States will be united again by the threat from those civilizations .46 They were united during
the Cold War by the threat from the Soviet Union, and history teaches that an external threat can produce comity where once there was rivalry.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 196/311
Countries band wagon rather than counterbalance
Krahmann 05
Elke Krahmann, Department of Politics University of Bristol U.K., 11/18/05, International Studies review, “American Hegemony or Global Governance?
Competing Visions of International Security” pg online @ http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118671849/HTMLSTART?
CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
The findings post-September 11 concerning the response of both allied and nonallied major powers—which typically are identified as France, the United
Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Russia, and China—to the imperialist security policies of the United States are contradictory. As Ikenberry (2003) observes:
Scholars of international relations tend to think about two basic strategies that are available to
states as they confront a predominant state: balancing and bandwagoning. One is the classic strategy of the
counter-balancing alliance. The other is the strategy of appeasement and acquiescence. But today, strategies for coping with a pre-eminent America tend to
fall in between these extremes. Although neorealist theory suggests that the declared imperialist strategy of the United States should hasten balancing
behavior among allied and nonallied powers, most countries aligned themselves with the United States in its "war
on terrorism" (Wallace 2002:113). In fact, NATO's Article 5, which calls for the collective defense of any alliance member under threat, was
invoked for the first time since its foundation when America's European allies unanimously declared their support
for the United States and its subsequent intervention in Afghanistan (Black 2001). Nonallied major
powers such as Russia and China should have felt threatened by a US military operation in
Central Asia, which these two powers have traditionally regarded as their backyard. However,
they also appeared to bandwagon with the United States in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks (Gittings
2001). Russia contributed to the intervention in Afghanistan by providing the United States with intelligence, by approving
US military bases in the former Soviet Republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and by offering landing rights in Tajikistan (Nau 2002). Moreover,
Russia supported the United States in spite of the fact that the Bush administration had just
unilaterally renounced the Anti-Ballistic-Missile (ABM) Treaty and even though NATO expansion was
progressing against Russia's will (Traynor 2001). However, allied and nonallied major powers chose to balance the United States when
the Bush administration identified Iraq as the next target in the "war on terrorism." France, Germany, Russia, and China in particular opposed a preemptive
military intervention in Iraq and insisted that the United Nations inspection team should be given more time to establish the existence of a program to
develop weapons of mass destruction. The four countries also threatened to veto the resolution in favor of an intervention that was proposed by the United
States, the United Kingdom, and Spain in the United Nations Security Council (Younge, Walsh, and Henley 2003). When the United States began air strikes
on March 20, 2003, the four countries led international protests against the intervention, with China calling for an "immediate halt to military actions against
Iraq" (Henley, Walsh, and Gittings 2003). The most surprising opposition to the US intervention in Iraq came from Turkey, traditionally a strong supporter
of the United States within the Atlantic Alliance. Despite its close relations and an offer of $24 billion in US grants and loans to compensate for the impact
of the war, Turkey rejected a US request for access to military bases on its border with Iraq, thereby dealing a severe blow to US military plans. American
strategists had hoped to be able to open a second front in northern Iraq by launching up to 62,000 troops from Turkish territory. In fact, much of this
contingent was already waiting on US warships in the Mediterranean and had to be re-diverted to the Gulf (Guardian 2003a, 2003b; Smith 2003). However,
the balancing behavior of allied and nonallied countries over Iraq did not represent a general
policy shift in response to a more imperialist United States. Instead, extensive diplomatic efforts
have been made to heal the relations between the United States and its allies in spite of continued
differences of opinion regarding the intervention. Since the end of the war, most major powers
have collaborated with the United States in the pacification of Iraq or have offered financial aid
for the reconstruction effort (Sharrock 2003). A further concession to the United States has involved NATO's decision to help with the
training of Iraqi security forces (Dombey 2004; NATO 2004)
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 197/311
Balancing is empirically denied—no other country has the capabilities
Lieber 07
Robert J Lieber, Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University, “Persistent Primacy and the Future of the American Era",
APSA Paper 2007,
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/1/1/0/5/pages211058/p211058-1.php
Possible Shifts in the International Distribution of Power Despite expectations that a period of unipolarity would trigger balancing behavior or that French-
German-Russian opposition to the American-led intervention in Iraq would stimulate the formation of such a coalition , effective balancing
against the United States has yet to occur. President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder did not speak for their EU
partners, and it is worth recalling that in the early months of 2003, at the time the American-led coalition began it’s intervention against Saddam Hussein,
some two-thirds of the member governments of both the EU and NATO supported the Bush administration’s decision. Despite arguments
about “soft-balancing”, not only has balancing not occurred, but principal European leaders have
either maintained (as in the case of Britain) or reasserted (Germany and France) pragmatic Atlanticist policies, 18
and for its part the European Union has not distanced itself from the United States let alone
emerged as a strategic competitor. 19 There are good reasons for this long-term continuity,
including shared interests and values as well as the inability of the EU member countries to create
a military with sufficient funding, military technology, power projection and the unity of
command that could enable it to play the kind of role in security that its size, population and
wealth would otherwise dictate. Several other major powers have actually tightened their bonds with
Washington. India and Japan have developed closer ties with the United States than perhaps at
any time in the past Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, Canada and others have also leaned more toward than away from
America. Despite a significant rise in expressions of anti-Americanism as indicated in opinion polls (and
more reflective of disagreement with Bush administration policies than rejection of America itself), it would be a mistake to assume
that the world has turned against the United States. As for the leading authoritarian capitalist powers, Russia under Putin, has
adopted a much more critical and assertive stance, but well short of outright confrontation. And China, despite its booming economy
and rapidly modernizing armed forces, has yet to take an overtly antagonistic position toward the
U.S.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 198/311
No one can fill in for the US—EU Japan China and Russia are all too weak
Haass 8
Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations “The Age of Nonpolarity,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87304-p40/richard-n-haass/the-age-of-nonpolarity.html
Charles Krauthammer was more correct than he realized when he wrote in these pages nearly two
decades ago about what he termed "the unipolar moment." At the time, U.S. dominance was real. But it lasted for only
15 or 20 years. In historical terms, it was a moment. Traditional realist theory would have predicted the end of
unipolarity and the dawn of a multipolar world. According to this line of reasoning, great powers,
when they act as great powers are wont to do, stimulate competition from others that fear or
resent them. Krauthammer, subscribing to just this theory, wrote, "No doubt, multipolarity will come in time. In perhaps another generation or so
there will be great powers coequal with the United States, and the world will, in structure, resemble the pre-World War I era.
But this has not happened. Although anti-Americanism is widespread, no great-power rival or set
of rivals has emerged to challenge the United States. In part, this is because the disparity between the
power of the United States and that of any potential rivals is too great. Over time, countries such as China
may come to possess GDPs comparable to that of the United States. But in the case of China,
much of that wealth will necessarily be absorbed by providing for the country's enormous
population (much of which remains poor) and will not be available to fund military development or external
undertakings. Maintaining political stability during a period of such dynamic but uneven growth will be no
easy feat. India faces many of the same demographic challenges and is further hampered by too much bureaucracy and too little infrastructure. The
EU's GDP is now greater than that of the United States, but the EU does not act in the unified
fashion of a nation-state, nor is it able or inclined to act in the assertive fashion of historic great
powers. Japan, for its part, has a shrinking and aging population and lacks the political culture to play
the role of a great power. Russia may be more inclined, but it still has a largely cash-crop economy
and is saddled by a declining population and internal challenges to its cohesion.
The fact that classic great-power rivalry has not come to pass and is unlikely to arise anytime soon is also
partly a result of the United States' behavior, which has not stimulated such a response. This is not to say that the United States
under the leadership of George W. Bush has not alienated other nations; it surely has. But it has not, for the most part, acted in a
manner that has led other states to conclude that the United States constitutes a threat to their
vital national interests. Doubts about the wisdom and legitimacy of U.S. foreign policy are pervasive, but this has tended to lead more to
denunciations (and an absence of cooperation) than outright resistance.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 199/311
AT: All Heg Bad Args
Your turns are inevitable and OSB is impossible – other nations will always perceive the U.S. as
the hegemon
Drezner 09
Daniel W., Professor of International Politics at Tufts and a senior editor at The National Interest, 7/15/ 09, “The False Hegemon,”
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21858
The rest of the world certainly seems to treat America as the hegemonic power, for good or ill. According to the
New York Times, Latin America is waiting for the United States to break the deadlock in Honduras .
Vladimir Putin is incapable of giving a foreign-policy speech in which he does not blast American
hegemony as the root of all of Russia’s ills. While Chinese officials talk tough about ending the dollar’s reign as the
world’s reserve currency, its leaders also want America to solve the current economic crisis and to take the lead
on global warming in the process. It’s not just foreign leaders who are obsessed with American hegemony. Last week, in an example of
true hardship duty, I taught a short course in American foreign policy at the Barcelona Institute for International Studies. The students in my class
represented a true cross section of nationalities: Spaniards, Germans, Brits, Estonian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Turkish,
Belgian, Mexican, Nicaraguan and, yes, even Americans. I cannot claim that my students represent a scientific cross section of non-Americans (one of them
complained that I did not rely on Marxism as a structural explanation for American foreign policy). Still, by and large the students were bright, well
informed about world affairs and cautiously optimistic about President Obama. That said, a
persistent trend among my students was their
conviction that the U.S. government was the world’s puppeteer, consciously manipulating every single event in world
politics. For example, many of them were convinced that George W. Bush ordered Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to precipitate last year’s war with
Russia. The Ghanaian students wanted to know why Obama visited their country last week. The standard “promotion of good democratic governance”
answer did not satisfy them. They were convinced that there had to be some deeper, potentially sinister motive to the whole enterprise. Don’t even ask what
they thought about the reasons behind the war in Iraq. To be sure, the United States is a powerful actor; the government is
trying to influence global events (and Americans are not immune to their own misperceptions). And good social scientists should always
search for underlying causes and not take rhetoric at face value. Nevertheless, the belief in an all-powerful America hatching
conspiracies left and right frequently did not jibe with the facts. For many of these students, even apparent policy
mistakes were merely examples of American subterfuge. Ironically, at the moment when many Americans are questioning
the future of U.S. hegemony, many non-Americans continue to believe that the U.S. government is
diabolically manipulating events behind the scenes. Going forward, the persistence of anti-Americanism
in the age of Obama might have nothing to do with the president, or his rhetoric or even U.S.
government actions. It might, instead, have to do with the congealed habits of thought that place
the United States at the epicenter of all global movings and shakings. The tragedy is that such an exaggerated
perception of American power and purpose is occurring at precisely the moment when the United States will need to scale back its global ambitions. Indeed,
the external perception of U.S. omnipresence will make the pursuit of a more modest U.S. foreign
policy all the more difficult. The Obama administration has consciously adopted a more modest posture in the hopes of improving
America’s standing abroad. If the rest of the world genuinely believes that the United States causes
everything, however, then the attempt at modesty will inevitably fail.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 200/311
Multipolarity Bad: War
Multipolarity leads to miscalculation and nuclear war
Khalilzad 95
Finally, and most important, there

is no guarantee that the system will succeed in its own terms. Its operation
requires subtle calculations and indications of intentions in order to maintain the balance while
avoiding war; nations must know how to signal their depth of commitment on a given issue
without taking irrevocable steps toward war. This balancing act proved impossible even for the
culturally similar and aristocratically governed states of the nineteenth-century European balance
of power systems. It will be infinitely more difficult when the system is global, the participants
differ culturally, and the governments of many of the states, influenced by public opinion, are unable to be as flexible (or cynical) as the rules of
the system require. Thus, miscalculations might be made about the state of the balance that could lead to
wars that the United States might be unable to stay out of. The balance of power system failed in
the past, producing World War I and other major conflicts. It might not work any better in the
future -- and war among major powers in the nuclear age is likely to be more devastating.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 201/311
Multipolarity Bad: War
Multi-polarity would cause proliferation, terrorism, Russian lashout, and nuclear wars worldwide
Arbatov 07
Alexei, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Editorial Board of Russia in Global Affairs, “Is a New Cold War
Imminent,” Russia in Global Affairs, No. 2, July-September 2007, http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/20/1130.html
<<However, the low probability of a new Cold War and the

collapse of American unipolarity (as a political doctrine, if not in reality)
cannot be a cause for complacency. Multipolarity, existing objectively at various levels and interdependently, holds
many difficulties and threats.
For example, if the Russia-NATO confrontation persists, it can do much damage to both parties and
international security. Or, alternatively, if Kosovo secedes from Serbia, this may provoke similar
processes in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniestria, and involve Russia in armed conflicts with Georgia
and Moldova, two countries that are supported by NATO.
Another flash point involves Ukraine. In the event of Kiev’s sudden admission into the North Atlantic Alliance (recently sanctioned by
the U.S. Congress), such a move may divide Ukraine and provoke mass disorders there, thus making it difficult for Russia and the West to refrain from
interfering.
Meanwhile, U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Central and Eastern Europe may cause Russia to withdraw from the INF Treaty and resume
programs for producing intermediate-range missiles. Washington may respond by deploying similar missiles in Europe, which would dramatically increase
This could make the stage for nuclear
the vulnerability of Russia’s strategic forces and their control and warning systems.
confrontation even tenser.
Other “centers of power” would immediately derive benefit from the growing Russia-West
standoff, using it in their own interests. China would receive an opportunity to occupy even more
advantageous positions in its economic and political relations with Russia, the U.S. and Japan, and
would consolidate its influence in Central and South Asia and the Persian Gulf region. India,
Pakistan, member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and some exalted
regimes in Latin America would hardly miss their chance, either.
A multipolar world that is not moving toward nuclear disarmament is a world of an expanding Nuclear Club. While
Russia and the West continue to argue with each other, states that are capable of developing
nuclear weapons of their own will jump at the opportunity. The probability of nuclear weapons
being used in a regional conflict will increase significantly.
International Islamic extremism and terrorism will increase dramatically; this threat represents
the reverse side of globalization. The situation in Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Middle East, and
North and East Africa will further destabilize. The wave of militant separatism, trans-border
crime and terrorism will also infiltrate Western Europe, Russia, the U.S., and other countries.
The surviving disarmament treaties (the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, and the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) will collapse. In a worst-case scenario, there is the chance that an
adventuresome regime will initiate a missile launch against territories or space satellites of one or
several great powers with a view to triggering an exchange of nuclear strikes between them.
Another high probability is the threat of a terrorist act with the use of a nuclear device in one or
several major capitals of the world.>>
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 202/311
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 203/311
Hege Checks Global War
US hegemony checks global war.
Walt 02, Academic Dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Robert and Renee Belfer Professorship in
International Affairs (Stephen, "American Primacy: It's prospects and pitfalls", Naval War College Review, Spring 2002, Vol. LV, No. 2)
level of overall international tranquility. Ironically, those who argue that primacy is no longer
important, because the danger of war is slight, overlook the fact that the extent of American
primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of great-power war is as low as it is. For most of
the past four centuries, relations among the major powers have been intensely competitive, often
punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of
the twentieth century, for example, great-power wars killed over eighty million people. Today, however, the
dominant position of the United States places significant limits on the possibility of great-power competition,
for at least two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so far ahead, other major
powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position. Not only is there no possibility of a "hegemonic war" (because
there is no potential hegemon to mount a challenge), but the risk of war via miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the United States
and the other major powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides can
convince themselves that they might be able to win. When the balance of power is heavily skewed, however, the leading state does not need to go to war and
weaker states dare not try. The second reason is that the continued deployment of roughly two hundred
thousand troops in Europe and in Asia provides a further barrier to conflict in each region. So
long as U.S. troops are committed abroad, regional powers know that launching a war is likely to
lead to a confrontation with the United States. Thus, states within these regions do not worry as much about
each other, because the U.S. presence effectively prevents regional conflicts from breaking out. What
Joseph Joffe has termed the "American pacifier" is not the only barrier to conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one. This
tranquilizing effect is not lost on America's allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S. dominance and dislike
playing host to American troops, but they also do not want "Uncle Sam" to leave. Thus, U.S. primacy is of benefit to the United States,
and to other countries as well, because it dampens the overall level of international insecurity. World politics might be more interesting if the United States
were weaker and if other states were forced to compete with each other more actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better one. A
comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than "interesting"
decades like the 1930s or 1940s.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 204/311
Soft Power High
US soft power high, and will continue with new president

Fullilove 8 (Michael, Director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute, Visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, 6/17,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/17/opinion/edfullilove.php)
the world, America's politics are, at some level, our politics as well. Why is the world so interested?
America's bulk is only part of the answer. Ultimately, it is not really the size of the U.S. economy
that draws our attention. It is not even America's blue-water navy or its new bunker-
busting munitions. Rather, it is the idea of America which continues to fascinate: a superpower
that is open, democratic, meritocratic and optimistic; a country that is the cockpit of global
culture; a polity in which all candidates for public office, whether or not they are a Clinton, seem to come from
a place called Hope. It's worth noting that the declinist canon has emerged at the nadir of the Bush
years; America's soft power account will look much healthier the instant the next president
is inaugurated.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 205/311
Internal Links – Human Rights Credibility Kt Heg
Human rights credibility is key to heg

Richardson 08 Governor of New Mexico, former candidate for democratic prez nomination (Bill, A New Realism A Realistic and Principled
Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb)
To cope with this new world, we

need a New Realism in our foreign policy -- an ethical, principled realism that harbors no
illusions about the importance of a strong military in a dangerous world but that also understands
the importance of diplomacy and multilateral cooperation. We need a New Realism based on the
understanding that what goes on inside of other countries profoundly impacts us -- but that we
can only influence, not control, what goes on inside of other countries. A New Realism for the twenty-first century
must understand that to solve our own problems, we need to work with other governments that respect and trust us. To be effective in the coming decades,
America must set the following priorities. First and foremost, we
must rebuild our alliances. We cannot lead other
nations toward solutions to shared problems if they do not trust our leadership. We need to
restore respect and appreciation for our allies -- and for the democratic values that unite us -- if we
are to work with them to solve global problems. We must restore our commitment to international law and to multilateral
cooperation. This means respecting both the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and joining the
International Criminal Court (ICC). It means expanding the United Nations Security Council to include Germany, India, Japan, a country from Latin
America, and a country from Africa as permanent members. We must be impeccable in our own respect for human
rights. We should reward countries that live up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as we
negotiate, constructively but firmly, with those who do not. And when genocide or other grave human rights violations
begin, the United States should lead the world to stop them. History teaches that if the United
States does not take the lead on ending genocide, no one else will. The norm of absolute territorial
sovereignty is moot when national governments partner with those who rape, torture, and kill
masses of people. The United States should lead the world toward acceptance of a greater norm of
respect for basic human rights -- and toward enforcing that norm through international institutions and multilateral measures. We
need to start taking human rights in Africa particularly seriously, because the two worst genocides
in recent history have taken place there, in Rwanda and now in Darfur. We failed to stop the killing in Rwanda, and for years we
have failed to stop the killing in Darfur. America must hold itself to a higher standard of leadership. The United States
should have sent a special envoy as soon as the mass killings began in Darfur. We could still do more to mobilize multilateral
pressure on the Sudanese government and on China, which has great influence over Sudan. It is shameful that the
Bush administration continues to wring its hands over Darfur when it is within our power to do
something
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 206/311
Heg Impact Authors – Kagan
US leadership prevents multiple scenarios for nuclear conflict – prefer it to all other alternatives
Kagan 07 Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [Robert “End of Dreams, Return of History” Policy Review
(http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html#n10)]
Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal
and conservative, Americans
have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle
East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal after the
Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United
States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even
as it
maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic competitions
in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia,
and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional
than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as “No. 1” and are equally loath to
relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they
have substantially transformed it in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily
to shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The
jostling for status and influence among these ambitious
nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international
system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for
power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from
intensifying — its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its
influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle
disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often
through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a
multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars
between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also
dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of stability in the
world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the United States is the dominant naval power
everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They either
happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways
and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the
United States engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more
genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance at
least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between nations would involve struggles
on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War i and other major conflicts, would
disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not only on the goodwill of peoples
but also on American power. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided by American power.
Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii
would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even
today Europe’s stability
depends on the guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any
dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely multipolar world, that would not be
possible without renewing the danger of world war. People who believe greater equality among
nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They
believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine
that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order that
they like would remain in place. But that’s not the way it works. International order does not rest
on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power.
Kagan continues…
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Heg Impact Authors – Kagan
Kagan continued…
The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A
different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the
United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and
norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that
international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in
the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the world’s
great powers. Even under the umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may
erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing
the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan
remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United
States. Such conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United States pursues. But
they are more likely to erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of
regional dominance. This is especially true in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable
American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of China’s
neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma
that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. In
Europe, too, the departure of the United States from the scene — even if it remained the world’s most powerful nation
— could be destabilizing. It could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially
forceful approach to unruly nations on its periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance
of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in
Europe, history
suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet
communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe — if it adopted what some call a strategy of
“offshore balancing” — this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its
near neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable
circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the
Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, “offshore” role would lead to greater stability
there. The vital interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access
open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would
stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more “even-handed”
policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel ’s aid
if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically
ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground. The
subtraction of American power
from any region would not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In the Middle East,
competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least
two centuries. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesn’t change this. It only adds a new and
more threatening dimension to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians
nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would change. The alternative to American predominance in the region
is not balance and peace. It is further competition. The region and the states within it remain
relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not be followed by a diminution of
other external influences. One could expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if only
to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the more powerful states of the region,
particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration
would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the Middle East further
toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasn’t changed that much. An American withdrawal from Iraq will not
return things to “normal” or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again.
The alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East and elsewhere is not a new
regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified
competition among nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American
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predominance into the future, no one should imagine that a reduction of American power or a
retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide an easier path.
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Heg Impact Authors – Thayer
US hegemony solves all problems

Thayer 06 Associate Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University [Bradley, In Defense of Primacy, The
National Interest, December (lexis)]
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there
was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on
the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international
order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing
democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the
current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they
are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling
things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler
succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the
United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you
lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United
States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive
outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War,
U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably
France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated
relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India
and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still
occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana
does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American
power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of
liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in
the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading
democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once
states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any
type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing
interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to
want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good
for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy
in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It
is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain
why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument,
should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's
interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better
off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004
election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It
was the military
power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered
democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle
East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in
Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along
with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the
United States
has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and
commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets.
The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good
from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not
out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to
be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of
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the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of
military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic
network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist
ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor
countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4
As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic
prosperity it provides.
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Heg Impact Authors – Brookes
The collapse of U.S. leadership will spark wars around the globe
Brookes 06 senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation (Peter, “Why they need us: Imagine a world without America”, Heritage Foundation
Commentary, july 4th)
The picture isn't pretty. Absent U.S. leadership, diplomatic influence, military might, economic power and unprecedented generosity, life
aboard planet earth would likely be pretty grim, indeed. Set aside the differences America made last century - just imagine a world where this country had
vanished on Jan. 1, 2001. On security, the United States is the global balance of power. While it's not our preference, we
are the world's "cop on the beat," providing critical stability in some of the planet's toughest neighborhoods. Without the U.S. "Globo-cop," rivals
India and Pakistan might well find cause to unleash the dogs of war in South Asia - undoubtedly
leading to history's first nuclear (weapons) exchange. Talk about Fourth of July fireworks . . . In Afghanistan, al Qaeda
would still be an honored guest, scheming over a global caliphate stretching from Spain to Indonesia. It
wouldn't be sending fighters to Iraq; instead, Osama's gang would be fighting them tooth and nail from Saudi
Arabia to "Eurabia." In Asia, China would be the "Middle Kingdom," gobbling up democratic
Taiwan and compelling pacifist Japan (reluctantly) to join the nuclear weapons club. The Koreas might
fight another horrific war, resulting in millions of deaths. A resurgent Russia, meanwhile, would
be breathing down the neck of its "near abroad" neighbors. Forget the democratic revolutions in
Ukraine and Georgia, Comrade! In Europe, they'd be taking orders from Paris or Berlin - if those
rivals weren't at each other's throats again. In Africa, Liberia would still be under Charles
Taylor's sway, and Sudan would have no peace agreement. And what other nation could or would
provide freedom of the seas for commerce, including the shipment of oil and gas - all free of charge?
Weapons of mass destruction would be everywhere. North Korea would be brandishing a solid
nuclear arsenal. Libya would not have given up its weapons, and Pakistan's prodigious
proliferator, A.Q. Khan, would still be going door to door, hawking his nuclear wares. Also missing would
be other gifts from "Uncle Sugar" - starting with 22 percent of the U.N. budget. That includes half the operations of
the World Food Program, which feeds over 100 million in 81 countries. Gone would be 17 percent
of UNICEF's costs to feed, vaccinate, educate and protect children in 157 countries - and 31
percent of the budget of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which assists more than 19
million refugees across the globe. In 2005, Washington dispensed $28 billion in foreign aid, more
than double the amount of the next highest donor (Japan), contributing nearly 26 percent of all official development assistance
from the large industrialized countries. Moreover, President Bush's five-year $15 billion commitment under the
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is the largest commitment by a single nation toward an
international health initiative - ever - working in over 100 (mostly African) countries. The United States is the world's
economic engine. We not only have the largest economy, we spend 40 percent of the world's
budget on R&D, driving mind-boggling innovation in areas like information technology, defense and medicine. We're the world's
ATM, too, providing 17 percent of the International Monetary Fund's resources for nations in
fiscal crisis, and funding 13 percent of World Bank programs that dole out billions in development
assistance to needy countries
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Heg Impact Authors – Lieber
Withdrawal of US leadership causes multiple regional nuclear conflicts

Lieber 05 Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University (Robert J., The American Era: Power and Strategy for the
21st Century, p. 53-54)
Withdrawal from foreign commitments might seem to be a means of evading hostility toward the
United States, but the consequences would almost certainly be harmful both to regional stability
and to U.S. national interests. Although Europe would almost certainly not see the return to competitive balancing among regional powers
(i.e., competition and even military rivalry between France and Germany) of the kind that some realist scholars of international relations have predicted,"
elsewhere the dangers could increase. In
Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would have strong motivation to
acquire nuclear weapons – which they have the technological capacity to do quite quickly.
Instability and regional competition could also escalate, not only between India and Pakistan, but
also in Southeast Asia involving Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and possibly the Philippines. Risks
in the Middle East would be likely to increase, with regional competition among the major
countries of the Gulf region (Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq) as well as Egypt, Syria, and Israel. Major regional
wars, eventually involving the use of weapons of mass destruction plus human suffering on a vast
scale, floods of refugees, economic disruption, and risks to oil supplies are all readily conceivable .
Based on past experience, the United States would almost certainly be drawn back into these
areas, whether to defend friendly states, to cope with a humanitarian catastrophe, or to prevent a
hostile power from dominating an entire region. Steven Peter Rosen has thus fit-tingly observed, "If the logic of American
empire is unappealing, it is not at all clear that the alternatives are that much more attractive."2z Similarly, Niall Ferguson has added that those who dislike
American predominance ought to bear in mind that the alternative may not be a world of competing great powers, but one with no hegemon at all.
Ferguson's warning may be hyperbolic, but it hints at the perils that the absence of a dominant power, "apolarity," could bring "an anarchic new Dark Age of
waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions; of economic stagnation and civilization's retreat
into a few fortified enclaves."2
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Heg Good – Transition Wars
The transition away from American hegemony entails global chaos and conflict – other powers are
incapable of maintaining stability
Brzezinski 05 National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration, Professor of Foreign Policy @ Johns Hopkins University
(Zbigniew "The Choice")
History is a record of change, a reminder that nothing endures indefinitely. It can also remind us, however, that some things
endure for a long time, and when they disappear, the status quo ante does not reappear. So it will
be with the current American global preponderance. It too, will fade at some point, probably later than some wish and earlier
than m any Americans take for granted. The key question is: What will replace it? An abrupt termination of American hegemony
would without doubt precipitate global chaos, in which international anarchy would be
punctuated by eruptions of truly massive destructiveness. An unguided progressive decline would
have a similar effect, spread out over a longer time. But a gradual and controlled devolution of power could lead to an
increasingly formalized global community of shared interest, with supranational arrangements increasingly assuming some of the special security roles of
traditional nation-states. In any case,
the eventual end of American hegemony will not involve a restoration of
multipolarity among the familiar major powers that dominated world affairs for the last two centuries. Nor will it yield
to another dominant hegemon that would displace the United States by assuming a similar
political, military, economic, technological, and sociocultural worldwide preeminence. The
familiar powers of the last century are too fatigued or too weak to assume the role the United
States now plays. It is noteworthy that since 1880, in a comparative ranking of world powers (cumulative1y based on their economic strength,
mi1itarybudgets and assets, populations, etc.), the top five slots at sequential twenty-year intervals have been shared by just seven states : the United States,
the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and China. Only the United States, however, unambiguously earned inclusion among the top five in
every one of the twenty¬ year intervals, and the gap in the year 2000 between the top-ranked United States and the rest was vastly wider than ever before.
The former major European powers – Great Britain, Germany, and France – are too weak to step into the
breach. In the next two decades, it is quite unlikely that the European Union will become sufficiently united
politically to muster the popular will to compete with the United States in the politico-military
arena. Russia is no longer an imperial power, and its central challenge is to recover
socioeconomically lest it lose its far eastern territories to China. Japan's population is aging and its
economy has slowed; the conventional wisdom of the 1980s that Japan is destined to be the next "superstate" now has the ring of historical
irony. China, even if it succeeds in maintaining high rates of economic growth and retains its
internal political stability (both are far from certain), will at best be a regional power still
constrained by an impoverished population, antiquated infrastructure, and limited appeal
worldwide. The same is true of India, which additionally faces uncertainties regarding its long-
term national unity. Even a coalition among the above – a most unlikely prospect, given their historical conflicts and
clashing territorial claims – would lack the cohesion, muscle, and energy needed to both push America off its pedestal and
sustain global stability. Some leading states, in any case, would side with America if push came to shove. Indeed, any evident American
decline might precipitate efforts to reinforce America's leadership. Most important, the shared resentment of American
hegemony would not dampen the clashes of interest among states. The more intense collisions – in
the event of America's decline – could spark a wildfire of regional violence, rendered all the more
dangerous by the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction. The bottom line is twofold: For the next
two decades, the steadying effect of American power will be indispensable to global stability, while
the principal challenge to American power can come only from within – either from the
repudiation of power by the American democracy itself, or from America's global misuse of its
own power. American society, even though rather parochial in its intellectual and cultural interests, steadily sustained a protracted worldwide
engagement against the threat of totalitarian communism and it is currently mobilized against international terrorism. As long as that commitment endures,
America's role as the global stabilizer will also endure. Should that commitment fade – either because terrorism has faded, or because Americans tire or lose
– America's global role could rapidly terminate. That role could also be
their sense of common purpose
undermined and de1egitimated by the misuse of U.S. power. Conduct that is perceived worldwide
as arbitrary could prompt America’s progressive isolation, undercutting not America's power to defend itself as
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such, but rather its ability to use that power to enlist others in a common effort to shape a more secure
international environment
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Heg Good – Transition Wars
The overwhelming power of the US prevents great power conflict

Thayer 07 Associate Professor at Missouri State University [Bradley “American Empire: A Debate” (pg 41-42)]
A great amount of good comes from American dominance, although that good is little
acknowledged, even by Americans. In this section, I will demonstrate the good that comes from
the American Empire. Specifically, it provides stability, allows democracy to spread, furthers
economic prosperity, and makes possible humanitarian assistance to countries beset by natural
and other disasters. The United States has an opportunity to do an enormous amount of good for
itself and the entire world. Realizing this good requires that Americans be bold, that they lead. In
return, Americans enjoy the benefits that flow to a leader. But as professors teach in Economics
101, there is no free lunch. No one gets anything for free; everything has a cost. The American
Empire is no exception. I want to make it clear that the benefits that the world and the United
States enjoy come with a cost. Leadership requires that the United States incur costs and run risks
not borne by other countries. These costs can be stark and brutal, and they have to be faced
directly by proponents of the American Empire. It means that some Americans will die in the
service of their country. These are the costs. They are considerable. Every American should be
conscious of them. It is equally the case that Americans should be aware of the benefits they enjoy.
I believe that the substantial benefits are worth the costs. Stability Peace, like good health, is not often
noticed, but certainly is missed when absent. Throughout history, peace and stability have been a
major benefit of empires. In fact, pax Romana in Latin means the Roman peace, or the stability brought about by the Roman Empire.
Rome's power was so overwhelming that no one could challenge it successfully for hundreds of
years. The result was stability within the Roman Empire. Where Rome conquered, peace, law, order, education, a common language, and much else
followed. That was true of the British Empire (pax Britannica) too. So it is with the United States today. Peace and stability are
major benefits of the American Empire. The fact that America is so powerful actually reduces the
likelihood of major war. Scholars of international politics have found that the presence of a dominant state in
international politics actually reduces the likelihood of war because weaker states, including even
great powers, know that it is unlikely that they could challenge the dominant state and win. They
may resort to other mechanisms or tactics to challenge the dominant country, but are unlikely to
do so directly. This means that there will be no wars between great powers. At least, not until a challenger
(certainly China) thinks it can overthrow the dominant state (the United States). But there will be intense security competition —both
China and the United States will watch each other closely, with their intelligence communities increasingly focused on each other, their diplomats striving to
ensure that countries around the world do not align with the other, and their militaries seeing the other as their principal threat. This
is not unusual
in international politics but, in fact, is its "normal" condition. Americans may not pay much attention to it until a crisis
occurs. But right now states are competing with one another. This is because international politics does not sleep; it never takes
a rest.
Abandoning our leadership role would be seen as a sign of weakness – only power prevents
conflicts
Second, U.S. power protects the United States. That sentence is as genuine and as important a statement about international politics as
one can make. International politics is not a game or a sport. There are no "time outs," there is no
halftime and no rest. It never stops. There is no hiding from threats and dangers in international
politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats it confronts, then the conventional and
strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats.
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Simply by declaring that the United States is going home, thus abandoning its commitments or
making half pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect its
wishes to retreat. In fact, to make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In
the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront
the strong. The same is true in the anarchic realm of international politics. If the United States is
not strong and does not actively protect and advance its interests, other countries will prey upon
those interests, and even on the United States itself.
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Heg Good – Decline  Reintervention
American intervention is inevitable – it’s a question of whether it’s effective

Continetti 08 Associate Editor of the Weekly Standard [Matthew “If we don't maintain world order, who will?” LA Times, March 4th
(http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-antle-continetti4mar04,1,2482677.story?ctrack=4&cset=true)]
Today's prompt asks us, "Is interventionism an organic plank of conservatism, or is it the cancer that's destroying it?" I am going to take issue with the way
the question is framed. Not only is "interventionism" not "destroying" conservatism, there is also nothing particularly "conservative" about interventionism.
For the United States, whether it likes it or not, periodically intervening in a world order that it has done so
much to establish is the only game in town. The job of conservatives is to ensure that those interventions
are aligned with American interests and ideals. The ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a belligerent Iran seeking nuclear weapons,
an unresolved Korean peninsular crisis, a rising China and an autocratic, aggressive Russia have made
many Americans anxious about the world and our place in it. But there is no escaping U.S. global involvement.
Foreign policy writers Robert Kagan and Ivo Daalder calculate that the United States intervened in other countries' affairs
"with significant military force" every 18 months on average between 1989 and 2001. Since 2001, the United
States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq; sent troops to the Philippines and Liberia; and conducted missile strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
American military commitments extend from Colombia to Kosovo to Japan. Including proposed supplemental
appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration has budgeted more than $600 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2009.
As is often pointed out, that amount is about the same as the combined defense budgets of the next 12 to 15 nations. These circumstances did not spring up
overnight, and they are not solely the product of President Bush and the neocons. Since the end of World War II, the
United States has adopted
an increasingly assertive foreign policy to first contain Soviet communism and then, once Soviet communism had been destroyed,
expand the sphere of liberal democratic nations. The net result of this foreign policy has been a richer, freer, more
peaceful world. These are the fruits of American "interventionism." As the United States has adopted this new
international role, however, the American people have also maintained their traditional ambivalence toward the rest of the world. We think most people are
like ourselves and then become disappointed when they do not live up to U.S. standards. We are reluctant to deploy military force and eager to withdraw
once those forces are deployed. We grow frustrated with allies for not doing their "fair share" of maintaining global order. We
often wish our
problems would go away. They won't. Truth is, if the United States were to renege on its commitments
and allow the international order that it has maintained for 60 years to fall apart, another order would
take its place. The transition from one to another would be characterized by conflict. And the new
order, once it was born, would not be pleasant. It would be less free, less prosperous and less peaceful than the
world we know today. You can see what happens when Americans turn inward by reading the
history of the 1970s. It is not a pretty sight. U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam marked the beginning of a
period of global catastrophe, as the Soviet Union expanded its influence in Central Asia, Africa and Central America
and the Iranian revolution provided the first state vehicle for jihadism's war on the West. These crises engendered
others in the U.S. government and the global economy. Going back even earlier in our history, when you look at America's failure to
maintain the post-Versailles Treaty order that it had helped build following the World War I, you
see the same pattern. Illiberalism was allowed to expand, the world economy tanked and more
war followed. We know what happens when the United States decides to reject "interventionism."
Let's not make the same mistakes again.
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Heg Good – Prolif Shell
Heg solves prolif

Rosen 03 Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University (Stephen, “ An Empire, If you can keep it”, The National Interest,
Spring)
Rather than wrestle with such difficult and unpleasant problems ,

the United States could give up the imperial mission, or
pretensions to it, now. This would essentially mean the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the
Middle East, Europe and mainland Asia. It may be that all other peoples, without significant exception, will then turn to their own
affairs and leave the United States alone. But those who are hostile to us might remain hostile, and be much less
afraid of the United States after such a withdrawal. Current friends would feel less secure and, in
the most probable post-imperial world, would revert to the logic of self-help in which all states do
what they must to protect themselves. This would imply the relatively rapid acquisition of
weapons of mass destruction by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Iran, Iraq and perhaps Algeria,
Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia and others. Constraints on the acquisition of biological
weapons would be even weaker than they are today. Major regional arms races would also be very
likely throughout Asia and the Middle East. This would not be a pleasant world for Americans, or anyone else. It is difficult to
guess what the costs of such a world would be to the United States. They would probably not put the end of the United States in prospect, but they would not
be small. If the logic of American empire is unappealing, it is not at all clear that the alternatives are that much more attractive.
Prolif causes nuclear war – deterrence fails

Lieber 07 Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University (Robert J. "Persistent Primacy and the Future of the American
Era", APSA Paper 2007)
In addition to the threat posed by radical Islamist ideology and terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear weapons could become
an increasingly dangerous source of instability and conflict. Over the longer term, and coupled with the spread of missile
technology, there is a likelihood that the U.S. will be more exposed to this danger. Not only might the technology, materials or
weapons themselves be diverted into the hand of terrorist groups willing to pay almost any price
to acquire them, but the spread of these weapons carries with it the possibility of devastating
regional wars. In assessing nuclear proliferation risks in the late-Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, in North Korea, and in Iran, some have asserted
that deterrence and containment, which seemed to work during the Cold War, would be sufficient to protect the national interests of the
U.S. and those of close allies. Such views are altogether too complacent. The U.S.–Soviet nuclear balance
took two decades to become relatively stable and on at least one occasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, the parties
came to the nuclear brink. Moreover, stable deterrence requires assured second strike capability, the knowledge
that whichever side suffered an initial nuclear attack would have the capacity to retaliate by
inflicting unacceptable damage upon the attacker, and the assumption that one’s adversary is a value-maximizing rational
actor. A robust nuclear balance is difficult to achieve, and in the process of developing a nuclear
arsenal, a country embroiled in an intense regional crisis may become the target of a disarming
first strike or, on the other hand, may be driven by a use-it-or-lose it calculation. Even though American
territory may not be at immediate risk within the next five to seven years, its interests, bases and allies surely might be. An d control by rational
actors in new or recent members of the nuclear club is by no means a foregone conclusion. The late
Saddam Hussein had shown himself to be reckless and prone to reject outside information that differed from what he wished to
hear. And Iranian President Ahmadinejad has expressed beliefs that suggest an erratic grip on reality or that call
into question his own judgment. For example, he has invoked t; hidden Imam, embraced conspiracy theories about 9/11, fostered
Holocaust denial, and called for Israel to be wiped off the map
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Ext. Heg Solves Prolif
Hegemony solves allied prolif, rogue state prolif and terrorism

Mandelbaum 05 Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns Hopkins
(Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century, p 189-191)
The greatest threat to their security that the members of the international system did face in the new century, one that the United States had devoted
considerable resources and political capital to containing and that a serious
reduction in the American global rule would
certainly aggravate, was the spread of nuclear weapons. Nuclear proliferation poses three related dangers. The first is that, in
the absence of an American nuclear guarantee, major countries in Europe and Asia will feel the
need to acquire their own nuclear armaments. If the United States withdrew from Europe and
East Asia, Germany might come to consider it imprudent to deal with a nuclear-armed Russia,
and Japan with a nuclear-armed China, without nuclear arms of their own. They would seek these
weapons in order to avoid an imbalance in power that might work to their disadvantage. The acquisition
of nuclear weapons by such affluent, democratic, peaceful countries would not, by itself, trigger a war. It could, however, trigger arms races similar to the
one between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It would surely make Europe and East Asia less comfortable places, and relations
among the countries of these regions more suspicious, than was the case at the outset of the twenty-first century. The spread of nuclear weapons poses a
second danger, which the United
States exerted itself to thwart to the extent of threatening a war in North
Korea and actually waging one in Iraq and that the recession of American power would increase:
the possession of nuclear armaments by "rogue" states, countries governed by regimes at odds
with their neighbors and hostile to prevailing international norms. A nuclear-armed Iraq, an unlikely development
after the over-throw of Saddam Hussein's regime, or a nuclear-armed Iran, a far more plausible prospect, would make the international relations of the
Persian Gulf far more dangerous. That in turn would threaten virtually every country in the world because so much of the oil on which they all depend comes
from that region.' A nuclear-armed North Korea would similarly change the international relations of East Asia for the worse. Especially if the
United States withdrew from the region, South Korea and Japan, and perhaps ultimately Taiwan,
might well decide to equip themselves with nuclear weapons of their own. A North Korean nuclear
arsenal would pose yet a third threat: nuclear weapons in the hands of a terrorist group such as al
Qaeda. Lacking the infrastructure of a sovereign state, a terrorist organization probably could not construct a nuclear weapon itself. But it could
purchase either a full-fledged nuclear explosive or nuclear material that could form the basis for a
device that, while not actually exploding, could spew poisonous radiation over populated areas, killing or
infecting many thousands of people.' Nuclear materials are potentially available for purchase not only in North Korea but elsewhere as
well.
Heg solves prolif

Brookes 08 Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic
and Security Review Commission (Peter, Heritage, Why the World Still Needs America's Military Might, November 24, 2008
The United States military has also been a central player in the attempts to halt weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
and ballistic missile proliferation. In 2003, President Bush created the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), an initiative to
counter the spread of WMD and their delivery systems throughout the world. The U.S. military's capabilities help
put teeth in the PSI, a voluntary, multilateral organization of 90-plus nations which uses national laws and joint military operations to fight
proliferation. While many of the PSI's efforts aren't made public due to the potential for revealing sensitive intelligence sources and methods, some
operations do make their way to the media. For instance, according to the U.S. State Department, the PSI stopped exports to Iran's missile program and
United
heavy water- related equipment to Tehran's nuclear program, which many believe is actually a nuclear weapons program. In the same vein, the
States is also developing the world's most prodigious-ever ballistic missile defense system to
protect the American homeland, its deployed troops, allies, and friends, including Europe. While
missile defense has its critics, it may provide the best answer to the spread of ballistic missiles and the
unconventional payloads, including the WMD, they may carry. Unfortunately, the missile and WMD prolifera-
tion trend is not positive. For instance, 10 years ago, there were only six nuclear weapons states. Today there are nine members of the once-
exclusive nuclear weapons club, with Iran perhaps knocking at the door. Twenty-five years ago, nine countries had ballistic missiles. Today, there are 28
countries with ballistic missile arsenals of varying degrees. This
defensive system will not only provide deterrence to the
use of these weapons, but also provide policymakers with a greater range of options in preventing
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or responding to such attacks, whether from a state or non-state actor. Perhaps General Trey Obering, the Director
of the Missile Defense Agency, said it best when describing the value of missile defense in countering the grow ing
threat of WMD and delivery system proliferation: "I believe that one of the reasons we've seen the
proliferation of these missiles in the past is that there has historically been no defense against
them."
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Heg Good – Terrorism Shell
Heg solves terrorism

Walt 02 professor of international affairs at Harvard (Stephen, “American Primacy” http://www.nwc .navy.mil/press/review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm))
Perhaps the most obvious reason why states seek primacy—and why the United States benefits from its current position—
is that international politics is a dangerous business. Being wealthier and stronger than other states does not guarantee that a state will survive, of course,
and it cannot insulate a state from all outside pressures. But the strongest state is more likely to escape serious harm than
weaker ones are, and it will be better equipped to resist the pressures that arise. Because the United States is so powerful, and because its society is
so wealthy, it has ample resources to devote to whatever problems it may face in the future. At the beginning of the Cold War, for example, its power
enabled the United States to help rebuild Europe and Japan, to assist them in developing stable democratic orders, and to subsidize the emergence of an open
international economic order.7 The United States was also able to deploy powerful armed forces in Europe and Asia as effective deterrents to Soviet
expansion. When the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf increased in the late 1970s, the United States created its Rapid Deployment Force in order to
deter threats to the West’s oil supplies; in 1990–91 it used these capabilities to liberate Kuwait. Also, when
the United States was
attacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in September 2001, it had the wherewithal to oust the
network’s Taliban hosts and to compel broad international support for its campaign to eradicate
Al-Qaeda itself. It would have been much harder to do any of these things if the United States had
been weaker. Today, U.S. primacy helps deter potential challenges to American interests in virtually
every part of the world. Few countries or nonstate groups want to invite the “focused enmity” of
the United States (to use William Wohlforth’s apt phrase), and countries and groups that have done so (such as Libya, Iraq,
Serbia, or the Taliban) have paid a considerable price. As discussed below, U.S. dominance does provoke opposition in a number of
places, but anti-American elements are forced to rely on covert or indirect strategies (such as terrorist bombings)
that do not seriously threaten America’s dominant position. Were American power to decline
challenges would be more likely.
The US will respond to the next attack – and the world will end.
CORSI 05 Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University [Jerome Corsi (Expert in Antiwar movements and political violence), Atomic Iran,
pg. 176-178]
The United States retaliates: 'End of the world' scenarios The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the
nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be
that the president will not immediately know how to respond or against whom.The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed
New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them
before they died that the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists.There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the
instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor will there be any possibility
the
of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of radioactive rubble.Still,
president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known enemy –
Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion
of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain?
The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world – more than 1 billion human beings in
countless different nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse
would be upon us.Then, too, we would face an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet
Union. Many in the Kremlin would see this as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them
by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of American cities
could possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible?
Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America .
In China, our newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not
concentrated in a few major cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the U nited States. What if
the United States retaliated with a nuclear counterattack upon China? The Chinese might be able to absorb the blow and recover. The North Koreans might
calculate even more recklessly. Why not launch upon America the few missiles they have that could reach our soil? More confusion and chaos might only
advance their position. If Russia, China, and the United States could be drawn into attacking one another, North Korea might emerge stronger just because it
was overlooked while the great nations focus on attacking one another. So, too, our supposed allies in Europe might relish the immediate reduction in power
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suddenly inflicted upon America. Many of the great egos in Europe have never fully recovered from the disgrace of World War II, when in the last century
the Americans a second time in just over two decades had been forced to come to their rescue. If the
French did not start launching
nuclear weapons themselves, they might be happy to fan the diplomatic fire beginning to burn under the Russians and the Chinese. Or the
president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be the
most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add
more nuclear devastation to the world calculation. Muslims around the world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United
for the
States had no positive proof that the destruction of New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran. But
president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by the loss of New York,
Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For this there would be
no effective answer. That
the president might think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every
president is by nature a politician. The political party in power at the time of the attack would be
destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people
would feel a price had to be paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge.
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Ext. Heg Solves Terrorism
US power projection is key to stopping terrorism

Boot 03 senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations
(Max, Weekly Standard, 5/3, Lexis)
A short pause to rest, regroup, and recharge is fine, even necessary. But turning
away from the world's dangers for long
would be a mistake, possibly a fatal one. The war against Islamist terrorism and against the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not over. Two battles have been won, but that is not enough. World War II
was not finished after El Alamein and Midway, or even after D-Day and Iwo Jima. Much remained to be done before the monstrous evils of fascism and
Nazism were defeated. So it is today. In a
world where North Korea may already have nuclear weapons, and
Iran is less than two years away from having them; in a world where al Qaeda continues to plot,
and states like Syria continue to support transnational terrorist groups; in a world where U.S.
security depends on alliances with shaky dictatorships like Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia--in
such a world, much remains to be done before Americans can feel safe. If we revert to our pre-
9/11 passivity, if we return to the 1990s policy of pretending globalization will solve all our problems, if we place our faith once
again in accommodation and "stability," then we may awake before long to a disaster worse than
9/11. The horrors of the day are now receding into memory; if you do not wander down to Ground Zero, September 11, 2001, can seem almost as distant
as December 7, 1941. It is for that very reason that we must keep our gaze resolutely focused on Ground Zero and our mind fully engaged to imagine worse
horrors that may yet transpire. We must never forget, never forgive--and never flag in our determination to prevent a recurrence.
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AT: Heg Causes Terrorism
Their ev isn’t reverse causal – collapse of heg wont stop terror

Lieber 05 Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University
(Robert J., The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century, (p. 29))
Realist views tend to rest on certain general assumptions about the nature of world politics, for example, that states with the capacity to use WMD or who
make these weapons available to terrorists can be reliably deterred. And in the case of Iraq, realists believed Saddam Hussein could have been dissuaded
from attacking his neighbors and that even if he eventually acquired nuclear weapons, he could have been deterred by the overwhelming power of the United
States. Some in this group,
in comparing the United States with other dominant powers of the past, invoke
the examples of great empires that came to grief through imperial overreach or through causing
other powerful states to form coalitions against them. And because of the emphasis on system-level
explanations, some realists downplay the traits of especially violent and fanatical individual
leaders or groups. However, as Richard Betts notes, although American primacy is one of the causes of the
terror war "There is no reason to assume that terrorist enemies would let America off the hook if it
retreated.
Their evidence only assumes a world where we are not a benevolent hegemon – Soft power solves
any risk of a terrorist attack
Steinberg, 08 – Dean of the Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs at Texas Austin (James, “Real Leaders Do Soft Power: Learning the Lessons
of Iraq,” Washington Quarterly, Spring, 2008)
Third, the strategy undermined the U.S. global position by calling into question the legitimacy of U.S.
leadership. This element of U.S. soft power is particularly critical in the face of terrorist threats,
which compel the United States to push the envelope of preventive force. The world rallied to the
United States after 9/11 and supported the invasion of Afghanistan because the Taliban's alliance
with al Qaeda represented a clear and present danger. The argument behind the necessity of dispatching Saddam, however,
was more [End Page 160] remote. By acting without the support of others, the administration fueled a fear that
the United States would act in an unconstrained fashion that would damage the interests of others
and encourage other, more dangerous nations to follow a similar course. By lowering the
substantive bar constraining the use of force in the absence of an imminent threat and rejecting
the alternative that would put in place procedural checks, such as approval by the UN Security
Council or a regional organization such as NATO, the invasion of Iraq unintentionally fueled a
global public perception that both al Qaeda and the United States were threats to peace and
stability. The administration believed that overwhelming U.S. military power freed the United
States from having to seek the support of others because other countries would have no choice but
to side with the world's sole superpower. Yet, those theorists got it backward. U.S. primacy makes
it all the more important that the United States pay judicious attention to legitimacy and greater
compliance with international law rather than it being an excuse to throw them overboard in the
hubris of the moment.
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Heg key to promote democracy

The American Empire gives the United States the ability to spread its form of government,
democracy, and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Using American power to spread
democracy can be a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as for the United
States. This is because democracies are more likely to align themselves with the United States and be
sympathetic to its worldview. In addition, there is a chance—small as it may be—that once states are governed
democratically, the likelihood of conflict will be reduced further. Natan Sharansky makes the argument that once
Arabs are governed democratically, they will not wish to continue the conflict against Israel." This idea has had a big effect on President George W. Bush.
He has said that Sharansky's worldview "is part of my presidential DNA."" Whether democracy in the Middle East would have this impact is debatable.
Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy
to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in October 2004, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them.
Elections were held in Iraq in January 2005, the first free elections in that country's history. The military power of the United States put Iraq on the path to
democracy. Democracy has spread to Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Caucasus, and now even the
Middle East is becoming increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style
democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the
Palestinian Authority, and Egypt. The march of democracy has been impressive. Although
democracies have their flaws, simply put, democracy is the best form of government. Winston Churchill
recognized this over half a century ago: "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time." The United States should do what it can to foster the
spread of democracy throughout the world.
Nuclear War
Diamond 95, Senior researcher fellow at Hoover Institution
(Larry, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990s: ACTORS AND INSTRUMENTS, ISSUES
AND IMPERATIVES)
The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a
truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their
neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically
“cleanse” their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor
terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to
threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and
more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to
their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better
bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness
makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they
respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable
foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
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Ext. Heg Solves Democracy
US hegemony is essential to support democracies

Diamond 96 Senior researcher fellow at Hoover Institution (Larry, Orbis, “Beyond the Unipolar
Moment: Why the United States Must Remain Engaged”, p. 405-413)
In the past, global power has been an important reason why certain countries have become models for
emulation by others. The global power of the United States, and of its Western democratic allies, has been a
factor in the diffusion of democracy around the world, and certainly is crucial to our ability to
help popular, legitimate democratic forces deter armed threats to their overthrow, or to return to
power (as in Haiti) when they have been overthrown. Given the linkages among democracy, peace, and human rights-as well
as the recent finding of Professor Adam Przeworski (New York University) that democracy is more likely to survive in a
country when it is more widely present in the region-we should not surrender our capacity to
diffuse and defend democracy. It is not only intrinsic to our ideals but important to our national security that
we remain globally powerful and engaged-and that a dictatorship does not rise to hegemonic power within any major region.
Hegemony is key to democracy promotion

McFaul 04, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and associate professor of political science at Stanford University
(Michael, “Democracy Promotion as a World Value”, Washington Quarterly, vol 28, no 1, p 147)
There is a genuine correlation between the advance of democracy as well as democratic norms
worldwide and the growth of U.S. power. No country has done more to strengthen the norms and
practices of democracy around the world than the United States. If Adolf Hitler had prevailed in World War II,
democratic values would have survived, but few democratic regimes would have remained. Similarly, if the Cold War had ended with
U.S. disintegration, rather than Soviet dissolution, command economies run by one-party
dictatorships would be the norm and democracy the exception. Thus, even good ideas need
powerful actors to defend and advance them.
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Heg Good – Economy
Primacy is key to the global economy and helping Third World countries
Economic prosperity is also a product of the American Empire. It has created a Liberal
International Economic Order (LIED)—a network of worldwide free trade and commerce, respect
for intellectual property rights, mobility of capi¬tal and labor markets—to promote economic
growth. The stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good
from which all states benefit, particularly states in the Third World. The American Empire has
created this network not out of altruism but because it benefits the economic well-being of the
United States. In 1998, the Secretary of Defense Wil¬liam Cohen put this well when he
acknowledged that "economists and soldiers share the same interest in stability"; soldiers create
the conditions in which the American economy may thrive, and "we are able to shape the
environment [of international politics] in ways that are advantageous to us and that are stabilizing to the areas
where we are forward deployed, thereby helping to promote investment and prosperity...business
follows the flag." Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the American Empire comes
from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat, researcher at the World Bank,
prolific author, and now a professor who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of
post-independence India that strongly condemned empire. He has abandoned the position of his
youth and is now one of the strongest proponents of the American Empire. Lal has traveled the
world and, in the course of his journeys, has witnessed great poverty and misery due to a lack of
economic development. He realized that free markets were necessary for the development of poor
countries, and this led him to recognize that his faith in socialism was wrong. Just as a
conservative famously is said to be a liberal who has been mugged by reality, the hard "evidence
and experi¬ence" that stemmed from "working and traveling in most parts of the Third World
during my professional career" caused this profound change.' Lal submits that the only way to
bring relief to the desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the American Empire.
Empires provide order, and this order "has been essential for the working of the benign processes
of globalization, which promote prosperity."62 Globalization is the process of creating a common
economic space, which leads to a growing integration of the world economy through the
increasingly free movement of goods, capital, and labor. It is the responsibility of the United States, Lal
argues, to use the LIEO to promote the well-being of all economies, but particularly those in the
Third World, so that they too may enjoy economic prosperity.
Econ stagnation causes nuclear war

Mead 92 Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, (Walter Russell, World Policy Institute, 1992)
Hundreds of millions – billions – of people have

pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders
have embraced the international market economy – and drawn closer to the west – because
they believe the system can work for
them. But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates – or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a
new period of international conflict: North against South, rich against poor. Russia, China, India
– these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater
danger to the world than Germany and Japan did in the ‘30s.
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Ext. Heg Solves Economy
Heg key to the economy

Boot 06 senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
(Max, “Power for Good; Since the end of the Cold War, America the Indispensable”, The Weekly
Standard, Vol. 11 No. 28)
Mandelbaum also points to

five economic benefits of American power. First, the United States provides the
security essential for international commerce by, for instance, policing Atlantic and Pacific
shipping lanes. Second, the United States safeguards the extraction and export of Middle Eastern oil,
the lifeblood of the global economy. Third, in the monetary realm, the United States has made the
dollar "the world's 'reserve' currency" and supplied loans to "governments in the throes of
currency crises." Fourth, the United States has pushed for the expansion of international trade by
midwifing the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and other
instruments of liberalization. And fifth, by providing a ready market for goods exported by such
countries as China and Japan, the United States "became the indispensable supplier of demand to
the world."
Heg solves economic collapse

Mandelbaum 05 Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns Hopkins
(Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-
First Century, p. 192-195)
Although the spread of nuclear weapons, with the corresponding increase in the likelihood that a
nuclear shot would be fired in anger somewhere in the world, counted as the most serious
potential consequence of the abandonment by the United States of its role as the world's
government, it was not the only one. In the previous period of American international reticence,
the 1920s and 1930s, the global economy suffered serious damage that a more active American
role might have mitigated. A twenty-first-century American retreat could have similarly adverse
international economic consequences. The economic collapse of the 1930s caused extensive
hardship throughout the world and led indirectly to World War II by paving the way for the
people who started it to gain power in Germany and Japan. In retrospect, the Great Depression is widely believed to have
been caused by a series of errors in public policy that made an economic downturn far worse than it would have been had governments responded to it in
appropriate fashion. Since the 1930s, acting on the lessons drawn from that experience by professional economists, governments have taken steps that have
helped to prevent a recurrence of the disasters of that decade.' In the face of reduced demand, for example, governments have increased rather than cut
spending. Fiscal and monetary crises have evoked rescue efforts rather than a studied indifference based on the assumption that market forces will readily
reestablish a desirable economic equilibrium. In contrast to the widespread practice of the 1930s, political authorities now understand that putting up barriers
to imports in an attempt to revive domestic production will in fact worsen economic conditions everywhere. Still,
a serious, prolonged
failure of the international economy, inflicting the kind of hardship the world experienced in the
1930s (which some Asian countries also suffered as a result of their fiscal crises in the 1990s) does not lie beyond the realm of
possibility. Market economies remain subject to cyclical downturns, which public policy can limit but has not found a way to eliminate entirely.
Markets also have an inherent tendency to form bubbles, excessive values for particular assets, whether seventeenth century Dutch tulips or twentieth
century Japanese real estate and Thai currency, that cause economic harm when the bubble bursts and prices plunge. In responding to these events,
governments can make errors. They can act too slowly, or fail to implement the proper policies, or implement improper ones. Moreover, the global economy
and the national economies that comprise it, like a living organism, change constantly and sometimes rapidly: Capital flows across sovereign borders, for
instance, far more rapidly and in much greater volume in the early twenty-first century than ever before. This means that measures that successfully address
economic malfunctions at one time may have less effect at another, just as medical science must cope with the appearance of new strains of influenza against
which existing vaccines are not effective. Most
importantly, since the Great Depression, an active American
international economic role has been crucial both in fortifying the conditions for global economic
well-being and in coping with the problems that have occurred, especially periodic recessions and
currency crises, by applying the lessons of the past. The absence of such a role could weaken those
conditions and aggravate those problems. The overall American role in the world since World War II therefore has something in
common with the theme of the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, in which the angel Clarence, played by Henry Travers, shows James Stewart, playing
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the bank clerk George Bailey, who believes his existence to have been worthless, how life in his small town of Bedford Falls would have unfolded had he
never been born. George Bailey learns that people he knows and loves turn out to be far worse off without him. So
it is with the United
States and its role as the world's government. Without that role, the world very likely would have
been in the past, and would become in the future, a less secure and less prosperous place. The
abdication by the United States of some or all of the responsibilities for international security that
it had come to bear in the first decade of the twenty-first century would deprive the international
system of one of its principal safety features, which keeps countries from smashing into each
other, as they are historically prone to do. In this sense, a world without America would be the
equivalent of a freeway full of cars without brakes. Similarly, should the American government
abandon some or all of the ways in which it had, at the dawn of the new century, come to support
global economic activity, the world economy would function less effectively and might even suffer
a severe and costly breakdown. A world without the United States would in this way resemble a
fleet of cars without gasoline.
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Heg Good – China War
Heg deters China/Taiwan war

Brookes 08 Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic
and Security Review Commission (Peter, Heritage, Why the World Still Needs America's Military Might, November 24, 2008
We know that China is undergoing a major military buildup, especially involving its power projection forces--i.e., air force,
navy, and ballistic missile forces, all aimed at Taiwan. Indeed, today Beijing has the world's third largest defense budget and the world's fastest growing
peacetime defense budget, growing at over 10 percent per year for over a decade. It increased its defense budget nearly 18 percent annually over the past two
years. I would daresay that military tensions across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China would be
much greater today if not for an implied commitment on the part of the United States to prevent a change
in the political status quo via military means. China hasn't renounced the use of force against its neighbor
and rival, Taiwan, a vibrant, free-market democracy. It is believed by many analysts that absent American military might, China would
quickly unite Taiwan with the mainland under force of arms. In general, the system of military
alliances in Asia that the United States maintains provides the basis for stability in the Pacific,
since the region has failed to develop an overarching security architecture such as that found in
Europe in NATO
Extinction
Straits Times 00 [“Regional Fallout: No one gains in war over Taiwan,” Jun 25, LN]
THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and
China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict
on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -- horror of horrors -- raise the possibility of a
nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and
logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means
South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire.
And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing
world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape.
The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia,
hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new
and dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US
Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US
from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US
foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -- truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear
there is little hope of
weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability,
winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China
possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems
prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its
"non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a
gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were
strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military
leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory
if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that
come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilisation. There would be no victors in such a war. While the
prospect of a nuclear Armaggedon over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it cannot be ruled out entirely,
for China puts sovereignty above everything else.
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Decline Causes Asian Instability
Hegemony solves Asian stability

White, 08 – Prof. of Strategic Studies at Australian National University; Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute (Hugh, “Why War in Asia Remains
Thinkable”, http://www.iiss.org/conferences/asias-strategic-challenges-in-search-of-a-common-agenda/conference-papers/fifth-session-conflict-in-asia/why-
war-in-asia-remains-thinkable-prof-hugh-white/ June 2)
It can help to start by thinking about the sources of the remarkable peace that has characterised
East Asia in recent decades. As Rich Armitage said over lunch yesterday, it has been the best thirty to thirty-five
years in Asia’s long history. The foundation of that peace has been a remarkable set of
relationships between the US, China and Japan that arose at the end of the Vietnam War, and
which I call the Post-Vietnam Order. The heart of that order was a posture of double assurance
provided by the US to the other two powers. The US has simultaneously assured China about its
security from Japan, and Japan about its security from China. Obviously, but crucially, US
primacy was the absolute core of this order.
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A2: Heg Bad – Intervention
US form of heg is exercised without getting entangled – more power means we don’t need to
intervene
Hurrell 06 Director of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.
(Andrew, Hegemony, liberalism and global order: what space for would-be great powers? (p 1-19), International Affairs, Published Online: Jan 24 2006
12:00AM)
The contrast with the United States is instructive. Much is made of the unique position of the United States and the degree to which, unlike all other modern
great powers, it faced no geopolitical challenge from within its region and was able to prevent, or more accurately contain, the influence of extraregional
other
powers. This is certainly true (even if the rise of the US to regional hegemony is often dated too early and its extent exaggerated). But the
important regional aspect of US power is the ability to avoid excessively deep entanglement or
involvement and, for the most part, to escape from ensnaring and diverting lower-level conflicts within its
‘backyard’. It has been able to take the region for granted and, for long periods, to avoid having a regional policy at all (as has arguably been the case since
2001). It is this fact that, perhaps counterintuitively, provides Brazil with some capacity to develop a relatively autonomous regional role. Second, attempts
to develop a global role can easily stir the animosity, or at least raise the concerns, of regional neighbours. This has been particularly evident in the reactions
of regional second-tier states to the attempt by India and Brazil to obtain permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and to Brazil’s more assertive
regional policy within South America more generally, especially on the part of Argentina. Third, the dominant power in the system
may take the opportunity to exploit regional conflicts to its own advantage and to engage in offshore balancing
in precisely the way in which neo-realist theory would predict. A similar, but less often noted, logic applies to regional arrangements: the United
States maximizes its power by promoting forms of regionalism so loosely institutionalized that
they do not tie down or constrain the US but, at the same time, work to undercut or forestall the
emergence of other, smaller regional groupings that could emerge as effective challengers to the
US. This pattern has been visible in the cases of both the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas.
Heg decreases interventionism

Kristol and Kagan 02 Editor of the Weekly Standard, Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
[William and Robert “Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy” (http://www.wnyc.org/books/16811)]
It is worth pointing out, though, that aforeign policy premised on American hegemony, and on the blending of principle with
material interest, may in fact mean fewer, not more, overseas interventions than under the "vital interest" standard. Had
the Bush Administration, for example, realized early on that there was no clear distinction between
American moral concerns in Bosnia and America's national interest there, the United States, with the enormous
credibility earned in the Gulf War, might have been able to put a stop to Milosevic's ambitions with a well-timed
threat of punishing military action. But because the Bush team placed Bosnia outside the sphere of
"vital" American interests, the resulting crisis eventually required the deployment of thousands of
troops on the ground. The same could be said of American interventions in Panama and the Gulf.
A passive world-view encouraged American leaders to ignore troubling developments which
eventually metastasized into full blown threats to American security. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein were
given reason to believe that the United States did not consider its interests threatened by their behavior, only to discover that they had been misled. In
each case, a broader and more forward-leaning conception of the national interest might have
made the later large and potentially costly interventions unnecessary
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Regional blocks
In a world without U.S. heg regional blocks would move to fill the void
Wolff and Julias ‘7 (Max Fraad Wolff is an economist and free lance researcher/writer. Max does
contract research on international financial risks and opportunities while teaching in the New
School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs. Stephen Julias has been an
associate with Curran & Whittington for six years. ‘Global Vacuum: Contested and Absent
Leadership’, March 1st 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0301-26.htm)
Contesting institutions and groups emerge to fill this void. Herein lays threat and possibility. Globalization of economic
activity, culture and terrorism demand global leadership. Regional blocks have rushed to fill the void. In South America
a progressive inflected nationalism has emerged at ballot boxes and on the streets. In the Islamic world hostility to
religious-cultural influences and political meddling has reached a boiling point. Africa hosts precious
few success stories, endemic poverty, instabilities and conflicts that threaten metastasis. East and South Asia loom
ever larger as their aggregate economic growth transforms global realities. The inequalities within
India and China hint at great tensions and frailties within these precious models of successful development. In the US, EU
and Japan fears for job security are combining with historically anomalously long periods of real wage decline. Developed world consensus toward free
trade- always thin- is fraying.
Regional power blocks will lead to a new Cold War era – makes resource wars inevitable
Telopress ‘9 (David Pan, Telopress, “World Order and the Decline of U.S. Power: Hard or Soft
Landing?”, 2/13/09, http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=294)
The new world order toward which we are moving in the twenty-first century may not consist of any true superpowers, but
rather encompass a set of more or less powerful regional powers including the United States and China certainly but perhaps also India, Russia,
and the European Union. But these different powers will not share the conformity of ideology and political
structure that stabilized the relations between the nineteenth-century European great powers.
Instead, these political entities will include differing political systems and ideological assumptions .
Significantly, the Global Trends 2025 report fails to list the Islamic world as anything but a zone of instability in the twenty-first century. The linking of
religion and politics in the Islamic world suggests an alternative way of imagining political entities and consequently poses a challenge to a nation-state
conception of politics. If this specifically liberal democratic understanding of politics will no longer be
hegemonic, a new set of risks and possibilities opens up arising from different understandings of
what constitutes a valid political structure. Though a rising China seems to bode for increasing stability, continuing
ideological differences leading to differing political structures could be a destabilizing influence. If
the rise of China indicates the development of regional political blocks, it also presages the decline
of the hegemony of liberal democracy as a universally recognized model for political structure. To
the extent that the United States continues to pursue a foreign policy that is oriented around liberalism, there is the risk that conflicts between
regional blocks could begin a new kind of dynamic familiar from the Cold War in which the
different regional blocks establish separate political-economic spheres that would compete for
legitimacy and resources. The challenge for U.S. foreign policy is to descend from the high horse of liberal democracy while at the same time
helping to establish the global framework that could mediate between both the economic interests and the political-theological differences amongst the
disparate regions of the world.
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Regional blocks
Resource Wars will lead to a nuclear war culminating in extinction
Centre for Research on Globalization ‘7 (6/6/07, Stephen Lendman for the Centre for Research
and Globalization, ‘Resource Wars: Can We Survive Them?’, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=va&aid=5892)
Resources and wars for them means militarism is increasing, peace declining, and the planet's
ability to sustain life front and center, if anyone's paying attention. They'd better be because beyond the point of no return, there's no
second chance the way Einstein explained after the atom was split. His famous quote on future wars was : "I know not with what weapons
World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones ." Under a worst
case scenario, it's more dire than that. There may be nothing left but resilient beetles and bacteria in the
wake of a nuclear holocaust meaning even a new stone age is way in the future, if at all. The threat
is real and once nearly happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. We later learned a miracle saved us at the 40th anniversary October,
2002 summit meeting in Havana attended by the US and Russia along with host country Cuba. For the first time, we were told how close we came to nuclear
Armageddon. Devastation was avoided only because Soviet submarine captain Vasily Arkhipov countermanded his order to fire nuclear-tipped torpedos
when Russian submarines were attacked by US destroyers near Kennedy's "quarantine" line. Had he done it, only our imagination can speculate what might
have followed and whether planet earth, or at least a big part of it, would have survived.
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China module
Without strong U.S. leadership, China would rush to fill the vacuum
UGA ‘7 (University of Georgia, Elizabeth A. Cason, October 2007, “From Russia…with Energy”,
http://www.thegrandalliance.eu/papers_07/papers%2007/Cason.htm )
In recent years, China and India have been growing in economic power, diminishing the relative power of the United States. World
governance has been dominated by the United States hegemony since the Breton Woods conference in 1944 and the United States has
enjoyed its position as the big man at the table. However, beginning in about 2004 or 2005, the U.S. centered system began to
crumble. Eventually another nation will fill the power vacuum left by the United States and China seems
to be the most likely candidate. With an exponentially growing economy and population, China is quickly gaining power in the world. If
China continues at the current pace, it will soon take over the position as the big man at the table. Some analysts fear
that if this scenario plays out, China will cause the global market to collapse due to their unfair competitive advantage and their infrastructural problems and
will also contribute to increased instability in the world system. International relations professor and former advisor to the Italian government Carlo Pelanda
says that it is important to protect the global market because it is an “engine of wealth for everyone.” He says that with China participating in the global
market without mind to the Western that govern the system like transparency, the global market would disintegrate and this would bring less equality and the
breakdown of capitalism.
China is actively seeking to be the global hegemon- they would fill any power vacuum left by the
U.S.
Mosher ‘6 (Steven A. Mosher President of Population Research Institute in a Testimony to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
02/14/06, http://74.125.47.132/search?
q=cache:8s_2bKC4B1QJ:www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/mos021406.pdf+Chinese+hegemony+leads+to&cd=64&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
I strongly disagree with this view. I am of the opinion, formed over 25 years of studying the PRC, that the CCP leadership has always had a grand strategy.
Moreover, it is clear to me that they continue to have a grand strategy today. It
is a strategy of intimidation, of expansion, of
assertiveness, and of domination on a global scale. It is a strategy to overtake, surpass, and
ultimately eclipse the reigning superpower, the United States of America. It is a strategy, in short, of Hegemony. The
PRC is bent on becoming the Hegemon, the Ba in Chinese, defined by longstanding Chinese usage as a single, all-
dominant power. A Hegemon, it should be understood, is more dominant than a mere superpower, more dominant even than a “sole superpower,”
the international role that the U.S. currently occupies. 3 The PRC accuses the U.S. of “seeking Hegemony,” but this
should be understood as secret envy and hidden ambition: It is Hegemony that the PRC itself
seeks.
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China module
If China were to gain hegemony it would cast a shadow worse than Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s
Russia
Mosher ‘6 (Steven A. Mosher President of Population Research Institute in a Testimony to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
02/14/06, http://74.125.47.132/search?
q=cache:8s_2bKC4B1QJ:www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/mos021406.pdf+Chinese+hegemony+leads+to&cd=64&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
Unlike the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler or the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, the People’s Republic of
China of Mao Zedong survives to the present day, its ruling party intact, its system of government
largely unchanged. The myths and lies that continue to prop up Mao’s image also serve to bolster
the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party itself. The current Communist leadership
proudly declares itself to be Mao’s heirs, maintains his Leninist dictatorship, continues his
military build-up and, the evidence would seem to indicate, cherishes his grand ambition s. All this
suggests a PRC that has, in combination, the historical grievances of a Weimar Republic, the paranoid
nationalism of a revolutionary Islamic state, and the Hegemonic ambitions of a Soviet Union at the
height of its power. As China grows more powerful and attempts to rectify those grievances and act
out those Hegemonic ambitions, it will cast an ever-lengthening shadow over Asia and the world.
China’s rise to power would lead to war
Layne ‘8(Christopher Layne is a Research Fellow with the Center on Peace and Liberty at The Independent Institute and Mary Julia and George R.
Jordan Professorship of International Affairs at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, ‘China’s Challenge to
U.S. hegemony, January 2008)
China’s rise affects the United States because of what international relations scholars call the “power transition” effect:
Throughout the history of the modern international state system, ascending powers have always
challenged the position of the dominant (hegemonic) power in the international system—and these challenges have
usually culminated in war. Notwithstanding Beijing’s talk about a “peaceful rise,” an ascending
China inevitably will challenge the geopolitical equilibrium in East Asia. The doctrine of peaceful rise thus is a
reassurance strategy employed by Beijing in an attempt to allay others’ fears of growing Chinese power and to foretall the United States from acting
preventively during the dangerous transition period when China is catching up to the United States
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Sino-Russian Module
A Sino-Russian alliance would move to fill any power vacuum left by the United States
Weitz ‘9 (Richard Weitz is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Hudson Institute, 1/14/09, ‘A Central
Asia Without the West?’, http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5013)
One of the scenarios, “A
World Without the West,” posits a situation in which the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) becomes the dominant institution in Central Asia. A Sino-Russian condominium
over Central Asia emerges due to the failure of NATO to sustain its regional commitments. The
United States and its European allies lose the will to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan
and other Central Asian countries. Russia and China move to fill the resulting power vacuum—as
well as to ensure their control over the region’s energy riches—while India, Iran, and other countries bandwagon with them. “The Afghan situation
threatened to destabilize the whole region, and we could not stand idly by,” the head of the SCO writes in his fictional 15 June 2015 letter to the NATO
Secretary-General. “Besides Afghanistan, we had disturbing intelligence that some ‘friendly’ Central Asian governments were coming under pressure from
radical Islamic movements and we continue to depend on Central Asian energy.” According to the posited SCO head, who is identified as a Russian
national, “The Central Asians thought they could use the SCO for their own purpose of playing the neighboring big powers off against one another,” but the
failure of the Western countries to sustain their regional role undermined this strategy by leaving them at the mercy of Eurasia’s authoritarian great powers .
The NIC analysts consider this Eurasian scenario possible, though unlikely, if—as the report projects—
the relative power and influence of China, India, and Russia continue to rise relative to that of the
United States and Europe. Whereas the 2004 NIC study projected continued American global dominance with the acquiescence of most of
the other great powers, the 2008 report stresses the constraints on U.S. influence due to ongoing globalization, the diffusion of military technologies, “an
historic shift of relative wealth and economic power from West to East,” and other factors. A reinforcing trend is that demographic, economic, and other
problems will decrease the relative influence of key U.S. allies in Europe and Asia. Slow economic growth, aging populations, and a lack of an effective
unified foreign policy apparatus make it impossible for the EU to sustain its even currently low levels of defense spending, contributing to NATO’s inability
to sustain its Afghan mission.
Sino-Russian power would lead to a new cold war era

Weitz 09 (Richard Weitz is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Hudson Institute, 1/14/09, ‘A Central Asia
Without the West?’ http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5013)
The emergence of a Sino-Russian condominium in Eurasia would have disastrous implications for world
order. NATO and the SCO would come to be seen as two Cold War-type blocs divided, if not by ideology,
than by enduring geopolitical and other cleavages. China, Russia, and Iran could use their pivotal position to
monopolize the production and export of Eurasian oil and gas, leveraging government controls to
manipulate for political advantage energy flows to Western markets.
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Corporations module
Corporations and non-government entities would move to fill U.S. power vacuum
Wolff and Julias ‘7 (Max Fraad Wolff is an economist and free lance researcher/writer. Max does
contract research on international financial risks and opportunities while teaching in the New
School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs. Stephen Julias has been an
associate with Curran & Whittington for six years. ‘Global Vacuum: Contested and Absent
Leadership’, March 1st 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0301-26.htm)
The power vacuum created by the lack of global political leadership will be filled, if not by
representative government organizations then by other forces that today’s globalization
empowers. The powerful global forces of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) and International Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGOs) abhor many elements of the present power vacuum and have been
rushing to fill the void with line item governance and outsourced power. The potential power of
these entities is not often fully appreciated. Major corporations account for 50 of the top 100
economies in the world. The largest NGOs control annual budgets several times larger than many
of the states that they work in. TNC and NGO alike are market diven. The case for this reality is probably adequately self evident in the
TNC case. NGOs are often funded by the great fortunes of globalization and regularly turn to fundraising for programs, expansions and survival. They look
to TNC giving and giving from the wealth of individuals invested in globalization. Thus, we are seeing the rise of private global
governance by NGO and TNC. This is most clear in vital regions were pressing humanitarian concern and vital resources compel leading
firms and NGOs to operate in the absence of local or international governmental authority. Ironically, the absence of effective state
control, international consensus and enforcement has created private patchworks of enterprise
and outreach authority. Is this the future? It certainly is absent the ability of states to agree and inter-governmental consortia to perform. We
are seeing an uncoordinated privatization of functions that states evolved to perform.
Without one center of world power companies would move to fill the power vacuum
Centre for Research on Globalization ‘8 (Andrew Gavin Marshall for the Centre for Research on
Globalization, ‘From Global Crisis to “Global Government” US Intelligence: A Review of Global
Trends 2025, 12/18/08, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11426)
In discussing the structure and nature of a new international system, the report states that, “By 2025, nation-states will no longer be the
only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’
will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and
uneven.” The report states that under a situation in which there are many poles of power in the world, yet little
coordination and cooperation between them all, it would be “unlikely to see an overarching, comprehensive, unitary
approach to global governance. Current trends suggest that global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of overlapping, often ad hoc
and fragmented efforts, with shifting coalitions of member nations, international organizations, social movements, NGOs,
philanthropic foundations, and companies.” In other words, by 2025, there won’t be an established global government, but rather
an acceleration of the processes and mechanisms that have been and currently are underway in efforts to create a world government.
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***HEG GOOD***
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Heg good- relations
World peace depends on US hegemony.
Mark E. Pietrzyk, 2002, “International Order and Individual Liberty: Effects of War and Peace
on the Development of Governments”, University Press of America
As I have noted previously, even a number of prominent proponents of the democracy-leads-to peace model have cited the
importance of U.S. hegemony in helping to maintain peace in Europe and Asia. Michael Doyle has
even suggested that U.S. hegemony provides the basis for cooperation in security and economic
affairs that is essential for domestic liberalism in states. The results of this study tend to confirm the
importance of U.S. hegemony as both a peace factor and as a stabilizer of democracy. Democracy
may aid cooperation betweens states, but without international leadership and security guarantees,
even democratic states may conflict with each other. Dean Acheson’s insight that international military and
economic leadership is necessary to maintain peace and liberty in international society remains a valuable
premise for the conduct of American foreign policy.
US heg improves trade relations.
Michael Oden, 1999, “The Costs of U.S. Hegemony: Military Power, Military Spending, and U.S.
Trade Performance” , Department of Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at
Austin
For David Gordon and his collaborators in the social structures of accumulation (SSA) tradition, the willingness to threaten potential adversaries with
military forces capable of acting on a global scale was seen to positively affect the U.S. terms of trade. U.S.
hegemony yielded specific
supply side benefits as favorable terms of trade reduced relative input prices and boosted
profitability. Although Gordon and his co-authors recognize the potential costs of sustaining a large, globally active military apparatus, these costs
are not incorporated in the econometric models supporting the SSA theory. This paper attempts to extend the SSA analysis by empirically measuring the
effects of both military spending and military power on U.S. trade performance over the 1951-1987 period. It is shown that while military power and
spending commitments may have positive effects on the terms of trade, these military variables had direct and indirect negative impacts on the U.S. net
export balance and therefore domestic aggregate demand. In the context of a model of U.S. growth performance open to international transactions, the
overall effect of the postwar military system on U.S. economic growth was likely negative in the cold-war era.
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Heg good- relations
US heg strengthens relations between other nations.
James A. Bill, 9/ 2001, “The Politics of Hegemony: The United States and Iran” Volume VIII,
Number 3, Middle East Policy Council, http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol8/0109_bill.asp
In its attempt to protect and expand its hegemonic power, the United States has pursued policies
designed to weaken regional powers such as Iran and China. The pressures applied by the global hegemon
often have unintended, counterproductive consequences. U.S. pressure, for example, acts as a catalyst
strengthening and solidifying relations between and among dominant regional hegemons . Figure 1
indicates how two regional hegemons, Iran and China, have come to form a fundamental cross-regional alliance. U.S. condemnation has resulted in both
intraregional and interregional alliances featuring Iran and China at the center of concentric circles of countries that resent and resist U.S. interventionary
hegemony. In the Middle East and East Asia these nation-states include Syria and North Korea respectively.
Maintaining US heg and preventing the rise of other hegemonies key to stop a next world war.
Paul Wolfowitz (Bush’s Deputy Secretary of Defense), 2000, [Paul, “Statesmanship in the New
Century”, Present Dangers: Crisis & Opportunity
in American Foreign & Defense Policy, ed. Kagan & Kristol, Encounter Books
//wyo-tjc]
One would like to think that this new consensus reflects a recognition that the United States cannot afford to allow a hostile
power to dominate Europe or Asia or the Persian Gulf; that the safest, and in the long run the
cheapest, way to prevent such a development is to preserve the U.S.-led alliances that have been so
successful—to paraphrase Lord Ismay in more diplomatic language—at keeping the Americans engaged, the allies
reassured and the aggressors deterred; and that the best way to avoid another world war is not by
being willing to cede Europe or Asia to hostile domination, but by making it clear in advance that
we will oppose it and thereby prevent any such effort. Unfortunately, today’s consensus reflects as much the complacency bred by our current
predominance as agreement on how to shape the future to prevent another world war, or even concern about the possibility of such an event.
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Heg good- solves extinction
U.S hegemony solves any scenario for extinction

Robert Kagan 2007
Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal
and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently,
Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush
administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward
across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also
engaged in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and
Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power,
and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as “No. 1” and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having
entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially
transformed it in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the
behavior of billions of people around the globe.
The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature
of the new post-Cold War international system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international
competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from
intensifying — its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions
where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past:
sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness.
One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear
weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also
dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance,
the United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it
even in their home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of
international waterways and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United
States engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it
would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between
nations would involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War I and other
major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests
not only on the goodwill of peoples but also on American power. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of
peoples but on a foundation provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to
American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most
Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europe’s stability depends on the guarantee , however distant and one hopes
unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any dangerous development on the continent. In a
genuinely multipolar world, that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world war. People
who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to
a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of
American power. They imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would
remain in place. But that ’s not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power. The
international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A
different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own
kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that international
order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United
States and Europe.
The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the world ’s great powers. Even under the
umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United
States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the
consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern
states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United
States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is especially true
in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of
China ’s neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the
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dilemma that an could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. Conflicts are more likely to
erupt if the United States withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. In Europe, too, the
departure of the United States from the scene — even if it remained the world’s most powerful nation — could be destabilizing. It
could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on its periphery. Although
some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West,
and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without
Soviet communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe — if it adopted what some call a strategy of “offshore balancing” —
this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn
draw the United States back in under unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in
the Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, “offshore” role would lead to greater stability there. The vital interest the United States has in access
to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and
hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more “even-handed” policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to
unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel ’s aid if its security became threatened. That commitment,
paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically ensures a heavy American military presence in the
region, both on the seas and on the ground. The subtraction of American power from any region would not end conflict but would simply change the
equation. In the Middle East, competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two centuries. The
rise
of Islamic fundamentalism doesn ’t change this. It only adds a new and more threatening dimension to the
competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would
change. The alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is further
competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not be followed by a diminution
of other external influences. One could expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18 And
one could also expect the more powerful states of the region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration
would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasn ’t changed that
much. An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to “normal” or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one
likely to draw the United States back in again.The alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East and
elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified competition among
nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no one should imagine that a
reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide an easier path.
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Heg good- solves war
U.S hegemony solves several scenarios for war and incentivizes global peace.
William Kristol and Robert Kagan 1996

(http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=276 - Toward a Neo-
Reaganite Foreign Policy - Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to
the Dawn of the 20th Century, (Knopf 2006) was the winner of the 2008 Lepgold Prize and a 2007
Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is listed as one of the world’s “Top 100 Public
Intellectuals” Kagan is an expert in U.S. national security and foreign policy, U.S. relations with Russia, China and Europe, the
European Union, NATO expansion, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Iraq. B.A., Yale University; M.P.P., John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University; Ph.D., American University)
TWENTY YEARS later, it is time once again to challenge an indifferent America and a confused American conservatism. Today's
lukewarm
consensus about America's reduced role in a post-Cold War world is wrong. Conservatives should not accede
to it; it is bad for the country and, incidentally, bad for conservatism. Conservatives will not be able to govern America over the long term if they fail to offer
a more elevated vision of America's international role.
What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the "evil empire," the United States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance.
The first objective of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance by
strengthening America's security, supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing up
for its principles around the world.
The aspiration to benevolent hegemony might strike some as either hubristic or morally suspect. But a hegemon is
nothing more or less than a leader with preponderant influence and authority over all others in its
domain. That is America's position in the world today. The leaders of Russia and China understand this. At their April summit meeting, Boris Yeltsin
and Jiang Zemin joined in denouncing "hegemonism" in the post-Cold War world. They meant this as a complaint about the United States. It should be taken
as a compliment and a guide to action.
Consider the events of just the past six months, a period that few observers would consider remarkable for its drama on the world stage. In
East Asia,
the carrier task forces of the U.S. Seventh Fleet helped deter Chinese aggression against
democratic Taiwan, and the 35,000 American troops stationed in South Korea helped deter a
possible invasion by the rulers in Pyongyang. In Europe, the United States sent 20,000 ground
troops to implement a peace agreement in the former Yugoslavia, maintained 100,000 in Western
Europe as a symbolic commitment to European stability and security, and intervened
diplomatically to prevent the escalation of a conflict between Greece and Turkey. In the Middle
East, the United States maintained the deployment of thousands of soldiers and a strong naval
presence in the Persian Gulf region to deter possible aggression by Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the
Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, and it mediated in the conflict between Israel and Syria in
Lebanon. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States completed the withdrawal of 15,000
soldiers after restoring a semblance of democratic government in Haiti and, almost without public
notice, prevented a military coup in Paraguay. In Africa, a U.S. expeditionary force rescued
Americans and others trapped in the Liberian civil conflict.
These were just the most visible American actions of the past six months, and just those of a military or diplomatic nature. During the same period, the
United States made a thousand decisions in international economic forums, both as a government and as an amalgam of large corporations and individual
entrepreneurs, that shaped the lives and fortunes of billions around the globe. America
influenced both the external and
internal behavior of other countries through the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank. Through the United Nations, it maintained sanctions on rogue states such as Libya, Iran,
and Iraq. Through aid programs, the United States tried to shore up friendly democratic regimes
in developing nations. The enormous web of the global economic system, with the United States at the
center, combined with the pervasive influence of American ideas and culture, allowed Americans
to wield influence in many other ways of which they were entirely unconscious. The simple truth of this era
was stated last year by a Serb leader trying to explain Slobodan Milosevic's decision to finally seek rapprochement with Washington. "As a pragmatist," the
Serbian politician said, "Milosevic knows that all satellites of the United States are in a better position than those
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that are not satellites."
And America's allies are in a better position than those who are not its allies. Most of the world's major
powers welcome U.S. global involvement and prefer America's benevolent hegemony to the
alternatives. Instead of having to compete for dominant global influence with many other powers, therefore, the United States finds both the
Europeans and the Japanese -- after the United States, the two most powerful forces in the world -- supportive of its world leadership role. Those who
anticipated the dissolution of these alliances once the common threat of the Soviet Union disappeared have been proved wrong. The principal concern of
America's allies these days is not that it will be too dominant but that it will withdraw.
Somehow most Americans have failed to notice that they have never had it so good. They have never lived in a world more
conducive to their fundamental interests in a liberal international order, the spread of freedom
and democratic governance, an international economic system of free-market capitalism and free
trade, and the security of Americans not only to live within their own borders but to travel and do
business safely and without encumbrance almost anywhere in the world . Americans have taken these remarkable
benefits of the post-Cold War era for granted, partly because it has all seemed so easy. Despite misguided warnings of imperial
overstretch, the United States has so far exercised its hegemony without any noticeable strain, and it
has done so despite the fact that Americans appear to be in a more insular mood than at any time since before the Second World War. The events of the last
six months have excited no particular interest among Americans and, indeed, seem to have been regarded with the same routine indifference as breathing and
eating.
And that is the problem. The most difficult thing to preserve is that which does not appear to need preserving. The dominant strategic and ideological
position the United States now enjoys is the product of foreign policies and defense strategies that are no longer being pursued. Americans have come to take
the fruits of their hegemonic power for granted. During the Cold War, the strategies of deterrence and containment worked so well in checking the ambitions
of America's adversaries that many American liberals denied that our adversaries had ambitions or even, for that matter, that America had adversaries. Today
the lack of a visible threat to U.S. vital interests or to world peace has tempted Americans to absentmindedly dismantle the material and spiritual foundations
on which their national well-being has been based. They do not notice that potential challengers are deterred before even
contemplating confrontation by their overwhelming power and influence .
The ubiquitous post-Cold War question -- where is the threat? -- is thus misconceived. In a world in which peace and American security
depend on American power and the will to use it, the main threat the United States faces now and
in the future is its own weakness. American hegemony is the only reliable defense against a
breakdown of peace and international order. The appropriate goal of American foreign policy,
therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States
needs a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence.
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American Heg is High we have specific warrants why the U.S. will remain the leader over other
countries
Jack & Suzy Welch (Sunday Times Economy and Business Finance writers) June 24 2007 [Lexis]
US economic dominance isn't a function of how long it's been leading the pack. It's about how the
US operates. We're talking mainly about freedom and stability
You have written about reasons to invest in India and China, but you haven't said whether you think those countries pose a threat to US hegemony in the
world economy. Do they? - Sahara Chhabra
We're neither economic forecasters nor political prognosticators by trade. But you don't need to be either to see that, right now ,
the US certainly
holds a robust lead in the race for hegemony. The US economy is about five times as large as
China's and nearly 15 times larger than India's, yet we have about a quarter of the population of
either of those nations. That can only give the US an advantage in providing education, healthcare
and national security - plus all the other stuff that makes a country thrive . But "right now" doesn't mean forever.
All you need is a ruler to draw the straight-line extrapolation that shows China and India, with their faster growth rates, will eventually catch up to the US in
terms of pure economic size. For China, that would occur as early as 2045, and for India, the date would be some 20 years later, which is why you so often
hear experts predicting, that by mid-century, the US will be trailing the two new world superpowers. We'd say, not so fast. Straight-line calculations about
the US, China and India assume that all three countries will enjoy smooth upward rides: no recessions, no banking breakdowns, no political crises, no
disruptive social uprisings. Unlikely? For sure! With China's massive experiment combining communism and capitalism, India's entrenched bureaucracy and
corruption, and the US's long-term entitlement obligations, it is far more probable that growth trajectories will zig and zag more than zoom. Further, straight-
line calculations do not take into account relationships with other parts of the world, like the Middle East, where tie-ups and friendships with one country or
another could very well change over the next few decades. Given that reality, then, what broad-brush scenario would you bet on for the next 50 years?
Would it be the US's 3% annual growth, or China and India at 8%? We'd take the US for a simple yet incontrovertible reason:
its system - the sum of all its parts - works. And when it breaks, it bounces back fast. Now, don't worry;
we're not going to start singing the Star Spangled Banner. We just believe US economic dominance isn't a function of how
long it has been leading the pack. It's about how the US operates as a country. We're talking
mainly about freedom and stability. US political parties disagree, often vehemently, but the
government never stops running. Generally speaking, the US justice system is fair. Healthcare,
while inconsistent in delivery, is widely available. And even though secondary education in the US
gets roundly knocked, we have without doubt the best system of higher education in the world,
turning out the world's most skilled, innovative science and engineering PhDs. The US has a final
competitive advantage that is as powerful as it is unique: its confluence of bright, hungry
entrepreneurs and flush, eager investors. Yes, China and India have ambitious people who dream
of building their own companies, and, increasingly, more are getting the chance. But neither
China nor India comes close to the US in these terms, and it will take years of venture capital
flowing in before the Chinese finally let go of their rote approach to work and embrace innovation
with true entrepreneurial spirit. China has other challenges as well. Aside from its risky social experiment, it has an economy in which
less than a quarter of its people truly participate. Its one-child policy is exacerbating the problem of its rapidly ageing population. India, meanwhile, will
continue to struggle with its overwhelming number of have-nots and its aforementioned corruption problem. Now, we're
not saying the US
system is perfect or its economy invulnerable. If you straight-line extrapolate again, you see a
budget deficit that explodes over the next 20 years. How the US handles that problem with a
combination of tax and spending policies will determine the strength of its growth engine.
Fortunately, the US's stable, highly adaptable system has conquered enough major problems - from
the Depression to the Cold War - in the past that there is more reason for optimism than despair.In the end, we'd make the case that US economic leadership
will be with us for most, if not all, of the century.It will by no means "rule," as it did at the turn of the century.But it will remain ahead until other nations
develop a total economic and social system that works as well. There's a lot more to the world's economic future than a straight-line extrapolation can tell
you.
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Soft power is high.

Fullilove, Lowy Visiting Fellow, 2008 [Michael, “Smart Power: Exaggerating America’s Decline”,
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0618_smart_power_fullilove.aspx, June 18]
the world, America's politics are, at some level, our politics as well.
Why is the world so interested? America's bulk is only part of the answer. Ultimately, it is not really the size of the U.S. economy that draws our attention. It
is not even America's blue-water navy or its new bunker-busting munitions. Rather, it
is the idea of America which continues to
fascinate: a superpower that is open, democratic, meritocratic and optimistic; a country that is the
cockpit of global culture; a polity in which all candidates for public office, whether or not they are
a Clinton, seem to come from a place called Hope. It's worth noting that the declinist canon has emerged at the nadir of the
Bush years; America's soft power account will look much healthier the instant the next president is
inaugurated.
USIA effectively increases soft power through exchanges and cultural transfers
Hughes ‘8 (John, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, The Christian
Science Monitor, June 26, Christian Science Monitor pg 9. “The key to a better U.S. image”)
In its heyday, USIA used many resources to reach out to international audiences. Seasoned public affairs officers stationed in foreign capitals, speaking the
local language, cultivated local newspaper editors, TV news directors, and other thought leaders. USIA libraries offered books and visual materials for
students to learn about America. Powerful short-wave radio broadcasts from the Voice of America found audiences in nations whose governments were less
accommodating. Sometimes a government that might balk at a politically suspect program would be amenable to a visiting American cultural or sports or
entertainment group, as with North Korea's recent acceptance of a visit by the New York Philharmonic, or as then-reclusive China's welcome to American
ping-pong players. We are not soon likely to see Iran's President Ahmadinejad sipping tea with a President McCain (or even Obama, for that matter) in the
White House. But we could one day see an American musical group performing to cheers from an audience in Tehran. A House foreign affairs
subcommittee found that "contact with America and Americans reduces anti-Americanism ... visitors, particularly students ... have more positive views
about America than nonvisitors by 10 percentage points." USIA actively promoted such visits and exchanges involving journalists, teachers, and artists. One
program targeted up-and-coming politicians likely to achieve high office. Such visitors included Anwar Sadat, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Hamid
Karzai, and Gerhard Schroeder. What a new president and Congress should do is revive the best of these past USIA programs, meld them with the newest
technology, and create a new and even better USIA. The times demand it.
HARD POWER IS STRONG -- U.S. DOMINATES EVERY INDICATOR OF MILITARY STRENGTH
Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Director of the Security Studies
Program, “Stability and Change in U.S. Grand Strategy,” Orbis, Fall, 2007
A qualitative assessment of U.S. military power relative to others is also necessary. Broadly speaking, the United States enjoys what I have called
“command of the commons.”3 The United States commands the sea, the air at altitudes above 10,000
feet, and space. If it wishes, it can drive others from these media. There is little that others can do
about it. Competition in this realm depends on areas of great U.S. superiority—military research and
development, extensive economic resources, highly skilled military professionals. It is plausible that U.S. command
of the commons has been an important enabler of globalization.
No nation is strong enough to counterbalance the US.

Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Senior Transatlantic Fellow, German Marshall Fund, 2007 [Robert, “End
of Dreams, Return of History”, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html#n10, August/September]
In any case, China and Russia cannot balance the United States without at least some help from Europe,
Japan, India, or at least some of the other advanced, democratic nations. But those powerful players
are not joining the effort. Europe has rejected the option of making itself a counterweight to
American power. This is true even among the older members of the European Union, where neither France, Germany, Italy, nor Spain proposes
such counterbalancing, despite a public opinion hostile to the Bush administration. Now that the eu has expanded to include the
nations of Central and Eastern Europe, who fear threats from the east, not from the west, the
prospect of a unified Europe counterbalancing the United States is practically nil. As for Japan
and India, the clear trend in recent years has been toward closer strategic cooperation with the
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United States.
US power guarantees allied relationships – the aff’s increase in soft power isn’t key.
If anything, the most notable balancing over the past decade has been aimed not at the American superpower but at the two large powers: China and Russia.
In Asia and the Pacific, Japan, Australia, and even South Korea and the nations of Southeast Asia
have all engaged in “hedging” against a rising China. This has led them to seek closer relations
with Washington, especially in the case of Japan and Australia. India has also drawn closer to the United States and is
clearly engaged in balancing against China. Russia’s efforts to increase its influence over what it regards as its “near abroad,” meanwhile, have produced
tensions and negative reactions in the Baltics and other parts of Eastern Europe. Because these nations are now members of the European Union, this has
also complicated eu-Russian relations. On balance, traditional allies
of the United States in East Asia and in Europe, while
their publics may be more anti-American than in the past, nevertheless pursue policies that reflect
more concern about the powerful states in their midst than about the United States . 12 This has
provided a cushion against hostile public opinion and offers a foundation on which to strengthen
American relations with these countries after the departure of Bush.
Hard power is high.

Fullilove, Lowy Visiting Fellow, 2008 [Michael, “Smart Power: Exaggerating America’s Decline”,
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0618_smart_power_fullilove.aspx, June 18]
In relation to hard power, the $14 trillion American economy dwarfs all the others. The United
States spends roughly as much on its military as the rest of the world combined. Washington has been
bloodied and diverted by its foolhardy invasion of Iraq, but it remains the only capital capable of running a truly global
foreign policy and projecting military power anywhere on earth.
Hard power is strong and increasing.

The world’s failure to balance against the superpower is the more striking because the United States, notwithstanding its difficult interventions in Iraq and
Afghanistan, continues to expand its power and military reach and shows no sign of slowing this expansion even after the 2008 elections. The
American defense budget has surpassed $500 billion per year, not including supplemental
spending totaling over $100 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan. This level of spending is sustainable ,
moreover, both economically and politically. 14 As the American military budget rises, so does the number of
overseas American military bases. Since September 11, 2001, the United States has built or
expanded bases in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia;
in Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania in Europe; and in the Philippines, Djibouti,
Oman, and Qatar. Two decades ago, hostility to the American military presence began forcing the United
States out of the Philippines and seemed to be undermining support for American bases in Japan. Today, the
Philippines is rethinking that decision, and the furor in Japan has subsided. In places like South Korea and
Germany, it is American plans to reduce the U.S. military presence that stir controversy, not what one would expect if there was a widespread fear or hatred
of overweening American power. Overall, there is no shortage of other countries willing to host U.S. forces, a good indication that much of the world
continues to tolerate and even lend support to American geopolitical primacy if only as a
protection against more worrying foes. 15
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soft power recoverable
Soft power can save the U.S. but policy’s must change
Brooks Spector (now completing work on a study of the comparative policy implications of sports, cultural and academic boycotts, and he is a visiting
senior lecturer for the International Relations Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he is teaching American foreign policy) Junly 22,
2007 [Lexis]
The liberation movements exerted their "soft power" too, pressing for cultural and sports
boycotts and economic sanctions via international organisations and coalitions of NGOs, even
though they controlled no territory.
But there is another side to soft power, which Nye cautioned about: observe the decline of the US's
international reputation in the aftermath of Iraq. Contrary to what Adekeye Adebajo suggested in
his piece on the same subject last week, I would like to propose that, unlike tanks or aircraft
carriers, soft power is not simply made with government budgets.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world are drawn to US popular culture - its films, television,
jazz, rock and R & B music, clothing styles and fast food. Despite the US's most vehement critics, women wear designer jeans beneath their chadors, every
teenager wants a pair of the latest athletic shoes, and DVDs of US movies are sold on street corners around the world, even before the films are released.
But surveys record that many young people around the world, despite their appetite for US
popular culture, now view the US as the globe's biggest threat to world peace. And so, in the final
years of the Bush administration, scholars and politicians alike ponder how to bring the US's
reputation back into congruence with the appeal of its products, once the Bush administration
passes into history in 18 months.
Just after World War Two, Ho Chi Minh - the man who would lead North Vietnam's war against the US for a generation - spoke at a Hanoi rally. Declaring
Vietnam free from French colonialism, he quoted the US's Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal ... they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights ... among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... "
With a little luck, his appreciation of the US's aspirations might have been an example of the
seductions of soft power, rather than a prelude to a generation of war between Vietnam and the
US.
Spector is visiting senior lecturer in international relations at Wits and a retired US diplomat
SECOND OPINION
says millions admire US popular culture, but some see the country itself as the greatest threat to
peace
Soft power is low, but recoverable – the plan’s increase in soft power will restore leadership.
Nye, Professor and Former Dean Of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, 2007 [Joseph, “A Conversation With Former Deputy Secretary Of
State Richard Armitage; Harvard Professor Joseph Nye Talks About Current Crises - Part 3”, Charlie Rose Show Transcripts, Lexis, 11/6] Charlie Rose - :
I hear you, and tell me if I`m wrong about this, and I read this in this report -- notwithstanding
some of the things that the
country has experienced and some of the attitudes about the country from around the world, that it
is not too late to change, and that it is too early to sort of for the United States to be granting this
century to someone else, in terms of our leadership, in terms of the role we ought to play, and the same role that we played in
the 20th century? JOSEPH NYE: Absolutely. I wrote a book in 1990 saying the United States was not in
decline, and I believe that to this day. We`ve just got to get smarter at the way we use our power.
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American leadership is low but it can rise with policy change
Barack Obama (Democratic senator from Illinois and Democratic presidential nominee) July/August 2007
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html
To recognize the number and complexity of these threats is not to give way to pessimism. Rather, it is a call to action. These
threats demand a
new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century -- a vision that draws from the past but is not
bound by outdated thinking. The Bush administration responded to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the
past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in
Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged. In
the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world
has lost trust in our purposes and our principles. After thousands of lives lost and billions of
dollars spent, many Americans may be tempted to turn inward and cede our leadership in world
affairs. But this is a mistake we must not make. America cannot meet the threats of this century
alone, and the world cannot meet them without America. We can neither retreat from the world
nor try to bully it into submission. We must lead the world, by deed and by example. Such
leadership demands that we retrieve a fundamental insight of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy --
one that is truer now than ever before: the security and well-being of each and every American
depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders. The mission of the
United States is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares
a common security and a common humanity. The American moment is not over, but it must be
seized anew. To see American power in terminal decline is to ignore America's great promise and historic purpose in the world. If elected president, I
will start renewing that promise and purpose the day I take office.
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Amending relations with Europe is possible

Rubin 2008 (James P, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affair, Foreign Affairs Jul/Aug Vol. 87, Iss. 4; pg.99 12 pgs “Building a New Atlantic
Alliance: Restoring America’s Partnership With Europe”)
The new administration's honeymoon period is likely to be short. With ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the constant threat of a terrorist attack,
there will be little time to make up for lost ground before the next crisis hits. That is why a
new partnership with Europe should be
launched right away. The path to such a partnership is straightforward, and the benefits would be
substantial. Most of the United States' leading politicians know that restoring lost respect and
admiration for the United States is crucial, and both parties' candidates for president say such an
effort is imperative. That political will must be translated into a new resolve to compromise with
the United States' European allies. Although there are risks to any diplomatic enterprise of this kind, the costs of the United States'
failing to win back the support of its allies would be far greater. Undoing the damage to the United States wrought by the
Iraq war and other Bush administration policies is a tall order. Washington may never again achieve the kind of
automatic solidarity with its European allies that it enjoyed during the Cold War, but progress is possible. And building a new
partnership across the Atlantic is the place to start.
Soft power is on an upswing – several reasons
Rubin 2008 (James P, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affair, Foreign Affairs Jul/Aug Vol. 87, Iss. 4; pg.99 12 pgs “Building a New Atlantic
Alliance: Restoring America’s Partnership With Europe”)
President Bush's second term was unquestionably better than his first on a number of pressing issues-especially Iran, the Israeli Palestinian peace process,
and North Korea. Washington's emphasis on diplomacy over military force and its shift from belligerency to persuasion
have had a salutary effect on U.S.-European relations. Key European countries have worked in
harmony with the State Department to demand a halt to Iran's uranium-enrichment program and to
secure UN security Council sanctions against Tehran. Since the Annapolis peace conference in November 2007, European
frustrations with Washington's handsoff stance in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
have largely disappeared. And thanks to the Bush administration's about-face on negotiations with North
Korea-as well as the recent glimmerings of diplomatic progress with Pyongyang European leaders no longer feel compelled to
send their own envoys to Kim Jong Il as peacemakers. Likewise, decisions by the Supreme Court and Congress to rein
in the Bush administration's extremist policy on the treatment of terrorist suspects and enemy combatants
has helped quiet the outrage throughout Europe over the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the
Abu Ghraib prison scandal. And although Europeans continue to be frustrated by what they see as Washington's selfishness on the subject of global
warming, they are now at least hopeful about the future. The combination of former Vice President Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and
the fact that all three remaining presidential contenders have recognized the need for action to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions has created a sense of optimism across the Atlantic that the United
States is finally coming around to the global consensus. Most important of all, however, has been the
change of personalities. The electoral victories of Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France have
altered the political landscape in the two major countries that parted ways with the United States over
the Iraq war. Merkel's pro-Americanism and Sarkozy's stated intention to improve France s prickly partnership with the United States stand in stark contrast
to the policies of their predecessors, Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac, who teamed up with Russian President Vladimir Putin to challenge President
Bush over the Iraq war. Both leaders have gone out of their way to avoid public spats with the Bush administration, making transatlantic relations far less
strained than they were a few years ago.
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at: iraq permanently ended soft power
IRAQ DID NOT PERMANENTLY END SOFT POWER -- CAREFUL POLICY-MAKING COULD REPAIR THE U.S. IMAGE
Bruce Jentleson, Prof of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Changing Character of War Programme, Oxford
University, and Visiting Senior Research Associate at the IISS, “America’s Global Reach after Bush,” Survival, September 2007
The Iraq imbroglio shook the US-European strategic relationship deeply, but the fundamentals remain
sound. Policymakers and other opinion leaders on both sides of the Atlantic continue to hold to a pretty
robust consensus that international peace and prosperity are best served by US-European
cooperation. Many crucial issues, not all of them unique to Bush, remain, including counter-terrorism cooperation in its many forms,
NATO's mission in Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran.20 These could strain, or reinforce, the transatlantic
security dimension, as could the World Trade Organisation Doha Round, and particularly the challenge of coordinated compromises on
agricultural policy, on the economic side.
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SP key to hegemony / at: hegemony resilient
SOFT POWER KEY TO HEGEMONY. OTHERWISE, COLLAPSE IS INEVITABLE AS A MULTITUDE OF GLOBAL PROBLEMS OVERWHELM
THE U.S.
March 2008
At first glance, the disparity between American power and that of the rest of the world looks
overwhelming. The United States is the only country with both intercontinental nuclear weapons and large, state-of-the-art air, naval and ground
forces capable of global deployment. The United States also leads the world in the information-based ‘revolution in military affairs’. With American
spending constituting nearly half of world military expenditure, it would be very difficult for other nations to organise a traditional military challenge against
the United States. In economic size, America’s roughly one-quarter share of world economic output (at
official exchange rates) is equal to the next three countries combined. In terms of soft power and cultural prominence, the United States is far and away the
In
world’s number-one film and television exporter. The country also attracts the most foreign students each year to its institutions of higher education.
terms of power resources, America is well ahead. But power measured in resources is not the same
as power measured in terms of being able to produce the outcomes one wants. Some analysts
describe this world as unipolar, others as multipolar, but both descriptions are wrong, because
each is an oversimplification of the situation in a world where no one form of power is decisive. Unipolarity is misleading because it
exaggerates the degree to which the United States is able to get the results it wants in some dimensions of world politics, while multipolarity is misleading
because it implies several roughly equal counties. Power defined in behavioural terms – the ability to influence others to produce the outcomes one wants –
always depends on context. Power
today is distributed among countries in a pattern that resembles a
complex, three-dimensional chess game. On the top board (representing the first context in which power resources may be analysed),
military power is largely unipolar. But on the middle board, economic power among states is already multipolar, with the United States, Europe and Japan
representing a majority of world economic output, and China’s dramatic growth rapidly making it the fourth major player. On this economic board, the
United States is not a hegemon, and often must bargain as an equal. The
bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational
relations that involve actors crossing borders outside of government control. This realm includes players as
diverse as bankers electronically transferring sums larger than most national budgets, terrorists transferring black-market weapons and hackers disrupting
Internet operations. It also includes ecological threats, such as pandemics and global climate change, that can do damage on a scale equal or larger to that of
major wars. (More people died in the 1918 flu pandemic, for example, than as a direct result of the First World War.) This
adds a new
dimension to questions of security and risk, and includes issues for which the military instruments
that dominate the top board are clearly insufficient. On this bottom board, power is widely dispersed, and it makes no sense to
speak of unipolarity, multipolarity or hegemony. And yet it is from this bottom board that many of the most
important security challenges arise. Those who recommend a hegemonic American foreign policy
based on traditional military power are relying on inadequate analysis, and like one-dimensional
chess players in a three-dimensional game, they will eventually lose. Because of its leading edge in
the information revolution and its past investment in traditional power resources, the United States will likely remain the
world’s single most powerful country in military, economic and soft-power terms well into the twenty-first century.
While potential coalitions to check American power could be created, countries like Russia, China
and India have differing goals and priorities , and it is unlikely that they would become firm
military allies unless the United States used its hard, coercive power in an overbearing, unilateral
manner that undermined its soft or attractive power. Because soft power is particularly important in
dealing with issues arising from the bottom chessboard of transnational relations, America’s
resources in this area are increasingly important. While polls show that American soft power has declined in the aftermath of
the invasion of Iraq, they also show that the cause of the decline is government policies, not American culture and values. This is important because policies
can change relatively quickly, while culture and values change more slowly. In the early 1970s, American policies in Vietnam led to low ratings in polls, but
the country regained much of its soft power within a decade. Still, the United States should
guard against taking its soft-power
resources for granted, as modern challenges to its leadership and security are of a different sort
than they used to be. The contemporary information revolution and its attendant brand of globalisation are transforming and shrinking the world.
At the beginning of this new century, these two forces combined to increase American power. But with time, technology will spread to other countries and
peoples, and America’s relative pre-eminence will diminish. For example, at the beginning of this century, the American twentieth of the global population
represented more than half of the world’s Internet users. Today that share has already declined. At some point in the future, the Asian cyber-community and
economy will loom larger than their American counterparts.
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SP key to hegemony
Only way to achieve goals is through soft power
Canberra Times (Australian News Paper) March 15, 2007
Analysts and pundits have often been mistaken about America's position in the world. For
example, two decades ago, the conventional wisdom was that the US was in decline. A decade
later, with the Cold War's end, the new conventional wisdom was that the world was a unipolar
American hegemony. Some neo-conservative pundits drew the conclusion that the US was so
powerful that it could decide what it thought was right, and others would have to follow.
Charles Krauthammer celebrated this view as the new unilateralism, and it heavily influenced the Bush Administration even before the attacks on September
11, 2001.
But the new unilateralism was based on a profound misunderstanding of the nature of power in
world politics. Power is the ability to get the outcomes one wants.
Whether the possession of resources will produce such outcomes depends upon the context.
For example, a large, modern tank army is a powerful resource if a war is fought in a desert, but
not if it is fought in a swamp as the US discovered in Vietnam. In the past, it was assumed that
military power dominated most issues, but in today's world, the contexts of power differ greatly .
The distribution of power in politics today is analogous to a three-dimensional chess game. On the top board military relations among states in the world
is, indeed, unipolar, and likely to remain that way for decades. But on the middle board of economic relations, the world is already multipolar, and the
US cannot obtain the outcomes it wants without the cooperation of Europe, Japan, China and
others. And, on the bottom board of transnational issues outside the control of governments,
including everything from climate change to pandemics to transnational terrorism, power is
chaotically distributed, and it makes no sense at all to claim American hegemony.
Yet it is on this bottom board that we find most of the greatest challenges today. The only way to
grapple with these problems is through cooperation with others, and that requires the soft power
of attraction as well as the hard power of coercion. There is no simple military solution that will
produce the outcomes we want.
Soft power is key to hegemony.

Nye, Professor and Former Dean Of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Armitage, deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005,
both are co-chairs of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power, 2007 [Joseph and Richard, “CSIS Reports – A Smarter, More Secure America”,
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,4156/type,1/, 11/6]
Military power is typically the bedrock of a nation’s power. It is understandable that during
a time of war we place primary emphasis on military might. But we have learned during the past five years that this is an
inadequate basis for sustaining American power over time. America’s power draws just as much
from the size of its population and the strength of its economy as from the vitality of our civic culture and the excellence of
our ideas. These other attributes of power become the more important dimensions.
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SP key to hegemony
Soft power is key to hegemony and the best way to solve global problems.
Nye, Professor and Former Dean Of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Armitage, deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005,
both are co-chairs of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power, 2007 [Joseph and Richard, “Stop Getting Mad, America. Get Smart”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502254_pf.html, 12/9]
This fearful approach has hurt the United States' ability to bring allies to its cause, but it is not too
late to change. The nation should embrace a smarter strategy that blends our "hard" and "soft"
power -- our ability to attract and persuade, as well as our ability to use economic and military might. Whether it is ending the crisis
in Pakistan, winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, deterring Iran's and North Korea's
nuclear ambitions, managing China's rise or improving the lives of those left behind by
globalization, the United States needs a broader, more balanced approach. Lest anyone think that this approach
is weak or naive, remember that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates used a major speech on Nov. 26 "to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use
'soft' power and for better integrating it with 'hard' power." We -- one Republican, one Democrat -- have devoted our lives to promoting American
preeminence as a force for good in the world. But the
United States cannot stay on top without strong and willing
allies and partners. Over the past six years, too many people have confused sharing the burden with relinquishing power. In fact, when we
let others help, we are extending U.S. influence, not diminishing it.
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SP key to coalition building
SOFT POWER KEY TO COALITION BUILDING -- NECESSARY FOR HEGEMONY AND SOLVING TERRORISM
James Steinberg, Dean of the Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs at Texas Austin, “Real Leaders Do Soft Power: Learning the Lessons of Iraq,”
Washington Quarterly, Spring, 2008
To secure international support requires that the United States take seriously the views of others in
formulating its own strategy. When the United States acts against well-intentioned counsel, its friends might
not balance against the United States by joining with its adversaries. They could and did, however, stand on the
sidelines, and Washington could do little to punish them. Those who were inclined to support the United States ran the risk
of losing the support of their own people, as with President José María Aznar of Spain and ultimately Prime Ministers Tony Blair of the United Kingdom
and John Howard of Australia. By appearing to defy important allies' advice and by short-circuiting the UN process that the
United States itself had help put in place, Washington complicated its ability to gain the support of other
countries on actions that were far more central to U.S. interests, including constraining Iran and
tackling terrorist cells globally.
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at: hegemony d/n solve post iraq
LEADERSHIP IMPACTS ARE STILL TRUE -- DESPITE IRAQ, HEGEMONY IS CRUCIAL TO GLOBAL STABILITY
Globally there is ambivalence. Some wounds from the Bush years are still raw. And the systemic
dynamics of geopolitical transition, the changing nature of security threats, the duality of globalisation and
identity-based fragmentation, and failed and failing states pose inherent global leadership difficulties for anyone. Still,
it remains true that most aspects of international peace and prosperity are most likely to be
achieved if the United States plays a significant and constructive leadership role. A US foreign policy
that re-establishes mutuality, re-demonstrates effectiveness and renews a vision that inspires a sense of a better future can best
serve the interests of the United States and the world.
LEADERSHIP STILL MATTERS POST IRAQ -- OUR IMPACTS ARE STILL TRUE
What global role should the United States play? The answer, for some of the world, is 'not much of
one, thank you very much'. Even during the Clinton years some dismay and resentment was stirring. America's
self-description as 'the indispensable nation', meant in part as a reassurance of engagement, was also taken as a boast of pre-eminence. And this was in a
much more harmonious international context than the Bush years. The breadth and depth that anti-Americanism has now reached are hard to deny. The 2006
Pew Global Attitudes poll found 70% of respondents had a less favourable view of the United States than they had five years earlier, and 85% had a less
favourable view of US foreign policy. The best the 2007 Pew poll showed was that anti-Americanism, while having deepened, had not widened further. The
trend is especially bad in the Middle East, where another poll found only 12% with favourable views and 65% with deep suspicion of American motives -
American retrenchment,
and that was in putatively more sympathetic countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.1
though, is neither in the US nor the global interest. International peace and prosperity are most
likely to be achieved if the United States plays a significant and constructive leadership role.2 This is not
about being the leader. The world is not unipolar, but nor is it a multipolar world in which the United States is just another country. This is partly a matter of
size, and partly since, even
with all the damage the Bush foreign policy has done to America's power and
position, much of the world still looks often to the United States for leadership.
HEGEMONY IMPACTS HAVE NOT CHANGED -- U.S. ROLE AFTER THE COLD WAR REMAINS CRITICAL TO GLOBAL PEACE
While the United States cannot be a provider of global security to the extent that it was during the
Cold War, it does need to be a 'security enhancer', bolstering critical security factors for allies and
global order more broadly. American military power remains crucial for strong defence and
credible deterrence against both state and non-state aggressors, reassurance for friends and allies,
and victory in those wars that may need to be fought. Diplomacy needs to be used more and military power, when necessary,
better. A key element is the role, often played by the United States, of peace broker, a third party asked
to help negotiate a resolution to a conflict. Today this role, consistent with the semi-hierarchical international structure, is much less
exclusive than was the case with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's 1970s Middle East shuttle diplomacy or the Camp David negotiations of presidents
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Other major powers also are involved, through such arrangements as the Middle East Quartet (United States, European
Union, Russia, United Nations), the Six-Party Talks (US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea) and the E3+3 on Iran (Britain, France and
Germany and the United States, Russia and China). But within each of these configurations the US role is key, particularly with
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regard to the security dimension.
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at: hard power is sufficient
NO, IT’S NOT
'The strong do what they have the power to do', Thucydides wrote of the claim made by the Athenians at the height of their power, 'and the weak accept what
they have to accept'.5 If the ancient Greek historian was right, the United States would be sitting pretty. America
spends more on its
military than the next 15 nations combined. The American economy accounts for close to 25% of
world gross domestic product. The United States is at the head of almost every important diplomatic table. America is the world's oldest democracy.
The fundamental flaw, though, in Thucydides's dictum is the gap between power and influence. The weak
don't always roll over or fall into line. And the strong are not always strong enough to achieve their objectives on their own or on their
own terms. Even a state as powerful and dominant as the United States has found out the hard way that its
crucial foreign-policy challenges are less about doing what it wants to do than getting others to do
what it wants them to do and ensuring that outcomes are what it wants them to be. States balance against,
bargain with, oppose, even 'bandwagon' against it as the dominant power. This may be because of its very preponderance of power, or in spite of it. Either
way, the
bottom line is that the possession of power does not guarantee the successful exercise of
influence.6
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combo key
Hard and Soft power are key to stability
Globe and Mail October 15, 2007 [Lexis]

On the best ways to spread democracy, Mr. Gates said, "We have a variety of tools. Not all of them are hammers." On how to promote freedom in Iran, Mr.
Gates emphasized soft power, the columnist said. "Again and again," Mr. Brooks said, "he returned to the importance of soft power."
A Bush guy endorsing soft power! On this side of the border, Lloyd Axworthy's ears were lighting up.
He senses - and may well be correct in doing so - that his much-derided foreign-affairs strategy is gaining credibility, as 9/12ers wrestle away the agenda
after years of fear-mongering wrought by the 9/11 calamity.
Mr. Axworthy made soft power a centrepiece of his diplomacy when he served as foreign minister in the late 1990s. Academic Joe Nye coined the term to
mean the use of power to co-opt, rather than to coerce: constructive engagement as an alternative to military force.
Under the panoply of soft power, Mr. Axworthy sought to advance humanitarian causes and
peace efforts by reaching out to forces in civil society and playing a lead role in campaigns to
create the International Criminal Court and to secure a land mine treaty. He helped bring terms
like "the human security agenda" and "the responsibility to protect" into the lexicon.
Lambasted for wimpiness from critics for this and his strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq,
Mr. Axworthy now looks on as his detractors dig into plates of crow on the war and as they soften
their criticism of marshmallow diplomacy.
Hard power has taken a big hit. Here is Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, talking in a
recent interview in GQ about how America's image can be restored. "We should remember what
that image was, back after World War II. It was the image of a generous country that sought not
to impose its will on other countries or even impose its values. But it showed the way." The Bush
administration is not making any radical turn toward constructive engagement. But there are
some encouraging signs and, among Democratic Party leaders (one of whom is likely to be the next
president), soft power has become a staple.
"Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan have shown," said Mr. Axworthy, who now serves as
President of the University of Winnipeg, "that relying on primarily the military to carry out your
foreign policy doesn't work." American influence has substantially diminished, added the long-
time Liberal, who supported the use of hard power in Kosovo. "How do they rebuild it? They start talking to people.
They start assisting people. They start using diplomacy and public diplomacy and all the tools of soft power that we talked about here." Former president Bill
Clinton, who could play a central role in the next administration, has had the look of a one-man soft-power dynamo, going around the globe stirring up
goodwill, publishing a book called Giving, celebrating the growing power of NGOs. Ex-president Jimmy Carter has been doing much the same.
Paul Heinbecker, who served as foreign-affairs adviser under Brian Mulroney and as United Nations ambassador from 2000 to 2003, sees Mr. Axworthy as a
trailblazer. "While we don't talk about the human security agenda much in Canada, it's becoming an accepted term internationally - a term that is used and
attributed to Canada."
Jean Chrétien releases his memoirs this week. His years may be remembered well for soft power and for staying out of Iraq. Where they left a gaping hole
was in the armed forces. Under Paul Martin and more so now under Stephen Harper, that hole is being filled as the military gains munitions and respect.
Soft power works better, as John Manley says, if you have hard power to back it up.
While big flaws in our foreign policy performance remain, the country is demonstrating some
strength in both kinds of power.
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at: hegemony bad – terrorism
NO ALTERNATIVE -- TERRORISTS WILL TRY TO STRIKE AMERICA EVEN IF HEGEMONY DECLINES
March 2008
In light of these new circumstances, how will the only superpower guide its foreign policy after the experience of the Iraq war? Will it provide global
leadership or conclude that the best course in world affairs is to remain uninvolved? Some Americans are tempted to believe
that the United
States could reduce its vulnerability if it withdrew its troops, curtailed its alliances and followed a more
isolationist foreign policy. But isolationism would not remove the vulnerability . Even if
Washington had a more inward-looking foreign policy, radical groups would resent the power of the
American economy that would still reach well beyond its shores. American corporations and citizens represent
global capitalism, which is anathema to some. Moreover, American popular culture has a global reach
regardless of what the government does. There is no escaping the influence of Hollywood, CNN and the Internet. American films and
television express freedom, individualism and change (as well as sex and violence). Generally, the global reach of American culture helps to enhance
America’s soft power – individualism and liberties are attractive to many people. Some, however, are repulsed by these American values, particularly
fundamentalists. Moreover, new problems like climate change and pandemics cross borders without the slightest regard to American culture or intentions.
Turning inward does no good if the problems follow you home.
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impact – global nuclear war
American leadership is vital to preventing global nuclear conflicts in every region of the world
Kagan, 07 - senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Robert, “End of Dreams, Return of History”, 7/19,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/end_of_dreams_return_of_histor.html)
This is a good thing, and it should continue to be a primary goal of American foreign policy to perpetuate this relatively benign international configuration of
power. The unipolar order with the United States as the predominant power is unavoidably riddled with flaws and contradictions. It inspires fears and
jealousies. The United States is not immune to error, like all other nations, and because of its size and importance in the international system those errors are
magnified and take on greater significance than the errors of less powerful nations. Compared to the ideal Kantian international order, in which all the
world's powers would be peace-loving equals, conducting themselves wisely, prudently, and in strict obeisance to international law, the
unipolar
system is both dangerous and unjust. Compared to any plausible alternative in the real world,
however, it is relatively stable and less likely to produce a major war between great powers. It is also
comparatively benevolent, from a liberal perspective, for it is more conducive to the principles of economic and political liberalism that Americans and
many others value. American
predominance does not stand in the way of progress toward a better world, therefore. It stands in the
way of regression toward a more dangerous world. The choice is not between an American-
dominated order and a world that looks like the European Union. The future international order
will be shaped by those who have the power to shape it. The leaders of a post-American world will not meet in Brussels but
in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. The return of great powers and great games If the world is marked by the persistence of unipolarity, it is
nevertheless also being shaped by the reemergence of competitive national ambitions of the kind that have shaped human affairs from time immemorial.
During the Cold War, this historical tendency of great powers to jostle with one another for status and influence as well as for wealth and power was largely
suppressed by the two superpowers and their rigid bipolar order. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not been powerful enough, and
probably could never be powerful enough, to suppress by itself the normal ambitions of nations. This does not mean the world has returned to multipolarity,
since none of the large powers is in range of competing with the superpower for global influence. Nevertheless, several large powers are now competing for
regional predominance, both with the United States and with each other. National ambition drives China's foreign policy today, and although it is tempered
by prudence and the desire to appear as unthreatening as possible to the rest of the world, the
Chinese are powerfully motivated to
return their nation to what they regard as its traditional position as the preeminent power in East
Asia. They do not share a European, postmodern view that power is passé; hence their now two-decades-long military buildup and modernization. Like
the Americans, they believe power, including military power, is a good thing to have and that it is better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more
Japan,
significant is the Chinese perception, also shared by Americans, that status and honor, and not just wealth and security, are important for a nation.
meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an aspiring postmodern power -- with its pacifist constitution and low defense spending -- now
appears embarked on a more traditional national course. Partly this is in reaction to the rising
power of China and concerns about North Korea 's nuclear weapons. But it is also driven by Japan's own national
ambition to be a leader in East Asia or at least not to play second fiddle or "little brother" to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest with
each trying to augment its own status and power and to prevent the other 's rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as well as
an economic and political component. Their competition is such that a nation like South Korea, with a long unhappy history as a pawn between the two
powers, is once again worrying both about a "greater China" and about the return of Japanese nationalism. As Aaron Friedberg commented, the East Asian
future looks more like Europe's past than its present. But it also looks like Asia's past. Russian
foreign policy, too, looks more like something
from the nineteenth century. It is being driven by a typical, and typically Russian, blend of national
resentment and ambition. A postmodern Russia simply seeking integration into the new European order, the Russia of Andrei Kozyrev,
would not be troubled by the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO, would not insist on predominant influence over its "near abroad," and would not
use its natural resources as means of gaining geopolitical leverage and enhancing Russia 's international status in an attempt to regain the lost glories of the
Soviet empire and Peter the Great. But Russia, like China and Japan, is moved by more traditional great-power considerations, including the pursuit of those
valuable if intangible national interests: honor and respect. Although Russian leaders complain about threats to their security from NATO and the United
States, the Russian sense of insecurity has more to do with resentment and national identity than with plausible external military threats. 16 Russia's
complaint today is not with this or that weapons system. It is the entire post-Cold War settlement of the 1990s that Russia resents and wants to revise. But
that does not make insecurity less a factor in Russia 's relations with the world; indeed, it makes finding compromise with the Russians all the more difficult.
One could add others to this list of great powers with traditional rather than postmodern aspirations. India
's regional ambitions are
more muted, or are focused most intently on Pakistan, but it is clearly engaged in competition
with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean and sees itself, correctly, as an emerging great power on the world scene. In the
Middle East there is Iran, which mingles religious fervor with a historical sense of superiority and leadership in its region. 17 Its nuclear program is as much
about the desire for regional hegemony as about defending Iranian territory from attack by the United States. Even the European Union, in its way, expresses
a pan-European national ambition to play a significant role in the world, and it has become the vehicle for channeling German, French, and British ambitions
in what Europeans regard as a safe supranational direction. Europeans seek honor and respect, too, but of a postmodern variety. The honor they seek is to
occupy the moral high ground in the world, to exercise moral authority, to wield political and economic influence as an antidote to militarism, to be the
keeper of the global conscience, and to be recognized and admired by others for playing this role. Islam is not a nation, but many Muslims express a kind of
religious nationalism, and the leaders of radical Islam, including al Qaeda, do seek to establish a theocratic nation or confederation of nations that would
encompass a wide swath of the Middle East and beyond. Like national movements elsewhere, Islamists have a yearning for respect, including self-respect,
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and a desire for honor. Their national identity has been molded in defiance against stronger and often oppressive outside powers, and also by memories of
ancient superiority over those same powers. China had its "century of humiliation." Islamists have more than a century of humiliation to look back on, a
humiliation of which Israel has become the living symbol, which is partly why even Muslims who are neither radical nor fundamentalist proffer their
sympathy and even their support to violent extremists who can turn the tables on the dominant liberal West, and particularly on a dominant America which
implanted and still feeds the Israeli cancer in their midst. Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across
numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia;
the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal after the Second World War, and
since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but
expanded its influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant
global power, it is also engaged
in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and
Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe,
Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath
to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as "No. 1" and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for
practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in their own image.
They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people around the
globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War
international system.
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Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for power,
influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying --
its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its influence in the
regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great
and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through
confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world
is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them
less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in
providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such
that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of
international waterways and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United States engages in a war, it is
able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance
at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict
between nations would involve struggles on the oceans as
well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War i and other major conflicts,
would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the
goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to
American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil
at the thought, but even today Europe
's stability depends on the guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that
the United States could step in to check any dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely
multipolar world, that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world war. People who
believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the
order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of
international order that they like would remain in place. But that 's not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is
shaped by configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially
since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and
Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping
it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of
enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee against major
conflict among the world's great powers. Even under the umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the
large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and
Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or
suffer the consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between Iran
and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such conflicts
may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States
weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is especially true in East Asia, where
most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the
region. That is certainly the view of most of China 's neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant
power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. In Europe, too, the
departure of the United States from the scene -- even if it remained the world's most powerful nation -- could be destabilizing. It
could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly
nations on its periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the
possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history suggests that conflicts
in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe -- if it adopted what some
call a strategy of "offshore balancing" -- this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving
Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable
circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the
Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, "offshore" role would lead to greater stability
there. The vital interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it
unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more "even-handed"
policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel 's aid
if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically
ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground. The subtraction of American power from any region would
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not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In the Middle East, competition for influence among powers
both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two centuries. The rise of Islamic
fundamentalism doesn't change this. It only adds a new and more threatening dimension to the
competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would
change. The alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is further
competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not
be followed by a diminution of other external influences. One could expect deeper involvement by
both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the more powerful states of the region, particularly Iran,
to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the
Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasn 't changed that much. An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to
"normal" or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again. The alternative to
American regional predominance in the Middle East and elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to
be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no one
should imagine that a reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide an easier path.
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COLLAPSE OF HEGEMONY RESULTS IN APOLARITY WHICH RISKS NUMEROUS SCENARIOS FOR NUCLEAR WAR
Niall Fergusen, Professor of History at New York University, Foreign Policy, July / August 2004
For more than two decades, globalization--the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital--has raised living standards throughout the
world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization--which
a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought
to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for
foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become
irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An
economic meltdown in China would
plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined
previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default
abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy--from
New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai--would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With
ease, terrorists could disrupt the
freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically
concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions,
beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East.
In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of
AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents;
who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For
all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar
world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from
global hegemony--its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier--its critics at home and abroad must not
pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old
balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be
multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great
powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.
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impact – middle east
U.S. power key to intervene to keep Iran and Israel conflict from going nuclear
The Business Times (Singapore News Paper) January 9, 2007 [Lexis]
ONE of the recommendations by the Iraq Study Group (ISG) was that the Bush administration engage Iran as part of an effort to bring stability to Iraq where
Teheran enjoys influence on leaders of the Shi'ite majority. Indeed, in the aftermath of the publication of the report by the bipartisan commission and the
nomination of new Defence Secretary Robert Gates, there was hope that President George W Bush would pursue the idea of a detente with Teheran under
which the two governments will also discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions.
But much of that optimism has evaporated. Mr
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made it clear that
they reject the idea, insisting that Washington would consider opening direct talks with Iran only
if and when the Iranians agree to end their uranium enrichment programme. There are also signs
of pressure by Saudi Arabia and Israel on the Bush administration to pursue a tougher approach
vis-a-vis Teheran.
Members of the Saudi royal family have expressed concerns that the collapse of Saddam Hussein's
regime and the coming to power of a Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad have helped shift the
balance of power in the Persian Gulf in favour of Iran. And they have demanded that the
Americans join the Arab Sunni regimes in developing a more aggressive strategy to contain
Teheran. At the same time, Israeli officials and their supporters in Washington have been
lobbying the Bush administration to use both diplomatic and military power to bring an end to
Iran's nuclear ambitions. The implication is that if the US fails in exerting pressure on Iran, the
Israelis would have no choice but to use their own military power. These lobbying efforts have played into the hands
of the remaining neo-conservative ideologues in the Bush administration who, despite the disastrous consequences of their policies in Iraq, continue to
campaign for a US policy aimed at achieving a 'regime change' in Teheran. As part of this strategy, they have urged the administration to bomb Iran's nuclear
installations.
American military power key in Persian gulf areas to prevent wars
BBC News Monitoring Middle East January 20, 2007 [Lexis]
The chairman of the Majlis Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy has said:
Notwithstanding its military power in the Persian Gulf, America is seriously vulnerable and
fragile, and if it decides to kindle a fire then it will suffer, too.
Talking to the Mehr news agency correspondent about the sensitive position of the Strait of Hormuz and the possibility of Iran exercising control over the
strait in the face of some unwise movements in the Persian Gulf by America and Britain, Ala'eddin Borujerdi said: I
do not think Americans
would make such erroneous [movements] requiring Iran to resort to such an option.
He stressed: Americans are vulnerable even not taking into account the Strait of Hormuz, and
without a doubt, they would not make such mistakes.
Referring to America's problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, the MP said: Americans know the
consequences of attacks on Iran.
Stressing the importance of the Strait of Hormuz for the economic and societal security of the
countries in the region, Borujerdi said: The security of the Persian Gulf should be maintained by
the countries in the region on the basis of bilateral or multilateral accords.
He went on: In order to justify their military presence, Americans are trying to sow the seeds of
discord among the countries in the region and Britain is playing a pivotal role.
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impact – asian stability
Hegemony solves Asian stability.

White, Prof. of Strategic Studies at Australian National University; Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute, 2008
[Hugh, “Why War in Asia Remains Thinkable”, http://www.iiss.org/conferences/asias-strategic-challenges-in-search-of-a-common-agenda/conference-
papers/fifth-session-conflict-in-asia/why-war-in-asia-remains-thinkable-prof-hugh-white/, June 2]
It can help to start by thinking about the sources of the remarkable peace that has characterised
East Asia in recent decades. As Rich Armitage said over lunch yesterday, it has been the best
thirty to thirty-five years in Asia’s long history. The foundation of that peace has been a
remarkable set of relationships between the US, China and Japan that arose at the end of the Vietnam War, and which I call the Post-Vietnam
Order. The heart of that order was a posture of double assurance provided by the US to the other
two powers. The US has simultaneously assured China about its security from Japan, and Japan
about its security from China. Obviously, but crucially, US primacy was the absolute core of this order.
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impact – terrorism
Heg is key to winning the war on terror and solving WMD terrorism.
Fakiolas, PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, currently working as a strategy and southeastern European affairs analyst
at ATEbank, and Fakiolas, PhD from IMEMO, Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences and is a special adviser on Russian and east European
affairs for a Greek business firm, 2007
[Efstathios T. and Tassos E., “Pax Americana or Multilateralism? Reflecting on the United States’ Grand Strategic Vision of Hegemony in the Wake of the
11 September Attacks”, Project Muse]
At the six-month anniversary of the attacks, in a White House address and flanked by flags of 175 nations and diplomats from more than 150 countries,
Bush urged US allies to stand behind him in the war on terror. He made it clear that he expected
governments everywhere to help him remove the “parasites” that were threatening their own
countries and international peace. The vision
of hegemony was also pronounced in his June 2002 West Point graduation speech. He noted that “America has, and
intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge — thereby making the destabilizing arms
races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.” 50 Moreover,
late in 2002 the Bush administration officially released a document titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.51 It sets out US
hegemonic pretensions most explicitly: Our Nation’s cause has always been larger than our Nation’s defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just peace
— a peace that favors liberty. We
will defend the peace against the threats from terrorists and tyrants. We
will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. And we will extend the
peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.52 Since then, the ideas and policy prescriptions
promulgated in this document have become the cornerstone of US grand strategy, the crux of which is preventive war and assertive engagement, not
deterrence and containment. The primary principle that guides its strategy is that because
terrorist groups cannot be deterred,
the United States has no option but to act unilaterally and forcefully to take preventive actions in
order to attain and consolidate security. It must strike first before hostile rogue states and their
associated terrorist organizations are able to pose a threat or resort to force by using weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) against the United States and its allies .53
Heg Good – War (General)

( ) US primacy prevents the outbreak of global hegemonic war.
Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls." Naval War
College Review, Vol. 55, Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages) Spring 2002.
Proquest
level of overall international tranquility. Ironically, those who argue that primacy is no longer important, because the danger of war
is slight, overlook the fact that the extent of American primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of
great-power war is as low as it is. For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major
powers have been intensely competitive, often punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-
out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of the twentieth century, for example, great-power wars killed over eighty million people.
Today, however, the dominant position of the United States places significant limits on the possibility
of great-power competition, for at least two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so far
ahead, other major powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position. Not only is there no
possibility of a "hegemonic war" (because there is no potential hegemon to mount a challenge), but the risk of war via
miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the United States and the other major
powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides can convince
themselves that they might be able to win. When the balance of power is heavily skewed, however, the leading
state does not need to go to war and weaker states dare not try.8 The second reason is that the continued
deployment of roughly two hundred thousand troops in Europe and in Asia provides a further
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barrier to conflict in each region. So long as U.S. troops are committed abroad, regional powers
know that launching a war is likely to lead to a confrontation with the United States . Thus, states
within these regions do not worry as much about each other, because the U.S. presence effectively
prevents regional conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe has termed the "American pacifier" is not the only barrier to
conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one. This tranquilizing effect is not lost on America's allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S.
dominance and dislike playing host to American troops, but they also do not want "Uncle Sam" to leave.9 Thus, U.S.
primacy is of benefit to
the United States, and to other countries as well, because it dampens the overall level of
international insecurity. World politics might be more interesting if the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete
with each other more actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better one. A comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for
genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than "interesting" decades like the 1930s or 1940s.
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Heg Good – Laundry List
Proquest
Thus, anyone who thinks that the United States should try to discourage the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, promote human rights, advance the cause of democracy, or pursue any other positive
political goal should recognize that the nation's ability to do so rests primarily upon its power. The
United States would accomplish far less if it were weaker, and it would discover that other states were
setting the agenda of world politics if its own power were to decline. As Harry Truman put it over fifty years ago,
"Peace must be built upon power, as well as upon good will and good deeds."17 The bottom line is clear.
Even in a world with nuclear weapons, extensive economic ties, rapid communications, an
increasingly vocal chorus of nongovernmental organizations, and other such novel features, power
still matters, and primacy is still preferable. People running for president do not declare that their main goal as commander in chief
would be to move the United States into the number-two position. They understand, as do most Americans, that being number one is a luxury they should try
very hard to keep.
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Heg Good – Peace/Stability
( ) Unipolarity promotes peace and stability – others want to follow US leadership
Wohlforth '99. William, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. International
Security, Summer 1999. "The Stability of a Unipolar World"
Second, the current unipolarity is prone to peace. The raw power advantage of the United States means
that an important source of conflict in previous systems is absent: hegemonic rivalry over
leadership of the international system. No other major power is in a position to follow any policy
that depends for its success on prevailing against the United States in a war or an extended
rivalry. None is likely to take any step that might invite the focused enmity of the United States . At
the same time, unipolarity minimizes security competition among the other great powers. As the system
leader, the United States has the means and motive to maintain key security institutions in order
to ease local security conflicts and limit expensive competition among the other major powers. For
their part, the second-tier states face incentives to bandwagon with the unipolar power as long as the expected costs of
balancing remain prohibitive.
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Heg Good – Warming
US military power and leadership is key to solve climate change.

For the purpose of this essay, national security is defined as the need to maintain the safety, prosperity, and survival of the nation-state through the use of
instruments of national power: diplomatic,
military, economic, and informational power will be the drivers of
GCC responses as they provide the needed resources ideas and technology. It will be through
invoking military and diplomatic power that resources are used and new ideas are implemented to
overcome any GCC challenges. In addition to fighting and winning the nation’s wars, the US military has a long
history of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, but the potential impacts of GCC should lead national security
policymakers to consider how environmental security will play a role in the future.
US leadership is key to solve warming.

The national security implications of GCC pose unique challenges for the United States in part
because it is best suited to lead counter-GCC efforts. The Nation has the economic and
informational power to develop and resource effective methods and the international status to
foster global cooperation and implementation. The U.S. military already has a robust capacity to
respond and could continue to develop and use it to help other nations to build that capacity. In
addition, by addressing environmental security, the United States may foster trust and cooperation
while beginning to anticipate some GCC effects.
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Heg Key to South China Sea – First Line
First, forward military presence in the pacific deters China and leads to stabilization allowing a
political solution to be brokered.
Odgaard 2K1
(Liselotte, Asst Prof, of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “Deterrence and Co-operation in the South China Sea”, Contemporary Southeast
Asia, Aug 1, lexis)
The South China Sea constitutes a first line of defence for the littoral states of Southeast Asia. As a
consequence, they cannot afford to ignore the worst-case scenario of conflict involving China. The
majority of the Southeast Asian states have embarked on a modernization of their naval
capabilities, aimed at developing a deterrent force as well as a force capable of engaging in military operations at sea. However, the
financial crisis of the late 1990s delayed some of these efforts, making the Southeast Asian states
more reliant on bilateral defence arrangements, in particular with the United States. The main countries in
the U.S. network of military co-operation agreements are Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. In substitution of the permanent base arrangements
In general, the military agreements
during the Cold War, U.S. troops have resumed joint exercises with the Philippines from 2000.
facilitate training, exercises, and interoperability, permitting the United States to be seen to be
engaged in Southeast Asia as a flexible regional balancer. The United States shares the widespread
perception within Southeast Asia that China's moves in the South China Sea indicate that it might
have expansionist intentions. Thus, the United States has maintained its strategy of forward
deployment. However, China is a power of second rank compared with the United States, and as such, is no immediate threat to the latter. Therefore,
Washington prefers that the regional states settle their disputes without its involvement as long as these do not pose a threat to U.S. interests. Although the
United States looks at China's Spratly policy as an indication of its possible bid for regional hegemony, it is not prepared to play an active part in the Spratly
dispute unless freedom of navigation through Southeast Asian waters is threatened. At the same time, the United States maintains its support for the ASEAN
position on the non-use of force concerning dispute settlement in the South China Sea. Thus, the U.S. policy on the Spratlys may be characterized as guarded
non-involvement. American reservations about direct involvement in the Spratly dispute do not imply that cordial relations between the United States and
China are on the agenda. On the contrary, since 1999, the relationship between the two powers has suffered a downturn because of Chinese opposition to the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strikes in Yugoslavia, the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and accusations of Chinese
military espionage in the United States. The Administration of George W. Bush is unlikely to call for a revival of the idea of a strategic partnership with
China. Bush describes China as a strategic competitor. [4] In line with this hardening of U.S. policy towards China, Bush has voiced strong support for a
theatre missile defence (TMD) system covering Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Technological constraints are likely to force Bush to moderate his position
on such defence plans. However, U.S. reassurances that research and development on the TMD will continue only leaves China with the option of
proceeding with military modernization to build up its deterrence capabilities. This geostrategic picture suggests that co-
operation on managing the regional balance of power is not on the cards. Instead, a structure of
deterrence appears to be in the making. Deterrence is directed at the intentions of opponents: if the
existence of deterrent forces are seen to prevent the opponent from achieving gains through aggression, the opponent will refrain from attack. Thus, the
power-projection capabilities of the various states are constrained by a mutual display of force
between the United States and the Southeast Asian states on the one hand, and China on the other.
A structure of deterrence does not operate on the basis of cooperation between opposing powers.
Nor can deterrence be equated with violence and volatility. On the contrary, the consolidation of a
structure of deterrence in the South China Sea may provide Southeast Asia with the level of
military security and reassurance necessary to allow for the development of stronger co-operative
ties with China.
Second, conflict in the SCS culminated into a global nuclear war.

Strait Times 1995
(staff, “Choose Your Own Style of Democracy”, May 21, p. proquest)
In his speech, Dr Mahathir also painted three scenarios for Asia. In the first -the worst possible scenario -Asian countries would go to war against each other,
he said. It might start with clashes between Asian countries over the Spratly Islands because of China's
insistence that the South
China Sea belonged to it along with all the islands, reefs and seabed minerals. In this scenario, the
United States would offer to help and would be welcomed by Asean, he said. The Pacific Fleet
begins to patrol the South China Sea. Clashes occur between the Chinese navy and the US Navy.
China declares war on the US and a full-scale war breaks out with both sides resorting to nuclear
weapons.
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Heg Key to South China Sea
( ) American military hegemony balanced with dialogue leads to a peace solution to the South
China Sea in the Squo.
Odgaard 2K1
(Liselotte, Asst Prof, of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “Deterrence and Co-operation in the South China Sea”, Contemporary Southeast
Asia, Aug 1, lexis)
This article has analysed the impact of the Spratly dispute on the security policies emerging between China and Southeast Asia in the South China Sea after
the Cold War. The analysis suggests three principal conclusions. First, the emergence of challenges to old security policies in the dispute suggests that it is
not merely a peripheral dispute reflecting security relations between China and Southeast Asia after the Cold War, but a central dispute in the sense that it
affects these relations. Secondly,
the fact that the challenges are founded in different security practices
between China and Southeast Asia implies that the threats towards regional security arising in the
Spratly dispute are not caused by the malevolent intentions of one state or entity. Instead, the
challenges are the result of interaction in an environment where the states have not yet established
concrete mechanisms of order. Thirdly, the efforts at managing the challenges coming to the fore
in the Spratly dispute suggest that the seeds of a new order are emerging, going beyond the
rudimentary level. Within the confines of a structure of deterrence, mechanisms of consultation
and limited co-operation are emerging as a focal point in the approaches to diplomacy and
international law of the littoral states of the South China Sea. What are the prospects that an
order combining deterrence and cooperation are consolidated as a stable security practice in the
South China Sea? From the preceding analysis, three preconditions must be fulfilled. First, the United States
must maintain its military presence in the region. Secondly, China and Southeast Asia must
compromise on their different approaches to diplomacy. Finally, China and Southeast Asia must
establish a code of conduct defining their rights and obligations in the South China Sea. If the
United States limits its role to maintaining a stable balance, the emerging structure of deterrence
can provide the Southeast Asian states with the military security necessary for them to develop a
partnership with China in the South China Sea.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 278/311
Heg Key to East Asian Stability – First Line
First, US withdrawal from Asia sparks Japan into rapid nuclear armament, attack on Taiwan and
North Korean proliferation.
Dao 2K3
(James, staff , “Why Keep US Troops?”, The New York Times, Jan. 5, p. l lexis)
Deciding if now is the time depends on how well the United States is able to project power across the Pacific, as well as on its responsibilities as the globe's
presumptive supercop. Withdrawing forces in Korea would reverberate powerfully in Tokyo, Beijing,
Taipei and beyond, raising questions in an already jittery region about Washington's willingness to maintain stability
in Asia. "In the present mood, the Japanese reaction could be quite strong," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national
security adviser to Jimmy Carter. "And under those circumstances, it's hard to say how the Chinese might respond." In the
1970's, Mr. Brzezinski took part in the last major debate over reducing American forces in Korea, when President Carter, motivated by post-Vietnam doubts
about American power, proposed withdrawing ground forces from the peninsula. He faced resistance from the South Korean government, the Pentagon and
the Central Intelligence Agency. The arguments against withdrawal then still apply today, Mr. Brzezinski says .
A secure Korea makes
Japan more confident, he contends. An American withdrawal from Korea could raise questions about
the United States' commitment to the 40,000 troops it has in Japan. And that could drive anxious
Japanese leaders into a military buildup that could include nuclear weapons, he argues. "If we did it, we
would stampede the Japanese into going nuclear," he said. Other Asian leaders would be likely to
interpret a troop withdrawal as a reduction of American power, no matter how much the United States asserts its
commitment to the region. China might take the opportunity to flex its military muscle in the Taiwan Straits
and South China Sea. North Korea could feel emboldened to continue its efforts to build nuclear
arms. "Any movement of American forces would almost certainly involve countries and
individuals taking the wrong message," said Kurt Campbell, a deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton administration.
"The main one would be this: receding American commitment, backing down in the face of irresponsible North Korean behavior. And frankly, the ultimate
beneficiary of this would be China in the long term." "Mind-sets in Asia are profoundly traditional," he said. "They calculate political will by the numbers of
soldiers, ships and airplanes that they see in the region."
Second, increasing Asian nuclearization runs the risk of wild-fire proliferation and arms-racing,
leading to miscalculation and nuclear war.
Friedburg 1994
(Aaron, Professor of International Relations at Princeton University International Security, Winter, p. 8, p. lexis)
Assuming, for the moment that an Asia with more nuclear powers would be more stable than one
with fewer, there would still be serious difficulties involved in negotiating the transition to such a
world. As in other regions, small, nascent nuclear forces will be especially vulnerable to
preemption. In Japan the prevailing “nuclear allergy” could lead first to delays in acquiring
deterrent forces and then to a desperate and dangerous scramble for nuclear weapons. In Asia,
the prospects for a peaceful transition may be further complicated by the fact that the present and
potential nuclear powers are both numerous and strategically intertwined. The nuclearization of
Korea (North, South or, whether through reunification or competitive arms programs, both together) could lead to a similar
development in Japan, which might cause China to accelerate and expand its nuclear programs,
which could then have an impact on the defense policies of Taiwan, India (and through it,
Pakistan) and Russia (which would also be affected by events in Japan and Korea). All of this would influence the behavior of the United
States. Similar shockwaves could also travel through the system in different directions (for example, from
India to China to Japan to Korea). A rapid, multifaceted expansion in nuclear capabilities could increase the
dangers of misperception, miscalculation, and war.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 279/311
Heg Key to Caspian Stability – First Line (1/2)
First, American leadership in the Caspian key to stability: boosts American hegemony, contains
Russia and is key to checking terrorism and smuggling
Kalicki 2K1
(Jan, Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, “Caspian Energy at the Cross-Roads”, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct, p.
lexis)
The countries surrounding the Caspian Sea -- Russia to the north, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to the east, Iran to the south, and
Azerbaijan to the west -- hold some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. And together with neighboring Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, and
Uzbekistan, they represent important economic, political, and strategic interests for the United States. To
advance those interests, Washington should strengthen its policy toward the Caspian by giving the highest level of support to the cooperative development of
regional energy reserves and pipelines. In particular, it should encourage the construction of multiple pipelines to ensure diverse and reliable transportation
of Caspian energy to regional and international markets.Although the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will continue to dominate the global
energy market for decades to come, oil and gas development in the Caspian basin could help diversify, secure, and stabilize world energy supplies in the
future, as resources from the North Sea have done in the past. The proven and possible energy reserves in or adjacent to the Caspian region -- including at
least 115 billion barrels of oil -- are in fact many times greater than those of the North Sea and should increase significantly with continuing exploration.
Such plentiful resources could generate huge returns for U.S. companies and their shareholders. American firms have already acquired 75 percent of
Kazakhstan's mammoth Tengiz oil field, which is now valued at more than $10 billion. Over time, as the capital generated from Caspian energy
development spreads to other sectors, U.S. firms in other industries -- from infrastructure to telecommunications to transportation and other services -- could
also benefit. In addition to these energy-related and commercial interests, the
United States has important political and
strategic stakes in the Caspian region -- including a NATO ally in Turkey, a former adversary in
Russia, a currently turbulent regime in Iran, and several fragile new states. Located at the
crossroads of western Europe, eastern Asia, and the Middle East, the Caspian serves as a trafficking area for weapons
of mass destruction, terrorists, and narcotics -- a role enhanced by the weakness of the region's
governments. With few exceptions, the fledgling Caspian republics are plagued with pervasive corruption, political repression, and the virtual
absence of the rule of law. Even if they can muster the political will to attempt reform themselves, the
attempt will fail so long as they lack the resources to build strong economic and political
institutions. And until they build close, substantive relations with the West, they will remain
vulnerable to Russia's hegemonic impulses. The cooperative development of regional energy
reserves and pipelines -- independent of their huge neighbors to the north and the south -- thus represents not only a boon
for the United States and the world at large, but also the surest way to provide for the Caspian
nations' own security and prosperity.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 280/311
Heg Key to Caspian Stability – First Line (2/2)
Second Failure to contain Russian would destabilize all of Eurasia, spark nuclear wars and put a
stranglehold on the west.
Cohen 1996
(Ariel, PhD, Heritage Foundation, “The New Great Game: Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia”, Backgrounder, no. 1065, p. lexis)
Much is at stake in Eurasia for the U.S. and its allies. Attempts to restore its empire will doom
Russia’s transition to a democracy and free-market economy. The ongoing war in Chechnya alone has cost Russia $6
billion to date (equal to Russia’s IMF and World Bank loans for 1995). Moreover, it has extracted a tremendous price from Russian society. The wars
which would be required to restore the Russian empire would prove much more costly not just for
Russia and the region, but for peace, world stability, and security. As the former Soviet arsenals
are spread throughout the NIS, these conflicts may escalate to include the use of weapons of mass
destruction. Scenarios including unauthorized missile launches are especially threatening. Moreover, if successful, a
reconstituted Russian empire would become a major destabilizing influence both in Eurasia and
throughout the world. It would endanger not only Russia’s neighbors, but also the U.S. and its
allies in Europe and the Middle East. And, of course, a neo-imperialist Russia could imperil the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf.15
Domination of the Caucasus would bring Russia closer to the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Middle East. Russian imperialists, such as radical
nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, have resurrected the old dream of obtaining a warm port on the Indian Ocean. If
Russia succeeds in
establishing its domination in the south, the threat to Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, and Afganistan will
increase. The independence of pro-Western Georgia and Azerbaijan already has been undermined by pressures from the Russian armed forces and
covert actions by the intelligence and security services, in addition to which Russian hegemony would make Western political and economic efforts to stave
off Islamic militancy more difficult. Eurasian oil resources are pivotal to economic development in the early
21st century. The supply of Middle Eastern oil would become precarious if Saudi Arabia became
unstable, or if Iran or Iraq provoked another military conflict in the area. Eurasian oil is also key to the economic
development of the southern NIS. Only with oil revenues can these countries sever their
dependence on Moscow and develop modern market economies and free societies. Moreover, if these vast oil
reserves were tapped and developed, tens of thousands of U.S. and Western jobs would be created. The U.S. should ensure free access
to these reserves for the benefit of both Western and local economies.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 281/311
Caspian Module – AT: No Military Deployments in Caspian
United States maintains substantial military presence in the Caspian region, including military aid
and training
Blank 2K3
(Stephen, MacArthur Professor of Research at the Strategic Studies Institute “A Violent Theater: Central Asia’s Militarization”, The World and I, Feb. 1, p.
lexis)
Finally, there is the American military presence in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. This presence,
ratified by bilateral agreements, extends to all of the area except for Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Washington now can render military assistance
to Armenia, and discussions to provide it with genuine assistance began several years ago. The
U.S. presence comprises air bases,
landing rights, and troops to defend those bases. Regular training and advising for the host
countries' troops also take place, whether through bilateral agreements, multilateral venues like
the Partnership for Peace exercises, or exercises with the Central Asian Battalion. U.S. commanders have
stated that these exercises and the mutual relationships forged through them were vital in winning local governments' speedy agreement to host U.S. military
bases and personnel after September 11. Those forces will remain abroad at least through 2003 to complete the mission of extirpating terrorism in
Afghanistan and securing that country for the future. Of course, they do not even begin to address in public the strategic issues connected with the possibility
of using Central Asian or Transcaucasian bases and U.S. military assets there against Iraq. WhileAmerican officials profess no
interest in long-term bases in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus, Washington's commitment to
consolidating long-term security relationships with those states has undoubtedly intensified. The
final parameters of our relationship with local regimes remain to be determined, but the United
States can be expected to upgrade and extend its overall presence. Bilateral and multilateral
venues of military training, assistance, and cooperation will continue, along with local
governments' quest for something in the way of security guarantees against threats to their
security. Uzbekistan, for example, quite openly wants a U.S. guarantee of its security. We can also expect, therefore, that the sale of U.S. weapons and
technologies will soon figure in these states' military profile, since those systems obviously go with American training and organization. Unsurprisingly, the
motives of those arms sellers will resemble those of the other states cited here, a quest for revenues and markets to keep their firms going, as well as a
political quest for influence over the security institutions and policies of the recipient states.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 282/311
Caspian Module – AT: No Risk Of Russian Hegemony
Lack of American involvement in the Caspian allows Russia’s reemergence as an imperial power.
Cohen 1996
(Ariel, PhD, Heritage Foundation, “The New Great Game: Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia”, Backgrounder, no. 1065, p. lexis)
The main threat to the equitable development of Eurasian oil is the Russian attempt to dominate the region in a de facto alliance with the radical Islamic
regime in Tehran.8 Russia benefits from instability in the Caucasus, where wars and conflicts undermine independence and economic development while
hindering the export of oil from the region’s states.9 Moscow has gone beyond words to establish its power in the
Caucasus. The Russians are setting up military bases in the region in order to gain exclusive
control over all future pipelines. Georgia now has four Russian bases and Armenia has three, while Azerbaijan is still holding out under severe pressure
from Moscow. In addition, members of the Commonwealth of Independent States are required to police their borders jointly with Russian border guards, and
thus are denied effective control over their own territory. Attempts to Reintegrate the South. The
struggle to reestablish a Russian
sphere of influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia started in early 1992. While not a full-scale
war, this struggle employs a broad spectrum of military, covert, diplomatic, and economic
measures. The southern tier of the former Soviet Union is a zone of feverish Russian activity aimed at tightening Moscow’s grip in the aftermath of the
Soviet collapse. The entire southern rim of Russia is a turbulent frontier, a highly unstable environment in which metropolitan civilian and military elites,
local players, and mid-level officers and bureaucrats drive the process of reintegration.10 With the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Boris Yeltsin
called for a re-examination of Russia’s borders to the detriment of her neighbors, especially Ukraine and Kazakhstan. For example, upon his return from a
state visit to the U.S. in September 1994, Yeltsin
reiterated Russia’s “right” to conduct “peacemaking” in the
“near abroad,” to protect Russian speakers and to exercise freedom of action in its sphere of
influence.11 These statements were echoed on numerous occasions by former Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev and other key policymakers
in Moscow. In his September 1995 Decree “On Approval of the Strategic Policy of the Russian Federation Toward CIS Member States,”12 Yeltsin outlined
plans to create a CIS military and economic union. Some observers have termed this design an informal empire “on the cheap,” a “sustainable empire” which
is less centralized than the old Soviet Union.13 The aim of such an arrangement would be to ensure Russia’s control of the oil and gas reserves in Eurasia.
Competing political interests inside Russia’s neighbors often prompt local elites to challenge the faction in power and to seek Moscow’s support. For
example, Russian oil chieftains in Kazakhstan and military commanders who are still in place in Moldova and Georgia naturally maintain close links with
Moscow. Where it lacks troops on the ground, Moscow supports the most pro-Russian faction in the conflict, such as Trans-Dniestrian ethnic Russians in
Moldova, the separatist Abkhazs in Georgia, warlords and former communist leaders in Azerbaijan, and pro-communist clans in Tajikistan. This is a classic
scenario for imperial expansion. What is common to these conflicts is that without Russian support, the pro-Moscow factions (regardless of their ethnicity)
could not have dominated their respective regions, and would be forced to seek negotiated and peaceful solutions. In each case, appeals by the legitimate
governments of the Newly Independent States to restore their territorial integrity were ignored by Moscow. Russian
political elites have
not overcome the imperialist ideology that inspired both pre-1917 and Soviet expansionism. For
today’s Moscow bureaucrats and generals, as for their predecessors in St. Petersburg prior to
1917, the turbulent southern periphery is a potential source of political fortunes, promotions, and
careers. For Russian politicians in search of a grand cause, re-establishing the empire and paying
for it with Eurasian oil revenues is a winning proposition, especially in the murky environment in
the aftermath of imperial collapse.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 283/311
Heg Key to Prevent Japanese Rearm
First, assurance of American hegemony is critical to prevent a resurgent nuclear Japan that would
spark arms races and war
The third vital interest is to ensure the survival of American allies— critical for a number of
reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that the United States has treaty obligations to two
important Asian states, Japan and South Korea. While meeting these obligations is necessary to maintain the credibility of the United States in
the international arena, it is consequential for directly substantive reasons as well. In both instances, the assurance of U.S. protection
has resulted in implicit bargains that are indispensable to the American conception of stable
international order. Thanks to American security guarantees, South Korea and Japan have both
enjoyed the luxury of eschewing nuclear weapons as guarantors of security. Should American protective
pledges be seen as weakening, the temptation on the part of both states to resurrect the nuclear
option will increase—to the consequent detriment of America’s global antiproliferation policy.
Equally significant, however, is that Japan, and possibly South Korea as well, would of necessity have to embark on a significant conventional build-up,
especially of maritime and air forces. The
resulting force posture would in practice be indistinguishable from a
longrange power-projection capability possessing offensive orientation. Even if such forces are developed
primarily for defensive purposes, they will certainly give rise to new security dilemmas regionwide that in turn
would lead to intensive arms-racing, growing suspicions, and possibly war.
.
Second, the instability from re-arms fuels wildfire proliferation, a series of wars and eventual
emergence of hostile Asian rival to the US
China in world III eschews democratization and normalization for an accelerated program of
military modernization, especially air and naval power-projection capabilities (Tellis et al., 1996). Japan might
choose to go in one of several directions in the face of China’s drive for regional superiority. Tokyo might decide to ally itself with Beijing; it might seek
U.S. support in balancing China; or it might compete with China for Asian leadership.
In the worst case—our world III—Japan
loses faith in U.S. security guarantees and chooses the latter path. Tokyo begins converting its
economic power into military strength and deploys a small nuclear arsenal to defend itself and its
interests against what it perceives as malign Chinese designs. In the rest of Asia, the second-tier powers jockey for position alongside one or another of the
competitors within a complex context of border and resource disputes. In
this world, NBC proliferation proceeds at a rapid
clip, as actors see nuclear weapons in particular as insurance policies against the dangers around
them. Power relations are fluid to the point of instability as small countries seek protectors and
larger powers recruit clients. And in this world, it seems likely that a global competitor to the
United States could emerge, perhaps as a result of an alliance of convenience between one of the Asian competitors and Russia.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 284/311
Japan Module – AT: Heg Doesn’t Solve Rearm
Collapse of US leadership in East Asia causes rapid Japanese renuclearization and a Sino-
Japanese alliance against the US.
Joseph S. Nye, Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. “U.S. Power and Strategy After Iraq.” Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations.
July/August 2003. Lexis
Could a revived Japan, a decade or two hence, become a global challenger to the United States, economically or militarily, as was predicted a decade ago? It
seems unlikely. Roughly the size of California, Japan will never have the geographical or population scale of the United States. Its record of economic
success and its popular culture provide Japan with soft power, but the nation’s ethnocentric attitudes and policies undercut that. Japan does show some
ambition to improve its status as a world power. It seeks a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and polls show that many younger
Japanese are interested in becoming a more “normal country” in terms of defense. Some
politicians have started a movement to
revise Article 9 of the country’s constitution, which restricts Japan’s forces to self-defense. If the
United States were to drop its alliance with Japan and follow the advice of those who want us to
stay “offshore” and shift our allegiance back and forth to balance China and Japan, we could
produce the sense of insecurity that might lead Japan to decide it had to develop its own nuclear
capacity. Alternatively, if Japan were to ally with China, the combined resources of the two
countries would make a potent coalition. While not impossible, such an alliance seems unlikely unless the
United States makes a serious diplomatic or military blunder. Not only have the wounds of the 193os failed to heal
completely, but China and Japan have conflicting visions of Japan’s proper place in Asia and in the world. China would want to constrain Japan, but Japan
might not want to play second fiddle. In
the highly unlikely prospect that the United States were to withdraw
from the East Asian region, Japan might join a Chinese bandwagon. But given Japanese concerns about the rise of
Chinese power, continued alliance with the United States is the most likely outcome. An allied East Asia is not a plausible candidate to be the challenger that
displaces the United States. [P. 24-25]
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 285/311
Heg Key to Stop German and Japan Rearm
( ) US hegemony is critical to preventing a German or Japanese rearmament
High levels of defense expenditures are not merely to overawe potential challengers. (In outlining possible
competitors, Krauthammer noted, "Only China grew in strength, but coming from so far behind it will be
decades before it can challenge American primacy -- and that assumes that its current growth continues unabated.") To again
quote from the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, "we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced
industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the
established political and economic order." Reassurance, the second prong of the hegemonic strategy, entails
convincing major powers not to build up their military capabilities, allowing the United States to
assume the burdens of ensuring their security instead. In other words, while outspending allies like
Germany and Japan on defense, the United States should be prepared to fight wars on behalf of
Germany and Japan, sparing them the necessity of re-arming -- for fear that these countries,
having "renationalized" their defense policies and rearmed, might become hostile to the United
States at some future date. For example, even though the threats emanating from the spillover of the Balkan conflicts affected Germany and
its neighbors far more than a geographically far-removed United States, Washington took the lead in waging the 1999 Kosovo
war -- in part to forestall the emergence of a Germany prepared to act independently. And the Persian
Gulf War was, among other things, a reassurance war on behalf of Japan -- far more dependent on Persian Gulf
oil than the United States -- confirmed by the fact that Japan paid a substantial portion of the United States’
costs in that conflict. Today, the great question is whether or not two other Asian giants -- India and China -- will eschew the development of true
blue-water navies and continue to allow the United States to take responsibility for keeping the Gulf open.
Sustained American hegemony prevents Japan from both rearming and nuclearizing
In the case of North Korea, for example, U.S. policy is motivated largely, although not solely, by the
fear that if Japan loses confidence in America’s willingness to protect it, Japan may obtain its own
nuclear deterrent and renationalize its foreign policy, emerging from the status of a semi-
sovereign U.S. protectorate to that of an independent military great power once again. But no
president can tell the American public that the United States must be willing to lose 50,000 or
more American lives in a war with North Korea for fear that Japan will get nuclear weapons to
defend itself. Therefore the public is told instead that North Korea might give nuclear weapons to non-state actors to use to destroy New York,
Washington and other American cities, or that North Korean missiles can strike targets in North America.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 286/311
Heg Key to Global Economy – First Line
growth.
WALT 2K2
(Stephen, JFKSchool of Government Professor at Harvard Univiversity Naval War College Review, Spring,
www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm)
also fosters global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world
peace, but it is more accurate to say that peace encourages interdependence-by making it easier
for states to accept the potential vulnerabilities of extensive international intercourse. Investors are more
willing to send money abroad when the danger of war is remote, and states worry less about being dependent on others when they are not concerned that
these connections might be severed. When states are relatively secure, they will also be less fixated on how the gains from cooperation are distributed. In
particular, they are less likely to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a relative disadvantage over time. By
providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U.S. primacy has created political
conditions that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment. Indeed, American primacy was a
prerequisite for the creation and gradual expansion of the European Union, which is often touted as a triumph of economic self-interest over historical
rivalries. Because the United States was there to protect the Europeans from the Soviet Union and from each other, they could safely ignore the balance of
power within Western Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The expansion of world trade has been a major
source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars upon which that system rests. The United States also played a leading
role in establishing the various institutions that regulate and manage the world economy. As a number of commentators have noted, the current era of
“globalization” is itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas Friedman puts it, “Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.”
( ) Second, A global economic collapse would escalate to full scale conflict and rapid extinction
Bearden 2K
(Thomas, “The Unnecessary Energy Crisis”, Free Republic, June 24, lexis)
History bears out that desperate
nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the
stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where
the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released.
As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal
response. Or suppose a desperate China-whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-attacks Taiwan. In
addition to
immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other
nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme
stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then
compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this
side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-
bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid
escalation to
full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States
itself. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of
the biosphere, at least for many decades.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 287/311
Heg Key to Global Economy
The tranquility caused by US primacy is key to the health of the global economy.
Proquest
also fosters global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world peace, but it is more accurate to say that
peace encourages interdependence-by making it easier for states to accept the potential
vulnerabilities of extensive international intercourse.10 Investors are more willing to send money
abroad when the danger of war is remote, and states worry less about being dependent on others
when they are not concerned that these connections might be severed. When states are relatively
secure, they will also be less fixated on how the gains from cooperation are distributed. In particular, they
are less likely to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a relative disadvantage over time.11 By
providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U.S. primacy has created political conditions
that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment. Indeed, American primacy was a prerequisite for the
creation and gradual expansion of the European Union, which is often touted as a triumph of economic self-interest over historical rivalries. Because the
United States was there to protect the Europeans from the Soviet Union and from each other, they could safely ignore the balance of power within Western
Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The
expansion of world trade has been a major
source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars upon which
that system rests.12 The United States also played a leading role in establishing the various institutions
that regulate and manage the world economy. As a number of commentators have noted, the current era of "globalization" is
itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas Friedman puts it, "Without America on duty, there will be no America Online."13
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 288/311
Heg Key to Democracy – First Line
First, leadership is critical to democratization effects.
Albright 97
(Madeleine, Secretary of State, “Building a framework for American leadership in the 21st Century - U.S. Secretary of State” Statement before the House
International Relations Committee, Washington, DC.
http://findarticles.co m/p/articles/mi_m1584/is_n2_v8/ai_19538680/pg_9)
Mr. Chairman, more than seven years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and five years since the demise of the Soviet Union. Today,
America is secure, our economy vibrant, and our ideals ascendant. Across the globe, the movement towards open
societies and open markets is wider and deeper than ever before. Democracy's triumph is neither accidental nor
irreversible; it is the result of sustained American leadership. It would not have been possible
without the power of our example, the strength of our military, or the constancy and creativity of
our diplomacy. That is the central lesson of the twentieth century -- and this lesson must continue to guide us if we are to safeguard our interests as
we enter the twenty-first. Make no mistake: the interests served by American foreign policy are not the abstract
inventions of State Department planners; they are the concrete real, ties of our daily lives. Think about
it. Would the American people be as secure if weapons of mass destruction, instead of being controlled, fell into the wrong hands? That is precisely what
would have happened if the Administration and Congress had not acted to ensure the dismantling of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, the freezing of North
Korea's, and the securing of Russia's.
Second, democratic consolidation is key to preventing nuclear war.

CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON PREVENTING DEADLY CONFLICT 1995
(staff, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s”, Oct, p. online: http://www.carnegie.org/sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html lexis)
made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear,
chemical, and
biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem,
appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for
legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this
century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to
war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic
governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass
destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer
to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they
respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of
international security and prosperity can be built.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 289/311
Heg Key Prevent War with China
( ) Absent increased influence, Chinese leadership will collide with US hegemony.
Romero 2K6,
(Julius, author – Journal Online. “US-China rivalry turning serious,” June 20th 2006, http://www.journal.com.ph/index.php?
page=news&id=4836&sid=1&urldate=2006-06-20)
WASHINGTON -- Rivalrybetween the United States and China is turning serious with the former
tightening global security control and the latter pushing bold groundwork for economic power. With
a recent survey indicating that it is statistically feasible to upstage the U.S. as a world power over the next decade and a half via economic domination, China
is seen in a fast forward roll. Fifty-five percent of 10,250 people polled worldwide saw China emerging as a formidable rival to the U.S. while 57 percent
believed American supremacy could hang on. What should disturb Washington in the survey commissioned by Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation is a
question of blunder and fallback poked at why American influence is decreasing. The 57 percent is a somersault from the 81 percent who currently see the
U.S. as a powerful international leader while the 55 percent on China as aspirant to lead the world in 2020 is a sharp increment from the 45 percent who
believe it has already attained that status. The same poll considered economic power and potential for growth as the most important quality for a global
leader -- and China has stepped up the challenge with loud action . Top Beijing officials burned the economic front by
expanding trade alliance and investment network for supremacy, a feat China already enjoyed in 1421 when Great Britain was still contemplating to colonize
the U.S. and more than 300 years before American independence. That explains how Chinese civilization greatly influenced the world, making it empirically
Its new leadership creates
possible for China to lead anew an enlarged socio-economic concordat with different political persuasions.
regional synergy and collides head-on with U.S. hegemony. That also allows China to dominate an expanding world
economy with widening imbalances. Since 1978 when Beijing launched a major economic reform program, phenomenal growth became a fixture of modern
China that created a spectacle of how communism compatibly operates with market economy. Data shows the Chinese economy closed out the first quarter
with 10.3 percent growth and 2006 GDP is projected to hit $2.23 trillion. China has contributed an average of 13 percent to the world economy, accounting
for $500 billion worth of commodities from the time it became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 290/311
Heg Key to Deter Rogue States – First Line (1/2)
First, Strong Hegemony and force projection is the only way to deal with rogue states.
HENRIKSON 1999
(Thomas, Sr. Fellow at Hoover Institute, “Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal with Rogue States”, p. online:
http://www.hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/94/94a.html //wyo-tjc)
In today's globally interconnected world, events on one side of the planet can influence actions on the other side, meaning that how
the United
States responds to a regional rogue has worldwide implications. Rogue leaders draw conclusions
from weak responses to aggression. That Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, escaped unpunished for his invasion of Kuwait no doubt
emboldened the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, in his campaign to extirpate Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina in pursuit of a greater Serbia.
Deterring security threats is a valuable mechanism to maintain peace, as witnessed by the cold war, and it may afford the only realistic option available. But
in dealing with rogue states deterrence and containment may not be enough. Before NATO intervened in the Bosnia imbroglio in 1995, to take one example,
the ethno-nationalist conflict raised the specter of a wider war, drawing in the neighboring countries of Greece, Turkey, and Russia. Political
inaction creates vacuums, which can suck in states to fill the void. Although the United States does
not want to be the world's sheriff, living in a world without law and order is not an auspicious
prospect. This said, it must be emphasized that the United States ought not intervene militarily in every conflict
or humanitarian crisis. Indeed, it should pick its interventions with great care. Offering Washington's good
offices to mediate disputes in distant corners is one thing; dispatching armed forces to far-flung deserts, jungles, or mountains is quite another. A global
doctrine setting forth all-inclusive guidelines is difficult to cast in stone. Containment, the doctrine articulated in response to Soviet global ambitions, offered
a realistic guideline for policymakers. A similar response to rogue states cannot be easily cloned for each contingency but may require the United States to
corral allies or partners into a unified policy, as circumstances dictate. But watching rogue behavior with complacency or relying on the United Nations
courts disaster in the age of weapons of mass destruction. Most incidents of civil turmoil need not engage U.S. military forces. Regrettable as the bloody
civil war in Sri Lanka is, it demands no American intervention, for the ethnic conflict between the secessionist Tamil minority and the Sinhalese majority is
largely an internal affair. Political turmoil in Cambodia is largely a domestic problem. Even the civil war in the Congo, which has drawn in small military
forces from Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, and Zimbabwe, is a Central African affair. Aside from international prodding, the simmering Congolese fighting is
better left to Africans to resolve than to outsiders. In the case of the decades-long slaughter in southern Sudan, the United States can serve a humanitarian
cause by calling international attention to Khartoum's genocide of Christian and animist peoples. These types of conflicts, however, do not endanger U.S.
strategic interests, undermine regional order, threaten global commercial relationships, or, realistically, call for direct humanitarian intervention. No weapons
of mass destruction menace surrounding peoples or allies. Thus, there is no compelling reason for U.S. military deployment. Terrorist rogue
states, in contrast, must be confronted with robust measures, or the world will go down the same
path as it did in the 1930s, when Europe and the United States allowed Nazi Germany to
propagate its ideology across half a dozen states, to rearm for a war of conquest, and to intimidate
the democracies into appeasement. Rogue states push the world toward anarchy and away from
stability. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, cited preventing global anarchy as one of the two goals of
"America's global engagement, namely, that of forging an enduring framework of global geopolitical cooperation." The other key goal is "impeding the
emergence of a power rival."(4)
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 291/311
Heg Key to Deter Rogue States – First Line (2/2)
Second, Failure to deter Rogues sparks a nuclear crises and war
Boot 2K4
(Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, “Neocons. (Think Again),” FOREIGN POLICY, January/February 2004, n. 140 p. 20 lexis)
True.The greatest danger to the United States today is the possibility that some rogue state will
develop nuclear weapons and then share them with terrorist groups. Iran and North Korea are
the two likeliest culprits. Neither would be willing to negotiate away its nuclear arsenal; no treaty would be any trustworthier than the 1994
Agreed Framework that North Korea violated. Neocons think the only way to ensure U.S. security is to topple the tyrannical regimes in Pyongyang and
Tehran. This objective does not mean, however, that neocons are agitating for preemptive war. They do not rule out force if necessary. But their preferred
solution is to use political, diplomatic, economic, and military pressure, short of actual war, to bring down these dictators--the same strategy the United
States followed with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Iranian and North Korean peoples want to be free; the United States should help them by
every means possible, while doing nothing to provide support for their oppressors. Regime
change may seem like a radical policy
but it is actually the best way to prevent a nuclear crisis that could lead to war. Endless
negotiating with these governments--the preferred strategy of self-described pragmatists and
moderates--is likely to bring about the very crisis it is meant to avert.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 292/311
Heg Key to Middle East Stability – First Line (1/2)
US leadership is key to prevent Middle Eastern stability and prevent escalation.
Frontiers of Freedom, 7/9/07 (“Democrats and Some Republicans Ignore Reality in Iraq”,
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/jbell_20070709.html)
It not only seems contradictory, it is contradictory - indeed, it
is delusional - to believe that a reliance on international
cooperation and foreign aid will soothe the ire of Iran, al Qaeda in Iraq and their ideological supporters and pave
the way for political and social progress. Absent active and engaged U.S. leadership Iraq will become a long-term
failed state and a terrorist sanctuary. With respect to Iraq, the Democrats have always preferred to plow the easy field of political
expediency instead of laboring in the difficult field of policy. Now the party of the donkey is being joined by some Republicans who are prepared to ignore
reality in favor of mythical rhetoric. On July 5, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote, “As evidence mounts that the ‘surge’ is failing to make Iraq more
secure, we cannot wait until the Administration’s September report before we change course. President Bush and the Iraqis must move now to finally accept
a measure of accountability for this war … transition the mission for our combat troops and start bringing them home from an intractable civil war.” First,
Reid and his political brethren have spent far too much time trying to make the case that what is transpiring in Iraq is a civil war. However one defines the
conflict it is a key battleground and the aftermath of the fighting will dictate what forces sink their roots deep into the Middle East’s future. Second, despite
Reid’s hyperventilating, there is no “evidence” that the surge is failing. In fact, U.S. commanders on the ground report the opposite.
On July 6, the day after Reid’s misguided missive, Army Major General Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division Center and the 3rd Army
Division said U.S. and Iraqi forces are making “significant progress” in destroying insurgent sanctuaries.
General Lynch said the “surge forces are giving us the capability we have now to take the fight to
the enemy. The enemy only responds to force and we now have that force.” Lynch explained, “We can conduct detailed kinetic
strikes, we can do cordon and searches, and we can deny the enemy sanctuaries. If those surge
forces go away that capability goes away and the Iraqi security forces aren’t ready yet to do that
(mission).” The general said if U.S. forces begin an untimely departure, “You’d find the enemy regaining
ground, reestablishing sanctuaries, building more IEDs (and) carrying those IEDs to Baghdad,
and the violence would escalate.”
Middle Eastern instability sky rockets oil prices, causing economic collapse.
Islam Online.Net, March 21, 2006 (“Frequently Asked Questions About Iraq”,
http://www.islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/topic_15.shtml)
Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy. The Middle East has about 65% of the world’s total oil
resources. With this in mind, it becomes clear that any instability in the Middle East would threaten the global oil
trade. If the global oil trade were disrupted, it would cause a shortage in supply which would cause oil prices to
skyrocket. Skyrocketing oil prices hamper global economic growth and threaten the world’s
economies. At worst, it could cause a recession in many of the world’s oil dependent countries.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 293/311
Heg Key to Middle East Stability – First Line (2/2)
( ) Economic collapse causes global nuclear war and extinction.
Bearden, 2000 (Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, 2000, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, 2000,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-Medicine/message/642) (PDAF0842)
Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As
the
collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations
as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History
bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will
have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a
starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S.
forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the
United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will
quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for
decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and
potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's
adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance
a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible.
As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed .
The resulting
great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at
least for many decades.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 294/311
Heg Key to Middle East Stability
( ) US primacy prevents Middle East instability
Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Rene Belfer Professor of International Affairs, March 22, 2002 (“American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls.
(Prominence of United States in Economic, International Affairs”, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-1555909/American-primacy-its-prospects-
and.html)
Primacy Provides Security Perhaps the most obvious reason why states seek primacy--and why the United States benefits from its current
position--is that international politics is a dangerous business. Being wealthier and stronger than other states does not guarantee that a state will survive, of
course, and it cannot insulate a state from all outside pressures. But the
strongest state is more likely to escape serious harm
than weaker ones are, and it will be better equipped to resist the pressures that arise. Because the United
States is so powerful, and because its society is so wealthy, it has ample resources to devote to whatever problems it may face in the future. At the beginning
of the Cold War, for example, its
power enabled the United States to help rebuild Europe and Japan, to assist
them in developing stable democratic orders, and to subsidize the emergence of an open
international economic order. (7) The United States was also able to deploy powerful armed forces in
Europe and Asia as effective deterrents to Soviet expansion. When the strategic importance of the
Persian Gulf increased in the late 1970s, the United States created its Rapid Deployment Force in
order to deter threats to the West's oil supplies; in 1990-91 it used these capabilities to liberate Kuwait. Also, when the
United States was attacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in September 2001, it had the
wherewithal to oust the network's Taliban hosts and to compel broad international support for its
campaign to eradicate Al-Qaeda itself. It would have been much harder to do any of these things if
the United States had been weaker.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 295/311
Heg Key to Iraq Stability (1/2)
( ) US hegemony in Iraq prevents Iraqi collapse
Washington Post, April 30, 2007 (“IF Leave, Regional War and ‘Shiastan’”,
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/leon_krauze/2007/04/keep_foot_on_or_chaos_and_shia.html)
For a while now, there have been only two possible outcomes in Iraq: the bad and the worse. Which is the latter and how to avoid it? The worst
outcome for Iraq would be a full-scale civil war that ends in the country’s partition. There is little question
that, once the American forces leave, the country will become a far bloodier and more lawless
battleground than it is now. Once that happens, I see no reason why Moqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite strongmen
would seek any kind of compromise with Sunni leaders in a pluralist government. Outright Shia domination
of Iraq should never be allowed. Given the recent history of both the Middle East and Islam, secularity is a precious asset. In fact, Saddam’s pragmatic view
of religion was perhaps the man’s only virtue. It wasn’t an insignificant attribute, especially given the aggressive expansionist theocracy next door. America
(and the world) should make sure that Iraq remains a diverse multicultural federation rather than become three isolated and weak enclaves. So the bad but
not the worst is a state more like India than the former Yugoslavia. But is this even possible? Can this be achieved without a violent, revolutionary period?
The stakes are too high to wait and find out. The consequences of an enormous “Shiastan” right in the heart of the Middle East could prove to be disastrous.
Saudi Arabia, Israel and Syria would stretch out their own claws soon enough. Regional conflict
would be, literally, around the corner.
( ) Iraqi instablity spills over and causes terrorism.

The National Interest, May-June 2007 (“Keeping the Lid On”, Lexisnexis)
THE COLLAPSE of Iraq into all-out civil war would mean more than just a humanitarian
tragedy that could easily claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and produce millions of
refugees. Such a conflict is unlikely to contain itself. In other similar cases of all-out civil war the resulting spillover has
fostered terrorism, created refugee flows that can destabilize the entire neighborhood, radicalized
the populations of surrounding states and even sparked civil wars in other, neighboring states or
transformed domestic strife into regional war. Terrorists frequently find a home in states in civil
war, as Al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan. However, civil wars just as often breed new terrorist groups-Hizballah, the
Palestine Liberation Organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat of Algeria, and
the Tamil Tigers were all born of civil wars. Many such groups start by focusing on local targets
but then shift to international attacks-starting with those they believe are aiding their enemies in
the civil war.
( ) Terrorism risks extinction

Kirkus Reviews, 1999 (Book Review on “The New Terrorism: Fanatiscism and the Arms of Mass Destruction”, http://www.amazon.com/New-
Terrorism-Fanaticism-Arms-Destruction/dp/product-description/0195118162)
Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a ``nuisance'' to ``one of the gravest dangers facing
mankind.'' First terroristsbe they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible permutationsseem
to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for
their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are willing to do, who and
how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of
mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or
biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless
fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted
society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world
scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in
the future may threaten the very foundations of modern civilizations.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 296/311
Heg Key to Iraq Stability (2/2)
( ) US presence in Iraq is key to stability.
The Straits Times, June 3, 2006 (“Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s Address at the Asia Security Conference”, Singapore Press Holdings
Limited, Lexisnexis)
The security situation in Iraq has not improved. After the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February, fears grew that the
country is sliding into civil war. The recent
appointment of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his new government after months of
deadlock has brought fresh hope of stabilising the situation, but enforcing basic order and security
remains a difficult challenge. If the United States leaves Iraq under conditions that can be
portrayed as defeat, its enemies everywhere will be emboldened, and we will all be at greater risk.
There is no choice but for the US and its coalition partners to stay the course and complete the work
in Iraq.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 297/311
Heg Key to Asian Arms Control
( ) US heg is key to nuclear arms control in Asia.
Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security, defense, and Asian strategy,
April and May 2000 (“Smoke, Fire, and What to do in Asia”, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3492121.html)
I believe that the commitment to U.S. regional preeminence remains the best solution to our multiple
national security interests in Asia. The relative merits of pursuing the maintenance of preeminence as a
grand strategy — as opposed to settling for a local multipolar balance of power or slowly
disengaging from the region — can be best demonstrated by testing the consequences of each of
these alternatives against the multiple goals pursued by the United States in Asia . The United States
has, arguably, several critical interests in Asia. The list here is in decreasing order of importance: The first critical interest consists of
preventing, deterring, and reducing the threat of attack on the continental United States and its
extended territorial possessions. In the simplest sense, this interest has two components. The first and most important
involves preserving the continental United States (conus) and its possessions from threats posed by
weapons of mass destruction in Asia. These weapons are important because of the extensive damage they can inflict in relatively
compressed time frames. Equally important, as Bracken points out, are the challenges posed by sophisticated
delivery systems, like ballistic and cruise missiles and advanced attack aircraft, currently deployed
by the wmd-capable states as well as prospective delivery systems that may be acquired by other
Asian states over time. This includes both spin-off technologies emerging from space and commercial aviation programs as well as other kinds
of non-traditional, covert delivery systems. The other component of this national objective involves protecting the
conus and its possessions from conventional attack. Because of the vast distances involved in the Asia-Pacific region, the
critical variables here are battlespace denial and power-projection capabilities — both sea- and air-based — that may be acquired by one or more Asian
states. Given the changes in technology, these capabilities must be expanded to include other, newer, approaches to conventional war-fighting like strategic
information warfare and the technologies and operational practices associated with the "revolution in military affairs." In all instances, U.S.
interests
suggest the following preference ordering: preventing potential adversaries from acquiring such
capabilities; if prevention is impossible, deterring their use becomes the next logical objective;
and, if even deterrence is unsuccessful, attenuating their worst effects through either extended
counterforce options or effective defensive measures finally becomes necessary.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 298/311
Heg Key to Chinese Containment – First Line
First, strong American capabilities and the containment of China is critical to prevent aggression
and war over Taiwan.
Third, the United States should seek to strengthen its own relative capabilities and those of its
friends in East Asia to deter possible Chinese aggression and deal effectively with a more
powerful, potentially hostile China. China's military leaders are considering the possibility of a
conflict with the United States. They recognize the overall superiority of the U.S. military but
believe there are weaknesses that could be exploited while preventing the United States from
bringing its full power to bear in case of a conflict over Taiwan. According to the Chinese, U.S. weaknesses include
vulnerability of U.S. bases to missile attacks, heavy U.S. reliance on space, America's need to rapidly reinforce the region in times of conflict, susceptibility
of U.S. cities to being held hostage, and America's sensitivity to casualties. According to the emerging Chinese doctrine, the local balance of power in the
region will be decisive because in this new era wars are short and intense. In a possible Taiwan conflict China would seek to create a fait accompli, forcing
the United States to risk major escalation and high levels of violence to reinstate the status quo ante. China might gamble that these risks would constrain the
U.S. response. Such an approach by China would be extremely risky and could lead to a major war. Dealing
with such possible
challenges from China both in the near and long term requires many steps. Burden-sharing and
enhanced ties with states in East and Southeast Asia will be important. New formal alliance
relationships--which would be the central element of a containment strategy--are neither
necessary nor practical at this time, but it would be prudent to take some preparatory steps to
facilitate the formation of a new alliance or the establishment of new military bases should that
become necessary. They would signal to China that any attempt on their part to seek regional hegemony would be costly. The steps we should
take now in the region must include enhancing military-to-military relations between Japan and South Korea, encouraging increased political- military
cooperation among the ASEAN states and resolving overlapping claims to the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea; fostering a Japanese-Russian
rapprochement, including a settlement of the dispute over the "northern territories;" and enhancing military-to-military cooperation between the United
States and the ASEAN states. These steps are important in themselves for deterrence and regional stability but they can also assist in shifting to a much
tougher policy toward China should that become necessary. Because
of the potential for conflict between the United
States and China over issues such as Taiwan, the U.S. military posture in general should take this
possibility into account. Measures should be taken to correct the Chinese belief that they can confront the world with a fait accompli in
Taiwan. The United States needs expanded joint exercises with states in the region. Ensuring access to key facilities in countries such as the Philippines, pre-
positioning stocks in the region, and increasing Taiwan's ability to defend itself would also be prudent. The
large distances of the East
Asian region also suggest that a future U.S. force-mix must emphasize longer-range systems and
stand-off weapons. The United States must develop increased capabilities to protect friendly
countries and U.S. forces in the region against possible missile attacks.
Second, failure to deter an invasion sparks a global nuclear war.

Chicago Tribune 1996
(staff, “China Prepares New Show of Strength”, Feb. 6, p. lexis)
While a peaceful solution remains a priority, both the politburo and the Peoples Liberation Army
have pledged to use force if necessary to regain the island on which the Nationalists settled after losing the civil war to
Mao Tse-tung in 1949.A PLA analysis--leaked to Western media--suggests that in the event of war with Taiwan, the U.S. would not intervene
because U.S. commercial interests in China would be damaged and any intervention could lead to a new Sino-Russian alliance.The document, circulated
among officers, concludes
that even if the U.S. intervened, Washington could only retard--but not
reverse--the defeat of Taiwan, and a Sino-U.S. conflict might lead to a global nuclear holocaust.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 299/311
Heg Key to Chinese Containment
American military presence is key to deter Chinese aggression.
Ross 2K2
(Robert, Professor of Political Science, Boston College, “Navigating the Taiwan Strait”, International Security, Fall, lexis)
The United States can continue to deter China from initiating war in the Taiwan Strait for many
decades. In the absence of a Taiwan declaration of independence, China prefers to maintain the status quo and an international environment conducive
to economic and military modernization. Moreover, Chinese analysts understand that China is vastly inferior to the
United States in nearly all facets of international power and that it will remain so for a long time.
One analyst estimated that Chinese military technology is fifteen to twenty years behind that of
the United States. n90 More important, Chinese analyses of "comprehensive national power," which takes into account the military, technological,
educational, and economic bases of national strength, estimated in 2000 that China would catch up to the United States in 2043 if Chinese comprehensive
national power grew at a rate of 6 percent per year and U.S. comprehensive national power grew at 3 percent per year.n91
During the Cold War, the most pessimistic U.S. civilian and government analysts insisted that only if the United States possessed war-winning capabilities
and/or escalation dominance could it deter the Soviet use of force in Europe. n92 In
the twenty-first century, the United States
possesses escalation dominance in the Taiwan Strait. At every level of escalation, from
conventional to nuclear warfare, the United States can engage and defeat Chinese forces.
Moreover, it can do so with minimal casualties and rapid deployment, undermining any Chinese
confidence in the utility of asymmetric and fait accompli strategies. Chinese military and civilian
leaders have acknowledged both U.S. resolve and its superior war-winning capabilities.
Confidence in its deterrence capabilities enables the United States to protect Taiwan while
developing cooperative relations with China. This was post-Cold War U.S. policy toward China in both the George H.W. Bush and
Clinton administrations. Maintaining this policy is both possible and necessary. On the one hand, the United States should continue to develop its
capabilities in long-range precision-guided weaponry and in its command-and-control facilities. It should also continue to develop and forward deploy not
only aircraft carriers but also Trident SSGNs and UAVs, platforms that enable the United States to deliver precision-guided weaponry and carry out
surveillance with minimal risk of casualties, thus further reducing PRC expectations that asymmetric capabilities or a fait accompli strategy could deter U.S.
defense of Taiwan.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 300/311
Heg Key to Space Dominance – First Line
First, it is crucial that the United States maintain leadership in Space to deter conflicts and
prevent other count
Dolman, Everett C. "Strategy Lost: Taking the Middle Road to Nowhere." High Frontier Journal. Vol. 3, No. 1 Winter, 2K5
Common to all hedging strategy proponents is the fear that placing weapons in space will spur a new arms race. Unfortunately, such a strategy increases the
likelihood of a space arms race if and when space weapons are ultimately deployed, as the only plausible response by the US would be to at least match the
opposing capabilities. This dithering approach blatantly ignores the current real world situation. At present, the US has no peer competitors in space. For
the US to refrain from weaponizing until another state proves the capacity to challenge it allows
for potential enemies to catch up to American capabilities. At a minimum, there is no risk for
potential peer competitors to try. On the other hand, should the US reject the hedging strategy and unilaterally
deploy weapons in space, other states may rationally decide not to compete. The cost of entry will
simply be too great; the probability of failure palpable. In other words, the fear of an arms race in
space, the most powerful argument in favor of the hedging plan, is most likely if the US follows its
counsel.
Second, this leads to global nuclear war.

Hitchens 2K3
(Theresa, Editor of Defense News, Director of Center for Defense Information, Former director of British American Security Information Council -think
tank based in Washington and London. October 2. http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1745)
The negative
consequences of a space arms race are hard to exaggerate, given the inherent offense-
dominant nature of space warfare. Space weapons, like anything else on orbit, are inherently vulnerable and, therefore, best exploited as
first-strike weapons. Thus, as Michael Krepon and Chris Clary argue in their monograph, “Space Assurance or Space Dominance,” the hair-trigger postures
of the nuclear competition between the United States and Russia during the Cold War would be elevated to the “ultimate high ground” of space.
Furthermore, any conflict involving ASAT use is likely to highly escalatory, in particular among nuclear weapons states, as the
objective of an attacker would be to eliminate the other side’s capabilities to respond either in
kind or on the ground by taking out satellites providing surveillance, communications and
targeting. Indeed, U.S. Air Force officials participating in space wargames have discovered that war in space rapidly deteriorates into all-out nuclear
war, precisely because it quickly becomes impossible to know if the other side has gone nuclear. Aviation Week and Space Technology quoted one gamer as
saying simply: “[If]
I don’t know what’s going on, I have no choice but to hit everything, using
everything I have.” This should not be surprising to anyone – the United States and the Soviet Union found this
out very early in the Cold War, and thus took measures to ensure transparency, such as placing
emphasis on early warning radars, developing the “hotline” and pledging to non-interference with
national technical means of verification under arms control treaties.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 301/311
U.S. Space Dominance Key to Prevent Conflicts
( ) US Space leadership is essential to deter conflicts and satisfy regional interests
Klotz, Frank G. , Vice Commander, Air Force Space Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colonel, Council on Foreign Relations, “Guiding U.S. Goal
should be to Preserve its Leadership in Outer Space” Space, Commerce, and National Security January 19 99
In this environment of mounting political and economic pressures, a principal objective of the
United States should be to maintain a leadership role in all aspects of human activity in space. One
way or another, rules of the road for national activities in space will evolve to account for the
phenomenal growth in its importance for both the military and commerce. For much of the space
age, the United States and the Soviet Union wrote these rules-first by actual practice, and then by
leading the process of codifying them into treaties and international agreements. Other nations
have, as has been shown, achieved modest success in influencing international practice and law on
space, particularly in the allocation of geosynchronous orbital slots and radio frequencies. But the
failure of the Moon treaty and other efforts to circumscribe the activities of the major space
powers shows the importance of a major and continuous U.S. presence in space to writing the
rules in such a way as to promote (or at least not hinder) American interests there. Thus, the most
important order of business for the United States in the years immediately ahead is to maintain
and build upon its status as the leading spacefaring nation. This not a new aspiration. As John Logsdon has pointed out,
"the quest for leadership has been a central feature of U.S. space policy from the very beginning." However, the objective is changing. During the Cold War,
leadership in space was perceived by senior American leaders to be an important element in a multifaceted competition with the Soviet Union for the hearts
and minds of the rest of the world. Demonstrated accomplishment in space was thought to confer prestige that translated into international influence writ
large. Today, leadership in space assumes a different, more focused dimension as the best means of influencing the evolution of the international regime in
space in response to clearly emerging political, economic, and military challenges.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 302/311
Leadership Key to Solve Global Problems (1/2)
( ) US primacy grants security to the country and its dominance—if it were weakened, challenges
against the US would be likely.
Proquest
Perhaps the most obvious reason why states seek primary-and why the United States benefits from its current position-is that international politics is a
dangerous business. Being wealthier and stronger than other states does not guarantee that a state will survive, of course, and it cannot insulate a state from
all outside pressures. But the
strongest state is more likely to escape serious harm than weaker ones are, and
it will be better equipped to resist the pressures that arise. Because the United States is so powerful,
and because its society is so wealthy, it has ample resources devote to whatever problems it may
face in the future. At the beginning of the Cold War, for example, its power enabled the United States to help
rebuild Europe and Japan, to assist them in developing stable democratic orders, and to subsidize
the emergence of an open international economic order.7 The United States was also able to deploy
powerful armed forces in Europe and Asia as effective deterrents to Soviet expansion. When the strategic
importance of the Persian Gulf increased in the late 1970s, the United States created its Rapid Deployment Force in order to deter threats to the West's oil
supplies; in 1990-91 it used these capabilities to liberate Kuwait. Also, when
the United States was attacked by the Al-Qaeda terrorist
network in September 2001, it had the wherewithal to oust the network's Taliban hosts and to compel
broad international support for its campaign to eradicate Al-Qaeda itself. It would have been
much harder to do any of these things if the United States had been weaker. Today, U.S. primacy
helps deter potential challenges to American interests in virtually every part of the world. Few
countries or nonstate groups want to invite the "focused enmity" of the United States (to use William
Wohlforth's apt phrase), and countries and groups that have done so (such as Libya, Iraq, Serbia, or the Taliban) have paid a
considerable price. As discussed below, U.S. dominance does provoke opposition in a number of places,
but anti-American elements are forced to rely on covert or indirect strategies (such as terrorist bombings)
that do not seriously threaten America's dominant position. Were American power to decline
challenges would be more likely. This does not mean that the United States can act with impunity, nor does it guarantee that the United
States will achieve every one of its major foreign policy objectives. It does mean that the United States has a margin of security that weaker states do not
possess. This margin of safety is a luxury, perhaps, but it is also a luxury that few Americans would want to live without.
( ) US Leadership is critical to solving global problems

Kagan 98
(Robert, Senior Associate at Carnegie, Foreign Policy Magazine, Summer, the Benevolent Empire,
www.foreignpolicy.com/Ning/archive/archive/111/empire.pdf)
Temporarily interrupting their steady grumbling about American arrogance and hegemonic pretensions, Asian,
European, and Middle
Eastern editorial pages paused to contemplate the consequences of a crippled American
presidency. The liberal German newspaper Frankfurter Run& schau, which a few months earlier had been accusing Americans of arrogant zealotry
and a "camouflaged neocolonialism," suddenly fretted that the "problems in the Middle East, in the Balkans or in Asia"
will not be solved "without U.S. assistance and a president who enjoys respect" and demanded
that, in the interests of the entire world, the president's accusers quickly produce the goods or shut
up. In Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post warned that the "humbling" of an American president had
"implications of great gravity" for international affairs; in Saudi Arabia, the Arab News declared that this was "not the
time that America or the world needs an inward-looking or wounded president. It needs one unencumbered by private concerns who can make tough
decisions."
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 303/311
Leadership Key to Solve Global Problems (2/2)
( ) Leadership is crucial to solving civil conflicts and global problems.
Serfaty 03 ("Studies Renewing the Transatlantic Partnership" Simon Serfaty director of European Studies CSIS May
http://www.nato.int/docu/conf/2003/030718_bxl/serfati-transatlpart.pdf)
Thus, after three global wars and a near infinite number of regional and civil conflicts fought
increasingly at the expense of civil populations, the twentieth century has given birth to a new
generation of “wretched” people who inhabit the territorial corpses left behind by these wars—wars
of territorial expansion, wars of national liberation, and even wars of ideological redemption. In most cases, these were wars that the
United States did not fight— and in many cases, wars that long predate the American Republic—
but they are nonetheless wars that U.S. power must now end. The war in Iraq is one of them:
coming with the war in Afghanistan, it is not the only such war, nor alas, is it likely to be the last
among them, notwithstanding the truly awesome and intimidating ways in which the war was
waged and won. For there will be more such wars—as if August 1914 had started only with a bilateral clash in and over Serbia
to settle the unresolved territorial issues inherited from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the unraveling of the Habsburg Empire, while escaping the
world war that we now know erupted in the absence of their resolution.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 304/311
Unipolarity Key to Solve War (1/3)
Unipolarity prevents power balancing wars
Unipolarity favors the absence of war among the great powers and comparatively low levels of
competition for prestige or security for two reasons: the leading state's power advantage removes
the problem of hegemonic rivalry from world politics, and it reduces the salience and stakes of
balance-of-power politics among the major states. This argument is based on two well-known realist theories: hegemonic
theory and balance-of-power theory. Each is controversial, and the relationship between the two is complex.35 For the purposes of this analysis, however,
the key point is that both theories predict that a unipolar system will be peaceful.
Unipolarity deters nations from attempting to balance power through wars

Until the underlying distribution of power changes, second-tier states face structural incentives
similar to those of lesser states in a region dominated by one power, such as North America. The low
incidence of wars in those systems is consistent with the expectations of standard, balance-of-
power thinking. Otto von Bismarck earned a reputation for strategic genius by creating and managing a complex alliance system that staved off war
while working disproportionately to his advantage in a multipolar setting. It does not take a Bismarck to run a Bismarckian alliance system under
unipolarity. No
one credits the United States with strategic genius for managing security dilemmas
among American states. Such an alliance system is a structurally favored and hence less
remarkable and more durable outcome in a unipolar system.
Unipolarity, by design, avoids conflict

To appreciate the sources of conflict that unipolarity avoids, consider the two periods already discussed in which leading states
scored very highly on aggregate measures of power: the Pax Britannica and the Cold War. Because those concentrations of power were
not unipolar, both periods witnessed security competition and hegemonic rivalry . The Crimean War is a case
in point. The war unfolded in a system in which two states shared leadership and three states were
plausibly capable of bidding for hegemony.41 Partly as a result, neither the statesmen of the time nor historians over the last
century and a half have been able to settle the debate over the origins of the conflict. The problem is that even those who agree that the war arose from a
threat to the European balance of power cannot agree on whether the threat emanated from France, Russia, or Britain. Determining
which state
really did threaten the equilibrium-or indeed whether any of them did-is less important than the
fact that the power gap among them was small enough to make all three threats seem plausible at
the time and in retrospect. No such uncertainty-and hence no such conflict-is remotely possible in
a unipolar system.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 305/311
( ) Unipolarity solves the roots of the worlds issues, security and competition
Third, we should not exaggerate the costs. The clearer the underlying distribution of power is, the less likely it is
that states will need to test it in arms races or crises. Because the current concentration of power
in the United States is unprecedentedly clear and comprehensive, states are likely to share the
expectation that counterbalancing would be a costly and probably doomed venture. As a result, they face
incentives to keep their military budgets under control until they observe fundamental changes in
the capability of the United States to fulfill its role. The whole system can thus be run at
comparatively low costs to both the sole pole and the other major powers. Unipolarity can be made
to seem expensive and dangerous if it is equated with a global empire demanding U.S. involvement
in all issues everywhere. In reality, unipolarity is a distribution of capabilities among the world's great
powers. It does not solve all the world's problems. Rather, it minimizes two major problems-
security and prestige competition-that confronted the great powers of the past. Maintaining unipolarity does not
require limitless commitments. It involves managing the central security regimes in Europe and Asia, and
maintaining the expectation on the part of other states that any geopolitical challenge to the United States is futile. As long as that is the expectation,
states will likely refrain from trying, and the system can be maintained at little extra cost.
( ) Under a unipolar system, hegemonic counterbalancing and security concerns do not turn into
conflicts
Both hegemonic rivalry and security competition among great powers are unlikely under
unipolarity. Because the current leading state is by far the world's most formidable military
power, the chances of leadership conflict are more remote than at any time over the last two
centuries. Unlike past international systems, efforts by any second-tier state to enhance its relative
position can be managed in a unipolar system without raising the specter of a power transition
and a struggle for primacy. And because the major powers face incentives to shape their policies with a
view toward the power and preferences of the system leader, the likelihood of security competition
among them is lower than in previous systems.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 306/311
Unipolarity is critical to solving regional conflicts and will prevent global counterbalancing
Second, the current unipolarity is prone to peace. The raw power advantage of the United States
means that an important source of conflict in previous systems is absent: hegemonic rivalry over
leadership of the international system. No other major power is in a position to follow any policy
that depends for its success on prevailing against the United States in a war or ail extended rivalry .
None is likely to take ally step that might invite the focused enmity of the United States. At the
same time, unipolarity minimizes security competition among the other great powers. As the
system leader, the United States has the means and motive to maintain key security institutions in
order to ease local security conflicts and limit expensive competition among the other major
powers. For their part, the second-tier states face incentives to bandwagon with the unipolar power as long as the expected costs of balancing remain
prohibitive.
Unipolarity is both stable and effective at conflict prevention and resolution

The scholarly conventional wisdom holds that unipolarity is dynamically unstable and that any
slight overstep by Washington will spark a dangerous backlash.12 I find the opposite to be true:
unipolarity is durable and peaceful, and the chief threat is U.S. failure to do enough.13 Possessing
an undisputed preponderance of power, the United States is freer than most states to disregard
the international system and its incentives. But because the system is built around U.S. power, it
creates demands for American engagement. The more efficiently Washington responds to these
incentives and provides order, the more long-lived and peaceful the system. To be sure, policy choices are likely
to affect the differential growth of power only at the margins. But given that unipolarity is safer and cheaper than
bipolarity or multipolarity, it pays to invest in its prolongation. In short, the intellectual thrust (if not the details) of the
Pentagon's 1992 draft defense guidance plan was right.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 307/311
Heg K Asian Stability, Democracy
Hegemony is key to Asian stability and democracy.

Buruma 08 (Henry Luce professor at Bard College. After America) online:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/04/21/080421crat_atlarge_buruma?currentPage=2
The one nation whose presence still guarantees a measure of stability in Asia is the very one whose
influence commentators are so quick to write off: the United States of America. The Chinese may not like the
fact that the United States has so many bases in Japan and South Korea, but they still prefer it to a nuclear-armed Japan. Cases of American G.I.s molesting
local girls enrage the populations of South Korea and Japan, but they
still feel safer with a U.S. military presence than
without it. Aside from the disaster in Vietnam, the United States has been a reasonably good Asian cop. But how long
can it continue to play that role? The longer this postwar arrangement goes on, the longer it will take the East Asian powers to manage their own security
responsibly. The same can be said of the Europeans, as became painfully clear in the Balkan conflicts.
Kagan is right when he says that "the
world's democracies need to show solidarity for one another, and they
need to support those trying to pry open a democratic space where it has been closing." But this
task would be made a lot easier if the United States were to depart from what Kagan believes to be its
national destiny of "expansive, even aggressive, global policy," and amplify its influence by fully
engaging with international institutions, instead of seeing them as threats to its national
sovereignty. Democracy would be a far more persuasive model than Chinese or Russian autocracy
if some of its main proponents were less eager to believe that the open society comes out of the
barrel of a gun.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 308/311
AT: Heg  China War – Cooperation (1/2)
US and China will cooperate.

Hachigian 08 (Senior Vice President and Director for the California office at American Progress. Council on Foreign Relations: “The United States
and Shifting Global Power Dynamics”) online: http://www.cfr.org/publication/16002/united_states_and_shifting_global_power_dynamics.html
More interesting is a difference we might have in what constitutes security. We define direct threats to American security as outside agents that can harm our
citizens. The only two forces that could take American lives on a large scale soon are terrorists, especially armed with a nuclear device, and a deadly
pathogen like influenza. Thus when you say, "I of course agree that we need to work with others wherever possible," that considerably understates the
urgency of the matter. Our very lives depend on collaboration. British police officers and Chinese health officials, for better or worse,
hold our fates in their hands. Further, we will not avoid a climate crisis—the potential security implications
of which seem to get worse by the hour—unless every large emitter acts. We have to prioritize, and
these direct threats are more important than whether China or others are empowering some of
the despicable regimes you list, much as that troubles us. Moreover, Beijing has shown it will act constructively under certain conditions—
it has played a critical role in efforts to rollback North Korea's nuclear weapons program. On Iran, America is the country being isolated. Instead of worrying
that we cannot get our way, America has to lead the world community toward a pragmatic solution that
others accept. We do think American leadership remains an important ingredient to solving many of
the world's problems. It is easiest to see the need where we have not acted—such as on global
warming. We are not advocating the kind of leadership America has exercised recently, though.
Instead, we have to build consensus and motivate other powers to take responsibility. We do not advocate
that America seek specifically to retain its "dominance." The cooperation we need is undermined by a pursuit of
primacy. Unlike you, however, we do not think that the question of American dominance is all that determinative. Of course, by pure logic, if other
countries are getting stronger, then America is getting relatively weaker. The more important question is: So what? Will that negatively
impact American lives? After an exhaustive survey, we conclude that it will not—if America finds
a new way to lead, harnessing the power of others, and invests in fixing some of its core problems
at home.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 309/311
AT: Heg  China War – Cooperation (2/2)
US-China relations aren’t zero-sum – the US and China will cooperate.

Hachigian 08 (Senior Vice President and Director for the California office at American Progress. Council on Foreign Relations: “The United States
and Shifting Global Power Dynamics”) online: http://www.cfr.org/publication/16002/united_states_and_shifting_global_power_dynamics.html
In our book, Mona Sutphen and I lay out a new paradigm for thinking about what we call the “pivotal powers,”
China, India, Russia, the EU and Japan. America need not fear their strength. In fact, in order to
keep Americans safe and prosperous, we need to work with these powers as never before. If
America leads abroad and tackles its problems at home, we will continue to thrive in a more
crowded world. Importantly, pivotal powers now want what we want—a stable world with open markets. None are true ideological adversaries.
Though hot spots remain, no intractable disputes divide us. Nation states seeking order are on the same side against the
forces of chaos—terrorists, climate change, disease, and proliferation. Only together can they defeat these rotten
fruit of globalization. For instance, China allows American agents into China’s ports to help screen outbound shipping containers for smuggled
radioactive devices. A climate crisis will come unless all the big emitters act. Nevertheless, near panic dominates the debate
about emerging powers, especially inside the Beltway—they are taking our jobs, luring away R&D, giving solace to enemies and reducing democracy’s
appeal. There is truth in some of these claims. But remedies
to these problems, more often than not, begin with
domestic policy. For example, more innovation in China and India benefits America, as long as innovation continues here. That requires
investments in math and science education. Thinking of big powers principally as competing rivals is not the right
paradigm. Companies compete for profits. Countries do not. Nor is there a vast zero-sum head-to-head battle for
influence. Policymakers need to shed the “us against them” Cold-War mindset. We advocate
“strategic collaboration” with the pivotal powers. The biggest challenge America faces is not their
growing strength. It is convincing them to contribute to the world order—regimes and institutions
that will tackle shared challenges like economic stability and nuclear proliferation. America still has to lead, but in a
new way that encourages others to take responsibility. Of course, we have to be prepared in case a hostile hegemon ever
emerges. But we’ve been notoriously bad at predicting which powers will rise and which will fall, and we have little control over their trajectories. We
should strengthen the country we do control—our own—and seek the cooperation that will keep Americans safe and prosperous.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 310/311
AT: Heg  China War – Heg K Check China
Preserving hegemony in Asia is key to check Chinese expansion.

Overholt 08 (Director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy and holds the center’s chair in Asia policy research. “In Asia, U.S. Still Guards the
Fort but Surrenders the Bank”) online: http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/spring2008/disoriented.html
Much of the current national-security establishment in Washington expresses fear of being forced
out of Asia by China. China has indeed made disproportionate gains in recent years. But this is
not because it has forced the United States out. It is because Washington has deliberately stepped
back from Asian regional institutions that include the United States, such as the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation, and created a vacuum into which China has stepped with institutions that
exclude the United States, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the East Asia Summit, and others. Likewise, South Korea and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations have distanced themselves from U.S. policy and cultivated a relationship with China that is much warmer than it was
before. China’s disproportionate success in both Asia and Africa has come from adopting policies that had been the core U.S. strategies in winning the Cold
War. The United States had a patent on those strategies but ceded the intellectual-property rights to China.
There is a real risk that future historians will conclude that the most influential foreign-policy decisions of this era concerned not Iraq, not the war on terror,
but rather the re-ignition and acceleration of Sino- Japanese rivalry. Washington
can still reestablish the old balances
between military and economic priorities and between China and Japan. Future U.S.
administrations would do well to revive an Asia policy that emphasizes diplomacy with all Asian
countries, promotes economic liberalization throughout the region, and abates rather than fosters
hostility among regional neighbors.
Chinese rise risks US-China war.

Overholt 08 (Director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy and holds the center’s chair in Asia policy research. “In Asia, U.S. Still Guards the
Fort but Surrenders the Bank”) online: http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/spring2008/disoriented.html
China’s emergence triggered a reaction in the United States and Japan. China had joined all the major economic institutions nurtured by the West in the Cold
War, opened its economy far more than Japan did, resolved most of its border disputes to the satisfaction of its neighbors, and engaged in a very successful
campaign for good diplomatic relations with most of its neighbors. All these seemed to support U.S. and Japanese interests, particularly in comparison with
an earlier era when China had been systematically attempting to destabilize its neighbors and to spread communism globally.
Nonetheless, China’s
success evoked various theories that rising powers are inherently destabilizing,
that undemocratic regimes are inherently aggressive, and that, since China is perhaps the only
power that could conceivably challenge the United States, American military planning should
focus on China. Tensions over Taiwan became a particular focus for the U.S. military, and thus,
too, did the risk of Sino-American war. That focus was greatly intensified by various U.S. interest groups that had much to gain from
building new weaponry for war against China or from hampering trade with China.
ICWest 09-10 Xue
Heg Good 311/311

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ICWest 09-10 Xue

Heg Good 1/311

U.S. Hegemony high now with no apparent decline – Iraq proves.

America’s military power is unprecedented

Hegemony sky high - US leads militarily and economically. NO challengers in sight.

US Heg is unrivaled - all trends indicate it’ll stay that way.

American power is unmatched in any category.

In this world, the

Heg is high— the US leads militarily and economically with no challengers.

Military bases prove US leadership

American power is unmatchable all in categories—military, economic, and cultural leadership.

The sustainability and enhancement of American primacy is inevitable

Obama in Russia attempting to “reset” relations with Russia

Iraq has strengthened the US strategic position and boosted leadership.

Iraq doesn’t tank US predominance

By the same token, foreign

The US has nuclear primacy

The US navy is unchallengable.

Heg is high – The US Air Force is the strongest

Ends: Protect Democracy and Guard Freedom. The

Heg is high – Air Force proves.

U.S. military spending is high now

U.S. military spending is high now

Four months later, the

Bad economy makes it easy for the military to recruit

military recruiting is getting easier, in large part due to the

American hard power is absolute.

America’s military power is unprecedented.

American hard power is the greatest in history – surge proves.

The US has supremacy in hard power – military technology.

The US is the absolute leader in hardpower

US hard power is unmatched:

US soft power high, and will continue with new president

US Soft power with Asian countries highest in 10 years

The report, which is based on public

No foreseeable enemy to US supremacy; counterbalancing won’t occur

Well, slow down a minute. It

Multipolarity is impossible to predict – the US will remain the unipolar power

Heg sustainable-no competitors

No one can take our place and no one wants us gone

Declinists are wrong – US power is underestimated

Heg is sustainable – qualitative and quantitative advantages in all areas

Hegemony is sustainable – this card assumes all their arguments.

Heg is completely sustainable – The U.S. dominates all power categories.

Military, economic and technological power ensure that US hegemony is sustainable

Heg is completely sustainable – The U.S. dominates all power categories.

The Internet’s software infrastructure developed in a typically American way — by entrepreneurs

America’s matrix of innovation ensures sustainability.

Hegemony is sustainable – American innovation allows us to continuously recreate our leadership.

US has large wellsprings of “latent power” it can tap

Obama gives us breathing room to improve leadership

Despite the financial crisis, heg is still sustainable

U.S. Hegemony is sustainable – The U.S. is dominant in every single sector

Multipolarity is impossible to predict

Predictions of hegemonic decline and multipolarity are flawed

The better the

Transition would be slow – reigning in the US would spread instability.

Today's distribution of power is unprecedented, however, and power-centric theories naturally

Turn - U.S. isolationism causes world war

Liberal internationalism protects the US from counterbalancing

No one is going to balance against US hegemony. They want the goodies.

Counter balancing not happening.