Chicago Debate League

CDL Core Files 2013/14 www.chicagodebateleague.org

Chicago Debate League

2013/14

Core Files

Researched by Brian Peterson

Edited by Les Lynn

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its economic engagement toward Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela.

2013/14 Core Files 2

Table of Contents (1/2)

I. AFFIRMATIVE CASES AND CASE NEGATIVES

*Affirmatives are listed in order of complexity – JV debaters will find Mexico Security and Venezuela Democracy most easy to use.

Mexico Security Affirmative 4 - 32

Mexico Security Negative 33 - 49

Venezuela Democracy Affirmative 50 - 86

Venezuela Democracy Negative 87 - 106

Cuba Ethanol Affirmative 107 - 141

Cuba Ethanol Negative 142 - 161

Critical Immigration Affirmative 162 - 197

Critical Immigration Negative 198 - 219

II. DISADVANTAGES

Corruption Negative 220 - 242

Corruption Affirmative 243 – 254

Diplomatic Capital Negative 255 - 270

Diplomatic Capital Affirmative 271 - 276

Politics Negative 277 - 313

Politics Affirmative 314 - 331

China Negative 332 - 360

China Affirmative 361 - 371

2013/14 Core Files 3

Table of Contents (2/2)

III. COUNTERPLAN

European Union Counterplan Negative 372 - 386

European Union Counterplan Affirmative 387 -397

IV. TOPICALITY VIOLATIONS

Mexico Security Topicality Negative 399 - 405

Venezuela Democracy Topicality Negative 406 - 412

Cuba Ethanol Topicality Negative 413 - 419

Critical Immigration Topicality Negative 420 - 431

Mexico Security Topicality Affirmative 433 - 434

Venezuela Democracy Topicality Affirmative 435 - 438

Cuba Ethanol Topicality Affirmative 439 - 441

Critical Immigration Topicality Affirmative 442 - 445

IV. Kritiks

Neo-Colonialism Kritik Negative 446 - 474

Neo-Colonialism Kritik Affirmative 475 - 487

CDL Core Files 2013/14 Index

Mexico Security Case 1/1

AFF

Mexico Security Affirmative 4

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 5

2AC Inherency 17

2AC Harms: A/t - #1 “Cooperation Now” [1/2] 18

2AC Harms: A/t - #2 “No Nuclear Terrorism” [1/3] 20

2AC Harms: A/t - #3 “Violence is Decreasing” [1/3] 23

2AC Harms: A/t - #4 “Drugs are Decreasing” [1/2] 26

2AC Solvency: A/t - #1 “Immigration From Everywhere” 28

2AC Solvency: A/t - #2 “Mexico Won’t Reform” [1/2] 29

2AC Solvency: A/t - #3 “Economy is Biggest Factor” 31

2AC Solvency: A/t - #4 “Geography Prevents Cooperation” 32

CDL Core Files 2013/14 1AC

Mexico Security Case 12/12

AFF

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 5

Contention One is Inherency: Current United States policy towards Mexico does not create successful cooperation on security issues along the border.

1) Obama’s policies toward Mexico are inconsistent and fail to address the key issues of immigration and security.

WALSER, MCNEILL AND ZUCKERMAN, 11

[Ray, PhD., Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at Heritage Foundation; Jena Baker, Senior Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at Heritage Foundation; Jessica, Research Assistant in the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, at The Heritage Foundation; “The Human Tragedy of Illegal Immigration: Greater Efforts Needed to Combat Smuggling and Violence,” 6/22, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/06/the-human-tragedy-of-illegal-immigration-greater-efforts-needed-to-combat-smuggling-and-violence]

This violence is augmented by an inconsistent policy by the Obama Administration, which downplays the risks of illegal migration, and an unorganized U.S. border security strategy. Exacerbating the problem is that enforcement of immigration laws inside the United States has been inconsistent—leaving a significant economic incentive for further illegal immigration. The escalating violence, ad hoc border security, and spotty immigration enforcement demands a more comprehensive and robust strategy for combating human smuggling, violence, and the huge numbers of illegal aliens. Such a strategy should include the following elements: Continued partnerships with nations to combat human smuggling and to dismantle trafficking networks throughout the region; Concerted efforts to promote justice and law enforcement reform, as well as free-market reform throughout Latin America to foster healthier economies, and thus weaken the incentive to migrate; Rejection of proposals for amnesty which give incentives to illegal immigrants; An organized strategy for integrating border manpower, technology, and other resources into an enterprise capable of responding to threats and decreasing the flow of illegal aliens across the border; Increased interior enforcement in the U.S. and reforms in legal immigration aimed at discouraging illegal entry; and Creation of an active public diplomacy program to educate potential illegal immigrants on the risks of such a journey and the consequences of illegal entry into the U.S.

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 6

2) The new Mexican government is decreasing cooperation over drug security with the U.S.

NEW YORK TIMES, 13

[Randal Archibold, Damien Cave, and Ginger Thompson; “Mexico’s Curbs on U.S. Role in Drug Fight Spark Friction,” 4/30, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/world/americas/friction-between-us-and-mexico-threatens-efforts-on-drugs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&]

But shortly after Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December, American agents got a clear message that the dynamics, with Washington holding the clear upper hand, were about to change. “So do we get to polygraph you?” one incoming Mexican official asked his American counterparts, alarming United States security officials who consider the vetting of the Mexicans central to tracking down drug kingpins. The Mexican government briefly stopped its vetted officials from cooperating in sensitive investigations. The Americans are waiting to see if Mexico allows polygraphs when assigning new members to units, a senior Obama administration official said. In another clash, American security officials were recently asked to leave an important intelligence center in Monterrey, where they had worked side by side with an array of Mexican military and police commanders collecting and analyzing tips and intelligence on drug gangs. The Mexicans, scoffing at the notion of Americans’ having so much contact with different agencies, questioned the value of the center and made clear that they would put tighter reins on the sharing of drug intelligence. There have long been political sensitivities in Mexico over allowing too much American involvement. But the recent policy changes have rattled American officials used to far fewer restrictions than they have faced in years.

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 7

Contention Two is Harms: Drug-related crimes in Mexico are causing violence to spill across the border, hurting the U.S. economy and security.

1) Mexico is the center-point of the U.S. struggle with drug importation and violence, and the cross-border drug trade causes massive economic upheaval and corruption in Mexico.

PERKINS AND PLACIDO, 10

[Kevin, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigative Division; Anthony, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence

Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation; “Drug Trafficking Violence in Mexico: Implications for the United States,” 5/05, http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/drug-trafficking-violence-in-mexico-implications-for-the-united-states]

Prior to addressing Mexico’s security situation, it is important to have a clear picture of the illicit drug-trafficking industry within Mexico as it relates to the United States. No other country in the world has a greater impact on the drug situation in the United States than does Mexico. The influence of Mexico on the U.S. drug trade is truly unmatched: the result of a shared border; Mexico’s strategic location between drug-producing and drug-consuming countries; a long history of cross-border smuggling; and the existence of diversified, poly-drug, profit-minded DTOs. Each of the four major drugs of abuse—marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine—are either produced in, or transshipped through, Mexico before reaching the United States. The vast majority of bulk currency interdicted within the U.S. is derived from drug trafficking activities. It is estimated that approximately 18-39 billion dollars annually is moved from the interior of the U.S. to the Southwest border on behalf of Mexican and Colombian DTOs. Thus, billions of U.S. dollars are sent back to Mexico annually. From the Mexican perspective, the flow of vast sums of money engenders corruption. The strategic consequence of the continuous seeping of illicit proceeds into the Mexican economy discourages the long-term growth of—indeed even the incentive to sustain—legitimate businesses and institutions. For all of these reasons, the U.S. and Mexican governments share the responsibility to defeat the threat of drug-trafficking.

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 8

2) Mexico’s inability to control cross-border violence without additional assistance is preventing future cooperation between Mexico and the United States, as well as preventing further reforms to combat corruption.

ROBERTS AND WALSER, 13

[James, Research Fellow for Economic Freedom and Growth in the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation; and Ray, PhD., Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at Heritage Foundation; “The Hagel, Kerry, and Brennan Senate Confirmation Hearings: U.S. Policy for the Western Hemisphere,” 1/18, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/kerry-hagel-and-brennan-senate-confirmation-hearings-us-policy-for-the-western-hemisphere]

Mexico’s fight against organized crime has cast a doleful shadow over U.S.–Mexican relations. New Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto promises to restore citizen security and continue overhauling Mexico’s police and judiciary. Often overlooked in the U.S. is Mexico’s emerging economic status—the world’s 11th largest economy and growing. If Mexico opens its energy sector to equity participation with American companies (with their advanced deepwater, fracking, and horizontal drilling technologies) and makes other serious reforms, it can reverse an alarming decline in its oil production and tap massive shale gas deposits. The U.S. should continue to help Mexico fight organized crime with a continuation of the Merida Initiative, enhanced military-to-military ties, and serious attention to building real citizen security. The U.S. and Mexico need to act jointly in troubled Central America, particularly in the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) to combat trafficking organizations and shore up weak police and judicial institutions. Investing in border infrastructure, avoiding protectionist flare-ups, and exploring new cross-border energy alternatives can also cement a stronger U.S.–Mexico relationship. The U.S. will find it hard to project global leadership without a democratic, prosperous, and stable Mexico.

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 9

3) Drug violence is beginning to spill-over into the United States because a new generation of dealers and gangs care more about sending a message than money.

PERKINS AND PLACIDO, 10

[Kevin, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigative Division; Anthony, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence

Excessive violence by the cartels is a national security problem for Mexico, and—as our close neighbor and political ally—presents high stakes for the United States. In the past year, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have worked diligently to reach a consensus view on “spillover” violence and on U.S. vulnerability to the Mexican cartels’ violent tactics. These discussions required the interagency to define “spillover” in practical terms. As agreed to by the interagency community, spillover violence entails deliberate, planned attacks by the cartels on U.S. assets, including civilian, military, or law enforcement officials, innocent U.S. citizens, or physical institutions such as government buildings, consulates, or businesses. This definition does not include trafficker on trafficker violence, whether perpetrated in Mexico or the U.S. Spillover violence is a complicated issue. It is crucial, in order to address the problem with the appropriate programs, resources, and operations, that we understand the difference between the intentional targeting of innocent civilians in the United States, or official U.S. government interests in Mexico or the United States, and actions that are characteristic of violent drug culture, such as the killing of an individual who owes a drug debt to the organization. Certain isolated incidents in the United States, such as the torture by a Mexican trafficker of a Dominican drug customer in Atlanta, are frightening, but do not represent a dramatic departure from the violence that has always been associated with the drug trade. Much of the risk of spillover violence is posed by younger-generation traffickers whose approach to the drug trade is less rational and profit-minded than that of their “elders,” or by multi-national street and prison gangs working in concert with Mexican cartels as enforcers and street-level drug distributors. As the GOM has continuously and successfully disrupted the cartels’ command and control structure through operations against their leaders, less-experienced “junior” cartel members are inhabiting roles formerly held by traffickers of long standing who, while violent, tended to be more deliberate and cautious in their actions. In Ciudad Juarez, where three individuals associated with the U.S. consulate were killed in March, the Barrio Azteca (BA) street gang is the best known of several gangs being used as enforcers by La Linea, gatekeepers for the Juarez Cartel. The BA has been linked to drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion, assaults, murder, and the retail sale of drugs obtained by Mexican DTOs. Elsewhere in Mexico, the link between street gangs and the Mexican cartels is more fluid and tenuous, with gang members typically filling retail drug sales roles rather than providing enforcement.

1AC: Mexico Security Affirmative 10

4) Drug violence is killing thousands every month, and this doesn’t include kidnappings or lives ruined. Even children are being turned into trained assassins.

CNN, 12

[Ashley Fantz, “The Mexico drug war: Bodies for billions,” 1/20, http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/15/world/mexico-drug-war-essay]

But the Mexican drug war, at its core, is about two numbers: 48,000 and 39 billion. Over the past five years, nearly 48,000 people have been killed in suspected drug-related violence in Mexico, the country's federal attorney general announced this month. In the first three quarters of 2011, almost 13,000 people died. Cold and incomprehensible zeros, the death toll doesn't include the more than 5,000 people who have disappeared, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. It doesn't account for the tens of thousands of children orphaned by the violence. The guilty live on both sides of the border. Street gangs with cartel ties are not only in Los Angeles and Dallas, but also in many smaller cities across the United States and much farther north of the Mexican border. Mexican cartels had a presence in 230 cities in the United States in 2008, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Its 2011 report shows that presence has grown to more than 1,000 U.S. cities. While the violence has remained mostly in Mexico, authorities in Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states have reportedly investigated abductions and killings suspected to be tied to cartels. Mexican black tar heroin (so called because it's dark and sticky), is cheaper than Colombian heroin, and used to be a rarity in the United States. Now it is available in dozens of cities and small towns, experts say. Customers phone in their orders, the Los Angeles Times reports, and small-time dealers deliver the drug, almost like pizza deliverymen. Traffickers are recruiting in the United States, and prefer to hire young. Texas high schools say cartel members have been on their campuses. Most notoriously, a 14-year-old from San Diego became a head-chopping cartel assassin. "I slit their throats," he testified at his trial, held near Cuernavaca. The teenager, called "El Ponchis" - the Cloak - was found guilty of torturing and beheading and sentenced to three years in a Mexican prison. For more than a decade, the United States' focus has been terrorism, an exhausting battle reliant on covert operatives in societies where the rule of law has collapsed or widespread violence is the norm. The situation in Mexico is beginning to show similarities. In many border areas, the authority of the Mexican state seems either entirely absent or extremely weak. In September 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said cartel violence might be "morphing into or making common cause with what we would call an insurgency." If cartel violence is not contained in Mexico, which shares a nearly 2,000 mile border with the United States, the drug war could threaten U.S. national security and even survival of the Mexican state.