Northland Stacked Aff
Roberts TOC
Stacked Aff
Stacked Aff 1
1AC (1/16) 2
1AC (2/16) 3
1AC (3/16) 4
1AC (4/16) 5
1AC (5/16) 6
1AC (6/16) 7
1AC (7/16) 8
1AC (8/16) 9
1AC (9/16) 10
1AC (10/16) 11
1AC (11/16) 12
1AC (12/16) 13
1AC (13/16) 14
1AC (13/16) 15
1AC (14/16) 16
1AC (15/16) 17
**Frontlines** 18
Foreign Link- Iran 19
Turns The Case 20
AT Language Doesn’t Matter 21
AT Can’t Criticize One Word 22
AT Gendered Issues Not Universal 23
1AC (1/16)
I affirm. Robert Pape defines economic sanctions,
Economic sanctions seek to lower the aggregate economic welfare of a target state by reducing international trade in order to coerce the target government to change its political behavior. Sanctions can coerce either directly, by persuading the target government that the issues at stake are not worth the price, or indirectly, by inducing popular pressure to force the government to concede, or by inducing a popular revolt that overthrows the government, resulting in the establishment of a government that will make concessions. Although coercers may suspend trade either comprehensively or partially, economic sanctions characteristically aim to impose costs on the economy as a whole. Partial trade suspensions are generally adopted either as a part of a calculated strategy to signal the potential of still worse pain to come if the target fails to comply, or as a second-best measure because more pressing domestic or international political constraints rule out comprehensive pressure. Accordingly, the most important measure of the intensity of economic sanctions is aggregate gross national product (GNP) loss over time. A trade war is when a state threatens to inflict economic harm or actually inflicts it in order to persuade the target state to agree to terms of trade more favorable to the coercing state. Because trade wars seek to redirect the course of ongoing trade relations, they typically occur between established trade partners. Unlike economic sanctions, trade wars do not seek to influence the target state’s political behavior but rather its international economic policies, and those only to the extent that they affect the wealth of the coercing state. When the United States threatens China with economic punishment if it does not respect human rights, that is an economic sanction; when punishment is threatened over copyright infringement, that is a trade war. Accordingly, the most important measure of the pressure of a trade war is the change in the price that the target state receives (or must pay) for an affected good or service. Economic warfare seeks to weaken an adversary’s aggregate economic potential in order to weaken its military capabilities, either in a peacetime arms race or in an ongoing war. This strategy assumes that the greater a state’s overall productive capacity, the greater its ability to produce technologically sophisticated weapons and to mobilize people and wealth for military use. Unlike the first two strategies, economic warfare does not seek to coerce the target by inflicting economic pain. To the extent that it coerces at all, it does so by persuading the target state that its reduced military strength makes certain political objectives unattainable. As a result, the most important measure of the pressure of economic warfare is the change in military production. Although some might use the term “economic sanctions” to apply to all three strategies, this is not the common practice, because it would be conceptually unwieldy and it would confuse policymakers about what they most want to know: when the strategy of economic sanctions can change another state’s behavior without resorting to military force. Recently, however, Baldwin has argued that the concept of economic sanctions should be broadened to encompass all aspects of “economic statecraft” including not only economic coercion for political purposes (the traditional understanding of sanctions), but also coercion for economic goals (trade disputes) as well as goals other than changing the target state’s behavior, such as engaging in economic warfare, rallying domestic political support, demonstrating resolve to third-party audiences, or simply inflicting punishment. He credits achievement of any of these goals as success for economic sanctions. Accepting [a] this looser standard for sanctions success would be a mistake for two reasons. First, the determinants of success for different categories of goals are not likely to be the same, and thus require separate theoretical investigations. A standard of success that lumps them all together risks losing information essential to building such theories. For example, knowing whether a certain type of economic sanction often helps the coercer government’s standing in the polls tells us little about whether the same sanctions, or other instruments, would be likely to succeed in coercing target states to change their political behavior. Theories of the determinants of success in trade disputes can and should be constructed, but they are not the same as a theory of economic sanctions. Second, beyond a certain point, excessively loose operationalization of dependent variables not only hinders theory building but departs from science altogether. Baldwin argues that the mere imposition of economic sanctions should automatically qualify as a success : “to make the target of an influence attempt pay a price for noncompliance is to be at least partially successful.” If failure is defined to be impossible, the dependent variable cannot vary and the theory cannot be falsified
This implies that funding freezes or targeted sanctions do not qualify as economic sanctions, because their aim is not to lower the welfare of the economy as a whole. Prefer this interpretation because this interpretation preserves limits. By limiting economic sanctions to a consistent class of actions, there are reasonable burdens on each side to discuss the same kind of action. Otherwise, there are no constraints on to what extent the neg can just fiat that we use a class of sanctions different in kind from that discussed in the AC, and I would have to prepare to engage any of these sanctions.
1AC (2/16)
Therefore, the negative is permitted to garner advantages from specific implementations of sanctions, on two conditions. First, they can't only advocate that implementation of sanctions, in order to PIC out of all the arguments in the AC. Access to generic ground is key because I can't be expected to prep every specific sanction, and specific implementations have a bias in the lit in their favor. I need access to the lit on comprehensive sanctions debate to balance this back. Second, their scenario has to have solvency advocates on both sides of the debate. Access to literature on both sides of the debate is key because he's making empirical claims so I'm at a structural disadvantage on the internal link debate if I can't offer counter-empirics to challenge the probability of his impacts.
I value morality, because under any interpretation of ought, our moral imperatives supersede our desires. The value criterion is to treat people as ends in themselves, which implies that it is impermissible to treat people as mere means to an end. Thomas Hill, Jr. writes,[1]
The second argument is roughly this: Most valuable things['] have value only because valued [sic] by human beings. Their value is derivative from the fact that they serve our interests and desires. Even pleasure, which we value for its own sake, has only derivative value, that is, value dependent on the contingent fact that human beings want it. Now if valuers confer derivative value on things by their preferences and choices, those valuers must themselves have value. In fact, they must have value independent of, and superior to, the derivative values which they create. The guiding analogy is how we treat ends. We value certain means because they serve intermediate ends, which in turn we value because they contribute to our ultimate ends, that is, what we value for its own sake. The value of the means and the intermediate means is derivative from the value of the ultimate ends; unless we value the ultimate end, the means and intermediate ends would be worthless to us. So, it seems, the source of derivative value must be valuable for its own sake. Since the ultimate source of the value of our contingent ends, such as health, wealth, and even pleasure, is their being valued by human beings, human beings, as valuers, must be valued for their own sakes.
1AC (3/16)
I contend that economic sanctions fail to respect people as ends-in-themselves. Treating people as ends requires never prioritizing any good above respect for rational capacities.
Even the redistribution of resources under so-called “smart sanctions” just licenses the elites to treat their own citizens as mere means and externalize harm on them. Daniel Drezner writes,[2]
Unfortunately, even if the implementers of smart sanctions become more sophisticated, smart sanctions are still likely to be a noble failure. The contributors to Smart Sanctions acknowledge some of the reasons for this, but not all. For example, the case studies show that smart sanctions still impose significant costs on a target state’s populace. Michael Brzoska notes that an arms embargo increases the costs of weapons procurement, leading ‘‘to a major shift in government spending priorities and a consequent reduction in the economic well-being of the general population in the targeted state’’ (p. 126). De Vries acknowledges that ‘‘financial sanctions probably caused the greatest negative impact on non-targeted sectors of Serbian society,’’ with the sanctions triggering severe stagflation in the Yugoslav economy (p. 102). The flight ban also imposed greater costs on the Yugoslav opposition than on the Milosevic regime, leading the European Union to reverse course. Moreover, travel sanctions can disrupt the shipment of food and cold-storage medicine to war-torn societies. In short, all sanctions impose costs on innocents.
Even if there is no causal link between economic sanctions and the deaths of innocents, that doesn't matter. What matters under my standard is the bad intents of government leaders, not whether or not the sanctions actually “successfully” kill people and thus pressure the population.
1AC (4/16)
The success of sanctions depends on the degree of harm they cause to innocent civilians, Gordon [3]writes,
Many of those who defend sanctions do not argue that damage to innocents is morally acceptable, but rather that this damage is not inherent in sanctions and could in principle be mitigated or avoided altogether. Where measures are taken to minimize civilian harm, the argument goes, sanctions are ethically defensible. But this optimism is inconsistent with the nature of economic sanctions, as well as with the history of sanctions and the logic of the vested interests created by sanctions. If economic sanctions are motivated by an intent to do economic damage, then partial sanctions and humanitarian exemptions will allow the target nation to adjust its economy to minimize the overall damage, undermining the intentions of the political actors imposing the sanctions. The more complete the sanctions, the more effective they will be, in terms of economic damage; but that in turn means that the economy as a whole will be undermined. The greater the degree to which the economy is generally undermined, the greater the damage to the civilian population, outside the military and political leadership. The greater the damage to the civilian population, the more serious the harm will be to the most vulnerable sectors—infants, the elderly, the sick, the handicapped, pregnant women, widows with children. Sanctions that are economically effective necessarily entail the greatest harm to those who are the most vulnerable and the most disenfranchised from power.
1AC (5/16)
Economic sanctions only benefit the elites because they are able to control the flow of imported or smuggled goods, Henkin writes,
Yagil Henkin, an Associate Fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, August 13, 2009 Why Economic Sanctions Alone Won't Work http://www.adelsoninstitute.org.il/PointOfView.aspx?id=67
Second, economic sanctions tend to strengthen the regime's control of the economy, and thus the population. Some say sanctions cause the rally-around-the-flag effect, but a more plausible explanation is that sanctions give the regime tighter control over the distribution of goods within its borders. Regimes can then force various interest groups to compete for favors, thereby distracting them from posing a political challenge to the regime. The ability of Hamas to sell aid items received in the Gaza Strip highlights this: he who has the guns has the power. As long as the regime can control the flow of imported or smuggled goods, it wields enormous power.
1AC (6/16)
Targeted countries fear that opposition might rise up as a result of sanctions, which causes them to crackdown on their citizens even more, Drury [4]writes,
In additionto enhancingtheregime’sholdon power,sanctionsalso providenew incentivesto repress, reducingcivillibertiesandpoliticalrights. Specifically,theimpositionofeconomicsanctionscancausesignificantdomesticpoliticalcostsfor thetargetif itconcedesto thesender’sdemands(Galtung1967;seealsoFearon 1994;Schultz1998). Whenan externalactordemandspolicychangesfromanotherregime,thetargetedleadershipusuallyperceivestheforeignpressureasathreatto sovereigntyand particularlyto regimesurvival(Morgan1995;Morgan and Schwebach1997;Ang and Peksen 2007). Specifically,thetargetedleadershipis likelyto surmisethatconcedingto theforeignpressurewilldecreasetheirlegitimacyandsupportinthecountry.Therefore,to mitigateanypossible“audiencecosts”caused by concedingto thesanctions,theregimehasanincentivetoputgreaterpressureon oppositiongroupstoshowitsdeterminationagainstany externalpressure. Furthermore,theregimemay fearthatthesanctions themselveswillemboldentheiropposition.Economicpressure, especiallythataimedatpolitical reforms,can easilybeseen asasignalfrominternationalactorstodomesticpro-reformgroups (Thyne2006). Theleadershipwillseesuch asignalasadirectthreatto theirtenureand haveyetanotherreason—directlycaused by thesanctions—tocrack down on any oppositiongroups.Consequently,afiercereactionagainstthethreator impositionof sanctionswillallowaregime todemonstrateto thepublicitsstrengthand resolveagainstchallengesto itsleadership. For instance,Morgan (1995) notesthattheAmericansanctionsagainstChinafollowingtheTiananmenSquareincidenthadbeen fiercelyrejectedby theChinesegovernmentbecauseoftheperceptionof thesanctionsasacrucialforeignchallengetotheregimestability.WhiletheU.S. demandfor greaterrespectof civiland politicallibertiesin Chinawaslargelysymbolic, Beijingviewed theirrepressivepoliciesasanessentialtooltomaintainingpower. Any accommodationsby thePRCcould resultin thegovernment’slossof power. “[M]any inthe mainlandgovernmentbelievethatwithouttheabilityto repressoppositiontheirhold on power is lost…Americancallsfor politicalfreedomand civillibertiesin mainlandChinamaybeheard as callsfor politicalsuicideby themainlandgovernment”(Morgan1995:36). Supporting Morgan’s claim,Drury andLi(2006) findempiricalevidencesuggesting thatthethreatof economiccoercionagainstChineseauthoritiestopromotepoliticalliberalizationwascounterproductive, whichled to fewerChineseaccommodations.Thus, thepossibleaudiencecostsinvolvedin concedingtothesender’sdemandslead targetedregimesto takefurther repressivemeasures againsttheircitizenryto maintainthestatusquo.