Seniors Afghanistan Neg Part 2

Northwestern Debate Institute 2010 2

Seniors Afghanistan Neg---Part 2

Afghanistan Neg---Part 2

***Minerals DA*** 3

Minerals DA – 1NC 1/2 4

Minerals DA – Uniqueness 6

Minerals DA – Link – Troop Withdrawal 7

Minerals DA – Internal Link – China Will Invest 8

Minerals DA – Internal Link – Military K2 Heg 9

Minerals DA – Impact – US-China War 1/2 10

Minerals DA – Impact – US-China War 2/2 11

Minerals DA – Impact – Resource Wars 12

Minerals DA – Impact – Terrorism 13

Minerals DA – Impact – Indo-Pak War 14

Minerals DA – AT: War Deters China 15

Minerals DA – AT: Other Countries Fill In 16

Minerals DA – AT: Minerals Solve the Economy 17

Minerals DA – Aff – Non-Unique 18

Minerals DA – Aff – China Won’t Invest 19

***Stability*** 20

Afghanistan Stability Frontline 20

EXT – Withdrawal Causes Instability 23

EXT – Instability Inevitable – Minerals 25

EXT – No War 26

EXT – COIN Key 29

Central Government Bad – Genocide 30

Warlords Bad 31

Pakistan =/= Extinction 32

AT: CT Solves 33

AT: Special Forces Solve 34

***Terrorism*** 35

Afghanistan Terrorism Frontline 1/3 35

EXT – Withdrawal Causes Terrorism 38

EXT – COIN Key 42

EXT – Terrorists Weak/No Nuclear Terrorism 43

EXT – Squo Solves 46

AT: CT Solves Terror 47

AT: Special Forces Sovles Terror 48

AT: Drones Solve Terror 49

***NATO*** 50

NATO Frontline 1/2 50

***Hegemony*** 52

Heg Frontline 1/3 52

***Pakistan*** 55

Pakistan Frontline 1/2 55

***ANA*** 57

ANA Frontline 57

***Iran*** 58

Iran Frontline 1/3 58

***State Budgets*** 61

State Budgets Frontline 1/2 61

***DA Links*** 63

Generic Links – Resolve 63

Generic Links – CMR 64

***Politics*** 65

Plan Unpopular 65

Plan Popular 66

***CT Bad***

CT Fails – COIN Key 69

CT Turns 70

Special Forces Bad – Civilian Casualties 71

***Special Forces PIC*** 73

1NC Special Forces PIC 74

2NR Public Key 75

Special Forces Bad—Civilian Casualties 76

Special Forces Bad—Opium Eradication 77

***Regionalism CP*** 78

1NC Regionalism CP 79

Regional Co-op Key 80

Pakistan Key 82

India Key 83

Iran Key 84

Saudi Arabia Key 85

China Key 86

Russia Key 87

AT: Indo-Pak Co-op 88

***Taliban Conditions CP*** 89

Taliban Conditions CP – 1NC 1/2 89

Taliban Conditions CP – Say Yes 91

Taliban Conditions CP – AT: Timeframe Perm 93

Taliban Conditions CP – Stability NB 1/3 94

Taliban Conditions CP – Aff – Say No 97

***Minerals DA***

Minerals DA – 1NC 1/2

Recent mineral discoveries make Afghanistan the most important mining center in the world

Risen 10 (James Risen, writer for the New York Times, “U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan”, June 13, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/ 14minerals.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials. The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

US troops are the only thing preventing foreign takeover of minerals in Afghanistan

Poonawalla 10 (Aziz Poonawalla, Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Wisconsin and a member of the Dawoodi Bohra, “Afghanistan's trillion dollar curse: lithium”, June 13, 2010, http://blog.beliefnet.com/cityofbrass/2010/06/afghanistans-trillion-dollar-c.html)

The words, "resource curse" have never been more stark or inescapable. In fact, this discovery portends total disaster for any hope of a liberal, stable Afghanistan, human rights, or economic relief. What wealth will be derived from the soil of Afghanistan will flow to butchers and tyrants and powerful global corporations - not the desperate poor and uneducated people of Afghanistan, the true sovereigns of their nation. That is the lesson of history.

Or is it? In fact, there is one power that can act as a dampener on the forces of corruption, tribalism, profiteering, and exploitation. A superpower, in fact: the United States. The very presence of our troops in Afghanistan is an immediate and unmovable barrier to the various forces that will seek to position themselves around the mineral wealth. The United States has leverage by virtue of its presence - and we can use that leverage to try and ameliorate the worst of what is to come.

China wants Afghanistan’s minerals

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

Chinese control over minerals in Afghanistan collapses the US military

Chang 10 (Gordon G. Chang, researcher for the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Pentagon and writer for Forbes, “The Taliban: World's Next Minerals Superpower”, June 16, 2010, http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/16/taliban-minerals-afghanistan-asia-opinions-columnists-gordon-g-chang.html)

Rare earth minerals are used in every major weapons system the U.S. fields today, from M1A2 Abrams tanks to Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. There is not a plane in the American inventory that will fly tomorrow without some mineral that is now mined in China. Lasers, radar and missile-guidance systems? Yes, they all require rare earth minerals, as do the military's hard drives.

So the stakes just went up in Afghanistan with the release of the information this week. The U.S. has a critical reliance on what is in the ground in that war-torn land. Kabul can undercut Beijing's virtual monopoly on rare earths--or it can help the Chinese tighten their grip over global markets. Right now, the prognosis does not look good for us.

Minerals DA – 1NC 2/2

Military power is key to heg

Hartman 08 (Thomas Hartman, Department of Political Science at University of California, 2008, http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/research/index.php?cmd=Download+Document&key=unpublished_manuscript&file_index=13&pop_up=true&no_click_key=true&attachment_style=attachment&PHPSESSID=fa567ae4f20db2ce78dafbe0bca882c8)

Literature today suggests there is an existing relationship between the military prestige of a state and its impact on attracting foreign government elites.25 Realists have noted that a hegemonic power can utilize its military and economic resources to coerce, provide financial support, or exchange cultural values for the purpose of building for itself a positive image.26 Similarly, with military power a state can alter the ideals and interests of policymakers in other countries. As they note, instruments traditionally used for coercive purposes can ―generate shared beliefs in the acceptability or legitimacy of a particular international order.‖27 It is therefore no surprise that the military organization has played an integral part of shaping, promoting, and protecting American national security interests. Most importantly, through the exchange of military training, technology, and alliance activities, trust in American normative beliefs among foreign military leaders, politicians, and their populations is formed, leading to an increased understanding of legitimacy in American foreign affairs.

Heg prevents extinction

Kagan 7 – Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, August-September 2007, “End of Dreams, Return of History,” Hoover Policy Review, online: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html

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 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.

Minerals DA – Uniqueness

Afghanistan will be a major source of minerals

So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan wants other countries to fill in once the US leaves

Feigenbaum 10 (Evan Feigenbaum, member of the Council on Foreign Relations at the Eurasia Group, “Afghan Mineral Deposits Could Unearth Corruption”, NPR, July 6, 2010, http://www. npr. org/ templates/story/story.php?storyId=128328818)

And then the third interest that they have is their own economic development, and they've gone all over the world, not just to Afghanistan, in search of resources that would help to fuel their economic growth. But I think, you know, the Afghans over the long term are looking for a diverse set of partners in the country. That's one reason, for instance, why they've been on a road show talking about their mineral potential. There was an Afghan minister that was in New Delhi trying to attract Indian companies to bid on some of this mineral potential over time.