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EconInadequate dredging is killing our shipping competetivness which collapses the economy triggering

massive wars and protectist measures causing tension and instability. Also, as long as we boost trade-

we check back all their impacts

Status quo doesnt solve - plan is key to dredge a sufficient number of ports

AP 12by RUSS BYNUM and BRUCE SMITH (Charleston and other Southeast, Gulf port cities need

deeper waterways; Corps of Engineers, 6/22/12,

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20120622/PC05/120629718/1010/charleston-and-other-

southeast-gulf-port-cities-need-deeper-waterways-corps-of-engineers)

The deepening projects singled out by the Army Corps represent just a fraction of the money U.S. ports

are spending to upgrade their docks, ship-to-shore cranes and other infrastructure. The American

Association of Port Authorities released a survey last week showing U.S. ports plan to spend at least $46

billion on improvements in the next five years.

Still, the Corps report cautioned that uncertainty will persist for several years after the Panama Canal

expansion is finished as to how many supersized ships will call on U.S. ports,which ones theyll frequent and howfull their cargo decks will be.

Giant ships sailing through Egypts Suez Canal have already begun making trips to the East Coast, where high tides give them enough of a boost

to reach ports such as Savannah and Charleston.

The budget crisis has made federal funding for port projects extremely tight, especially since Congress and

President Barack Obama for the past two years have sworn offso-called earmark spending that was used to fund

such projects in the past.

The Army Corps report said current funding levels for port improvements wont cover all the projects

that should be done. If Congress wont increase the agencys funding for harbor projects, the report said, then perhaps stategovernments and private companies such as shipping lines should be required to pay a greater share

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Navy

Absent dredging the maritime industry will collapse killing our ability to support a strong navytriggering great power wars. Also, deeper ports are vital to allowing us to rapidly respond to crisis

which is key to checking escalation and solves back their war impacts.

The pursuit of hegemony is inevitable, sustainable, and prevents great power war star this card, it

answers all turns

Ikenberry, Brooks, and Wohlforth 13 *Stephen G. Brooks is Associate Professor of Government at

Dartmouth College, **John Ikenberry is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs

at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, **William C.

Wohlforth is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College (Lean Forward: In Defense

of American Engagement, January/February 2013, Foreign Affairs,

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138468/stephen-g-brooks-g-john-ikenberry-and-william-c-wohlforth/lean-forward)

Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a single grand strategy: deep engagement. In

an effort to protect its security and prosperity, the country has promoted a liberal economic order and

established close defense ties with partners in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Its military bases

cover the map, its ships patrol transit routes across the globe, and tens of thousands of its troops stand guard in allied countries such asGermany, Japan, and South Korea.

The details of U.S. foreign policy have differed from administration to administration, including the

emphasis placed on democracy promotion and humanitarian goals, but for over 60 years, every

president has agreed on the fundamental decision to remain deeply engaged in the world, even as the

rationale for that strategy has shifted. During the Cold War, the United States' security commitments to Europe, East Asia, and

the Middle East served primarily to prevent Soviet encroachment into the world's wealthiest and most resource-rich regions. Since the fall

of the Soviet Union, the aim has become to make these same regions more secure, and thus less

threatening to the United States, and to use these security partnerships to foster the cooperation

necessary for a stable and open international order.Now, more than ever, Washington might be tempted to abandon this grand strategy and pull back from the world. The rise of China is chipping

away at the United States' preponderance of power, a budget crisis has put defense spending on the chopping block, and two long wars have

left the U.S. military and public exhausted. Indeed, even as most politicians continue to assert their commitment to global leadership, a very

different view has taken hold among scholars of international relations over the past decade: that the United States should minimize its

overseas military presence, shed its security ties, and give up its efforts to lead the liberal international order.

Proponents of retrenchment argue that a globally engaged grand strategy wastes money by subsidizing the

defense of well-off allies and generates resentment among foreign populations and governments. A more modest posture,

they contend, would put an end to allies' free-riding and defuse anti-American sentiment. Even if allies did nottake over every mission the United States now performs, most of these roles have nothing to do with U.S. security and only risk entrapping the

United States in unnecessary wars. In short, those in this camp maintain that pulling back would not only save blood and treasure but also make

the United States more secure.

They are wrong. In making their case, advocates of retrenchment overstate the costs of the current

grand strategy and understate its benefits . In fact, the budgetary savings of lowering the United States'

international profile are debatable, and there is little evidence to suggest that an internationally engaged

America provokes other countries to balance against it, becomes overextended, or gets dragged into

unnecessary wars.

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The benefits of deep engagement, on the other hand, are legion. U.S. security commitments reduce

competition in key regions and act as a check against potential rivals. They help maintain an open

world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations. And they make it easier for the

United States to secure cooperation for combating a wide range of global threats. Were the United States to

cede its global leadership role, it would forgo these proven upsides while exposing itself to the

unprecedented downsides of a world in which the country was less secure, prosperous, and influential .AN AFFORDABLE STRATEGYMany advocates of retrenchment consider the United States' assertive global posture simply too expensive. The

international relations scholar Christopher Layne, for example, has warned of the country's "ballooning budget deficits" and argued that

"its strategic commitments exceed the resources available to support them." Calculating the savings of switching grand

strategies, however, is not so simple, because it depends on the expenditures the current strategy

demands and the amount required for its replacement numbers that are hard to pin down.If the United States revoked all its security guarantees, brought home all its troops, shrank every branch of the military, and slashed its nuclear

arsenal, it would save around $900 billion over ten years, according to Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan of the Cato Institute. But few

advocates of retrenchment endorse such a radical reduction; instead, most call for "restraint," an "offshore balancing" strategy, or an "over the

horizon" military posture. The savings these approaches would yield are less clear, since they depend on which security commitments

Washington would abandon outright and how much it would cost to keep the remaining ones. If retrenchment simply meant

shipping foreign-based U.S. forces back to the United States, then the savings would be modest at best,

since the countries hosting U.S. forces usually cover a large portion of the basing costs. And if it meantmaintaining a major expeditionary capacity, then any savings would again be small, since the Pentagon

would still have to pay for the expensive weaponry and equipment required for projecting power

abroad.The other side of the cost equation, the price of continued engagement, is also in flux. Although the fat defense budgets of the past decade

make an easy target for advocates of retrenchment, such high levels of spending aren't needed to maintain an engaged

global posture. Spending skyrocketed after 9/11, but it has already begun to fall back to earth as the United States winds down its twocostly wars and trims its base level of nonwar spending. As of the fall of 2012, the Defense Department was planning for cuts of just under $500

billion over the next five years, which it maintains will not compromise national security. These reductions would lower military spending to a

little less than three percent of GDP by 2017, from its current level of 4.5 percent. The Pentagon could save even more with no ill effects by

reforming its procurement practices and compensation policies.

Even without major budget cuts, however, the country can afford the costs of its ambitious grand strategy .The significant increases in military spending proposed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, during the 2012 presidential campaign

would still have kept military spending below its current share of GDP, since spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would still have gonedown and Romney's proposed nonwar spending levels would not have kept pace with economic growth. Small wonder, then, that the case for

pulling back rests more on the nonmonetary costs that the current strategy supposedly incurs.

UNBALANCED

One such alleged cost of the current grand strategy is that, in the words ofthe political scientist Barry Posen, it

"prompts states to balance against U.S. power however they can." Yet there is no evidence that countries have

banded together in anti-American alliances or tried to match the United States' military capacity on their

own or that they will do so in the future.

Indeed, it's hard to see how the current grand strategy could generate true counterbalancing. Unlike past

hegemons, the United States is geographically isolated, which means that it is far less threatening to other

major states and that it faces no contiguous great-power rivals that could step up to the task of balancing

against it. Moreover, any competitor would have a hard time matching the U.S. military. Not only is the

United States so far ahead militarily in both quantitative and qualitative terms, but its security guaranteesalso give it the leverage to prevent allies from giving military technology to potential U.S. rivals. Because

the United States dominates the high-end defense industry, it can trade access to its defense market for

allies' agreement not to transfer key military technologies to its competitors . The embargo that the United Stateshas convinced the EU to maintain on military sales to China since 1989 is a case in point.

If U.S. global leadership were prompting balancing, then one would expect actual examples of pushback

especially during the administration ofGeorge W. Bush, who pursued a foreign policy that seemed

particularly unilateral. Yet since the Soviet Union collapsed, no major powers have tried to balance

against the United States by seeking to match its military might or by assembling a formidable alliance; the prospect is simply

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too daunting. Instead, they have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing," using international institutions and norms to constrain

Washington. Setting aside the fact that soft balancing is a slippery concept and difficult to distinguish from everyday

diplomatic competition, it is wrong to say that the practice only harms the United States. Arguably, as the global leader, the United

States benefits from employing soft-balancing-style leverage more than any other country. After all, today'srules and institutions came about under its auspices and largely reflect its interests, and so they are in fact tailor-made for soft balancing by the

United States itself. In 2011, for example, Washington coordinated action with several Southeast Asian states to oppose Beijing's claims in the

South China Sea by pointing to established international law and norms.Another argument for retrenchment holds that the United States will fall prey to the same fate as past

hegemons and accelerate its own decline. In order to keep its ambitious strategy in place, the logic goes, the country

will have to divert resources away from more productive purposes infrastructure, education, scientific

research, and so on that are necessary to keep its economy competitive. Allies, meanwhile, can get away withlower military expenditures and grow faster than they otherwise would.

The historical evidence for this phenomenon is thin; for the most part, past superpowers lost their

leadership not because they pursued hegemony but because other major powers balanced against them

a prospect that is not in the cards today. (If anything, leading states can use their position to stave off their

decline.) A bigger problem with the warnings against "imperial overstretch" is that there is no reason to believe that the

pursuit of global leadership saps economic growth. Instead, most studies by economists find no clear

relationship between military expenditures and economic decline.

To be sure, if the United States were a dramatic outlier and spent around a quarter of its GDP on defense, as the Soviet Union did in its last decades, its growth andcompetitiveness would suffer. But in 2012, even as it fought a war in Afghanistan and conducted counterterrorism operations around the globe, Washington spent

just 4.5 percent of GDP on defense a relatively small fraction, historically speaking. (From 1950 to 1990, that figure averaged 7.6 percent.) Recent economic

difficulties might prompt Washington to reevaluate its defense budgets and international commitments, but that does not mean that those policies caused the

downturn. And any money freed up from dropping global commitments would not necessarily be spent in ways that would help the U.S. economy.

Likewise, U.S. allies' economic growth rates have nothing to do with any security subsidies they receive from Washington. The contention that lower military

expenditures facilitated the rise of Japan, West Germany, and other countries dependent on U.S. defense guarantees may have seemed plausible during the last

bout of declinist anxiety, in the 1980s. But these states eventually stopped climbing up the global economic ranks as their per capita wealth approached U.S. levels -

- just as standard models of economic growth would predict. Over the past 20 years, the United States has maintained its lead in per capita GDP over its European

allies and Japan, even as those countries' defense efforts have fallen further behind. Their failure to modernize their militaries has only served to e ntrench the

United States' dominance.

LED NOT INTO TEMPTATION

The costs of U.S. foreign policy that matter most, of course, are human lives, and critics ofan expansive grand strategy worry

that the United States might get dragged into unnecessary wars . Securing smaller allies, they argue, emboldens thosestates to take risks they would not otherwise accept, pulling the superpower sponsor into costly conflicts -- a classic moral hazard problem.

Concerned about the reputational costs of failing to honor the country's alliance commitments, U.S. leaders might go to war even when no

national interests are at stake.History shows, however, that great powers anticipate the danger of entrapment and structure their

agreements to protect themselves from it. It is nearly impossible to find a clear case of a smaller power

luring a reluctant great power into war. For decades, World War I served as the canonical example of

entangling alliances supposedly drawing great powers into a fight, but an outpouring of new historical

research has overturned the conventional wisdom, revealing that the war was more the result of a

conscious decision on Germany's part to try to dominate Europe than a case of alliance entrapment.

If anything, alliances reduce the risk of getting pulled into a conflict . In East Asia, the regional security agreements thatWashington struck after World War II were designed, in the words of the political scientist Victor Cha, to "constrain anticommunist allies in the

region that might engage in aggressive behavior against adversaries that could entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war." The same

logic is now at play in the U.S.-Taiwanese relationship. After cross-strait tensions flared in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, U.S.

officials grew concerned that their ambiguous support for Taiwan might expose them to the risk of entrapment. So the Bush administration

adjusted its policy, clarifying that its goal was to not only deter China from an unprovoked attack but also deter Taiwan from unilateral moves

toward independence.For many advocates of retrenchment, the problem is that the mere possession of globe-girdling military capabilities supposedly inflates

policymakers' conception of the national interest, so much so that every foreign problem begins to look like America's to solve. Critics also

argue that the country's military superiority causes it to seek total solutions to security problems , as inAfghanistan and Iraq, that could be dealt with in less costly ways. Only a country that possessed such awesome military power and faced no

serious geopolitical rival would fail to be satisfied with partial fixes, such as containment, and instead embark on wild schemes of democracy

building, the argument goes.

Furthermore, they contend, the United States' outsized military creates a sense of obligation to do somethingwith it even when no U.S. interests are at stake. As Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the un, famously asked Colin Powell, then

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chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when debating intervention in Bosnia in 1993, "What's the point of having this superb military you're

always talking about if we can't use it?"If the U.S. military scrapped its forces and shuttered its bases, then the country would no doubt eliminate the risk of entering needless wars,

having tied itself to the mast like Ulysses. But if it instead merely moved its forces over the horizon, as is more commonly proposed by

advocates of retrenchment, whatever temptations there were to intervene would not disappear. The bigger problem with the idea that a

forward posture distorts conceptions of the national interest, however, is that it rests on just one case: Iraq. That war is an outlier in terms of

both its high costs (it accounts for some two-thirds of the casualties and budget costs of all U.S. wars since 1990) and the degree to which the

United States shouldered them alone. In the Persian Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. allies boremore of the burden, controlling for the size of their economies and populations.

Besides, the Iraq war was not an inevitable consequence of pursuing the U nited States' existing grand

strategy; many scholars and policymakers who prefer an engaged America strongly opposed the war. Likewise, continuing the

current grand strategy in no way condemns the United States to more wars like it. Consider how the country,after it lost in Vietnam, waged the rest of the Cold War with proxies and highly limited interventions. Iraq has generated a similar reluctance to

undertake large expeditionary operations -- what the political scientist John Mueller has dubbed "the Iraq syndrome." Those contending

that the United States' grand strategy ineluctably leads the country into temptation need to present

much more evidence before their case can be convincing.KEEPING THE PEACE

Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far below what advocates of retrenchment claim, they would not be worth

bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do. The most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it

reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict. The United States' security commitments deter states with

aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from tryingto solve security problems on their own in ways that would end up threatening other states.

Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries from erupting. They

maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to

prevent conflict. In other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the Americanpacifier.

But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would likely

expand their military capabilities and go nuclear, which could provoke a destabilizing reaction from

China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried to obtain nuclear

weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its security commitments to

restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to leave the Middle East, the

countries currently backed by Washington notably, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia might act in ways

that would intensify the region's security dilemmas .There would even be reason to worry about Europe. Although it's hard to imagine the return of great-power military competition in a post-

American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political

costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing itself from threats on its periphery, unable to

join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers.

Given how easily a U.S. withdrawal from key regions could lead to dangerous competition, advocates ofretrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't actually hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the

United States could survive the return of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East but at what cost? Were states in one or

both of these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military

budgets, arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the United States, inpart because its lead in military capabilities would narrow.

Greater regional insecurity could also produce cascades ofnuclear proliferation as powers such as

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those countries'regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals . Although nuclear deterrence can promote stability betweentwo states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple

nuclear rivals with less robust arsenals. As the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit

transfers, irrational decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up.

The case for abandoning the United States' global role misses the underlying security logic of the current approach. By reassuring allies

and actively managing regional relations, Washington dampens competition in the world's key areas,

thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse in which countries would grow new military

capabilities. For proof that this strategy is working, one need look no further than the defense budgets

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of the current great powers: on average, since 1991 they have kept their military expenditures as a percentage of GDP to historiclows, and they have not attempted to match the United States' top-end military capabilities. Moreover, all of the world's most modern

militaries are U.S. allies, and the United States' military lead over its potential rivals is by many measures growing.

On top of all this, the current grand strategy acts as a hedge against the emergence regional hegemons . Somesupporters of retrenchment argue that the U.S. military should keep its forces over the horizon and pass the buck to local powers to do the

dangerous work of counterbalancing rising regional powers. Washington, they contend, should deploy forces abroad only when a truly credible

contender for regional hegemony arises, as in the cases of Germany and Japan during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Yet there is already a potential contender for regional hegemony -- China -- and to balance it, the United States will need to maintain its keyalliances in Asia and the military capacity to intervene there. The implication is that the United States should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq,

reduce its military presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia. Yet that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing.MILITARY DOMINANCE, ECONOMIC PREEMINENCE

Preoccupied with security issues, critics of the current grand strategy miss one of its most important benefits: sustaining an open global

economy and a favorable place for the United States within it. To be sure, the sheer size of its output would guarantee the United States a

major role in the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the country's military dominance undergirds its

economic leadership. In addition to protecting the world economy from instability, its military commitments and naval

superiority help secure the sea-lanes and other shipping corridors that allow trade to flow freely and

cheaply. Were the United States to pull back from the world, the task of securing the global commons

would get much harder. Washington would have less leverage with which it could convince countries to

cooperate on economic matters and less access to the military bases throughout the world needed to

keep the seas open.

A global role also lets the United States structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular

economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington used its overseas security commitments to get allies to embrace the economicpolicies it preferred -- convincing West Germany in the 1960s, for example, to take costly steps to support the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.

U.S. defense agreements work the same way today. For example, when negotiating the 2011 free-trade agreement with South Korea, U.S.

officials took advantage of Seoul's desire to use the agreement as a means of tightening its security relations with Washington. As one diplomat

explained to us privately, "We asked for changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses, and the Koreans took it a ll." Why? Because

they feared a failed agreement would be "a setback to the political and security relationship."

More broadly, the United States wields its security leverage to shape the overall structure of the global economy. Much of what the United

States wants from the economic order is more of the same: for instance, it likes the current structure of the World Trade Organization and the

International Monetary Fund and prefers that free trade continue. Washington wins when U.S. allies favor this status quo, and one reason they

are inclined to support the existing system is because they value their military alliances. Japan, to name one example, has shown interest in the

Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important free-trade initiative in the region, less because its economic interests

compel it to do so than because Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda believes that his support will strengthen Japan's security ties with the United

States.

The United States' geopolitical dominance also helps keep the U.S. dollar in place as the world's reservecurrency, which confers enormous benefits on the country, such as a greater ability to borrow money .This is perhaps clearest with Europe: the EU's dependence on the United States for its security precludes the EU from having the kind of

political leverage to support the euro that the United States has with the dollar. As with other aspects of the global economy, the United States

does not provide its leadership for free: it extracts disproportionate gains. Shirking that responsibility would place those benefits at r isk.CREATING COOPERATION

What goes for the global economy goes for other forms of international cooperation. Here, too, American leadership benefits many countries

but disproportionately helps the United States. In order to counter transnational threats, such as terrorism, piracy, organized

crime, climate change, and pandemics, states have to work together and take collective action. But cooperation

does not come about effortlessly, especially when national interests diverge. The United States' military efforts

to promote stability and its broader leadership make it easier for Washington to launch joint initiatives

and shape them in ways that reflect U.S. interests . After all, cooperation is hard to come by in regions

where chaos reigns, and it flourishes where leaders can anticipate lasting stability.

U.S. alliances are about security first, but they also provide the political framework and channels of

communication for cooperation on nonmilitary issues. NATO, for example, has spawned new institutions, such as theAtlantic Council, a think tank, that make it easier for Americans and Europeans to talk to one another and do business. Likewise, consultations

with allies in East Asia spill over into other policy issues; for example, when American diplomats travel to Seoul to manage the military alliance,

they also end up discussing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Thanks to conduits such as this, the United States can use

bargaining chips in one issue area to make progress in others.

The benefits of these communication channels are especially pronounced when it comes to fighting the

kinds of threats that require new forms of cooperation, such as terrorism and pandemics. With its

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alliance system in place, the United States is in a stronger position than it would otherwise be to

advance cooperation and share burdens. For example, the intelligence-sharing network within NATO,

which was originally designed to gather information on the Soviet Union, has been adapted to deal with

terrorism. Similarly, after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated surrounding countries in 2004, Washington had a much easier timeorchestrating a fast humanitarian response with Australia, India, and Japan, since their militaries were already comfortable working with one

another. The operation did wonders for the United States' image in the region.

The United States' global role also has the more direct effect of facilitating the bargains amonggovernments that get cooperation going in the first place. As the scholar Joseph Nye has written, "The American militaryrole in deterring threats to allies, or of assuring access to a crucial resource such as oil in the Persian Gulf, means that the provision of

protective force can be used in bargaining situations. Sometimes the linkage may be direct; more often it is a factor not mentioned openly but

present in the back of statesmen's minds."THE DEVIL WE KNOW

Should America come home? For many prominent scholars of international relations, the answer is yes -- a view that seems even wiser in the

wake of the disaster in Iraq and the Great Recession. Yet their arguments simply don't hold up. There is little evidence that the

United States would save much money switching to a smaller global posture. Nor is the current strategy

self-defeating: it has not provoked the formation of counterbalancing coalitions or caused the country to

spend itself into economic decline. Nor will it condemn the United States to foolhardy wars in the future.

What the strategy does do is help prevent the outbreak of conflict in the world's most important regions,

keep the global economy humming, and make international cooperation easier . Charting a different course wouldthreaten all these benefits.

This is not to say that the United States' current foreign policy can't be adapted to new circumstances and challenges. Washington does not

need to retain every commitment at all costs, and there is nothing wrong with rejiggering its strategy in response to new opportunities or

setbacks. That is what the Nixon administration did by winding down the Vietnam War and increasing the United States' reliance on regional

partners to contain Soviet power, and it is what the Obama administration has been doing after the Iraq war by pivoting to Asia. These episodes

of rebalancing belie the argument that a powerful and internationally engaged America cannot tailor its policies to a changing world.

A grand strategy of actively managing global security and promoting the liberal economic order has

served the United States exceptionally well for the past six decades, and there is no reason to give it up

now. The country's globe-spanning posture is the devil we know, and a world with a disengaged America is the devil we don't know. Were

American leaders to choose retrenchment, they would in essence be running a massive experiment to

test how the world would work without an engaged and liberal leading power. The results could well be

disastrous.

Naval dominance is key to prevent the rise of any global challengers and the lynchpin of hegemony

Stratfor 2008 - the worlds leading private intelligence service. (U.S.: Naval Dominance and the

Importance of Oceans,

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/u_s_naval_dominance_and_importance_oceans)

Our statement that control of the worlds oceans is a cornerstone of U.S. geopolitical security and keepsany potential adversary half a world away sparked extensive comment. This is a long-standing Stratfor

position, not a casual assertion, and is crucial to the way we see the world. In his 1890 classic TheInfluence of Sea Power Upon History, U.S. Naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan examines the decisiverole superior sea power played in geopolitical competition and conflict from 1660 to 1783. His work has

made him perhaps the foremost theorist of naval power in the United States. At the risk ofoversimplification, Mahans thesis is that control ofthe sea can be decisive in both peacetime and

wartime, and has far-reaching military, economic and geopolitical ramifications. Mahan is required reading at Stratfor. Theworld has changed quite a bit since the time of Mahan, who wrote as sail was giving way to steam as the principal method of naval propulsion. Indeed, a common question from our readers hasbeen about the applicability of the oceans to U.S. security in the 21st century, particularly in the context of globalization. In essence, readers have asked us whether oceans still matter after

globalization has so reduced transit t imes and increased interconnectivity that transnational terrorism and cyberspace have come into existence. While aviation, theintercontinental ballistic missile, satellites and the Internet have all fundamentally altered the way the

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world interacts and how wars are fought, Mahans analysis holds true. Over the course of a century, but particularly during and afterWorld War II, the United States honed and perfected expeditionary naval operations. Washingtons ability to function on the other side of the planet from home port is unparalleled and has

surpassed the sea power of the British Empire that Mahan so admired. The importance of this cannot be overstated, and has broadapplicability. Globalization has massively increased, not decreased seaborne commerce. As the dominant

global naval power, Washington exercises a decisive influence over the principal avenue of bothinternational trade and the flow of the worlds oil (and, increasingly, natural gas). In addition to wielding

this as a lever over other countries, the U.S. Navy is the guarantor of Americas global supply lines . ThatWashington has claim to both the worlds foremost navy and the worlds foremost economy is nocoincidence, and it is a key dynamic of the entire international system. From a military perspective, the last shooting war in theWestern Hemisphere of any strategic significance for the United States was the Spanish-American War. That conflict resulted in the expulsion at the end of t he 19th century of the last EasternHemispheric power from Washingtons periphery. For more than a century now, the United States has fought its warsabroad, with the only strategic threat to the homeland being Soviet (and to a

much lesser extent, Chinese) nuclear weapons. Indeed, the fundamental value of naval dominance was demonstrated in 1962. During the Cuban Missile Crisis,Washington was able to prevent the re-emergence of an outside powers beachheadin Cuba because U.S. naval dominancemade the situation untenable for the Kremlin. The Russian navy was not in a position to sustain forces there in the face of concerted U.S. naval opposition. And while the notion of invasion in

the 21st century may seem anachronistic in the U.S. perspective, the rest of the world sees t hings very differently. That apparent anachronism is symptomaticof fundamental U.S. geopolitical security. Across the oceans, even much of Europe still looks east over

the open Northern European plain and remembers columns of Soviet armor. Nations the world overcontinue to struggle day in and day out with their neighbors. Pakistan, India and China continue to

squabble over Kashmir, which they each consider core to their geographic security. Russias foremostgeopolitical struggle is the re-establishment of some semblance of a peripheral buffer in Europe and the

Caucasusnecessary buffers, but a poor compensation for unfavorable geography. These issuescrucial geopolitical objectiveskeep Eurasia divided and restrict (but obviously do not eliminate) othercountries bandwidth to deal with global issues farther afield. The ultimate consequence of this division is

the prevention of the emergence of a potential challenger to the United States. By this, we mean theemergence of a country so secure in its geopolitical position that the mustering of resources necessary to

project military force across the Atlantic or Pacific to meaningfully challenge the strategic security of theNorth American continent becomes a possibility. More simply, U.S. naval dominance allows Washingtonto keep the costs of projecting hostile military force across the worlds oceansprohibitively high. The

countries of the world are thus largely left confronting geopolitical challenges in their own backyards,unable to militarily challenge the United States in its backyard. All the while, the U.S. Navy conducts

operations daily in Eurasias backyard. This is a secure and enviable geopolitical position.

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Predictions

Framework: the role of the ballot is to determine whether the aff is better than the status quo or a

competitive policy option. This means that they can have the K but fiating the alt is a voting issue

a) Utopian fiatthey do not specify an agent or mechanism for achieving the alt. It is a rigged game to

test the aff versus utopia. This kills fairness and is an independent voting issue.

b) Decision-makingThe agent of the alt is not directly competitive with the plan so we are not

engaging in opportunity cost thinkingwhich is the most rigorous way to test the aff and is one of the

most important critical thinking skills we take away from debate

Floating PIKs are a voterreject the team to deter bad practices and compensate for strategic

damage:

A) Makes it impossible to be affwe could never defend a single representation in a vacuum and

making the debate that narrow crushes the educational value of the topic. They have no offenseiftheir arguments were meaningful they wouldnt need to steal all our offense.

B) Even if they kick it, its functionally a new 2nc advocacy that wasnt in the 1nc which is an

independent voter because it skews 1ar strategy and forces us to read new offensethat causes

shallow debate.

We justify our epistomolgy using empirically tested data and statistical probabilities

Their predictions arguments dont apply to our affimagining unintended catastrophes is both

accurate and necessarythis is the author that did their studies

TETLOCK 2009 (Philip Tetlock is the Mitchell Endowed Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Expert PoliticalJudgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, The National Interest, August 25, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22040)

The authors point out too thatjust because somethinglike geopolitical riskis hard to quantify does not give

you license to ignore it. Rough approximations are better than tacitly treating the risk as zero. Ask the energycompanies that rushed into Yeltsins Russia in the 1990s to make large fixed -capital investments and were then compelled by Putin in the next

decade to renegotiate. This means we need to value contrarian thinkers, even though they can be a royal pain and slow

down the adoption of policies preferred by insiders. And so the authors suggest we might consider one much-hyped, but still-useful,

method of prying open otherwise-closed minds: scenario planning. This requires policy advocates to envision worlds

in which things dont work out as planneda world in which we are not greeted as liberators in Iraq; or

a world in which deregulation leads not to greater market efficiencies but rather to excessive borrowing

that severely destabilizes financial markets. History rarely overtly repeats itself but it often rhymes

and there is an advantage to those who can pick up the more subtle similarities . Saddam Hussein bore some

resemblance to Hitler, but he also bore some to Ceauescu, Mussolini, Kim Il Sung and Stalin, all of whom played a far more risk-aversegeopolitical game. The case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq loses much of its rhetorical force when we use

historical analogies in a more nuanced fashion. The authors are even nimble enough to see that although there are manysettings in which foxes like themselves have an advantagethey are slower to jump to premature conclusions and are quicker to change their

minds in response to new evidencehedgehogs are still sometimes remarkably prescient. As far back as 1933,

Churchill classified Hitler as a grave threat to Great Britaina category into which, incidentally, he also tossed Gandhi.

Similarly, the most bearish and bullish financial pundits occasionally have their days in the sun.

Even if our predictions are bad the possibility of extinction means that we should use them

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POSNER 2004 (Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Catastrophe: Risk

and Response 18)

The example suggests that the reason human survival beyond, say, the twenty-second century has little resonance with

most of us is merely that the future is hazy; the haziness illustrates the operation of imagination cost. The future that is

now the present was as hazy to the Romans as our future is to us. But that would not have been a good

reason for their risking the destruction of the human race in what to them was the remote and

therefore weightless future. Where the example is misleading, however, is in failing to extrapolate from the Romans assumed ability(assumed in my example, that isobviously the assumption is contrary to fact) to build a particle accelerator 2,000 years ago. If they had had

that much knowledge in 4 A.D., then probably within a few hundred more years they would have learned how to avoid an accelerator disaster,

and so the risk of extinction by 2004 would have been smaller than 1 in 500. Nevertheless the example is relevant to whether we

should be utterly insouciant about the fate of our remote descendants(remote on the scale of thousands, not millions

or billions, of years). It does not answer the question how much we owe the remote future, but the answer

may not be important. The threat that the catastrophic risks pose in the near future, the current

century, may be a sufficient basis for taking effective action now to prevent the risks from ever

materializing.

Perm do the plan and reject linear scenario planning in favor of complex theoretical analysis

Empiricism is the most useful form of knowledge for policymakersuseful in making theories toshape policy

Walt, 5 Prof, Kennedy School of Government @ Harvard (Stephen M., Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2005. 8:2348, pg. 25-26, The Relationship BetweenTheory and Policy in International Relations, http://www.iheid.ch/webdav/site/political_science/shared/political_science/3452/walt.pdf)

Policy decisions can be influenced by several types of knowledge. First, policy makers invariably rely on

purely factual knowledge (e.g., how large are the opponents forces? What is the current balance of payments?). Second, decision

makers sometimes employ rules of thumb: simple decision rules acquired through experience rather

than via systematic study (Mearsheimer 1989).3 A third type of knowledge consists of typologies, which classify phenomena based on sets of specific

traits. Policy makers can also rely on empirical laws. An empirical law is an observed correspondence

between two or more phenomena that systematic inquiry has shown to be reliable. Such laws (e.g.,

democracies do not fight each other or human beings are more risk averse with respect to losses

than to gains) can be useful guides even if we do not know why they occur, or if our explanations for

them are incorrect. Finally, policy makers can also use theories. A theory is a causal explanation itidentifies recurring relations between two or more phenomena and explains why that relationship

obtains. By providing us with a picture of the central forces that determine real-world behavior, theories

invariably simplify reality in order to render it comprehensible. At the most general level, theoretical IR

work consists of efforts by social scientists. . .to account for interstate and trans-state processes, issues,

and outcomes in general causal terms (Lepgold & Nincic 2001, p. 5; Viotti & Kauppi 1993 (). IR theories offer explanations

for the level of security competition between states including both the likelihood of war among

particular states and the warproneness of specific countries); the level and forms of international

cooperation (e.g., alliances, regimes, openness to trade and investment); the spread of ideas, norms,

and institutions; and the transformation of particular international systems, among other topics.In

constructing these theories, IR scholars employ an equally diverse set of explanatory variables. Some of thesetheories operate at the level of the international system, using variables such as the distribution of power among states (Waltz 1979, Copeland 2000, Mearsheimer

2001), the volume of trade, financial flows, and interstate communications (Deutsch 1969, Ruggie 1983, Rosecrance 1986); or t he degree of institutionalization

among states (Keohane 1984, Keohane & Martin 2003). Other theories emphasize different national characteristics, such as regime type (Andreski 1980, Doyle

1986, Fearon 1994, Russett 1995), bureaucratic and organizational politics (Allison & Halperin 1972, Halperin 1972), or domestic cohesion (Levy 1989); or the

content of particular ideas or doctrines (Van Evera 1984, Hall 1989, Goldstein & Keohane 1993, Snyder 1993). Yet another family of theories operates at the

individual level, focusing on individual or group psychology, gender differences, and other human traits (De Rivera 1968, J ervis 1976, Mercer 1996, Byman&Pollock

2001, Goldgeier&Tetlock 2001, Tickner 2001, Goldstein 2003), while a fourth body of theory focuses on collective ideas, ident ities, and social discourse (e.g.,

Finnemore 1996, Ruggie 1998, Wendt 1999). To develop these ideas, IR theorists employ the full range of social science

methods: comparative case studies, formal theory, large-N statistical analysis, and hermeneutical or

interpretivist approaches.

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Focusing on epistemology selfishly ignores real world problems

Jarvis, 2K Prof Philosophy @ U South Carolina (Darryl, Studies in International Relations, International Relations and the Challenge ofPostmodernism, pg.2)

While Hoffmann might well be correct, these days one can neither begin nor conclude empirical research without first

discussing epistemological orientations and ontological assumptions. Like a vortex, metatheory has engulfed

us all and the question of "theory" which was once used as a guide to research is now the object of

research. Indeed, for a discipline whose purview is ostensibly outward looldng and international in scope, and at a time of ever encroachingglobalization and transnationalism, International Relations has become increasingly provincial and inward

looking. Rather than grapple with the numerous issues that confront peoples around the world, since the early 1980s the discipline has tended more and more

toward obsessive self-examination.3 These days the politics of famine, environmental degradation, underdevelopment, or

ethnic cleansing, let alone the cartographic machinations in Eastern Europe and the reconfiguration of

the geo-global political-economy, seem scarcely to concern theorists of international politics who define

the urgent task of our time to be one of metaphysical reflection and epistemological investigation.

Arguably, theory is no longer concerned with the study of international relations so much as the "manner in

which international relations as a discipline, and international relations as a subject matter, have been

constructed."4 To be concerned with the latter is to be "on the cutting edge," where novelty has itself become "an appropriate form of scholarship."5

Failure to engage in the political process will result in the takeover by the extreme right, leading to

discrimination and war worldwide

Rorty 98 professor emeritus of comparative literature and philosophy, by courtesy, at Stanford

University (Richard, ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, 1998,

pg. 89-94)

*WE DO NOT ENDORSE GENDERED LANGUAGE*

Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading

into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional

governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future.

The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and

unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to

prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will

realize that suburban white-collar workers - themselves desperately afraid of being downsized - are notgoing to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point, something will

crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a

strongman to vote for-someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats,

tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the

shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis novel It Cant Happen Here may then be played out. For once

such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions

made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic. One

thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown

Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into

fashion. The words "nigger" and "kike" will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which

the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resent-ment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college

graduates will find an outlet. But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness. For

after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international super-

rich, just as Hitler made his with the German industrialists. He will invoke the glorious memory of the

Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term prosperity. He will be a disaster

for the country and the world. People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise.

Where, they will ask, was the American Left? Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of globalization?Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer have a Left. Since nobody

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denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national politics. It is not the sort of Left which can be

asked to deal with the consequences of globalization. To get the c ountry to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations

with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions. It would have to talk much more about money, e ven at the cost of talking less about stigma. I have

two suggestions about how to effect this transition. The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory. It should try to

kick its philosophy habit. The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans. It should ask the public to consider how thecountry of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey's Reconstruction in Philos ophy in which he expresses his exaspera tion

with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of "individualism versus communitarianism." Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a

common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or

that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts

and their dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong when he went on tosay that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies "the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order. "9 For such ascents are now

more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the estab lished order

you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been "inadequately

theorized," you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism.

Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan's impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the

established order. Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by "problematizing familiar concepts." Recent attempts to subvert social institutions by problematizing concepts have produced a

few very good books. They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worst. The authors of these purportedly "subversive" books honestly

believe that they are serving human liberty. But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty,

a candidate, or a political strategy. Even though what these authors "theorize" is often something very concrete and near at hand-a current TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal-they

offer the most abstract and barren explanations imaginable. These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance

are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach

to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations. These

result in an intellectual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main

Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is

called "power." This is the name of what Edmundson calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is

everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10

Perm do the plan and reject all other instances of complexity

Prediction is possible and accurate even if not perfect-game theory and political modeling can account

for complex social systems by aggregating expertism-forecasting can provide an accurate basis for

scenario planning especially for MENA revolutions

de Mesquita 11 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Silver Professor of Politics at New York University and a

senior fellow at the Hoover Institution B.A. from Queens, M.A. from Michigan, PhD from Michigan,

"FOX-HEDGING OR KNOWING: ONE BIG WAY TO KNOW MANY THINGS" July 18 www.cato-

unbound.org/2011/07/18/bruce-bueno-de-mesquita/fox-hedging-or-knowing-one-big-way-to-know-

many-things/

Given what we know today and given the problems inherent in dealing with human interaction, what is

a leading contender for making accurate, discriminating, useful predictions of complex human

decisions? In good hedgehog mode I believe one top contender is applied game theory. Of course there

are others but I am betting on game theory as the right place to invest effort. Why? Because game

theory is the only method of which I am aware that explicitly compels us to address human adaptability.

Gardner and Tetlock rightly note that people are self-aware beings who see, think, talk, and attempt to

predict each others behaviorand who are continually adapting to each others efforts to predict each

others behavior, adding layer after layer of new calculations and new complexity. This adaptation is

what game theory jargon succinctly calls endogenous choice. Predicting human behavior means

solving for endogenous choices while assessing uncertainty. It certainly isnt easy but, as the example ofbandwidth auctions helps clarify, game theorists are solving for human adaptability and uncertainty with

some success. Indeed, I used game theoretic reasoning on May 5, 2010 to predict to a large investment

groups portfolio committee that Mubaraks regime faced replacement, especially by the Muslim

Brotherhood, in the coming year. That prediction did not rely on in-depth knowledge of Egyptian history

and culture or on expert judgment but rather on a game theory model called selectorate theory and its

implications for the concurrent occurrence of logically derived revolutionary triggers. Thus, while the

desire for revolution had been present in Egypt (and elsewhere) for many years, logic suggested that the

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odds of success and the expected rewards for revolution were rising swiftly in 2010 in Egypt while the

expected costs were not.

This is but one example that highlights what Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, who was quoted by

Gardner and Tetlock, has said about game theory and prediction (referring, as it happens, to a specific

model I developed for predicting policy decisions): Bueno de Mesquita has demonstrated the power of

using game theory and related assumptions of rational and self-seeking behavior in predicting the

outcome of important political and legal processes. Nice as his statement is for me personally, the

broader point is that game theory in the hands of much better game theorists than I am has the

potential to transform our ability to anticipate the consequences of alternative choices in many aspects

of human interaction.

How can game theory be harnessed to achieve reliable prediction? Acting like a fox, I gather information

from a wide variety of experts. They are asked only for specific current information (Who wants to

influence a decision? What outcome do they currently advocate? How focused are they on the issue

compared to other questions on their plate? How flexible are they about getting the outcome they

advocate? And how much clout could they exert?). They are not asked to make judgments about what

will happen. Then, acting as a hedgehog, I use that information as data with which to seed a dynamic

applied game theory model. The models logic then produces not only specific predictions about the

issues in question, but also a probability distribution around the predictions. The predictions aredetailed and nuanced. They address not only what outcome is likely to arise, but also how each player

will act, how they are likely to relate to other players over time, what they believe about each other, and

much more. Methods like this are credited by the CIA, academic specialists and others, as being accurate

about 90 percent of the time based on large-sample assessments. These methods have been subjected

to peer review with predictions published well ahead of the outcome being known and with the issues

forecast being important questions of their time with much controversy over how they were expected

to be resolved. This is not so much a testament to any insight I may have had but rather to the virtue of

combining the focus of the hedgehog with the breadth of the fox. When facts are harnessed by logic and

evaluated through replicable tests of evidence, we progress toward better prediction.

Vague alt they provide no description of what their alternative political actions would be making itimpossible to answer. This is a voter for fairness and education killing disad links and clash over

alternative solvency.

Even if predictions in the abstract are wrong, policy debates that predict hypothetical outcomes and

weigh evidence of the risk of those outcomes is productive

Tetlock & Gardner 11 Philip Tetlock is a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas Business School

at the University of California-Berkeley, AND Dan Gardner is a columnist and senior writer for the

Ottawa Citizen and the author of The Science of Fear, received numerous awards for his writing,

including the Michener Award, M.A. History from York, "OVERCOMING OUR AVERSION TO

ACKNOWLEDGING OUR IGNORANCE" July 11 www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-

philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance/

The optimists are right that there is much we can do at a cost that is quite modest relative to what is

often at stake. For example, why not build on the IARPA tournament? Imagine a system for recording

and judging forecasts. Imagine running tallies of forecasters accuracy rates. Imagine advocates on either

side of a policy debate specifying in advance precisely what outcomes their desired approach is

expected to produce, the evidence that will settle whether it has done so, and the conditions under

which participants would agree to say I was wrong. Imagine pundits being held to account. Of course

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance/http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance/http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance/http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance/

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arbitration only works if the arbiter is universally respected and it would be an enormous challenge to

create an analytical center whose judgments were not only fair, but perceived to be fair even by

partisans dead sure they are right and the other guys are wrong. But think of the potential of such a

system to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, to sharpen public debate, to shift attention from blowhards

to experts worthy of an audience, and to improve public policy. At a minimum, it would highlight how

often our forecasts and expectations fail, and if that were to deflate the bloated confidence of experts

and leaders, and give pause to those preparing some great leap forward, it would be money well

spent.

But the pessimists are right, too, that fallibility, error, and tragedy are permanent conditions of our

existence. Humility is in order, or, as Socrates said, the beginning of wisdom is the admission of

ignorance. The Socratic message has always been a hard sell, and it still isespecially among practical

people in business and politics, who expect every presentation to end with a single slide consisting of

five bullet points labeled The Solution.

We have no such slide, unfortunately. But in defense of Socrates, humility is the foundation of the fox

style of thinking and much research suggests it is an essential component of good judgment in our

uncertain world. It is practical. Over the long term, it yields better calibrated probability judgments,

which should help you affix more realistic odds than your competitors on policy bets panning out.

Alt fails- no spillover

Political modeling obviates critiques of expertism

de Mesquita 11 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Silver Professor of Politics at New York University and a

senior fellow at the Hoover Institution B.A. from Queens, M.A. from Michigan, PhD from Michigan,

"FOX-HEDGING OR KNOWING: ONE BIG WAY TO KNOW MANY THINGS" July 18 www.cato-

unbound.org/2011/07/18/bruce-bueno-de-mesquita/fox-hedging-or-knowing-one-big-way-to-know-

many-things/

Good predictionand this is my beliefcomes from dependence on logic and evidence to draw

inferences about the causal path from facts to outcomes. Unfortunately, government, business, and themedia assume that expertiseknowing the history, culture, mores, and language of a place, for

instanceis sufficient to anticipate the unfolding of events. Indeed, too often many of us dismiss

approaches to prediction that require knowledge of statistical methods, mathematics, and systematic

research design. We seem to prefer wisdom over science, even though theevidence shows that the

application of the scientific method, with all of its demands, outperforms experts (remember Johan de

Witt). The belief that area expertise, for instance, is sufficient to anticipate the future is, as Tetlock

convincingly demonstrated, just plain false. If we hope to build reliable predictions about human

behavior, whether in China, Cameroon, or Connecticut, then probably we must first harness facts to the

systematic, repeated, transparent application of the same logic across connected families of problems.

By doing so we can test alternative ways of thinking to uncover what works and what doesnt in

different circumstances. Here Gardner, Tetlock, and I could not agree more. Prediction tournaments are

an essential ingredient to work out what the current limits are to improved knowledge and predictive

accuracy. Of course, improvements in knowledge and accuracy will always be a moving target because

technology, ideas, and subject adaptation will be ongoing.

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States Devolution-lConditionality is a voter:

1. Strat Skew They make impossible to effectively allocate my 2ac by being able to kick out ofwhat I spend the most time on.

2. PolicymakingConditionality doesnt force logical concessions to kick arguments promoting abad form of education.

3. Multiple Conditional Worlds allow the negative to cross apply our offense to become theiroffense causing affs to be squirrely which is an independent voter.

4. Perf Con forces us to debate against ourselves killing education and fairness which is an

independent voter.

4. 1 Conditional Advocacy solves their offense

CP fails-a)Without fed funding investment is zero sum- ports will have to compete against each

other for funds which means that we cant boost enough sufficiently. Also, courts and legalissues means that the cp would take forever to be implemented which isnt fast enough tosolve for Panama. Thats AAPA

b) Taxes- the alternative to direct funding is a massive increase in port taxes which wouldcripple maritime competetivness- literally solves none of our aff. Thats AAPA

The devolution counterplan is illegitimate and a voter

A) Literaturethere is no literature about devolution in the context of our afflit is the source of ourpreparation and offense and the only objective way to know whats predictable.

B) Decisionmakingno decisionmaker ever faces the choice they poseits an illogical thought process

so theres no coherence or jurisdiction to vote on impossible outcomes especially when it costs us a year

of debates about transportation infrastructure.

C) Aff groundthey fiat through all logical offensethis stifles the topic and forces us to the margins

while they use it as a strategic crutch creating stale debates.

D) Counter-interpretationthey get the 50 states CP but dont get to fiat through all barriers and legal

precedents.

Devolution fails- States need federal support

Kavinoky, 5/14/12- Executive Director, Transportation & Infrastructure U.S. Chamber of Commerce Vice

President (Janet, Long-term funding needs to hit the road, Jack, Campaign for Free Enterprise by The

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 5/24/12, http://www.freeenterprise.com/infrastructure/long-term-

funding-needs-hit-road-jack)RC

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It has been suggested that federal transportation programs be eliminated and the responsibility left

to the states. Devolution, as its called, is unworkable and ill-advised. Governors, state legislators,

mayors and city council members are not prepared to increase local revenues to take on this huge

liability. States and metropolitan areas already are strapped for cash and using transportation trust

funds to balance budgets. Without federal funding and the policy and programmatic structures to

support them, states cannot be expected to act on their own to ensure that interstate commerce,

domestic and international trade, interstate passenger travel and emergency preparedness are

adequately supported by the transportation infrastructure in their care. And where will funds come

from to seed the public transportation investments to address traffic congestion, mobility and

productivity in the economic engines of the U.S. economy our cities? Some people wrongly

argue that investment in transit is a less than serious, utopian enterprise. The Chamber strongly

believes transit is a critical means of addressing congestion and is driving economic development in

many areas around the country. These red herrings, accepting major funding cuts or devolving

federal programs to the states, are not real solutions. Congress and President Barack Obama must

work toward passage of a bill out of conference before June 30. The nation cannot afford for them

to fail in finding a way to sustain federal funds through 2013 or to address many of the

inefficiencies of current federal law. Then, before the ink on their agreement dries, we have to get

back on the road to a serious conversation about long-term funding for transportation thatmodernizes American infrastructure and promotes economic stability.

Perm: Do both

Giving power to the states fail

Heiligenstein 6 [Mike Heiligenstein, Executive Director at the Central Texas Regional Mobility AuthorityThe Devolution of Transportation Funding

How Innovative Financing Is Putting Local Communities Back in the Drivers Seat

2006http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/44380/1/TransportPaper-Heiligenstein.pdf SMerchant]

The devolution of transportation funding and the paradigm shift that has put local leaders in the

drivers seat is poorly and not readily understood by the public. As a result, implementation has beendifficult.Despite a looming transportation funding crisis and a wide range of new funding tools at the

disposal of public officials, the development of new facilities has been painfully slow and plagued by

setbacks. Still the process moves forward, driven by the reality that there are few other realistic options and that local government andregions must bring new dollars to the table to leverage the already scarce gas tax dollars. The most important thing to focus on as this new

course is charted is what brought us to this point: the inadequacy of the gas tax, as currently structured, to provide sufficient funding for future

completed needs. The promise of surplus revenue from tolling brings with it the same risks born out in the history of the gas tax.

Federal leadership is vital to maximizing competitiveness

SCHANK, 5/20 PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE Eno Center for Transportation, was a Transportation

Policy Advisor for Hilary Clinton, and holds a Ph.D. in urban planning from Columbia University, a Master

of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.A. in urban studies from

Columbia University.(Joshua,

The Federal Role in Transportation: Four Ideas for Greater Federal Involvement

,Eno Center for

Transportation, 5/20/12, http://www.enotrans.org/eno-brief/the-federal-role-in-transportation-four-ideas-for-greater-federal-

involvement)//GP

All of these ideas have a consistent theme they require strong federal leadership to maximize our

return on investment. Our freight system, airports, highways, and ports all require some federal coordination in

order for the U.S. to effectively compete in the global economy . While we consider the federal role in transportation

given the increasing possibility of diminished federal funding in the coming decades, these are areas where there not only

http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/44380/1/TransportPaper-Heiligenstein.pdfhttp://www.enotrans.org/eno-brief/the-federal-role-in-transportation-four-ideas-for-greater-federal-involvementhttp://www.enotrans.org/eno-brief/the-federal-role-in-transportation-four-ideas-for-greater-federal-involvementhttp://www.enotrans.org/eno-brief/the-federal-role-in-transportation-four-ideas-for-greater-federal-involvementhttp://www.enotrans.org/eno-brief/the-federal-role-in-transportation-four-ideas-for-greater-federal-involvementhttp://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/44380/1/TransportPaper-Heiligenstein.pdf

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needs to be a federal presence, but federal leadership . If local transportation decisions are seen as

purelypolitical, with little regard to performance outcomes or national goals, we will fall short of where we need

to be as a nation. These transportation investments will require strong federal leadership to ensure that

they remain primarily influenced by data, analysis, and desired outcomes.

Constitution prevents nuclear war you must uphold itKucinich 2

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Oh, March, http://www.downwinders.org/Kucinich_Peace_p.html

"Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war," the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th

2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 ofthe United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take

responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President is very popular, according to the polls. But

polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or

dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year

for defense is a political decision. Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political

decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of

nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy

there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from

the consent of the governed. In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before wecelebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and

open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy. We have reached a moment in our country's history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as

president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear

through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping

consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. O ne faction thinks: war! and starts a

war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace? Neither individuals nor nations exist in a

vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It i s also urgent that we find t hose places of war in our own lives, and begin

healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the

power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the

world. Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we

should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time an d space. Some of our leaders

have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. Recently there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might

wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government: 1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a

preemptive nuclear strike. 2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons. 3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. 4.

Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack. Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the

context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the "war on terrorism" with World War II. He

expresses a desire to have the nuclear option "on the table." He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missileshield. He institutes, without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside our nation's Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the

storage of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons. Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared and hated the Russians who feared

and hated us. We feared and hated the "godless, atheistic" communists. In our schools, each of us dutifully put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-

cover drills. In our nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We

surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you "nu ked"

others you "nuked" yourself. The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs. Them, the

dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear weapons, pollutes the psyche with

the arrogance of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space. It is

dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers

who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find

the bombs in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels

that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

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Immigratoion Reform

Immigration reform is at the bottom of the docketplan wont affect it

Neyoy, 2/9(Cesar, Grijalva: Debate on immigration may take time, YumaSun, 2/9/13 00:58 ET,http://www.yumasun.com/news/reform-85153-congress-immigration.html) EK

Congress could begin debate within six months on an immigration reform measure that could give millions of

undocumented immigrants a path toward legal residency in the United States, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva predicts. But a vote by Congress

on any reform bill is not likely to come until just before the end of the year, the Tucson Democrat said during a

recent visit to Somerton. Grijalva, whose district includes the southern half of Yuma County, said any measure that advances

through Congress will not confer any automatic benefits for immigrants. There will be many people

who won't qualify, either because they have committed some crime or because they can't demonstrate that they have roots here asidefrom the fact of being in the country. The central issue of this reform is to unify families where, for example, the children are U.S. citizens but

the parents have been deported. The process is to unify families. The applicants for legal status, aside from having to pay fines, will have to

meet certain requirements for legal residency, he added. In the wake of the November elections, Grijalva said, support in Congress for

immigration reform has increased from less than 50 percent of lawmakers to nearly 60 percent. But in the event Congress does not act on the

issue, he added, President Obama has the option of taking executive action to enact immigration reform, as he did last summer when his

administration suspended deportations of undocumented youths for two years to give them time to apply for legal residency. Grijalva said he

and other lawmakers will visit their districts to try to line up broad-based community support for immigration reform amid what he expects willbe a drawn-out debate over the subject in Congress. It's going to be a process of almost seven months, he said. Right

now, we don't have any concrete proposal. We are practically starting from scratch .

Wont passRepublicans, security and gay marriage fights comingalso empirically will fail

Spetalnick 1/30 (Matt, Obama pushes Congress on immigration, split emerges,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/30/us-usa-immigration-obama-

idUSBRE90S06U20130130)//DR. H

(Reuters) - Just over a week into his second term, President Barack Obama took his fight for immigration reform to theWest on Tuesday and pushed Congress to quickly find a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented residents.

But as Obama praised a bipartisan immigration plan during a speech in Las Vegas, disagreement emergedbetween the White House and Republicans that underscored the difficulty of resolving anemotive issue that has long defied a legislative fix."I'm here today because the time has come for common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform," Obama said at a high school. "The time is

now. Now is the time."

After years on the back burner, immigration reform has suddenly looked possible as Republicans, chastened by Latino voters who rejected

them in the November election, appear more willing to accept a thorough overhaul.

Action on immigration was sidelined by economic issues and healthcare reform during Obama's first term but it is part of an ambitious liberal

agenda the Democratic president laid out last week in his second inaugural address. That agenda also includes gun control, gay rights and

fighting climate change.

Hispanic voters were crucial in winning Nevada for Obama in November and the crowd at the high school was supportive.

"Si se puede," yelled some, using a Spanish phrase that harked back to Obama's 2008 "Yes we can" campaign slogan. Some in the audience

were brought to tears when he talked about the difficulties some immigrants have experienced.

In Washington, however, differences quickly emerged between what Obama would l