CaseAT: Heg Bad

U.S. hegemony KT check great power war through deterrence and alliance building thats Zhang

Liberal order inevitable its just a question of who leads. The U.S. strategy of institutional problem solving is comparatively better.

US Hegemony is key to deter escalating aggressions Transition wars turns the turn Kagan, 14 [Robert Kagan, PhD in American Diplomatic History from American University, Masters of Public Policy from Harvards Kennedy School of Government, Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, 5-24-2014, New Republic, Superpowers Don't Get to Retire: What our tired country still owes the world, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117859/allure-normalcy-what-america-still-owes-world] JeongToday, however, Americans seem overwhelmed by the difficulty and complexity of it all. They yearn to return to what Niebuhr called the innocency of irresponsibility, or at least to a normalcy in which the United States can limit the scope of its commitments. In this way America has perhaps returned to the mood of the 1920s. There is a difference, however. In the 1920s, it was not Americas world order that needed shoring up. Americans felt, mistakenly as it turned out, that it was Britains and Europes job to preserve the world order they had created. Today, it is Americas world order that needs propping up. Will Americans decide that it matters this time, when only they have the capacity to sustain it? You never miss the water til the well runs dry, or so the saying goes. One wonders whether Americans, including their representatives and their president, quite understand what is at stake. When President Obama first took office five years ago, Peter Baker of The New York Times reported that he intended to deal with the world as it is rather than as it might be. It is a standard realist refrain and has been repeated time and again by senior Obama officials as a way of explaining why he decided against pursuing some desirable but unreachable ideal in this place or that. What fewer and fewer seem to realize, however, is that the last 70 years have offered Americans and many others something of a reprieve from the world as it is. Periods of peace and prosperity can make people forget what the world as it is really looks like, and to conclude that the human race has simply ascended to some higher plateau of being. This was the common view in Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century. At a time when there had not been a war between great powers in 40 years, or a major Europe-wide war in a century, the air was filled with talk of a new millennium in which wars among civilized nations had become impossible. Three-quarters of a century and two world wars and a cold war later, millennial thoughts return. Studies cited by Fareed Zakaria purport to show that some transformation of international relations has occurred. Changes of borders by force have dropped dramatically since 1946. The nations of Western Europe, having been responsible for two new wars a year for 600 years, had not even started one since 1945. Steven Pinker observes that the number of deaths from war, ethnic conflict, and military coups has declinedsince 1945and concludes that the human race has become socialized to prefer peace and nonviolence. The dates when these changes supposedly began ought to be a tip-off. Is it a coincidence that these happy trends began when the American world order was established after World War II, or that they accelerated in the last two decades of the twentieth century, when Americas only serious competitor collapsed? Imagine strolling through Central Park and, after noting how much safer it had become, deciding that humanity must simply have become less violentwithout thinking that perhaps the New York Police Department had something to do with it. In fact, the world as it is is a dangerous and often brutal place. There has been no transformation in human behavior or in international relations. In the twenty-first century, no less than in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, force remains the ultima ratio. The question, today as in the past, is not whether nations are willing to resort to force but whether they believe they can get away with it when they do. If there has been less aggression, less ethnic cleansing, less territorial conquest over the past 70 years, it is because the United States and its allies have both punished and deterred aggression, have intervened, sometimes, to prevent ethnic cleansing, and have gone to war to reverse territorial conquest. The restraint showed by other nations has not been a sign of human progress, the strengthening of international institutions, or the triumph of the rule of law. It has been a response to a global configuration of power that, until recently, has made restraint seem the safer course. When Vladimir Putin failed to achieve his goals in Ukraine through political and economic means, he turned to force, because he believed that he could. He will continue to use force so long as he believes that the payoff exceeds the cost. Nor is he unique in this respect. What might China do were it not hemmed in by a ring of powerful nations backed by the United States? For that matter, what would Japan do if it were much more powerful and much less dependent on the United States for its security? We have not had to find out the answers to these questions, not yet, because American predominance, the American alliance system, and the economic, political, and institutional aspects of the present order, all ultimately dependent on power, have mostly kept the lid closed on this Pandoras box. Nor have we had to find out yet what the world as it is would do to the remarkable spread of democracy. Skeptics of democracy promotion argue that the United States has often tried to plant democracy in infertile soil. They may be right. The widespread flowering of democracy around the world in recent decades may prove to have been artificial and therefore tenuous. As Michael Ignatieff once observed, it may be that liberal civilization itself runs deeply against the human grain and is achieved and sustained only by the most unremitting struggle against human nature. Perhaps this fragile democratic garden requires the protection of a liberal world order, with constant feeding, watering, weeding, and the fencing off of an ever-encroaching jungle. In the absence of such efforts, the weeds and the jungle may sooner or later come back to reclaim the land. One wonders if even the current economic order reflects the world as it is. A world in which autocracies make ever more ambitious attempts to control the flow of information, and in which autocratic kleptocracies use national wealth and resources to further their private interests, may prove less hospitable to the kind of free flow of commerce the world has come to appreciate in recent decades. In fact, from the time that Roosevelt and Truman first launched it, the whole project of promoting and defending a liberal world order has been a concerted effort not to accept the world as it is. The American project has aimed at shaping a world different from what had always been, taking advantage of Americas unique situation to do what no nation had ever been able to do. Today, however, because many Americans no longer recall what the world as it is really looks like, they cannot imagine it. They bemoan the burdens and failures inherent in the grand strategy but take for granted all the remarkable benefits. Nor do they realize, perhaps, how quickly it can all unravel. The international system is an elaborate web of power relationships, in which every nation, from the biggest to the smallest, is constantly feeling for shifts or disturbances. Since 1945, and especially since 1989, the web has been geared to respond primarily to the United States. Allies observe American behavior and calculate Americas reliability. Nations hemmed in or threatened by American power watch for signs of growing or diminishing power and will. When the United States appears to retrench, allies necessarily become anxious, while others look for opportunities. In recent years, the world has picked up unmistakable signals that Americans may no longer want to carry the burden of global responsibility. Others read the polls, read the presidents speeches calling for nation-building at home, see the declining defense budgets and defense capabilities, and note the extreme reticence, on the part of both American political parties, about using force. The world judges that, were it not for American war-weariness, the United States probably would by now have used force in Syriajust as it did in Kosovo, in Bosnia, and in Panama. President Obama himself recently acknowledged as much when he said, Its not that its not worth it. Its that after a decade of war, you know, the United States has limits. Such statements set the web vibrating. In East Asia, nations living in close proximity to an increasingly powerful China want to know whether Americans will make a similar kind of calculation when it comes to defending them; in the Middle East, nations worried about Iran wonder if they will be left to confront it alone; in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, American security guarantees are meaningless unless Americans are able and willing to meet them. Are they? No one has taken a poll lately on whether the United States should come to the defense of its treaty allies in the event of a war between, say, China and Japan; or whether it should come to the defense of Estonia in a Ukraine-like conflict with Russia. The answers might prove interesting. Meanwhile, the signs of the global order breaking down are all around us. Russias invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea was the first time since World War II that a nation in Europe had engaged in territorial conquest. If Iran manages to acquire a nuclear weapon, it will likely lead other powers in the region to do the same, effectively undoing the nonproliferation regime, which, along with American power, has managed to keep the number of nuclear-armed powers limited over the past half century. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia are engaged in a proxy war in Syria that, in addition to the 150,000 dead and the millions displaced, has further destabilized a region that had already been in upheaval. In East Asia, nervousness about Chinas rise, combined with uncertainty about Americas commitment, is exacerbating tensions. In recent years the number of democracies around the world has been steadily declining, while the number of autocracies grows. If these trends continue, in the near future we are likely to see increasing conflict, increasing wars over territory, greater ethnic and sectarian violence, and a shrinking world of democracies. How will Americans respond? If the test is once again to be national interests narrowly construed, then Americans may find all of this tolerable, or at least preferable to doing something to stop it. Could the United States survive if Syria remains under the control of Assad or, more likely, disintegrates into a chaos of territories, some of which will be controlled by jihadi terrorists? Could it survive if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, and if in turn Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt acquire nuclear weapons? Or if North Korea launches a war on the South? Could it survive in a world where China dominates much of East Asia, or where China and Japan resume their old conflict? Could it survive in a world where Russia dominates Eastern Europe, including not only Ukraine but the Baltic states and perhaps even Poland? Of course it could. From the point of view of strict necessity and narrow national interest, the United States could survive all of this. It could trade with a dominant China and work out a modus vivendi with a restored Russian empire. Those alarmed by such developments will be hard-pressed, as Roosevelt was, to explain how each marginal setback would affect the parochial interests of the average American. As in the past, Americans will be among the last to suffer grievously from a breakdown of world order. And by the time they do feel the effects, it may be very late in the day. Looking back on the period before World War II, Robert Osgood, the most thoughtful of realist thinkers of the past century, discerned a critical element missing from the strategic analyses of the day. Mere rational calculations of the national interest, he argued, proved inadequate. Paradoxically, it was the idealists, those who were most sensitive to the Fascist menace to Western culture and civilization, who were among the first to understand the necessity of undertaking revolutionary measures to sustain Americas first line of defense in Europe. Idealism, he concluded, was an indispensable spur to reason in leading men to perceive and act upon the real imperatives of power politics. This was Roosevelts message, too, when he asked Americans to defend not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded. Perhaps Americans can be inspired in this way again, without the threat of a Hitler or an attack on their homeland. But this time they will not have 20 years to decide. The world will change much more quickly than they imagine. And there is no democratic superpower waiting in the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters.

Realism dictates state action everyone is self-interested, deterrence is uniquely key. Mearsheimer 14 -- Professor of political science at the University of Chicago, PhD in international relations (John J., Realism Reader, edited by Colin Elman and Michael A. Jensen, London ; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, p. 179-188, tony) Great powers, I argue, are always searching for opportunities to gain power over their rivals, with hegemony as their final goal. This perspective does not allow for status quo powers, except for the unusual state that achieves preponderance. Instead, the system is populated with great powers that have revisionist intentions at their core. This chapter presents a theory that explains this competition for power. Specifically, I attempt to show that there is a compelling logic behind my claim that great powers seek to maximize their share of world power. . .Why states pursue power My explanation for why great powers vie with each other for power and strive for hegemony is derived from five assumptions about the international system. None of these assumptions alone mandates that states behave competitively. Taken together, however, they depict a world in which states have considerable reason to think and sometimes behave aggressively. In particular, the system encourages states to look for opportunities to maximize their power vis--vis other states. . . Bedrock assumptions The first assumption is that the international system is anarchic, which does not mean that it is chaotic or riven by disorder. It is easy to draw that conclusion, since realism depicts a world characterized by security competition and war. By itself, however, the realist notion of anarchy has nothing to do with conflict; it is an ordering principle, which says that the system comprises independent states that have no central authority above them.2 Sovereignty, in other words, inheres in states because there is no higher ruling body in the international system. 3 There is no "government over governments."4 The second assumption is that great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly destroy each other. States are potentially dangerous to each other, although some states have more military might than others and are therefore more dangerous. A state's military power is usually identified with the particular weaponry at its disposal, although even if there were no weapons, the individuals in those states could still use their feet and hands to attack the population of another state. After all, for every neck, there are two hands to choke it. The third assumption is that states can never be certain about other states' intentions. Specifically, no state can be sure that another state will not use its offensive military capability to attack the first state. This is not to say that states necessarily have hostile intentions. Indeed, all of the states in the system may be reliably benign, but it is impossible to be sure of that judgment because intentions are impossible to divine with 100 percent certainty. 5 There are many possible causes of aggression, and no state can be sure that another state is not motivated by one of them. 6 Furthermore, intentions can change quickly, so a state 's intentions can be benign one day and hostile the next. Uncertainty about intentions is unavoidable, which means that states can never be sure that other states do not have offensive intentions to go along with their offensive capabilities. The fourth assumption is that survival is the primary goal of great powers. Specifically states seek to maintain their territorial integrity and the autonomy of their domestic political ... order. Survival dominates other motives because, once a state is conquered, it is unlikely t be in a position to pursue other aims. Soviet leader Josef Stalin put the point well during a war scare in 1927: "We can and must build socialism in the [Soviet Union]. But in order lv do so we first of all have to exist."7 States can and do pursue other goals, of course, but security is their most important objective. The fifth assumption is that great powers are rational actors. They are aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it. In particular. they consider the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those other states, and how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy for survival. Moreover, states pay attention to the long term as well as the immediate consequences of their actions. As emphasized, none of these assumptions alone dictates that great powers as a general rule should behave aggressively toward each other. There is surely the possibility that some state might have hostile intentions, but the only assumption dealing with a specific motive that is common to all states says that their principal objective is to survive, which by itself is a rather harmless goal. Nevertheless, when the five assumptions are married together. They create powerful incentives for great powers to think and act offensively with regard t each other. In particular, three general patterns of behavior result: fear, self-help, and power maximization. T

1. We meet their interpretation two reasons: a. Our plan text mandates restriction of data collection from U.S. companies who are legally U.S. persons.b. U.S. persons data overseas gets swept up in bulk collection and through loophole exploitation the aff prevents overbreadth

2. C/I: Domestic refers to searches within the United States---this can include relevant information about foreign sourcesTruehart 2 J.D., Boston University School of Law - meow(Carrie, CASE COMMENT:UNITED STATES v. BIN LADEN AND THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE EXCEPTION TO THE WARRANT REQUIREMENT FOR SEARCHES OF "UNITED STATES PERSONS" ABROAD, 82 B.U.L. Rev. 555)This Case Comment uses the word "domestic" to refer to searches and investigations conducted within the United States. The term "domestic foreign intelligence investigations" at first glance seems like an oxymoron, but it is not. As used in this Case Comment, the term refers to investigations conducted within the United States to obtain foreign intelligence information - that is, information pertaining to foreign nationals and their respective governments or international groups - as opposed to investigations conducted within the United States to obtain domestic intelligence information - that is, information pertaining to United States persons only. Notice that a United States person residing in the United States, however, could become the target of a foreign intelligence investigation if the Government were investigating that individual's relationship with a foreign government or international terrorist group. In other words, the difference between whether an investigation is a "domestic foreign intelligence investigation" or a "domestic intelligence investigation" turns on whether the investigation focuses in part on a foreign government or international group.

3. Prefer it: a. Overlimits they exclude all affs about the internet and most surveillance affs b/c cant tell who is a u.s. person until you surveil. b. Predictable clash its normal means for the govt. to collect metadata in bulk from companies. c. PRISM is the biggest issue within domestic surveillanceCFR 13 (Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, U.S. Domestic Surveillance, http://www.cfr.org/intelligence/us-domestic-surveillance/p9763 )//NCIn the wake of the September 11 attacks, Congress passed sweeping legislation to bolster U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Some of the most controversial measures, including the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, significantly enhanced the federal government's ability to collect and analyze private information related to U.S. citizens. Proponents argue that the broader surveillance authorities are required to uncover and neutralize terrorism plots, while critics say the expanded powers infringe on civil liberties. In 2005, the Bush administration came under fire from Democrats and activist groups after press reports disclosed the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. In 2013, the Obama administration similarly attracted criticism from watchdog groups upon leaks related to its far-reaching domestic surveillance activities under the NSA. The episode has revived debate over privacy and national security and raised calls for reform. What is the domestic surveillance controversy under Obama? Two NSA surveillance programs were exposed in press reports in June 2013. First, a Guardian report disclosed a classified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order instructing Verizon, one of the largest U.S. telecommunications firms, to hand over phone records of millions of Americans to the NSA. Another secret program, code-named PRISM, accessed troves of communication dataaudio/video chats, emails, photos, and other mediafrom several U.S. technology companies, according to the Washington Post. Subsequent leaks revealed details on additional programs that gave the NSA extensive electronic surveillance tools, both domestic and international, allowing the government to track and tap into conversations of suspected terrorists, civilians, and even friendly foreign heads of state. Amid criticism from civil rights groups, the Obama administration initially defended the surveillance program, saying it is legal, limited, and effective in preventing terrorist attacks. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the program does not monitor phone calls, but acquires telephony metadata to be queried only when there is a "reasonable suspicion" of links to a foreign terrorist organization. Experts say the White House is likely relying on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a provision that says government can mandate the turnover of "any tangible things" from any entity as long as the items are for an investigation to defend against international terrorism or spying. In congressional testimony, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander credited his agency's surveillance with helping prevent "dozens" of terrorist attacks, and said he welcomed a debate on the legality of the programs. In August, President Obama created a task force of intelligence and legal experts to review NSA operations and recommend potential reforms. The inquiry is reportedly part of a comprehensive White House review of signals intelligence. What was the domestic surveillance controversy under Bush? After 9/11, the Bush administration opted not to seek approval from the FISC before intercepting "international communications into and out of the United States of persons linked to al-Qaeda (PDF) or related terrorist organizations." The special secret court, set up in 1978 following previous administrations' domestic spying abuses, was designed to act as a neutral overseer in granting government agencies surveillance authorization. After the NSA program was revealed by the New York Times in late 2005, former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales argued (PDF) that President Bush had the legal authority under the constitution and congressional statute to conduct warrantless surveillance on U.S. persons "reasonably believed to be linked to al-Qaeda." The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), without specifically mentioning wiretapping, grants the president broad authority to use all necessary force "against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the [9/11] terrorist attacks." This includes, administration officials say, the powers to secretly gather domestic intelligence on al-Qaeda and associated groups. The Bush administration maintained that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was an outdated law-enforcement mechanism that was too time-consuming given the highly fluid, modern threat environment. Administration officials portrayed the NSA program as an "early warning system" (PDF) with "a military nature that requires speed and agility." Moreover, the White House stressed that the program was one not of domestic surveillance but of monitoring terrorists abroad, and publicly referred to the operation as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Opponents of the program referred to it as "domestic spying." Under congressional pressure, Gonzales announced in January 2007 plans to disband the warrantless surveillance program and cede oversight to FISC, but questions about the legality of the program lingered in Congress and Gonzales resigned months later. But Washington's vow to seek FISA approval for domestic surveillance was short-lived. In July 2007--weeks before Gonzales stepped down--intelligence officials pressed lawmakers for emergency legislation to broaden their wiretapping authority following a ruling by the court overseeing FISA that impacted the government's ability to intercept foreign communications passing through telecommunications "switches" on U.S. soil. In August, President Bush signed the Protect America Act of 2007, which gave the attorney general and the director of national intelligence temporary power to approve international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. It also said warrants are unnecessary for surveillance of a person "reasonably believed" to be located overseas. This six-month stopgap measure expired in early 2008, but the FISA Amendment Act passed just months later contained similar provisions. President Obama reauthorized this legislation for five more years in December 2012. Why did this become an issue in mid-2013? Edward Snowden, the ex-CIA and former NSA contractor who leaked news of the two NSA programs, cited concerns over civil liberties violations as his primary motive. "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards," he said in an interview with the Guardian. However, DNI Director Clapper publicly denied initial media reports (PDF) that the PRISM surveillance program was "an undisclosed collection or data mining program" that unilaterally taps into servers of U.S. telecoms. Rather, he stated the NSA program was limited and had been "widely known and publicly discussed since its inception in 2008." Specifically, Clapper said the program operated under Section 702 of FISA that permits the targeting of non-U.S. persons abroad without individualized court orders. As noted above, President Obama has reauthorized this legislation until 2017. Many U.S. lawmakers have pressed for Snowden's prosecution, and the Obama administration referred his case to the Justice Department. Snowden fled to Hong Kong in May and was granted temporary asylum in Russia in August after spending weeks at the Moscow airport. What are the challenges to domestic surveillance policy? Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for a reexamination of the government's broad surveillance powers in the wake of disclosures regarding NSA activities. Top-ranking Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and John McCain (R-AZ) supported requests for congressional hearings on NSA surveillance, despite their support for the controversial programs. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), an outspoken critic of NSA's broad authorities, has called on the White House to detail the extent to which Americans were monitored. In the past, the NSA said it lacked the technical ability to quantify this data. Critics allege that even if the programs are operating within the letter of law, as the Obama administration says, they violate the law's intent and the values of democratic society. Some civil liberties activists have appealed for a thorough review of several provisions in the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act that provide controversial surveillance authorities. Civil libertarians question whether government surveillance programs violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." In December, Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the NSA's bulk gathering of U.S. telephone metadata likely violates the Constitution. "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment," he wrote. The judge ordered the government to stop collecting data on calls of the two plaintiffs in the case, but stayed the injunction to allow the government a chance to appeal. Other legal challenges are in early phases, including suits by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Obama administration's task force also released its findings in December, recommending dozens of changes to current surveillance practice. Significant proposed reforms include: ending the government's indiscrimate collection of U.S. telephone metadata and requiring authorities to obtain a court order to query this information, held in the private sector; placing new limits on the monitoring of foreign leaders and ordinary non-Americans; and supporting new encryption standards and technologies. But legal analysts say that while the recommendations, if implemented, would require greater executive, congressional, and judicial review of surveillance activities, they would end few programs. Meanwhile, in Congress, two bills that would forbid the NSA from collecting phone data on Americans not suspected of a crime are still in the early legislative process. The USA Freedom Act, which would reform the Patriot Act to address privacy concerns, has enough support to pass, but lawmakers are uncertain when it will be ready for a vote. Still, many Democrats and Republicans say the NSA programs are essential counterterrorism tools that have proved effective in preventing potential attacks.d. Reasonability we are close enough to the core of the topic competing interpretations causes a race to the bottom

K2ACFramework to vote for the simulation that saves the most lives key to competitive equity and critical thinking because their framework allows them to moot the 1AC and blow arbitrary things up in a vacuum which theyll always be more prepared for that kills clash.It turns their f/w portable skills helps us bridge the gap between the symbolic and the real. Vague alts are a voting issue for dodging clash and morphing into floating PIKS in the block.

Permutation do both theres no reason why we cant embrace our death drives and address non-constructed problems (like the harms of the 1ac) when they come up. enjoy its own internal limitations and merely address external limits as they came up.

No value to life doesnt outweigh---prioritize existence because value is subjective and could improve in the future Tnnsj 11 [Torbjrn, the Kristian Clason Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, 2011, Shalt Thou Sometimes Murder? On the Ethics of Killing, online: http://people.su.se/~jolso/HS-texter/shaltthou.pdf]I suppose it is correct to say that, if Schopenhauer is right, if life is never worth living, then according to utilitarianism we should all commit suicide and put an end to humanity. But this does not mean that, each of us should commit suicide. I commented on this in chapter two when I presented the idea that utilitarianism should be applied, not only to individual actions, but to collective actions as well. It is a well-known fact that people rarely commit suicide. Some even claim that no one who is mentally sound commits suicide. Could that be taken as evidence for the claim that people live lives worth living? That would be rash. Many people are not utilitarians. They may avoid suicide because they believe that it is morally wrong to kill oneself. It is also a possibility that, even if people lead lives not worth living, they believe they do. And even if some may believe that their lives, up to now, have not been worth living, their future lives will be better. They may be mistaken about this. They may hold false expectations about the future. From the point of view of evolutionary biology, it is natural to assume that people should rarely commit suicide. If we set old age to one side, it has poor survival value (of ones genes) to kill oneself. So it should be expected that it is difficult for ordinary people to kill themselves. But then theories about cognitive dissonance, known from psychology, should warn us that we may come to believe that we live better lives than we do. My strong belief is that most of us live lives worth living. However, I do believe that our lives are close to the point where they stop being worth living. But then it is at least not very far-fetched to think that they may be worth not living, after all. My assessment may be too optimistic. Let us just for the sake of the argument assume that our lives are not worth living, and let us accept that, if this is so, we should all kill ourselves. As I noted above, this does not answer the question what we should do, each one of us. My conjecture is that we should not commit suicide. The explanation is simple. If I kill myself, many people will suffer. Here is a rough explanation of how this will happen: ... suicide survivors confront a complex array of feelings. Various forms of guilt are quite common, such as that arising from (a) the belief that one contributed to the suicidal person's anguish, or (b) the failure to recognize that anguish, or (c) the inability to prevent the suicidal act itself. Suicide also leads to rage, loneliness, and awareness of vulnerability in those left behind. Indeed, the sense that suicide is an essentially selfish act dominates many popular perceptions of suicide. The fact that all our lives lack meaning, if they do, does not mean that others will follow my example. They will go on with their lives and their false expectations at least for a while devastated because of my suicide. But then I have an obligation, for their sake, to go on with my life. It is highly likely that, by committing suicide, I create more suffering (in their lives) than I avoid (in my life).

Psychoanalysis is a bunk science --- its untestable, produces contradictory analyses, and cant make predictionsBeystehner 13 --- J.D. from University of Georgia (Kristen M, Psychoanalysis: Freud's Revolutionary Approach to Human Personality, http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/beystehner.html)//trepkaStorr (1981) insists, "Only a few fundamentalist psychoanalysts of an old-fashioned kind think that Freud was a scientist or that psychoanalysis was or could be a scientific enterprise," and that, "...to understand persons cannot be a scientific enterprise" (p. 260). Although many psychoanalysts themselves would undoubtedly consider psychoanalysis to be a science, many critics would disagree. Popper, by far one of psychoanalysis' most well-known critics and a strong critic of Grnbaum, insists that psychoanalysis cannot be considered a science because it is not falsifiable. He claims that psychoanalysis' "so-called predictions are not predictions of overt behavior but of hidden psychological states. This is why they are so untestable" (Popper, 1986, p. 254). Popper (1986) claims that only when individuals are not neurotic is it possible to empirically determine if prospective patients are currently neurotic (p. 254). Popper (1986) asserts that psychoanalysis has often maintained that every individual is neurotic to some degree due to the fact that everyone has suffered and repressed a trauma at one point or another in his or her life (p. 255). However, this concept of ubiquitous repression is impossible to test because there is no overt behavioral method of doing so (p. 254). Other critics claim that psychoanalysis cannot be considered a science due to its lack of predictions. Psychoanalysts, critics maintain, state that certain childhood experiences, such as abuse or molestation, produce certain outcomes or states of neurosis. To take this idea one step further, one should be able to predict that if children experience abuse, for instance, they will become characterized by certain personality traits. In addition, this concept would theoretically work in reverse. For instance, if individuals are observed in a particular neurotic state, one should be able to predict that they had this or that childhood experience. However, neither of these predictions can be made with any accuracy (Colby, 1960, p. 55). Additional critics insist that psychoanalysis is not a science because of the lack of interpretive rules or regulations. Colby (1960) contends that critics of psychoanalysis have difficulties with the idea that "there are no clear, intersubjectively shared lines of reasoning between theories and observations" (p. 54). For instance, one psychoanalyst will observe one phenomenon and interpret it one way, whereas another psychoanalyst will observe the same phenomenon and interpret it in a completely different way that is contradictory to the first psychoanalyst's interpretation (Colby, 1960, p. 54). Colby (1960) concludes that if analysts themselves cannot concur that a certain observation is an example of a certain theory, then the regulations that govern psychoanalytic interpretation are undependable (p. 55). Eysenck (1986) maintains:Zizhave always taken it for granted that the obvious failure of Freudian therapy to significantly improve on spontaneous remission or placebo treatment is the clearest proof we have of the inadequacy of Freudian theory, closely followed by the success of alternative methods of treatment, such as behavior therapy. (p. 236) Whereas critics, such as Popper (1986), insist that Freud's theories cannot be falsified and therefore are not scientific, Eysenck claims that because Freud's theories can be falsified, they are scientific. Grnbaum (1986) concurs with Eysenck that Freud's theory is falsifiable and therefore scientific, but he goes one step further and claims that Freud's theory of psychoanalysis has been proven wrong and is simply bad science.

Psychoanalysis cant explain international relations --- the move from the clinic to the macro-sphere is too great --- obviously not everyone shares the exact same fantasies and theres no mechanism to actualize changeBoucher 2010 --- literary and psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University (Geoff M., Zizek and Politics: A Critical Introduction, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_hmrBgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=%C5%BDi%C5%BEek+and+Politics:+An+Introduction&ots=3uqgdGUwxC&sig=MNP7oMG7JXgWMj49yz2DHRTs6BI#v=onepage&q&f=false)//trepkaCan we bring some order to this host of criticisms? It is remark- able that, for all the criticisms of Zizek's political Romanticism, no one has argued that the ultra-extremism of Zizek's political position might reflect his untenable attempt to shape his model for political action on the curative final moment in clinical psychoanalysis. The differences between these two realms, listed in Figure 5.1, are nearly too many and too great to restate - which has perhaps caused the theoretical oversight. The key thing is this. Lacan's notion of travers- ing the fantasy involves the radical transformation of people's sub- jective structure: a refounding of their most elementary beliefs about themselves, the world, and sexual difference. This is undertaken in the security of the clinic, on the basis of the analysands' volun- tary desire to overcome their inhibitions, symptoms and anxieties. As a clinical and existential process, it has its own independent importance and authenticity. The analysands, in transforming their subjective world, change the way they regard the objective, shared social reality outside the clinic. But they do not transform the world. The political relevance of the clinic can only be (a) as a support- ing moment in ideology critique or (b) as a fully-fledged model of politics, provided that the political subject and its social object are ultimately identical. Option ((7), Zizek's option, rests on the idea, not only of a subject who becomes who he is only through his (mis) recognition of the objective sociopolitical order, but whose 'traversal of the fantasy' is immediately identical with his transformation of the socio-political system or Other. I-Ience, according to Zizek, we can analyse the institutional embodiments of this Other using psy- choanalytic categories. In Chapter 4, we saw Zi2ek's resulting elision of the distinction between the (subjective) Ego Ideal and the (objec- tive) Symbolic Order. This leads him to analyse our entire culture as a single subject-object, whose perverse (or perhaps even psychotic) structure is expressed in every manifestation of contemporary life. Zizek's decisive political-theoretic errors, one substantive and the other methodological, are different (see Figure 5.1) The substantive problem is to equate any political change worth the name with the total change of the subject-object that is, today, global capitalism. This is a type of change that can only mean equat- ing politics with violent regime change, and ultimately embrac- ing dictatorial govermnent, as Zizek now frankly avows (IDLC 412-19). We have seen that the ultra-political form of Zizek's criti- cism of everyone else, the theoretical Left and the wider politics, is that no one is sufficiently radical for him - even, we will discover, Chairman Mao. We now see that this is because Zizek's model of politics proper is modelled on a pre-critical analogy with the total transformation of a subiect's entire subjective structure, at the end of the talking cure. For what could the concrete consequences of this governing analogy be? We have seen that Zizek equates the individual fantasy with the collective identity of an entire people. The social fantasy, he says, structures the regime's 'inherent transgressions': at once subjects' habitual ways of living the letter of the law, and the regime's myths of origin and of identity. If political action is modelled on the Lacanian cure, it must involve the complete 'traversal' - in Hegel's terms, the abstract versus the determinate negation - of all these lived myths, practices and habits. Politics must involve the periodic founding of of entire new subjectobjects. Providing the model for this set of ideas, the first iekian political subject was Schellings divided God, who gave birth to the entire Symbolic Order before the beginning of time (IDLC 153; OB 1448). But can the political theorist reasonably hope or expect that subjects will simply give up on all their inherited ways, myths and beliefs, all in one world- creating moment? And can they be legitimately asked or expected to, on the basis of a set of ideals whose legitimacy they will only retrospectively see, after they have acceded to the Great Leap Forward? And if they do not for iek laments that today subjects are politically disengaged in unprecedented ways what means can the theorist and his allies use to move them to do so?

AT: Death Drive

Death drive is a reductive, dogmatic theory that doesnt explain behavior. Its not falsifiable. Carel 06 Havi Carel is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England. (Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger)The notion of the death drive is on the one hand too wide, explaining all types of aggression as well as the putative urge towards complete rest. This leads the notion to be economically incoherent, as will be discussed in the next section. But a prior point must be examined: are all types of aggression the same? Freud suggests a positive answer, but as a psychological taxonomy this approach seems to erase important differences. For example, if both sadism and masochism stem from the same aggressive source, should they be classified as belonging to the same group? Should they be clinically approached in a similar fashion? The answer to both these questions seems to be no. The problems and symptoms characterising sadism are very different from the ones characterising masochism, as is their treatment. Another example, group aggression and individual aggression: should we attempt to describe or treat the two as belonging to the same cluster? Again, the answer seems to be negative. As to the second point, one could justifiably ask: what does the death drive mean? Because it is so general, the notion of the death drive is vague. The death drive cannot explain a given situation because it itself becomes meaningful only as a collection of situations. On Freud's account, any behaviour meriting the adjective 'aggressive' arises from the death drive. If we take a certain set of aggressive behaviours, say, sadistic ones, the death drive would come to signify this set. If we take another set of masochistic behaviours, the death drive would mean this set. As it stands, the significance of the notion seems entirely dependent on the observed phenomenon. If Freud were never to meet any masochists, would his notion of the death drive exclude masochism? Any science relying on observation and empirical data relics on this data and should be willing, in principle, to modify and update its concepts in accordance with new empirical observations. The opening paragraph of Instincts and Their Vicissitudes describes this process. We have often heard it maintained that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basic concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them. Even at the stage of description it is not possible to avoid applying certain abstract ideas to the material in hand, ideas derived from somewhere or other but certainly not from the new observations alone [...]. They must at first necessarily possess some degree of indefiniteness; there can be no question of any clear delimitation of their content. So long as they remain in this condition, we come to an understanding about their meaning by making repeated references to the material of observation from which they appear to have been derived, but upon which, in fact, they have been imposed