Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Geneva Conventions – Democracy Module – Famine

1. Democracy Prevents Famine

Talbot 96 (Strobe, Deputy Secretary of State, Foreign Affairs, Nov./De,c, pg. l/n)

In some of the world’s poorest countries, such as Nicaragua and Malawi, elected leaders have proved more inclined that their authoritarian or totalitarian predecessors to adopt policies that benefit their people. Democratic authorities, because of the way they came to power, have an important additional source of legitimacy that can reinforce their ability to make painful but necessary economic choices, including allocation of scarce natural resources. Amartya Sen. An economist at Harvard University, has argued that “no substantial famine has ever occurred in a country with democratic form of government and a relatively free press.” He points out that throughout its history India endured widespread famines, including one in 1943 that claimed between two million and three million lives. But since becoming the world’s largest democracy in 1947, the country has not had a single substantial famine, despite frequent crop failures and food scarcities. Similarly, famine prevention programs run by democratically elected governments in Botswana and Zimbabwe enabled those nations to withstand crop failures in the early 1980s. During the same period, Sen. Notes, Sudan and Ethiopia, faced with relatively smaller declines in food output but ruled by authoritarian regimes, suffered severe famines.
2. Famine Will Kill 2 Billion People

Shah 1999 (Mahendra M2 Presswire, October 26)JFS

As the 21^st Century dawns, the world faces the prospect of a new and complex food crisis that will require better ways of ensuring that the hungry and the malnourished will be able to meet their foods. “If the world cannot make progress against hunger and poverty, by year 2025, there could be 4 billion people living on less that US$ 2 per day and more than 2 billion living in extreme poverty,” says James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, a founder and cosponsor of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). To tackle this enormous challenge, the international community must launch a new “Green Revolution”, more powerful and encompassing than the one that thirty years ago that doubled production of key crops such as rice and wheat. The power of science and information technology must be harnessed for the benefit of the world’s poor, says a new book released today by the CGIAR System Review Secretariat. “New scientific developments have the potential to radically reshape the world’s agriculture and food systems,” says Maurice Strong, Chairman of the CGIAR System Review and co-author of the Book. Food in the 21^st Century: From Science to Sustainable Agriculture. “We need to recommit to science and research to ensure that the poor are not excluded, and that biodiversity and the environment are not undermined.”

Geneva Conventions – Democracy Module – Deterrence

1. Democratization Doesn’t Hurt, But Rather Helps Deterrence

Moore 2004 John Norton , Professor of Law, University of Virginia, VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION, Winter , p. 391-2. (DRG/C821)

It is doubtful, however, that democracies are uniquely poor at deterrence. Rummel's analysis of major wars between 1816 and 1991 shows that there were 198 war pairings between non-democracies, the largest category of war in this period. If the earlier analysis of the importance of deterrence in war avoidance when dealing with potential aggressors is correct, then this level of war between non-democracies suggests that nondemocratic regimes also may have great, if not greater, difficulty deterring.
2. Deterrence prevents nuclear annihilation

Lee, 93 (Morality, Prudence, and Nuclear Weapons, , P. 39-40)

(P3)What would be the consequences if nuclear deterrence were abandoned mutually instead of unilaterally? Negative consequences, such as those outlines in (P2), would still follow. Nuclear deterrence deters not only nuclear war, but also conventional war between nuclear superpowers. Without nuclear deterrence, conventional war between superpower opponents would be more likely. Moreover, in one of the ironies of the nuclear age, the mutual abandonment of nuclear deterrence would actually make nuclear war more likely. For, in the midst of any conventional war that occurred after this abandonment, the erst-while nuclear powers are likely to race to re-arm themselves with nuclear weapons making it very possible that the conflict would become nuclear. In the midst of conventional war, each side would be likely to try and rebuild its nuclear weapons, first, because it would believe that a few such weapons would provide it with a decisive advantage in the war and, second, because it would suspect that the other side, believe this as well,was already secretly rearming. Each side would rearm in the hopes of gaining an advantage in the war and out of the fear that the other side might be trying to achieve that very advantage. The potential for or the actualization of this dynamic could lead other nations to behave in ways suggested in (P2). Instability would infect international relations weather the abandonment of nuclear deterrence were unilateral or mutual. (C) A consequentialist argument for some policy needs to show not only that a policy would have good (or not so bad) consequences, but that alternative policies would have consequences that are worse. (P1)-(P3) allows this comparative evaluation in the case of nuclear deterrence. On the positive side, mutual vulnerability and the stability it creates makes nuclear deterrence a reliable way if keeping the peace, with the beneficial consequences for all persons that this entails. On the negative side, the alterative to nuclear deterrence- its abandonment – whether unilateral or multilateral, would result in instability that would have consequences that are worse no only prudentially, but morally as well. Many nations would become less sure of their ability to avoid aggression or coercion on the part of other nations and so would make moves that would increase the likelihood of war. Part of this dynamic would be that nations fears of the potential for other nations to arm or rearm themselves with nuclear weapons would make their own nuclear armament or rearmament more likely. So the risk of nuclear war would also increase. The result would be a set of expected consequences of great disvalue for people all over the world. Thus, nuclear superpowers are morally required, in consequentionalist terms, to maintain their policies of nuclear deterrence.