Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Readiness – Impact – Iraq Instability – Terrorism

Iraqi instablity spills over and causes terrorism.

The National Interest 7 (“Keeping the Lid On”, Lexisnexis, May–June 2007)

THE COLLAPSE of Iraq into all-out civil war would mean more than just a humanitarian tragedy that could easily claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and produce millions of refugees. Such a conflict is unlikely to contain itself. In other similar cases of all–out civil war the resulting spillover has fostered terrorism, created refugee flows that can destabilize the entire neighborhood, radicalized the populations of surrounding states and even sparked civil wars in other, neighboring states or transformed domestic strife into regional war. Terrorists frequently find a home in states in civil war, as Al–Qaeda did in Afghanistan. However, civil wars just as often breed new terrorist groups-Hizballah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat of Algeria, and the Tamil Tigers were all born of civil wars. Many such groups start by focusing on local targets but then shift to international attacks-starting with those they believe are aiding their enemies in the civil war.
Terrorism risks extinction

Kirkus Reviews, 99 (Book Review on “The New Terrorism: Fanatiscism and the Arms of Mass Destruction”, http://www.amazon.com/New–Terrorism–Fanaticism–Arms–Destruction/dp/product–description/0195118162)

Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a ``nuisance'' to ``one of the gravest dangers facing mankind.'' First terroristsbe they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible permutationsseem to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are willing to do, who and how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in the future may threaten the very foundations of modern civilizations.

Readiness – Impact – Economy

Heg is key to economic growth – nations only trade in a stable world.
Walt 2 (Stephen, JFKSchool of Government Professor at Harvard Univiversity Naval War College Review, Spring, www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2002/spring/art1-sp2.htm)

By facilitating the development of a more open and liberal world economy, American primacy also fosters global prosperity. Economic interdependence is often said to be a cause of world peace, but it is more accurate to say that peace encourages interdependence-by making it easier for states to accept the potential vulnerabilities of extensive international intercourse. Investors are more willing to send money abroad when the danger of war is remote, and states worry less about being dependent on others when they are not concerned that these connections might be severed. When states are relatively secure, they will also be less fixated on how the gains from cooperation are distributed. In particular, they are less likely to worry that extensive cooperation will benefit others more and thereby place them at a relative disadvantage over time. By providing a tranquil international environment, in short, U.S. primacy has created political conditions that are conducive to expanding global trade and investment. Indeed, American primacy was a prerequisite for the creation and gradual expansion of the European Union, which is often touted as a triumph of economic self-interest over historical rivalries. Because the United States was there to protect the Europeans from the Soviet Union and from each other, they could safely ignore the balance of power within Western Europe and concentrate on expanding their overall level of economic integration. The expansion of world trade has been a major source of increased global prosperity, and U.S. primacy is one of the central pillars upon which that system rests. The United States also played a leading role in establishing the various institutions that regulate and manage the world economy. As a number of commentators have noted, the current era of “globalization” is itself partly an artifact of American power. As Thomas Friedman puts it, “Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.”
Continued economic decline will result in global war.

Mead, 9 (Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. The New Republic, “Only Makes You Stronger,” February 4 2009.  http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8&p=2)

Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the world. Crisis can also strengthen the hand of religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to resist liberal capitalist society for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these societies are often less established and more vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more established firms in wealthier societies. As a result, developing countries and countries where capitalism has relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater economic and political damage when crisis strikes--as, inevitably, it does. And, consequently, financial crises often reinforce rather than challenge the global distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again. None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well.If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.