Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Geneva Conventions – Democracy Module – Free Trade

1. Democracy Causes International Interreliance and Free Trade

Orneal and Russett 97 (John R. Bruce M. , Prof of Int’l Relations at Yale, International Studies Quarterly, , pp. 270-271)

Democracy may encourage interdependence. In democracies, economically powerful groups are likely to be political powerful as well (Papayoanou, 1996). Political and economic freedoms allow individuals to form transitional associations to influence policy (Veridier, 1994; Risse-Kappen, 1995). Trade agreements among democracies may also be particularly long lasting. Because executives in democratic countries must persuade and accommodate other powerful groups – the legislature, their party, interest groups – they are more likely to abide by their international commitments than are nondemocratic leaders whose power is less subject to checks and balances. Economic ties are required credible commitments regarding the terms of trade and capital flows; hence, democracies should be better at promoting and sustaining interdependence (Martin, 1995). In fact, democracies are inclined to trade with one another. (Bliss and Russett, 1996). With other democratic states, they need not fear entering into economic relationships for absolute gains in welfare for fear that trading partners’ greater relative gains will imperil their security (Powell, 1991; Gowa and Mansfield, 1993).
2. Free Trade Key to Prevent Nuclear War

Spicer 96 (Michael Former Member of the British Parliament, The Challenge from the East and Rebirth of the West, p. 121)

The choice facing the West today in much the same as that which faced the Soviet bloc after World War II; between meeting head-on the challenge of world trade with adjustments and the benefits that it will bring, or of attempting to shut out markets that are growing and where a dynamic new pace is being set for innovative production. The problem about the second approach is not simply that it won’t hold: satellite technology alone will ensure that he consumers will begin to demand those goods that the East is able to provide most cheaply. More fundamentally, it will guarantee the emergence of a fragmented world in which natural fears will be fanned and inflamed. A world divided into eight trade blocs will be a deeply troubled and unstable place in which suspicion and ultimately envy will possibly erupt into a major war. I do not say that the converse will necessarily be true, that in a free trading world there will be an absence of all strife. Such a proposition would manifestly be absurd. But to trade is to become interdependent, and that is a good step in the direction of world stability. With nuclear weapons at two a penny, stability will be at a premium in the years ahead.

Geneva Conventions – Democracy Module – Genocide

1. Democracy Checks Genocide – Increases Pluralism

Staub 1 (Ervin , Dept. of Psych @ Univ. of Mass, Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict and Conflict Reduction, Ed. By Richard D. Ashmore, , p. 177-178)

Another group level issue is culture change. Cultural devaluation and authority otentation shape identities. Monolithic cultures, with a limited set of values and limited access of at least some groups of people to the public domain, also make genocide more likely, while pluralistic cultures make genocide less likely. When respect for authorities is moderate and there are varied values and points of view that can be expressed in the public domain, people are more able to tolerate uncertainty and therefore social upheaval (Soeters, 1996).

Democracies, which are pluralistic, are unlikely to engage in genocide (Rummel, 1994). This, however, seems especially true of “Mature” democracies (Staub, 1996b). There are democracies in which laws are enforced, in which all groups can participate in public life, and which have a “civil society” (i.e., well-established civic institutions). Germany was not this kind of democracy at the time of the Weimar Republic, nor was Argentina at the time of “the disappearances” (Staub, 1989b), when elected government were regularly replaced by military rule. Working to create democracy and a civil society is one way to bring about culture change that makes genocide less likely. Such a culture is likely to form individuals whose relationship to the group is more akin to constructive rather than blind, patriotism and who are less likely to be embedded in their group.

Multiple group identities seem important in preventing genocide. When people can gain identity and fulfill other basic needs through connection to a variety of groups that turns against others. Their ability to oppose destructive ideologies and practices will increase.

2. Genocide Outweighs Nuclear War – Its Intentional Nature Makes It Especially Horrible

Lang 90 (Berel , Prof. of Humanities at Trinity College, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide, , p. 12-13)

Before considering further the two primary factors in the concept of genocide (the specification of the group and the intention related to its destruction), it is important to recognize the implied relation between these factors, on the hand, and the likely agents of genocide, on the other. That genocide entails the destruction of a group; but the practical implementation of a design for genocide would almost necessarily be so complex to assure this. Admittedly, the same technological advances that make genocide increasingly possible as a collective action also have increasingly possible as a collective action also have increased the possibility that an individual acting alone could initiate the process. (When the push of a single button can produce cataclysmic effects, we discover an order of destruction – “omnicide” – even larger than genocide). But the opprobrium attached to the term “genocide” seems also to have the connotation of a corporate action – as if this act or sequence of acts would be a lesser fault, easier to understand if not to excuse if one person rather than a group were responsible for it. A group (we suppose) would be bound by a public moral code; decisions made would have been reached collectively, and the culpability of individual intentions would be multiplied proportionally. Admittedly, corporate responsibility is sometimes invoked in order to diminish (or at least to obscure) individual responsibility; so, for example, the “quagmire” effect that was appealed to retrospectively by defenders of the United States’ role in Vietnam. But for genocide, the likelihood of its corporate origins seems to accentuate its moral enormity: a large number of individual, intentional acts would have to be committed and the connections among them also affirmed in order to produce the extensive act. Unlike other corporate acts that might be not only decided on but carried out by a single person or small group of persons, genocide in its scope seems necessarily to require collaboration by a relatively large number of agents acting both collectively and individually.