West Coast Publishing Ocean 2014 affirmative page

AT: Local Movements Solve Warming

Local movements can’t solve warming – global solutions key

Ian Angus, editor of the online journal Climate & Capitalism, 2013, “The Myth of ‘Environmental Catastrophism’,” Monthly Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2013/09/01/myth-environmental-catastrophism

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level that avoids catastrophe, we need to: * Leave more than two-thirds of the fossil fuel reserves under the soil; * Stop the exploitation of tar sands, shale gas and coal; * Support small, local, peasant and indigenous community farming while we dismantle big agribusiness that deforests and heats the planet; * Promote local production and consumption of products, reducing the free trade of goods that send millions of tons of CO2 while they travel around the world; * Stop extractive industries from further destroying nature and contaminating our atmosphere and our land; * Increase significantly public transport to reduce the unsustainable “car way of life”; * Reduce the emissions of warfare by promoting genuine peace and dismantling the military and war industry and infrastructure.22 The projects that Yuen describes are worthwhile, but unless the participants are also committed to building mass environmental campaigns, they will not be helping to achieve the vital objectives that Solón identifies. Posing local communes and slow food as alternatives to building a movement against global climate change is effectively a proposal to abandon the fight against capitalist ecocide in favor of creating greenish enclaves, while the world burns.

AT: Wish Away System

The system is sustained by more than belief – the system is coded into us and no amount of revelation can reverse it

Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, 7-25-2006, “Belief and Social Reality,” http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com

In a number of places Zizek argues that it is merely our belief that sustains social reality. As Zizek puts it in The Parallax View,¶ …how does shared meaning emerge? Through what Alfred Schutz called “mutual idealization”: subjects cut the impasse of endless probing into “do we all mean the same thing by ‘bird’?” by simply taking it for granted, presupposing, acting as if they do mean the same thing. There is no language without this “leap of faith”.¶ This presupposition, this “leap of faith” should not be conceived, in the Habermasian vein, as the normativity built into the functioning of language, as the ideal for which the speakers (should) strive: far from being an ideal, this presupposition is the fiction, the as if…, that sustains language– as such, it should be undermined again and again in the progress of knowledge… its “truth effect,” its positive role of enabling communication, hinges precisely on the fact that it is not true, that it jumps ahead into fiction– its status is not normative because it cuts the debilitating deadlock of language, its ultimate lack of guarantee, by presenting what we should strive for as already accomplished. (51-2)¶ What holds for the institution of meaning in language, holds likewise for any social institution. It is merely our beliefs, this leap of faith, that sustains these institutions. When Lacan says that there is no Other of the Other, he is essentially claiming that there is no authority, no outside, no sovereign that legislates truth and meaning after the fashion of Descartes’ God that establishes mathematical and natural truth. Thus, when Christian nationalists argue that “marraige, by definition, is between a man and a woman” and appeal to a dictionary, etc., it is clear that they are appealing to an Other of the Other to make such an argument. The joke, of course, is that dictionaries are not authorities but take their authority from the speakers of the language.¶ I confess that I find this line of thought very attractive as it suggests that if only we give up our belief in certain institutions, these institutions will dissipate and float away like so much fog. This is the paradox of the social: It transcends individuals but exists only in and through individuals. However, as David has pointed out in response to one of my other posts, it is possible that Zizek has a “hopelessly outdated conception of belief.” It seems to me that there are at least three major difficulties with Zizek’s conception of belief:¶ Systemic Interdependence

Changing minds isn’t sufficient –programs that can shift material relationships are key.

Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, 8-31-2006, “Foucault and Zizek… Again (UPDATED),” Larval Subjects, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com

Foucault’s point seems to be that discourse and cognition (active synthesis) are completely circumvented in this formation of the body, such that the body is moulded to act automatically in a particular way in the presence of particular signs, regardless of the attitude the subject in question might have to these “habits”. Deleuze gives the example of the movements of a chicken as resulting from this sort of synthesis: “The nods of a chicken’s head accompany its cardiac pulsations in an organic synthesis before they serve as pecks in the perceptual synthesis with the grain” (DR, 76). Just as the chicken plays no active role in nodding its head in this way as it searches about for grain but does so automatically by virtue of the system of habits it organically is, the subject resulting from a disciplinary regime of the sort described by Foucault automatically moves and experiences affects in the way that it does as a result of a process of body-formation produced through repetition.¶ In this regard, I’m led to wonder whether Zizek’s shift of ideology from what we think about the world to how we subjectivize what we do in the world (“they know very well, but they’re still doing it!”), really hits the mark with regard to Foucault. I am not trying to suggest that Foucault is correct and Zizek is wrong. Rather, I find myself wondering whether active synthesis plays any role at all in the sorts of mechanisms of power Foucault describes. Zizek seems to converge with Foucault when he favorably cites Pascal’s dictum “kneel and you’ll believe”, but here there still seems to be the assumption of a decision to kneel, rather than a recognition of the way in which we’re thrown into certain conditioning environments and formed by them, prior to even reflecting on a decision of whether to act as others do (thus raising the question of whether issues of identification are even relevant to understanding certain social formations and attitudes giving the body form). Even if I come to recognize that despite knowing money is merely a sign (and nothing of value in itself), I nonetheless behave towards money in exactly the same way (according to Foucault) as a result of the way in which my body has been formed as a system of habits. That is, changing my attitudes towards money does not change how I behave in relation to money (money probably isn’t the best example), since this is a conditioned response, not a decision. I still behave like a chicken in relation to the grain.

AT: Anthro

Their rejection of human values ends humanity

Wesley Smith, Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture, 2009, “Poverty is the Answer: Radical Environmentalism Leading Us to a New Form of Human Sacrifice”, http://stanford.wellsphere.com/bioethics-article/poverty-is-the-answer-radical-environmentalism-leading-us-to-a-new-form-of-human-sacrifice/632295

But you can bet that he and his co-believers would strive mightily to stifle development in now destitute areas of the world--dooming perhaps billions of people to lives of continued squalor, disease, and lower life expectancies.¶ More to the point of what we discuss here at SHS, human beings are a logical species: We take our ideas where they lead! (Thus, once Americans accepted the verity of Jefferson's "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..."it doomed slavery, because servitude and equality are incompatible.) For the same reason, once we accept the fundamental premise of the piece--that we must sacrifice human prosperity to "save the planet"--the misanthropic ideology of Deep Ecology--humans as a viral infection afflicting Gaia--with radical depopulation as the cure--consider the genocidal implications--become a logical next step¶ And thus we see how the healthy environmentalism that cleaned up filthy rivers and reduced Los Angeles air pollution is quickly mutating into an implicit and explicit anti-humanism that is in danger of leading to becoming so degraded in our self perception, that we could reach the point of being urged (forced?) to become human sacrifices on Gaia's altar.

AT: Serial Policy Failure

Serial policy failure is hogwash---policing/security are not static and can be remade to be more inclusive through state policies

Ian Loader 2007, Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford and Neil Walker, Professor of European Law in the Department of Law at the EU Institute, Florence, "Civilizing Security", 2007, guessoumiss.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/civilizing-security.pdf

Yet critical work in policing and security studies remains, in our view, skewed in its account of these associations. It concludes too easily from the above that there can be no progressive democratic politics aimed at civilizing security, that security is so stained by its uncivil association with the (military and police) state and its monolithic affects and effects, that the only radical strategy left open is to deconstruct and move beyond it (e.g. Dillon 1996: ch. 1). In so doing, this strand of state scepticism commits two mistakes, both of which flow from its failure to appreciate or at least sufficiently to acknowledge what we tried to demonstrate in an earlier section of the chapter; namely, that state policing, however culpable it might be in exacerbating certain of the tensions involved in applying general order in any particular context, is not the fixed and fundamental source of these tensions. It forgets, first of all, that while the affective connections between security, state and nation are deeply entrenched, they take no necessary or essential substantive form. They can, in other words, be remade and reimagined in ways that connect policing and security to other more inclusive, cosmopolitan forms of belonging - to political communities that 'do not necessarily equate difference with threat* (Dalby 1997: 9). It tends, secondly, to forget that the 'pursuit of security' through general order is not only the product of forms of technocratic, authoritarian government that impoverishes our sense of the political (Dillon 1996: 15).

AT: Structural Violence

Nuke war threat is real and o/w structural violence

Ken Boulding 1978 is professor of economics and director, Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, University of Michigan, “Future Directions in Conflict and Peace Studies,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 342-354

Even in the twenti- eth century, with its two world wars and innumerable smaller ones, it has probably not acounted for more than 5% of deaths, though of course a larger proportion of premature deaths. Now, however, ad- vancing technology is creating a situation where in the first place we are developing a single world system that does not have the redundancy of the many isolated systems of the past and in which therefore if any- thing goes wrong everything goes wrong. The Mayan civilization could collapse in 900 A.D., and collapse almost irretrievably without Europe or China even being aware of the fact. When we had a number of iso- lated systems, the catastrophe in one was ultimately recoverable by migration from the surviving systems. The one-world system, therefore, which science, transportation, and communication are rapidly giving us, is inherently more precarious than the many-world system of the past. It is all the more important, therefore, to make it internally robust and capable only of recoverable catastrophes. The necessity for stable peace, therefore, increases with every improvement in technology, either of war or of peacex

AT: Liberal Internationalism is Flawed

We have a defense of the way we view international relations---game-theory proves that liberal internationalism is effective

Recchia and Doyle 2011 Stefano, Assistant Professor in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, and Michael, Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science at Columbia University, “Liberalism in International Relations”, In: Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino, eds., International Encyclopedia of Political Science (Sage, 2011), pp. 1434-1439

The reasons that make liberal democracies particularly enthusiastic about international cooperation are manifold: First, transnational actors such as nongovernmental ¶ organizations and private corporations thrive in liberal democracies, and they frequently advocate increased international cooperation; second, elected democratic officials rely on delegation to multilateral bodies such as the WTO or the EU to commit to a stable policy line and to internationally lock in fragile domestic policies and constitutional arrangements; and finally, powerful liberal democracies, such as the United States and its ¶ allies, voluntarily bind themselves into complex global governance arrangements to demonstrate strategic restraint and create incentives for other states to cooperate, thereby reducing the costs for ¶ maintaining international order. ¶ Recent scholarship, such as that of Charles ¶ Boehmer and colleagues, has also confirmed the ¶ classical liberal intuition that formal international ¶ institutions, such as the United Nations (UN) or ¶ NATO, independently contribute to peace, especially when they are endowed with sophisticated ¶ administrative structures and information-gathering ¶ capacities. In short, research on global governance ¶ and especially on the relationship between democracy and international cooperation is thriving, and ¶ it usefully complements liberal scholarship on the ¶ democratic peace.

AT: Environmental Securitization Bad

Environmental security challenges state legitimacy and lead to a paradigm shift away from militarism

Jon Barnett, Research Council Fellow In The School Of Social And Environmental Enquiry At The University Of Melbourne, 2001, The Meaning Of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics And Policy In The New Security Era, Chapter 9, 137-41

The question of whether it is valid to understand environmental problems as security problems recurs throughout any thoughtful discussion of environmental security. The dilemma should by now be apparent; securitising environmental issues runs the risk that the strategic/realist approach will coopt and colonise the, environmental agenda rather than respond positively to environmental problems (as discussed in Chapter 6). For this reason critics of environmental security, such as Deudney (1991) and-Brock (1991), Suggest that it is dangerous to understand environmental problems as security issues: This book's position on the matter has been emerging in previous chapters. It contends that the problem turns not on the presentation of environmental problems as security issues, but on-the meaning and practice of security in present times. Environmental security, wittingly or not, contests the legitimacy of the realist conception of security by pointing to the contradictions of security as the defence of territory and resistance to change. It seeks to work from within the prevailing conception of security, but to be successful it must do so with a strong sense of purpose and a solid theoretical base. Understanding environmental problems as security problems is thus a form of conceptual speculation. It is one manifestation of the pressure the Green movement has exerted on states since the late 1960s. This pressure has pushed state legitimacy nearer to collapse, for if the state cannot control a problem as elemental as environmental degradation, then what is its purpose?

Using environmental security creates a political climate that solves best

Richard Matthew, Prof. of IR and Env. Poliics at UC-Irvine, 2002, “In Defense of Environment and Security Research”, ECSP Report, Summer, p 119

In addition, environmental security's language and findings can benefit conservation and sustainable development."' Much environmental security literrature emphasizes the importance of development assistance, sustainable livelihoods, fair and reasonable access to environmental goods, and conservation practices as the vital upstream measures that in the long run will contribute to higher levels of human and state security. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are examples of bodies that have been quick to recognize how the language of environmental security can help them. The scarcity/conflict thesis has alerted these groups to prepare for the possibility of working on environmental rescue projects in regions that are likely to exhibit high levels of related violence and conflict. These groups are also aware that an association with security can expand their acceptance and constituencies in some countries in which the military has political control, For the first time in its history; the contemporary environmental movement can regard military and intelligence agencies as potential allies in the struggle to contain or reverse humangenerated environmental change. (In many situations, of course, the political history of the military--as well as its environmental record-raise serious concerns about the viability of this cooperation.) Similarly, the language of security has provided a basis for some fruitful discussions between environmental groups and representatives of extractive industries. In many parts of the world, mining and petroleum companies have become embroiled in conflict. These companies have been accused of destroying traditional economies, cultures, and environments; of political corruption; and of using private militaries to advance their interests. They have also been targets of violence, Work is now underway through the environmental security arm of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to address these issues with the support of multinational corporations. Third, the general conditions outlined in much environmental security research can help organizations such as USAID, the World Bank, and IUCN identify priority cases--areas in which investments are likely to have the greatest ecological and social returns. For all these reasons, IUCN elected to integrate environmental security into its general plan at the Amman Congress in 2001. Many other environmental groups and development agencies are taking this perspective seriously (e.g. Dabelko, Lonergan & Matthew, 1999). However, for the most part these efforts remain preliminary.'

AT: Can’t Solve Warming With Security Mindset

Your K doesn’t assume the plan – our concrete solution motivates action to solve climate change

Robert J. Brulle, PhD in Sociology and Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science in the Department of Culture and Communications at Drexel University, March 2010, “From Environmental Campaigns to Advancing the Public Dialog: Environmental Communication for Civic Engagement” http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~brullerj/From%20Social%20Marketing%20to%20Advancing%20the%20Public%20Dialogue%20-%20Brulle.pdf

One of the most common assumptions in designing identity-based environmental communication campaigns is that fear appeals are counterproductive. As Swim et al. (2009, p. 80) note: ‘‘well meaning attempts to create urgency about climate change by appealing to fear of disasters or health risks frequently lead to the exact opposite of the desired response: denial, paralysis, apathy, or actions that can create greater risks than the one being mitigated.’’ While the author goes on to qualify and expand this line of argument, this has been taken as an absolute in the popular press and much of the grey literature produced by nonprofit organizations and foundations. However, the academic literature portrays a much more complex picture: whereas apocalyptic rhetoric has been shown to be able to evoke powerful feelings of issue salience (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009, p. 373), reassuring messages, such as those advocated by ecoAmerica, have the least ability to increase issue salience (de Hoog, Stroebe, & de Wit, 2007; Lowe et al., 2006; Meijinders, Cees, Midden, & Wilke, 2001; Witte & Allen, 2000). Additionally, apocalyptic messages do not necessarily result in denial. A number of empirical studies show that individuals respond to threat appeals with an increased focus on collective action (Eagly & Kulesa, 1997; Langford, 2002; Leiserowitz, Kates, & Parris, 2006, p. 437; Maiteny, 2002; Shaiko, 1999; Swim et al., 2009, p. 94). Tomaka, Blascovich, Kelsey, and Leitten (1993, p. 248) distinguish between threat and challenge messaging: threat messages ‘‘are those in which the perception of danger exceeds the perception of abilities or resources to cope with the stressor. Challenge appraisals, in contrast, are those in which the perception of danger does not exceed the perception of resources or abilities to cope.’’ If a meaningful response to a threat can be taken that is within the resources of the individual, this results in a challenge, which ‘‘may galvanize creative ideas and actions in ways that transform and strengthen the resilience end creativity of individuals and communities’’ (Fritze, Blashki, Burke, & Wieseman, 2008, p. 12). While fear appeals can lead to maladaptive behaviors, fear combined with information about effective actions can also be strongly motivating (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009, p. 376; Witte & Allen, 2000).

AT: Warming Reps Cause Paralysis

Our framing of warming galvanizes action – overcomes disbelief

Joe Romm, Senior Fellow at American Progress, Editor of Climate Progress, former acting assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and PhD in physics from MIT, 2-26-2012, “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media, and the Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate” http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsday-messages-on-climate/#more-432546

The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive! These myths are so deeply ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a serious shot at a climate bill, the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in their $200 million communications effort (see my 6/10 post “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?“). These myths are so deeply ingrained in the mainstream media that such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced — and the flimsiest studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message home (see “Dire straits: Media blows the story of UC Berkeley study on climate messaging“) The only time anything approximating this kind of messaging — not “doomsday” but what I’d call blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable — was in 2006 and 2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth (and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and media coverage like the April 2006 cover of Time). The data suggest that strategy measurably moved the public to become more concerned about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here). You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast literature on advertising and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the needle. Because I doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action could possibly occur until these myths are shattered, I’ll do a multipart series on this subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading experts, and the latest social science research. Since this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the public are exposed to in popular culture and the media. It ain’t doomsday. Quite the reverse, climate change has been mostly an invisible issue for several years and the message of conspicuous consumption and business-as-usual reigns supreme.

Alt Fails

No alternative from radical security standpoint---ends progressive politics that should be focused on effective interventions like the aff

Ian Loader 2007, Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford and Neil Walker, Professor of European Law in the Department of Law at the EU Institute, Florence, "Civilizing Security", 2007, guessoumiss.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/civilizing-security.pdf

Against security?

One finds here a quite proper insistence on the troubling conundrum that democratic polities ultimately depend upon coercion to enforce collective decisions and protect democratic institutions. But this point is hammered home in terms that are overly sweeping and reductionist - often, as in the writings of Agamben (2004a), as a philosophical claim that invites but resists sociological scrutiny. If 'there is always a violence at the heart of every form of political and legal authority' (Newman 2004:575), upon what grounds can we distinguish between, or develop a critique of, the security-seeking practices of particular states - and why would we bother?¶ Radical anti-statism evinces, secondly, a preference for social and political criticism over social and political reconstruction. It favours a politics that privileges the monitoring, exposure and critique of the sys- tematic biases of state power {as, for instance, in the indefatigable efforts of the British-based NGO Statewatch), one that implicitly or expressly holds that 'security' is so stained by its uncivil association with the (military and police) state that the only available radical strat- egy is to destabilize the term itself, while contesting the practices that are enacted under its name (Dalby 1997: 6; see, also, Dillon 1996: ch. 1). There can, from this vantage point, be no progressive democratic politics aimed at civilizing security. Rather, one is left with a politics of critique, and a failure of political imagination, that leaves radically underspecified the feasible or desirable alternatives to current institutional configurations and practices, or else merely gestures towards the possibility of transcendent forms of non-state communal ordering - as in George Rikagos's (2002: 150) claim that 'the only real alternatives to current policing practices are pre-capitalist, non-commodified security arrangements'.

Alt Fails

Abandoning realism doesn’t eliminate global violence — alternative worldviews provide no direction to dealing with real world security situations.

Terry O'Callaghan, lecturer in the school of International Relations at the University of South Australia, 2002, International Relations and the third debate, ed: Jarvis, p. 79-80

George, for example, is concerned about the violent, dangerous and war-prone character of the present international system. And rightly so. The world is a cruel and unforgiving place, especially for those who suffer the indignity of human suffering beneath tyrannous leaders, warrior states, and greedy self-serving elites. But surely the problem of violence is not banished from the international arena once the global stranglehold of realist thinking is finally broken? It is important to try to determine the levels of violence that might be expected in a nonrealist world. How will internecine conflict be managed? How do postmodernists like George go about managing conflict between marginalized groups whose "voices" collide? It is one thing to talk about the failure of current realist thinking, but there is absolutely nothing in George's statements to suggest that he has discovered solutions to handle events in Bosnia, the Middle East, or East Timor. Postmodern approaches look as impoverished in this regard as do realist perspectives. Indeed, it is interesting to note that George gives conditional support for the actions of the United States in Haiti and Somalia "because on balance they gave people some hope where there was none" (George, 1994:231). Brute force, power politics, and interventionism do apparently have a place in George's postmodem world. But even so, the Haitian and Somalian cases are hardly in the same intransigent category as those of Bosnia or the Middle East. Indeed, the Americans pulled out of Somalia as soon as events took a turn for the worse and, in the process, received a great deal of criticism from the international community. Would George have done the same thing? Would he have left the Taliban to their devices in light of their complicity in the events of September 11? Would he have left the Somalians to wallow in poverty and misery? Would he have been willing to sacrifice the lives of a number of young men and women (American, Australian, French, or whatever) to subdue Aidid and his minions in order to restore social and political stability to Somalia? To be blunt, I wonder how much better off the international community would be if Jim George were put in charge of foreign affairs. This is not a fatuous point. After all, George wants to suggest that students of international politics are implicated in the trials and tribulations of international politics. All of us should be willing, therefore, to accept such a role, even hypothetically. I suspect, however, that were George actually to confront some of the dilemmas that policymakers do on a daily basis, he would find that teaching the Bosnian Serbs about the dangers of modernism, universalism and positivism, and asking them to be more tolerant and sensitive would not meet with much success. True, it may not be a whole lot worse than current realist approaches, but the point is that George has not demonstrated how his views might make a meaningful difference.

Alt Fails

Dissident IR fails – it lacks a mechanism to convert theory into practice – maintains same violent structures.

Anna M. Agathangelou, Dir. Global Change Inst. And Women’s Studies Prof @ Oberlin, and L.H.M. Ling, Inst. For Social Studies @ Hague, Fall 1997, Studies in Political Economy, v. 54, p 7-8

Yet, ironically if not tragically, dissident IR also paralyzes itself into non-action. While it challenges the status quo, dissident IR fails to transform it. Indeed, dissident IR claims that a “coherent” paradigm or research program — even an alternative one — reproduces the stifling parochialism and hidden power-mongering of sovereign scholarship. “Any agenda of global politics informed by critical social theory perspectives,” writes Jim George “must forgo the simple, albeit self-gratifying, options inherent in ready-made alternative Realisms and confront the dangers, closures, paradoxes, and complicities associated with them. Even references to a “real world, dissidents argue, repudiate the very meaning of dissidence given their sovereign presumption of a universalizable, testable Reality. What dissident scholarship opts for, instead, is a sense of disciplinary crisis that “resonates with the effects of marginal and dissident movements in all sorts of other localities.” Despite its emancipatory intentions, this approach effectively leaves the prevailing prison of sovereignty intact. It doubly incarcerates when dissident IR highlights the layers of power that oppress without offering a heuristic, not to mention a program, for emancipatory action. Merely politicizing the supposedly non-political neither guides emancipatory action nor guards it against demagoguery. At best, dissident IR sanctions a detached criticality rooted (ironically) in Western modernity. Michael Shapiro, for instance, advises the dissident theorist to take “a critical distance” or “position offshore’ from which to “see the possibility of change.” But what becomes of those who know they are burning in the hells of exploitation, racism, sexism, starvation, civil war, and the like while the esoteric dissident observes “critically” from offshore? What hope do they have of overthrowing these shackles of sovereignty? In not answering these questions, dissident IR ends up reproducing despite avowals to the contrary, the sovereign outcome of discourse divorced from practice, analysis from policy, deconstruction from reconstruction, particulars from universals, and critical theory from problem-solving.

AT: Threat Con => War

Fear doesn’t lead to war – state interests can describe the causes of war – policymakers can counter fear spirals

Sandeep Baliga, Prof at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, David O. Lucca, Federal Reserve Board, and Tomas Sjöström, Prof of Economics, Rutgers University, July 2010, Domestic Political Survival and International Conflict: Is Democracy Good for Peace?” Review of Economic Studies.

Determining the underlying motives behind conflicts, based on a subjective reading of history, will always leave scope for disagreement. Our theoretical model, building on Baliga and Sjöström [6], assumes conflicts can be sparked by fear (“Schelling’s dilemma”). Historians have uncovered many examples of such “fear-spirals”.3 For example, Thucydides ([71], 1.23, p. 49) argued that the Peloponnesian War was caused by “the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”The period that preceded World War I was characterized by mutual distrust and fear (Tuchman [73], Wainstein [76] and Sontag [68]). A spiral of fear was evident during the Cold War arms race (Leffl er [48]). The India-Pakistan arms race is a current example of escalation fueled by mutual distrust, and Bobbitt ([11], p. 10) suggests a similar logic will continue to operate in the wars of the twenty-first century: “We think terrorists will attack; so they think we think the terrorists will attack; so they think we shall intervene; so they will attack; so we must.”Nevertheless, there is disagreement about the number of large-scale wars that can be said to have been triggered by fear (see Reiter [62] and Van Evera [74]). Reiter [61] argues that leaders who understand the spiraling logic can prevent conflict by communicating. Baliga and Sjöström [6] verify that, in theory at least, cheap-talk can sometimes prevent a conflict; but it cannot always do so. Our current model assumes leaders are partly motivated by domestic political concerns, and may behave hawkishly in order to maintain political support. Thus, fear is not the only reason for starting a war, and Reiter’s [61] argument that World War I was not a pure fear-spiral is consistent with our model: “Domestic politics in a number of nations set the stage for war, though some...have gone further to argue that Germany sought war... to shore up the threatened domestic political order at home”(Reiter [61], p. 22).

Necessary not sufficient

Stuart J Kaufman, Prof Poli Sci and IR – U Delaware, 2009, “Narratives and Symbols in Violent Mobilization: The Palestinian-Israeli Case,” Security Studies 18:3, 400 – 434)

Even when hostile narratives, group fears, and opportunity are strongly present, war occurs only if these factors are harnessed. Ethnic narratives and fears must combine to create significant ethnic hostility among mass publics. Politicians must also seize the opportunity to manipulate that hostility, evoking hostile narratives and symbols to gain or hold power by riding a wave of chauvinist mobilization. Such mobilization is often spurred by prominent events (for example, episodes of violence) that increase feelings of hostility and make chauvinist appeals seem timely. If the other group also mobilizes and if each side’s felt security needs threaten the security of the other side, the result is a security dilemma spiral of rising fear, hostility, and mutual threat that results in violence. A virtue of this symbolist theory is that symbolist logic explains why ethnic peace is more common than ethnonationalist war. Even if hostile narratives, fears, and opportunity exist, severe violence usually can still be avoided if ethnic elites skillfully define group needs in moderate ways and collaborate across group lines to prevent violence: this is consociationalism. 17 War is likely only if hostile narratives, fears, and opportunity spur hostile attitudes, chauvinist mobilization, and a security dilemma.

AT: Security -> War

No internal link from security-seeking to outright warfare

Kydd, Assistant professor of political science, University of California, Riverside, 1997, Sheep in Sheep's clothing: Why security seekers do not fight each other, Security Studies.

I HAVE ARGUED that the search for security does not lead to conflict, in spite of uncertainty about motivations. The search for security leads to a focus on the motivations of other states. Security seekers who know each other to be security seekers can avoid conflict entirely. Such states do best by not attacking each other; each is then perfectly secure. Offensive realists argue that motivations are unobservable and hence security seekers will never know if they face security seekers or not. States treat all other states alike; there are no friends in international relations, only current enemies and potential enemies. States therefore seek relative power as a proxy for security. This enables them to maximize their chances of winning in die inevitable wars of die future, whomever they may be fought against. This point of view completely ignores the possibility of revealing motivations offered by transparent democratic policy processes, and deliberate signaling of intentions. It leads scholars such as Mearsheimer to predict increased conflict between Britain, France, and Germany when we see no evidence of such conflict. It ignores the wealth of information available to states about the motivations of other states, and the fact that this information often has a direct impact on foreign-policy making. Such theorizing tells us much about the dynamics of a system in which all states are power maximizers, but it tells us less about the real world in which few states fit that description Defensive realists, more realistically, assert that the search for security does not always cause conflict, because state motivations can sometimes be signaled under certain favorable conditions.

AT: Threat Con

Threats aren’t arbitrary – focus on personal perceptions can’t prevent objective threats – only concrete strategies cope with perceptions and material reality

Olav. F. Knudsen, Prof @ Södertörn Univ College, 2001, Security Dialogue 32.3, “Post-Copenhagen Security Studies: Desecuritizing Securitization,” p. 360

During the Cold War, peace research was struggling to gain the status of so- cial and intellectual respectability then only accorded strategic studies. The concept of securitization has helped to change that. A key aspect of the securitization idea is to create awareness of the (allegedly) arbitrary nature of ‘threats’, to stimulate the thought that the foundation of any national security policy is not given by ‘nature’ but chosen by politicians and decisionmakers who have an interest in defining it in just that way. That interest (according to this line of reasoning) is heavily embodied not just in each country’s military establishment, but also in the power and influence flowing from the military’s privileged position with respect to the network of decisionmakers and politi- cians serving that establishment. Hence, ‘securitization’ gave a name to the process, hitherto vaguely perceived, of raising security issues above politics and making them something one would never question. This argument is convincing as far as its description of the military estab- lishment and decisionmakers goes, but its heyday is gone. It was a Cold War phenomenon, and things just aren’t so anymore. In the post-Cold War period, agenda-setting has been much easier to influence than the securitization approach assumes. That change cannot be credited to the concept; the change in security politics was already taking place in defense ministries and parlia- ments before the concept was first launched.

Literature and psychological bias runs towards threat deflation – they are the opposite of paranoid

Randall L. Schweller, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University, 2004, “Unanswered Threats A Neoclassical RealistTheory of Underbalancing,” International Security 29.2 (2004) 159-201, Muse

Despite the historical frequency of underbalancing, little has been written on the subject. Indeed, Geoffrey Blainey's memorable observation that for "every thousand pages published on the causes of wars there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace" could have been made with equal veracity about overreactions to threats as opposed to underreactions to them.92 Library shelves are filled with books on the causes and dangers of exaggerating threats, ranging from studies of domestic politics to bureaucratic politics, to political psychology, to organization theory. By comparison, there have been few studies at any level of analysis or from any theoretical perspective that directly explain why states have with some, if not equal, regularity underestimated dangers to their survival. There may be some cognitive or normative bias at work here. Consider, for instance, that there is a commonly used word, paranoia, for the unwarranted fear that people are, in some way, "out to get you" or are planning to do oneharm. I suspect that just as many people are afflicted with the opposite psychosis: the delusion that everyone loves you when, in fact, they do not even like you. Yet, we do not have a familiar word for this phenomenon. Indeed, I am unaware of any word that describes this pathology (hubris and overconfidence come close, but they plainly define something other than what I have described). That noted, international relations theory does have a frequently used phrase for the pathology of states' underestimation of threats to their survival, the so-called Munich analogy. The term is used, however, in a disparaging way by theorists to ridicule those who employ it. The central claim is that the naïveté associated with Munich and the outbreak of World War II has become an overused and inappropriate analogy because few leaders are as evil and unappeasable as Adolf Hitler. Thus, the analogy either mistakenly causes leaders [End Page 198] to adopt hawkish and overly competitive policies or is deliberately used by leaders to justify such policies and mislead the public. A more compelling explanation for the paucity of studies on underreactions to threats, however, is the tendency of theories to reflect contemporary issues as well as the desire of theorists and journals to provide society with policy- relevant theories that may help resolve or manage urgent security problems. Thus, born in the atomic age with its new balance of terror and an ongoing Cold War, the field of security studies has naturally produced theories of and prescriptions for national security that have had little to say about—and are, in fact, heavily biased against warnings of—the dangers of underreacting to or underestimating threats.

AT: Alternative Solves Backlash

Your radical act doesn’t change everyone’s mind along the way – naïve to think backlash will be wished-away.

James G. Blight –Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts – American Psychologist –Volume 42, Issue 1, 1987 – obtained via CSA Illumina Database

Faced with a nuclear fait accompli deriving from a historic summit meeting, the NATO allies and the American public and Congress, all notoriously fickle in matters of nuclear policy, agree to the radical change of course. In this scenario, therefore, the manner of thinking is altered by a radical action taken by the top leadership, which results eventually in a widely shared new way of thinking about superpower relations. Deutsch typifies advocates of the top-down tactic. In his view, the malignant social process could be completely transformed if only "a bold and courageous American leadership would take a risk for peace . . . [and] announce its determination to end the crazy arms race." If only a president would take charge, says Deutsch (1983), "we could replace the arms race with a peace race" (p. 23). But is it really true that even an extraordinarily bold move by an American president to seize an opportune moment is likely to initiate a chain reaction of political, military, and psychological events that results ultimately in the transcendence of the arms race and, eventually, a top-down cure for superpower psychopathology? There are no historical reasons for optimism on this question. For we are highly unlikely to experience in the foreseeable future anything like the peculiar circumstances that combined, during the late spring and summer of 1963, to produce the most opportune such moment so far in the nuclear age. During those few brief but eventful months, the American leader, together with his Soviet counterpart, did indeed labor mightily to accomplish what Mack (1985b) has called "a transformation in the quality of the Soviet-American relationship" (p. 53). And although some notable accomplishments marked these months, it is obvious, after nearly a quarter of a century, that they led to no fundamental changes in the superpower relationship. It is very far from obvious, therefore, why we should expect any top-down cure of the superpower relationship in the future.

Critical theory creates fascism not utopia – can’t prescribe new realities

John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, Winter 1995, “The False Promise of International Institutions.” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3.

There is another problem with the application of critical theory to international relations. Although critical theorists hope to replace realism with a discourse that emphasizes harmony and peace, critical theory per se emphasizes that it is impossible to know the future. Critical theory according to its own logic, can be used to undermine realism and produce change, but it cannot serve as the basis for predicting which discourse will replace realism, because the theory says little about the direction change takes. In fact, Cox argues that although "utopian expectations may be an element in stimulating people to act...such expectations are almost never realized in practice." (160) Thus, in a sense, the communitarian discourse championed by critical theorists is wishful thinking, not an outcome linked to the theory itself. Indeed, critical theory cannot guarantee that the new discourse will not be more malignant than the discourse it replaces. Nothing in the theory guarantees, for example, that a fascist discourse far more violent than realism will not emerge as the new hegemonic discourse.

No Alternatives To Realism

Rejecting realism makes it worse – it constitutes the primary mode of thought practitioners use

Stefano Guzzini, Assistant Professor at Central European Univ., Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy, 1998, p. 235

Third, this last chapter has argued that although the evolution of realism has been mainly a disappointment as a general causal theory, we have to deal with it. On the one hand, realist assumptions and insights are used and merged in nearly all frameworks of analysis offered in International Relations or International Political Economy. One of the book's purposes was to show realism as a varied and variably rich theory, so heterogeneous that it would be better to refer to it only in plural terms. On the other hand, to dispose of realism because some of its versions have been proven empirically wrong, ahistorical, or logically incoherent, does not necessarily touch its role in the shared understandings of observers and practitioners of international affairs. Realist theories have a persisting power for constructing our understanding of the present. Their assumptions, both as theoretical constructs, and as particular lessons of the past translated from one generation of decisionmakers to another, help mobilizing certain understandings and dispositions to action. They also provide them with legitimacy. Despite realism's several deaths as a general causal theory, it can still powerfully enframe action. It exists in the minds, and is hence reflected in the actions, of many practitioners. Whether or not the world realism depicts is out there, realism is. Realism is not a causal theory that explains International Relations, but, as long as realism continues to be a powerful mindset, we need to understand realism to make sense of International Relations. In other words, realism is a still necessary hermeneutical bridge to the understanding of world politics. Getting rid of realism without having a deep understanding of it, not only risks unwarranted dismissal of some valuable theoretical insights that I have tried to gather in this book; it would also be futile. Indeed, it might be the best way to tacitly and uncritically reproduce it.

AT: X is the Root Cause

No root cause– prefer proximate causes

John Norton, Professor of Law at the University of Virginia He formerly served as the first Chairman of the Board of the United States Institute of Peace and as the Counselor on International Law to the Department of State, Winter, 2004, “Beyond the Democratic Peace: Solving the War Puzzle”, 44 Va. J. Int'l L. 341, Lexis Law

If major interstate war is predominantly a product of a synergy between a potential nondemocratic aggressor and an absence of effective deterrence, what is the role of the many traditional "causes" of war? Past, and many contemporary, theories of war have focused on the role of specific disputes between nations, ethnic and religious differences, arms races, poverty and social injustice, competition for resources, incidents and accidents, greed, fear, perceptions of "honor," and many other factors. Such factors may well play a role in motivating aggression or generating fear and manipulating public opinion. The reality, however, is that while some of these factors may have more potential to contribute to war than others, there may well be an infinite set of motivating factors, or human wants, motivating aggression. It is not the independent existence of such motivating factors for war but rather the circumstances permitting or encouraging high-risk decisions leading to war that is the key to more effectively controlling armed conflict. And the same may also be true of democide. The early focus in the Rwanda slaughter on "ethnic conflict," as though Hutus and Tutsis had begun to slaughter each other through spontaneous combustion, distracted our attention from the reality that a nondemocratic Hutu regime had carefully planned and orchestrated a genocide against Rwandan Tutsis as well as its Hutu opponents. n158 Certainly if we were able to press a button and end poverty, racism, religious intolerance, injustice, and endless disputes, we would want to do so. Indeed, democratic governments must remain committed to policies that will produce a better world by all measures of human progress. The broader achievement of democracy and the rule of law will itself assist in this progress. No one, however, has yet been able to demonstrate the kind of robust correlation with any of these "traditional" causes of war that is reflected in the "democratic peace." Further, given the difficulties in overcoming many of these social problems, an approach to war exclusively dependent on their solution may doom us to war for generations to come.

Framework

Criticism of state-centric security studies sacrifice the most important international actor – loss of options outweighs the dangers of legitimization.

Olav. F. Knudsen, Prof @ Södertörn Univ College, 2001, Security Dialogue 32.3, “Post-Copenhagen Security Studies: Desecuritizing Securitization,” p. 360

We should study the state – conceived as a penetrated state – specifically because it performs essential security functions that are rarely performed by other types of organization, such as being: • the major collective unit processing notions of threat; • the mantle that cloaks the exercise of elite power; • the organizational expression that gives shape to communal ‘identity’ and ‘culture’; • the chief agglomeration of competence to deal with issue areas crossing jurisdictional boundaries; • the manager of territory/geographical space – including functioning as a ‘receptacle’ for income; and • the legitimizer of authorized action and possession. Recognizing the problems of state-focused approaches belongs to the beginner’s lessons in IR. There is the danger of legitimizing the state as such by placing it at the center of research, and of legitimizing thereby the repression and injustice which on a massive scale have been and still are perpetrated in its name around the globe. Some draw the conclusion on this basis that states should not be studied, a stance which is obviously unwarranted and pointless. The state is an instrument of power on a scale beyond most other instruments of power. For this reason alone, keeping a watch on how it is used should be a top priority for social scientists. The mobilization – the assumption of the mantle – of state power by more or less arbitrarily chosen (or self-selected) individuals or groups, to act on behalf of all, is something which requires continual problematization, not least when it is done vis-à-vis other collectivities. The state is also the instrument of de- mocracy on a large scale in its most well-functioning forms. Surveying democ- racy’s state of health is a crucial responsibility for social scientists. Finally, when it comes to performing collective tasks on a large scale, the state is the most potentially effective organizing instrument across an almost limitless range of objectives. Security is among them.

Realism True

Empirical evidence proves realism describes IR – change in academic or political ideologies won’t change it.

John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001, http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall01/002025excerpt.htm, accessed 11/14/02

The optimists' claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned out of the system is wrong. In fact, all of the major states around the globe still care deeply about the balance of power and are destined to compete for power among themselves for the foreseeable future. Consequently, realism will offer the most powerful explanations of international politics over the next century, and this will be true even if the debates among academic and policy elites are dominated by non-realist theories. In short, the real world remains a realist world. States still fear each other and seek to gain power at each other's expense, because international anarchy—the driving force behind great-power behavior—did not change with the end of the Cold War, and there are few signs that such change is likely any time soon. States remain the principal actors in world politics and there is still no night watchman standing above them. For sure, the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a major shift in the global distribution of power. But it did not give rise to a change in the anarchic structure of the system, and without that kind of profound change, there is no reason to expect the great powers to behave much differently in the new century than they did in previous centuries. Indeed, considerable evidence from the 1990s indicates that power politics has not disappeared from Europe and Northeast Asia, the regions in which there are two or more great powers, as well as possible great powers such as Germany and Japan. There is no question, however, that the competition for power over the past decade has been low-key. Still, there is potential for intense security competition among the great powers that might lead to a major war. Probably the best evidence of that possibility is the fact that the United States maintains about one hundred thousand troops each in Europe and in Northeast Asia for the explicit purpose of keeping the major states in each region at peace.

Realism True

Realism is rooted in human nature – anarchic worlds from the dawn of time to today created an impetus for realist thought.

Thayer, a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, 2004, Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict, University of Kentucky Press, pg. 75-76.

The central issue here is what causes states to behave as offensive realists predict. Mearsheimer advances a powerful argument that anarchy is the fundamental cause of such behavior. The fact that there is no world government compels the leaders of states to take steps to ensure their security, such as striving to have a powerful military, aggressing when forced to do so, and forging and maintaining alliances. This is what neorealists call a self-help system: leaders of states are forced to take these steps because nothing else can guarantee their security in the anarchic world of international relations. I argue that evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior. Evolutionary theory explains why individuals are motivated to act as offensive realism expects, whether an individual is a captain of industry or a conquistador. My argument is that anarchy is even more important than most scholars of international relations recognize. The human environment of evolutionary adaptation was anarchic; our ancestors lived in a state of nature in which resources were poor and dangers from other humans and the environment were great—so great that it is truly remarkable that a mammal standing three feet high—without claws or strong teeth, not particularly strong or swift—survived and evolved to become what we consider human. Humans endured because natural selection gave them the right behaviors to last in those conditions. This environment produced the behaviors examined here: egoism, domination, and the in-group/out-group distinction. These specific traits are sufficient to explain why leaders will behave, in the proper circumstances, as offensive realists expect them to behave. That is, even if they must hurt other humans or risk injury to themselves, they will strive to maximize their power, defined as either control over others (for example, through wealth or leadership) or control over ecological circumstances (such as meeting their own and their family's or tribes need for food, shelter, or other resources).

Neolib Resilient

Neoliberal market economies are resilient

Vivien A. Schmidt, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University, and Mark Thatcher, Professor of Comparative Politics and International Studies at the London School of Economics, 11-22-2013, “Given the abject failure of the neoliberal policy offer, why has it persisted as the dominant approach to policymaking?” LSE, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/37626

. But rather than a weakness, this can be seen as a strength, since lack of implementation can serve neoliberal politicians also as a rallying cry, to call for more neoliberalism.¶ Third, neoliberal ideas have generally been more successful in policy debates and political discourse, winning in the ‘battle of ideas’ against weaker alternatives. In some cases, that strength may come from the seemingly common sense nature of neoliberal arguments. For example, appeals to the ‘virtue’ of sound finances using the metaphor of the household economy—extrapolating from the need to balance one’s household budget to the need to do the same for the state budget—may resonate better with ordinary citizens than the Keynesian counter-intuitive proposition to spend more at a time of high deficits and debts. In other cases, neoliberal success can be attributed to the re-framing of current problems—say, as a crisis of public debt rather than of the banks; to the narratives—about public profligacy being the problem, belt-tightening the solution; and to the myths—for the Germans, that belt-tightening is the only way to avoid the risks of hyperinflation of the early 1920s, thereby ignoring the risks of deflation and unemployment of the early 1930s that led to the rise of Hitler. Equally importantly, it may be that neoliberals are not so strong but their opponents are weak. Where, after all, have the center-left parties been in all of this, in particular in Europe throughout the Eurozone crisis? Notably, only very recently have European social democratic leaders called for growth, even as they continue to dole out austerity.¶ Fourth, powerful coalitions of interests often take up neoliberal ideas for their own strategic purposes, whether they believe in them or not. Economic actors may benefit materially, notably through lower taxes or the new opportunities opened up by ‘deregulation’ and privatization. Bankers have been laughing all the way to the bank. Politicians also can benefit by using neoliberal ideas to gain or retain political power while institutional actors—regulators, central bankers, and the like—gain autonomy and increasing power. All of this, moreover, tends to be self-reinforcing, since the more neoliberalism takes hold, the more it is likely to consolidate such actors’ commitment to neoliberal ideas, as well as to create an attitude of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them,’ as in the center-left’s adoption of neoliberal ideas beginning in the 1990s.¶ Fifth, the neoliberal ideas gain force from their institutionalization in rules and regulations, as well as in the organisations, including the ‘non-majoritarian’ independent regulatory bodies such as the independent central banks, the international credit-rating agencies, and the standard-setting bodies that are out of the reach of national state control.