The United States Congress should restrict the National Security Agency’s ability to collect “bulk data” without a warrant

Competitiveness/Hegemony/Econ/Internet Adv

1AC Competitiveness/Internet Advantage

Bulk data collection kills competitiveness, tech exports, the economy and internet leadership

Eoyang and Horwitz ’13 (12-20 Mieke,- the Director of the National Security Program and Gabriel,- is the Director of the Economic Program at Third Way “NSA Snooping's Negative Impact On Business Would Have The Founding Fathers 'Aghast'”)

The revelations about the scope and scale of NSA’s surveillance both at home and abroad have made many uneasy about the security of their data. This loss of trust could have ongoing consequences for the U.S. economy and for the future development of the Internet. Policymakers must understand these implications as they make decisions on how to reform our surveillance efforts. First, what will this mean for American competitiveness? For years, the Internet has been largely “Made in America”, but the technical architecture and data transcend national borders. European, Chinese, Russian, and other global competitors are vying for the billions of consumers who currently use U.S. Internet services every day—from Google to Facebook to Ebay. One major competitive global advantage for U.S. companies is that America’s openness and freedoms have brought an implied level of trust in the security and privacy of the data flowing through their servers. But when the U.S. government asserts that it can exploit electronic data abroad for intelligence purposes, it creates an international reaction with profound economic consequences. For example, Europe’s Commissioner for digital affairs, Neelie Kroes, predicts the fallout from Snowden’s leaks will have “multi-billion Euro consequences” for US businesses. The EU Commission’s Vice President, Viviane Reding, is pushing for Europe to adopt more expansive privacy laws that will help build market share for regional companies—thereby shutting American companies out. The economic consequences could be staggering. Studies by leading Internet researchers at ITIF, Gartner, and Forrester examining the NSA surveillance revelations’ impact project potential lost revenue for U.S. cloud computing companies ranging from $35 billion to $180 billion over the next three years. More than half of the overseas members of a cloud industry group, the Cloud Security Alliance, said they were less likely to use U.S. cloud providers in the future. Ten percent of such members said they had cancelled a U.S. cloud services project as a result of the “Snowden Incident”. While the true costs of the loss of trust are hard to quantify, and will be reported in future quarters, the potential losses are enormous. Second, what will this mean for the future of Internet governance? Since its earliest days, the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has governed the web. As the Internet has expanded, several nations, especially China, have been pressing to end American dominance and transfer control of Internet governance to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency within the United Nations. Worse still for prospects of continued American dominance, the NSA revelations have prompted calls for extensive regional control of the Internet. For example, Brazil, which has long called for such regional control, will host an important Internet governance conference in April that could challenge America’s role. Unless the U.S. government takes steps to restore some degree of trust, the groundswell of international interest in a new approach to Internet governance could undermine or end U.S. Internet leadership. This could leave management of the Internet to nations like China or Russia that do not share America’s commitment to safety, openness, competition, and growth. Recommendations for change are coming from many corners. President Obama’s advisory group on NSA reform is calling for an end to bulk collection of Americans’ metadata and other steps to restore protections abroad. Major Internet companies have called for greater restrictions on surveillance activities, saying the balance has tipped too far from the individual. The government should heed these calls for reflection and reform. Without understanding the economic implications of our security policies and taking reasonable steps to restore trust in America’s surveillance efforts, our Internet dominance and our economy could pay the price.

Extinction

Genachowski 13 Julius Genachowski is chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, First Amendment scholar Lee C. Bollinger is president of Columbia University. Bollinger serves on the board of the Washington Post Company, Foreign Policy, April 16, 2013, "The Plot to Block Internet Freedom", http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/16/plot_block_internet_freedom?page=full
The Internet has created an extraordinary new democratic forum for people around the world to express their opinions. It is revolutionizing global access to information: Today, more than 1 billion people worldwide have access to the Internet, and at current growth rates, 5 billion people -- about 70 percent of the world's population -- will be connected in five years. But this growth trajectory is not inevitable, and threats are mounting to the global spread of an open and truly "worldwide" web. The expansion of the open Internet must be allowed to continue: The mobile and social media revolutions are critical not only for democratic institutions' ability to solve the collective problems of a shrinking world, but also to a dynamic and innovative global economy that depends on financial transparency and the free flow of information. The threats to the open Internet were on stark display at last December's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, where the United States fought attempts by a number of countries -- including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia -- to give a U.N. organization, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), new regulatory authority over the Internet. Ultimately, over the objection of the United States and many others, 89 countries voted to approve a treaty that could strengthen the power of governments to control online content and deter broadband deployment. In Dubai, two deeply worrisome trends came to a head. First, we see that the Arab Spring and similar events have awakened nondemocratic governments to the danger that the Internet poses to their regimes. In Dubai, they pushed for a treaty that would give the ITU's imprimatur to governments' blocking or favoring of online content under the guise of preventing spam and increasing network security. Authoritarian countries' real goal is to legitimize content regulation, opening the door for governments to block any content they do not like, such as political speech. Second, the basic commercial model underlying the open Internet is also under threat. In particular, some proposals, like the one made last year by major European network operators, would change the ground rules for payments for transferring Internet content. One species of these proposals is called "sender pays" or "sending party pays." Since the beginning of the Internet, content creators -- individuals, news outlets, search engines, social media sites -- have been able to make their content available to Internet users without paying a fee to Internet service providers. A sender-pays rule would change that, empowering governments to require Internet content creators to pay a fee to connect with an end user in that country. Sender pays may look merely like a commercial issue, a different way to divide the pie. And proponents of sender pays and similar changes claim they would benefit Internet deployment and Internet users. But the opposite is true: If a country imposed a payment requirement, content creators would be less likely to serve that country. The loss of content would make the Internet less attractive and would lessen demand for the deployment of Internet infrastructure in that country. Repeat the process in a few more countries, and the growth of global connectivity -- as well as its attendant benefits for democracy -- would slow dramatically. So too would the benefits accruing to the global economy. Without continuing improvements in transparency and information sharing, the innovation that springs from new commercial ideas and creative breakthroughs is sure to be severely inhibited. To their credit, American Internet service providers have joined with the broader U.S. technology industry, civil society, and others in opposing these changes. Together, we were able to win the battle in Dubai over sender pays, but we have not yet won the war. Issues affecting global Internet openness, broadband deployment, and free speech will return in upcoming international forums, including an important meeting in Geneva in May, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum. The massive investment in wired and wireless broadband infrastructure in the United States demonstrates that preserving an open Internet is completely compatible with broadband deployment. According to a recent UBS report, annual wireless capital investment in the United States increased 40 percent from 2009 to 2012, while investment in the rest of the world has barely inched upward. And according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, more fiber-optic cable was laid in the United States in 2011 and 2012 than in any year since 2000, and 15 percent more than in Europe. All Internet users lose something when some countries are cut off from the World Wide Web. Each person who is unable to connect to the Internet diminishes our own access to information. We become less able to understand the world and formulate policies to respond to our shrinking planet. Conversely, we gain a richer understanding of global events as more people connect around the world, and those societies nurturing nascent democracy movements become more familiar with America's traditions of free speech and pluralism. That's why we believe that the Internet should remain free of gatekeepers and that no entity -- public or private -- should be able to pick and choose the information web users can receive. That is a principle the United States adopted in the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order. And it's why we are deeply concerned about arguments by some in the United States that broadband providers should be able to block, edit, or favor Internet traffic that travels over their networks, or adopt economic models similar to international sender pays. We must preserve the Internet as the most open and robust platform for the free exchange of information ever devised. Keeping the Internet open is perhaps the most important free speech issue of our time.

Free internet key to solve all global and EXISTENTIAL threats

Eagleman 10 (David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law and author of Sum (Canongate). Nov. 9, 2010, “ Six ways the internet will save civilization,”
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no)
Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence One of our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic. Viral and bacterial epidemics precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The internet can be our key to survival because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum number of employees working from home. This can reduce host density below the tipping point required for an epidemic. If we are well prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us. The internet will predict natural disasters We are witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media: news stories are increasingly becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires, locals went to the TV stations to learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations appeared most concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures, updated Facebook statuses and tweeted. The balance tipped: the internet carried news about the fire more quickly and accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots, decentralised scheme, there were embedded reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead of the fire. This head start could provide the extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well ahead of the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. If the Indian Ocean had the Pacific’s networked tsunami-warning system, South-East Asia would look quite different today. Discoveries are retained and shared Historically, critical information has required constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan civilisation -- have fallen to the bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is hard won but easily lost. And information that survives often does not spread. Consider smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China and Africa centuries before it made its way to Europe. By the time the idea reached North America, native civilisations who needed it had already collapsed. The net solved the problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using the latest bricks of knowledge in their fortification against risk. Tyranny is mitigated Censorship of ideas was a familiar spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling the press, airwaves and copying machines in the USSR, Romania, Cuba, China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenko’s agricultural despotism in the USSR, it directly contributed to the collapse of the nation. Historically, a more successful strategy has been to confront free speech with free speech -- and the internet allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of information by offering access to the newspapers of the world, the photographers of every nation, the bloggers of every political stripe. Some posts are full of doctoring and dishonesty whereas others strive for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us to sift through. Given the attempts by some governments to build firewalls, it’s clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance. Human capital is vastly increased Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve problems. Yet far fewer than one per cent of the world’s population is involved. We need expand human capital. Most of the world not have access to the education afforded a small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma or Barack Obama who has educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This squandering of talent translates into reduced economic output and a smaller pool of problem solvers. The net opens the gates education to anyone with a computer. A motivated teen anywhere on the planet can walk through the world’s knowledge -- from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MIT’s OpenCourseWare. The new human capital will serve us well when we confront existential threats we’ve never imagined before. Energy expenditure is reduced Societal collapse can often be understood in terms of an energy budget: when energy spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy problem with a natural ease. Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from paper to electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce reduces the need to drive long distances to purchase products. Delivery trucks are more eco-friendly than individuals driving around, not least because of tight packaging and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy costs to the banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the same quantity of information flow. The tangle of events that triggers societal collapse can be complex, and there are several threats the net does not address. But vast, networked communication can be an antidote to several of the most deadly diseases threatening civilisation. The next time your coworker laments internet addiction, the banality of tweeting or the decline of face-to-face conversation, you may want to suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.

Key to hege, tech sector and intel co-op which checks terrorism

NSN 14 (National Security Network,- non-profit foreign policy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, that focuses on international relations, global affairs and national security. Characterizing itself as "progressive," the NSN's mission statement asserts the group aims to "build a strong progressive national security and counter conservative spin." with 2,000 members and experts represent the emerging generation of foreign policy leaders. With a wealth of experience in government service, the private sector and the non-profit sector “The National Security Benefits of NSA Reform”)

NSN Executive Director John Bradshaw said, “These reforms are an important step toward creating the right balance between intelligence capabilities that can effectively protect national security and safeguards for the legitimate privacy expectations of the American public and foreign citizens and governments. The ending of the bulk metadata collection program as it exists and the requirement that such data can only be reviewed after a judicial finding is a positive step toward putting the burden of proof on the NSA to show that they need access to certain information instead of having free rein to collect and analyze the metadata of all citizens.” As America’s elected representatives consider how to better direct the NSA, they should keep in mind that privacy and national security concerns should be seen not as mutually exclusive, but as mutually reinforcing. Indeed, there are strong national security reasons for elected leaders to support NSA reform, including preventing economic damage to American industry resulting from suspicions abroad and protecting the mutual trust necessary for security cooperation with foreign partners. At the same time, the national security justification for NSA metadata collection remains to be demonstrated by American officials, leaving serious questions unanswered. Deeper focus on managing multiple risks – security and privacy – is needed. The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, composed of NSN Advisory Board member Richard A. Clarke, Michael J. Morell, Geoffrey R. Stone, Cass R. Sunstein and Peter Swire recommends, “The central task is one of risk management; multiple risks are involved, and all of them must be considered. When public officials acquire foreign intelligence information, they seek to reduce risks, above all risks to national security. The challenge, of course, is that multiple risks are involved. Government must consider all of those risks, not a subset, when it is creating sensible safeguards. In addition to reducing risks to national security, public officials must consider four other risks: Risks to privacy; Risks to freedom and civil liberties, on the Internet and elsewhere; Risks to our relationships with other nations; and Risks to trade and commerce, including international commerce.” [Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, 12/12/13] Counterterrorism value of NSA metadata to preventing terrorist attack open to question, yet to be demonstrated by government. Senior officials have justified the value of the metadata or “bulk” collection programs in terms of their ability to rapidly turn around counterterrorism intelligence in response to a time-sensitive need. However, DC District Court Judge Richard Leon who presided over a challenge to the metadata collection program last year, writes that “Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation — most notably the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics — I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.” Importantly, during court proceedings, the government shared only limited evidence with the court and did not provide additional evidence when invited to do so, leaving the issue of justification open. [Richard Leon via USA Today, 12/16/13] Additionally, a report by New America Foundation’s Peter Bergen et al. concluded that “in-depth analysis” of 225 terrorism cases related to “the government’s claims about the role that NSA ‘bulk’ surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading,” adding that “the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal.” [Peter Bergen et al., 1/14] National Security Benefits of NSA Reform: Undoing economic damage: Cameron F. Kerry, former general counsel and acting secretary of the Department of Commerce, explains the damage done to U.S. industry abroad and how reform could undo or limit such negative effects: “The international firestorm they [leaks of NSA programs] ignited has damaged America’s brand and the brand of U.S. companies—and that has cost real money, with estimates of losses to ranging from $25 billion to $180 billion over three years. Surveys and individual statements express increased reluctance on the part of foreign businesses to entrust data to U.S. cloud services and technology providers” as a result of reticence over doing business with American telecoms and technology firms in connection to NSA operations. President Obama touched on this very concern when he announced that reforms “will ensure that we take into account our security requirements, but also our alliances; our trade and investment relationships, including the concerns of America’s companies.” [Cameron F. Kerry, 1/15/14. President Obama, 1/17/14] Political sustainability of signals intelligence collection: Signals intelligence collected by the NSA is and will remain vital to American national security. But loss in public confidence in NSA programs as overseen by elected officials risks overreaction to NSA programs in the future if not responded to adequately in the near future with greater oversight and leadership on the part of Americans’ representatives. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes explains, “We have an ability to do essentially anything technologically. So do we have the appropriate legal and policy overlay to ensure that’s focused?” Public opinion polls reinforce the reality of public loss of confidence in NSA programs, finding “59% of Americans oppose keeping the NSA’s widespread collection of data unchanged.” [Ben Rhodes via NY Times, 1/16/14. The Guardian, 1/16/14] Protecting security and political cooperation with international partners: The New York Times editorializes on the political and intelligence-related risks of surveillance overstep: “Such surveillance undermines the trust of allies and their willingness to share the kind of confidential information needed to thwart terrorism and other threats. When the N.S.A. violates French or German law, law enforcement agencies in those nations cooperate with the agency at their own risk. There is also the more subtle damage done by the feeling that the United States plays by its own rules and respects neither the sovereignty nor the political sensibilities of some of its closest democratic allies.” Indeed, President Obama recognized this benefit of reform, saying “our global leadership demands that we balance our security requirements against our need to maintain trust and cooperation among people and leaders around the world.” [NY Times, 10/29/13. President Obama, 1/17/14]

Great power war

Baru 9

Sanjaya is a Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis, Strategic Analysis, Volume 33, Issue 2 March 2009 , pages 163–168.

The management of the economy, and of the treasury, has been a vital aspect of statecraft from time immemorial. Kautilya’s Arthashastra says, ‘From the strength of the treasury the army is born. …men without wealth do not attain their objectives even after hundreds of trials… Only through wealth can material gains be acquired, as elephants (wild) can be captured only by elephants (tamed)… A state with depleted resources, even if acquired, becomes only a liability.’4 Hence, economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.5¶ In the modern era, the idea that strong economic performance is the foundation of power was argued most persuasively by historian Paul Kennedy. ‘Victory (in war),’ Kennedy claimed, ‘has repeatedly gone to the side with more flourishing productive base.’6 Drawing attention to the interrelationships between economic wealth, technological innovation, and the ability of states to efficiently mobilize economic and technological resources for power projection and national defence, Kennedy argued that nations that were able to better combine military and economic strength scored over others.¶ ‘The fact remains,’ Kennedy argued, ‘that all of the major shifts in the world’s military-power balance have followed alterations in the productive balances; and further, that the rising and falling of the various empires and states in the international system has been confirmed by the outcomes of the major Great Power wars, where victory has always gone to the side with the greatest material resources.’7¶ ¶ In Kennedy’s view the geopolitical consequences of an economic crisis or even decline would be transmitted through a nation’s inability to find adequate financial resources to simultaneously sustain economic growth and military power – the classic ‘guns vs butter’ dilemma.

US Internet freedom signal key to maintain global economy

Meldre 14 – Patrik Maldre is a specialist in the security policy and arms control division of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Having lived half of his life in Estonia and the other half in the United States, Patrik received a double-bachelor in philosophy and political science at the University of Illinois and completed his M.A. studies in international relations with a specialisation in peace and security at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals. (“Estonia, the Freedom Online Coalition and the future of internet governance”, Estonian World, April 25, 2014, http://estonianworld.com/security/estonia-freedom-online-coalition-future-internet-governance/)

Concurrently, there has been an increase in the number and activeness of forums dedicated to studying and debating the topic of internet governance, which refers to the norms, principles and procedures by which the internet operates and evolves. Thus far, the development of the internet has been a decentralised and multidimensional process in which a variety of different organisations have contributed to maintaining and increasing its availability and interoperability. This involvement of academia, enterprises and civil society is known the implementation of the multi-stakeholder model. Of course, there is one country that, as the source of the internet in the first place, has had a considerable influence on the development of the internet: the United States. However, in the wake of the Snowden revelations, there has been an increasing push by some governments to reduce the role of the US in the process, while increasing their own. The danger embodied by this momentum lies in the fact that the United States has employed its influence toward the policy goal of promoting an open, interoperable, secure and reliable internet. On the other hand, many other states are seeking a greater role in internet governance with the objective of codifying into international law the primacy of each individual state’s role in defining what their citizens can see, read, write or share online. Taken to its logical end, this would entail the fracturing of the internet, with states in effect drawing national borders around their information space largely for the purpose of enhanced surveillance and censorship. Not only would this end up impinging on the exercise of citizens’ fundamental human rights, it would also inevitably stifle innovation and economic growth around the world.

Extinction

Austin ‘09 (Michael, Resident Scholar – American Enterprise Institute, and Desmond Lachman, Resident Fellow – American Enterprise Institute, “The Global Economy Unravels”, Forbes, 3-6, http://www.aei.org/article/100187)

Conversely, global policymakers do not seem to have grasped the downside risks to the global economy posed by a deteriorating domestic and international political environment. If the past is any guide, the souring of the political environment must be expected to fan the corrosive protectionist tendencies and nationalistic economic policy responses that are already all too much in evidence. After spending much of 2008 cheerleading the global economy, the International Monetary Fund now concedes that output in the world's advanced economies is expected to contract by as much as 2% in 2009. This would be the first time in the post-war period that output contracted in all of the world's major economies. The IMF is also now expecting only a very gradual global economic recovery in 2010, which will keep global unemployment at a high level. Sadly, the erstwhile rapidly growing emerging-market economies will not be spared by the ravages of the global recession. Output is already declining precipitously across Eastern and Central Europe as well as in a number of key Asian economies, like South Korea and Thailand. A number of important emerging-market countries like Ukraine seem to be headed for debt default, while a highly oil-dependent Russia seems to be on the cusp of a full-blown currency crisis. Perhaps of even greater concern is the virtual grinding to a halt of economic growth in China. The IMF now expects that China's growth rate will approximately halve to 6% in 2009. Such a growth rate would fall far short of what is needed to absorb the 20 million Chinese workers who migrate each year from the countryside to the towns in search of a better life. As a barometer of the political and social tensions that this grim world economic outlook portends, one needs look no further than the recent employment forecast of the International Labor Organization. The ILO believes that the global financial crisis will wipe out 30 million jobs worldwide in 2009, while in a worst case scenario as many as 50 million jobs could be lost. What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and global chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20 million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets. Europe as a whole will face dangerously increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for the rest of Europe. A prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist legislation in the United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what they are doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang.

Legitimacy of U.S. hegemony’s key to global stability-prevents great power war

Fujimoto, US Army Lt. Colonel, 2012

(Kevin, “Preserving U.S. National Security Interests Through a Liberal World Construct”, 1-11, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/index.cfm/articles/Preserving-US-National-Security-Interests-Liberal-World-Construct/2012/1/11)

The emergence of peer competitors, not terrorism, presents the greatest long-term threat to our national security. Over the past decade, while the United States concentrated its geopolitical focus on fighting two land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, China has quietly begun implementing a strategy to emerge as the dominant imperial power within Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Within the next 2 decades, China will likely replace the United States as the Asia-Pacific regional hegemonic power, if not replace us as the global superpower.1 Although China presents its rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic, its construction of naval bases in neighboring countries and military expansion in the region contradict that argument. With a credible threat to its leading position in a unipolar global order, the United States should adopt a grand strategy of “investment,” building legitimacy and capacity in the very institutions that will protect our interests in a liberal global construct of the future when we are no longer the dominant imperial power. Similar to the Clinton era's grand strategy of “enlargement,”2 investment supports a world order predicated upon a system of basic rules and principles, however, it differs in that the United States should concentrate on the institutions (i.e., United Nations, World Trade Organization, ASEAN, alliances, etc.) that support a world order, as opposed to expanding democracy as a system of governance for other sovereign nations. Despite its claims of a benevolent expansion, China is already executing a strategy of expansion similar to that of Imperial Japan's Manchukuo policy during the 1930s.3 This three-part strategy involves: “(i) (providing) significant investments in economic infrastructure for extracting natural resources; (ii) (conducting) military interventions (to) protect economic interests; and, (iii) . . . (annexing) via installation of puppet governments.”4 China has already solidified its control over neighboring North Korea and Burma, and has similarly begun more ambitious engagements in Africa and Central Asia where it seeks to expand its frontier.5 Noted political scientist Samuel P. Huntington provides further analysis of the motives behind China's imperial aspirations. He contends that “China (has) historically conceived itself as encompassing a “‘Sinic Zone'. . . (with) two goals: to become the champion of Chinese culture . . . and to resume its historical position, which it lost in the nineteenth century, as the hegemonic power in East Asia.”6 Furthermore, China holds one quarter of the world's population, and rapid economic growth will increase its demand for natural resources from outside its borders as its people seek a standard of living comparable to that of Western civilization. The rise of peer competitors has historically resulted in regional instability and one should compare “the emergence of China to the rise of. . . Germany as the dominant power in Europe in the late nineteenth century.”7 Furthermore, the rise of another peer competitor on the level of the Soviet Union of the Cold War ultimately threatens U.S. global influence, challenging its concepts of human rights, liberalism, and democracy; as well as its ability to co-opt other nations to accept them.8 This decline in influence, while initially limited to the Asia-Pacific region, threatens to result in significant conflict if it ultimately leads to a paradigm shift in the ideas and principles that govern the existing world order. A grand strategy of investment to address the threat of China requires investing in institutions, addressing ungoverned states, and building legitimacy through multilateralism. The United States must build capacity in the existing institutions and alliances accepted globally as legitimate representative bodies of the world's governments. For true legitimacy, the United States must support these institutions, not only when convenient, in order to avoid the appearance of unilateralism, which would ultimately undermine the very organizations upon whom it will rely when it is no longer the global hegemon. The United States must also address ungoverned states, not only as breeding grounds for terrorism, but as conflicts that threaten to spread into regional instability, thereby drawing in superpowers with competing interests. Huntington proposes that the greatest source of conflict will come from what he defines as one “core” nation's involvement in a conflict between another core nation and a minor state within its immediate sphere of influence.9 For example, regional instability in South Asia10 threatens to involve combatants from the United States, India, China, and the surrounding nations. Appropriately, the United States, as a global power, must apply all elements of its national power now to address the problem of weak and failing states, which threaten to serve as the principal catalysts of future global conflicts.11 Admittedly, the application of American power in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation raises issues. Experts have posed the question of whether the United States should act as the world's enforcer of stability, imposing its concepts of human rights on other states. In response to this concern, The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty authored a study titled, The Responsibility to Protect,12 calling for revisions to the understanding of sovereignty within the United Nations (UN) charter. This commission places the responsibility to protect peoples of sovereign nations on both the state itself and, more importantly, on the international community.13 If approved, this revision will establish a precedent whereby the United States has not only the authority and responsibility to act within the internal affairs of a repressive government, but does so with global legitimacy if done under the auspices of a UN mandate. Any effort to legitimize and support a liberal world construct requires the United States to adopt a multilateral doctrine which avoids the precepts of the previous administration: “preemptive war, democratization, and U.S. primacy of unilateralism,”14 which have resulted in the alienation of former allies worldwide. Predominantly Muslim nations, whose citizens had previously looked to the United States as an example of representative governance, viewed the Iraq invasion as the seminal dividing action between the Western and the Islamic world. Appropriately, any future American interventions into the internal affairs of another sovereign nation must first seek to establish consensus by gaining the approval of a body representing global opinion, and must reject military unilateralism as a threat to that governing body's legitimacy. Despite the long-standing U.S. tradition of a liberal foreign policy since the start of the Cold War, the famous liberal leviathan, John Ikenberry, argues that “the post-9/11 doctrine of national security strategy . . . has been based on . . . American global dominance, the preventative use of force, coalitions of the willing, and the struggle between liberty and evil.”15 American foreign policy has misguidedly focused on spreading democracy, as opposed to building a liberal international order based on universally accepted principles that actually set the conditions for individual nation states to select their own system of governance. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, argues that true Wilsonian idealists “support liberal democracy, but reject the possibility of democratizing peoples . . .”16 and reject military primacy in favor of supporting a rules-based system of order. Investment in a liberal world order would also set the conditions for the United States to garner support from noncommitted regional powers (i.e., Russia, India, Japan, etc.), or “swing civilizations,” in countering China's increasing hegemonic influence.17 These states reside within close proximity to the Indian Ocean, which will likely emerge as the geopolitical focus of the American foreign policy during the 21st century, and appropriately have the ability to offset China's imperial dominance in the region.18 Critics of a liberal world construct argue that idealism is not necessary, based on the assumption that nations that trade together will not go to war with each other.19 In response, foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman rebukes their arguments, acknowledging the predicate of commercial interdependence as a factor only in the decision to go to war, and argues that while globalization is creating a new international order, differences between civilizations still create friction that may overcome all other factors and lead to conflict.20 Detractors also warn that as China grows in power, it will no longer observe “the basic rules and principles of a liberal international order,” which largely result from Western concepts of foreign relations. Ikenberry addresses this risk, citing that China's leaders already recognize that they will gain more authority within the existing liberal order, as opposed to contesting it. China's leaders “want the protection and rights that come from the international order's . . . defense of sovereignty,”21 from which they have benefitted during their recent history of economic growth and international expansion. Even if China executes a peaceful rise and the United States overestimates a Sinic threat to its national security interest, the emergence of a new imperial power will challenge American leadership in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region. That being said, it is more likely that China, as evidenced by its military and economic expansion, will displace the United States as the regional hegemonic power. Recognizing this threat now, the United States must prepare for the eventual transition and immediately begin building the legitimacy and support of a system of rules that will protect its interests later when we are no longer the world's only superpower.