The us uses economic engagement as a disguise to hide their colonialist efforts towards Latin America

Economy Link

Their econ advantage inherently links them to the K – the process of neoliberal economics is one of homogenization and control over the native populace.

McKinney ’13 [Claire McKinney coaches for the Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas, “Latin America Topic Analysis – Economic Engagement and the Neoliberal Consensus”, published 5/15/13, accessed 7/16/13, < http://utdebatecamp.com/2013/latin-america-topic-analysis-economic-engagement-and-the-neoliberal-consensus/> ] //pheft
The first response of most critical debaters in looking at next year’s topic is certainly going to be the ease of making a critique of capitalism a topic specific kritik. “Economic” is right there in the resolution! While it is undoubtedly true that it will be exceedingly difficult for an affirmative to claim “no link,” it is also the case that every affirmative will be much more prepared to debate your generic kritik of capitalism using the specificity of the aff mechanism. That is, any affirmative team that has done their own work will have designed the plan mechanism in such a way that generic arguments about the economic system and its rampant production of harm will seem generic and not intrinsic to their deployment of economic mechanisms of foreign policy. Thus, debaters who want to win the Cap K will have to have a more nuanced and historically grounded criticism of the aff if you want to be a step ahead and win. (For a good primer on why a historically grounded and nuanced kritik is strategically useful, see Max Hantel’s blog post from a couple of years ago: http://utdebatecamp.com/2011/thunder-rods-and-aliens-beginning-preparation-for-the-space-topic/)¶ ¶ This post will not provide you with all you need to know to run the Cap K and win; rather, I hope to provide a basis for beginning to think of historically grounded approaches to critiques of economic engagement as a tool of foreign policy. An excellent, though dated, history on the use of foreign aid as an economically coercive tool to remake countries into the US economist’s image and the production of the 1980s debt crises that still fundamentally shape the economies of countries across the globe is Robert Wood’s From Marshall Plan to Debt Crisis: Foreign Aid and Development Choices in the World Economy. Wood’s book is an attempt to diagnose the aid policies that led to the debt crisis that gripped the world economy in the early 1980s, precipitated by several developing countries, including Mexico, stating that they would be unable to pay back their external debt obligations. While other authors have argued that this was precipitated by the oil crisis and the anti-inflationary policies of the United States that took place to control the “stagflation” of the 1970s, Wood sees deeper roots to the crisis in how foreign aid was conceived as a tool to manage and open developing markets to foreign investment and profit.¶ ¶ We can understand the foreign policy of economic engagement as bookended by two crises: the debt crisis of the 1980s and the global financial collapse of 2008. The period in between is dominated by an almost unchallenged dedication to neoliberal foreign policy and economic relations. What is neoliberalism? Broadly, neoliberalism is a belief that markets can perform the functions of government and more efficiently; thus free markets absent governmental regulations can create the conditions for global prosperity and growth. Neoliberalism also transforms our understanding of citizenship away from a notion of engaged members of a polity who democratically participate to transform the conditions of governance and towards the notion of the citizen-consumer, who must bear the burden of low wages, insufficient social support, resource wars, and military repression. The primary positive role of individuals is to continue to sustain the market through purchasing goods and services without any power of decision-making over the operation of the engines of economic growth. Thus, “profit over people” is more than just a leftist mantra; it is the central operative logic for neoliberal economics to function.¶ ¶ As David Harvey writes,¶ For capital accumulation to return to 3 per cent compound growth will require a new basis for profit-making and surplus absorption. The irrational way to do this in the past has been the rough the destruct on of the achievements of preceding eras by way of war, the devaluation of assets, the degradation of productive capacity, abandonment and other forms of ‘creative destruction’, The effects are felt not only throughout the world of commodity production and exchange. Human lives are disrupted and even physically destroyed, whole careers and lifetime achievements are put in jeopardy, deeply held beliefs are challenged, psyches wounded and respect for human dignity is cast aside. Creative destruction is visited upon the good, the beautiful the bad and the ugly alike. Crises, we may conclude, are the irrational rationalisers of an irrational system. Can capitalism survive the present trauma? Yes. of course. But at what cost? This question masks another. Can the capitalist class reproduce its power in the face of the raft of economic, social, political and geopolitical and environmental difficulties? Again, the answer is a resounding –Yes it can: This will however, require the mass of the people to give generously of the fruits of their labour to those in power, to surrender many of their rights and their hard -won asset values (in everything from housing to pension rights) and to suffer environmental degradations galore, to say nothing of serial reductions in their living standards which will mean starvation for many of those already struggling to survive at rock bottom. More than a little political repression, police violence and militarised state control will be required to stifle the ensuing unrest. (2010, 224-225)¶ ¶ How is this connected to the two crises mentioned above? Well, the 1980s debt crisis produce the “Washington Consensus,” a ten-point plan for addressing the debt crisis through neoliberal mechanisms. Regan whole-heartedly endorsed the plan, tying debt cancellation to the enactment of these various elements to transform the economies of developing countries. What are these ten points? According to John Williamson, who coined the term “Washington Consensus,” the policy proposals are as follows:¶ ¶ Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;¶ ¶ Redirection of public spending from subsidies (“especially indiscriminate subsidies”) toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;¶ Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;¶ Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;¶ Competitive exchange rates;¶ Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform tariffs;¶ Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;¶ Privatization of state enterprises;¶ Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions;¶ Legal security for property rights.¶ ¶ In preparing for the debate season, it will be important to understand what each of these policy aims means and what those transformations would do to Mexico and Venezuela. As we know Cuba’s aid was tied to the Soviet Union and thus has a distinctly different historical trajectory, where economic engagement form the United States took the form of embargoes and travel restrictions. Suffice to say, these transformations called for an achieved in many countries the end of state-run industries that caused oligarchic control of industries that further impoverished domestic populations and the elimination of crucial elements of social safety nets that an invisible and massive human toll to economic liberalization would remain unseen from the economist’s view. What we have seen is the development of “microfinancing” loans that ostensibly transform people in poverty from the clients of state welfare that they had been into entrepreneurial mini-capitalists that will create the freest of all behavior: generation of profit. But as most anthropological and sociological work on micro-finance has shown, the majority of people and collectives take out these loans to pay for day-to-day needs and special occasions like weddings. Thus, state welfare has been replaced by a draconian system of loans, where missed payments ensure the tenuous economic status of people in poverty is rendered intolerable.