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

Impact Stuff

Mexico Specific stuff

Mexican neoliberal political change strain democracy and sells out Mexico to the US Imperialism

Kim 2013 [Kim, Dongwoo. "Modernization or Betrayal: Neoliberalism in Mexico." Constellations 4.1 (2013)]

Carlos Salinas trampled the workers’ rights, one of the key victories of the Mexican Revolution¶ enshrined in the Constitution of 1917, as part of his neoliberal economic agenda. The article 123 of¶ the Constitution of 1917, among many other things, guarantees the right of the workers, whether¶ employed by public or private enterprises, to organize and strike; it states that “[t]oda persona tiene¶ derecho al trabajo digno y socialmente útil; al efecto, se promoverán la creación de empleos y la¶ organización social de trabajo, conforme a la ley.”29 Salinas’ brutal crackdown on union workers,¶ which completely contradicted the article 123, symbolized the continuation of the PRI government’s¶ betrayal and oppression. For Salinas, the crackdown of the unions was a necessary step before the¶ implementation of his neoliberal policies. In the context of free trade with Canada and the United¶ States, the “competitive advantage” of Mexico consisted of “cheap labor” and “a minimum of state¶ intervention in the economy,” and thus the labor had to be subdued before anything else.30¶ According to Mark Eric Williams, most of the scholars agree that the “weak labor opposition,”¶ diluted in the CTM, was one of the key characteristics of the Mexican industry that allowed Salinas¶ to implement his privatization policies.31 However, the labor leaders who wielded significant¶ influence in Mexican society, such as Joaquín Hernández or Agapito Gónzalez definitely posed a¶ threat to Salinas’ agenda and hence it was necessary for him to overcome this opposition¶ beforehand. Instead of negotiation, which would have been preferred in modernized countries and¶ more in line with the Constitution of 1917, Salinas chose a rather caudillo and PRI method of¶ resolving conflicts: brutal crackdown.¶ The arrest and sentencing of Joaquin “La Quina’ Hernandez demonstrates the undemocratic and¶ classical PRI method of dealing with dissidents which completely disregards the article 123 of the¶ constitution. Carlos Salinas launched a war against the unions with the controversial arrest of “La¶ Quina” in January of 1989. Galicia was the de-facto leader of the union of Petróleos Mexicanos¶ (PEMEX) that represented the interests of more than 200,000 workers.32 Hernández staunchly¶ opposed the privatization of the petroleum industry and this belief was echoed when he said that¶ “the oil should always be in the hands of the Mex-i-cans.”33 Hence, he was an enemy who had to be¶ overcome by Salinas in order to privatize one of the greatest industries of Mexico. Eventually,¶ Hernández was arrested on January 10th, 1989 on charges of corruption and possession of firearms.34¶ Expectedly, Hernández’s arrest sparked a series of strikes across the nation, which were quickly¶ subdued by the federal government. Hernández “acquiesced” to the charges laid against him when¶ the chief commander of the Federal Judicial Police threatened to harm his family, and was sentenced¶ to thirty-five years in prison.35 PEMEX was then gradually privatized—eventually having its¶ petrochemical plants out for sale (open to both domestic and foreign buyers) in early 1993.36¶ Subsequently, Salinas went after the dockworkers’ union in Veracruz and another prominent labor¶ leader Agapito González Cavazo, a day before his union was scheduled to protest against the¶ maquiladora plants owned by the American investors.37 The foreign media regarded Salinas as a¶ competent leader who maintained the stability of the country—and commented that Mexico was¶ being well prepared for the neoliberal market economy.38 However, the brutal crackdown of the¶ union leaders and their strikes demonstrate Carlos Salinas’ disregard for the promises of the PRI¶ government embedded in Article 123 of the Constitution of 1917.The privatization of public corporations not only prepared the markets for foreign investment—but¶ also strengthened the PRI government’s grip on the power. After the crushing of the key labor¶ leaders, the Salinas administration started to privatize various key corporations with free rein.¶ Interestingly, many close associates of the PRI government, most notably Carlos Slim Herú,¶ benefited the greatly from the series of privatization efforts.39 Furthermore, Jorge Castañeda, who¶ was then a professor of political science at UNAM, asserted that the series of privatizations and the¶ upcoming implementation of NAFTA undertaken without political transparency, and predicted that¶ they would eventually strengthen PRI’s hold on power.40 Hence, he interpreted the neoliberal¶ reforms implemented by the Salinas administration as the means of strengthening its unjust grip on¶ the power, and, therefore, as the perpetuation and confirmation of the betrayal of the promises of¶ the Mexican Revolution and the Constitution of 1917. However, the challenge to the sacred Article¶ 27 of the Constitution of 1917 was a far clearer symbol of the PRI government’s betrayal.¶ The land “reform” of the Salinas administration was among the most controversial. As mentioned¶ previously, Carlos Salinas, as part of the neoliberal policies that would prepare Mexican market for¶ the implementation of NAFTA, amended the Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917. For many¶ Mexicans, this article symbolized the victory of, and the promises of the PRI to stand by the¶ Mexican Revolution; the statements of this article eventually became “central to the assertion of Mexican nationalism and the right of the Mexican state to control the activities of foreign capital.”41¶ The Article 27 basically delivered the long-demanded land reform to the campesinos—which¶ guaranteed a “more equitable distribution of public wealth” and protection from the abuses of the¶ church and foreigners.42 Granted, the land reform guaranteed by the Constitution of 1917 was not¶ entirely successful and in fact statistics suggest that the lands were not being used efficiently—¶ mostly due to the lack of the capital to work on them.43 Still, the Article 27 provided a sense of¶ history and pride for the campesinos who associated themselves with the Zapatista rebels of the¶ early twentieth century and legitimacy to the party that claimed to be the heir of the Mexican¶ Revolution. These, however, would soon be gone with Salinas’ land “reform.”¶ In February 1992, Carlos Salinas took an even bolder step with his neoliberal economic policy and¶ amended Article 27 to effectively privatize the lands. Under the amendments, Mexicans were¶ deprived of the constitutional guarantee of receiving land from the government; the government lost¶ the authority to expropriate and distribute lands; and the farmers were allowed to purchase, sell, or¶ rent out their properties on the market.44 Wesley Smith, writing for a conservative policy periodical,¶ praised the implementation of this land reform as a policy that would effectively improve “Mexico’s¶ antiquated agricultural sector” and prepare the local economy for the implementation of NAFTA.45¶ The Salinas administration defended this policy on the grounds that this would dramatically improve¶ the productivity of the countryside, which did not fare well in comparison to the industrial sector,¶ and also to attract foreign investments.46 Rosaria Angela Pisa argues that the new land reforms were¶ used by the PRI regime to gain a tighter control of the countryside, especially before the 1994¶ General Elections, which paralleled the idea of the democratic façade that it had been perpetuating¶ throughout the twentieth century.47 In all fairness, the productivity eventually increased in these¶ lands and the former ejido reform was not doing enough for Mexican farmers—but many felt¶ uneasy about this transition. Benito, a farmer, echoed this general feeling when he angrily said that¶ his neighbor “shouldn’t be selling his land, even if it is now the law.”48¶ The trope of neoliberalism as the ultimate betrayal becomes clearer with the rhetoric of imperialism.¶ Many Mexicans and foreign observers displayed concerns about the possible unbalance of economic¶ benefits between the United States and Mexico. The NAFTA negotiation was in a way described as¶ selling out of Mexico to the foreigners. Ramón, a farmer from Mexquitic, associated the PRI¶ presidents with “Spaniards,” drawing “a multivocal symbol of capitalism, greed, and foreignness,”¶ the characteristics that symbolized the United States.49 As such, the neoliberal policies were then¶ associated with the Salinas government and the American imperialists.¶ The invitation of foreign investment and the amendment of the Article 27, which allowed Mexican¶ peasants to sell out their lands to foreigners, suggested the imagery of the American invasion—and¶ as the betrayal of lo Mexicano. Zapata was the image of nationalism (as well as the Revolution,which the PRI government had appropriated), which sharply contrasted from the “selling out”¶ attitude of the Salinas government. Benito, who I have quoted above, also made the association¶ between the “gringo,”50 and those “outside the community”51 when he talked about his thoughts on¶ the ejido reform. This imagery of imperialism was further reflected in the reaction of the¶ Maquiladora workers.

Cultural Diversity

Neoliberal Imperialism is homogenizing and destroys culture, and diversity

S Marcos 01 [Subcomandante Marcos, Participant of EZLN, “The Fourth World War”, International Civil Commission of Human Rights Observation in La Realidad, October 23, 2001]

This Fourth World War uses what we call "destruction." Territories are destroyed ¶ and depopulated. At the point at which war is waged, land must be destroyed, ¶ turned into desert. Not out of a zeal for destruction, but in order to rebuild and ¶ reorder it. What is the primary problem confronted by this unipolar world in ¶ globalizing itself? Nation States, resistances, cultures, each nation's means of ¶ relating, that which makes them different. How is it possible for the village to be ¶ global and for everyone to be equal if there are so many differences? When we say ¶ that it is necessary to destroy Nation States and to turn them into deserts, it does ¶ not mean doing away with the people, but with the peoples' ways of being. After ¶ destroying, one must rebuild. Rebuild the territories and give them another place. The place which the laws of the market determine. This is what is driving ¶ globalization. ¶ The first obstacle is the Nation States: they must be attacked and destroyed. ¶ Everything which makes a State "national" must be destroyed: language, culture, ¶ economy, its political life and its social fabric. If national languages are no longer of ¶ use, they must be destroyed, and a new language must be promoted. Contrary to ¶ what one might think, it is not English, but computers. All languages must be made ¶ the same, translated into computer language, even English. All cultural aspects ¶ that make a French person French, an Italian Italian, a Dane Danish, a Mexican ¶ Mexican, must be destroyed, because they are barriers which prevent them from ¶ entering the globalized market. It is no longer a question of making one market for ¶ the French, and another for the English or the Italians. There must be one single ¶ market, in which the same person can consume the same product in any part of ¶ the world, and where the same person acts like a citizen of the world, and no ¶ longer as a citizen of a Nation State. ¶ That means that cultural history, the history of tradition, clashes with this process ¶ and is the enemy of the Fourth World War. This is especially serious in Europe ¶ where there are nations with great traditions. The cultural framework of the French, ¶ the Italians, the English, the Germans, the Spanish, etcetera - everything which ¶ cannot be translated into computer and market terms - are an impediment to this ¶ globalization. Goods are now going to circulate through information channels, and ¶ everything else must be destroyed or set aside. Nation States have their own ¶ economic structures and what is called "national bourgeoisie" - capitalists with ¶ national headquarters and with national profits. This can no longer exist: if the ¶ economy is decided at a global level, the economic policies of Nation States which ¶ try to protect capital are an enemy which must be defeated. The Free Trade ¶ Treaty, and the one which led to the European Union, the Euro, are symptoms that ¶ the economy is being globalized, although in the beginning it was about regional ¶ globalization, like in the case of Europe. Nation States construct their political ¶ relationships, but now political relationships are of no use. I am not characterizing ¶ them as good or bad. The problem is that these political relationships are an ¶ impediment to the realization of the laws of the market. The national political class ¶ is old, it is no longer useful, it has to be changed. They try to remember, they try to ¶ remember, even if it is the name of one single statesman in Europe. They simply ¶ cannot. The most important figures in the Europe of the Euro are people like the ¶ president of the Bundesbank, a banker. What he says is going to determine the ¶ policies of the different presidents or prime ministers inflicted on the countries of ¶ Europe. If the social fabric is broken, the old relationships of solidarity which make ¶ coexistence possible in a Nation State also break down. That is why campaigns ¶ against homosexuals and lesbians, against immigrants, or the campaigns of ¶ xenophobia, are encouraged. Everything which previously maintained a certain ¶ equilibrium has to be broken at the point at which this world war attacks a Nation ¶ State and transforms it into something else. It is about homogenizing, of making everyone equal, and of hegemonizing a ¶ lifestyle. It is global life. Its greatest diversion should be the computer, its work ¶ should be the computer, its value as a human being should be the number of credit ¶ cards, one's purchasing capacity, one's productive capacity. The case of the ¶ teachers is quite clear. The one who has the most knowledge or who is the wisest ¶ is no longer valuable. Now the one who produces the most research is valuable, ¶ and that is how his salary, his grants, his place in the university, are decided. ¶ This has a lot to do with the United States model. It also so happens, however, that ¶ this Fourth World War produces an opposite effect, which we call "fragmentation." ¶ The world is, paradoxically, not becoming one, it is breaking up into many pieces. ¶ Although it is assumed that the citizen is being made equal, differences as ¶ differences are emerging: homosexuals and lesbians, young people, immigrants. ¶ Nation States are functioning as a large State, the anonymous State-land-society ¶ which divides us into many pieces.

Genocides

The 1ac’s method of imperialism is uniquely bad – it hides atrocities in the shadows and allow them to escalate to the point of genocides without anyone thinking twice about them

Sugirtharajah ‘11

[R.S. Sugirtharajah, “1. Postcolonialism: Hermeneutical Journey through a Contentious Discourse”, Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: History, Method, Practice, April 20 2011, Wiley interscience]

Colonial discourse analysis began with several theorists who studied colonialism in the Arab world, such as Albert Memmi in Tunisia, Frantz Fanon in Algeria, and Edward Said. Since then it has seen several changes. First, the way of doing postcolonialism has changed. In the initial stages, following Said, Spivak, and Bhabha, postcolonialism was based on, in Spivak ’ s phrase, a “ South Asian model ” 17 and was seen as an anglophone affair limited to the imperial adventures of the British. Now, postcolonial studies has widened its scope to include not only the other old European empires like the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, and French, and Eastern ones like the Japanese, but also the newer empires like that of the United States of America. To this one could add the Soviet empire as well, demonstrating that not all colonialism was from the far right. As Spivak points out, with such a changed and widened focus of attention, the old model derived from South Asia, which was basically “ ‘ India ’ plus the Sartrian ‘ Fanon ’ will not serve … We are dealing with heterogeneity on a different scale and related to imperialism on another model. ” 18 This also means that the earlier texts of Fanon, Memmi, and Cabral, which supplied exemplary theoretical underpinning in their time, may not have as much purchase as they did with the old colonialism. To meet the different demands of the decolonization process which started soon after the Second World War, and was soon to be caught up in the Cold War and the new imperialism in the form of globalization, new texts are required. One such, which accommodates the new political geography and neo - colonial context, especially in Asia, is Kuan - Hsing Chen ’ s Asia as Method . 19 In this volume, Chen takes into account Japanese military occupation, US imperialism after the Second World War, and the emergence of China as both territorial and economic superpower. Second, the nature of colonialism has changed. The old territorial colonialism has given way to new forms under the heading of neo - colonialism. Unlike the old empires, where one knew the boundaries and identifi ed their power structure, now it is diffi cult to specify the parameters. The new empire has no territorial center of power or clearly delineated boundaries. As Hardt and Negri put it, it is “ a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers … The distinct national colors of the imperial map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow. ” 20 In this barrierless world it is not the traditional nation - states that wield power but the transnationals, which have become the “ fundamental motor of the economic and political transformation of postcolonial countries and subordinated regions. ” 21 One such borderless empire is environmental colonialism. Just as the old colonialists tried to redeem the savages for the Christian Church, the new conservationists try to save the natural resources not so much for the local people as for the multinationals. With the professedly altruistic motive of preserving the tropical rainforests, Western corporations are buying them up as resources. The lands in which the indigenous peoples lived for long ages have been declared idyllic and turned into wildlife sanctuaries, and local people are forbidden to hunt, cut trees, and quarry stone. The eviction of the aborigines of Palawan Island in the Philippines, and the bushmen in Botswana, in order to create national parks are egregious examples of this type of green colonialism. 22 Physical occupation may be a thing of the past but there is still the desire to extend sovereign rights in a place like Antarctica where the seabed is rich in gas, oil, and minerals. Colonialist tactics, too, have become much more nuanced. The old colonialists preached Christianity as a way of saving souls, whereas the current neo - colonialists spread the virtues of democracy and human rights in order to prepare countries for a liberalized market economy. According to The Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, democracy has become the new Christianity. 23 The word “ mission ” has been replaced with the word “ intervention. ” The former British foreign secretary, David Miliband, called for a moral intervention as the West ’ s new mission to encourage democracy through “ soft or hard power. ” 24 The old colonizers saw themselves as masters and used brute force to achieve their goals, but the new colonizers, no less violent, project themselves as liberators, or, to use the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, “ tutors of mankind in its pilgrimage to perfection. ” 25 Third, there is a remarkable change in the geopolitical landscape. In the north, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the old ways of drawing boundaries determined by the Cold War are no longer politically tenable. In the south, the emerging markets have altered the old classifi cation of developing and underdeveloped world. The emergence of China, India, and Brazil as new economic forces on the world stage has unsettled the traditional Western hold on the economy. Rapid globalization and the free - market economy have called into question what is local and indigenous. But the structuring of the world is not as rigid as it used to be. The old stringent oppositional division of colonizer/colonized, East/West, oppressor/ oppressed, and First World/Third World has slowly lost its ideological purchase. The world has become more unipolar and more singular, and as such it is now much more nuanced and interrelated. Fourth, a critical practice which started as a political frame of reference and a tool for literary analysis has moved beyond its general theorizing to a specifi c, deeper, and more practical phase of engagement. Some of the recent literature offers evidence of engagement of postcolonialism with particular subjects, thus bringing to the fore a variety of fi elds which are underrepresented in the various earlier anthologies and compilations. To name a few: legal studies, disability, 26 development, 27 international terrorism, 28 environmentalism, 29 fi lm, tourism, popular music, dance, 30 and the history of book production. 31 These studies extend the central debates and concerns of the theory beyond its rich theoretical manifestations. More importantly, these engagements have not only answered the earlier accusation that postcolonialism was pure theory and very much slanted towards high literature, culture, and philosophy, but also introduced popular cultural forms such as music, fi lms, and sport. Interestingly, a theoretical practice which has its roots in humanistic tradition has now become a serviceable tool providing challenging refl ections on religions. There are books using postcolonial insights to study Hinduism, 32 Buddhism, 33 Islam, 34 the Bible, 35 and Christian theology. 36 These books not only demonstrate how ideologies of empire shaped the construction of the Eastern religions but also show how the religions themselves offered a form of resistance to colonial rule. Meanwhile, postcolonialism has embraced a wide variety of disciplinary fi elds which have not usually been open to postcolonial inquiry. It has now expanded to include all forms of oppression and subjugation ranging from disability studies to queer studies. It has moved back in time to embrace subjects such as classics 37 and medieval studies which at fi rst glance might not have been seen as having any postcolonial interest. As Barbara Goff, the editor of Classics and Colonialism , put it, “ it is no longer appropriate to account for e.g. British Romanticism without an acknowledgment of the emergence of the British empire. ” 38 Fifth, the nature of the postcolonial condition has perceptively changed. In the early stages, it was as seen as a newly acquired territorial freedom enjoyed by former colonized countries soon after the physical departure of Western countries. Then, with forced and voluntary migration, diasporic status became a new postcolonial status. The resultant border - crossing anguishes such as yearning for home and recovering the cultural soul were treated as new forms of the postcolonial condition. While this predicament of dislocation reifi ed the plight and distresses of the metropolitans, the material conditions of the rural poor were altered by state development policies, agrarian capitalism, and technological changes in food production in the rural economy, which, in Akhil Gupta ’ s view, have led to a condition of postcoloniality for the rural poor and peasants. 40 The defi nition of postcoloniality was thrown into further confusion with the recent wars in Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, and the Balkans, which resulted in a great number of internally displaced people forced to live in detention centers and welfare camps in their own countries. Sixth, the narratives which postcolonialism dealt with in its initial stages have given way to newer grand narratives. The earlier anti - colonial writers and activists were wrestling with European expansionism, Enlightenment values, and neo - liberalism. The new metanarratives are “ war on terror, ” “ ethnic cleansing, ” “ environmental catastrophe, ” and religious fundamentalisms. The earlier grand narratives resulted in destruction and annihilation of the benighted people, whereas the new ones speak about the redemption and salvation carried out on behalf of the hapless victims.

Imperialism is Bad

Ottoway & Lacina- 03, Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Political Analyst

Marina Ottaway and Bethany Lacina, “International Interventions and Imperialism: Lessons from the 1990s”, The SAIS Review, Summer-Fall 2003, http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/sais_review/v023/23.2ottaway.html

The evolution of international interventions suggests that U.S. unilateralism, as expressed in the doctrine of preemptive intervention, is in part an extension of ideas and trends that emerged in the 1990s. The UN’s increasing reliance on partnerships with other multilateral organization and member country forces, for example, led individual countries to take on responsibilities traditionally reserved for the UN, albeit with UN consent. U.S. unilateralism is also a reaction against the frustrating delays and compromises required to obtain Security Council decisions.¶ But the ideas set forth in the doctrine of preemptive intervention, and the U.S. attitude to- ward the UN on display¶ before and during the Iraq war, break with that trend in significant ways. First, the United States is seeking to shift final authority for authorizing internal interventions away from the UN and toward itself, relegating the UN to a position of secondary importance, to be called upon when convenient as a marginal contributor to essentially American undertakings.¶ Second, by arguing that the United States has the right to intervene not only to eliminate threats to itself and international peace, but also to put in place new regimes, the doctrine of preemptive intervention poses a new threat to the principle of state sovereignty. Not surprisingly, the debate on imperialism has intensified—unilateral American interventionism constitutes a far greater threat to the foundations of the international system than even the most aggressive multilateral missions of the 1990s. In Namibia, Haiti, and Sierra Leone multilateral interventions sup- ported regime change, but these cases have been justified as the return of legally recognized powers in place of an illegal de facto regime. The unilateralist American project appears to go much further. It justifies regime change not simply as a means of restor- ing a legitimate government, but as a means of removing threats to U.S. security interests as defined by the U.S. administration. Though all states have the right to defend their security interests, U.S. unilateral interventions, based on preemption of vaguely defined threats and undertaken without an international process of legitimization, would provoke widespread international resentment against the United States, as the war in Iraq already has. U.S. unilateralism may also furnish a license for unilateral interventions by other states, and thus become a source of instability.¶ In addition to the threat unilateral interventions pose to the international system and U.S. moral credibility, the experience of multilateral post-conflict reconstruction during the 1990s should be a major check on such a project. That experience demonstrates that interventions, even those with imperial characteristics and significant resources, often result in very little change to internal power dynamics. Even the tremendous military power and financial resources of the United States cannot necessarily keep its attempts to rebuild states and support stable, benign, and democratic regimes from being thwarted by local political realities. Rapidly transforming rogue and failed states will prove a daunting task, and unilateral intervention, shackled by international resentment and charges of imperialism, is especially unlikely to prove an effective tool.¶ The international community still does not have a satisfactory answer to the issues of civil conflict, humanitarian crisis, and state collapse that have brought the principle of state sovereignty into conflict with the international interest in peace and security. What is now necessary, however, is not a unilateral U.S. project of regime changes and state transformations, but the reinvention of international mechanisms in order to make multilateral interventions more responsive and more effective, while avoiding threats to state sovereignty and independence.¶

Extinction

Unlimited imperialist conquest inevitably results in extinction, every modern war has been a byproduct of the spread of colonialism

Harvey ‘06

[David Harvey, “Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development”, May 17 2006, Chapter 13]

At times of savage devaluation, interregional rivalries typically degenerate into struggles over who is to bear the burden of devaluation. The export of unemployment, of inflation, of idle productive capacity become the stakes in the game. Trade wars, dumping, interest rate wars, restrictions on capital flow and foreign exchange, immigration policies, colonial conquest, the subjugation and domination of tributary economies, the forced reorganization of the division of labour within economic empires, and, finally, the physical destruction and forced devaluation of a rival's capital through war are some of the methods at hand. Each entails the aggressive manipulation of some aspect of economic, financial or state power. The politics of imperialism, the sense that the contradictions of capitalism can be cured through world domination by some omnipotent power, surges to the forefront. The ills of capitalism cannot so easily be contained. Yet the degeneration of economic into political struggles plays its part in the long-run stabilization of capitalism, provided enough capital is destroyed en route. Patriotism and nationalism have many functions in the contemporary world and may arise for diverse reasons; but they frequently provide a most convenient cover for the devaluation of both capital and labour. We will shortly return to this aspect of matters since it is, I believe, by far the most serious threat, not only to the survival of capitalism (which matters not a jot), but to the survival of the human race. Twice in the twentieth century, the world has been plunged into global war through inter-imperialist rivalries. Twice in the space of a generation, the world experienced the massive devaluation of capital through physical destruction, the ultimate consumption of labour power as cannon fodder. Class warfare, of course, has taken its toll in life and limb, mainly through the violence daily visited by capital upon labour in the work place and through the violence of primitive accumulation (including imperialist wars fought against other social formations in the name of capitalist 'freedoms'). But the vast losses incurred in two world wars were provoked by inter-imperialist rivalries. How can this be explained on the basis of a theory that appeals to the class relation between capital and labour as fundamental to the interpretation of history? This was, of course, the problem with which Lenin wrestled in his essay on imperialism. But his argument, as we saw in chapter 10, is plagued by ambiguity. Is finance capital national or international? What is the relation, then, between the military and political deployment of state power and the undoubted trend within capitalism to create multinational forms and to forge global spatial integration? And if monopolies and finance capital were so powerful and prone in any case to collusion, then why could they not contain capitalism's contradictions short of destroying each other? What is it, then, that makes inter-imperialist wars necessary to the survival of capitalism? The 'third cut' at crisis theory suggests an interpretation of inter-imperialist wars as constitutive moments in the dynamics of accumulation, rather than as abberations, accidents or the simple product of excessive greed. Let us see how this is so. When the 'inner dialectic' at work within a region drives it to seek external resolutions to its problems, then it must search out new markets, new opportunities for capital export, cheap raw materials, low-cost labour power, etc. All such measures, if they are to be anything other than a temporary palliative, either put a claim on future labour or else directly entail an expansion of the proletariat. This expansion can be accomplished through population growth, the mobilization of latent sectors of the reserve army, or primitive accumulation. The insatiable thirst of capitalism for fresh supplies of labour accounts for the vigour with which it has pursued primitive accumulation, destroying, transforming and absorbing pre-capitalist populations wherever it finds them. When surpluses of labour are there for the taking, and capitalists have not, through competition, erroneously pinned their fates to a technological mix which cannot absorb that labour, then crises are typically of short duration, mere hiccups on a general trajectory of sustained global accumulation, and usually manifest as mild switching crises within an evolving structure of uneven geographical development. This was standard fare for nineteenth-century capitalism. The real troubles begin when capitalists, fating shortages of labour supply and as ever urged on by competition, induce unemployment through technological innovations which disturb the equilibrium between production and realization, between the productive forces and their accompanying social relations. The closing of the frontiers to primitive accumulation, through sheer exhaustion of possibilities, increasing resistance on the part of pre-capitalist populations, or monopolization by some dominant power, has, therefore, a tremendous significance for the long-run stability of capitalism. This was the sea-change that began to be felt increasingly as capitalism moved into the twentieth century. It was the sea-change that, far more than the rise of monopoly or finance forms of capitalism, played the crucial role in pushing capitalism deeper into the mire of global crises and led, inexorably, to the kinds of primitive accumulation and devaluation jointly wrought through inter-capitalist wars. The mechanisms, as always, are intricate in their details and greatly confused in actual historical conjunctures by innumerable cross-currents of conflicting forces. But we can construct a simple line of argument to illustrate the important points. Any regional alliance, if it is to continue the process of accumulation, must maintain access to reserves of labour as well as to those 'forces of nature' (such as key mineral resources) that are otherwise capable of monopolization. Few problems arise if reserves of both exist in the region wherein most local capital circulates. When internal frontiers close, capital has to look elsewhere or risk devaluation. The regional alliance feels the stress between capital embedded in place and capital that moves to create new and permanent centres of accumulation elsewhere. Conflict between different regional and national capitals over access to labour reserves and natural resources begins to be felt. The themes of internationalism and multilaterialism run hard up against the desire for autarky as the means to preserve the position of some particular region in the face of internal contradictions and external pressures - autarky of the sort that prevailed in the 193Os, as Britain sealed in its Commonwealth trade and Japan expanded into Manchuria and mainland Asia, Germany into eastern Europe and Italy into Africa, pitting different regions against each other, each pursuing its own 'spatial fix'. Only the United States found it appropriate to pursue an 'open door' policy founded on internationalism and multilateral trading. In the end the war was fought to contain autarky and to open up the whole world to the potentialities of geographical expansion and unlimited uneven development. That solution, pursued single-mindedly under United States's hegemony after 1945, had the advantage of being super-imposed upon one of the most savage bouts of devaluation and destruction ever recorded in capitalism's violent history. And signal benefits accrued not simply from the immense destruction of capital, but also from the uneven geographical distribution of that destruction. The world was saved from the terrors of the great depression not by some glorious 'new deal' or the magic touch of Keynesian economics in the treasuries of the world, but by the destruction and death of global war.

Economy

Even under the aff’s framework you vote neg – globalization and imperialism have destroyed Latin America’s economy and it is steadily bringing down the world’s as well

Robinson 2002

[William I. Robinson, “Latin America in the Age of Inequality: Confronting the New “Utopia””, International Studies Review, December 17 2002, Wiley interscience]

Globalization has played a determinant role in the shift in Latin America from¶ a regional model of accumulation, based on domestic market expansion,¶ populism, and import-substitution industrialization, to the neoliberal model¶ based on liberalization and integration to the global economy, a laissez-faire¶ state, and export-led development.3 The transition from predominant worldwide¶ model of Keynesian or Fordist accumulation to post-Fordist “flexible”¶ accumulation models involves a process in each region of internal adjustment¶ and rearticulation to the global system. It has accelerated diversity and¶ uneven development among countries and regions in accordance with the¶ matrix of factor cost considerations and the configuration of diverse social¶ forces in the new globalized environment. The particular form of rearticulation¶ to the global economy, including new socioeconomic structures and a¶ modified regional profile in the global division of labor, has varied from¶ region to region.¶ The dismantling of the preglobalization model of development and its¶ replacement by the neoliberal model began in Latin America in the 1970s. But¶ the imbroglio in Latin America’s development hit in the 1980s, often referred to¶ as Latin America’s “lost decade.” At the beginning of the decade, Latin America¶ was hit by an economic crisis unprecedented since the 1930s crisis of world capitalism,¶ and that endured throughout the decade. Latin American development not¶ only stagnated in absolute terms, but perhaps more significantly, the region has¶ experienced backward movement in relation to the world economy. Some have¶ referred to the region’s marginalization as the “Africanization” of Latin America,¶ in reference to Africa’s severe marginalization from the centers of world¶ power and wealth and the increasing structural similarity of the two regions in¶ the global system.¶ Latin America’s share in world trade and production has declined steadily¶ since 1980. Income and economic activity have contracted relative to the global¶ system. As growth stagnated worldwide during the world recession that began in 1973, Latin America fell behind developing countries as a whole. The average¶ annual growth of real Gross Domestic Product per capita in Latin America¶ dropped to –0.4 percent, compared to 2.3 percent in developing countries.4¶ Between 1980 and 1989 world economic activity expanded by an annual¶ average of 3.1 percent. Growth in Africa dropped from 4.2 percent (1965–1980)¶ to 2.1 percent (1980–1989), and in Latin America it dropped even more precipitously,¶ from 6.1 percent (1965–1980) to 1.6 percent (1980–1989).5 Between¶ 1980 and 1990, Latin America’s share of manufacturing value added fell from 6¶ percent of the world total to 4.9 percent.6¶ Latin America’s share of world exports and imports has declined steadily¶ from 1950, but it dropped precipitously from 1980 into the 1990s.7 In contrast,¶ the volume of Latin American exports increased significantly throughout the¶ 1980s and 1990s. In other words, Latin Americans have worked harder and¶ produced more for the global economy, even as they have become more impoverished¶ and marginalized. Between 1983 and 1985, the volume of the region’s¶ exports rose by 16.2 percent, but the value of these same exports dropped by 9.9¶ percent. Between 1992 and 1994, the volume rose by 22.3 percent, but the value¶ only increased by 3.3 percent.8 The steady deterioration of the terms of trade for¶ Latin America must be understood as a consequence of the region’s increasingly¶ asymmetric participation in the global division of labor at a time when adjustment¶ has shifted resources toward the external sector.9¶ Latin America’s increasing marginality in the global system should not be¶ confused with its contribution to global capital accumulation. Latin America¶ was a net exporter of capital to the world market throughout the 1980s,¶ exporting $219 billion between 1982 and 1990.10 Ironically, therefore, Latin¶ America continues to be a supplier of surplus for the world and an engine¶ of growth of the global economy. In a liberalized global capitalist economy, surpluses may be transferred just as easily as they are generated, which¶ reminds us that growth alone does not involve development. The permanent¶ drainage of surplus from Latin America helps to explain the region’s stagnation,¶ declining income, and plummeting living standards. The poor have to¶ run faster just to remain in the same place. The social crisis in Latin America¶ is not as much a crisis of production as one of distribution. Inequality is a¶ social relation of unequal power between the dominant and the subordinate,¶ we should recall, and more specifically, the power of the rich locally and¶ globally to dispose of the social product.¶ Latin America experienced renewed growth and a net capital inflow of $80¶ billion between 1991 and 1994.11 But the vast majority of the inflow of capital is¶ not a consequence of direct foreign investment that could have helped expand¶ the region’s productive base as much as from new loans. It also did not result¶ from the purchase of stock in privatized companies and speculative financial¶ investment in equities and mutual funds, pensions, insurance, and so on.12 The¶ dominance of speculative financial flows over productive capital, reflecting the¶ hegemony of transnational finance capital in the age of globalization and its frenzied¶ “casino capitalism” activity in recent years, gives an illusion of “recovery”¶ in Latin America. In addition, Latin America continued to export annually¶ between 1992 and 1994 an average of $30 billion in profits and interests.¶ Although there has been a resumption of growth, “recovery” has not generated¶ new employment opportunities but has been accompanied by increased poverty¶ and inequality.13¶ Given the outward drainage of surplus combined with liberalization and¶ deeper external integration, it is not surprising that the external debt has continued¶ to grow throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, and that its rate of¶ growth is again increasing in the 1990s.14¶ Latin America’s development debacle is clearly linked to the crisis of¶ global accumulation, which also hit Africa in the 1980s and finally caught up¶ with the “miracle economies” of East Asia starting with the currency crises of¶ 1997. Yet, there are also region-specific considerations. The particular¶ preglobalization structures and the form of articulation to the world economy¶ help shape each region’s fate under globalization. Africa’s relegation to a¶ world preserve for mineral and agricultural raw materials (with some notable¶ exceptions, among them South Africa) placed that region at a severe disadvantage¶ as globalization unfolded. East Asia and Latin America shared a¶ more advanced level of import substitution industrialization (ISI). But East¶ Asia’s ISI model was based on the simultaneous expansion of the domestic¶ market and increasingly higher value added exports for the world market,¶ along with growing sectoral articulation and forward-backward linkages, a¶ pattern that it sustained into the mid-1990s. Latin American ISI, in contrast,¶ was characterized by an internal-external dualism: industrial expansion¶ largely for the domestic market and continued articulation to the world economy¶ through primary exports.18 By eliminating the domestic market as a¶ factor in development, globalization has placed Latin America in a structural¶ situation parallel to that of Africa. But this is only part of the story. Regional adjustment in Latin America to the global economy has been effectuated¶ through the neoliberal program, which is most advanced in this region, and is¶ based on creating the optimal environment for private transnational capital¶ to operate as the putative motor of development and social welfare. The fact¶ that the domestic market is not of strategic importance in development and¶ accumulation has important implications for class relations and social movements,¶ and is, I suggest, at the heart of the development crisis in Latin¶ America.

Environment

Neoliberal imperialism causes environmental destruction – turns case

Zimmerer ‘9 [Karl S. Zimmerer is chair of the Department of Geography, University of

Wisconsin, Madison, “Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads”, published in 2009, accessed 7/16/13, p. 157]//pheft

Neoliberal trade and economic policies have incurred environmental¶ consequences that are negative across much of Latin America and the¶ Caribbean. Environmental destruction attributed to specific policies range¶ from widespread deforestation, overfishing, soil and water degradation,¶ damage due to mineral and energy resource extraction and processing;¶ industrial waste and toxin contamination; and urban environment problems¶ such as worsening air and water pollution (Hindery 2004; Liverman and¶ Vilas 2006; Moog Rodrigues 2003; Speth 2003). If not dismissed outright,¶ these environmental problems are often regarded as economic “externalities”¶ that can be treated or regulated through the further privatization of¶ resources and property. Increasingly, privatization approaches have been¶ associated with market valuation policies—such as eco-certification and¶ market-based conservation rewarding “ecological services” (Perreault and¶ Martin 2005).

Democracy

Imperialism destroys democracy

Mehta ‘06

[Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Empire and Moral Identity”, Ethics & International Affairs, August 30 2006, Wiley interscience]

According to Dana Villa, the concern that the practice of empire building would subvert the moral identity of a society underlay Socrates’ criticism of Athenian imperial democracy. As Villa characterizes Socrates’ view, “An imperial democracy cannot stay a democracy for long, since the basis of democratic justice—equal shares for all— demands a self-restraint directly at odds with the energies and ambitions of imperialism.”2 In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke vigorously stated similar worries about the corrupting effects of empire on Britain. Empire is a craving for power that can corrupt the citizenry. It alters the balance of the constitution, and it implicates the nation in crimes for which it scarcely takes responsibility. Almost all empires have a profound impact on the internal political processes of a nation. Burke worried that the veneer of empire allowed the most venial of mercantile interests to gain ascendancy over the British constitution, and in a manner that was corrupting. Empire almost always enlarges the powers of the state at the expense of the people. The vast panoply of offices, institutions, and networks of patronage and favor that it occasions leads to concentrations of power that would be disallowed by any robust democratic constitutional scheme. Engaging in the grand project of building and maintaining an empire hides from view the internal infirmities and fissures that any complex society faces, and small plutocracies rather than citizens at large will tend to reap the greatest material benefits of these policies. According to this view, empire enlarges domestic inequalities, and the diversion of energies that it represents can have a profound impact on the domestic arrangements. U.S. senator J. William Fulbright’s impassioned exhortation to his fellow citizens in The Arrogance of Power expressed many of the same concerns about what the project of empire building was doing to America, and what this would mean for the rest of the world. The argument that empire corrupts the identity of a people has obvious appeal. Most peoples have a sense of practical identity, a set of shared values that define who they are; they like to think of themselves as being shaped by moral ideals, not just by the imperatives of power. These values provide authoritative constraints on their behavior. It assumes further that this practical identity is not simply an abstraction but is embodied in these peoples’ shared practices and institutions. What empire puts at risk, then, is not some abstract moral value, or even simply the well-being of subject peoples, but rather the constitutive features of a peoples’ moral identity. But why, more precisely, have theorists like Socrates and Burke thought that empire would corrupt moral identity, and especially the moral identity of democratic peoples? The short answer is that empire appears to stand for everything that democracy stands against—namely, the lack of properly authorized political authority. Proper authority in international affairs may be claimed in two ways. Regimes can acquire authority by some claim to possessing the consent of the people over whom power is being exercised as expressed, perhaps, in practices of collective decision-making. Or it could at least have the seal of approval of duly constituted international bodies that formulate the rules of recognition by which states regulate their relations with each other. Thus, instances where there is some kind of appropriate multilateral authorization for armed intervention are not characteristically described as empire. Nor are all illegitimate acts of intervention tantamount to carrying out an imperial project. American intervention in Iraq has many of the hallmarks of an imperial project. This intervention used military means to acquire power in Iraq. Its consequence will be nothing less than the reconstitution of Iraqi society, and even if power is transferred to an Iraqi regime, this regime will operate under constraints set by the U.S. military presence in Iraq. But most of all, the absence of proper multilateral authorization contributed to the sense of illegitimacy of American intervention in Iraq and earned it the designation “imperial.”3 Imperial acts seem to be paradigmatic instances of procedural illegality. And since the essence of legitimate political power is authorization, empire seems manifestly illegitimate. Whatever the consequential outcomes of an empire, its illegitimacy remains a ground for rebuke. The failure to secure political authorization for the use of power is a failing that seems to reveal the character of a nation’s moral identity. It reveals the propensity of a nation to set itself up as a judge in its own cause, to have little regard for the “opinions of mankind,” and to be neglectful of many of the relevant consequences of its actions. There may be times, of course, when confronted with genocide or serious security threats, that nations may simply have to act on their consciences, and when the complicated negotiations of international society may be found morally wanting. Such interventions, however, are exceptions for which clear and forceful justification must be offered. On most occasions, setting oneself up as a judge in one’s own cause is singularly narcissistic or arrogant or both. It suggests an unwillingness to submit to proper authority: a sentiment incompatible with democratic restraint.

Structural violence

The globalized economy under imperialism promotes structural violence

Demenchonok and Peterson ‘09

[Edward Demenchonok and Richard Peterson, “1. Globalization and Violence: The Challenge to Ethics”, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, February 18 2009, Wiley interscience]

DESPITE its many benefits, globalization has proven to harbor a good deal of violence. This is not only a matter of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction inaugurated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but includes many forms of indirect or “structural violence” resulting from the routine of economic and political institutions on the global scale. In this essay, the multifaceted phenomena of violence are approached from the standpoint of ethics. The prevailing political thinking associated with “realism” fails to address the problems of militarism and of hegemonic unilateralism. In contrast, many philosophers are critically rethinking the problem of global violence from different ethical perspectives. Despite sharing similar concerns, philosophers nevertheless differ over the role of philosophical reflection and the potentials of reason. These differences appear in two contrasting approaches associated with postmodern philosophy and discourse ethics. In the analysis of discourse ethics, attention is paid to Karl-Otto Apel’s attempt of philosophically grounding a macroethics of planetary co-responsibility. At the heart of the essay is the analysis of the problem of violence, including terrorism, by Jürgen Habermas, who explains the phenomenon of violence in terms of the theory of communicative action as the breakdown of communication. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion of “terrorism” also is analyzed. According to the principle of discourse ethics, all conflicts between human beings ought to be settled in a way free of violence, through discourses and negotiations. These philosophers conclude that the reliance on force does not solve social and global problems, including those that are the source of violence. The only viable alternative is the “dialogical” multilateral relations of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among the nations for solving social and global problems. They emphasize the necessity of strengthening the international rule of law and institutions, such as a reformed United Nations. THE IMPORTANCE OF the global dimension has emerged on almost every level of social experience, from the economic and political to the cultural and psychological. One can view globalizing phenomena and the problems they raise through a variety of lenses, including those of social justice. These reveal questions of inequality, power, and recognition. Closely related to each is an issue that can become a distinctive lens of historical perception on its own—the question of violence. Indeed, the question of violence is inescapable once one attends to the actual conflicts that the many aspects of globalization and issues of justice have brought to the fore. In a nuclear age ushered in by the bombing of Hiroshima, war has become a global danger. The toll taken by the many regional wars and neocolonial conflicts during the Cold War itself show, further, that the nuclear stalemate was no solution to this recurring danger facing human society. The problem of violence is itself extremely difficult to untangle, in part because what some thinkers treat as a matter of human nature has been shown by others not to be a constant of human societies, and by still others to be something that evolves dramatically with historical change.1 Nevertheless, within this multifaceted problem, two aspects are becoming more obvious and disturbing: one is the globalization of violence; the other is the spread of structural violence. First, the complex of change associated with the idea of globalization, despite all its benefits and promise, is itself frequently a very violent business. One may think, indeed, that the underside of globalization is itself a host of old and new kinds of violence. We can see this in the new kinds of wars that accompany structural change pushed forward by global economic pressures,2 in the new weapons of destruction that flow through global networks that often mix together the movement of arms and illegal drugs,3 as well as in the new kinds of terrorist violence associated with the idea of a global network.4 One can think also of new kinds of weapons systems associated with space weapons, including not just missiles but satellite technology, laser-operated devices, and so on.5 And these observations only consider violence in the familiar sense of actual or threatened harms imposed on bodies and populations. In addition to its direct manifestations, violence in a broader sense has many indirect and subtle forms. If we think of structural violence, for example, we can see that many of the economic and environmental changes taking place raise questions of violence as well.6 The term “structural violence” does not refer to all the kinds of physical and psychological suffering caused by the workings of social institutions. Rather, it refers to those institutionally caused harms that are not only predictable but have been predicted and debated, and for which preventive measures could be taken. The moral force of the notion of violence is preserved in the case of structural violence when we see that agents have knowingly permitted predictable harms, even though they have not intended them, as is the case with direct violence. Structural violence in this somewhat restricted sense includes the poverty that has expanded with the dramatic increases of inequality that globalization has caused, both on the global scale and within many national societies like the United States itself. We see such violence in the proliferation of sweatshops and other kinds of harsh labor, including contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in humans. We see it, too, in so-called natural disasters, where conscious policies have made populations vulnerable and unprepared for predictable harms triggered by dramatic weather events. Facing the combination of the growing scope of structural violence with the evolving conditions of direct violence, we can think of violence as a key issue in the unfolding conflicts over globalization. While violence is by no means the only challenge posed by globalization, it is of indisputable importance both for its impact on the lives of individuals and societies and for its place in the historical problem of finding adequate institutional forms to bring the processes of globalization into line with the needs and aspirations proper to justice and democracy. In this light, the theme of violence is a key part of the larger prospect of the kind of social learning that is needed if the new structures and cultural forms that are needed are to be found/achieved.7 Within this sweeping set of challenges, the problem of ethics has a key role. But ethics needs to be viewed in the historical terms of globalization itself. In what follows, we will survey some facets of this problem of ethical reflection and action in the shadow of a violence-prone globalization. In this setting is it possible to imagine a universal ethics, one that informs a global co-responsibility for shared problems?

Feminism/women’s rights

We solve feminism - Imperialism oppresses women by creating inequalities in the workforce as well as in the social sphere

Robinson 2002

[William I. Robinson, “Latin America in the Age of Inequality: Confronting the New “Utopia””, International Studies Review, December 17 2002, Wiley interscience]

The larger structural context for the upsurge in women’s struggles is the¶ dramatic change in the status of women in Latin America in recent decades.¶ Globalization has major implications for the sexual division of labor, for gender¶ relations, and for the transformation of the family itself. The percentage of¶ women in the labor force has grown in most regions of the world under globalization.¶ 37 Increased formal sector female participation has resulted from several¶ factors. Among them are the predictable pattern that accompanies capitalist¶ development in general, that is, the need for families to send an increasing number¶ of family members into the labor market with the decline in real wages and¶ household income; the predilection of transnational capital to hire “docile”¶ female labor, particularly in maquila production; and so on.38¶ With the decline in male employment and real wages brought about by¶ neoliberal restructuring, women have assumed a growing absolute and also relative¶ importance as wage earners, and their contribution to household economies¶ has increased. The reorganization of production on a global scale is feminizing¶ the labor force and changing the previous gender demarcation of domestic and¶ wage labor. Gender inequality is reproduced in the workforce at the same time as¶ it continues in the household: the systematic subordination of women in the¶ reproduction sphere is coupled with the systematic inequality of women in the production sphere. It is clear that under globalization there is a transformation of¶ the sexual division of labor. New forms of labor market segmentation between¶ men and women and wage differentials in the formal sector converge with¶ unpaid domestic labor and hardship imposed in the sphere of gendered social¶ reproduction, resulting in a deterioration of the status and social condition of¶ most women. From the maquilas of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean¶ to the new transnational agribusiness plantations in Chile and Colombia and¶ the new industrial complexes in Brazil’s northeast, women in Latin America¶ disproportionately—and in some cases, exclusively—engage in unskilled, laborintensive¶ phases of globalized production.39