So I realized that a lot of topics have very similar impacts (soft power, relations, heg, econ, blah blah blah) and that a lot of cards from previous topic blockfiles could be useful in the future. So basically this file is a bunch of those previous cards organized into a file — the first part is the written up version, the second part is all the cards. Table of Contents (not exactly in order, just use command+F): Heg US Econ Climate change Democracy Allied prolif Cyber security Credibility/Allied commitment Multipolarity Soft Power/Diplomacy Multilateralism Deterrence Latin Relations China war impacts Chinese Aggression Russia impacts North Korea impacts Middle East stability etc Nuclear terror Drone strikes Interventions Donations to US campaigns Unions ISIL Trump has crazy fopo Al Qaeda Military Readiness LNG impacts Free Trade Federalism Oil Spills Appeasement/weakness thesis Resource wars Microfinance Renewables transition Social movements Offshore Balancing Written blocks AT: Hegemony GOOD: qa China nuclear war: 1. International affairs professor Robert Gilpin confirms in 2013 that if US hegemony declines and China becomes a challenger, a war between the US and China is practically guaranteed, as no dominant state in history has ever relinquished its position without a fight and no rising power has ever established itself as dominant without winning a great power war. Professor of political science Caitlin Talmadge furthers in 2016 that because China and the US would be unable to distinguish between conventional strikes and attempts to destroy the other’s nuclear capability, a US China war would have a high chance of going nuclear. That causes extinction, Carl Shulman at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute finds in 2013 that any nuclear conflict would result in soot and ash being thrown into the atmosphere, which would block out the sun for years, in turn resulting in extinction because agriculture would collapse due to the lack of sunlight. Generic great power war: 1. International relations professor Joseph Nye explains in 1995 that the decline of the US would make great power conflicts more likely because “Declining nations may attempt to put down rising competitors while growing nations may attack declining ones that they perceive as weak to secure a more favorable place in the international system. The Khalilzad card: 1. UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad explains in 2011 that the closing gap between the capabilities of the US and its rivals both increases the probability of arms races because small countries perceive the US as unable to ensure regional security and increases the chance of wars between great powers because they become more competitive to get ahead. Generic stops war: 1. International affairs professor Stephen Walt explains in 2002 that a stronger US hegemony tary prevents major wars because the cost of war dramatically increases for the competitors and also stops regional wars between other actors who are afraid of the US intervening against them if they start a conflict with a neighbor. Democracy: 1. Government professor Robert Lieber writes in 2007 that because other countries model their governments on that of the current hegemony, while Chinese and Russian leadership threaten will spread authoritarianism, US primacy is the greatest guarantee for the future of global democracy. Because democracies answer to their citizens, Larry Diamond of Hoover Institution finds in 1995 that democratic nations don’t go to war with each other, don’t engage in genocide, don’t use weapons of mass destruction, and don’t sponsor terrorism. Multipolarity Bad: 1. Political scientist Andrea Varisco writes in 2013 that a deterioration of American unipolarity would revert us back to the multipolar system at the beginning of the 20th century that caused two world wars. Varisco continues that multipolarity is inherently less stable than unipolarity because when there are multiple powers with similar strength, they’re more likely to compete for power and influence because they think they can get ahead of their competitors. Coop/laundry list: 1. Government professor Stephen Brooks explains in 2013 that US leadership has created joint initiatives and alliances that enable international communication to solve issues like terrorism and pandemics. AT: Decline inevitable: 1. Decline isn’t inevitable. Robert Merry at the National Interest explains in 2012 that the decline [of hegemony]... is a choice and is not an inevitable fate. The kinds of policies a great power wishes to pursue [are what determine whether hegemony lasts].” We argue that increasing military spending is one such policy that preserves hegemony. 2. Their historical analysis of past hegemons is irrelevant, Michael Beckley of the Belfer Center writes in 2012 that because the US has leveraged advantages from globalization, the US is unlike any past superpower, so “laws of history do not apply to contemporary world politics” and unlike past hegemons, US power is durable. AT: High now: 1. Decline is happening now, Dmitry Suslov at the Higher School for Economics finds in 2014 that because of the closing gap in military spending between the US and countries like Russia and China and the shift of economic power to new areas in Asia, US hegemony is declining and unipolarity is no longer a guarantee. BAD: Generic Impact D: 1. US hegemony is not the cause of modern peace. Ben Friedman of George Washington University writes in 2014 that “factors other than US power are diminishing war” such as globalization and nuclear proliferation. Chris Fettweis of Tulane University finds empirically in 2011 that when US hegemony and military strength declined, the world grew more peaceful and other actors didn’t boost their own forces or start conflicts. 2. No impact to hegemonic decline. Ted Carpenter of the CATO institute reports in 2013 that if US power declined in Europe, the EU and its allies would still be sufficient to deter Russia in Europe. Carpenter continues that if US hegemony in Asia declined, other countries like Japan, South Korea, and Australia could pick up the slack and create a regional balance of power. Retrenchment turn + impact D: 1. No impact to hegemonic decline. Political science professor Paul MacDonald finds in 2011 that empirically, the decline of hegemony doesn’t cause higher rates of conflict and that US decline will be gradual and controlled, meaning it won’t spark great power conflicts because no actor would have the incentive to strike first. He furthers that decline wouldn’t start regional arms races because a gradual decline avoids the Chinese expansionism that would start an arms race. 2. Turn, MacDonald finds that adopting a policy of retrenchment in which the US partially withdraws from trying to unilaterally manage global affairs would allow the US to shift security burdens to its allies and multilateral institutions, avoiding the unnecessary military clashes that come with forward deployments while ensuring that China rises peacefully by signalling the US’s willingness to accommodate China’s rise. Collapse inevitable: 1. US hegemony is unsustainable. Because of China’s inevitable rise, Richard Maher of Brown University writes in 2010 that the US cannot maintain its global power status for very long and needs to start planning for the multipolar world. 2. Trump will destroy hegemony in both worlds. Thomas Wright of the Brookings institute writes in 2016 that Donald Trump will “liquidate the US-led liberal order by ending America’s alliances [and] closing the open global economy. Heg high now: 1. US Hegemony faces few threats. Salvatore Babones of the University of Sydney writes in 2015 writes that “American hegemony has waxed and waned over the last seventy years, but it has never been eclipsed.” He concludes that “there are few factual indications that American decline has begun–or that it will begin anytime soon.” China turns: 1. Trying to outpace China triggers an arms race. Michael Swaine at the Carnegie Endowment finds in December that if the US doubled down on dominance in Asia, it would trigger an arms race with China. This would be disastrous, as Political science professor Toby Rider finds in 2000 that arms races increase the chance of war by 5 times because there are higher diplomatic tensions. 2. Pursuing hegemony causes China to cut off cooperation. Political scientist Robert Ross writes in 2012 that when the US increased its presence in Asia, China responded by cutting off cooperation on key issues like North Korean nuclear weapons. This is problematic because Thomas Fingar of Stanford writes that only a cooperative relationship between the US and China can avoid great power wars, resource scarcity, economic collapse, environmental degradation, and increased carbon emissions. 3. Hegemony causes war with China. IR professor Christopher Layne writes in 2008 that China will inevitably rise to power, so “if the United States tries to maintain its current dominance in East Asia, Sino-American conflict is virtually certain” during the transition because the US strategy demands anticipatory violence in order to maintain dominance. Prolif turn: 1. Turn, Professor Harry van der Linden finds in 2009 that US hegemony forces other countries to proliferate because they are powerless to stop our conventional forces, so they turn to nuclear weapons as a shortcut to deter potential US aggression. International relations professor Matthew Kroenig explains in 2015 that nuclear proliferation increases the risk of nuclear terrorism because A, corrupt states could sell nuclear weapons to terrorist groups, and B, new nuclear states have minimal security, so the weapons could be stolen. Moreover, Kroenig explains that since new nuclear states lack second strike capabilities, they are prone to preemptively launching nukes out of the fear that their nuclear capabilities will be taken out by an enemy. AT: Cyber security 1. The US isn’t as vulnerable as they claim – if we were really that vulnerable Russia or terrorist groups would have already hacked us because they definitely have the intent.