BHR Hegemony Bad

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Hegemony Bad
Hegemony Bad............................................................................................................................................................................................................................1
Heg Bad – Shell...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................3
Heg Bad - Shell............................................................................................................................................................................................................................5
2nc Overview 1/6........................................................................................................................................................................................................................6
2nc Overview 2/6........................................................................................................................................................................................................................7
2nc Overview 3/6........................................................................................................................................................................................................................8
2nc Overview 4/6........................................................................................................................................................................................................................9
2nc Overview 5/6......................................................................................................................................................................................................................10
2nc Overview 6/6......................................................................................................................................................................................................................11
AT: Khalilzad 1/2........................................................................................................................................................................................................................12
AT: Khalilzad 2/2........................................................................................................................................................................................................................13
AT: Ferguson 1/1........................................................................................................................................................................................................................14
Decline Stable / Heg Unsustainable..........................................................................................................................................................................................15
Decline Stable / Heg Unsustainable..........................................................................................................................................................................................16
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................16
Decline Stable...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................17
Decline Now Good / Heg Unsustainable....................................................................................................................................................................................18
Decline Now Good / Heg Unsustainable....................................................................................................................................................................................19
Multipolarity Coming – Neoconservatives.................................................................................................................................................................................20
Multipolarity Coming – China, India, EU....................................................................................................................................................................................21
Multipolarity Coming – Nations and Non-State..........................................................................................................................................................................22
Multipolarity Coming – Non-State..............................................................................................................................................................................................23
Multipolarity Coming – EU.........................................................................................................................................................................................................24
Multipolarity Coming – Asia.......................................................................................................................................................................................................25
Multipolarity Coming – EU and Japan........................................................................................................................................................................................26
Heg Unsustainable – Political Will..............................................................................................................................................................................................27
OSB Good – Solves Conflict / MP Key.........................................................................................................................................................................................28
OSB Good – Solves Conflict.......................................................................................................................................................................................................29
***AT: Heg Good***...................................................................................................................................................................................................................30
Decline doesn’t lead to vacuum................................................................................................................................................................................................30
AT: Intervention Good – Bush Blunder.......................................................................................................................................................................................31
AT: Great Power Wars................................................................................................................................................................................................................34
AT: Great Power Wars – European Deterrence...........................................................................................................................................................................37
AT: Great Power Wars – Empirics...............................................................................................................................................................................................38
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................38
AT: Benign Hegemony...............................................................................................................................................................................................................39
AT: Global Challengers..............................................................................................................................................................................................................44
AT: Hegemony Inevitable..........................................................................................................................................................................................................45
AT: Hegemony Inevitable..........................................................................................................................................................................................................46
***Heg Bad MPX***...................................................................................................................................................................................................................47
***Counterbalancing Shell***....................................................................................................................................................................................................47
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................47
CBal – Link.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................48
CBal - Link.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................49
CBal – Link – EU.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................51
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................51
CBal – Link.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................52
Soft-Balancing Link....................................................................................................................................................................................................................53
Soft-Balancing Link....................................................................................................................................................................................................................54
Soft Balancing Link....................................................................................................................................................................................................................55
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................55
Soft-Balancing MPX – ME Instability..........................................................................................................................................................................................56
Soft-Balancing MPX – Oil Access 1/2.........................................................................................................................................................................................58
Soft-Balancing MPX – Oil Access 2/2.........................................................................................................................................................................................59
Soft-Balancing MPX – Hard Balancing........................................................................................................................................................................................60
Soft-Balancing MPX – Prolif........................................................................................................................................................................................................61
***Power Wars***......................................................................................................................................................................................................................62
Power Wars MPX........................................................................................................................................................................................................................63
Powers Wars MPX – Must Read..................................................................................................................................................................................................64
Power Wars MPX........................................................................................................................................................................................................................65
Power Wars Link – Asymmetrical Warfare.................................................................................................................................................................................66
Power Wars Link – Russia..........................................................................................................................................................................................................67
***East Asian Wars***...............................................................................................................................................................................................................68
EAW Link...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................70
EAW Link...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................71
AT: East Asian Prolif...................................................................................................................................................................................................................72
AT: East Asian Prolif...................................................................................................................................................................................................................73
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................73
AT: Heg Solves Power Wars.......................................................................................................................................................................................................74
AT: China Rise – Japan and S/K..................................................................................................................................................................................................75
AT: China Rise – Taiwan.............................................................................................................................................................................................................76
AT: China Rise – Bandwagon.....................................................................................................................................................................................................77
AT: Taiwan Relations..................................................................................................................................................................................................................78
AT: Japan Relations....................................................................................................................................................................................................................79
AT: Withdrawal Destabilizes......................................................................................................................................................................................................80
AT: Withdrawal Destabilizes......................................................................................................................................................................................................81
***North Korea***......................................................................................................................................................................................................................82
North Korea Shell......................................................................................................................................................................................................................82
North Korea Shell......................................................................................................................................................................................................................83
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North Korea Link........................................................................................................................................................................................................................85
North Korea Link........................................................................................................................................................................................................................86
***Middle East***......................................................................................................................................................................................................................87
Middle East Shell.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................87
Middle East Shell.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................88
Middle East MPX - Afghanistan..................................................................................................................................................................................................89
Middle East MPX – Iran..............................................................................................................................................................................................................91
Middle East MPX – Iran..............................................................................................................................................................................................................92
Middle East MPX – Moderates....................................................................................................................................................................................................93
***Terrorism***..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................94
Terrorism Shell..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................94
Terrorism Shell..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................95
Terrorism Link............................................................................................................................................................................................................................96
Terrorism Link............................................................................................................................................................................................................................97
***Proliferation***.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................98
Prolif Shell.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................98
Prolif Shell.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................99
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................99
Prolif Link................................................................................................................................................................................................................................100
Prolif Link................................................................................................................................................................................................................................101
***Economy***........................................................................................................................................................................................................................102
Economy Shell.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................102
Economy Link..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................104
Economy Link – Overstretch....................................................................................................................................................................................................105
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Heg Bad – Shell
AMERICAN HEGEMONY WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE FROM COUNTER-

BALANCING, OVERSTRETCH AND CREEPING MULTIPOLARITY—
EXTENDING IT WILL ONLY GENERATE POWER WARS AND TERRORISM
—MUST ESCAPE HEGEMONY NOW FOR OFFSHORE BALANCING
Layne in 6
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy
from 1940 to Present
Advocates of hegemony claim that it is illusory to think that the United States can retract its military power safely from Eurasia. The answer to this
the risks and costs of American grand strategy are growing, and the
assertion is that
strategy is not likely to work much longer in any event. As other states—
notably China—rapidly close the gap, U.S. hegemony is fated to end in
the next decade or two regardless of U.S. efforts to prolong it. At the same
time, understandable doubts about the credibility of U.S. security guarantees are driving creeping re-nationalization by America’s Eurasian allies, which, in
costs of trying to hold on to

turn, is leading to a reversion to multipolaritv. In this changing geopolitical context, the
hegemony are high and going to become higher. Rather than fostering peace
and stability in Eurasia, America’s military commitments abroad have become
a source of insecurity for the United States, because they carry the risk of
entrapping the United States in great power Eurasian wars. The events of
9/11 are another example of how hegemony makes the United States less
secure than it would he if it followed an offshore balancing strategy. Terrorism, the RAND Corporation terrorism expert Bruce Hoff- man says, is
“about power: the pursuit of power, the acquisition of power, and use of power to achieve political change~.” If we step hack for a moment from our
horror and revulsion at the events of September 11, we can see that the attack was in keeping with the Clausewitzian paradigm of war: force was used
against the United States by its adversaries to advance their political objectives.87 As Clausewitz observed, “War is not an act of senseless passion but is
controlled by its political object.”88 September 111 represented a violent counter reaction to America’s geopolitical—and cultural—hegemony. As the
strategy expert Richard K. Betts presciently observed in a 1998 Foreign Affairs article: It is hardly likely that Middle Eastern radicals would be hatching
schemes like the destruction of the World Trade Center if the United States had not been identified so long as the mainstay of Israel, the shah of Iran, and
conservative Arab regimes and the source of an eternal assault on Islam.
U.S. hegemony fuels terrorist groups like al Qaeda and fans Islamic
fundamentalism, which is a form of “blowback” against America’s
preponderance and its world role.9°As long as the United States maintains its
global hegemony—and its concomitant preeminence in regions like the Persian Gulf—it
will be the target of politically motivated terrorist groups like al Qaeda. After 9/li, many
foreign policy analysts and pundits asked the question, “Why do they hate us?” This question missed the key point. No doubt, there are Islamic
fundamentalists who do “hate” the United States for cultural, religious, and ideological reasons. And even leaving aside American neoconservatives’
obvious relish for making it so, to some extent the war on terror inescapably has overtones of a “clash of civilizations.” Still, this isn’t—and should not be
allowed to become a replay of the Crusades. Fundamentally 9/11 was about geopolitics, specifically about
U.S. hegemony. The United States may be greatly reviled in some quarters of the Islamic world, but were the United States not so
intimately involved in the affairs of the Middle East, it’s hardly likely that this detestation would have manifested itself in something like 9/11. As Michael
Scheurer, who headed the CIA analytical team monitoring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, puts it, “One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding
how to confront the Islamist threat lies in continuing to believe—at the urging of senior U.S. leaders—that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and
think, rather than for what we do.”91 It is American policies—to be precise, American hegemony—that make the United
States a lightning rod for Muslim anger. Hegemony has proven to be an elusive goal for the great powers that have sought it. The
European great powers that bid for hegemony did so because they were on a geopolitical treadmill. For them, it seemed as if security was attainable only
by ~eliminating their great power rivals and achieving continental hegemony. And it is this fact that invested great power politics with its tragic quality,
because the international system’s power-balancing dynamics doomed all such bids to failure. The United States, on the other hand, has never faced
similar pressures to seek security through a hegemonic grand strategy, and, too often, instead of enhancing U.S. security as advertised,
America’s hegemonic grand strategy has made the United States less
secure. In the early twenty-first century, by threatening to embroil the United
States in military showdowns with nuclear great powers and exposing the
United States to terrorism, the pursuit of hegemony means that “over there”
well may become over here. Objectively, the United States historically has enjoyed an extraordinarily high degree of immunity
from external threat, a condition that has had nothing to do with whether it is hegemonic and everything to do with geography and its military capabilities.
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the United States has, should it wish to use it, an exit ramp—offshore
Consequently,
balancing—that would allow it to escape from the tragedy of great power

politics that befalls those that seek hegemony. The failure of the United
States to take this exit ramp constitutes the real tragedy of American
diplomacy.
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Heg Bad - Shell
WAR-MONGERERS ARE WRONG- US LEADERSHIP DOES NOT SOLVE

AND MAKES A PLETHORA OF NUCLEAR CONFLICTS INEVITABLE
Sapolsky Gholz and Press in 97
PhD’s @ MIT, Come Home America, International Security
The selective engagers' strategy is wrong for two reasons. First, selective engagers overstate the
effect of U.S. military presence as a positive force for great power peace. In today's world,
disengagement will not cause great power war, and continued
engagement will not reliably prevent it. In some circumstances, engagement may actually
increase the likelihood of conflict. Second, selective engagers overstate the costs of
distant wars and seriously understate the costs and risks of their strategies. Overseas deployments require a large force structure. Even
worse, selective engagement will ensure that when a future great power war
erupts, the United States will be in the thick of things. Although distant great power
wars are bad for America, the only sure path to ruin is to step in the middle of a faraway
fight. Selective engagers overstate America's effect on the likelihood of future

great power wars. There is little reason to believe that withdrawal from
Europe or Asia would lead to deterrence failures. With or without a forward
U.S. presence, America's major allies have sufficient military strength to
deter any potential aggressors. Conflict is far more likely to erupt from a sequence described in the spiral model. The
danger of spirals leading to war in East Asia is remote. Spirals happen when states, seeking security, frighten their neighbors. The risk of
spirals is great when offense is easier than defense, because any country's
attempt to achieve security will give it an offensive capability against its
neighbors. The neighbors' attempts to eliminate the vulnerability give them fleeting offensive capabilities and tempt them to launch preventive
war.71 But Asia, as discussed earlier, is blessed with inherent defensive advantages. Japan
and Taiwan are islands, which makes them very difficult to invade. China has a long land
border with Russia, but enjoys the protection of the East China Sea, which stands between it and Japan. The expanse of Siberia
gives Russia, its ever-trusted ally, strategic depth. South Korea benefits from
mountainous terrain which would channel an attacking force from the north.
Offense is difficult in East Asia, so spirals should not be acute. In fact, no other region in which great powers
interact offers more defensive advantage than East Asia. The prospect for spirals is greater in Europe, but continued U.S.
engagement does not reduce that danger; rather, it exacerbates the risk. A West
European military union, controlling more than 21percent of the world's GDP, may worry Russia. But NATO, with 44 percent of the world's GDP, is far more
The more NATO frightens Russia, the more likely it is

threatening, especially if it expands eastward.
that Russia will turn dangerously nationalist, redirect its economy toward the
military, and try to re-absorb its old buffer states.72 But if the U.S. military
were to withdraw from Europe, even Germany, Europe's strongest advocate
for NATO expansion, might become less enthusiastic, because it would be German rather than
American troops standing guard on the new borders. Some advocates of selective engagement point to the past fifty years as evidence that America's
forward military presence reduces the chance of war. The Cold War's great power peace, however, was overdetermined. Nuclear weapons brought a
powerful restraining influence.73 Furthermore, throughout the Cold War, European and Asian powers had a common foe which encouraged them to
cooperate. After an American withdrawal, the Japanese, Koreans, and Russians would still have to worry about China; the Europeans would still need to
keep an eye on Russia. These threats can be managed without U.S. assistance, and the challenge will
encourage European and Asian regional cooperation.
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2nc Overview 1/6
FIRST, UNIQUENESS - HEG DECLINE IS INEVITABLE

A) IMPACTS TO HEGEMONY BAD RESULT IN HEGEMONY DECLINE
WHICH MEANS THAT WE CONTROL TERMINAL UNIQUENESS AND
HAVE EXTERNAL IMPACTS TO A FUTILE ATTEMPT TO ATTAIN PRIMACY
B) PUBLIC SENTIMENT
Ferguson in 4
Niall, Professor of History at Harvard University and Professor of Business Administration at
Harvard Business School How and why has the United States' power position in the
international arena weakened?, International Security, Muse
Of course,the United States is overstretched in other ways. It is domestically

overstretched; its fiscal system is heading for severe crisis, as the costs of
Medicare will spiral out of control in the next 10 or 20 years. That is the kind
of constraint that is really critical here. The other point is that Americans
reject the notion of a major overseas military commitment, and so you can
get politically overstretched pretty quickly because the people of the United
States have a really low tolerance for foreign wars.
C) BALANCING
Pape in 5
Professor of Political Science, Soft-Balancing Against the United States, International
Security, Muse
The international image of the United States as a benign superpower is

declining, particularly with regard to the aspects that are likely to erode its
relative immunity to balance of power dynamics. Without the perception of benign
intent, a unipolar leader's intervention in regions beyond its own, especially
those with substantial economic value, is likely to produce incentives among
the world's other major powers to balance against it. That the United States
does not pose an imminent threat to attack any major power is not sufficient
to prevent these incentives, because the main danger for second-ranked
states is that the United States would pose an indirect threat or evolve from
a unipolar leader into an unrestrained global hegemon. In a unipolar world,
the response to an expansionist unipolar leader is likely to be global
balancing. [End Page 35]
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2nc Overview 2/6
D) ECONOMY
Layne in 7
Bradley, Professor @ Missouri State, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 122-123
The proponents of American primacy and empire assert both that the United
States can afford this grand strategy and that American economy is
fundamentally robust. These claims might come as news to most Americans, however. When a company like General Motors-
historically one of the flagship corporations of the U.S. economy-teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and sheds some 126,000 jobs-rosy descriptions about
the notion that the U.S. economy is healthy

the strength of the U.S. economy ring hollow.4 Similarly,
certainly would not be shared by the hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers

who have lost their jobs in America's ever-contracting manufacturing sector-
often because their jobs have been outsourced to China or India. Even more
worrisome, future outsourcing of American jobs is not likely to be confined just
to blue-collar workers. Rather, an increasing number of high-skill/ high-education jobs will flow from the United States to other
countries.' Another warning sign that all is not well with the U.S. economy is the "middle class squeeze"-the fact that middle class incomes in the United
States have been stagnant since the early 1970s. Doubtless, the American economy has made gains in productivity, but those gains are being enjoyed by
only a small number of Americans in the highest income brackets. As the Financial Times recently noted: Since 1973, the income of the top 10 per cent of
American earners has grown by 111 per cent, while the income of the middle fifth has grown by only 15 per cent. That trend has become more
pronounced in the last few years. Between 1998 and 2004, the median income of American households fell by 3.8 per cent.' To some the American
economy may seem buoyant, but the hollowing-out of America's manufacturing industrial base, the outsourcing of American jobs, and stagnant middle-
class incomes are flashing red lights warning that all is far from well with the U.S. economy. Indeed, the economic vulnerabilities that Kennedy pinpointed
in the late 1980s may have receded into the background during the 1990s, but they did not disappear. Once again, the United States is running endless
The United States still depends on

federal budget deficits, and the trade deficit has grown worse and worse .
capital inflows from abroad, with China fast replacing Japan as America's
most important creditor, to finance its deficit spending, finance private
consumption, and maintain the dollar's position as the international
economic system's reserve currency. Because of the twin deficits, the
underlying fundamentals of the U.S. economy are out of alignment. The United
States cannot continue to live beyond its means indefinitely. Sooner or later, the bill
will come due in the form of sharply higher taxes and interest rates-and,
consequently, economic slowdown. And, as the United States borrows more
and more to finance its budget and trade deficits, private investment is likely
to be "crowded out" of the marketplace, with predictable effects on the
economy's long-term health. In a word (or two), the United States is suffering
from "fiscal overstretch."'
E) MANUFACTURING BASE
Johnson 2k
Pres. Of the Japan Policy Research Inst, Chalmers, Blowback: Costs and Consequences of American EmpirThirty years ago the international relations
our empire has exploited us,

theorist Ronald Steel noted, "Unlike Rome, we have not exploited our empire. On the contrary,
making enormous drains on our resources and energies."9 Our economic

relations with our East Asian satellites have, for example, hollowed out our
domestic manufacturing industries and led us into a reliance on finance
capitalism, whose appearance has in the past been a sign of a hitherto
healthy economy entering decline. An analogous situation literally wrecked the former USSR. While fighting a losing war
in Afghanistan and competing with the United States to develop ever more advanced "strategic weaponry," it could no longer withstand pent-up desires
in Eastern Europe for independence.
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2nc Overview 3/6
THAT COLLAPSES THE ECONOMY AND MAKES HEG DECLINE

INEVITABLE
Vargo 3
Franklin, National Association of Manufacturers, Federal News Service, 10-1, Lexis
I would like to begin my statement with a review of why manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy. Since
manufacturing only represents about 16 percent of the nation's output, who cares? Isn't the United States a post-manufacturing services economy? Who
the United States economy would collapse without

needs manufacturing? The answer in brief is that
manufacturing, as would our national security and our role in the world. That
is because manufacturing is really the foundation of our economy, both in
terms of innovation and production and in terms of supporting the rest of the
economy. For example, many individuals point out that only about 3 percent of the
U.S. workforce is on the farm, but they manage to feed the nation and export
to the rest of the world. But how did this agricultural productivity come to
be? It is because of the tractors and combines and satellite systems and
fertilizers and advanced seeds, etc. that came from the genius and
productivity of the manufacturing sector. Similarly, in services -- can you envision an airline without airplanes?
Fast food outlets without griddles and freezers? Insurance companies or banks without computers? Certainly not. The manufacturing industry is truly the
Manufacturing performs over 60

innovation industry, without which the rest of the economy could not prosper.
percent of the nation's research and development. Additionally, it also

underlies the technological ability of the United States to maintain its
national security and its global leadership. Manufacturing makes a disproportionately large contribution to
productivity, more than twice the rate of the overall economy, and pays wages that are about 20 percent higher than in other sectors. But its most
fundamental importance lies in the fact that a healthy manufacturing sector truly underlies the entire U.S. standard of living -because it is the principal
way by which the United States pays its way in the world. Manufacturing accounts for over 80 percent of all U.S. exports of goods. America's farmers will
export somewhat over $50 billion this year, but America's manufacturers export almost that much event month! Even when services are included,
If the U.S. manufacturing sector

manufacturing accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. exports of goods and services.
were to become seriously impaired, what combination of farm products together

with architectural, travel, insurance, engineering and other services could make up for
the missing two-thirds of our exports represented by manufactures? The
answer is "none." What would happen instead is the dollar would collapse,
falling precipitously -- not to the reasonable level of 1997, but far below it
-and with this collapse would come high U.S. inflation, a wrenching economic
downturn and a collapse in the U.S. standard of living and the U.S. leadership
role in the world. That, most basically, is why the United States cannot
become a "nation of shopkeepers."
NUCLEAR WAR
Mead, 92 [Walter Russel Mead, Senior Fellow in American FoPo @ the Council on Foreign
Relations, World Policy Institute, 1992]
Hundreds of millions, billions, of people have pinned their hopes on the international market
. They and their leaders have embraced market principles and drawn closer to the west
because they believe the system can work for them? But what if it can’t? What if the global
economy stagnates or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international
conflict: North against South, rich against poor. Russia, China India, these countries with
their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to the
world than Germany and Japan did in the 30s
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2nc Overview 4/6
SECOND IS OUR EXTERNAL IMPACTS

A) GREAT POWER WARS – HEGEMONY ENCOURAGES COUNTER-
BALANCING TO BE MADE BY GREAT POWERS THAT FOCUS ON
BELLIGERENCE AND MILITARY PRE-EMINENCE. THIS LEADS TO WAR-
SEEKING GREAT POWERS IN CHINA, RUSSIA, AND EURASIA – THAT’S
SAPOLSKY GHOLZ AND PRESS
THE MOST RELIABLE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORIES SUPPORT

OUR ARGUMENT
Waltz in 2k
(Prof at UC Berkeley) Kenneth, “Structural Realism After the Cold War”, International
Security, Summer, vol. 25, no. 1, p. asp
With so many of the expectations that realist theory gives rise to confirmed by what
happened at and after the end of the Cold War, one may wonder why realism is in bad
repute.[65] A key proposition derived from realist theory is that international politics
reflects the distribution of national capabilities, a proposition daily borne out. Another key proposition is
that the balancing of power by some states against others recurs. Realist theory predicts that balances disrupted will one day be restored. A limitation of
the theory, a limitation common to social science theories, is that it cannot say when. William Wohlforth argues that though restoration will take place, it
will be a long time coming.[66] Of necessity, realist theory is better at saying what will happen than in saying when it will happen. Theory cannot say when
"tomorrow" will come because international political theory deals with the pressures of structure on states and not with how states will respond to the
pressures. The latter is a task for theories about how national governments respond to pressures on them and take advantage of opportunities that may
One does, however, observe balancing tendencies already taking place.

be present.
Upon the demise of the Soviet Union, the international political system became unipolar. In
the light of structural theory, unipolarity appears as the least durable of
international configurations. This is so for two main reasons. One is that
dominant powers take on too many tasks beyond their own borders, thus
weakening themselves in the long run. Ted Robert Gurr, after examining 336 polities,
reached the same conclusion that Robert Wesson had reached earlier: "Imperial decay is ...
primarily a result of the misuse of power which follows inevitably from its concentration."[67]
The other reason for the short duration of unipolarity is that even if a
dominant power behaves with moderation, restraint, and forbearance,
weaker states will worry about its future behavior. America's founding fathers
warned against the perils of power in the absence of checks and balances. Is unbalanced
power less of a danger in international than in national politics? Throughout the Cold War,
what the United States and the Soviet Union did, and how they interacted, were dominant
factors in international politics. The two countries, however, constrained each other. Now the
United States is alone in the world. As nature abhors a vacuum, so international
politics abhors unbalanced power. Faced with unbalanced power, some
states try to increase their own strength or they ally with others to bring the
international distribution of power into balance. The reactions of other states
to the drive for dominance of Charles V, Hapsburg ruler of Spain, of Louis XIV and
Napoleon I of France, of Wilhelm II and Adolph Hitler of Germany, illustrate the
point.
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2nc Overview 5/6
B) TERRORISM – NON-STATE ACTORS BACKLASH AGAINST US

MILITARY PRESENCE – THE IMPACT IS ATTACKS ON US SOIL AND
INSURGENCIES AGAINST OUR TROOPS THAT MAKE PULLOUT
INEVITABLE – THAT’S LAYNE
C) CHAIN-GANG – WAR IS INEVITABLE, BUT MOST ARE NOT WARS

THAT RISK US SECURITY. HEGEMONIC PRIMACY ENSURES US
INVOLVEMENT AND THUS THE ESCALATION OF THESE CONFLICTS –
THAT’S SAPOLSKY
D) THE EXIT RAMP – A DECLINE IN HEGEMONY STILL ALLOWS OFF-

SHORE BALANCING WHICH DETERS CONFLICTS AS EASILY AS
MILITARY EXISTENCE. ALSO, MULTIPOLARITY IS INEVITABLE AND
WILL DETER LARGE WARS WHILE STILL ALLOWING US PRE-EMINENCE
FROM HOME – THAT’S LAYNE
MULTIPOLARITY SOLVES DETERRENCE BETTER

Kupchan in 2
Charles A., professor of international relations in the School of Foreign Service and
Government Department at Georgetown University, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, served on the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration, The
End of the American Era, pg. 34
Although the future holds in store a competitive world of multiple centers of power, the
coming era of multipolarity will likely have its own unique characteristics and may
resemble only distantly its historical antecedents. Much has changed in the recent past to
provide optimism that the era that is opening will be less bloody than the one that is
closing. Nations no longer have the same incentives to engage in predatory
conquest. They now accumulate wealth through developing information
technology and expanding financial services, not conquering and annexing
land and labor. Nuclear weapons also increase the costs of war. And
democratic states may well be less aggressive than their authoritarian
ancestors; democracies seem not to go to war with each other. Perhaps future poles of
power, as long as they are democratic, will live comfortably alongside each other.
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2nc Overview 6/6
E) PREFER OUR EVIDENCE – DEFENSES OF HEGEMONY ARE A

TAUTOLOGIES THAT RELY UPON A FLAWED EUROCENTRIC
MISCONCEPTION OF REALITY
Kaplan in 3
Amy, President of American Studies Association @ Pennsylvania University, Violent
Belongings and the Question of Empire Today Presidential Address to the American Studies
Association, muse
This is also a narrative about race. The images of an unruly world, of anarchy and
chaos, of failed modernity, recycle stereotypes of racial inferiority from earlier
colonial discourses about races who are incapable of governing themselves,
Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the law,” or Roosevelt’s “loosening ties of civilized society,”
in his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In his much-noted article in the New York Times
Magazine entitled “The American Empire,” Michael Ignatieff appended the subtitle “The
Burden” but insisted that “America’s empire is not like empires of times past, built on
colonies, conquest and the white man’s burden.”12 Denial and exceptionalism are
apparently alive and well. In American studies we need to go beyond simply exposing
the racism of empire and examine the dynamics by which Arabs and the religion of Islam
are becoming racialized through the interplay of templates of U.S. racial codes and colonial
Orientalism. These narratives of the origins of the current empire—that is, the
neoconservative and the liberal interventionist—have much in common. They take
American exceptionalism to new heights: its paradoxical claim to
uniqueness and universality at the same time. They share a
teleological narrative of inevitability, that America is the apotheosis
of history, the embodiment of universal values of human rights, liberalism, and
democracy, the “indispensable nation,” in Madeleine Albright’s words. In this logic, the
United States claims the authority to “make sovereign judgments on what is right and what
is wrong” for everyone else and “to exempt itself with an absolutely clear conscience from
all the rules that it proclaims and applies to others.”13 Absolutely protective of its own
sovereignty, it upholds a doctrine of limited sovereignty for others and thus deems the
entire world a potential site of intervention. Universalism thus can be made manifest
only through the threat and use of violence. If in these narratives imperial power
is deemed the solution to a broken world, then they preempt any
counternarratives that claim U.S. imperial actions, past and present, may have
something to do with the world’s problems. According to this logic, resistance to
empire can never be opposition to the imposition of foreign rule; rather,
resistance means irrational opposition to modernity and universal human
values.
11
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Khalilzad 1/2
KHALILDAD DOES NOT APPLY BECAUSE IT DOES NOT ASSUME THE

CURRENT POLITICAL ARENA
A) IT’S WRITTEN PRE-9/11 AND DOESN’T ASSUME NON-STATE
BALANCING SUCH AS SOFT-BALANCING @ THE UN
B) PRE-IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WHICH ARE THE MOST VISIBLE

SIGNS OF US WEAKNESS AND HAVE STRETCHED FORCES TO
IMMEASURABLE LENGHTS
LINK TURN
A) HEG LEADS TO PROLIF
Rodman 2k
Director of National Security Programs, Peter, W., National Interest, Summer, p. 77
The Pentagon has a phrase, "asymmetric strategies", which refers to the strategies
by which smaller powers seek to exploit the vulnerabilities of a stronger
power. Lord knows we have such vulnerabilities -- and others are eagerly searching for
them. (Chinese strategists, for example, have analyzed the 1991 Gulf War and
satisfied themselves that if Saddam Hussein had not committed a few key
errors, the outcome would have been quite different.) The intensity of rogue
states' pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, moreover, undoubtedly
derives from their conviction that such a capability would prove a
great "equalizer", significantly compounding America's reluctance to
use its power in some hypothetical future confrontation.
B) HEG LEADS TO REGIONAL HEGEMONY BY RENEGADE STATES

Layne in 7
Christopher, Professor @ TX A&M, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 93-94
Primacy is a strategy that causes insecurity because it will lead to a

geopolitical backlash against the United States. In time, this will take the form
of traditional great power counterbalancing against American primacy. The
emergence of new great powers during the next decade or two is all but
certain. Indeed, China already is on the cusp of establishing itself as a peer
competitor to the United States. The U.S. grand strategy of maintaining its
global primacy has put the United States on the road to confrontation with a
rising China, and with Iran. In the short term, primacy has triggered asymmetric
responses-notably terrorism-in regions like the Middle East where America’s
geopolitical presence is resented.
12
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Khalilzad 2/2
C) HEGEMONY ENCOURAGES ESCALATION OF LOW-LEVEL CONFLICTS

Bandow in 7
Doug, Scholar @ the CATO Institute, Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention,
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=10491
However, there's another potential problem with humanitarian intervention

that advocates of warmongering for good rarely acknowledge: threatening to
intervene to settle bitter internal conflicts creates an incentive for weaker
parties to foment such conflicts. For many rebellious groups, outside
intervention is the only hope for success; thus, triggering
involvement by a neighboring nation, regional power, or the globe's
superpower becomes an overriding objective. In economic-speak
this is the problem of "moral hazard."
D) HEG DOESN’T DETER ANOTHER GLOBAL HOSTILE RIVAL – OFF-

SHORE BALANCING WORKS BETTER
Sapolsky, Gholz, and Press in 97
PhD’s in Political Science @ MIT, Come Home America, International Security, Come Home
America
Given its geographical advantages and nuclear arsenal, the United States would be
very secure even if Japan, China, and Russia matched its defense
expenditures. The fact is that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, no one else comes
close. It is not at all clear what, if anything, Americans are getting for their extra defense
dollars. The United States can spend much less than it does today and still be
much more secure than it was during the Cold War. U.S. defense spending has
dropped from its Cold War peak, but the budget is still within its Cold War range (see Figure
2). In fact, defense outlays in 1995 were very close to those of an average peaceful year of
the Cold War. America has not cashed in a "peace dividend," but has traded it
for a "security dividend," even as the external threat has disappeared." The
United States can cut defense greatly and still enjoy the security that
geography and the end of the Cold War provide.
13
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Ferguson 1/1
FERGUSON’S CALLS FOR AMERICAN HEGEMONY ARE AN ATTEMPT TO

RESURRECT THE NOTION OF THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN TO
COLONIZE THE SAVAGE- ITS NOT ONLY REVISIONIST, IT CEMENTS AN
IMPERIAL AND ORIENTALIST VIEW OF REALITY
Kaplan in 3
Amy, President of American Studies Association @ Pennsylvania University, Violent
Belongings and the Question of Empire Today Presidential Address to the American Studies
Association, muse
On the other hand, I am disturbed that all this talk about empire conceals more
than it reveals and makes certain kinds of utterances unspeakable. Along with
other scholars, I have argued that the denial and disavowal of empire has long
served as the ideological cornerstone of U.S. imperialism and a key component
of American exceptionalism. So I feel blindsided when I find champions of empire
making a similar argument for different political ends. Niall Ferguson, for
example, in his popular revisionist history of the beneficence of the British Empire,
chides America for being “an empire in denial,” calling on it to accept its
rightful heritage of the white man’s burden.4 Indeed he quotes Rudyard
Kipling’s 1899 poem, pointing out, as many of us have, that it was dedicated
to Theodore Roosevelt with the aim of encouraging the United States to
annex the Philippines.
14
SDI 08-09
BHR
Decline Stable / Heg Unsustainable
HEGEMONY IS STABALLY DECLINING – PAVING THE WAY FOR

AUTONOMOUS SECURITY ALLIANCES
Layne in 6
Japan is a good example of the kind of creeping re—nationalization now

occurring in East Asia. While still wedded to the United States, in recent years Tokyo has
become increasingly concerned that, at some point, it “might face a threat against which
the United States would not prove a reliable ally.”’ In 1998, for example, U.S. failure to warn
Tokyo of an impending North Korean missile test (which over flew Japanese airspace)
galvanized doubts about U.S. reliability and jolted the Japanese government into producing
its own reconnaissance satellites. In the last several vears, Japan has become extremely
worried about China’s military buildup. In response, Japan is moving toward dropping Article
9 of its American-imposed constitution (which imposes severe constraints on Japan’s
military policy), building up its own forces, and quietly pondering the possibility of becoming
a nuclear power.37 In other words, incrementally Japan is laying the foundation for
its emergence as an independent pole of power. As Naval War College East Asian
security expert Jonathan Pollack puts it: Even though Japanese actions appear
ernbedded in the prevailing framework of the bilateral relationship with the
United States, the evidence of shifting directions is palpable. American
policymakers as well as Japan’s neighbors will increasingly deal with a
leadership far more willing and able to chart its own course, with a far clearer
concept of Japan’s long—term national interests.38South Korea—looking ahead to the
peninsula’s eventual reunification—also is laying the foundation for its strategic decoupling
from the United States. In recent years, Seoul’s military strategy has de-emphasized its land
force capabilities (which should receive priority if its defense program is driven primarily
by the threat from the North), in favor of building up its naval and airpower. As one leading
expert has put it, rather than investing in countering a North Korean threat that “could well
diminish over time and that might disappear altogether,” during the twenty-first century’s
first decade “the peninsular focus of Korean national security policy will be increasingly sup-
planted by more of a regional orientation.”39 Here South Korea is following the
same strategy as Japan: both “are seeking to diversify their political-
security options rather than depend exclusively on the United States or
assume the forward deployment of U.S. military power in perpetuity.”
15
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BHR
Decline Stable / Heg Unsustainable
MULTIPOLARITY COMING NOW

Layne in 6
Although balance-of-power theorists were off with respect to the timing, now, even if
somewhat belatedly, new great powers indeed are emerging, and the unipolar
era’s days are numbered. In its survey of likely international developments up until
2020, the National Intelligence Council’s report, Mapping the Global Future, notes: The
likely emergence of China and India as new global players—similar to the rise of
Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century—will
transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those of
the previous two centuries. In the same ways that commentators refer to the l900s as the
American Century, the early 21st century may be seen as the time when some in the
developing world led by’ China and India came into their own.98 In a similar vein, a study by
the Strategic Assessment Group concludes that already both China. (which, according to
Mapping the Global Future, by’ around 2020, will be “by any measure a first rate military
power”) and the European Union (each with a 14 percent share) are approaching
the United States (20 percent) in their respective shares of world power. Although the
same study’ predicts the EU’s share of world power will decrease somewhat
between now and 2020, China and India are projected to post significant
gains. In other words, the international system today already is on the cusp of
multipolarity and is likely to become fully multipolar between now and 2020.
16
SDI 08-09
BHR
Decline Stable
THE UNITED STATES CAN MANAGE THE SHIFT TO MULTIPOLARITY
PEACEFULLY IF IT DOES NOT RESIST
Kupchan in 2
Charles A., professor of international relations in the School of Foreign Service and
Government Department at Georgetown University, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, served on the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration, The
End of the American Era, pg. 247-248
The United States and should not resist the end of the American era. To do so
would only risk alienating and provoking conflict with a rising Europe and an
ascendant Asia. Asking that the United States prepare for and manage its exit from global
primacy however, is a tall order. Great powers have considerable difficulty accepting their
mortality; few in history have willfully made room for rising challengers and adjusted their
grand strategies accordingly. If armed with the right politics and the right policies, the
United States may well be able to manage peacefully the transition from
unipolarity to multipolarity thereby ensuring that the stability and prosperity
attained under its watch will extend well beyond its primacy. At first glance, the
past provides only sober warnings, not useful lessons. Multipolar systems have for the most
part been breeding grounds for rivalry and war, not good news for America’s leaders and
their foreign counterparts who will soon have to confront the geopolitical fault lines long held
in abeyance by U.S. predominance. But amid the long centuries of bloodshed are a
few historical episodes that provide cause for optimism and reason to look again
to the past for guidance on how to prepare for the future. The relevant periods all involve
processes of integration in which separate states self-consciously bound themselves to one
another to avoid the destructive competition that would otherwise ensue. These historical
episodes fall along a continuum that runs from a tight coupling at one end to a loose
grouping at the other. At the tight end of the spectrum is America’s experience with
federation. The thirteen American colonies joined together to attain independence from
Britain and then formed a polity that not only prevented rivalry among the separate states,
but eventually merged them into a unitary nation. At the other end of the spectrum is the
Concert of Europe, which effectively preserved peace in a multipolar system from 1815 until
the middle of the nineteenth century The five nations that participated in the Concert
jealously guarded their sovereignty and created only an informal club; they never even
considered engaging in the more demanding processes of integration that had occurred in
North America. But they did succeed in overcoming the geopolitical rivalry that is
usually endemic to multipolarity In between the experiences of the United
States and the Concert of Europe is that of the European Union. The EU is
much less than a unitary nation but much more than a loose grouping of
sovereign states. Although neither fish nor fowl, the EU represents a historic
experiment in geopolitical engineering that has proved remarkably effective
in erasing the strategic relevance of Europe’s national borders.
17
SDI 08-09
BHR
Decline Now Good / Heg Unsustainable
THE WORST THING TO DO IS TRY TO PROLONG UNIPOLARITY –

HEGEMONY COLLAPSE IS INEVITABLE AND WE SHOULD START THE
TRANSITION NOW TO AVOID CATASTROPHIC POWER WARS
Kupchan in 2
Professor of International Relations @ Georgetown, Charles, The End of the American Era: US
Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century, Alfred A. Knopf, New York
NOTHING COULD be more perilous than entering the emerging period of

geopolitical transition under the illusion of geopolitical stasis. Nonetheless, that
is precisely what the United States is poised to do. America is likely to be preoccupied
with the battle against terrorism, a focus that will come at the expense of the
attention paid to the challenges posed by the return of a multipolar world.
America’s unipolar moment is also coming undone in a deceptively quiet fashion,
with most observers and policy-makers failing to appreciate the geopolitical significance of
Europe’s rise. That the shifting character of American internationalism will
contribute to the pace of global change further masks the unraveling of
unipolarity; Diminishing political will is much harder to detect and measure than
diminishing military might. So too is it hard to measure the quiet alienation engendered by
America’s unilateralism. Accustomed to hegemony and overlooking the subtle but potent
forces altering global politics, most American strategists remain confident that unipolarity is
durable. The size of the U.S. economy and its dominating defense establishment help
sustain this illusion. Indeed, confidence in the longevity of American primacy contributed to
the dangerous mix of unilateralism and isolationism that shaped the initial outlines of the
foreign policy of President George W. Bush. Managing the return to multipolarity will be
difficult and fraught with dangers under the best of circumstances. To overlook the
global diffusion of power, focus on homeland defense and combating terror-
ism, and otherwise continue with business as usual would ensure the worst
outcome. The United States would antagonize Europe and other aspirants,
ensuring that the return of a world of multiple poles leads to estrangement
and rivalry Were America to seek to extend unipolarity beyond its time, it
would also overreach, setting the stage for popular discontent and the
country’s ultimate retreat. A fragmenting international system coupled with a
sudden bout of American isolationism would likely result—exactly the
conditions that during the 1930S cleared the way for war. Instead, the United
States should get ahead of the curve and seek to shape the global transition that is now
under way and picking up speed. The central question is not how much longer the unipolar
moment will last, but whether the multipolar world that lies ahead emerges by default or by
design. If by default, multipolarity will likely bring with it renewed instability
and conflict. If by design, America has at least a reasonable chance of getting
it right.
18
SDI 08-09
BHR
Decline Now Good / Heg Unsustainable
COMPARATIVELY BETTER TO DISENGAGE NOW—WAITING FOR THE

INEVITABLE COLLAPSE DESTROYS THE US ABILITY TO SURVIVE IN A
MULTIPOLAR WORLD
Layne in 6
it will take some time for others’

At the same time, it doubtless is true that
balancing efforts to realize their intended outcome. Although the United States,
contrary’ to my 1993 prediction, probably will not he challenged by great power rivals as
early as 2010, it is even more doubtful that U.S. hegemony will endure until the
early 2030s. Is it worthwhile paying the price to hang onto unipolarity for, at
best, another two decades? Given that American hegemony’ is destined to end
sooner rather than later and that the costs of trying to “shape the
international system” to America’s liking will rise (even as the benefits of doing so
diminish), it would make more sense grand strategically for the United States
to retrench and husband its resources for the long haul. The United States can do
this by adopting an offshore balancing grand strategy.
19
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BHR
Multipolarity Coming – Neoconservatives
NEOCON ADVENTURISM IS DECLINING HEGEMONY – MULTIPOLARITY

IS FILLING IN
Wallerstein in 7
Immanuel, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. He is also the former president of the
International Sociological Association., Precipitate Decline, Harvard International Review, pg.
Proquest
The adventurism of the Bush administration has transformed a slow US

decline into a precipitate decline. The United States' economic, political, and
ideological position had already become tenuous by 2001. The only
advantage the United States seemed to retain was in its absolutely enormous
military capability, and it was on this power that Vice President Dick Cheney, former
secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the neoconservative policymakers were
relying. But they made two fundamental mistakes. The first was failing to
realize that air power and special forces are sufficient to make the armed
forces of even strong powers retreat, but they are not able to bring wars to a
conclusive end. For that, land armies are necessary-and against popular resistance, very
large land armies. But the United States does not and will not have a
significantly large land army primarily due to political reasons. The US public
is ready to cheer on military victories, but they are not ready to sacrifice the
lives of their children. Invasions like those of Iraq are thus destined to fail. And that
leads to the second mistake of the neoconservatives. Military power is feared
as long as it is successful. But anything less than overwhelming victory
reduces the fear of others, and therefore the effectiveness of expensive and
advanced military hardware as an intimidating factor in world politics.
20
SDI 08-09
BHR
Multipolarity Coming – China, India, EU
CURRENT HEG DECLINE WILL CREATE A MULTIPOLAR WORLD

Layne in 7
Can the United States Be Caught? Up to a point, the primacists are correct. In terms of hard
power, there is a yawning gap between the United States and the next-ranking powers. It
will take some time before any other state emerges as a true "peer competitor" of the
United States. Nevertheless, at some point within the next decade or two, new
great power rivals to the United States will emerge. To put it slightly differently,
American primacy cannot be sustained indefinitely. The relative power position of
great powers is dynamic, not static, which means that at any point in time some states are
gaining in relative power while others are losing it. Thus, as Paul Kennedy has observed, no
great power ever has been able "to remain permanently ahead of all others,
because that would imply a freezing of the differentiated pattern of growth
rates, technological advance, and military developments which has existed
since time immemorial."36 Even the most ardent primacists know this to be true, which
is why they concede that American primacy won't last forever. Indeed, the leading
primacists acknowledge, that-at best-the United States will not be able to hold onto its
primacy much beyond 2030. There are indications, however, that American primacy could
end much sooner than that. Already there is evidence suggesting that new great
powers are in the process of emerging. This is what the current debate in the United
States about the implications of China's rise is all about. But China isn't the only factor
in play, and transition from U.S. primacy to multipolarity may be much closer than
primacists want to admit. For example, in its survey of likely international developments up
until 2020, the CIA's National Intelligence Council's report Mapping the Global Future notes:
The likely emergence of China and India as new major global players-similar to the rise of
Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century-will transform
the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those of the previous two
centuries. In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the American Century,
the early 21st century may be seen as the time when some in the developing
world led by China and India came into their own.37 In a similar vein, a recent
study by the CIA's Strategic Assessment Group projects that by 2020 both China (which
Mapping the Global Future pegs as "by any measure a first-rate military power" around
2020) and the European Union will come close to matching the United States
in terms of their respective shares of world power.38 For sure, there are always
potential pitfalls in projecting current trends several decades into the future (not least is that
it is not easy to convert economic power into effective military power). But if the ongoing
shift in the distribution of relative power continues, new poles of power in the
international system are likely to emerge during the next decade or two. The
real issue is not if American primacy will end, but how soon it will end.
21
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BHR
Multipolarity Coming – Nations and Non-State
HEG DECLINE IS LEADING TO STABLY MULTIPOLARITY

Haass in 99
Richard, Vice President, Director of Foreign Policy Studies, and Sydney Stein, Jr., Chair in
International Security at the Brookings Institution, What to Do With American Primacy,
Council on Foreign Relations
It must be said at the outset that America's economic and military advantages,
while great, are neither unqualified nor permanent. The country's strength
is limited by the amount of resources (money, time, political capital) it can
spend, which in turn reflects a lack of domestic support for some kind of
American global empire. De Tocqueville's observation that democracy is ill suited for
conducting foreign policy is even more true in a world without a mortal enemy like the
Soviet Union against which to rally the public. Moreover, U.S. superiority will not
last. As power diffuses around the world, America's position relative to
others will inevitably erode. It may not seem this way at a moment when the American
economy is in full bloom and many countries around the world are sclerotic, but the long-
term trend is unmistakable. Other nations are rising, and nonstate actors --
ranging from Usama bin Ladin to Amnesty International to the International Criminal Court to
George Soros -- are increasing in number and acquiring power. For all these
reasons, an effort to assert or expand U.S. hegemony will fail. Such an action
would lack domestic support and stimulate international resistance, which in
turn would make the costs of hegemony all the greater and its benefits all
the smaller. Meanwhile, the world is becoming more multipolar. American
foreign policy should not resist such multipolarity (which would be futile) but
define it. Like unipolarity, multipolarity is simply a description. It tells us about the
distribution of power in the world, not about the character or quality of international
relations. A multipolar world could be one in which several hostile but roughly
equal states confront one another, or one in which a number of states, each
possessing significant power, work together in common. The U.S. objective
should be to persuade other centers of political, economic, and military power -- including
but not limited to nation-states -- to believe it is in their self-interest to support constructive
notions of how international society should be organized and should operate.
22
SDI 08-09
BHR
Multipolarity Coming – Non-State
US ATTEMPTS TO PROMOTE HEGEMONY MAKE DECLINE INEVITABLE –

INSTEAD THE US SHOULD PROMOTE MULTIPOLARITY
Haass in 2k
Richard, Chair in International Security at the Brookings Institution, Imperial America
Implicit in the above is a recognition that U.S. advantages in economic and military
might, while great, are not unqualified. To the contrary, U.S. strengths are limited
by the availability of resources, which in turn reflects a lack of domestic
political consensus over national priorities and over the U.S. role in the world.
In addition, individual countries (or, in the case of Europe, groups of countries) rival the
United States in one or more dimensions of power. An effort to assert U.S.
hegemony is thus bound to fail: doing so would stimulate
international resistance, which in turn would make the costs of
hegemony all the greater. In addition, U.S. advantages are not permanent.
For the same reasons that current U.S. advantages are limited, the U.S. position relative to
others is eroding. The reality is that other countries and non-state actors (be they
Osama Bin Laden, Amnesty International, the International Criminal Court, or George Soros
and one of his hedge funds) are accumulating ever more significant amounts of
power in one or more forms. In addition, American society and domestic
politics will hasten the fading of American primacy. De Tocqueville's judgment that
democracy is ill-suited for the conduct of foreign policy goes double for world leadership.
The result will be a world more multipolar than the present one. But
here again, multipolarity is simply a description. It tells us about the distribution of power in
the world, not about the character or quality of international relations. Multipolarity can
reflect a world in which several hostile but roughly equal states confront one another-or a
world in which a number of states, each possessing significant power, work together in
common pursuits. The purpose of American foreign policy should not be to resist
multipolarity (which in any event would be futile) but to define it. As much as possible, the
U.S. objective should be to persuade other centers of political, economic and
military power to see it as their self-interest to support constructive notions
of how international society should be organized and operated. The proper
goal for American foreign policy, then, is to encourage the emergence of a
multipolarity characterized by cooperation and concert rather than
competition and conflict. In such a world, order would not be limited to non-belligerence
based on a balance of power (or fear of escalation) but rather on something much more
broad, reflecting agreement on both global purposes and the means to accomplish them.
23
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BHR
Multipolarity Coming – EU
THE EU CAN ACCOMPLISH MULTIPOLAR STABILITY

Gray in 3
John, Author, New Statesman Ltd, NS Essay, for Europe’s sake, keep Britain out
Manifestly, the American military does not possess the skills that are needed in circumstances such
as these. Even if it did, it would not have the resources. The Rumsfeld doctrine - supposedly vindicated by the success of the war - demands small, highly
mobile forces equipped with the latest technology. This can only mean a reduction in the size of the US army. There will simply not be enough boots on the
ground to sustain the messy, colonial-type occupation that will be required. Above all, it is not clear that the American public will pay the blood price of
empire. A small but steady flow of body bags will surely be the price of a long-running American occupation of Iraq. The attacks of 11 September may
have made Americans more ready to tolerate the burdens of war - including a far-reaching curtailment of their liberties. But this does not mean they will
American culture harbours a strong

accept an unending stream of casualties. Today, as in previous periods,
strain of isolationism. America may turn against Bush's policies in the Middle
East if they involve burdensome commitments of money and personnel - to say nothing of the sort of attacks on Americans that we have just seen in
Riyadh. Yet a sizeable long-term military presence seems required if the US is to retain control of the country. How else can the emergence of an Iranian-
style regime be forestalled and US control of Iraqi oil maintained? The Bush administration's muddle in Iraq exemplifies a larger incoherence in American
thinking. Under the influence of neoconservative ideologues, the US has embarked on an imperial mission it has neither the means nor the will to sustain.
There is nothing new in American imperialism. Despite its anti-colonial self-image, the US has long enjoyed the privileges of empire in Latin America, and it
has used its control of transnational institutions such as the IMF to exploit developing countries in classically imperialist fashion. What is new is the scale
The US is seeking to entrench a unipolar global regime at a time

of American ambitions.
when its dependency on the rest of the world has never been greater. The theory of
American imperial overstretch developed by Yale University's Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, published in 1987, may have been
premature, but it was prescient in capturing the mismatch between American imperial ambitions and growing American economic weakness. The
current weakness of the dollar shows just how vulnerable the US has
become. In part it reflects a belated realisation that the claims made for the unique productivity of the American model were largely fraudulent.
The scandals revealed at Enron and other American companies were not just examples of corporate excess. They suggest that the extravagant claims that
If international
were made for the American model of capitalism in the 1990s may well have relied on cooking the books.
investors are fleeing the dollar for the euro, one reason is that they suspect
that when they bought into American assets in the 1990s, they were robbed.
Besides showing how widely the US economic model is discredited, the weakness of the dollar is a sign
that a multipolar world is already a reality. Hostility to US Middle Eastern policies may be one reason
why the Saudis are diverting some of their resources into Europe. Similarly, resistance to the American-led global monetary regime is clearly a factor in
the recent call by the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, for Malaysia's state oil company to abandon the dollar for the euro. It is worth
remembering that Iraq converted its currency reserves from dollars to euros in October 2000. At the time, expert economic opinion was virtually
unanimous that this would prove a costly error. In fact, because the euro appreciated hugely, the Iraqi regime made a handsome profit from the exchange.
The effect of American hubris is to

Malaysia may be only the first of a number of countries to follow its example.
rally resistance to US power, and Europe is pivotal in this global reaction. America
may be able to intimidate small states by reminding them of the fate of Yemen, a desperately poor country whose economy was nearly destroyed when
Aside from the

the US cut off aid in retaliation for its opposition to the first Gulf war. It cannot bully the EU in quite the same way.
euro's growing strength, European attitudes on issues of war and peace

reflect those of the international community - not the fictitious entity invoked
by the US to rubber-stamp its unilateral decisions, but the actual community
that forms a majority in every transnational institution.
24
SDI 08-09
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Multipolarity Coming – Asia
ASIAN MULTIPOLARITY SOLVES – KEY TO US ECONOMY, CONTAINS

RIVALS
Layne in 96
Chris, Professor of Political Scienc, less is more – realistic foreign policies for east asia
http://www.looksmartcollege.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_n43/ai_18298481?pi=scl
The United States would benefit strategically from East Asian multipolarity in
two ways. First, forcing others to channel resources from economic
development to national security would enhance America's relative
economic power. A Japan that internalized its security costs would no longer
be able to concentrate as intently on the trading state strategy that gives
Tokyo the upper hand in the U.S.-Japan economic competition. As well, Japan
and China -- America's East Asian geopolitical rivals -- would be contained
without the United States having to risk direct confrontation with either.
25
SDI 08-09
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Multipolarity Coming – EU and Japan
MULTIPOLARITY GOOD – EU AND JAPAN CAN FILL-IN

Kolko in 2
PhD from Harvard, Professor of History @ York, Another Century of War? Pg. 150
The way America's leaders are running the nation's foreign policy is not
creating peace or security at home or stability abroad. The reverse is the case: its
interventions have been counterproductive. Everyone-Americans and those
people who are the objects of their efforts-would be far better off if the United
States did nothing, closed its bases overseas and withdrew its fleets
everywhere, and allowed the rest of the world to find its own way without
American weapons and troops. Communism is dead, and Europe and Japan
are powerful and can take care of their own affairs as they think best. There
is every reason for the United States to adapt to these facts; to continue as it
has over the past half century is to admit it has the vainglorious and
irrational ambition to run the world.
26
SDI 08-09
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Heg Unsustainable – Political Will
THE US WILL BECOME MORE ISOLATIONIST AND UNILATERIST –

demographics and political will
Kupchan in 2
Charles A., professor of international relations in the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at
Georgetown University, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, served on the National Security Council
during the first Clinton administration, The End of the American Era
In contrast, this book treats the emergence of a more diffident and difficult U.S. internationalism as an inevitable
consequence of the absence of a major adversary Europe will challenge American primacy, but it will not be the
Terrorism will remain a threat to
type of enemy that evokes America’s global engagement.
Americans at home and abroad. But even as the United States engages in
isolated strikes against terrorists and their sponsors, it will also fortify the
homeland and rein in its overseas commitments in an attempt to cordon
itself off from such threats. A national economy that has cooled off and
demographic change in the United States will also dampen the country’s
enthusiasm for the expansive, multilateral brand of internationalism that it
has practiced for the past five decades. Even if America were to maintain its
material preponderance for years to come, a new isolationism and a rising
unilateralism would still bring about a major change in the global landscape.
27
SDI 08-09
BHR
OSB Good – Solves Conflict / MP Key
OFFSHORE BALANCING GIVES THE UNITED STATES STRATEGIC

FLEXIBILITY IN CHOOSING ITS COMMITMENTS. REGIONAL
BALANCES OF POWER WILL DETER VIOLENCE AND HEGEMONIC
CHALLENGERS
Layne in 2
Professor of Political Science, Christopher & Ben Schwarz, “A New Grand Strategy”, Atlantic
Monthly, Jan 2002, vol. 289, no. 1
the experiences of Britain and America highlight the central

Taken together,
feature of the offshore balancing strategy: it allows for burden shifting, rather
than burden sharing. Offshore balancers can afford to be bystanders in the opening
stages of conflict. Because the security of others is most immediately at risk, an offshore balancer can be confident that those others will attempt to
defend themselves. Often they will do so expeditiously, obviating the offshore balancer's intervention. If, on the other hand, a predominant power seems
to be winning, an offshore balancer can intervene decisively to forestall its victory (as Britain did against Philip II, Louis XIV, and Napoleon). And if the
offshore balancer must intervene, the state aspiring to dominance will already have been at least somewhat bloodied, and thus not as formidable as it was
The same dynamics apply—or would,

for those who had the geopolitical misfortune to constitute the first line of defense.
if the United States gave them a chance—in regional conflicts, although not quite as
dramatically. Great powers that border restive neighbors, or that are
economically dependent on unstable regions, have a much larger
interest than does the United States in policing those areas. Most
regional power balances (the relative positions of, say, Hungary and Romania, or of one
sub-Saharan state and another) need not concern the United States.
America must intervene only to prevent a single power from
dominating a strategically crucial area—and then only if the efforts of great
powers with a larger stake in that region have failed to redress the imbalance. So for an
offshore balancing strategy to work, the world must be multipolar—
that is, there must be several other great powers, and major regional powers
as well, onto which the United States can shift the burden of maintaining
stability in various parts of the world. For America the most important grand-
strategic issue is what relations it will have with these new great powers. In fostering a
multipolar world—in which the foreign and national-security policies of the emerging
great powers will be largely devoted to their rivalries with one another and to quelling and
containing regional instability—an offshore balancing strategy is, of course,
opportunistic and self-serving. But it also exercises restraint and shows
geopolitical respect. By abandoning the “preponderance” strategy's
extravagant objectives, the United States can minimize the risks of
open confrontation with the new great powers.
28
SDI 08-09
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OSB Good – Solves Conflict
OFFSHORE BALANCING THE ONLY WAY TO MAXIMIZE AMERICA’S

RELATIVE ADVANTAGES AND AVOID THE PITFALLS OF HEGEMONY
Layne in 98
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, “Rethinking American Grand Strategy”, World
Policy Journal, Summer 1998, vol. 15, no. 2
The underlying premise of an offshore balancing strategy is that it will become increasingly
more difficult, dangerous, and costly for the United States to maintain order in, and control
over, the international political system. In contrast to the strategy of
preponderance, offshore balancing would define U.S. interests narrowly in
terms of defending America's territorial integrity and preventing the rise of a
Eurasian hegemon (that is, a state so powerful that, like Nazi Germany had Hitler been
victorious, would potentially command sufficient resources to threaten North America). As
an offshore balancer, the United States would disengage from its military
commitments in Europe, Japan, and South Korea. The overriding objectives of
an offshore balancing strategy would be to insulate the United States from
possible future great power wars and maximize its relative power position in
the international system. Offshore balancing would reject the strategy of
preponderance's commitment to economic interdependence because interdependence has
negative strategic consequences. Offshore balancing also would eschew any ambition to
perpetuate U.S. hegemony and would abandon the ideological pretensions embedded in the
strategy of preponderance. As an offshore balancer, there would be a strong presumption
against U.S. involvement in the following kinds of activities: assertive promotion of
democracy abroad; participation in peace enforcement operations; rescuing "failed states"
(like Somalia and Haiti); and the use of military power for the purpose of humanitarian
intervention. U.S. involvement in these types of external actions should be viewed
skeptically because they seldom affect the geostrategic and security
interests that would be the core of an American offshore balancing grand
strategy.
29
SDI 08-09
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***AT: Heg Good***
Decline doesn’t lead to vacuum
CLAIMS OF THE WORLD GOING TO HELL THE SECOND THE U.S.

WITHDRAWS ARE FALSE, DERIVED FROM THREAT EXAGERATION
TO JUSTIFY HEGEMONIC POLICIES
Layne in 6
The entire fabric of American grand strategy would unravel if U.S. allies no longer felt
reassured by Washington’s security umbrella. If the credibility of U.S. commitments to
regional stability is questioned, that “in turn could cause allies and friends to adopt more
divergent defense policies and postures, thereby weakening the web of alliances and
coalitions on which we rely to protect our interests abroad.”6’ Hence, credibility is
viewed by U.S. decision makers as a vital interest.62 To establish its credibility,
however, the United States often is forced to intervene in conflicts where its own interests
are not at stake~3 Indeed, Robert MeMahon has noted that this explains a paradox: the
United States tends to intervene most frequently “in areas of demonstrably marginal value
to core U.S. economic and security interests.”64 Precisely by being willing to fight in
such places, the United States, or so policymakers believe, establishes its
credibility.65 Of course, it’s not so easy for U.S. policymakers to explain to
domestic audiences why the United States must intervene in regions of
marginal strategic value, or why it must act before there is any obvious
threat to U.S. interests. This is why, as John A. Thompson puts it, threat
exaggeration—which includes the frequent invocation of domino imagery—is
an American foreign policy tradition.66 As Jerome Slater observes,
notwithstanding the cold war’s end, the domino theory retains its vitality in
U.S. strategic thought. There are two reasons for this. First, the United States
remains overwhelmingly powerful, which tempts it to define its security
interests extravagantly. Second, the Wilsonian ideology that underpins U.S.
foreign policy has inculcated a belief that the United States has an obligation
“to provide world leadership for global order, collective security, democracy,
and capitalism.”
30
SDI 08-09
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AT: Intervention Good – Bush Blunder
NO RISK OF HEG GOOD OFFENSE – BUSH WILL BLUNDER FOREIGN

INTERVENTION WITH POOR MILITARY PLANNING
Kolko in 2
PhD from Harvard, Professor of History @ York, Another Century of War? Pg. 78
It is inaccurate to call America's leaders duplicitous, because that implies

they really know where they want to go. They do not, and whether one
describes their state of mind after the end of the cold war as being in
transition or confused is less important than the fact that it is folly for any
nation to place its confidence in America. What is certain is that until
September 11 the Bush administration had embarked on a unilateralist
course, one that dismissed treaties and distressed many of its allies, only to
completely reverse itself for some months; it is now returning to its
unilateralism, which fits its triumphalism much better. Its traditional allies remain
skeptical that it can be trusted to continue with its new "internationalism"
once it believes it has won its war on terrorism.
31
SDI 08-09
BHR
EVEN IF MILITARY POWER DETERS WAR, HEGEMONY ENSURES

THE POLITICAL SOLUTIONS TO WAR GO AWRY – sex edited
Kolko in 2
PhD from Harvard, Professor of History @ York, Another Century of War? Pg. 140-141
The United States has more military equipment than ever, and since 1950
Pentagon spending has become one of the traditional and indispensable foundations of
American prosperity. There is no indication that it will decline. But there are no
technological quick fixes to political problems. Solutions are political. They
require another mentality and much more wisdom, including a readiness to
compromise and, above all, to stay out of the affairs of nations. Otherwise,
they will not succeed. Worse yet, its reliance on weapons and force has exacerbated or
created far more problems for the United States than it has solved. After September 11
there can be no doubt that arms have not brought security to America. It is
not only in the world's interest that America adapt to the realities of the
twenty-first century. What is new is that it is now, more than ever, in the
interest of the American people themselves. It is imperative that the United
States acknowledge the limits of its power-limits that are inherent in its own
military illusions and in the very nature of a world that is far too big and
complex for any country to even dream of managing. Humankind cannot
endure another century of war, because future wars will be far more
destructive, to civilians as well as soldiers.
32
SDI 08-09
BHR
SEVERE MILITARY CONFUSION PREVENTS SUCCESS IN MILITARY

ADVENTURES
Kolko in 2
PhD from Harvard, Professor of History @ York, Another Century of War? Pg. 138-139
A foreign policy that is both immoral and unsuccessful is not simply stupid, it
is increasingly dangerous to those who practice or favor it. That is the
predicament that the United States now confronts. Communism no longer exists,
American military power has never been greater, but the United
States has never been so insecure and its people more vulnerable.
After fifty years of interventions in the affairs of dozens of nations on every continent
(interventions that varied from training police and armies to supplying them with lethal
equipment and advisers to teach them how to use it), and after two major wars involving its
own manpower, America's sustained, intense, and costly efforts have only
culminated in greater risks to itself. There is more instability and violence in
the world than ever, and now they have finally reached America's own
shores-and its political leaders have declared wars will continue. By any
criterion, above all the security of its own citizens, the United States'
international policies, whether military or political, have produced
consummate failures. It is neither realistic nor ethical. Its foreign policy is
a shambles of confusions and contradictions, pious, superficial morality
combined with cynical adventurism, all of which has undermined, not
strengthened, the safety of the American people and left a world more
dangerous than ever.
33
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Great Power Wars
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP DOES NOT CHECK POWER RIVALRY—THE

US DOESN’T HAVE THAT MUCH INFLUENCE AND CREEPING
MULTIPOLARITY MEANS THAT IT WILL BREAK-DOWN SOON
Layne in 6
A second contention advanced by proponents of American hegemony is that

the United States cannot withdraw from Eurasia because a great power war
there could shape the postconflict international system in ways harmful to U.S. interests.
Hence, the United States “could suffer few economic losses during a war, or even benefit
somewhat, and still find the postwar environment quite costly to its own trade and
investment.”59 This really is not an economic argument but rather an argument about the
consequences of Eurasia’s political and ideological, as well as economic, closure. Proponents
of hegemony fear that if great power wars in Eurasia occur, they could bring to power
militaristic or totalitarian regimes. Here, several points need to be made. First, proponents
of American hegemony overestimate the amount of influence that the United
States has on the international system. There are numerous possible geopolitical
rivalries in Eurasia. Most of these will not culminate in war, but it’s a good bet that some will.
But regardless of whether Eurasian great powers remain at peace, the
outcomes are going to be caused more by those states’ calculations of their
interests than by the presence of U.S. forces in Eurasia. The United States has
only limited power to affect the amount of war and peace in the international
system, and whatever influence it does have is being eroded by the creeping
multipolarization under way in Eurasia. Second, the possible benefits of
“environment shaping” have to be weighed against the possible costs of U.S.
involvement in a big Eurasian war. Finally, distilled to its essence, this argument
is a restatement of the fear that U.S. security and interests
inevitably will be jeopardized by a Eurasian hegemon. This threat is
easily exaggerated, and manipulated, to disguise ulterior motives
for U.S. military intervention in Eurasia.
34
SDI 08-09
BHR
no war will be large enough to bring in the us

America
America's core national interests are easily

For the first time in five decades,
within reach. Small wars will likely continue to be frequent, but those wars
cannot spread easily to U.S. shores, and their results will not shift the global
power balance. Similarly, military threats to America's prosperity are quite low.
In fact, the only way the United States could jeopardize its favorable position
is to meddle in other nations' affairs, join their wars, and overspend on
defense.
35
SDI 08-09
BHR
EXTENDED DETERRENCE doesn’t prevent wars – rational actors

won’t give up their homeland for sake of allies
Layne in 6
During the cold war, the United States sought to deter a Soviet strategic nuclear
attack on Western Europe by extending its strategic nuclear umbrella to cover its NATO
allies. However, deterring attacks on overseas allies and their interests—”extended
deterrence”—is not so easy.’7 The reason is straightforward: “One of the perpetual
problems of deterrence on behalf of third parties is that the costs a state is
willing to bear are usually much less than if its own territory is at stake, and it
is very difficult to pretend otherwise.”18 The logic of extended deterrence in a
nuclear world is simple: if push comes to shove, it’s better that one’s allies
be conquered than for one’s homeland to be destroyed. Nuclear weapons
magnify the self-help imperative that is at the core of international polities. For nuclear
great powers, it’s foolish to risk your existence for the sake of allies. Yet,
extended deterrence cannot work unless both potential challengers and the
defender’s allies are convinced that the defender’s commitment is credible
36
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Great Power Wars – European Deterrence
neighborhood deterrence prevents conflict – US is not key

America
the United States has by far

The result of America's profligate defense spending is that
the largest and most capable of the world's air forces and navies; an army that
can defeat any other; and a marine corps that has personnel and equipment comparable to
the entire armed forces of the United Kingdom, one of America's leading "competitors." The
United States can project and sustain military strength further and longer
than anyone else. In the past, the United States feared that a hostile adversary might
unite the rest of the world's industrial capacity through conquest, generating enough
military and economic power to threaten U.S. security. But unlike the situation during the
Cold War, no hostile country now has a chance of conquering Europe or East
Asia. Each of the Eurasian great powers (with the exception of Russia) spends
about the same amount on its military as the others, which suggests that
none could easily overpower the rest. There is a rough balance of power on
the continent. Furthermore, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China all
have nuclear weapons, which provide the ultimate guarantee against
conquest. Great power conflict may continue, but Eurasia's industrial resources will stay
divided. America's primary national interest, physical security, does not
demand much in the way of defense spending or overseas deployment.
37
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Great Power Wars – Empirics
hegemony does not allow the us to win wars

Wallerstein in 3
Immanuel, Ph.D. Columbia University (1959), former President of the International
Sociological Association, chair of the International Gulbenkian Commission on the
Restructuring of the Social Sciences, Senior research Scholar at Yale University, The Decline
of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World, pg. 24-25
Undoubtedly, the military remains the United States’ strongest card; in fact, it is
the only card. Today, the United States wields the most formidable military apparatus in the
world. And if claims of new, unmatched military technologies are to be believed, the U.S.
military edge over the rest of the world is consid¬erably greater today than it was just a
decade ago. But does that mean, then, that the United States can invade Iraq, conquer it
rapidly, and install a friendly and stable regime? Unlikely. Bear in mind that of the
three serious wars the U.S. military has fought since 1945 (Korea, Vietnam, and
the Gulf War), one ended in defeat and two in draws—not exactly a glorious
record. Saddam Hussein’s army is not that of the Taliban, and his in¬ternal military control
is far more coherent. A U.S. invasion would necessarily involve a serious land force, one that
would have to fight its way to Baghdad and would likely suffer signifi¬cant casualties. Such
a force would also need staging grounds, and Saudi Arabia has made clear that it does not
wish to serve in this capacity. Would Kuwait or Turkey help out? Perhaps, if Washington calls
in all its chips. Meanwhile, Saddam can be ex¬pected to deploy all weapons at his disposal,
and it is precisely the U.S. government that keeps fretting over how nasty those weapons
might be. The United States may twist the arms of regimes in the region, but popular
sentiment there clearly views the whole affair as reflecting a deep anti-Arab bias in the
United States. Can such a conflict be won? The British general staff has apparently already
informed Prime Minister Tony Blair that it does not believe so. And there is always the
matter of “second fronts.” Following the Gulf War, U.S. armed forces sought to prepare
for the possi¬bility of fighting two simultaneous regional wars. After a while, the Pentagon
quietly abandoned the idea as impractical and costly. But who can be sure that no
potential U.S. enemies would strike when the United States appears to be
bogged down in Iraq? Consider, too, the question of U.S. popular tolerance of
nonvictories. Americans hover between a patriotic fervor that lends support
to all wartime presidents and a deep isolationist urge. Since 1945, patriotism
has hit a wall whenever the death toll has risen. Why should today’s reaction differ? And
even if the hawks (who are almost all civilians) feel impervious to public opinion, U.S. Army
generals, burned by Vietnam, do not.
38
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Benign Hegemony
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A ‘BENIGN HEGEMON’—POST-COLD

WAR POLICIES PROVE
Layne in 6
just because the United States is a democracy doesn’t mean that

Finally,
others won’t fear its hegemonic power. When important geopolitical interests
are on the line, realpolitik, not regime type, determines great power policies.
The fact that U.S. power is unbalanced—and that Washington is so little constrained—means
that, whenever it believes its interests dictate, the United States can throw the
purported strictures of democratic benevolence out the window and act as
hegemons typically have acted. Indeed, since the end of the cold war, the nature, and
scope, of America’s hegemonic ambitions have become increasingly apparent even to its
liberal democratic allies. The post—cold war policies of the United States have caused other
states to have second thoughts about whether it really is a status quo power. And the fact
that the United States is a democratic hegemon does nothing to cause
nondemocratic states (either second-tier major powers or lesser-ranking regional
powers) to regard the United States as a benevolent hegemon. In international
politics benevolent hegemons are like unicorns—there is no such animal. Hegemons love
themselves, but others mistrust and fear them—and for good reason. In today’s world,
others dread both the over-concentration of geopolitical weight in America’s favor and the
purposes for which it may be used: No great power has a monopoly on virtue and, although
some may have a great deal more virtue than others, virtue imposed on others is not seen
as such by them. All great powers are capable of exercising a measure of self: restraint, but
they are tempted not to and the choice to practice restraint is made easier by the existence
of countervailing power amid the possibility of it being exercised.4 While Washington’s self-
proclaimed benevolence is inherently ephemeral, the hard fist of American power is
tangible. Hence, others must worry constantly that if U.S. intentions change, or
if a multilateral United States reverts to unilateralism—as arguably has happened
under the Bush II administration—there is a good chance that they are going to get
whacked.
39
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Benign Hegemony
no hegemon is benign – military primacy promotes backlash

Layne in 6
Christopher, Professor of Political Science, The Unipolar Illusion Revisisted, International
Security, Muse
there are no benevolent hegemons. In today’s world,

In international politics
other states dread both the overconcentration of geopolitical infuence in the
United States’ favor and the purposes for which it may be used. As Paul Sharp
writes, “No great power has a monopoly on virtue and, although some may
have a great deal more virtue than others, virtue imposed on others is not
seen as such by them. All great powers are capable of exercising a measure of self-
restraint, but they are tempted not to and the choice to practice restraint is made easier by
the existence of countervailing power and the possibility of it being exercised.”74 While
Washington’s self-proclaimed benevolence is inherently ephemeral, the hard fist of U.S.
power is tangible.
40
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Benign Hegemony
SUPPOSED US BENEVOLENCE DOES NOT PREVENT BALNCING

Layne in 7
The claim that others regard American primacy as benevolent because of

U.S. soft power and shared values is similarly dubious. And again, Iraq played an
important role in exploding this myth. Beginning with the run-up to the invasion of
Iraq to the present, one public opinion survey after another has revealed that a vast "values
gap" exists between the United States and the rest of the world. Tellingly, this gap exists not
just between the United States and East Asia and the Middle East, but between the United
States and Europe. One would think that if there is any part of the world where
shared values really do cause others to view American primacy as
benevolent, Europe would be the place. Yet, a September 2004 poll of eight
thousand respondents on both sides of the Atlantic found that 83 percent of Americans,
and 79 percent of Europeans, agreed that Europe and the United States have
different social and cultural values.48 On a host of issues-including the death penalty,
the role of religion in everyday life, and attitudes toward the role of international law and
institutions-Europeans and Americans hold divergent views, not common ones. The Iraq
war has exposed the huge gulf in values that gradually is causing the United
States and Europe to drift apart-in large measure because Europe regards
the United States as being a geopolitical rogue elephant, rather than as a
"benevolent hegemon." The problem with rogue elephants, of course, is that
when they are on the loose anyone nearby is at risk of being trampled. This
is why other states are uneasy about American primacy.
41
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Benign Hegemony
MASSIVE POWER PREVENTS PERCEPTIONS OF BENEVOLENCE

Layne in 7
Christopher, Professor @ TX A&M, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 68
Doubtless, American primacy has its dimension of benevolence, but a state as

powerful as the United States can never be benevolent enough to offset the
fear that other states have of its unchecked power. In international politics,
benevolent hegemons are like unicorns-there is no such animal.
Hegemons love themselves, but others mistrust and fear them-and for good
reason. In today's world, others dread both the overconcentration of geopolitical weight in
America's favor and the purposes for which it may be used. After all, "No great power
has a monopoly on virtue and, although some may have a great deal more virtue than
others, virtue imposed on others is not seen as such by them. All great powers are capable
of exercising a measure of self-restraint, but they are tempted not to and the choice to
practice restraint is made easier by the existence of countervailing power and the possibility
of it being exercised."49 While Washington's self-proclaimed benevolence is inherently
ephemeral, the hard fist of American power is tangible. Others must worry constantly that if
U.S. intentions change, bad things may happen to them. In a one-superpower world, the
overconcentration of power in America's hands is an omnipresent challenge
to other states' security, and Washington's ability to reassure others of its
benevolence is limited by the very enormity of its power.
42
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Benign Hegemony
THE END OF BIPOLARITY REMOVED THE LAST MAJOR

CONSTRAINT TO AMERICAN CAPRIOUSNESS—A SPAT OF RECENT
INTERVENTIONS PROVES IT
Layne in 6
Few raised their eyebrows about Panama (1989) or Haiti (1994, 2004). After all, the United
States has a track record of wielding a big stick to maintain stability in its own backyard. But
the two wars with Iraq (1991, 2003), the U.S. military interventions in the Balkans (Bosnia in
1995, Kosovo in 1999), and the invasion of Afghanistan (2001) do stand out. The first war
with Iraq was fought to exert U.S. geopolitical primacy in the Gulf. The Balkan interventions
aimed to “strengthen Washington’s control of NATO, the major institution for maintaining
U.S. influence in European affairs” and to “project American power into the East
Mediterranean region where it could link up with a growing U.S. military presence in the
Middle East.”3 Afghanistan allowed the United States to do more than go after a! Qaeda and
the Taliban. The United States shored up its strategic position in the Middle
East while simultaneously extending its reach into Central Asia and, in the
process, challenging Russia’s influence in Moscow’s own backyard.
Had the cold war not ended it is doubtful that the United States would have
fought these wars. Why did the cold war’s end lead to a new wave of U.S. expansion?
That’s easy. After the Soviet collapse, the United States stood head and
shoulders above the rest of the world, militarily and economically. The United
States, moreover, was imbued with an expansive conception of its world role and its
interests. By removing the only real check on U.S. power, the Soviet Union’s demise
presented the United States with the opportunity to use its capabilities to
exert more control over—to “shape”—the international political system and
simultaneously to increase its power. When the risks of doing so appear low—and the
potential rewards appear high— states with lots of power usually succumb to the temptation
to use it. In the years since the cold war the United States has extended its
strategic reach because it has had the motive, means, and opportunity to do
so.
43
SDI 08-09
BHR
AT: Global Challengers
NO RISK OF A ‘KHALILZAD’ GLOBAL CHALLENGER SCENARIO—

REGIONAL BALANCERS WILL COUNTER HEGEMONS, NUCLEAR
DETERRENCE PREVENTS MAJOR CONFLICTS AND OFFSHORE
BALANCING ALWAYS GIVES THE US THE OPTION OF TAKING THE
HEGEMON DOWN LATER
Layne in 6
the
The received wisdom is that since the early twentieth century (at least), America’s grand strategy has been counterhegemonic. That is,
United States has sought to prevent a single great power from achieving a
Mackinderesque dominance of the Eurasian heartland, because a Eurasian hegemon would control enough hard power to threaten
the American homeland. This fear is invoked by U.S. strategists, along with the economic Open Door and oil access
concerns, as a reason that the United States cannot abandon its hegemonic grand strategy in favor of offshore balancing. The prospect
that a threatening hegemon will emerge in Eurasia is remote, and the

United States does not need to maintain a permanent Eurasian
military presence to guard against this possibility. The United States
has three lines of defense against a potential Eurasian hegemon: regional
power balances, distance, and its own military capabilities. Regional power balances are
America’s first line of defense against a rising Eurasian hegemon, and an offshore balancing strategy would rely on the balance-of power dynamics of a
The major powers in

twenty-first-century multipolar system to thwart a distant great power seeking Eurasian predominance.
Eurasia have a much more immediate interest in stopping a rising hegemon

in their midst than does the United Sates, and it’s money in the bank that some of them will step up to the plate
and balance against a powerful, expansionist state in their own neighborhood. In a multipolar system, the question is not whether balancing will occur, hut
which state(s) will to do it. Here is where the logic of passing the buck comes into play.68 Offshore balancing would aim to capitalize on the strategic
advantages of America’s insular position and pass the buck for stopping a Eurasian hegemon to those whose security would be most
immediatelyjeopardized.69 Insularity allows the United States to stand aloof from others’ security competitions and engage in bystanding and buck-
passing behavior that compels others to take on the risks and costs of counterhegemonic balancing in Eurasia.° Offshore balancing
is a hedging strategy. It recognizes that if regional power balances fail, the United States might need to intervene
counterhegemonicallv, because a Eurasian hegemon might pose a threat to American security. However, an offshore balancing strategy would not assume
that the rise of a twenty-first-century Eurasian hegemon inevitably would threaten the United States. There is a strong case to be made that the
nuclear revolution has transformed the geopolitical context with respect to
America’s interests in Eurasia in two crucial ways. First, nuclear weapons have made
the Eurasian balance less salient to the United States. Because of nuclear
deterrence (and geography), fear that a future Eurasian hegemon would
command sufficient resources to imperil the United States arguably is a
strategic artifact of the pre-nuclear era.7’ Second, even as the impact of the Eurasian
balance of power has declined as a factor in America’s security, in a nuclear world the
likely cost of U.S. intervention in a great power war in Eurasia has risen.
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AT: Hegemony Inevitable
POWER STRUCTURES ALLOWS, BUT DOES NOT NECESSITATE

HEGEMONY—INTERNAL VARIABLES LIKE POLICY CAN DICTATE
HEGEMONY
Layne in 6
My approach in this book is rooted firmly in neoclassical realism.26 Neoclassical realists, as

well as diplomatic historians, believe that grand strategies result from the interaction of
systemic factors—especially the distribution of power in the international system—and
domestic dynamics. This is certainly true of the United States. As Thomas G. Paterson says,
it is the interplay of structural and unit-level variables that explains U.S.
grand strategic behavior. The international system conditions U.S. grand
strategy, he observes, but does not control it. “For that control,” Paterson observes,
“we look inward at a number of factors: economic, strategic, political,
ideological, cultural, and social.”27 To explain America’s foreign policy since the early
1940s, I propose a theory of American grand strategy that I call “extraregional hegemony
theory.”
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AT: Hegemony Inevitable
THE US WON’T BE ‘SUCKED BACK IN’—OFFSHORE BALANCING

ALLOWS IT TO PICK ITS FIGHTS.
Layne in 6
The historical record does not support the claim that European and Asian wars
invariably compel the United States to intervene. The United States does not
get “sucked into” Eurasian wars. Wars are not forces of nature that magnetically draw
states into conflict against their will. Policymakers have volition. They decide whether to go
to war. I The United States could have allowed an offshore balancing strategy
and probably remained out of both world wars (and certainly out of World War I).
However, although America’s interests would have allowed it to remain safely on the
sidelines, America’s ambitions—and its ideology—caused it to become involved iii these
conflicts. In this sense, far from enhancing America’s security, the grand strategic
internationalism to which those ambitions has given rise has contributed to American
insecurity.
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***Heg Bad MPX***
***Counterbalancing Shell***
AMERICAN POWER IS UNIQUELY THREATENING BECAUSE IT

LACKS NO COMMON THREAT TO INDUCE RESTRAINT—STATES
WILL balance
Waltz in 2k
(Prof at UC Berkeley) Kenneth, “Structural Realism After the Cold War”, International
Security, Summer, vol. 25, no. 1, p. asp
Will the preponderant power of the United States elicit similar reactions? Unbalanced
power, whoever wields it, is a potential danger to others. The powerful state may, and the United States
does, think of itself as acting for the sake of peace, justice, and well-being in the world. These terms, however, are defined to the liking of the powerful,
which may conflict with the preferences and interests of others. In international politics, overwhelming power repels and leads others to try to balance
With benign intent, the United States has behaved and, until its power
against it.
is brought into balance, will continue to behave in ways that sometimes

frighten others. For almost half a century, the constancy of the Soviet threat
produced a constancy of American policy. Other countries could rely on the
United States for protection because protecting them seemed to serve American security interests.
Even so, beginning in the 1950s, Western European countries and, beginning in the 1970s, Japan had increasing doubts about the reliability of the
American nuclear deterrent. As Soviet strength increased, Western European countries began to wonder whether the United States could be counted on to
use its deterrent on their behalf, thus risking its own cities. When President Jimmy Carter moved to reduce American troops in South Korea, and later when
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and strengthened its forces in the Far East, Japan developed similar worries. With the disappearance of the Soviet
the United States no longer faces a major threat to its security. As General
Union,
Colin Powell said when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I'm running out of
demons. I'm running out of enemies. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung."[68] Constancy of
threat produces constancy of policy; absence of threat permits policy to become capricious.
When few if any vital interests are endangered, a country's policy becomes
sporadic and self-willed. The absence of serious threats to American security gives the United States wide latitude in making
foreign policy choices. A dominant power acts internationally only when the spirit moves it. One example is enough to show this. When Yugoslavia's
collapse was followed by genocidal war in successor states, the United States failed to respond until Senator Robert Dole moved to make Bosnia's peril an
issue in the forthcoming presidential election; and it acted not for the sake of its own security but to maintain its leadership position in Europe. American
policy was generated not by external security interests, but by internal political pressure and national ambition. Aside from specific threats it may pose,
unbalanced power leaves weaker states feeling uneasy and gives them
reason to strengthen their positions. The United States has a long history of
intervening in weak states, often with the intention of bringing democracy to them.
American behavior over the past century in Central America provides little evidence of self-
restraint in the absence of countervailing power. Contemplating the history of the
United States and measuring its capabilities, other countries may well wish
for ways to fend off its benign ministrations. Concentrated power invites
distrust because it is so easily misused. To understand why some states want
to bring power into a semblance of balance is easy, but with power so sharply
skewed, what country or group of countries has the material capability and the political will
to bring the "unipolar moment" to an end?
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CBal – Link
hegemony leads to counter-balancing

America
Fourth,a policy of primacy, even without a preventive war, will breed anger
and resentment around the world. It will turn allies into neutrals and neutrals
into enemies. American culture, prominently represented by movies and television
programs, is already eating away at traditional cultures around the world. English has
become the universal language of business, science, entertainment, and diplomacy.
American consumer products have become a part of daily life around the world, and high
product standards, regulations, civil liberties, and political styles beckon all.87 Even without
a foreign policy of hegemony, the United States threatens those who hold power in much of
the world.88 It is quite surprising that no coalition has banded together to
balance against America's overwhelming power-a testimony to the trust that
its defense-oriented foreign policy engendered among its Cold War allies.89 A
decision to consolidate American hegemony would undo that good
will. Americans wonder today who the next threat to great power
security may be. To the rest of the world, it may be becoming clear:
the only country capable of threatening them is the United States.
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CBal - Link
OTHER COUNTRIES WILL BALANCE – TERRITORY, DIPLOMACY,

ECONOMICS, AND SECRET COOPERATION
Pape in 5
Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, Soft balancing against the United
States, International Security
TERRITORIAL DENIAL. Superior states often benefit from access to the territory of third
parties as staging areas for ground forces or as transit for air and naval forces. Denying
access to this territory can reduce the superior state's prospects for victory,
such as by increasing the logistical problems for the superior state or
compelling it to fight with air or sea power alone, constraints that effectively
reduce the overall force that a stronger state can bring to bear against a
weaker one. ENTANGLING DIPLOMACY. Even strong states do not have
complete freedom to ignore either the rules and procedures of important
international organizations or accepted diplomatic practices without losing substantial
support for their objectives. Accordingly, states may use international institutions
and ad hoc diplomatic maneuvers to delay a superior state's plan for war and
so reduce the element of surprise and give the weaker side more time to
prepare; delay may even make the issue irrelevant. Especially if the superior state is also a
democracy, entangling diplomacy works not only by affecting the balance of military
capabilities that can be brought to bear in the dispute but also by strengthening domestic
opposition to possible adventures within the superior state. ECONOMIC
STRENGTHENING. Militarily strong, threatening states that are the targets of
balancing efforts usually derive their military superiority from possession of
great economic strength. One way of balancing effectively, at least in the long run,
would be to shift relative economic power in favor of the weaker side. The most obvious way
of doing this is through regional trading blocs that increase trade and economic growth for
members while directing trade away from nonmembers. If the superior state can be
excluded from the most important such blocs, its overall trade and growth rates may suffer
over time. SIGNALS OF RESOLVE TO BALANCE. Second-ranked powers seeking
to act collectively against a sole superpower confront intense concern that
the needed collective action will not materialize. Soft balancing, in addition to its
direct usefulness in restraining aggression by a unipolar leader, may also address this
problem by helping to coordinate expectations of mutual balancing behavior. If multiple
states can cooperate, repeatedly, in some of the types of measures listed
above, they may gradually increase their trust in each other's willingness to
cooperate against the unipolar leader's ambitions. Thus, a core purpose of soft
balancing is not to coerce or even to impede the superior state's current actions, but to
demonstrate resolve in a manner that signals a commitment to resist the superpower's
future ambitions. Accordingly, the measure of success for soft balancing is not
limited to whether the sole superpower abandons specific policies, but also
includes whether more states join a soft-balancing coalition against the
unipolar leader.
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CBal – Link – EU
eu can counterbalance
Nye in 3
Joseph, Europe is too powerful to be ignored, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government , Financial Times
the sceptics have a myopic view of power that focuses too

Even more important,
heavily on the military dimension, where the US excels. But power in the 21st century
is distributed differently on different issues and resembles a three-dimensional chess game.
On the top board of military issues, where US military expenditure is equal to the next two
dozen countries combined, the world is unipolar. There is only one superpower. It is likely to
remain that way unless Europeans want to double the proportion of gross national product
spent on defence to equal US levels. But even more modest European capabilities
should not be discounted. European participation in a coalition against Iraq
helps the legitimacy of the US cause and European nations could play a
crucial role in the aftermath. There are more European than US troops
helping to keep the peace today in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. The
middle board of economic issues is a sharp contrast from the military board. Here the
world has a multipolar balance of power. The US cannot achieve a global
trade agreement without the agreement of Europe and others. In the area of
antitrust, General Electric was unable to merge with Honeywell because the
European Commission opposed the move. And recently, Microsoft had to make
significant changes to its new passport system in order to meet European
privacy regulations. This is hardly the "American hegemony" that some
proclaim. Moreover, despite the political popularity of the US in Donald Rumsfeld's "new
Europe", the US is becoming less prominent in business and investment there.
EU countries account for three-quarters of the "new Europe's" trade. The bottom board of
the three-dimensional chess game consists of transnational issues that cross borders outside
the control of governments. Examples include illegal migration, drugs, crime, the spread of
infectious diseases, global climate change and, of course, transnational terrorist networks.
On this board, power is chaotically organised and it makes no sense to speak of unipolarity,
hegemony or American empire. While these issues are having an increasing effect on the
lives of ordinary Americans, they cannot be solved by military power or by the US acting
alone. Co-operation with other countries, particularly the capable Europeans,
is essential to Americans' ability to get the outcomes they want. Europe is
not likely soon to become the military equal of the US but it has enough sticks and
carrots to produce significant hard power, the ability to get others to do what
they would not otherwise do. In addition, despite internal divisions, Europe's culture,
values and the success of the EU have produced a good deal of soft power, the
ability to attract rather than merely coerce others.
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CBal – Link
PREPONDERANCE WON’T SURVIVE LONG PAST THE COLD-WAR -

ALLIES WILL INEVITABLY BALANCE AGAINST THE DOMINANT
POWER
LAYNE & SCHWARZ 93
Assoc. Prof at U. of Miami, Christopher & Ben, “American Hegemony Without an Enemy”,
Foreign Policy, Fall 1993
Apart from the costs and consequences of an imperial strategy, there is an even more basic
objection to the strategy of preponderance: It cannot survive the Cold War's end.
The Soviet Union was a necessary foil for the attainment of America's larger world order
objectives. Thus, while it is doubtful that the United States will miss the Cold War per se, the
Soviet Union will, in a perverse sense, be greatly missed by America's foreign policy
establishment. At home, the Soviet threat induced the American public to
sustain the high economic and political costs associated with the national
security state. Most Americans never understood that, for this country's foreign policy
leadership, the requirements of containment fortuitously coincided with those of the world
order strategy that would have been pursued even without a Soviet threat. Thus the
American public still wonders why post Cold War defense spending must remain so high and
overseas commitments so extensive. Abroad, the Soviet Union performed a similarly useful
function for the American foreign policy establishment. For the strategy of preponderance,
the Soviets were a convenient adversary. While the Soviet Union was never powerful enough
to be truly dangerous, it was just threatening enough to cause Japan and Western Europe to
enfold themselves in the security and economic structures the United States constructed
after 1945. As historian Anders Stephanson observed, the Soviet Union served
exceedingly well as an open-ended justification for the enormous American
expansion-political, economic, and military--that took place after the war, as
a mechanism, in other words, for the United States to defend vigorously its
global interests and to intervene without compunction wherever intervention was felt
necessary.
Without a hostile USSR, however, the geopolitical equation changes because
Japan and Western Europe need not sacrifice their autonomy and interests to
secure American military protection. Moreover, a unipolar world will spur the
emergence of Germany and Japan (and possibly others) as great powers to balance
unchecked American power. Without the bipolarity that existed after World
War II, America's world order policy becomes untenable.[1]
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Soft-Balancing Link
states will counterbalance military pre-eminence by leash-slipping –

this makes heg decline inevitable
Layne in 6
Christopher, Professor of Political Science, The Unipolar Illusion Revisisted, International
Security, Muse
Notwithstanding the paucity of hard balancing against the United States,

other states have sought alternative methods of balancing against it,
especially soft balancing. To date, these efforts have failed to create a new constellation
of power in the international system. That unipolarity has not given way to a
multipolar distribution of power, however, does not mean there has
been an absence of balancing behavior by other states. It is important to differentiate
between the intentions driving states’ strategies and the outcomes those policies produce. Balancing (which is behavior at the unit level), therefore,
should not be conoated with the actual attainment of balance (which is a systemic outcome).Precisely because
counterbalancing against an actual hegemon is much more complex than
balancing against a rising one, a reconsideration of the types of state
strategies that should be categorized as balancing is needed. In particular,
there is one form of counterbalancing that heretofore has been over- looked:
leash-slipping. In this section, I define “leash-slipping.” I then offer three case studies to demonstrate that states have attempted to
counterbalance U.S. hegemonic power. The United States’ hard power poses a nonexistential (or soft) threat to others’ autonomy and interests. By
acquiring the capability to act independent of the United States in the realm
of security, however, other states can slip free of the hegemon’s leash-
like grip and gain the leverage needed to compel the United States
to respect their foreign policy interests. As Posen writes, other major states
are expected “at a minimum [to] act to buffer themselves against the caprices of the U.S.
and will try to carve out the ability to act autonomously should it become necessary.”81
Leash-slipping is not traditional hard balancing because it is not explicitly directed at
countering an existential U.S. threat. At the same time, it is a form of insurance
against a hegemon that might someday exercise its power in a predatory
and menacing fashion.82 As Robert Art puts it, a state adopting a leash-slipping strategy “does not fear an increased threat to its
physical security from another rising state; rather it is concerned about the adverse effects of that state’s rise on its general position, both political and
economic, in the international arena. This concern also may, but need not, include a worry that the rising state could cause security problems in the
leash-slipping would result in the creation

future, although not necessarily war.”83 If successful,
of new poles of power in the international system, thereby restoring

multipolarity and bringing U.S. hegemony to an end.
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Soft-Balancing Link
primacy encourages soft-balancing which transforms into military

counter-balancing – that collapses the us economy and hegemony
Pape in 5
Security, Muse
major powers are already engaging in the early stages of balancing

Second,
behavior against the United States. In the near term, France, Germany, Russia, China,
Japan, and other important regional states are unlikely to respond with traditional hard-
balancing measures, such as military buildups, war-fighting alliances, and transfers of
military technology to U.S. opponents. Directly confronting U.S. preponderance is too costly
for any individual state and too risky for multiple states operating together, at least until
major powers become confident that members of a balancing coalition will act in unison.
Instead, major [End Page 9] powers are likely to adopt what I call "soft-balancing"
measures: that is, actions that do not directly challenge U.S. military
preponderance but that use nonmilitary tools to delay, frustrate, and
undermine aggressive unilateral U.S. military policies. Soft balancing using
international institutions, economic statecraft, and diplomatic arrangements has already
been a prominent feature of the international opposition to the U.S. war against Iraq. Third,
soft balancing is likely to become more intense if the United States continues to
pursue an aggressively unilateralist national security policy. Although soft balancing
may be unable to prevent the United States from achieving specific military
aims in the near term, it will increase the costs of using U.S. power, reduce
the number of countries likely to cooperate with future U.S. military
adventures, and possibly shift the balance of economic power against the
United States. For example, Europe, Russia, and China could press hard for the
oil companies from countries other than the United States to have access to
Iraqi oil contracts, which would increase the economic costs of U.S.
occupation of the country. Europeans could also begin to pay for oil in euros
rather than in dollars, which could reduce demand for the dollar as the
world's reserve currency and so increase risks of inflation and higher interest
rates in the United States. Most important, soft balancing could eventually
evolve into hard balancing. China and European states could also increase
their economic ties with Russia while the Kremlin continues or even
accelerates support for Iran's nuclear program, a step that would negate U.S.
economic pressure on Russia while signaling the start of hard balancing
against the United States.
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Soft Balancing Link
Soft balancing is occurring against the United States Now- Multiple

area prove Hegemony being undermined Now
Pape in 5
Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, Soft balancing against the United
States, International Security
Soft balancing is replacing traditional hard balancing as the principal reaction of major powers to the Bush administration's
preventive war doctrine. Until now, there has been no concept for this form of balancing behavior, and so it has been difficult to detect
that the early stages of soft balancing against U.S. power have already started. On August 26, 2002, Vice President Dick
Cheney called for the United States to launch a preventive war to depose Saddam Hussein. In September the United States issued its new strategy,
asserting the right to wage preventive war against rogue states. Shortly thereafter, European, Middle Eastern, and Asian powers undertook a series
of steps to contain U.S. military power using soft-balancing instruments. First, France, Sweden, and other European states used
institutional rules and procedures in the UN to delay, if not head off completely, U.S. preventive war against Iraq. In
the past, the United States has often been able to legitimate foreign and military policies by gaining the approval of the UN Security Council. In
September 2002 it sought to gain such sanction for war against Iraq. France, however, threatened to veto the resolution authorizing war -- which would
have been the first time a U.S. resolution had ever been vetoed in the Security Council -- unless two conditions were met: (1) the Bush administration
would have to accept a serious effort to resolve matters with Iraq through weapons inspections; and (2) it would need to wait for a resolution authorizing
war until after the inspections were completed. The administration agreed, even though this meant delaying its plan for war. In March 2003 the UN's chief
weapons inspector, Hans Blix, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, declared that the inspections had made
substantial progress but would take months longer to complete -- a judgment that effectively prevented the United States from gaining the votes
Second, Turkey and Saudi Arabia firmly denied the United States
necessary for a Security Council resolution in support of the war.
the use of their territory for ground forces and have been ambiguous about providing basing rights for logistic efforts
and airpower. Turkey is the most important case because Bush administration officials made repeated efforts to gain its cooperation. In January
2003 the administration asked Turkey to allow the deployment of between 60,000 to 90,000 U.S. ground troops who then would cross Turkish territory into
Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Ankara balked. "The government has indicated its preparedness to meet American requests basically in all areas with the
exception of the stationing of a large number of ground forces in Turkey," a Turkish official said. Turkey was strategically important to a low-cost, high-
confidence strategy for defeating Iraq. The United States hoped to invade Iraq from Turkey in the north and Kuwait in the south, and so attack Saddam
Hussein's overstretched military forces from different directions and quickly overwhelm them. Although U.S. officials expected that they could conduct a
successful attack to conquer Iraq even without access to land bases in Turkey, they granted that such a war would be, as one ranking official put it,
Third,
"harder and uglier." U.S. ships with an infantry division waited off the coast of Turkey for weeks, but the Turkish government remained firm.n62
China and South Korea are attempting to elevate their role in diplomatic negotiations over North Korea's nuclear
program, making it more difficult for the United States to use force. In October 2002 North Korea admitted to having an
ongoing nuclear weapons program, declaring that in response to the growing U.S. threat to its country from the Bush doctrine of preventive war, it
would accelerate its efforts to build nuclear weapons. The North Korean leadership offered to halt the nuclear program if the United States would sign a
nonaggression treaty agreeing not to attack their country. While the United States has refused to make this pledge, South Korea has sided with North
Korea, asking the United States to sign a nonaggression treaty in return for Pyongyang's agreement to abandon nuclear development and meeting with
Japanese and Russian officials to gain their support for this position. December 2002 Gallup polls show that more South Koreans had a positive view of
North Korea than of the United States. Of those surveyed, 47 percent felt positively about North Korea, while 37 percent held an unfavorable view. Only 37
percent had a positive view of the United States, while 53 percent viewed it unfavorably. This represented a significant change from 1994 when 64 percent
of South Koreans surveyed said they liked the United States and only 15 percent disliked it. Also in December 2002 South Korea elected a new president,
Roh Moo Hyun, who advocates continuation of the sunshine policy of engagement with North Korea and who, after the election, met with military officials
and instructed them to draw up plans that assume a reduction in U.S. forces stationed there. "The U.S. military presence must be adjusted," says Kim
None of these moves directly challenges U.S. military power, but they all make it
Sangwoo, a foreign policy adviser to Roh.n63
more difficult for the United States to exercise that power. They impose immediate costs and constraints on the
application of U.S. power by entangling the United States in diplomatic maneuvers, reducing the pressure on
regional states to cooperate with its military plans, and bolstering the claims of target states that U.S. military threats
justify the acceleration of their own military programs. They also establish a new pattern of diplomatic activity: cooperation among
major powers that excludes the United States. If the United States remains committed to its unilateral military policies, such soft-balancing
measures are likely to become more common. Balancing against a sole superpower such as the United States will
have a logic of its own, one perhaps not wholly unique, but one that is nonetheless distinctive to the condition of
unipolarity.n64
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Soft-Balancing MPX – ME Instability
soft-balancing leads to middle-eastern instability

Pape in 5
Security, Muse
Soft balancing can also impose real military costs. The United States may be
the sole superpower, but it is geographically isolated. To project power in
Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, it depends greatly on basing rights
granted by local allies. Indeed, all U.S. victories since 1990—Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and
Afghanistan—relied on the use of short-legged tactical air and ground forces based in the
territory of U.S. allies in the region. Without regional allies, the United States might still
be able to act unilaterally, but it would have to take higher risks in blood and
treasure to do so.65 Turkey's refusal to allow U.S. ground forces on its soil
reduced the amount of heavy ground power available against Iraq by one-
third, thus compelling the United States to significantly alter its preferred
battle plan, increasing the risk of U.S. casualties in the conquest [End Page 41]
of Iraq, and leaving fewer forces to establish stability in the country
after the war.
the impact is nuclear war

Steinbach in 2
John, Israeli Nuclear weapons: a threat to piece, 3/3
http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/mat0036.htm
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in

turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and
even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle
East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a
nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong
probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is
gaining momentum (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the
Soviet Union has long been a major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely
reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish
satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear
targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S.
spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament
and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear
weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for
their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar
pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed
soon- for whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world
conflagration."
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Soft-Balancing MPX – Oil Access 1/2
soft-balancing hurts us oil access

Pape in 5
Security, Muse
Soft balancers may also become more ambitious. As the U.S. occupation of
Iraq continues, France, Germany, Russia, and China could press hard for the
UN rather than the United States to oversee the administration of oil
contracts in Iraq, perhaps even working with the new Iraqi government for this purpose.
Even if they did not succeed, U.S. freedom of action in Iraq and elsewhere in
the region would decline. If the United States gave in, it would lose control
over which companies ultimately obtain contracts for Iraq's oil, and so pay a
higher price for any continued presence in the region.
Supply disruptions kill US economy

Diamond in 5
Robbie, President of Securing America’s Energy Future, July 27, Committee on House
International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation, CQ
Congressional Testimony, LN
It is useful to review some of the key findings from Oil ShockWave. We did not seek to reach
unanimous conclusions among the participants, however, a majority of participants would
most likely embrace most of the findings and recommendations. First, there is really no such
thing as "foreign oil." Oil is a fungible global commodity. A change in supply or
demand anywhere will affect prices everywhere. Second, we discovered that
taking such a small amount of oil off the market could have significant
impact on crude oil prices and gasoline. Oil markets are currently precariously
balanced. Small supply/demand imbalances can have dramatic effects. We essentially
took only 3.5 million barrels off a roughly 84 million barrel global daily
market. This means that a supply shortfall of approximately 4% could cause
prices to rise to $161 per barrel of oil or to $5.74 per gallon of gasoline. This
would create tremendous national security and economic problems for the
country. Third, the prices of crude oil rose quickly. It would not necessarily
take much to go from $60 to $123 or even $161. Fourth, once oil supply
disruptions occur, little can be done in the short term to protect the US economy
from its impacts. There are few good short-term solutions. Fifth, there are a number of
supply-side and demand-side policy options available that would significantly improve US oil
security. Benefits from these measures will take a decade or more to mature, and thus
should be enacted as soon as possible. This is the reason we must act now to end this
national and economic security vulnerability.
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Soft-Balancing MPX – Oil Access 2/2
the impact is nuclear war

Mead, 92 [Walter Russel Mead, Senior Fellow in American FoPo @ the Council on Foreign Relations, World Policy
Institute, 1992]
Hundreds of millions, billions, of people have pinned their hopes on the international market . They and their
leaders have embraced market principles and drawn closer to the west because they believe the system can work
for them? But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates or even shrinks? In that case, we
will face a new period of international conflict: North against South, rich against poor. Russia, China
India, these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much
greater danger to the world than Germany and Japan did in the 30s.
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Soft-Balancing MPX – Hard Balancing
soft-balancing leads to hard balancing

Pape in 5
Security, Muse
soft balancing could eventually evolve into hard balancing. Now

Most important,
that the United States has conquered Iraq, major powers are likely to
become quite concerned about U.S. intentions toward Iran, North Korea, and
possibly Saudi Arabia. Unilateral U.S. military action against any of these states could
become another focal point around which major powers' expectations of U.S. intentions
could again converge. If so, then soft balancing could establish the basis for
actual hard balancing against the United States.
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Soft-Balancing MPX – Prolif
soft balancing leads to weapons spread

Pape in 5
Security, Muse
Perhaps the most likely step toward hard balancing would be for major states
to encourage and support transfers of military technology to U.S. opponents.
Russia is already providing civilian nuclear technology to Iran, a state that U.S. intelligence
believes is pursuing nuclear weapons. Such support is [End Page 42] likely to continue, and
major powers may facilitate this by blocking U.S. steps to put pressure on
Moscow. For instance, if the United States attempts to make economic threats
against Russia, European countries might open their doors to Russia wider. If
they did, this would involve multiple major powers cooperating for the first
time to transfer military technology to an opponent of the United States.
Collective hard balancing would thus have truly begun.
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***Power Wars***
HEGEMONY CAUSES EXTENDED DETERRENCE BREAK DOWNS

AND NUCLEAR WAR
Layne in 6
Proponents of U.S. hegemony like to say that America’s military

commitments in Eurasia are an insurance policy against the purportedly damaging
consequences of a Eurasian great power war by preventing it from happening in the first
place or limiting its harmful effects if it does happen. This is a dubious analogy, because
insurance policies neither prevent, nor limit, damage to policyholders.
Rather, they compensate the policyholder for damage incurred. Even on its own terms,
however, the insurance policy argument is not persuasive. Both Californians and Floridians
know that some types of insurance are either unaffordable or unobtainable at any price. The
chances of the “Big One”—a catastrophic earthquake on the San Andreas Fault—jolting Los
Angeles or San Francisco, or a Force 5 hurricane making a direct hit on Miami, are small. But
if either were to happen the consequences could be catastrophic, which is why insurance
companies don’t want to offer earthquake and hurricane insurance. Prospective great
power wars in Eurasia represent a similar dynamic: the risk of such a war
breaking out may be low, but if it does it could be prohibitively expensive for
the United States to be involved. Rather than being instruments of regional
pacification, today America’s alliances are transmission belts for war that
ensure that the U.S. would be embroiled in Eurasian wars. In deciding whether to
go war in Eurasia, the United States should not allow its hands to be tied in
advance. For example,a non—great power war on the Korean Peninsula—even if nuclear
weapons were not involved—would he very costly. The dangers of being entangled in
a great power war in Eurasia, of course, are even greater, and could expose the
American homeland to nuclear attack. An offshore balancing grand strategy
would extricate the United States from the danger of being entrapped in
Eurasian conflicts by its alliance commitments.
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Power Wars MPX
AMERICAN HEGEMONY WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE AND SPARK

NUCLEAR WAR—A TRANSITION NOW TO OFFSHORE-BALANCING IS
CRITICAL TO AVOID CONFLICT AND MAXIMIZE AMERICAN POWER
Layne in 97
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing”,
International Security, Summer 1997, vol. 22
My argument for adopting an alternative grand strategy is prospective: although sustainable

for perhaps another decade, the strategy of preponderance cannot be maintained
much beyond that period. The changing distribution of power in the international system--
specifically, the relative decline of U.S. power and the corresponding rise of
new great powers--will render the strategy untenable. The strategy also is being
undermined because the robustness of America's extended deterrence strategy is
eroding rapidly. Over time, the costs and risks of the strategy of
preponderance will rise to unacceptably high levels. The time to think about
alternative grand strategies is now--before the United States is overtaken by events. An
offshore balancing strategy would have two crucial objectives: minimizing the
risk of U.S. involvement in a future great power (possibly nuclear) war, and
enhancing America's relative power in the international system. Capitalizing
on its geopolitically insular position, the United States would disengage from
its current alliance commitments in East Asia and Europe. By sharply circumscribing its
overseas engagement, the United States would be more secure and more
powerful as an offshore balancer in the early twenty-first century than it would be if it
continues to follow the strategy of preponderance. In advocating this strategy, I do not
deprecate those who believe that bad things (e.g., increased geopolitical instability) could
happen if the United States abandons its strategy of preponderance. Indeed, they may;
however, that is only half of the argument. The other hall seldom acknowledged by
champions of preponderance, is that bad things--perhaps far worse things--could
happen if the United States stays on its present grand strategic course. Grand
strategies must be judged by the amount of security they provide; whether, given
international systemic constraints, they are sustainable; their cost; the degree of risk
they entail; and their tangible and intangible domestic effects. Any serious debate about
U.S. grand strategy must use these criteria to assess the comparative merits of both the
current grand strategy and its competitors. I hope to foster an awareness that fairly soon the
strategy of preponderance will be unable to pass these tests.
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Powers Wars MPX – Must Read
AMERICA MUST AVOID FUTURE POWER WARS—SHORT-TERM

COSTS FROM WITHDRAWAL PALE IN COMPARISON TO NUCLEAR
WAR
Sapolsky et al in 97
Professor of Political Science, Harvey, “Come Home America”, International Security, Spring
the probability of great power wars stemming from

Some analysts agree that
American withdrawal is very low, but they still advocate engagement because they
fear low-probability, high-cost events. A war would be a human tragedy, the environment
would suffer, and international trade would be disrupted. But the costs of distant great
power wars must be compared to the costs of the strategy intended to
prevent them. Advocates of selective engagement argue that their policy's costs are
small.[74] We disagree with this assessment. Two costs are associated with selective
engagement and both are high: the cost of maintaining forces in Europe and
Asia and the risk that, with engagement, the United States will have to fight a
war. Maintaining substantial military power in Europe and Asia and the capability to surge
forces to the Persian Gulf will require most of America's current military assets, a two-MRC
force. Any savings from force cuts will be marginal.[75] The larger long-term cost of
selective engagement is the risk of involvement in faraway great power
wars. Great power conflicts will continue to be a rare occurrence, but when they happen,
the United States is much better off staying as far away from the combatants
as possible. World War II resulted in the deaths of 400,000 Americans, many times that
number wounded, and nearly 40 percent of GDP devoted to defense (compared to 4 percent
today).[76] A new great power conflict, with the possibility of nuclear use,
might exact even higher costs from the participants. World War II was fought to
prevent the consolidation of Europe and Asia by hostile, fanatical adversaries, but a new
great power war would not raise that specter. The biggest cost of selective
engagement is the risk of being drawn into someone else's faraway great
power war. The global economy may be disrupted by war, depending on who is involved, but even in the worst case, the costs would be
manageable. Trade accounts for roughly 20 percent of the American economy,[77] and sudden, forced autarky would be devastating for American
prosperity. Butno great power war could come close to forcing American autarky :
essentially all goods have substitute sources of supply at varying marginal increases in cost. Furthermore, wars never isolate the fighting countries
completely from external trade. Some dislocation is a real possibility, but these short-term costs would not justify the risks of fighting a great power war.
The risk of nuclear escalation is a reason to worry about great power war, but
it is a highly suspect reason to favor a military policy that puts U.S. forces
between feuding great powers. Nuclear weapons may not be used in a future great power war; the fear of retaliation
should breed great caution on the part of the belligerents.[78] But the larger point is that the possibility of a faraway nuclear exchange is precisely the
An Indo-Pakistani nuclear war

reason that America should keep its military forces out of other country's disputes.[79]
would be a terrible thing, but it makes no sense to get in the

middle. Distant wars would be costly, but not nearly as costly as the
solution that selective engagers propose.
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Power Wars MPX
Primacy leads to great power military confrontation

PhD’s in Political Science @ MIT, Come Home America, International Security
Furthermore,primacy increases the chances of a full-fledged confrontation with

a new rival. As things stand now, all of America's potential competitors have
other countries to worry about; they all live near one another and far from
the United States. Number two, no matter who it is, has plenty of problems
without American engagement. But by adopting a policy of
confrontation, attempting to limit the economic and military power
of Russia, China, Japan, and perhaps a united Europe, the United
States would make itself these countries' biggest problem-more
powerful and threatening than their natural, geographic
adversaries. Primacy is the surest recipe for starting bipolar military
confrontation.
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Power Wars Link – Asymmetrical Warfare
HEGEMONY SPARKS COUNTERBALANCING AND ASSYMETRICAL

WARFARE, LEADING TO WAR AND TERRORISM
Layne in 2
Christopher & Ben Schwarz, “A New Grand Strategy”, Atlantic Monthly, Jan 2002, vol. 289,
no. 1
the Kosovo conflict made apparent the disparity between America's

Also,
geopolitical power and Europe's, inciting Europe to take its first serious steps toward
redressing that disparity by acquiring—through the European Defense and Security Identity
—the kinds of military capabilities it would need to act independent of the United States. If
the European Union fulfills EDSI's longer-term goals, it will emerge as an unfettered strategic
player in world politics. And that emergence will have been driven by the clear objective of
investing Europe with the capability to act as a brake on America's aspirations. Any
remaining doubt that American hegemony could trigger a hostile reaction,
whether reasonable or not, surely dissipated on September 11. The role the
United States has assigned itself in the Persian Gulf has made it—not Japan, not
the states of Western Europe, not China—vulnerable to a backlash. Iran, Iraq, and
Afghanistan resent America's intrusion into regional affairs. The widespread perception
within the region that the Middle East has long been a victim of “Western imperialism” of
course exacerbates this animosity. Moreover, aggrieved groups throughout the Middle East
contest the legitimacy of the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf emirates which
the United States is compelled to support, making America even more of a lightning rod for
the politically disaffected. In this sense Osama bin Laden's brand of terrorism (which aims to
compel the United States to remove its military forces from the Persian Gulf, and to replace
America's client, the Saudi monarchy, with a fundamentalist Islamic government)
dramatically illustrates U.S. vulnerability to the kind of “asymmetric warfare” of which some
defense experts have warned. American intervention in Kosovo crystallized fears
of U.S. hegemony, prompting the emergence of an anti-U.S. constellation of
China, Russia, and India. Viewing the Kosovo war as a dangerous precedent establishing
Washington's self-declared right to interfere in other countries' internal affairs, and asserting
their support for a multipolar world, these three states increased their arms
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Power Wars Link – Russia
us hegemony in eurasia doesn’t deter russia, and encourages nuclear

war
Tsepalko in 98
Valery, Belarus' Ambassador to the United States, The Remaking of Eurasia, Foreign Affairs
But abetting the continuing destabilization of Eurasia is not in the West's

interests. NATO enlargement has not consolidated anti-Western forces in the
region, as some Western experts had feared, but it has encouraged the
division of Eurasia and the shattering of the Russian Federation. There will
likely be further attempts at secession, although not necessarily according to the
bloody model of Chechnya. Central Asia and the Caucasus are rife with flash
points that could ignite several nations and draw in outside powers. And with
regional destabilization and the slackening of central control, the nuclear
threat is perhaps greater now than during the Cold War. If current trends
continue, Russia's clout in Eurasia will further dwindle and that of Western powers and
Western-dominated international organizations will grow. The United States, however,
will be unable to maintain control of the process. Western allies like
Germany, Japan, and Turkey will adopt independent policies in the region.
The jockeying of Western interests will exacerbate tensions between and
within countries. And the West will confront the increasing power of China
and, to a lesser extent, Iran, which will make extending Western influence
beyond the Urals impossible. Eurasia will rapidly become a less predictable
and more dangerous place.
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***East Asian Wars***
HEGEMONY AND EXTENDED DETERRENCE COMMITMENTS IN EAST

ASIA WILL INEVITABLY FAIL, CHAIN-GANGING THE US INTO A
NUCLEAR WAR. MUST WITHDRAW AND ALLOW RENUCLEARIZATION
TO STRIKE A STABLE BALANCE AND PREVENT A LARGER WAR
BETWEEN THE US AND ASIA
Layne 96
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, “Less is More”, National Interest, Spring
The conditions that contributed to successful extended nuclear deterrence in
Cold War Europe do not exist in post-Cold War East Asia. Unlike the situation that prevailed in Europe
between 1948 and 1990 -- which was fundamentally stable and static -- East Asia is a volatile region in which all
the major players -- Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Vietnam -- are candidates to become
involved in large-scale war. There is no clear and inviolable status quo. The lines of demarcation between spheres of influence are already blurred
and may well become more so as Chinese and Japanese influence expand simultaneously, increasing the number and unpredictability of regional rivalries. The status of Taiwan, tension
along the 38th Parallel in Korea, conflicting claims to ownership of the Spratly Islands, and the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands are only a few of the flash-points
Washington will clearly exercise far less control over the

that could ignite a great power war in East Asia.
policies of East Asian powers than it exercised over America's European allies
during the Cold War. Hence, the risk of being chain-ganged into a nuclear conflict
are much higher for the United States in post-Cold War East Asia if it maintains
or extends nuclear guarantees to any of the region's major states. Even more
important, post-Cold War East Asia simply does not have the same degree of
strategic importance to the United States as did Europe during the Cold War. Would the United States risk a nuclear confrontation to
defend Taiwan, the Spratlys, or Senkaku? Knowing that they would not constitute the same kind of threat to U.S. interests that the Soviet Union did, future
The presence of
revisionist East Asian powers would probably be more willing to discount America's credibility and test its resolve.
American forces in the region may indeed have the perverse effect of failing
to preserve peace while simultaneously ensuring the United States would be
drawn automatically into a future East Asian war. They could constitute the
wrong sort of tripwire, tripping us rather than deterring them. Notwithstanding current
conventional wisdom, the United States should encourage East Asian states -- including Japan -- to resolve their own security dilemmas, even if it means
acquiring great power, including nuclear, military capabilities. Reconfiguring American security policies anywhere in the world in ways that, in effect,
Nuclear proliferation
encourage nuclear proliferation is widely seen as irresponsible and risky. This is not necessarily the case.
and extended deterrence are generally believed to be flip sides of the same
coin, in the sense that providing the latter is seen to discourage the former. Nearly all
maximalists are simultaneously proliferation pessimists (believing that any proliferation will have negative security implications) and extended nuclear
But this formulation comes apart from

deterrence optimists (believing that extended nuclear deterrence "works").
both ends in East Asia: Potential nuclear powers in the region are unlikely to
act irresponsibly and, as suggested above, the U.S. nuclear umbrella is of
uncertain credibility in post-Cold War circumstances in which the Soviet Union no longer
exists and strains in the U.S.-Japanese relationship are manifest. Even selective
proliferation by stable, non-rogue states admittedly raises important political, strategic, organizational, and doctrinal issues. But so does
relying on America's nuclear extended deterrence strategy in changed circumstances. The need at hand is to weigh the dangers imbedded in an extended
deterrence strategy against those posed by the possibility of nuclear proliferation, and here the Japanese case provides the most important and sobering
illustration. Clearly, most of the concerns about proliferation that maximalists hold are inapplicable to Japan. Japan is not a rogue
state, but a highly stable political system with a firm pattern of civil-military relations in which civilian primacy is unchallenged. On the technical
side, Japan has both the technology and the resources to build an invulnerable,
second strike deterrent force, thus contributing to crisis stability by muting a potential adversary's incentives to pre-empt in
crisis. No one seriously doubts that Japan could develop command-and-control systems at least as sophisticated as our own to ensure against accidents,
unauthorized use, or terrorism. And while the dangers of japanese proliferation are more modest than commonly supposed, the risks to the United States
of maintaining its nuclear umbrella are greater. In short, for the United States, some nuclear proliferation may be
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preferable to pledges of extended deterrence in circumstances in which
credibility would be low compared to the dangers of catalytic war.
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EAW Link
DISENGAGING COMPARATIVELY BETTER—RISK OF CONFLICT IS

EQUALLY AS GREAT WHETHER OR NOT WE’RE INVOLVED AND
JOINING THE FIGHT LATER IS FAR MORE ADVANTAGEOUS
Mearsheimer in 1
Professor of Political Science, John J., “The Future of the American Pacifier”, Foreign Affairs,
Sept/Oct
One might counter that if the United States stays put in Europe and Northeast Asia, there
will be no great-power war in the first place and thus no danger that Americans might have
to suffer its horrible costs. But although a U.S. military presence may make war less
likely, it cannot guarantee that conflict will not break out. If the U.S. military
stays put in Northeast Asia, for example, it could plausibly end up in a war with
China over Taiwan. If a great-power war does occur, moreover, this time the
United States will be involved from the start, which does not make good
strategic sense. It would be best for the United States either to avoid the
fighting entirely or, if it has to join in, to do so later rather than earlier. That way,
the United States would pay a much smaller price than the states fighting
from start to finish and would be well positioned at the war's end to win the
peace and shape the postwar world to its advantage.
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EAW Link
troops in asia makes nuclear war inevitable

Layne in 96
Chris, Professor of Political Scienc, less is more – realistic foreign policies for east asia
http://www.looksmartcollege.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_n43/ai_18298481?pi=scl
The conditions that contributed to successful extended nuclear deterrence in

Cold War Europe do not exist in post-Cold War East Asia. Unlike the situation
that prevailed in Europe between 1948 and 1990 -- which was fundamentally
stable and static -- East Asia is a volatile region in which all the major players
-- Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Vietnam -- are candidates to become involved in large-scale
war. There is no clear and inviolable status quo. The lines of demarcation
between spheres of influence are already blurred and may well become more
so as Chinese and Japanese influence expand simultaneously, increasing the
number and unpredictability of regional rivalries. The status of Taiwan, tension
along the 38th Parallel in Korea, conflicting claims to ownership of the Spratly Islands, and
the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands are only a few of the flash-
points that could ignite a great power war in East Asia. Washington will clearly exercise far
less control over the policies of East Asian powers than it exercised over America's European
allies during the Cold War. Hence, the risk of being chain-ganged into a
nuclear conflict are much higher for the United States in post-Cold
War East Asia if it maintains or extends nuclear guarantees to any
of the region's major states. Even more important, post-Cold War East Asia simply
does not have the same degree of strategic importance to the United States as did Europe
during the Cold War. Would the United States risk a nuclear confrontation to defend Taiwan,
the Spratlys, or Senkaku? Knowing that they would not constitute the same kind of threat to
U.S. interests that the Soviet Union did, future revisionist East Asian powers would probably
be more willing to discount America's credibility and test its resolve. The presence of
American forces in the region may indeed have the perverse effect of failing
to preserve peace while simultaneously ensuring the United States would be
drawn automatically into a future East Asian war. They could constitute the
wrong sort of tripwire, tripping us rather than deterring them. Notwithstanding
current conventional wisdom, the United States should encourage East Asian
states -- including Japan -- to resolve their own security dilemmas, even if it
means acquiring great power, including nuclear, military capabilities.
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AT: East Asian Prolif
US PULL-OUT WOULDN’T SPARK AN ASIAN ARMS RACE—US ARMS

SALES ARE ALREADY THE MAIN CAUSE OF WEAPONS PROLIF IN
THE REGION
Savage and Huntley in 2
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sust. Development, Timothy & Wade, “Diplomacy First in
North-East Asia”, INESAP Information Bulletin
Proponents of a strong US military posture in East Asia frequently warn that

any kind of US pullback would push the countries in the region to expand
their militaries in response to the resulting uncertainties. This argument, however,
ignores the degree to which the US contributes to arms races in the region.
The US is by far the largest seller of weapons worldwide, and continues to
sell larges stores of weapons to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and several
ASEAN (Association of Sout-Eeast Asian Nations) states. Indeed, in many cases US
officials have acted as arms salesmen, using official trips to push allies like
South Korea to purchase US-manufactured weaponry over alternatives made
in Russia or the EU. The United States is encouraging Japan to take a more aggressive
military posture, and authorized South Korea to increase the range of its missiles. Ironically,
on the same day that the Joongang Ilbo reported that the US was investigating allegations
that North Korea had sold Egypt 24 Rodong missiles - based on decades-old Soviet
technology - the Washington Post reported that the US was planning to sell Egypt 53 state-
of-the-art Harpoon missiles.
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AT: East Asian Prolif
HEGEMONY WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE—MAINTAINING THE

STRATEGY MAKES OVEREXTENSION AND GREAT POWER WARS
BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND EAST ASIAN POWERS A
CERTAINTY
Layne in 97
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, “A House of Cards”, World Policy Journal, Fall
1997, vol. 14,no.3
Although it is beyond the scope of this review to do so, the United States urgently needs
to reexamine its hegemonic strategy because that strategy is rapidly becoming
unsustainable for a number of reasons, especially the inevitable erosion of
extended deterrence's credibility and the continuing relative decline of
American power.19 The causal logic of U.S. hegemonic strategy shows why it is doomed.
First, to maintain American predominance, no new great powers can be permitted to
emerge. Second, to convince "friendly" potential great powers--like Japan--to refrain from
seeking that status, the United States must undertake to protect them from threats to their
security (if they are protected by Washington, it is reasoned, they do not need to develop
their own military capabilities). If the United States allowed other states to defend their own
interests, the result would be regional instability. If instability occurred, America's economic
interests in East Asia would be jeopardized. To a significant degree, economic
interdependence drives America's hegemonic strategy. Thus, far from leading to peace, the
need to protect interdependence in East Asia at best causes the United
States to overextend itself strategically and, at worst, could entangle it in a
future great power war in East Asia. The hegemonic strategy is a house of
cards. Instability may be bad for interdependence but the United States
cannot prevent regional instability. America cannot prevent new great
powers--friendly or otherwise--from emerging. The United States soon will lack
the military and economic means to underwrite East Asia's security.
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AT: Heg Solves Power Wars
CHINA AND JAPAN WILL INEVITABLY OVERTAKE AMERICAN

HEGEMONY IN EAST ASIA—DISENGAGEMENT NOW ALLOWS THEM
TO BALANCE OFF EACH OTHER AND AVOID A POWER WAR THAT
DRAWS THE US IN
Layne in 97
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, “A House of Cards”, World Policy Journal, Fall
1997, vol. 14,no.3
The United States need not regard this turn of events with trepidation because there is a
realist--and realistic-- alternative to the hegemonic strategy: offshore balancing. Pursuant to
this strategy, the United States would gradually disengage militarily from East Asia
and allow China to be contained by the kind of power balancing behavior
that is normal in international politics. Rather than directly confronting China itself,
the United States would leave it to other states in the region (including potential
great powers like Japan, India, and Russia, and powerful middle powers) to assume
responsibility for containing China and managing the rise of Chinese power.
Most American strategists today would reject an offshore balancing strategy because it
would result in a "renationalized" Japan. The acquisition of great power capabilities by Japan
would, it is argued, destabilize East Asia by creating security dilemmas for Japan's
neighbors. The result would be regional security rivalries, nuclear proliferation, and a
conventional arms race--in short, instability in East Asia. Lurking just below the surface of
these fears is the unstated American apprehension of a resurgent Japan. In this respect, the
current U.S. East Asian strategy seeks to contain both China and Japan. Yet, in the final
analysis, the United States can no more prevent Japan's great power emergence than it can
prevent China's. Indeed, quite apart from whether the United States remains militarily
engaged in East Asia, China's rise as a great power (combined with increasing doubts about
the viability of U.S. security guarantees) will provide a powerful incentive for Japan to
become a strategically self-sufficient great power. Rather than fearing Japan's great
power emergence, the United States should exploit it. Rather than
attempting to contain both China and Japan simultaneously, the optimal
American strategy would be to allow China and Japan to contain each other,
while the United States watches from a safe distance.
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AT: China Rise – Japan and S/K
Japan and south korea deter a rising China

CurrentU.S. strategy implicitly assumes that America must remain engaged

because of the Asian countries' failure to balance against Chinese strength.39
But Japan and Taiwan, the two plausible targets for Chinese aggression, are
more than capable of defending themselves from conventional attack. Both
enjoy the geographic advantage of being islands. The surrounding oceans
ensure a defense dominance that could only be overcome with enormous
material or technological advantages.
Heg decline won’t lead to a Chinese attack on Japan

America
Japan's threat environment is even more benign. Its "moat" is wider than the
Taiwan Strait. Japan's large, sophisticated air and naval forces give it great
defensive capabilities, and air and naval warfare play directly to Japan's
technological advantage. 3 The side with the best sensors can target the
enemy first, gaining an enormous advantage; empirical evidence suggests
that a better-trained or technologically superior air force can achieve
favorable exchange ratios of 10:1 or greater. Japan's east-coast ports would
make a blockade with ground-launched anti-ship cruise missiles technically
impossible and would increase the area of coverage for blockading forces beyond the
reasonable limits of any non-American navy's sustainment capability. Finally, anti-
submarine warfare capability is a particular strength of the Japanese armed
forces because of the Cold War mission for which they were designed.
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AT: China Rise – Taiwan
Heg decline won’t lead to a Chinese attack on Taiwan

America
The amphibious operations required for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or

Japan would be extremely difficult and at a minimum would require
substantial investment in amphibious warfare capability.40 Taiwan could
extract a withering toll on invading forces. Its air force is large, sophisticated,
and growing; its navy has deadly missile boats; and it produces anti-ship
cruise missiles. The same Taiwanese forces would make a Chinese blockade
of Taiwan even harder. China would find it difficult to harass Taiwanese ports on the
eastern side of the island with ground-launched anti-ship cruise missiles 41 Chinese
attacks on shipping would be blocked by Taiwan's air superiority and sea
control, and Chinese blockading forces would find it difficult to cover the
wide swath of ocean around Taiwan. China could use its ballistic missile force
to conduct terror attacks against Taiwanese targets, but terror attacks have
negligible military or long-run political effects-witness the failures of the
German Blitz and of the sustained IRA bombing campaign against the United
Kingdom.42 As long as Taiwan has access to advanced Western weapons, it will be able
to defend itself.
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AT: China Rise – Bandwagon
countries will align against a china rise

America
This sanguine analysis of the Asian military balances has not yet considered a last defensive
advantage: the ability of defenders to seek balancing alliances. In a 1994 article, Gerald
Segal argues that continued American military engagement in Asia is necessary because
Asian nations have failed to balance Chinese power. Segal's conclusions, however, are
inconsistent with the details he recounts of balancing by Asian countries whenever American
military protection is absent. He reports that Vietnam has made enough progress at
internal balancing to restrict the Chinese military actions in the South China
Sea, and that Australia and Indonesia have made new commitments, jointly
and separately, to oppose Chinese expansionism.45 If China sought to
acquire significant power projection assets, U.S. allies could no
longer afford to voice their minor disputes with each other; they
would work together to contain Chinese threats.
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AT: Taiwan Relations
Hegemony decline doesn’t threaten US alliance with Taiwan

America
Taiwan is a less likely candidate for nuclear proliferation. America's

withdrawal from Asia would not deprive Taiwan of an American nuclear
commitment, because Taiwan never had one. Even with the United States
engaged in Asia, Taiwan is vulnerable to a nuclear first strike from China;
restraint will do nothing to change this. Taiwan seems to have concluded that the risks of a
Chinese nuclear strike do not require a nuclear deterrent. Many analysts have long doubted
the utility of nuclear weapons in civil wars, and if China really believes it "owns"
Taiwan, then a nuclear attack would be like an attack on itself.50 The bottom
line for American defense policy is that, while the issue of Taiwan's nuclear
vulnerability is tricky, America's current military posture in Asia does little to
relieve any nuclear tension there. With or without American power in the
region, Taiwan will do what it has to do to defend itself.
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AT: Japan Relations
Japan won’t retaliate against the US – they want US disengagement

America
The final issue to be considered regarding America's withdrawal from Asia is the possibility
of economic retaliation by U.S. allies. Japan might retaliate for an American withdrawal
from the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty by escalating its export competition with American
industry or by raising the interest rates at which it is willing to loan money to the United
States.51 Although neither of these alternatives would threaten American security, both
could attack the other core American goal: prosperity. These concerns are unfounded. First,
a significant fraction of Japanese politicians favor a transition to a "normal"
international role, including expanded attention to self-defense. The political
ramifications of the rape of a twelve- year-old Japanese girl by U.S. Marines
on Okinawa revealed considerable popular support for American
disengagement.52 If American military withdrawal were greeted with a
favorable response from the electorate, even leaders who favor
America's presence might not retaliate. Second, the Japanese have few
levers to inflict additional economic pain on America. In the trade case, it is
hard to imagine how the Japanese could compete more intensively than they
already do or how they could more decisively stonewall American market-
opening initiatives. In fact, one of the benefits of a policy of restraint might
come in the realm of international trade, if the reduction in American
resources spent on the military resulted in better American industrial
competitiveness, or if the reduction in U.S. defense spending led to a higher
domestic savings rate. Restraint could promote a macro-economic
environment better suited to reducing America's trade deficit.53
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AT: Withdrawal Destabilizes
ASIAN NATIONS WILL SEEK BALANCING ALLIANCES ABSENT US

INVOLVEMENT
Gholz et al in 97
Doctoral Candidate @ MIT, Eugene, “Come Home America”, International Security, Spring
This sanguine analysis of the Asian military balances has not yet considered
a last defensive advantage: the ability of defenders to seek balancing
alliances. In a 1994 article, Gerald Segal argues that continued American military
engagement in Asia is necessary because Asian nations have failed to balance Chinese
power. Segal's conclusions, however, are inconsistent with the details he recounts of
balancing by Asian countries whenever American military protection is absent. He reports
that Vietnam has made enough progress at internal balancing to restrict the Chinese military
actions in the South China Sea, and that Australia and Indonesia have made new
commitments, jointly and separately, to oppose Chinese expansionism.[45] If China
sought to acquire significant power projection assets, U.S. allies could no
longer afford to voice their minor disputes with each other; they would work
together to contain Chinese threats.
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AT: Withdrawal Destabilizes
WITHDRAWING FROM ASIA ALLOWS CHINA AND JAPAN TO

BALANCE THEIR OWN SECURITY RELATIONSHIPS
Layne in 97
Multipolarity challenges strategists because a state can be threatened by more than a single
adversary. It is often unclear which of potential multiple rivals poses the most salient threat,
whether measured in terms of capabilities, intentions, or time. In East Asia, where
China and Japan are emerging great powers, the United States confronts this
dilemma of multiple rivals. Offshore balancing is the classic grand strategic response of
an insular great power facing two (or more) potential peer competitors in the same region.
As an offshore balancer, the United States would increase its relative power
against both China and Japan by letting them compete and balance against,
and contain, each other.[89]
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***North Korea***
North Korea Shell
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP WILL FAIL TO RESOLVE THE KOREAN

CRISIS—MUST ACCEPT THE INEVITABLITY OF A NUCLEAR NORTH
KOREA
Carpenter in 4
CATO, Galen, Ted, “Living With the Unthinkable”, National Interest, Winter 2003/2004
Ultimately, the competing strategies of dialogue and economic/diplomatic pressure are

based on the same assumption: that the right policy mix will cause the North to give up its
nuclear ambitions. But what if that assumption is wrong? CIA director George Tenet
concedes that North Korea may believe there is no contradiction between
continuing to pursue a nuclear weapons program and seeking a "normal
relationship" with the United States--a relationship that would entail substantial
concessions from Washington. "Kim Jong-il's attempts to parlay the North's nuclear program
into political leverage suggest he is trying to negotiate a fundamentally different relationship
with Washington, one that implicitly tolerates the North's nuclear weapons program", Tenet
concludes.(n1) Robert Madsen, a fellow at Stanford University's Asia/Pacific Research Center
is even more skeptical of the conventional wisdom that North Korea is using the nuclear
program solely as a bargaining chip. As he argued in the Financial Times,
The problem with this analysis is that Pyongyang probably does not intend to trade
its nuclear weapons for foreign concessions. To the contrary, an examination of
North Korea's national interests suggests the acquisition of a sizeable nuclear
arsenal is a perfectly rational objective. Given the way the United States has treated
non-nuclear adversaries such as Serbia and Iraq, such a conclusion by North Korean leaders
would not be all that surprising. Pyongyang's long-standing pattern of making
agreements to remain non-nuclear and then systematically violating those
agreements also casts doubt on the bargaining chip thesis. In addition to
violating the 1994 Agreed Framework, the North violated its obligations under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (which Pyongyang joined in 1985) and the 1991 joint declaration with
South Korea to keep the peninsula non-nuclear. Such repeated cheating raises a very
disturbing possibility: Perhaps North Korea is determined to become a nuclear
power and has engaged in diplomatic obfuscation to confuse or lull its
adversaries. If that is the case, the United States and the countries of East
Asia may have to deal with the reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea.
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North Korea Shell
NORTH KOREAN WAR CAN ONLY BE AVERTED BY withdrawing

troops and inter-asian alliances
Carpenter in 4
CATO, Galen, Ted, “Living With the Unthinkable”, National Interest, Winter 2003/2004
INSTEAD OF placing faith in the efficacy of negotiations with a country that has
violated every agreement it has ever signed on the nuclear issue or considering the
dangerous option of pre-emptive war, the United States needs a strategy to deal with
the prospect of North Korea's emergence as a nuclear power. Washington should pursue a
two-pronged strategy, since there are two serious problems that must be addressed. One
problem is the possibility that Pyongyang might be aiming to become a regional nuclear
power with a significant arsenal that could pose a threat to its neighbors and, ultimately, to
the American homeland. The latter is not an immediate danger, but a North Korean
capability to do so over the longer-term is a problem Washington must anticipate.
Countering the threat of a "bolt out of the blue" attack on the United States is relatively
straightforward. America retains the largest and most sophisticated nuclear
arsenal in the world, as well as a decisive edge in all conventional military capabilities.
The North Korean regime surely knows (although it might behoove the
administration to make the point explicitly) that any attack on American soil would
mean the obliteration of the regime. The United States successfully deterred
a succession of aggressive and odious Soviet leaders from using nuclear
weapons, and it did the same thing with a nuclear-armed China under Mao Zedong. It is
therefore highly probable that Kim Jong-il's North Korea, which would possess a much
smaller nuclear arsenal than either the Soviet Union and China, can be deterred as well. As
an insurance policy to protect the American population in the highly unlikely event that
deterrence fails, and for other reasons besides, Washington should continue developing a
shield against ballistic missiles.
To counter North Korea's possible threat to East Asia, Washington should convey the
message that Pyongyang would be making a serious miscalculation by assuming it will
possess a nuclear monopoly in northeast Asia. North Korea's rulers are counting on the
United States to prevent Japan and South Korea from even considering the option of going
nuclear. American officials should inform Pyongyang that, if the North insists on joining the
global nuclear weapons club, Washington will urge Tokyo and Seoul to re-evaluate their
earlier decisions to decline to acquire strategic nuclear deterrents. Even the possibility that
South Korea and Japan might do so would come as an extremely unpleasant wakeup call to
North Korea.
The United States does not need to press Tokyo and Seoul to go nuclear. It is
sufficient if Washington informs those governments that the United States
would not object to them developing nuclear weapons. That by itself would be a
major change in U.S. policy. In addition, Washington needs to let Seoul and Tokyo know
that the United States intends to withdraw its forces from South Korea and Japan.
In an environment with a nuclear-armed North Korea, those forward-deployed
forces are not military assets; they are nuclear hostages.
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North Korea Link
NORTH KOREA WILL NOT TAKE COERCION LYING DOWN—EVEN

TROOP BUILD-UPS COULD TRIGGER A WAR
Carptenter in 4
Ted, “Living With the Unthinkable”, National Interest, Winter 2003/2004
It is conceivable, of course, that Kim Jong-il's regime would fulminate about an Osirak-like
strike but not escalate the crisis to full-scale war. Or perhaps North Korea's military would
unravel under stress and not be able to mount a coherent offensive. But that is not the way
to bet. Even a U.S. military buildup in the region designed to intimidate
Pyongyang could trigger a catastrophe. "Bold Sentinel"--a war game organized by
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in May 2003, featuring a mock National
Security Council comprised of individuals who held senior policy positions in previous
administrations--reached the conclusion that North Korea would likely launch a pre-
emptive strike in response to such a buildup. This assessment is shared by a
senior North Korean defector, Cho Myung-chul, who estimates the chances of
general war to be 80 percent in response to even a limited strike on
Yongbyon.
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North Korea Link
US PRESENCE IN NORTH KOREA EAST ASIA ENSURES BLOODY

WARS BECAUSE ITS POWER POLITICS INVITE INSTABILITY
Savage and Huntley in 2
Timothy & Wade, “Diplomacy First in North-East Asia, Ineasap Information Bulletin, March
building peace - not just preventing war - in North-East Asia will be

Ultimately,
impossible as long as the US refuses to give up its right to unilateral action.
Proponents of relying on US military might for peace in the region are
ignoring the bloody history of the 20th century, when the emphasis on
military alliances between great and small powers resulted in four major
wars and numerous smaller conflicts. It's high time for some innovative thinking of
new ways to ensure peace in the region free from domination by any power or group of
powers.
86
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***Middle East***
Middle East Shell
HEGEMONY IN THE MIDDLE EAST SPARKS TERRORISM,

PROLIFERATION AND RADICAL ULTRA-NATIONALISM, LINK
TURNING EVERY POSSIBLE REASON FOR HAVING HEG THERE IN
THE FIRST PLACE
Layne in 6
Nondemocratic states know—and have known long before March 2003— that the United
States is willing to use its hard power to impose its liberal institutions and values on
them. This tends to create self-fulfilling prophecies, because it causes states that
might not otherwise have done so to become “threats.” When the United
States challenges the very legitimacy of existing nondemocratic regimes, the
effect is to increase their sense of isolation and vulnerability. States and regimes
are highly motivated to survive, so it’s no surprise that, in self-defense, others respond to
U.S. offensive use of liberal ideology by adopting strategies that give then, a
chance to do so, including asymmetric strategies such as acquiring weapons
of mass destruction and supporting terrorism. Another grand strategic
consequence of U.S. democracy-promotion efforts is that these often generate
instability abroad. Again, Iraq is a good example. Convinced that the Middle East already
is so turbulent that nothing the United States does will make things worse, the Bush II
administration professes indifference about the destabilizing potential of democratic
transitions in the region.34 President George W. Bush declared that the United States will not
accept the status quo in the Middle East and that “stability cannot be purchased at the
expense of liberty.”35 Although it’s unlikely the United States can purchase real
democracy in the Middle East at any price, it is likely that by attempting to
do so Washington will end up buying a lot more turmoil in the region. Indeed,
radical Islamic groups see the U.S. push to democratization as a path for seizing power.36
The odds are high that U.S. efforts to export democracy will backfire,
because even if democracy should take root in the region, it is not likely to
be liberal democracy. Illiberal democracies usually are unstable, and they
often adopt ultranationalist and bellicose external policies.37 In a volatile region
like the Middle East, it is anything but a sure bet that newly democratic regimes—which by
definition would be sensitive to public opinion—would align themselves with the United
States. Moreover, if new democracies should fail to satisfy the political and
economic aspirations of their citizens—precisely the kind of failure to which
new democracies are prone—they easily could become far more dangerous
breeding grounds for terrorism than are the regimes now in power in the
Middle East.
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Middle East Shell
AGGRESSIVE HEGEMONY IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONLY RAMPS UP

RISKS OF ROGUE STATES AND TERRORISM—MOVING TO AN OFF
SHORE BALANCING STRATEGY AND USING DIPLOMATIC POWER
TO BROKER MIDDLE EAST PEACE IS KEY TO STABILITY IN THE
REGION
Mearshiemer in 2
Professor of Political Science, John, “One Year On”, Foreign Affairs, Fall
the United States needs to overhaul its Middle East policies if it

Obviously,
hopes to solve the terrorist problem. To start, it should end "dual containment",
which requires a major American presence in the region to contain both Iran and
Iraq. Instead, the United States should rely on the states in the region to balance each other.
Specifically, it should seek to improve relations with Iran, not Iraq, and rely heavily on Iran to
contain Iraq (or vice versa if necessary). That strategy would allow the United
States to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia and act as an offshore
balancer in the region, as it did from 1947 until 1990. It follows that Washington should
not invade Iraq. Also, sanctions against Iraq should end, as they are costly and ineffective.
The United States should make a major effort to end the war between Israel and the
Palestinians, because that is the only way America can remain close to Israel and still have
good relations with the Islamic world. In effect, that means creating a viable Palestinian state
in Gaza and the West Bank, which will require Washington to pressure Israel to remove most
of its settlements from those areas. If an agreement is reached, the United States should
target aid to Israel so that it can easily defend itself within its new borders. If Israel refuses
to end its occupation, America should cut off economic and diplomatic support to Israel. In
short, the United States either has to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict
or distance itself from Israel. Otherwise, the terrorism problem will never go
away, and might even get worse. Finally, the Bush Administration should tone
down its rhetoric about preemptive strikes. It does not make sense to shout from
the rooftops that America is committed to striking out of the blue against any group or state
it considers evil. Such a policy alienates allies, tips off adversaries, promotes
nuclear proliferation and generally makes states less willing to cooperate
with the United States. It makes much more sense, as Teddy Roosevelt said, to speak
softly and carry a big stick. The Bush Administration has made progress over the past year
in its campaign against Al-Qaeda. But much work lies ahead. The best way to crush Al-
Qaeda is not to build a worldwide empire based mainly on military force, but
instead to lower America's military profile around the globe while improving
its image in the Islamic world.
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Middle East MPX - Afghanistan
U.S. DISENGAGEMENT IS MORE CONDUCIVE TO STABILITY IN

AFGHANISTAN – PRIMACY ONLY GUARANTEES MILITARY
INVOLVEMENT SHOULD CONFLICT BREAK OUT
Schwarz and Layne in 2
A new grand strategy, The Atlantic Monthly
http://www.michaeldenny.net/issues/Foreign%20Policy/2.html
Passing the buck would help the United States out of the impasse that
securing Afghanistan promises to be. The political and military challenges
the war poses underscore how difficult and costly will be the effort to restore
order in the country and the region when the fighting stops. When the United
States has achieved its military goals in Afghanistan, it should announce a phased
withdrawal from its security commitments in the region, shifting to others the
hard job of stabilizing it. The complexities involved in that job are numerous.
Washington’s very strategy of primacy, and America’s concomitant military
presence in the region, are in themselves a source of instability, especially
for the regimes on which the United States relies. The regimes in Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan, for instance, face doubtful prospects precisely because
their close connection to Washington intensifies radical nationalist and
Islamic fundamentalist opposition within those countries. For this reason none of
the regional regimes in the current coalition can be especially dependable allies. Only with
enormous pressure did a few of them even allow American forces to conduct offensive
strikes on Afghanistan from bases on their territory. And fearing that popular anger at the
U.S. military campaign will trigger domestic political explosions, many of these states
pressed Washington to bring an early end to the war. If America remains in the region
indefinitely, it will have to prop up these unpopular or failing regimes. In
Saudi Arabia the United States could easily find itself militarily involved if
internal upheaval threatens the monarchy’s hold on power. To forestall economic
collapse in Pakistan, Washington will have to donate billions of dollars in direct and indirect
assistance. Finally, if the United States continues to play the role of regional
gendarme, it will assume the thankless – and probably hopeless – burden of
trying to put Afghanistan together again. Divided along ethnic, linguistic, and
clan fault lines, the various factions inside Afghanistan cannot agree on that
country’s future political organization. (The forces making up the anti-Taliban
contingent seem only to agree that they resent U.S. bombing of their country.) That the
outside powers have conflicting goals for Afghanistan’s future further
complicates any sorting out of Afghanistan’s political structure. If ever there
was a place where America should devolve security responsibilities to others,
it is the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia region. Again, Western Europe,
Japan, Russia, China, and India all have greater security and economic
interests in the region than does the United States, and if America pulls out,
they will police it because they must.
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90
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Middle East MPX – Iran
HEG LEADS TO WAR WITH IRAN

Layne in 7
Because of the strategy of primacy and empire, the United

Iran
States and Iran are on course for a showdown. The main source of conflict-
or at least the one that has grabbed the lion's share of the headlines-is Tehran's evident
determination to develop a nuclear weapons program. Washington's policy, as President
George W. Bush has stated on several occasions-in language that recalls his prewar stance
on Iraq-is that a nuclear-armed Iran is "intolerable." Beyond nuclear weapons, however,
there are other important issues that are driving the United States and Iran toward an armed
confrontation. Chief among these is Iraq. Recently, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador
to Iraq, has accused Tehran of meddling in Iraqi affairs by providing arms and training to
Shiite militias and by currying favor with the Shiite politicians who dominate Iraq's recently
elected government. With Iraq teetering on the brink of a sectarian civil war between Shiites
and Sunnis, concerns about Iranian interference have been magnified. In a real sense,
however, Iran's nuclear program and its role in Iraq are merely the tip of the iceberg. The
fundamental cause of tensions between the United States and Iran is the
nature of America's ambitions in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. These are
reflected in current U.S. grand strategy-which has come to be known as the
Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine's three key components are rejection of deterrence in
favor of preventive/preemptive military action; determination to effectuate a radical shake-
up in the politics of the Persian Gulf and Middle East; and gaining U.S. dominance over that
region. In this respect, it is hardly coincidental that the administration’s policy toward Tehran
bears a striking similarity to its policy during the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq,
not only on the nuclear weapons issue but-ominously-with respect to regime change and
democratization. This is because the same strategic assumptions that underlay
the administration's pre-invasion Iraq policy now are driving its Iran policy.
The key question today is whether these assumptions are correct.
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Middle East MPX – Iran
no risk of offense – heg can’t solve iran conflict, it can only promote
instability
Sobhy in 5
Sedky, Brig. General Egyptian Army, THE U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
ISSUES AND PROSPECTS, USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT, Online
Since the United States strategic goals of containing Iran are not necessarily
dependent on the presence of large numbers of U.S. ground troops in the
region, assuming that Iraq becomes "normal," large numbers of U.S. ground forces
can still depart from the Middle East and the Gulf. Essentially, the United States
military posture in the Middle East and the Gulf can return to a state similar to that following
the 1990-1991 Gulf War. For example, a United States Army mechanized or armored
brigade-size force can still be based in one of the Gulf Arab monarchies friendly to the U.S.,
e.g., Kuwait or Bahrain, that can act as a "tripwire" in the case of Iranian military
adventurism in the Gulf. However, it was this level of United States military presence in the
region that invited the destabilizing ideological effects that gave rise to radical Islam and Al
Qaeda terrorist activities. Thus, the focus should be on the total withdrawal
of United States ground forces from the region. Furthermore, the United
States military presence in the Middle East and the Gulf becomes
increasingly unnecessary due to the planned "forward-basing" of U.S. forces
in the Balkans (Bulgaria, Romania) and Central Asia (former Soviet
Republics), and the emergence of new military technologies that are readily
available to the U.S. Armed Forces. These United States force deployments
and military technologies assure a continuous and improved future U.S.
military intervention capability in the Middle East.
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Middle East MPX – Moderates
withdrawal from the middle east leads to moderate forces to take over
the middle east and prompt stability
Pollack in 3
Ken, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and the Brookings
Institutions, Once More Unto the Breach,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030701faessay15401-p0/kenneth-m-pollack/securing-the-
gulf.html
Most Middle East experts think that a revolution or civil war in any of the GCC states within
the next few years is unlikely, but few say so now as confidently as they once did. In fact,
even the Persian Gulf regimes themselves are increasingly fearful of their
mounting internal turmoil, something that has prompted all of them to
announce democratic and economic reform packages at some point during
the last ten years. From Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the emir of Qatar to the
new king of Bahrain, the Persian Gulf rulers recognize the pressure building among their
populations and the need to let off some of the steam. If the reforms do not
succeed and revolution or civil war ensues, the United States might
face some very difficult security challenges. Widespread unrest in
Saudi Arabia, for example, would threaten Saudi oil exports just as
surely as an Iranian invasion. The best way for the United States to
address the rise of terrorism and the threat of internal instability in Saudi
Arabia and the other GCC states would be to reduce its military presence in
the region to the absolute minimum, or even to withdraw entirely. The presence of
American troops fuels the terrorists' propaganda claims that the United
States seeks to prop up the hated local tyrants and control the Middle East.
And it is a source of humiliation and resentment for pretty much all locals -- a
constant reminder that the descendants of the great Islamic empires can no
longer defend themselves and must answer to infidel powers. So pulling back
would diminish the internal pressure on the Persian Gulf regimes and give
them the political space they need to enact the painful reforms that are vital
to their long-term stability.
93
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***Terrorism***
Terrorism Shell
HEGEMONY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF CATASTROPHIC

TERRORISM
Eland in 98
CATO, Ivan, “Does US Interventions Overseas Breed Terrorism”, CATO Foreign Policy Analysis,
Dec. 17, p. online: http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb50.pdf
The terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
and retaliation by the United States with cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and
Sudan have once again focused international attention on the problem of
terrorism. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright noted the importance of the issue to the
Clinton administration: "We have said over and over again that [terrorism] is the
biggest threat to our country and the world as we enter the 21st century."1 Many
analysts agree with Albright, especially in light of the possibility that terrorists may be
able to buy, steal, or develop and produce weapons of mass destruction (nuclear,
chemical, or biological weapons). Considerable attention, both in and out of
government, focuses on combating terrorism by deterring and disrupting attacks before they
occur or retaliating after the fact. Less attention has been paid to investigating the
motives of terrorists or their backers. Charles William Maynes, president of the
Eurasia Foundation and former editor of Foreign Policy, advocates examining the motives of
those who support terrorism in order to lessen their grievances.2 If more emphasis were
placed on exploring why terrorists launch attacks against the United States, innovative
policy changes might be made that would reduce the number of such attacks and lower
their cost--both in money and in lost lives. The Defense Science Board's 1997 Summer
Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats notes a relationship
between an activist American foreign policy and terrorism against the United
States: As part of its global power position, the United States is called upon
frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the
world. America's position in the world invites attack simply because of its presence. Historical data
show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.3 In an August
8, 1998, radio address justifying cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan in response to terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies, President
Clinton admitted as much but put a positive spin on it with political hyperbole: Americans are targets of terrorism in part because we have unique
leadership responsibilities in the world, because we act to advance peace and democracy, and because we stand united against terrorism. 4 Richard
Betts, an influential authority on American foreign policy at the Council on

Foreign Relations, has written about the connection between U.S. activism
overseas and possible attacks on the United States with nuclear, chemical,
and biological weapons: "American activism to guarantee international
stability is, paradoxically, the prime source of American vulnerability."
Elaborating, he notes, "Today, as the only nation acting to police areas outside its
own region, the United States makes itself a target for states or groups
whose aspirations are frustrated by U.S. power."5
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Terrorism Shell
SECOND, STRATEGIC RESTRAINT OF MILITARY FORCES, REIGNING

IN THE BROAD WAR ON TERROR AND INCREASING AMERICAN
CREDIBILITY IS CRITICAL TO PREVENT NUCLEAR TERRORISM
Mearshiemer in 2
Professor of Political Science, John, “One Year On”, Foreign Affairs, Fall
RATHER THAN pursue an empire with the sword to defeat Al-Qaeda, the
United Stares should adopt a "hearts and minds" strategy that concentrates on
reducing Islamic hostility toward it. Instead of building an empire--which will
increase anti-American hatred and put U.S. forces on the front lines around
the world--the United States should seek to reduce its military footprint and
use force sparingly. A hearts and minds strategy contains four main ingredients. First,
the United States should not engage in a global war on all terrorist organizations
wherever they might arise, but should focus on destroying Al-Qaeda and its close allies.
Otherwise, it will squander resources on secondary threats and create enemies
out of terrorist organizations that have no special quarrel with America.
Second, the United States should place the highest priority on locking up the fissile material
and nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union, because that is where a terrorist is likely to
acquire the ultimate weapon. Some conservatives justify a war on Iraq by claiming that
Saddam might give Al-Qaeda or other such groups nuclear weapons if he had them. But this
claim is unconvincing, because bin Laden would use them against the United States or
Israel, who would almost certainly respond with a nuclear strike against Iraq. Saddam is an
aggressive despot, but there is no evidence that he is suicidal. If we are really worried
about terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction (and we
should be), we should concentrate on the most likely source (Russia) rather
than on far less imminent dangers (Iraq). Third, America should emphasize
intelligence, diplomacy and covert actions over military force in its campaign
against Al-Qaeda. Of course, circumstances might arise that call for large-scale military
assaults, but they should not be our preferred method of operation. Fourth, the United
States should adopt policies that ameliorate the rampant anti-Americanism
in the Islamic world. If such policies are successful, individuals and states in that
region would be less likely to support Al-Qaeda and more willing to cooperate
with the United States against terrorism. Furthermore, the pool of potential
recruits for Al-Qaeda would shrink substantially.
95
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Terrorism Link
AMERICAN PRIMACY AND GLOBAL MILTIARY PRESENCE ACTS AS

A LIGHTENING ROD FOR ASSYMETRIC WARFARE
Betts in 2
Prof & Dir. Institute of War and Peace Studies @ Columbia, Richard, “The Soft Underbelly of
American Primacy: The Tactical Advantages of Terror”, Political Science Quarterly, Spring
American global primacy is one of the causes of this war. It animates both the
terrorists' purposes and their choice of tactics. To groups like al Qaeda, the
United States is the enemy because American military power dominates their
world, supports corrupt governments in their countries, and backs Israelis
against Muslims; American cultural power insults their religion and pollutes
their societies; and American economic power makes all these intrusions and
desecrations possible. Japan, in contrast, is not high on al Qaeda's list of
targets, because Japan's economic power does not make it a political, military, and cultural
behemoth that penetrates their societies. Political and cultural power makes the United
States a target for those who blame it for their problems. At the same time, American
economic and military power prevents them from resisting or retaliating against the United
States on its own terms. To smite the only superpower requires unconventional
modes of force and tactics that make the combat cost exchange ratio
favorable to the attacker. This offers hope to the weak that they can work
their will despite their overall deficit in power.
96
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Terrorism Link
AMERICAN PRIMACY WILL CONTINUE TO GENERATE DEVASTATING

TERRORISM
Betts in 2
Prof & Dir. Institute of War and Peace Studies @ Columbia, Richard, “The Soft Underbelly of
American Primacy: The Tactical Advantages of Terror”, Political Science Quarterly, Spring
September 11 reminded those Americans with a rosy view that not all the
world sees U.S. primacy as benign, that primacy does not guarantee security,
and that security may now entail some retreats from the economic globalization that some
had identified with American leadership. Primacy has two edges — dominance and
provocation. Americans can enjoy the dominance but must recognize the risks it evokes.
For terrorists who want to bring the United States down, U.S. strategic primacy is a
formidable challenge, but one that can be overcome. On balance, Americans have
overestimated the benefits of primacy, and terrorists have underestimated
them. For those who see a connection between American interventionism, cultural
expansiveness, and support of Israel on one hand, and the rage of groups that turn to
terrorism on the other, primacy may seem more trouble than it's worth, and the need to
revise policies may seem more pressing. But most Americans have so far preferred the
complacent and gluttonous form of primacy to the ascetic, blithely accepting steadily
growing dependence on Persian Gulf oil that could be limited by compromises in lifestyle and
unconventional energy policies. There have been no groundswells to get rid of SUVs, support
the Palestinians, or refrain from promoting Western standards of democracy and human
rights in societies where some elements see them as aggression. There is little evidence
that any appreciable number of Americans, elite or mass, see our primacy as provoking
terrorism. Rather, most see it as a condition we can choose at will to exploit or not. So U.S.
foreign policy has exercised primacy in a muscular way in byways of the
post-cold war world when intervention seemed cheap, but not when doing
good deeds threatened to be costly. Power has allowed Washington to play
simultaneously the roles of mediator and partisan supporter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. For a
dozen years nothing, with the near exception of the Kosovo War, suggested that primacy
could not get us out of whatever problems it generated.
97
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***Proliferation***
Prolif Shell
HEGEMONY CREATES SECURITY VULNERABILITIES, INCREASING

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION
Jervis in 3
Professor of International Politics, Robert, “The Compulsive Empire”, Foreign Policy, Jul/Aug
The United States is the strongest country in the world, yet its power remains subject to two
familiar limitations: First, it is harder to build than to destroy. Second, success inevitably
depends on others, because even a hegemon needs some external
cooperation to achieve its objectives. Of course, countries like Syria and Iran cannot
ignore U.S. military capabilities. They may well decide to limit their weapons of mass
destruction programs and curtail support for terrorism, as Bush expects. But the
prospects for long-run compliance are less bright. Although a frontal assault
on U.S. interests is unlikely, highly motivated adversaries will not give up the
quest to advance their own perceived interests. The war in Iraq has increased
the risks of seeking nuclear weapons, for example, but it also has increased
the rewards of obtaining them. Whatever else these weapons can do,
they can deter all-out invasion, thus rendering them attractive to any state
that fears it might be in the Pentagon's gun sights.
98
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Prolif Shell
NEW HORIZONTAL PROLIFERATION RISKS SEVERAL SCENARIOS

FOR NUCLEAR WAR
Totten 94
Professor, Samuel, The Widening Circle of Genocide, p. 289
There are numerous dangers inherent in the spread of nuclear weapons,

including but not limited to the following: the possibility that a nation threatened
by destruction in a conventional war may resort to the use of its nuclear
weapons; the miscalculation of a threat of an attack and the subsequent use of nuclear
weapons in order to stave off the suspected attack; a nuclear weapons accident due to
carelessness or flawed technology (e.g., the accidental launching of a nuclear weapon); the
use of such weapons by an unstable leader; the use of such weapons by
renegade military personnel during a period of instability (personal, national or
international); and, the theft (and/or development) and use of such weapons by
terrorists. While it is unlikely (though not impossible) that terrorists would be
able to design their own weapons, it is possible that they could do so with
the assistance of a renegade government.
99
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Prolif Link
COUNTRIES WILL COUNTER-BALANCE THE U.S. WITH WMDS

Paeman in 3
European Political Analysts, Hugo, Transatlantic Relations: A View from Europe,
wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/108/pae0617.htm
The position of the U.S. on this issue will be decisive. Its monopoly of military power
allows it to satisfy the requirements of a global strategic reach. But solitary action has
become difficult in a unifying world and politically risky. Even if this unique
position of strength can be maintained in the foreseeable future, it will encourage
others to look for recognition based on the same standards and using the
same elements of power. With the transfer of technology becoming
increasingly fluid, monopolistic positions will be more and more short-lived
100
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Prolif Link
Heg makes proliferation and nuclear use more likely – places

countries in a use or lose situation
The spread of nuclear weapons to hostile countries is not good news. Certain countries may
use nuclear weapons in irrational attacks on Americans or their friends. Accidental nuclear
wars are not likely but are possible, especially if new nuclear states lack technical
safeguards for their weapons. Continued military engagement, however, will not help stop
proliferation to America's enemies. In 1981 Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear facilities near
the city of Osirak, setting back the Iraqi nuclear program by at least a decade. The raid
taught Iraq and other countries with nuclear ambitions an important lesson: nuclear
weapons facilities must be hidden and dispersed. In the decade following the Israeli attack,
Iraq rebuilt its nuclear weapons program, and efforts to hide its size and progress were very
effective. In 1990, as American military planners designed the Gulf War air campaign, they
knew of only two major Iraqi nuclear weapons facilities. In the months following the war, UN
inspectors on the ground discovered sixteen additional major sites.92 Until troops and
inspectors were on the ground and searching warehouses, factories, and military
installations for clandestine nuclear facilities, the world was almost completely in the dark
about Iraq's weapons program.93 A military counterproliferation operation against
a regional power with a dispersed, concealed weapons program would
require weeks or months of ground operations. Stopping an Iranian weapons
program, for example, would not be a precision strike. Iran's armed forces
would have to be neutralized and its major military and industrial areas
occupied. In other words, Iran would have to be conquered.
Counterproliferation operations would be long, complex, and costly, but more
to the point, these operations would multiply, not reduce, the risk that
America will be the target of nuclear attacks. The reason to attack an Iranian
nuclear program is that Iran might, in some fit of irrationality, use nuclear
weapons against the United States. But during an attack, Iran would be
forced to defend itself. It would not face the difficulty of delivering a warhead against a
distant U.S. homeland, because American troops would be on its shore. Even worse, the
Iranian government might believe it had little to lose. Nuclear
proliferation among hostile states would not be a pleasant development, but an activist
security policy does not reduce the danger. To the contrary, the best the United
States may be able to do is to stay out of hostile countries' disputes and
maintain a powerful nuclear deterrent. Fortunately, that is probably good enough.
Military restraint would not increase the danger of rogue states
developing nuclear weapons, because even an activist policy could
not halt their efforts.
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***Economy***
Economy Shell
HEGEMONY JACKS THE ECONOMY—OVERHEAD COSTS OF EMPIRE ARE
MASSIVE DRAGS ON THE ECONOMY DESPITE THE SMALL ABSOLUTE
COST
Layne in 97
Isthe strategy of preponderance directly responsible for America's relative

economic decline (or for making it worse than it otherwise might have been)? This is a complex question. Defense spending does not
invariably lead to economic decline; indeed, under certain conditions it can stimulate economic growth.[66] It could be argued in fact that America's
the cumulative
sustained postwar economic growth would have been impossible without "military Keynesianism."[67] Nevertheless,
effect of the high levels of national security-related spending required to

support preponderance is that the United States is less well off economically
than it otherwise would have been. Gilpin has outlined the causal logic supporting
this conclusion. As he points out, the overhead costs of empire are high: "In order
to maintain its dominant position, a state must expend its resources on
military forces, the financing of allies, foreign aid, and the costs associated
with maintaining the international economy. These protection and related
costs are not productive investments; they constitute an economic drain on
the economy of the dominant state."[68] Although not conclusive, some evidence suggests
that, directly and indirectly, the strategy of preponderance has contributed
significantly to the relative decline of U.S. economic power. David Calleo has shown that the
inflationary spiral ignited by the Vietnam War, coupled with the dollar outflows required to sustain America's preeminent military and economic position,
were factors in undermining U.S. economic competitiveness and relative economic power (reflected in the chronic balance-of-payments and trade deficits
The high levels of defense spending the strategy

the United States has incurred since 1971).[69]
requires also have significant opportunity costs, and affect long-term

economic performance by diverting scarce resources from the civilian
economy.[70] Even though it constitutes a relatively small share of U.S. GNP, the
adverse economic impact of defense spending, as the economist Lloyd L. Dumas
observes, can "be dramatically out of proportion to its relative size" because it
diverts from productive uses "substantial amounts of critical economic
resources."[71]
THE IMPACT IS NUCLEAR WAR

Mead, 92 [Walter Russel Mead, Senior Fellow in American FoPo @ the Council on Foreign Relations, World Policy
Institute, 1992]
Hundreds of millions, billions, of people have pinned their hopes on the international market . They and their
leaders have embraced market principles and drawn closer to the west because they believe the system can work
for them? But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates or even shrinks? In that case, we
will face a new period of international conflict: North against South, rich against poor. Russia, China
India, these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much
greater danger to the world than Germany and Japan did in the 30s.
102
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Economy Link
heg collapses the economy – hurts domestic savings, leads to trade

deficits, causes loan losses, unemployment, welfare costs, foreign
aid, and federal debt
Layne in 97
International Security, Summer 1997, vol. 22, no. 1
It is difficult to quantify the strategy of preponderance's economic costs; Jim Hanson's 1993
analysis suggests, however, that the strategy's costs include: loss of domestic
savings, trade deficits, overseas investment and loan losses, employment
loss and welfare costs (attributable to the export of jobs), a swelling federal budget
deficit, ballooning interest on the federal debt, foreign economic and military
aid, and one-half of U.S. defense spending (attributable to "imperial" security
responsibilities).[72] According to Hanson's study, as of 1990 the cost of maintaining the
American empire was $970 trillion, nearly 20 percent of GNE Although the specifics of the
study's accounting methodology can be questioned, the basic point remains: There is a
strong prima facie case that for the United States the strategy of preponderance
is expensive, and over the long term the strategy will retard its economic
performance; decrease its relative economic power; and weaken its
geopolitical standing in the emerging twenty-first century-multipolar system.
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Economy Link – Overstretch
overstretch leads to deficit spending, that collapses the economy

Bello in 3
Walden, a professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the
Philippines and executive director of Focus on the Global South, Pax Romana versus Pax
Americana: Contrasting Strategies of Imperial Management, Muse
This point may sound surreal after the massive firepower we witnessed on television night
after night over the past month. But consider the following and ask whether they
are not signs of overreach: the failure to consolidate a pro-U.S. regime in
Afghanistan outside of Kabul; the inability of a key ally, Israel, to quell, even
with Washington's unrestricted support, the Palestinian people's uprising; the
inflaming of Arab and Muslim sentiment in the Middle East, South Asia, and
Southeast Asia, resulting in massive ideological gains for Islamic
fundamentalists--which was what Osama bin Laden had been hoping for in
the first place; the collapse of the cold war "Atlantic Alliance" and the
emergence of a new countervailing alliance, with Germany and France at the
center of it; the forging of a powerful global civil society movement against
U.S. unilateralism, militarism, and economic hegemony, the most recent
significant expression of which is the anti-war movement; the loss of
legitimacy of Washington's foreign policy and global military presence, with
its global leadership now widely viewed, even among its allies, as imperial
domination; the emergence of a powerful anti-American movement in South
Korea, which is the forward point of the U.S. military presence in East Asia;
the coming to power of anti-neoliberal, anti-U.S. movements in Washington's
own backyard--Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador--as the Bush administration is
preoccupied with the Middle East; an increasingly negative impact of
militarism on the economy, as U.S. military spending becomes dependent on
deficit spending, and deficit spending becomes more and more dependent on
financing from foreign sources, creating more stresses and strains within an
economy that is already in the grip of deflation.
105

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SDI 08-09

AMERICAN HEGEMONY WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE FROM COUNTER-

costs of trying to hold on to

balancing—that would allow it to escape from the tragedy of great power

WAR-MONGERERS ARE WRONG- US LEADERSHIP DOES NOT SOLVE

fight. Selective engagers overstate America's effect on the likelihood of future

The more NATO frightens Russia, the more likely it is

FIRST, UNIQUENESS - HEG DECLINE IS INEVITABLE

Of course,the United States is overstretched in other ways. It is domestically

The international image of the United States as a benign superpower is

the notion that the U.S. economy is healthy

certainly would not be shared by the hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers

The United States still depends on

our empire has exploited us,

making enormous drains on our resources and energies."9 Our economic

THAT COLLAPSES THE ECONOMY AND MAKES HEG DECLINE

the United States economy would collapse without

Manufacturing performs over 60

percent of the nation's research and development. Additionally, it also

If the U.S. manufacturing sector

were to become seriously impaired, what combination of farm products together

SECOND IS OUR EXTERNAL IMPACTS

THE MOST RELIABLE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORIES SUPPORT

One does, however, observe balancing tendencies already taking place.

B) TERRORISM – NON-STATE ACTORS BACKLASH AGAINST US

C) CHAIN-GANG – WAR IS INEVITABLE, BUT MOST ARE NOT WARS

D) THE EXIT RAMP – A DECLINE IN HEGEMONY STILL ALLOWS OFF-

MULTIPOLARITY SOLVES DETERRENCE BETTER

E) PREFER OUR EVIDENCE – DEFENSES OF HEGEMONY ARE A

KHALILDAD DOES NOT APPLY BECAUSE IT DOES NOT ASSUME THE

B) PRE-IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WHICH ARE THE MOST VISIBLE

B) HEG LEADS TO REGIONAL HEGEMONY BY RENEGADE STATES

Primacy is a strategy that causes insecurity because it will lead to a

C) HEGEMONY ENCOURAGES ESCALATION OF LOW-LEVEL CONFLICTS

However, there's another potential problem with humanitarian intervention

D) HEG DOESN’T DETER ANOTHER GLOBAL HOSTILE RIVAL – OFF-

FERGUSON’S CALLS FOR AMERICAN HEGEMONY ARE AN ATTEMPT TO

HEGEMONY IS STABALLY DECLINING – PAVING THE WAY FOR

Japan is a good example of the kind of creeping re—nationalization now

MULTIPOLARITY COMING NOW

THE WORST THING TO DO IS TRY TO PROLONG UNIPOLARITY –

NOTHING COULD be more perilous than entering the emerging period of

COMPARATIVELY BETTER TO DISENGAGE NOW—WAITING FOR THE

it will take some time for others’

NEOCON ADVENTURISM IS DECLINING HEGEMONY – MULTIPOLARITY

The adventurism of the Bush administration has transformed a slow US

CURRENT HEG DECLINE WILL CREATE A MULTIPOLAR WORLD

HEG DECLINE IS LEADING TO STABLY MULTIPOLARITY

US ATTEMPTS TO PROMOTE HEGEMONY MAKE DECLINE INEVITABLE –

THE EU CAN ACCOMPLISH MULTIPOLAR STABILITY

American culture harbours a strong

The US is seeking to entrench a unipolar global regime at a time

The effect of American hubris is to

Aside from the

euro's growing strength, European attitudes on issues of war and peace

ASIAN MULTIPOLARITY SOLVES – KEY TO US ECONOMY, CONTAINS

MULTIPOLARITY GOOD – EU AND JAPAN CAN FILL-IN

THE US WILL BECOME MORE ISOLATIONIST AND UNILATERIST –

OFFSHORE BALANCING GIVES THE UNITED STATES STRATEGIC

the experiences of Britain and America highlight the central

The same dynamics apply—or would,

OFFSHORE BALANCING THE ONLY WAY TO MAXIMIZE AMERICA’S

Decline doesn’t lead to vacuum

CLAIMS OF THE WORLD GOING TO HELL THE SECOND THE U.S.