Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 1 | Opponent:  | Judge:
We should do the resolution without the phrase "In the criminal Justice System".

Tournament: Emory | Round: 1 | Opponent: X | Judge: X
I'm reading all of the K's on my policy team's wiki except Decoloniality. The links will be different and will change based on the Aff. I will disclose them as I read them but if you want to see anything specific just email me at nesh4646@gmail.com 

here's the link to their wiki 

http://hspolicy.debatecoaches.org/bin/Katy+Taylor/Alattar-Li+Neg

This was the link I read at churchill for global local(Neta Crawford K):

The affirmative’s understanding of environmental problems as an objectively global phenomenon is not the disinterested inquiry they proclaim it to be—rather it is a specific way of knowing the world which necessarily recreates the technocratic management which makes ecological devastation possible. Root cause of their imapcts. Esteva and Prakash,
Gustavo Esteva, independent writer, a grassroots activist and a deprofessionalized intellectual, and Madhu Prakash, Professor at Pennsylvania State University, 1998, Grassroots Postmodernism: Remaking the Soil of Culture, p. 22-3
We can only think wisely ... of their actions and decisions upon others.

Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 2 | Opponent: Bronx Science GM | Judge: Tyler Cook
Obama's push key to preventing default
Jim, “Issues test Obama’s persuasion, mobilizing skills”, http://www.salon.com/2013/09/08/issues_test_obamas_persuasion_mobilizing_skills/, MCR
"congress will have...traditional republican allies"

Republicans oppose Compulsory Voting
Ryan, Robertson Time's ‘Ideas’ Blog Toys with Notion of Mandatory Voting Aug 21 2012, Researcher at Media Research Center's News Analysis Division, NewsBusters.org
"republicans will oppose...a second term"

Comprehensive empirics prove
Liem, Simon, “The Democratic Argumetn for Compulsory Voting”, Leading French Journalist for Harpers Magazine, Harper’s Magazine
"republican lawmakers in...reap political gain"

Syria's speech freed up PC, key to pushing up ceiling
Caren, “Delay in Syria vote frees Obama to shift to hefty domestic agenda”, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=52932, MCR
"putting off a...the borrowing limit"

Failure to raise ceiling - collapse of global econ
Adam Davidson co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money,” a podcast and blog, “Our Debt to Society”, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/our-debt-to-society.html?pagewanted=alland_r=0, MCR
"If the debt...fewer job oppurtunities"

Nuke War
Khalilzad ’11 Zalmay was the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations during the presidency of George W. Bush and the director of policy planning at the Defense Department from 1990 to 1992, “ The Economy and National Security”, 2-8-11, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/259024, MCR
"economic and fiscal...make aggressive moves"

Tournament: Churchill | Round: 1 | Opponent: X | Judge: X
If you want further info email me at nesh4646@gmail.com for standards or anything. I might read something not on this list, so if you want to ask me what I consider are fair interpretations before the round, I'd love to discuss. 

The affirmative must identify and defend a specific policy of environmental protection to be enacted during the first affirmative speech that models governmental decision-making enacted by all developing countries on the 2014 Jan-Feb topic. 

Plans on the 2014 Jan Feb topic must have a solvency author who advocates for the enactment of the plan by the plan text’s specified countries in the specified locations/jurisdictions. 

If the affirmative reads a plan, the actor must be multiple developing countries or an international body/organization that represents such advocated by a qualified solvency advocate.

On the January/February 2014 topic, the negative must implement the resolution as a general principle or a parametrized topical advocacy in all developing countries or at least concede links to negative disadvantages in said countries in cross examination. To clarify, the aff may read a plan that repeals or implements as specific topical policy, but may not defend only one country as the actor or only of a set of countries as the actor of the resolution.

If the affirmative reads AFC, the framework or role of the ballot must be utilitarian.

Resource extraction does not include renewable resources.
Alamance County Board of Commissioners 11 “ALAMANCE COUNTY HEAVY INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE” Oct 31
Resource Extraction means ...any renewable resource. 

The affirmative must garner offense only from topical links between their advocacy and the resolution (may not advocate extra-topical action in addition to the resolution)

Arruda explains the conservation vs protection distinction.
Arruda, Joe, Dr (Pitt State University). "Careers with an Environmental Spin." Careers with an Environmental Spin. Pitt State Environmental Science professor
Environmental protection refers ....fish, and wildlife.

Affs must not fiat the actions of individuals or mindset changes. 

The affirmative must defend the actor of the Aff as a developing country defined by the World Bank.

Thus, the affirmative plan must directly tradeoff with extraction of these resources from the Earth

The affirmative must be limited to arguing the effects of taking the topic directly, rather than the act of the topic being an effect of another action.

Debaters must disclose all arguments, cases, and positions read in this debate round with the first and last three words of each card and full taglines, on the NDCA LD wiki on the 2014 Jan-Feb topic. The disclosure must occur at least 30 minutes before the round.

Tournament: TOC | Round: 2 | Opponent: fwefeqwf | Judge: fewfwefwe
Thus the standard is maximizing the protection of life.

A)  Uniqueness: The risk of oil price shocks remain despite anticipated supply increases from the US and Iran. Boyle December 11th.
Oil price ‘upside risks’ remain despite Iran: IEA. Catherine Boyle, CNBC December 11, 2013. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101263664
The cost of oil is being sent higher by "remarkably persistent" factors on both supply and demand, despite concerns that a potential return of Iranian oil to the global market would send prices down, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The influential global energy research body raised its estimates for global oil demand for 2013 by 130 kilobarrels of oil per day, to 91.2 million barrels per day, on Wednesday, citing stronger?than?expected demand from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries in the third quarter, particularly the U.S. There was also a decline in supply of crude oil from OPEC, the group of oil-exporting nations which includes Saudi Arabia. OPEC supply fell by 160 kilobarrels per day in November to 29.73 million barrels a day, the fourth month in a row supply fell, after political disruptions in Libya and Nigeria. With signs that Iran is moving towards greater international co-operation under new President Hassan Rouhani, it looked more likely that Iranian oil would come onto the global market again, raising supply and driving prices down. However, a raft of other factors seem to be conspiring to keep the oil price high. One of the most important factors is the gradual economic recovery in OECD countries, which has fueled demand for oil. As inventories are relatively low, demand has grown unexpectedly quickly. "Oil markets participants have been bracing themselves for a soft patch in the first quarter. But upside risk to oil markets, from both the supply and the demand sides, is proving remarkably persistent," the IEA wrote in a statement. And the road back from international pariah status for Iran looks like it could be long, with the U.S. renewing its sanction waivers for Iran oil importers at the end of November, a clear sign that it is determined to keep the sanctions for the time being.

B) Link: Developing Countries are key to Oil Supply. IEA predictions of stable prices depend almost entirely on developing countries. Cunningham November 12th.
“World Depends on Two Countries for Increase in Oil Production” Nick Cunningham. Oilprice.com http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/World-Depends-on-Two-Countries-for-Increase-in-Oil-Production.html 12 November 2013.
 Oil prices will only rise moderately over the next 20 years according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. The IEA released the 2013 edition of its much-anticipated World Energy Outlook, which projects oil prices to rise steadily but slowly to $128 per barrel (in 2012 dollars) by 2035. Leaving aside the fact that these projections are usually way off, the report bases its rosy figures on some pretty tenuous developments. For example, for prices to keep from spiking much higher than the projected $128 per barrel, production will have to keep up with rising demand. According to the report, world oil production will increase from the current rate of 89 million barrels per day (mb/d) to 101 mb/d by 2035. Therefore, for this to successfully play out, global production needs to add 12 mb/d. et, the IEA believes that over half of this production will come from two countries: Iraq and Brazil. First, let’s take Iraq. Iraq has the fifth largest oil reserves in the world at 141 billion barrels and there are high hopes that it can ramp up production. In fact, the IEA is predicting that Iraqit will be the largest source of additional oil production in the world over the next 20 years. Iraq is so important that the IEA published a special report on its energy sector last year, in which it predicted that the Middle Eastern country could double its production from 3 mb/d in 2012 to 6 mb/d by 2020, steadily ratcheting up production to 8.3 mb/d by 2035. A lot will have to go right for this scenario to play out. Iraq suffers from several problems that will stand in its way. First, political leaders have yet to pass a hydrocarbon law that would bring certainty to the sector.  Kurdistan has made its own oil deals with international companies and hopes to build a pipeline through Turkey. This has sparked the ire of Baghdad. The dispute of oil revenue sharing is far from settled. Second, Iraqi oil infrastructure is in pretty bad shape. War, sanctions, sabotage, and a lack of investment have taken its toll. Third, rapidly expanding oil production will require investment, and investment will require security. The Iraqi government made progress in bringing down violence in recent years, but it has roared back in 2013. With 5,500 people killed thus far this year, 2013 has been the deadliest year in Iraq since 2008. All of these problems will need to be addressed for Iraq to nearly triple its oil production over the next 20 years. The other country in which the IEA is placing its faith is Brazil. Already a major producer, the IEA expects Brazil to also triple its production by 2035, representing around one-third of the global increase. Production will almost entirely come from ultra-deep water, beneath a thick layer of salt. These pre-salt reserves, although significant, are capital-intensive and difficult to reach. It is far from clear that Brazil can successfully tap into this oil. What about the U.S? Much of the buzz around the report centered on the role of unconventional oil production in the U.S., which may allow the U.S. to surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest oil producer by the end of the decade. This surge in production in oil and natural gas has spurred headlines and euphoria in Washington about U.S. “energy independence” or “self-sufficiency.” Yet, as the report indicates, such dominance may be fleeting as shale production suffers from rapid initial decline rates. The U.S. shale revolution may fizzle out by the beginning of the next decade.

Shutting down even ONE of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields would easily cause a global recession. Kroenig 2013.
“Iranian Nukes and Global Oil.” Matthew Kroenig, an assistant professor and international relations field chair in the department of government at Georgetown University and Robert McNally, president of the Rapidan Group, an energy market and policy consulting firm, and served as Special Assistant to the President at the U.S. National Economic Council. The American Interest. Feb 12, 2013.
The oil market impacts and resulting economic and political consequences of a poly-nuclear Persian Gulf range from severely jarring to systemically catastrophic. Periods of high tension and conventional conflict would lead to price spikes measured in increments of at least $10 per barrel. A nuclear conflict could destroy key oil production, refining or transportation facilities, as well as indirectly render them inoperable by paralyzing the attacked producers’ capacity to sustain their operations. Even the use of a radiological dispersion device, or “dirty bomb”, at one or more key Gulf facilities could destroy a substantial amount of global oil production. In February 2006 terrorists unsuccessfully attacked the Saudi oil processing facility at Abqaiq, which accounts for some six mb/d of production. A successful dirty bomb or nuclear strike on Abqaiq would in one fell swoop remove 7 percent of global oil production and nearly all spare capacity, trigging a price shock that would cause a severe, protracted global recession.15

Therefore, the impacts would be unimaginable severe if all Saudi oil-fields are shut down along with oil production in Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait, to name only a few other developing countries. 

C: Impact. Increasing oil prices collapses the global economy, causes massive environmental destruction, and causes widespread famine.  Kroenig 2013.
“Iranian Nukes and Global Oil.” Matthew Kroenig, an assistant professor and international relations field chair in the department of government at Georgetown University and Robert McNally, president of the Rapidan Group, an energy market and policy consulting firm, and served as Special Assistant to the President at the U.S. National Economic Council. The American Interest. Feb 12, 2013.
With no replacement supplies available, oil prices would rise to whatever levels were necessary to ration demand. Since oil demand is less responsive to price than to economic activity, the oil price spike would likely trigger a major recession first by crushing gasoline and distillate consumption and auto sales. Consumer confidence would subsequently fall off and investment would ratchet back as productivity dropped in a chain reaction rippling through the economy. This would destabilize credit markets and perpetuate a self-reinforcing cycle of destruction to growth and employment, quickly metastasizing into general institutional failure throughout the real and financial economy. During the years-to-decade-long recovery, political concerns about pollution and global warming would likely be subordinated to the overarching necessity to increase energy production as fast as possible.  Depending on the amount and duration of oil supply destroyed or rendered inoperable in a nuclear conflict, oil prices themselves may eventually cease to be relevant. In the wake of a massive supply shock and resulting oil price spike on traded futures exchanges, current, market-based oil trade would collapse, giving way to bilateral deals between desperate producers and consumers. Market mechanisms could even be suspended as governments invoked emergency powers to commandeer resources, impose rationing, ban exports and ensure energy supplies were directed to critical infrastructure, national security and food production and distribution.  While all countries and regions would suffer economic damage, those that depend on food and energy imports would suffer most. Food prices are linked to oil and gas prices due to the energy-intensive nature of modern agriculture and food distribution. Relatively self-sufficient states in the Americas, Russia and Australia would not fare as badly as Europe, seaboard Asia and non-oil producing Middle Eastern countries. However, all countries, including the relatively self-sufficient United States, would be exposed to new geopolitical uncertainty as sudden shifts in the balance of power upended global geopolitics.

Economic collapse and resource shortages will lead to nuclear war. Broward 2009.
Broward 9 ((Member of Triond) http://newsflavor.com/opinions/will-an-economic-collapse-kill-you/ AD: 7-7-09 )ET
Now its time to look at the consequences of a failing world economy. With five offical nations having nuclear weapons, and four more likely to have them there could be major consequences of another world war. The first thing that will happen after an economic collapse will be war over resources. The United States currency will become useless and will have no way of securing reserves. The United States has little to no capacity to produce oil, it is totatlly dependent on foreign oil. If the United States stopped getting foreign oil, the government would go to no ends to secure more, if there were a war with any other major power over oil, like Russia or China, these wars would most likely involve nuclear weapons. Once one nation launches a nuclear weapon, there would of course be retaliation, and with five or more countries with nuclear weapons there would most likely be a world nuclear war. The risk is so high that acting to save the economy is the most important issue facing us in the 21st century.

Prioritizing environment over resource extraction ends Chinese exports of rare metals. Plumer 11 (Brad, Washington Post reporter) “How to free the world from China’s rare-earth stranglehold.” Washington Post. 9/16/11 JY Plumer:  
Part of the reason China could corner the market was that it didn’t follow the same stringent pollution safeguards that Western countries did. Processing rare-earth ore involves a variety of toxic acids, and tends to be horrifically dirty. During the 1990s, the biggest mine in the United States, in the Mojave Desert near Mountain Pass, Calif., would produce “hundreds of gallons of wastewater an hour, mixed with radioactive elements from thorium to uranium.” Eventually, U.S. environmental rules tightened and production shifted to China. The Mountain Pass mine shut down in 2002. China’s dominance, meanwhile, has a cost. The country perpetually restricts the amount of rare earths it exports — reducing quotas by 40 percent in 2010. A variety of electronics manufacturers have been moving to China just to secure access to the metals, which are frequently irreplaceable. (To take one example, those tiny earbuds most people use to listen to their iPods are impossible to make without small magnets made using rare earths — take them away and we’re back to big, chunky, over-the-head headphones.) But now Chinese leaders are starting to fret about the environmental cost. To see why, check out this old Daily Mail dispatch from Bautou, in Inner Mongolia. The city’s main mine, which produces nearly half of the country’s rare earths, has turned “the town and the surrounding areas into a poisoned, arid wasteland littered with unregulated refineries.”
Availability of rare earth is key to clean tech. Vowles
  Vowles 13 (Glenn, Open University Associate Lecturer in Environment) “Rare Earth Elements and the Environment” Sustainable Cities Aug 26
  (Union of C
All these greener products, along with many non-green ones ‘from iphones to missiles’ as a recent Telegraph article puts it, currently need rare earth elements in their production (see below). The supply of these elements raises many environmental issues. The inner surfaces of compact fluorescent light bulbs are coated with varying blends of metallic and rare-earth (europium, terbium, yttrium) phosphor salts, which luminesce. Hybrid cars use nickel-metal hydride batteries, the anode of which contains lanthanum (in the form of mischmetal, a mix of metals, in this case 50 lanthanum). Neodymium-iron-boron high strength permanent magnets are used in hybrid car motors and wind power generators. Relatively small amounts of the rare earth metal be hampered unless the supply of these is raised. There is uncertainty about this due to concentration of supplies in China.  Rare earth's are not easily recycled. Continued high demand, rising prices and concentration of supply could result in more countries seeking to develop new sources and/or open new or currently dormant mines, bringing many consequent environmental impacts. Alternatively production might rise considerably in China, where mining is likely to be even higher in impact. Rare earth's are not easily substituted. This, along with lack of secure, affordable, accessible supplies, could result in countries turning away from clean technologies like solar and wind and developing alternatives that are less clean or have other impacts, such as increasing land demand in the case of biomass/biofuel.

That’s key to solve global warming UCS 11  
  (Union of Concerned Scientists) “Solutions to Global Warming” Climate Hot Map: GLOBAL WARMING EFFECTS AROUND THE WORLD AT
There is no single solution to global warming, which is primarily a problem of too much heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. (Learn more about the causes of global warming.) The technologies and approaches outlined below are all needed to bring down the emissions of these gases by at least 80 percent by mid-century. To see how they are best deployed in each region of the world, use the menu at left. Boosting energy efficiency: The energy used to power, heat, and cool our homes, businesses, and industries is the single largest contributor to global warming. Energy efficiency technologies allow us to use less energy to get the same—or higher—level of production, service, and comfort. This approach has vast potential to save both energy and money, and can be deployed quickly. Greening transportation: The transportation sector's emissions have increased at a faster rate than any other energy-using sector over the past decade. A variety of solutions are at hand, including improving efficiency (miles per gallon) in all modes of transport, switching to low-carbon fuels, and reducing vehicle miles traveled through smart growth and more efficient mass transportation systems. Revving up renewables: Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and bioenergy are available around the world. Multiple studies have shown that renewable energy has the technical potential to meet the vast majority of our energy needs. Renewable technologies can be deployed quickly, are increasingly cost-effective, and create jobs while reducing pollution. Phasing out fossil fuel electricity: Dramatically reducing our use of fossil fuels—especially carbon-intensive coal—is essential to tackle climate change. There are many ways to begin this process. Key action steps include: not building any new coal-burning power plants, initiating a phased shutdown of coal plants starting with the oldest and dirtiest, and capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants. While it may sound like science fiction, the technology exists to store carbon emissions underground. The technology has not been deployed on a large scale or proven to be safe and permanent, but it has been demonstrated in other contexts such as oil and natural gas recovery. Demonstration projects to test the viability and costs of this technology for power plant emissions are worth pursuing. Managing forests and agriculture: Taken together, tropical deforestation and emissions from agriculture represent nearly 30 percent of the world's heat-trapping emissions. We can fight global warming by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and by making our food production practices more sustainable. Exploring nuclear: Because nuclear power results in few global warming emissions, an increased share of nuclear power in the energy mix could help reduce global warming—but nuclear technology poses serious threats to our security and, as the accident at the Fukushima Diaichi plant in Japan illustrates to our health and the environment as well. The question remains: can the safety, proliferation, waste disposal, and cost barriers of nuclear power be overcome? Developing and deploying new low-carbon and zero-carbon technologies: Research into and development of the next generation of low-carbon technologies will be critical to deep mid-century reductions in global emissions. Current research on battery technology, new materials for solar cells, harnessing energy from novel sources like bacteria and algae, and other innovative areas could provide important breakthroughs.

Warming is real, anthropogenic, and threatens extinction. Schiffman:  
  Richard Schiffman 9/27/13, environmental writer @ The Atlantic citing the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “What Leading Scientists Want You to Know About Today's Frightening Climate Report,” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/leading-scientists-weigh-in-on-the-mother-of-all-climate-reports/280045/
The polar icecaps are melting faster than we thought they would; seas are rising faster than we thought they would; extreme weather events are increasing. Have a nice day! That’s a less than scientifically rigorous summary of the findings of the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released this morning in Stockholm.Appearing exhausted after a nearly two sleepless days fine-tuning the language of the report, co-chair Thomas Stocker called climate change “the greatest challenge of our time," adding that “each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than the past,” and that this trend is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. Pledging further action to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, "This isn’t a run of the mill report to be dumped in a filing cabinet. This isn’t a political document produced by politicians... It’s science." And that science needs to be communicated to the public, loudly and clearly. I canvassed leading climate researchers for their take on the findings of the vastly influential IPCC report. What headline would they put on the news? What do they hope people hear about this report? When I asked him for his headline, Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State (a former IPCC author himself) suggested: "Jury In: Climate Change Real, Caused by Us, and a Threat We Must Deal With."Ted Scambos, a glaciologist and head scientist of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) based in Boulder would lead with: "IPCC 2013, Similar Forecasts, Better Certainty." While the report, which is issued every six to seven years, offers no radically new or alarming news, Scambos told me, it puts an exclamation point on what we already know, and refines our evolving understanding of global warming. “I do not know of any other area of any complexity and importance at all where there is unanimous agreement…” The IPCC, the indisputable rock star of UN documents, serves as the basis for global climate negotiations, like the ones that took place in Kyoto, Rio, and, more recently, Copenhagen. (The next big international climate meeting is scheduled for 2015 in Paris.) It is also arguably the most elaborately vetted and exhaustively researched scientific paper in existence. Founded in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, the IPCC represents the distilled wisdom of over 600 climate researchers in 32 countries on changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas. It endeavors to answer the late New York mayor Ed Koch’s famous question “How am I doing?” for all of us. The answer, which won’t surprise anyone who has been following the climate change story, is not very well at all.  It is now 95 percent likely that human spewed heat-trapping gases — rather than natural variability — are the main cause of climate change, according to today’s report. In 2007 the IPCC’s confidence level was 90 percent, and in 2001 it was 66 percent, and just over 50 percent in 1995.  What’s more, things are getting worse more quickly than almost anyone thought would happen a few years back.“If you look at the early IPCC predictions back from 1990 and what has taken place since, climate change is proceeding faster than we expected,” Mann told me by  email. Mann helped develop the famous hockey-stick graph, which Al Gore used in his film “An Inconvenient Truth” to dramatize the sharp rise in temperatures in recent times.  Mann cites the decline of Arctic sea ice to explain : “Given the current trajectory, we're on track for ice-free summer conditions in the Arctic in a matter of a decade or two... There is a similar story with the continental ice sheets, which are losing ice — and contributing to sea level rise — at a faster rate than the earlier IPCC models had predicted.” But there is a lot that we still don’t understand. Reuters noted in a sneak preview of IPCC draft which was leaked in August that, while the broad global trends are clear, climate scientists were “finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades.” Parched plants in a field in Lower Austria, where temperatures rose to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit in early August (Reuters) From year to year, the world’s hotspots are not consistent, but move erratically around the globe. The same has been true of heat waves, mega-storms and catastrophic floods, like the recent ones that ravaged the Colorado Front Range. There is broad agreement that climate change is increasing the severity of extreme weather events, but we’re not yet able to predict where and when these will show up.  “It is like watching a pot boil,” Danish astrophysicist and climate scientist Peter Thejll told me. “We understand why it boils but cannot predict where the next bubble will be.” There is also uncertainty about an apparent slowdown over the last decade in the rate of air temperature increase. While some critics claim that global warming has “stalled,” others point out that, when rising ocean temperatures are factored in, the Earth is actually gaining heat faster than previously anticipated. The point at which “humans lose control … may be sooner than expected.” “Temperatures measured over the short term are just one parameter,” said Dr Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in an interview. “There are far more critical things going on; the acidification of the ocean is happening a lot faster than anybody thought that it would, it’s sucking up more CO2, plankton, the basic food chain of the planet, are dying, it’s such a hugely important signal. Why aren’t people using that as a measure of what is going on?” Barnett thinks that recent increases in volcanic activity, which spews smog-forming aerosols into the air that deflect solar radiation and cool the atmosphere, might help account for the temporary slowing of global temperature rise. But he says we shouldn’t let short term fluctuations cause us to lose sight of the big picture. The dispute over temperatures underscores just how formidable the IPCC’s task of modeling the complexity of climate change is. Issued in three parts (the next two installments are due out in the spring), the full version of the IPCC will end up several times the length of Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace. Yet every last word of the U.N. document needs to be signed off on by all of the nations on earth. “I do not know of any other area of any complexity and importance at all where there is unanimous agreement... and the statements so strong,” Mike MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute in Washington, D.C. told me in an email. “What IPCC has achieved is remarkable (and why it merited the Nobel Peace Prize granted in 2007).”Not surprisingly, the IPCC’s conclusions tend to be “conservative by design,” Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology told me: “The IPCC is not supposed to represent the controversial forefront of climate science. It is supposed to represents what nearly all scientists agree on, and it does that quite effectively.” Nevertheless, even these understated findings are inevitably controversial. Roger Pielke Jr., the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder suggested a headline that focuses on the cat fight that today’s report is sure to revive: "Fresh Red Meat Offered Up in the Climate Debate, Activists and Skeptics Continue Fighting Over It." Pielke should know. A critic of Al Gore, who has called his own detractors "climate McCarthyists," Pielke has been a lightning rod for the political controversy which continues to swirl around the question of global warming, and what, if anything, we should do about it.  The public’s skepticism of climate change took a dive after Hurricane Sandy. Fifty-four percent of Americans are now saying that the effects of global warming have already begun. But 41 percent surveyed in the same Gallup poll believe news about global warming is generally exaggerated, and there is a smaller but highly passionate minority that continues to believe the whole thing is a hoax.  For most climate experts, however, the battle is long over — at least when it comes to the science. What remains in dispute is not whether climate change is happening, but how fast things are going to get worse.There are some possibilities that are deliberately left out of the IPCC projections, because we simply don’t have enough data yet to model them. Jason Box, a visiting scholar at the Byrd Polar Research Center told me in an email interview that: “The scary elephant in the closet is terrestrial and oceanic methane release triggered by warming.” The IPCC projections don’t include the possibility — some scientists say likelihood — that huge quantities of methane (a greenhouse gas thirty times as potent as CO2) will eventually be released from thawing permafrost and undersea methane hydrate reserves. Box said that the threshhold “when humans lose control of potential management of the problem, may be sooner than expected.” Box, whose work has been instrumental in documenting the rapid deterioration of the Greenland ice sheet, also believes that the latest IPCC predictions (of a maximum just under three foot ocean rise by the end of the century) may turn out to be wildly optimistic, if the Greenland ice sheet breaks up. “We are heading into uncharted territory” he said. “We are creating a different climate than the Earth has ever seen.” The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, speaks for the scientific consensus when he says that time is fast running out to avoid the catastrophic collapse of the natural systems on which human life depends. 

A. Interpretation: The affirmative must identify and defend the implementation of a topical policy of environmental protection to be enacted during the first affirmative speech that models governmental decision-making enacted by a group of developing countries on the 2014 Jan-Feb topic through a comparative worlds lens.  

1. Should: Ericson,
   Jon M. Ericson 2003 (Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
   The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each a topic with contains certain key elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.

B. Violation: 

C. Standards: 

1. Policy discussion, specifically the advocacy of specific policy options is the hallmark of the critical thinking skills. Keller writes:
   Keller, Whittaker, and Burke 01 Thomas E., Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of Chicago, James K., professor of Social Work, and Tracy K., doctoral student School of Social Work, “Student debates in policy courses: promoting policy practice skills and knowledge through active learning,” Journal of Social Work Education, Spr/Summer
   Effective policy practice involves analytic activities, such as defining issues, gathering data, conducting research, identifying and prioritizing policy options, and creating policy proposals (Jansson, 1994). It also involves persuasive activities intended to influence opinions and outcomes, such as discussing and debating issues, organizing coalitions and task forces, and providing testimony. According to Jansson (1984, pp. 57-58), social workers rely upon five fundamental skills when pursuing policy practice activities:?    * value-clarification skills for identifying and assessing the underlying values inherent in policy positions;?    * conceptual skills for identifying and evaluating the relative merits of different policy options;?    * interactional skills for interpreting the values and positions of others and conveying one's own point of view in a convincing manner;?    * political skills for developing coalitions and developing effective strategies; and?    * position-taking skills for recommending, advocating, and defending a particular policy. These policy practice skills reflect the hallmarks of critical thinking (see Brookfield, 1987; Gambrill, 1997). The central activities of critical thinking are identifying and challenging underlying assumptions, exploring alternative ways of thinking and acting, and arriving at commitments after a period of questioning, analysis, and reflection (Brookfield, 1987). Significant parallels exist with the policy-making process--identifying the values underlying policy choices, recognizing and evaluating multiple alternatives, and taking a position and advocating for its adoption. 

3. Topic lit Salem et. Al.
Ossama Salem, Munyaradzi Chenje, Jennifer Mohamed-Katerere, INTERLINKAGES: THE ENVIRONMENT AND POLICY WEB,  African Environment outlook UN environment program 1987
Environmental problems are never strictly linear, even though some cause-and-effect relationships can be shown, but are a part of a complex web of interactions. This chapter highlights some of the challenges facing Africa which have strong links to the environment come of these challenges are analysed sectorally o  hematically, but they are all interlinked. Finding opportunities for improved environmental management, as well as for human development, almost always goes beyond any given sector, demanding that new levels of cooperation and collaboration are found in governance, in policy responses, and in environmental management. Deforestation, for example, is not just about trees but about changing forest landscapes and ecosystems which have implications for biodiversity and water catchment management. Deforestation may increase run-off, thus accelerating soil erosion and siltation of rivers and lakes (WCED 1987); it may also affect soil fertility. In addition to these biophysical interactions, there are also links between forest changes and human society. Deforestation may be the product of multiple and interlinked changes in human society, including the lack of livelihood options, new pressures brought about by demographic changes, an economic environment that does not support value-adding activities and thus results in ever higher levels of harvesting, and so on. It may also affect human well- being by closing some opportunities, threatening cultures and knowledge systems closely related to forest resources, undercutting agricultural and livestock productivity, and increasing poor health as access to medicinal plants, wild meat and wild fruits that supplement local diets are lost. By adopting an interlinkages approach to the challenges facing Africa, policy may maximize the opportunities across a number of domains. An interlinkages approach recognizes the complexities inherent in ecosystem dynamics and their interface with the equally complex social, economic and political dynamics inherent in human development and governance, particularly policies, laws and institutions. Its value lies in the dynamic understanding and problem solving opportunities it brings to addressing complex cross-sectoral issues. The interlinkages concept stresses the importance of coordination of action across the relevant dimensions of sustainable development including environmental, social and economic issues. Developing an interlinkages approach requires addressing the complexity of environmental challenges. Box 1 defines interlinkages. In each situation, policymakers and resource managers will need to determine the appropriate level of interlinkages to address any particular problem. This will need to take into account the multiple scales of interaction, the high incidence of non-linear trajectories, uncertainty, time lags, and the common and conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders (Sayer and Campbell 2004). Successful approaches involve considering, among other things, that: Trade and investment, research and development, science and technology, and health and poverty are all important interlinked drivers of environmental change with both positive and negative impacts. Green environmental issues are linked to brown environmental issues, such as pollution and solid wastes, both impacting on the environment and on development opportunities. Processes which improve cooperation between science, policy making, practice and management can create robust and dynamic response systems that provide for better understanding of the issues and more effective responses (Keeley and Scoones 2003). In any given situation, there may be multiple knowledge systems related to environmental management; different stakeholders may have different interests and values, indicating a need for processes that not only recognize, but also mediate and make trade-offs between these interests. An added challenge is that institutions – laws and policies – operate at multiple scales. The reach and jurisdiction of organizations also vary considerably and thus interlinkages in governance are important. Opportunities for improved participation and the recognition of public values, concerns and priorities in shaping policies are necessary to create linkages between these diverse levels, and to build collaborative and sustainable governance and management systems. These responses should include creating opportunities for participation in regional and sub-regional processes as well as creating more effective decentralization and devolution policies at the national level. The complexity of environmental problems – and thus the identification of opportunities – needs to be addressed through, among other things, analysing the interlinkages between and among the biophysical aspects of the environment and existing policy responses, including sub-regional, regional and international multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), and institutions in the different sectors and at different levels, and how these affect the sustainability of the environment-human complex. ? Variations in temporal and spatial scales between different changes within the environment-human complex will need to be identified. Focusing on a single scale may obscure processes that only become obvious at finer or broader scales (Lovell and others 2003). Changes within natural systems and human systems occur at different temporal and spatial scales; for example, environmental shocks are episodic, rainy seasons are cyclic and droughts are stochastic. Stochastic events are those having a random probability distribution or pattern that can be analysed statistically but not predicted precisely. The spatial range of impact of these phenomena may vary.

Tournament: Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: D | Judge: D
Obama missing an important TTP summit during the shutdown has allowed China to slowly exclude the US from the deal. The US must act now. Obama can do it but political capital is key and finite especially after the shutdown. Levy on the 16th,
Levy, Phil, Oct 16, 2013, U.S. Political Dysfunction and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, foreignpolicy.com, Phil Levy is a senior fellow on the global economy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and formerly taught about global economies and markets at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business NY
From 2005 ot 2006 he was a member of the secretary of state's policy planning staff. From 2003 to 2005 he was senior Eeconomist for trade on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has previously taught at Columbia, Georgetown, and Yale universities.

As the bell rings, signaling the end of the current round of Washington scuffling over the debt ceiling, and as the participants return to their respective corners, we can take a moment to assess the damage. There is plenty, but we can focus on the question of what the last few weeks meant for the Obama administration's effort to conclude a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The current incarnation of TPP talks dates back to late 2008; these have been going on a while. The 12 countries now participating have set themselves a notional goal of wrapping things up this year. The Financial Times concludes that the recent budget standoff took a toll, when President Barack Obama decided to skip the APEC leaders' gathering. It quotes the director of research at the Asian Development Bank Institute as saying, "Obama not coming here means that the TPP probably didn't get the big push it was to get." Instead, the Financial Times story describes how China used the occasion to advance its alternative trade vision -- the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership -- which just so happens to exclude the United States (as the TPP excludes China). There are plenty of reasons to worry about the TPP's prospects, and the budget debacle in Washington likely made things worse. But the main problem was not Obama's absence from the Asian gatherings, nor China's chance to peddle its wares. Had the president used the government downtime to find common ground with Republicans and repair a broken relationship, the TPP's prospects would likely have improved. Had there been a grand bargain on budget matters, as some participants sought, Congress could have moved on to other matters, such as granting the president negotiating authority for the TPP and the agreement with Europe (the TTIP - another casualty of government-shutdown theater). Instead, the president seemed determined to vanquish his off-balance Republican opponents. The putative deal that emerged from the Senate only provides a few months' respite, guaranteeing that Congress will return to fight over the issue another day. This matters for the TPP (and TTIP) because it will be virtually impossible for the president to conclude these deals successfully without cooperation from congressional Republicans. As I noted in the wake of our early-fall foreign-policy crisis (over Syria), Congress has the ultimate say over trade policy. With Republicans in the majority in the House, the TPP would need their support to pass. An optimist might counter that this is hardly a serious concern. Are Republicans really going to vote down a concluded agreement just to spite Obama? The threat hardly seems credible. And that would be right -- if the president already had trade negotiating authority. It is that authority which would give him his negotiating instructions and let him put a completed agreement before Congress for an up-down vote. But he doesn't have any such authority. The last version of trade promotion authority (TPA) expired in 2007. There have been attempts since to revive it, notably in 2011, but the White House didn't back the effort and Senate Democrats blocked it. The road to successful trade agreements runs through TPA. To get TPA, there has to be agreement on what subjects trade pacts ought to cover. This is not just haggling about tariffs; it involves trickier domestic policy issues such as labor standards, environmental measures, intellectual property rights protection, and regulatory practices. There is substantial opposition to the current approach to trade among House Democrats, represented by the House Trade Working Group. The veteran trade skeptics on the left have recently been joined by a smaller group of novice trade skeptics on the right, who voice concerns about the delegation of congressional power to the executive. One can still imagine a successful coalition in the House that could back TPA, but it would likely involve Obama working hand in hand with Republican leaders to craft a bill that would embrace Republican principles, enjoy majority Republican support, and win over a minority of internationalist Democrats. At this point, such cooperation seems fanciful. Even if the president could fracture the House Republican caucus and get a group to endorse the principles of the Democratic skeptics, the outcome would likely be unpalatable to the country's TPP trading partners. 

Republicans oppose mandatory voting because it threatens their political power. Robertson,
Ryan, Robertson Time's ‘Ideas’ Blog Toys with Notion of Mandatory Voting Aug 21 2012, Researcher at Media Research Center's News Analysis Division, NewsBusters.org NY

The reasoning for such a proposal couldn’t have been any more transparent. “Some Republicans will oppose mandatory voting for the reason they now push voter IDs: to win,” Liu wrote. Parenthetically adding, “Conventional wisdom says the more people who vote, the worse the GOP does.” But it’s more than just conventional wisdom. It’s backed up by polling data. "If everyone in America voted, President Obama would be on his way to a second term,” the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake recently lamented. “If people don’t vote, their candidate preferences won’t have an impact. And these Americans clearly aren’t paying attention to politics, only 39 percent can identify Joe Biden as the current vice president.”

Comprehensive empirics prove. Liem,
Liem, Simon, “The Democratic Argumetn for Compulsory Voting”, Leading French Journalist for Harpers Magazine, Harper’s Magazine NY

In an essay selected for the Readings section of our October issue, Victoria Bassetti writes about the lack of constitutional protection for voting—an important issue right now, as some states have passed voter-identification laws that civil-rights groups believe could discourage millions of people from voting in the upcoming general election. Since 2003, Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and a handful of other states have passedvoter id laws laws that require voters to present photo id identification at polling stations to cast a ballot, with the stated aim of preventing voter-impersonation fraud, and the actual aim of placing obstacles to voting in front of poor people and minorities, who happen to traditionally support Democrats. Even without such efforts, turnout will be abysmally low, as it always is. Presidential-election voting peaked in the twentieth century in 1960, when nearly two-thirds of eligible voters came out to the polls, and reached its nadir in 1996, when just over half did. The most recent two presidential elections were better, with each turning out over 60 percent, but the most recent midterm elections managed only 40. Given that it has become a struggle to get half of Americans to the polls, it’s quite incredible that anyone would do anything to discourage voting. This has become a particular problem for Democrats, who, if they were wise, would be targeting nonvoters with more than just get-out-the-vote drives. In August, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll showed that unregistered voters, if they had to choose, would pick Obama over Romney at a rate of nearly two to one, while registered voters who said they weren’t sure if they would cast a ballot also heavily favored Obama. The pool of 90 to 95 million nonvoters represent a significant missed opportunity for Democrats, one they might someday capitalize on by pushing to aggressively reform voting laws around the country, a strategic goal that happens to coincide with increased participation in the democratic process. Allowing same-day registration and a variety of acceptable identifications at the voting booths helped Minnesota achieve the highest turnout of any state in the 2008 presidential election, at 77 percent, while Democrats in California have passed laws that allow for online registration in the upcoming election, resulting in promising early numbers. But to really push people to the polls would require much more. It would be in the Democrats’ interest to push in that direction—and at relatively low cost, as reform would first have to happen slowly on a state level, where, if other systems are any example, the success and popularity of compulsory voting would serve as a model that could spread through the country. The biggest challenges would most likely be legal ones—because, as Bassetti points out, the lack of a federal constitutional right to vote makes standards flexible and essentially subject to the whims of state courts. Of course, Democrats legislating voters to the polls strictly for their benefit would be no less cynical than Republican voter-registration efforts, nor earlier efforts to remove property requirements, for example, to ensure that more white men could vote, thus preserving slavery. But a compulsory vote would represent the expansion of electoral engagement; the Democrats would potentially reap political gain

Failure to advance the deal has put US heg on the brink. Hammond on the 17th,
Hammond, Andrew, U.S. be warned: Default would cause global crisis, foreign policy analyst,  Oct. 17th 2013 http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/prospector/debt-debacle-sends-global-shockwaves/#.UmDOamTwJvY NY

For some time, world leaders and senior U.S. officials have warned that the impact of recent Washington political infighting has undermined the country’s reputation as a responsible international power, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. As Secretary of State John Kerry has asserted, this episode has sent a message “of political silliness” that we “can’t get our own act together ... we need to “get back on a track the world will respect”. Worrying, political gridlock in Washington may only intensify in the build-up to next year’s congressional elections. This threatens key domestic reforms on the horizon, including an immigration overhaul, which is of interest to many internationally. The perception, in many foreign capitals, is that growing partisanship and polarisation is also infecting U.S. foreign policy. And, this is feeding angst over the reliability of Washington as an international partner, has been vocalised recently by countries, including China, Japan and Mexico. Already, this month, President Barack Obama has lost the opportunity to advance the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal as a result of the cancellation of his trip to Asia. Meanwhile, U.S. trade officials were forced to cancel second round negotiations with Brussels over the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The gravity of this reputational issue for foreign affairs was recently acknowledged by two former defense secretaries. Republican Donald Rumsfeld asserted that “lack of leadership is sending a signal around the world that the United States is in decline, that that we’re withdrawing, that we as a country are not going to behave in a rational manner”. Meanwhile, Democrat Leon Panetta bemoaned that by “governing by crisis after crisis after crisis…the world will view the United States as less able to back its word with power”. The spectacle of what is perceived, internationally, as Washington’s growing political dysfunction is as bemusing as it is alarming. And, according to some data, this is a driver behind a decline in the country’s international reputation. For instance, the 2012-2013 FutureBrand Country Index shows a continued fall in the international ranking of the United States compared to other states. Based on a sample of around 3,600 people in 18 countries, it concludes that the country is “in decline”, partly because of “successive fiscal crises”. This builds on earlier studies by the organization, including in 2011-12 which highlighted “intensified speculation about America’s long-term stability”, partly as a result of the downgrade by Standard and Poor’s of the country’s credit rating. This was prompted by the last near debt default of Washington in 2011. These findings on the U.S. reputation are echoed by the 2013 BBC Country Rating Survey, which interviewed around 26,000 people in 25 countries, and also the 2013 Pew Global Study based on a sample of about 37,600 in 39 countries. The BBC poll recorded a fall in positive views toward the United States for a second consecutive year, while the Pew survey found that pro-U.S. sentiment is slipping, after a strong bounce following Obama’s election in 2008. To be sure, the scale of reputational damage is not—yet—as serious as that which faced the country during the previous Bush administration. For much of that period, surveys indicated profound international concern with US foreign and military policies. Indeed, the country’s reputation fell to its lowest level since at least the Vietnam War. 

TTP is key to reviving US economy. Bureau of Public Affairs ‘13,
Bureau of Public Affairs, 2013 Policy Fact Sheet, Sept 5 2013, The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Building on U.S. Economic and Strategic Partnerships in the Asia-Pacific NY

“The TPP will boost our economies, lowering barriers to trade and investment, increasing exports, and creating more jobs for our people…the TPP has the potential to be a model not only for the Asia Pacific but for future trade agreements.” – President Barack Obama. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a cornerstone of U.S. trade policy, a priority initiative to promote economic recovery through increased exports and jobs, and the economic centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s strategic rebalance toward Asia-Pacific. With shared values and strong economic ties, the United States and its eleven TPP partners are working to form a comprehensive and high-standard trade and investment framework in the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific region. TPP Members Since the first round of negotiations in March 2010 between seven TPP partners – United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, and Singapore– TPP membership has grown to twelve, with the addition of Vietnam and Malaysia (2010), Mexico and Canada (2012), and most recently Japan (2013). TPP members are a diverse group – large and small economies, advanced and emerging, on four continents – but they share the belief that the best way to generate economic growth and job creation is to foster a more open and competitive environment for trade and investment. TPP Goals TPP partners are addressing 21st century issues affecting trade and investment, as well as providing strong protections for workers and the environment. The TPP will be transformative, serving as a platform for broader regional integration as well as a catalyst for advancing trade liberalization globally. The U.S./TPP Economic Relationship The Asia-Pacific is home to the world’s most dynamic and fastest growing economies. Current TPP members represent about 40 of global GDP. Over the next two decades, it is forecast that nearly 50 percent of world growth will be generated in the Asia-Pacific region, yielding almost one billion new middle class consumers. TPP includes some of America’s top trading partners – Canada (1st), Mexico (3rd), Japan (4th) – and collectively accounted for $1.5 trillion in trade with the United States in 2012 (see data box below). Additionally, in 2011, $83 billion in U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) flowed into TPP member countries, while the United States received $61 billion in FDI from TPP members. Total U.S. FDI in TPP countries and inward FDI from TPP partners have both doubled since 2002, reaching $843 billion and $596 billion in 2011, respectively. Export/Import Activity In 2012, U.S. goods trade with TPP countries totaled more than $1.5 trillion. U.S. merchandise exports to TPP partner countries in 2012 totaled $689 billion, accounting for almost 45 percent of total U.S. exports. 

Nuclear war
Khalilzad ’11 Zalmay was the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations during the presidency of George W. Bush and the director of policy planning at the Defense Department from 1990 to 1992, “ The Economy and National Security”, 2-8-11, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/259024, NY

Today, economic and fiscal trends pose the most severe long-term threat to the United States’ position as global leader. While the United States suffers from fiscal imbalances and low economic growth, the economies of rival powers are developing rapidly. The continuation of these two trends could lead to a shift from American primacy toward a multi-polar global system, leading in turn to increased geopolitical rivalry and even war among the great powers. The current recession is the result of a deep financial crisis, not a mere fluctuation in the business cycle. Recovery is likely to be protracted. The crisis was preceded by the buildup over two decades of enormous amounts of debt throughout the U.S. economy — ultimately totaling almost 350 percent of GDP — and the development of credit-fueled asset bubbles, particularly in the housing sector. When the bubbles burst, huge amounts of wealth were destroyed, and unemployment rose to over 10 percent. The decline of tax revenues and massive countercyclical spending put the U.S. government on an unsustainable fiscal path. Publicly held national debt rose from 38 to over 60 percent of GDP in three years. Without faster economic growth and actions to reduce deficits, publicly held national debt is projected to reach dangerous proportions. If interest rates were to rise significantly, annual interest payments — which already are larger than the defense budget — would crowd out other spending or require substantial tax increases that would undercut economic growth. Even worse, if unanticipated events trigger what economists call a “sudden stop” in credit markets for U.S. debt, the United States would be unable to roll over its outstanding obligations, precipitating a sovereign-debt crisis that would almost certainly compel a radical retrenchment of the United States internationally. Such scenarios would reshape the international order. It was the economic devastation of Britain and France during World War II, as well as the rise of other powers, that led both countries to relinquish their empires. In the late 1960s, British leaders concluded that they lacked the economic capacity to maintain a presence “east of Suez.” Soviet economic weakness, which crystallized under Gorbachev, contributed to their decisions to withdraw from Afghanistan, abandon Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and allow the Soviet Union to fragment. If the U.S. debt problem goes critical, the United States would be compelled to retrench, reducing its military spending and shedding international commitments. We face this domestic challenge while other major powers are experiencing rapid economic growth. Even though countries such as China, India, and Brazil have profound political, social, demographic, and economic problems, their economies are growing faster than ours, and this could alter the global distribution of power. These trends could in the long term produce a multi-polar world. If U.S. policymakers fail to act and other powers continue to grow, it is not a question of whether but when a new international order will emerge. The closing of the gap between the United States and its rivals could inotensify geopolitical competition among major powers, increase incentives for local powers to play major powers against one another, and undercut our will to preclude or respond to international crises because of the higher risk of escalation. The stakes are high. In modern history, the longest period of peace among the great powers has been the era of U.S. leadership. By contrast, multi-polar systems have been unstable, with their competitive dynamics resulting in frequent crises and major wars among the great powers. Failures of multi-polar international systems produced both world wars. American retrenchment could have devastating consequences. Without an American security blanket, regional powers could rearm in an attempt to balance against emerging threats. Under this scenario, there would be a heightened possibility of arms races, miscalculation, or other crises spiraling into all-out conflict. Alternatively, in seeking to accommodate the stronger powers, weaker powers may shift their geopolitical posture away from the United States. Either way, hostile states would be emboldened to make aggressive moves in their regions.