K

Thesis: (although it also provides a link)

In cross-x they equated Cuba with the nation-state of Cuba.

This assumption of the nation-state as the natural unit of politics makes a methodological nationalist agenda inevitableOates 10 [Ph.D. candidate in political science at The Ohio State University, March 3, 2010, John Oates, “Methodological Nationalism in International Theory: Rethinking Sovereignty as Constituent Power,” Draft for Research in International Politics]The Problem of Methodological Nationalism The term methodological nationalism was first employed by Herminio Martins in 1974 to

refer to the scholarly practice of treating the “national community as the terminal unit and boundary condition for the demarcation of problems and phenomena for social science (quoted in Chernilo, 2006, p. 7).” The

term was a key part of the debates about the sociology of the state during the late 1970s and has once again become a point of debate in social theory (Beck, 2004, 2007; Chernilo, 2006a, 2006b). Driven largely by the growing attention afforded to globalization, scholars have increasingly called into question the traditional practice of equating the nation-state with society and examining how the internal practices of the state negotiate the putatively external forces of globalization.

Calling attention to the problem of methodological nationalism involves a call for a more cosmopolitan approach to social theory, one that appreciates the transnational and global dimensions of contemporary political life

(Beck, 2002, 2004). While the term methodological nationalism circulates primarily in the discipline of sociology, the influence of nationalist categories of practice is very much evident in the discipline of IR. Indeed, taking the nation-state as the natural unit for the analysis of political life is, in many ways, the constitutive assumption of IR theory. The existence of internally constituted political communities that interact with each other in an anarchic environment is a core assumption not only of many IR theories but of the discipline of IR itself. Without this assumption, there would be little rationale for maintaining world politics as a realm that requires theories and methods distinct from the study of

domestic or comparative political dynamics. These disciplinary concerns notwithstanding, theories that explicitly question the assumed necessity of the nation-state as the basis of political life have proliferated in recent

years (for an overview, see Wendt & Snidal, 2009). The study of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, global civil society, and theories of global governance more broadly have drawn our attention to the importance of non-state actors in shaping the contours of world politics, and many of these approaches self-consciously imagine a world organized around principles distinct from the parochial political

claims of nationalism (e.g. Archibugi, 2004; Held, 1996; Linklater, 1997; Shaw, 2000) These developments are a welcome

correction to the traditional state-centric assumptions of much of IR theory, yet moving towards a more

cosmopolitan perspective on world politics does not, in itself, fully avoid the dangers of methodological nationalism. Methodological nationalism entails not only the historical reification of the nation-state as a necessary unit of political life but also the ontological reification of belonging as a natural and pre-political expression of organic unity. While cosmopolitanism explicitly calls into question the historical claims of nationalism (that society and the state are necessarily co-terminus), it does not always acknowledge the often implicit ontological claims that structure nationalist ideology and influence, on a deep level, the study of political life. This ontological problem of methodological nationalism is rooted in the difficulties associated with theorizing the political practice of constituting a social unit, not only in IR theory but in social theory more broadly.

Much of modern social theory assumes that the unity of a political community, that is, the practices and interactions that

constitute a set of relationships as an identifiable unit of analysis, resides in a set of processes that are prior to the daily struggles and contestations we associate with political life, and the analytic focus remains on the ways in which this unit(y) or interdependence is managed and regulated through social norms, institutional rules or the imposition of

costs and benefits rather than how this unity is constituted as such in the first place. Such an analytical move reproduces the aim of nationalism to naturalize political belonging. Taking the existence of interdependent relations among actors that are in need of governance as the starting point for the analysis of political life necessarily marginalizes or even overlooks entirely the prior political question of what set of relations should be managed, what principles found these sets of relationships, and what actors and issues are encompassed by these principles. Adopting this methodological perspective suggests the need for the further conceptual differentiation between the various practices through which the regulation of social life is accomplished, and while this

differentiation can be realized either interpretively, looking to the historically specific practices through which social regulation is enacted (as many Constructivists have done in the study of sovereignty), or analytically, developing a set of a priori distinctions to categorize existing practices (as Krasner does), the exclusive focus on the regulation of social relations risks obscuring how a set of relationships and exchanges come to be understood as a unit in need of governance and regulation in the

first place. In short, focusing solely on the regulation of interaction and exchange within a social unit obscures the

deeply political problem of representing these processes as a bounded and identifiable unit in need of governance, and it is precisely this effort to naturalize the boundaries and principles of political association that nationalist ideology seeks to accomplish. So long as IR theory avoids the question of how social unity is

constituted through political action, therefore, it will remain complicit in the practice of methodological nationalism. Though we may acknowledge that nationalist categories of practice have had a deep influence on the categories of analysis we employ in social theory and IR theory in particular, it is not at all clear what particular problems this influence creates for our understandings of political life. What, in other words, is at stake in overcoming the problem of methodological nationalism in the study of international organization? I want to draw our attention to two problems, one theoretical and the other normative, that result from the practice of methodological nationalism. The first problem is one of explanation: without an understanding of the practices through which a political community represents itself as a unity, we risk overlooking a critical dimension in the practice of sovereignty, an oversight that complicates the effort to develop theories capable of explaining the emergence of novel forms of unity in the international system such as supranationalism. The explanatory difficulties that result from a neglect of the practices through which the unity of a polity is represented are most apparent in those studies that focus on cases of normative change or the emergence of new authority relationships in world politics. In order to explain how a new rule or practice of authority is legitimated, these studies must appeal to prior intersubjective beliefs. In Reus-Smit’s

(2003) study of the origins of international legal obligation, for example, the legitimacy of legal rules is ultimately rooted in a prior normative commitment to sacral obligation that evolved from the early modern to the modern period. While this study may help us trace the genealogical origins of legal obligation, it must ultimately appeal to a prior ,

taken-for-granted normative order to explain legitimate rule. This style of argument, what Bially-Mattern (2005, p. 55) calls the appeal to an ever-receding horizon of authority, requires us to take the existence of a normative consensus on the principles of political unity as given, leading to an infinite explanatory regress as we must appeal to a pre-existing normative foundation to explain how a new norm could be accepted as legitimate. By attending to the practices through which social unity is constituted in the first place , that is, showing how a new form of association is the product of a political act of representation rather than the most recent manifestation of a long-term historical process of normative change, we may be able to avoid this unsatisfying theoretical cul-de-sac in our theories of international organization. This explanatory problem of being unable to account fully for the emergence of new forms

of social unity is by no means limited to Constructivist analyses. Rationalist approaches to international organization most frequently begin with a specification of the particular cooperation problem that confronts a group of interdependent actors. How this problem is defined has a determinate effect on the governance solution chosen to address it, yet little concern is given to how a relationship is represented as a particular cooperation problem in the first place. These analyses begin, in effect, too late, taking as given the principles and self-representations that define the social unit in need of organization. In so doing, these approaches risk under-specifying the conditions of possibility for the emergence of particular forms of organization in the international system. The near exclusive focus on the regulation of social relations and the relative inattention to the dynamics through which these relations are represented as an object of

political intervention in the first place means that these studies risk overlooking a critical first step in the emergence of any governance regime. If we accept that the representation of the principles and interests that constitute a given set of interactions as a domain of governance plays a critical role in determining what forms of organization are possible among a group of actors, failing to account for these practices of representation (practices that, as I argue below, are intimately bound up with the practice of sovereignty) leaves us ill-equipped to explain the emergence of new forms of social unity. A second problem that results from methodological nationalism concerns its political consequences and the normative concerns that stem from it. Without a more focused concern for the political dynamics of constitution in world politics, the production of political unity risks being understood in decidedly

apolitical terms, as, for example, the manifestation of overlapping basic interests or reflections of functionally efficient scales of social organization. Yet naturalizing the principles upon which political unity rests in this way is precisely the move that nationalist ideology attempts to accomplish. So long as we

continue to understand political association in these ways, therefore, we will continue to reproduce not only the ontological presuppositions of nationalism (and its attendant explanatory limitations) but also the implicit political claims it advances: namely that a particular manifestation of political unity is somehow inevitable and necessary rather than the product of political action and choice. Such a perspective discourages creative

political action, constraining our ability to imagine new and more just forms of transnational or supranational

organization, and risks legitimating existing (and potentially unjust) political arrangements by explaining their provenance as somehow natural or necessary. Given the transnational and global problems that currently confront humanity,

moving beyond the parochial political claims of nationalism seems an important step if IR theory is continue to provide critical and relevant knowledge about international political life.

Links: Plan

Their portrayal of Cuba as key to U.S. well-being perpetuates a self-fulfilling prophecy of manifest destinyPérez 08 [Louis A., Ph.D. University of New Mexico, Professor of History at University of North Carolina, "Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos,"]But it is also true that, for all the ways that Cuba stands as an embodiment of American imperial practice, it is at the same time different- so different, in fact, that it must be considered as a case apart. Cuba seized hold of the North American imagination early in the nineteenth century. What made awareness of Cuba particularly significant were the ways that it acted on the formation of the American consciousness of nationhood. The destiny of the nation seemed inextricably bound to the fate of the island. It was impossible to imagine the former without attention to the latter . All through the

nineteenth century, the Americans brooded over the anomaly that was Cuba: imagined as within sight, but seen as beyond reach; vital to the national interest of the United States, but in the possession of Spain. To imagine Cuba as indispensable to the national well-being was to make possession of the island a necessity . The proposition

of necessity itself assumed something of a self-fulfilling prophesy, akin to a prophetic logic that could not be explained in any way other than a matter of destiny. The security and perhaps - many insisted - even the very survival of the North American Union seemed to depend on the acquisition of Cuba. The men and women who gave thought to affairs of state, as elected leaders and appointed oflicials; as news- paper editors and magazine publishers; as entrepreneurs, industrialists, and investors; as poets and playwrights; as lyricists, journalists, and novelists; and an ever-expanding electorate-almost all who contemplated the future well- being of the nation were persuaded that possession of Cuba was a matter of national necessity. Not everyone agreed, of course. It was with a sense of exasperation that Vermont senator ]acob Collamer protested in 1859 that "the idea that the pos- session of Cuba is necessary to the actual existence of this country, is a mere figment of the imagination." But that was exactly the point: the convention- ally wise were indeed persuaded that possession of Cuba was indispensable to the "actual existence" of the United States. And, as will be argued in the pages that follow, precisely because Cuba revealed itself as a "figment of the imagi- nation," the island inscribed itself deeply into the very certainties by which Americans arrived at a sense of themselves as a nationality and as a nation.

Links: Influence

The Aff’s reliance and the state’s reliance on realism situates the state as the referent object for security. Not only is this tool to construct nationalist identity, but it ignores true threats to human securityLal 08 [Prerna P. Lal, J.D. Candidate at George Washington Law School, Critical Security Studies, “Deconstructing the National Security State: Towards a New Framework of Analysis,” POSC 4910: Senior Seminar, http://prernalal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/css-deconstructing-the-nat-sec-state.pdf]

In fact, the American statecraft has always viewed the world through the problematic lens of realism, and maintained the right to secure Americans, even though security is an ill-defined and “essentially contested concept” (Buzan 1991, 25) with no stable meaning. Rather, the traditional neorealist

notion of national security is paradoxical, epistemologically flawed and ontologically unstable, serving only the interests of the state and power elites and produces more insecurity than security; therefore, it should be discarded in favor of an individual-centered, poststructuralist approach focused on human emancipation, which dislodges the state as the primary referent of security. The Problem with “Realism” Four years later, amidst the deaths of countless many civilians, a soaring budget deficit, numerous accounts of human rights violations, and the continued rise of “terrorist” networks in many more countries, the “war on terror” is steadily losing support, yet the leaders of the United States continue to carpet bomb Middle-Eastern nations with no end in sight. Hence, it has become critically important to question and reassess the dominant articulation of security as presented by the national security state. This dominant articulation is realism, which has imposed an image of reality upon people that is unrealistic; an image that has been composed and constantly reconsidered, acting 2as a tool for statist identity construction and economic elites. For the purpose of this paper, all mentions of realism from hereon refers to neo-realism, which is an ideology that presupposes the existence of objective truth and assumes that political conflict and war is a result of the anarchic nature of the international system, where nation-states have to constantly fight to defend their boundaries. In an increasingly complex world, filled with a multitude of different cultures, languages, states and peoples, the traditional neorealist view of national security is problematic. The problems with realism are many, starting with the fact that (neo)-realism is a

misnomer for it is unrealistic and fails to grasp how the world really works. In fact, it is a problem veiled as a

problem-solver, wearing the false cloak of objectivity and truth. It assumes that objective truth and knowledge exists independent of our minds; however, the world is not free from our perceptions. As Anais Nin (2005, 5) points

out in Critical Security Studies and World Politics, “we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.” In this case, the “we” are the rulers of the American nation-state, who tout realism as objective truth, in order to create a world more favorable to them. Those with an ideology of domination and an economic interest to dictate, define our reality in terms of their interests. In fact, the construction of this reality is so pervasive that we do not see realism as an ideology, but as a self-evident truth. To accept this constructed reality without questioning is dangerous, for all ideology serves a purpose, and in this case, neorealism serves the purpose of the state and its elites. Realism also has a narrow and statist agenda that fails to cope with the actual threats to human society. Kenneth Booth (2005, 7), a self-proclaimed fallen realist and head of the Department of International Relations at University of Wales, argues in 3Critical Security Studies and World Politics that realism offers a massive but narrow agenda, which is “based on the perceived interests of states (and therefore of their elites); this so-called national interest is concerned with maximizing state security, maximizing economic well-being, and protecting the state’s way of life.” Moreover, judging by the high levels of human insecurity that still exists in this world, it is safe to say that realism is a failure for it has empirically failed to deliver security. The threats to human security, which include war, disease, famines, crime, ethnic and religious persecution, violence against women, environmental degradation and so on, take a back-seat because realist notions of security are state-centric. This exclusive lens of international relations is downright regressive for it silences dissidents and minority populations. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, progressives, the working class and their concerns are absent from the realist security agenda. Consequently, an alternative view that questions the dominant paradigm of realism and realist notions of security is desperately needed to provide for human security and emancipation.

War discourse causes nationalismShroyer 11

(SSRN-id2020708.pdf, Guy F. Shroyer, Dr. Guy F. Shroyer is a political scientist who has spent his lifetime pursuing knowledge promoting peace and social justice. He received a certificate in Political Psychology from The Ohio State University in 1995, and his Ph.D. in International Relations from the Department of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 1998)Narratives can be used to convey versions of reality and truth, and therefore they are a fundamental resource in the instantiation of power relations based upon the production and reproduction of what Pierre Bourdieu (1990) calls doxa: the natural, the unquestioned. In US political culture since the Second World War, American involvement in constant warfare has become doxic in this sense. Uninterrupted military engagement throughout the world outside of US borders has become naturalized, and narratives, in a sense, storytelling, have been instrumental in accomplishing this naturalization of constant US involvement in war. What exactly makes these narratives effective, how is it that particular realities are produced, and through what means are they disseminated? This paper will analyze narratives about war, targeted to schoolchildren, in terms of their sense of movement, or profluence (Scollon 2010), their story world space and time configuration(s), or chronotopes (Bakhtin 1981), their arrangement of semiotic material producing limitations and affordances for interpretation (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), and their motive configuration(s) (Burke 1969) that foreground and background certain evaluations of the stories being told. The narratives analyzed through this method are relevant to the production and reproduction of acceptance of war and global hegemony because they are linked through the Web to the sites of primary national identity construction, the public schools, and appropriated as teacher resource databases for social studies content development, for dissemination to the students themselves, and for public school activities. In using this method of analysis, we can see how the given narrative structure in the data works to produce supportive stories that serve to justify policies of armed conflict through the social construction of naturalness and thus, consent. In his article “Aristotle fails to persuade the donkey: Conflicting logics in narrative social analysis” (Scollon: 2010) Ron Scollon made the argument that not only do narratives have social force in supporting power relations, but they also, by virtue of their structure, create affordances and obstacles to social action. In other words, narratives can make some things hard to say and other things easy to relate, and that this has important social consequences. In this paper, I take up this issue by focusing on how narratives support the militarization of US national identity. As a first step in examining how narrative structure produces certain „realities‟ and not others, I am looking at narratives characterized as being educational resources for primary school teachers1 , including material from Kidipede, About.com, and the US Veterans Administration website online package for children. The analyses of this material take into account multimodality of narrative presentation as it is found at the original source. Before presenting the data, however, it is necessary to review the theoretical and methodological tools being appropriated to make the case that these narratives are themselves important mediational means in the development of hegemonic doxa.

Their AC presents to us numerous predictive scenarios that end in nuclear war, this framing of nuclear war from an interstate perspective masks the ongoing nuclear extermination of the Fourth World and reveals the Affs mindset that only nation-states matterKato 93 (Masahide, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, Alternatives 18, 339-360)Nuclear war has been enclosed by two seemingly opposite yet complementary regimes of discourse: nation-state strategic discourse (nuclear deterrence, nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation,

and so on) and extra-nation-state (or extra-territorial) discourse (antinuclearism, nuclear criticism, and so on). The epistemology of the former is entrenched in the "possible" exchange(s) of nuclear warheads among nation states. The latter, which emerged in reaction to the former, holds the "possibility of extinction" at the center of its discursive production. In delineating the notion of "nuclear war," both of these discourses share an intriguing leap: from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the "possible" nuclear explosions in an indefinite-yet-ever-closer-to-the-present future. Thus any nuclear explosions after World War II do not qualify as nuclear war in the cognitive grid of conventional nuclear discourse. Significandy, most nuclear explosions after World War II took place in the sovereign territories of the Fourth World and Indigenous Nations. This critical historical fact has been contained in the domain of nuclear testing. Such obliteration of the history of undeclared nuclear warfare by nuclear discourse does not merely posit the deficiency of the discourse. Rather, what it does is reveal the late capitalist form of domination, whereby an ongoing extermination process of the periphery is blocked from constituting itself as a historical fact. In the first half of this article, I trace this disqualification process of nuclear war against the Fourth World and Indigenous Nations to the mode of perception that objectifies the periphery in order to subordinate it to a reconstructed homogeneous time and space.

Links: Biotech

Trade Leadership is a nationalist goal that is unachievable and hurts worldwide trade, turning the caseLindsey 98 (Brink Lindsey is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the director of its Center for Trade Policy Studies, November 9 1998, “Free Trade Nationalism”, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/free-trade-nationalism)Free trade is losing its grip on the conservative movement. In recent years a growing minority of conservatives, led by Patrick Buchanan, has swung to the opposite end of the spectrum and embraced outright protectionism. Less noticeably, others on the right who remain opposed to raising new trade barriers have grown disenchanted with trying to remove existing ones. The September 25 House vote on “fast track” trade negotiating authority tells the story. The GOP leadership pushed for a vote before the midterm elections, claiming that Republicans would carry the measure even in the face of overwhelming Democratic opposition. They didn’t even come close: the bill went down 243-180, with roughly a third of the Republican caucus voting against the party line. What’s happening here? Why are conservatives running away from a cause that promotes tax cuts and deregulation? One explanation is that conservatives are being asked to choose between their nationalism and their free-market economics. It’s a false dilemma: The conflict arises not from the nature of free trade, but from the way it has been packaged and pursued. For over six decades, trade liberalization has served as the handmaiden of an internationalist foreign policy. This association goes back to the New Deal, when, in the aftermath of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff, FDR’s secretary of state Cordell Hull masterminded and pushed through the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. Previously, setting tariff levels had been a matter of domestic economic policy; now it became the subject of international negotiations. Hull and the other New Dealers who pulled off this transformation did so not out of love for free markets generally; their aims were primarily diplomatic. In the international arena, they saw open markets as a way of promoting peaceful relations in an increasingly hostile world. After World War II, free trade was integrated into the larger strategy of containing Soviet communism. By increasing our commercial ties with

Europe and Japan, trade agreements fortified the solidarity of the Western alliance. And by opening our markets to

Third World countries, we hoped to prevent defections to the Soviet camp. The Cold War is over, but U.S. support for trade liberalization continues to be sold as an obligation of American “international leadership.”

Fast track in particular tends to get lumped together with calls for additional IMF funding and paying back UN

dues, mixed in with grousing about know-nothing members of Congress who don’t even have passports. It’s not just that free traders have sold their cause on foreign policy grounds. Through linking trade liberalization exclusively with international negotiations, they have actually conveyed the impression that free trade requires the subordination of the U.S. national economic interest to broader concerns. After all, in trade talks countries agree to reduce

their trade barriers only on the condition that other countries do likewise. Thus, trade barriers are treated like nuclear missiles in arms control talks — prized strategic assets that are given up only in exchange for foreign assets of equivalent value. (Indeed, in the parlance of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, a commitment to reduce tariffs is a

“concession.”) With the issue so framed, the military metaphors proliferate. Trade “hawks” argue that relatively open markets amount to “unilateral disarmament,” and urge that we close off access to U.S. markets unless foreign countries let in more American goods. Free traders, by resisting such calls, get cast as “doves.” Of course, the equation of trade with war is economic nonsense. Trade, unlike war,

is not a zero sum game: one country doesn’t “win” at another’s expense. In particular, openness to foreign competition is not a vulnerability. On the contrary, it allows a country’s citizens to enjoy the best goods and services the world has to offer, and to specialize in those pursuits at which they are relatively more productive. And the benefits of open markets accrue regardless of whether other countries maintain similarly liberal policies. Nevertheless, free traders have seldom challenged the protectionist misconceptions that trade talks encourage. By and large they accept the notion that the United States is somehow

at a disadvantage because most of our trading partners maintain higher trade barriers than we do. Their position is that America is strong enough to “win” at international trade even with the deck stacked against us; and anyway, they argue, broader geopolitical interests — countering Soviet power, and now maintaining some kind

of nebulous “influence” — outweigh narrow commercial concerns. Thus, by the twisted logic of trade negotiations, free traders appear to be asking the United States to play by less favorable rules than apply to other countries. Furthermore, the direction of trade negotiations in recent years suggests a connection between free trade and the progressive diminution of U.S. national sovereignty. The scope of trade agreements

has broadened far beyond simple tariff-cutting to encompass sweeping forays into traditional domestic policy areas. In particular, efforts to “harmonize” national policies on labor and the environment are working their way onto negotiating agendas at both the regional and multilateral levels. And to enforce these increasingly ambitious agreements, new and

more powerful international institutions — most notably, the World Trade Organization — have been created and empowered to pronounce judgment on national laws’ fidelity to international obligations.

Impacts:

National identity prevents an effective response to global problems—only articulating a shared identity can prevent extinctionSmith 03 [Rogers, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania, PhD Harvard University, 2003, “Stories Of Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals of Political Membership,” p. 166-169]It is certainly important to oppose such evolutionary doctrines by all intellectually credible means. But many have already been widely discred-ited; and today it may well prove salutary, even indispensable, to heighten awareness of human identity as shared membership in a species engaged in an ages-long process of adapting to often dangerous and unforgiving natural and man-

made environments.20 When we see ourselves in the light of general evolutionary patterns, we become aware that it is genuinely possible for a species such as ourselves to suffer massive setbacks or even to become extinct if we pursue certain dangerous courses of action. That outcome does not seem to be in any human's interest. And when we reflect on the state of our species today, we see or should see at least five major challenges to our collective survival, much less our collective nourishing, that are in some respects truly unprecedented. These are all challenges of our own making, however, and so they

can all be met through suitably cooperative human efforts. The first is our ongoing vulnerability to the extraordinary

weapons of mass destruction that we have been building during the last half century. The tense anticipations of imminent conflagration that characterized the Cold War at its worst are now behind us, but the nuclear arsenals that were so threatening are largely still with us, and indeed the governments and, perhaps, terrorist groups possessed of some nuclear weaponry have continued to proliferate. The second great

threat is some sort of environmental disaster, brought on by the by-products of our efforts to achieve ever-accelerating industrial

and post-industrial production and distribution of an incredible range of good and services. Whether it is global warming, the spread of toxic wastes, biospheric disruptions due to new agricultural techniques, or some combination of these and other consequences of human interference with the air, water, climate, and plant and animal species that sustain us, any major environmental disaster can affect all of humanity. Third, as our economic and technological systems have become ever more interconnected, the danger that major economic or technological failures in one part of the world might trigger global catastrophes may well increase . Such interdependencies can, to be sure, be a source of strength as well as weakness, as American and European responses to the East Asian and Mexican economic crises of the 1990s indicated. Still, if global capitalism were to collapse or a technological disaster comparable to the imagined Y2K doomsday scenario were to occur, the consequences today would be more far-reaching than they would have been for comparable developments in previous centuries. Fourth, as advances in food production, medical care, and other technologies have contributed to higher infant survival

rates and longer lives, the world's population has been rapidly increasing, placing intensifying pressures on our physical and social environments in a great variety of ways. These demographic trends, necessarily involving all of humanity,

threaten to exacerbate all the preceding problems, generating political and military conflicts, spawning chronic and acute environmental damages, and straining the capacities of economic systems. The final major challenge we face as a species is a more novel one, and it is one that may bring consciousness of our shared "species interests" even more to the fore. In the upcoming century, human beings will increasingly be able to affect their own genetic endowment, in ways that might potentially alter the very sort of organic species that we are. Here as with modern weapons, economic processes, and population growth, we face risks that our efforts to improve our condition may go disastrously wrong, potentially endangering the entire human race. Yet the appeal of endowing our children with greater gifts is sufficiently powerful that organized efforts to create such genetic technologies capable of "redesigning humans" are already burgeoning, both among reputable academic researchers and less restrained, but well-endowed, fringe groups.21 To be sure, an awareness of these as well as other potential dangers affecting all human beings is not enough by itself to foster moral outlooks that reject narrow and invidious particularistic conceptions of human identity. It is perfectly possible for leaders to feel that to save the species, policies that run roughshod over the claims of their rivals are not simply justified but morally demanded . Indeed, like the writers I have examined here, my own more egalitarian and cosmopolitan moral leanings probably stem originally from religious and Kantian philosophical influences, not from any consciousness of the common "species interests" of human beings. But the ethically constitutive story which contends that we have such interests, and that we can see them as moral interests, seems quite realistic, which is of some advantage in any such account. And under the circumstances just sketched, it is likely that more and more people will become persuaded that today, those shared species interests face more profound challenges than they have in most of human history. If so, then stressing our shared identity as members of an evolving species may serve as a highly credible ethically constitutive story that can challenge particularistic accounts and foster support for novel political arrangements . Many more people may come to feel that it is no longer safe to conduct their political lives absorbed in their

traditional communities, with disregard for outsiders, without active concern about the issues that affect the whole species and without practical collaborative efforts to confront those issues. That consciousness of shared interests has the potential to promote stronger and much more inclusive senses of trust, as people come to realize that the dangers and challenges they face in common matter more than the differences that will doubtless persist. I think this sort of awareness of a shared "species interests" also can support senses of personal and collective worth, though I acknowledge that this is not obviously the case. Many people find the spectacle of the human species struggling for survival amidst rival life forms and an unfeeling material world a bleak and dispiriting one. Many may still feel the need to combine acceptance of an evolutionary constitutive story with religious or philosophical accounts that supply some stronger sense of moral purpose to human and cosmic existence. But if people are so inclined, then nothing I am advocating here stands in the way of such combinations. Many persons, moreover, may well find a sustaining sense of moral worth in a conception of themselves as contributors to a species that has developed unique capacities to deliberate and to act responsibly in regard to questions no other known species can yet conceive: how should we live? What relationships should we have, individually and collectively, to other people, other life forms, and the broader universe? In time, I hope that many more people may come to agree that humanity has shared responsibilities of stewardship for the animate and physical worlds around us as well as ourselves, ultimately seeking to promote the flourishing of all insofar as we are capable and the finitude of existence permits. But even short of such a grand sense of species vocation, the idea that we are part of humanity's endeavor to strive and thrive across ever-greater expanses of space and time may be one that can inspire a deep sense of worth in many if not most human beings. Hence it does not seem unrealistic to hope that we can encourage increased acceptance of a universalistic sense of human peoplehood that may help rein in popular impulses to get swept up in more parochial tales of their identities and interests. In the years ahead, this ethical sen - sibility might foster acceptance of various sorts of transnational political arrangements to deal with problems like exploitative and wildly fluctuating international financial and labor markets, destructive environmental and agricultural practices, population control, and the momentous issue of human genetic modifications. These are, after all, problems that appear to need to be dealt with on a near-global scale if they are to be dealt with satisfactorily. Greater acceptance of such arrangements would necessarily entail increased willingness to view existing governments at all levels as at best only "semi-sovereign," authoritative over some issues and not others, in the manner that acceptance of multiple particularistic constitutive stories would also reinforce. In the resulting political climate, it might become easier to construct the sorts of systems of interwoven democratic international, regional, state and local governments that theorists of "cosmopolitan democracy," "liberal multicultural nationalism," and "differentiated democracy" like David Held, Will Kymlicka, Iris Young, William Connolly, and Jurgen Habermas all envision.

National identity reinforces ‘inside/outside’ dualisms making nuclear war inevitableLal 08 [Prerna P. Lal, J.D. Candidate at George Washington Law School, Critical Security Studies, “Deconstructing the National Security State: Towards a New Framework of Analysis,” POSC 4910: Senior Seminar, http://prernalal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/css-deconstructing-the-nat-sec-state.pdf]Identity is not a stable and stationary concept; it is constantly redefined and reconstructed to meet new challenges and adapt to new events. It would be easier to draw a parallel between gender identity and state identity to exemplify this concept. Contrary to mainstream thought, gender identity is socially constructed and keeps changing throughout our lives.

Comparably, the identity of the state is also in a constant state of flux. The state and its elites are involved in identity work when they place or take things off the national security agenda. And similarly to gender identity, which

requires the presence of difference (masculine and feminine) in order for gender to have any meaning, the state requires the

existence of the Other to build an identity for the self . This identity is a performative constitution, taking

the shape of security discourse, and thus, the “constitution of identity is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an ‘inside’ from and ‘outside,’ a ‘self’ from an ‘other,’ a ‘domestic’ from a ‘foreign’ (Campbell 1998, 9).

The state moves to eliminate the Other and claim sovereignty over the outside and the foreign. In doing

so , the state gains power and control over foreign policy, and international relations becomes a field

concerned with building boundaries instead of bridges. However, since the identity of the state is fluid, boundaries do change over time though the performative constitution of state identity, which occurs through security discourse. This positional identity construction will be examined in terms of the Cold War and Post-Cold War era, but it is important to note that the discourse of fear and danger, in order to construct state identity, is not new to the modern nation-state. David Campbell (1998, 49), Professor of International Politics at University of Newcastle in England, suggests in Writing Security that the discourse of danger by the state is as old as Christendom for “thinking that Western civilization was besieged by a horde of enemies (Turks, Jews, heretics, witches), the church saw the devil everywhere and encouraged guilt to such an extent that a culture of anxiety ensured.” Today, Turks, Jews, heretics, and witches have simply been replaced with rogue nations, “Arab terrorists,” communists, and “Third World” dictators through security discourse. After the fall of Christendom, danger has become the new God of Western civilization, and according to Campbell (1998, 48), the discourse of threat construction provides a “new theology of truth…about who and what we are by highlighting who or what ‘we’ are not, and what ‘we’ have to fear.” This demonstrates the inherent unstable nature of security as defined by the

national security state, and the never-ending construction of identity through the otherization of difference. Instead of celebrating our different identities and bridging the gaps present in international relations,

the national security state has drawn boundaries by constructing an identity in opposition to the

Other. The Cold War serves as the classic example of statist identity construction through the creation of the Other, which created more

insecurity than security for the entire world. After the fall of Hitler and the Axis powers, the United States emerged as a superpower, along with the Soviet Union, which had been a key ally in the war. Due to the neo-realist obsession with an ordered world operating under the assumption that states exist in an anarchic system, the United States formulated an identity of the self that was opposed to disorder and incivility. Out of the Cold War discourse of the Other came the

national security state, which was defined by the National Security Act of 1947 (Der Derian 1992, 76), a measure that Truman regretted signing by the time he left office. This national security state found an enemy in the Soviet Union, and created the Other in order to stabilize the self and guarantee its existence. In NSC-68, the United States admitted that even without the threat of Soviet communism, it would still pursue policies designed to shape the world in a more orderly manner (Campbell 1998, 30-31), probably referring to a more capitalist economic order. TheCold War that ensued between the two superpowers became coded as a struggle between good and evil, civilized and barbaric, freedom-loving and totalitarian. Suddenly, the threat of communism was equated to the ruthless and fascist Nazi regime, and communism was “un-American,” as demonstrated by the oppressive activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The search for national security created insecurity for a large number of Americans who were labeled as communists and Soviet-sympathizers, blacklisted and lost their jobs. The identity construction by the American statecraft in opposition to Soviet communism did serve the interests of the elite . Issues such as employment, childcare, women’s rights, universal healthcare, and equal wages were characterized as evil and foreign by being associated with communism and the Soviet Union (Campbell 1998, 140). These domestic issues caused vast human insecurity in the United States, and the Cold War search for security caused insecurity

throughout the entire world. It is important to note that the Soviet Union was never a military threat to the United States. This is

not to say that the USSR lacked military capability, but that its ability to cause severe damage to the United States was not recognized (and encouraged) until it was construed as the Other. To secure the self from the threat of the Other, the two superpowers engaged in a massive arms buildup, which almost resulted in nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Furthermore, they fought proxy wars in underdeveloped countries, destroying millions of lives and infrastructure. The end result of this face-off was a vast amount of human insecurity, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and our existing bipolar mindset of the world. Even today, what constitutes of American is unclear; however, what unites Americans is the threat of what is

defined as “un-American” by the national security apparatus. In the Post-September 11 era, identity construction by

the American state in terms of us vs. them discourse continues to pervade our consciousness. The threat of a nuclear winter never did materialize, but it seems to have deep frozen the minds of our policymakers, and no amount of thawing makes any difference. George W. Bush is so infected with the “Cold War of the mind” that he keeps coughing up redundant phrases like “they hate freedom,” and “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," which usually happens every time he stumbles and cannot find anything else in his frozen brain. In a press release after the ‘terrorist’ attack in Bali, Bush stated that “those of us who love freedom must work together to do everything we can to disrupt, deny and bring to justice these people who have no soul, no conscience, people that hate freedom” (U.S. Department of State 2002, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs).

Who in their right mind hates freedom? ! Then, in his State of the Union address this year, Bush maintained that “the United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies” (U.S. Department of State 2005, Democracy). In all of these cases, the enemy is ill-defined and unknown, simply functioning as an opposition against whom the American state can construct an identity.

Additionally, the enemy or the Other is outside the border, and not within, as is represented by “we have to face terrorists abroad so we do not have to fight them here at home.” It is preposterous to think that Americans cannot be terrorists or engage in terrorism, and yet the state ensures us that “we” are peace-loving, free and civil while “they” are constructed as uncivilized, soulless, inhumane, barbaric and oppressive. While functioning as identity construction for the state, this discourse of security also legitimizes state

violence in favor of elitist interests.

The globalized system is incapable of dealing with risks it produces—responsibility is too spread out. Only a cosmopolitan identity can prevent error replicationBeck 09 – Professor of Sociology at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University and the London School of Economics, and author ofWorld at Risk [2009, Ulrich Beck, “Critical Theory of World Risk Society: A Cosmopolitan Vision,” Constellations, Volume 16, No 1, Accessed Online at: http://www.ulrichbeck.net-build.net/uploads/constellations.pdf]As Piet Strydom (2002) correctly observes,9 I developed this partial theory of institutional contradictions in Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (2002) [German: Gegengifte (1988)] through a controversy with – i.e. an appropriation and critique of – Niklas Luhmann’s 1986 study Okologische Kommunikation ¨ which was published at the same time as my Risk Society. Luhmann bases his argument on the slogan that what cannot be controlled is not real. Because modern society consists of functionally differentiated systems that can cope with self-generated risks only in the terms of their own specific systemic logics – the economy in terms of prices, politics in terms of majorities, law in terms of guilt, science in terms of truth, etc. – modern society not only cannot cope with environmental and other global risks; these problems do not even exist. Those who give them expression, such as social movements and counter-experts, are the real source of danger because the “noise” that they generate “disturbs” the smooth functioning of the systems. I reduced this to the ironical-critical formula: “Schweigen entgiftet!”10 (“Silence decontaminates!”). Hence, I turned this diagnosis from its head onto its feet. Instead of making the reality of global risks cleverly disappear in the metaphysics of systems rationality (thereby avoiding the historical falsification of one’s own systems theory), I draw the opposite conclusion from a similar diagnosis, namely, that contemporary society and its subsystems are incapable of coping with their most urgent, self-generated problems. The counterpart of the non-responsibility of science is an implicit responsibility of businesses and the sole responsibility of politics for legitimacy. Responsibilities can indeed be assigned but they are spread out over several social subsystems. The global threats posed by modernization should not be assigned to science or the economy or politics but are a “coproduction” of these subsystems. Thus we are dealing with an extensive labyrinth whose construction plan is not non-responsibility or irresponsibility but, rather, the coexistence of responsibility [Zustandigkeit ¨ ] and impunity [Unzurechenbarkeit] – to be more precise, responsibility as impunity, or organized irresponsibility. The contradictory nature of the basic institutions of modern society, which lay claim to both competence and impunity, is grounded in increasing social differentiation, in the factor in which Luhmann thought he had discovered the meta-solution to all problems. Thus the contradictions within and between the institutions of modern society become clearly visible as the latest in contemporary experiences of catastrophes, as magnified by the alarmism the mass media. A core contradiction in contemporary society is the fact that advanced modernity, with the aid of its scientific instruments and its mass mediated communication, is forced to accord highest priority to the mega-threats it itself has generated, although it is clear that it lacks the necessary concepts to observe or impute, let alone “manage,” them adequately – at any rate, not as long as the institutional status quo is absolutized and held constant in an ahistorical manner. The self-criticism of society becomes more radical to the extent that these contradictions are overcome through recurring catastrophic crises and their anticipation in the experience and memory of modernity. As the latest example of the global financial risk demonstrates again, this self-criticism initially unfolds as immanent critique of the institutionalized and continually newly-proclaimed promises of security and their failure in the concrete experiences of catastrophes. This includes an involuntary self-criticism of science in the conflict between experts and counter-experts as well as the inability to redeem in an anticipatory way promises of security in the face of the “unknown unknowns,” hence of the inability-to-know. Here the (unreflected) self-confrontation of modernity turns into “reflexive” modernizationin the narrower sense: conflict awakens and impresses upon consciousness that a “misconception of the century” has crept into the relation between global risks and the institutional arrangements from which they have arisen and which are supposed to control them. Risks can no longer be dismissed as side effects. Instead they are becoming an internal problem of

apparently self-enclosed social systems. At the same time, every attempt to manage the complexity of risk creates the need to fall back on abstractions and models which give rise to new uncertainties. This is the basis of a further institutionalized contradiction. Risk and non-knowledge prompt the call for security and lead to new insecurities and uncertainties in the general groping about in the fog of insecurity and uncertainties. Moreover, the undecidability of problems, which nevertheless have to be decided, is growing along with the pressure to make decisions.11 Yet threats are not “things.” Hence conflicts and struggles over definitions arise in the interplay of constructivism and institutionalism. These do not occur in an institutional vacuum, however. A key component of this social construction and its “plausibility” and “truth resources,” hence its collectively binding force, resides in the relations of definition. Here too, it is the case that the communicative logic of risk permeates society in all of its institutions and lifeworlds. And to the extent that every new catastrophic experience awakens memories of previous catastrophes, the more these relations of definitional power become publicly visible and themselves a political issue. This prompts the question concerning a new ethics and system of responsibility, concerning a democratization of the relations of definitional power in the world risk society – in other words, the question concerning a responsible modernity. However, the brutal fact of ontological insecurity always has an ultimate addressee: the recipient of the residual risk of the world risk society is the individual. Whatever propels risk and makes it uncalculable, whatever provokes the institutional crisis at the level of the governing regime and the markets shifts the ultimate decision-making responsibility onto the individuals who are ultimately left to their own devices with their partial and biased knowledge, with undecidability and multiple layers of uncertainty. This is undoubtedly a powerful source of right-wing radicalism and fundamentalism in the second modernity that is not easy to stem.

Alt:

The alternative is a criticism of the 1ac’s reliance on methodological nationalism—this opens up space for cosmopolitanism and transforms societyDelanty 06 (Professor of Sociology in the University of Liverpool 2006, Gerard Delanty, “The cosmopolitan imagination: critical cosmopolitanism and social theory,” The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 1, http://www.oneworlduv.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cosmopolitan_imagination.pdf)The micro dimension of cosmopolitanism concerns individual agency and social identities, that is aspects of

cosmopolitanism reflected in internal societal change. This is the dimension of cosmopolitanism that is most commonly commented on, but the examples that are generally given tend to focus on trans-national or post-national phenomena. The conclusion of this paper is that this dimension must not only be looked at in the wider context of the macro and historical framework of modernity, but it must also be seen as more than a simple empirical condition, as in the frequently given example of a shift from national community to transnational community or the replacement of national identities by cosmopolitan ones. The micro dimension of cosmopolitanism is exemplified in changes within, for example, national identities rather than in the emergence in new identities. So cosmopolitanism is not to be equated with transnationalization, as is the tendency in political cosmopolitanism as

discussed above. The relativizing of cultural values in contemporary society and the experience of contingency has led to a greater self-scrutiny within national identity: there are few national identities that do not

contain self-problematizing forms of self-understanding. Rather than find cosmopolitanism embodied in a supra-national identity it makes more sense to see it expressed in more reflexive kinds of self-understanding.

Taking the example of Europeanization, a cosmopolitan European identity can be seen less as a new supra identity rather than as a growing reflexivity within existing identities, including personal, national and supranational identities, as

well as in other kinds of identities (see Delanty 2005). In addition to the transformation in identity, there is also the transformation in communication and in cultural models. The indicators of cosmopolitanism go beyond shifts in identity to wider discursive and cultural transformation. In methodological terms, cosmopolitan indicators are necessarily ones concerning socio-cultural mediation. If the cosmopolitan moment arises in the construction and emergence of new identities or forms of self-understanding , cultural frames and cultural models,

then mediation is the key to it. This emphasis on mediation between, for example, competing conceptions of the social world

accords with the cosmopolitan idea in all its forms: the desire to go beyond ethnocentricity and particularity. In this sense

then critical cosmopolitanism is an open process by which the social world is made intelligible ; it should be

seen as the expression of new ideas, opening spaces of discourse, identifying possibilities for translation and the construction of the social world. Following Bryan Turner’s analysis, it can be related to such virtues as irony (emotional distance from one’s own history and culture), reflexivity (the recognition that all perspectives are culturally conditioned and contingent), scepticism towards the grand narratives of modern ideologies, care for other cultures and an acceptance of cultural hybridization, an ecumenical commitment to dialogue with other cultures, especially religious ones, and nomadism, as a condition of never being fully at home in cultural categories or geo-political boundaries (Turner 2001; Turner and Rojek 2001: 225). This is also reiterated in the arguments of other social theorists, such as Calhoun (2003), Gilroy (2004) and Kurasawa (2004) that cosmopolitanism does not entail the negation of solidarities, as liberal cosmopolitan theorists, such as Nussbaum (1996) argue, but is more situated and, as Appiah (2005)

argues, it is also ‘rooted’. This notion of cosmopolitanism goes beyond conventional associations of cosmopolitanism with world polity or with global flows. The article stresses the socially situated nature of cosmopolitan processes while recognizing that these processes are world-constituting or constructivist ones. Such processes take the form of translations between things that are different. The space of cosmopolitanism is the space of such translations. While the capacity for translation has always existed, at least since the advent of writing, it is only with modernity that translation or translatability, has

itself become the dominant cultural form for all societies. Translation once served the function of communication and was not the basis of a given culture. It is only becoming fully apparent today what the logic of translation has extended beyond the simple belief that everything can be translated to the recognition that every culture can translate itself and others. The most general one is the translation of inside/outside as a solution to the problem of inclusion and exclusion. Other dynamics of translation are those of the local and global, self and other, particular and universal, past and present, core and periphery. It is the nature of such translations that the very terms of the translation is altered in the process of translation and something new is created. This is because

every translation is at the same time an evaluation. Without this dimension of self-transcendence, cosmopolitanism is a meaningless term. Conceived of in such terms, cosmopolitanism entails the opening up of normative questions within the cultural imaginaries of societies. The research object for critical cosmopolitan sociology

concerns precisely this space, the discursive space of translations. Conclusion Cosmopolitanism does not refer simply to a global space or to post-national phenomena that have come into existence today as a result of globalization. The argument advanced in this paper is that it resides in social mechanisms and dynamics that can exist in any society at any time in history where world openness has a resonance. Clearly cosmopolitanism has become relevant today, due not least to the impact of globalization. Cosmopolitanism concerns processes of self-transformation in which new cultural forms take shape and where new spaces of discourse open up leading to a transformation in the social world. The cosmopolitan imagination from the perspective of a critical social theory of modernity tries to

capture the transformative moment, interactive relations between societies and modernities, the developmental and

dialogic. For these reasons, methodologically speaking, a critical cosmopolitan sociology proceeds on the assumption that culture contains capacities for learning and that societies have developmental possibilities. The article has highlighted translations as one of the central mechanisms of cosmopolitan transformation and which occurs on macro-societal and on micro dimensions as well as being played on in the continued transformation of modernities. Cosmopolitan sociology is a means of making sense of social transformation and therefore entails an unavoidable degree of moral and political evaluation. To this extent, cosmopolitanism is a connecting strand between sociology and political

discourse in society and in political theory. It has a critical role to play in opening up discursive spaces of world openness and thus in resisting both globalization and nationalism.

Case:

Soft Power:

No-impact: we should have already seen the impacts of Cohen due to the first crisis in Georgia or the current one in Ukraine.

No-link: their Perez and Grandin evidence only talk about LA soft power, where their advantage is based on worldwide soft power and Perez never even talks about influence, just “goodwill”.

Biotech:

Turn: Cuban biotech has the potential to fuel biological terrorismZilinskas 11 - Director, Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury College (Raymond, ABSTRACT OF: “Cuba, Terrorism, and Biotechnology”, 7/15/2011, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/0471686786.ebd0151.pub2/abstract, HW)The Cuban government has in the past been known to directly support terrorist groups and, as well, nations

that are or were supporters of terrorists. In addition, it has taken steps over its existence to acquire a powerful biotechnology infrastructure. Is it possible that Cuban biotechnology has been misused for the purpose of acquiring biological weapons? There certainly have been allegations made by high U.S. government officials to this effect . This entry addresses the relationships between Cuba, terrorism, and biotechnology. It has two sections. The first

section considers Cuba's history of terrorist support and associations with nations that have been named by the United States as supporting terrorists, such as Iran, Libya, and Syria. Second, Cuba's powerful biotechnological capability is reviewed, as well as its potential for biological weapons acquisition.

Non-unique: their Sanchez evidence never speaks on collapse, only regime change. Piccone says they are reforming now and CPAG says the shift is inevitable.

No link: Piccone never says anything about preventing collapse.

No Extinction: Quammen 13 never talks about extinction

Non-unique: this disease would be a global problem and any biotech group could potentially solve, looking to just one creates lower possibilities for success and their Cuba key evidence literally just talks about some vaccines they have created, everyone has created vaccines.

Squo Solves: US-Cuba scientists already cooperatingRass ’04 (Reynold Rass, reporter for Political Affairs, “Cuba and US to Cooperate on Anti-cancer Drug Research”, Political Affairs, 8-20-2004, http://www.politicalaffairs.net/cuba-and-us-to-cooperate-on-anti-cancer-drug-research/)

ON July 15, and for the first time in 40 years, a cooperation agreement was signed by Cuban and U.S. companies for the transfer of biotech n ological technology directed at developing vaccines against cancer. The agreement was signed between the CancerVax Corporation and the Center for Molecular Immunology at the International Conference Center in Havana. President Fidel Castro Ruz attended the signing, as did other leaders of state and government; Dr. David Hale and Hazel

Aker, executive director and vice president and attorney for the CancerVax Corporation, respectively, as well as the directors of Cuba’s most important scientific centers and health institutes. During the event, a video message was shown to participants, sent from Dr. Donald Morton, U.S. professor and outstanding cancer specialist and medical director and chief surgeon at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, California.The message, read by Dr. Morton himself, congratulates all those involved in this significant event for their dedication, cooperation, commitment and labor to make the day possible. He commented that the agreement signed is very important to him for many reasons: 'I am a cancer surgeon and a survivor of this disease who has spent the last 40 years doing research on the use of the immune system and controlling cancer. I have dedicated my career to leading research on promising technologies, such as therapeutic cancer vaccines and the challenge to try and intimidate it. Morton further comments that unfortunately, the incidence of this disease around the world is continuing to grow. The World Health Organization estimates that in the year 2000, more than 10 million persons throughout the world were diagnosed with cancer, and that number will grow to 15 million by the year 2020. He notes that by that time, cancer will have become the most frequent cause of death in the world, because it will have exceeded cardiovascular disease, and he adds that in his opinion, the technologies represented in the signed agreement are potentially useful for the treatment and control of cancer. 'We believe that the candidates for products that you have developed in Cuba represent new approaches. A unique, unprecedented discovery that of the development of vaccines against cancer designed to stimulate the immune system,' Morton says. 'Thank you all for your continuous support for cancer research and each one of you for your personal

involvement,' he concluded. Speaking on behalf of Cuban scientists, Dr. Agustín Lage Dávila, director of the Center for Molecular Immunology, said that dissatisfaction is a scientist’s natural state of being, and it is known that what remains to be done is much more than what we have done so far . Lage said that it was necessary to recognize that an important point had been reached that had made the signing of the agreement possible. He

recounted the history of how scientific work had begun in Cuba to search for anti-cancer vaccines, with the purpose of halting the growth of malignant tumors. That project received a boost from Fidel Castro’s decision to develop a Center for Molecular Immunology, even in the context of the tremendous economic difficulties that the country was experiencing during the 1990s , he noted. CancerVax, a company that was already known in Cuba for its work on

melanoma vaccines, came into contact with the Center for Molecular Immunology in 2001, and its attention was caught by the first clinical results that our country had at that time for a vaccine for the treatment of advanced lung cancer, Lage explained. He recalled how Dr. Donald Morton visited the country, and that from then on, a process of contact began that took more than three years of negotiations, culminating in the signing of the current agreement. For technical reasons, a complex negotiations process is already underway involving three different cancer vaccines, all under the protection of six patents from the Center for Molecular Immunology and the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center, with different manufacturing processes, Lage noted. 'This negotiation has additional complications, and anyone could recite a long list of reasons why this agreement could have been impossible, he added. There is not tradition of technology transfer, particularly in biotechnology, from Southern to Northern countries, generally speaking, and particularly in the case of Cuba and the United States, Lage affirmed. It is no secret that there is a 40-plus year void of a total absence of economic cooperation, a situation for which we have never blamed the U.S. people, far less the scientists of that country,' he said. Within that complex context, CancerVax decided to set about reaching an agreement, together with Cuba, for the transfer of technology with the goal of producing anti-cancer vaccines, which has been achieved, Lage explained. 'The reasons that made it possible include, among other elements, the enthusiasm and perseverance of Professor Donald Morton and Dr. David Hale, attorney Hazel Aker and her team, and the ethics of medical scientists who put the interests of the sick before any other consideration.' He further mentioned the determination of the Cuban authorities and of the Center for Molecular Immunology, in being faithful to the idea that both Cuban and

U.S. patients deserved all their efforts to overcome the obstacles and abnormal conditions surrounding these negotiations to make the project possible and open a new road forward. From now on, a joint scientific team from both institutions are to plan and lead new clinical trials, including the United States and Europe, he explained, adding that conditions will be created to produce vaccines by CancerVax and Cuban scientific centers, as they work to make the productive processes in both countries equivalent and to obtain the vaccines’ registration in order to begin distribution.