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1ac – Intelligence Only Contention _ is Human Intelligence

Information overload drains resources and trades off with targeted surveillance Volz, 14(Dustin, The National Journal, “Snowden: Overreliance on Mass Surveillance Abetted Boston Marathon Bombing: The former NSA contractor says a focus on mass surveillance is impeding traditional intelligence-gathering efforts—and allowing terrorists to succeed”, October 20, 2014, ak.)

Edward Snowden on Monday suggested that if the National Security Agency focused

more on traditional intelligence gathering—and less on its mass-surveillance programs—it could have thwarted the 2013 Boston Marathon

bombings. The fugitive leaker, speaking via video to a Harvard class, said that a preoccupation with collecting bulk communications data has led to resource constraints at U.S. intelligence agencies, often leaving more traditional, targeted methods of spying on the back burner . "We miss attacks, we miss

leads, and investigations fail because when the government is doing its 'collect it all,' where we're watching everybody, we're not seeing anything

with specificity because it is impossible to keep an eye on all of your targets," Snowden told Harvard professor and Internet freedom activist Lawrence Lessig. "A good example of

this is, actually, the Boston Marathon bombings." Snowden said that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were

pointed out by Russian intelligence to U.S. officials prior to the bombings last year that killed three and left hundreds wounded, but that such actionable intelligence was largely ignored. He argued that targeted surveillance on known extremists and diligent pursuit of intelligence leads provides for better counterterrorism efforts than mass spying. "We didn't really watch these guys and the question is, why?" Snowden asked. "The reality of that is because we do have finite resources and the question is, should we be spending 10 billion dollars a year on mass-surveillance programs of the NSA to the extent that we no longer have effective means of traditional [ targeting ]?" Anti-spying activists have frequently argued that bulk data collection has no record of successfully thwarting a terror ist attack , a line of argument some federal judges reviewing the NSA's programs have also used in their legal reviews of the

activities. Snowden's suggestion—that such mass surveillance has not only failed to directly stop a threat, but actually makes the U.S. less safe by distracting resource-strapped intelligence officials from performing their jobs—takes his criticism of spy programs to a new level. "We're watching everybody that we have no reason to be watching simply because it may have value, at the

expense of being able to watch specific people for which we have a specific cause for investigating, and that's something that we need to look carefully at how to balance," Snowden said.

The plan solves- 1) Leads to the abandonment of wasteful, inefficient mass

surveillance tactics in favor of targeted surveillance Walt, 14(Stephen M. Walt is the (real papa Walt) and Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, “The Big Counterterrorism Counterfactual Is the NSA actually making us worse at fighting terrorism?”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/10/counterterrorism_spying_nsa_islamic_state_terrorist_cve, November 10, 2014, ak.)The head of the British electronic spy agency GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, created a minor flap last week in an article he wrote for the Financial Times. In effect, Hannigan argued that more robust encryption procedures by private Internet companies were unwittingly aiding terrorists such as the Islamic State (IS) or al Qaeda, by making it harder for organizations like the NSA and GCHQ to monitor online traffic. The implication was clear: The more that our personal privacy is respected and protected, the greater the danger we will face from evildoers. It's a serious issue, and democracies that want to respect individual privacy while simultaneously keeping citizens safe are going to have to do a much better job of reassuring us that vast and (mostly) secret surveillance capabilities overseen by unelected officials such as Hannigan won't be abused. I tend to favor the privacy side of the argument, both because personal freedoms are hard to get back once lost, but also because there's not much evidence that these surveillance activities are making us significantly safer. They seem to be able to help us track some terrorist leaders, but there's a lively debate among scholars over whether tracking and killing these guys is

an effective strategy. The fear of being tracked also forces terrorist organizations to adopt less efficient communications procedures, but it

doesn't seem to prevent them from doing a fair bit of harm regardless. The fear of being tracked also forces terrorist organizations to adopt less efficient communications procedures, but it doesn't seem to prevent them from doing a fair bit of harm regardless. So here's a wild counterfactual for

you to ponder: What would the United States , Great Britain, and other wealthy and powerful nations do if they didn't have these vast surveillance powers? What would they do if they didn't have armed drones, cruise missiles, or other implements of destruction that can make it remarkably easy (and in the short-term, relatively cheap) to target anyone they suspect might be a terrorist? Assuming that there were still violent extremists plotting various

heinous acts, what would these powerful states do if the Internet was there but no one knew how to spy on it?

For starters, they'd have to rely more heavily on tried-and-true counterterrorism measures: infiltrating extremist organizations and flipping existing members, etc., to find out what they were planning, head attacks off before they

occurred, and eventually roll up organization themselves. States waged plenty of counterterrorism campaigns before the Internet was invented, and while it

can be difficult to infiltrate such movements and find their vulnerable points, it's not exactly an unknown art. If we couldn't spy on them from the safety of Fort Meade, we'd probably be doing a lot more of this. Second, if we didn't

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/10/counterterrorism_spying_nsa_islamic_state_terrorist_cve


have all these expensive high-tech capabilities, we might spend a lot more time thinking about how to discredit and delegitimize the terrorists' message, instead of repeatedly doing things that help them make their case and recruit new followers . Every time the United States goes and pummels another Muslim country -- or sends a drone to

conduct a "signature strike" -- it reinforces the jihadis' claim that the West has an insatiable desire to dominate the Arab and Islamic world and no respect for Muslim life. It doesn't matter if U.S. leaders have the best of intentions, if they genuinely want to help these societies, or if they are responding to a legitimate threat; the crude message that drones, cruise missiles, and targeted killings send is rather different. If we didn't have all these cool high-tech hammers, in short, we'd have to stop treating places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria as if they were nails that just needed another pounding, and we might work harder at marginalizing our enemies within their own societies . To do that,

we would have to be building more effective partnerships with authoritative sources of legitimacy within these societies, including religious leaders. Our failure to do more to discredit these movements is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the entire war on terror, and until that failure is recognized and corrected, the war will never end. Third, and somewhat paradoxically, if we didn't have drones and the NSA, we'd have to think more seriously about boots on the ground, at least in

some places. But having to think harder about such decisions might be a good thing, because it would force the U nited S tates (or others) to decide which threats were really serious and which countries really mattered.

It might even lead to the conclusion that any sort of military intervention is counterproductive. As we've seen over the past decade, what the NSA, CIA, and Special Ops Command do is in some ways too easy: It just doesn't cost that much to add a few more names to the kill list, to vacuum up a few more terabytes of data, or to launch a few more drones in some new country, and all the more so when it's done under the veil of secrecy. I'm not saying that our current policy is costless or that special

operations aren't risky; my point is that such activities are still a lot easier to contemplate and authorize than a true "boots on the ground" operation. By making it easier, however, the capabilities make it easier for our leaders to skirt the more fundamental questions about interests and strategy. It allows them to "do something," even when what is being done won't necessarily help. Lastly,

if U.S. leaders had to think harder about where to deploy more expensive resources, they might finally start thinking about the broader set of U.S. and Western policies that have inspired some of these movements in the first place. Movements like IS, al Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, al-

Shabab, or the Taliban are in some ways indigenous movements arising from local circumstances, but they did not spring up out of nowhere and the United States (and other countries) bear some (though not all) blame for their emergence and growth. To say this is neither to defend nor justify violent extremism, nor to assert that all U.S. policies are wrong; it is merely to acknowledge that

there is a causal connection between some of what we do and some of the enemies we face. But if some of the things the United States (or its allies)

is doing are making it unpopular in certain parts of the world, and if

some of that unpopularity gets translated into violent extremism that forces us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to protect ourselves , then maybe we ought to ask ourselves if every single one of those policies makes sense and is truly consistent with U.S. interests and values. And if not, then maybe we ought to change some of them, if only to take some steam out of the extremist enterprise. What I'm

suggesting, in short, is that the " surveil and strike" mentality that has dominated the counterterrorism effort (and which is clearly reflected in Hannigan's plea to let Big Brother --

oops, I mean the NSA and GCHQ -- keep its eyes on our communications) is popular with government officials because it's relatively easy , plays to our technological

strengths, and doesn't force us to make any significant foreign-policy

changes or engage in any sort of self-criticism at all. If we can solve the terrorist problem by throwing money at it, and enriching some defense contractors and former government officials in the process, what's not to like? If we can solve the terrorist problem by throwing money at it, and enriching some defense contractors and former government officials in the process, what's not to like? To be clear: I'm not suggesting we dismantle the NSA, fire all our cryptographers, and revert to Cordell Hull's quaint belief that "gentlemen [or ladies] do not read each

other's mail." But until we see more convincing evidence that the surveillance

of the sort Hannigan was defending has really and truly kept a significant number of people safer from foreign dangers, I'm going to wonder if we aren't overemphasizing these activities because they are relatively easy for us, and

because they have a powerful but hard-to-monitor constituency in Washington and London. In short, we're just doing what comes naturally, instead of doing what might be more effective .

2) That prevents tradeoffs with human-intel which is critical to overall US intel.

Margolis ‘13Gabriel Margolis – the author presently holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Conflict Management & Resolution from UNC Wilmington and in his final semester of the program when this article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Security Studies . Global Security Studies (GSS) is a premier academic and professional journal for strategic issues involving international security affairs. All articles submitted to and published in Global Security Studies (GSS) undergo a rigorous, peer-reviewed process. From the article: “The Lack of HUMINT: A Recurring Intelligence Problem” - Global Security Studies - Spring 2013, Volume 4, Issue 2http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Margolis%20Intelligence%20(ag%20edits).pdf

The United States has accumulated an unequivocal ability to collect intelligence as a result of the

technological advances of the 20th century. Numerous methods of collection have been

employed in clandestine operations around the world including those that focus on human, signals, geospatial, and measurements and signals intelligence. An infatuation with technological methods of intelligence gathering has developed within many intelligence organizations, often leaving the age old practice of espionage as an afterthought. As a result of the focus on technical methods, some of the worst intelligence failures of the 20th century can be attributed to an absence of human intelligence. The 21st century has ushered in advances in technology

have allowed UAVs to become the ultimate technical intelligence gathering platform; however human intelligence is still being neglected. The increasing reliance on UAVs will make the U nited S tates susceptible to intelligence failures unless human intelligence can be properly integrated . In the near future UAVs may be able to gather human level intelligence, but it will be a long time before classical espionage is a thing of the past.

1ac - Civilian CasualtiesContention _ is Human Intelligence

Information overload drains resources and trades off with targeted surveillance Volz, 14(Dustin, The National Journal, “Snowden: Overreliance on Mass Surveillance Abetted Boston Marathon Bombing: The former NSA contractor says a focus on mass surveillance is impeding traditional intelligence-gathering efforts—and allowing terrorists to succeed”, October 20, 2014, ak.)



bombings. The fugitive leaker, speaking via video to a Harvard class, said that a preoccupation with collecting bulk communications data has led to resource constraints at U.S. intelligence agencies, often leaving more traditional, targeted methods of spying on the back burner . "We miss attacks, we miss





activities. Snowden's suggestion—that such mass surveillance has not only failed to directly stop a threat, but actually makes the U.S. less safe by distracting resource-strapped intelligence officials from performing their jobs—takes his criticism of spy programs to a new level. "We're watching everybody that we have no reason to be watching simply because it may have value, at the

expense of being able to watch specific people for which we have a specific cause for investigating, and that's something that we need to look carefully at how to balance," Snowden said.

The plan solves- 1) Leads to the abandonment of wasteful, inefficient mass

surveillance tactics in favor of targeted surveillance Walt, 14(Stephen M. Walt is the (real papa Walt) and Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, “The Big Counterterrorism Counterfactual Is the NSA actually making us worse at fighting terrorism?”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/10/counterterrorism_spying_nsa_islamic_state_terrorist_cve, November 10, 2014, ak.)The head of the British electronic spy agency GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, created a minor flap last week in an article he wrote for the Financial Times. In effect, Hannigan argued that more robust encryption procedures by private Internet companies were unwittingly aiding terrorists such as the Islamic State (IS) or al Qaeda, by making it harder for organizations like the NSA and GCHQ to monitor online traffic. The implication was clear: The more that our personal privacy is respected and protected, the greater the danger we will face from evildoers. It's a serious issue, and democracies that want to respect individual privacy while simultaneously keeping citizens safe are going to have to do a much better job of reassuring us that vast and (mostly) secret surveillance capabilities overseen by unelected officials such as Hannigan won't be abused. I tend to favor the privacy side of the argument, both because personal freedoms are hard to get back once lost, but also because there's not much evidence that these surveillance activities are making us significantly safer. They seem to be able to help us track some terrorist leaders, but there's a lively debate among scholars over whether tracking and killing these guys is

an effective strategy. The fear of being tracked also forces terrorist organizations to adopt less efficient communications procedures, but it

doesn't seem to prevent them from doing a fair bit of harm regardless. The fear of being tracked also forces terrorist organizations to adopt less efficient communications procedures, but it doesn't seem to prevent them from doing a fair bit of harm regardless. So here's a wild counterfactual for

you to ponder: What would the United States , Great Britain, and other wealthy and powerful nations do if they didn't have these vast surveillance powers? What would they do if they didn't have armed drones, cruise missiles, or other implements of destruction that can make it remarkably easy (and in the short-term, relatively cheap) to target anyone they suspect might be a terrorist? Assuming that there were still violent extremists plotting various

heinous acts, what would these powerful states do if the Internet was there but no one knew how to spy on it?

For starters, they'd have to rely more heavily on tried-and-true counterterrorism measures: infiltrating extremist organizations and flipping existing members, etc., to find out what they were planning, head attacks off before they

occurred, and eventually roll up organization themselves. States waged plenty of counterterrorism campaigns before the Internet was invented, and while it

can be difficult to infiltrate such movements and find their vulnerable points, it's not exactly an unknown art. If we couldn't spy on them from the safety of Fort Meade, we'd probably be doing a lot more of this. Second, if we didn't



have all these expensive high-tech capabilities, we might spend a lot more time thinking about how to discredit and delegitimize the terrorists' message, instead of repeatedly doing things that help them make their case and recruit new followers . Every time the United States goes and pummels another Muslim country -- or sends a drone to

conduct a "signature strike" -- it reinforces the jihadis' claim that the West has an insatiable desire to dominate the Arab and Islamic world and no respect for Muslim life. It doesn't matter if U.S. leaders have the best of intentions, if they genuinely want to help these societies, or if they are responding to a legitimate threat; the crude message that drones, cruise missiles, and targeted killings send is rather different. If we didn't have all these cool high-tech hammers, in short, we'd have to stop treating places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria as if they were nails that just needed another pounding, and we might work harder at marginalizing our enemies within their own societies . To do that,

we would have to be building more effective partnerships with authoritative sources of legitimacy within these societies, including religious leaders. Our failure to do more to discredit these movements is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the entire war on terror, and until that failure is recognized and corrected, the war will never end. Third, and somewhat paradoxically, if we didn't have drones and the NSA, we'd have to think more seriously about boots on the ground, at least in

some places. But having to think harder about such decisions might be a good thing, because it would force the U nited S tates (or others) to decide which threats were really serious and which countries really mattered.

It might even lead to the conclusion that any sort of military intervention is counterproductive. As we've seen over the past decade, what the NSA, CIA, and Special Ops Command do is in some ways too easy: It just doesn't cost that much to add a few more names to the kill list, to vacuum up a few more terabytes of data, or to launch a few more drones in some new country, and all the more so when it's done under the veil of secrecy. I'm not saying that our current policy is costless or that special

operations aren't risky; my point is that such activities are still a lot easier to contemplate and authorize than a true "boots on the ground" operation. By making it easier, however, the capabilities make it easier for our leaders to skirt the more fundamental questions about interests and strategy. It allows them to "do something," even when what is being done won't necessarily help. Lastly,

if U.S. leaders had to think harder about where to deploy more expensive resources, they might finally start thinking about the broader set of U.S. and Western policies that have inspired some of these movements in the first place. Movements like IS, al Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, al-

Shabab, or the Taliban are in some ways indigenous movements arising from local circumstances, but they did not spring up out of nowhere and the United States (and other countries) bear some (though not all) blame for their emergence and growth. To say this is neither to defend nor justify violent extremism, nor to assert that all U.S. policies are wrong; it is merely to acknowledge that

there is a causal connection between some of what we do and some of the enemies we face. But if some of the things the United States (or its allies)

is doing are making it unpopular in certain parts of the world, and if

some of that unpopularity gets translated into violent extremism that forces us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to protect ourselves , then maybe we ought to ask ourselves if every single one of those policies makes sense and is truly consistent with U.S. interests and values. And if not, then maybe we ought to change some of them, if only to take some steam out of the extremist enterprise. What I'm

suggesting, in short, is that the " surveil and strike" mentality that has dominated the counterterrorism effort (and which is clearly reflected in Hannigan's plea to let Big Brother --

oops, I mean the NSA and GCHQ -- keep its eyes on our communications) is popular with government officials because it's relatively easy , plays to our technological

strengths, and doesn't force us to make any significant foreign-policy

changes or engage in any sort of self-criticism at all. If we can solve the terrorist problem by throwing money at it, and enriching some defense contractors and former government officials in the process, what's not to like? If we can solve the terrorist problem by throwing money at it, and enriching some defense contractors and former government officials in the process, what's not to like? To be clear: I'm not suggesting we dismantle the NSA, fire all our cryptographers, and revert to Cordell Hull's quaint belief that "gentlemen [or ladies] do not read each

other's mail." But until we see more convincing evidence that the surveillance

of the sort Hannigan was defending has really and truly kept a significant number of people safer from foreign dangers, I'm going to wonder if we aren't overemphasizing these activities because they are relatively easy for us, and

because they have a powerful but hard-to-monitor constituency in Washington and London. In short, we're just doing what comes naturally, instead of doing what might be more effective .

2) That prevents tradeoffs with human-intel which is critical to overall US intel.

Margolis ‘13Gabriel Margolis – the author presently holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Conflict Management & Resolution from UNC Wilmington and in his final semester of the program when this article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Security Studies . Global Security Studies (GSS) is a premier academic and professional journal for strategic issues involving international security affairs. All articles submitted to and published in Global Security Studies (GSS) undergo a rigorous, peer-reviewed process. From the article: “The Lack of HUMINT: A Recurring Intelligence Problem” - Global Security Studies - Spring 2013, Volume 4, Issue 2http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Margolis%20Intelligence%20(ag%20edits).pdf

The United States has accumulated an unequivocal ability to collect intelligence as a result of the

technological advances of the 20th century. Numerous methods of collection have been

employed in clandestine operations around the world including those that focus on human, signals, geospatial, and measurements and signals intelligence. An infatuation with technological methods of intelligence gathering has developed within many intelligence organizations, often leaving the age old practice of espionage as an afterthought. As a result of the focus on technical methods, some of the worst intelligence failures of the 20th century can be attributed to an absence of human intelligence. The 21st century has ushered in advances in technology

have allowed UAVs to become the ultimate technical intelligence gathering platform; however human intelligence is still being neglected. The increasing reliance on UAVs will make the U nited S tates susceptible to intelligence failures unless human intelligence can be properly integrated . In the near future UAVs may be able to gather human level intelligence, but it will be a long time before classical espionage is a thing of the past.

Scenario _ is Intelligence …

Insert Intelligence Impacts

Scenario _ is Civilian Casualties

Independently, “signature strikes” are inevitable – but lack of human intel boosts civilian death tolls.Margolis ‘13Gabriel Margolis – the author presently holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Conflict Management & Resolution from UNC Wilmington and in his final semester of the program when this article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Security Studies . Global Security Studies (GSS) is a premier academic and professional journal for strategic issues involving international security affairs. All articles submitted to and published in Global Security Studies (GSS) undergo a rigorous, peer-reviewed process. From the article: “The Lack of HUMINT: A Recurring Intelligence Problem” - Global Security Studies - Spring 2013, Volume 4, Issue 2http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Margolis%20Intelligence%20(ag%20edits).pdf

UAVs are the ultimate intelligence platform. "One of the most significant military developments in the last 10 to 15 years has been that of

the unmanned aerial vehicle, which has evolved from the simple drone with limited capability to today's sophisticated aircraft, which, for some roles, particularly Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), is now the platform of choice."68 UAVs have replaced satellites and manned aircraft as the favored platform for intelligence collection. UAVs can be outfitted with equipment that allows them to collect SIGINT, MASINT, and GEOINT. They have also been armed with missiles to allow them to collect intelligence, fly around while it is being analyzed, and then conduct strikes based upon the decisions of policy makers. This nexus of intelligence and technology is like a

new toy for a small child. The President, the CIA, and the entire intelligence community

have become infatuated with the capabilities of these constantly evolving tools of war.69 The main idea behind the development of UAV technology was to reduce the number of lives risked to collect intelligence and to deliver strikes with accuracy. “However, it is the relatively low cost of drones compared to that of modern combat aircraft that will drive the proliferation of drones over the next decade. More basic drones cost less than 1/20th as much as the latest combat aircraft and even the more advanced drones that feature jet propulsion and employ some stealth technology are less than 1/10th the cost.”70 While military budgets around the World are cut, UAVs will be viewed as a viable alternative to manned aircraft for many missions. UAVs have several major advantages over traditional aircraft that make them valuable assets in modern conflicts. A UAVs greatest advantage is their very long endurance. Some versions of the Predator UAVs can maintain flight for over thirty hours. This advantage means that UAVs have more flight time than that of traditional aircraft, which enables them to observe and track a target for many hours at a time before deciding whether to strike. “This makes drones an ideal surveillance and striking weapon in counterinsurgency or counterterrorism operations, where the targets are usually individuals rather than objects.”71 UAVs have several vulnerabilities to go along with their advantages. UAVs are susceptible to air defense systems because they are very slow. “Even the jet-powered Avenger recently purchased by the Air Force only has a top speed of around 460 miles per hour, meaning that it cannot escape from any manned fighter aircraft, not even the outmoded 1970s-era fighters that are still used by a number of nations.”72 UAVs are also vulnerable to manned fighter aircraft and jamming. Manned aircraft are much faster than UAVs and the pilots can respond more rapidly to air combat situations than the current technology allows the operators of UAVs to do. “Remotely piloted aircraft are dependent upon a continuous signal from their operators to keep them flying, and this signal is vulnerable to disruption and jamming.”73 This cyber vulnerability has been exploited by insurgents and governments in several instances. Several years ago the Iranians downed a RQ-170 sentinel UAV and

essentially pilfered it for intelligence information and technology.74 UAVs have been used in targeted strikes and

signature strikes against insurgents in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. “The primary focus of U.S. targeted killings, particularly through drone strikes, has been on the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership networks in Afghanistan and the remote tribal regions of Pakistan. However, U.S. operations are continuing to expand in countries such as Somalia and Yemen.”75 Targeted, or personality, strikes utilize all forms of intelligence available, including HUMINT. Targeted strikes utilize HUMINT because they are used to target top tier leadership of terrorist organizations; a specific person. As terrorist organization leadership tends to shy away from communications and may conceal themselves from detection by GEOINT methods, HUMINT is the remaining discipline which must be used to identify targets.

Signature strikes are based on MASINT. They do not usually rely on HUMINT , but instead use signatures ascribed by analysts to determine whether or not a strike is permissible. Based upon

information collected by MASINT, signature strikes are “the type of drone strike in which no specific individual is identified, but rather a target is chosen based on the observed behavior, or ‘signature,’ of people on the ground.”76 However

there has been some dissent amongst the state department and administration pertaining to signature strikes. “Some State Department officials

have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist

‘signature’ were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ the agency

thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers , skeptics argue d.”77 What

these skeptics are alluding to is that unlike personality strikes, signature strikes have no corroborating HUMINT to support the operation. The absence of HUMINT has been a consistent factor in the absence of intelligence failures throughout the history of the CIA. The absence of HUMINT has resulted in an increase of unintentional civilian casualties, which will turn the tide of public support against UAV strikes in time. “TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individual. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave

behind.”78 “The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes.”79 Due to the fact that a majority of

UAV strikes are signature strikes which rely solely on MASINT, the CIA and U.S. intelligence community appear to be falling into the same pattern that has plagued intelligence operations for over sixty years.

They are put ting technical means of intelligence ahead of HUMINT, and if

history is indicative of any kind of pattern will eventually suffer a massive intelligence failure due to this choice. The pattern that emerges when reflecting upon intelligence failures of the 20th century shows that no single form of intelligence collection does well by itself. HUMINT is especially detrimental to overlook or ignore because covert actions are often subject to bad information, CI, and

mismanagement from policy-makers. The U.S. fascination and focus on technical methods of intelligence

has made some operations especially susceptible to CI and other forms of failure

when areas of HUMINT are not addressed. This problem has come to an apex in the form of UAV technology and the implementation of signature strikes. UAVs can contain GEOINT,

SIGINT, and MASINT capabilities and can therefore immediately operate based upon technical intelligence. The United States has focused on the technical methods of intel ligence gathering, and once again HUMINT is missing. Signature strikes are not based upon HUMINT , which brings to mind the various intelligence failures that failed to incorporate HUMINT into their modus operandi.

***Funding HUMINT isn’t enough – data overload independently hamstrings strike effectivenessHarris, 11 – Freelance business and technology writer. Also writes for Entrepreneur, InformationWeek, San Jose Magazine, Government Technology, Public CIO, U.S. Banker, Digital Communities Magazine, Converge Magazine, and the San Jose Business Journal. (Chandler, “Data Overload Bogging Down Military”, Clearance Jobs, 1/24/11, http://news.clearancejobs.com/2011/01/24/data-overload-bogging-down-military/)//KTC

As the amount of data from drones and other surveillance technology has risen 1,600

percent since 9/11, military personnel are becoming overwhelmed and making mistakes. A recent incident in Afghanistan highlighted this problem, as a drone operator mistakenly attacked a gathering that killed 23 Afghan civilians. The military cited “information overload” as the cause of the mistake and said the incident could’ve been prevented “if we had just slowed things down and thought deliberately.”

The mountains of data have created a new class of wired warrior that sifts through the information sea and, at times, determine what targets to hit and avoid. At Langley Air Force Base’s $5 billion global surveillance network, military personnel review 1,000 hours of video, 1,000 high-altitude spy photos and hundreds of hours of “signals intelligence”, which are usually cellphone calls. Yet the sheer amount of data that needs to be absorbed and used to make decisions has pushed many soldiers to their mental limit. “There is information overload at every level of the military — from the general to the soldier on the ground,” said Art Kramer, a neuroscientist and director of the Beckman Institute, a research lab at the University of Illinois.

Insert Civilian Casualties Frontlines

Intelligence Scenarios

General

1ac Frontline

HUMINT key to success to counter state and non-state threats. Wilkinson ‘13Kevin R. Wilkinson – United States Army War College. The author is a former Counterintelligence Company Commander, 205th Military Intelligence Battalion. This thesis paper was overseen by Professor Charles D. Allen of the Department of Command Leadership and Management. This manuscript is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Strategic Studies Degree. The U.S. Army War College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools – “Unparalleled Need: Human Intelligence Collectors in the United States Army” - March 2013 - http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA590270

In the twenty-first century, the role of HUMINT is more important than ever. As employed during the Cold War, a significant portion of intelligence was collected using SIGINT and GEOINT methods. The COE assessment now discerns a hybrid threat encompassing both conventional and asymmetric warfare, which is

difficult to obtain using SIGINT and GEOINT alone. Unlike other intelligence collection disciplines,

environmental conditions such as weather or terrain do not hinder HUMINT collectors.12 HUMINT collection played a key role during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. OIF was initially a force-on-force ground

war using traditional maneuver forces. After six months of conventional conflict and on the verge of defeat, the

Iraqi armed forces, with the assistance of insurgents, employed asymmetrical warfare. The continuation of

conventional warfare paired with the asymmetric threat created a hybrid threat. HUMINT is effective when countering a conventional threat that consists of large signatures, such as

discerning troop movement. However, it becomes invaluable when presented with an asymmetrical threat that entails a smaller signature , such as focusing on groups of insurgents, which other intelligence collection disciplines cannot solely collect on.

BW and nuclear use coming. HUMINT key to stay-ahead of these risks.Johnson ‘9Dr. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal "Intelligence and National Security" and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Dr. Johnson served as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Johnson earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Riverside. "Evaluating "Humint": The Role of Foreign Agents in U.S. Security" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, Feb 15, 2009 – available via: http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/0/6/6/p310665_index.html

The world is a dangerous place , plagued by the presence of terrorist cells; failed or failing states;

competition for scarce resources , such as oil, water, uranium, and food;

chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, not to mention bristling arsenals of conventional armaments; and deep-seated animosities between rival nations and factions. For self-protection,

if for no other reason, government officials leaders seek information about the capabilities and—an

especially elusive topic—the intentions of those overseas (or subversives at home) who can inflict harm upon the nation. That is the core purpose of espionage: to gather information about threats, whether external or internal, and to warn leaders about perils facing the homeland.

Further, the secret services hope to provide leaders with data that can help advance the national interest—the opportunity side of the security equation. Through the practice of espionage—spying or clandestine human intelligence: whichever is one's favorite term—the central task, stated baldly, is to steal secrets from adversaries as a means for achieving a more thorough understanding of threats and opportunities in the world.

National governments study information that is available in the public domain (Chinese newspapers, for example), but knowledge gaps are bound to arise. A favorite metaphor for intelligence is the jigsaw puzzle. Many of the pieces to the puzzle are available in the stacks of the Library of Congress or on the Internet;

nevertheless, there will continue to be several missing pieces—perhaps the most important ones. They may be hidden away in Kremlin vaults or in caves where members of Al Qaeda hunker down in

Pakistan's western frontier. The public pieces of the puzzle can be acquired through careful research; but often discovery of the missing secret pieces has to rely on spying, if they can be found at all. Some things— "mysteries" in the argot of intelligence professionals—are unknowable in any definitive way, such as who is likely to replace the current leader of North Korea. Secrets, in contrast, may be uncovered with a combination of luck and skill—say, the number of Chinese nuclear-armed submarines, which are vulnerable to satellite and

sonar tracking. Espionage can be pursued by way of human agents or with machines ,

respectively known inside America's secret agencies as human intelligence ("humint," in the acronym) and technical intelligence ("techint"). Humint consists of spy rings that rely on foreign agents or "assets" in the field, recruited by intelligence professionals (known as case officers during the Cold War or. in more current jargon, operations

officers). -_Techint includes mechanical devises large and small, including satellites the size of Greyhound buses, equipped with fancy cameras and listening devices that can see and hear acutely from orbits deep in space; reconnaissance aircraft, most famously the U-2; unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, such as the Predator—often armed with Hellfire missiles, allowing the option to kill what its handlers have just spotted through the lens of an onboard camera); enormous ground-based listening antennae, aimed at enemy territory: listening devices clamped surreptitiously on fiber-optic communications cables that carry telephone conversations; and miniature listening "bugs" concealed within

sparkling cut-glass chandeliers in foreign embassies or palaces. Techint attracts the most funding in Washington, D.C. (machines are costly, especially heavy satellites that must be launched into space), by a ratio of some nine-to-one over humint in America's widely estimated S50 billion annual intelligence budget. Human spies, though, continue to be recruited by the United States in most every region of the globe. Some critics contend that these spies contribute little to the knowledge of Washington officials about the state of

international affairs; other authorities maintain, though, that only human agents can provide insights into that most vital of all national security question s: the intentions of one's rivals— especially those adversaries who are well armed and hostile. The purpose of this essay is to examine the value of humint, based on a review7 of the research literature on intelligence, survey data, and the author's interviews with individuals in the espionage trade. The essay is organized in the following manner: it opens with a primer on the purpose, structure, and methods of humint; then examines some empirical data on its value; surveys more broadly the pros and cons of this approach to spying; and concludes with an overall judgment about the value of agents for a nation's security.

Those impacts cause extinction.Ochs ‘2

Richard - Chemical Weapons Working Group Member - “Biological Weapons must be Abolished Immediately,” June 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_.../abolish.html]

Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the

continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are

easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over.

With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end.

Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the

hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine.

Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.

Ext. Yes Resource Wars( ) Most probable conflict

Cairns 4 John Cairns Jr, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Biology Emeritus, Department of Biology and Director Emeritus, University Center for Environmental and Hazardous Materials Studies @ Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University – “Eco-Ethics and Sustainability Ethics,” Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, http://ottokinne.de/esepbooks/EB2Pt2.pdf#page=66

The most probable cause of this curious position is humankind’s obsession with growth. On a finite planet with finite resources, continued growth induces scarcity. Then, scarcity leads to resource wars , mass migration , political instability and , arguably most importantly, competition for increasingly scarce resources (e.g. oil). Equitable and fair sharing of resources, including those needed to maintain the planet’s ecological life-support system, will require both sharing and population control. Humankind is rapidly approaching the time when it will be attempting to manage the entire planet for sustainability. Half the world’s human population is living marginally or worse, and yet Renner (2003a) reports that military expenditures are on the rise. In 2001, a conservative estimate of world military expenditures was US$839 billion, of which the United States spends 36% and those states considered hostile to the United States spend 3% (Renner, 2003a). Even so, expenditures for the military are expected to continue rising (Stevenson and Bumiller, 2002; Dao, 2002). Even 25% of these funds would provide a much needed programme to develop alternative energy sources, which would also diminish the perceived need for resource wars. Renner and Sheehan (2003) state that approximately 25% of the 50 wars and armed conflicts of recent years were triggered or exacerbated by resource exploitation. Hussein persisted as a political leader by using resource money (in this case, oil) to maintain power by a variety of methods, including murder. The use of resource funds to maintain power is all too common (e.g. Le Billon, 2001). Ending such misuse of power and the resultant conflicts has proven impossible because it is difficult to displace the power elite (e.g. United Nations Security Council, 2002).

( ) Best studies proveHeinberg ‘4(Richard, journalist, teaches at the Core Faculty of New College of California, on the Board of Advisors of the Solar Living Institute and the Post Carbon Institute “Power Down”, Published by New Society Publishers, pg. 55-58)

This is a persuasive line of reasoning on the face of it, but it ignores the realities of how markets really work. If the global market were in fact able to prevent resource wars, the past half-century should have been a period of near-perfect peace. But resource disputes have instead erupted repeatedly , and continue to do so. Just in the past twenty years, resource disputes have erupted over oil in Nigeria, Algeria, Colombia, Yemen, Iraq /Kuwait, and Sudan ; over' timber and natural gas in Indonesia (Aceh); and over copper in Bougainville/Papua New Guinea -and this is far from being an exhaustive list. In classical economic theory , all actors within a market system act rationally in pursuit of their own interests, and no one buys or sells without an expectation of benefit. In the real world , however, buyers and sellers enter the marketplace with unequal levels of power . Some economic players have wealth and weapons, while others don't; as a result, some have figurative -if not literal -guns to their heads persuading them to act in ways that are clearly not in their own interest. Lest we forget: the essence of the European colonial system was the maintenance of unequal terms of trade through military duress. While nearly all of the old colonial governments were overthrown after World War II in favor of indigenous regimes, much of the essential structure of colonialism remains in place. Indeed, some would argue that the new institutions of global trade (the World Trade Organization, together with lending agencies like the World Bank) are just as effective as the old colonial networks at transferring wealth from resource-rich poor

http://ottokinne.de/esepbooks/EB2Pt2.pdf#page=66

nations to militarily powerful rich consuming nations, and that the failure of these institutions to enable the fair distribution of resources will ultimately result in a greater likelihood of armed conflict within and between nations. The new post-colonial international system works to maintain and deepen inequalities of wealth primarily through control (on the part of the wealthy, powerful nations) over the rules and terms of trade, and over the currencies of trade.

Ext. Bulk Collection TradeoffBulk collection causes data overload – makes law enforcement less effective. Ward ‘15Stan Ward – writer for the publication Best VPM and has been involved in writing and teaching for 50 years. This article internally quotes William Binney, a founder of Contrast Security and a former NSA official. “NSA swamped with data overload also trashes the Constitution” – From the publication: Best VPN - May 18th, 2015 - https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/19187/nsa-swamped-with-data-overload-also-trashes-the-constitution/

It has long been an argument of the civil liberties crowd that bulk data gathering was counter-productive, if not counter- intuitive. The argument was couched in language suggesting that to “collect it all”, as the then NSA director James Clapper famously decried, was to, in effect, gather nothing, as the choking amounts of information collected would be so great as to be unable to be analyzed effectively. This assertion is supported by William Binney, a founder of Contrast Security and a former NSA official, logging more than three decades at the agency. In alluding to what he termed “bulk data failure”, Binney

said that an analyst today can run one simple query across the NSA’s various databases, only to become immediately overloaded with information. With about four billion people (around two-thirds of the world’s population) under the NSA and partner agencies’ watchful eyes,

according to his estimates, there is far too much data being collected. “That’s why they couldn’t stop the Boston bombing, or the Paris shootings, because the data was all there…

The data was all there… the NSA is great at going back over it forensically for years to see what they were

doing before that. But that doesn’t stop it.” Binney is in a position to know, earning his stripes during the terrorism build up that culminated with the 9/11 World Trade Center bombing in 2001. He left just days after the draconian legislation known as the USA Patriot Act was enacted by Congress on the heels of that attack. One of the reasons which prompted his leaving was the scrapping of a surveillance system on which he long worked, only to be replaced by more intrusive systems.

AT: Accumulo

( ) Accumulo’s not responsive to our human intel internal link. Even if NSA can process a large quantity of data, the quality’s low unless HUMINT’s involved.

( ) Accumulo fails – Boston Marathon proves it doesn’t find the needle.

Konkel ‘13Frank Konkel is the editorial events editor for Government Executive Media Group and a technology journalist for its publications. He writes about emerging technologies, privacy, cybersecurity, policy and other issues at the intersection of government and technology. He began writing about technology at Federal Computer Week. Frank is a graduate of Michigan State University. “NSA shows how big 'big data' can be” - FCW - Federal Computer Week is a magazine covering technology - Jun 13, 2013 - http://fcw.com/articles/2013/06/13/nsa-big-data.aspx?m=1

As reported by Information Week, the NSA relies heavily on Accumulo, "a highly distributed, massively parallel processing key/value store capable of analyzing structured and unstructured data" to process much of its data. NSA's

modified version of Accumulo, based on Google's BigTable data model, reportedly makes it possible for the agency to analyze data for patterns while protecting personally identifiable information – names, Social Security numbers and the like. Before news of Prism broke, NSA officials revealed a graph search it operates on top of Accumulo at a Carnegie Melon tech conference. The graph is based on 4.4 trillion data points, which could represent phone numbers, IP addresses, locations, or calls made and to whom; connecting those points creates a graph with more than 70 trillion edges. For a human being, that kind of visualization is impossible, but for a vast, high-end computer system with the right big data tools and mathematical algorithms, some signals can be pulled out. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, publicly stated that the government's collection of phone records thwarted a terrorist plot inside the United States "within the last few years," and other media reports have cited anonymous intelligence insiders claiming several

plots have been foiled. Needles in endless haystacks of data are not easy to find, and

the NSA's current big data analytics methodology is far from a flawless system, as evidenced by the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more

than 200. The bombings were carried out by Chechen brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the latter of whom was previously interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the Russian Federal Security

Service notified the agency in 2011 that he was a follower of radical Islam. The brothers had made threats on Twitter prior to their attack as well, meaning several data points of suspicious behavior existed, yet no one detected a pattern in time to prevent them from setting off bombs in a public place filled with people. "We're still in the genesis of big data, we

haven't even scratched the surface yet," said big data expert Ari Zoldan, CEO of New-York-based Quantum Networks. "In many ways, the technology hasn't evolved yet, it's still a new industry."

AT: Accumulo Solves Privacy

Accumulo doesn’t solve privacy – it can’t keep info secure on its ownPontius ‘14Brandon H. Pontius. The author holds a B.S. from Louisiana State University and an M.B.A., Louisiana State University. The author wrote this piece in partial fulfillment of a MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE from the NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL. The thesis advisor that reviewed this piece is Mark Gondree, PhD. Gondree is a security researcher associated with the Computer Science Dept at the Naval Postgraduate School – “INFORMATION SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR APPLICATIONS USING APACHE ACCUMULO” - September 2014 - http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/43980/14Sep_Pontius_Brandon.pdf?sequence=1

NoSQL databases are gaining popularity due to their ability to store and process large heterogeneous data sets more efficiently than relational databases. Apache

Accumulo is a NoSQL database that introduced a unique information security feature—cell-level access control. We study Accumulo to examine its cell-level access control policy enforcement

mechanism. We survey existing Accumulo applications, focusing on Koverse as a case study to

model the interaction between Accumulo and a client application. We conclude with a discussion of potential security concerns

for Accumulo applications. We argue that Accumulo’s cell-level access control can assist developers in creating a

stronger information security policy, but Accumulo cannot provide security—particularly enforcement of information flow policies—on its own. Furthermore, popular patterns for interaction between Accumulo and its clients require diligence on the part of developers, which may otherwise lead to

unexpected behavior that undermines system policy. We highlight some undesirable but reasonable confusions stemming from the semantic gap between cell-level and table-level policies, and between policies for end-users and Accumulo clients.

Accumulo won’t solve privacy – security features failPontius ‘14Brandon H. Pontius. The author holds a B.S. from Louisiana State University and an M.B.A., Louisiana State University. The author wrote this piece in partial fulfillment of a MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE from the NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL. The thesis advisor that reviewed this piece is Mark Gondree, PhD. Gondree is a security researcher associated with the Computer Science Dept at the Naval Postgraduate School – “INFORMATION SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR APPLICATIONS USING APACHE ACCUMULO” - September 2014 - http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/43980/14Sep_Pontius_Brandon.pdf?sequence=1

We commented on potential security threats facing developers that build applications based on Accumulo. We used a hypothetical application to illustrate potential user

management concerns. We identified injection attacks that have been carried out against other NoSQL databases and

may be relevant to some uses of Accumulo. We commented on Accumulo’s inability to enforce

information flow policies. These examples serve to demonstrate that using Accumulo and it’s cell-level security feature is not a full solution to access control problems unless Accumulo is paired with well-designed enforcement mechanisms in the client application. We believe that the combination of our technical discussion of Accumulo’s cell-level access control enforcement, illustration of Accumulo integration in a larger application, and identification of potential security concerns may help future studies learn more about Accumulo information security and lead to development of more secure Accumulo based applications.

North Korea

1ac Frontline North Korea prolif is accelerating now- recent submarine tests- also leads to Iranian acquisitionHuessy 6/11 (Peter, 2015, Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, founded in 1981, and the senior defense consultant at the Air Force Association and National Security Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, “North Korea's Serious New Nuclear Missile Threat,” http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5914/north-korea-nuclear-missile)//RTF

North Korea appears to have made significant progress in extending its capability as a nuclear-armed rogue nation, to where its missiles may become capable of hitting American cities with little or no warning. What new evidence makes such a threat compelling? North Korea claims to have nuclear warheads small enough to fit on their ballistic missiles and missiles capable of being launched from a submerged platform such as a submarine. Shortly after North Korea's April 22, 2015 missile test, which heightened international concern about the military capabilities of North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China and our regional allies to restart the 2003 "six-party talks" aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and reining in North Korea's expanding nuclear missile

program. There are some "experts," however, who believe that North Korea's threat is highly exaggerated and poses no immediate danger to the United States. Consequently, many believe that, given China's oft-repeated support for a "nuclear weapons free" Korean peninsula, time is on America's side to get an agreement that will guarantee just

such a full de-nuclearization. But, if North Korea's technical advances are substantive, its missiles, armed with small nuclear weapons, might soon be able to reach the continental United States -- not just Hawaii and Alaska.

Further, if such missile threats were to come from submarines near the U.S., North Korea would be able to launch a surprise nuclear-armed missile attack on an American city. In this view, time is not on the side of the U.S. Submarine-launched missiles come without a "return address" to indicate what country or terrorist organization

fired the missile. The implications for American security do not stop there. As North Korea is Iran's primary missile-development partner, whatever North Korea can do with its missiles and nuclear warheads, Iran will presumably be able to do as well. One can assume the arrangement is reciprocal. Given recent warnings that North Korea may have upwards of 20 nuclear warheads, the United States seems to be facing a critical new danger. Would renewed negotiations with China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea really be able to address this threat? Two years ago, Andrew Tarantola and Brian Barrett said there was "no reason to panic;" that North Korea was "a long way off" -- in fact "years" -- before its missiles and nuclear weapons could be "put together in any meaningful way." At the same time, in April 2013, an official U.S. assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency stated the U.S. had "moderate" confidence that "North Korea had indeed developed a nuclear device small enough to mount on a ballistic missile." That was followed up two years later, on April 7, 2015, when the commander of Northcom, Admiral Bill Gortney, one of the nation's leading homeland security defenders, said the threat was considerably more serious. He noted that, "North Korea has deployed its new road-mobile KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile and was capable of mounting a miniaturized nuclear warhead on it."[1] At a Pentagon press briefing in April, Admiral Cecil Haney, Commander of the US Strategic Command and America's senior military expert on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, said it was important to take seriously reports

that North Korea can now make small nuclear warheads and put them on their ballistic missiles.[2] And sure enough, in April, North Korea launched a ballistic missile from a submerged platform. Media reaction to the North Korean test has been confused. Reuters, citing the analysis of two German "experts," claimed the North Korean test was fake -- a not-too-clever manipulation of video

images. The Wall Street Journal, on May 21, 2015, echoed this view, noting: "[F]or evidence of North Korea's bending of reality to drum up fears about its military prowess," one need look no further than a consensus that North Korea "doctored" pictures of an alleged missile test from a submarine. This, they claimed, was proof that the "technology developments" by North Korea were nothing more than elaborately faked fairy tales. However,

Israeli missile defense expert Uzi Rubin -- widely known as the "father" of Israel's successful Arrow missile defense program -- explained to this author that previous North Korean missile developments, which have often been dismissed as nothing more than mocked-up missiles made of plywood, actually turned out to be the real thing -- findings confirmed by subsequent intelligence assessments. Rubin, as well as the South Korean Defense Ministry, insist that on April 22, the North Korean military did, in fact, launch a missile from a submerged platform.[3] Kim Jong Un, the "Supreme Leader" of North Korea, supervises the April 22 test-launch of a missile from a submerged platform. (Image source: KCNA) What gave the "faked" test story some prominence were the misunderstood remarks of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld. He had said, on May 19, that the North Korean missile launch was "not all" that North Korea said it was. He also mentioned that North Korea used clever video editors to "crop" the missile test-launch images. Apparently, that was exactly what the editors did. The Admiral, however, never claimed in his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies there had been no successful missile test.[4] The

same day, a high-ranking State Department official, Frank Rose -- Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance -- told a Korean security seminar on Capitol Hill that North Korea had successfully conducted a "missile ejection" test, but from an underwater barge rather than a submarine.[5] To confuse matters further, additional pictures were released by the South Korean media to illustrate stories about the North Korean test. Those pictures, however, were of American missiles, which use both solid and liquid propellant; as a result, one photo showed a U.S. missile with a solid propellant smoke trail and one, from a liquid propellant, without a smoke trail. These photographs apparently befuddled Reuters' "experts," who may have jumped to the conclusion that the photos of the North Korean test were "faked," when they were simply of entirely different missile tests, and had been used only to "illustrate"

ocean-going missile launches and not the actual North Korean test.[6] According to Uzi Rubin, to achieve the capability to eject a missile from an underwater platform is a significant technological advancement. The accomplishment again illustrates "that

rogue states such as North Korea can achieve military capabilities which pose a notable threat to the United States and its allies." Rubin also

stated that the North Korean underwater launch test was closely related to the development of a missile-firing submarine, "a first step in achieving a very serious and dangerous new military capability."[7] Admiral Winnefeld and Secretary Rose, in their remarks, confirmed that the North Korean test was not the "dog

and pony show" some have claimed. In other words, the U.S. government has officially confirmed that the North Koreans have made a serious step toward producing a sea-launched ballistic missile capability. While such an operational capability may be "years away," Rubin warns that "even many years eventually pass, and it will also take many years to build up the missile defenses, so we had better use the time wisely."[8] Will diplomacy succeed in stopping the North Korean threats? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to think it worth a try; so he began the push to restart the old 2003 "six-party" talks between the United States, North Korea, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, to bring North Korea's nuclear weapons under some kind of international control and eventual elimination. After all, supporters of such talks claim, similar talks with Iran appear to be leading to some kind of "deal" with Tehran, to corral its nuclear weapons program, so why not duplicate that effort and bring North Korea

back into the non-nuclear fold? What such a "deal," if any, with Iran, will contain, is at this point unknown. Celebrations definitely seem premature. If the "deal" with North Korea is as "successful" as the P5+1's efforts to rein in Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program, the prognosis for the success of diplomacy could scarcely be more troubling. Bloomberg's defense writer, Tony Carpaccio, reflecting Washington's conventional wisdom, recently wrote that of course China will rein in North Korea's nuclear program: "What might be a bigger preventative will be the protestations of China, North Korea's primary trade partner and only prominent international ally. Making China angry would put an already deeply impoverished, isolated North Korea in even more dire straits." Unfortunately, no matter how attractive a strategy of diplomatically ending North Korea's nuclear program might look on the surface, it is painfully at odds with China's established and documented track record in supporting and carrying out nuclear proliferation with such collapsed or rogue states as Iran, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea and Libya, as detailed by the 2009 book The Nuclear Express, by Tom C. Reed (former Secretary of the Air Force under President Gerald Ford and Special Assistant to the President of National Security Affairs during the Ronald Reagan administration) and Daniel Stillman (former Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Far from being a potential partner in seeking a non-nuclear Korean peninsula, China, say the authors, has been and is actually actively pushing the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states, as a means of asserting Chinese hegemony, complicating American security policy and undermining American influence. The problem is not that China has little influence with North Korea, as China's leadership repeatedly claims. The problem is that China has no interest in pushing North Korea away from its nuclear weapons path because the North Korean nuclear program serves China's geostrategic purposes. As Reed and Stillman write, "China has been using North Korea as the re-transfer point for the sale of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen". They explain, "Chinese and North Korean military officers were in close communication prior to North Korea's missile tests of 1998 and 2006". Thus, if China takes action to curtail North Korea's nuclear program, China will likely be under pressure from the United States and its allies to take similar action against Iran and vice versa. China, however, seems to want to curry favor with Iran because of its vast oil and gas supplies, as well as to use North Korea to sell and transfer nuclear technology to both North Korea and Iran, as well as other states such as Pakistan. As Reed again explains, "China has catered to the nuclear ambitions of the Iranian ayatollahs in a blatant attempt to secure an ongoing supply of oil". North Korea is a partner with Iran in the missile and nuclear weapons development business, as Uzi Rubin has long documented. Thus, it is reasonable to believe that China may see any curtailment of North Korea's nuclear program as also curtailing Iran's access to the same nuclear technology being supplied by North Korea. Any curtailment would also harm the Chinese nuclear sales business to Iran and North Korea, especially if China continues to use the "North Korea to Iran route" as an indirect means of selling its own nuclear expertise and technology to Iran. It is not as if Chinese nuclear proliferation is a recent development or a "one of a kind" activity. As far back as 1982, China gave nuclear warhead blueprints to Pakistan, according to Reed. These findings indicate that China's nuclear weapons proliferation activities are over three decades old.[9] Reed and Stillman also note that nearly a decade later, China tested a nuclear bomb "for Pakistan" on May 26, 1990, and that documents discovered in Libya when the George W. Bush administration shut down Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi's nuclear program revealed that China gave Pakistan the CHIC-4 nuclear weapon design. Unfortunately, China's nuclear assistance to Pakistan did not stay just in Pakistan. The nuclear technology made its way from Pakistan to North Korea. For example, high explosive craters, construction of a 50 megawatt nuclear reactor (finished in 1986) and a secret reprocessing facility begun in 1987 all were done in North Korea with major Pakistani help from the A.Q. Khan "Nukes R Us" smuggling group, as Reed and Stillman document in their book. Reed and Stillman write that when, amid disclosures in 2003 of a major Libyan nuclear weapons program, the U.S. government sought help in shutting down the Khan nuclear smuggling ring, "Chinese authorities were totally unhelpful, to the point of stonewalling any investigation into Libya's nuclear supply network." More recently, Chinese companies have now twice -- in 2009 and 2011 -- been indicted by the Attorney for the City of New York for trying to provide Iran with nuclear weapons technology. The indictments document that Chinese companies were selling Iran steel for nuclear centrifuges and other banned technology. A leaked State Department cable, discussing the indictments at the time, revealed "details on China's role as a supplier of materials for Iran's nuclear program," and that "China helped North Korea ship goods to Iran through Chinese airports." And more recently, in April 2015, the Czech government interdicted additional nuclear technology destined for Iran -- the origin of which remains unknown -- in violation of current sanctions against Iran. From 1982 through at least the first part of 2015, the accumulation of documentary evidence on nuclear proliferation reveals two key facts: First, despite literally hundreds of denials by Iran that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and amid current negotiations to end Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, there is solid evidence that Iran still seeks nuclear weapons technology; and that North Korea has nuclear weapons and is advancing their capability. Second, China continues to transfer, through its own territory, nuclear weapons technology involving both North Korea and Iran. Although the Chinese profess to be against nuclear proliferation, their track record from the

documented evidence illustrates just the opposite. In summary, it is obvious North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles are a serious threat to America and its allies. And China, from its proliferation record for the past three decades, is making such a threat more widespread. In this light, is dismissing North Korea's advances in military technology and ignoring China's record of advancing its neighbors' nuclear weapons technology really best for U.S. interests?

That causes miscalc- leads to global nuclear warMetz 13 – Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, 3/13/13, “Strategic Horizons: Thinking the Unthinkable on a Second Korean War,” http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12786/strategic-horizons-thinking-the-unthinkable-on-a-second-korean-war)

Today, North Korea is the most dangerous country on earth and the greatest threat to U.S. security. For years, the bizarre regime in Pyongyang has issued an unending stream of claims that a U.S. and South Korean invasion is imminent, while declaring that it will defeat this offensive just as -- according to official propaganda -- it overcame the unprovoked American attack in 1950. Often the press releases from the official North Korean news agency are absurdly funny, and American policymakers tend to ignore them as a result. Continuing to do so, though, could be dangerous as events and rhetoric turn even more ominous. In response to North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council recently tightened existing sanctions against Pyongyang. Even China, North Korea's long-standing benefactor and protector, went along. Convulsed by anger, Pyongyang then threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea, abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and cut off the North-South hotline installed in 1971 to help avoid an escalation of tensions between the two neighbors. A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry asserted that a second Korean War is unavoidable. He might be right; for the first time, an official statement from the North Korean government may prove true. No American leader wants another war in Korea. The problem is that the North Koreans make so many threatening and bizarre official statements and

sustain such a high level of military readiness that American policymakers might fail to recognize the signs of impending attack . After all, every recent U.S. war began with miscalculation; American policymakers misunderstood the intent of their

opponents, who in turn underestimated American determination. The conflict with North Korea could repeat this pattern. Since the regime of Kim Jong Un has continued its predecessors’ tradition of responding hysterically to every action and statement it doesn't like, it's hard to assess exactly what might push Pyongyang over the edge and cause it to lash out. It could be something that the United States considers modest and reasonable, or it could be some sort of internal power struggle within the North Korean regime invisible to the outside world. While we cannot know whether the recent round of threats from Pyongyang is serious or simply more of the same old lathering, it would be prudent to think the unthinkable and reason through what a war

instigated by a fearful and delusional North Korean regime might mean for U.S. security. The second Korean War could begin with missile strikes against South Korean, Japanese or U.S. targets, or with a combination of missile strikes and a major conventional invasion of the South -- something North Korea has prepared for many decades.

Early attacks might include nuc lear weapons, but even if they didn't, the United States would probably move quickly to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The war itself would be extremely costly and probably long. North Korea is the most militarized society on earth. Its armed forces are backward but huge. It's hard to tell whether the North Korean people, having been fed a steady diet of propaganda based on adulation of the Kim regime, would resist U.S. and South Korean forces that entered the North or be thankful for relief from their brutally parasitic rulers. As the conflict in Iraq showed, the United States and its allies should prepare for widespread, protracted resistance even while hoping it doesn't occur. Extended guerrilla operations and insurgency could potentially last for years following the defeat of North Korea's conventional military. North Korea would need massive relief, as would South Korea and Japan if Pyongyang used nuclear weapons. Stabilizing North Korea and developing an effective and peaceful regime would require a lengthy occupation, whether

U.S.-dominated or with the United States as a major contributor. The second Korean War would force military mobilization in the United States. This would initially involve the military's existing reserve component, but it would probably ultimately require a major expansion of the U.S. military and hence a draft. The military's

training infrastructure and the defense industrial base would have to grow. This would be a body blow to efforts to cut government spending in the United States and postpone serious deficit reduction for some time, even if Washington increased

taxes to help fund the war. Moreover, a second Korean conflict would shock the global economy and

potentially have destabilizing effects outside Northeast Asia. Eventually, though, the United States and its allies would defeat the North Korean military. At that point it would be impossible for the United States to simply re-establish the status quo ante bellum as it did after the first Korean War. The Kim regime is too unpredictable, desperate and dangerous to tolerate. Hence regime change and a permanent ending to the threat from North Korea would have to be America's strategic objective. China would pose the most pressing and serious challenge to such a transformation of North Korea. After all, Beijing's intervention saved North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung after he invaded South Korea in the 1950s, and Chinese assistance has kept the subsequent members of the Kim family dictatorship in power. Since the second Korean War would invariably begin like the first one -- with North Korean aggression -- hopefully China has matured enough as a great power to allow the world to remove its dangerous allies this time. If the war began with out-of-the-blue North Korean missile strikes, China could conceivably even contribute to a multinational operation to remove the Kim regime. Still, China would vehemently oppose a long-term U.S. military presence in North Korea or a unified Korea allied with the United States. One way around this might be a grand bargain leaving a unified but neutral Korea. However appealing this might be, Korea might hesitate to adopt neutrality as it sits just across the Yalu River from

a China that tends to claim all territory that it controlled at any point in its history. If the aftermath of the second Korean War is

not handled adroitly, the result could easily be heightened hostility between the U nited States and China, perhaps even a new cold war. After all, history shows that deep economic connections do not automatically prevent nations from hostility and war -- in 1914 Germany was heavily involved in the Russian economy and had extensive trade and financial ties with France and Great Britain. It is not inconceivable then, that after the second Korean War, U.S.-China relations would be antagonistic and hostile at the same time that the two continued mutual trade and investment. Stranger things have happened in statecraft.

Humint key to verification of nuclear weaponization in North Korea.Johnson ‘9Dr. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal "Intelligence and National Security" and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Dr. Johnson served as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Johnson earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Riverside. "Evaluating "Humint": The Role of Foreign Agents in U.S. Security" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, Feb 15, 2009 – available via: http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/0/6/6/p310665_index.html

Despite the many negative critiques of humint, former DCI Tenet emphasizes that

intelligence is still "primarily a human endeavor.” — He is obviously not referring to

the government's intelligence budget priorities. Recall that the U nited S tates devotes only a small percentage of its annual intelligence budget to human spying. — Spy machines

are costly, while human agents are relatively inexpensive to hire and sustain on an annual stipend. One of the ironies of American intelligence is that the vast percentage of its spending goes into expensive intelligence hardware , especially surveillance satellites, even though the value of these machines is questionable in helping the U nited S tates understand such contemporary global concerns as terrorism or

China's economic might. Cameras mounted on satellites or airplanes are unable to peer inside the canvas tents, mud huts, or mountain caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan where terrorists

plan their lethal operations, or into the deep underground caverns where North Koreans construct atomic weapons. "Space cameras cannot see into factories where missiles are made, or

into the sheds of shipyards," writes an intelligence expert. "Photographs cannot tell whether

stacks of drums outside an assumed chemical-warfare plant contain nerve gas or oil, or whether they are empty” — _As a U.S. intelligence officer has observed, we need "to know what's inside the building, not what the building looks like”.

Effective verification creates deals that stop prolif.Hernandez 13 – Research Associate, Monterey Institute of International Studies (Jason, “Proliferation Pathways to a North Korean Intercontinental Ballistic Missile”, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dec. 20, 2013) RMT

During the Clinton Administration, the United States and North Korea came extremely close to concluding a "Missile Deal" that would have halted North Korean development, production,

and testing of increasingly longer-range missiles. However, the deal never came to fruition, and under the Bush

Administration it was scrapped completely. One of the primary issues for both the Clinton and Bush administrations was monitoring and verification . The United States sought a comprehensive monitoring and verification regime that would have permitted U.S. inspectors on-site access to rocket and missile facilities, while North Korea believed that the United States could accomplish verification through imagery analysis and other national technical means. [20] It is therefore likely

that any future missile deal negotiations will focus heavily upon verification. Detection and

Monitoring Any advances in rocket technology using the three pathways described above will require numerous

tests before the missile can be accepted into service and deployed. Given North Korea's limited

geographical size, all long-range missile tests will result in debris falling into international waters. For the December 2012 Unha-3 launch, the rocket's first stage fell into the Yellow Sea, and the second fell off the coast of the Philippines. By recovering the first stage debris, South Korea was able to confirm some facts about the Unha, while discovering new data that indicated progress in the Unha's design. The debris demonstrated continued areas of struggle and primitive design elements, such as in the propellant, airframe, and welding, while also showing program advancements and new design elements, such as the use of steering engines in place of jet vanes for orientation. [21] It is reasonable to assume that over the course of a testing program, debris will be recovered to enlighten the world on the progress of North Korea's missile program.

New deployment methods, such as the use of silos or road-mobile launchers in pathways two or three will not necessarily be detected. While the construction of silos could be detected by satellite imagery analysis, it is not guaranteed that the international community would detect every silo. Iran's Shahab silos went unnoticed in the open source until displayed on Iranian media during the Great Prophet 6 military exercises. [22] A road-mobile TD-2/Unha would seemingly go undetected unless paraded or displayed publically. The KN-08 was unknown in the open source until it was displayed at the April 2012 military parade in Pyongyang. Deployments and launches of silo-based or road-mobile TD-2/Unha's would be very difficult to detect and monitor. Verification The issue of verification is complex, and any

missile deal will undoubtedly cover the entirety of North Korea's missile production, from battlefield and short-range ballistic missiles to space launch vehicles and ICBMs. However, this brief will only address the relationship between a missile deal and the three pathways to an ICBM. For the purpose of this section, the author assumes that a

future missile deal will either aim to prevent or reverse a missile program in four key areas: development; manufacturing and production; acquisition; and deployment. The question becomes for each of the three pathways to an ICBM, can the international community verify that North Korea is abiding by a deal that prevents or reverses 1) development; 2) manufacturing and production; and 3) deployment of an ICBM?

Verification efforts are a detterent and prevent tech development.Walker 11--UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit (ACDRU) since March 1985.Published widely on aspects of CBW history in the Harvard-Sussex Program’s ‘The CBW Conventions Bulletin’[John R., “The CTBT: Verification and Deterrence”, VERTIC BRIEF • 16 • OCTOBER 2011]RMT

We can however consider that any state contemplating a clandestine programme, or

in this case one or more underground nuclear tests, must make certain calculations about its ability to conceal all of the evidence all of the time from a

watchful international community . Balancing risks—military and strategic gains against the political, diplomatic and economic costs—is not easy. A potential violator has to be sure that his preparations to test , as well as

its conduct and aftermath, can be concealed from the international community indefinitely . In the case of the CTBT, it will be a combination of national technical means (NTMs) and the treaty’s International Monitoring System (IMS) and on-site inspections that place a series of high hurdles in the face of a would-be

proliferator. Tripping over just one can compromise his plans and negate any

conceivable military advantage that he might have been hoping to derive from a clandestine test , or tests. It is worth recalling here that Sir William Penney, the leader of the UK’s nuclear weapons programme in the 1950s and early 1960s, advised Harold Macmillan’s government in 1962 that even though the Soviet Union might be confident in avoiding the detection of one test under the then envisaged verification system, it could not be at all sure that a series of, say, three tests would go unnoticed. Penney’s view was that one test would not alter the strategic balance and so the risk of a test ban treaty was worth taking as one would need a series of tests to obtain a strategically significant advantage. M ore than fifty years later we have the CTBT’s IMS, which, as of August 2011, has 86 per cent of its primary stations (including seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide stations), 83 per cent of its auxiliary seismic stations and 63 per cent of its radionuclide laboratories certified. Their detection capabilities are immeasurably superior to those planned by the 1958 Geneva seismic experts’ meeting. Simulations of global detection thresholds today, measured in terms of equivalent nuclear-yield in kilotons of TNT (kt), suggest that the IMS network is capable of detecting and identifying, worldwide, explosions fired close- coupled underground in hard rock, in the atmosphere, and in the ocean, with a yield equal to or more than one kiloton. In many areas of the world, such as continental Eurasia, the detection threshold is significantly less than one kiloton. In the 1977–1980 Tripartite Test Ban Treaty negotiations, UK and US scientists took the view The CTBT: Verification and Deterrence2 that it would only be yields of around ten kilotons that would permit meaningful developments in new warhead

design. Any state contemplating a clandestine test has to be sure that, even assuming its

preparations go undetected (it can take about a year to prepare for an underground test), it still must find the right geological conditions on its territory in a reasonably remote area. It has to be sure, too, that it can stem a borehole or tunnel effectively to guarantee no venting of radioactive particles or radioactive noble gases that could be picked up by IMS radionuclide stations. Such a task would be challenging for a state with no prior experience of underground testing. Then there is the small matter of the seismic stations— primary and auxiliary—detecting the event and the strong likelihood that it will be subsequently correctly identified as an explosion from the Treaty’s International Data Centre (IDC) Reviewed Events Bulletin. How convincing an explanation could a state provide when pressed for clarification under the Treaty’s Article IV provisions? Could it be absolutely confident that it could conjure up a fool-proof cover story that

would hoodwink all of the treaty’s states parties? This is where we first begin to see that the more effective the verification system and the greater the integration of the elements that combine to make it up, the greater the level of deterrence of non-compliance is. A regime that can demonstrate a very high level of technical reliability, coverage and sensitivity presents a formidable obstacle to anyone who wants to cheat. The IMS does that. A state might hope that the CTBT Organisation’s Executive Council would fail to act on the compelling evidence presented by the IDC as well as any supporting information from states parties NTMs and other sources (such as commercial satellite data) and vote against an on-site inspection. However, could any state guarantee that this would indeed be the case? Just how confident ahead of time could

it be? As Tibor Toth— the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS) Executive Secretary—has pointed out, the very nature of the Treaty’s verification regime will be democratic in that the information behind an inspection request is derived from an independent system whose results are open to all states parties. There may , therefore, be very strong pressures to respond to a well-substantiated compliance concern, which it would be politically much more difficult to ignore or dismiss. Building an on-site inspection capability for the CTBT is a demanding and lengthy process—but such a capability provides the one clear way of confirming that an event that triggered an inspection was a nuclear test conducted in violation of the treaty’s Article I prohibitions. Effective inspections require a well-equipped, trained and experienced cadre of inspectors and an ability to deploy to the field promptly. If the future Technical Secretariat cannot meet these criteria then the OSI regime is a paper

tiger. However, major strides have been taken by the PTS and some states signatories in recent years and efforts are continuing on building up an initial capability that would be fit for purpose on entry-into-force of the treaty. There will be a large-scale OSI exercise Integrated Field Exercise in 2014 that will be a key milestone in the development of the Treaty’s OSI regime. OSIs present a violator with an array of techniques and technologies that will make it immensely difficult to be sure that absolutely all incriminating traces of illegal activity can be concealed for up to the 130 days that an inspection could last. Deployment of these

techniques and technologies in an integrated and intelligent manner provides a potent tool for detecting non-compliance. And, if the traces cannot be concealed, finding sustainable and convincing technical explanations that will persuade not just the inspectors but the Executive Council back in Vienna is no easy matter. The Council will review the final inspection report and determine whether any non-compliance has occurred. Knowing that the treaty’s OSI capability is effective and would stand a very good chance of uncovering facts strongly suggestive of non-compliance, a cheating state will have to obstruct the inspectors in the field. A systematic pattern of evasion, delay, obstruction, obfuscation and down-right hostility tells its own story, especially since inspectors are allowed to comment on the co-operation (or lack thereof ) provided by an Inspected State Party in their final inspection report. Even a remote chance of detection is a difficult thing for a would-be violator to guard against. Moreover, the greater the level of uncertainty in the mind of such a state, the greater the role that OSIs play in the deterrent effect of the treaty’s overall verification regime. During the 1977–1980 tripartite test ban treaty

negotiations the UK noted that: ‘Ther e is no known remote method of determining unambiguously whether an underground event was man-made in origin and, if so, was due to a nuclear explosion. Such conclusive evidence is only

obtainable b y a n o n-the-spot i nvestigation i nto t he p resence of radioactive materials. Provision for OSI would help deter clandestine testing by posing a threat that it would be identified as such; OSI would also enhance the confidence of all parties to the treaty that its provisions were being observed.’ This statement

remains valid today. 1 The CTBT verification regime —comprising the IMS stations (i.e. primary seismic, auxiliary seismic, hyrdoacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide, including stations with radioactive noble gas detection capabilities), the International Data Centre, National Data Centres, consultations and clarification procedures and on-site inspections armed

with an array of detection techniques and technologies—presents a formidable set of obstacles for a would-be violator to surmount . And in this equation we should not overlook the role that can be played by NTMs—remote sensing data such as multispectral and infrared images to give but one example. Nor should we forget that science and technology does not stand still and we can confidently expect that the capabilities of all aspects of the verification regime will increase. In particular, as the June 2011 Science and Technology for the CTBT Conference in Vienna noted, progress in sensors, networks and observational technologies as well as in computing and processing offer promising benefits for the

efficacy of all components of the treaty’s verification regime. We might still not know exactly what deters in deterrence in the context of preventing non-compliance in arms

control and disarmament agreements, but in the context of the CTBT the negotiators designed an integrated system that will clearly complicate the plans of any state thinking that it could evade that system successfully and derive a meaningful political, military or strategic advantage from doing so. The overall

regime must inevitably impact on the calculations of a wouldbe evader,

and the higher the assurance of detection the more uncertain he must be that he can get away with cheating. Deterrence of non-compliance is therefore strengthened.

Ext. Accelerating Prolif is accelerating- err on the side of safetyFifield 5/20 (Anna, 2015, Washington Post, “North Korea says it has technology to make mini-nuclear weapons,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pyongyang-says-it-has-technology-to-make-small-submarined-mounted-nuclear-warheads/2015/05/20/0e96d0bc-fec0-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html)//RTF

TOKYO — North Korea claimed Wednesday that it has been able to make nuclear warheads small enough to fit on a missile — a development that, if verified, would mark a major advance in the country’s military capabilities and the threat it can pose to the world. Pyongyang has a habit of exaggerating its technical abilities, and the latest assertion comes amid widespread doubts about its purported test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile this month. But Kim Jong Un’s regime is known to have been working simultaneously on a nuclear weapons program and missile technology, and analysts widely believe that it is just a matter of time until North Korea puts the two together through “miniaturization.” The North’s National Defense Commission, or NDC — its top military authority, chaired by Kim — said it was able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to be fired at the mainland United States. “It is long since [North Korea’s] nuclear striking means have entered the stage of producing smaller nukes and diversifying them,” a spokesman for the NDC said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. North Korea “has reached the stage of ensuring the highest precision and intelligence and best accuracy of not only medium- and short-range rockets, but long-range ones,” the KCNA report continued, according to a translation by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. The report added that this month’s purported submarine missile test was part of the North’s “byungjin” policy, under which Pyongyang hopes to advance its nuclear weapon capabilities and its economy. Pyongyang

claimed it had sent a “world-level strategic weapon” soaring “into the sky from underwater.” State media ran photos of Kim aboard a boat holding binoculars as the rocket blasted out of the sea. But that purported test has been widely discredited. On Tuesday, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the North Koreans “have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe.” “They are years away from developing this capability,” he told a forum in Washington. Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., an expert on North

Korea’s weapons programs and chief analytical officer at AllSource Analysis, a consulting firm, wrote that the test missile appeared to have been fired from a submerged barge rather than a submarine. The commentary was in a report for 38 North, a Web site devoted to North Korea. North Korean television also ran only photos, rather than video, of the test, leading analysts to speculate that the missile had flown for only a few seconds. Notably, one of the photos was not cropped as it was

in the newspapers and showed a ship towing a barge. Still, experts put miniaturization of nuclear weapons as a distinct possibility for the North. It has conducted three nuclear test blasts and regularly launches missiles of varying ranges, advancing its capabilities with each test. [Top defense chief in

North reportedly put to death] In a separate report for 38 North in February, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said it seemed “very plausible” that North Korea would be able to design nuclear weapons small enough to fit on a missile. “I’ll be the first person to say that we should not exaggerate the capabilities of North Korea’s nuclear forces, but underestimating

them is every bit as bad,” Lewis wrote. “The North Koreans are developing military capabilities that we will, sooner or later, have to deal with.” A 2013 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said the agency had “moderate confidence” that Pyongyang had the ability to miniaturize its nuclear weapons and mount them on long-range missiles. U.S. military officials have offered similar assessments more recently, although the military does not

consider weapons to be operational until they have been tested. “Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland,” Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, told reporters at the Pentagon last month, referring to North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile. This

echoed an earlier statement from Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea. [Photo gallery: Inside North Korea] “I believe they have the capability to miniaturize the device at this point and they have the technology to potentially actually deliver what they say they have,” he said in October. But Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea’s nuclear weapons at the International Crisis Group, spoke of the difference between “rhetoric and reality” when it comes to Pyongyang’s claims. “I think they probably have a small device that they can put on a missile, but as far as actually using it goes, no one has been able to demonstrate anything,” he said. That Pyongyang was raving about its capabilities probably meant officials there were not yet certain, he said. “I think this shows a lack of confidence and a vulnerability,” Pinkston said. Separately, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general and a South Korean, said Wednesday that the North had retracted an invitation for him to visit an inter-Korean industrial park Thursday. The Kaesong complex, where companies from the South employ workers from the North just over the northern side of the border, has long been hailed as an example of inter-Korean cooperation. Ban, who is in Seoul for an education conference, had said he would visit the complex on Thursday, but Wednesday he said that North Korea had decided against it. “This decision by Pyongyang is deeply regrettable,” he said.

Noko prolif accelerating – better intelligence k2 solveHarper 4/7 (Jon, 2015, reporter for Stars and Stripes, “NORAD commander: North Korean KN-08 missile operational,” NORAD commander: North Korean KN-08 missile operational)//RTF

WASHINGTON — North Korea has an operational road-mobile missile that could carry nuclear weapons to the United States, according to the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command. The KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile was first paraded in North Korea in 2012. Many analysts suspected at the time that the missiles on display were mock-ups and doubted that the country had actually developed the weapon. But on Tuesday, Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters at the Pentagon that he thinks Pyongyang has achieved a breakthrough. “We assess that it’s operational today, and so we practice to go against that,” he said. Gortney said North Korea has not yet tested the missile, and he declined to explain why he thinks the missile is ready to go. The

U.S. military does not consider its weapons to be operational until they’ve been tested. The KN-08, if operationally deployed, would be more difficult to defeat than fixed-site missiles because it could potentially be moved around secretly by

the North Korean regime to make it more difficult for the U.S. to locate and target preemptively during a crisis. “It’s the relocatable target set that really impedes our ability to find, fix and finish the threat,” a problem which is compounded by the fact that the U.S. military does not have “persistent” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets over North Korea, Gortney said. North Korea also has the ability to marry the missile with a nuclear warhead, according to the NORAD chief. “Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the [U.S.] homeland,” he said. The U.S. ballistic missile defense system has a spotty test record. Gortney noted the “fits and starts” that it’s experienced, but expressed confidence that it would work in a crisis. The U.S. has 30 ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. As the leader of NORAD and NORTHCOM, Gortney would be responsible for launching the interceptors against North Korean missiles if they threatened the homeland. “I own the trigger on this,” he said, “and I have high confidence that it will work against North Korea.”

Prolif’s accelerating- they’ll be a major threat by 2020Wit 4/10 (Joel, 2015, founder and editor of 38 North, a program of the US-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in an interview with Srinivas Mazumdaru for DW, “'North Korea could have up to 100 nuclear weapons by 2020',” http://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-could-have-up-to-100-nuclear-weapons-by-2020/a-18374679)//RTF

Despite international sanctions, North Korea is on the verge of rapidly increasing its nuclear arsenal over the next five years, adding to regional concerns, as Joel Wit, founder of US think tank 38 North, tells DW. The delivery systems a country possesses determine its ability to use its weapons - be it conventional, nuclear or biological - in the event of a war. The systems range from hi-tech options such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and combat aircraft to low-technology

ways of using artillery and ground-based vehicles. Despite efforts to curb the spread of these systems, many countries around the world continue to acquire them. And those already in possession of these technologies, such as North Korea, appear steadfast to improve and expand their arsenals. Pyongyang's nuclear program has been a key bone of contention the communist regime and the international community, particularly after the isolated East Asian nation conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. While the country's current inventory

is well-developed, the regime has "bigger ambitions and is seriously pursuing the deployment of more capable, longer-range, more survivable weapons," concludes a recently released report by 38 North, a program of the US-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. Titled "The Future of North Korean Nuclear Delivery Systems," the report dwells into North Korea's current missile program and offers various scenarios for the country's future nuclear delivery systems capabilities. Nordkorea testet Schiff-Abwehrrakete North Korea is believed to have the world's most secretive regime In a DW interview, Joel Wit,

founder and editor of 38 North as well as the project lead, says that North Korea could be a significant threat to the region by 2020 even without any new missile and nuclear weapons tests. He stresses that international sanctions against North Korea have so far been totally unsuccessful in terms of stopping the country from importing nuclear technology. DW: According to your findings,

how would you assess North Korea's present nuclear arms capabilities? Joel Wit: We estimate that North Korea possesses anywhere between 10-16 nuclear weapons, and that they are able to put these weapons on top of at least medium-range missiles, which are able to hit most targets in Japan and South Korea. North Korea has a small nuclear arsenal, but the most important point we are trying to make in the

report is that they could be on the verge of rapid expansion of both their nuclear arsenal and their delivery systems over the next five years. What are the main findings of your report? In terms of nuclear weapons, North Korea would have a stockpile of between 20 and 100 bombs by 2020, depending on several factors such as the amount of resources it pours into its nuclear program and the country's ability to acquire foreign technology. Nordkorea Militärübung Raketen Wit: 'North Korea's missile program is still mainly based on old Soviet technology' But while North Korea has mastered nuclear weapons technology over the past 25 years,

developing the delivery systems has proved to be more difficult and remains a significant engineering challenge. For instance, if you look at North Korea's

missile program, it is still mainly using old soviet technology. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the country has about 1,000 missiles that can reach targets in the region, and they require no new testing. The bottom line therefore is that North Korea could be a significant threat to the region by 2020 even without any new missile and nuclear weapons tests. Who is supporting North Korea in developing its nuclear delivery systems capabilities? Right now, we believe it's very much an indigenous program. There is no more foreign assistance for North Korea's old liquid-fueled rockets. However, what we find is that some of the newer systems that are appearing are also based on old Russian technology. And it's not quite clear whether North Koreans are able to produce them by themselves or they acquired a these technologies somehow from Russia in the past. Although there is a bit of uncertainty, we think the North has the capabilities to take care of their main basic missiles - the liquid-fuel ones - in their arsenal. What challenges does North Korea's nuclear program currently face? One of the things we are not clear about North Korea's nuclear capabilities is the size of their program to produce highly-enriched uranium. We know it exists but we are not sure how advanced it is. So the issue is how many nuclear plants they have and how much uranium can they produce. And that's one of the factors that influence our projections. In terms of the qualitative capabilities of their nuclear weapons, the main consideration is of course whether they can mount their weapons on top of missiles or not. Although there has recently been some talk about North Korea being able to put weapons on top of intercontinental missiles, we are skeptical about it and believe it requires more testing for the country to acquire that capability. How successful

have the current international sanctions been in curbing Pyongyang's nuclear activities? The sanctions have been totally unsuccessful in terms of stopping North Korea from importing nuclear technology. I don't think they have had any impact on Pyongyang's ability to acquire more capabilities. North Koreans have been evading sanctions for decades, and on top of that I would say that the enforcement of these sanctions by the international community has been very lax. What level of threat does the North's nuclear capability pose to the countries in the region? If I was a South Korean or Japanese, I wouldn't want a North Korea that could be armed with a 100 nuclear weapons in the next five years. I would be very concerned about that development, particularly if the relationships in the region remain tense. It’s certainly not a good scenario and could get much worse. What should the international community do to stop or at least slow down North Korea's pursuit to develop more advanced weapons and delivery systems? The problem right now is that everything we are doing is currently not working. We have no diplomacy, and sanctions aren't working at all. I would even go further and say that the recognition of this growing threat is lagging behind the speed at which it is growing. Yongbyon Atomanlage Nordkorea 2008 'It is unclear how many nuclear plants North Korea has and how much uranium they produce' I

think we really do need to have a reassessment of what's going on in North Korea, and based on that we need to find a new approach to tackle the issue. The approach is going to require thinking about serious sanctions; making them

tougher and actually enforcing them. But it would also need thinking about serious diplomacy to identify peaceful paths to move forward. Unfortunately, I don't believe any of that is going to happen. The US is pretty much done in terms of dealing with North Korea and is consumed with Iran, and I don't think that's going to change.

Ext. Need Better DetectionStatus quo detection and verification is insufficient- most intel is guessworkThielmann 5/12 (Greg, 2015, Senior Fellow at Arms Control Association, “Understanding the North Korean Nuclear Threat,” http://www.armscontrol.org/files/TAB_05_2015.pdf)//RTF

Intelligence Challenges Regarding North Korean Nuclear and Missile Programs Making accurate political and technical forecasts concerning North Korea has proven to be extremely challenging. The actions of North Korea’s leaders often appear erratic to those who do not follow the arcane politics and history of the ruling Kim dynasty.

Moreover, the weapons development track in North Korea sometimes deviates from the course of development elsewhere. Given the lack of U.S. diplomatic, commercial, and cultural contact with North Korea, the hermetically sealed nature of North Korean society, and the concentration of decision-making authority at the top of the North’s dictatorial regime, continuing surprises from the government in Pyongyang should be expected. An assessment of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities starts with some solid information: the amount of plutonium-239 known to have been extracted from the spent fuel of the Yongbyon reactor and reprocessed. Based on this knowledge, experts initially estimated that North Korea had sufficient fissile material for a handful of weapons using a rudimentary nuclear warhead design. Over time, additional variables were added to the equation, including the unknown amount of enriched uranium from recently revealed centrifuges at Yongbyon and possibly from other, covert facilities and the unknown sophistication of North Korean warhead designs, which would affect the amount of fissile material needed for each

weapon. On some key questions, the U.S. intelligence community has been frank in describing the limits of its understanding. For example, Director

of National Intelligence James Clapper conceded in this year’s worldwide threat assessment statement to Congress that “we do not know the details of Pyongyang’s nuclear doctrine or employment concepts.”3 In other areas, however, the intelligence community has been less forthcoming about its lack of information and certainty, offering only predictions of what “could” happen rather than what is most likely to happen. Such formulations provide ample protection to the analysts against future accusations that they had provided no warning, but inevitably lead to misleading contemporaneous headlines in the press and erroneous interpretations by members of Congress. Open disagreements in characterizing the status of North Korea’s long-range missile program among senior U.S. officials and between U.S. and South Korean officials is revelatory. They could indicate either honest differences in assessing the meaning of commonly shared information or the differing purposes of the intelligence assessment. Warning of what could happen uses different assumptions than predicting what is likely to happen; each has a legitimate role. Some U.S. military commanders have stated confidently that North Korea has been able to design miniaturized warheads that can be placed on medium- and short-range missiles. For example, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the top U.S. military commander in South Korea, said at a Pentagon news conference in October 2014, “I believe that [the North Koreans] have the capability to have miniaturized the [nuclear] device at this point.”4 A Defense Intelligence Agency report in 2013 had assessed with “moderate confidence” that the North had already mastered the technology of building a device small enough to be used in a missile warhead.5 Such statements have been challenged by South Korean intelligence officials or walked back by the leadership of the U.S. intelligence

community and senior Pentagon officials. There is, in fact, a significant difference of opinion among experts in what Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation

Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, calls “The Great Miniaturization Debate.” Lewis explains that determining whether North Korea can arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead boils down to an assessment of three questions: • Can it make a nuclear weapon small enough? • Can a compact nuclear weapon survive the shock, vibration, and temperature change of ballistic missile flight? • Can the re-entry vehicle survive the heat of reentry? His answer to each is “yeah, probably,” but he concedes that “reasonable people may disagree.”6 Until an actual flight test occurs and perhaps even afterward, the confidence level in such assessments will not be high. In recent months, nongovernmental analysts have described an increasingly alarming situation with regard to North Korea’s nuclear status, particularly concerning the numbers of nuclear warheads that North Korea may be able to deploy. A prominent analysis by Joel Wit and Sun Young Ahn of the US-Korea Institute at SAIS laid out scenarios for minimal, moderate, and rapid growth in North Korea’s nuclear forces (see Table 1). From an existing estimated stockpile of 10 to 16 nuclear weapons (six to eight fashioned from plutonium) capable of being deployed on short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, the authors project growth by 2020 to 20, 50, or 100 warheads, with the latter two paths including nuclear-tipped intermediate-range ballistic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).7 Although Wit and Ahn assessed that the moderate path was the most likely, most press coverage of their report headlined the high-end projection—100 warheads deployed on a full range of battlefield, theater, and intercontinental weapons, with the longer-range systems carrying a significantly higher yield than the North currently has in its inventory. Recent news reports suggested that Chinese estimates already credit North Korea with 20 nuclear warheads and sufficient weapons-grade uranium-enrichment capacity for doubling the size of its arsenal by next year8—a pace of progress more in line with the rapid-growth scenario in the Wit and Ahn analysis than the majority view among U.S. security experts. The closed-door discussions with U.S. nuclear specialists in February 2015 were reported to include Chinese technical, political, and diplomatic experts on North Korea’s nuclear program, as well as military representatives. Although more-detailed information is needed to reach definitive conclusions about whether such assessments reflect the official views of the Chinese government, the higher number cited is at least intriguing and more noteworthy coming from China’s “reluctant witness” perspective. Siegfried Hecker, who was the U.S. team’s lead expert during the February conversations,

acknowledged that estimates of North Korea’s nuclear stockpile by China and the United States involved a great deal of guesswork. Additional evidence of the softness in threat assessments regarding North Korea can be seen in the frequently cryptic or confusing references to North Korean capabilities in unclassified statements of the U.S. intelligence community. For example, Clapper straddled the ICBM deployment timing issue in congressional testimony by explaining that “[w]e assess that North Korea has already taken initial steps toward fielding [the KN-08 ICBM], although the system has not been flight-tested.” He thereby left the impression, at least among non-experts, that a system that has never flown is already being fielded, even though experts realize that, in all other historical examples of ICBM development, operational status would only be achieved years after the system’s first research and development flight test. Some argue in response to such logic that North Korean weapons development timelines are sui generis, noting, for example, that the Nodong medium-range ballistic missile was deployed after only one successful flight test. The weight of evidence, however, appears to be on the side of those who are dubious about the operational capability of North Korea’s road-mobile KN-08 ICBM.9 A prestigious U.S. commission headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assessed in 1998 that North Korea (and other states of proliferation concern) would be able to threaten the United States with an ICBM within five years – that is, by 2003. More than a dozen years have come and gone since then with no North Korean flighttest of an ICBM. Although the 1999 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the foreign ballistic missile threat was more careful in its predictions than the Rumsfeld Commission, it judged as “most likely” that the United States would face a North Korean ICBM threat by 2015.10 North Korea’s recent announcement that it had successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submerged submarine11 will add new concerns about the nuclear threat the country poses. If

confirmed, political reactions in the region and in the United States are likely to prove more dramatic than any actual military gains by North Korea would warrant.

Korea is years away from nuclear capacity — our detection capabilities need to be upgraded for when it occurs. Sang-hun 15 — Choe Sang-hun, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, B.A. in Economics from Yeungnam University, 2015 (“North Korea Claims it Has Built Small Nuclear Warheads,” New York Times, May 20th, accessible online at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/asia/north-korea-claims-it-has-built-small-nuclear-warheads.html?ref=topics&gwh=31AE2434E90C8F3D553433E9E11563E1&gwt=pay, accessed on 6-23-15)

North Korea said the May 8 test involved successfully launching a strategic missile from a submarine. But some analysts have since questioned the claim, saying that some of the photographs of the episode that North Korea released may have been altered and that the test launch may have been conducted from a submerged barge, rather than a submarine.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Tuesday, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, voiced similar misgivings.

“They have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believ e ,” Admiral Winnefeld said. “They are many years away from developing this capability. But if they are eventually able to do so, it will present a hard-to-detect danger for Japan and South Korea, as well as our service members stationed in the region.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/asia/north-korea-claims-it-has-built-small-nuclear-warheads.html?ref=topics&gwh=31AE2434E90C8F3D553433E9E11563E1&gwt=pay



Civilian Casualties Scenario

Civilian Casualties

AT: Casualties LowDrone strike casualties are huge and inevitable – it’s a question of reform Hudson, 14- B.A. in International Relations and a minor in Middle Eastern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, focusing on the Arabic language. Studied international humanitarian law and public policy at the University of Oxford (Adam, “UN Human Rights Committee Finds US in Violation on 25 Counts”, Truth Out, 4/4/14, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22887-un-human-rights-committee-finds-us-in-serious-violation)//KTC

Despite claims to the contrary, drone strikes kill a significant number of civilians and inflict serious human suffering. So far, US drone strikes and other covert

operations have killed between 2,700 and nearly 5,000 people, including 500 to more than 1,100 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, according to the Bureau of

Investigative Journalism's figures. Many of those deaths occurred under Obama's watch, with drone strikes killing at least 2,400 people during his five years in office. Only 2 percent of those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan are high-level militants, while most are low-level fighters and civilians. In addition to causing physical harm, drone strikes terrorize and traumatize communities that constantly live under them. Drone strikes have lulled in Pakistan due to peace talks between the Pakistani government and Pakistan Taliban, which collapsed on February 17. The last US drone

strike in Pakistan happened on Christmas Day 2013. In Yemen, drone strikes have continued. Several US drone strikes in Yemen occurred during the first 12 days of March. Last November, six months after President Obama laid out new rules for US drone strikes, a TBIJ analysis showed that "covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech." It also was recently reported that the Obama administration is debating whether to kill a US citizen in Pakistan who is suspected of "actively plotting terrorist

attacks," according to The New York Times. It is very likely these operations will continue. The Pentagon's 2015 budget proposal, taking sequestration into account, spends $0.4 billion less than 2014 at $495.6 billion, shrinks the Army down to between 440,000 to 450,000 troops from the post-9/11 peak of 570,000, and protects money for cyberwarfare and special operations forces. Cyber operations are allocated $5.1 billion in the proposal, while US Special Operations Command gets $7.7 billion, which is 10 percent more than in 2014, and a force of 69,700 personnel. While President Obama promised to take the United States off a

"permanent war footing," his administration's policies tell a different story. The Obama administration is reconfiguring, rather than halting, America's "permanent war footing."

Yemen Scenario

1ac Yemen Long

First, signature strikes are inevitable but faulty intelligence creates civilian casualties which destabilize and create anti-american sentiment. Greenfeild 13 — Danya Greenfield, deputy director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, where she leads the Yemen Policy Group, M.A. in International Studies and Middle East Studies from John Hopkin’s University, B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University, 2013 (“The Case Against Drone Strikes on People Who Only 'Act' Like Terrorists,” The Atlantic, August 19th, accessible online at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-case-against-drone-strikes-on-people-who-only-act-like-terrorists/278744/, accessed on 6-25-15)

As Mark Bowden discusses in this month's Atlantic cover story, there is great debate about whether drone strikes should be a core component of the U.S. counterterrorism strategy. Of all the the arguments in favor, those those emphasizing effectiveness of signature strikes are particularly dubious. The term "signature strike" is used to distinguish strikes conducted against individuals who "match a pre-identified 'signature' of behavior that the U.S. links to militant activity," rather than targeting a specific person. The United States should not allow signature strikes because the cost of these attacks far outweighs the potential benefit. Leaving aside significant concerns about the legality of such strikes, there are serious questions about the efficacy of this approach in undermining terrorist networks .

The problem with signature strikes is that they open the door to a much higher incidence of civilian casualties -- and this is where the danger lies . If the U nited States is choosing targets based on suspicious activity or proximity to other known-terrorists, this falls short of the threshold for drone strikes set by the Obama Administration, perpetuates a disastrous U.S. image in Yemen , and serves to invigorate the ranks of those groups the United States aims to disable.In response to increasing criticism, President Obama outlined his counterterrorism policy in May 2013 with a speech at National Defense University. Obama noted that the U.S. will only act against "terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat." He did not, however, directly address the use of signature strikes , leaving open the prospect that they could be used in the ongoing fight against terrorism . This would be a mistake. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, extensive

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-case-against-drone-strikes-on-people-who-only-act-like-terrorists/278744/


signature strikes sparked a significant increase in anti-American sentiment . After years of drone strikes, 74 percent of Pakistanis considered the U.S. an enemy by 2012 (up from 64 percent in 2009) according to a Pew Research Center poll. The White House authorized signature strikes for Yemen , but U.S. officials insist that they have not employed this tactic to date. If true, the incidence of civilian and non-combatant casualties in Yemen means that faulty intelligence and targeting failures are to blame , which is perhaps even more worrisome.

Second, this is specifically true of Yemen — targeted strikes solve blowback and AQAP recruitment — it’s reverse causal. Greenfeild 13 — Danya Greenfield, deputy director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, where she leads the Yemen Policy Group, M.A. in International Studies and Middle East Studies from John Hopkin’s University, B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University, 2013 (“The Case Against Drone Strikes on People Who Only 'Act' Like Terrorists,” The Atlantic, August 19th, accessible online at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-case-against-drone-strikes-on-people-who-only-act-like-terrorists/278744/, accessed on 6-25-15)

In waging the drone campaign, the United States occasionally hits precisely the wrong person . A U.S. strike in August 2012 supposedly killed three al-Qaeda militants in Yemen. Among the casualties, however, was an anti-Qaeda imam and a policeman he had brought along for protection. The imam was working to dismantle al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), making him precisely the sort of local ally the U.S. desperately needs in a place like Yemen. Yemeni Nobel Prize laureate Tawakkul Karman warned that Yemeni tribal leaders in areas where civilians have been killed in drone strikes say that these attacks drive more Yemenis to turn against Washington. During his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Yemeni writer Farea al-Muslimi recounted an incident where the eldest son of a man killed by a drone joined AQAP because he identifies the U.S. as his father's killer and wants revenge. As the deaths and injuries mount, dangerous anti-American sentiment grows. When drone strikes occur and non-combatants are killed, Yemenis lash out with protests demanding justice and accountability from the United States--which has not been forthcoming.

In a place like Yemen, although the American drone program is universally hated, many Yemenis will admit they would support targeted assassinations if there is clear intelligence that an individual is a senior operative within AQAP and plotting a specific and imminent act of terror against Americans. The problem with signature strikes is that they do not meet this threshold-- not even remotely -- and they open



the door for the U.S. to make grievous targeting mistakes and be seen as taking sides in a domestic insurgency. Signature strikes target low-level militants who might be nasty characters, but they are not necessarily planning an imminent act of terror or hold a leadership position.

Beyond signature strikes, there is a more fundamental question that we should be asking--a question of overall strategy: is the current drone program achieving our national security objectives? It is not just civil libertarians and human rights advocates that are sounding the alarm; a group of 30 foreign policy experts sent a letter to President Obama in March 2013 calling for an end to the current drone strategy. Even senior retired members of the military, including General Stanley McChrystal, believe drone strikes are counterproductive because of the blowback they foment among the local population.

Targeted killings may eliminate key al-Qaeda leaders, but when civilians die along with them, these strikes ensure that a generation of Yemenis, Pakistanis, or Somalis will blame the U.S. for killing innocent community members , exacerbating America's serious image problems abroad and creating a space for extremist ideology to take root. In short, the U.S. drone program not only undermines the long-term national security of the U nited S tates by fostering widespread anti-U.S. sentiment , it also undermines the legitimacy of the host country government , whose support the U.S. needs, and it provides fodder for jihadi rhetoric that strengthens the very groups the U.S. seeks to destroy.

Third, Yemen is a test case — success over AQAP prevents regional terror and instability, but failure emboldens radical groups and inflames regional rivalries. Jarrell 14 — Matthew Jarrell, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at Brown University, 2014 (“Yemen: The Importance of Success in a Failed State,” Brown Political Review, October 30th, accessible online at http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2014/10/yemen-the-importance-of-success-in-a-failed-state/, accessed on 6-22-15)

Regional Reverberations

As Yemen deals with this latest round of domestic upheaval, the visible reciprocal relationship between the nation and foreign interventionists remains. World and regional powers have consistently had a negative impact on Yemeni internal affairs, and in turn, Yemen’s

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problems are hardly confined within its borders. There are numerous parallels between Yemen and other Middle Eastern nations’ struggles: intense regionalism embodied by the north versus south dynamic is reminiscent of Libyan civil strife, and the Sunni-Shia sectarian tensions harken back to Syrian divides. The Islamic State, a powerful terrorist group with international ambitions, has derailed a domestic political order in Iraq in a similar manner as AQAP in Yemen. As a nation that is plagued by all of these different dilemmas, it follows that a “solution” in Yemen could help immensely in shedding light on how to counter terror in the region as a whole.

The first step to a more stable society is loosening the grip of destructive foreign interests. The lessons that can be learned by examining repeated foreign missteps in Yemen are many: Britain’s colonial division, Saudi Arabian and American unflinching backup of Saleh, and Iran’s meddling in the Houthi issue should all have been avoided. Furthermore, if any hope of a resolution exists in this war-weary republic, it will manifest itself through domestic dialogue between the competing factions; perhaps the recent entrance of the Houthis into mainstream political discussion will enable that. Ideally, all Yemenis should form a common front against AQAP, eliminating one of the world’s most active terrorist groups and serving as a model for national integration to the entire Middle East.

Fourth, Yemen Instability destroys regional stability — we have two internal links.

A)Yemen instability ensures a steady flow of weapons and sectarian divides — causes regional draw-in and escalation.

Salmoni et al. 10 — Barak Salmoni, Associate Professor of International Security Affairs at the College of International Security Affairs, Ph.D. in Middle East Policy from Harvard University, B.A. in Middle East Studies from Brandeis University — Bryce Loidolt, Adjunct Professor of Middle Eastern Affairs at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, B.A. in Middle East Studies from Middleton College — Madeline Wells, Research Assistant at RAND Corporation, M.A. in Islamic Studies from Columbia University, B.A. in Government from Cornell University, 2010 (“Concerns of Regional Powers,” Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen, Published by the RAND Corporation, ISBN: 978-0-8330-4933-9, pgs. 281-283)

Concerns of Regional Powers

Over the past three years, regional states have become increasingly involved in the GoYHuthi conflict . While San‘a has often referred to foreign (Libyan, Iranian) involvement as a way to explain Huthi persistence, neighboring govenments are concerned that the Huthi challenge aggravates the mounting threats to Yemen’s internal security. In this respect, the lack of adequate security along Yemen’s land and maritime borders increases the likelihood that terrorism , illicit trade , and weapons smuggling will persist throughout the region , raising the possibility that combatants in numerous substate conflicts will circulate transnationally, contributing to other simmering conflicts , or may be an element of regime propaganda focusing on the Huthis’ supposed foreign support. These issues pose a problem for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as well as Iran, while increasing the dangers in the ungoverned spaces in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea littoral. The regional threat perception caused by the conflict may also increase Sunni sentiment against alleged Iranian-Shi‘a encroachment in the Gulf.

Huthi violence in northern Yemen directly increases the threat to Saudi Arabian border regions. Although Yemen is not yet officially a part of the GCC, instability in a region that shares borders and security concerns requires a regional focus on boosting Yemeni security capabilities . Part of the security problem stems from the fact that much of Yemen’s border has never been satisfactorily delineated, despite recently heightened security coordination. Without consistent border security, the frequent frontier crossings by Yemeni tribesmen pose a concern to both states, in light of the Huthi challenge to the GoY. Additionally, tribal populations in the Saudi provinces of ‘Asir, Jizzan, and Najran (which has a large Isma‘ili and a small Zaydi minority) may identify with their Yemeni cousins. Specifically, although the Khawlan bin ‘Amr subtribes of Jabal Fayfa, Bani Ghazi, and Jabal Bani Malik have been on the Saudi side of the border since 1934, their members often travel back and forth for purposes of commerce. Given the geographical extent of GoY-Huthi clashes, these tribal sections may include some proHuthi members or may host small numbers of refugees from the conflict in Sa‘da. As we have seen, at different times the GoY has alluded to cross-border tribal support for Huthi fighters, while Huthi sources have alleged Saudi provision of funding and arms to the GoY, as well as cooperation in armed attacks on Huthi supporters.7 In the 2009– 2010 round of fighting, this became a regular theme of Huthi statements. More basically, unmonitored movement of population permits the proliferation of the enablers of regional strife, including weapons , funds , contraband goods , and ideas .

As seen in Chapter Five, the sixth phase of the war in Sa‘da has highlighted the conflict’s regional aspects and its potential for further

transnationalization. Saudi Arabia has become directly entangled in fighting with Huthi forces on both sides of its border with Yemen and could persist in anti-Huthi operations. According to local analysts, Saudi involvement reflects frustration with GoY failures as well as a fear that a border open to Huthi movement could also permit the reinfiltration of al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) into Saudi territory, from which it had been mostly eradicated in 2003–2006. Toward the end of 2009, regional Arab fora, such as the GCC and Arab League, came out in support of Saudi actions to prevent “encroachment on Saudi and Yemeni sovereignty,” considering Yemeni security integral to that of surrounding Arab Gulf States. While Arab League and GCC states maintained the appearance of a united Arab front, their support for Saudi Arabia and the GoY lessens their ability to act as impartial mediators in any future conflict abatement process that might begin where the Qatar process ended.

B)Yemen instability ensures Saudi proliferation — sectarian split creates a regional arms race.

Ashraf 15 — Maimuna Ashraf, Research Fellow at the Strategic Vision Institute, an international security think-tank, 2015 (“Muddle of Power Politics and Proliferation in Middle East – Analysis,” Eurasia Review, May 8th, accessible online at http://www.eurasiareview.com/08052015-muddle-of-power-politics-and-proliferation-in-middle-east-analysis/, accessed on 6-21-15)

Likewise, the Saudi military action in Yemen cannot be observed in disconnection to a US-Iranian nuclear deal. Evidently, the US is focusing on an approach to ensure a Balance of Power and blow a sectarian divide in the region, as it previously supported Iranian-led Shiite in Iraq and now reportedly is providing intelligence and mission planning to Saudi Arabia against pro-Iranian al-Houthis. The US does not want Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon because Iran holds the conventional capability to target US and allied troops stationed in Middle Eastern region. Thus, the Iranian nuclear weapon developments would increase the threat radically for US. Whereas, if the Iran-US nuclear deal finalizes, the framework of the deal would probably lead to the lifting of sanctions from Iran, which may invigorate the Iranian economy to assist their military or nuclear ambitions.

These advancements might lead to a nuclear arms race in the region, by primarily forcing Saudi Arabia to pursue such an option . The Saudis have already warned that they would acquire the atomic bomb if Iran becomes a nuclear power. Recently, Riyadh signed a memo of understanding with Seoul to build two nuclear power plants, whereas similar projects have already been taken place with France, Argentina and China.

Recently the US lifted its ban on military aid to Egypt, while Egypt has also announced the plan to build its first nuclear power plant with Russian help on the Mediterranean coast west of the port city of Alexandria. Egypt is being

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considered as another Sunni state in region, emerging as an atomic proliferate state. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) long ago ahead started constructing its nuclear reactor. Whereas, Israel’s nuclear plans are widely known, Israel is a non-party state to NPT, yet it already has a robust nuclear weapons stockpile in the region and is reportedly in quest of second strike capability. Now almost all the major powers of Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Turkey, Syria, Oman, UAE, Jordon, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt have either announced plans to produce nuclear energy or have signed nuclear cooperation accords. Yemen and Libya are the two states that have called off their nuclear programs. The predominant fear in the region is that most of the states in the region will join the nuclear arms race to secure themselves, following the Iran case or as result of ongoing regional power politics.

Conversely, the Yemen issue is widely affecting the Middle East , and the possibility of a South Asian state becoming embroiled in Yemen’s civil war is high because Riyadh has been leaning on Pakistan to join its military coalition, whilst the reports of secret Pak-Saudi nuclear cooperation are already being speculated. Thus, if the Yemen conflict gets complicated and Houthi rebels extend their vigorous aggression inside Saudi territory, then in such a worsening situation, Pakistan will be standing at a crossroad to decide about the level of its involvement in the conflict and scale of its cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Possibly, sighting the geopolitical calculus, a flat refusal would not be possible for Islamabad, while a direct involvement in Yemen would be taken as Saudi-led Sunni coalition arrayed against Iran that might ignite Pakistan-Iranian tensions and broader Shiite-Sunni conflict.

Fifth, Saudi proliferation ensures regional proliferation and nuclear war — it escalates and draws in other powers. Edelman et al. 11 — Eric Edelman, visiting scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. in US Diplomatic History from Yale University, B.A. in History from Cornell University — Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. from Harvard University in International Relations — Evan Montgomery, Senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, 2011 (“The Dangers of a Nuclear Armed Iran,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, accessible online at

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/persian-gulf/2011-01-01/dangers-nuclear-iran, accessed on 6-21-15)

There is, however, at least one state that could receive significant outside support: Saudi Arabia . And if it did, proliferation could accelerate throughout the region . Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been geopolitical and ideological rivals. Riyadh would face tremendous pressure to respond in some form to a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to deter Iranian coercion and subversion but also to preserve its sense that Saudi Arabia is the leading nation in the Muslim world. The Saudi government is already pursuing a nuclear power capability , which could be the first step along a slow road to nuclear weapons development. And concerns persist that it might be able to accelerate its progress by exploiting its close ties to Pakistan. During the 1980s, in response to the use of missiles during the Iran-Iraq War and their growing proliferation throughout the region, Saudi Arabia acquired several dozen CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China. The Pakistani government reportedly brokered the deal, and it may have also offered to sell Saudi Arabia nuclear warheads for the CSS-2s, which are not accurate enough to deliver conventional warheads effectively.

There are still rumors that Riyadh and Islamabad have had discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, or security guarantees. This "Islamabad option" could develop in one of several different ways. Pakistan could sell operational nuclear weapons and delivery systems to Saudi Arabia, or it could provide the Saudis with the infrastructure, material, and technical support they need to produce nuclear weapons themselves within a matter of years, as opposed to a decade or longer. Not only has Pakistan provided such support in the past, but it is currently building two more heavy-water reactors for plutonium production and a second chemical reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. In other words, it might accumulate more fissile material than it needs to maintain even a substantially expanded arsenal of its own.

Alternatively, Pakistan might offer an extended deterrent guarantee to Saudi Arabia and deploy nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and troops on Saudi territory, a practice that the United States has employed for decades with its allies. This arrangement could be particularly appealing to both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It would allow the Saudis to argue that they are not violating the NPT since they would not be acquiring their own nuclear weapons. And an extended deterrent from Pakistan might be preferable to one from the United States because stationing foreign Muslim forces on Saudi territory would not trigger the kind of popular opposition that would accompany the deployment of U.S. troops. Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/persian-gulf/2011-01-01/dangers-nuclear-iran


benefits and international clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as well as strategic depth against its chief rival, India.The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how India would respond. Would it target Pakistan's weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India's reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT.

N-Player Competition

Were Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons, the Middle East would count three nuclear-armed states, and perhaps more before long. It is unclear how such an n-player competition would unfold because most analyses of nuclear deterrence are based on the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War. It seems likely , however, that the interaction among three or more nuclear-armed powers would be more prone to miscalculation and escalation than a bipolar competition . During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union only needed to concern themselves with an attack from the other. Multipolar systems are generally considered to be less stable than bipolar systems because coalitions can shift quickly, upsetting the balance of power and creating incentives for an attack.

More important, emerging nuclear powers in the Middle East might not take the costly steps necessary to preserve regional stability and avoid a nuclear exchange. For nuclear-armed states, the bedrock of deterrence is the knowledge that each side has a secure second-strike capability, so that no state can launch an attack with the expectation that it can wipe out its opponents' forces and avoid a devastating retaliation. However, emerging nuclear powers might not invest in expensive but survivable capabilities such as hardened missile silos or submarine-based nuclear forces. Given this likely vulnerability, the close proximity of states in the Middle East, and the very short flight times of ballistic missiles in the region, any new nuclear powers might be compelled to "launch on warning" of an attack or even, during a crisis, to use their nuclear forces preemptively. Their governments might also delegate launch authority to lower-level commanders, heightening the possibility of miscalculation and escalation. Moreover, if early warning systems were not integrated into

robust command-and-control systems, the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch would increase further still. And without sophisticated early warning systems, a nuclear attack might be unattributable or attributed incorrectly. That is, assuming that the leadership of a targeted state survived a first strike, it might not be able to accurately determine which nation was responsible. And this uncertainty, when combined with the pressure to respond quickly, would create a significant risk that it would retaliate against the wrong party, potentially triggering a regional nuclear war.

Most existing nuclear powers have taken steps to protect their nuclear weapons from unauthorized use: from closely screening key personnel to developing technical safety measures, such as permissive action links, which require special codes before the weapons can be armed. Yet there is no guarantee that emerging nuclear powers would be willing or able to implement these measures, creating a significant risk that their governments might lose control over the weapons or nuclear material and that nonstate actors could gain access to these items . Some states might seek to mitigate threats to their nuclear arsenals; for instance, they might hide their weapons. In that case, however, a single intelligence compromise could leave their weapons vulnerable to attack or theft.

Meanwhile, states outside the Middle East could also be a source of instability. Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race that other nations were essentially powerless to influence. In a multipolar nuclear Middle East, other nuclear powers and states with advanced military technology could influence -- for good or ill -- the military competition within the region by selling or transferring technologies that most local actors lack today: solid-fuel rocket motors, enhanced missile-guidance systems, warhead miniaturization technology, early warning systems, air and missile defenses. Such transfers could stabilize a fragile nuclear balance if the emerging nuclear powers acquired more survivable arsenals as a result. But they could also be highly destabilizing . If , for example, an outside power sought to curry favor with a potential client state or gain influence with a prospective ally, it might share with that state the technology it needed to enhance the accuracy of its missiles and thereby increase its ability to launch a disarming first strike against any adversary. The ability of existing nuclear powers and other technically advanced military states to shape the emerging nuclear competition in the

Middle East could lead to a new Great Game, with unpredictable consequences.

Sixth, only the plan reverses the trend in time to solve — the Middle East could pass the brink for nuclear war at any moment. London 10 — Herbert I. London, President of the Hudson Institute, Professor Emeritus at New York University, Ph.D. from New York University, 2010 (“The Coming Crisis In The Middle East,” Gatestone Institute, June 28th, available online at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1387/coming-crisis-in-the-middle-east, Accessed 6-22-15)

The coming storm in the Middle East is gaining momentum ; like conditions prior to World War I, all it takes for explosive action to commence is a trigger .

Turkey's provocative flotilla, often described in Orwellian terms as a humanitarian mission, has set in motion a gust of diplomatic activity: if the Iranians send escort vessels for the next round of Turkish ships, which they have apparently decided not to do in favor of land operations, it could have presented a casus belli. [cause for war]

Syria, too, has been playing a dangerous game, with both missile deployment and rearming Hezbollah. According to most public accounts, Hezbollah is sitting on 40,000 long-, medium- and short-range missiles, and Syrian territory has been serving as a conduit for military materiel from Iran since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War.

Should Syria move its own scuds to Lebanon or deploy its troops as reinforcement for Hezbollah, a wider regional war with Israel could not be contained .

In the backdrop is an Iran, with sufficient fissionable material to produce a couple of nuclear weapons. It will take some time to weaponize the missiles, but the road to that goal is synchronized in green lights since neither diplomacy nor diluted sanctions can convince Iran to change course.

From Qatar to Afghanistan all political eyes are on Iran, poised to be "the hegemon" in the Middle East; it is increasingly considered the "strong horse" as American forces incrementally retreat from the region. Even Iraq, ironically, may depend on Iranian ties in order to maintain internal stability.

For Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regional strategic vision is a combination of deal-making to offset the Iranian Shia advantage, and attempting to buy or develop nuclear weapons as a counterweight to Iranian ambition. However, both of these governments are in a precarious state; should either fall, all bets are off in the

Middle East neighborhood. It has long been said that the Sunni "tent" must stand on two legs: if one, falls, the tent collapses.

Should this tent collapse, and should Iran take advantage of that calamity, it could incite a Sunni-Shia war . Or feeling empowered, and no longer dissuaded by an escalation scenario, Iran, with nuclear weapons in tow , might decide that a war against Israel is a distinct possibility. However implausible it may seem at the moment, the possible annihilation of Israel and the prospect of a second holocaust could lead to a nuclear exchange.

The only wild card that can change this slide into warfare is an active United States' policy. Yet, curiously, the U.S. is engaged in both an emotional and physical retreat from the region.

Despite rhetoric which suggests an Iran with nuclear weapons is intolerable, the U.S. has done nothing to forestall this eventual outcome. Despite the investment in blood and treasure to allow a stable government to emerge in Iraq, the anticipated withdrawal of U.S. forces has prompted President Maliki to travel to Tehran on a regular basis. Further, despite historic links to Israel that gave the U.S. leverage in the region as well a democratic ally, the Obama administration treats Israel as a national security albatross that must be disposed of as soon as possible.

As a consequence, the U.S. is perceived in the region as the "weak horse," the one dangerous to ride. In every Middle East capital the words "unreliable and United States" are linked. Those individuals seeking a moderate course of action are now in a distinct minority. A political vacuum is emerging, one that is not sustainable and one the Iranian leadership looks to with imperial exhilaration.

It is no longer a question of whether war will occur, but rather when it will occur, and where it will break out. There are many triggers to ignite the explosion, but not many scenarios for containment. Could it be a regional war in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch from the sidelines, but secretly wish for Israeli victory? Or will this be a war in which there aren't victors, only devastation? Moreover, should war break out, what does the U.S. do?

This is a description far more dire than any in the last century and, even if some believe that it is overly pessimistic, Arab and Jew, Persian and Egyptian, Muslim and Maronite tend to believe in its veracity -- a truly bad sign.

Seventh, instability causes AQAP positioning in Yemen that causes seizing of the Bab El-Mandeb strait. Anzinger 14 — Niklas Anzinger, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Syracuse University, 2014 (“Jihad At Sea - Al Qaeda’s Maritime Front in Yemen,” Maritime Executive, February 25th, accessible online at http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Jihad-At-Sea--Al-Qaedas-Maritime-Front-in-Yemen-2014-02-25, accessed on 6-22-15)

http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Jihad-At-Sea--Al-Qaedas-Maritime-Front-in-Yemen-2014-02-25



Yemen’s state weakness due to fragmentation and ongoing conflicts allowed Al Qaeda and affiliates to take and hold territory, possibly enabling them to seize the Port of Aden. If Al Qaeda establishes safe havens in the southern Abyan province , supported by local Yemeni inhabitants, attacks at sea or in near by ports similar to the “USS Cole bombing” in 2000 could become a threat, increasing the danger to Red Sea shipping. Yet Al Qaeda is of secondary concern for the Yemeni government, with secessionist insurgencies in the north and the south threatening the state’s unity. Only a stable Yemen can effectively deny Al Qaeda a stable base in the long run.

In recent years, international shippers taking the Red Sea route have been primarily concerned with attacks by Somali pirates. Those attacks went down from 237 in 2011 to 15 in 2013 due to the Somali governments’ increased ability to fight and deter piracy, among other causes. However, another threat to international shipping in the Gulf of Aden looms. Yemen’s southern coastline is on the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb which links the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a critical maritime choke point where roughly 8.2% of global oil supply passed through in 2009. Its oil exports, accounting for 70% of Yemeni government revenue, make the country highly dependent on its declining reserves. Yemen is an Al Qaeda stronghold, second only to Pakistan (and possibly Syria more recently). It was a target of the U.S. “drone campaign,” with 94 strikes between 2002 and 2013 (Pakistan: 368). Al Qaeda aims to enforce rigid Islamic legislation in Muslim countries and establish a global Islamic Caliphate . According to its 20-year plan, Al Qaeda aims to subdue “apostate” Muslim regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It hosts a franchise in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), establishing safe havens in the governorates of Al Bayda’, Ma’rib, Shabwah, Lahji and Abyan, where it exerts considerable influence.

Yemen’s weak central state

Yet the Yemeni government, headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi since February 2012 after the 33-year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh came to an end, has to deal with more than Al Qaeda. In 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic in the north united with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. United in name, Yemen, however, remained a fragmented entity rife with internal divisions. In 1994, a civil war between Saleh’s north and the secessionist south broke out. In 1997, a group called “Ansar Allah”, emerging from a Zaidi Shia religious organization, confronted the Yemeni government leading to armed uprisings and several rounds of fighting between 2004 and 2010. In late March 2011, the defection of General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, the chief military commander in north Yemen, led to a security vacuum in the northwest that Ansar Allah seized to take

control of Saada city where it continues fighting Sunni-Salafist tribes. His defection may, however, only be a symptom of the Yemeni state’s retreat to Sana’a, neglecting the north and the south. As a consequence, Hadi has to cope with internal struggles and two rebel movements, constraining his ability to fight AQAP.Al Qaeda’s terrorism at sea

Al Qaeda’s terrorism at sea emanating from Yemen has a tradition and method. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, an eminent jihadi strategist, defined several choke points as a target and outlined methods for disruption: blocking the passages using mines or sinking ships in them, threatening movement at sea through piracy, martyrdom operations and weapons.

On the Earth, there are five (5) important straits, four of them are in the countries of the Arabs and the Muslims. The fifth one is in America, and it is the Panama Canal. These straits are: 1. The Strait of Hormuz, the oil gate in the Persian Gulf. 2. The Suez Canal in Egypt. 3. The Bab el Mandib between Yemen and the African continent. 4. The Gibraltar Strait in Morocco. Most of the Western world’s economy, in terms of trade and oil, passes through these sea passages. Also passing through them are the military fleets, aircraft carriers and the deadly missiles hitting our women and children … It is necessary to shut these passages until the invader campaigns have left our countries. […]. — Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, “The Global Islamic Resistance Call”.

Eighth, Yemen instability spikes oil prices via straight cut off — perception alone triggers the impact. Rosen 15 — Armin Rosen, Freelance journalist who has written in publications like The Atlantic, US News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal — Internally citing an EIA report on the Bab el-Mandeb Straight, 2015 (“War In Yemen Could Threaten One Of The World's Most Important Oil Chokepoints,” Business Insider, March 26th, accessible online at http://www.businessinsider.com/war-in-yemen-could-threaten-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-oil-choke-points-2015-3, accessed on 6-21-15)

Oil prices are surging after Saudi Arabia began a military operation against Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen :

Yemen isn't a world-shaking oil producer , churning out a mere 133,000 barrels a day in 2013. Prices may have been jolted by the strong possibility that Saudi Arabia, which produces 11.6 million barrels a day, is entering a risky military conflict.

http://www.businessinsider.com/war-in-yemen-could-threaten-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-oil-choke-points-2015-3


The situation in Aden, a strategically decisive port city on Yemen's southern coast, was so bad that President Adb Rabbu Mansur Hadi reportedly had to flee the city, and the country, by boat rather than by air.

This means that Houthi rebels are contesting areas along the Bab el-Mandeb , the straits at the opening of the Red Sea and one of the world's crucial oil chokepoints.

According to the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) fact-sheet on global oil chokepoints, 3.8 million barrels of oil and "refined petroleum products" passed through the Bab el-Mandeb each day on its way to Europe, Asia, and the US, making it the world's fourth-busiest chokepoint.

The strait controls access to multiple oil terminals and to a oil pipeline co-owned by state companies from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that transits oil between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, called the Suez-Mediterranean or SUMED pipeline.

The Bab el-Mandeb is 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, "limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments," according to the Energy Information Administration.

The closure of the straits — or the perception of added risk of closure — could have huge consequences for the global oil market.

"Closure of the Bab el-Mandeb could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal or SUMED Pipeline, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa, adding to transit time and cost," the EIA fact-sheet explains. "In addition, European and North African southbound oil flows could no longer take the most direct route to Asian markets via the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb."

Sudan and South Sudan would also have their only oil terminal cut off from Asia-bound trade, as the countries' shared pipeline terminates in Port Sudan. And it would cut off Indian Ocean access to the Mediterranean sea as well as the SUMED pipeline, which can transit 2.24 million barrels of oil per day — more than the daily output of all but 13 of the world's countries.

Ninth, price shocks cause global economic collapse — causes a domino effect of economic decline.Rentschler 13 — Jun Rentschler, Analyst at the World Bank, Consultant at the European Bank for Development, Ph.D. in Economics from the University College, London, 2013 (“Oil Price volatility – its risk on economic growth and development,”

World Bank, July 18th, accessible online at http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/oil-price-volatility-its-risk-economic-growth-and-development, accessed on 6-22-15)

Oil price shocks (i.e. sudden changes) can be transmitted into the macro-economy via various channels. In the private sector, a positive oil price shock will increase production costs and hence restrict output – with price increases at least partially passed on to consumers. Moreover, as prices for gasoline and electricity increase, households face higher costs of living, with the poor being particularly vulnerable. These impacts can have further significant knock-on effects and repercussions throughout the economy, affecting macro-indicators such as employment, trade balance, inflation and public accounts, as well as stock market prices and exchange rates. Thereby, the nature and extent of such knock-on effects depend on the structural characteristics of an economy; for instance, the more a country engages in oil trade, the more it is exposed to price shocks on global commodity markets. Countries relying on a high fossil fuel share in their energy mix, or on energy intensive industrial production, are also more vulnerable. Furthermore, oil price shocks on the international market might be amplified in specific countries, depending on the respective Dollar exchange rate and prevailing inflationary pressures.

While a given oil price increase may be perceived positively by oil exporting countries and negatively by importers, an increase in oil price volatility (i.e. consecutive positive and negative oil price shocks) increases perceived price uncertainty for all countries – regardless of their trade balance. Such oil price volatility reduces planning horizons, causes firms to postpone investments , and may require expensive reallocation of resources. Formulating robust national budgets becomes more difficult, as importing countries face uncertainty regarding import costs and fuel subsidies levels , and exporters face volatile revenues. This may be a particularly profound problem in budget constrained developing countries, which rely on oil exports as a main source of public revenue. In order to protect firms and households against price volatility on international markets, particularly in developing countries, governments often allocate large parts of their budgets to subsidizing fuel. These subsidy systems not only expose governments to significant budgetary risks, but result in significant environmental costs , benefit mainly the wealthier, create disincentives for energy efficiency, and crowd out resources from education, health and other investments in development.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/oil-price-volatility-its-risk-economic-growth-and-development


Finally, global economic decline risks nuclear war.Merlini 11 — Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Insitution, 2011 (“A Post-Secular World?,” Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2, April, pgs. 117–130, accessible online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00396338.2011.571015, accessed on 6-22-15)

Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00396338.2011.571015

1ac Yemen Oil Prices






















Fourth, instability causes AQAP positioning in Yemen that causes seizing of the Bab El-Mandeb strait. Anzinger 14 — Niklas Anzinger, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Syracuse University, 2014 (“Jihad At Sea - Al Qaeda’s Maritime Front in Yemen,” Maritime Executive, February 25th, accessible online at http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Jihad-At-Sea--Al-Qaedas-Maritime-Front-in-Yemen-2014-02-25, accessed on 6-22-15)







Yet the Yemeni government, headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi since February 2012 after the 33-year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh came to an end, has to deal with more than Al Qaeda. In 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic in the north united with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. United in name, Yemen, however, remained a fragmented entity rife with internal divisions. In 1994, a civil war between Saleh’s north and the secessionist south broke out. In 1997, a group called “Ansar Allah”, emerging from a Zaidi Shia religious organization, confronted the Yemeni government leading to armed uprisings and several rounds of fighting between 2004 and 2010. In late March 2011, the defection of General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, the chief military commander in north Yemen, led to a security vacuum in the northwest that Ansar Allah seized to take control of Saada city where it continues fighting Sunni-Salafist tribes. His defection may, however, only be a symptom of the Yemeni state’s retreat to Sana’a, neglecting the north and the south. As a consequence, Hadi has to cope with internal struggles and two rebel movements, constraining his ability to fight AQAP.Al Qaeda’s terrorism at sea

Al Qaeda’s terrorism at sea emanating from Yemen has a tradition and method. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, an eminent jihadi strategist, defined several choke points as a target and outlined methods for disruption: blocking the passages using

mines or sinking ships in them, threatening movement at sea through piracy, martyrdom operations and weapons.


Fifth, Yemen instability spikes oil prices via straight cut off — perception alone triggers the impact. Rosen 15 — Armin Rosen, Freelance journalist who has written in publications like The Atlantic, US News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal — Internally citing an EIA report on the Bab el-Mandeb Straight, 2015 (“War In Yemen Could Threaten One Of The World's Most Important Oil Chokepoints,” Business Insider, March 26th, accessible online at http://www.businessinsider.com/war-in-yemen-could-threaten-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-oil-choke-points-2015-3, accessed on 6-21-15)


Yemen isn't a world-shaking oil producer , churning out a mere 133,000 barrels a day in 2013. Prices may have been jolted by the strong possibility that Saudi Arabia, which produces 11.6 million barrels a day, is entering a risky military conflict. The situation in Aden, a strategically decisive port city on Yemen's southern coast, was so bad that President Adb Rabbu Mansur Hadi reportedly had to flee the city, and the country, by boat rather than by air.


According to the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) fact-sheet on global oil chokepoints, 3.8 million barrels of oil and "refined petroleum



products" passed through the Bab el-Mandeb each day on its way to Europe, Asia, and the US, making it the world's fourth-busiest chokepoint.





Sudan and South Sudan would also have their only oil terminal cut off from Asia-bound trade, as the countries' shared pipeline terminates in Port Sudan. And it would cut off Indian Ocean access to the Mediterranean sea as well as the SUMED pipeline, which can transit 2.24 million barrels of oil per day — more than the daily output of all but 13 of the world's countries.

Sixth, price shocks cause global economic collapse — causes a domino effect of economic decline.Rentschler 13 — Jun Rentschler, Analyst at the World Bank, Consultant at the European Bank for Development, Ph.D. in Economics from the University College, London, 2013 (“Oil Price volatility – its risk on economic growth and development,” World Bank, July 18th, accessible online at http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/oil-price-volatility-its-risk-economic-growth-and-development, accessed on 6-22-15)

Oil price shocks (i.e. sudden changes) can be transmitted into the macro-economy via various channels. In the private sector, a positive oil price shock will increase production costs and hence restrict output – with price increases at least partially passed on to consumers. Moreover, as prices for gasoline and electricity increase, households



face higher costs of living, with the poor being particularly vulnerable. These impacts can have further significant knock-on effects and repercussions throughout the economy, affecting macro-indicators such as employment, trade balance, inflation and public accounts, as well as stock market prices and exchange rates. Thereby, the nature and extent of such knock-on effects depend on the structural characteristics of an economy; for instance, the more a country engages in oil trade, the more it is exposed to price shocks on global commodity markets. Countries relying on a high fossil fuel share in their energy mix, or on energy intensive industrial production, are also more vulnerable. Furthermore, oil price shocks on the international market might be amplified in specific countries, depending on the respective Dollar exchange rate and prevailing inflationary pressures.

While a given oil price increase may be perceived positively by oil exporting countries and negatively by importers, an increase in oil price volatility (i.e. consecutive positive and negative oil price shocks) increases perceived price uncertainty for all countries – regardless of their trade balance. Such oil price volatility reduces planning horizons, causes firms to postpone investments , and may require expensive reallocation of resources. Formulating robust national budgets becomes more difficult, as importing countries face uncertainty regarding import costs and fuel subsidies levels , and exporters face volatile revenues. This may be a particularly profound problem in budget constrained developing countries, which rely on oil exports as a main source of public revenue. In order to protect firms and households against price volatility on international markets, particularly in developing countries, governments often allocate large parts of their budgets to subsidizing fuel. These subsidy systems not only expose governments to significant budgetary risks, but result in significant environmental costs , benefit mainly the wealthier, create disincentives for energy efficiency, and crowd out resources from education, health and other investments in development.

Finally, global economic decline risks nuclear war.Merlini 11 — Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Insitution, 2011 (“A Post-Secular World?,” Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2, April, pgs. 117–130, accessible online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00396338.2011.571015, accessed on 6-22-15)



1ac Yemen Instability






















Fourth, Yemen Instability destroys regional stability — we have two internal links.

C)Yemen instability ensures a steady flow of weapons and sectarian divides — causes regional draw-in and escalation.




Huthi violence in northern Yemen directly increases the threat to Saudi Arabian border regions. Although Yemen is not yet officially a part of the GCC, instability in a region that shares borders and security concerns requires a regional focus on boosting Yemeni security capabilities . Part of the security problem stems from the fact that much of Yemen’s border has never been satisfactorily delineated, despite recently heightened security coordination. Without consistent border security, the frequent frontier crossings by Yemeni tribesmen pose a concern to both states, in light of the Huthi challenge to the GoY. Additionally, tribal populations in the Saudi provinces of ‘Asir, Jizzan, and Najran (which has a large Isma‘ili and a small Zaydi minority) may identify with their Yemeni cousins. Specifically, although the Khawlan bin ‘Amr subtribes of Jabal Fayfa, Bani Ghazi, and Jabal Bani Malik have been on the Saudi side of the border since 1934, their members often travel back and forth for purposes of commerce. Given the geographical extent of GoY-Huthi clashes, these tribal sections may include some proHuthi members or may host small numbers of refugees from the conflict in Sa‘da. As we have seen, at different times the GoY has alluded to cross-border tribal support for Huthi fighters, while Huthi sources have alleged Saudi provision of funding and arms to the GoY, as well as cooperation in armed attacks on Huthi supporters.7 In the 2009– 2010 round of fighting, this became a regular theme of Huthi statements. More basically, unmonitored movement of population permits the proliferation of the enablers of regional strife, including weapons , funds , contraband goods , and ideas .

As seen in Chapter Five, the sixth phase of the war in Sa‘da has highlighted the conflict’s regional aspects and its potential for further

transnationalization. Saudi Arabia has become directly entangled in fighting with Huthi forces on both sides of its border with Yemen and could persist in anti-Huthi operations. According to local analysts, Saudi involvement reflects frustration with GoY failures as well as a fear that a border open to Huthi movement could also permit the reinfiltration of al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) into Saudi territory, from which it had been mostly eradicated in 2003–2006. Toward the end of 2009, regional Arab fora, such as the GCC and Arab League, came out in support of Saudi actions to prevent “encroachment on Saudi and Yemeni sovereignty,” considering Yemeni security integral to that of surrounding Arab Gulf States. While Arab League and GCC states maintained the appearance of a united Arab front, their support for Saudi Arabia and the GoY lessens their ability to act as impartial mediators in any future conflict abatement process that might begin where the Qatar process ended.

D)Yemen instability ensures Saudi proliferation — sectarian split creates a regional arms race.


Likewise, the Saudi military action in Yemen cannot be observed in disconnection to a US-Iranian nuclear deal. Evidently, the US is focusing on an approach to ensure a Balance of Power and blow a sectarian divide in the region, as it previously supported Iranian-led Shiite in Iraq and now reportedly is providing intelligence and mission planning to Saudi Arabia against pro-Iranian al-Houthis. The US does not want Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon because Iran holds the conventional capability to target US and allied troops stationed in Middle Eastern region. Thus, the Iranian nuclear weapon developments would increase the threat radically for US. Whereas, if the Iran-US nuclear deal finalizes, the framework of the deal would probably lead to the lifting of sanctions from Iran, which may invigorate the Iranian economy to assist their military or nuclear ambitions.


Recently the US lifted its ban on military aid to Egypt, while Egypt has also announced the plan to build its first nuclear power plant with Russian help on the Mediterranean coast west of the port city of Alexandria. Egypt is being



considered as another Sunni state in region, emerging as an atomic proliferate state. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) long ago ahead started constructing its nuclear reactor. Whereas, Israel’s nuclear plans are widely known, Israel is a non-party state to NPT, yet it already has a robust nuclear weapons stockpile in the region and is reportedly in quest of second strike capability. Now almost all the major powers of Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Turkey, Syria, Oman, UAE, Jordon, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt have either announced plans to produce nuclear energy or have signed nuclear cooperation accords. Yemen and Libya are the two states that have called off their nuclear programs. The predominant fear in the region is that most of the states in the region will join the nuclear arms race to secure themselves, following the Iran case or as result of ongoing regional power politics.

Conversely, the Yemen issue is widely affecting the Middle East , and the possibility of a South Asian state becoming embroiled in Yemen’s civil war is high because Riyadh has been leaning on Pakistan to join its military coalition, whilst the reports of secret Pak-Saudi nuclear cooperation are already being speculated. Thus, if the Yemen conflict gets complicated and Houthi rebels extend their vigorous aggression inside Saudi territory, then in such a worsening situation, Pakistan will be standing at a crossroad to decide about the level of its involvement in the conflict and scale of its cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Possibly, sighting the geopolitical calculus, a flat refusal would not be possible for Islamabad, while a direct involvement in Yemen would be taken as Saudi-led Sunni coalition arrayed against Iran that might ignite Pakistan-Iranian tensions and broader Shiite-Sunni conflict.

Fifth, Saudi proliferation ensures regional proliferation and nuclear war — it escalates and draws in other powers. Edelman et al. 11 — Eric Edelman, visiting scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. in US Diplomatic History from Yale University, B.A. in History from Cornell University — Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. from Harvard University in International Relations — Evan Montgomery, Senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, 2011 (“The Dangers of a Nuclear Armed Iran,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, accessible online at

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/persian-gulf/2011-01-01/dangers-nuclear-iran, accessed on 6-21-15)


There are still rumors that Riyadh and Islamabad have had discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, or security guarantees. This "Islamabad option" could develop in one of several different ways. Pakistan could sell operational nuclear weapons and delivery systems to Saudi Arabia, or it could provide the Saudis with the infrastructure, material, and technical support they need to produce nuclear weapons themselves within a matter of years, as opposed to a decade or longer. Not only has Pakistan provided such support in the past, but it is currently building two more heavy-water reactors for plutonium production and a second chemical reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. In other words, it might accumulate more fissile material than it needs to maintain even a substantially expanded arsenal of its own.

Alternatively, Pakistan might offer an extended deterrent guarantee to Saudi Arabia and deploy nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and troops on Saudi territory, a practice that the United States has employed for decades with its allies. This arrangement could be particularly appealing to both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It would allow the Saudis to argue that they are not violating the NPT since they would not be acquiring their own nuclear weapons. And an extended deterrent from Pakistan might be preferable to one from the United States because stationing foreign Muslim forces on Saudi territory would not trigger the kind of popular opposition that would accompany the deployment of U.S. troops. Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial



benefits and international clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as well as strategic depth against its chief rival, India.The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how India would respond. Would it target Pakistan's weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India's reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT.



More important, emerging nuclear powers in the Middle East might not take the costly steps necessary to preserve regional stability and avoid a nuclear exchange. For nuclear-armed states, the bedrock of deterrence is the knowledge that each side has a secure second-strike capability, so that no state can launch an attack with the expectation that it can wipe out its opponents' forces and avoid a devastating retaliation. However, emerging nuclear powers might not invest in expensive but survivable capabilities such as hardened missile silos or submarine-based nuclear forces. Given this likely vulnerability, the close proximity of states in the Middle East, and the very short flight times of ballistic missiles in the region, any new nuclear powers might be compelled to "launch on warning" of an attack or even, during a crisis, to use their nuclear forces preemptively. Their governments might also delegate launch authority to lower-level commanders, heightening the possibility of miscalculation and escalation. Moreover, if early warning systems were not integrated into

robust command-and-control systems, the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch would increase further still. And without sophisticated early warning systems, a nuclear attack might be unattributable or attributed incorrectly. That is, assuming that the leadership of a targeted state survived a first strike, it might not be able to accurately determine which nation was responsible. And this uncertainty, when combined with the pressure to respond quickly, would create a significant risk that it would retaliate against the wrong party, potentially triggering a regional nuclear war.


Meanwhile, states outside the Middle East could also be a source of instability. Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race that other nations were essentially powerless to influence. In a multipolar nuclear Middle East, other nuclear powers and states with advanced military technology could influence -- for good or ill -- the military competition within the region by selling or transferring technologies that most local actors lack today: solid-fuel rocket motors, enhanced missile-guidance systems, warhead miniaturization technology, early warning systems, air and missile defenses. Such transfers could stabilize a fragile nuclear balance if the emerging nuclear powers acquired more survivable arsenals as a result. But they could also be highly destabilizing . If , for example, an outside power sought to curry favor with a potential client state or gain influence with a prospective ally, it might share with that state the technology it needed to enhance the accuracy of its missiles and thereby increase its ability to launch a disarming first strike against any adversary. The ability of existing nuclear powers and other technically advanced military states to shape the emerging nuclear competition in the

Middle East could lead to a new Great Game, with unpredictable consequences.

Finally, only the plan reverses the trend in time to solve — the Middle East could pass the brink for nuclear war at any moment. London 10 — Herbert I. London, President of the Hudson Institute, Professor Emeritus at New York University, Ph.D. from New York University, 2010 (“The Coming Crisis In The Middle East,” Gatestone Institute, June 28th, available online at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1387/coming-crisis-in-the-middle-east, Accessed 6-22-15)







For Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regional strategic vision is a combination of deal-making to offset the Iranian Shia advantage, and attempting to buy or develop nuclear weapons as a counterweight to Iranian ambition. However, both of these governments are in a precarious state; should either fall, all bets are off in the

Middle East neighborhood. It has long been said that the Sunni "tent" must stand on two legs: if one, falls, the tent collapses.





It is no longer a question of whether war will occur, but rather when it will occur, and where it will break out. There are many triggers to ignite the explosion, but not many scenarios for containment. Could it be a regional war in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch from the sidelines, but secretly wish for Israeli victory? Or will this be a war in which there aren't victors, only devastation? Moreover, should war break out, what does the U.S. do?


Internal LinksSignature strikes fail, creating anti-americanism and bolstering terror groups — only the aff improves strikes enough to solve. Greenfeild 13 — Danya Greenfield, deputy director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, where she leads the Yemen Policy Group, M.A. in International Studies and Middle East Studies from John Hopkin’s University, B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University, 2013 (“The Case Against Drone Strikes on People Who Only 'Act' Like Terrorists,” The Atlantic, August 19th, accessible online at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-case-against-drone-strikes-on-people-who-only-act-like-terrorists/278744/, accessed on 6-25-15)


The problem with signature strikes is that they open the door to a much higher incidence of civilian casualties --and this is where the danger lies. If the U nited States is choosing targets based on suspicious activity or proximity to other known-terrorists, this falls short of the threshold for drone strikes set by the Obama Administration, perpetuates a disastrous U.S. image in Yemen , and serves to invigorate the ranks of those groups the U nited States aims to disable. In response to increasing criticism, President Obama outlined his counterterrorism policy in May 2013 with a speech at National Defense University. Obama noted that the U.S. will only act against "terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the America n people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat." He did not, however, directly address the use of signature strikes , leaving open the prospect that they could be used in the ongoing fight against terrorism. This would be a mistake . In Pakistan and Afghanistan,



extensive signature strikes sparked a significant increase in anti- American sentiment . After years of drone strikes, 74 percent of Pakistanis considered the U.S. an enemy by 2012 (up from 64 percent in 2009) according to a Pew Research Center poll. The White House authorized signature strikes for Yemen, but U.S. officials insist that they have not employed this tactic to date. If true, the incidence of civilian and non-combatant casualties in Yemen means that faulty intelligence and targeting failures are to blame , which is perhaps even more worrisome .

This is specifically true of Yemen — targeted strikes solve blowback and AQAP recruitment — it’s reverse causal. Greenfeild 13 — Danya Greenfield, deputy director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, where she leads the Yemen Policy Group, M.A. in International Studies and Middle East Studies from John Hopkin’s University, B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University, 2013 (“The Case Against Drone Strikes on People Who Only 'Act' Like Terrorists,” The Atlantic, August 19th, accessible online at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-case-against-drone-strikes-on-people-who-only-act-like-terrorists/278744/, accessed on 6-25-15)








Regional Instability Yemen is a test case — success over AQAP prevents regional terror and instability, but failure emboldens radical groups and inflames regional rivalries. Jarrell 14 — Matthew Jarrell, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at Brown University, 2014 (“Yemen: The Importance of Success in a Failed State,” Brown Political Review, October 30th, accessible online at http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2014/10/yemen-the-importance-of-success-in-a-failed-state/, accessed on 6-22-15)


As Yemen deals with this latest round of domestic upheaval, the visible reciprocal relationship between the nation and foreign interventionists remains. World and regional powers have consistently had a negative impact on Yemeni internal affairs, and in turn, Yemen’s problems are hardly confined within its borders. There are numerous parallels between Yemen and other Middle Eastern nations’ struggles: intense regionalism embodied by the north versus south dynamic is reminiscent of Libyan civil strife, and the Sunni-Shia sectarian tensions harken back to Syrian divides. The Islamic State, a powerful terrorist group with international ambitions, has derailed a domestic political order in Iraq in a similar manner as AQAP in Yemen. As a nation that is plagued by all of these different dilemmas, it follows that a “solution” in Yemen could help immensely in shedding light on how to counter terror in the region as a whole.




Yemen Instability destroys regional stability — we have two internal links.

E)Yemen instability ensures a steady flow of weapons and sectarian divides — causes regional draw-in and escalation.




Huthi violence in northern Yemen directly increases the threat to Saudi Arabian border regions. Although Yemen is not yet officially a part of the GCC, instability in a region that shares borders and security concerns requires a regional focus on boosting Yemeni security capabilities . Part of the security problem stems from the fact that much of Yemen’s border has never been satisfactorily delineated, despite recently heightened security coordination. Without consistent border

security, the frequent frontier crossings by Yemeni tribesmen pose a concern to both states, in light of the Huthi challenge to the GoY. Additionally, tribal populations in the Saudi provinces of ‘Asir, Jizzan, and Najran (which has a large Isma‘ili and a small Zaydi minority) may identify with their Yemeni cousins. Specifically, although the Khawlan bin ‘Amr subtribes of Jabal Fayfa, Bani Ghazi, and Jabal Bani Malik have been on the Saudi side of the border since 1934, their members often travel back and forth for purposes of commerce. Given the geographical extent of GoY-Huthi clashes, these tribal sections may include some proHuthi members or may host small numbers of refugees from the conflict in Sa‘da. As we have seen, at different times the GoY has alluded to cross-border tribal support for Huthi fighters, while Huthi sources have alleged Saudi provision of funding and arms to the GoY, as well as cooperation in armed attacks on Huthi supporters.7 In the 2009– 2010 round of fighting, this became a regular theme of Huthi statements. More basically, unmonitored movement of population permits the proliferation of the enablers of regional strife, including weapons , funds , contraband goods , and ideas .

As seen in Chapter Five, the sixth phase of the war in Sa‘da has highlighted the conflict’s regional aspects and its potential for further transnationalization. Saudi Arabia has become directly entangled in fighting with Huthi forces on both sides of its border with Yemen and could persist in anti-Huthi operations. According to local analysts, Saudi involvement reflects frustration with GoY failures as well as a fear that a border open to Huthi movement could also permit the reinfiltration of al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) into Saudi territory, from which it had been mostly eradicated in 2003–2006. Toward the end of 2009, regional Arab fora, such as the GCC and Arab League, came out in support of Saudi actions to prevent “encroachment on Saudi and Yemeni sovereignty,” considering Yemeni security integral to that of surrounding Arab Gulf States. While Arab League and GCC states maintained the appearance of a united Arab front, their support for Saudi Arabia and the GoY lessens their ability to act as impartial mediators in any future conflict abatement process that might begin where the Qatar process ended.

F) Yemen instability ensures Saudi proliferation — sectarian split creates a regional arms race.


Likewise, the Saudi military action in Yemen cannot be observed in disconnection to a US-Iranian nuclear deal. Evidently, the US is focusing on an approach to ensure a Balance of Power and blow a sectarian divide in the region, as it previously supported Iranian-led Shiite in



Iraq and now reportedly is providing intelligence and mission planning to Saudi Arabia against pro-Iranian al-Houthis. The US does not want Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon because Iran holds the conventional capability to target US and allied troops stationed in Middle Eastern region. Thus, the Iranian nuclear weapon developments would increase the threat radically for US. Whereas, if the Iran-US nuclear deal finalizes, the framework of the deal would probably lead to the lifting of sanctions from Iran, which may invigorate the Iranian economy to assist their military or nuclear ambitions.


Recently the US lifted its ban on military aid to Egypt, while Egypt has also announced the plan to build its first nuclear power plant with Russian help on the Mediterranean coast west of the port city of Alexandria. Egypt is being considered as another Sunni state in region, emerging as an atomic proliferate state. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) long ago ahead started constructing its nuclear reactor. Whereas, Israel’s nuclear plans are widely known, Israel is a non-party state to NPT, yet it already has a robust nuclear weapons stockpile in the region and is reportedly in quest of second strike capability. Now almost all the major powers of Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Turkey, Syria, Oman, UAE, Jordon, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt have either announced plans to produce nuclear energy or have signed nuclear cooperation accords. Yemen and Libya are the two states that have called off their nuclear programs. The predominant fear in the region is that most of the states in the region will join the nuclear arms race to secure themselves, following the Iran case or as result of ongoing regional power politics.

Conversely, the Yemen issue is widely affecting the Middle East , and the possibility of a South Asian state becoming embroiled in Yemen’s civil war is high because Riyadh has been leaning on Pakistan to join its military coalition, whilst the reports of secret Pak-Saudi nuclear cooperation are already being speculated. Thus, if the Yemen conflict gets complicated and Houthi rebels extend their vigorous aggression inside Saudi territory, then in such a worsening situation, Pakistan will be standing at a crossroad to decide about the level of its involvement in the conflict and scale of its cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Possibly, sighting the geopolitical calculus, a flat refusal would not be possible for

Islamabad, while a direct involvement in Yemen would be taken as Saudi-led Sunni coalition arrayed against Iran that might ignite Pakistan-Iranian tensions and broader Shiite-Sunni conflict.

Saudi proliferation ensures regional proliferation and nuclear war — it escalates and draws in other powers. Edelman et al. 11 — Eric Edelman, visiting scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. in US Diplomatic History from Yale University, B.A. in History from Cornell University — Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. from Harvard University in International Relations — Evan Montgomery, Senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, 2011 (“The Dangers of a Nuclear Armed Iran,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/persian-gulf/2011-01-01/dangers-nuclear-iran, accessed on 6-21-15)


There are still rumors that Riyadh and Islamabad have had discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, or security guarantees. This "Islamabad option" could develop in one of several different ways. Pakistan could sell operational nuclear weapons and delivery systems to Saudi Arabia, or it could provide the Saudis with the infrastructure, material, and technical support they need to produce nuclear weapons themselves within a matter of years, as opposed to a decade or



longer. Not only has Pakistan provided such support in the past, but it is currently building two more heavy-water reactors for plutonium production and a second chemical reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. In other words, it might accumulate more fissile material than it needs to maintain even a substantially expanded arsenal of its own.

Alternatively, Pakistan might offer an extended deterrent guarantee to Saudi Arabia and deploy nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and troops on Saudi territory, a practice that the United States has employed for decades with its allies. This arrangement could be particularly appealing to both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It would allow the Saudis to argue that they are not violating the NPT since they would not be acquiring their own nuclear weapons. And an extended deterrent from Pakistan might be preferable to one from the United States because stationing foreign Muslim forces on Saudi territory would not trigger the kind of popular opposition that would accompany the deployment of U.S. troops. Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial benefits and international clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as well as strategic depth against its chief rival, India.The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how India would respond. Would it target Pakistan's weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India's reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT.



More important, emerging nuclear powers in the Middle East might not take the costly steps necessary to preserve regional stability and avoid a nuclear exchange. For nuclear-armed states, the bedrock of deterrence is the knowledge that each side has a secure second-strike capability, so that no state can launch an attack with the expectation that it can wipe out its opponents' forces and avoid a devastating retaliation. However, emerging nuclear powers might not invest in expensive but survivable capabilities such as hardened missile silos or submarine-based nuclear forces. Given this likely vulnerability, the close proximity of states in the Middle East, and the very short flight times of ballistic missiles in the region, any new nuclear powers might be compelled to "launch on warning" of an attack or even, during a crisis, to use their nuclear forces preemptively. Their governments might also delegate launch authority to lower-level commanders, heightening the possibility of miscalculation and escalation. Moreover, if early warning systems were not integrated into robust command-and-control systems, the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch would increase further still. And without sophisticated early warning systems, a nuclear attack might be unattributable or attributed incorrectly. That is, assuming that the leadership of a targeted state survived a first strike, it might not be able to accurately determine which nation was responsible. And this uncertainty, when combined with the pressure to respond quickly, would create a significant risk that it would retaliate against the wrong party, potentially triggering a regional nuclear war.


Meanwhile, states outside the Middle East could also be a source of instability. Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race that other nations were essentially powerless to influence. In a multipolar nuclear Middle

East, other nuclear powers and states with advanced military technology could influence -- for good or ill -- the military competition within the region by selling or transferring technologies that most local actors lack today: solid-fuel rocket motors, enhanced missile-guidance systems, warhead miniaturization technology, early warning systems, air and missile defenses. Such transfers could stabilize a fragile nuclear balance if the emerging nuclear powers acquired more survivable arsenals as a result. But they could also be highly destabilizing . If , for example, an outside power sought to curry favor with a potential client state or gain influence with a prospective ally, it might share with that state the technology it needed to enhance the accuracy of its missiles and thereby increase its ability to launch a disarming first strike against any adversary. The ability of existing nuclear powers and other technically advanced military states to shape the emerging nuclear competition in the Middle East could lead to a new Great Game, with unpredictable consequences.

Only the plan reverses the trend in time to solve — the Middle East could pass the brink for nuclear war at any moment. London 10 — Herbert I. London, President of the Hudson Institute, Professor Emeritus at New York University, Ph.D. from New York University, 2010 (“The Coming Crisis In The Middle East,” Gatestone Institute, June 28th, available online at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1387/coming-crisis-in-the-middle-east, Accessed 6-22-15)







For Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regional strategic vision is a combination of deal-making to offset the Iranian Shia advantage, and attempting to buy or develop nuclear weapons as a counterweight to Iranian ambition. However, both of these governments are in a precarious state; should either fall, all bets are off in the Middle East neighborhood. It has long been said that the Sunni "tent" must stand on two legs: if one, falls, the tent collapses.





It is no longer a question of whether war will occur, but rather when it will occur, and where it will break out. There are many triggers to

ignite the explosion, but not many scenarios for containment. Could it be a regional war in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch from the sidelines, but secretly wish for Israeli victory? Or will this be a war in which there aren't victors, only devastation? Moreover, should war break out, what does the U.S. do?


Oil Price SpikesInstability causes AQAP positioning in Yemen that causes seizing of the Bab El-Mandeb strait. Anzinger 14 — Niklas Anzinger, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Syracuse University, 2014 (“Jihad At Sea - Al Qaeda’s Maritime Front in Yemen,” Maritime Executive, February 25th, accessible online at http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Jihad-At-Sea--Al-Qaedas-Maritime-Front-in-Yemen-2014-02-25, accessed on 6-22-15)







Yet the Yemeni government, headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi since February 2012 after the 33-year rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh came to an end, has to deal with more than Al Qaeda. In 1990, the Yemen Arab Republic in the north united with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. United in name, Yemen, however, remained a fragmented entity rife with internal divisions. In 1994, a civil war between Saleh’s north and the secessionist south broke out. In 1997, a group called “Ansar Allah”, emerging from a Zaidi Shia religious organization, confronted the Yemeni government leading to armed uprisings and several rounds of fighting between 2004 and 2010. In late March 2011, the defection of General Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, the chief military commander in north Yemen, led to a security vacuum in the northwest that Ansar Allah seized to take control of Saada city where it continues fighting Sunni-Salafist tribes. His defection may, however, only be a symptom of the Yemeni state’s retreat to Sana’a, neglecting the north and the south. As a consequence, Hadi has to cope with internal struggles and two rebel movements, constraining his ability to fight AQAP.Al Qaeda’s terrorism at sea

Al Qaeda’s terrorism at sea emanating from Yemen has a tradition and method. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, an eminent jihadi strategist, defined several choke points as a target and outlined methods for disruption: blocking the passages using mines or sinking ships in them, threatening movement at sea through piracy, martyrdom operations and weapons.


Yemen instability spikes oil prices via straight cut off — perception alone triggers the impact. Rosen 15 — Armin Rosen, Freelance journalist who has written in publications like The Atlantic, US News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal — Internally citing an EIA report on the Bab el-Mandeb Straight, 2015 (“War In Yemen Could Threaten One Of The World's Most Important Oil Chokepoints,”

Business Insider, March 26th, accessible online at http://www.businessinsider.com/war-in-yemen-could-threaten-one-of-the-worlds-most-important-oil-choke-points-2015-3, accessed on 6-21-15)


Yemen isn't a world-shaking oil producer , churning out a mere 133,000 barrels a day in 2013. Prices may have been jolted by the strong possibility that Saudi Arabia, which produces 11.6 million barrels a day, is entering a risky military conflict. The situation in Aden, a strategically decisive port city on Yemen's southern coast, was so bad that President Adb Rabbu Mansur Hadi reportedly had to flee the city, and the country, by boat rather than by air.


According to the US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) fact-sheet on global oil chokepoints, 3.8 million barrels of oil and "refined petroleum products" passed through the Bab el-Mandeb each day on its way to Europe, Asia, and the US, making it the world's fourth-busiest chokepoint.





Sudan and South Sudan would also have their only oil terminal cut off from Asia-bound trade, as the countries' shared pipeline terminates in Port



Sudan. And it would cut off Indian Ocean access to the Mediterranean sea as well as the SUMED pipeline, which can transit 2.24 million barrels of oil per day — more than the daily output of all but 13 of the world's countries.

Price shocks cause global economic collapse — causes a domino effect of economic decline.Rentschler 13 — Jun Rentschler, Analyst at the World Bank, Consultant at the European Bank for Development, Ph.D. in Economics from the University College, London, 2013 (“Oil Price volatility – its risk on economic growth and development,” World Bank, July 18th, accessible online at http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/oil-price-volatility-its-risk-economic-growth-and-development, accessed on 6-22-15)

Oil price shocks (i.e. sudden changes) can be transmitted into the macro-economy via various channels. In the private sector, a positive oil price shock will increase production costs and hence restrict output – with price increases at least partially passed on to consumers. Moreover, as prices for gasoline and electricity increase, households face higher costs of living, with the poor being particularly vulnerable. These impacts can have further significant knock-on effects and repercussions throughout the economy, affecting macro-indicators such as employment, trade balance, inflation and public accounts, as well as stock market prices and exchange rates. Thereby, the nature and extent of such knock-on effects depend on the structural characteristics of an economy; for instance, the more a country engages in oil trade, the more it is exposed to price shocks on global commodity markets. Countries relying on a high fossil fuel share in their energy mix, or on energy intensive industrial production, are also more vulnerable. Furthermore, oil price shocks on the international market might be amplified in specific countries, depending on the respective Dollar exchange rate and prevailing inflationary pressures.

While a given oil price increase may be perceived positively by oil exporting countries and negatively by importers, an increase in oil price volatility (i.e. consecutive positive and negative oil price shocks) increases perceived price uncertainty for all countries – regardless of their trade balance. Such oil price volatility reduces planning horizons, causes firms to postpone investments , and may require expensive reallocation of resources. Formulating robust national budgets becomes



more difficult, as importing countries face uncertainty regarding import costs and fuel subsidies levels , and exporters face volatile revenues. This may be a particularly profound problem in budget constrained developing countries, which rely on oil exports as a main source of public revenue. In order to protect firms and households against price volatility on international markets, particularly in developing countries, governments often allocate large parts of their budgets to subsidizing fuel. These subsidy systems not only expose governments to significant budgetary risks, but result in significant environmental costs , benefit mainly the wealthier, create disincentives for energy efficiency, and crowd out resources from education, health and other investments in development.

Global economic decline risks nuclear war.Merlini 11 — Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Insitution, 2011 (“A Post-Secular World?,” Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2, April, pgs. 117–130, accessible online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00396338.2011.571015, accessed on 6-22-15)



AT: “AQAP Weak/Status Quo Intelligence Solves”AQAP is strong and our intelligence in the region is weak. Knutsen 15 — Alexis Knutsen, Analyst for the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, Publis Fellow at the Claremont Institute, 2015 (“As America pulls out of Yemen, ISIS and AQAP move in,” American Enterprise Institute, March 24th, accessible online at https://www.aei.org/publication/as-america-pulls-out-of-yemen-isis-and-aqap-move-in/, accessed on 6-24-15)

The United States began withdrawing its remaining personnel from Yemen Saturday, citing deteriorating security conditions . About 100 American troops, including the special operations forces assisting the Yemeni military in the fight against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), were evacuated. The move diminishes America’s intelligence footprint in Yemen and abandons the country to AQAP , the Iranian-backed al Houthis, and, now, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS). What does the Obama administration intend to do about the threat from Yemen? So far, not much.

Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, AQAP, is nowhere close to being defeated , and is , in fact , benefiting from Yemen’s chaos. Yemen has slowly collapsed into two rival governments – one in northern Yemen controlled by the Zaydi Shia rebel group known as the al Houthis, and the other in southern Yemen under former President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, whom the US still recognizes as Yemen’s president. As both the Hadi and al Houthi governments are drawn further into armed conflict, both sides will likely be less able to commit forces to fighting AQAP. AQAP, furthermore, has also been able to embed its fighters within local populations opposed to the al Houthis, giving AQAP more operating room throughout the country.

https://www.aei.org/publication/as-america-pulls-out-of-yemen-isis-and-aqap-move-in/

https://www.aei.org/publication/as-america-pulls-out-of-yemen-isis-and-aqap-move-in/

AT: “Wahaishi Weakens AQAP”Recent death of Wahaishi doesn’t weaken AQAPCook 6/16 (Joana, 2015, Doctoral Candidate in the Department of War Studies. She is also the current Editor-in-Chief of Strife and a Research Affiliate with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS,) “Wahaishi is gone, but AQAP will thrive in absence of political solution,” http://strifeblog.org/2015/06/16/wahaishi-is-gone-but-aqap-will-thrive-in-absence-of-political-solution/)//RTF

News broke this morning of the death of Nassir al-Wahaishi, the second in command of al-Qaeda, and the leader of its strongest affiliate group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula (AQAP). Wahaishi was reportedly killed in a drone

strike, said to have taken place in the port city of Mukallah, Yemen. While this strike is certainly significant, especially in its symbolic value, it is unlikely to quell the threat AQAP poses as long as a political solution in the country remains out of reach . Officially formed in January 2009 from Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qaeda, AQAP is often cited as the most lethal branch of the organization , largely due to the bomb-making skills of Ibrahim al-Asiri. Al-Asiri has been the key figure from AQAP linked with the many threats that have emanated from the country in recent years. These have included the 2009 underwear bomber who attempted to detonate a device on a commercial liner over Detroit on Christmas Day, as well as the 2010 cargo plane plot which saw explosives hidden

in US-bound printers. Most recently, AQAP had claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. The death of Wahaishi follows on from other significant blows for the organization in recent years, such as the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born English-speaking cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011. Even post-mortem, Awlaki has continued to be one of the most influential figures in encouraging Westerners to travel abroad and engage in violence – through recordings of his speeches and his writing – and is cited by many traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight today. Drone strikes have also consistently cut down AQAP leaders like regional leader in the Baitha province Qaed al-Thahab in August 2013, and more recently

this year Nasr Ibn Ali al-Ansi, who announced the Charlie Hebdo attack. However, such deaths have not reduced the strength of the organization , which has only continued to grow in capacity and membership. AQAP has proven its ability to thrive in Yemen, where the central government has been unable to provide basic governance and accountability to its citizens. In 2011, now ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh recalled troops from areas such as Jaar and Zinjibar to secure his position in

the capital against peaceful protestors when his position came under threat during the Arab Spring. The removal of government forces in this period left a power vacuum that AQAP filled , quickly installing their own version of law and order when the government proved unable to do so. AQAP was able to hold these positions for just over a year, allowing it plenty of space to regroup and strengthen. In March 2015, the failing security situation in the country left an open opportunity for AQAP to seize a significant foothold in the important port city of Mukallah, in Hadhramaut province. Here, they released over 300 prisoners from the city’s central prison, including other important members of AQAP such as Khalid Bartafi. The advance into Mukallah was another case of the organization capitalizing on the unrest in the country, and the additional strength it has been able to gain in

such situations. Drone and air strikes targeted at the organization, which are often used as band-aid solutions, have also severely impacted local populations. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, hundreds of civilians

have been caught up in these strikes and killed, often perpetuating a cycle of resentment for the government and its partners, and driving further recruitment for AQAP. AQAP has been shown to thrive in periods when the reach of the central government has been restricted, and in periods when discontent with the government has risen. What’s more, local recruitment has not always been premised on individuals who aspire to attack the West, but is often driven by grievances against the government; AQAP has been seen to step in at times of vulnerability and provide services, law and order, and accountability for victims and frustrated parties that the central government has

been unable to provide. While the death of al-Wahaishi will certainly provide some short-term interruption for the organization, they have already named Qassim al-Rimi as the group’s new leader. However, like the many strikes before it, Wahaishi’s death will not provide a lasting solution to depleting AQAP in the country. To ensure lasting stability in Yemen, current initiatives like those in Geneva that have brought the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels to the table, are the primary hope for peace and stability in the country. The country’s population is increasingly suffering from a desperate humanitarian situation that has left upwards of 80% of the population reliant on humanitarian aid. Tens of thousands have been internally displaced, while fighting and air strikes continue across the country,

overshadowing the great hope that the National Dialogue Conference once presented to the country. To challenge groups like AQAP in Yemen, and ensure others such as ISIL do not also try and gain a foothold in the country, only national peace and unity in the form of an inclusive, political solution will provide the necessary remedy.

AT: “Yemen Stable/Not Key”Yemen instability is on the brink — if the rebels take Aden, AQAP will have a client state. The Economist 15 — The Economist, large magazine and news source, 2015 (“On the Run,” The Economist, March 25th, accessible online at http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21647159-defeat-presidents-forces-may-lead-more-conflict-not-less-run, accessed on 6-22-15)

This week Mr Hadi, now president, found himself replaying the events of 1994 with roles reversed. On March 26th the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia militant group from Yemen’s northern highlands, reportedly captured an airbase less than 40 miles from Aden, a southern port city in which Mr Hadi had taken refuge. The base had only recently been used in counterterror operations by American military forces, which evacuated a few days before. Mr Hadi's whereabouts are not currently known. Though some reports suggest he left the country bound for Riyadh ahead of the Houthi assault on Aden, other sources said he remained in Yemen.

If ongoing chaos bears a resemblence to the events of 1994 there are nonetheless key differences. Allegiances have shifted dramatically over the last two decades. The few military units still loyal to Mr Hadi , mostly southerners, are augmented by the same secessionists he helped suppress two decades ago along with some of the men who fought jihad abroad before crushing the southern rebellion. Mr Saleh, who was booted out of power just four years ago, is now backing the Houthis, a group he warred against as president.

If the Houthis manage to push Mr Hadi out they will be able to impose their own terms, much as they did in September of 2014 after seizing control of Sana’a, Yemen’s ancient capital in the northern highlands. The miliants struck a peace deal with Mr Hadi after their victory, and prepared plans to form a presidential council to replace him through a series of UN mediated negotiations. But in February Mr Hadi fled Sana’a after a month under house arrest. He denounced the earlier deal, prompting the Houthis to return to war. If Mr Hadi is in fact gone, the presidential council may resume in coming days.

Even if the Houthis can complete their power grab they will not be in for an easy ride. Mr Hadi is not popular in the south, and the coalition around him in Aden owes more to Sunni distaste for the Houthis than faith in his leadership. Southerners widely believe the Houthis have worse repression in store for the south than Mr Saleh ever attempted. To back down, says Saadadeen bin Taleb, minister of trade under Mr Hadi, would be “suicidal for the south”.

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The Houthis and the president's men are not the only forces pulling at Yemen. It is also home to a thriving al-Qaeda franchise that has vowed to defeat the Houthis, and a nascent Islamic State offshoot that killed as many as 140 people in the bombing of Zaydi mosques on March 20th. Neighbouring Saudi Arabia views the Houthis as a noxious Iranian proxy and was willing to underwrite Mr Hadi’s campaign against them. That strategy will remain unchanged with or without Mr Hadi in Aden, but Riyadh may take additional action if the Houthi advance continues. Saudi military forces are now moving toward the border with Yemen.

Should the Houthis secure Aden an end to the conflict is anything but assured . They might then move on the oil rich province of Mareb in central Yemen, which they see as being key to control of the country. With the end of the Houthi action in sight the ties between the Houthis and Mr Saleh—a wily and power-hungry figure not long ago their enemy—could fray. Mr Saleh, who famously described the job of governing Yemen as like “dancing on the heads of snakes”, has long been among the nimblest of Yemeni operators. It is hard to believe that he is not looking to manipulate the Houthi advance into a new bid for power. Yemen’s troubles , it would appear, are only just beginning.

Yemen instability undermines US strategy for the region — it’s a vital training ground and ally. Shrinkman 15 — Paul Shrinkman, Security writer for US News & World Report, M.A. in Political Science and International Relations, 2015 (“Yemen Instability Threatens U.S. Terror Fight,” U.S. News & World Report, February 11th, accessible online at http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/11/yemen-instability-threatens-us-drone-commando-campaign-against-aqap, accessed on 6-23-15)

“There’s no question as a result of the political instability in Yemen that our counterterror capabilities have been affected. I couldn’t stand up here and tell you that they haven’t been,” he said. “Of course they have been.”

Such counterterrorism missions only work with the cooperation of the host nation government as an effective and reliable partner, Kirby said.

“Right now, that country, the Yemeni security forces and the government to which they report is very much in flux right now,” he said. “We understand that. I wouldn’t say there’s been no adjustments made.”

The U.S. relies almost exclusively on regional alliances for its secretive work hunting Islamic extremists in the region . It retains a

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covert drone base in Djibouti and key military bases in Bahrain and Qatar, along with a critical alliance with the oil-rich Saudi Arabia. All of these countries are predominantly Sunni and abhor the increasingly expeditionary presence of Shiite Iran in and around their neighborhood.

On the ground, instability in Yemen means American shadow forces likely will have more difficulty gathering the critical intelligence they need to keep flying drone missions overhead.

And the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a signals an inability to help corral allied regional powers into some sort of agreement that maintains a strong American influence there.

“Yemen exemplifies why American diplomats need to take personal risks in our national interest,” four influential former ambassadors to the region – Ryan Crocker, Robert Ford, James F. Jeffrey and Ronald Neumann – wrote in a column published in The Hill last week. “Yemen teeters on the edge of civil war. The fight there with Al-Qaeda is far from successful but is not yet lost.

“At this critical time engagement and judgment on the ground are essential to try to stabilize the situation before Yemen slides into such complete chaos that outsiders are helpless to influence the situation.”

Still in question is who will maintain control of the tenuous situation. The Houthis have no apparent plan for shared governance of the country, where Sunni Muslims are a slight majority. But they also won’t allow for a return of the U.S.-allied government that was key to fighting terrorism there, despite a shared disdain for Sunni extremists.

“That relationship has worked, and that’s the relationship that the Houthi takeover endangers,” says Mike Lewis, a professor at Ohio Northern University who flew F-14 fighter jets during the Gulf War.

The Houthis have tremendous work before them to establish a government that could lead to the re-establishment of formal relations with the U.S. – if they even desire to do so.

“There’s no way the Houthis by force of arms are going to control most of the rest of Yemen,” Lewis says. “Yemen is headed toward a failed-state scenario unless you can find some sort of meaningful cooperation between a number of political entities there – quite honestly, warlords and tribal chiefs who are going to have to get along and back somebody.”

Any chance of stability in Yemen, and hopes for a continued U.S. mission to defeat AQAP where it operates, rests on finding some way around the current chaos . And with so many other powerful forces

looking at Sana’a, the U.S. can only hope the situation doesn’t get any worse.

AT: “Drone Strikes Not Key”Civilian death tolls in Yemen make AQAP stronger and cause mass instabilityWiener-Bronner 13 (Danielle, December 13th 2013, reporter for The Wire, “Latest Drone Strikes Shows How U.S. Strategy in Yemen Is Backfiring,” http://www.thewire.com/global/2013/12/yemen-drones/356111/)//RTF

Targeted drone killings are defended by the United States as means to combat al-Qaeda in the most effective way possible. If attacks are carried

out correctly, they should minimize civilian casualties, eliminate risk to our own forces, and remove dangerous militant operatives, ideally dismantling terrorist groups from a safe distance. But if the attacks are not carried out correctly, as they often aren't, the results can backfire, which is exactly what's been happening in Yemen, according to Reuters: Tribal leaders, who have a lot of influence within Yemen's complex social structure, warn of rising sympathy for al Qaeda. Awad Ahmed Mohsen from Majallah, a southern village hit by a drone strike

that killed dozens in 2009, told Reuters that America had brought hatred with its drones. Asked if more people joined al Qaeda in the wake of attacks that killed civilians, Mohsen said: "Definitely. And even those who don't join, now sympathize with al Qaeda because of these strikes, these violations. Any American they see, they exact revenge, even if it's a civilian." On Thursday, 14 Yemeni civilians were killed by a U.S. drone strike that mistakenly targeted a wedding convoy, according to Yemeni national security officials. Another official, however, said AQAP militants may have been traveling with the wedding party, but in either case it seems that civilians were not the original targets have been killed. The CIA didn't comment on the strike, per standard procedure. The attack threatens to undo the U.S.'s efforts to scale back its drone program, while making it more palatable to the

countries it affects. Reuters reports that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP) has started traveling in smaller groups to avoid the aerial strikes, which may actually make it more difficult to track their motions. And the strikes are angering some Sunni Muslims upset about strikes that kill their supporters, rather than anti-government Shi'ite rebels, fueling sectarian tensions which are already high in the region. If those

killed in this week's attack are confirmed to be civilians, according to the Associated Press, it could mean a surge of anti-American sentiment in Yemen: Civilian deaths have bred resentments on a local level, sometimes undermining U.S. efforts to turn the public against the militants. The backlash in Yemen is still not as large as in Pakistan, where there is heavy pressure on the government to force limits on strikes — but public calls for a halt to strikes are starting to emerge. In May, President Obama promised to increase transparency on the drone strike program and enhance guidelines on their use. But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found in November that the six months following Obama's speech actually saw an increase of drone strike casualties in Yemen and Pakistan. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported in October that civilian casualties of drone strikes are higher than the U.S. admits. Around the same time, a U.N. human rights investigator said

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400-600 of the 2,200 people killed by drones in the past decade were noncombatants. And in 2012, reports emerged that the Yemeni government works to help the U.S. hide it deadly errors. Data on drone strikes, like all

counter-terrorism efforts, is necessarily shrouded in mystery, making it difficult to measure success. But if drone strikes continue to indiscriminately kill civilians, moderates in Yemen may be driven towards more extremist positions. Even governments working with Washington to coordinate the strikes could turn against the U.S. if drone casualties are not scaled back or eliminated . Drone strikes may very well be an effective means of fighting terrorism, but for now they remain a controversial experiment in warfare that could possibly be drastically, dangerously failing to keep people safe.

Credibility Scenario

1ac – Credibility (Heg)Dismissive nature of civilian casualties in strikes hurts human rights credibility Tirman, 12- Writer for the Washington Post (John, “Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?”, Washington Post, 1/6/12, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-we-ignore-the-civilians-killed-in-american-wars/2011/12/05/gIQALCO4eP_story.html)//KTC

These attitudes have consequences. Perhaps the most important one —

apart from the tensions created with the host governments, which have been

quite vocal in protesting civilian casualties — is that indifference provides permission to

our military and political leaders to pursue more interventions. There are costs to our global reputation as well: The United States, which should be regarded as a principal advocate of human rights, undermines its credibility when it

is so dismissive of civilian casualties in its wars. Appealing for

international action on Sudan, Syria and other countries may sound hypocritical when our own attitudes about civilians are so cold. Korean War

historian Bruce Cumings calls this neglect the “hegemony of forgetting, in which almost everything to do with the war is buried history.” Will we ever

stop burying memories of war’s destruction? More attention to the human costs may jolt the American public into a more compassionate understanding. When we build the memorial for Operation Iraqi Freedom, let’s mention that Iraqi civilians were part of the carnage. Count them, and maybe we can start to recognize and remember the larger tolls of the wars we wage.

Lack of HR cred devastates US leadership- the aff reverses that Shattuck 08 (John, Fall, CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and a lecturer on U.S. foreign policy at Tufts University, “Restoring U.S. Credibility on Human Rights,” http://www.americanbar.org/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol35_2008/human_rights_fall2008/hr_fall08_shattuck.html)//RTF

Among the many challenges facing you from the time you take office will be how to restore U.S. credibility in the world. One way to do this will be to change the global perception that the United States is a human rights violator. International public opinion of the recent U.S. record on human rights has been devastating. A poll conducted last year in eighteen countries on all continents by the British Broadcasting Corporation revealed that 67 percent disapproved of U.S. detention practices in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Another poll in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, and India found that majorities or pluralities condemned the United States for torture and other violations of international law. A third poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that majorities in thirteen countries, including many traditional allies, believe “the U.S. cannot be trusted to act responsibly in the world.” Less than a decade ago, the situation was quite different. A 1999 survey published by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Research showed that the United States was viewed favorably by large majorities in France, 62 percent; Germany, 78 percent; Indonesia, 75 percent; and Turkey, 52 percent; among others. This positive climate of opinion helped produce the outpouring of international support immedi-ately following the 9/11 attacks that made it possible for this country to quickly assemble a broad coalition with United Nations (UN) approval to respond to the terrorist attacks by striking al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan. Seven years later, global support for U.S. leadership has evaporated. In nearly all the countries that registered strong support for the United States in 1999, a big downward shift of opinion had occurred by 2006. In France it was down to 39 percent; in Germany, 37 percent;

and in Indonesia, 30 percent. A separate survey conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed extremely hostile attitudes toward the United States throughout the Arab and Muslim world: In Egypt, the United States polled 70 percent negative; in Pakistan, 73 percent negative; in Jordan, 85 percent negative; and in Turkey, 88 percent negative. The gap between America’s values and actions revealed by this polling data has severely eroded U.S. global influence. How can you and your administration gain it back? First, you should make it clear that one of our country’s bedrock principles is the international rule of law. Human rights are de-fined and protected by the Constitution and international treaties ratified and incorporated into our domestic law. In flaunting basic rules—such as habeas corpus, the Convention against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions—the previous administration created a series of “law-free zones.” Within these zones, detainees were abused, thousands were held indefinitely without charges, and human rights were trampled. Second, you should bring U.S. values and practices back into alignment. The United States in recent years has lost credibility by charging others with the types of human rights violations that it has committed itself. In recent annual country reports on human rights practices, the State Department has criticized other countries for engaging in torture, detention without trial, warrantless electronic surveillance, and other abuses, even though the U.S. record in these areas also has been abysmal. Fortunately, history shows that U.S. credibility on human rights can be restored when our government’s policies reflect our na-tion’s values. A series of bipartisan initiatives during five recent presidencies––three Republican and two Democratic––illustrates the point. President Gerald Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, paving the way for international recognition of the cause of human rights inside the Soviet bloc. President Jimmy Carter mobilized democratic governments to press for the release of political prisoners by repressive regimes. President Ronald Reagan signed the Con-vention against Torture and persuaded a Republican-dominated Senate to ratify it. President George H. W. Bush joined with other governments in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to nurture new democracies and respect for human rights following the end of the Cold War. And President Bill Clinton worked with NATO and the UN to implement the Genocide Conven-tion and bring an end to the human rights catastrophe in the Balkans. Mr. President, you can restore U.S. influence by reconnecting the nation’s values and policies on human rights and the rule of law. Among the initiatives that you might take are the following. Human Rights Law Enforcement. You should announce that the United States is bound by the human rights treaties and con-ventions that it has ratified and adopted as domestic law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Convention, and the Interna-tional Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. You should follow through with your commitment to close the detention center at Guan-tanamo and transfer detainees to this country for determinations whether to try them in U.S. courts or release them. Fully complying with the Geneva Conventions would not preclude the United States from trying detainees in military commissions under constitutional standards of due process, nor would it restrict the government’s authority to conduct lawful interrogations to obtain intelligence in-formation about terrorist activities. Truth Commission. At times in our recent history, the nation has created high-level commissions to probe national crises and recommend ways to prevent them in the future. In the area of human rights, these bodies have included, most notably, the Kerner Commission on race in the 1960s and the commission in the 1980s on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The recent commission on the events of 9/11 had a comparable scope and impact in addressing a complex and far-reaching national crisis. A similar commission could be established to compile the record of human rights abuses in the War on Terror. U.S. Commission on Human Rights. A permanent institution could be created to monitor the U.S. government’s compliance with its legal obligations on human rights. I urge you to endorse legislation pending in Congress that would establish a United States Commission on Human Rights with oversight authority and subpoena power. The legislation would require the executive branch to provide regular reports to the commission on its implementation of international human rights treaties such as the Torture Convention and the Geneva Conventions. Counterterrorism Assistance. The United States could provide assistance to other countries for counterterrorism operations that comply with basic standards on human rights. “Fighting terror” has become a convenient excuse for repressive regimes around the world to engage in further repression, often leading to more terrorism in an increasing cycle of violence. To break this cycle, this country could provide assistance and training to foreign military and law enforcement personnel in methods of fighting terrorism within the rule of law. Democracy and Human Rights Assistance. The United States should find appropriate ways to support those seeking to promote the rule of law, democracy, and human rights within their own countries. Democracy and human rights activists are the shock troops in the struggle against terrorism. But democracy and human rights can never be delivered from the barrel of a gun. Assistance to those working to build their own democratic societies must be carefully planned, sustained over time, and based on a thorough understand-ing of the unique circumstances and profound differences among cultures, religions, and countries. The new administration should work within a

multilateral framework to assist those struggling around the world to bring democracy and human rights to their own societies. Responsibility to Protect. The United States should join with other countries, alliances, and international organizations to pre-vent or stop crimes against humanity and genocide. Mr. President, you could invoke the Doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006, to work with other leaders to develop effective multilateral methods of preventing human rights catastrophes such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Darfur. Diplomatic and economic tools should be employed first to head off im-pending genocides, but multilateral military intervention must remain available under international law if other means have been ex-hausted. By recommitting the United States to a foreign policy conducted within a framework of human rights and the rule of law, Presi-dent Obama, you can restore America’s moral leadership in the world, and, by doing so, strengthen U.S. national security.

US hegemony is the only option – it’s inevitable, sustainable, deters great power war, and is critical to cooperation over every global issueBrooks et al. 13 “STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College;” January/February 2013 “Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138468/stephen-g-brooks-g-john-ikenberry-and-william-c-wohlforth/lean-forward

Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a single grand strategy: deep engagement. In an effort to protect its security and prosperity, the country has promoted a liberal economic order and established close defense ties with partners in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Its military bases cover the map, its ships patrol transit routes across the globe, and tens of thousands of its troops stand guard in allied countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The details of U.S. foreign policy have differed from administration to administration, including the emphasis placed on democracy promotion and humanitarian goals, but for over 60 years, every president has agreed on the fundamental decision to remain deeply engaged in the world, even as the rationale for that strategy has shifted. During the Cold War, the United States' security commitments to Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East served primarily to prevent Soviet encroachment into the world's wealthiest and most resource-rich regions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the aim has become to make these same regions more secure, and thus less threatening to the United States, and to use these security partnerships to foster the cooperation necessary for a stable and open international order. Now, more than ever, Washington might be tempted to abandon this grand strategy and pull back from the world. The rise of China is chipping away at the United States' preponderance of power, a budget crisis has put defense spending on the chopping block, and two long wars have left the U.S. military and public exhausted. Indeed, even as most politicians continue to assert their commitment to global leadership, a very different view has taken hold among scholars of international relations over the past decade: that the United States should minimize its overseas military presence, shed its security ties, and give up its efforts to lead the liberal international order. Proponents of retrenchment argue that a globally engaged grand strategy wastes money by subsidizing the defense of well-off allies and generates resentment among foreign populations and governments. A more modest posture, they contend, would put an end to allies' free-riding and defuse anti-American sentiment. Even if allies did not take over every mission the United States now performs, most of these roles have nothing to do with U.S. security and only risk entrapping the United States in unnecessary wars. In

short, those in this camp maintain that pulling back would not only save blood and treasure but also make the United States more secure. They are wrong. In making their case, advocates of retrenchment overstate the costs of the current grand strategy and understate its benefits. In fact, the budgetary savings of lowering the United States' international profile are debatable, and there is little evidence to suggest that an internationally engaged America provokes other countries to balance against it, becomes overextended, or gets dragged into unnecessary wars. The benefits of deep engagement, on the other hand, are legion. U.S. security commitments reduce competition in key regions and act as a check against potential rivals. They help maintain an open world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations. And they make it easier for the United States to secure cooperation for combating a wide range of global threats. Were the United States to cede its global leadership role, it would forgo these proven upsides while exposing itself to the unprecedented downsides of a world in which the country was less secure, prosperous, and influential. AN AFFORDABLE STRATEGY Many advocates of retrenchment consider the United States' assertive global posture simply too expensive. The international relations scholar Christopher Layne, for example, has warned of the country's "ballooning budget deficits" and argued that "its strategic commitments exceed the resources available to support them." Calculating the savings of switching grand strategies, however, is not so simple, because it depends on the expenditures the current strategy demands and the amount required for its replacement -- numbers that are hard to pin down. If the United States revoked all its security guarantees, brought home all its troops, shrank every branch of the military, and slashed its nuclear arsenal, it would save around $900 billion over ten years, according to Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan of the Cato Institute. But few advocates of retrenchment endorse such a radical reduction; instead, most call for "restraint," an "offshore balancing" strategy, or an "over the horizon" military posture. The savings these approaches would yield are less clear, since they depend on which security commitments Washington would abandon outright and how much it would cost to keep the remaining ones. If retrenchment simply meant shipping foreign-based U.S. forces back to the United States, then the savings would be modest at best, since the countries hosting U.S. forces usually cover a large portion of the basing costs. And if it meant maintaining a major expeditionary capacity, then any savings would again be small, since the Pentagon would still have to pay for the expensive weaponry and equipment required for projecting power abroad. The other side of the cost equation, the price of continued engagement, is also in flux. Although the fat defense budgets of the past decade make an easy target for advocates of retrenchment, such high levels of spending aren't needed to maintain an engaged global posture. Spending skyrocketed after 9/11, but it has already begun to fall back to earth as the United States winds down its two costly wars and trims its base level of nonwar spending. As of the fall of 2012, the Defense Department was planning for cuts of just under $500 billion over the next five years, which it maintains will not compromise national security. These reductions would lower military spending to a little less than three percent of GDP by 2017, from its current level of 4.5 percent. The Pentagon could save even more with no ill effects by reforming its procurement practices and compensation policies. Even without major budget cuts, however, the country can afford the costs of its ambitious grand strategy. The significant increases in military spending proposed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, during the 2012 presidential campaign would still have kept military spending below its current share of GDP, since spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would still have gone down and Romney's proposed nonwar spending levels would not have kept pace with economic growth. Small wonder, then, that the case for pulling back rests more on the nonmonetary costs that the current strategy supposedly incurs. UNBALANCED One such alleged cost of the current grand strategy is that, in the words of the political scientist Barry Posen, it "prompts states to balance against U.S. power however they can." Yet there is no evidence that countries have banded together in anti-American

alliances or tried to match the United States' military capacity on their own -- or that they will do so in the future. Indeed, it's hard to see how the current grand strategy could generate true counterbalancing. Unlike past hegemons, the United States is geographically isolated, which means that it is far less threatening to other major states and that it faces no contiguous great-power rivals that could step up to the task of balancing against it. Moreover, any competitor would have a hard time matching the U.S. military. Not only is the United States so far ahead militarily in both quantitative and qualitative terms, but its security guarantees also give it the leverage to prevent allies from giving military technology to potential U.S. rivals. Because the United States dominates the high-end defense industry, it can trade access to its defense market for allies' agreement not to transfer key military technologies to its competitors. The embargo that the United States has convinced the EU to maintain on military sales to China since 1989 is a case in point. If U.S. global leadership were prompting balancing, then one would expect actual examples of pushback -- especially during the administration of George W. Bush, who pursued a foreign policy that seemed particularly unilateral. Yet since the Soviet Union collapsed, no major powers have tried to balance against the United States by seeking to match its military might or by assembling a formidable alliance; the prospect is simply too daunting. Instead, they have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing," using international institutions and norms to constrain Washington. Setting aside the fact that soft balancing is a slippery concept and difficult to distinguish from everyday diplomatic competition, it is wrong to say that the practice only harms the United States. Arguably, as the global leader, the United States benefits from employing soft-balancing-style leverage more than any other country. After all, today's rules and institutions came about under its auspices and largely reflect its interests, and so they are in fact tailor-made for soft balancing by the United States itself. In 2011, for example, Washington coordinated action with several Southeast Asian states to oppose Beijing's claims in the South China Sea by pointing to established international law and norms. Another argument for retrenchment holds that the United States will fall prey to the same fate as past hegemons and accelerate its own decline. In order to keep its ambitious strategy in place, the logic goes, the country will have to divert resources away from more productive purposes -- infrastructure, education, scientific research, and so on -- that are necessary to keep its economy competitive. Allies, meanwhile, can get away with lower military expenditures and grow faster than they otherwise would. The historical evidence for this phenomenon is thin; for the most part, past superpowers lost their leadership not because they pursued hegemony but because other major powers balanced against them -- a prospect that is not in the cards today. (If anything, leading states can use their position to stave off their decline.) A bigger problem with the warnings against "imperial overstretch" is that there is no reason to believe that the pursuit of global leadership saps economic growth. Instead, most studies by economists find no clear relationship between military expenditures and economic decline. To be sure, if the United States were a dramatic outlier and spent around a quarter of its GDP on defense, as the Soviet Union did in its last decades, its growth and competitiveness would suffer. But in 2012, even as it fought a war in Afghanistan and conducted counterterrorism operations around the globe, Washington spent just 4.5 percent of GDP on defense -- a relatively small fraction, historically speaking. (From 1950 to 1990, that figure averaged 7.6 percent.) Recent economic difficulties might prompt Washington to reevaluate its defense budgets and international commitments, but that does not mean that those policies caused the downturn. And any money freed up from dropping global commitments would not necessarily be spent in ways that would help the U.S. economy. Likewise, U.S. allies' economic growth rates have nothing to do with any security subsidies they receive from Washington. The contention that lower military expenditures facilitated the rise of Japan, West Germany, and other countries dependent on U.S. defense guarantees may have seemed plausible during the last bout of declinist anxiety, in the 1980s. But these states eventually stopped climbing up the global economic ranks as their per capita wealth approached U.S. levels -- just as standard models of economic growth would predict. Over the

past 20 years, the United States has maintained its lead in per capita GDP over its European allies and Japan, even as those countries' defense efforts have fallen further behind. Their failure to modernize their militaries has only served to entrench the United States' dominance. LED NOT INTO TEMPTATION The costs of U.S. foreign policy that matter most, of course, are human lives, and critics of an expansive grand strategy worry that the United States might get dragged into unnecessary wars. Securing smaller allies, they argue, emboldens those states to take risks they would not otherwise accept, pulling the superpower sponsor into costly conflicts -- a classic moral hazard problem. Concerned about the reputational costs of failing to honor the country's alliance commitments, U.S. leaders might go to war even when no national interests are at stake. History shows, however, that great powers anticipate the danger of entrapment and structure their agreements to protect themselves from it. It is nearly impossible to find a clear case of a smaller power luring a reluctant great power into war. For decades, World War I served as the canonical example of entangling alliances supposedly drawing great powers into a fight, but an outpouring of new historical research has overturned the conventional wisdom, revealing that the war was more the result of a conscious decision on Germany's part to try to dominate Europe than a case of alliance entrapment. If anything, alliances reduce the risk of getting pulled into a conflict. In East Asia, the regional security agreements that Washington struck after World War II were designed, in the words of the political scientist Victor Cha, to "constrain anticommunist allies in the region that might engage in aggressive behavior against adversaries that could entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war." The same logic is now at play in the U.S.-Taiwanese relationship. After cross-strait tensions flared in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, U.S. officials grew concerned that their ambiguous support for Taiwan might expose them to the risk of entrapment. So the Bush administration adjusted its policy, clarifying that its goal was to not only deter China from an unprovoked attack but also deter Taiwan from unilateral moves toward independence. For many advocates of retrenchment, the problem is that the mere possession of globe-girdling military capabilities supposedly inflates policymakers' conception of the national interest, so much so that every foreign problem begins to look like America's to solve. Critics also argue that the country's military superiority causes it to seek total solutions to security problems, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, that could be dealt with in less costly ways. Only a country that possessed such awesome military power and faced no serious geopolitical rival would fail to be satisfied with partial fixes, such as containment, and instead embark on wild schemes of democracy building, the argument goes. Furthermore, they contend, the United States' outsized military creates a sense of obligation to do something with it even when no U.S. interests are at stake. As Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the UN, famously asked Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when debating intervention in Bosnia in 1993, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" If the U.S. military scrapped its forces and shuttered its bases, then the country would no doubt eliminate the risk of entering needless wars, having tied itself to the mast like Ulysses. But if it instead merely moved its forces over the horizon, as is more commonly proposed by advocates of retrenchment, whatever temptations there were to intervene would not disappear. The bigger problem with the idea that a forward posture distorts conceptions of the national interest, however, is that it rests on just one case: Iraq. That war is an outlier in terms of both its high costs (it accounts for some two-thirds of the casualties and budget costs of all U.S. wars since 1990) and the degree to which the United States shouldered them alone. In the Persian Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. allies bore more of the burden, controlling for the size of their economies and populations. Besides, the Iraq war was not an inevitable consequence of pursuing the United States' existing grand strategy; many scholars and policymakers who prefer an engaged America strongly opposed the war. Likewise, continuing the current grand strategy in no way condemns the United States to more wars like it.

Consider how the country, after it lost in Vietnam, waged the rest of the Cold War with proxies and highly limited interventions. Iraq has generated a similar reluctance to undertake large expeditionary operations -- what the political scientist John Mueller has dubbed "the Iraq syndrome." Those contending that the United States' grand strategy ineluctably leads the country into temptation need to present much more evidence before their case can be convincing. KEEPING THE PEACE Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far below what advocates of retrenchment claim, they would not be worth bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do. The most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict. The United States' security commitments deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from trying to solve security problems on their own in ways that would end up threatening other states. Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries from erupting. They maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to prevent conflict. In other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the American pacifier. But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would likely expand their military capabilities and go nuclear, which could provoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried to obtain nuclear weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its security commitments to restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to leave the Middle East, the countries currently backed by Washington -- notably, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia -- might act in ways that would intensify the region's security dilemmas. There would even be reason to worry about Europe. Although it's hard to imagine the return of great-power military competition in a post-American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing itself from threats on its periphery, unable to join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. Given how easily a U.S. withdrawal from key regions could lead to dangerous competition, advocates of retrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't actually hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the United States could survive the return of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East -- but at what cost? Were states in one or both of these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military budgets, arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the United States, in part because its lead in military capabilities would narrow. Greater regional insecurity could also produce cascades of nuclear proliferation as powers such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those countries' regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals. Although nuclear deterrence can promote stability between two states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple nuclear rivals with less robust arsenals. As the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit transfers, irrational decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up. The case for abandoning the United States' global role misses the underlying security logic of the current approach. By reassuring allies and actively managing regional relations, Washington dampens competition in the world's key areas, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse in which countries would grow new military capabilities. For proof that this strategy is working, one need look no further than

the defense budgets of the current great powers: on average, since 1991 they have kept their military expenditures as a percentage of GDP to historic lows, and they have not attempted to match the United States' top-end military capabilities. Moreover, all of the world's most modern militaries are U.S. allies, and the United States' military lead over its potential rivals is by many measures growing. On top of all this, the current grand strategy acts as a hedge against the emergence regional hegemons. Some supporters of retrenchment argue that the U.S. military should keep its forces over the horizon and pass the buck to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing rising regional powers. Washington, they contend, should deploy forces abroad only when a truly credible contender for regional hegemony arises, as in the cases of Germany and Japan during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Yet there is already a potential contender for regional hegemony -- China -- and to balance it, the United States will need to maintain its key alliances in Asia and the military capacity to intervene there. The implication is that the United States should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, reduce its military presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia. Yet that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing. MILITARY DOMINANCE, ECONOMIC PREEMINENCE Preoccupied with security issues, critics of the current grand strategy miss one of its most important benefits: sustaining an open global economy and a favorable place for the United States within it. To be sure, the sheer size of its output would guarantee the United States a major role in the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the country's military dominance undergirds its economic leadership. In addition to protecting the world economy from instability, its military commitments and naval superiority help secure the sea-lanes and other shipping corridors that allow trade to flow freely and cheaply. Were the United States to pull back from the world, the task of securing the global commons would get much harder. Washington would have less leverage with which it could convince countries to cooperate on economic matters and less access to the military bases throughout the world needed to keep the seas open. A global role also lets the United States structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington used its overseas security commitments to get allies to embrace the economic policies it preferred -- convincing West Germany in the 1960s, for example, to take costly steps to support the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. U.S. defense agreements work the same way today. For example, when negotiating the 2011 free-trade agreement with South Korea, U.S. officials took advantage of Seoul's desire to use the agreement as a means of tightening its security relations with Washington. As one diplomat explained to us privately, "We asked for changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses, and the Koreans took it all." Why? Because they feared a failed agreement would be "a setback to the political and security relationship." More broadly, the United States wields its security leverage to shape the overall structure of the global economy. Much of what the United States wants from the economic order is more of the same: for instance, it likes the current structure of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund and prefers that free trade continue. Washington wins when U.S. allies favor this status quo, and one reason they are inclined to support the existing system is because they value their military alliances. Japan, to name one example, has shown interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important free-trade initiative in the region, less because its economic interests compel it to do so than because Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda believes that his support will strengthen Japan's security ties with the United States. The United States' geopolitical dominance also helps keep the U.S. dollar in place as the world's reserve currency, which confers enormous benefits on the country, such as a greater ability to borrow money. This is perhaps clearest with Europe: the EU's dependence on the United States for its security precludes the EU from having the kind of political leverage to support the euro that the United States has with the dollar. As with other aspects of the global economy, the United States does not provide its leadership for free: it extracts disproportionate gains. Shirking that responsibility would place those benefits at risk. CREATING COOPERATION What goes for the global economy goes for other forms of international cooperation. Here, too, American leadership benefits many countries but disproportionately helps the United States. In order to counter transnational threats, such as terrorism, piracy, organized crime, climate change, and pandemics, states have to work together and take

collective action. But cooperation does not come about effortlessly, especially when national interests diverge. The United States' military efforts to promote stability and its broader leadership make it easier for Washington to launch joint initiatives and shape them in ways that reflect U.S. interests. After all, cooperation is hard to come by in regions where chaos reigns, and it flourishes where leaders can anticipate lasting stability. U.S. alliances are about security first, but they also provide the political framework and channels of communication for cooperation on nonmilitary issues. NATO, for example, has spawned new institutions, such as the Atlantic Council, a think tank, that make it easier for Americans and Europeans to talk to one another and do business. Likewise, consultations with allies in East Asia spill over into other policy issues; for example, when American diplomats travel to Seoul to manage the military alliance, they also end up discussing the Trans- Pacific Partnership. Thanks to conduits such as this, the United States can use bargaining chips in one issue area to make progress in others. The benefits of these communication channels are especially pronounced when it comes to fighting the kinds of threats that require new forms of cooperation, such as terrorism and pandemics. With its alliance system in place, the United States is in a stronger position than it would otherwise be to advance cooperation and share burdens. For example, the intelligence-sharing network within NATO, which was originally designed to gather information on the Soviet Union, has been adapted to deal with terrorism. Similarly, after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated surrounding countries in 2004, Washington had a much easier time orchestrating a fast humanitarian response with Australia, India, and Japan, since their militaries were already comfortable working with one another. The operation did wonders for the United States' image in the region. The United States' global role also has the more direct effect of facilitating the bargains among governments that get cooperation going in the first place. As the scholar Joseph Nye has written, "The American military role in deterring threats to allies, or of assuring access to a crucial resource such as oil in the Persian Gulf, means that the provision of protective force can be used in bargaining situations. Sometimes the linkage may be direct; more often it is a factor not mentioned openly but present in the back of statesmen's minds." THE DEVIL WE KNOW Should America come home? For many prominent scholars of international relations, the answer is yes -- a view that seems even wiser in the wake of the disaster in Iraq and the Great Recession. Yet their arguments simply don't hold up. There is little evidence that the United States would save much money switching to a smaller global posture. Nor is the current strategy self-defeating: it has not provoked the formation of counterbalancing coalitions or caused the country to spend itself into economic decline. Nor will it condemn the United States to foolhardy wars in the future. What the strategy does do is help prevent the outbreak of conflict in the world's most important regions, keep the global economy humming, and make international cooperation easier. Charting a different course would threaten all these benefits. This is not to say that the United States' current foreign policy can't be adapted to new circumstances and challenges. Washington does not need to retain every commitment at all costs, and there is nothing wrong with rejiggering its strategy in response to new opportunities or setbacks. That is what the Nixon administration did by winding down the Vietnam War and increasing the United States' reliance on regional partners to contain Soviet power, and it is what the Obama administration has been doing after the Iraq war by pivoting to Asia. These episodes of rebalancing belie the argument that a powerful and internationally engaged America cannot tailor its policies to a changing world. A grand strategy of actively managing global security and promoting the liberal economic order has served the United States exceptionally well for the past six decades, and there is no reason to give it up now. The country's globe-spanning posture is the devil we know, and a world with a disengaged America is the devil we don't know. Were American leaders to choose retrenchment, they would in essence be running a massive experiment to test how

the world would work without an engaged and liberal leading power. The results could well be disastrous.

1ac- Credibility (Soft Power)Dismissive nature of civilian casualties in strikes hurts human rights credibility Tirman, 12- Writer for the Washington Post (John, “Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?”, Washington Post, 1/6/12, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-we-ignore-the-civilians-killed-in-american-wars/2011/12/05/gIQALCO4eP_story.html)//KTC

These attitudes have consequences. Perhaps the most important one —

apart from the tensions created with the host governments, which have been

quite vocal in protesting civilian casualties — is that indifference provides permission to

our military and political leaders to pursue more interventions. There are costs to our global reputation as well: The United States, which should be regarded as a principal advocate of human rights, undermines its credibility when it

is so dismissive of civilian casualties in its wars. Appealing for

international action on Sudan, Syria and other countries may sound hypocritical when our own attitudes about civilians are so cold. Korean War

historian Bruce Cumings calls this neglect the “hegemony of forgetting, in which almost everything to do with the war is buried history.” Will we ever

stop burying memories of war’s destruction? More attention to the human costs may jolt the American public into a more compassionate understanding. When we build the memorial for Operation Iraqi Freedom, let’s mention that Iraqi civilians were part of the carnage. Count them, and maybe we can start to recognize and remember the larger tolls of the wars we wage.

U.S. human rights credibility is key to overall soft power. Hooper et al. 15 — Melissa Hooper, Director of the International Law Scholarship Project/Pillar Project at Human Rights First, former Regional Director for Russia and Azerbaijan for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative in Moscow, holds a J.D. from the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, with Ignacio Mujica, Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights First, and Megan Corrarino, Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow with Human Rights First, 2015 (“U.S. Must Affirm Leadership Role on Human Rights,” New York Law Journal, February 27th, Available Online at http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202719078471/US-Must-Affirm-Leadership-Role-on-Human-Rights#ixzz3eZkOWa00, Accessed 06-30-2015)

The United States once positioned itself as a human rights leader, and that moral authority gave it considerable soft power around the world . U.S. leadership was instrumental in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The significant due process components of the U.S. justice system have been used as the basis for rule-of-law reforms in numerous other countries. The United States still has among the

http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202719078471/US-Must-Affirm-Leadership-Role-on-Human-Rights#ixzz3eZkOWa00

http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202719078471/US-Must-Affirm-Leadership-Role-on-Human-Rights#ixzz3eZkOWa00

broadest frameworks for protection for free speech and freedom of religion in the world.

But any claim that the U nited States might have to leadership in human rights is undermined by the fact that , over the past decade and a half, it has failed to satisfy its own international legal obligations . The most famous and egregious examples are those that have come from the so-called "War on Terror," reliance on torture as outlined in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, and arbitrary detention of prisoners at Guantánamo, often based on secret evidence without access to due process.

But there are many other areas where the United States has contributed to a culture of impunity and indifference to international law: repatriating people to countries where they are likely to face torture or death, in violation of the Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention; imprisoning more of its population than any other country in the world in violation of international law principles of proportionality, personal dignity and anti-discrimination; and continuing to imprison individuals in conditions that are shocking to the conscience, in violation of the obligation to refrain from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

This disconnect between the legal principles that the United States purports to uphold and its actual practice is one reason why Human Rights First has been working with leading scholars, practitioners and policymakers to urge the United States to reassume its leadership role in the sphere of human rights by adhering to the international norms that it consistently urges other countries to observe. For the United States to credibly address extrajudicial killings in Pakistan; arbitrary detention in Belarus, China, Cuba, North Korea, and Syria; or global prison conditions, it must ensure that its own practices adhere to international legal standards.

Human rights law, which places human dignity at its core, must be a central goal of national and international legal regimes , and of efforts to promote rule of law at home and abroad. While the U nited States may have limited power to create foreign enforcement mechanisms, and must rely on soft power in the international sphere , at home we have the power and obligation to enforce international human rights law. The power of international norms increases with the number of powerful states that comply and hold themselves accountable. In leading by example , the United States gains the moral currency necessary to hold other states to account.

We must make the U.S. judicial system a place where this country more consistently lives up to its international obligations. This means giving detainees access to justice, prosecuting torturers, granting asylum when a refugee has met the legal criteria, and ensuring that our jurisprudence comports with our

international treaty obligations, which are binding on U.S. courts under article VI of the Constitution.

Human rights law is thriving around the world. Courts in Canada, Latin America, Europe, India and South Africa, among others, are developing bodies of jurisprudence that incorporate human rights law and citing international and comparative law in their decisions. International tribunals, such as the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, hold states accountable to protect refugees, to adopt mechanisms to prosecute torture, and to provide humane conditions for prisoners. As the rest of the world is taking these steps forward, however gradual, the United States must not allow itself to step backward and lose its moral credibility by backing down from its international legal commitments .

Human rights law is only as irrelevant as we allow it to be. The United States is still a leader on the world stage, and what it does matters . If we want to hold other states accountable for human rights violations and promote the global legitimacy of human rights, we must honor our own international legal obligations and recognize that they are an integral part of the law of the land.

US soft power maintains peace and stabilityWilliams 14 (Trevor, editor of Global Atlanta, “U.S. Soft Power key to Global Stability,” Global Atlanta, 9/29/14, http://www.globalatlanta.com/article/27191/isakson-us-soft-power-key-to-global-security/)//kjz America still has an unrivaled level of influence in the world, but the key to achieving long-term peace is marrying military strength with moves to boost education, health and economic development in conflict areas, U.S. Sen.

Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said Monday. While he sees “peace through strength” as a valid doctrine, American “soft power” portrayed through trade and humanitarian outreach globally will help solidify stability won through power. “Strength will get you the peace

originally but it’s good soft power that keeps the peace,” Mr. Isakson said at the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead during a speech on foreign aid hosted by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. Focusing heavily on Africa, Mr. Isakson sought to debunk the idea that American influence in the world is waning, using travel tales to

support the idea that the American reputation is alive and well thanks to the work of the U.S. government as well as corporations and nonprofits around the globe. “It’s about telling America’s story to the American people themselves. I know sometimes we forget,” the senator said. U.S. Visa Glitch Leaves Travelers in LimboMetro Atlanta Chamber Supports 'Open Innovation' as Key to Regional GrowthCan Technology Fix the Air Travel Experience? Popeyes Plans More International GrowthAfter Dispute, Atlanta Loses Nobel Summit From Coca-Cola’s clean water work in Ghana to MANA’s nutritional paste made from Georgia peanuts saving lives in Somalia to the decision to hand out

U.S.-backed micro loans to Iraqi merchants after the invasion, America is still invested in using its strength for the good of the world, he said, mentioning multiple times the PEPFAR program, which provides antiretroviral drugs to help stem mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Africa. Formerly the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s sub-committee on Africa, he

contrasted the U.S. approach in Africa to that of China, framing one of the U.S.’s largest trade partners as a “competitor" on the continent that exploits African resources and builds infrastructure but not capacity. He was also unequivocal in labeling the air strikes aimed at debilitating and destroying ISIS in Iraq constituted a “dangerous war, the ultimate war between good and evil.” When the U.S.-led coalition has won, it will have to provide those affected by the war the same type of redevelopment assistance it gave Germany, Korea and Japan

after emerging victorious in conflicts with those nations. “America doesn’t bomb and leave; America stays and builds, and that’s the difference in us and any other nation on the face of this earth,” he said.

2ac – Drone Strikes KeyThe international community condemns casualties from drone strikesThe Express Tribune, 14 – (“Targeting Pakistan: UN rights panel condemns use of drones”, The Express Tribune with the International New York Times, 9/24/14, http://tribune.com.pk/story/766427/targeting-pakistan-un-rights-panel-condemns-use-of-drones/)//KTC

The UN Human Rights Council has condemned arbitrary killings by the use of

armed drones in Pakistan. The condemnation by representatives from 21 countries was voiced at a

panel discussion on drones in Geneva on Monday. This is the first time that the Human Rights Council has formally discussed the issue of armed drones in violation of international human rights law as well as the UN Charter. All countries except the US, UK and France condemned the human rights consequences of US drone strikes in Pakistan and other parts of the world. Speaking on the

occasion, Pakistan’s Ambassador Zamir Akram referred to serious concerns by the international

community over the use of drones outside the international legal framework; he said the use of armed drones must comply with long-standing rules of international law, and the UN Charter. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri questioned whether the use of armed drones was compatible with the rules and principles of international humanitarian law. In spite of precision claims, the use of armed drones created an atmosphere of fear in the affected communities, and had a

negative effect in the everyday life of the affected population, she said. United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions Christoph Heyns said the issue with drones was not the legality of the weapon but the legality of their use. Meanwhile, Legal Director of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights Shahzad Akbar noted that

a state could not use deadly force merely because capture was not feasible; the individual in question must pose an imminent threat to human life. “The experience in Pakistan showed that this simply was not the case,” he said. “The obligation was not upon individuals to prove they posed no threat but the obligation was upon the State firing armed drones to show that their use of force was necessary,” he added.

US drone strikes are condemned by the UN as a human rights violationHudson, 14- B.A. in International Relations and a minor in Middle Eastern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, focusing on the Arabic language. Studied international humanitarian law and public policy at the University of Oxford (Adam, “UN Human Rights Committee Finds US in Violation on 25 Counts”, Truth Out, 4/4/14, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22887-un-human-rights-committee-finds-us-in-serious-violation)//KTC

Drone Strikes, Assassination To execute its perpetual global war on terrorism, the Bush administration favored large-scale, conventional land invasions and occupations, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has moved away from such

operations and embraced seemingly lighter tactics of irregular warfare to continue the perpetual war, while

making it less visible to Americans. Extrajudicial killing and drone strikes are the most notable methods, but others include air strikes, cruise missile attacks, cyberwarfare, special operations, and proxy wars. These tactics have meant more use of the military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the

paramilitary branch of the CIA. Both the CIA and JSOC carry out drone strikes and

sometimes collaborate in joint operations. The CIA, not the military, is legally mandated to launch covert operations, which are classified and unacknowledged by the US government. However, JSOC performs essentially the same operations, particularly extrajudicial killings. Thus, transferring

control of the drone program from the CIA to the military would make little difference. The UN report criticized the United States' assassination program and drone strikes. It expressed concerned with the "lack of transparency regarding the

criteria for drone strikes, including the legal justification for specific attacks, and the lack of accountability for the loss of life resulting from such attacks." The United States' position for justifying its extrajudicial killing operations is that it is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and "associated forces" - a term the Obama administration created to refer to co-belligerents with al-Qaeda - and that the war is in

accordance with the nation's inherent right to self-defense against a terrorist enemy. However, the committee took issue with the United States' position, particularly its "very

broad approach to the definition and the geographical scope of an armed conflict, including the end of hostilities." A May 2010 report by Philip Alston, former UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, notes that, under international law, states cannot wage war against non-state actors, such as international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, because of their nebulous

character and loose affiliations. The committee's report also took issue with "the unclear interpretation of what constitutes an 'imminent threat' and who is a combatant or civilian taking a direct part in hostilities, the unclear position on the nexus that should exist between any particular use of lethal force and any specific theatre of hostilities, as well as the precautionary measures taken to avoid civilian casualties in practice."

HUMINT alters foreign policyCostanza, 14- William Costanza designed and implemented operational targeting and intelligence collection strategies in the areas of counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, weapons of mass destruction, telecommunications and strategic technologies. Assisted foreign governments in enhancing their indigenous counter-terrorism capabilities through training, target analysis and program management. Conducted operations in high threat environments against high priority terrorist targets in Africa and Central Asia in addition to serving in fast-paced operational environments in Latin America and Europe. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Forensic and Legal Psychology at Marymount University. Doctorate in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, M.A. in International Studies from American University (William, “Human Intelligence (HUMINT)”, The Encyclopedia of U.S. Intelligence, August 2014, Taylor and Francis Publishers, http://www.academia.edu/3995342/Human_Intelligence_HUMINT_)//KTC

CONCLUSION HUMINT plays a vital role in contributing to a broad range of intelligence assessments used by U.S. policymakers to guide the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. It often constitutes the only stream of intelligence on issues where intelligence collection by other means is not possible. To maintain this key collection capability, HUMINT programs require highly skilled intelligence officers to securely and effectively recruit and manage the cadre of human sources who work with the U.S. often at great

personal risk to themselves and their families. The increasing global challenges and potential threats facing the U.S. and its allies in the years ahead more than ever underscore the urgent need for the U.S. to maintain a flexible, high quality intelligence capability necessary to support policymakers as they devise policies to address a turbulent world. HUMINT will continue to play an indispensable role in this effort by providing unique access to intelligence that provides the “ground truth” analysts need to produce more accurate and timely intelligence assessments critical to formulating a coherent foreign policy.

2ac – Surveillance KeyNSA metadata surveillance is highly criticized internationally as a human rights violation, the aff remedies thatHudson, 14- B.A. in International Relations and a minor in Middle Eastern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, focusing on the Arabic language. Studied international humanitarian law and public policy at the University of Oxford (Adam, “UN Human Rights Committee Finds US in Violation on 25 Counts”, Truth Out, 4/4/14, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22887-un-human-rights-committee-finds-us-in-serious-violation)//KTC

NSA Surveillance Notably, the UN report denounced the NSA's mass surveillance "both within and outside the United States through the bulk phone metadata program (Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act) and, in particular, the

surveillance under Section 702 of Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) conducted through PRISM (collection of the contents of communications from US-based companies) and UPSTREAM (tapping of fiber-optic cables in the country that carry internet traffic) programs and

their adverse impact on the right to privacy. "The report also criticized the secrecy of "judicial interpretations of FISA and rulings of the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Court (FISC)," which prevent the public from knowing the laws and legal interpretations that impact

them. Promises of "oversight" obviously did not persuade the committee, either, as it said "the current system of oversight of the activities of the NSA fails to effectively protect the rights of those affected," and "those affected have no access to effective remedies in case of abuse." Continuing NSA leaks, provided by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden last year, have revealed the depth of the United States' massive surveillance system. The bulk collection of phone metadata is probably the most well-known program. Recently, President Obama

proposed ending the bulk phone metadata collection program. But the NSA's surveillance system extends far beyond phone metadata. In a program called PRISM, the NSA collects user data, such as search history and message content, sent through internet communication services like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and Skype. Major tech companies have denied knowledge

of the program, but the NSA claims those companies knew and provided full assistance. The NSA uses a back door in surveillance law to monitor the communications of American citizens without a warrant. As mentioned earlier, the NSA is also involved in the drone program through the collection of signals intelligence. Additionally, much of NSA surveillance is used for economic espionage. With the help of Australian intelligence, the NSA spied on communications between the Indonesian government and an American law firm representing it during trade talks. Indonesia and the United States have long been in trade disputes, such as over Indonesia's shrimp exports and a US ban on the sale of Indonesian clove cigarettes. It is highly unlikely Obama's reforms will curb these abuses.

Ext. HR k2 soft powerU.S. human rights credibility is key to its global influence. Griffey 11 — Brian Griffey, human rights consultant who has worked for the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA and as an investigative journalist, 2011 (“U.S. leadership on human rights essential to strengthen democracy abroad,” The Hill, March 18th, Available Online at http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/150667-us-leadership-on-human-rights-essential-to-strengthen-democracy-abroad#ixzz2sB8JqAUc, Accessed 02-02-2014)

Nonetheless, U.S. leadership on human rights offers clear opportunities to advance not only international peace and security – a fundamental purpose of the U.N. – but also conjoined US political and economic interests at home and abroad.

The U.S. is presently demonstrating exactly how crucial such involvement is as a n elected member of the H uman R ights C ouncil, participating in vital negotiations on how best to mitigate widespread abuses responding to ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, including by strategic US allies in global security and trade.

As Secretary Clinton expressed en route to Geneva to participate in recent talks on human rights violations in Libya, joining the Council has “proven to be a good decision, because we’ve been able to influence a number of actions that we otherwise would have been on the outside looking in.”

In its first submission to the body, the U.S. likewise recognized that participation in the Council ’s peer-review system allows the U.S. not only to lead by example and “ encourage others to strengthen their commitments to human rights ,” but also to address domestic human rights shortcomings.

By leading international discourse on human rights , the U.S. will be in a better position both to advance observation of human rights abroad , and to take on new treaty commitments that demonstrate adherence of our own system to the vaulting principles we identify with our democracy.

Soft Power Good—TerrorismSoft power key to solve terrorism Nye 06 (Joseph S. Jr., University distinguished service professor at Harvard University and author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, “Think Again: Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, 2/23/06, http://foreignpolicy.com/2006/02/23/think-again-soft-power/)//kjz

Soft Power Is Irrelevant to the Current Terrorist Threat False. There is a small likelihood that the West will ever attract such people as Mohammed Atta or Osama bin Laden. We need hard power to deal with people like them. But

the current terrorist threat is not Samuel Huntingtons clash of civilizations. It is a civil war within Islam

between a majority of moderates and a small minority who want to coerce others into an extremist and oversimplified version of their religion. The United States cannot win unless the moderates win. We cannot win unless the number of

people the extremists are recruiting is lower than the number we are killing and deterring. Rumsfeld himself asked in a 2003 memo:

Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us? That equation will be very hard to balance without a strategy to win hearts and minds. Soft power is more relevant than ever.

[Insert terrorism impact]

Exts. Soft Power Solves TerrorismSoft power key to effective hard power and fighting terrorism Nye 04 (Joseph S.,University distinguished service professor at Harvard University , “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics—Edited Transcript,”4/13/04, https://www.academia.edu/2517747/Soft_power_The_means_to_success_in_world_politics)//kjz

New threats are arising from the bottom board of transnational relations. While military power can be of some use occasionally on the bottom board, more often you will need other forms of power, particularly soft power. The trouble is that a group of people within the Administration, who came into power and looked at American military preeminence, devised the view that Charles Krauthammer has called “the new unilateralism:” that the United States is so powerful that we can do as we wish and others have no choice but to follow. They have used that view as a way of applying American military power to all sorts of problems. The problem is that this is a one-dimensional view in a three-dimensional world. If you play one-dimensional chess on one board only and it’s a three-dimensional game, in the long run you will lose. That is my great fear about the way in which we have implemented the strategy. What about soft power? The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks. The Bush Administration has neglected using our American soft power. In this new world of transnational threats and the information age, it is not just whose army wins, it’s whose story wins. They have not been very attentive to the question of whose story wins. If you look at the results of their strategy, the polls are quite chilling. Not only do you find situations like Europe, where the United States has lost on average thirty points of attractiveness in all European capitals, including countries that supported us in the Iraq war, but if you go beyond that to the Islamic world, the decline of American attraction is quite appalling. In 2000, in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country, three-quarters of the people said they were attracted to the United States. By May 2003, that had dropped to 15 percent. And yet these are the people that we will need for cooperation against organizations like al-Gama’a at-al-Islamiyya and other offshoots of al Qaeda in the region. If you look at trends in polls in countries like Jordan or Pakistan, which are allegedly somewhat more friendly towards the United States, we see that larger majorities are attracted to Osama bin Laden than to George Bush or Tony Blair. Again, this is a bit chastening when those are the people whose cooperation we will need to deal with this new type of threat. The new unilateralists’ reaction is: “Not to worry. You should never base foreign policy on polls. Popularity is ephemeral. We have been unpopular in the past -- look how unpopular the Americans were during the Vietnam War, and yet we recovered. We should keep on track and decide what we think is right, pursue it, and then let the chips fall as they may.” This skepticism about the role of soft power, quite frequent among neo-conservatives, is a very powerful view. The great danger is that it sells short the importance of being

able to attract others. And it ignores the fact that a country’s soft power can affect its hard power. If you take the example of Turkey a year ago, the Americans wanted to persuade the Turkish government to send the Fourth Infantry Division across Turkey to enter Iraq from the north. The Turkish government might have been willing to

concede, but the Turkish parliament said, “No,” because the United States had become so unpopular, its policies perceived as so illegitimate, that they were not willing to allow this transfer of troops across the country. The net effect was that the Fourth Infantry Division had to go down through the Canal, up through the Gulf, and arrived late to the war, which made a difference in the number of troops on the ground in areas like

the Sunni Triangle. Neglect of soft power had a definite negative effect on hard power. The question is sometimes further rebutted by the skeptics who say: “Yes, that may all be well and good, and it may also be true that the Americans and the West used soft power to prevail in the Cold War, but it has nothing to do with the current situation of terrorism. Terrorists are a new type of threat and are not attractable. The idea that we will defeat bin Laden or al Qaeda by attracting them is sticking your head in the

sand.” To some extent that is true. If you ask, “Are we going to attract bin Laden or people like Mohamed Atta, who flew into the World Trade Towers?” No. You do need hard power to defeat these people who are

irreconcilable. But the important role for soft power is to be found in the larger context. If you think of the war on terrorism as a clash between Islam and the West -- Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” -- you

are mischaracterizing the situation. It’s a clash within Islamic civilization, between a group of people at the extreme who are trying to use force to impose their view of a pure version of their religion on

others, a majority who want things that are similar to what we want: a better life, education, health care, opportunities, and a sense of dignity. The key question is: how do you prevent those

extremists from prevailing as they try to radicalize the majority, the moderates? Soft power is essential to be able to attract the majorities to the values that I just described -- not

necessarily to being Americans, but in a diverse and pluralistic world to better opportunities, education, health care, and a sense of dignity. We can appeal to these values and try

to inoculate them against the appeal of the extremists. We will not prevail in this struggle against terrorism unless the majority wins, unless the moderates win. And we will not prevail against extremists unless we are able to attract that majority, those moderates. That is the role of soft power. In

addition, even when you need to use hard power against the hard-core terrorist, you will need cooperation from other governments in a civilian matter. You will not solve this by bombs alone. You will need close civilian cooperation -- intelligence sharing, policy work across borders, tracing financial flows. To some extent other governments will share information to deal with terrorists out of their self-interest, but the degree of sharing you get depends upon the degree to which you are attractive to other countries. For example, if being pro-American or sympathetic to the Americans or being seen to cooperate with the Americans is the kiss of death in domestic politics, you will get less cooperation from those governments -- witness the Turkish example I just gave. So for both reasons, both to attract the moderate majority and to reach a context or setting in which governments can cooperate more fully with us to deal with the hard core, soft power is key to being able to wage this struggle against terrorism. How are we doing? Not well. We are not doing well for several reasons. One is the style and substance of our policies. Soft power grows out of a country’s culture; it grows out of our values -- democracy and

human rights, when we live up to them; it grows out of our policies. When our policies are formulated in ways which are consultative, which involve the views and interests of others, we are far more likely to be seen as legitimate and to attract others. And certainly the style of the new unilateralists in the Bush Administration has decreased the legitimacy of American policy. So to restore our soft power, we need to change both the substance and style of our foreign policy. We also need to find better ways to present this policy. This country, the leader in the information age, supposedly the greatest communicating country in the world, is being out-communicated by people in caves. This is a bizarre situation. With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, we wanted a peace dividend not only in military expenditures but also in our public diplomacy, and so we cut back dramatically. The U.S. Information Agency had half the number of people that it had at the height of the Cold War when it was folded into the State Department, itself a big mistake. International exchange programs were cut by a third. Look at how poorly we do in broadcasting -- for example if you take Urdu, the lingua franca of Pakistan, the Voice of America broadcasts two hours a day in Urdu, and yet Pakistan is allegedly a frontline country in this struggle against terrorism. Ambassador Djerejian, who chaired a bipartisan panel on Public Diplomacy in the Islamic World, argued that the United States spent $150 million on public diplomacy for the whole Islamic world last year, and that is about the equal of two hours of the defense budget, an extraordinary imbalance. The United States spends 400 times more on its hard power than on its soft power, if you take all the exchange programs and broadcasting programs and lump them together as a measure of soft power. If we were to spend just 1 percent of the military budget on soft power, it would mean quadrupling our public diplomacy programs. There is something wrong with our approach. In short, the challenge that we face in dealing with this new threat of terrorism, particularly the danger of their obtaining weapons of mass destruction, is a challenge which is very new and real in American foreign policy. But beyond the United States, it is a challenge for all of modern urban civilization. If this spreads, and we find that people will no longer live in cities because of fear, we will live in a very different and less favorable world. At the same time, our approach to the problem has relied much too heavily on one dimension of a

three-dimensional world, one instrument between hard and soft power. The answer is not to pretend that hard power doesn’t matter -- it does and we will need to continue to use it -- but realise that to use hard power without combining it with soft power, which has all too often been the practice in the last few years, is a serious mistake. The good news is that in the past the United States has, as in the Cold War, combined hard and soft power. The bad news is that we are not doing it yet. But since we have done it once, presumably we can do it again. When we learn how to better combine hard and soft power, then we will be what I call a smart power.

Soft power fosters more positive opinions of the US—helps deter suicide bombings Chiozza 14 (Giacomo, associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, “Does U.S. Soft Power Have Consequences for U.S. Security? Evidence from Popular Support for Suicide Bombing,” The Korean Journal of International Studies, 9/3/14, http://www.kjis.org/journal/view.html?uid=154&&vmd=Full)//kjzIn Figure 4, I present four CART models, a pooled model for all the three countries, and three disaggregate

models for each country. The major finding at the aggregate level, in the upper left panel of Figure 4, is that, positive attitudes towards the United States was the most discriminating factor accounting for opposition to suicide bombing.

The probability that someone who had a good opinion of the United States would support suicide attacks was between 4.3% and 9.1%, a large drop over the unconditional probability of support which ranged from 41.5% to 46.2%. As a first result, therefore, the analysis in Figure 4 indicates 11 Theprobabilitythatagivenindividualwouldsupportsuicidebombing(π)canbemodeledasa binomial distribution where n is the number of subjects in the sample and x is the number of subjects who hold such a belief. I use a non-informative reference prior distribution to derive the posterior distribution and, from that, the probability that the parameter of interest πlies in an interval with 95% probability. I use Jeffrey’s reference prior distribution, which has the property of being invariant to scale transformations. In the case of binomial likelihood functions, Jeffrey’s prior takes the form of a Beta distribution, π~ Beta(1/2,1/2). 12 I report the logistic regression models in the on-line Appendix. 77). I use a validation set approach, by split- The Korean Journal of International Studies 13-1 222 that U.S. soft power provided a “disabling environment,” as Nye (2011)’s soft power theory predicts. LEGEND: AMERICANS PRO.AL.QAEDA PRO.FRANCE PRO.US RELIGION.VERY.IMPORTANT SAFER.SADDAM.CONE THREATS.TO.ISLAM Dslk=Respondent dislikes the American people; Like=Repondent likes the American people Does respondent have any confidence, or no confidence at all, in Usama bin Laden? Does respondent have a favorable opinion of France? Does respondent have a favorable opinion of the United States? Is religion very important in respondent’s life? Does respondent believe that the world is safer anfter the removal of Saddam Hussein from power? Does respondent believe that there are serious threats to Islam? Figure 4. Attitudinal Profile of the Support for Suicide Bombing against Americans and Westerners Note: Data analysis is based on the 2005 wave of the Pew Global Attitudes Survey. The labels below the final branches indicate the most common response: “No” indicates that the most common response was disap- proval of suicide bombing; “Yes” indicates that the most common response was approval suicide bombing. The numbers underneath measure the 95% Bayesian confidence intervals around the conditional probability of approval of suicide bombing. “CI” stands for Confidence Interval. After that, the model splits the sample separating Turkey, on the one hand, and Jordan and Lebanon, on the other. This split indicates that the patterns in Turkey Does U.S. Soft Power Have Consequences for U.S. Security? 223 differed from those found in Jordan and Lebanon not just quantitatively, as illus- trated in Figures 2 and 3, but also qualitatively. The second substantive factor accounting for patterns of opinion towards suicide attacks was another soft power indicator, i.e. attitudes towards the American people.

For the Jordanians and the Lebanese who disliked the United States, a negative view of the American people increased the probability of approval of suicide attacks against Americans and Westerners to a range between 74.5% and 81%. For the Jordanians and Lebanese who disliked the United States and liked the Americans, the probability of support for suicide attacks dropped substantially, but not enough to clear the

baseline confidence interval. The country-by-country analysis further validates the aggregate findings. In both

the Jordanian and the Lebanese cases, U.S. soft power emerges as the strongest predictor of support for suicide bombing against Americans and Westerners. Overwhelmingly, the Jordanians who had a positive opinion of Americans did not find suicide bombing against them legitimate; the probability interval for the support of suicide attacks ranges from 5.4% to 12.6%. Among the Lebanese, no one among those who liked the United States was also willing to justify suicide attacks against them, which yields a

probability of support between 0% and 2%. With such a discriminating power, U.S. soft power emerged as a key factor in structuring opinion towards suicide bombing. Importantly for the theory of soft power, however, its policy component i.e., the endorsement that foreign publics might give to specific U.S. policies, such as the U.S.-led war on terror does not emerge as a relevant explanatory parameter. For the people of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, it was the (lack of) normative and personal standing of the United States and its people that would mostly shape their views on anti-American violence.

Soft Power Good—DemocracySoft power is influenced by policies and uniquely promotes democracy Nye 09 (Joseph S., University distinguished service professor at Harvard University, “Obama’s Soft Power,” New Perspectives Quarterly, 2009, https://onlinelibrarystatic.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1540-5842.2009.01057.x/asset/j.1540-5842.2009.01057.x.pdf?v=1&t=ib5e5swr&s=278fd5621bdb8284abc7f132a1d586979bf9117b)//kjzcambridge, mass—In her confirmation hearings to become secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said: “America cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America. . . . We must use what has been called ‘smart power,’ the full range of tools at our disposal.” Smart power is the

combination of hard and soft power. Soft power is the ability to obtain preferred outcomes through attraction rather than coercion or payments. Public opinion polls show a serious decline in American attractiveness in Europe, Latin America and, most dramatically, across the entire Muslim world. The resources that produce soft power for a country include its culture (where it is attractive to others), its values (where they are attractive and not undercut by inconsistent practices) and policies

(where they are seen as inclusive and legitimate in the eyes of others). When poll respondents are asked why they report a decline in American soft power, they cite American policies more than American culture or values. Since it is easier for a

country to change its policies than its culture, this implies that President Barack Obama will be able to choose policies that could help to recover some of America’s soft power. Of course, soft power is not the solution to all problems. Even though North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il likes to watch Hollywood movies, that is unlikely to affect his nuclear weapons program. And soft power got nowhere in attracting the Taliban government away from its support for al-Qaida in

the 1990s. It took hard military power in 2001 to end that. But other goals—such as the promotion of democracy and human rights—are better achieved by soft power.

Soft power is a successful tool in democracy promotionKroenig, McAdam, and Weber 10 (Matthew, Associate Professor and International Relations Field Chair in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at The Atlantic Council; Melissa, Visiting Scholar at George Washington University’s Elliott School, in the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies; Steven, Professor at the Information School , University of California, Berkeley, “Taking Soft Power Seriously,” Comparative Strategy, 12/13/10, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ucst20)//kjz

The United States has also attempted to use soft power to promote the spread of democracy around the globe. Unlike in the other two issue areas, the U.S. democracy promotion campaigns met with some success as evidenced by a spate of electoral revolutions in the postcommunist region. We argue that the successful influence of these U.S. democracy promotion efforts is due to the presence of the necessary conditions for an effective soft power

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ucst20)//kjz

campaign. In the countries that experienced electoral revolutions, there was a functioning marketplace of ideas,

the United States identified and supported credible messengers to transmit ideas about democratization, and ideas about the best practices for bringing down authoritarian regimes could significantly impact the outcome. In recent years, the United States has devoted a disproportionate amount of its democracy promotion attention to the postcommunist region. The proportion of countries receiving USAID democracy assistance, and the duration of time over which the countries receive assistance, are higher in the postcommunist region than in other world regions. A survey of USAID funding from 1990–2003 “reveals that the postcommunist region stands out as a clear priority for USAID with respect to democracy assistance.”73 Other U.S. government-funded democracy promotion organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy

have similarly concentrated their resources on the postcommunist region. The U.S.’s soft power strategies aimed at promoting democracy in the postcommunist world since the end of the Cold War have met with notable success. The rate of

electoral revolutions in this region has been staggering. According to a recent study, “pivotal elections that have either enhanced or introduced democracy have taken place in eight countries, or 40 percent of the twenty postcommunist countries that remained eligible for such revolutions.”74 The well-publicized

“color revolutions” swept through Georgia (The Rose Revolution, 2003), Ukraine

(The Orange Revolution, 2004), and Kyrgyzstan (The Tulip Revolution, 2005). Downloaded by [Georgetown University] at 11:08 23 June 2015 Taking Soft Power Seriously 423

Soft Power Good—Peace/ProliferationAmerican soft power is crucial to a stable international order—slows proliferation and bolsters tradeNye 15 - Joseph Nye is university distinguished service professor and former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, chair of the National Intelligence Council, and deputy under secretary of state for security assistance, science, and technology. (Is the American Century Over? pp. 153-158 e-book, 2015) STRYKER

The problem of leadership in such a world is how to get everyone into the act and still get action. And the American role in galvanizing institutions and organizing informal networks remains crucial to answering that puzzle. As we saw earlier, there has often been self-serving exaggeration about the American

provision of public goods in the past, but a case can be made for Goliath. As Michael Mandelbaum describes the American role, other countries will criticize it, but “ they will miss it when it is gone.”11 More important, it is not yet gone. Even in issues where its pre-eminence in

resources has diminished, American leadership often remains critical to global collective action . Take trade and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons as two examples of important economic and security issues where American dominance is not what it once was. In trade, the United States was by far the largest trading nation when the GATT (General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) was created in 1947, and the United States deliberately accepted trade discrimination by Europe and Japan as part of its Cold War strategy. After those countries recovered, they joined the United States in a club of like-minded nations within the GATT.12 In the 1990s, as other states’ shares

of global trade increased, the United States supported the expansion of GATT into the World Trade Organization and the club model became obsolete. The United States supported Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization and China passed the United States as the world’s largest trading nation. While global rounds of trade negotiations became more difficult to accomplish and various free trade agreements proliferated, the rules of the World Trade Organization continued to provide a general structure wherein the norm of most favored nation status and reciprocity created a framework in which particular club deals could be generalized to a larger number of countries. Moreover, new entrants like China found it in

their interests to observe even adverse judgments of the World Trade Organization dispute settlement process. Similarly with the non-proliferation regime: in the 1940s, when the United States had a nuclear monopoly, it proposed the Baruch plan for UN control, which the

Soviet Union rejected in order to pursue its own nuclear weapons program. In the 1950s, the United States used the Atoms for Peace program, coupled with inspections by a new International Atomic Energy Agency, to try to separate the peaceful from the weapons

purposes of nuclear technology as it spread. In the 1960s, the five states with nuclear weapons negotiated the non-proliferation treaty, which promised peaceful assistance to

states that accepted a legal status of non-weapons states. In the 1970s, after India’s explosion of a nuclear device and the further spread of technology for enrichment and reprocessing of fissile materials, the United States and like-

minded states created a Nuclear Suppliers Group, which agreed “to exercise restraint”

in the export of sensitive technologies, as well as an International National Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation, which called into question the optimistic projections about the use of plutonium fuels. While none of these institutional adaptations was perfect, and problems persist with North Korea and Iran today, the net effect of the normative structure and American leadership was to slow the growth in the number of nuclear weapons states from the 25 expected in the 1960s to the 9 that exist today.13 In 2003, the US launched the Proliferation Security Initiative, a loosely structured grouping of countries that shares information and coordinates

efforts to stop trafficking in nuclear proliferation related materials. Similar questions arise today about the governance of the internet and cyber activities . In its early days, the internet was largely American, but today China has twice as many users as the United States. Where once only Roman alphabet characters were used on the internet, now there are top-level domain names in Chinese, Arabic, and Cyrillic scripts, with more alphabets expected. And in 2014, the United States announced that it would relax the Commerce Department’s supervision of the internet’s “address book,” the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Some observers worried that this would open the way for authoritarian states to try to exert control and censor the addresses of opponents. Such fears seem exaggerated both on technical grounds and in their underlying premises. Not only would such censorship be difficult, but there are self-interested grounds for states to avoid such fragmentation of the internet. In addition, the descriptions in the decline in American power in the cyber issue are overstated. Not only does the United States remain the second largest user of the internet, but it is the home of eight of the ten largest global information companies.14 Moreover, when one looks at the composition of important non-state voluntary communities (like the Internet Engineering Task Force), one sees a disproportionate number of Americans participating because of their expertise. The loosening of US government influence over ICANN could be seen as a strategy for strengthening

the institution and reinforcing the American multistakeholder philosophy rather than as a sign of defeat.15 Some cyber stability now exists, but the fact that cyber insecurity creates inherent risks for both the United States and its opponents provides a basis for possible agreements.16 In short, projections based on theories of hegemonic decline can be misleading about the realities of American leadership in international institutions and networks. Even with diminishing power resources, American leadership remains essential in creating public goods.

Proliferation causes extinctionKroenig 12 – Matthew Kroenig is the Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ("The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future? Prepared for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center,” May 26, 2012, http://www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=1182&tid=30)

Nuclear War. The greatest threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons is nuclear war. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the greater the probability that somewhere, someday,

there is a catastrophic nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between the two superpowers during the Cold War could have arguably resulted in human extinction and a nuclear exchange between states with smaller nuclear arsenals, such as India and Pakistan, could still result in millions of deaths and casualties, billions of dollars of economic devastation, environmental degradation, and a parade of other horrors. To date, nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare once. In 1945, the United States used one nuclear weapon each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing World War II to a close. Many analysts point to sixty-five-plus-year tradition of nuclear non-use as evidence that nuclear weapons are unusable, but it would be naïve to think that nuclear weapons will never be used again. After all, analysts in the 1990s argued that worldwide economic downturns like the Great Depression were a thing of the past, only to be surprised by the dot-com bubble bursting in the later 1990s and the Great Recession of the late Naughts.[53] This author, for

one, would be surprised if nuclear weapons are not used in my lifetime. Before reaching a state of MAD, new nuclear states go through a transition period in which they lack a secure second-strike capability. In this context, one or both

states might believe that it has an incentive to use nuclear weapons first. For example, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons neither Iran, nor its nuclear-armed rival, Israel, will have a secure, second-strike capability. Even though it is believed to have a large arsenal, given its small size and lack of strategic depth, Israel might not be confident that it could absorb a nuclear strike and respond with a devastating counterstrike. Similarly, Iran might eventually be able to build a large and survivable nuclear arsenal, but, when it first crosses the nuclear threshold, Tehran will have a small and vulnerable nuclear force. In these pre-MAD situations, there are at least three ways that nuclear war could occur.

First, the state with the nuclear advantage might believe it has a splendid first strike capability. In a crisis, Israel might, therefore, decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike to disarm Iran’s nuclear capabilities and eliminate the threat of nuclear war against Israel. Indeed, this incentive might be

further increased by Israel’s aggressive strategic culture that emphasizes preemptive action. Second, the state with a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, in this case Iran, might feel use ‘em or loose ‘em pressures. That is, if Tehran believes that Israel might launch a preemptive strike, Iran might decide to strike first rather than risk having its entire nuclear arsenal destroyed. Third, as Thomas Schelling has argued,

nuclear war could result due to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack. If there are advantages to striking first, one state might start a nuclear war in the belief that war is inevitable and that it would be better to go first than to go second. In a future Israeli-Iranian crisis, for example, Israel and Iran might both prefer to avoid a nuclear war, but decide to strike first rather than suffer a devastating first attack from an opponent.

Even in a world of MAD , there is a risk of nuclear war. Rational deterrence theory assumes nuclear-armed states are governed by rational leaders that would not intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. This assumption appears to have applied to past and current nuclear powers, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to hold in the future. For example, Iran’s theocratic government, despite its inflammatory rhetoric, has followed a fairly pragmatic foreign policy since 1979, but it contains leaders who genuinely hold millenarian religious worldviews who could one day ascend to power and have their finger on the

nuclear trigger. We cannot rule out the possibility that, as nuclear weapons continue to spread, one leader will choose to launch a nuclear war, knowing full well that it could result in self-destruction. One does not need to resort to irrationality, however, to imagine a nuclear war under MAD. Nuclear weapons may deter leaders from intentionally launching full-scale wars, but they do not mean the end of international politics. As was discussed above,

nuclear-armed states still have conflicts of interest and leaders still seek to coerce nuclear-armed adversaries. This leads to the credibility problem that is at the heart of modern deterrence theory: how can you threaten to launch a suicidal nuclear war? Deterrence theorists have devised at least two answers to this question. First, as stated above, leaders can choose to launch a limited nuclear war. This strategy might be especially attractive to states in a position of conventional military inferiority that might have an incentive to escalate a crisis quickly. During the Cold War, the United States was willing to use nuclear weapons first to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe given NATO’s conventional inferiority in continental Europe. As Russia’s conventional military power has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has come to rely more heavily on nuclear use in its strategic doctrine. Indeed, Russian strategy calls for the use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict (something that most Western strategists would consider to be escalatory) as a way to de-escalate a crisis. Similarly, Pakistan’s military plans for nuclear use in the event of an invasion from conventionally stronger India. And finally, Chinese generals openly talk about the

possibility of nuclear use against a U.S. superpower in a possible East Asia contingency. Second, as was also discussed

above, leaders can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.” They can initiate a nuclear crisis. By playing these risky games of nuclear brinkmanship, states can increase the risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. Historical crises have not

resulted in nuclear war, but many of them, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, have come close. And scholars have documented historical incidents when accidents could have led to war.[57] When we think about future nuclear crisis dyads, such as India and Pakistan and Iran and Israel, there are fewer sources of stability that existed during the Cold War, meaning that there is a very real risk that a future Middle East crisis could result in a devastating nuclear exchange.

Exts. PeaceSoft power resolves a laundry list of impacts—reestablishing values is specifically key to projectionLagon 11 Mark P. Lagon is the International Relations and Security Chair at Georgetown University's Master of Science in Foreign Service Program and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the former US Ambassador-at-Large to Combat Trafficking in Persons at the US Department of State. “The Value of Values: Soft Power Under Obama,” SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/value-values-soft-power-under-obamaWhat he hasn’t accomplished to any great degree is what most observers assumed would be the hallmark of his approach to

foreign affairs—a full assertion of the soft power that makes hard power more effective. His 2008 campaign centered on a critique of President Bush’s overreliance on hard power. Obama suggested he would rehabilitate the damaged image of America created by these excesses and show that the United States was not a cowboy nation. Upon taking office, he made fresh-start statements, such as his June 2009 remarks in Cairo, and embraced political means like dialogue, respectful multilateralism, and the use of new media, suggesting that he felt the soft power to change minds, build legitimacy, and advance interests was the key element missing from the recent US approach to the world—and that he would

quickly remedy that defect. Yet President Obama’s conception of soft power has curiously lacked the very quality that has made it most efficacious in the past—the values dimension . This may seem odd for a leader who is seen worldwide as an icon of morality, known for the motto “the audacity of hope” and his deployment of soaring rhetoric. Yet his governance has virtually ignored the values dimension of soft power, which goes beyond the tradecraft of diplomacy and multilateral consultation to aggressively assert the

ideals of freedom in practical initiatives. The excision of this values dimension renders soft power a hollow concept. Related Essay Boxed In? The Women of Libya’s Revolution Ann Marlowe | ESSAY Libya’s leading women are eager to join in forming a new, post-Qaddafi government, but thus far they have been given seats on the sidelines. The Obama presidency has regularly avoided asserting meaningful soft power, particularly in its relations with three countries—Iran, Russia, and Egypt—where it might have made a difference not only for those countries but for American interests as well. His reaction to the challenges these countries have posed to the US suggest that it is not soft power itself that Obama doubts, but America’s moral standing to project it. Perhaps the most striking example of a lost opportunity to use moral soft power was in Iran. In March 2009, President Obama made an appeal in a video to Iran for a “new beginning” of diplomatic engagement. In April 2009, he said in an address in Prague that in trying to stem Iran’s nuclear arms efforts, his administration would “seek engagement with Iran based on mutual interests and mutual respect.” Two months later questions arose about President Ahmadinejad claiming victory over Mir Hussein Moussavi in the presidential election on June 12th. Within three days, there were large demonstrations in Tehran, Rasht, Orumiyeh, Zahedan, and Tabriz. As Iranians took to the streets, Obama had to choose whether to associate the US with the protestors or preserve what he appeared to believe was a possible channel of dialogue with Ahmadinejad on Iran’s nuclear program. For several days, the American president deliberately refused to embrace the Green Movement swelling in Iran’s streets to protest a stolen election—reaching up to three million in Tehran alone. Temporizing, he said, “It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.” But it was inevitable that the US would be scapegoated by Iranian leaders for meddling, even if it chose moral inaction. As Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass wrote in Newsweek seven months later: “I am a card-carrying realist on the grounds that ousting regimes and replacing them with something better is easier said than done. . . . Critics will say promoting regime change will encourage Iranian authorities to tar the opposition as pawns of the West. But the regime is already doing so. Outsiders should act to strengthen the opposition and to deepen rifts among the rulers. This process is underway . . . . Even a realist should recognize that it’s an opportunity not to be missed.” Eventually, probably as a result of the influence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose opposition to Iran’s leadership she established as a senator, administration policy became more forthright. A year after the protests began, the president signed into law targeted sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard. Yet failing to clearly side with Ahmadinejad’s opponents in 2009 represented a serious loss of US credibility. It also failed to encourage the moral “change” that Obama had appeared to invoke during his campaign. Soft power and its ability to strengthen the protest movement was squandered. Early and active US backing for a more unified opposition might have buoyed and strengthened the Green opposition and helped it to better take advantage of subsequent divisions in the regime: parliamentarians petitioning to investigate payoffs to millions of people to vote for Ahmadinejad, friction between Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and efforts by the Revolutionary Guard to assert prevalence over politics. By supporting the opposition in Iran through soft power, the administration would not only have associated the US with the aspirations of the people in the streets of Tehran but also advanced the objective of dislodging a potentially nuclear rogue state. I t is particularly ironic that Obama policy toward Russia should have eschewed the projection of soft power given that the NSC’s senior director for Russia and Eurasia, Michael McFaul, is the administration official most closely identified in his career

with the cause of democracy promotion. In Advancing Democracy Abroad , published just last year, he writes, “The

American president must continue to speak out in support of democracy and human rights. Shying away from the ‘d’ word . . . would send a terrible signal to the activists around the world fighting for human rights and democratic change. . . . American diplomats must not check their values at the door.” In the book, McFaul offers an ambitious vision linking values to stability for Russia and Eurasia: “In Eurasia, a democratic Russia could become a force for regional stability . . . not unlike the role that Russia played in the beginning of the 1990s. A democratic Russia seeking once again to integrate into Western institutions also would cooperate more closely with the United States and Europe on international security issues.” But in its haste to “hit the reset button” on bilateral relations, the Obama White House ignored McFaul’s counsel. Instead of approaching the Russians with a set of firm moral expectations, the administration has courted President Medvedev as a counterweight to Putinism (missing the fact that rather than a countervailing force, Medvedev was, as noted in a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Robin to Putin’s Batman). As events would show, Medvedev offered no real obstacle to Putin’s resumption of the presidency after a hiatus as prime minister to satisfy term limit laws. Nor, for that matter, is there any significant difference in policy between the Medvedev era and that which preceded it in terms of issues such as the occupation of Georgian territory, internal corruption, or silencing remaining independent media or business figures. Instead of establishing a foundation of clear principles in his reset of relations with the Putin regime, President Obama has seen relations with Russia in terms of a larger picture of strategic arms control. He believes proliferators like Iran and North Korea can be restrained if the major nuclear powers reduce their stockpiles, in fealty to the premises of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hence, the New START Treaty was his singular focus with Russia and the grounds for his appeasement of Putinism. He seems never to have considered asserting a soft power that would have signaled to Russian opposition figures like Boris Nemtsov—badly beaten in December 2010 after flying home from speaking in the US—that the US places little trust in bargains with leaders shredding the rule of law in their daily governance. The Russian security state has chosen to cooperate with the US in a few areas it has concluded are in its own interest. It allowed passage of a watered-down UN Security Council resolution 1929, imposing sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program, and cancelled plans to sell the S-300 air defense system to the Ahmadinejad regime. It has also cooperated on counterterrorism and US military access to Afghanistan. Yet would the United States have been unable to secure this discrete cooperation without “checking our values at the door,” in Michael McFaul’s phrase? The United States has achieved no cooperation from Russian leaders on issues such as the rule of law and an end to systematic intimidation and the arrests of opposition, press, and business figures, and indeed threats to American businesses’ private property rights and safety. Leaders of the Solidarity opposition movement continue to be detained, environmental nonprofits continue to be raided for trumped-up tax and software piracy irregularities, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in detention, and journalist Oleg Kashin was, like Boris Nemtsov, beaten. There is no evidence of concerted bilateral pressure by the Obama administration to protest Russian unwillingness to protect freedoms for its citizens. The lack of linkage between “realist” hard-power issues (such as nonproliferation) and domestic values (such as the rule of law) has limited rather than increased US influence with Russia. The Carnegie Endowment’s Matthew Rojansky and James Collins rightly conclude: “If the United States erects an impenetrable wall between bilateral cooperation and Russia’s domestic politics, the Kremlin will simply conclude Washington is willing to give ground on transparency, democracy, and rule of law in order to gain Russian cooperation on nonproliferation, Afghanistan, and other challenges.” Indeed, in June 2011, the undeterred Russian regime barred Nemtsov’s People’s Freedom Party from running in the December 2011 parliamentary elections. President Obama has selected Michael McFaul to be his ambassador to Russia. Sadly, dispatching the first non-diplomat in that role in three decades, not to mention a man whose vision of a just Russian policy for the US is at odds with the administration’s own practice, is unlikely to dislodge this values-free approach. The underwriting of Hosni Mubarak long predates the Obama administration. The unconditional gift of massive annual aid for the 1979 Camp David Accords lasted thirty-one years, spanning the administrations of six US presidents. It left Mubarak to squash democracy initiatives at home and force a binary choice on American policymakers between the Egyptian ruler and Muslim Brotherhood Islamists. Yet both before and after Egyptians took to the streets early this year to call for Mubarak’s ouster, President Obama lost chances to exercise soft power in a way that might have conditioned the eventual outcome in Egypt. The United States would have been much better poised to shape a transition and assist non-Islamist democrats in 2011 if the Obama administration had not cut democracy and governance aid in Egypt from $50 million in 2008 to $20 million in 2009 (to which Congress later restored $5 million). The outgoing Bush administration had cut economic aid for Egypt in the 2009 budget, but sustained democracy and governance programs. Urged by US ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey, the Obama administration cut those programs too. Cuts for civil society and NGOs were sharpest, from $32 million to $7 million in 2009. These steps made a mockery of Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech offering to “turn a page” in US-Muslim engagement. When the Egyptian people took to the streets to reject their leader as Tunisians just had, President Obama picked former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner as special crisis envoy. Reflecting what was actually the president’s position at the outset, Wisner said to an annual conference in Munich, “We need to get a national consensus around the pre-conditions for the next step forward. The president [Mubarak] must stay in office to steer those changes.” He also opined, “I believe President Mubarak’s continued leadership is critical—it’s his chance to write his own legacy.” This legacy was not a pretty thing as the Mubarak regime tried to resist the will of the Egyptian public with lethal force. Echoing his response nineteen months earlier in Iran, President Obama asserted only that the United States was determined not to be central to the Egyptian story, however it evolved. When he saw which way the truth was blowing on the streets of Cairo, the president recalibrated. Watching these developments, which had far more to do with image than policy, Financial Times correspondent Daniel Dombey surmised: “So when the demonstrations began, the White House struggled to catch up, changing its message day by day until it eventually sided with the protesters against the government of Hosni Mubarak . . . Now, US officials suggest, the president has finally embraced his ‘inner Obama’ . . . The White House has also indulged in a little spinning, depicting the president as a decisive leader who broke with the status quo view of state department Arabists.” In the March 2011 referendum on amendments to the Egyptian Constitution, forty-one percent of the Egyptian public turned out and backed the amendments by a seventy-seven percent tally. The leaders of the anti-Mubarak protests and leading presidential candidates Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa had urged Egyptians to turn out and reject the amendments, drafted by lawyers and judges picked by Egypt’s military rulers, in favor of a whole new constitution limiting expansive presidential powers. The Muslim Brotherhood backed the amendments, perhaps hoping to benefit from winning strong executive power. The “inner Obama” failed to place America squarely behind the relatively weak non-Islamist forces in Egyptian

civil society when it would have counted. Despite large economic challenges, two protracted military expeditions, and the rise of China, India, Brazil,

and other new players on the international scene, the United States still has an unrivaled ability to confront terrorism, nuclear proliferation, financial instability, pandemic disease, mass atrocity, or tyranny. Although far from

omnipotent, the United States is still, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called it, “the indispensible nation.” Soft power is crucial to sustaining and best leveraging this role as catalyst. That President Obama should have excluded it from his vision of America’s foreign policy assets—particularly in the key cases of Iran, Russia, and Egypt—suggests that he feels the country has so declined, not only in real power but in the power of example, that it lacks the moral authority to project soft power. In the 1970s, many also considered the US in decline as it grappled with counterinsurgency in faraway lands, a crisis due to economic stagnation, and reliance on foreign oil. Like Obama, Henry Kissinger tried to manage decline in what he saw as a

multipolar world, dressing up prescriptions for policy as descriptions of immutable reality. In the 1980s, however,

soft power played a crucial part in a turnaround for US foreign policy. Applying it, President Reagan sought to transcend a nuclear balance of terror with defensive technologies, pushed allies in the Cold War (e.g., El Salvador, Chile, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines) to liberalize for their own good, backed labor movements opposed to Communists in Poland and Central America, and called for the Berlin Wall to be torn down—over Foggy Bottom objections. This symbolism not only boosted the perception and the reality of US influence, but also hastened the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. For Barack Obama, this was the path not taken. Even the Arab Spring has not cured his acute allergy to soft power. His May 20, 2011, speech on the Middle East and Northern Africa came four months after the Jasmine Revolution emerged. His emphasis on 1967 borders as the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace managed to eclipse even his broad words (vice deeds) on democracy in the Middle East. Further, those words failed to explain his deeds in continuing to support some Arab autocracies (e.g., Bahrain’s, backed by Saudi forces) even as he gives tardy rhetorical support for popular forces casting aside other ones. To use soft power without hard power is to be Sweden. To use hard power without soft power is to be

China. Even France, with its long commitment to realpolitik, has overtaken the United States as proponent and implementer of humanitarian intervention in Libya and Ivory Coast. When the American president has no problem with France combining hard and soft power better than the United States, something is seriously amiss .

Blocks

Counterplans

Fund HUMINT CPThe cplan’s just more data overload – makes intel ops less successful AND will re-create new resource tradeoffs. Tufekci ‘15Zeynep Tufekci is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “Terror and the limits of mass surveillance” – Financial Times’ The Exchange - Feb 3rd http://blogs.ft.com/the-exchange/2015/02/03/zeynep-tufekci-terror-and-the-limits-of-mass-surveillance/

The most common justification given by governments for mass surveillance is that these tools are indispensable for fighting terrorism. The NSA’s ex-director Keith

Alexander says big data is “what it’s all about” . Intelligence agencies routinely claim that they need massive amounts of data on all of us to catch the bad guys, like the French brothers who assassinated the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, or the murderers of Lee Rigby, the British soldier killed by two men who claimed the act was revenge for the UK’s

involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the assertion that big data is “what it’s all about” when it comes to predicting rare events is not supported by what we know about

how these methods work, and more importantly, don’t work. Analytics on massive datasets can be powerful in analysing and identifying broad patterns, or events that occur regularly

and frequently, but are singularly unsuited to finding unpredictable, erratic, and rare needles in huge haystacks. In fact, the bigger the haystack — the more massive the scale

and the wider the scope of the surveillance — the less suited these methods are to finding such exceptional events, and the more they may serve to direct resources and attention away from appropriate tools and methods. After Rigby was killed, GCHQ, Britain’s intelligence service, was criticised by many for failing to stop his killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. A lengthy parliamentary inquiry was conducted, resulting in a 192-page report that lists all the ways in which Adebolajo and Adebowale had brushes with data surveillance, but were not flagged as two men who were about to kill a soldier on a London street. GCHQ defended itself by saying that some of the crucial online exchanges had taken place on a platform, believed to be Facebook, which had not alerted the agency about these men, or the nature of their postings. The men apparently had numerous exchanges that were extremist in nature, and their accounts were suspended repeatedly by the platform for violating its terms of service. “If only Facebook had turned over more data,” the thinking goes. But that is misleading, and makes sense only with the benefit of hindsight. Seeking larger volumes of data, such as asking Facebook to alert intelligence agencies every time that it detects a post containing violence, would deluge the agencies with multiple false leads that would lead to a data quagmire,

rather than clues to impending crimes. For big data analytics to work, there needs to be a reliable connection between the signal (posting of violent content) and the event

(killing someone). Otherwise, the signal is worse than useless. Millions of Facebook’s billion-plus

users post violent content every day, ranging from routinised movie violence to atrocious violent rhetoric. Turning over the data from all such occurrences would merely flood the agencies with “ false positives” — erroneous indications for events that actually will not happen. Such data overload is not without

cost, as it takes time and effort to sift through these millions of strands of hay to confirm that they are, indeed, not needles — especially when we don’t even know what needles look like. All that the investigators would have would be a lot of open leads with

no resolution, taking away resources from any real investigation. Besides, account suspensions carried out by platforms like Facebook’s are haphazard, semi-automated and unreliable indicators. The flagging system misses a lot more violent content than it flags, and it often flags content as inappropriate even when it is not, and suffers from many biases. Relying on such a haphazard system is not a reasonable path at all. So is all the hype around big data analytics unjustified? Yes and no. There are appropriate use cases for which massive datasets are intensely useful, and perform much better than any alternative we can imagine using conventional methods. Successful examples include using Google searches to figure out drug interactions that would be too complex and too numerous to analyse one clinical trial at a time, or using social media to detect national-level swings in our mood (we are indeed happier on Fridays than on Mondays). In contrast, consider the “lone wolf”

attacker who took hostages at, of all things, a “Lindt Chocolat Café” in Sydney. Chocolate shops are not regular targets of political violence, and random, crazed men attacking them is not a pattern on which we can base further identification. Yes, the Sydney attacker claimed jihadi ideology and brought a black flag with Islamic writing on it, but given the rarity of such events, it’s not always possible to separate the jihadi rhetoric from issues of mental health — every era’s mentally ill are affected by the cultural patterns around them. This isn’t a job for big data analytics. (The fact that the gunman was on bail facing various charges and was known for sending hate letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed overseas suggests it was a job for traditional policing).

When confronted with their failures in predicting those rare acts of domestic terrorism, here’s what GCHQ, and indeed the NSA, should have said instead of asking for increased surveillance capabilities: stop asking us to collect more and more data to perform an impossible task. This glut of data is making our job harder, not easier, and the expectation that there will never be such incidents, ever, is not realistic.

Modest amounts of data’s key. Cplan won’t solve, doesn’t cut back on data overload.Press ‘13Gil - Managing Partner at gPress, a marketing, publishing, research and education consultancy. Previously held senior marketing and research management positions at NORC, DEC and EMC. Most recently he was a Senior Director, Thought Leadership Marketing at EMC, where he launched the Big Data conversation with the “How Much Information?” study (2000 with UC Berkeley) and the Digital Universe study. He is also contributes on computing technology issues as a guest writer at Forbes Magzzine – “The Effectiveness Of Small Vs. Big Data Is Where The NSA Debate Should Start” – Forbes – 6-12-13 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/06/12/the-effectiveness-of-small-vs-big-data-is-where-the-nsa-debate-should-start/

Most of the discussion around the revelations about the data collection activities of the NSA has been about the threat to our civil rights and the potential damage abroad to U.S. political and business interests. Relatively

little has been said, however, about the wisdom of collecting all phone call

records and lots of other data in the fight against terrorism or other threats to the United States. Faith in the power (especially the predictive power) of more data is of course a central

tenet of the religion of big data and it looks like the NSA has been a willing convert. But not everybody agrees it’s the most effective course of action. For example, business analytics expert

Meta Brown: “The unspoken assumption here is that possessing massive quantities of data guarantees that the government will be able to find criminals, and find

them quickly, by tracing their electronic tracks. That assumption is unrealistic. Massive

quantities of data add cost and complexity to every kind of analysis, often with no meaningful improvement in the results. Indeed, data quality problems and

slow data processing are almost certain to arise, actually hindering the work of data analysts. It is far more productive to invest resources into

thoughtful analysis of modest quantities of good quality, relevant data.”

No solvency — focus on metadata will still exist — they’ll use metadata before Humint data.

Funding alone is not enough — divisional focus must be diverted for Humint. Gallington 06 — Daniel Gallington, Adjunct Professor of National Security Law at the University of Illinois, senior policy and program adviser at the George C. Marshall Institute, LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School, J.D. from the University of Illinois, 2006 (“What hope for HUMINT?,” Washington Times, May 8th, accessible online at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/may/8/20060508-091537-5575r/?page=all, accessed on 6-30-15)

Assuming Mike Hayden is confirmed as the new director, basic CIA “housecleaning” should continue — happening at the same time will be significant budgetary shifts from high-tech “remote-sensing” intelligence operations, to human-intelligence collection, the traditional CIA mission. Because the entrenched CIA senior bureaucracy remains resistant to change, it’s also fair to ask if the CIA can improve its hum an- int elligence collection even if we spend a lot more money on it. The answer in the shorter term — three to 10 years — is probably “no,” and whether we can do it for the longer term is not at all clear yet. Why such a negative assessment? Looking at how we have done in the past with human intelligence provides at least an indicator of our probable success: Our archenemy for 50 years, the Soviet Union, proved very hard to collect against using human sources. And, for most of the Cold War we seemed oblivious to this: Many sources we used were double agents and “played us like an organ,” as the expression goes. A primary way to get human intelligence — pay for it — can too often become the only way , because it is simply easier. And, we have probably paid a lot of money over the years for bad information — much of it planted with us by double agents. Traditionally, we have been unable to develop long-term, well-placed sources in other countries. The reason is that the time required — sometimes 20 years — seems beyond our comprehension and the ability of our government to fund and keep secret for sustained periods. Too often, our idea of “cover” for our agents was something your mother — let alone the KGB — could have figured out in about 30 seconds. We have the wrong kind of people doing the work: Despite being the most culturally diverse free nation in the world, we seem to send blond-haired, blue-eyed people to do intelligence field work. They simply can’t do the mission in today’s world — however, they seem to rise to leadership positions without difficulty. What should we do? (1) We have to take a very critical look at ourselves. This cannot be done objectively by the CIA and the other agencies because their primary focus is on the very short term — getting more money to spend. The president — consulting with the Intelligence Committees in Congress — should call together a group of experts, including counterintelligence experts, and chart out a long-term HUMINT collection strategy. We should get their guidance, Congress should fund it and the president carry it out. (2) It isn’t written in stone

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that the traditional HUMINT roles, missions and collection authorities of the various intelligence agencies should stay the same. In fact, everything should be on the table and no agency should expect its traditional HUMINT mission will remain intact. On paper at least, the new director of national intelligence (DNI) would seem empowered to direct this kind of reallocation of mission. (3) Too often, our intelligence collections overseas are based on second- and third-hand reports, and often obtained from host or other nations’ intelligence services. As these reports are analyzed and similarities are seen and written about, it’s easy to see how we can be misled by “group speak” reporting, mostly controlled by sources we have no way of assessing. Spying is spying: We should do more of it on our own throughout the world and get our own, firsthand information. (4) Most HUMINT collections should be controlled centrally: Local authorities overseas — including the U.S. ambassador in the country concerned and the regional military commander — should not, ordinarily, be “in the loop” for such activities. (5) There has been way too much emphasis on “open source” reporting, and it’s become a crutch for a number of agencies. Many so-called “open sources” are manipulated by those opposed to us, whether we consider them our “friends” or not. And, way too often, “open source” reporting just means someone reading a foreign newspaper — then writing an “intelligence” report on it. Will these recommendations work? We don’t have any choice: We are simply not getting the critical information we need to be responsive to the ever-broadening spectrum of threats from terrorism . And, unless we can penetrate terrorist organizations, including their planning and financing, we’ll simply be unable to prevent more terrorist attacks against us around the world and at home. Nevertheless, even if we do all these things — and do them right — we may be 15 or 20 years away from developing a true “world class” HUMINT collection capability: as good, for example as some of our key adversaries have had against us for years. But let’s make sure we stay on task and do it right — not just fling our money in a different direction for a few years.

A shift in intelligence gathering priority is key — commanders still prioritize drones post-counterplan. BI 14 — Business Insider, major US business journal — Byline: Robert Caruso, 2014 (“Here's How the US Can Build the Intelligence Capabilities Needed to Defeat ISIS,” Business Insider, September 8th, accessible online at http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-needs-better-humint-to-beat-isis-2014-9, accessed on 6-29-15)

The U.S. government has a large number of officers trained by the CIA that can be deployed globally . Their efforts should focus on high- quality targets for human source intelligence that can provide information on strategic intent . Sources that only provide tactical and capability-based intelligence are insufficient.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-needs-better-humint-to-beat-isis-2014-9

Human source intelligence collection is as much a psychological and emotional construct as it is a political, military, or national security one. Intelligence collection is not an academic exercise that can be understood by rote formula or analyzed by a linear thinking process.

Typical defense intelligence priorities must undergo a conceptual shift . The practice of providing tactical intelligence to support military commanders is extremely important. But only understanding our adversaries’ capabilities without knowing their intentions means the U.S. is only winning half the battle.There's a legal dimension to the problem that today's enemy combatants pose as well. In order to expand the fight against groups like ISIS, a congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force may be necessary. But that brings up questions of its own: Authorization for what? And, more poignantly, against whom? The language could become rapidly outdated as the nature of the enemy and the scope of the fight changes.

Today's enemy is embedded in local populations. Drones have no way of distinguishing between enemy combatants and noncombatants without actionable intelligence. Deep knowledge of today's enemies is vital to understanding them — and defeating them.

Humnit must consistently be our focus to solve. Webster 08 — William Webster, Chairman of the National Security Council, Former director of both the CIA and FBI, J.D. from Washington University, St. Louis, 2008 (“How can the U.S. improve its human intelligence,” Washinton Times, July 6th, accessible online at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/06/how-can-the-us-improve-its-human-intelligence/?page=all, accessed on 6-29-15)

Expansion of human intelligence (Humint).

These on-the-ground sources are the most reliable means of ascertaining the intentions and capabilities of our adversaries . Whenever the threat seems lessened these sources are the first to go and not be replaced. These sources are vital to our security, they cannot be put on ice and immediately called up and put in place to meet each new threat , whether officially assigned or as nonofficial cover agents (NOCs). This takes time, and the time to do it is now. Complete the FBI’s reorganization of its data gathering and data mining electronic capability. Past efforts have failed to transform this extremely valuable resource into a system that can supply needed intelligence to CIA and other key agencies. “Need to share” is just as important as “need to know.” The cost is high, but well worth it. Pre-emptive and preventive

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intelligence. The intelligence gathered by modern digital technology on a rapid basis should be made available to all personnel charged with spotting suspected terrorists at various points of entry as will those on the watch lists seeking to fly on commercial aircraft. Any useful intelligence gathered abroad must be promptly conveyed to security officers looking for suspected individuals and cargo so that the prompt and preventive policy can be more effective. Improve National Estimates. The longer-view estimates have often been neglected by consumers at the White House and elsewhere in favor of the “current intelligence” that seems to be more readily actionable. The NIEs have real, though less apparent value, in spotting trends and conditions that could result in hostile action against the United States and should be elevated in quality and presentation. Retention of objectivity. We may expect in a troubled world during this century that our leaders may want to cherry-pick the intelligence to support a previously determined program for action. Intelligence officers must not only be seen to be objective; they must protect the work product from distortion by the consumers that can only undermine its credibility. This can be a tough assignment, but it must be done. Our satellites project important imagery and signals intelligence that expand our understanding of potentially hostile activities and should be enhanced wherever possible. They do not, however, replace the need for on-the-ground intelligence about the intentions and capabilities of our adversaries. A well-placed human source can be of critical importance in explicating the purpose of such activities detected by our electronic “eyes and ears.” Similarly, human intelligence can also be an important factor in helping our electronic tools focus upon unusual plans or activities on the ground. Each is important in early detection and analysis. Together, they can make an important contribution to the safety of our nation by avoiding surprise and miscalculation of the intentions and capabilities of our adversaries and are thus indispensable to our policy-makers in reaching sound decisions in the best interest of our country. Public source information must also be factored in. But if we want to avoid surprises like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 we must have access to closely guarded secrets. Humint cannot be an afterthought.

Disad

2AC – Link Turn Terror Info-overload – big data floods the system with false positives and stalls counter-terror ops Schwartz, 15(Mattathias Schwartz, a staff writer, began contributing to the magazine in 2011. “A Massacre in Jamaica,” his investigation into the extradition of Christopher Coke, won the 2011 Livingston Award for international reporting. He has reported for the magazine from the Mosquito Coast, Tripoli, and Zuccotti Park. Between 2002 and 2005, he edited and published the twenty-one-issue run of the Philadelphia Independent, a broadsheet newspaper, “The Whole Haystack”, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack, January 26, 2015, ak.)

It’s possible that Moalin would have been caught without Section 215.

His phone number was “a common link among pending F.B.I. investigations,” according to a report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent agency created in 2004 at the suggestion of the 9/11 Commission, which Obama had tasked with

assessing Section 215. Later, in a congressional budget request, the Department of Justice said that the Moalin case was part of a broader investigation into Shabaab funding. Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, who, like Leahy, has pressured the N.S.A. to justify bulk

surveillance, said, “To suggest that the government needed to spy on millions of law-abiding people in order to catch this individual is simply not true.” He continued, “I still haven’t seen any evidence that the dragnet surveillance of Americans’ personal information has done a single thing to improve U.S. national security.” Representative James

Sensenbrenner, of Wisconsin, who introduced the Patriot Act in the House, agreed. “The intelligence community has never made a compelling case that bulk collection stops terrorism,” he told me. Khalid al-Mihdhar’s phone calls to Yemen months before he helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77, on 9/11, led Obama, Alexander, Feinstein, and others to suggest that Section 215 could have prevented the attacks. “We know that we didn’t stop 9/11,” Alexander told me last spring.

“People were trying, but they didn’t have the tools. This tool, we believed, would help them.” But the PCLOB found that “it was not necessary to collect the entire nation’s calling records” to find Mihdhar. I asked William Gore, who was running the F.B.I.’s San Diego office at the time, if the Patriot Act would have made a difference. “Could we have prevented 9/11? I don’t know,” he said.

“You can’t find somebody if you’re not looking for them.” Last year, as evidence of the fifty-four disrupted plots came apart, many people in Washington shifted their rhetoric on Section 215 away from specific cases and toward hypotheticals and analogies. “I have a fire-insurance policy on my house,” Robert Litt, the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said. “I don’t determine whether I

want to keep that fire-insurance policy by the number of times it’s paid off.” James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, has called this “the peace-of-mind metric.” Michael Leiter, who led the National Counterterrorism Center

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under George W. Bush and Obama, told me that Section 215 was useful but not indispensable: “Could we live without Section 215? Yes. It’s not the most essential piece. But it would

increase risk and make some things harder.” In addition to phone metadata, the N.S.A. has used Section 215 to collect records from hotels, car-rental agencies, state D.M.V.s, landlords, credit-card companies, “and the like,” according to Justice

Department reports. Once the N.S.A. has the phone metadata, it can circulate them through a shared database called “the corporate store.” To some, this sounds less like fire insurance and more like a live-in fire marshal, authorized to root through the sock drawer in search of flammable material. “The open abuse is how they use that data,” Mike German, a former F.B.I. agent and lobbyist for the A.C.L.U., who is now a fellow at the Brennan

Center, said. “It’s no longer about investigating a particular suspect.” In 2013,

Le Monde published documents from Edward Snowden’s archive showing that the N.S.A. obtained seventy million French phone-metadata records in one month. It is unknown whether any of these calls could be retrospectively associated with the Paris attacks. “The interesting thing to know would be whether these brothers made phone calls to Yemen in a way that would have been collected by a program like Section 215 or another signals intelligence program,” Leiter told me last week. “I don’t know the answer to that question.” Philip Mudd, a former C.I.A. and senior F.B.I. official, told me that tallying up individual cases did not capture the full value of Section 215. “Try to imagine a quicker way to understand a human being in 2015,” he said. “Take this woman in Paris. Who is she? How are you going to figure that out? You need historical data on everything she ever touched, to accelerate the investigation. Now, do we want to do that in America?

That’s a different question, a political question.” Documents released by Snowden and

published by the Washington Post show that the N .S.A. accounted for $10.5 billion of the $52.6 billion “black budget, ” the top-secret budget for U.S. intelligence spending, in 2013. About seventeen billion dollars of the black budget goes to counterterrorism each year, plus billions more through the unclassified budgets of the Pentagon, the State Department, and other agencies, plus a special five-billion-dollar fund proposed by Obama last year to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The maximalist approach to intelligence is not limited to the N.S.A. or to Section 215. A

central terrorist watch list is called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or

TIDE. According to a classified report released by the Web site the Intercept, TIDE, which is kept by the

National Counterterrorism Center, lists more than a million people. The C.I.A., the N.S.A., and the F.B.I. can all “nominate” new individuals. In the weeks

before the 2013 Chicago Marathon, analysts performed “due diligence” on “all of the records in TIDE of people who held a drivers license in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.” This was “based on the lessons learned from the Boston Marathon.” In retrospect, every terrorist attack leaves a data trail that appears to be dotted with missed opportunities. In the case of 9/11, there was Mihdhar’s landlord, the airport clerk who sold Mihdhar his one-way ticket for cash, and the

state trooper who pulled over another hijacker on September 9th. In August, 2001, F.B.I. headquarters failed to issue a search warrant for one of the conspirators’ laptops, despite a warning from the Minneapolis field

office that he was “engaged in preparing to seize a Boeing 747-400 in commission of a terrorist act.” There was plenty of material in the haystack. The government had adequate tools to collect even more.

The problem was the tendency of intelligence agencies to hoard info rmation , as well as the cognitive difficulty of anticipating a spectacular and unprecedented attack. The 9/11 Commission called this a “failure of the imagination.” Finding needles, the commission wrote in its report, is easy when you’re looking backward, deceptively so. They quoted the historian Roberta Wohlstetter writing about

Pearl Harbor: It is much easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals. After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with

conflicting meanings. Before the event, every bit of hay is potentially relevant. “The most dangerous adversaries will be the ones who most successfully disguise their individual transactions to appear normal, reasonable, and legitimate,” Ted Senator, a data scientist who worked on an early post-9/11 program called Total Information Awareness, said, in 2002. Since then, intelligence officials have often referred to “lone-wolf terrorists,” “cells,” and, as Alexander has put it, the “terrorist who walks among us,” as though Al Qaeda

were a fifth column, capable of camouflaging itself within civil society. Patrick Skinner, a former C.I.A. case officer who works with the Soufan Group, a security company, told me that this image is wrong. “We knew about these networks,” he said, speaking of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Mass surveillance, he continued,

“gives a false sense of security . It sounds great when you say you’re monitoring every phone call in the United States. You can put that in a PowerPoint. But, actually, you have no idea what’s going on .” By flooding the system with false positives, big-data approaches to counterterror ism

might actually make it harder to identify real terrorists before they act . Two years before the Boston Marathon bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older

of the two brothers alleged to have committed the attack, was assessed by the city’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. They determined that he was not a threat. This was

one of about a thousand assessments that the Boston J.T.T.F. conducted that year, a number that had nearly doubled in the previous two years, according to the Boston F.B.I. As of 2013, the Justice Department has trained nearly three hundred thousand law-enforcement officers in how to file “suspicious-activity reports.” In 2010, a central database held about three thousand of these reports; by 2012 it had grown to almost twenty-eight thousand. “The bigger haystack makes it harder to find the needle,” Sensenbrenner told me. Thomas Drake, a former N.S.A. executive and whistle-blower who has become one of the agency’s most vocal critics, told me,

“If you target everything, there’s no targe t .” Drake favors what he calls “a traditional law-enforcement” approach to terrorism, gathering more intelligence on a smaller set of targets. Decisions about which targets matter, he said, should be driven by human expertise , not by a database . One alternative to data-driven counterterrorism is already being used by the F.B.I. and other agencies. Known as

“countering violent extremism,” this approach bears some resemblance to the

community-policing programs of the nineteen-nineties, in which law enforcement builds a listening relationship with local leaders. “The kinds of people you want to look for, someone in the community might have seen them first,” Mudd said. After the Moalin arrests, the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego

began hosting a bimonthly “Somali roundtable” with representatives from the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security, the sheriff’s office, local police, and many Somali organizations. “They’ve done a lot of work to reach out and explain what they’re about,” Abdi Mohamoud, the Somali nonprofit director, who has attended the meetings, said. Does the Moalin case justify putting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens into the hands of the federal government? “Stopping the money is a big deal,” Joel Brenner, the N.S.A.’s former inspector general, told me.

Alexander called Moalin’s actions “the seed of a future terrorist attack or set of attacks.” But Senator Leahy contends that stopping a few thousand dollars, in one instance, over thirteen years, is a weak track record. The program “invades Americans’ privacy” and “has not been proven to be effective,” he said last week. The Moalin case, he continued, “was not a ‘plot’ but, rather, a material-support prosecution for sending a few thousand dollars to Somalia.” On June 1st, Section 215 and the “roving wiretap” provision of the Patriot Act will expire. Sensenbrenner told me that he doesn’t expect Congress to renew either unless Section 215 is revised.

“If Congress knew in 2001 how the FISA court was going to interpret it, I don’t think the Patriot Act would have passed,” he told me.

Superfluous data prevents the government from stopping actual terror plots Greenwald, 14(Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His most recent book, No Place to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn’s column was featured at The Guardian and Salon. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the George Polk award for National Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (he was the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. The NSA reporting he led for The Guardian was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service – what a baller, “No Place to Hide”, http://www.simoleonsense.com/snowden-the-nsa-and-the-u-s-surveillance-state/ - some dude transcribed parts of the book here so swag, ak.)

“Surveillance cheerleaders essentially offer only one argument in defense of mass surveillance : it is only carried out to stop terrorism and keep people safe. Indeed, invoking an external threat is a historical tactic of choice to keep the population submissive to government powers.” “That

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same month, Obama’s hand-picked advisory panel (composed of, among others, a former CIA deputy director and a former White House aide, and convened to study the NSA

program through access to classified information) concluded that the metadata program “was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.” “The record is indeed quite poor. The collect-it-all system did nothing to detect, let alone disrupt, the 2012 Boston Marathon bombing . It did not detect the attempted Christmas -day bombing of a jetliner over Detroit , or the plan to blow up Times Square, or the plot to attack the New York City subway system—all of which were stopped by alert bystanders or traditional police powers. It certainly did nothing to stop the string of mass shootings from Aurora to Newtown. Major international attacks from London to Mumbai to Madrid proceeded without detection, despite involving at least dozens of operatives .” “In

fact, mass surveillance has had quite the opposite effect: it makes detecting and stopping terror more difficult. Democratic Congressman Rush Holt, a physicist

and one of the few scientists in Congress, has made the point that collecting everything about everyone’s communications only obscures actual plots being discussed by actual terrorists . Directed rather than indiscriminate surveillance would yield more specific and useful information.”

“American dying in a terrorist attack is infinitesimal, considerably less than the chance of being struck by lightning. John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures

in fighting terrorism, explained in 2011: “The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year.” More American citizens have “undoubtedly” died “overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses,” the news agency McClatchy reported, “than from terrorism.” “After the trouble-free Olympics, Stephen Walt noted in Foreign Policy that the outcry was driven, as usual, by severe exaggeration of the threat. He cited an essay by John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart in International Security for which the authors had analyzed fifty cases of purported “Islamic terrorist plots” against the United States, only to conclude that

“virtually all of the perpetrators were ‘ incompetent , ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, and foolish.’” Mueller and Stewart quoted from Glenn Carle, former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who

said, “We must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are,” and they noted that al-Qaeda’s “capabilities are far inferior to its desires.”

Not enough resources to watch everyone – undermines actual counter surveillanceVolz, 14(Dustin, The National Journal, “Snowden: Overreliance on Mass Surveillance Abetted Boston Marathon Bombing: The former NSA contractor says a focus on mass surveillance is impeding traditional intelligence-gathering efforts—and allowing terrorists to succeed”, October 20, 2014, ak.)



bombings. The fugitive leaker, speaking via video to a Harvard class, said that a preoccupation with collecting bulk communications data has led to resource constraints at U.S. intelligence agencies , often leaving more traditional, targeted methods of spying on the back burner . "We miss attacks, we miss





activities. Snowden's suggestion—that such mass surveillance has not only failed to directly stop a threat, but actually makes the U.S. less safe by distracting resource-strapped intelligence officials from performing their jobs—takes his criticism of spy programs to a new level. "We're watching everybody that we have no reason to be watching simply because it may have value, at the expense of being able to watch specific people for which we have a specific cause for investigating, and that's something that we need to look carefully at how to balance," Snowden said.