Resolved: Failed nations are a greater threat to the United States than stable nations.
Things to consider
The meaning of “Failed” nations. What requirements does a nation have to have in order to qualify as a “failed nation”? And, once again, whatever those requirements are will dictate the GROUND for debate, which means.. some definitions are advantageous to Aff and some are advantageous to Neg
AFF
Definitions
Failed nations: any nation where significant parts of the country are not under the government’s control (specifically: military control); any country where there are significant threats to the stability of the regime; any country where the government has failed to protect significant parts of the population from harm (genocide = failed).
This includes Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia, etc.
“Significance” means “brink of civil war”, violent uprisings, in other words, bloodshed by opposition forces
United States: At the very least, the United States constitutes the people of the US. So, anything that can kill lots of people is a threat to the US.
Argument 1: Failed nations have the perfect environments to breed extremist groups and individuals
The lack of state control and border controls make it easy for terrorist organizations to set up base in failed countries
Ex: Pakistan, Afghanistan
Lack of resources and security provide lots of recruits for terrorist organizations
When there is no food, police, etc, its very easy for people to become unreasonable.
In other words, when life sucks, being a terrorist actually looks pretty good.
Taliban gets most of their recruits from disillusioned young men from the country side or refugee camps.
The demographics of failed nations provide lots of young men with few job opportunities which push them towards extremism
There are lots of studies that consistently show, the more young men you have in a nation, the more extremist your nation will become. Excessive amounts of testosterone (particularly in countries where women rights don’t exist) combined that with a lack of jobs have been proven to breed extremism.
The political environment disillusions the population
Failed nations are called failed nations because they failed. Usually when there’s a military fail, there’s also a political fail. And the military fail plus the political fail means people don’t like their government. Which breeds radical political ideas
Think.. HITLER in post WWI Germany
Think… Lenin and post WWI Russia
Argument 2: Independent extremist groups are harder to identify and negotiate with than nations
Threatening nations are easy to find.
It’s pretty clear when a nation doesn’t like you. There are political tensions, progressive signs, and let’s face it, nations can’t hide.
Individuals and organizations, not so easy to find.
Ex: Taliban. We’ve spent the last 10 years trying to find them and root them out. It took us a month to target Iraq and bomb them.
Bin ladin: we don’t even know if he’s alive.
Nations can be negotiated with through politics much more easily than organizations
Nations generally have to deal with the international community. In the real modern world, a nation can’t really live in an island of one. Most nations can’t provide everything it needs, so it imports, and to make up for that, it exports. That requires interaction with other states. This means that when nations do something other states don’t like, they can be pressured, lets say, economic sanctions.
Ex: South Africa with apartheid and economic sanctions
Also, there are lots of forums for political negotiations for nations
Ex: the UN, mediating nations
It’s much harder to get organizations/individuals to do things
Organizations can be more isolated than nations.
They don’t need to interact with other organizations, they only need to interact with people, or they can cloister themselves.
You can’t really put economic sanctions on an organization because it’s not like they have trade, or a currency, etc.
Organizations tend to ask for more ridiculous things than nations during negotiations
Nations ask for, more trade, more respect, specific people to be removed from office.
Look for your own examples
Taliban asked for the US to become a muslim country. That’s pretty ridiculous.
Argument 3: Organizations have a greater potential for harm.
Organizations movements are harder to track
If we can’t find the organizations, chances are we can’t figure out what their doing.
It’s more costly to track organizations
Need way more spies and stuff.
Also, since organizations are smaller, their operations are smaller, so the ability of satellite imaging to track them is not an option. Which means more spies, and man power is way more expensive than tech power.
Since nations have to worry about what other people think of them, it’s easier for them to use/support organizations/individuals to do attacks.
It’s difficult for a nation to simply bomb another nation without significant retaliation. However, it is possible for them to bomb someone through an extremist organization.
Nations support these organizations in numerous ways such as:
Providing weapons
Providing training
Providing money
Terrorists groups do not fight strategically
AKA: Guerilla warfare. Wanna know why Vietnam kicked our asses? It’s because we’re not used to fighting against people without plans. It’s like a rookie poker player going against a pro. The rookie has beginners luck since they don’t know the rules and therefore cannot be read at all.
Since these groups don’t fight or act in any strategic manner, it’s hard to come up with a counter plan.
You can’t really prepare for randomness.
You also can’t secure yourself if you don’t have a reasonable idea of what’s going to be attacked.
Don’t let the NEg say that this argument means not failing nations are more dangerous because they can support terrorist organizations!
The entire point of this point is that without terrorist organizations, these nations wouldn’t be able to do any harm at all without serious, retaliatory consequences. These retaliatory consequences prevents many nations from simply bombing the US.
Argument 3: Failed Nations that have nuclear technology have a greater chance for nuclear leakage. This combined with the potential for terrorist groups to get nuclear weapons pretty much means nuclear terrorism.
The absolute worst thing that can happen is Nuclear terrorism. This just combines the worst of multiple worlds.
First, you have the destructive power of nuclear war. You know the stats: only the cockroach will survive.
Second, you have the unpredictability of Terrorist organizations (see argument above about the lack of strategic fighting). Once again, you don’t know what to protect and you can’t evacuate all the cities of America for a nuclear attack.
Failed nations generally have spotty military control (this was part of our definition for “failed”.
When there are gaps in government control, it’s much easier for nuclear weapons to just go missing.
In other words, when the military fails, there’s no one to guard the weapons. If no one can guard the weapons, then anyone can just take them.
In addition, failed nations don’t have the institutions to prevent nuclear technology leaks
Not all countries have the luxury of the FBI and CIA. These institutions are crucial to preventing spying on not only state secrets, but weapon secrets.
When there are no institutions to catch spies, it’s much easier for spies from other countries, or Terrorist organizations to infiltrate and steal nuclear knowledge.
This is bad, because we don’t want Terrorist organizations to get Nukes.
Specifically, talk about Pakistan and the recent instability.
Pakistan has Nukes and the quasi civil war going on is particularly worrisome and threatening to the US.
NEG
Definitions:
US: Encompasses the people that live within the territory of the US and also the government of the US
Failed nations: Any nation in which anarchy is eminent.
This definition should be much more restrictive than in Aff
So, it’s not enough to have a couple of groups bombing themselves. In other words, Pakistan wouldn’t count (yet).
Threat: A very low threshold. IN other words, ANY damage constitutes a threat.
Argument 1: Stable nations are much more likely to be pariah states
Pariah states: nations that do not follow international-interaction-logics and do not respond to international pressure.
In other words, pariah states are the weirdos at lunch who don’t care about what people think of them.
They also tend to be in areas with very hostile neighbors (Think Isreal, N.Korea)
Pariah States have high motivation to develop nuclear weapons.
Because they tend to live next to hostile neighbors, they feel very insecure and feel a need to build up weapons
Therefore, Pariah states are much more likely to enter the arms race.
The inability of Pariah states to bend to international pressure combined with nuclear weapons means there is a higher likelihood of them utilizing nuclear weapons
Most states don’t use their nuclear weapons, because they all know that to do so is suicidal.
Pariah states don’t really care what other people think, which means they don’t care about nuclear arms agreements, or about achieving diplomacy through normal means.
Examples of pariah states:
North Korea
Iran
Argument 2: Pariah states have a greater destructive potential than individuals/organizations
In aff there’s an analysis that says the things we worry about from failed nations are terrorist organizations/extremist individuals.
Pariah states have the resources to create sophisticated weaponry.
Believe it or not, but good bombs are hard to make. In other words, you can’t just make a nuclear bomb in your backyard (can you believe I’ve heard somebody claim this in a round?) Nuclear weapons require large reactors and high energy requirements, and are extremely dangerous without trained professionals to manage.
The chances of a terrorist organization or an extremist individual getting a nuclear weapons/creating a nuclear weapon is MUCH lower than the chances of a Pariah state getting nuclear technology.
It takes a lot of money to develop nuclear weaponry. The amount of money necessary is beyond the reach of organizations (unless it’s Microsoft).
The ability of Pariah states to have nuclear weapons in comparison to organizations makes Pariah states already far more threatening.
Pariah states have the resources to launch larger attacks
With terrorists, you get a couple of cities bombed (maybe) and probably not with nuclear weapons.
With Pariah states, you have strategic deployment of missiles. In other words, you have every major city bombed.
Resources include: Planes, bombs, people, money. Can you imagine a war with China? We would get CRUSHED.
In summary, Pariah states have nukes, don’t care about using the nukes, and have the resources to launch major attacks.
Argument 3: Attacks from Pariah States are far harder to prevent than attacks from terrorists
The size of an attack from Pariah states is just larger, and the bigger things are, the harder they are to stop.
It’s harder to evacuate one city when compared to 5
In addition, the amount of time it takes for a nuclear weapon to get to us through long distance ballistic tech. is not enough time to evacuate millions of people
There’s really no way to prevent a flying long distance missile aimed towards the US.
We can try, but we really don’t have that technology)
We have been very successful with preventing individual actions and their technology.
Sure we dropped the bomb during 9/11, but that was before we even though terrorism was a big problem.
There have already been 3 major terrorists attacks prevented through our fabulous spy program. The first was by Britain with the planes and liquid bombs, the second was last week with the Massachusetts man, and I’m sure there are others
In other words, our spy program now works very well at catching terrorists, and because terrorists work as individuals or small groups of people, they are easier to stop because all you need to do is capture them. You can’t really arrest a state.
Preventing Pariah states is almost impossible without pre-emptive strikes because Pariah states are not status quo oriented.
Like I said before, they’re the weird kids at lunch. They don’t respond to international pressure (KIM JONG IL) and they don’t respond to diplomatic means.
ALTERNATIVE NEG ARGUMENTS (Use with caution)
Expanding the ground in Debate:
Aff is going to concentrate on physical harms, aka: bloodshed.
By lowering the threshold on what qualifies as a “threat”, you also expand the ground for debate.
A threat doesn’t have to just be military, it could also be economic.
Economic threats are far MORE threatening to the US’s government stability than military threats.
Military threats tend to unite populations. When it becomes a question of them versus us, people really band together.
Ex: 9/11. Bush’s approval rating when through the roof.
Economic turmoil leads to greater unrest. Let’s face it, people care more about their homes than their lives.
Ex: the recent economic depression, bush’s approval rating PLUMETTED
The more economic insecurity the population feels, the more likely they will be prone to revolution
Plenty of examples here: china, Iran, Russia, US (both the Civil war and revolution), Britain (the bloodless revolution), FRANCE (all 16 of their revolutions)
The US is huge and relatively far away from other nations that pose threats. It is much harder to militarily conquer the US than it is to decimate its economy
The US hasn’t been occupied since the British.
We have had several depressions.
In addition, we have the most nukes in the world. People know not to attack us.
Yes, China poses a military threat because they have lots of people. But China isn’t dumb. They aren’t willing to risk certain death, which is why we haven’t been in war with China since the Korean war
China (a stable nation) pretty much owns the US
China has bought so many US bonds that they own you and your children
We literally owe trillions of dollars to China
If China were to cash in all their bonds immediately, that would literally mean the collapse of the US Economy.
In addition, there are lots of examples as to how China is undermining the US economy, from their unfair currency exchange policy, to their cutthroat business practices.
Neg provides threats in 2 spheres whereas Aff only provides threats to 1 sphere
We have threats in more places, and these add together, therefore we have more threats period.
In case you guys were wonder, those 2 spheres are: military/bodied well being and political stability