Elections DA – ENDI 2016

Things to Know

411

Below is the elections disadvantage, which will likely be the MOST POPULAR disadvantage read through early November (when the presidential election takes place). This version is a “Clinton Good/Trump Bad” version – which means it says Clinton will win now, the affirmative’s unpopularity hurts Clinton/helps Trump, Trump presidency bad.There are a variety of impact scenarios that you can read – each varies in terms of quality and strategery.Regardless of what you do, read the file and have fun!

Shell

1nc ShellObama’s rising popularity ensures Clinton wins in 2016Stanage 5/29/16 (Niall, Contributor @ The Hill, "Clinton's ace in the hole: Obama," http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/281575-hillary-clintons-ace-in-the-hole-obama)Hillary Clinton will have a not-so-secret weapon in her quest for the White House: President Obama. Obama’s approval ratings have been marching upward since the start of the year. He retains immense popularity with the Democratic base, including vital groups such as young people, with whom Clinton has struggled. And experts also say that there is no one better positioned to unify the party behind the former secretary of State as her long and sometimes bitter struggle with primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) draws to a close. If Obama could run for a third-term, “he’d be reelected in a walk,” said New York-based Democratic strategist Jonathan Rosen. “He can play a huge role in bringing the Democratic base and independents, together to unite behind her candidacy.” That could be particularly important given evidence from the primary season that suggests Clinton has failed to thrill some parts of the Obama coalition, even while she has drawn strong support from other blocs. She has struggled mightily among younger voters, for example, even while beating Sanders by huge margins among African-American Democrats. The political relationship between Obama and Clinton is a long and knotty one. Distrust still festers among some of the aides who worked for each candidate during their titanic 2008 primary struggle. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton rallied support for Obama in the general election that year, even coming to the Democratic National Convention floor to move a motion for the then-Illinois senator to become the nominee. In 2012, former President Bill Clinton — whose role in the 2008 primary was contentious — gave a famously effective speech lauding Obama’s economic record. Before Hillary Clinton began her quest for the presidency this time around, she seemed to distance herself from the man whom she served as secretary of State. Back in August 2014, she critiqued a foreign-policy view synonymous with Obama saying, “Great nations need organizing principles and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” That attitude carried through into the early months of the campaign. Last fall, according to NPR, she told voters in Davenport, Iowa, “I am not running for my husband’s third term of President Obama’s third term. I am running for my first term.” Clinton’s rhetoric shifted as the challenge from Sanders became more serious, however. On healthcare, she cast herself as the protector of Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act. A Clinton ad on gun control featured the candidate saying, of the president, “I’m with him.” Part of Clinton’s pivot was clearly aimed at stopping the Sanders insurgency in its tracks. But Clinton’s political proximity to Obama could pay dividends in the general election, too. Gallup’s daily tracking poll at the end of last week showed 52 percent of adults approving of Obama’s job performance and 44 percent disapproving. At the beginning of the year, Obama won approval from just 45 percent of adults in the equivalent poll, while 51 percent disapproved. Some independent experts believe that the feverish tone of the primary season in both parties has fueled Obama’s climb. “As the conflicts got more into the gutter during the primary season, President Obama looks much better by comparison,” said Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University. “I think that he personally has been helped by what has happened in both primaries — but particularly the Republican one — which reminded people why they liked the guy eight years ago.” Experts like Reeher noted that traditionally it has been difficult for a candidate to win the White House after his or her party has held the presidency for the preceding eight years. Only once since 1948 has someone pulled off that feat. President George H.W. Bush succeeded his fellow Republican President Reagan by winning the 1988 election. But 2016 could be exceptional. The polarizing nature of the presumptive Republican nominee could leave some voters seeking a “safe haven” with a known quantity such as Clinton, experts say. That dynamic could be enough to counteract Clinton’s own lowly favorability numbers, as well as the traditional reluctance to give a party three successive White House terms. “It is obviously a challenge to win the White House for three straight elections and as a candidate, as a front-runner,

everyone takes shots at you. But that challenge can be overcome when you have a popular sitting president,”

said Democratic strategist Evan Stavisky.

Soft-line policies on China alienate the public and become election-year fodder for Republicans Glaser 15 (Bonnie, Senior Adviser for Asia in the Freeman Chair in China Studies, where she works on issues related to Chinese foreign and security policy. She is concomitantly a senior associate with CSIS Pacific Forum and a consultant for the US government on East Asia, "China bashing: American campaign ritual or harbinger of tougher policy?," http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2015/08/25/China-bashing-American-campaign-ritual-or-harbinger-of-tougher-policy.aspx)China-bashing in the 2016 presidential election has begun in earnest. In past campaigns, many of the attacks on China were forgotten as candidates dropped out of the race or were defeated. In 2012, for example, Mitt Romney pledged to declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. He never got the chance, of course, and Obama's policies were unaffected by Romney's campaign rhetoric. Sometimes, promises to 'get tough' with China during the campaign simply became irrelevant as presidents, once in power, confront the demands of real-world policy challenges. When George W Bush ran for president in 2000, he criticised his predecessor Bill Clinton for calling China a strategic partner, and instead said China should be viewed as a 'strategic competitor.' After becoming president, however, Bush dropped that label. When a Chinese jet collided with a US surveillance plane over the South China Sea, Bush worked hard to avert a US-China political crisis, and after the September 11 attacks, he welcomed Beijing's proposal to fight together against terrorism. This time may be different, however. China's repressive policies at home, combined with its transgressions in the South China Sea and massive cyber attacks on US

companies and the Federal Government, make it an easy target. Moreover, criticism of China likely resonates with most Americans. Republican candidates will accuse Obama of being too soft on China and vow that if elected, they will stand up for American interests. Democrats, including Obama's former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, are more likely to find fault with than defend the current Administration's approach to managing US-China relations. Regardless of who is elected president in November 2016, he or she is likely to adopt a firmer approach to China on a litany of issues. So what are the candidates saying about China so far? GOP candidate Donald Trump condemned China's recent currency devaluation as 'the greatest theft in the history of the United States.' If elected president, Trump said, 'Oh would China be in trouble!' Carly Fiorina, another GOP contender, criticised China's cyber hacks on federal databases as an 'act of aggression' against America. She also warned against allowing the Chinese to control trade routes in the South China Sea and pledged she would be 'more aggressive in helping our allies...push back against new Chinese aggression.' In a lengthy critique of Obama Administration policies published in Foreign Affairs, GOP candidate Marco Rubio lambasted Obama's 'willingness to ignore human rights violations in the hope of appeasing the Chinese leadership.' He also accused China of pursuing 'increasingly aggressive regional expansionism.' Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has joined the fray in an effort to shield herself from the accusation that she was complicit in the implementation of a policy that accommodated China and failed to sufficiently stand up for American interests. Clinton acknowledges that as secretary of state she worked hard to build a better relationship with China and says she would continue to do so as president. But she also warns about the dangers posed by China's militarisation of the South China Sea and condemns China's 'stealing commercial secrets, blueprints from defense contractors' and 'huge amounts of government information' in its quest for an advantage over other nations. The presidential campaign is just starting to heat up. The torrent of China-bashing in the remaining 15 months before the general election is likely to have a profoundly negative effect on China's image in the US, which is already unfavourable. In a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center,

only 35% of Americans had a positive view of China, while 55% had a negative one. China's image in the US has tilted in a more negative direction in recent years – as recently as 2011 half of Americans gave China a positive rating. The negative public mood will likely align with harsher attitudes in Congress, reinforcing the proclivities of the next

US president to adopt a tougher stance against Chinese trade policies, human rights violations, cyber intrusions, and assertiveness in the South China Sea. Despite a sincere desire for a positive bilateral relationship with the US, Xi Jinping is likely to prioritise the preservation of domestic stability, defence of sovereignty, and pursuit of the Chinese Dream.

Perceived weakness from Obama on security issues hurts the Dems - flips the election for the GOP Needham 1/21/16 (Vicki, The Hill, “Moody’s model gives Dem candidate advantage in 2016,” http://thehill.com/policy/finance/266668-moodys-model-gives-dem-candidate-advantage-in-2016)The Democratic presidential nominee will win the race for the presidency, but the election is shaping up as historically tight,

according to a political model. Less than 11 months from Election Day, Moody’s Analytics is predicting that whomever lands the Democratic nomination will capture the White House with 326 electoral votes to the Republican nominee’s 212. Those results are heavily dependent on how swing states vote. The latest model from Moody’s reflects razor-thin margins in the five most important swing states — Florida, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia. In each of those states, the Democratic advantage is less than 1 percentage point, well within the margin of error. The election model weighs political and economic strength in each state and determines the share of the vote that the incumbent party will win. The most important economic variable in the model is the growth in incomes in the two years leading up to the election. That factor captures the strength of the job market in each state, including job growth, hours worked, wage growth and the quality of the jobs being created. The model also factors in home and gasoline prices. So far, the strength of the economy has kept the model on track for the Democratic nominee. But the trajectory of the president’s approval rating also makes a difference in who could win the White House. If President Obama’s approval rating shifts only a little more than 4 percentage points, a bit more than the margin of error for many

presidential opinion polls, the move could further cut into Democratic hopes to retain the White House.

Growing concern about terrorism and other issues could dent Obama’s approval rating further. Usually, if the sitting president’s approval rating is improving in the year leading up the election, the incumbent party receives a boost. But in most elections, the president’s rating has declined in the lead-up to the election, favoring the challenger party.

Trump victory risks extinction via climate change and global warNisbet 5/27/16 (Matthew, Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Affiliate Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University who studies the role of communication, media, and public opinion in debates over science, technology, and the environment,

New Scientist, "Trump would deliver fatal blow to fight against climate change," http://www.northeastern.edu/camd/commstudies/people/matthew-nisbet/#sthash.Zoq2zrjr.dpuf)Trump would deliver fatal blow to fight against climate change A Donald Trump presidency would disrupt the fight against climate change in a way that threatens to snuff out all hope, warns Matthew Nisbet Trump on a podium, with his hilarious hair Bad for the environment Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images By Matthew Nisbet Donald Trump has just promised to “cancel the Paris climate agreement“, end US funding for United Nations climate change programmes, and roll back the “stupid” Obama administration regulations to cut power plant emissions. The Republican presidential candidate has often defied party orthodoxy on major issues, shocking conservatives with his off-the-cuff remarks. But his scripted speech yesterday to an oil industry meeting directly echoed the party’s line on climate change and energy. Trump trails Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic rival for the White House, in fundraising, and his speech was a clear sign that he seeks to capitalise on financial support from the powerful fossil fuel industry. His call to roll back industry regulations also deepens his appeal to voters in oil, gas and coal-producing states. “Obama has done everything he can to get in the way of American energy, for whatever reason,” Trump said, in an attack sure to be a centrepiece of his campaign. “If ‘crooked’ Hillary Clinton is in charge, things will get much worse, believe me.” Climate incoherence Yet a Trump presidency poses an existential threat

qualitatively different from past Republican candidates who have doubted climate change. It could set in motion a wave of political and economic crises, creating global turmoil that would fatally disrupt efforts to tackle this issue in the US and abroad. Alarmed by the possibility of a Trump victory in November, international negotiators are urgently working to finalise the UN Paris agreement, in the hope that it can become legally binding before President Obama leaves office. Yet even if the gambit is successful, a Trump victory could cripple international progress in other ways. To meet the aggressive targets set at Paris, countries will have to substantially ratchet up efforts to end reliance on fossil fuels over the next few years. At the very moment when the world needs American leadership on this, Trump’s incoherence on climate and energy policy and his outright disgust for global collaboration would have a severe chilling effect on progress. In past comments, he has said he is “not a believer in man-made global warming“, declaring that climate change is a “total hoax” and “bullshit“, “created by and for the Chinese” to hurt US manufacturing. On energy policy, he has appeared befuddled when asked about specifics, even fumbling the name of the Environmental Protection Agency, which he has promised to abolish. Civil unrest The broader disruption of a Trump presidency would do even greater damage, weakening efforts to create a sense of urgency over climate change. Trump’s candidacy has brought public discourse in the US to its ugliest level, as he trades in trash talk and outrageous insults, spreading falsehood and innuendo, fomenting bigotry and prejudice. He has threatened the censure of critics in the media, even condoning violence against protesters, calling them “thugs” and “criminals”. His success emboldens far right and ultra-nationalist movements in the US and across Europe, risking further destabilisation. At home, Trump’s promise to ban Muslims from entering the US, to erect a wall at the Mexican border, and to deport millions of immigrants will provoke widespread protest and civil unrest. Abroad, Trump’s bravado and reckless unpredictability, his vow to renegotiate trade deals and to walk away from security

alliances will generate deep tensions with China, Russia and Europe, risking financial collapse and military conflict. In the midst of such dysfunction and upheaval, the glimmer of hope offered by the historic climate change pact agreed to in Paris last

year may forever fade. The stakes riding on a US presidential election have never been higher .

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Uniqueness

Clinton Will Win – 2nc WallClinton will win – electoral map goes against Trump Martin et al 5/29/16 (Jonathan, Alexander Burns, Trip Gabriel, Fernanda Santos, NYT, "Can Donald Trump Win? These Battleground Regions Will Decide," http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/30/us/politics/donald-trump-general-election-battleground.html?referer=http://news.google.com/)With Donald J. Trump pulling even or ahead of Hillary Clinton in a series of recent national polls, the once unthinkable has become at least

plausible. But if he is to be elected the 45th president, he must compete on a political map that, for now, looks forbidding . In the Republican primaries, he proved a master of nationalizing the political debate, appealing to voters across regional lines with jeremiads about immigration and crime that captivated an almost uniformly white primary electorate. At the outset of the general election, Mr. Trump has dominated the day-to-day political combat on national television and social media. In the general election, however, his fate will be determined not by his Twitter followers or a relatively homogeneous Republican electorate, but by a set of interlocking and increasingly diverse regions, home to some 90 million Americans, that hold many of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win. Republicans enter the general election at a hefty disadvantage:

Since the 1992 campaign, 18 states have voted consistently for Democrats in presidential elections, giving their party a firm foundation of 242 electoral votes to build upon. And in the four regions likely to decide the presidency — Florida, the upper Southeast, the Rust Belt and the interior West — Mr. Trump faces daunting obstacles, according to interviews last week with elected officials, political strategists and voters.

Obama popularity means Clinton wins – EXCELLENT predictor of her chancesGoldstein 5/28/16 (Ken, Political Commentator @ Bloomberg News, "Analysis: Recent national polls should worry Clinton - See more at: http://amestrib.com/news/analysis-recent-national-polls-should-worry-clinton#sthash.TAHFC0yQ.dpuf," http://amestrib.com/news/analysis-recent-national-polls-should-worry-clinton)With that in mind, one data point to pay attention to is President Barack Obama’s job approval number. It is now more than 50 percent, according to Gallup and a variety of other surveys, and that should be good news for Clinton. Even though Obama is not on the ticket, the approval rating of the incumbent president is an excellent predictor of the vote share of his party’s nominee . Clinton’s chances are greatly buoyed by an improving view of Obama’s job performance.

Prediction markets favor Clinton – they should be preferred over fundamentals or polls Bernstein 5/27/16 (Jonathan, Political Commentator @ Bloomberg News, "Presidential race gets harder to predict," http://www.myajc.com/news/news/presidential-race-gets-harder-predict/nrTnT/) A different way of forecasting election results is to follow the wisdom of crowds, found in election betting markets (such as those aggregated by PredictWise). Some critics of these tools believe they only quantify conventional wisdom, which is as likely to be wrong as right. But prediction markets have the advantage that the participants, and therefore the results, can take into consideration any relevant information -- as opposed to the "fundamentals" analysis, which excludes anything specific to this election cycle, and polling, which only looks at current public opinion and therefore ignores predictable changes. So far this year, Clinton has been the solid favorite.

Predictwise currently gives the Democrats a 67 percent chance of winning in November.

Iowa Electronic Market predicts Clinton win – it’s the most accurate Versace 5/25/16 (Chris, Contributor @ InvestorPlace, "President Donald Trump: The U.S. Economy’s Winners and Losers," http://investorplace.com/investorpolitics/president-donald-trump-us-economy/#.V0w5ZPkrLIV)As improbable as it might have seemed even a few months ago, the prospects of a “President Donald Trump” are very much on the table. One of the most accurate predictors of presidential elections over the years has been the University

of Iowa’s Presidential Election Electronic Market, which is currently predicting a win for the democratic

nominee, Hillary Clinton, by a significant margin. Between now and then however, there’s high potential for game-changing events between Clinton’s email server to Benghazi woes and Donald Trump’s occasional foot-in-mouth/that’s-not-what-I-meant

moments. Others polls suggest a tighter race, which means the election as well as the “will they or won’t they boost rates?” question at the Federal Reserve will no doubt make us all feel like we are in a drawn-out tennis match during a long, hot summer, begging for it to be over.

Moody's predicts Clinton will win - historically the MOST accurate Long 5/26/16 (Heather, Columnist @ CNN Money, "Clinton predicted to beat Trump...due to economics," http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/26/news/economy/hillary-clinton-beat-donald-trump-moodys/) Donald Trump is in trouble, according to a model that has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential race since Ronald Reagan in 1980. This time around the model -- run by Moody's Analytics -- says a Democrat will win the White House. Hillary Clinton is widely expected to be the Democratic nominee. It's a bad sign for Trump. Moody's has been predicting a Democratic triumph since last August, but the margin of victory is getting bigger for the left as the economy has stayed relatively strong and President Obama's approval rating has risen. The reason a Democrat will win isn't about polling or personalities, it's about economics, says Moody's. The economy is the top issue in just about every election. When the economy is doing well, the party currently in office usually wins again. When the economy is tanking, Americans vote for change. So far, the U.S. economy is chugging along. It's growing. Millions of people are getting jobs,

home prices are rising and gas is cheap. All of this favors Democrats.

A2 Uniq O/Whelms LinkClinton remains the favorite but small changes in voter support can flip the election for TrumpBernstein 5/27/16 (David, Staff @ Politico, "How Hillary Loses," http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-hillary-clinton-campaign-loses-defeated-donald-trump-213924)The reassurance is that the recent polls probably don’t mean much. Trump’s current surge is likely driven by Republican voters coalescing around their nominee, and Clinton will almost certainly get a similar bump when Bernie Sanders lets

go and Democratic voters return to the fold. Most pundits believe 2016 is still Clinton’s race to lose. Here’s the bad news: There is now a clear path for her to lose it. If you drill down enough, it’s clear there are at least four paths to a loss, and any one of them poses a real risk for a candidate likely to follow her usual careful, calculating playbook. The cold math of a potential Clinton defeat is not to be found in national polls, but in the Electoral College—and within each state’s unique demographics and culture. Trump won’t dramatically remake the political map, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to squeeze a little more out of certain voters in certain states, while Clinton draws a little less. If Clinton pushes away some of her potential supporters; fails to energize others to vote; and fires up Trump’s base by pandering to her own—well, she just might be able to make the numbers work out for him. If he does pull off the election of the century, Trump’s path to 270 Electoral College votes will begin with 164 practically in the bank, from 21 solid-red states generally considered sure things for the Republican nominee. And here’s how Clinton could push more than enough additional states onto Trump’s side of the ledger—Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan—one mistake at a time.

Clinton is leading, but it’s not inevitable – changing political dynamics can turn the tidesHancock 3/27/16 (Peter, Columnist @ Lawrence Journal World, "Vegas oddsmakers now rivaling the best pollsters," http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/capitol-report/2016/mar/27/vegas-oddsmakers-now-rivaling-the-best-p/)So, if you're wondering who the odds-on favorite is to win the White House in November, all you have to do is Google the term "presidential prediction markets" and you get your answer: Democrats stand a 71 percent chance of winning the general election , and right now, Hillary Clinton has roughly a 90 percent chance of being the Democratic nominee. Put another way, Donald Trump is viewed as having an 80 percent chance of being the Republican nominee, giving Republicans only a 29 percent chance of winning the White House. That's the current (as of this writing) assessment from the website PredictWise, founded by Microsoft Research economist David Rothschild, which aggregates data from a number of different sites. One of the sites PredictWise uses goes by a similar name, PredictIt, which gives users the chance to buy, sell and trade shares in the outcome of an electoral event, such as the outcome of a primary, a nomination, or the general election. So, for example, 'Candidate A wins the nomination' would be an event, and traders will speculate on what the percentage chance is of a particular outcome of that event, either "yes" or "no." Percentages are then translated into U.S. cents. The sum total of "yes" and "no" bids add up to $1. As of Sunday afternoon, people willing to bet money on a "Clinton-Yes" outcome of the general election were buying at 61 cents. People betting on a "Clinton-No" outcome were selling for 39 cents. To see how accurate that model is, we only have to look back at some recent primaries. Leading up to the March 1 Super Tuesday primaries, PredictIt was forecasting that Trump would win in 10 states and lose only in Texas to that state's favorite son Sen. Ted Cruz. And it showed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would finish second in the Minnesota caucuses. PredictIt got every one of those right, except Minnesota, where Rubio eked out a win. That kind of information can be fun and entertaining, depending on which side of the race you're on, as long as you take it with a grain of salt. There's still a whole lot of race left, and a scandal here, or a misstep there still could greatly affect the outcome. But these prediction markets are also grabbing serious attention from academic circles. Kansas University political science professor Burdett Loomis called attention to them during a recent talk he gave to the Douglas County Democratic Party. When I emailed him later to get more information, he suggested the Iowa Electronic Markets, one of the oldest prediction markets around, and one originally set up by academics. IEM has been around for a few election cycles now, and in 2008 it outperformed all the major public opinion polls for accurately predicting the outcome of the election. IEM's model, which looks a lot like commodity futures trading, offers two different types of "contracts," or estimates of the outcome: "vote shares," or the percentage of the total popular vote either party will get; and "winner-take-all," which predicts the outcome, regardless of point spread. At last check, contracts for a Democratic popular vote win in November were trading at 59.8 cents, compared with 40.5 cents for a Republican win. In the winner-take-all contracts, Democrats were up 71 cents to 31 cents over Republicans. Prediction markets are essentially a variation on a theme that has been developing in the field of public opinion polling for some time. Originally, pollsters would ask (and still do ask), "Who do you intend to vote for in the upcoming election?" That would give an accurate snapshot in time of where the race stood at that particular moment, but it often had little predictive value because people change their minds. More recently, pollsters have started asking a different question: "Regardless of who you intend to vote for, who do you think will win the race?" That question turns out to have much more predictive value because it acknowledges the tendency of people, in the end, to gravitate toward the norm. In other words, most people want to be on the winning side.

A2 Random Poll Says Trump WinsConsensus of polls says you’re wrong – he’s crashing in the pollsRubin 3/29/16 (Jennifer, Columnist @ Wash Post, "What Cruz must do tonight to derail Trump," https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/03/29/what-cruz-must-do-tonight-to-derail-trump/)Despite the cynics’ claim that “nothing matters” and that #NeverTrump is having no effect, Trump in fact is crashing in the polls.

(“How bad are Trump’s image ratings? The HuffPost Pollster average of recent national polls puts Trump’s favorability at only 31 percent, while 63 percent view him unfavorably,” Politico reports.) Trump trails Clinton in every general election poll collected by RealClearPolitics in the last month. She enjoys an 11 percent lead in

the RCP average. In all of 2016 Trump has led in only two polls (both within the margin of error). His boasting evidences the extent of his self-delusion and the false premise on which his argument for the nomination rests.

A2 Indictment/October Surprise Hillary leading now – consensus of polls – indictment and other surprises won’t thumpKlein 3/29/16 (Ed, former foreign editor of Newsweek and served as the editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine + MS degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism, "Ed Klein: The Donald Is Hillary's Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card," http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Donald-Trump-Hillary-Clinton/2016/03/29/id/721344/#ixzz44OO5afKC Donald Trump loves to boast "I haven't started on Hillary yet." The way he sees it, come the general election, he'll carpet bomb Hillary into oblivion the way he's destroyed most of his Republican primary opponents. To use a favorite Trumpism: "You can count on it 100 percent." But according to my reporting, Hillary isn't shaking in her boots. Far from it. Sources close to Hillary tell me she couldn't be happier about the Trump phenomenon. In fact, she's hoping and praying for a one-on-one matchup against Trump next November. The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Hillary trouncing The Donald by 11 points — with a chance of winning back control of the Senate. "Hillary would be delighted if Trump turns out to be the nominee of the Republican Party," says one of her closest advisers. "He represents everything Democrats say is wrong with Republicans — that they're nasty and prejudiced and against minorities and women. "Seventy percent of American women already don't like Donald," the adviser continued, "and the minute Donald goes after Hillary the way he's gone after Megyn Kelly, he'll lose even more female support. And you can't win the White House without the woman's vote. "Most important of all, Trump is Hillary's get-out-of-jail-free card. Say Hillary is indicted on her email scandal. If Trump is your only other alternative for president, millions of voters will pull the lever for Hillary, indicted or not."

A2 Indictment ThumpsClinton won’t be indicted – consensus of legal expertsAlderman 3/28/16 (Julie, Staff @ Media Matters for America, "Media Hype LA Times Report On Clinton Emails Even Though It Says Prosecution Unlikely," http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/03/28/media-hype-la-times-report-on-clinton-emails-ev/209574)LA Times: "Legal Experts Believe Clinton Faces Little Risk Of Being Prosecuted For Using The Private Email System." The March 27 Los Angeles Times report cited by Fox and MSNBC stated that "legal experts believe that Clinton faces little risk of being prosecuted for using the private email system to conduct official business." The Times reported that experts say that "using a private email system was not banned at the time, and others in government had used personal email to transact official business," and the article says the " chances she will be found criminally liable are low": Many legal experts believe that Clinton faces little risk of being prosecuted for using the private email system to conduct official business when she served as secretary of State, though that decision has raised questions among some about her judgment. They noted that using a private email system was not banned at the time, and others in government had used personal email to transact official business. The bigger question is whether she or her aides distributed classified material in email systems that fell outside of the department's secure classified system. But even if prosecutors determine that she did, chances she will be found criminally liable are low. U.S. law makes it a crime for someone to knowingly or willfully retain classified information, handle it in a grossly negligent manner or to pass it to someone not entitled to see it. [Los Angeles Times, 3/27/16]

Clinton won't be indicted - legal experts Tucker and Biesecker 3/22/16 (Eric and Michael, Associated Press, "Experts See Little Chance of Charges in Clinton Email Case," http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/experts-clinton-face-felony-charges-emails-37842551)Asked earlier this month whether she'd be indicted over her use of a private email server as secretary of state, Hillary

Clinton responded, " It's not going to happen ." Though Republicans characterized her response as hubris, several legal experts interviewed by The Associated Press agreed with the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The relatively few laws that govern the handling of classified materials were generally written to cover spies, leakers and those who illegally retain such information, such as at home. Though the view is not unanimous, several lawyers who specialize in this area said it's a stretch to apply existing statutes to a former cabinet secretary whose communication of sensitive materials was with aides — not a national enemy. During her tenure as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013, Clinton's work emails were routed through a private computer server located in the basement of her New York home. The State Department now concedes that a small percentage of those messages contained sensitive national security information, including some later determined to be top secret. Computer security experts say the arrangement could have left the messages vulnerable to hackers, including those working for foreign intelligence agencies. Clinton has called her decision to rely on the home server a "mistake," but has also repeatedly asserted that none of the messages was marked as classified when she sent or received them. The FBI has for months been investigating whether the sensitive information that flowed through Clinton's email server was mishandled. The inspector general at the State Department has also been reviewing the issue. Regardless of the outcomes, there's no question the probes have created a major distraction as Clinton campaigns for her party's nomination. One potentially relevant statute carrying up to a year in prison makes it a crime to knowingly remove classified information and retain it at an unauthorized location. Former CIA Director David Petraeus pleaded guilty to that misdemeanor offense last year after providing eight black binders of classified information to his biographer. He was sentenced to two years' probation as part of a plea deal, and prosecutors made clear in that case that Petraeus knew he was turning over highly classified information. With Clinton, though, "I look at something which requires knowledge, and the first question I've got to ask is, 'How do they prove knowledge?'" said Bill Jeffress, a Washington criminal defense lawyer. While knowledge that information is classified is a critical component, it can likely still be established even in the absence of classification markings on the emails in question, said Nathan Sales, a Syracuse University law professor who used to work at the departments of Justice and Homeland Security and who thinks that the investigation raises important legal issues. "Sometimes information is so obviously sensitive that you can infer knowledge from the content," in which case the lack of markings may not matter for the purpose of establishing liability, Sales said. A separate law makes it a felony to handle national defense information with "gross negligence," by causing it to be removed from its proper place of custody or to be lost, stolen or destroyed. But that statute is part of the Espionage Act, a law used against former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that's generally intended for people the government believes intended to harm U.S. national interests. Proving gross negligence requires showing an act was more than just a mistake. "One has to put this in perspective of what types of prosecutions have happened under the Espionage Act," said Jon Michaels, a national security law professor at UCLA. "And the universe of prosecutions under the Espionage Act is quite small compared to the amount of information transferred through non-secure means."

A2 Too Early/Can’t PredictVoter preferences are shaped early, but are not staticJennings 15 (William, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Southampton, “The Timeline of Elections: A Comparative Perspective,” presented at the 2015 Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Hollywood, Florida, and also at the University of Amsterdam, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Manchester, the University of Mannheim)Discussion and Conclusion Voter preferences evolve in a systematic way over the election timeline in a wide range of representative democracies. There is structure to preferences well in advance of elections, indeed, years before citizens actually vote.

That is, very early polls predict the vote , at least to some extent. This largely reflects differences in the equilibrium support

of parties and candidates. Polls do become increasingly informative over time, however, pointing to real evolution of preferences. That this pattern holds across countries is important and points towards 35 a general tendency in the formation of electoral preferences. But the pattern is not precisely the same in all countries. Political institutions structure the evolution of voters’ preferences.23 Government institutions are important. Preferences come into focus later in presidential elections than in parliamentary ones. A year out from Election Day, parliamentary elections are more predictable from the polls than are the outcomes of presidential races. This presumably reflects the greater uncertainties involved in the assessment of presidential candidates and also the time it takes for voters to directly factor in their dispositions toward the political parties (Erikson and Wlezien 2012). In parliamentary systems, by contrast, parties matter more early on. This is important because partisan dispositions, while not fixed, are more durable than those toward candidates. That preferences are in place much later in presidential systems thus comes as little surprise. That there is no real difference between legislative elections in presidential and parliamentary systems may surprise, however. It implies that parties do not matter consistently more to voters in the latter. Electoral institutions also are important. Preferences in legislative elections come into focus more quickly and completely in proportional systems. We find limited evidence of general differences across systems—that proportional representation per se is what matters. We find stronger evidence that the party-centricity of the systems matters most of all. Although closely related to proportionality, there is significant variation in party-centricity within both proportional and plurality systems, and this variation is of consequence for the formation of electoral preferences. The number of parties, meanwhile, appears to have little effect. We have only scratched the surface of the variation in context. To begin with, political institutions differ in ways that we have not considered. Perhaps more importantly, there are other differences in context that we have not even begun to explore. Some of the differences relate to countries themselves. For instance, following Converse (1969), there is reason to think that the age of democracy is important to the formation and evolution of preferences. Other differences relate not to political institutions or the countries themselves, but to characteristics of political parties. There are numerous possibilities here, most notable of which may be whether parties are in government or opposition, as is suggested by the literature on economic voting (e.g. Fiorina 1981; Duch and Stevenson 2008). Another is whether parties are catch-all or niche. The age and size of parties also could matter. Clearly, much research remains to be done, and our methodology can guide the way. That said, we have learned something about the general pattern relating preferences and the vote over the election timeline and the structuring influences of political institutions. We have shown that preferences are often in place far in advance of Election Day and that they evolve slowly over time. Indeed, the final outcome is fairly clear in the polls before the election campaign really begins. This is not to say that the campaign does not matter, as it does, particularly in 37 certain types of countries and elections where candidates are central. Even there, however, it is clear that the “long campaign” between elections matters most of all . Actions now shape the conversation and resonate with the electorate---shapes voting patternsYork 15 (Byron, - Chief Political Correspondent for the Washington Examiner, “2016: Yes, it's early, but pay attention now,” http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/2016-yes-its-early-but-pay-attention-now/article/2563339) It's conventional wisdom that the 2016 Republican presidential race is at such an early stage that the polls don't matter. They're just a measurement of name recognition at this point, some observers say, and the only people really paying attention to the campaign are reporters and hard-core party activists. Maybe that was true in

earlier years. But it doesn't seem to be the case now . "One thing about this election — Republicans are paying attention," says a GOP pollster

not affiliated with any campaign. "They are very concerned about who the nominee is going to be, and the idea that what a candidate says now doesn't matter could not be farther from the truth." Look at the new CNN/ORC poll, out Monday morning. First of all, it's a huge field, and no candidate dominates — Jeb Bush is in the lead with just 17 percent. But nearly all the respondents surveyed have picked a candidate to support; add together every candidate's little share of the vote and the total nears 100 percent, with few undecided. There's Bush's 17 percent, followed by Scott Walker with 12 percent; then Rand Paul and Marco Rubio with 11 percent each; Mike Huckabee with nine percent; Ted Cruz with seven percent; Ben Carson and Chris Christie with four percent each; Rick Perry and Rick Santorum with three percent each; and Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, and John Kasich with two percent each. Then there are five percent who say they support some other candidate. MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER What's behind Trump's collapsing Iowa poll numbers? Evangelicals prefer Carson By Daniel Allott • 10/26/15 6:20 PM Add it up, and that's 94 percent of Republicans who say they support a specific candidate now. The rest — a pretty tiny number of undecided — say

they can't make a decision or have no opinion. Of course, that's just for now. Many will change their minds, but they are already taking the

race seriously . At this point, many voters are likely making preliminary decisions based on very little information. They know Scott Walker fought unions in Wisconsin. They know

Jeb Bush is George W. Bush's brother and George H.W. Bush's son. They know Ted Cruz was involved in the government shutdown. "That's why these announcements are important," says the pollster, "because it is the first time to associate more facts with each candidate. And you've seen each candidate get a little bump when they announced." Some analysts describe this period

as the "pregame." The real game starts at some point in the future, perhaps in August when the first Republican debate takes place in Ohio. But the pregame , if that's what it is,

matters too. Candidates are getting their only chance to make a first impression . In the 2012 campaign, the first Republican

debate was held May 5, 2011, in Greenville, South Carolina. The participants were Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, and Gary Johnson. (Don't remember Johnson? He's the former New Mexico governor who ended up running as a Libertarian.) The big question that night was whether Pawlenty could ascend to the top tier of candidates. (He couldn't.) But the real lesson of the evening, at least in retrospect, was that the GOP field was still remarkably unformed at that stage. This year's field seems much more stable at an earlier time. Yes, Kasich might enter the race — he certainly sounded that way last weekend in New Hampshire — and yes, perhaps another candidate will give it a try, too. But the basic structure of the Republican field seems nearly set. And strong, too. Back in 2011 and 2012, it was common to hear Republicans complain about the weakness of their field. Some complain today — some always do — but the fact is the 2016 GOP field is a pretty impressive group. Governors with solid records, senators who have made their mark in the Senate, plus intriguing figures who come from outside the world of politics. Not all of them will make it even to the Iowa caucuses. And they'll drop off like flies after that. The key thing for the winning candidate is to realize that he will have to be able to

assemble a coalition of those voters who support other candidates in the current 14-candidate field. That's what it will take to win. One thing a candidate — or anyone else, for that matter — should not do is dismiss what is going on in the race now as meaningless because it is so early. Plenty can change, but it might be that when February 2016 comes around , and the

voting begins, some themes (and frontrunners ) in the race will look a lot like they look now.

Not too early – actions now shape voter impressions of candidatesPiccoli 15 (writer @ Newsmax, 2016 Candidates Running Too Early?, www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/Matt-McDonald-David-Goodfriend-2016-election/2015/04/16/id/639020/)With Election Day more than 18 months out — that's 571 days by the campaign clock — a consultant to the last three Republican presidential nominees says it's not too early to run even though most Americans pay the race no mind until the finish line is within sight. Candidates introducing themselves to voters "is a process," veteran GOP strategist Matt McDonald told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV Thursday. "So if you think that you are going to convince a voter to vote for you in kind of the final quarter, that's not a great strategy." McDonald debated how soon is too soon for presidential campaigns with David Goodfriend, a Democratic strategist and former deputy staff secretary to President Bill Clinton. "Those of us in the political sphere … are always amazed to learn how most Americans really tune into an election very, very shortly before Election Day," said Goodfriend. "A lot of the early polling and a lot of the early modeling is irrelevant because people's attention — true attention, focusing on the issues and the candidates — really comes fairly late in the game." McDonald agreed that voters decide "later" who to support. "But they are getting to know the candidates , deciding whether these candidates share their values, what the attributes of these candidates are, how they feel about them, all along the way," he said. "It's like any other relationship where you're making a friend or you're going out on a first date , or anything like that," he said, "and those first impressions that are happening today matter down the road. And it really is a build over time , as people get to know people."

Links

South China SeasSoft on China policies alienate the public, empower Republican attacks, AND SCS policies will be tied to Clinton Nakamura 15 (David, Staff @ Wash Post, "Anti-China rhetoric in campaign suggests change under a new president," 9/23, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/anti-china-rhetoric-in-campaign-suggests-change-under-a-new-president/2015/09/23/f6bb3066-61ff-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html)A flashpoint every four years in American politics, China again has become a target for Republicans and

Democrats alike on the presidential campaign trail. But foreign policy experts said there is mounting evidence that this time it’s more than a rhetorical gambit: Escalating tensions have left officials on both sides of the Pacific preparing for a shift in U.S. policy toward China, no matter which political party wins the 2016 election. As President Obama prepares to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday, those vying to succeed Obama have begun bashing China over its currency manipulation,

cyberhacking, human rights abuses and aggression in the South China Sea. Although Obama aides and Chinese

officials have tried to shrug off the attacks as election-season pandering, analysts said the tough talk reflects souring attitudes

toward China on Capitol Hill and in the public. And they suggested that the fear of a less friendly administration to come has contributed to China’s recent provocations. “What I think they’re really concerned about is what comes next,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And as a result, I think they’re trying to use this one-year-plus period in the Obama administration to get done in some areas as much as they can. In fact, I would argue this is what’s going on in the artificial island building in the South China Sea.” Xi’s two-day state visit to Washington is meant to reassure U.S. political leaders that China will be a reliable global partner and that its economic and territorial ambitions in Asia under his leadership are benign. In an address to business leaders in Seattle on Tuesday, the Chinese leader pledged to fight against cyberattacks and proposed creating a “high-level joint dialogue mechanism” with the United States to establish ground rules in cyberspace and to resolve disputes. But, it is unlikely that Xi and Obama will be able to announce major breakthroughs on the scale of the climate deal they reached last fall in Beijing, and that will make it difficult for the Chinese leader to accomplish those goals. Meantime, public opinion of China has soured as the United States has slowly recovered from the Great Recession. This year, 54 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of China, compared with 29 percent in 2006, according to the Pew Research Center. “President Obama has hoped that being more open to China would make them a more responsible nation. It has not worked,” Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who is seeking the GOP nomination, said in a speech to business leaders last month in Charleston, S.C. “We can no longer succumb to the illusion that more dialogue with China’s current rulers will narrow the gap in values and interests that separates us. . . . It is up to our next president to correct the errors of our current one.” Officials at the White House and in Beijing have rolled their eyes over much of the campaign-trail rhetoric. It’s easy for Republican front-runner Donald Trump to harangue China for stealing U.S. jobs or for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a candidate for the Democratic nomination, to criticize the trade imbalance. Just wait until one of these critics takes office, the White House thinking goes, and realizes just how important China is to the fortunes of the United States. Even Obama talked tough on China while campaigning before moderating his stance once in office. White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes chalked up much of the criticism from GOP candidates to hyperbole that overstates “the degree of Chinese responsibility for certain things.” He emphasized the “bipartisan support” over previous Democratic and Republican administrations for a policy of engagement with China since the opening of relations more than four decades ago. At the same time, Rhodes acknowledged the growing concerns on Capitol Hill and in the business community, warning that “China needs to be mindful that its activities don’t undermine its standing here in the United States.” Part of Obama’s message to Xi, Rhodes added, is that “if you are not taking steps to address some of these concerns as it relates to particular trade irritants or cyber activities, you risk eroding the support for the U.S.-China relationship that comes from the business community; you risk inviting responses from Congress.” The issue is complicated. When the Chinese stock market tumbled in August, leading to fresh concerns over Beijing’s handling of its economy, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker adopted the strongest stance among the GOP presidential candidates. He suggested Obama cancel Xi’s visit to send a message over the economic issues, as well as the cyber, maritime and currency tensions. But the message landed with a thud in Iowa, whose farmers export millions of dollars of soybeans and other agriculture to China each year. Walker ended his campaign this week amid plummeting poll numbers. Still, China is unlikely to fade as a campaign issue. Organized labor has railed against China’s currency manipulation, saying it has contributed to trade imbalances. Congressional Democrats, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who is slated to take over as party leader in 2017, are pushing for legislation that would punish China over currency manipulation. And although Hillary Rodham Clinton has not spoken much about China on the campaign trail, her tenures as first lady in the 1990s and as secretary of state during Obama’s first term were marked by memorable moments in confronting Beijing. In 1995, she spoke out forcefully on women’s rights during a speech at the U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. And in 2010, her declaration during a security conference in Hanoi that the United States would intervene in growing regional tensions over China’s bid to gain

more control in the South China Sea signaled a shift in the Obama administration’s tone . A year later, the administration announced a “pivot to Asia,” a bid to refocus foreign policy attention to the region that Beijing interpreted as an effort to contain China. Beijing has responded by launching several major regional economic initiatives, including an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and by building artificial islands in the South China Sea, which analysts said will probably be used as military outposts.

Mil to Mil Engagement Greater mil-to-mil engagement sparks conservative backlash - perceived as rewarding Chinese aggression Freedberg 15 (Sydney, Deputy Editor @ Breaking Defense, 10/23, "Mixed Messages? Navy Welcomes Chinese In Mayport, Deters In Pacific," http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Zj_Aa0OExMwJ:breakingdefense.com/2015/10/mixed-messages-navy-welcomes-chinese-in-mayport-deters-in-pacific/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)WASHINGTON: Are we giving Beijing mixed messages? On the one hand, the US Navy is getting ready — maybe — to challenge Chinese claims around their artificial islets in the South China Sea. On the other hand, the Navy’s also preparing to welcome three Chinese warships at Naval Station Mayport in Florida two weeks from now, reportedly the first such port visit on the East Coast. Chinese officers will go into Jacksonville to visit City Hall and maybe even meet the mayor. The Navy considers all this normal activity, part of the complex balancing act of being a global superpower. Just this week, dozens of our officers visited the Chinese carrier Liaoning, as part of a week-long trip that, itself, was in reciprocity for an earlier Chinese delegation’s tour of the US. Whatever disagreements we may have, it’s vital to keep military-to-military relations (“mil to mil”) close and vibrant between us and a rising power, admiral after admiral has said. Conservative Republicans aren’t so sure. We’re being a lot more open and welcoming with the Chinese, they say, than the Chinese are being with us — at a time when we should be pressing them on their bad behavior. “Military to military exchanges with China, like the one planned at Naval Station Mayport, hold promise for broader understanding between our nations,” said the Jacksonville congressman — and defense appropriator — Rep. Ander Crenshaw in a statement to Breaking Defense. “Over the long run, however, a display of goodwill must indicate transparency of mission around the globe and, in particular, a de-escalation of unwelcome movements in the South China Sea.” The chairman of the House seapower subcommittee, frequent Obama critic Randy Forbes, was much less restrained in his critique than Crenshaw. “It just puzzles me that the Chinese continue to ratchet up their aggressive behavior [–] the artificial structures that they trying to put out in the South China Sea [and] the reckless intercept of some of our planes [–] and yet the way we tend to respond to that is by rolling out the red carpet to them and giving them the key to the

city,” Forbes told me this afternoon. That sends Beijing a signal, he argued, that they can keep adding insult to injury and we’ll never push back. The signal’s even stronger because — despite a lot of talk — we haven’t yet taken action in the South China Sea to challenge the 12 nautical mile radius Beijing claims around its artificial islets. Said Forbes, “I hear one day they’re going to do it, one day they’re going to study it, another day they’re going to do it again.” “If it were up to me, I would have a direct correlation between Chinese behavior and the invites we give them on things that matter to them,” Forbes said. Given China’s bad behavior of late, he said, “ I would not reward them by giving them mil to mil contacts .”Conservatives oppose mil-to-mil coop with ChinaPavgi 15 (Kedar, M.A. candidate at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He was previously a Digital Editor at Defense One, and has worked at Government Executive, and Foreign Policy magazine, 8/5, "Here’s One Way the US-China Relationship Is Improving," http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2015/08/heres-one-way-us-china-relationship-improving/118865/?oref=d_brief_nl)There are other obstacles to an easy relationship. In 2000, Congress outlawed mil-to-mil contacts that might create a national security risk by exposing critical information. U.S. officials routinely bemoan a lack of transparency and reciprocity in exchanges, and an overly staged feel to mutual visits. Then there are the increasing points of friction between the countries: U.S. weapons sales and gestures of support for Taiwan, network breaches and data theft, even air and sea operations that bring U.S. and Chinese forces into proximity. Right now, the U.S. and China work together in several areas, including counterpiracy and counterterrorism missions in the Gulf of Aden. Chinese military officials also pay regular visits to U.S. military educational institutions, like the February visit that brought to the National Defense University a 12-person delegation led by Rear Adm. Li Ji, the head of the Ministry of National Defense Foreign Affairs. A senior defense official said that the mil-to-mil relationship has “sustained positive momentum over the past few years, deepening bilateral engagements and making progress developing risk reduction measures.” The two militaries have also worked alongside each other in humanitarian assistance exercises, but haven’t really cooperated extensively in them. Gregson says that he doesn’t “sense any willingness from the Chinese to increase their level of participation.” Many in Congress are dubious about such contacts as well. “Most people on Capitol Hill believe the Chinese get a whole lot more out of it than we do,” said Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., who has worked extensively on China policy. In Forbes’ estimation, the Pentagon has too long tried to build a relationship by hosting Chinese delegations, visits that produced little in return. Over the past year, he has tried to persuade then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and others to step back and assess what exactly the U.S. is getting for their efforts. “You have a lot of people at the Pentagon that just start saying, ‘The more contact we have, the better it is,” Forbes said. “We always have

to have metrics to measure whether our policies are working, and you can’t have a metric to measure if its working if you don’t know what the policy is.”

North KoreaPublic cares deeply about North Korea and the plan will be spun as “soft” on the DPRKGolan 15 (Shahar, Henry M. Jackson School of Int’l Studies at University of Washington – Chaired by Sorenson - Director Center for Korea Studies, Building a Pragmatic Coalition in American Politics, Rethinking United States Military Bases in East Asia, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Task Force - Winter 2015, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33275/Task%20Force%20E%202015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)Many de-facto political actors are voicing alternative policy today that is more hawkish towards the DPRK, for the most part from the political right wing. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that has strong influence in congress, has repeatedly made the argument that “North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism: We should designate them accordingly. Obama officials have stated on the record that the DPRK counterfeits US currency: We have never made a formal charge”, such vehement calls to place the DPRK on the list of state sponsors of terrorism are grounded on the belief, stated in this Heritage Foundation policy memo, “if we don’t get back to hurting them, they will keep on hurting us” (Bromund, 2015, n.p.). Similar echoes can be found in the American Enterprise Institute, another conservative think-tank, as it suggests, “The Obama administration must also drop the wishful thinking deriving from the Bush era that China will somehow put pressure on Pyongyang to rein in its destructive behavior…. Recent calls by former chief American negotiator Christopher Hill for a “strategic reengagement” with Beijing over the DPRK thus promise to lead the US down the same path of wishful thinking and being tactically outmaneuvered.” (Austin, 2015). Meanwhile the liberal American Security Project reflects far greater optimism for negotiations and soft power, suggesting “that there is a role that public diplomacy can play in North Korea to catalyze social change and advance US foreign policy objectives… properly directed outreach as a component of a coordinated overall smart power strategy may be able to help catalyze change.”(Mull, 2013, n.p.). Policy circles are proposing alternate options, with a clear divergence based on American political identification. This debate will only increase with the rethink of the military bases, and will highlight the different takes liberals and conservative generally hold towards the DPRK. The administration should expect members of congress to attack the reforms and use think-tank publications to propose alternate policy. Gries eloquently describes the fundamental factor in American attitudes towards the DPRK, he states that “surveys have consistently revealed that Americans feel coolest toward communist countries like North Korea and China” (n.p.). Focusing on divergence of opinion in the US, he claims “conservatives desire a tougher policy toward North Korea than liberals do in large part because they feel cooler towards communist countries and hence North Korea” (Gries, n.p.). This argument, evidenced in different media outlet portrayals of recent events, is crucial to understanding the sources of backlash to the rethink of the bases. These news articles provide an account of how liberals and conservatives in the US feel towards the DPRK specifically and Communism in general. Obama’s ending of the embargo on Cuba provided an interesting case study for Gries’s conclusion that conservatives are cooler towards communist courtiers. Responding to the recent opening to Cuba, Ana Quintana (2015) of the Heritage Foundation voiced her opposition stating that “President Obama’s new Cuba policy has been heavily criticized and rightfully so,” insisting that “Congress must make sure that US policy continues to support civil society groups on the island that uphold US values and are unaffiliated with the Castro regime and its communist ideology” (n.p.). In contrast, there are analysts who argue that complete embargos have not proven successful. Nicholas Kristof (2014) argues for the lifting of the embargo because he believes that people traveling across countries spread ideas that combat leftist sentiment (n.p.). This phenomenon can reform non-inclusive political and economic regimes better than hawkish policies (n.p.). He begins his article with criticism for the hawks in politics, recounting, “When I hear hawks denouncing President Obama for resolving to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease the embargo, I don’t understand the logic. Is their argument that our policy didn’t work for the first half-century but maybe will work after 100 years?;” he proceeds to call for “hordes of them [American tourists in Cuba], giggling at ancient cars held together with duct tape, or comparing salaries with Cubans” (n.p.). The divergence of opinion between Kristof and Quintana regarding policies towards communist Cuba is consistent with the argument that liberals are warmer towards communist states. This assessment can be seen in other recent events as well. On the same day the embargo on Cuba ‘ended,’ another communist regime, the DPRK and the Sony hacking saga, dominated headlines and grabbed US attention . While criticizing the DPRK’s hacking into Sony and calling for a response to it from the Obama administration, Jonathan D. Pollack (2014), writing for the left-of-center Brookings Institute, remarks that “Sony’s decision to produce a film about a US-sponsored scheme to assassinate the DPRK’s leader, Kim Jong-un, was remarkably foolish; President Obama acknowledged as much” (n.p.). Writing for the conservative Weekly Standard Blog, William Kristol (2014) had a drastically different tone in his response to the Sony Affair: The surrender to North Korea is a historical moment. It's far more significant than President Obama's announcement the same day of his opening toward Cuba. That is merely another sign of an administration's strategically weak and morally rudderless foreign policy. The capitulation to North Korea could be—unless we reverse course in a fundamental way—a signpost in a collapse of civilizational courage. (n.p.) Reports following the hacking scandal in the Washington Post quoted a senior American diplomat saying “we want to test if they [North Korean regime] have an interest in resuming negotiations”, and a proposition for Pyongyang to postpone missile tests if the US cancelled joint exercise with the ROK; this prompted varying responses in conservative and liberal media outlets (Fified, 2015, n.p.). An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claimed that, The last time the Administration made a diplomatic overture… North responded with a ballistic missile launch … That is all the more reason for the … [US to] adopt a policy of regime change through coercive financial sanctions, support for North Korean refugees and dissidents, and enhanced deterrence on the Korean peninsula. (Review & Outlook, 2015) Meanwhile, an editorial in the NYT objected to the rejectionist attitude displayed in the Wall Street Journal, arguing, “It’s hard to understand what America would lose by testing the North’s intentions once again, especially as China may be ready to be a more responsible partner in finding a solution” (The Editorial Board, 2015, n.p.). These varying views and calls to action show that political ideology is a factor in Americans stances towards the DPRK, and portrays that Gries’s assertion is visible in media debates in the most recent of times. From the above analysis regarding Congressional actions, think-

tank proposals, and media opinions in the US toward the DPRK, it is clear that it is a topic of controversy in US domestic politics. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Republican policy makers are likely to attack the administration, framing the rethink as not harsh enough on the DPRK.

Clinton will take the blame – GOP wants to use North Korea as a referendum on the Dems Reuters 1/6/16 (James Oliphant & Doina Chiacu, “North Korea bomb claim a new challenge for Clinton campaign,” http://news.yahoo.com/republicans-blame-obama-urge-china-curb-north-korea-145314298.html)To Republican U.S. presidential contenders, North Korea’s claim that it tested a hydrogen bomb may

further make the 2016 race what they dearly want it to be: a referendum on President Barack Obama's foreign policy and, by extension, Hillary Clinton’s. For months, these Republicans have liked to say the world is "on fire," pinning the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, and the recent tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia on Obama’s administration and Clinton’s stint as his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Now, they can add North Korea to the threats they say face American voters. "When China fell to the communists (in 1949), the question that dogged the Truman administration was: 'Who lost China?'" said John Feehery, a Republican strategist. "The question that will dog the Democrats is: Who lost North Korea?" "They’ve been a headache for every Democrat. They’ve been a headache for every Republican," Michael Rubin, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said of the North Koreans. "North Korea may be the last remaining foreign policy quagmire that hasn't been politicized in a partisan fashion." That does not mean Republican candidates did not try on Wednesday after North Korea's announcement. They said Obama's foreign policy let North Korea bolster its nuclear arms capabilities, and also assigned blame to Clinton. "Three out of the four nuclear detonations that the North Koreans have done have happened on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's watch," New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told Fox News, "and they have just not acted strongly at all around the world." Clinton condemned North Korea's move as "dangerous and provocative," and said the U nited States should respond with more sanctions and stronger missile defenses. She also defended her performance as Obama's top diplomat. "As secretary,

I championed the United States' pivot to the Asia Pacific - including shifting additional military assets to the theater - in part to confront threats like North Korea and to support our allies," Clinton said in a statement. "I worked to get not just our allies but also Russia and China on board for the strongest sanctions yet."

Interest groups ensure changes in policies towards the DPRK become hot-button issuesGolan 15 (Shahar, Henry M. Jackson School of Int’l Studies at University of Washington – Chaired by Sorenson - Director Center for Korea Studies, Building a Pragmatic Coalition in American Politics, Rethinking United States Military Bases in East Asia, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Task Force - Winter 2015, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33275/Task%20Force%20E%202015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)This chapter will look into the constraints that US domestic politics pose to the proposed policy reforms. A plethora of interest groups including ethnic lobbies and business communities, as well as political ideology and foreign policy outlook, pose constraints to American action in the Asia Pacific. This report will draw on academic work, publications of think tanks, actions of interest groups, public opinion surveys, and statements of influential US foreign policy thinkers to assess and predict how opposition to a policy rethink will manifest. The report concludes that the opponents of the reforms will perceive

current legislation as soft on the PRC and not harsh enough on the DPRK . After explaining the complications that US domestic politics pose, the paper will prospect areas of healthy support in the US. It will show how it is possible to create coalitions of support for the proposed reforms by utilizing American domestic preoccupation with the Middle East, the foreign policy outlook of 2016 candidates, interest groups, and existing calls for reforms in the US today.

Taiwan/Arms Sales Republicans will spin decreased support for Taiwan as soft on ChinaGolan 15 (Shahar, Henry M. Jackson School of Int’l Studies at University of Washington – Chaired by Sorenson - Director Center for Korea Studies, Building a Pragmatic Coalition in American Politics, Rethinking United States Military Bases in East Asia, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Task Force - Winter 2015, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33275/Task%20Force%20E%202015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)Sutter evaluates that unlike the executive branch, “the US Congress is much more open to and dependent on domestic American constituencies” (Shambaugh, p.103). Therefore, a more consistent fight against the reforms is likely to occur in both chambers of the legislative branch. Congress’ dependence on American constituencies causes it to be much more responsive to the interests of certain lobbying groups and public opinion. For example, the ‘pro-Taiwan’ lobby always has a stake in policy regarding US-China relations for fairly obvious reasons; likewise, some interest groups will attempt to influence policy in regards to topics that are not necessarily visibly correlated to their issue of concern. Colin Dueck (2010) explains this phenomena in his book Hard Line: The Republican Party and US Foreign Policy since World War II by arguing that “electoral coalitions in the United States come together across a broad range of issue, many of which have nothing to do with international relations at all;” this analysis brings to light how the reforms could draw criticisms from a coalition of interest groups, some not directly related to security (p.301). As this section alluded to earlier, the most likely source of opposition to reform will come from the Taiwan lobby. Sutter, as well as many other experts, have claimed that Taiwan is “the most sensitive and complex issue regarding US-China relations ”, and while Taiwan manages to maintain support in the US due to Taiwan-interest lobby members of Congress, this complicates US policy towards the ROC (Sutter, p.138). In his Foreign Affairs article “Diplomacy Ink: the influence of lobbies on US foreign policy,” John Newhouse (2009) claims that “for years, the lobby that promoted Taiwanese interests, known simply as the China lobby, was the superpower of lobbies representing foreign causes in the United States” (p.90). The lobby, with its strong hold on Congress, has previously managed to complicate the US’ pursuit of improved relations with the PRC. For example, the State Department legal adviser during Carter’s administration, when commentating on the Taiwan Relations Act, said, “We were not as Taiwan-oriented as the Senate Foreign Relations committee” attributing that to “[a] lot of provisions that were cranked into the bill once it got there were… Taiwan-favoring positions.” (Tucker, 2011, p.119). In more recent times, with the aid of the Taiwan lobby, “many in Congress and among the Republican presidential aspirants criticized President Obama’s decision not to sell F-16 Fighters despite strong requests from Taiwan’s president” (Tucker, 2011, p.252). In its pursuit of cooler measures towards the PRC, the Taiwan lobby could find an ally in labor unions in the US. Labor unions that fight for workers’ rights in the US see the ‘world factory’—the PRC—as an adversary to their cause. Sutter notes this can be seen in “think tanks associated with organized labor in the United States [that] have tended to call for tougher policies against perceived unfair Chinese trade and economic policies” (Shambaugh, p.122). A security deal that is set to improve US-China relations will be seen as a source of improvement in trade between the two states. Although they are not natural stakeholders on a debate about national security, labor unions are likely to lobby Congress against reforms alongside the Taiwan lobby.

Generic China LinksRepublicans will spin increased engagement as soft on ChinaGolan 15 (Shahar, Henry M. Jackson School of Int’l Studies at University of Washington – Chaired by Sorenson - Director Center for Korea Studies, Building a Pragmatic Coalition in American Politics, Rethinking United States Military Bases in East Asia, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Task Force - Winter 2015, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33275/Task%20Force%20E%202015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)Another factor that one cannot dodge when debating American foreign policy or USChina relations in particular is political ideology. Dueck explains that electoral needs caused the Republican Party “by the time of the

Korean War to become more hawkish than Democrats—a position they have never relinquished”, and concludes that “today as before, a hawkish American nationalism forms the center of gravity of the Republican Party, especially in its conservative base, when it comes to foreign policy issues” (Dueck, p.307). Focusing specifically on the China debate, Peter Heyes Gries (2014) argues in his book “The Politics of American Foreign Policy: how ideology divides liberals and conservative over foreign affairs” that “Conservatives desire a tougher China Policy than liberals do… because on average

they maintain much more negative attitudes towards communist countries in general and the Chinese government in particular” (n.p.). Meanwhile, when regarding the other political opposition, Gries infers that “the anti-China advocacy of Big Labor has likely counteracted the greater liberal warmth towards China within the Democratic Party” (n.p.). It becomes revealed that a clear divergence between general attitudes of Republican and Democrat voters when it comes to China, with the former preferring cooler relations. Therefore the rethink of the military bases is likely to be spun as soft on China, especially in conservative circles, and used to berate Democrats for caving to Chinese aggression.No risk of a link turn – negativity bias means China will always be spun negatively Golan 15 (Shahar, Henry M. Jackson School of Int’l Studies at University of Washington – Chaired by Sorenson - Director Center for Korea Studies, Building a Pragmatic Coalition in American Politics, Rethinking United States Military Bases in East Asia, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Task Force - Winter 2015, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33275/Task%20Force%20E%202015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)Finally, another constraint regarding the PRC is general American public opinion towards the East Asian country. Sutter explains that “American Public opinion remains more negative than positive regarding the policies and practices of China, but it is not in a position, as it was in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown, to prompt serious negative change in American China policy”( Shambaugh, p.117). While public opinion in the US regarding the PRC has soften since the early 1990’s, the general distaste for Chinese actions lead politicians to pursue populist rhetoric at times in order to appease public sentiment . Sutter points that this can be seen in the media that “reflected trends in American public opinion in demonstrating a continuing tendency to highlight the negative implication of Chinese developments for American interests and values” (Shambaugh, p.118). While American public opinion, as Sutter points out, is not a

position to strongly affect American actions towards the PRC, it could provide further motivation for politicians to use harsh rhetoric against the PRC.

DA Link Turns the Aff – 2ncThe link turns the aff – electoral backlash causes misunderstandings that deck bilateral cooperation Wang 3/24/16 (Zheng, Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies and an Associate Professor in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, "How the Chinese See U.S. Elections: Three Myths," https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/116/how-the-chinese-see-us-elections-three-myths/)China, long a hot topic in U.S. presidential elections, is one of the few countries frequently mentioned in American presidential candidates’ speeches and debates, very often as the target of attack. And, although

electoral issues have changed many times over the past two or three decades, the China topic has remained resolute. Different candidates from different times blame China for the exact same things: the trade deficit, currency manipulation, job losses, and human rights and foreign policy problems. Current candidates have, not unlike their predecessors, taken to criticizing the present president for being soft on China and for being overrun by the Chinese. On the other side of the Pacific, people in China have been watching the U.S. elections with great interest. However, U.S. opinions of the way the Chinese themselves perceive these accusations against China are often misguided. Here are three major myths in the U.S. regarding how the Chinese see themselves and the U.S. elections. Myth 1: The Chinese agree China is the winner in terms of trade. Reality: Many Chinese consider trade with the U.S. to be unequal, unfair, and even harmful to their country. Though U.S. candidates talk about the trade deficit with China, many Chinese actually believe that China is the victim of trade with the U.S., as China’s exports to the U.S. are mainly cheap products and raw materials that produce low profits, and its imports from the U.S. are normally expensive high-tech products that generate huge profits for American corporations. For example, to buy a Boeing aircraft, China has to export hundreds of millions of shirts. And an Apple phone that is manufactured in China results in only 4 US dollars in profit for the factory in China, while Apple reaps huge financial benefits from the Chinese market. Amidst all of China’s manufacturing focus, the country pays a high price for environmental pollution. China also pays a high societal price. According to Chinese government statistics from 2014, 168 million migrant workers moved from the countryside in Central and Western China to coastal areas to find factory jobs. As these migrant workers cannot afford to have their families living together in the coastal areas, they end up leaving 61 million children at home. Families are forced to separate, causing many social problems. Many Chinese citizens and economists alike agree that trade and globalization have brought China some profits, but that American corporations are the ones taking home the majority of the earnings while China is left to suffer the negative environmental and societal consequences that accompany this trade. A popular opinion in China is that the low income and middle class societies in the U.S. are only able to maintain their living standards due to trade with China, and that China’s low wages, low human rights, and sparse environmental regulations have made the low prices of these products possible. Additionally, China’s trade surplus and the world’s highest reserves of foreign currency have also provided the government with huge resources to buy the loyalty of elites and to control and suppress any internal opposition. Myth 2: The Chinese also see China as an aggressor in the foreign policy arena. Reality: Many Chinese see China as a victim and believe their government is not tough enough on foreign policy. Where people outside China tend to see China’s recent foreign policy behavior as that of an aggressive bully, most Chinese actually see themselves as the victims. Consider the case of the South China Sea: Outsiders often disagree with China’s maritime claims, but the Chinese genuinely believe that their claims are based on history and are valid. In fact, generations of Chinese students have been taught this position in their history and geography textbooks. Because of this, many believe that China’s neighbors have long been violating China’s sovereignty, rights, and interests in the South China Sea. To some extent, the government’s aggressiveness is a response to the rise of popular nationalism at home, which is heavily influenced by education and social discourse. Myth 3: The Chinese admire the U.S. electoral system. Reality: Not exactly. Many Chinese people actually consider U.S. elections to be rather unsophisticated and ineffective. Many Chinese are not very impressed with the U.S. democratic election process. Though they do not really have the opportunity to watch the debates or listen to political discourse, they often hear about the negative aspects of the elections, such as the hostilities exchanged between candidates and the political rumors that encircle the race, from state-sponsored media. There are two popular ideas commonly found in Chinese narratives regarding the U.S. elections. First, many Chinese people believe that a few politically connected families and business tycoons manipulate the elections. As it turns out, this year’s discussion about establishments and the emergence of Donald Trump are actually supporting this assumption. Many Chinese think that the U.S. democratic system only offers Americans choices between a few candidates, and that most of those candidates are representatives of the establishment. They feel, in other words, that America’s is not a true democracy. The second idea is that the U.S. system selects candidates with good public speaking skills and personal appeal, rather than those with experience and capability. Some Chinese scholars openly publish articles describing how the Chinese system of selecting state leaders is more advanced and effective than its American counterpart. China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, is often held up as an example. Before he became president, Xi experienced a full range of political positions, including county chief, mayor, governor of a province, and chief of Shanghai (China’s largest city). The five years he spent as China’s vice president served as the final stage of his training. Over this period of time, he gained intensive training in foreign policy and operation of the party and central government. Not only does Xi possess this expertise, but so did each of his predecessors in the past three decades, as do most members of the top leadership echelon. So for many people in China, it is unthinkable that someone like Barack Obama, who had only one term in the U.S. Senate under his belt and had no foreign policy experience, was chosen to run an entire country and become president of the world’s leading nation. It should be noted, however, that while people are proud of the Chinese system, they forget that, in recent decades, almost every time China's top leadership has gone through a power transition, it actually caused fierce internal power struggles, the consequences of which always took lengthy periods of time to overcome. The reality, then, is this: U.S.-China relations have become arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the international system, so it is critical for people from both sides to better understand each other, including their political systems. If individuals always use their own institutional and cultural experiences to interpret the other side, misunderstandings and misjudgments will become inevitable . When U.S. presidential candidates blame China for many issues, it often signifies an oversimplification of complicated trade and foreign policy

issues. When they attempt to use China as a scapegoat, they create obstacles that make it more difficult for people to identify the real problems that face the country. At the same time, the Chinese should also avoid using their own institutional and cultural experiences to interpret the other side, otherwise misunderstandings will become inevitable.

China-bashing in elections hurts bilateral cooperationCarpenter 15 (Ted Galen, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and is the author of nine books in addition to more than 550 articles and policy studies on international issues, 8/31, "China: The Mishandled Issue in the U.S. Presidential Election Campaign," http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/china-mishandled-issue-us-presidential-election-campaign)What we are witnessing is a repetition of the usual quadrennial spectacle regarding relations with China. In presidential campaign after presidential campaign, candidates (especially those representing the party not controlling the White House) either neglect the issue or play the role of demagogue. In the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan criticized Jimmy

Carter’s administration for “abandoning” Taiwan and establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing . Twelve years later, candidates Bill Clinton and Ross Perot vied with each other to accuse President George H. W. Bush of being too soft on China. Repeatedly citing the Tiananmen Square bloodshed, Clinton referred to Chinese leaders as “the butchers of Beijing.” During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush viewed China as a worrisome “strategic competitor,” rather than an economic partner of the United States. The good news is that once in office the new presidents continued the responsible, pragmatic policies toward China first developed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The inflammatory campaign rhetoric was quickly discarded. That will likely be the case this time as well. The bilateral economic relationship is simply too valuable to jeopardize by imprudent White House actions. But campaign posturing, even if not meant seriously, creates needless suspicions and resentment in U.S.-China relations . Presidential candidates need to remember that preserving a cordial relationship with China must be a top U.S. foreign policy priority. Bilateral cooperation enables China and the United States to foster global strategic stability and economic prosperity. Conversely, a breakdown of the relationship would lead to unpleasant and possibly catastrophic global consequences . Policy toward China is far too important for candidates either to ignore or demagogue. Unfortunately, the current crop of presidential aspirants seems determined to do one or the other.

Internal Links/Answers To Common Args

FoPo Focus Hurts Dems – 2ncThe plan creates clear contrast between the parties on national security --- allowing it to swing the electionAmble 1/28/16 (John, former U.S. Army intelligence officer and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, AND PhD candidate at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College London, “We Still Don’t Know if Foreign Policy Matters in the Presidential Election,” http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/we-still-dont-know-if-foreign-policy-matters-in-the-presidential-election/)So wait, is this a foreign policy election or not? Good question, one that Elizabeth Saunders sought to answer this week in The Washington Post. One reason voters sometimes don’t support candidates based on foreign policy issues, even when they profess to be concerned with them, is because the divides between candidates’ positions can be less stark than on issues like, say, taxes and social welfare policy: “Consider Vietnam and the 1968 election … [when] most individuals’ votes were not based on Vietnam — because there was little difference between the public positions taken by Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. … That’s potentially true in 2016 as well. The most likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, has taken more hawkish foreign policy positions than many recent Democratic candidates, presumably bringing her positions closer to the more traditionally hawkish Republican side.” Democratic candidates avoiding foreign policy While the GOP field is happy to talk about national security and foreign policy issues, the Democrats (as we’ve noted before) are simply not interested. For Buzzfeed, Zack Beauchamp talked to Democratic foreign policy wonks who aren’t happy about that. Some of the highlights: Heather Hurlburt, New America Foundation: “The discussion of national security in the presidential debate is terrible. You sit around and say, ‘If only they would talk more about our issues in the context of the presidential campaign,’ and then they do. Just be careful what you wish for.” Matt Duss, Foundation for Middle East Peace: “Whenever there’s a crisis, Democratic leaders scramble to make statements about what we should do. But there’s a failure to constantly articulate a progressive vision for foreign policy.” Rachel Kleinfeld, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Hillary is probably a little more interventionist than the Democratic base would like. Bernie Sanders is closer to where the Democratic base is … [but] that’s not the message he wants his campaign to be about. Although Clinton is kind of an exception To be fair, in this week’s Democratic town hall hosted by CNN, Clinton did spend a lot of time tackling foreign policy issues, especially compared to her two opponents. She addressed the Iranian nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Islamic State, radicalization, and Benghazi. But as Frida Ghitis writes for CNN, “there was, however, a downside for Clinton. …

The once seemingly inevitable Democratic nominee opted to tie herself ever more closely to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Indeed, come the general election, Clinton’s full-throated defense of the controversial Iran deal and other foreign policy choices will make it that much harder to distance herself from the broader historic catastrophe of the unraveling of the Middle East that has unfolded during Obama’s watch.”

The plan allows Republicans to draw a significant contrast with Dems --- helps foreign policy influence the electionSaunders 1/26/16 (Elizabeth, assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, “Will foreign policy be a major issue in the 2016 election? Here’s what we know,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/26/will-foreign-policy-be-a-major-issue-in-the-2016-election-heres-what-we-know/Does foreign policy affect how voters decide who to vote for and who gets elected? The consensus is that foreign policy generally has little effect on elections, as Brendan Nyhan pointed out after the Paris attacks (see also Dan Drezner here and here). Of course, foreign policy can matter in elections. But it’s hard for a politician to sway large numbers of voters based on foreign affairs . [Think you can predict the election? Join our 2016 Forecasting Tournament.] Why? Some issues are simply not salient enough: on trade, for example, research by Alexandra Guisinger found that voters did not hold their senators accountable for votes on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Another challenge is that a candidate must be able to draw a significant contrast with the other party . That may mean taking a popular position that the opposition cannot easily match (as Lynn

Vavreck comments). Consider Vietnam and the 1968 election. Benjamin Page and Richard Brody found that despite the apparently high salience of the war, most individuals’ votes were not based on Vietnam — because there was little difference between the public positions taken by Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. That’s potentially true in 2016 as well. The most likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, has taken more hawkish foreign policy positions than many recent Democratic candidates, presumably bringing her positions closer to the more traditionally hawkish Republican side. Basing a vote on foreign policy can be difficult because candidates often have an incentive to be vague, as Humphrey and Nixon were in 1968. In 2015 and 2016, the Republican candidates have been long on talk of “toughness” but short on specifics. This can build broad primary support, but isn’t likely to produce sharply contrasting positions between the parties.

GOP candidates will rhetorically weaponize the plan using it against Hillary as a sign of vulnerability and to make all other issues secondaryHarris 2016 (Peter, Prof of political science @ Colorado State U, "President Obama’s Partisan Foreign Policy," Jan 26, nationalinterest.org/feature/president-obamas-partisan-foreign-policy-15019?page=2)The political scientist V.O. Key once wrote that “latent” public opinion is the only type of public opinion that government officials truly care about. Politicians do not cater to audiences in the here and now, he suggested, but rather are focused on engineering positive endorsements of their policies among people in the future. Indeed, leaders are quite willing to tolerate poor approval ratings because there is always a hope—an expectation, even—that posterity will bring absolution. Given his standing in the polls, President Barack Obama can probably be counted among those politicians who have put their faith in vindication by future generations. But Obama will have to wait a long time before anything close to a unanimous verdict on his legacy can emerge—let alone a positive one. This is especially true in the realm of foreign affairs, where Obama’s agenda has been thoroughly partisan and divisive—pleasing to Democrats but anathema to Republicans. When it comes to Obama’s record on foreign policy, Republicans smell blood. Indeed, it has been a staple for the party’s presidential hopefuls to accuse Obama of weakness on national security, with his failure to “defeat” the Islamic State, the resurgence of Russia as a bona fide power on the world stage, the nuclear deal with Iran—along with the attendant worsening of relations with Israel—and the looming rise of China being among the most common lines of attack. Earlier this month, the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina offered a window into how the party is using foreign policy to sully Obama and the Democrats. Riled up over the seizure of U.S. sailors by Iran two days prior, the assembled GOP contenders fell over themselves to castigate the president for allowing the country and members of its armed forces to be humiliated by a sworn adversary. Ted Cruz led the charge. “I give you my word,” he declared, “[that] if I am elected president, no serviceman or servicewoman will be forced to be on their knees in any nation that captures our fighting men and women. We’ll field the full force and fury of the United States of America.” The detainees had already been released by the time this grandstanding took place. And the truth is that the sailors had only been held by Iran’s forces because they had wrongly strayed into Iranian waters. More sober critics of President Obama were probably correct to avoid politicizing the issue; Nikki Haley, for example, wisely declined to invoke the crisis in her response to the president’s State of the Union. Yet the overreaction of the GOP’s presidential candidates showed just how eager they are during this electoral cycle to weaponize the perception that Obama is weak on national security . What mattered to them were not the facts—that this was, in sum, a very minor encounter and certainly not a military crisis—but rather the political potential to make foreign policy a winning issue for the Republican Party come November. Listening to the Republicans, one would be forgiven for thinking that Obama’s entire foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. The Middle East is in flames, and only carpet bombing and U.S. boots on the ground can save it; Vladimir Putin has become such a threat to U.S. interests that it is now worth shooting down his planes over Syria; and world leaders from Tehran to Beijing to Mexico City spend their days guffawing over American stupidity. But this is not how everybody in domestic politics views Obama’s record on international issues, of course. On the contrary, loyal members of the president’s electoral coalition have solid reasons to judge his tenure in the White House as an incredible success story. After all, what Republicans denounce as weakness—namely, Obama’s reluctance to use U.S. military power abroad—is actually a major strength in the eyes of many Democrats. Obama secured the Democratic nomination and won the 2008 election partly on the back of his pledge to wind down the deeply unpopular war in Iraq. And if anything, the Democratic coalition seems to have grown more anti-war over the course of the Obama presidency, not less. Initially a proponent of ramping up the military effort in Afghanistan, for example, President Obama was encouraged early in his first term—not least of all by electoral concerns—to reduce the U.S. footprint in that country, as well as in Iraq. Especially after the killing of Osama bin Laden, Obama shifted his focus from defeating America’s enemies in battle to ending a decade of warfare in the Middle East. The wisdom of retrenchment in Iraq and Afghanistan is open to debate, of course, given the worsening security situation in both countries. But the goal of extricating the United States from foreign wars remains in vogue among Democrats. So does avoiding future wars. Consider John Kerry’s remarks in response to Iran’s implementation of the controversial nuclear deal. “I think we have also proven once again why diplomacy has to always be our first choice, and war our last resort,” he said. “And that is a very important lesson to reinforce. We have approached this challenge with the firm belief that exhausting diplomacy before choosing war is an imperative. And we believe that today marks the benefits of that choice.” The implicit claim is that, under a different president, the United States could well have found itself embroiled in open warfare with Iran. But thanks to Obama’s steady hand and strategic foresight, diplomacy has proven sufficient to meet the objectives of keeping America safe and maintaining security in the Persian Gulf. Diplomacy pays. Militarism does not. Diplomacy is also bearing fruit in Cuba, Obama’s supporters might say. Tough talk, economic blockade and the assassination plots of yesteryear have done nothing to advance the U.S. goal of regime change in Havana. In stark contrast, Obama’s approach brings new hope that the two countries can mend their bilateral relations and that, in time, the Cuban government will either reform or be replaced by its own people. Elsewhere, too, diplomacy appears to have paid dividends. Although it has a much lower profile in U.S. domestic politics than the attempted rapprochements with Iran and Cuba, for example, Obama’s opening to Burma has seen that country edge towards democratization and an improvement of its human rights record (even if Obama’s support for democratic reforms in other countries—Egypt and Bahrain spring to mind—has been mixed). On the environment—a central issue for many in the Democratic coalition—Obama can claim to have delivered the Paris Agreement on tackling climate change, a marked improvement on previous global compacts, as well as ensuring that China plays its part in curbing carbon emissions. He has done so in the teeth of bitter Republican opposition, of course, which makes his legacy on the environment particularly vulnerable to partisan disagreement. And then there is the question of American leadership of the global economy under the Obama administration. It is sometimes easy to forget just how fragile things were in January 2009 when Obama first took office, but it is surely a non-trivial achievement that, seven years later, an open world economy has survived relatively intact, with most major world powers having eschewed the sort of beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies that characterized the interwar period. It is clear, then, that the Obama foreign policy has given groups within the Democratic coalition plenty to be happy about: diplomatic solutions that have reduced reliance on militarism, the promise of improved relations with some longstanding adversaries and achievements in the realms of climate, human rights and trade. And indeed, Democrats are much more likely to rate

Obama favorably as a world leader. The cost of these achievements has been to reject the militarist and macho brand of foreign policy that plays well with hawkish voters, the result being that Obama has little chance of being remembered as a strong commander-in-chief. He will have to live with his detractors’ attempts to blame him for turmoil in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere; his legacy will long be tarnished by accusations of weakness, appeasement and misplaced priorities. In his new book, The Obama Doctrine, Colin Dueck notes that President Obama achieved a very rare thing during the 2012 presidential election by turning foreign policy into a “winning issue” for the Democrats. An aggressive foreign policy of targeting terrorists that culminated in the death of bin Laden, a new start with some of America’s former adversaries and a seemingly imminent end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—all of these things made it hard for Mitt Romney to land punches on the sitting president when it came to foreign affairs. But this was a fleeting moment. Just four years later, foreign policy is back to being a highly politicized and utterly partisan issue. Worse still for Obama and his co-partisans, foreign policy an issue area that the Democrats are decidedly vulnerable over, especially given sustained Republican attacks on Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State. And so while Obama (like his predecessor before him) might well view posterity as some sort of coconspirator—a source of ultimate validation and vindication for foreign policies not appreciated in their time—his would-be successors in the Democratic Party can enjoy no such luxury. Future public opinion is the least of their worries.

Weak on foreign policy will give the GOP the electionKraushaar and Roarty 15 (Josh Kraushaar and Alex Roarty, politics editor for National Journal, b. senior political reporter for Roll Call, “GOP Poll: Foreign Policy, Not Economy, Voters’ Top Concern”, http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/2015/04/14/GOP-Poll-Foreign-Policy-Not-Economy-Voters-Top-Concern)A GOP poll is reinforcing Re pub lic an strategists’ con vic tion that foreign policy will be a major issue in 2016””one the party believes it can wield to its ad vant age against Democratic congressional candidates and Hillary Clinton. The internal survey, conducted by the GOP firm OnMessage, found that security issues ranked first on a list of top pri or it ies for voters, ahead of eco nom ic growth , fiscal responsibility, and moral issues, among others. A 22 per cent plur - al ity of all re spond ents ranked it as the top is sue, compared with 13 percent who listed economic growth as their top concern. (14 percent listed “fiscal responsibility” at the head of their list.) The poll was conducted March 23 to 25 for the Republican super PAC American Action Network, the John Boehnerlinked third party group that spent tens of millions of dollars last election aiding House Republican campaigns. The poll surveyed 1,400 people and has a margin of error of 2.6 percent. The findings confirm other surveys showing national security has spiked as a leading issue in the upcoming elec tions . In January, the Pew Research Center

found that, for the first time in five years, an equal share of voters rated de fend ing the U.S. against terrorism (76 percent) as important a policy priority as the economy (75 percent). Foreign policy moved down the list of public concerns following the 2008 financial crisis, but the polls are a sign the issue has returned with vigor to the public consciousness. And Republicans see the surveys as a sign that the issue is poised to help their candidates in an import-ant way for the first time since public opinion turned against the Iraq War after the 2004 election. “It really started before the [2014] election, as ISIS and their conquest really took center stage “¦ probably about midsummer, we started noticing that concerns about foreign affairs and defense were popping up,” said Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster who conducted the survey. “Honestly, we haven’t seen that since 2004 in any real significance. [It was present] in 2006, but obviously in a very negative way for Republicans.” Nonpartisan polls suggest that, as a political issue, foreign policy favors Republicans. The public gives President Obama low marks on the issue, according to a number of sur-

veys, and a February poll from Pew shows voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle foreign policy. The GOP has taken note. Attacking President Obama’s record on Israel and Iran is now one of the biggest applause lines for presiden-tial candidates. Republicans are now just as eager to scrutinize Hillary Clinton’s record as secretary of State as she is to promote it. And one of the targeted Republican senators up for reelection in 2016 already is telegraphing that he’s focusing on national security as his top campaign message. What’s more interesting than whether foreign policy will help the party next election, however, might be specifically the type of voters GOP strategists think it will help them with. After successive elections in which Democrats have focused their campaign strategy on winning big with women voters, Republican operatives believe raising questions about the Democrats’ handling of terrorism could help them push back. “If a bunch of those swing, often suburban, soft partisan or independent wo men are becoming more concerned about security is - sues, what does that do to [Clinton’s] ability to drive the gender splits they enjoyed in 2012?” Anderson said. “So there’s the big question. As foreign affairs and security issues grow, does this put a real wrench in their ability to drive a gender gap?” The rising import of foreign policy in today’s politics has sparked a de bate over wheth er for eign policy , despite its surge in polls, will really be such an im port ant is sue in 2016. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York, citing stagnant wage growth in the latest Labor Department data, suggested economic concerns still will rate No. 1 on the minds of voters come Election Day. It’s not an argument Anderson rejects: The pollster conceded that if the elec tion were held to mor row, the eco nomy would still be the most im port ant is sue . But he added that polling data shows that if events across the world con tin ue to get worse,

that could change. “The question is not wheth er eco nomy is go ing to fade as an issue, it’s whether oth er issues like foreign affairs or defense are going to surge,” he said. “We’re see ing evidence that a trend is building there, and it’s all built around fear over the in sec ur ity and chaos around the world right now, and if that just continues and some bad things happen, then it may become a voter determinative issue for a lot of voters in 2016.”

Obama Popularity Key to Clinton – 2ncObama’s approval ratings are increasing – that’s a KEY predictor for Dem success in 2016Klein 3/29/16 (Ezra, Political commentator @ Vox, citing Alan Abramowitz, Prof of Poli Sci @ Emory Univ., "This presidential campaign is making Americans like Obama — and that's good for Dems in November," http://www.vox.com/latest-news/2016/3/29/11326606/campaign-americans-like-obama)Political scientist Alan Abramowitz emailed over an interesting insight about the effect the presidential race is having on Barack Obama's numbers — and what that might mean in November: All the noise being made by the presidential campaign, especially by the Republican campaign, has taken attention away from what may turn out to be more significant for the general election — Barack Obama’s rising approval rating. Obama’s weekly approval rating in the Gallup tracking poll (I ignore the daily fluctuations which are largely meaningless) has risen to its highest level in many months — 53 percent approval vs. 44 percent disapproval for the past week. This is potentially very significant for the November election because much research, including my own, has found that the president’s approval rating is a key predictor of the election results even when the president is not on the ballot. Thus a very unpopular George W.

Bush probably doomed John McCain to defeat in 2008 no matter what happened during the campaign that year. A 53-44 approval-disapproval balance would give Democrats a good shot at keeping the White House even if they were not running against a badly divided Republican Party led by perhaps the most unpopular nominee in decades. So why has Obama’s approval rating been rising recently? Several factors may be involved including an improving economy but one of the most important [may] well be the GOP presidential campaign. The more voters see of the leading GOP candidates, the better Obama looks. Along these lines, it is probably not a coincidence that there has been an especially large jump in Obama’s approval rating among women which now stands at 58 percent.

Obama approval ratings key to Dem chances in 2016Bernstein 3/30/16 (Jonathan, Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics, "Commentary: Obama's rising popularity is good news for Democrats," http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-barack-obama-approval-rating-hillary-clinton-20160330-story.html)President Barack Obama's surging approval rating is becoming a major plot line of the 2016 election. Obama has reached 53 percent approval from Gallup, a three-year high, and he's been at or above 50 percent in that survey for four weeks. HuffPollster's aggregate of all current polls gives Obama an average approval rating of 49.2 percent, compared with 47.3 percent disapproval. He bottomed out in the first week of December at 44.1 percent, according to that estimate, so

he's gained five percentage points over an almost four-month sustained rally. That should help Hillary Clinton's chances in November. Current presidential approval, along with some measure of economic performance, both have strong effects on general election voting. They aren't perfect predictors, but they seem to make a difference. In the Gallup survey, Obama is now doing a little bit better than Ronald Reagan was in late March 1988. He's well behind Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton during their final years in the White House, and far ahead of George W. Bush.

A2 Clinton Not Tied to ObamaYes Clinton tied to Obama – she wants to ride his coattails – but NEW political controversies can impact her fortunesCollinson 5/7/16 (Stephen, Political Analyst @ CNN, "Barack Obama's last campaign," http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/07/politics/obama-hillary-clinton-last-campaign/)Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama's popularity is growing just in time for him to wage the final campaign of his political life. A CNN/ORC poll published Friday found Obama's approval rating at 51%. He's now been in positive territory since February -- the longest period since shortly after his re-election in 2012. And 49% of those polled say things in the

country are going very or fairly well -- up 7% since January. The late-term boost in popularity is good news for a President whose

achievements have often come at a heavy political price in a deeply partisan age. But it could be even better news for Hillary Clinton, who is preparing for a fierce general election clash with Donald Trump and may need to deploy a popular Obama to the campaign trail to drive up Democratic enthusiasm. Though Obama yet hasn't formally endorsed Clinton, who remains in a primary race against Bernie Sanders, he was eager Friday to take on Trump and preview his arguments for the fall. "We are in serious times and this is a really serious job," Obama said in his first news conference since Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee this week. "This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States." His remarks reflect the fact that though many Democrats and Republicans believe Clinton is favored to win given Trump's high negatives with key demographics, lack of political experience and controversial rhetoric, the White House will take nothing for granted. "Our view is that he will campaign and he will be out there like the nominee is having the race of their life," said a senior administration official on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking. "That is how you have to run in presidential elections." The GOP resistance to Donald Trump Hitting the stump for his chosen successor -- always a nostalgic moment for a President leaving office -- Obama will draw contrasts with the gains made in his presidency and what he believes Republicans, under Trump, would represent. 'Holes in his shoes' "There is no question that the President will be rolling up his sleeves and be out there quite a bit on the campaign trail in the summer and the fall," said White House Communications Director Jen Psaki. "He has already done quite a bit of fundraising. I think people can expect that he will get some holes in his shoes from the amount of campaigning he will do." Obama will likely spend time courting voters who twice backed his White House campaigns -- millennials, Latinos and African Americans -- all of whom Clinton needs in November. The President and his wife, Michelle, could be powerful advocates for Clinton in big cities in key swing states, like Cleveland, Miami and Denver, where Trump must cut into the Democratic vote to win the election. "President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are the two most popular elected and non-elected officials amongst minorities, particularly African Americans," said Tharon Johnson, a Georgia Democratic strategist who ran Obama's southern re-election campaign in 2012 and now backs Clinton. "President Obama will be able to speak to the minority community with not just rhetoric like Trump but with concrete successes like (Obamacare), the growth in the economy etc that will ignite that demographic," Johnson said. Johnson said Obama would also be an asset in uniting Democrats after a primary that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to pursue until the convention in July. "Mobilizing the Sanders wing of that party is something a sitting president like Obama who is popular with the base can probably do better than anyone," Johnson said. Given his improving approval ratings, Obama also plans to venture into more unexpected territory, White House aides said, including suburban areas and midwestern states. Such an itinerary could draw him into direct conflict with Trump, who will brandish a fiercely protectionist trade agenda in areas that he says have been hurt by economic competitors like China and the economy under Obama. Obama's potential to help There is every sign Clinton understands Obama's potential to help her. Although she has repeatedly said she's not running for

Obama's third term -- or that of her husband -- she has praised and defended the President in front of Democratic audiences. And having been on the inside when then-Vice President Al Gore spurned President Bill Clinton's offers of help in 2000, fearing fallout from his boss's personal dramas could be damaging, Clinton has special insight on the president-versus-candidate dynamic. But Obama's gaze is not just on the future that will unfold when he is an ex-politician. He has personal political business to get done as well. In some ways, Obama is a unique lame duck president as he is in significantly better positions than many of the term-limited presidents who preceded him. In 1988, Ronald Reagan was popular, but much of his political energy had been punctured by the Iran-Contra affair. And in his late 70s, he had none of the vigor that the younger Obama still retains -- despite his increasingly snowy hair. Bill Clinton, though personally popular when he left office, was still overshadowed politically by the impeachment drama and President George W. Bush's second term approval sank under the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the economic meltdown and never recovered. Spared such trials, these are heady and poignant times in the White House as the President basks in a political boost in the twilight of his term. "In my final year, my approval ratings keep going up. The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my

major," Obama joked at the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner last week. The unexpected Still, if there is one lesson of the Obama presidency, it is that the unexpected is usually just around the corner. A sudden game-changing event -- be

it a terror attack, global crisis or an unexpected economic slump -- could change the political weather.

A2 Clinton Doesn’t Take the BlameAny change in China policy exposes Clinton to political risk Rong 15 (Xiaoqing, New york based contributor @ Global Times, "Clinton may find it best to be quiet on China," 4/16, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/917207.shtml)China has become a fixed topic in US elections at state and federal level in recent years. Most of the sound bites are negative. And in many elections, candidates blame each other for being too soft on China. A Washington Post

editorial during the 2012 presidential election explained the reason wittily: "It's an iron law of US politics: You can't go wrong bashing China. Polls show the public believes that the US is losing jobs due to unfair economic competition from abroad, especially from China. And so, every four years, presidential candidates fall all over themselves promising to get tough on imports." Sometimes the Sinophobia can be stretched to an insane level. In 2013, when the now Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell was campaigning for re-election in Kentucky, his wife Elaine Chao, the Taiwan-born former secretary of labor in George W. Bush's administration, was attacked by supporters of his rival for being a "Chinese wife" who prompted her husband to "create jobs for China." Clinton doesn't want to be seen as "soft" on China. In her 2014 memoir Hard Choices, she called on other Asian countries to form an alliance so they could collectively stand up to China. She also criticized China's censorship. She mentioned a confrontation with a Chinese leader about Tibet. And she devoted a whole chapter to how the Americans helped Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist who went to the US Embassy in Beijing and then was allowed to leave China for asylum in the US. The attacks have continued. Clinton recently used her Twitter account to criticize China for detaining five feminist activists. But even this "tough on China" tone doesn't seem to have convinced her political opponents or even some of the people on her side. The alliance among smaller Asian countries she hoped to see is at best weak. And now it could be further dissolved with the establishment of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The "James Bond-style activity" of Chen's American saviors described in her book doesn't fit entirely with Chen's own account in his newly published autobiography in which he blamed the US for not fulfilling its promises to him. And the thorniest issue Clinton faces might be money. According to joint research of the Washington Examiner and watchdog Judicial Watch, during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, her husband, former president Bill Clinton, made $48 million from foreign countries for giving 215 speeches, including $1.7 million for giving four speeches in China or to Chinese-sponsored entities in the US. In addition, entities that have close ties to China donated between $750,000 to $1.75 million and the Clinton Foundation, the family's charitable organization. Clinton resigned from the board of the family foundation right after Sunday's announcement to avoid conflicts of interest. Still, her opponents will not easily let go of the opportunity to question her ethics. What may also be brought up in the process is Clinton's once close relationship to Chinese-American fundraiser Norman Hsu whose 2007 arrest for illegal fundraising prompted her to return $850,000 in campaign donations he helped to raise. Hsu was later indicted for fundraising fraud. In 1996, the Democratic National Committee also returned $360,000 in donations raised by questionable Taiwan-born fundraiser Johnny Chung for Bill Clinton's reelection campaign. Chung said he got some money from the mainland, which denied the connection. Clinton's campaign will reportedly cost $2.5 billion. The figure has already raised many eyebrows. There is no doubt Clinton has the ability to raise whatever she needs without crossing the line. But the astronomical spending will likely bring up all the money-related questions and memories and mean that Clinton has an incentive to keep her distance from China. Maybe. Clinton should keep in mind a warning from Henry Paulson. When asked at an event at the Asian Society on Monday what he'd like to hear the presidential candidates say about China, the former US treasury secretary quipped: " I'd like them to say as little as possible ."

A2 Can’t Swing the ElectionPublic panic over security can swing the electionCarswell 3/5/16 (Simon, Staff @ Irish Times, Quoting William Galston, an expert in governance at the Brookings Institution think tank, "Can anger put Donald Trump in the White House," http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/can-anger-put-donald-trump-in-the-white-house-1.2560361)Galston raises the phenomenon of the “October surprise” in the month leading to the election that could further upend this topsy-turvy election. “Let’s say Clinton has a nine- or 10-point lead at the beginning of October,” he says. “Then there is a major terrorist event: Isis gets a vote. I can think of all sorts of reasons why they would just love to have someone with Mr Trump’s declared positions on Muslims in the Oval Office. And if there is a security panic in the months before the election, frankly all bets are off. I don’t know what would

happen under those circumstances.” This imponderable, Galston says, could produce the nastiest October surprise ever.

A2 China Not Key to ElectionChina policy MATTERS – public cares deeply, empirically sparks huge fights in election yearsGolan 15 (Shahar, Henry M. Jackson School of Int’l Studies at University of Washington – Chaired by Sorenson - Director Center for Korea Studies, Building a Pragmatic Coalition in American Politics, Rethinking United States Military Bases in East Asia, University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Task Force - Winter 2015, https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33275/Task%20Force%20E%202015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)The China Factor In recent times China has become one of the most contentious issues regarding American foreign policy. Out of all issues concerning East Asia, China generates the greatest political attention in the US; American politicians frequently use the China card in foreign policy debate, especially during campaigns . The rethink

of the military bases will provide ammunition for critics of the administration who will try to spin the reform as soft on the PRC. In his book US-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present, Robert Sutter, an acclaimed China expert, describes the political environment of the US regarding China policy as “an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism

in American domestic politics over China policy,” setting the stage “ for often bitter and debilitating fights in US domestic politics over China policy in ensuing years that on balance are seen not to serve the overall national interests of the United States” (Sutter, 2013, p.81). Sutter’s observations show that electoral needs in the US often cause candidates to use harsher rhetoric and actions against the PRC than they believe are beneficial for the US . While many scholars have argued that administrations will ultimately favor pragmatic forward-moving relationships with the PRC, aspiring presidents have not been shy of criticism of the PRC leading up to presidential elections. This portrays how political maneuvering is needed to pursue policies that could be perceived as warm towards the PRC. Because of these domestic hurdles, US history has proven a pattern of presidents pursuing forward-moving, pragmatic relations with the PRC after a campaign of harsh rhetoric pointed at the Asian state.

A2 China Lobby/Business LobbyNo turn – policy changes put the Dems on the defensive and the business lobby HATES China nowSevastopulo and Donnan 15 (Demetri and Shawn, Washington Correspondents @ Financial Times, 8/26, "Republicans line up for potshots at China," http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ced1bce8-4baa-11e5-a089-1a3e2cd1819b.html#axzz49gbNsW5i)China has long served as a bogeyman in US presidential elections. Whether Bill Clinton referring to the “butchers of Beijing” in reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre, George W Bush attacking Mr Clinton for being soft on China or Mr Obama touting the need for alliances to challenge Beijing, US presidential contenders have long lambasted China while vowing to take a tougher stance than the White House incumbent if

elected president. But some analysts say China is sparking a different degree of anger now for several reasons: its growth as an economic power, its assertive actions in the South China Sea, rampant cyber attacks, theft of intellectual property rights and the creation of a climate that is less welcoming to foreign business. Frank Jannuzi, president of the Mansfield Foundation, which promotes US-Asia relations, said there had been a bipartisan consensus since Richard Nixon went to China in 1972 that the US would

profit by engaging the country. But he said the consensus had almost unravelled because companies had become “increasingly disenchanted” with China. Trump throws out reporter and the rule book Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during the first Republican presidential debate at the Quicken Loans Arena Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) When Donald Trump evicted an influential Latino reporter from a press conference on the campaign trail in Iowa, it fuelled concerns that his perceived war on Hispanics is damaging the Republican party’s chances of reclaiming the White House in 2016. Continue reading “In Washington there has always been a debate between the China hawks and the Panda-huggers. The balance keepers used to be business,” said Mr Jannuzi, who advised Joe Biden in his 2008 run to be the Democrats’ nominee for president. “You are going to see many presidential candidates view China’s moment of economic turmoil as an opportunity to push them . . . because they can combine the anxiety of the American people about the way China’s economy could hit their retirement accounts with the anxiety that has long been there in elite policy circles about China’s international policy behaviour.” Chris Johnson, a former top China analyst at the CIA, said the rhetoric on China was “different from the standard stuff” because Beijing refused to address US concerns on issues such as cyber security. “The comments from Walker and the others are irresponsible,” said Mr Johnson. “But it does put the administration on the defensive . . . 

because they will have to go hard on these issues.” Mr Johnson added that China had become a victim of its own success and could not rely on the “hide your strength, bide your time” strategy promoted by Deng Xiaoping. “Suddenly these guys who were doing well, but doing well invisibly, are out there in a way that they weren’t before. They’re an easy target.” The China-bashing has implications for Mr Obama, who spent much of this year deflecting demands from Capitol Hill to include binding provisions to prevent currency manipulation in a Pacific Rim trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

China lobby is weak and US businesses are anti-China nowDrezner 10 (Daniel, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a senior editor at The National Interest, "The Death of the China Lobby?" 7/20, http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/07/20/the-death-of-the-china-lobby/)Obama could be right, but on one key dimension his bargaining hand will actually be stronger than those of past presidents. China, by continuing to alienate and frustrate western multinational corporations, is also effectively weakening the strongest pro-China lobbies in both Washington and Brussels. As Rachman notes: Were it not for the power of big business, the relationship between the US and China might have gone sour years ago. There are forces on both sides of the Pacific – Chinese nationalists, American trade unionists, the military establishments of both countries – that would be happy with a more adversarial relationship. For the past generation it has been US multinationals that have made the counter-argument – that a stronger and more prosperous China could be good for America. So it is ominous, not just for business but for international politics, that corporate America is showing increasing signs of disillusionment with China…. In the past, American business has acted as the single biggest constraint on an anti-Chinese backlash in the US. If companies such as GE, Google and Goldman Sachs qualify their support for China or refuse to speak up, the protectionist bandwagon will gather speed. The Chinese government, of course, is not stupid. China’s growing confidence in dealing with the US, and the world in general, is still matched by a cautious desire to avoid conflict. At strategic moments, the Chinese government is likely to make tactical concessions – whether on Google or the currency – in an effort to head off a damaging conflict with the US. But with American business and the American public increasingly restive, the risks of miscalculation are growing. And here I must dissent from Rachman. In some ways, I do think the Chinese government has been pretty stupid over the past year in executing its "Pissing Off As Many Countries As Possible" strategy. China rankled the Europeans over its climate change diplomacy at Copenhagen. For all of Beijing’s bluster, it failed to alter U.S. policies on Tibet and Taiwan. It backed down on the Google controversy. It overestimated the power that comes with holding U.S. debt. It alienated South Korea and Japan over its handling of the Cheonan incident, leading to joint naval exercises with the United States — exactly what

China didn’t want. It’s growing more isolated within the G-20. And, increasingly, no one trusts its economic data. This doesn’t sound like a government that has executed a brilliant grand strategy. It sounds like a country that’s benefiting from important structural trends, while frittering away its geopolitical advantages. Alienating key supporters in the country’s primary export markets — and even if Chinese consumption is rising, exports still matter an awful lot to the Chinese economy — seems counterproductive to China’s long-term strategic and economic interests.

A2 Other Issues Outweigh2016 will be about foreign policy—laundry list of threatsMcPike 6/21 (Erin McPike-Political reporter Huffington Post, “Democrats Are Ceding Foreign Policy Too Early in the 2016 Election”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-mcpike/democrats-are-ceding-fore_b_7632524.html ,06/21/2015 4:53 pm EDT, N.G.)There's a decent chance the 2016 presidential election will be about national security. If that's the case, recent spin by Democratic pundits may undercut former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's campaign before it has much of a chance to establish itself. "I think foreign policy is a Republican base issue, which is why you see Republicans coming out of the gate talking about it," Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter said on NBC's Meet the Press on June 14. Challenged on that, she said, "It's a Republican establishment issue, and it always has been." Tell that to President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, former Maine Democratic Sen. George Mitchell, the Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, all the voters who opposed the Iraq war, all the veterans who support Democrats, the organization known as VoteVets.org, etc. From the rise of ISIS, to Russian President Vladimir Putin's chest-thumping, to Israel's struggles with the Palestinians, to the nuclear negotiations with Iran, to cybersecurity, trade, China's rise and tensions with North Korea, foreign policy has become all-consuming for the executive branch and will take up a huge chunk of the 45th president's time and energy.

A2 SCS Tensions Now ThumpChina won’t force the issue on the SCS now – they want to avoid it becoming an election issueHayton 4/9/16 (Bill, journalist with BBC World News and an Associate Fellow of the Asia Program at Chatham House. He is also the author of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia, named a book of the year by both The Economist and Foreign Affairs in 2014, "The South China Sea Disputes: Past, Present, and Future," http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/the-south-china-sea-disputes-past-present-and-future/)How do you expect the South China Sea dispute to develop in 2016? Is China likely to modify its South China Sea

policy? The Chinese government does not want to be a major topic of debate during the U.S. presidential election campaign, so the odds are that Beijing will try and keep things quiet in the South China Sea in 2016. The situation may heat up in June, however, with the expected results of the case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration between the Philippines and China. The next opportunity for escalation could be as soon as a few weeks after the new U.S. president is inaugurated. In early 2001, shortly after the inauguration of George W. Bush, there was the EP-3 incident off Hainan Island where Chinese aircraft deliberately challenged a U.S. spy plane. In March 2009, fairly soon after Obama was inaugurated, you had the Impeccable incident—again a deliberate challenge to U.S. activities in the South China Sea. So one scenario might be that in January 2017, after the next presidential inauguration, China could engineer another incident in the South China Sea with a U.S. ship or plane.

Clinton Good Impacts

Paris Talks/Warming – 1ncGOP president will undermine US follow through of Paris Deal --- key to check global climate changeAdler 12/16/15 (Ben, covers environmental policy and politics for Grist, with a focus on climate change, energy, and cities, “Republicans still hope to throw a wrench in the Paris climate deal,” http://grist.org/climate-energy/republicans-still-hope-to-throw-a-wrench-in-the-paris-climate-deal/)Republicans didn’t even wait for a global climate change deal to be struck in Paris to start undermining it. Last month, congressional Republicans were loudly discouraging other nations from signing onto any agreement, arguing that the U.S. won’t keep up its end of the bargain if a Republican wins the 2016 presidential election . And they passed bills that would repeal the Clean Power Plan, the new set of EPA restrictions on carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, which is the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s strategy for meeting its emissions targets under the Paris Agreement. While U.S. negotiators were hard at work in Paris trying to secure a deal, congressional Republicans kept working hard to make the U.S. look insincere. The House passed an energy bill that would expedite permitting for oil and gas projects such as pipelines and expand liquefied natural gas exports. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is running for president, held a hearing stuffed with climate science deniers, including one who Greenpeace revealed is on the fossil fuel industry’s payroll. Republicans in Congress have also voted to end the crude oil export ban as part of the budget deal. That policy change would be a giveaway to the oil industry that would increase domestic oil

production at the expense of the environment. Once a deal came out of Paris, naturally Republicans started criticizing it. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, complained — nonsensically, since he doesn’t even accept climate science in the first place — that the agreement does not hold countries such as China and India to strong enough standards. Anyway, he promises to interfere with any effort to meet our emissions targets or climate

finance commitments. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said President Obama “is ‘making promises he can’t keep’ and should remember that the agreement ‘is subject to being shredded in 13 months,’” according to the Associated

Press. As AP explains, “McConnell noted that the presidential election is next year and the agreement could be reversed if the GOP wins the White House .” The U.S. — as the world’s largest economy, largest historic polluter, and second-largest present-day carbon polluter — is an essential player in any functioning global climate agreement. Well aware of this, President Obama made a huge and largely successful effort on climate diplomacy

over the last year, crafting bilateral agreements with key nations such as China, India, and Brazil in order to lay the groundwork for an international deal. Republicans, knowing the importance of U.S. cooperation, are eager not only to kneecap any U.S. climate policy, but also to prevent global cooperation on climate change. Perhaps they fear that a future Republican president will face

more pressure from allies and trading partners to address climate change now that everyone else in the world has already committed to do so. So over the next five years, until the world comes together again in 2020 to hopefully negotiate a stronger set of national targets, congressional Republicans will be working to destroy the agreement and its future potential by preventing the U.S. from keeping its word. Their game plan will be to undo the Clean Power Plan and revoke U.S. pledges of financing to assist developing nations with expanding clean energy and adapting to climate change. How this plays out will depend on the outcome of the next presidential election. All of the leading Republican presidential candidates are climate science deniers who oppose the Clean Power Plan. On the campaign trail this week, most of them have avoided any discussion of the Paris Agreement. All but one of the top nine GOP

campaigns did not respond to a query on the subject from The New York Times. The one Republican candidate who responded, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, via a spokesman, had a perverse take: “While the governor believes that climate change is real and that human activity contributes to it, he has serious concerns with an agreement that the Obama administration deliberately crafted to avoid having to submit it to the Senate for approval. That’s an obvious indicator that they expect it to result in significant job loss and inflict further damage to our already sluggish economy.” But Senate Republicans have always made it clear that they wouldn’t approve any kind of climate treaty, no matter what the expected economic impacts. That’s why Obama pushed the world to adopt a more flexible agreement that doesn’t require Senate approval. Kasich is blaming Obama for a condition of his own party’s making. In the GOP presidential debate on Tuesday night, Kasich briefly mentioned the Paris negotiations, only to ridicule the idea of discussing climate change instead of how to combat ISIS. That was the only mention of climate change in

the entire two-hour debate on foreign policy. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another presidential contender, weighed in on the Paris Agreement from the campaign trail,

calling it “ridiculous,” and adding, “unilateral disarmament in our economy is reckless, and it is hurting the American Dream.” Republicans, it seems, have settled on the talking point that the Paris Agreement will harm our economy without bothering to produce any evidence of that. Their claim seems to rest on the premise that the Clean Power Plan will raise electricity costs. But in fact, studies have found that the CPP will actually lower electricity bills for the average American family, thanks to the energy-efficiency provisions. Other studies have found that the jobs lost in the coal industry under the CPP will be vastly outweighed by jobs created in

renewable energy and productivity gains across the economy from lower electricity costs. And certainly there is nothing “unilateral” about our “disarmament.” The European Union, for example, is cutting emissions more drastically than the U.S. And while developing countries aren’t pledging bigger cuts than the U.S., they

already have much lower emissions per capita and smaller economies, so they are offering more significant limits in relative terms. We don’t need to wait for the other Republican candidates to talk about the Paris Agreement to know what they think of it. The League of Conservation Voters compiled a fact sheet with the comments they made about the COP21 negotiations before the deal was inked. All were critical, with many saying that Obama shouldn’t even have gone to Paris to

work for an agreement, and that they wouldn’t have were they in the White House. If a Democrat wins the presidency next year, the fight over following through on Paris and ramping up for the next agreement will be between her and

Congress. If there is a Republican in the White House, he will get cooperation from the reliably Republican House to repeal the Clean Power Plan and end climate funding for developing nations , and those efforts may or may not be aided by the Senate, depending on whether Democrats take control of it in 2016, or at least have enough votes to mount a filibuster. No matter who becomes the next president, the third branch of

government will also have a say. Conservative state attorneys general and corporate fossil fuel interests are challenging the Clean Power Plan in federal court. The presidential election probably won’t determine the court case’s outcome — only a vacancy on the Supreme Court before the

case is heard might lead to that — but it will determine how the EPA responds if the rule is overturned. The Supreme Court has already held that EPA has the legal authority to regulate carbon pollution, so if the CPP is overturned, it would mean that the agency could promulgate new regulations on power plants that are more likely to be deemed compliant with the Clean Air Act. But whether their boss wants them to or not will depend on who sits in the White House. The bottom line: The domestic political fight over the Paris Agreement has just begun.

Warming is real, human caused, and causes extinctionMccoy 14 (Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4/2, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510)The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of the physical science of global warming [1], the IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival , health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is “ virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system” and that it is “ extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations [is] at risk.” [2] Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century.” [3] The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. [4] “Business as usual ” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised global community.” [5]. The IPCC warns of “ tipping points ” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe.” [2] And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” [6]

Paris Talks/Warming – 2ncTrump reverses Obama climate policy – undermines our ability to meet Paris obligationsMurray 5/17/16 (Bill, Energy policy contributor @ RealClearPolitics, "Would Trump Undo Obama's Environmental Legacy?," http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/05/17/would_trump_undo_obamas_environmental_legacy_130583.html)A simple parsing of his phrases – “opening up energy” or “put the miners back to work” –implies overturning important elements of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), which is the main method by which the U.S. plans to meet its emissions obligations promised at the Paris climate change convention in December.

“According to the attitude that he has expressed, he would be a major threat to health and the environment” if elected, said David Goldston, the director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. “He doesn’t believe in climate change, he doesn’t believe in the ozone hole, and he talks about dismantling the EPA.” How is a wholesale rollback of Obama’s environmental regime possible? The quick answer is that the failure of cap-and-trade legislation in 2010 forced the administration to try and achieve its environmental goals via the executive branch. By deciding to go down the executive-action path, the risk existed of a rollback if Republicans regained the White House. The easiest way to undo Obama’s environmental efforts would be for a President Trump to simply order his administration to stop working on a series of environmental rules that are still in draft form or mired in the federal court system. The CPP would qualify, given that federal courts may not decide on its legality until 2017. Other EPA-sponsored energy-related rules that could be quickly undermined by a Trump presidency include a “well-control” methane rule just finalized last week, and a Waters of the United States rule, both of which are struggling to make it through the courts. “He’s going to be an old-school pro-business Republican with a harder edge,” said Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist who deals with energy

and environment issues. “He would target the things that underpin the whole structure of the Obama environmental policy. He’ll look at the Clean Power Plan and say, ‘Are we out of our frigging mind?’”

GOP presidency causes other nations to BACKTRACK on Paris and tank future emissions agreements – Dem victory keyGraves 1/5/16 (Lucia Graves, staff writer, “The Whole World Has a Stake in the Outcome of Our Presidential Election,” Pacific Standard, http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/2016-presidential-election-does-the-world-have-a-future) This Christmas, summer came early in the North Pole. A freak storm pushed temperatures 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and past the melting point; in the eastern United States, temperatures climbed to the high 60s in places as far north as Boston, Massachusetts, and Burlington, Vermont. There wasn't enough snowfall on the entire east coast for James Inhofe to make a

snowball. Last year, 2015, was easily the hottest year on the books, but you would never know it to hear our presidential candidates talk on the trail. Just days after world leaders forged the Paris climate agreement, the planet's best hope for curbing the catastrophic effects of global warming, Republican presidential candidates assembled for a debate. And nobody, not the nine candidates on the main stage or the three moderators before them, mentioned the Paris Agreement as anything more than a passing jab. "And when I see they have a climate conference over in Paris, they should have been talking about destroying ISIS," Ohio Governor John Kasich said. Donald Trump merely scoffed at how President Obama thinks climate change is even a priority. That was it, in the wake of the historic moment: nada, zip, zilch, zero actual conversation. Just a one-touch dismissal from a guy most people don't know is even running, and a jibe in the deal's general direction from The Donald. It wasn't an oversight—it's standard practice on climate for Republicans. The party's internally incoherent consensus on the matter seems to be that the climate agreement is somewhere between "reckless," "ridiculous," and a "threat" to our sovereignty—and anyway, climate change is not really happening. But how, exactly, would the candidates respond to the landmark deal once in office? Specifically, would they submit an even stronger climate plan by 2020, as the U.S. is now required to do under the international accord? Or would they tear up the document entirely? Where candidates come down on

this matter will have tremendous consequences, not just for environmentalists or even for Americans, but for the world. While Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have done a remarkable job of skirting Republican opposition in Congress—laying the groundwork through intercountry alliances in recent years— experts say a GOP president could legally

unravel the deal . Whether it's by rolling back Obama's Clean Power Plan—a lynchpin of the U.S.

commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions—or by pulling out of the deal directly, a

Republican president could single-handedly undo the past decade of progress on climate and

propel the world far beyond the warming cap of two degrees Celsius needed to stave off the worst

consequences of climate change. The U.S., as the world’s second-largest emitter currently and the biggest emitter cumulatively, has an outsized duty in preserving the planet’s future . Obama seems to be betting that a GOP president wouldn't go through with breaking the global contract; as he told reporters in Paris: “Your credibility and America’s ability to influence events depends on taking seriously what other

countries care about.” Now that there's global consensus behind taking action, Obama added, the next president "is going to need to think this is really important." So far, however, that looks like wishful thinking, particularly where Republican frontrunners are concerned. Ted Cruz has already said he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord, telling reporters in a high school classroom in Knoxville, Tennessee: "Barack Obama seems to think the SUV parked in your driveway is a bigger threat to national security than radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill us. That’s just nutty. These are ideologues, they don’t focus on the facts, they won’t address the facts, and what they’re interested [in] instead is more and more government power." Trump, while he hasn't directly addressed the accord, has argued in the past that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Meanwhile Rand Paul thinks granting power to the United Nations would threaten U.S. sovereignty, resulting in "a bunch of two-bit dictators telling America what to do," as he put it recently. Marco Rubio insists the Paris climate deal is an "unfunny joke" that's "hurting the American dream." “Here’s the most outrageous part,” Rubio told Fox News recently. “This is a deal that’s going to require the American taxpayer to send billions of dollars to developing countries. Well, China considers itself a developing country. Does that mean the American taxpayer is going to send billions to China to help them comply with the arrangement here?” Short answer: no. Contrary to Rubio's impressions, China played a leadership role in the Paris talks and was on the giving side of the equation, offering up to $3.1 billion to help actual developing countries. In fact, the only Republican candidate supporting clear actions on climate change, Lindsey Graham, dropped out in late December after failing for months to break the one percent mark in the polls. He never even made it onstage for anything but an undercard debate. The only other Republican contender to express (tepid) support for the deal, George Pataki, dropped out a week later. This, apparently, is what happens when you take a realistic, even semi-honest approach to climate change in the Republican primary: You’re

drummed out. There remains no candidate on the Republican side who will commit to upholding the deal, and the majority of candidates have said nothing about the agreement at all. By contrast, all three candidates on the Democratic side have said they'd not just honor the Paris

Agreement, but advance it ; before the gavel even went down in Paris, Bernie Sanders was lamenting that the deal doesn't go far enough. But denial won't play well in the general election. A recent Pew Research Center survey found 69 percent of Americans favor a multilateral commitment to limit the burning of greenhouse gas emissions; and that such statistics are sharply divided by political affiliation won't work in Republicans’ favor come November. The leading Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton—well aware of her party's edge here—has been increasingly vocal on climate, as when she came out against the Keystone XL pipeline even before president Obama nixed the project ahead of Paris. She's also voiced her support for all the president’s executive actions on climate. Still, many environmental advocates still favor Sanders, who, as movement leader Bill McKibben noted in an aside at Paris climate talks, was against Keystone as early as 2011, when the pipeline first came on the national stage. Given how things looked (say) 18 months ago, environmentalists can perhaps take comfort in watching Democratic candidates argue in prime-time over who hated Keystone first, and most. The world will be presented with two stark choices come the general election. But the White House, for its part, expresses hope that the accord can be upheld regardless. "I think it's going to be incredibly difficult

to move back from this position," a senior administration official told reporters post-Paris. "Momentum begets momentum." "We don't want to be naive to the domestic

policies here," he added, "but I think with every passing month and with every passing milestone, [the ideals of the Paris Agreement] will get more and more baked in." Of course it's possible that Republicans are just pandering and that, if elected to office, a Republican president might not seek to destroy the deal. Obama has gestured to this possibility, arguing: "Even if somebody from a different party succeeded me, one of the things you find is when you're in this job, you think about it differently than if you're just running for the job." Maybe he's right. But is it worth betting the world? For years the U.S. has had the dubious distinction of being the only country anywhere with a major party that denies the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real, man-made, and accelerating. It was always a denial with far-reaching

effects, given the U.S.'s hefty emissions, currently the second largest after China's, but now that pernicious reach is extended farther still. If America elects a Republican in 2016, he (it would almost certainly be a “he”) could undermine the diplomatic efforts of almost 200 countries, offering our global partners a tempting excuse to abandon their climate commitments — and to distrust the U.S. for years to come. Given America’s long history of hypocrisy in climate negotiations and repeated broken promises to world partners, such a reversal could be devastating . In Paris, for the first time ever, the U.S. played the role of a climate leader, hero even, in these talks, a hard-won victory that's been years in the making. That Obama has invested so much in this deal for so long, that he's made it a centerpiece of his administration—and, many expect, the overarching mission of his final year in office—underscores just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of victory we saw in Paris, and just how much these global climate talks depend on the power of the U.S. president. If Obama could make this, the next guy could break it. It might not be easy to destroy the Paris Agreement, but it would be a whole lot easier than what the world pulled off at le Bourget.

The next president is make it or break it for warming – its real and anthropogenic – GOP victory kills any possible progress Neuhauser 15 (Alan, energy, environment and STEM reporter for U.S. News & World Report, “The Climate Change Election”, August 14, 2015, US News, http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/08/14/the-2016-election-is-critical-for-stopping-climate-change)For as long as Americans have voted and pundits have bloviated, each presidential election cycle has seemed The Most Important in All History. Next year, though, may truly – actually, seriously – be different, if climate scientists

are right. The next candidate Americans send to the Oval Office, experts say, may also be the very last who can avert catastrophe from climate change. "It is urgent and the timeframe is critical and it has to be right now," says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown Law. "We can't lose another four years, much less eight years." This is not an overnight ice age or a rise of the apes. But global warming is already here, parching the American West, flooding coastal cities, strengthening storms, erasing species and inflaming armed conflict, with a rise of just 0.85 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. And it's going to get worse, experts say. Last year, a U.N. panel of scientists predicted the world had until 2050 to slash emissions by as much as 70 percent to keep temperatures from rising another 1.15 degrees by the end of the century . That's the threshold of an unstoppable cycle of Arctic and Antarctic melting, the release of heat-trapping gases that had been caught in the ice, more warming, more melting, more warming, more melting – until the glaciers and ice caps disappear. But some researchers – including the man who first presented the facts on climate change to Congress in 1988 – say that that tipping point may come even sooner, perhaps as early as 2036: Humans, in short, are having an even greater impact than expected. "Sea level projections and upcoming United Nations meetings in Paris are far too sluggish compared with the magnitude and speed of sea level changes," the scientist, Columbia professor James Hansen, wrote Wednesday in a Q&A on the web forum Reddit, discussing a study he published in July.

The needed changes are monumental: Halting climate change and heading off its worst consequences is going to require a wholesale switch from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas to renewables like wind and solar – potentially upending utilities, energy producers and construction contractors, the sort of change "of the magnitude of the invention of the steam engine or the electrification of society," says Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonpartisan energy research group. "How quickly can we transform one of the most complex industrial systems – our energy system – across the globe in order to move toward low carbon?" he asks . "There is absolutely no doubt we have to act now." This presents an election – and a choice – with no historical analogues. "This will be a make-or-break presidency as far as our ability to avert a climate change catastrophe," says Michael Mann, meteorology professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, whose "hockey-stick" shaped graph warned of sharply rising emissions and temperatures. Pick any issue throughout history, he and others argue, none has shared the three qualities that make climate change stand apart: its threat to the entire planet, the short window to respond, and how sharply it has divided the two parties' candidates. "Republicans and Democrats have argued over issues for years, but I can't think of an example where one party didn't even say that the issue exists," says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who has advised Evangelical and conservative climate action groups, and who has urged policymakers to address warming. Four of the five Democratic candidates has pledged or supported Obama administration efforts to cut the heat-trapping emissions that cause climate change: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee. Former Sen. Jim Webb has said he'd expand the use of fossil fuels and once voted to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating certain greenhouse gas emissions. Among the Republicans, eight of the 17 candidates have hedged: Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Jim Gilmore, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki and Rand Paul have acknowledged that humans do contribute to global warming, but have questioned or stopped short of saying how much – a position at odds with the findings of a vast majority of scientists. "The climate is changing; I don't think anybody can argue it's not. Human activity has contributed to it," Bush said in an email interview with Bloomberg BNA in July – a statement that notably did not mention how much humans were at fault. During a campaign stop in New Hampshire in June, he had previously told listeners, "The climate is changing, whether men are doing it or not," one month after calling it "arrogant" to say climate science is settled. The rest of the GOP field – including three senators who rejected a January amendment tying human activity to climate change – has dismissed the issue outright. Paul also voted against the amendment. "As a scientist it's very frustrating to hear politicians basically saying, 'This isn't true,' or, 'They're just making it up to get government money,'" Hayhoe says. "A thermometer is not Democrat or Republican. What observations are telling us is not political – it is what it is." And there are conservative solutions for warming. Some party members, in fact, see it as an inherently Republican issue: Carbon emissions, for example, distort the free market, forcing others to pay the higher and indirect costs of climate change (storm recovery, disaster relief) plus the health costs associated with air pollution. "We allow the coal industry to socialize its costs, and we conservatives don't like allowing people to socialize anything," says former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who now explores free-market solutions to climate change as head of the Energy and Enterprise Institute at George Mason University. A revenue-neutral carbon tax, one that does not support other programs and instead goes back to households, could fix that distortion, he and others argue. "The question is not, 'Is there going to be a tax on carbon?' It's, 'Do you want a tax that you have a voice in and control, or do you want to keep writing checks after disasters that you have no control over?'" says retired Rear Admiral David Titley, who has advised some of the GOP presidential candidates and directs the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State University. "That $60 billion relief bill for Hurricane Sandy that passed very quickly through a Republican-led House, did you get a vote on that tax? Because that's a tax." Yet Inglis, himself is a living example of what can happen to conservatives who call for climate action. The recipient of the JFK Profile in Courage Award in April, he was unseated in the Republican primary in 2010 after shifting his position on global warming. "Republicans say, 'Look at what happened to him when he said it was real. Do you want that to happen to you?'" Hayhoe describes. Oil, gas and coal companies, along with billionaire Libertarian industrialists David and Charles Koch, rank among the biggest campaign donors, and often seem as allergic to new taxes as a bubble boy to fresh pollen. But popular sentiment among voters appears to be changing: Most Republican voters say they support climate action, and last week, Shell did not renew its membership in the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council because of the group's opposition to climate action. Even the climate statements by the eight Republicans who have hedged on warming, vague as they were, may signify a kind of progress – especially during the primaries, when candidates play to their parties' more extreme bases. "In the Great Recession in 2010, it was this very atheistic position with regard to climate change: 'We don't believe,'" Inglis says. "Then, in the 2014 cycle, 'I'm not a scientist,' that was an agnostic position. These are data points on a trend line toward a tipping point." Republicans can exploit a distinct advantage on climate action, too, he adds: Voters tend to support the presidents who buck party stereotypes. "Nixon goes to China, Bill Clinton signs welfare reform – the country will trust a conservative to touch climate," Inglis argues. But climate scientists, environmental advocates and Democrats remain deeply skeptical. The most recent Republican president, for one, backpedaled on his 2000

campaign pledge to rein-in carbon emissions. Campaign donations remain hugely influential, and as Republican candidates lambaste the environmental agenda of the Obama administration, stopping climate change will actually require they expand upon Obama initiatives: resist industry pressure to slow the roll-out of tighter fuel standards for cars, push states to reduce emissions from their power sectors and uphold and ratchet-up international commitments to slow carbon emissions. There's also the Supreme Court: with four Supreme Court justices now over the age of 70, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pushing 80, the next

president will likely have the chance to nominate new jurists to the court – a court that will almost certainly decide challenges to various environmental actions aimed at slowing global warming. "If we are going to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change impacts, we have to be ramping down our carbon emissions dramatically in the years ahead. The current administration has begun that process, but our next president must not only continue but build on that progress," Mann says. It is on the global stage where perhaps the spotlight – and climate scientists' hopes and expectations – will shine brightest. In December, negotiators from nearly 200 nations will meet in Paris to hammer-out an international climate accord. It is expected to include commitments from China and India, heavy polluters spurred to rein-in their emissions and invest in clean energy by America's own commitment to slash carbon emissions from its power sector. "The rest of the world is going to expect the U.S. to live up to its commitment [made at the Paris meeting], no matter who is in the White House," says Henrik Selin, professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. "If you have a president who comes in and starts rolling back the Obama initiatives, you're going to have international leaders being very unhappy about this – and they are not just countries, they are trading partners. This is not just a domestic issue, it's also very much a foreign policy

issue." And so far, he and others argue, none of the Republican candidates have offered a clear vision on climate, let alone any plan to slow warming. "If we want to get to that low-carbon future, we have to agree that's where we're going to go, and then we can fight over the speed at which we're going to get there," Kortenhorst, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, says. As David Sandalow, who held senior posts in the State Department and Energy Department under Obama and is an inaugural fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, describes: "There's a very big difference between electing a candidate who's committed to seriously addressing this problem and one who isn't. The implications of failing to address the problem in the next four years could be very serious."

Dems Key to Clean Energy – 2ncGOP victory risks extinction from climate – Dem win keyKrugman 2/1/16 (Paul, professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton, “Wind, Sun and Fire,” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/wind-sun-and-fire.html?_r=0,)So what’s really at stake in this year’s election? Well, among other things, the fate of the planet. Last year was the hottest on record, by a wide margin, which should — but won’t — put an end to climate deniers’ claims that global warming has stopped. The truth is that climate change just keeps getting scarier; it is, by far, the most important policy issue facing America and the world. Still, this election wouldn’t have much bearing on the issue if there were no prospect of effective action against

the looming catastrophe. But the situation on that front has changed drastically for the better in recent years, because we’re now achingly close to achieving a renewable-energy revolution. What’s more, getting that energy revolution wouldn’t require a political revolution. All it would take are fairly modest policy changes, some of which have already happened and others of which are already underway. But those changes won’t happen if the wrong people end up in power. To see what I’m talking about, you need to know something about the current state of climate economics, which has changed far

more in recent years than most people seem to realize. Most people who think about the issue at all probably imagine that achieving a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would necessarily involve big economic sacrifices. This view is required orthodoxy on the right, where it forms a sort of second line of defense against action, just in case denial of climate science and witch hunts against climate scientists don’t do the trick. For example, in the last Republican debate Marco Rubio — the last, best hope of the G.O.P. establishment — insisted, as he has before, that a cap-and-trade program would be “devastating for our economy.” To find anything equivalent on the left you have to go far out of the mainstream, to activists who insist that climate change can’t be fought without overthrowing capitalism. Still, my sense is that many Democrats believe that politics as usual isn’t up to the task, that we need a political earthquake to make real action possible. In particular, I keep hearing that the Obama administration’s environmental efforts have been so far short of what’s needed as to be barely worth mentioning. But things are actually much more hopeful than that, thanks to remarkable technological progress in renewable energy. The numbers are really stunning. According to a recent report by the investment firm Lazard, the cost of electricity generation using wind power fell 61 percent from 2009 to 2015, while the cost of solar power fell 82 percent. These numbers — which are in line with other estimates — show progress at rates we normally only expect to see for information technology. And they put the cost of renewable energy into a range where it’s competitive with fossil fuels. Now, there are still some issues special to renewables, in particular problems of intermittency: consumers may want power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. But this issue seems to be of diminishing significance, partly thanks to improving storage technology, partly thanks to the realization that “demand response” — paying consumers to cut energy use during peak periods — can greatly reduce the problem. So what will it take to achieve a large-scale shift from fossil fuels to renewables, a shift to sun and wind instead of fire? Financial incentives, and they don’t have to be all that huge. Tax credits for renewables that were part of the Obama stimulus plan, and were extended under the recent budget deal, have already done a lot to accelerate the energy revolution. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which if implemented will create strong incentives to move away from coal, will do much more. And none of this will require new legislation; we can have an energy revolution even if the crazies retain control of the House. Now, skeptics may point out that even if all these good things happen, they won’t be enough on their own to save the planet. For one thing, we’re only talking about electricity generation, which is a big part of the climate change problem but not the whole thing. For another, we’re only talking about one country when the problem is global. But I’d argue that the kind of progress now within reach could produce a tipping point, in the right direction . Once renewable energy becomes an obvious success and, yes, a powerful interest group, anti-environmentalism will start to lose its political grip. And an energy revolution in America would let us take the lead in global action . Salvation from climate catastrophe is , in short, something we can realistically hope to see happen, with no political miracle necessary. But failure is also a very real possibility . Everything is hanging in the balance.

GOP presidential victory risks extinction via climate change and wealth inequalityFerner 1/25/16 (Matt, National Reporter @ Huff Post, citing Noam Chomsky, social critic and MIT Lingustics professor, "Noam Chomsky Says GOP Is ‘Literally A Serious Danger To Human Survival’," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/noam-chomsky-gop_us_56a66febe4b0d8cc109aec78) Noam Chomsky, the noted radical and MIT professor emeritus, said the Republican Party has become so extreme

in its rhetoric and policies that it poses a “serious danger to human survival.” “Today, the Republican Party has drifted off the rails,” Chomsky, a frequent critic of both parties, said in an interview Monday with The Huffington Post.

“It’s become what the respected conservative political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call ‘a radical insurgency’ that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics.” Chomsky cited a 2013 article by Mann and Ornstein published in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, analyzing the polarization of the parties. The authors write that the GOP has become “ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Chomsky said the GOP and its presidential candidates are “literally a serious danger to decent human survival” and cited Republicans’ rejection of measures to deal with climate change, which he called a “looming environmental catastrophe.” All of the top Republican presidential candidates are either outright deniers, doubt its seriousness or insist no action should be taken — “dooming our grandchildren,” Chomsky said. “I am not a believer,” Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, said recently. “Unless somebody can prove something to me, I believe there’s weather.” Trump isn’t alone. Although 97 percent of climate scientists insist climate change is real and caused by human actions, more than half of Republicans in Congress deny mankind has anything to do with global warming. “What they are saying is, let’s destroy the world. Is that worth voting against? Yeah,” Chomsky said in a recent

interview with Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera English’s “UpFront.” The policies that the GOP presidential candidates and its representatives in Congress support, Chomsky argued, are in “abject service to private wealth and power,” despite “rhetorical posturing” of some, including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). GOP proposals would effectively raise taxes on lower-income Americans and reduce them for the wealthy.

Warming Bad – 2nc Unchecked climate change exacerbates structural violence, sparks global instability and conflict, and risks planetary destruction – slowing the rate is vital Klare 11/3/15 (Michael, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the defense correspondent of The Nation, author of 14 books on international energy and security affairs, including most recently, The Race for What’s Left, "The Future of Climate Change Is Widespread Civil War," http://www.thenation.com/article/the-future-of-climate-change-is-widespread-civil-war/)At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held. Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that designated that

phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), the Paris summit will be focused on the adoption of measures that would limit global warming to less than catastrophic levels. If it fails, world temperatures in the coming decades are likely to exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit), the maximum amount most scientists believe the Earth can endure

without experiencing irreversible climate shocks, including soaring temperatures and a substantial rise in global sea levels. A failure to cap carbon emissions guarantees another result as well, though one far less discussed. It will, in the long run, bring on not just climate shocks, but also

worldwide instability, insurrection, and warfare. In this sense, COP-21 should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference—perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history. To grasp why, consider the latest scientific findings on the likely impacts of global warming, especially the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). When first published, that report attracted worldwide media coverage for

predicting that unchecked climate change will result in severe droughts, intense storms, oppressive heat waves, recurring crop failures, and coastal flooding, all leading to widespread death and deprivation . Recent events, including a punishing drought in California and crippling heat waves in Europe and Asia, have focused more attention on just such impacts. The IPCC report,

however, suggested that global warming would have devastating impacts of a social and political nature as well, including economic decline, state collapse, civil strife, mass migrations, and sooner or later resource wars. These

predictions have received far less attention, and yet the possibility of such a future should be obvious enough since human institutions , like natural systems, are vulnerable to climate change . Economies are going to suffer when key commodities—crops, timber, fish, livestock—grow scarcer, are destroyed, or fail. Societies will begin to buckle under the strain of economic decline and massive refugee flows. Armed conflict may not be the most

immediate consequence of these developments, the IPCC notes, but combine the effects of climate change with already existing poverty, hunger, resource scarcity, incompetent and corrupt governance, and ethnic, religious, or national resentments, and you’re likely to end up with bitter conflicts over access to food, water, land, and other necessities of life. THE COMING OF CLIMATE CIVIL WARS Such wars would not arise in a vacuum. Already existing stresses and grievances would be heightened, enflamed undoubtedly by provocative acts and the exhortations of demagogic leaders. Think of the current outbreak of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, touched off by clashes over access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (also known as the Noble Sanctuary) and the inflammatory rhetoric of assorted leaders. Combine economic and resource deprivation with such situations and you have a perfect recipe for war. The necessities of life are already unevenly distributed across the planet. Often the divide between those with access to adequate supplies of vital resources and those lacking them coincides with long-term schisms along racial, ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. The Israelis and Palestinians, for example, harbor deep-seated ethnic and religious hostilities but also experience vastly different possibilities when it comes to access to land and water. Add the stresses of climate change to such situations and you can naturally expect passions to boil over. Climate change will degrade or destroy many natural systems, often already under stress, on which humans rely for their survival. Some areas that now support agriculture or animal husbandry may become uninhabitable or capable only of providing for greatly diminished populations. Under the pressure of rising temperatures and increasingly fierce droughts, the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, for example, is now being transformed from grasslands capable of sustaining nomadic herders into an empty wasteland, forcing local nomads off their ancestral lands. Many existing farmlands in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will suffer a similar fate. Rivers that once supplied water year-round will run only sporadically or dry up altogether, again leaving populations with unpalatable choices. As the IPCC report points out, enormous pressure will be put upon often weak state institutions to adjust to climate change and aid those in desperate need of emergency food, shelter, and other necessities. “Increased human insecurity,” the report says, “may coincide with a decline in the capacity of states to conduct effective adaptation efforts, thus creating the circumstances in which there is greater potential for violent conflict.” A good example of this peril is provided by the outbreak of civil war in Syria and the subsequent collapse of that country in a welter of fighting and a wave of refugees of a sort that hasn’t been seen since World War II. Between 2006 and 2010, Syria experienced a devastating drought in which climate change is believed to have been a factor, turning nearly 60 percent of the country into desert. Crops failed and most of the country’s livestock perished, forcing millions of farmers into penury. Desperate and unable to live on their land any longer, they moved into Syria’s major cities in search of work, often facing extreme hardship as well as hostility from well-connected urban elites. Had Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad responded with an emergency program of jobs and housing for those displaced, perhaps conflict could have been averted. Instead, he cut food and fuel subsidies, adding to the misery of the migrants and fanning the flames of revolt. In the view of several prominent scholars, “the rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.” A similar picture has unfolded in the Sahel region of Africa, the southern fringe of the Sahara, where severe drought has combined with habitat decline and government neglect to provoke armed violence. The area has faced many such periods in the past, but now, thanks to climate change, there is less time between the droughts. “Instead of 10 years apart, they became five years apart, and now only a couple years apart,” observes Robert Piper, the United Nations regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel. “And that, in turn, is putting enormous stresses on what is already an incredibly fragile environment and a highly vulnerable population.” In Mali, one of several nations straddling this region, the nomadic Tuaregs have been particularly hard hit, as the grasslands they rely on to feed their cattle are turning into desert. A Berber-speaking Muslim population, the Tuaregs have long faced hostility from the central government in Bamako, once controlled by the French and now by black Africans of Christian or animist faith. With their traditional livelihoods in peril and little assistance forthcoming from the capital, the Tuaregs revolted in January 2012, capturing half of Mali before being driven back into the Sahara by French and other foreign forces (with US logistical and

intelligence support). Consider the events in Syria and Mali previews of what is likely to come later in this century on a far larger scale. As climate change intensifies, bringing not just desertification but rising sea levels in low-lying coastal areas and increasingly devastating heat waves in regions that are already

hot, ever more parts of the planet will be rendered less habitable, pushing millions of people into desperate flight. While the strongest and wealthiest governments, especially in more temperate regions, will be better able to cope with these stresses, expect to see the number of failed states

grow dramatically, leading to violence and open warfare over what food, arable land, and shelter remains. In other words, imagine significant parts of the planet in the kind of state that Libya, Syria, and Yemen are in today. Some people will stay and fight to survive; others will migrate, almost assuredly encountering a far more

violent version of the hostility we already see toward immigrants and refugees in the lands they head for. The result, inevitably, will be a global epidemic of resource civil wars and resource violence of every sort. WATER WARS Most of these conflicts will be of an internal, civil character: clan against clan, tribe against tribe, sect against sect. On a climate-changed planet, however, don’t rule out struggles among nations for diminished vital resources—especially access to water. It’s already clear that climate change will reduce the supply of water in many tropical and subtropical regions, jeopardizing the continued pursuit of agriculture, the health and functioning of major cities, and possibly the very sinews of society. The risk of “water wars” will arise when two or more countries depend on the same key water source—the Nile, the Jordan, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Mekong, or other trans-boundary river systems—and one or more of them seek to appropriate a disproportionate share of the ever-shrinking supply of its water. Attempts by countries to build dams and divert the water flow of such riverine systems have already provoked skirmishes and threats of war, as when Turkey and Syria erected dams on the Euphrates, constraining the downstream flow. One system that has attracted particular concern in this regard is the Brahmaputra River, which originates in China (where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo) and passes through India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Indian Ocean. China has already erected one dam on the river and has plans for more, producing considerable unease in India, where the Brahmaputra’s water is vital for agriculture. But what has provoked the most alarm is a Chinese plan to channel water from that river to water-scarce areas in the northern part of that country. The Chinese insist that no such action is imminent, but intensified warming and increased drought could, in the future, prompt such a move, jeopardizing India’s water supply and possibly provoking a conflict. “China’s construction of dams and the proposed diversion of the Brahmaputra’s waters is not only expected to have repercussions for water flow, agriculture, ecology, and lives and livelihoods downstream,” Sudha Ramachandran writes in The Diplomat, “it could also become another contentious issue undermining Sino-Indian relations.” Of course, even in a future of far greater water stresses, such situations are not guaranteed to provoke armed combat. Perhaps the states involved will figure out how to share whatever limited resources remain and seek alternative means of survival. Nonetheless, the temptation to employ force is bound to grow as supplies dwindle and millions of people face thirst and starvation. In such circumstances, the survival of the state itself will be at risk, inviting desperate measures. LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE There is much that undoubtedly could be done to reduce the risk of water wars, including the adoption of cooperative water-management schemes

and the introduction of the wholesale use of drip irrigation and related processes that use water far more efficiently. However, the best way to avoid future climate-related strife is, of course, to reduce the pace of global warming. Every fraction of a degree less warming achieved in Paris and thereafter will mean that much less blood spilled in future climate-driven resource wars. This is why the Paris climate summit should be viewed as a kind of preemptive peace conference, one that is taking place before the wars truly begin. If delegates to COP-21 succeed in sending us down a path that limits global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the risk of future violence will be diminished accordingly. Needless to say, even 2 degrees of warming guarantees substantial damage to vital natural systems, potentially severe resource scarcities, and attendant civil strife. As a result, a lower ceiling for temperature rise would be preferable and should be the goal of future conferences. Still, given the carbon emissions pouring into the atmosphere, even a 2-degree cap would be a significant accomplishment. To achieve such an outcome, delegates will undoubtedly have to begin dealing with conflicts of the present moment as well, including those in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Ukraine, in order to collaborate in devising common, mutually binding climate

measures. In this sense, too, the Paris summit will be a peace conference. For the first time, the nations of the world will have to step beyond national thinking and embrace a higher goal: the safety of the ecosphere and all its human inhabitants, no matter their national, ethnic, religious, racial, or linguistic identities . Nothing like this has ever been

attempted, which means that it will be an exercise in peacemaking of the most essential sort—and, for once, before the wars truly begin.

Warming causes extinction and turns every impact Sharp and Kennedy 14 (Robert and Edward, an associate professor on the faculty of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA) AND renewable energy and climate change specialist who has worked for the World Bank and the Spanish Electric Utility ENDESA on carbon policy and markets, 8-22, “Climate Change and Implications for National Security” http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2014/08/22/climate-change-implications-national-security/)Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. If that whole time was to be reflected on a single one-year calendar then the dinosaurs died off sometime late in the afternoon of December 27th and modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago, or at around lunchtime on December 28th. Therefore, human life on earth is very recent. Sometime on December 28th humans made the first fires – wood fires – neutral in the carbon balance. Now reflect on those most recent 200,000 years again on a single one-year calendar and you might be surprised to learn that the industrial revolution began only a few hours ago during the middle of the afternoon on December 31st, 250 years ago, coinciding with the discovery of underground carbon fuels. Over the 250 years carbon fuels have enabled tremendous technological advances including a population growth from about 800 million then to 7.5 billion today and the consequent demand to extract even more carbon. This has occurred during a handful of generations, which is hardly noticeable on our imaginary one-year calendar. The release of this carbon – however – is changing our climate at such a rapid rate that it threatens our survival and presence on earth. It defies imagination that so much damage has been done in such

a relatively short time. The implications of climate change are the single most significant threat to life on earth and, put simply, we are not doing enough to rectify the damage. This relatively very recent ability to change our climate is an inconvenient truth; the science is sound. We know of the complex set of interrelated national and global security risks that are a result of global warming and the velocity at which climate change is occurring. We worry it may already be too late.

Climate change writ large has informed few, interested some, confused many, and polarized politics. It has already led to an increase in natural disasters including but not limited to droughts, storms, floods, fires etc. The year 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record

according to an American Meteorological Society (AMS) report. Research suggests that climate change is already affecting human displacement; reportedly 36 million people were displaced in 2008 alone because of sudden natural disasters. Figures for 2010 and 2011 paint a grimmer picture of people displaced because of rising sea levels, heat and storms. Climate change affects

all natural systems. It impacts temperature and consequently it affects water and weather patterns . It contributes to

desertification, deforestation and acidification of the oceans . Changes in weather patterns may mean droughts in one area

and floods in another. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, sea levels rise but perennial river water supplies are reduced because glaciers are retreating. As glaciers and polar ice caps melt, there is an albedo effect, which is a double whammy of less temperature regulation because of less surface area of ice present. This means that less absorption occurs

and also there is less reflection of the sun’s light. A potentially critical wild card could be runaway climate change due to the release of methane from melting tundra. Worldwide permafrost soils contain about 1,700 Giga Tons of carbon, which is about four times more than all the carbon released through human activity thus far. The planet has already adapted itself to dramatic climate change

including a wide range of distinct geologic periods and multiple extinctions, and at a pace that it can be managed. It is human intervention that has accelerated the pace dramatically: An increased surface temperature, coupled with more

severe weather and changes in water distribution will create uneven threats to our agricultural systems

and will foster and support the spread of insect borne diseases like Malaria, Dengue and the West Nile virus. Rising sea levels will increasingly threaten our coastal population and infrastructure centers and with more than 3.5 billion people – half the planet – depending on the ocean for their primary source of food, ocean acidification may dangerously undercut critical natural food systems which would result in reduced rations. Climate change also carries significant inertia. Even if emissions were completely halted today, temperature increases would continue for some time. Thus the impact is not only to the environment, water, coastal homes, agriculture and fisheries as mentioned, but also would lead to conflict and thus impact national security. Resource wars are inevitable as countries respond, adapt and compete for the shrinking set of those available resources.

These wars have arguably already started and will continue in the future because climate change will force countries to act for national survival; the so-called Climate Wars. As early as 2003 Greenpeace alluded to a report which it claimed was commissioned by the Pentagon titled: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security. It painted a picture of a world in turmoil because global warming had accelerated. The scenario outlined was both abrupt and alarming. The report offered recommendations but backed away from declaring climate change an immediate problem, concluding that it would actually be more incremental and measured; as such it would be an irritant, not a shock for national security systems. In 2006 the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – Institute of Public Research – convened a board of 11 senior retired generals and admirals to assess National Security and the Threat to Climate Change. Their initial report was published in April 2007 and made no mention of the potential

acceleration of climate change. The team found that climate change was a serious threat to national security and that it was: “most likely to happen in regions of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism.” The team made recommendations from their analysis of regional impacts which suggested the following. Europe would experience some fracturing because of border migration. Africa would need more stability and humanitarian operations provided by the United States. The Middle East would experience a “loss of food and water security (which) will increase pressure to emigrate across borders.” Asia would suffer from “threats to water and the spread of infectious disease.” In 2009 the CIA

opened a Center on Climate Change and National Security to coordinate across the intelligence community and to focus policy. In May 2014, CNA again convened a Military Advisory Board but this time to assess National Security and the Accelerating Risk of Climate Change. The report concludes that climate change is no longer a future threat but occurring right now and the authors appeal to the security community, the entire government and the American people to not only build

resilience against projected climate change impacts but to form agreements to stabilize climate change and also to

integrate climate change across all strategy and planning. The calm of the 2007 report is replaced by a tone of anxiety concerning the future coupled with calls for public discourse and debate because “time and tide wait for no man.” The report notes a key distinction between resilience (mitigating the impact of climate change) and agreements (ways to stabilize climate change) and states that: Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate change. The 9/11 Report framed the terrorist attacks as less of a failure of intelligence than a failure of imagination.

Greenpeace’s 2003 account of the Pentagon’s alleged report describes a coming climate Armageddon which to readers

was unimaginable and hence the report was not really taken seriously. It described: A world thrown into turmoil by drought, floods, typhoons. Whole countries rendered uninhabitable. The capital of the Netherlands submerged. The borders of the

U.S. and Australia patrolled by armies firing into waves of starving boat people desperate to find a new home. Fishing boats armed with cannon to drive off competitors. Demands for access to water and farmland backed up with nuclear weapons. The CNA and Greenpeace/Pentagon reports are both mirrored by similar analysis by the World Bank which

highlighted not only the physical manifestations of climate change, but also the significant human impacts that threaten to unravel decades of economic development, which will ultimately foster conflict. Climate change

is the quintessential “Tragedy of the Commons,” where the cumulative impact of many individual actions (carbon emission in this case) is not seen as linked to the marginal gains available to each individual action and not seen as cause and effect. It is simultaneously huge, yet amorphous and nearly invisible from day to day. It is occurring very fast in geologic time terms, but in human time it is (was) slow and incremental. Among environmental problems, it is uniquely global. With our planet and culture figuratively and literally honeycombed with a reliance on fossil fuels, we face systemic challenges in changing the reliance across multiple layers of consumption, investment patterns, and political decisions; it will be hard to fix!

A2 Paris FailsU.N. climate negotiations on track – will solve warming Depra 12/27/14 (Dianne, “Climate Change 2014: A Year of Climate Policy in Focus,” http://www.techtimes.com/articles/23161/20141227/climate-change-2014-a-year-of-climate-policy-in-focus.htm) In the hope of mitigating the effects of climate change, the United Nations has started moving toward involving all countries in the effort. After all, climate change will affect everyone. The organization still has a long way to go, but 2014 was a big year for climate policy , most especially after negotiations in Lima, Peru for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change successfully ended in December. With an agreement from 190 nations in hand, each one promising to reduce emissions, the U.N. is ready for the climate summit in Paris scheduled for late 2015. Since the organization needs the cooperation of bigger nations in making climate policies work, it's a big boost to the U.N. effort that China, the worst emission offender in the world, has already set a goal to stick to a ceiling limit on emissions by 2030. This goal is complemented by the United States' own, which aims to cut emissions by up to 28 percent of its current use by 2025. Both countries also hope to bolster clean energy development, promoting the use of nonfossil fuel sources for energy. While big nations cooperating is a definite plus to the climate effort, the U.N. still needs smaller nations to work with the organization, particularly when they are the ones most at risk for the effects of climate change in the world. Because many of the smaller nations don't have the means to finance proper mitigation projects, the Green Climate Fund is stepping in, providing funding assistance to nations that need it the most. Started in 2009, it received little support in the beginning but it now has $10 billion in pledges, set to be finalized in Paris in 2015. It's a good thing to have money to spend as it gives nations the opportunity to acquire the clean technologies they need for a greener future. Renewables used to be too costly, turning away a lot of interested parties. Now that renewable energy is more affordable, there are more incentives to taking advantage of cleaner alternatives, most especially when the Green Climate Fund can lend a hand . When the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, it sought to bind the European community and 37 industrialized countries into committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The treaty expired in 2012, so a new set of climate policies must be enacted to take its place.

Preliminary negotiations are done, but nothing is final until next year's climate summit. Based on what was achieved in 2014,

though, goals will be met slowly but surely.

Paris agreement solves climate – U.S. leadership is key, and the impact is extinctionWillis 14 (Rebecca, Council Member of the Natural Environment Research Council, August, “Paris 2015: Getting a global agreement on climate change,” 2 http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/resources/Paris%202015-getting%20a%20global%20agreement%20on%20climate%20change.pdf)At the Paris summit in December 2015, 196 countries will meet to sign a new climate change agreement. But how

likely is it that it will be meaningful and make a difference to climate action on the ground? Not only is a deal possible but, with the right political leadership, it can lead to ambitious outcomes that will have a real impact on tackling

climate change. Countries like the US and China are working to ensure an outcome is likely in 2015; and the years since the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations have seen some significant breakthroughs. The 2009 negotiations were fraught and chaotic, with a last minute agreement emerging after frantic scenes on the conference floor. Yet international negotiations remain vital for countries to build on national approaches, providing reassurance that they are not acting alone, and making it easier for nations to work together towards a low carbon future. This is why the 2015 Paris summit is important. To ensure meaningful action on climate change, the deal must contain the following elements: • ambitious action before and after 2020 • a strong legal framework and clear rules • a central role for equity • a long term approach • public finance for adaptation and the low carbon transition • a framework for action on deforestation and land use • clear links to the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals A strong deal will make a significant difference to the ability of

individual countries to tackle climate change. It will provide a clear signal to business , to guide investment toward low carbon outcomes. It will reduce the competitiveness impacts of national policies, and create a simpler, more predictable framework for companies operating in different countries. Vitally, a strong climate deal will help to meet international development aims, which are at increasing risk from rising global temperatures. Eliminating poverty, improving health and building security are all outcomes linked to tackling climate change. And it will also bring huge benefits to the natural environment by helping to avoid biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems upon which we all depend .Paris is different from past agreements – includes concrete plans sufficient to solve climate changeWillis 14 (Rebecca, Council Member of the Natural Environment Research Council, August, “Paris 2015: Getting a global agreement on climate change,” 2 http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/resources/Paris%202015-getting%20a%20global%20agreement%20on%20climate%20change.pdf)

In December 2015, countries will meet in Paris to sign a global agreement on climate change. But what should be in it? The 2015 agreement will be different from those that came before . In the early years of climate negotiations, the focus was on setting ‘top-down’ targets, which drove national action. Today, the emphasis has shifted. Individual countries are being asked to come forward with their own ambitions and plans for carbon reduction. Agreement at the global level is needed to to ensure that countries’ pledged contributions add up to sufficient global action, providing financial support for adaptation and the low carbon transition, while ensuring transparency to enhance co-operation.

A2 No Impact - AdaptationWarming causes extinction and the threshold is soon – no adaptation Roberts 13 – citing the World Bank Review’s compilation of climate studies - 4 degree projected warming, can’t adapt - heat wave related deaths, forest fires, crop production, water wars, ocean acidity, sea level rise, climate migrants, biodiversity loss. ("If you aren’t alarmed about climate, you aren’t paying attention", January 10, 2013, http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-alarmism-the-idea-is-surreal)We know we’ve raised global average temperatures around 0.8 degrees C so far. We know that 2 degrees C is where most scientists predict catastrophic and irreversible impacts. And we know that we are currently on a trajectory that will push temperatures up 4 degrees or more by the end of the century. What would 4 degrees look like? A recent World Bank review of the science reminds us. First, it’ll get hot: Projections for a 4°C world show a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high-temperature extremes. Recent extreme heat waves such as in Russia in 2010 are likely to become the new normal summer in a 4°C world. Tropical South America, central Africa, and all tropical islands in the Pacific are likely to regularly experience heat waves of unprecedented magnitude and duration. In this new high-temperature climate regime, the coolest months are likely to be substantially warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. In regions such as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Tibetan plateau, almost all summer months are likely to be warmer than the most extreme heat waves presently experienced. For example, the warmest July in the Mediterranean region could be 9°C warmer than today’s warmest July. Extreme heat waves in recent years have had severe impacts,

causing heat-related deaths, forest fires, and harvest losses. The impacts of the extreme heat waves projected for a 4°C world have not been evaluated, but they could be expected to

vastly exceed the consequences experienced to date and potentially exceed the adaptive capacities of many societies and natural systems .

[my emphasis] Warming to 4 degrees would also lead to “an increase of about 150 percent in acidity of the ocean,” leading to levels of acidity “unparalleled in Earth’s history.” That’s bad news for, say, coral reefs: The combination of thermally induced bleaching events, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise threatens

large fractions of coral reefs even at 1.5°C global warming. The regional extinction of entire coral reef ecosystems, which could occur well before 4°C is reached, would have profound consequences for their dependent species and for the people who depend on them for food, income, tourism, and shoreline protection. It will also “likely lead to a sea-level rise of 0.5 to 1 meter, and possibly more, by 2100, with several meters more to be realized in the coming centuries.” That rise won’t be spread

evenly, even within regions and countries — regions close to the equator will see even higher seas. There are also indications that it would “significantly exacerbate existing water scarcity in many regions, particularly northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, while additional countries in Africa would be newly confronted with water scarcity on a national scale due to population growth.” Also, more extreme weather events: Ecosystems will be affected by more frequent extreme weather events, such as forest loss due to droughts and wildfire exacerbated by land use and agricultural expansion. In Amazonia, forest fires could as much as double by 2050 with warming of approximately 1.5°C to

2°C above preindustrial levels. Changes would be expected to be even more severe in a 4°C world. Also loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services: In a 4°C world, climate change seems likely to become the dominant driver of ecosystem shifts, surpassing habitat destruction as the greatest threat to biodiversity. Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is likely to occur in a 4°C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth’s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience. Ecosystem damage would be expected to dramatically reduce the provision of ecosystem services on which society depends (for example, fisheries and protection of coastline afforded by coral reefs and mangroves.) New research also indicates a “rapidly rising risk of crop yield reductions as the world warms.” So food will be tough. All this will add up to “large-scale displacement of populations and have adverse consequences for human security and economic and trade systems.” Given the uncertainties and long-tail risks involved, “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.” There’s a small but non-trivial chance of advanced civilization breaking down entirely. Now ponder the fact that some scenarios show us going up to 6degrees by the end of the century, a level of devastation we have not studied and barely know how to conceive. Ponder the fact that somewhere

along the line, though we don’t know exactly where, enough self-reinforcing feedback loops will be running to make climate change unstoppable and irreversible for centuries to come. That would mean handing our grandchildren and their grandchildren not only a burned, chaotic, denuded world , but a world that is inexorably more inhospitable with every passing decade.

A2 Warming Inevitable Continued emissions risk extinction via catastrophic sea level rise – DEFINITIVE action reducing emissions now is keyRomm 15 (Joe, Fellow at American Progress and is the Founding Editor of Climate Progress, Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, PhD in Physics @ MIT, "James Hansen Spells Out Climate Danger Of The ‘Hyper-Anthropocene’ Age," http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/27/3684564/james-hansen-climate-danger-hyper-anthropocene/)James Hansen and 16 leading climate experts have written a must-read discussion paper on what humanity risks if it can’t keep total global warming below 2°C (3.6°F). The greatest risk they identify is “that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable.” This is warning everyone should heed — not just because Hansen’s co-authors include some of the world’s top sea-level rise experts, such as Eric Rignot and Isabella Velicogna, but also given Hansen’s prescience on climate change dating back more than three decades. In 1981, Hansen led a team of NASA scientists in a seminal article in Science, “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” They warned: “Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.” Wow. A 35-year-old peer-reviewed climate warning that is 100 percent dead on. Is there anyone else on the planet who can has been right for so long about climate change? Hansen and co-authors deftly dismiss those ill-informed Pollyannas who use Orwellian terms like “good Anthropocene.” They explain that we are far past “the era in which humans have contributed to global climate change,” which probably began a thousand years ago, and are now in “a fundamentally different phase, a Hyper-Anthropocene … initiated by explosive 20th century growth of fossil fuel use.” The “Hyper-Anthropocene” is a very good term to describe the unprecedented acceleration in global warming that humanity has set in motion with the explosive growth of fossil fuels and carbon pollution, as the recent science makes clear: Marcott et al. Temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013) plus projected warming this century on humanity’s current emissions path (in red, via recent literature). The fact that warming as high as 2°C should be avoided at all costs is not news to people who pay attention to climate science, though it may be news to people who only follow the popular media. Indeed, 70 leading climate experts made that point crystal clear in a May report to the world’s leading governments that received embarrassingly little coverage from the mainstream media. As an important aside, Hansen and his 16 co-authors continue to be criticized for publicizing this paper prior to peer review. While I probably would have framed the paper’s launch somewhat differently — as an expert opinion and discussion piece coming from one or more major scientific institutions — I think this particular criticism is overblown. The mainstream media has generally failed to explain to the public the dire nature of our climate situation, repeatedly hitting the snooze alarm even as the world’s scientists shout “Wake Up” louder and louder in every peer-reviewed forum you can imagine. Hansen himself has tried every traditional way possible to inform the media and alert the public for 35 years. If this new piece is what it takes to get any non-Trump, non-Kardashian, coverage in our current media environment, I’m not certain how much criticism scientists deserve for playing by a set of rules they did not make, rules made by the very people nit-picking at them. The fact that 2°C total warming locks us in to sea level rise of 10 feet or more has been obvious for a while now. Heck, the National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a news release back in March 2012 on paleoclimate research with the large-type headline, “Global Sea Level Likely to Rise as Much as 70 Feet in Future Generations.” The lead author of that study explained, “The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 70 feet higher than now.” And a 2009 paper in Science showed that the last time CO2 levels were this high, it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher. What has changed is our understanding of just how fast sea levels could rise. In 2014 and 2015, a number of major studies revealed that large parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are unstable and headed toward irreversible collapse — and some parts may have already passed the point of no return. Another 2015 study found that global sea level rise since 1990 has been speeding up even faster than we knew. The key question is how fast sea levels rise this century and beyond. Coastal planners — and governments — need to know what the plausible worst-case is. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) reviewing the scientific literature, threw up their hands. They have no idea how quickly the ice sheets can melt and contribute to sea level rise — so they assume it is very little and plead ignorance: “The basis for higher projections of global mean sea level rise in the 21st century has been considered and it has been concluded that there is currently insufficient evidence to evaluate the probability of specific levels above the assessed likely range.” And so the IPCC’s sea level rise range for 2100 is instantly obsolete and useless for governments and planners. A study that integrated expert opinion from 2013 on ice sheet melt with the IPCC findings concluded, “seas will likely rise around 80 cm” [31 inches] by 2100, and that “the worst case [only a 5% chance] is an increase of 180 cm [6 feet].” Since that expert opinion predated all of the bombshell findings of the last 18 months, the authors of that study noted, “We acknowledge that this may have changed since its publication. For example, it is quite possible that the recent series of studies of the Amundsen Sea Sector and West Antarctic ice sheet collapse will alter expert opinion.” Precisely. The main contribution Hansen et al. makes is to warn that “sea level rise of several meters in 50, 100 or 200 years,” which means as early as this century but in any case, sooner than expected. They also warn that even with the less than 1°C of warming we already have, ice sheet melt appears to be putting sea level rise on an exponential growth path that would bring 10 feet of sea level rise sooner, rather than later — even if we stabilize at 2°C total warming. Why does this matter? The authors explain, “The economic and social cost of losing functionality of all coastal cities is practically incalculable.” Heck, even the New York Times reported last year on the news of the accelerating collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet that “The heat-trapping gases could destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the Greenland ice sheet, potentially causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s coastal cities would eventually have to be abandoned.” Team Hansen just carries the analysis to its next logical phase and exposes the dangers of the IPCC’s willful underestimation of the problem: “Our analysis paints a different picture than IPCC (2013) for how this Hyper-Anthropocene phase is likely to proceed if GHG emissions grow at a rate that continues to pump energy at a high rate into the ocean. We conclude that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable.” And

what happens in the Hyper-Anthropocene? Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea

level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable , threatening the fabric of civilization. That is especially true when you throw in the other part of Hansen’s prediction from 1981 that has come true — “the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones.” Indeed, if this comprehensive new paper has one failing, it is in not discussing the myriad studies and evidence that warming-driven Dust-Bowlification threatens one third of the habited and arable landmass of the planet. I also think Hansen is pushing the speculative possibility of 10 feet of sea level rise this century harder than he needs to. Yes, there are many experts who consider that a real possibility now, so it would be imprudent to ignore the warning. But the fact is, on our current emissions path, we now appear to be headed toward the ballpark of 4-6 feet of sea level rise in 2100 — with seas rising up to one foot per decade after that — which should be more than enough of a “beyond adaptation” catastrophe to warrant strongest of action ASAP. Reductions NOW can avoid and delay catastrophic impactsChestney 13 (Nina, senior environmental correspondent, 1/13, “Climate Change Study: Emissions Limits Could Avoid Damage By Two-Thirds,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/13/climate-change-study-emissions-limits_n_2467995.html)The world could avoid much of the damaging effects of climate change this century if greenhouse gas emissions are curbed more sharply, research showed on Sunday. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first comprehensive assessment of the benefits of cutting emissions to keep the global temperature rise to within 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, a level which scientists say would avoid the worst effects of climate change. It found

20 to 65 percent of the adverse impacts by the end of this century could be avoided. "Our research clearly identifies the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions - less severe impacts on flooding and crops are two areas of particular benefit," said Nigel Arnell, director of the University of Reading's Walker Institute, which led the study. In 2010, governments agreed to curb emissions to keep temperatures from rising above 2 degrees C, but

current emissions reduction targets are on track to lead to a temperature rise of 4 degrees or more by 2100 . The World Bank has warned more extreme weather will become the "new normal" if global temperature rises by 4 degrees. Extreme heatwaves could devastate areas from the Middle East to the United States, while sea levels could rise by up to 91 cm (3 feet), flooding cities in countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, the bank has said. The latest research involved scientists from British institutions including the University of Reading, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, as well as Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. It examined a range of emissions-cut scenarios and their impact on factors

including flooding, drought, water availability and crop productivity. The strictest scenario kept global temperature rise to 2 degrees C with emissions peaking in 2016 and declining by 5 percent a year to 2050. FLOODING Adverse effects

such as declining crop productivity and exposure to river flooding could be reduced by 40 to 65 percent by 2100 if warming is limited to 2 degrees, the study said. Global average sea level rise could be reduced to 30cm (12 inches) by 2100, compared to 47-55cm

(18-22 inches) if no action to cut emissions is taken, it said. Some adverse climate impacts could also be delayed by many decades. The global productivity of spring wheat could drop by 20 percent by the 2050s, but the fall in yield could be delayed until 2100 if strict emissions curbs were enforced. "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions won't avoid the impacts of climate change altogether of course, but our research shows it will buy time to make things like buildings, transport systems and agriculture more resilient to climate change ," Arnell said.

Not inevitable – cuts now have an IMMEDIATE effectDesjardins 13 (Cléa, member of Concordia university Media Relations Department, academic writer, citing Damon Matthews; associate professor of the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University, PhD, Member of the Global Environmental and Climate Change Center, “Global Warming: Irreversible but Not Inevitable,” http://www.concordia.ca/now/what-we-do/research/20130402/global-warming-irreversible-but-not-inevitable.php)Carbon dioxide emission cuts will immediately affect the rate of future global warming Concordia and MIT

researchers show Montreal, April 2, 2013 – There is a persistent misconception among both scientists and the public that there is a delay between emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climate’s response to those emissions. This misconception has led policy makers to argue that CO2 emission cuts implemented now will not affect the climate system for

many decades. This erroneous line of argument makes the climate problem seem more intractable than it actually is, say Concordia University’s Damon Matthews and MIT’s Susan Solomon in a recent Science article. The researchers show that

immediate decreases in CO2 emissions would in fact result in an immediate decrease in the rate of climate warming. Explains Matthews, professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, “If we can successfully decrease CO2 emissions in the near future, this change will be felt by the climate system

when the emissions reductions are implemented – not in several decades ." “The potential for a quick climate response to prompt cuts in CO2 emissions opens up the possibility that the climate benefits of emissions reductions would occur on the same timescale as the political decisions themselves.” In their paper, Matthews and Solomon, Ellen Swallow Richards professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science, show that the onus for slowing the rate of global warming falls squarely on current efforts at reducing CO2 emissions, and the resulting future emissions that we produce. This means that there are critical implications for the equity of carbon emission choices currently being discussed internationally. Total emissions from developing countries may soon exceed those from developed nations. But developed countries are expected to maintain a far higher per-capita contribution to present and possible future warming. “This disparity clarifies the urgency for low-carbon technology investment and diffusion to enable developing countries to continue

to develop,” says Matthews. “Emission cuts made now will have an immediate effect on the rate of global warming,” he asserts. “I see more hope for averting difficult-to-avoid negative impacts by accelerating advances in technology development and diffusion, than for averting climate system changes that are already inevitable. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the climate mitigation challenge, clarifying these points of hope is critical to motivate change.”

A2 No Warming Warming is real, anthropogenic, and causes extinctionSchiffman 13 (Richard, , environmental writer @ The Atlantic citing the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “What Leading Scientists Want You to Know About Today's Frightening Climate Report,” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/leading-scientists-weigh-in-on-the-mother-of-all-climate-reports/280045/The polar icecaps are melting faster than we thought they would; seas are rising faster than we thought they would; extreme weather events are increasing. Have a nice day! That’s a less than scientifically rigorous summary of the findings of the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released this morning in Stockholm.¶ Appearing exhausted after a nearly

two sleepless days fine-tuning the language of the report, co-chair Thomas Stocker called climate change “the greatest challenge of our time," adding that “each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than the past,” and that this trend is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. ¶ Pledging further action to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, U.S. Secretary of State John

Kerry said, "This isn’t a run of the mill report to be dumped in a filing cabinet. This isn’t a political document produced by politicians... It’s science." ¶ And that science needs to be communicated to the public, loudly and clearly. I canvassed leading climate researchers for their take on the findings of the vastly influential IPCC

report. What headline would they put on the news? What do they hope people hear about this report?¶ When I asked him for his headline, Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State (a former IPCC author himself) suggested: "Jury In: Climate Change Real, Caused by Us, and a Threat We Must Deal With."¶ Ted Scambos, a glaciologist and head scientist of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

based in Boulder would lead with: "IPCC 2013, Similar Forecasts, Better Certainty." While the report, which is issued every six to seven years, offers no radically new or alarming news,

Scambos told me, it puts an exclamation point on what we already know, and refines our evolving understanding of global warming. ¶ The IPCC, the indisputable rock star of UN documents, serves as the basis for global climate negotiations, like the ones that took place in Kyoto,

Rio, and, more recently, Copenhagen. (The next big international climate meeting is scheduled for 2015 in Paris.) It is also arguably the most elaborately vetted and exhaustively researched scientific paper in existence. Founded in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, the

IPCC represents the distilled wisdom of over 600 climate researchers in 32 countries on changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas. It endeavors to answer the late New York mayor Ed Koch’s famous question “How am I doing?” for all of us. The answer, which won’t surprise anyone who has been following the

climate change story, is not very well at all. ¶ It is now 95 percent likely that human spewed heat-trapping gases — rather than natural variability — are the main cause of climate change , according to today’s report. In 2007 the IPCC’s confidence level was 90 percent, and

in 2001 it was 66 percent, and just over 50 percent in 1995. ¶ What’s more, things are getting worse more quickly than almost anyone thought would happen a few years back. ¶ “If you look at the early IPCC predictions back from 1990 and what has taken place since, climate change is proceeding faster than we expected,” Mann told me by email. Mann helped develop the famous hockey-stick graph, which Al Gore used in his film “An Inconvenient Truth” to dramatize the

sharp rise in temperatures in recent times. ¶ Mann cites the decline of Arctic sea ice to explain : “Given the current trajectory, we're on track for ice-free summer conditions in the Arctic in a matter of a decade or two ... There is a similar story with the continental ice sheets, which are losing ice — and contributing to sea level rise — at a faster rate than the [earlier IPCC] models had predicted.”¶ But there is a lot that we still don’t understand. Reuters noted in a sneak preview of IPCC draft which was leaked in August that, while the broad global trends are clear, climate scientists were “finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming

decades.”¶ From year to year, the world’s hotspots are not consistent, but move erratically around the globe . The same has been true of heat waves, mega-

storms and catastrophic floods, like the recent ones that ravaged the Colorado Front Range. There is broad agreement that climate change is increasing the severity of extreme weather events, but we’re not yet able to predict where and when these will show up. ¶ “It is like watching a pot boil,” Danish astrophysicist and climate scientist Peter Thejll told me. “We understand why it boils but cannot predict where the next bubble will be.” ¶ There is also uncertainty about an apparent slowdown over the last decade in the rate of air temperature increase. While some critics claim that global warming has “stalled,” others point out that, when rising ocean temperatures are factored in, the Earth is actually gaining heat faster than previously anticipated . ¶ “Temperatures measured over the short term are just one parameter,” said Dr Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in an interview. “There are far more critical things going on; the

acidification of the ocean is happening a lot faster than anybody thought that it would, it’s sucking up more CO2, plankton, the basic food chain of the planet , are dying, it’s such a hugely important signal . Why

aren’t people using that as a measure of what is going on?”¶ Barnett thinks that recent increases in volcanic activity, which spews smog-forming aerosols into the air that

deflect solar radiation and cool the atmosphere, might help account for the temporary slowing of global temperature rise. But he says we shouldn’t let short term fluctuations cause us to lose sight of the big picture.¶ The dispute over temperatures underscores just how formidable the IPCC’s task of modeling the complexity of climate change is. Issued in three parts (the next two installments are due out in the spring), the full version of the IPCC will end up several times the length of Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace.

Yet every last word of the U.N. document needs to be signed off on by all of the nations on earth. ¶ “I do not know of any other area of any complexity and

importance at all where there is unanimous agreement ... and the statements so strong ,” Mike MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute in Washington, D.C. told me in an email. “What IPCC has achieved is remarkable (and why it merited the Nobel Peace Prize granted in 2007).”¶ Not

surprisingly, the IPCC’s conclusions tend to be “ conservative by design,” Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie

Institution’s Department of Global Ecology told me: “The IPCC is not supposed to represent the controversial forefront of climate

science. It is supposed to represents what nearly all scientists agree on, and it does that quite effectively.” ¶ Nevertheless, even these understated findings are inevitably controversial. Roger Pielke Jr., the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder suggested a headline that focuses on the cat fight that today’s report is sure to revive: "Fresh Red Meat Offered Up in the Climate Debate, Activists and Skeptics Continue Fighting Over It." Pielke should know. A critic of Al Gore, who has called his own detractors "climate McCarthyists," Pielke has been a lightning rod for the political controversy which continues to swirl around the question of global warming, and what, if anything, we should do about it. ¶ The public’s skepticism of climate change took a dive after Hurricane Sandy. Fifty-four percent of Americans are now saying that the effects of global warming have already begun. But 41 percent surveyed in the same Gallup poll believe news about global warming is generally exaggerated,

and there is a smaller but highly passionate minority that continues to believe the whole thing is a hoax. ¶ For most climate experts, however, the battle is long over — at least when it comes to the science. What remains in dispute is not whether climate change is happening, but how fast things are going to get worse.¶ There are some possibilities that are deliberately left out of the IPCC projections, because we simply don’t have enough data yet to model them. Jason Box, a visiting scholar at the Byrd

Polar Research Center told me in an email interview that: “The scary elephant in the closet is terrestrial and oceanic methane release triggered by warming.” The IPCC projections don’t include the possibility — some scientists say likelihood — that huge quantities of methane (a greenhouse gas thirty times as potent as CO2) will

eventually be released from thawing permafrost and undersea methane hydrate reserves. Box said that the threshhold “when humans lose control of potential management of the problem, may be sooner than expected.” ¶ Box, whose work has been instrumental in documenting the rapid

deterioration of the Greenland ice sheet, also believes that the latest IPCC predictions (of a maximum just under three foot ocean rise by the end of the century) may turn out to be wildly optimistic, if the Greenland ice sheet breaks up. “We are heading into uncharted territory” he said. “ We are creating a different climate than the Earth has ever seen. ” ¶ The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, speaks for the scientific

consensus when he says that time is fast running out to avoid the catastrophic collapse of the natural systems on which human life depends. What he recently told a group of climate scientist could be the most chilling headline of all for the U.N. report: ¶ "We have five minutes before midnight."

A2 Clinton = Perpetual WarClinton isn’t a war-monger – her foreign policy will be restrainedThrall 5/17/16 (A. Trevor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and an associate professor at George Mason University in the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs, "Why Hillary Clinton Will Be a Foreign-Policy Nightmare," http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/why-hillary-clinton-will-be-foreign-policy-nightmare-16233)How likely is this nightmare scenario? All three decisions are entirely plausible given the decisions made by the previous two presidents. Hillary Clinton’s own behavior as Secretary of State and her comments on the campaign trail only make them more so. That said, predicting the future is a tricky business . As concerned as Americans are about ISIS, they are also tired of war [14] in the Middle East and sending troops to the desert carries enormous political risks for any president. It may turn out, then, that foreign policy under a new Clinton administration would be far more restrained than the worst-case scenario I have outlined here. But what if it isn’t? The costs for America in lives and treasure could be momentous.

A2 Clinton = War w/SyriaNo policy difference over Syria - Trump will also escalate US involvement Beauchamp 5/27/16 (Zack, Foreign Policy Contributor @ Vox, "The Donald Trump dove myth: why he’s actually a bigger hawk than Hillary Clinton," http://www.vox.com/world/2016/5/27/11608580/donald-trump-foreign-policy-war-iraq-hillary-clinton)Today, when it comes to Syria, Trump talks a lot about the risks of military intervention, whereas Clinton has played up our obligation to try to end the conflict. "I would have stayed out of Syria and wouldn’t have fought so much

for Assad, against Assad," Trump said. "We’re supposed to fight ISIS, who is fighting Assad." But the two of them support more or less the same military escalation in Syria. Both Clinton and Trump have proposed carving out "safe zones" in the country, which means clearing out a chunk of its territory and protecting it from aggressors . Trump sees this as the answer to the Syrian refugee crisis — if you can keep the Syrians there, they won't have to come over here (or to Europe). "What I like is build a safe zone, it’s here, build a big, beautiful safe zone and you have whatever it is so people can live, and they’ll be happier," he said in a campaign appearance. "I mean, they’re gonna learn German, they’re gonna learn all these different languages. It’s ridiculous." Similarly, both candidates have emphasized the need to bomb ISIS in Iraq and Syria — with Trump famously summarizing his policy as "bomb the shit out of" ISIS. But the way in which Trump plans to wage war on ISIS is far more aggressive — and illegal — than anything Clinton proposed. One of Trump's signature proposals is targeting and killing the families of suspected ISIS fighters. "When you get these terrorists," Trump said in December, "you have to take out their families." He also wants to bring back torture that's "much tougher" than waterboarding. "Don’t kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work," he said at a November campaign event. But "if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing." To be clear, both torture and the intentional killing of civilians are crimes under international and US law. Confusingly, Trump said in early March he would not order US military officers to disobey the law. But he subsequently suggested that he'd "like the law expanded" to permit torture. So Trump has not only supported most of America's recent wars, he also wants to wage wars in a fashion that's far more violent than what Clinton — or most mainstream politicians — would countenance. There's just no evidence, when you look at actual policy positions

rather than rhetoric, that Trump is inclined to be skeptical about using force in the midst of an international crisis.

Trump Bad Impacts

Causes Global War – 1ncTrump causes global war – undercuts US ties globally and incentivizes Russian and North Korean aggressionZahkheim 3/5/16 (Dov, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) in the Administration of George W. Bush, and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense during the first and second Reagan Administrations, "Trump Must Be Stopped," http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-must-be-stopped-15408)I was among a group of Republican former national security officials who signed an open letter pointing out the danger of electing Donald Trump as president of the United States. Even before coming even close to obtaining sufficient delegates for the Republican nomination, he

has become anathema to American friends and allies throughout the world. His questioning of America’s alliances, and his acceptance of Vladimir Putin’s effusive endorsement has alienated America’s NATO partners, with the possible exception of the quasi-fascist Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who himself is too close to Putin for the comfort of many in the West. Trump’s proposal to block all Muslims from entering the United States not only smacks of racism—much like his hesitant disavowal of David Duke’s endorsement—but also has infuriated America’s Arab and Muslim friends in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. His remarks about Jews and Israel have caused that country to wonder how it would fare in a Trump presidency. His opposition to free trade, and his Korea- and Japan-bashing have provided ammunition to those in both countries who would prefer to loosen the bonds that tie them to Washington. His statements about forcing trade concessions from China are only aggravating the tensions that have engulfed the South China Sea. And of course, his attitude toward Hispanic immigrants not only has alienated Mexico, but has infuriated all of our Latin American allies. Not everyone who opposes Trump, or who signed the national security letter, is a neocon. I am not the lone realist among the group who had reservations about the Iraq War. And if anyone is a warmonger, it is Trump himself.

His policies could well lead to war, perhaps because Putin will conclude that he is free to attack a NATO ally, or because Kim Jong-un of North Korea will choose to attack Seoul before it goes nuclear as a result of its ruptured relationship with the United States. But then perhaps Trump doesn’t care what happens in Europe or Asia. He may be content to let NATO collapse, or let the south be destroyed by North Korea. His reaction is anyone’s guess. But it is precisely for this reason that this man should be stopped, before he does even more damage to American national security than he has already managed to do in the course of his all-too-frightening quest for the presidency of the United States.

Causes Global War – 2nc Trump will deck US alliances and use energy as a weapon – sparks great power war Ford 15 (John, captain in the United States Army’s JAG Corps, "The Trump Doctrine," 12/30, http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/the-trump-doctrine/)Given that Donald Trump continues to lead in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, it’s worth asking what kind of foreign policy he would implement if elected. Trump has set forth a surprisingly consistent view of foreign policy. If we treat his public statements

seriously as a reflection of what he would do if elected, what emerges is a foreign policy that would be so cataclysmic for the United States that it might be impossible to undo the damage done. Trump’s statements reflect a surprisingly consistent worldview — a Trump Doctrine. The current international system is held up by several key pillars, the most important of which are that states should be formally treated as equals; that all states should enjoy freedom of trade and navigation; that the distribution of resources should be driven by markets, and not by national governments; and that national sovereignty should generally be respected. This liberal order has proven durable because most countries think they get a fair deal under it and they tend to stand with the United States in upholding it against challengers. Trump’s foreign policy rejects these basic pillars of the international system that have helped ensure global stability. If Trump were elected and acted on his promises, the

United States would go from the defender of the liberal order to its main challenger. Trump’s foreign policy is the policy of a revisionist power that seeks to fundamentally rewrite the rules of the international system. Trump has promised to demand enormous concessions from U.S. allies in exchange for defending them and has pledged to upend the global trading system. He has proposed tariffs that would dramatically alter global trade patterns. Most dangerously, he would reject the idea that commodities like oil should be bought and sold freely on open markets. Instead, Trump would dramatically heighten the chances of a war between major powers by making control of oil a battleground for national governments. Allies or Tributaries? At the core of Trump’s foreign policy is his demand that U.S. allies shoulder a greater share of the burden for their defense. He has said the European countries need to take the lead in dealing with Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and criticized the terms of the U.S.–Japan alliance as being too favorable to Japan. Trump has reserved his harshest criticisms for South Korea. In 2011, Trump complained in a television interview that South Korea was making “hundreds of billions” in profit from the U.S. presence there and paying nothing in exchange. In 2013, Trump complained, “How long will we go on defending South Korea from North Korea without payment? … When will they pay us?” Trump has reaffirmed during his campaign this year that he thinks South Korea needs to pay the United States more money to defend it. Trump thinks of America’s alliances with Japan and South Korea, and its membership in NATO, as acts of charity. It seems that Trump has never considered the idea that it might be in America’s interest to maintain security alliances with other countries that help the United States defend the liberal order. Our allies provide basing rights for U.S. forces, and many of them provide substantial military forces that work with U.S. forces in hot spots around the world. Nor does Trump seem to have considered that these countries have other options aside from an alliance with the United States. South Korea’s trade with China is now double its trade with the United States and there is a risk that over time, the gravitational pull of China’s economy will draw South Korea into China’s orbit. Similarly, much of Europe depends on Russia for energy supplies, making it difficult for them to oppose Russia’s actions in Ukraine. A policy of making more demands of U.S. allies might push America’s allies into the arms of rival powers and it may not be possible for Trump’s successor to put these alliances back together. The countries to which Trump wants to make more demands remain in the U.S. sphere of influence specifically because the United States carefully calibrates the demands it makes of them. The liberal order allows these countries to deal with the United States on formally equal terms and gives them security guarantees. In exchange, the United States ensures that its own security interests are protected and rival powers remain contained. By making more onerous demands on allies, Trump is changing the terms of the relationship and the rules of the international system. Trump doesn’t want allies. He wants tributaries. Upending Global Trade Markets Nothing Trump is proposing will do more to weaken America’s alliances than his stance on trade. Much of the benefit of having a strong relationship with the United States is having a trading relationship with the world’s largest economy and the world’s largest consumer market. Trump has made it abundantly clear that he is not a fan of free trade. Trump has accused China of cheating on trade and threatened to place retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods. Trump has also made similar threats towards many American allies including promises of tariffs on goods from Mexico, Japan, and South Korea. In his 2011 book, Time to Get Tough, he proposed a 20-percent tariff on all imports. If Trump were actually elected and started making greater demands of America’s allies on security issues while offering less in return, and at the same time slapping tariffs on imported goods from those same allies, he would find that the United States wouldn’t have many allies left. Trump’s promise to start a trade war would violate America’s existing treaty commitments and wreak havoc on the world economy, but it would also be a disaster for America’s alliance system. Oil Conflicts As much damage as Trump would do to America’s alliances, similarly reckless is his promise to is seize Iraq’s oil by force. In 2011, Donald Trump gave an interview to Bill O’Reilly during which he said the United States should not leave Iraq but should stay in order to “take the oil.” Trump now believes the United States should “take the wealth away” from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by re-introducing ground troops and taking control of Iraq’s oil fields. Trump doesn’t limit his oil-seizure policy to Iraq, either. He has also said that the United States should not have intervened in Libya unless it was going to take that country’s oil. If Trump’s proposals to restrict Muslim immigration are not enough to alienate America’s allies in the Muslim world, then surely his oil seizure policy will push them away. It is impossible to imagine the American-led coalition against ISIL remaining intact if Trump were to actually try to bring back 19th century-style colonialism. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it placed control of Iraq’s oil in the hands of the new Iraqi government. It was never proposed that the U.S. seize Iraq’s resources for itself. What Trump is proposing would be a radical departure

from past U.S. policy in the region. If a U.S. president were willing to seize Iraq’s oil, there is no reason for countries like Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States to believe the United States would serve as a guarantor of their security, a role it has played for decades. A president who could seize Iraq’s or Libya’s oil is one who could seize Saudi or Kuwaiti oil just as easily. Given that Trump has (falsely) accused Saudi Arabia of funding ISIL and implied other Gulf States were doing the same, these countries would have legitimate reason to fear Donald Trump. Even more threatened would be China. More than any other country, China has been the target of Trump’s threats on trade issues. If Trump were elected, they would find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having the Middle Eastern oil they depend on under the control of someone who has made clear he is willing to use any leverage he can to extract economic concessions from them. China would have every reason to fear that Trump would use oil as a political weapon against it and would have no choice but to find other ways of securing access to energy resources. This would open a wide range of dangerous possibilities that today would be unthinkable. China might feel it has no choice but to make special arrangements with other oil producers in order to guarantee access to the oil it needs. China could make arrangements with the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Venezuela to provide those countries with security guarantees against an American attempt to seize their oil in exchange for guarantees of Chinese access to oil, bringing these countries into the orbit of a rival power to the United States. A scramble would be on to secure access to resources, with oil producers terrified they might be Trump’s next target and oil importers terrified they no longer would be able to guarantee access to oil through world markets. This would dramatically increase the chances of military conflict between the United States and other major oil-consuming countries, especially China. Trump’s policy of seizing the Middle East’s oil would not defeat ISIL. Instead, it would shatter the anti-ISIL coalition and pose a major threat to oil producers and importers alike. The new energy order Trump would create would leave the world much less safe

than it was before by significantly increasing the chances of confrontation between great powers over natural resources. Such an outcome would be inconceivable under the current rules of the international system.

Trump will initiate colonial wars of conquest in order to seek national resourcesBeauchamp 5/27/16 (Zack, Foreign Policy Contributor @ Vox, "The Donald Trump dove myth: why he’s actually a bigger hawk than Hillary Clinton," http://www.vox.com/world/2016/5/27/11608580/donald-trump-foreign-policy-war-iraq-hillary-clinton)But the problem is that the way "we understand" Trump's national security position is bollocks. Trump isn't a leftist, nor is he a pacifist. In fact, Trump is an ardent militarist, who has been proposing actual colonial wars of conquest for years. It's a kind of nationalist hawkishness that we haven't seen much of in the United States since the Cold War — but has supported some of the most aggressive uses of force in American history. As surprising as it may seem, Clinton is actually the dove in this race. Trump wants to start wars for oil — literally In the past five years, Trump has consistently pushed one big foreign policy idea: America should steal other countries' oil. He first debuted this plan in an April 2011 television appearance, amid speculation that he might run for the GOP nomination. In the interview, Trump seemed to suggest the US should seize Iraqi oil fields and just operate them on its own. "In the old days when you won a war, you won a war. You kept the country," Trump said. "We go fight a war for 10 years, 12 years, lose thousands of people, spend $1.5 trillion, and then we hand the keys over to people that hate us on some council." He has repeated this idea for years, saying during one 2013 Fox News appearance, "I’ve said it a thousand times." Trump sees this as just compensation for invading Iraq in the first place. "I say we should take it [Iraq's oil] and pay ourselves back," he said in one 2013 speech. During the 2016 campaign, Trump has gotten more specific about how exactly he'd "take" Iraq's oil. In a March interview with the Washington Post, he said he would "circle" the areas of Iraq that contain oil and defend them with American ground troops: POST: How do you keep it without troops, how do you defend the oil? TRUMP: You would... You would, well for that— for that, I would circle it. I would defend those areas. POST: With U.S. troops? TRUMP: Yeah, I would defend the areas with the oil. After US troops seize the oil, Trump suggests, American companies would go in and rebuild the oil infrastructure damaged by bombing and then start pumping it on their own. "You’ll get Exxon to come in there … they’ll rebuild that sucker brand new. And I’ll take the oil," Trump said in a December stump speech. Trump loves this idea so much that he'd apply it to Libya as well, telling Bill O'Reilly in April that he'd even send in US ground troops ("as few as possible") to fight off ISIS and secure the country's oil deposits. To be clear: Trump's plan is to use American ground troops to forcibly seize the most valuable resource in two different sovereign countries. The word for that is colonialism. Trump wants to wage war in the name of explicitly ransacking poorer countries for their natural resources — something that's far more militarily aggressive than anything Clinton has suggested. This doesn't really track as "hawkishness" for most people, mostly because it's so outlandish. A policy of naked colonialism has been completely unacceptable in American public discourse for decades, so it seems hard to take Trump's proposals as seriously as, say, Clinton's support for intervening more

forcefully in Syria. Yet this is what Trump has been consistently advocating for years. His position hasn't budged an inch, and he in fact appears to have doubled down on it during this campaign. This seems to be his sincere belief, inasmuch as we can tell when a politician is being sincere.

Kills Trade – 1ncTrump decks global trade via protectionism Ignatius 3/18/16 (David, Pultizer-prize winning columnist @ Wash Post, "The Mistaken Bipartisan Attack on Free Trade," http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/03/18/the_mistaken_bipartisan_attack_on_free_trade_130017.html)WASHINGTON -- Of the many dangerous trends in the 2016 election, the revolt against free trade that has captured both parties could do the most long-term damage. That's because protectionism would undermine future growth of the U.S. economy and subvert America's role as global leader. Globalization has undeniably hurt some American workers and

cost some manufacturing jobs. But there's strong evidence that trade has benefited the U.S. economy and created whole new industries in which America is dominant. That's the essence of the "creative destruction" that makes a market economy so potent: It relentlessly pushes innovation and change. Rather than shooting at trade agreements with a blunderbuss, as both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have done (dragging their rivals along with them), candidates should be talking about how to protect the workers who are harmed by foreign competition. The debate should focus on trade-adjustment assistance, job training and better education at all levels. President Bill Clinton two decades ago spoke about "building a bridge to the 21st century" for all Americans. That's still the issue. The free trade argument feels like a rerun of what I covered in my first reporting job in Pittsburgh in the late 1970s, when foreign competition began to challenge the steel industry. Management and labor joined forces to plead for protection, arguing that lower-cost foreign steel was being "dumped" in the United States by the Japanese and others. But that argument wasn't true. Japanese mills had lower costs because they had innovated -- building new, super-efficient blast furnaces and rolling mills while the American industry slumbered. If the protectionists had won back then, they would, in effect, have imposed a tax on all American consumers to support bad management and high costs in the steel business. The protectionists failed, and the steel industry collapsed. People suffered in the transition: The population of Allegheny County got smaller, older and poorer from 1980 to 1995, as steel jobs vanished and workers moved or retired, according to the University of Pittsburgh's University Center for Social and Urban Research. The region's real median household incomes were also stagnant or declining. But over time, the disruptive whirlwind of change created new jobs and greater incomes, thanks to dynamic new businesses that spun up around the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Carnegie Mellon University. Census Bureau data show that in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, per-capita incomes roughly doubled from the beginning of steel's downturn in 1978 to 2014. In inflation-adjusted constant dollars, average personal income rose from $23,239 in 1978 to $45,231 in 2014. Over that time, average incomes in the Pittsburgh area grew faster than in Pennsylvania and the U.S. as a whole. The bipartisan protectionism of Trump and Sanders has focused its attacks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal the Obama administration negotiated with 11 other countries. Economists who have studied the TPP carefully argue that this assault is badly misplaced . In a new paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Robert Z. Lawrence and Tyler Moran estimate that between 2017 and 2026, when TPP would have its major impact, the costs to displaced workers would be 6 percent of the benefits to the economy -- or an 18-to-1 benefit-to-cost ratio. So focus protection on that 6 percent. Even economists who think free trade has harmed U.S. manufacturing see benefits in the TPP. David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson argued last year that although import competition helped produce a "momentous decline" in U.S. manufacturing, "We believe blocking the TPP on fears of globalization would be a mistake." They note that the pact would promote trade in knowledge industries where the U.S. has a big advantage, and that "killing the TPP would do little to bring factory work back to America." Trump, the businessman, seems weirdly out of touch with real economic trends. He speaks of Japan as if it were an economic powerhouse, when it has actually suffered a two-decades-long slump; he describes a surging China, when the numbers show its growth is sagging. Trump is a real estate guy and hotelkeeper. So maybe he doesn't realize that because of low energy costs and high productivity, the U.S. is "seeing ... evidence of an American manufacturing renaissance," according to the Boston Consulting Group. The number of U.S. executives who plan to add production capacity at home has increased by about 250 percent since 2012, according to BCG. Trump and Sanders are swinging a wrecking ball on trade. The right answer is to help the workers who are being hurt as the economy evolves, not to shut down the global trading system.

Global nuke warPanzner 8 (Michael J., faculty at the New York Institute of Finance, 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets who has worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro, Dresdner Bank, and JPMorgan Chase, 2008, Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse, Revised and Updated Edition, p. 136-138)Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States and other nations to spew forth protectionist legislation like the

notorious Smoot-Hawley bill. Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series of tit-for-tat economic responses, which many commentators

believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a prolonged and devastating global disaster , But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been long forgotten during the next collapse. Eventually, fed by a mood of desperation and growing public anger, restrictions on trade, finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify. ¶ Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may even call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many nations will make transporting or sending funds to other countries exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies, they will introduce controls on foreign exchange, foreign individuals and companies seeking to acquire certain American infrastructure assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the (heap thanks

to a rapidly depreciating dollar, will be stymied by limits on investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across

economies and markets, disrupting global payment, settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to undermine business confidence and consumer spending. In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through arbitrage or portfolio-based risk management, or that allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife, or that otherwise facilitates

unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly.¶ The rise in isolationism and protectionism will bring

about ever more heated arguments and dangerous confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key commodities as well as factors of production that must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations. Whether involving raw materials used in strategic industries or basic necessities such as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take increasing precedence in a world where demand seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the environment and natural resources will become more commonplace.

Around the world, such tensions will give rise to full-scale military encounters, often with minimal provocation.¶ In some instances,

economic conditions will serve as a convenient pretext for conflicts that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations may look to divert attention away from domestic problems by channeling frustration and populist sentiment toward other countries and cultures. Enabled by cheap technology and the waning threat of American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the frequency and scale of their horrifying attacks, bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level.¶ Turbulent conditions will encourage aggressive saber rattling and interdictions by rogue nations running

amok. Age-old clashes will also take on a new, more healed sense of urgency. China will likely assume an increasingly belligerent posture toward Taiwan, while Iran may embark on overt colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part, may look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into a growing number of conflicts. Some observers, like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated that an "intense confrontation" between the United States and China is "inevitable" at some point.¶ More than a few disputes will turn out to be almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and religious differences will be transformed from wars of words to battles soaked in blood. Long-simmering resentments could also degenerate quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and triggering

genocidal acts. Terrorists employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional forces using jets, cruise missiles, and bunker-

busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and Western societies as the beginnings of a new world war.

Kills Trade – 2nc Trump destroys the global trading system via trade wars and tariffs – sparks great power warFord 15 (John, captain in the United States Army’s JAG Corps, "The Trump Doctrine," 12/30, http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/the-trump-doctrine/)If Trump were elected and acted on his promises, the United States would go from the defender of the liberal order to its main challenger. Trump’s foreign policy is the policy of a revisionist power that seeks to fundamentally rewrite the rules of the international system. Trump has

promised to demand enormous concessions from U.S. allies in exchange for defending them and has pledged to upend the global trading system. He has proposed tariffs that would dramatically alter global trade patterns . Most

dangerously, he would reject the idea that commodities like oil should be bought and sold freely on open markets. Instead, Trump would dramatically heighten the chances of a war between major powers by making control of oil a battleground for national governments. Allies or Tributaries? At the core of Trump’s foreign policy is his demand that U.S. allies shoulder a greater share of the burden for their defense. He has said the European countries need to take the lead in dealing with Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and criticized the terms of the U.S.–Japan alliance as being too favorable to Japan. Trump has reserved his harshest criticisms for South Korea. In 2011, Trump complained in a television interview that South Korea was making “hundreds of billions” in profit from the U.S. presence there and paying nothing in exchange. In 2013, Trump complained, “How long will we go on defending South Korea from North Korea without payment? … When will they pay us?” Trump has reaffirmed during his campaign this year that he thinks South Korea needs to pay the United States more money to defend it. Trump thinks of America’s alliances with Japan and South Korea, and its membership in NATO, as acts of charity. It seems that Trump has never considered the idea that it might be in America’s interest to maintain security alliances with other countries that help the United States defend the liberal order. Our allies provide basing rights for U.S. forces, and many of them provide substantial military forces that work with U.S. forces in hot spots around the world. Nor does Trump seem to have considered that these countries have other options aside from an alliance with the United States. South Korea’s trade with China is now double its trade with the United States and there is a risk that over time, the gravitational pull of China’s economy will draw South Korea into China’s orbit. Similarly, much of Europe depends on Russia for energy supplies, making it difficult for them to oppose Russia’s actions in Ukraine. A policy of making more demands of U.S. allies might push America’s allies into the arms of rival powers and it may not be possible for Trump’s successor to put these alliances back together. The countries to which Trump wants to make more demands remain in the U.S. sphere of influence specifically because the United States carefully calibrates the demands it makes of them. The liberal order allows these countries to deal with the United States on formally equal terms and gives them security guarantees. In exchange, the United States ensures that its own security interests are protected and rival powers remain contained. By making more onerous demands on allies, Trump is changing the terms of the relationship and the rules of the international system. Trump doesn’t want allies. He wants tributaries. Upending Global Trade Markets Nothing Trump is proposing will do more to weaken America’s alliances than his stance on trade. Much of the benefit of having a strong relationship with the United States is having a trading relationship with the world’s largest economy and the world’s largest consumer market. Trump has made it abundantly clear that he is not a fan of free trade. Trump has accused China of cheating on trade and threatened to place retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods. Trump has also made similar threats towards many American allies including promises of tariffs on goods from Mexico, Japan, and South Korea. In his 2011 book, Time to Get Tough, he proposed a 20-percent tariff on all imports. If Trump were actually elected and started making greater demands of America’s allies on security issues while offering less in return, and at the same time slapping tariffs on imported goods from those same allies, he would find that the United States wouldn’t have many allies left. Trump’s promise to start a trade war would violate America’s existing treaty commitments and wreak havoc on the world economy , but it would also be a disaster for America’s alliance system.

Trump shuts down the global trading system – his protectionist policies would be modeled globallyMoore and Kudlow 15 (Stephen and Larry, co-founders with Arthur Laffer and Steve Forbes of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, 8/27, "Is Donald Trump a 21st-Century Protectionist Herbert Hoover?" http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423141/donald-trumps-protectionism-is-worrisome-stephen-moore-larry-kudlow)Here’s a historical fact that Donald Trump, and many voters attracted to him, may not know: The last American president who was a trade protectionist was Republican Herbert Hoover. Obviously, Hoover’s economic strategy didn’t turn out so well — either for the nation or for the GOP. Does Trump aspire to be a 21st-century Hoover, with a modernized platform of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, which collapsed the banking system and helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a decade-long depression? We can’t help wondering whether the recent panic in world financial markets is in part a result of the Trump assault on free trade . Trump is also running full throttle on an anti-immigration platform that could hurt growth as well as alienate the GOP from the ethnic voters it needs to win in 2016. We call this the Trump Fortress America platform. He clearly sees international trade and immigration as negative-sum games for American workers. Trump recently announced that as president he would prohibit American companies such as Ford from building plants in Mexico. He moans pessimistically that “China is eating our lunch” and “sucking the blood out of the U.S.” But following the anti-business, rule-making assault from Obama, strategic tax cuts and

regulatory relief — not trade and immigration barriers — are the solution to America’s competitiveness deficit. A draft of Trump’s 14-point economic manifesto promises that, as president, he would “modify or cancel any business or trade agreement that hinders American business development, or is shown to create an unfair trading relationship with a foreign entity.” His immigration plan would not only deport illegal immigrants, it would lock the golden doors to those who come to this country lawfully for opportunity, freedom, and jobs. This could hardly be further from the Reagan vision of America as a “shining city on a hill.” In his latest policy manifesto, Trump writes, “Decades of disastrous trade deals and immigration policies have destroyed our middle class.” This “influx of foreign workers,” he continues, “holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans — including immigrants themselves and their children — to earn a middle-class wage.” There’s some evidence that competition for jobs in very low-skilled occupations holds down wages, but for the most part immigrants fill niches in the labor market that natives can’t or won’t fill. Immigrants add to the overall productivity of the labor force while starting new businesses, and thus are net creators of jobs. Tech CEOs will tell you there might not be a Silicon Valley were it not for foreign talent and brainpower. In the 1980s and ’90s, the U.S. admitted nearly 20 million new legal immigrants — one of the largest waves of newcomers in our nation’s history. Over that time period, the U.S. created nearly 40 million new jobs, the unemployment rate plunged by half, and the middle class saw living standards rise by almost one-third (between 1983 and 2005). When Washington gets the macroeconomic policies right — on taxes, trade, regulation, and the dollar — economic opportunity flourishes. Free trade is also one of these prosperity building blocks, and Trump’s call for tariffs as high as 35 percent is worrisome in the extreme. We want Americans and workers all over the world to have access to the best-quality products at the lowest possible prices. This is the centuries-long economic law of comparative advantage first taught to us by David Ricardo. Take the Ford plant in Mexico. If it’s more profitable for Ford to produce trucks in Mexico, fine. As the supply of Mexican trucks rises, incomes for all Mexicans go up. These same Mexicans then go out and spend their new money — not just on domestic products, but on U.S. goods and services available on the market, thus building up the U.S. economy. It’s win-win. Trump is correct that there are unfair trading practices around the world. We know, for example, that China pirates U.S. technologies and patents. They counterfeit our goods. But slapping Trump’s punitive tariff on imported Chinese goods would hurt America at least as much as Beijing. The same is true for rolling back Reagan’s NAFTA — a great success . Mexico is now our second-largest export market. China is our third. And China is our number-one import market, with Canada second and Mexico third. Do we really want to pick an economic war with them? The U.S is the hub of the global trading system, so any lurch toward protectionism in America would give other nations an easy excuse to erect higher trade barriers. The ensuing domino effect could shut down the global trading system. No wonder financial markets are so jittery.

Trade Solves War Trade reduces the likelihood of all conflicts – best statistical studiesHillebrand 10 (Evan E. Hillebrand – Professor of Diplomacy @ University of Kentucky and a Senior Economist for the Central Intelligence Agency, “Deglobalization Scenarios: Who Wins? Who Loses?,” Global Economy Journal, Volume 10, Issue 2 2010)A long line of writers from Cruce (1623) to Kant (1797) to Angell (1907) to Gartzke (2003) have theorized that economic interdependence can lower the likelihood of war . Cruce thought that free trade enriched a society in general and so made people more

peaceable; Kant though t that trade shifted political power away from the more warlike aristocracy, and Angell thought that

economic interdependence shifted cost/benefit calculations in a peace-promoting direction. Gartzke contends that trade relations enhance transparency among nations and thus help avoid bargaining miscalculations. There has also been a tremendous amount of empirical research that mostly supports the idea of an inverse relationship between trade and war. Jack Levy said that, “While there are extensive debates over the proper research designs for investigating this question, and while some

empirical studies find that trade is associated with international conflict, most studies conclude that trade is associated with peace , both at the dyadic and systemic levels” (Levy, 2003, p. 127). There is another important line of theoretical and empirical work called Power Transition Theory that focuses on the relative power of states and warns that when rising powers approach the power level of their regional or global leader the chances of war increase (Tammen, Lemke, et al, 2000). Jacek Kugler (2006) warns that the rising power of Chin a relative to the United States greatly increases the chances of great power war some time in the next few decades. The IFs model combines the theoretical and empirical work of the peace- through-trade tradition with the work of the power transition scholars in an attempt to forecast the probability of interstate war. Hughes (2004) explains how he, after consulting with scholars in bot h camps, particularly Edward Mansfield and Douglas Lemke, estimated the starting probabilities for each dyad based on the historical record, and then forecast future probabilities for dyadic militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and wars based on the calibrated relationships he derived from the empirical literature. The probability of a MID, much less a war, between any random dyad in any given year is very low, if not zero. Paraguay and Tanzania, for example, have never fought and are very unlikely to do s o. But there have been thousands of MIDs in the past and hundreds of wars and many of the 16,653 dyads have non- zero probabilities. In 2005 the mean probability of a country being involved in at least one war was estimated to be 0.8%, with 104 countries having a probability of at least 1 war approaching zero. A dozen countries 12 , however, have initial probabilities over 3%. The globalization scenario projects that the probability for war will gradually

decrease through 2035 for ever y country—but not every dyad--that had a significant (greater than 0.5% chance of war) in 2005 (Table 6). The decline in prospects for war stems from the scenario’s projections of rising levels of democracy, rising incomes, and rising trade interdependence—all of these factors figure in the algorithm that calculates the probabilities. Not all dyadic war probabilities decrease, however, because of the power transition mechanism that is also included in the IFs model. The probability for war between China and the US, for example rises as China’s power 13 rises gradually toward the US level but in these calculations the probability of a China/US war never gets very high. 14 Deglobalization raises the risks of war

substantially. In a world with much lower average incomes, less democracy, and less trade interdependence, the average probability of a country having at least one war in 2035 rises from 0.6% in the globalization scenario to 3.7% in the deglobalization scenario. Among the top-20 war-prone countries, the average probability rises from 3.9% in the globalization scenario to 7.1% in the deglobalization scenario. The model estimates that in the deglobalization scenario there will be about 10 wars in 2035, vs. only 2 in the gl obalization scenario 15 . Over the whole period, 2005-2035, the model predicts four great power wars in the deglobalization scenario vs. 2 in the globalization scenario.IV. Winners and Losers Deglobalization in the form of reduced trade interdependence, reduced capital flows, and reduced migration has few positive effects, based on this analysis with the International Futures Model. Economic growth is cut in all but a handful of countries, and is cut more in the non- OECD countries than in the OECD countries. Deglobalization has a mixed impact on equality. In many non-OECD countries, the cut in imports from the rest of the world increases the share of manufacturing and in 61 count ries raises the share of income going to the poor. But since average productivity goes down in almost all countri es, this gain in equality comes at the expense of reduced incomes and increased poverty in almost all countries. The only wi nners are a small number of countries that were small and poor and not well integrated in th e global economy to

begin with—and the gains from deglobalization even for them are very small. Politically, deglobalization makes for less stable domestic politics and a greater likelihood of war . The likelihood of state failure th rough internal war, projected to diminish through 2035 with increasing globalization, rises in the deglobalization scenario particularly among the non-OECD democracies. Similarly,

deglobalization makes for more fractious relations among states and the probability for interstate war rises .

Kills Econ – 1ncTrump decks the economy – trade, tax, and immigration proposals would cause collapseCovert 3/2/16 (Bryce, editor at ThinkProgress and a frequent contributor to The Nation, "The Biggest, Greatest, Most Terrific Recession," http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/donald_trump_s_presidency_would_create_a_deep_recession.html)A Donald Trump presidency would cause the U.S. economy to collapse . By Bryce Covert trump. Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Valdosta State University on Monday in Georgia. Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images Donald Trump has formidably strong support among working-class voters, who showed up for him in a big way on Super Tuesday. He’s cultivated that following by making grandiose promises not just about isolationism but also about the economy. Trump’s mantra about making America great again is, in large part, centered on economic growth, and specifically on jobs. Of the policy positions he spells out on his website, three of the five are tied to the economy. He wants drastic changes to our trade relations with China, which is part of his promise to restore all the manufacturing jobs lost to other countries. His tax plan will “create jobs and incentives of all kinds while simultaneously growing the economy.” His theory of immigration reform “puts the needs of working people first.” Beyond the appeals to racism and xenophobia, his message is all about restoring the economic prospects of Americans who have seen them decline. But if President Trump puts these plans into effect, there is no way they would make jobs great again. Instead, they would most likely throw us into a recession. How does Trump want to reform relations with China? One big plank is imposing huge tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S., possibly as large as 45 percent. He would also somehow crack down on China’s lax labor regulations and declare the country a currency manipulator, thereby ensuring more fairness in a global playing field in which Americans have lost too many jobs overseas. “Jobs and factories will stop moving offshore and instead stay here at home,” he assures his followers. “The economy will boom.” One study found that the country lost somewhere around 2 million jobs between 1999 and 2011 to trade competition with China—about 10 percent of all manufacturing job losses during that time. But many of those jobs are likely gone for good and have moved on from China to even lower-wage countries like Vietnam and Indonesia. What tariffs are certain to do is hurt Americans’ wallets. When Trump says the U.S. loses $58 billion to Mexico in trade, he neglects to mention what we get in return for that money: cheap goods. Tariffs on those products would drive up their prices, forcing Americans who are not seeing much in the way of wage growth to spend more for the same things. There was a natural experiment with just this policy in 2009, when the U.S. levied a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires. That move saved a maximum of 1,200 jobs while it raised costs for Americans buying those tires by $1.1 billion in one year alone. It would cost a lot of money to deport so many people—about $400 billion to $600 billion. Under Trump’s plan, China would also likely retaliate, as it did against the tire tariff with its own on American chicken imports, costing our exporters about $1 billion. That would only hurt American companies, who would likely cut back on jobs. Next, Trump’s tax plan. The candidate declared that his plan would offer the poor and middle class relief while it went after the “hedge fund guys” by changing the capital gains tax rate on investment income. But the details didn’t bear out his big promises. According to the Tax Policy Center, under Trump’s scheme, the poorest fifth of the country would get less than 1 percent of the benefits of his plan over a decade while the top fifth would get more than two-thirds. Yet it would cost $9.5 trillion in revenue—a far larger bite than under Reagan or even George W. Bush. The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation found that Trump’s claim that the plan will be revenue-neutral not to be true “under any scenario.” There’s little reason to think that big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will lead to a supercharged economy. There’s certainly no evidence that higher rates have a negative impact on economic growth, and in fact, growth has historically been faster under higher top marginal rates. What massive tax cuts for the wealthy do accomplish, on the other hand, is faster growth in income inequality, which hurts economic growth. Third and last, we turn to Trump’s brand of immigration reform, which wouldn’t help the economy either. Economists have found little negative effect on Americans’ wages from immigration. On the other hand, mass deportation and a blockade against immigrants trying to come into the country could have serious negative consequences, knocking $1.6 trillion off of our gross domestic product. Immigrants are projected to provide nearly all growth in the labor force for the next 40 years, but deporting them would shrink it by 6.4 percent over 20 years. Of course, it would also cost a lot of money to deport so many people—about $400 billion to $600 billion. Overall, Trump’s prescriptions are pretty pricy: Added altogether, the conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that his policies would add between $11.7 trillion and $15.1 trillion to the national debt, including interest payments. Deficits in and of themselves don’t necessarily harm growth, and can in fact simulate it, particularly when the country is climbing out of a recession. The outcomes depend on how the money is spent; Trump’s plans aren’t likely to involve productive expenditures. And if Trump wants to deliver on his promise to make his plans revenue-neutral, he’ll have to find huge cost savings elsewhere, cutting spending by trillions. Given that he’s said he won’t touch Medicare and Social Security, he would have to slash current spending by more than three-quarters. Those cuts would all but decimate most government programs, including those that spur the economy such as infrastructure projects, job training, and a safety net that boosts economic productivity and mobility, to name only a few. There’s no telling what a President Trump could actually get passed if he were to enter the White House. But if he got even part of what he wanted, we’d all be in for a very rocky economic ride.

Impact is global nuclear war AND accesses every global impactLieberthal and O'Hanlon 12 (Kenneth and Michael, Senior Fellows in Foreign Policy @ Brookings, "The Real National Security Threat: America's Debt," http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon)Lastly, American economic weakness undercuts U.S. leadership abroad. Other countries sense our weakness and wonder about our purported decline. If this perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes

more persuasive, countries will begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism about America's future. Allies and friends will doubt our commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons for their own security, for example; adversaries will sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing around their weight in their own neighborhoods. The crucial

Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely become less stable. Major war will become more likely. When running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions: healing America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change, dramatically curbing global poverty through development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. These were, and remain, worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his

successor, there is now a much more urgent big-picture issue: restoring U.S. economic strength. Nothing else is really possible if that fundamental prerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished.

Kills Econ – 2nc Trump presidency decks the US and global economies – injects tremendous uncertainty into financial marketsSummers 3/1/16 (Larry, the Charles W. Eliot university professor at Harvard, is a former treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council in the White House, "Larry Summers: Donald Trump is a serious threat to American democracy," https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/01/larry-summers-donald-trump-is-a-serious-threat-to-american-democracy/?tid=sm_fb)The possible election of Donald Trump as president is the greatest present threat to the prosperity and security of the United States. I have had a strong point of view on each of the last ten presidential elections, but never before had I feared that what I regarded as the wrong outcome would in the long sweep of history risk grave damage to the American project. The problem is not with Trump’s policies, though they are wacky in the few areas where they are not indecipherable. It is that he is running as modern day man on a horseback—demagogically offering the power of his personality as a magic solution to all problems—and making clear that he is prepared to run roughshod over anything or anyone who stands in his way. Trump has already flirted with the Ku Klux Klan and disparaged and demeaned the female half of our population. He vowed to kill the families of terrorists, use extreme forms of torture, and forbid Muslims from coming into our country. Time and again, he has claimed he will crush those who stand in his way; his promised rewrite of libel laws, permitting the punishment of the New York Times and The Washington Post for articles he does not like, will allow him to make good on this threat. Lyndon Johnson’s celebrated biographer, Robert Caro, has written that while “power doesn’t always corrupt…[it] always reveals.” What will a demagogue with a platform like Trump’s who ascends to the presidency do with control over the NSA, FBI and IRS? What commitment will he manifest to the rule of law? Already Trump has proposed that protesters at his rallies “should have been roughed up.” Nothing in the way he campaigned gave Richard Nixon a mandate for keeping an enemies list or engaging in dirty tricks. If he is elected, Donald Trump may think he has such a mandate. What is the basis for doubting that it will be used? To be sure there are precedents in American politics for Trump. Precedents like Joe McCarthy, George Wallace, and Huey Long. Just as Trump does, each mined the all too rich veins of prejudice, paranoia and excess populism that lie beneath American soil. Yet even at their highest points of popularity, none of these figures looked like plausible future presidents. One shudders to think what President Huey Long would have done during the Depression, what President Joe McCarthy would have done at the height of the Cold War, or what President George Wallace would have done at the end of the turbulent 1960s. My Harvard colleague, Niall Ferguson, suggests that William Jennings Bryan is the right precursor for Trump. This comparison seems unfair to Bryan who was a progressive populist but not a thug, as evidenced by the fact that he ended up as secretary of state in the Wilson Administration. Trump’s election would threaten our democracy. I doubt that democracy would have been threatened if Bryan had beaten McKinley. Robert Kagan and others have suggested that Trump is the culmination of trends under way for decades in the Republican Party. I am no friend of the Tea Party or of the way in which Congress has obstructed President Obama. But the suggestion that Trump is on the same continuum as George W. Bush or even the Republican congressional leadership seems to me to be quite unfair. Even the possibility of Trump becoming president is dangerous. The economy is already growing at a sub-two percent rate in substantial part because of a lack of confidence in a weak world economy. A growing sense that a protectionist demagogue could soon become president of the United States would surely introduce great uncertainty at home and abroad . The resulting increase in risk premiums might well be enough to tip a fragile U.S. economy into recession. And a concern that the U.S. was becoming protectionists and isolationist could easily undermine confidence in many emerging markets and set off a financial crisis . The geopolitical consequences of Donald Trump’s rise may be even more serious. The rest of the world is incredulous and appalled by the possibility of a Trump presidency and has started quietly rethinking its approach to the United States accordingly. The U.S. and China are struggling

over influence in Asia. It is hard to imagine something better for China than the U.S moving to adopt a policy of "truculent isolationism." The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a central element in our rebalancing toward Asia, could collapse. Japan would have to take self-defense, rather than reliance on American security guarantees, more seriously. And others in Asia would inevitably tilt from a more erratic America towards a relatively steady China. Donald Trump’s rise goes beyond his demagogic appeal. It is a reflection of the political psychology of frustration – people see him as responding to their fears about the modern world order, an outsider fighting for those who have been left behind. If we are to move past Trumpism, it will be essential to develop convincing responses to economic slowdown. The United States has always been governed by the authority of ideas, rather than the idea of authority. Nothing is more important than to be clear to all Americans that the tradition of vigorous political debate and compromise will continue. The sooner Donald Trump is relegated to the margins of our national life, the better off we and the world will be.

Econ Decline = WarEconomic decline causes global war – statistics and diversionary theory proveRoyal 10 (Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction – U.S. Department of Defense, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises”, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline ma y increase the likelihood of external conflict . Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next . As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states . He argues that

interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases , as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources . C rises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a s trong correlat ion between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and

lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the U nited States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.