Dowling Debate

2008-2009Impact Superfile4 /440Nelson

5**TERMINAL IMPACTS**

6AIDS

7Aids turns military readiness

8Air Pollution

9Anthrax

10Biodiversity

11Bioterror

12Bioterror

13Bird Flu

14Constitution

15Democracy

16Democracy Good- Democide

17Dehumanization

18Disease

19Disease turns military readiness

20Disease turns military readiness

21Economy

22Econ- US Key

23Econ- developing countries

24Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution

25Econ Collapse Bad

26Econ interdependence prevents war

27Impacts Economic Decline ( Nuclear War

28Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

34Impacts Econ Turns Heg

36Impacts Econ Turns Prolif

37Impacts Econ Turns Disease

38Impacts Econ Turns Warming/Environment

40Impacts Econ Turns Famine

41Impacts Econ Turns Racism

42Impacts Econ Turns Russia War

43Impacts Econ Solves War

44Impacts Econ Solves Poverty

45Impacts War Turns Gender Violence

46Impacts Econ Turns Terrorism

47Economic decline turns TB, Malaria, AIDS

48Economic Decline Turns Soft Power

49Econ turns heg

51Econ turns heg

52US Econ Collapse ( global

53Econ growth good- environment

53Growth in the economic is beneficial to the environment.

54Econ Growth good- environment

55Econ growth good- environment

56Econ growth good- Poverty

56Countries with higher economic growth rates will face poverty alleviation.

57Econ growth good- poverty/environment

57Economic growth is key to reducing poverty and helping the environment.

58Econ growth good- social services

59Econ growth good- poverty

60AT: Dedev-No mindshift

61Econ growth good-violence

62Econ growth good- social services

62Economic growth helps increase social services, leading to a decrease in poverty.

62Economic growth helps increase social welfare, which is the objective of governments.

63AT: Trainer

64Econ defense

65Econ Defense

66Environmental Destruction/opop turns disease

67Environment Impact/ turns disease

68Environment turns war/economy

69Environmental destruction turns agriculture

70Freedom

71Genocide

72Heg

73Homophobia ( War

74Human Rights: Credibility

75Human Rights Promo Good- Terrorism

76Human Rights Promo Good- Iran Prolif

78Human Rights Promo Good- Democracy

79Human Rights Promo Good- Central Asia

81Oceans

82Ozone

83Patriarchy

84Patriarchy ( War

85Patriarchy ( War

86Patriarchy ( War

87Patriarchy ( War

88Poverty

89Racism

90SARS

91Space Exploration bad

92Space Weaponization: NASA Key

93Space Weaponization Bad: Nuclear Annhilation

94SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA

96SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA

96US-CHINA CONFLICT IS A ZERO-SUM COMPETITION

97WEAPONIZTION BAD: A2: PEACEFUL NUKES

98SPACE WEAPONIZATION IMPOSSIBLE: NASA

99SPACE WEAPONIZATION ALREADY HAPPENED

100TB (1/4)

101TB (2/4)

102TB (3/4)

103TB (4/4)

104TB

105Terror

106Terrorism turns Econ

107Terrorism Defense

108Terrorism Defense

109Terrorism doesnt hurt the economy

111Warming

112**HEG**

113Heg Declining and Unsustainable

116Hard Power doesnt solve Heg

117Heg collapse turns economy

118Kagan

121Decline Inev

122Econ T/

123**WAR IMPACTS**

124War causes dehumanization

125War Turns Disease

126War turns Gender violence

127War turns Human Right Violations

128War turns human rights/ disease

129War Turns Racism

130War Turns Everything

131War Turns Mental Health

132War turns Health

133War turns domestic violence

134War turns the environment

135War outweighs disease

137AIDS

138Animal Rights T/

139Biodiversity

140Cap

141Civil Liberties T/

142Dehumanization T/

143Democracy T/

144Disease T/

145Disease T/

146Domestic Violence T/

147Econ T/

148Edelman

149Environment

150Environment

151Fascism

152Gendered Violence T/

153Health T/

154Heg T/

155Homelessness

157Homophobia

158Inequality

160Mental Health T/

161Poverty

162Poverty

163Woman Rights T/

164Racism

165Rape

166Rights T/

167Rights T/

168Social Service T/

169Starvation

170Terror

171**X TURNS CASE**

172AIDS T/ Readiness

173AIDS T/ Readiness

174Disesase T/ Readiness

175Disease T/ Readiness

176Disease T/ War

177Ecodestruction T/ Disease

178Ecodestruction T/ Disease

179Ecodestruction T/ War

180Ecodestruction T/ Agriculture

181**NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIOS**

182Central Asian Conflict

183China-US

184Economic Collapse

185India/Pakistan War

186Iraq Pullout

187Iran

188Japanese Relations (Spratly Islands)

189Japanese Relations (Middle Eastern Conflict)

190Japanese Relations (China/Taiwan Conflict)

191Japanese Relations (Korea)

192Japanese Relations (Sino-Russian Ties)

193North Korea

194Pakistan Collapse

195Sino-Russian Conflict

196Sunni/Shiite Conflict

197Russia-US

198Taiwan/China War

199Taiwan

200Terrorism Nuclear Escalation

201Terror = Extinction

202**NUKE WAR IMPACTS**

203Nuclear War ( Disease

204Nuclear War ( Extinction

206Nuclear War ( Pollution

207Nuclear War ( Phytoplankton Scenario

208Nuclear War ( Ozone Scenario

209Nuke War ( Oceans

210Nuclear War ( Biodiversity Scenario (1/2)

211Nuclear War ( Biodiversity Scenario (2/2)

212**NUKE WAR PROBABILITY**

213Nuclear War Evaluated First

215Schell

216Nuclear War Likely

217Nuclear War Likely Escalation

218Nuclear War Likely Middle East Prolif

219Great Power War Likely

220Nuke War Not Likely

221Nuke War Not Likely US Russia

222Nuke War Not Likely Rising Costs

223Nuke War Not Likely Deterrence

224Nuke War Not Likely International System

226Nuke War Not Likely North Korea

227Nuke War Not Likely Pakistan

228No Nuclear Terror

229No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (1/6)

231No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (2/6)

232No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (3/6)

233No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (4/6)

234No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (5/6)

235No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (6/6)

236AT: Schell

237AT: Schell

238AT: Schell

239**IMPACT TAKEOUTS**

240AT: Giligan

242Extinction Impossible

243Nuclear War

244Biological Attack Not Probable

245Indo-Pak

246Iran

247**IMPACT CALCULUS**

248Impacts Exaggerated (1/2)

249Impacts Exaggerated (2/2)

250Prob. Evaluated First (1/2)

251Prob. Evaluated First (2/2)

252Prob Before Mag Ext

253Systemic Impacts First

254Probability Evaluation Key

255AT: Rescher

256Predictions Bad - Policymaking

258Predictions Bad Background Beliefs

259Predictions Bad Irresponsibility

261Predictions Bad - Monkeys

262Predictions Bad Decisionmaking Spillover

263AT: Monkeys

264Predictions Good (1/3)

265Predictions Good (2/3)

266Predictions Good (3/3)

267Mag. Evaluated First (1/3)

268Mag. Evaluated First (2/3)

269Mag. Evaluated First (3/3)

270Role of Ballot = Magnitude

272Extinction Evaluated First

273**PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**

274Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Avoidance

275Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Fails

276Precautionary Principle Good Risk Fails

277Precautionary Principle Good- AT Innovation Stultification

278Precautionary Principle Good- AT Zero Risk

279Precautionary Principle Good- AT Cost

280Precautionary Principle Good- AT Bad Science

281**AT PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**

282Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (1/3)

283Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (2/3)

284Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (3/3)

285Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (1/3)

286Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (2/3)

287Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (3/3)

288Precautionary Principle Bad- Pandemic

289Precautionary Principle Bad- Militarism

290**UTIL**

291Util O/W Rights

292Util Good K2 Policymaking

293Util Good - K2 Determine Rights

294Util Good Best Interest

295Util Good Concrete Decisionmaking

296Util Good Prevents Nuke War

297Util Inevitable

299Survival Instinct Good Extinction

300Consequentialism Good

301Consequentialism Fails

302Consequentialism Fails

303**AT UTIL**

304Util Bad No Equality/Justice

305Util Bad Mass Murder

306Util Bad Annihilation

307Util Bad VTL

308Util Excludes Rights

309Survival Instinct Bad Destroys Humanity

310**RIGHTS/DEONTOLOGY**

311Must Evaluate Human Rights (1/2)

312Must Evaluate Human Rights (2/2)

313Deontology O/W Util

314Deontology O/W Util

315Deontology O/W Util

317Deontology O/W Util

319Deontology Good K2 VTL

320Callahan (1/2)

321Callahan (2/2)

322Callahan Ext

324Moral Justice First

325Moral Rationality First

326Rights Absolute

328Rights/Liberty K2 Rationality

329Moral Resolution O/W Util

330Morals Compatible With Util

331No Rights = Violent Backlash

332Right To Health O/W

333Poverty Moral Obligation

334Action Key End Result Irrelevant

335**AT DEONTOLOGY/RIGHTS**

336Rights Violation Inev

337AT: Rights First

338AT: Rights First

339AT Rawls

340AT Rawls

341AT Rawls

342AT: Liberty/Rights First

343AT: Morals First

344AT: Gewirth

346AT: Gewirth

347AT: Gewirth

348AT: Gewirth

349AT: Gewirth

350Ethics Bad

352Ethics Bad

353Ethics Bad

354Deontology Bad No Assume Nuke War

355Deontology Bad - Policy

356Deontology Bad - Policy

357Deontology Bad - Democracy

358Deontology Bad -- Conflicts

359Deontology Bad Subjective Rights

360Extinction O/W Deontology

361Deontology Bad - Absolutist

362Deontology Bad - Absolutist

363Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive

364Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive

366**AT EGAL**

367Egalitarianism Frontline (1/2)

368Egalitarianism Frontline (2/2)

369Public Sphere Ext Arg Plurality

370Hierarchies Inevitable

371Egal = Envy

372Egal = Infinite Redistribution

373Egal Biased

374Rejection of Egal K2 Check Abuse

375AT: Moral Egal

377AT: Democratic Egal

378AT: Radical Egal

379AT: Egal = Util

380Inegal Solves

381Econ Turns Egal

382Sufficientarianism Good

383Sufficientarianism Good

384Sufficientarian Perm

385**AGENCIES**

386Generic Agencies Fail

387NGOs Key Federal Sucess

388Administration for Children and Families

389Agriculture Department

390Department of Health and Human Services

391Department of Education

392States Solve Education

393Department of Interior

394Department of Interior (Natives Link)

395Department of Interior (U.S. Territories DA)

396Housing and Urban Development

397Department of labor

398Department of Justice

399Environmental Protection Agency

400Office of National Aids Policy

401Social Security Administration

402ICE

403Veterans Health Administration

404Ineffective Agency Political Capital Link

405**INTERNATIONAL LAW**

406Intl Law Good

407Intl Law Good

408Intl Law Impact

409Intl Law K2 Rights

411Intl Law K2 Democracy

412Intl Law Bad

**TERMINAL IMPACTS**

AIDS

The spread of AIDS causes mutations that risk extinction

Ehrlich and Erlich 90

Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Professors of Population studies at Stanford University, THE POPULATION EXPLOSION, 1990, p. 147-8

Whether or not AIDS can be contained will depend primarily on how rapidly the spread of HIV can be slowed through public education and other measures, on when and if the medical community can find satisfactory preventatives or treatments, and to a large extent on luck. The virus has already shown itself to be highly mutable, and laboratory strains resistant to the one drug, AZT, that seems to slow its lethal course have already been reported." A virus that infects many millions of novel hosts, in this case people, might evolve new transmission characteristics. To do so, however, would almost certainly involve changes in its lethality. If, for instance, the virus became more common in the blood (permitting insects to transmit it readily), the very process would almost certainly make it more lethal. Unlike the current version of AIDS, which can take ten years or more to kill its victims, the new strain might cause death in days or weeks. Infected individuals then would have less time to spread the virus to others, and there would be strong selection in favor of less lethal strains (as happened in the case of myxopatomis). What this would mean epidemiologically is not clear, but it could temporarily increase the transmission rate and reduce life expectancy of infected persons until the system once again equilibrated. If the ability of the AIDS virus to grow in the cells of the skin or the membranes of the mouth, the lungs, or the intestines were increased, the virus might be spread by casual contact or through eating contaminated food. But it is likely, as Temin points out, that acquiring those abilities would so change the virus that it no longer efficiently infected the kinds of cells it now does and so would no longer cause AIDS. In effect it would produce an entirely different disease. We hope Temin is correct but another Nobel laureate, Joshua Lederberg, is worried that a relatively minor mutation could lead to the virus infecting a type of white blood cell commonly present in the lungs. If so, it might be transmissible through coughs.

AIDS spread and mutations will cause extinction

Lederberg 91

(Joshua Lederberg, Molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner in 1958, 1991In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic Disease, p 35-6)

Will Aids mutate further ? Already known, a vexing feature of AIDS is its antigenic variability, further complicating the task of developing a vaccine. So we know that HIV is still evolving. Its global spread has meant there is far more HIV on earth today than ever before in history. What are the odds of its learning the tricks of airborne transmission? The short is, No one can be sure. But we could make the same attribution about any virus; alternatively the next influenza or chicken pox may mutate to an unprecedented lethality. As time passes, and HIV seems settled in a certain groove, that is momentary reassurance in itself. However, given its other ugly attributes, it is hard to imagine a worse threat to humanity than an airborne variant of AIDS. No rule of nature contradicts such a possibility; the proliferation of AIDS cases with secondary pneumonia multiplies the odds of such a mutant, as an analogue to the emergence of pneumonic plague.Aids turns military readiness

AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes govt control

Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike other diseases, AIDS has an incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it will produce significant casualties on the front lines of a war. It will still, however, deplete force strength in many states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed forces in sub-Saharan countries are HIV-positive, and in a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe, it may be as high as 80 percent.147 In high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes military readiness, directly threatening national security. Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related illnesses are now the leading cause of death in the army and police forces of these countries, accounting for more than 50% of inservice and post-service mortalities. In badly infected countries, AIDS patients occupy 75% of military hospital beds and the disease is responsible for more admissions than battlefield injuries. The high rate of HIV infection has meant that some African armies have been unable to deploy a full contingent, or even half of their troops, at short notice.. [In South Africa, because] participation in peace-support operations outside the country is voluntary, the S[outh] A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling with the problem of how to ensure the availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even the use of members for internal crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse conditions or stationing in areas where local in- frastructure is limited, presents certain problems. Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea and the common cold, can be serious enough to require the hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in some cases, can prove fatal if they are not treated immediately.148 Armed forces in severely affected states will be unable to recruit and train soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying colleagues, the potential recruitment pool itself will dwindle, and officers corps will be decimated. Military budgets will be sapped, military blood supplies tainted, and organizational structures strained to accommodate unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also threaten civilians at home and abroad. Increased levels of sexual activity among military forces in wartime means that the military risk of becoming infected with HIV is as much as 100 times that of the civilian risk. It also means that members of the armed forces comprise a key means of transmitting the virus to the general population; with sex and transport workers, the military is considered one of the three core transmission groups in Africa.149 For this reason, conflict-ridden states may become reluctant to accept peacekeepers from countries with high HIV rates. Rather than contributing directly to military defeat in many countries, however, AIDS in the military is more likely to have longer term implications for national security. First, IDs theoretically could deter military action and impede access to strategic resources or areas. Tropical diseases erected a formidable, although obviously not insurmountable, obstacle to colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French and later American efforts to open the Panama Canal, similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control efforts effectively checked yellow fever and malaria. Second, in many countries AIDS already strains military medical systems and their budgets, and it only promises to divert further spending away from defense toward both military and civilian health. Third, AIDS in the military promises to have its greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further destabilizing the state. Terminally ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their government, and their government may be in more need of defending as AIDS siphons funds from housing, education, police, and administration. Finally, high military HIV/AIDS rates could alter regional balances of power. Perhaps 40.50 percent of South Africa.s soldiers are HIV-infected. Despite the disease.s negative impact on South Africa.s absolute power, Price-Smith notes, AIDS may increase that nation.s power relative to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with potentially important regional consequences.150 AIDS poses obvious threats to the military forces of many countries, particularly in sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not present the same immediate security problems for the United States. The authors of a Reagan-era report on the effects of economic and demographic trends on security worried about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education, and funding on the defense budget,151 but a decade of relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These surpluses have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS spending have not reappeared and are unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, given the relatively low levels of HIV-infection in the United States. AIDS presents other challenges, including prevention education and measures to limit infection of U.S. soldiers and peacekeepers stationed abroad, particularly in high risk settings, and HIV transmission by these forces to the general population. These concerns could limit U.S. actions where American interests are at stake.152Air Pollution

Air pollution will lead to extinction

Driesen 03

(David, Associate Professor, Syracuse University College of Law. J.D. Yale Law School, 1989, Fall/Spring, 10 Buff. Envt'l. L.J. 25, p. 26-8)

Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon which all life depends and harming the health of both future and present generations. The Rio Declaration articulates six key principles that are relevant to air pollution. These principles can also be understood as goals, because they describe a state of affairs that is worth achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between them, they aid understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first principle is that "human beings. . . are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature", because they are "at the center of concerns for sustainable development." While the Rio Declaration refers to human health, its reference to life "in harmony with nature" also reflects a concern about the natural environment. Since air pollution damages both human health and the environment, air quality implicates both of these concerns. Lead, carbon monoxide, particulate, tropospheric ozone, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides have historically threatened urban air quality in the United States. This review will focus upon tropospheric ozone, particulate, and carbon monoxide, because these pollutants present the most widespread of the remaining urban air problems, and did so at the time of the earth summit. 6 Tropospheric ozone refers to ozone fairly near to the ground, as opposed to stratospheric ozone high in the atmosphere. The stratospheric ozone layer protects human health and the environment from ultraviolet radiation, and its depletion causes problems. By contrast, tropospheric ozone damages human health and the environment. 8 In the United States, the pollutants causing "urban" air quality problems also affect human health and the environment well beyond urban boundaries. Yet, the health problems these pollutants present remain most acute in urban and suburban areas. Ozone, carbon monoxide, and particulate cause very serious public health problems that have been well recognized for a long time. Ozone forms in the atmosphere from a reaction between volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and sunlight. Volatile organic compounds include a large number of hazardous air pollutants. Nitrogen oxides, as discussed below, also play a role in acidifying ecosystems. Ozone damages lung tissue. It plays a role in triggering asthma attacks, sending thousands to the hospital every summer. It effects young children and people engaged in heavy exercise especially severely. Particulate pollution, or soot, consists of combinations of a wide variety of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide contribute to formation of fine particulate, which is associated with the most serious health problems. 13 Studies link particulate to tens of thousands of annual premature deaths in the United States. Like ozone it contributes to respiratory illness, but it also seems to play a [*29] role in triggering heart attacks among the elderly. The data suggest that fine particulate, which EPA did not regulate explicitly until recently, plays a major role in these problems. 16 Health researchers have associated carbon monoxide with various types of neurological symptoms, such as visual impairment, reduced work capacity, reduced manual dexterity, poor learning ability, and difficulty in performing complex tasks. The same pollution problems causing current urban health problems also contribute to long lasting ecological problems. Ozone harms crops and trees. These harms affect ecosystems and future generations. Similarly, particulate precursors, including nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, contribute to acid rain, which is not easily reversible. To address these problems, Agenda 21 recommends the adoption of national programs to reduce health risks from air pollution, including urban air pollution. These programs are to include development of "appropriate pollution control technology . . . for the introduction of environmentally sound production processes." It calls for this development "on the basis of risk assessment and epidemiological research." It also recommends development of "air pollution control capacities in large cities emphasizing enforcement programs using monitoring networks as appropriate." A second principle, the precautionary principle, provides support for the first. As stated in the Rio Declaration, the precautionary principle means that "lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation" when "there are threats of serious or irreversible damage." Thus, lack of complete certainty about the adverse environmental and human health effects of air pollutants does not, by itself, provide a reason for tolerating them. Put differently, governments need to address air pollution on a precautionary basis to ensure that humans can life a healthy and productive life.

Anthrax

A small amount of anthrax could be effective in killing millions of people

Wake, 01

Ben Wake The Ottawa Citizen October 13, 2001 Saturday Final EDITION

http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T7030650745&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T7030641352&cisb=22_T7030650748&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8363&docNo=4.The potential impact on a city can be estimated by looking at the effectiveness of an aerosol in producing downwind casualties. The World Health Organization in 1970 modeled the results of a hypothetical dissemination of 50 kg of agent along a 2-km line upwind of a large population center. Anthrax and tularemia are predicted to cause the highest number of dead and incapacitated, as well as the greatest downwind spread. A government study estimated that about 200 pounds of anthrax released upwind of Washington, D.C., could kill up to 3 million people. Here is a list of all of the recognized Biological Weapons.

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is key to preventing extinction

Madgoluis 96

(Richard Margoluis, Biodiversity Support Program, 1996, http://www.bsponline.org/publications/showhtml.php3?10)

Biodiversity not only provides direct benefits like food, medicine, and energy; it also affords us a "life support system." Biodiversity is required for the recycling of essential elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is also responsible for mitigating pollution, protecting watersheds, and combating soil erosion. Because biodiversity acts as a buffer against excessive variations in weather and climate, it protects us from catastrophic events beyond human control. The importance of biodiversity to a healthy environment has become increasingly clear. We have learned that the future well-being of all humanity depends on our stewardship of the Earth. When we overexploit living resources, we threaten our own survival.

Biodiversity loss outweighs all impacts

Tobin 90

(Richard Tobin, THE EXPENDABLE FUTURE, 1990, p. 22 )

Norman Meyers observes, no other form of environmental degradation is anywhere so significant as the fallout of species. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest in assessing the relative consequences of human-caused extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen to earth is not economic collapse, the depletion of energy supplies, or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events might be, Wilson reasons that they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoingthat will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.

Bioterror

Bioterror will cause extinction

Steinbrenner 97, Brookings Senior Fellow, 1997 [John D. , Foreign Policy, "Biological weapons: a plague upon all houses," Winter, InfoTrac]

Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential weapons of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning. The use of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population. The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit. Nobody really knows how serious a possibility this might be, since there is no way to measure it reliably.

Bioterror is the only impact that risks extinction

Ochs 02 (Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002 Biological Weapons must be Abolished Immediately, June 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)

Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.

Bioterror

Biological terrorism caused extinction

Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002

[Biological Weapons must be Abolished Immediately, June 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_.../abolish.html]Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.Bird Flu

Bird Flu goes global, killing billions

[Ethne Barnes, Research Assistant in Paleopathology, Wichita State, 2005, Diseases and human evolution, p. 427-8]

Human history is riddled with accounts of epidemics wreaking similar havoc among human populations around the world, though not as severe as the rabbit myxomatosis introduced into Australia. Even the great influenza pandemic in the early twentieth century did not come close to killing off a significant portion of the global population. However, a more deadly influenza pandemic is all too likely. Influenza virus exemplifies the ideal predator for reducing human populations. It is airborne and travels the globe easily and quickly, capable of infecting all age groups in repeated waves within a short time span. Influenza type A viruses are unstable and continuously evolving. Global movements of people and viruses at a rapid pace make gene swapping possible among previously isolated strains. Hybrid virus produced by such gene swapping could result in a deadly strain that targets the lower branches of the bronchial tubes and the lungs. Severe viral pneumonia and death within twenty-four hours would follow. The new influenza virus could easily move around the globe within days and kill over half the human population (Ryan, 1997). Crowded cities, especially megacities, could suffer up to 90 percent fatalities within days or weeks.

Constitution

The Constitution is the most important thing to preserveEidmoe 92 (John A. Eidsmoe is a Constitutional Attorney, Professor of Law at Thomas Goode Jones School of Law and Colonel with the USAF, 1992 3 USAFA J. Leg. Stud. 35, p. 57-9) Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the wellproportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which united national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them, than were ever shed over the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty. It is possible that a constitutional convention could take place and none of these drastic consequences would come to pass. It is possible to play Russian roulette and emerge without a scratch; in fact, with only one bullet in the chamber, the odds of being shot are only one in six. But when the stakes are as high as one's life, or the constitutional system that has shaped this nation into what it is today, these odds are too great to take the risk.

We have a moral obligation to prevent violations of the constitution whenever possibleLevinson 2kDaryl Levinson, professor of law at University of Virginia, Spring 2000 UC Law Review

Extending a majority rule analysis of optimal deterrence to constitutional torts requires some explanation, for we do not usually think of violations of constitutional rights in terms of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency. Quite the opposite, constitutional rights are most commonly conceived as deontological side-constraints that trump even utility-maximizing government action. Alternatively, constitutional rights might be understood as serving rule-utilitarian purposes. If the disutility to victims of constitutional violations often exceeds the social benefits derived from the rights-violating activity, or if rights violations create long-term costs that outweigh short-term social benefits, then constitutional rights can be justified as tending to maximize global utility, even though this requires local utility-decreasing steps. Both the deontological and rule-utilitarian descriptions imply that the optimal level of constitutional violations is zero; that is, society would be better off, by whatever measure, if constitutional rights were never violated.

Democracy

Democracy preserves human lifeCarnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict 95 (October, "Promoting Democracy in the 1990's," http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)

Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.Democracy Good- Democide

Democratization solves DemocideRummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, 2001 (R.J., International Journal on World Peace, September, proquest)

There is a feeling among many that since democide (genocide and mass murder) and war have always been with us, they always will be; that such violence is in our bones, part of the human condition. After all, year after year, as far back as one looks in history, some part of the world has suffered war or genocide. And, even today, this is going on in many countries and regions, such as in the Sudan, Burma, China, North Korea, and the Middle East. By democide alone, during the last century about 174 million people were murdered by government, over four times the some 38 million combat dead in all the century's domestic and foreign wars.

Nonetheless, there is much hope to eradicate war and democide. Consider that from the perspective of the eighteenth century, slavery also looked to the humanist as democide and war do to us today: an evil that has always been part of human society. Now slavery is virtually ended, and eventually the same may be true of war and democide. Why this is true and how to foster this end to democide and war is the subject of this essay.

There are many complex considerations and theoretical issues to the problem of war and democide. There are the questions of general and immediate causation, and of aggravating and inhibiting conditions. There are the practical questions of how to gather timely intelligence about them and inform decision makers about what is known, how to influence the political process through which intervention against democide is decided, and how to give democide and war elsewhere the required prominence in the complex of perceived national interests. With regard to intervening to stop democide, there are questions concerning the national mix of the necessary troops, their weapons, and the rules of engagement.

Many of the answers to these questions will fall into place if we recognize three facts and one practical necessity that cut through the jumble of questions and problems involved. The one fact is that democracies by far have had the least domestic democide, and now with their extensive liberalization, have virtually none. Therefore, democratization (not just electoral democracies, but liberal democratization in terms of civil and political rights and liberties) provides the long-run hope for the elimination of democide.

The second fact is that democracies do not make war on each other and that the more democratic two governments, the less the likelihood of violence between them. Not only is democracy a solution to democide, but globalizing democracy is also a solution to war. That the world is progressively becoming more democratic, with 22 democracies in 1950 to something like 120 democracies today (about 88 of them liberal democracies), it is increasingly likely that in the long run the twin horrors of democide and war will be eliminated from human society.Dehumanization

Dehumanization outweighs all other impacts

Berube, 1997

(Berube, David. Professor. English. University of South Carolina. Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side. 1997. http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm.)

Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would involve valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the current ones, humans would never be able to escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon.

Disease

Disease causes extinction

South China Morning Post 96

(Avi Mensa, 1-4-1996, Leading the way to a cure for AIDS, P. Lexis)

Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen."That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years - theoretically, it could happen tomorrow.The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.

Drug resistant diseases threaten human extinction.

Discover 2000 (Twenty Ways the World Could End by Corey Powell in Discover Magazine, October 2000, http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld)If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the New World.Disease turns military readiness

Pandemics kill military readiness

Major Hesko, 6 (Gerald, Air Command And Staff College Pandemic Influenza: Military Operational Readiness Implications April 2006)

There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of the past century with the potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult to accurately predict, scientists theorize that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is imminent.

If a pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community, the number of Americans affected could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in untold suffering and deaths. Although an influenza pandemic, if it occurs, has the potential to devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming consequence is the effects it could have on the operational readiness of the United States military establishment. With our current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with other smaller engagements world-wide, if an influenza pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational readiness, preparedness and ability to defend our vital national interests could be decreased or threaten. As a result of the pending threat of an influenza pandemic, the United States military, must take decisive actions to mitigate the potential devastation an influenza pandemic might have on operational readiness.

Disease turns military readiness

Suburban Emergency Management Project, 7 (Disease Outbreak Readiness Update, U.S. Department of Defense

Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=449)

An infectious disease pandemic could impair the militarys readiness, jeopardize ongoing military operations abroad, and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel reporting sick or being absent during a pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007).

Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation. (1) The 40% number (above) comes from the Homeland Security Councils estimate that 40% of the U.S. workforce might not be at work due to illness, the need to care for family members who are sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military and civilian personnel and contractors would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.

Aids kills military readiness

Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the 21st Century Trust, World Policy Journal, Global Public Health Trumps the Nation-State Volume XXI, No 3, Fall 2004, http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)

The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS pandemic has the potential to derail the economic prospects of billions of peopleparticularly in Russia, China, and Indiaand to thereby alter the global military balance.5 Eurasia (defined as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the worlds population, and its combined GNP is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more importantly, the region includes four of the worlds five militaries with over one million members and four declared nuclear states. Since HIV has a relatively long incubation period, its effects on military readiness are unusually harsh. Officers who contract the disease early in their military careers do not typically die until they have amassed significant training and expertise, so armed forces are faced with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace officers.

Disease turns military readiness

Diseases kill military readiness- empirically proven

Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and outcome of military conflict by eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond notes, .All those military histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies..142 During the European conquest of the Americas, the conquistadors shared numerous lethal microbes with their native American foes, who had few or no deadly diseases to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez and his men first attacked the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520, they left behind smallpox that wiped out half the Aztec population. Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their vulnerability to a disease that appeared harmless to the Europeans, and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in conquering the Aztec nation.143 Spanish conquest of the Incan empire in South America followed a similar pattern: In 1532 Francisco Pizarro and his army of 168 Spaniards defeated the Incan army of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had killed the Incan emperor and his heir, producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to defeat a large, but divided enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the ability of military forces to prosecute and win a war. The German Army chief of staff in the First World War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed Germany.s loss of that war at least partly on the negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German troops.145 In the Second World War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in certain areas than did military action.146 Throughout history, then, IDs have had a significant potential to decimate armies and alter military history.Economy

Economic collapse causes a global nuclear exchange

Mead 92

(Walter Russell, Mead, Senior Fellow Council on Foreign Relations, New Perspectives Quarterly, Summer, 1992, p. 30)The failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of worldwide depression- will open their eyes to their folly. Hundreds of millions-billions-of people around the world have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have embraced market principles-and drawn closer to the West-because they believe that our system can work for them. But what if it can't? What if the global economy stagnates, or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia. China. India-these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 1930's.

Economic slowdown will cause WWIII

Bearden 2k

(Liutenant Colonel Bearden, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, 2000, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-Medicine/message/642Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As the collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed . The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.

Econ- US Key

U.S. economic collapse leads to an economic depression globally.

(Walter Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 04 04, Americas Sticky Power, Foreign Policy, Proquest, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_ id=2504&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/ cms.php?story_id=2504&page=2)

Similarly, in the last 60 years, as foreigners have acquired a greater value in the United States-government and private bonds, direct and portfolio private investments-more and more of them have acquired an interest in maintaining the strength of the U.S.-led system. A collapse of the U.S. economy and the ruin of the dollar would do more than dent the prosperity of the United States. Without their best customer, countries including China and Japan would fall into depressions. The financial strength of every country would be severely shaken should the United States collapse. Under those circumstances, debt becomes a strength, not a weakness, and other countries fear to break with the United States because they need its market and own its securities. Of course, pressed too far, a large national debt can turn from a source of strength to a crippling liability, and the United States must continue to justify other countries' faith by maintaining its long-term record of meeting its financial obligations. But, like Samson in the temple of the Philistines, a collapsing U.S. economy would inflict enormous, unacceptable damage on the rest of the world.

A drop in the U.S. economy causes a global recession.

(Anthony Faiola, staff writer of Washington Post, 01 30 08, U.S. Downturn effects may ease worldwide, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/auth/checkbrowser.do?ipcounter=1&co okieState=0&rand=0.2947196325707201&bhcp=1)

Analysts caution that a sharper drop in the U.S. economy something widely feared, as evidenced by the global route on stock markets from Paris to Tokyo last week could yet plunge the world economy below the 2.5 to 3 percent growth range that constitutes a global recession. And around the world, billions of dollars in losses from Americas subprime mortage morass are still being accounted for, with experts predicting it will take a deeper financial toll.

Econ- developing countries

A global economic crisis has a hard effect on growing economies and provides significantly reduced funds for families living in these countries.

(Luska Times, 12 24 08, Global Economic crisis shows effects on families, http://www.lusakatimes.com/?p=6713)

Effects of the global economic crisis have already started showing a negative impact on growing economies, such as Zambia, with only a few people managing to spend for Christmas. According to a survey carried out this morning by ZANIS, people said it is hard to do shopping because there are no funds to meet the needs of many families. Most people expressed concern about lack of funds to do shopping because prices have been hiked so much, making it difficult for many people to buy gifts for their beloved ones. Alfonsaias Haamanjanti said people should not over-spend unnecessarily but consider critical things such as school fees and uniforms for children when schools reopen. Mr Haamanjati said it is important to budget for the things that one needs by writing a list and follow it. He pointed out that the global financial crisis may not be felt now, saying there is need to save money and shop only when it is necessary. He said the global financial crisis may be felt so much next year, adding that most Zambians should consider saving their money and use it when there is real need.

Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution

U.S. economic collapse will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S. into six pieces.

(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministrys academy for future diplomats, expert on U.S.- Russia relations, 12 29 08, As if Things werent bad enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media. In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger." Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations. But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories. A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire. "There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S. Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

Economic and financial problems in the U.S will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S.

(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministrys academy for future diplomats, expert on U.S.- Russia relations, 12 29 08, As if Things werent bad enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. Mr. Panarin predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in. California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia. "It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin. Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's role as a global financial regulator.

Econ Collapse Bad

Global economic collapse results in nuclear war causes North Korean aggression, Afghanistan collapse, Russian adventurism, and American isolationismFriedberg and Schenfeld, 8 (Aaron Friedberg-professor of politics and international relations at the Woodrow Wilson School, and Gabriel Schoenfeld-visiting scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, 10/21/2008, The Dangers of a Diminished America, The Wall Street Journal, p. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future?

Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern.

If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk.

In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability.

The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity.

None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures.

As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power.

Econ interdependence prevents war

Economic interdependence prevents war

Griswold, 7 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, 4/20/2007, Trade, Democracy and Peace, http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)

A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say." In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 17, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest report found that 2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another. What a remarkable and wonderful fact.

The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press report, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Current estimates of people killed by war are down sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War.

Many causes lie behind the good news--the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them--but expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American author argued in a forgettable book, growing commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would argue that free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways.

First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies--a record high. Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight wars. While it's true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare occurrence for democracies to engage in wars with non-democracies. We can still hope that as more countries turn to democracy, there will be fewer provocations for war by non-democracies.

A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting more economic integration. As national economies become more intertwined with each other, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the economic cost of war.

The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on "Economic Freedom and Peace" by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia University. Dr. Gartzke compares the propensity of countries to engage in wars and their level of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including the freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, "Making economies freer translates into making countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as the most free."

By the way, Dr. Gartzke's analysis found that economic freedom was a far more important variable in determining a countries propensity to go to war than democracy.

A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in a high-tech, service economy. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home. In short, globalization and the development it has spurred have rendered the spoils of war less valuable.

Impacts Economic Decline ( Nuclear War

Prolonged Recession yields nuclear war- must avert it now- empirically proven

Sean ODonnell Staff Writer, Baltimore Examiner, B.A. in History from the University of Maryland 2/26, Will this recession lead to World War II, http://www.examiner.com/x-3108-Baltimore-Republican-Examiner~y2009m2d26-Will-this-recession-lead-to-World-War-III

Could the current economic crisis affecting this country and the world lead to another world war? The answer may be found by looking back in history. One of the causes of World War I was the economic rivalry that existed between the nations of Europe. In the 19th century France and Great Britain became wealthy through colonialism and the control of foreign resources. This forced other up-and-coming nations (such as Germany) to be more competitive in world trade which led to rivalries and ultimately, to war. After the Great Depression ruined the economies of Europe in the 1930s, fascist movements arose to seek economic and social control. From there fanatics like Hitler and Mussolini took over Germany and Italy and led them both into World War II. With most of North America and Western Europe currently experiencing a recession, will competition for resources and economic rivalries with the Middle East, Asia, or South American cause another world war? Add in nuclear weapons and Islamic fundamentalism and things look even worse. Hopefully the economy gets better before it gets worse and the terrifying possibility of World War III is averted. However sometimes history repeats itself.

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

The US is key to global econ rest of the world failing

Kaczmarek, Editor-in-Chief of the SAIS Review of International Affairs and M.A. Candidate, 08(Matthew D. Kaczmarek, Editor-in-Chief of the SAIS Review of International Affairs and M.A. Candidate of 2000, Summer-Fall 2008, The SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 28, Number 2, pp. 207-209)

While the economic policy of the U.S. Government can no longer be printed on IMF letterhead and declared global consensus ipso facto, it is wrong to assume that the United States has somehow relinquished its mandate to lead. The world is awash in conflicting bilateral trade agreements, varying degrees of capital mobility, and wildly inconsistent access within nations to the fruits of global development. If there is a time for the United States to demonstrate sober global leadership while responsibly advancing its own interests and ideals, it is now. With the Doha round stagnating and the Bank and Fund deep into an identity crisis, but with the memories of the economic turbulence of the 1980s and 90s still fresh in the mind, an uncertain world continues to look toward the United States to show a willingness to step up to engage the recalcitrant global economy. The process of reengagement is difficult and will undoubtedly prove frustrating for the next administration. The G-8 is no longer a useful forum for building global economic consensus unless it moves more quickly to include emerging economic powers. The IMF must continue in its reform mission as well as embrace the need to become the explicit lender of last resort to sovereign nations. The next administration should develop clear and thoughtful goals for engagement with each global region, and build ties, embrace, and nurture mutually beneficial relationships with emerging regional leaders. The days of proxy wars for spheres of influence are long gone, while the flood of economic support in exchange for political-security cooperation is showing no faster diminishing returns than in Pakistan and Iraq. The authors in the preceding pages of this volume have debated the costs, effectiveness, and opportunities for multilateral engagement across a wide range of specific issues. Where the United States continues to hold absolute supremacy, such as military power, and where ideological objectives are concerned, such as the continuing War on Terror, the U.S. enjoys the luxury to choose whether or not to engage the rest of the world in a multilateral discussion and debate. On economic development, there is no such choice. The future prosperity of billions of low and middle income citizens around the world, and the continued success of todays leading economies depends on a sound and stable global economic architecture, and the deferential respect afforded the U.S. in the global economy begs for its reengagement.

American consumption key to global economic growth other nations cant replace the US spot

Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners-Capital Management, 7-2

Ajbinder Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners Capital Management, 7-2-09, The Financial Post, The US Consumer: Engine of the Global Economy Gears Down

Over the years, the world the world has looked to the US consumer to lead the way out of economic downturns. Currently, the US consumer accounts for almost 70% of the American economy and about 15 - 17% of the global economy. Economists had long derided the Spend! Spend! Spend! ways of Americans. Credit was a means to an end. The rising real estate prices that had lasted for much of this decade allowed consumers to cash out some of the equity from their homes to continue the odyssey of lifestyle improvement. This gave way to the notion that US consumers were using their homes as ATM machines. But a funny thing has happened during the current economic slowdown. US consumers have retrenched from vigorous consumption in order to save more. As the chart below shows, savings rates in the US have gone from a negative rate (consumers adding debt to consume) to positive. Current statistics show that the savings rate in the US is on track to approach a level of about 7% later this year. This change in behavior is both positive and negative. The negative case for this change is that it means that other countries will have to bolster their own consumption and investment as an offset. This will not be easy as Asian nations have a higher rate of savings.Europes economy will likely take much longer to get moving as is usually the case after economic slowdowns. For the financial markets this means that any excessive optimism should be tempered with this realization that the coming economic recovery will be different than any we have seen in quite some time. The positive side to this change is that it will mean less reliance by the US on foreign capital to help fund the budget deficit. These rising savings rates are ending up in the US banking system and will provide more fuel for the US banking system to lend a helping hand to the US economy. Not to mention - helpful to the US dollar. The irony is that just as the world would welcome the US consumer going back to old habits of spending and consuming, Americans have realized that a little savings can go a long way. The price of this change in behavior is that global economic growth will not rebound as fast and as much as the markets might be hoping for.

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

US economic decline hits other nations unsettles global financial markets

Lynch, Graduate of Wesleyan University and M.A. International Relations at Yale, 07David J. Lynch, Graduate of Wesleyan University and M.A. International Relations at Yale, 12-10-07, USA Today, Slowing US Economy Inflicts Pain around the World

The extent to which other economies have "decoupled" from their traditional dependence upon the U.S. economic engine, however, remains a topic of debate. On one hand, three countries China, India and Russia accounted for more than half of global economic growth over the past year, according to the IMF. So emerging markets are expected to shoulder principal responsibility for keeping the global economy moving forward in 2008. But the U.S. economy remains the world's largest, and a sharp fall in demand here for others' goods will reverberate. Canada and Mexico, sending 81% of their exports to the USA, are the USA's top trading partners and the countries most exposed to a serious U.S. downturn. Economic weakness in the USA can hit other countries both by unsettling global financial markets, thus curbing access to capital, and by depressing trade. "The U.S. and Asian economies are not decoupled, and a slowdown here is likely to produce ripple effects lowering growth there," says Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Whether the rest of the world can, in fact, shrug off slower U.S. growth remains to be demonstrated. But the remedies central banks are choosing to fight the credit crunch are putting strains on other parts of the global financial system, which could ultimately damage growth in some emerging markets. Central banks in the USA, United Kingdom and Canada have cut interest rates in recent weeks, trying to counteract banks' reluctance to make new loans. On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve, which already has trimmed the target for its benchmark rate by three-quarters of a percentage point since September, is widely expected to cut rates again. The Fed's actions ricochet from Beijing to Dubai. Countries such as China and the oil producers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which link their currencies to the level of the U.S. dollar to varying degrees, face a choice between setting interest rates according to the needs of their domestic economies or tailoring rates to maintain stable exchange rates. That means keeping their exchange rates stable against the dollar and importing inflation or raising their interest rates to head off inflation at the cost of seeing their currencies appreciate. So far, the quasi-dollar-linked countries are swallowing higher prices and the potential for overheating. In Qatar, for example, inflation runs at an annual rate of almost 13%. Current monetary policies and exchange rates are "completely out of kilter with what these countries need and might actually encourage the bubble in emerging markets to get bigger. It is really only a question of time before we have this regime change in the global monetary system," says George Magnus, senior economic adviser of UBS (UBS) in London. That said, most economists expect the global economy to pull through unless another unexpected shock hits. "We're in this window of vulnerability. If something else comes along, we don't have a lot of padding," says Harvard's Rogoff. "We're very vulnerable."

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

The US is essential to the global economy no other country is close to US production.

Fisher, President of the federal reserve bank, 06 Richard W. Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. 2/6/06. The United States: Still the Growth Engine for the World Economy?

My kind hosts, who had no idea that this event would follow so closely on the heels of the meager growth estimate reported for last years fourth quarter, have asked me to address the question: Is the United States still the growth engine for the world? The answer is yes. Let me explain why. The American economy has been on an upswing for more than four years. Growth advanced briskly at 4.2 percent in 2004. It slowed to a still solid 3.5 percent in 2005, although I would not be surprised if GDP were revised upward when we take a more definitive look at the fourth quarter. In January, the U.S. economy employed 134.6 million people, up 2.2 million in a year. Unemployment stood at a four-year low of 4.7 percent, which compares with the latest reading of 8.4 percent for Europe and even higher rates for some of the continents major economies. We have weathered hurricanes fury and record-high energy prices while continuing to grow and keep inflation under control. The statement the Federal Open Market Committee released Tuesday quite summed up our current situation succinctly: Although recent economic data have been uneven, the expansion in economic activity appears solid. This is especially true in what I call the growth riman arc of population centers with favorable demographics that begins in Virginia, runs down the southeastern seaboard through Georgia to Florida, then through the megastate of Texas and on to the uberstate of California and up to Seattle. I use mega and uber to describe the two largest states for a reason: to illustrate the depth and breadth of our economy. In d