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[A] Interpretation: Assistance must go to the government

“For” means in support ofOxford Dictionary 2011[Oxford University Press, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/for?region=us]for(for)Pronunciation:/fôr, fər/preposition1 in support of or in favor of (a person or policy):they voted for independence in a referendum

“Syria” refers to the governmentDictionary.com 2011http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/SyriaSyr·i·a [seer-ee-uh] Show IPAnoun1. Official name, Syrian Arab Republic. a republic in SW Asia at the E end of the Mediterranean. 16,137,899; 71,227 sq. mi. (184,478 sq. km). Capital: Damascus.2. a territory mandated to France in 1922, including the present republics of Syria and Lebanon (Latakia and Jebel ed Druz were incorporated into Syria 1942): the French mandatory powers were nominally terminated as of January 1, 1944.3. an ancient country in W Asia, including the present Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and adjacent areas: a part of the Roman Empire 64 b.c.–a.d. 636.

[B] Violation: The plan gives assistance to the opposition

[C] Prefer our interpretation:

1. Limits – thousands of NGOs and other potential recipients. Each one is a potential aff.

2. Ground – domestic politics is necessary and educational ground. They make debates about who gets assistance not why we give it.

[D] T is a voting issue, or the aff would read a new indisputable case every debate


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Obama has de-prioritized all other legislative issues to secure PTC extensionNicholas, 12/31(Columnist-Detroit Free Press, http://www.freep.com/article/20111231/NEWS15/111231019/obama-campaign-strategy, Obama hints at campaign strategy pitting him against 'do-nothing' Congress)

HONOLULU, Hawaii — Heading into the new year, President Barack Obama will insist that Congress renew the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012, but will otherwise limit his dealings with an unpopular Congress, and instead travel the country to deliver his re-election message directly to voters, a White House aide said “In terms of the president’s relationship with Congress in 2012 — the state of the debate, if you will — the president is no longer tied to Washington, D.C.,” said spokesman Josh Earnest in a press briefing in Honolulu, Hawaii. The assertion is striking given that Obama, as president for nearly three years, is both the symbol and personification of the federal government. It also offers a glimpse into an Obama re-election strategy that will target a “do-nothing” Congress much in the style of Harry S. Truman’s re-election campaign in 1948. With most legislative cliffhangers behind him, Obama does not consider the rest of his policy agenda to be a “must-do” for lawmakers , Earnest said. Rather, the White House believes Obama is well-served by continuing to distance himself from a Congress often blamed for Washington’s gridlock and infighting. As the year unfolds, Obama will roll out more initiatives designed to boost the economy and assist struggling families using executive authority, the White House aide said. Obama has already unveiled 20 such measures under the new slogan, “We can’t wait.” Earnest said that the White House goal is to contrast the image of a “gridlocked, dysfunctional Congress” with “a president who’s leaving no stone unturned to try to find solutions to the difficult financial challenges and economic challenges facing this country.” Obama will also make the case for passage of his $447 billion jobs package, most of which Congress has rejected over the past three months. His jobs plan includes money to keep public workers on the job and rebuild the nation’s roads, ports and bridges. But it seems doubtful that he’ll push Congress to enact his jobs plan with the same focus that he brought to the p ayroll t ax c ut debate. Nothing else on Obama’s menu requires congressional action as urgently as the tax cut, the White House said. If Congress were to let the payroll tax cut expire at the end of February, tens of millions of Americans would be hit with a tax increase, harming the fragile economic recovery, the White House contends.

Democracy assistance drains political capitalMcLaughlin, contributing writer – The Washington Diplomat, 5/31/’11(Seth, “Key Foreign Policy Players Try to Master Capitol Hill,” The Washington Diplomat)

But it's not just politicos in Washington and anxious Americans who are following the partisan showdown. The city's diplomats have been intently watching the congressional sparring as well. After all, strengthening economic ties with the world's largest economy is among every diplomat's top priorities. Whether it's development assistance or trade and investment, the state of the U.S. government checkbook matters not just to Americans, but to the world.However, after a decade of tax cuts coupled with two wars, a housing boom and bust and an economic recession, America's bloated and battered checkbook needs rebalancing. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that with a budget deficit of $1.5 trillion and climbing — along with a national debt of about $14.2 trillion — federal spending must be curbed . But by how much, from where and how fast, especially in the midst of a still fragile recovery and sagging unemployment, will be the talk of the town for months to come. Immediately after the dust settled over the budget for the 2011 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, both sides set their sights on the 2012 numbers that will also decide the amount of money and manpower the United States releases across the globe.Though the State Department and foreign operations budget represent a sliver of total spending, most peg it at about 1 percent of more than $3.5 trillion federal budget, money spent on diplomacy and development has become a convenient whipping post for voters and lawmakers searching for quick answers to the country's financial mess, but also wary of the fallout from reforming the real drivers of federal spending — popular entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and spending on defense (also see "America's Foreign Affairs Budget Faces Congressional Chopping Block" in the March 2011 issue of The Washington Diplomat).


Even if politicians are more willing to broach so-called third rail subjects like Medicare and Medicaid, the international affairs budget still faces the threat of significant cuts by lawmakers determined to show fiscal restraint across the board. A congressman would be hard pressed to take away grandmother's Medicare and justify giving more assistance to rebel fighters in Libya, for instance, even if the two cases aren't exactly correlated.Explaining fiscal nuance is not an easy sell. Politically speaking, it's simply easier for lawmakers to cut foreign aid than to go after programs that have a more noticeable effect on their constituents back in their home districts.But like entitlement programs, the Pentagon is where the actual spending — and by extension potential savings — is. In general, the budget for international affairs has amounted to about $50 billion annually in recent years while the Defense Department racks up roughly $700 billion a year, including most war expenditures. Yet both parties have only flirted with the idea of touching the Defense budget, which has become a sacred cow among lawmakers of all stripes.Public misperceptions also drive the political expediency. Americans think that 25 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign assistance, according to a recent poll by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes. The real amount? The total international affairs budget comes in at under 1.5 percent.But you can be sure both sides will be clawing over every scrap of that 1.5 percent. As it stands, the fiscal 2011 budget allocated $48.3 billion for State and foreign operations — an $8.4 billion reduction from the president's requested amount though it was on par with 2010 levels. As part of the $38 billion of cuts in the 2011 budget, about $500 million was carved out of the State Department's budget compared to last year, while U.S. payments to the United Nations will be decreased by $377 million. Pay for Foreign Service officers was also frozen, and USAID operating expenses were trimmed by $39 million.

Economic collapsePolitical Correction 12-12, factchecking branch of the Media Matters Action Network, “Republicans: Payroll Tax Holiday Isn't "Stimulating" Enough”, http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201112120007

Zandi: "Without That Payroll Tax Cut This Year, I Think We'd Be Skirting Recession Now." During a June 26, 2011, appearance on CNN's State of the Union, Moody's Analytics economist Mark Zandi stated : "On the other side of that, there are a few things I think that can be done that would make a difference in the very short term if we need it. So extending the payroll tax holiday for another year seems like a reasonable thing to do. I think that can get done politically. Without that payroll tax cut this year , I think we'd be skirting recession now because of the higher energy prices." [CNN's State of the Union, 6/26/11, emphasis added] Moody's: Every Dollar In Reduced Revenue From Payroll Tax Cut Expands Economy by $1.27. According to the C enter on B udget and P olicy priorities : The rationale for enacting the temporary payroll tax cut last December - the economy was weak and a payroll tax cut would provide a more efficient bang-for-the-buck than many other tax-cut options - has become still more compelling today, given the renewed signs of economic weakness. At a time of soft economy-wide demand, the tax cut increases consumer purchasing power in a manner that is both substantial (boosting take-home pay by 2 percent for most workers) and modestly progressive, since the wage cap limits the benefit for higher-income families (who are more likely to save rather than spend the additional money) Largely for these reasons, Moody's Analytics estimates that every $1 reduction in federal tax revenue resulting from an employee-side payroll tax cut expands the economy by $1.27 . [CBPP.org, 9/7/11, emphasis added, internal citation removed] CBO Director In 2010: A Payroll Tax Cut Would Add Jobs And Spur The Economy. From C ongressional B udget O ffice Director Douglas Elmendorf's February 23, 2010, testimony before the Joint Economic Committee: A temporary reduction in employees' portion of the payroll tax would not immediately affect employers' costs. Instead, it would have initial effects similar to those of reducing other taxes for people below the 2010 income cap. The increase in take-home pay would spur additional spending by the households receiving the higher income, and that higher spending would , in turn, increase production and employment. Those effects would be spread over time, however, and the majority of the increased take-home pay would be saved rather than spent. CBO estimates that reducing employees' payroll taxes would raise output cumulatively between 2010 and 2015 by $0.30 to $0.90 per dollar of total budgetary cost . CBO also estimates that the policy would add 3 to 9 cumulative years of full-time-equivalent employment in 2010 and 2011 per million dollars of total budgetary cost. [Elmendorf Testimony, 2/23/10, emphasis added, via CBO.gov] FACT: Economists Say Letting Payroll Tax Cut Expire Would Weaken Economy CBPP: Extending Payroll Tax Cut Will Reduce Risk That The Economy

http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201112120007


Will Continue To Grow Too Slowly. From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Failure by Congress to extend the temporary payroll tax cut enacted last December would reduce all paychecks starting on January 1, withdrawing needed support from the still-weak economy. The measure, part of the tax cut-unemployment insurance deal between President Obama and Republican leaders, reduces the employee share of the Social Security payroll tax, boosting workers' take-home pay by an estimated $120 billion in 2011. The tax cut is worth $934 to the average family. (The table below gives some examples of how the tax cut's expiration would affect workers in different occupations.) Many economists have warned that letting the tax cut expire at the end of December would slow economic growth next year. To reduce the risk that the economy will continue to grow too slowly to lower unemployment or may even slide back into recession, policymakers should at a minimum extend the tax cut. [CBPP.org, 9/7/11, emphasis added, citation removed for clarity] EPI/Century Foundation: Failure To Extend Payroll Tax Cut Could Decrease GDP By $128 Billion And Cost Almost 1 Million Jobs. According to an issue brief from the E conomic P olicy I nstitute and The Century Foundation : "As part of December's deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, Congress enacted a 2 percentage point reduction in the Social Security payroll tax for all workers, and it is set to expire at the end of the year. The cost of failing to extend the payroll tax cut is estimated by adjusting the cost of the 2011 payroll tax cut (JCT 2010) by CBO's projection of wage and salary growth (CBO 2011b), resulting in a cost of $117 .8 billion . Applying a fiscal multiplier of 1.09 (Zandi 2010), we estimate that the failure to extend the payroll tax cut would decrease GDP by $ 128 billion (-0.8%) and lower nonfarm employment by 972,000 jobs . [Economic Policy Institute and The Century Foundation, 8/4/11, emphasis added] Zandi: "Critical" To Extend Payroll Tax Holiday; Failure To Do So Will Increase Drag On Economy. According to Moody's Analytics Economist Mark Zandi: "To avoid recession, Congress and the administration must also find common ground on economic policy. If they do nothing, federal fiscal policy will shave 1.7 percentage points from real GDP growth next year . The triggers for this include the expiration of both this year's reduced payroll tax rate and emergency unemployment insurance benefits. Even a strong economy would have trouble digesting this, never mind one that is struggling to post any growth at all . [...] It is critical (and assumed in our baseline outlook) that lawmakers agree at least to extend and increase the payroll tax holiday for workers through 2012 as proposed by President Obama. This would reduce next year's fiscal drag to less than 1 percentage point-still a heavy lift for the economy, but doable. [Economy.com, 10/10/11] Zandi: Extending Payroll Tax Cut Would Create 750,000 Jobs. From McClatchy: "The biggest contributor to job growth next year under the Obama plan would be extending the payroll tax holiday for workers, which Zandi estimates would add 750,000 jobs. The portion that is waved for employers would add another 300,000 jobs, he said. Infrastructure spending could add 400,000 jobs." [McClatchy, 9/8/11]

ExtinctionKemp 10Geoffrey Kemp, Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, served in the White House under Ronald Reagan, special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Former Director, Middle East Arms Control Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010, The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East, p. 233-4

The second scenario, called Mayhem and Chaos, is the opposite of the first scenario; everything that can go wrong does go wrong. The world economic situation weakens rather than strengthens , and India, China, and Japan suffer a major reduction in their growth rates , further weakening the global economy. As a result, energy demand falls and the price of fossil fuels plummets, leading to a financial crisis for the energy-producing states, which are forced to cut back dramatically on expansion programs and social welfare. That in turn leads to political unrest: and nurtures different radical groups, including, but not limited to, Islamic extremists. The internal stability of some countries is challenged , and there are more “failed states.” Most serious is the collapse of the democratic government in Pakistan and its takeover by Muslim extremists , who then take possession of a large number of nuclear weapons. The danger of war between India and Pakistan increases significantly . Iran, always worried about an extremist Pakistan, expands and weaponizes its nuclear program. That further enhances nuclear prolif eration in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt joining Israel and Iran as nuclear states. Under these circumstances, the potential for nuclear terrorism increases, and the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack in either the Western world or in the oil-producing states may lead to a further devastating collapse of the


world economic market, with a tsunami-like impact on stability. In this scenario, major disruptions can be expected, with dire consequences for two-thirds of the planet’s population .


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The United States federal government should ask the Government of Qatar to provide technical assistance for the democratic opposition to Bashar Al-Assad.

Qatar will say yes – key to regional influenceUlrichsen, 11(4/12, research fellow at the London School of Economics & Author of The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East http://www.opendemocracy.net/kristian-coates-ulrichsen/qatar-and-arab-spring)

In recent weeks, the Gulf state of Qatar has emerged as a leading advocate of international intervention on the side of the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya. It organised the politically-crucial Arab support for the No-Fly Zone, was one of the first countries to recognise the Interim Transitional National Council (ITNC) in Benghazi, and offered to market oil on behalf of the ITNC. Simultaneously, Qatar-based Al Jazeera played an instrumental role in shaping popular perceptions through its blanket television coverage of the conflict. Similarly high-profile statements of support for the opposition to dictatorial tyranny in Yemen have reinforced Qatar’s burgeoning regional and international profile . Yet a brutal and ongoing crackdown on pro-democracy activists is taking place just 25 miles off its western shore, in neighbouring Bahrain. There, the Gulf Cooperation Council (of which Qatar is a member) has intervened to protect the Al-Khalifa family against an escalating social movement threatening its authoritarian rule. Why has Qatar experienced such a different trajectory to much of the rest of the Arab world in recent months? What explains its recent actions, and how might it emerge from the Arab Spring? A rising power On 2 December 2010, the stunning decision to award the 2022 FIFA World Cup to Qatar set the capstone on its rapid rise as a small state with global ambition. In little more than a decade, this country of 1.7 million people (once described by the Lonely Planet travel guide as ‘possibly the most boring place on Earth’) has been transformed into a sophisticated urban metropolis. Futuristic architecture and a skyline worthy of Manhattan coexist alongside world-class museums and hubs of cutting-edge research and development. Education City hosts branch campuses from six leading US universities and the top French HEC Paris business school, with University College London (UCL) joining them in autumn 2011. Meanwhile, the Doha Debates have gained a worldwide reputation for critical discussion of controversial regional issues. Together with high-profile announcements such as the sponsorship tie-up between the Qatar Foundation and Barcelona football club and the hosting of major international sporting events such as the Women’s Tennis Association season-ending championships, these initiatives have put Qatar well and truly in the international limelight. They represent a potent form of country branding encapsulated in the World Cup bidding slogan: ‘Expect Amazing.’ In a region where competition – particularly with Abu Dhabi and Dubai – for the biggest and the best is intense and often megalomaniacal, the successful bid surpassed any previous achievement and catapulted Qatar to world attention. Another element of Qatar’s growing reach was its growing reputation for diplomatic mediation in conflict -afflicted areas. Officials scored a big success in 2008 with the Doha agreement that reached a political solution that averted the threat of civil strife in Lebanon. Since then, Qatari diplomacy has been at work in Yemen (where they negotiated a short-lived ceasefire between Houthi rebels and government forces in 2007-8), Djibouti and Eritrea (mediating the border dispute between them), and has hosted intermittent peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebel groups in Darfur. Although never quite repeating their 2008 breakthrough in Lebanon (which has since fallen apart), Qatar has steadily built a reputation for mediation and gained a perception as a (relatively) honest broker . Underpinning Qatar’s rise is the production and export of oil and – more significantly – liquefied natural gas (LNG). Qatar shares with Iran the largest non-associated gas field in the world and began to exploit its share of the North Field (the Iranian portion is named South Pars) in the 1990s. Exports of LNG began in 1997, and by 2006 the country was the largest exporter of natural gas in the world. Much of the gas is locked into long-term agreements with leading industrialised and emerging economies around the world, ranging from the US and the UK to South Korea, Japan and China. These agreements form a web of interdependencies giving powerful international partners a direct stake in a stable Qatar. So, too, does the hosting of the forward headquarters of US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the generously-funded bases that serve as logistics hubs, command and basing centres, and pre-positioning facilities for US operations in Afghanistan and (formerly) Iraq. According to leaked US diplomatic cables, Qatar contributes 60% of the upkeep costs of the main Al-Udaid airbase, seen by some as the price (worth paying) of maintaining US


troops as the ultimate guarantor of Qatari security. Freedom of manoeuvre The fortuitous combination of immense natural resources and a tiny citizen population gives the Qatari leadership great leeway in formulating domestic and foreign policy. Only about 220,000 people hold Qatari citizenship and in 2008 the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated the GDP per capita per citizen to be an astonishing $448,246. This level of extreme wealth provides insulation from the social and economic discontent that has built up elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. For Qatari nationals, the state is a distributor of wealth, whether through public sector employment, grants of land or the provision of subsidised goods and services. This is not atypical for citizens in other Gulf States, but in the Qatari case the revenues are, seemingly, limitless, in stark contrast to the tensions that have built up in Bahrain, Oman and parts of Saudi Arabia where models of wealth distribution are fraying under the strain of rapid population growth. Extreme wealth has led to political apathy and a stifling of aspirations for democratic participation. After seizing power from his father in a bloodless coup in 1995, the Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, instigated a process of cautious top-down reforms. These included the introduction of elections to a Central Municipal Council (1999) and a new constitution (2003), but announced elections to a unicameral parliament (initially scheduled for 2004) have been indefinitely delayed. Interestingly, these reforms did not come in response to any significant internal pressures or calls for change. This contrasted with an otherwise-similar trajectory in Bahrain, where another new ruler also sought to impose his stamp on domestic affairs by introducing constitutional and legislative changes in the late-1990s. Last month, Asda’a Burson-Marsteller, a Dubai-based public relations company, published the results of its third annual Arab Youth Survey. It found that the proportion of respondents in Qatar who ranked democracy as important had fallen from 68% in 2008 to just 33% in 2010. Two-thirds of respondents placed greater importance on stability and living in a safe neighbourhood. This remarkable drop demonstrated the premium placed on a strong economy intermixed with feelings of national pride following the success of the World Cup bid. Qatari citizens simply have too much to lose by rocking the boat and disrupting the status quo while the 1.5 million expatriate labourers remain disempowered and unable to mobilise without sanction. The winds of change blasting so forcefully through the region (including oil-rich Abu Dhabi which saw an increase from 58% to 75% of respondents ranking democracy as important) have instead passed Qatar by. Qatari officials can thus react to the Arab Spring with expressions of declaratory and material support for opposition movements that are unlikely to rebound domestically. Moreover, such support plays into Qatari efforts to be taken credibly as a responsible international actor and boost still further its reputation for diplomacy and mediation. The same may be said of Al Jazeera English, whose no-holds barred coverage of the civil uprisings in Egypt and Libya amounted to a CNN-style ‘Gulf War’ breakthrough in western markets. Its Arabic-language coverage, by contrast, has veered from the comprehensive (in Egypt, Libya and Yemen) to the mild (Syria, Bahrain). This has prompted accusations of unevenness and inconsistency, providing succour to sceptics who suspect a guiding hand lies behind editorial decisions; certainly, Bahrain hits uncomfortably close to home, both in terms of physical proximity and its involvement of a fellow Gulf ruling family. Instead, it is in Libya and Yemen that Qatari officials have greatest freedom of action, as opposing Gaddafi and Saleh does not raise awkward questions of regime type. Moreover, the bloodshed unleashed by both flailing regimes represents a safe target on which to make a high-visibility stand against tyranny , enabling Qatar to align its support for the protection of human rights and democratic expression in a manner that resonates powerfully with the (western-led) i nternational community . Thus, the Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, was instrumental in rallying GCC and Arab League around the idea of a No-Fly Zone in Libya and recognition of the ITNC, stating that “Qatar will participate in military action because we believe there must be Arab states undertaking this action, because the situation is intolerable.” The dispatch of four Mirage-2000 fighters to Crete gave the military operations the crucial Arab support needed to overcome nagging western doubts about the campaign.

The power vacuum left by a limited US role has allowed Qatar to seize leadershipEconomist, 11/5(The rise of Qatar: Pygmy with the punch of a giant, http://www.economist.com/node/21536659)

In any event, Qatar punches far above its weight : witness its recent proclaimed triumph in Libya. Its muscle, in the form of weapons, cash, fuel, airlift, six fighter-bombers, 100-plus field advisers and vigorous diplomacy, bolstered NATO’s bombers and drones and—more than any other Arab country—helped oust Colonel Qaddafi, even as Al Jazeera’s relentless coverage speeded his messy slide to extinction. While cheerleading the Arab spring, Qatar has interposed itself , with mixed diplomatic success,


in conflicts as far away as Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Its sheikhs sit on an array of big European boards and own choice chunks of London. Their spreading portfolios embrace Chinese refineries, French fashion houses and Spanish football teams. In 2022 Qatar will host football’s World Cup. Such clout carries a cost in controversy. Critics sniff that the global shopping sprees of institutions such as the ruling Thani family’s investment arm, Qatar Holdings, along with the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign-wealth fund worth $70 billion, are a crude attempt to buy influence. Chastened dictators obviously resent what they see as Al Jazeera’s meddling, whereas leftists, citing the presence of a giant American airbase just outside Doha, charge Qatar with being Washington’s cat’s paw. Arab liberals, meanwhile, look at the generous air time which Al Jazeera gives to Islamists and at the Qataris’ enthusiasm for radical Islamist groups such as Hamas in Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon, and conclude that the emirate is promoting not popular revolution but a fundamentalist power grab. Such doubts have long lingered, stoked in part by the innovation, when Al Jazeera was launched in 1996, of airing religious voices at a time when stodgily secular state monopolies filled Arab airwaves. But the charges grew more pointed during Libya’s seven-month conflict. The way much of Qatar’s aid seemed to end up in the hands of a closely knit coterie of Islamist radicals, boosting armed Islamist factions, rang alarm bells not just in neighbouring capitals and in the West but in Libya too. Last month Ali Tarhouni, the liberal oil and finance minister in Libya’s ruling national council, issued a rebuke. “Anyone who wishes to come to our house should knock on the front door first,” he said, in a thinly veiled warning to Qatar to stop favouring ambitious Islamists at the expense of the shaky central government. But there may be simpler reasons for Qatar’s sudden enthusiasm for a far-off war. Opportunism , in a word, is what has guided policy , along with heaps of cash and ambition mixed with a mild appetite for risk that stands in contrast to other more shy-mannered Gulf potentates. The quiet protection of America’s heavy bootprint also lent encouragement. It helps, too, that even for an untrammelled if benign autocracy, Qatar’s command structure is slim. Only three people really count: the emir, his cousin the long-serving and dynamic prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who also runs foreign policy and holds vast business interests, and, increasingly, Crown Prince Tamim, the Sandhurst-trained army chief. A score of intimates, drawn largely from two clans aside from the Thanis, runs nearly everything else. Such corporate streamlining has allowed Qatar to put its assets into act ion swiftly and efficiently, at a time when other regional actors, including America, have grown increasingly hesitant. “ If there wasn’t a power vacuum across the region, Qatar would never have got away with it ,” says a young Qatari businessman, referring to the Libyan adventure. A foreign diplomat adds that countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which might in the past have blocked a Gulf upstart from flaunting such ambition, no longer have the will to try. Moreover, Qatar’s big role in Libya has been a useful training ground for Crown Prince Tamim, who is being groomed to rule. His popularity with the army, whose pay for officers was more than doubled as a reward in September, has soared on the back of such a success.

Qatari leadership key to stabilize AfghanistanHughes, 11/3(Foreign Policy Strategist, New World Strategies Coalitionhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/qatar-west-relations_b_1073374.html)

I came to appreciate the depth of Qatar's global influence while covering the Doha Inter-faith Dialogue Conference in Qatar last week (a report of which can be found here). Qatar's leadership team has applied vision and imagination in not only trying to bridge gaps between world religions but in trying to stabilize the Middle East, and its forward-looking domestic policy has made the monarchy seemingly immune to the Arab Spring vicissitudes plaguing its Levantine and North African brethren. Outside of Qatar being the home of Aljazeera and winning the 2022 World Cup bid, many in the West are unfamiliar with the country's profile. Qatar is the richest nation in the world per capita with one of the world's fastest growing economies, primarily driven by the fact it sits on the world's largest known natural gas field. Although many Qataris adhere to the conservative Wahhabi Islamic tradition in personal matters, society at large is relatively liberal and culturally tolerant. After undergoing dramatic westernization since 1995 when the current Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, ousted his father in a bloodless coup, Qatar has allowed full rights to women and permitted political representation at the municipal level. Its wealth, spread amongst a small native population of just over 300,000, has been integral in preempting dissent. U.S. President Barack Obama was caught on tape earlier this year explaining Qatar's ability to avoid mass protest: "There's no big move towards democracy in Qatar. But you know part of the reason is that the per capita income of Qatar is $145,000 a year. That will dampen a lot of conflict." Despite its riches Qatar has


shown no signs of resting on its laurels. The al-Thani regime has prudently invested heavily in research, technology and education to diversify the economy and produce a highly-skilled workforce. On the outskirts of Doha sits the 2,500-acre Education City which houses the Mideast branches of top-ranked American universities such as Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern. Nominally a constitutional monarchy, Qatar certainly has issues to address, especially when it comes to freedom of speech. Just months ago an anti-regime blogger was "disappeared" by Qatari security forces, a story reported, ironically, by state-owned Aljazeera. Although power is heavily-consolidated in the hands of the royal family, most Qataris don't seem to mind. Yet the monarchy illustrated its vision again on Tuesday by announcing Qatar would hold elections for its advisory council in 2013. Justin Gengler from the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute in Doha applauded the move in a Foreign Policy piece: Qatar's decision is an entirely proactive one. Indeed, as indicated by the results of several recent, scientific public opinion surveys, its citizens are quite pleased with their current political system -- and have little interest in changing it any time soon. Shadi Hamid from the Brookings Institution's Doha Center said in The Atlantic how this was yet another example of how Qatar was "ahead of the curve" in addressing issues that have fomented Arab Spring uprisings, calling it "Qatari exceptionalism." Qatar's independent foreign policy is founded on a novel theory that regional peace and stability is in its best interest. Qatari diplomats led an Arab League delegation just this week aimed at brokering peace in Syria. Last week, according to the Guardian, Libyan leaders disclosed that Qatar basically planned the battles that toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It will also play a crucial role during the post-Gaddafi transition as Qatar has been chartered with disarming militias and integrating disparate rebel units into Libya's newly established security institutions. The monarchy has hosted talks in Doha to ease conflicts in Lebanon and Darfur and has tried to soothe tensions between Riyadh and Tehran in the wake of the uncovering of an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat. However, Doha's independent-mindedness has also aggravated its Saudi neighbor, especially its outreach to Shia Iran and its efforts to make peace between Palestine and Israel. Aljazeera's aggressive coverage of Saudi human rights abuses forced the House of Saud to freeze relations with Qatar in 2002. All of which discredits accusations levied by neoconservatives at The American Spectator who claim Qatar has a hidden pro-Sunni Islamist agenda. Despite all of its accomplishments Qatar is positioned to do even more for global peace and security, because perhaps the road to peace in Afghanistan can run through Doha . Qatar is a nonaligned , enlightened Muslim country with a penchant for resolving political and religious strife, making it an appealing interlocutor to a wide range of moderate and conservative factions across Afghan society 's ethnic, tribal and sectarian mosaic.

That prevents global nuclear warMorgan 7

(Stephen John, former National Executive Officer of the British Labour Party, his responsibilities included international relations, ethnic minority work, women’s issues, finance, local government and organization, he specialised particularly in international crisis situations spending long periods working in Belfast, in efforts to overcome sectarian strife and terrorism, former Director of WIC, a research and publishing company based in London, he went to live in Budapest during the Gorbachov period from where he helped build opposition groups in the underground in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and East Germany, Stephen left active politics in the early 1990 and came to live in Brussels, where he established and managed his own publishing company, has lived and worked in more than 27 different countries, including underground political work during the troubles in in Northern Ireland and war in Yugoslavia, http://www.electricarticles.com/display.aspx?id=639)

Although disliked and despised in many quarters, the Taliban could not advance without the support or acquiescence of parts of the population, especially in the south. In particular, the Taliban is drawing on backing from the Pashtun tribes from whom they originate. The southern and eastern areas have been totally out of government control since 2001. Moreover, not only have they not benefited at all from the Allied occupation , but it is increasingly clear that with a few small centres of exception, all of the country outside Kabul has seen little improvement in its circumstances . The conditions for unrest are ripe and the Taliban is filling the vacuum. The Break-Up of Afghanistan? However, the Taliban is unlikely to win much support outside of the powerful Pashtun tribes. Although they make up a majority of the nation, they are concentrated in the south and east. Among the other key minorities, such as Tajiks and Uzbeks, who control the north they have no chance of making new inroads. They will fight the Taliban and fight hard, but their loyalty to the NATO and US forces is tenuous to say the least. The Northern


Alliance originally liberated Kabul from the Taliban without Allied ground support. The Northern Alliance are fierce fighters, veterans of the war of liberation against the Soviets and the Afghanistan civil war. Mobilized they count for a much stronger adversary than the NATO and US forces. It is possible that, while they won’t fight for the current government or coalition forces , they will certainly resist any new Taliban rule. They may decide to withdraw to their areas in the north and west of the country. This would leave the Allied forces with few social reserves, excepting a frightened and unstable urban population in Kabul, much like what happened to the Soviets. Squeezed by facing fierce fighting in Helmund and other provinces, and, at the same time, harried by a complementary tactic of Al Qaeda-style urban terrorism in Kabul, sooner or later, a “Saigon-style” evacuation of US and Allied forces could be in the cards. The net result could be the break-up and partition of Afghanistan into a northern and western area and a southern and eastern area, which would include the two key cities of Kandahar and, the capital Kabul. « Pastunistan?» The Taliban themselves, however may decide not to take on the Northern Alliance and fighting may concentrate on creating a border between the two areas, about which the two sides may reach an agreement regardless of US and Allied plans or preferences. The Taliban may claim the name Afghanistan or might opt for “Pashtunistan” – a long-standing, though intermittent demand of the Pashtuns, within Afghanistan and especially along the ungovernable border regions inside Pakistan. It could not be ruled out that the Taliban could be aiming to lead a break away of the Pakistani Pashtuns to form a 30 million strong greater Pashtun state, encompassing some 18 million Pakistani Pashtuns and 12 Afghan Pashtuns. Although the Pashtuns are more closely linked to tribal and clan loyalty, there exists a strong latent embryo of a Pashtun national consciousness and the idea of an independent Pashtunistan state has been raised regularly in the past with regard to the disputed territories common to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The area was cut in two by the “Durand Line”, a totally artificial border between created by British Imperialism in the 19th century. It has been a question bedevilling relations between the Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout their history, and with India before Partition. It has been an untreated, festering wound which has lead to sporadic wars and border clashes between the two countries and occasional upsurges in movements for Pashtun independence. In fact, is this what lies behind the current policy of appeasement President Musharraf of Pakistan towards the Pashtun tribes in along the Frontiers and his armistice with North Waziristan last year? Is he attempting to avoid further alienating Pashtun tribes there and head–off a potential separatist movement in Pakistan, which could develop from the Taliban’s offensive across the border in Afghanistan? Trying to subdue the frontier lands has proven costly and unpopular for Musharraf. In effect, he faces exactly the same problems as the US and Allies in Afghanistan or Iraq. Indeed, fighting Pashtun tribes has cost him double the number of troops as the US has lost in Iraq. Evidently, he could not win and has settled instead for an attempted political solution. When he agreed the policy of appeasement and virtual self-rule for North Waziristan last year, President Musharraf stated clearly that he is acting first and foremost to protect the interests of Pakistan. While there was outrageous in Kabul, his deal with the Pashtuns is essentially an effort to firewall his country against civil war and disintegration. In his own words, what he fears most is, the « Talibanistation » of the whole Pashtun people, which he warns could inflame the already fierce fundamentalist and other separatist movement across his entire country. He does not want to open the door for any backdraft from the Afghan war to engulf Pakistan. Musharraf faces the nationalist struggle in Kashmir, an insurgency in Balochistan, unrest in the Sindh, and growing terrorist bombings in the main cities. There is also a large Shiite population and clashes between Sunnis and Shias are regular. Moreover, fundamentalist support in his own Armed Forces and Intelligence Services is extremely strong. So much so that analyst consider it likely that the Army and Secret Service is protecting, not only top Taliban leaders, but Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda central leadership thought to be entrenched in the same Pakistani borderlands. For the same reasons, he has not captured or killed Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership. Returning from the frontier provinces with Bin Laden’s severed head would be a trophy that would cost him his own head in Pakistan. At best he takes the occasional risk of giving a nod and a wink to a US incursion, but even then at the peril of the chagrin of the people and his own military and secret service. The Break-Up of Pakistan? Musharraf probably hopes that by giving de facto autonomy to the Taliban and Pashtun leaders now with a virtual free hand for cross border operations into Afghanistan, he will undercut any future upsurge in support for a break-away independent Pashtunistan state or a “Peoples’ War” of the Pashtun populace as a whole, as he himself described it. However events may prove him sorely wrong. Indeed, his policy could completely backfire upon him. As the war intensifies, he has no guarantees that the current autonomy may yet burgeon into a separatist movement. Appetite comes with eating, as they say. Moreover, should the Taliban fail to re-conquer al of Afghanistan, as looks likely, but capture s at least half of the country, then a Taliban Pashtun caliphate could be established which would act as a magnet to separatist Pashtuns in Pakistan. Then, the likely break up of


Afghanistan along ethnic lines, could, indeed, lead the way to the break up of Pakistan, as well. Strong centrifugal forces have always bedevilled the stability and unity of Pakistan, and, in the context of the new world situation, the country could be faced with civil wars and popular fundamentalist uprisings, probably including a military-fundamentalist coup d’état. Fundamentalism is deeply rooted in Pakistan society. The fact that in the year following 9/11, the most popular name given to male children born that year was “Osama” (not a Pakistani name) is a small indication of the mood. Given the weakening base of the traditional, secular opposition parties, conditions would be ripe for a coup d’état by the fundamentalist wing of the Army and ISI, leaning on the radicalised masses to take power. Some form of radical, military Islamic regime, where legal powers would shift to Islamic courts and forms of shira law would be likely. Although, even then, this might not take place outside of a protracted crisis of upheaval and civil war conditions, mixing fundamentalist movements with nationalist uprisings and sectarian violence between the Sunni and minority Shia populations. The nightmare that is now Iraq would take on gothic proportions across the continent . The prophesy of an arc of civil war over Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq would spread to south Asia, stretching from Pakistan to Palestine, through Afghanistan into Iraq and up to the Mediterranean coast . Undoubtedly, this would also spill over into India both with regards to the Muslim community and Kashmir . Border clashes, terrorist attacks, sectarian pogroms and insurgency would break out. A new war, and possibly nuclear war, between Pakistan and India could not be ruled out . Atomic Al Qaeda Should Pakistan break down completely, a Taliban-style government with strong Al Qaeda influence is a real possibility. Such deep chaos would, of course, open a "Pandora's box" for the region and the world. With the possibility of unstable clerical and military fundamentalist elements being in control of the Pakistan nuclear arsenal, not only their use against India, but Israel becomes a possibility, as well as the acquisition of nuclear and other deadly weapons secrets by Al Qaeda. Invading Pakistan would not be an option for America. Therefore a nuclear war would now again become a real strategic possibility. This would bring a shift in the tectonic plates of global relations. It could usher in a new Cold War with China and Russia pitted against the US . What is at stake in "the half-forgotten war" in Afghanistan is far greater than that in Iraq . But America's capacities for controlling the situation are extremely restricted. Might it be, in the end, they are also forced to accept President Musharraf's unspoken slogan of «Better another Taliban Afghanistan, than a Taliban NUCLEAR Pakistan!


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Foreign aid is government coercion and destroys libertyDiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College, 1/6/2005(Thomas, “A Foreign Aid Disaster in the Making,” http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1715)

Politicians are bound to politicize this disaster, as they do with all other world events, in a way that helps them accumulate more power and confiscate more wealth from their citizens . Specifically, now that they are becoming rather fond of portraying themselves as internationalized Mother Teresas, coming to the aid of anyone, anywhere, as long as it is all paid for by their hard-working , hapless taxpayers , they will be inclined to become champions of ever-expanding foreign aid spending. To do this they will have to ignore the truth about foreign aid: For over half a century, it has been either ineffective or counterproductive in stimulating prosperity. The late Peter Bauer (Lord Bauer) devoted his entire career to studying the law of unintended consequences as it applied to foreign aid, and many of his conclusions are summarized in his 1991 book, The Development Frontier. First of all, notes Bauer, foreign aid is not "aid" but a transfer or subsidy. And it is typically not a transfer to the poor and needy but to governments. Thus, the predominant effect of "foreign aid" has always been to enlarge the size and scope of the state , which always ends up impairing prosperity and diminish ing the liberty of the people . Worse yet, it leads to the centralization of governmental power, since the transfers are always to the recipient country’s central government.

Root cause of warBrowne, former Libertarian presidential candidate, 1995(Harry, executive director of public policy at American Liberty Foundation, editor of Liberty Magazine, financial advisor and economist, Why Government Doesn’t Work, pg 66-67)

The reformers of the Cambodia n revolution claimed to be building a better world . They forced people into reeducation programs to make them better citizens. Then they used force to regulate every aspect of commercial life. Then they forced office workers and intellectuals to give up their jobs and harvest rice, to round out their education. When people resisted having their lives turned upside down, the reformers had to use more and more force. By the time they were done, they had killed a third of the country’s population , destroyed the lives of almost everyone still alive , and devastated a nation. It all began with using force for the best of intentions—to create a better world. The Soviet leaders used coercion to provide economic security and to build a “New Man”—a human being who would put his fellow man ahead of himself. At least 10 million people died to help build the New Man and the Workers’ Paradise. But human nature never changed—and the workers’ lives were always Hell, not Paradise. In the 1930s many Germans gladly traded civil liberties for the economic revival and national pride Adolf Hitler promised them. But like every other grand dream to improve society by force, it ended in a nightmare of devastation and death. Professor R.J. Rummel has calculated that 119 million people have been killed by their own governments in this century. Were these people criminals? No, they were people who simply didn’t fit into the New Order—people who preferred their own dreams to those of the reformers. Every time you allow government to use force to make society better, you move another step closer to the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany . We’ve already moved so far that our own government can perform with impunity the outrages described in the preceding chapters. These examples aren’t cases of government gone wrong; they are examples of government—period. They are what governments do —just as chasing cats is what dogs do. They are the natural consequence of letting government use force to bring about a drug-free nation, to tax someone else to better your life, to guarantee your economic security, to assure that no one can mistreat you or hurt your feelings, and to cover up the damage of all the failed government programs that came before.

Moral side constraintPetro, Wake Forest Professor in Toledo Law Review, 1974(Sylvester, Spring, page 480)

However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: " It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1715


at once." Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration . Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Dijas. In sum, if one believed in freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit .


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Unallocated ESF funds will be used to bolster US-Egypt science cooperationTelegraph, 11(2/15, From a report of the American Embassy in Cairo, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/egypt-wikileaks-cables/8326970/EGYPT-FOLLOW-UP-TO-THE-PRESIDENTS-SPEECH-PART-I-WAY-FORWARD-IN-REACHING-EDUCATION-GOALS.html)

1.(SBU) Key Points: -- The President's historic June 4 speech in Cairo converges with efforts at post and initial discussions with the government of Egypt to refocus E conomic S upport F und priorities toward poverty eradication, with special emphasis on improving education and access to opportunity in Egypt. -- Many of the President's other initiatives will also find enthusiastic support here as well; we will address other opportunities septel. --Our initial discussions have identified three main educational focal areas that will demonstrate the President's vision and find ready partners in Egypt. First, we are prepared to expand scholarships for study in the US for young Egyptians significantly. Second, we intend to develop more extensive and effective programs to match the skills of Egypt's youth with the marketplace. Third, we want to address the overall quality of Egypt's educational system by accelerating and improving Egypt's National Teacher Training Plan and introduce other high impact initiatives aimed at creating graduates capable of innovation and participation in the global economy of the 21st century, with heightened focus on science, technology, and mathematics skills. -- In the short term we will work with funds already allocated to expand our cooperation in education . We have at least $40 million in FY2009 that can be redirected toward education al goals, and anticipate over $100 million in FY2010 that can fund education initiatives. -- The President's call to support entrepreneurship, technological development, and to create scientific centers of excellence can be integrated into our overall education approach . We envisage expanding public-private partnerships in pursuit of these goals and also see a role for online networking to amplify success stories and create new partnerships. We can start immediately by injecting additional funds into the existing US Egypt Science and Technology Cooperation Fund, a longstanding and successful mechanism for bilateral scientific cooperation. This is an immediate and effective way to spur innovation.2.(SBU) The President's observation that "education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century" is nowhere more meaningful than Egypt, a country that introduced modern educational institutions and methods in the early part of the twentieth century but that has sadly witnessed the deterioration of these institutions and standards over the last sixty years. Egyptians across all classes agree that Egypt's public education system is failing its children and undermining its competitiveness.3. (SBU) Egypt has begun to address its educational deficiencies, but the size of the problem, lack of resources, and in some cases weak political will have resulted in such slow, incremental progress that no one has confidence in the government's ability to reform this vital sector. Ongoing USAID programs support GOE efforts to fix endemic problems, like illiteracy, with particular focus on primary education and teacher training. Following the President's speech, the Embassy received a letter of interest from Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit (full text septel) which outlined interest in exchange programs and capacity building (including both infrastructure requests and teacher training programs). We believe given our experience and the GOE's interest, we see a window of opportunity to build on existing momentum to accelerate educational reform efforts and to offer bold, new high impact programs that could attract additional support from the private sector as well. 4.(SBU) Mission Cairo currently supports several hundred successful academic exchanges annually, but additional investment in post-graduate scholarships will support our goals to create measurable change in the Egyptian educational system over the next three years. We believe that a major portion of so-far unobligated $40 million in FY2009 ESF can jump-start our education initiative. Some of our ideas include: (1) funding MA and Ph.D programs for educators who will lead improvements in the teaching of science and math in Egyptian schools; (2) expand the number of students in the NESA Undergraduate Intensive English Language Study Program and formally tie success in that 6-week program to the chance to complete an undergraduate degree in the U.S.; (3)expand the Fulbright-supported Community Colleges Initiative to focus on decentralized school administration training in rural areas to create a cohort of dynamic, jobs-oriented Egyptian school managers; (4) enlarge the scope of successful English programs like the English ACCESS Microscholarship Program targeting disadvantaged youth aged 14 to 17, which has been extremely successful in increasing English proficiency and exposing students to American culture. In addition, expand the YES high school exchange program to reach more students.


(Note: We also envisage use of some of the $40 million as seed money to develop initiatives described below to realize other elements of our education approach: how to do teacher CAIRO 00001158 002 OF 002 training more effectively; how to use online networking capabilities to support educational reform; how to coordinate with existing public-private partnerships in education to maximize their impact in Egypt. End Note.) 5.(SBU) Efforts to address the gap between students and potential employers begins with dialogue. A number of successful, albeit limited, programs already exist in this area, many involving the private sector, and the Mission will explore if these can be effectively expanded. The U.S. can encourage collaboration with the private sector by establishing networks of business leaders, Egyptian, American and international luminaries, civil society, and foundations to address major impediments to youth employment. Such a system would be open, encourage transparency and competiveness while also encouraging a refocus of curriculum goals to meet the labor market with private sector input.6.(SBU) Egypt's current education system, established in 1952, was designed to train bureaucrats to enter public service. In today's job market these graduates are ill equipped to enter the workforce; the private sector and GOE have expressed interest in remedying this problem. We can bring US expertise in the area of curriculum development particularly in science and technology. (Note: We have faced challenges in working with the GOE on issues of curriculum development in the past. It is a sensitive area but an important one. End Note.) We will look to lessons learned from recent USAID secondary education programs targeting training in agriculture sector where jobs will make a significant impact on the lives of those outside the society's elites. Focus on this sector helps support the expanding production in agriculture based exports that create income and support the Egyptian economy . 7.(SBU) Neither adequately paid nor trained, instructors have been known to leave their teaching position for better paid positions in other sectors. To address these constraints, teachers will need adequate living wages, on-going professional training, and possibly exchange programs. Centers of Excellence for teacher training could be established to upgrade the teaching profession. The MOE is interested in such a model.8. (SBU) One idea that we have is to refine Egypt's existing "model schools" (public schools with better infrastructure and teachers) further as sources of academic excellence and as laboratories for teaching training and curriculum development. Upgrading their English-language training, and science and math training in particular could produce a steady stream of high-school graduates who could compete for foreign scholarships and become the brain trust of the next generation. 9.(SBU) The GOE has been interested for some time in developing an endowment mechanism that over time could become the legacy institution of the U.S.-Egyptians ESF program. The GOE is pursuing Public Private Partnerships in higher education as a sustainable vehicle towards expansion and diversifying institutional funding. Through a US-Egypt endowment, we can encourage this and similar initiatives, such as student micro-loans, which exploit alternative funding streams, permit autonomy, and engage the private sector. We will begin discussions in July with the GOE on the form of a possible endowment. We anticipate that negotiations for this instrument could take well over a year.10.(SBU) The Egypt Science and Technology Cooperation Fund is one of the most active and productive bilateral relationship in OES. Since its creation in 1995, there have been over 400 funded scientific collaborations between American scientists and their Egyptian counterparts. Our efforts have also led to the development of the Egypt Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF), modeled on our own National Science Foundation (NSF). Building on the fund to create an independent, autonomous organization, better equipped to manage scientific research, answers the President's call to support both research of young scientists and to identify scientific interactions that have strong commercial potential - leading to the creation of new jobs.

New democracy funding will come from the ESF fundPOMED 11 (Project on Middle East Democracy, “Summary and Highlights of FY11 Appropriations Act”, April 17, http://pomed.org/blog/2011/04/summary-and-highlights-of-fy11-appropriations-act.html/)

Speaking on the wave of democratic protests in the Middle East, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) is one of many in Congress that have called for additional assistance to the region: “Events this powerful demand a response of equal power. Our commitment now to the ordinary people who are risking their lives to win human rights and democracy will be remembered for generations in the Arab world. We have to get this moment right [by working] in the Senate with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to create a package of


financial assistance to help turn the new Arab awakening into a lasting rebirth.” This call was integrated into the FY11 spending bill as: “funds appropriated under [the E conomic S upport F und ] heading shall be made available to support democratic transitions in the M iddle E ast and N orth A frica, including assistance for civil society organizations and the development of democratic political parties.” However, no additional funds are provided for this purpose ; therefore , any funds made available to support democratic transitions must be taken from E conomic S upport F unds intended for other programming .

US assistance to science education key to Egyptian regional influenceEl-Baz, 7(Member-U.S. National Academy of Engineering, is Director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, http://www.strategicforesight.com/iwforum/farouk.htm)

Egypt used to play a leading role in the Arab region . During the past century, it set the cultural trends and provided administrators, teachers, advisors and aid to others. However, a humiliating military defeat in 1967 derailed its self-confidence and eroded its influence. As Egypt slumbered in self-pity, the rest of the Arab world followed suit and stagnated. Thus, a revival of its preeminence would have positive effects in the whole region . Egypt’s newly-named cabinet is led by an information technology expert. The success of this cabinet’s forward-looking reform mandate could inspire similar efforts elsewhere in the Arab world. Need for Reform Today, we live in the information age and Arab countries could be left behind once again if they do not modernize their education system. The so-called “digital divide” is both a reflection of the science and technology gap and a cause of its continued existence. This has to be taken into account in education reform both to catch up with the developed world, and to ensure technological development in every field. Improving education, emphasizing the acquisition, increase and dissemination of knowledge, and empowering innovative thinkers are keys to economic growth. Asian countries such as China, India, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea provide successful cases by emphasizing education in their initial development plans to assure economic growth. South Korea represents a particularly illuminating case. For a whole decade, it gave the highest priority to education in the national budget regardless of the needs of other sectors. This allowed the preparation of a knowledgeable and well-trained workforce whose products are now recognized worldwide. The trend continues to this day with lightening speed in the field of information technology; the proportion of Internet users in the population is greater in South Korea than in the U.S. In contrast, although Arabs constitute 5% of the world population, Internet users make up only 1.1% of the global usage. Calls for reform abound from both within and outside the Arab region. Invariably, emphasis is placed on instituting freedom through political democracy, privatization of the economy, and empowering women. These goals cannot flourish in the presence of a knowledge deficit. As former U.S. President John Adams said: “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” An educated populace is necessary to initiate and update the proposed reforms. Personal freedoms through democracy must be accompanied by upholding the individual’s responsibility toward society; a growing economy requires a knowledgeable and continually updated workforce; and gender equality can only take root in a well-informed society. The analytical prowess that is imparted by education is necessary to spread and sustain the needed reforms. Role of EducationAlthough the Arab region is considered oil-rich and wealthy, all indications point to its knowledge deficit. This fact is clearly conveyed in the “Arab Human Development Report: Building a Knowledge Society” that was issued in 2003 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It pointed out that the Arab region trails behind all other regions in knowledge indicators, except sub-Saharan Africa. These indicators included the number of books, newspapers, radio stations, television channels, telephone lines, personal computers and Internet access. A few small Arab countries have recently reversed this trend. For example, in the United Arab Emirates, nearly 30% of its nationals use personal computers, a number more than ten times those in Egypt. Also, the Emirate of Dubai has evolved its government transactions to electronic media. Furthermore, Dubai has established an electronic marketplace where all government agencies procure their needs in a totally transparent manner, with all of the benefits of vendor competition. This has allowed the eradication of inflated prices and agent fees in addition to hampering corruption. These examples prove that it is possible to benefit from advanced technology while preserving the local culture. In general, Arab countries show exceptionally inadequate performance in knowledge acquisition and generation. In terms of knowledge acquisition, one indicator is the efficiency of literature translation. As indicated in the UNDP Report, the number of books translated in twenty-two Arab


countries during the early 1980s is equal to one-fifth of those translated into Greek. Knowledge generation does not fare any better. Although Arabs constitute 5% of the world population, they produce only 0.8% of the literary and artistic literature. The situation is particularly acute in science and technology. Arab countries spend less than 0.2% of their national budgets on science and technology research and development. This is more than ten times less than the amount that developed countries spend. The results become clear if we consider the publication of scientific research papers and/or patent registration. Results of research conducted in Arab countries are rarely published in international professional journals. The number of patents produced by Arabs is meager; during the past two decades, South Korea registered in the U.S. over 44 times the number of patents from all Arab countries combined. Reform of education can play a central role in economic development. Education is critical to a nation’s growth because it develops the minds of the young to be useful citizens. It must include teaching the young how to think for themselves and to have confidence in their knowledge. This requires highly respected and motivated teachers who are well versed in communicating with their students. Teachers must be kept abreast of new teaching methodologies, scientific breakthroughs and literary masterpieces. They must also be motivated by awards and recognized for excellence. Thus, teacher preparation and continued training become integral parts of the necessary reforms. Road Ahead It is never too late to remedy a problem, particularly when it relates to the future of a nation. A factory that goes out of step with the times is retooled. In the same manner, the objectives and mission of education in the Arab world need to be updated. The problem needs to be remedied starting at the very beginning. Pre-school education, at homes and kindergartens, can set the pattern. A child’s perception of learning and the development of its personality begin at a very young age. Inquisitiveness and analytical thinking can all be implanted in the minds of young children through dialogue. More importantly, valuing knowledge and respecting its sources affect children from an early age. I can personally attest to that: my earliest recollection from childhood was about the way my father reached for a book in his bookshelf, carried it with great care, and opened its pages with tenderness and respect. In some countries like Egypt, the information is crammed in the young minds with no time allocated for discussion or reasoning, which forces emphasis on rote learning. There are things that must be memorized, such as multiplication tables, grammar rules, or poems. But, students should learn to discuss possible interpretations and the benefit of debate. There must be a balance between expecting obedience and encouraging innovation. Teachers should seek the participation of students in free and critical thinking, which in itself increases their interest in, and enjoyment of, the time they spend at school. University education requires much reform as well. At higher education institutions, students should be taught how to acquire dynamic and renewable knowledge. Their minds must be challenged to achieve new heights and their energies directed to useful pathways. To do so, educators must be allowed a measure of autonomy. At the same time, they require systems of regular evaluation and monitoring and continued training. Other essential changes include upgrading the libraries and improving the information technology hardware and software to benefit from the vast resources that are now available on electronic media. International Assistance Reform of education is a long-term process that requires focused objectives, perseverance in their implementation, and the application of the knowledge gained from the experiences of others. Much like successful economic development, reform should incorporate successful practices. There is no shame in this whatsoever; to improve its business management styles, the U.S. imported practices from Japan. Several Arab countries have experimented with different types and styles of educational institutions. These experiences must be shared and reviewed in an open-minded way to adopt the best for a particular local setting. It is important to note that although Arabs constitute only about 20% of all Muslims, they set the trend and wield a great deal of influence. Modernizing Arab education would reverberate throughout the rest of the Islamic world . In so doing we must study cases of education reform in developing countries that have reshaped their workforce in record time. These cases include countries of varied sizes, such as Korea and India, or varied political systems, such as China and Costa Rica. They also encompass largely Islamic countries with varied cultural characteristics, such as Malaysia and Turkey. The objective is not to mimic any one of the cases, but to learn how to implement reforms in the most efficient way. In terms of the emphasis on education topics and paths, the experience of the West must be taken into consideration. Relatively small countries like Ireland and Finland have made vast advances by educating their workforce in modern science and technology. This has elevated them to leadership positions in innovation and production, raising their per capita income. Today, Finland exports products whose monetary value is equal to the exports, apart from oil and gas, of all twenty-two Arab countries. Western countries should be willing and eager to help the Arab region become knowledgeable and partake of the modern world. This helps to ease the pressure of migration of vast numbers of youth from the region to Europe. It also ameliorates the potential for the growth of radicalism , which threatens the whole world. It further


allows the West to benefit from Arab minds in the global renaissance of knowledge, which knows no borders. A leading role in this must be played by the U nited States. U.S. education enjoys much respect in the Arab world thanks to the reputation of motivated Americans who elected to live in Arab countries as educators. In addition, the U.S. is held in esteem as the world leader in science and technology since the time of the first Apollo lunar landing mission of thirty-five years ago. American educational institutions are universally popular through two tangible and visible ways: First, the presence of the American University campuses in Cairo, Beirut, Sharjah, etc. Second, it is commonly perceived that the vast majority of the most prominent local educators, government officials, intellectuals and successful businessmen and women are the products of American education.

Egyptian leadership key to encourage Nile water-sharingGrebowski 11(6/23, Sarah Grebowski blogs from Egypt at Cairo Comment. She is a former research assistant at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/pages/articleDetails.aspx?aid=81)

A curious thing has happened on the Nile since the fall of Hosni Mubarak: after decades of dictating the river's politics, Egypt is finally acting like a downstream state. Sensing both its vulnerability and opportunity for change in the wake of the January 25 revolution, Egypt's transitional authorities have shuttled representatives from one Nile Basin state to another, making gestures in the name of cooperation and mutual development. The emphasis on diplomacy is long-overdue, as Egypt's control of the Nile has gradually but steadily loosened over the last half-century. Ultimately, it took a revolution to kickstart the country's strategic thinking. The revolution has re-prioritized the Nile issue within Egypt's foreign policy agenda and will provide a window for the country's new leadership to cleanly depart with policies of the Mubarak era. Egypt now faces not just an opportunity, but an imperative to revamp its policies and relationships on the Nile by relinquishing notions of hard power based upon colonial privileges and regional dominance and instead embracing soft power. Egypt's revolution brought the Nile issue back to the forefront of the foreign policy agenda in more ways than one. Firstly, when protesters in Tahrir Square demanded that Egypt's role as a regional leader be restored, they were referring as much to Africa as they were the Arab world. Egypt’s monopoly over the Nile began to fray decades ago as upstream states like Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania started to develop their own irrigation and hydroelectric capabilities (and more importantly, ambitions), and the relevance of colonial-era water agreements that promised Egypt and Sudan roughly 90 percent of the Nile's water faded with changing geopolitical realities. Failing to sense that the time had come for a new framework to govern use of the Nile’s waters, Egypt was taken aback by the drafting of the Cooperative Framework Agreement–a treaty first introduced by upstream states in 2007 that would potentially alter water-sharing agreements and create a Nile Basin Commission to regulate activity on the river. In behavior unbefitting of a continental superpower, Egypt's unimaginative response once confronted with these changes was to cling to the anachronistic water treaties of 1929 and 1959 and reject development projects of upstream states. Sharif El Musa, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, even argues that for the last ten years, Mubarak failed altogether to put forward a serious Nile policy. More concerned with relations with Israel, the U.S., and European allies, Egypt’s communication with other Nile states faltered and the regime neglected to utilize expertise on Nile issues. Secondly, opportunistic actions of other Nile riparian states in the wake of the Egyptian revolution have upped the urgency of the need for a new Nile strategy. Closely following the fall of Mubarak, Burundi became the sixth state to sign the Cooperative Framework Agreement, giving the agreement the necessary majority in order to be ratified and implemented in the region. Furthermore, in late March, Ethiopia announced that it would commence construction of its massive, 5,000-megawat Millennium Dam without the endorsement of Egypt or Sudan. While official statements deny that either state sought to exploit Egypt's internal political turmoil in order to advance its own interests on the Nile, it proved the perfect opportunity to force Egypt's hand . Recognizing that antagonistic policies on the Nile are no longer sustainable, Egyptian experts are advocating a new approach, starting with greater flexibility towards the Cooperative Framework Agreement. Egypt's rigid rejection of the CPA stems from its fear that a new Nile agreement will reduce its allocation of water, a threat the state considers to be existential. However, as Ana Cascao, a Nile expert at the Stockholm International Water Institute, explains, changes that the CPA would usher in are firmly in Egypt's interests. Geopolitically, downstream riparian states are the ones vulnerable to the repercussions of upstream actions and thus in need of protection. Upstream countries have been building dams and initiating


projects that affect the Nile's flow, if in minute ways, for years. With changes on the Nile already being set in motion by riparian states unbound by Egypt's colonial treaties, Egypt could benefit from the creation of a Nile Basin Commission to regulate activity and promote transparency regarding where and how water is being used. Egypt's cooperation does not necessarily mean giving up power on the Nile, but trading hard power for soft power. In an article in Al Masry al Youm, El Musa details several ways that Egypt can begin to exercise soft power, including assistance to other Nile riparian states in irrigation techniques; increased import of agricultural commodities from the other states; contracts to purchase electricity from hydro-electric power stations upstream that the Ethiopian and Ugandan governments wish to build; and cooperation in both public and private sectors in order to establish basic industries and in the design and construction of communication and transportation facilities. "The deployment of Egyptian soft power could influence how much water these [upstream] nations would demand or actually use, and how they would divide it between hydroelectric power generation and irrigation," El Musa writes. These sorts of changes are unlikely to crystallize in the near future, primarily because they necessitate a sitting (rather than transitional) government as well as the recovery of the private sector. However, transitional authorities and civil society groups are already hard at work to lay the foundation for a new strategy. Since March, popular committees comprised of prominent politicians, former diplomats and ministers, activists, and youth leaders have visited Uganda and Ethiopia in attempts to thaw tensions and pave the way for better relations. Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia topped Prime Minister Essam Sharaf's list of official diplomatic visits upon assuming office. Egypt recently pledged to significantly boost trade and investment ties with Ethiopia. Egypt's surge of diplomacy has been effective, convincing countries to delay the ratification of the CPA, as well as prompting Ethiopia to allow a commission to investigate plans for the Millennium Dam. This is likely due in part to the clear change in Egypt's attitude and tone; signaling genuine change, a representative of the original popular committee to Uganda told Al-Ahram Online: “We wanted to give a message that Egypt now is not represented by Mubarak. The spirit of the 25 January revolution rules now." Government officials' recent statements are also indicative of a shift. Water Minister Hussein El-Atfy, for example, has described cooperation with Nile Basin states as an "imperative," heralded a "new era" in Egyptian-Ethiopian relations that would see greater cooperation in all areas, and verbally committed support to projects that benefit upstream states. Also encouraging is the leadership that Egypt could put towards creating and implementing a new Nile policy. According to both Cascao and El Musa, Egypt has a core of diplomats, politicians, and experts who worked towards regional cooperation within the context of the Nile Basin Initiative in the early 1990s. These individuals would be well served by their recollection of what a cooperative Nile Basin community looks like, awareness of the pitfalls of mistrust among Nile states, and an acknowledgment that Egypt must waste no time in re-engaging its neighbors.

Failed water diplomacy escalates Rotberg 10(7/2, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/07/02/the_threat_of_a_water_war/Robert I. Former Director-Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention, and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government)

NATIONS FIGHT over water , especially when access is curtailed or threatened, and there are the ingredients for a battle over the 4,100-mile long Nile River. Egypt and Sudan have counted on the abundance of the Nile’s life-giving flow. Now upstream nations want to keep more of the abundance for themselves. Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda are asserting their rights to more of the river’s relentless flow. Washington needs to intervene to forestall hostilities between the countries. Britain conquered Uganda and Kenya in the 19th century in part to protect the precious Nile waters from being diverted away from their critical possession of Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea route to India. Without the yearly sustaining floods of the Nile, agriculture and settlement in the valley of the river from Luxor to Cairo and Alexandria would have been impossible. When Britain in the 1920s controlled all of the waters of the Nile, bar those sluicing down the Blue Nile from Ethiopia, it signed a pact that gave Egypt and Sudan rights to nearly 75 percent of its annual flow. This 1929 agreement was confirmed in 1959, after Egypt and the Sudan had broken from Britain but while the East African countries were still colonies. A new 2010 Cooperative Framework Agreement, now signed by most of the key upstream abutters, would give all riparian states (including the Congo, where a stream that flows into Lake Tanganyika is the acknowledged Nile source) equal access to the resources of the river. That would give preference to large scale upstream energy and industrial, as well as long-time agricultural and


irrigation uses. Egypt and Sudan have refused to sign the new agreement, despite years of discussions and many heated meetings. Given climate change, the drying up of water sources everywhere in Africa and the world, Egypt, which is guaranteed 56 billion of the annual flow of 84 billion cubic meters of Nile water each year, hardly wants to lose even a drop of its allocation. Nor does Sudan, guaranteed 15 billion cubic meters. About 300 million people depend on the waters of the Nile. The upstream countries, with still growing populations, believe that their socio-economic development has long been unfairly constrained by Egypt’s colonial-era lock on the river. Ethiopia and Uganda have not been able to support agricultural schemes. Nor have they been able fully to harness the river or its tributaries for industry and power. Both have suffered from major hydroelectric shortages in recent years. Egypt has declared the continued surge of the Nile waters a “red line’’ that affects its “national security.’’ There is discussion in Egypt about the use of air power to threaten upstream offenders , especially if Ethiopia becomes too demanding. In theory, Ethiopia could divert much of the Blue Nile to its own uses. Or Ethiopia and others could charge Egypt for water that has largely escaped modern pricing. Egypt is sufficiently disturbed by Ethiopia’s potentially aggressive water designs that it has recently made friends with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s arch enemy. In 1998, Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war over slices of insignificant mountainous territory. Although the shooting ended in 2000, a peace settlement handed down by the World Court in 2006 has still not been observed by both sides. If Egypt attacks Ethiopia, Eritrea might join in. Egyptian generals claim that Israel is on the other side , helping the upstream nations by encouraging their thirst for water and by financing the construction of four hydroelectric projects in Ethiopia. All these issues provide conditions for a war over water.

Most likely global warCoddrington 10(7/1, http://www.tomorrowtoday.co.za/2010/07/01/a-looming-crisis-world-water-wars/PhD-Business Adminstration & Guest lecturer at top business schools, including the London Business School, Duke Corporate Education and the Gordon Institute of Business Science.)

People go to war when their way of life is threatened. I have written before about the many issues we face in the coming years that threaten our way of life. These include global warming/climate change, pollution, pandemics, nuclear bombs, intelligent machines, genetics, and more. More and more I am becoming convinced that the next major regional/global conflict will be over water. We are much more likely to have water wars in the next decade than nuclear ones . And I were to guess, I’d say that it is most likely to happen in around North East Africa. This is a region with its own internal issues. But it also has the foreign involvement of America, China, the Middle Eastern Arab nations, and (increasingly) Israel. Quite a potent mix… Last week, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia hosted the 18th regular meeting of the Council of Ministers of Water Affairs of the Nile Basin countries. In the lead up to the conference, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, the five countries that are all upstream of Egypt and Sudan concluded a water-sharing treaty – to the exclusion of Egypt and Sudan. This has obviously reignited the longstanding dispute over water distribution of the world’s longest river in the world’s driest continent. Egypt is currently the largest consumer of Nile water and is the main beneficiary of a 1929 treaty which allows it to take 55.5 billion cubic metres of water each year, or 87% of the White and Blue Nile’s flow. By contrast, Sudan is only allowed to draw 18.5 billion cubic metres. On attaining independence Sudan refused to acknowledge the validity of the Nile water treaty and negotiated a new bilateral treaty with Egypt in 1959. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda also expressly refused to be bound by the treaty when they attained independence, but have not negotiated a new treaty since then. Under the 1929 treaty, Egypt has powers over upstream projects: The Nile Waters Agreement of 1929 states that no country in the Nile basin should undertake any works on the Nile, or its tributaries, without Egypt’s express permission. This gives Egypt a veto over anything, including the building of dams on numerous rivers in Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and by implication Egypt has control over agriculture, industry and infrastructure and basic services such as drinking water and electricity in these countries. This is surely untenable. But if the other countries broke the treaty, would Egypt respond with force? Since the late 1990s, Nile Basin states have been trying unsuccessfully to develop a revised framework agreement for water sharing, dubbed the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). In May 2009, talks held in Kinshasa broke down because Egypt and Sudan’s historical water quotas were not mentioned in the text of the proposed agreement. Water ministers met again in July 2009 in Alexandria, where Egypt and Sudan reiterated their rejection of any agreement that did not clearly establish their historical share of water. This is an untenable position. Upstream states accuse Egypt and Sudan of attempting to maintain


an unfair, colonial-era monopoly on the river. Egyptian officials and analysts, however, defend their position, pointing out that Egypt is much more dependent on the river for its water needs than its upstream neighbours. Egypt claims that Nile water accounts for more than 95% of Egypt’s total water consumption, although they appear to be working hard to reduce both their water usage (they’re stopping growing rice, for example) and their dependence on the Nile.


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The United States federal government should alter tax law for private foundations and individuals that contribute to organizations providing technical assistance for the democratic opposition to Bashar Al-Assad. --Eliminating the prohibition against lobbying activities by private foundations--Applying a charitable deduction for private contributions to the democratic opposition to Bashar Al-Assad.

Removing tax exemption restrictions encourages a wave of private aidCrimm, 3(Law Prof-St. John’s, “Through a post-September 11 Looking Glass: Assessing the Roles of Federal Tax Laws and Tax Policies Applicable to Global Philanthropy by Private Foundations and their Donor,” 23 Va. Tax Rev. 1)

The events of September 11 provided a compelling catalyst for the Bush administration to analyze this nation's foreign policy by particularly focusing on our present lack of pecuniary support abroad for building social capital, fostering economic development, promoting social stewardship, and bolstering humanitarian projects. The administration and Congress might reverse this dearth of financial assistance by encourag ing the global philanthropic participation of America's citizens, residents, and entities through consistent, harmonious, and thoughtful tax policies and laws . Although a number of federal tax laws central to global philanthropy have positive objectives, their implementation in the context of international giving is problematic, as is demonstrated by the opinions of study participants. Congressional and administrative attention was not focused on international giving as these federal tax rules were put into place, and they now should be revisited with the interests of our country as a critical player in the globalized world in mind. Moreover, a special task force of the American Bar Association Section on Exempt Organizations, United States International Grant-Makers, and the Council on Foundations share the concern that our federal tax laws do not efficiently and effectively encourage global philanthropy.n426 A. Charitable Contribution Deduction 1. Inconsistencies Although individuals and domestic corporations can make nondeductible charitable contributions directly to foreign charitable organizations, global philanthropy is likely stimulated by the charitable contribution deduction .n427 It is important, therefore, to consider whether the income, estate, and gift tax charitable contribution deduction statutes warrant modification. There are inconsistencies in the statutory requirements for entitlement to the charitable contribution deduction for income, estate, and gift tax purposes.n428 No geographic restrictions are imposed under the estate or gift tax provisions in order for a donor to claim a charitable contribution deduction. n429 As a result, citizens and resident aliens can freely transfer assets by inter vivos gift or bequest directly to foreign charitable organizations without incurring gift or inheritance taxes on such transfers. By comparison, for purposes of federal income taxation, section 170(c)(2) predicates deductibility of individuals' donations on satisfaction of one geographic restriction and of corporations' donations on compliance with two geographic restrictions. In the case of individuals, the income tax charitable contribution deduction is permitted if the donation is made to a nongovernmental incorporated or unincorporated entity legally formed in the United States, regardless of where that domestic entity uses the donated assets. n430 In the case of corporations, the income tax charitable contribution deduction is predicated not only on a donation to a nongovernmental domestically incorporated or unincorporated entity, but also on the donation's use for charitable purposes in the United States if contributed to a domestic unincorporated entity. n431 These charitable contribution deduction statutes long pre-date the past several decades of expanded globalization. While the geographically unrestricted estate and gift tax charitable contribution deduction statutes do nothing to inhibit global philanthropy, the same cannot be said of the income tax charitable contribution deduction for individuals and corporations. The domestic legal formation requirement provides the United States government some means of control and direction over contributions as a quid pro quo for sacrificing income tax revenues, but as demonstrated by several bilateral income tax treaties, even the government has been willing to occasionally forego its ironclad sovereignty over this requirement. The additional domestic use limitation imposed by section [*139] 170(c)(2) with respect to corporate contributions to a domestic unincorporated entity is easily avoided by tax planning. For example, corporations can direct contributions to a domestic corporate charitable entity,


which are unconstrained by the domestic use restriction, or corporate contributions to a domestic unincorporated entity subsequently can be regranted to another domestic public charity. Nonetheless, the domestic use limitation appears to have the virtuous gloss of protecting donated funds from potential misuse or misappropriation by entities not generally otherwise subjected to rigorous state regulatory controls. This appears appealingly commendable. The limitations may effectively result in corporate donations directed primarily to incorporated entities regulated by state governments rather than to unincorporated organizations for which the abuse potential is greater because they generally are subject to less state regulation. The virtuous gloss dissolves, however, as a result of two considerations: first, the absence of the geographic use limitation from the income, estate, and gift tax charitable contribution deduction statutes applicable to individuals; and second, the donee organization's existing exposure to the regulatory and enforcement powers of the Service by virtue of the organization's section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. 2. Reformation In light of the various inconsistencies, consideration should be given to reforming sections 170(c)(2), 2055, and 2522. One option would be to entirely expunge one or both of the domestic geographic limitations from section 170(c)(2). However, while other individuals may not agree, without an appropriate bilateral treaty where contracting states have specifically negotiated otherwise, I do not advocate permitting individuals or corporations to give tax-deductible charitable contributions directly to foreign organizations.n432 Accordingly, I suggest that our income, estate, and gift tax rules uniformly apply a domestic legal formation requirement. I also believe that our bilateral treaties with Canada and Mexico should be revisited and that there should be more uniformity in their now [*140] diverse approaches to overriding the domestic formation provision of section 170(c)(2). Further, our tax treaties with politically supportive overseas allies, such as the United Kingdom, which do not now incorporate an override to the domestic formation provision of section 170(c)(2), should be reconsidered. On balance, I question the additive value of the geographic use limitation as it applies only to corporations contributing to unincorporated charitable organizations. The limitation's obstacle to global philanthropy can be, and in fact is, easily and legally circumvented. Nor does it serve as increased protection against the misuse or misappropriation of donated funds; the limitation's inclusion in section 170(c)(2) does not enhance the regulatory and enforcement powers that the Service can exercise over the section 501(c)(3) charitable entity. I would prefer the limitation purged from section 170(c)(2). In our globalized world of today, the geographic use limitation rule appears quite archaic. Nonetheless, if, after informed and thoughtful debate clearly focused on reasons for its retention in current section 170(c)(2), Congress affirmatively decides there are appropriate reasons to retain the geographic use limitation with respect to deductible contributions by corporations, it should consider whether the same reasoning, and thus the same geographic constraint, should be extended uniformly to the charitable contribution income, estate, and gift tax provisions applicable to individuals. In sum, any statutory or treaty modifications should attempt to balance considerations regarding protection of donor funds from misuse, the preservation of the federal tax base, and the encouragement of global philanthropy.B. Special Tax Rules Applicable to Private Foundations and Income Tax Withholding Rules1. Shared Concerns Like the charitable contribution deduction statutes, sections 4942 and 4945, which pertain to private foundations, pre-date the recent era of world globalization. Nonetheless, there is a shared recognition that sections 4942 and 4945 today remain valuable tools in a quest to promote accountability and transparency of grant-making domestic private foundations and foreign grantees. Those statutes and the pertinent regulations impose due diligence inquiry and reporting requirements, many of which are standard good business practices for grant-makers.Notwithstanding the statutes' positive purposes, because Congress neither anticipated nor planned for the current state of world globalization when enacting sections 4942 and 4945, these statutes and their interpretive Treasury Regulations do not now promote efficient and effective direct global philanthropy. In fact, they apparently deter new and unsophisticated private foundations from engaging in direct global philanthropy . They also pose hurdles for established private foundations' direct international giving , even after compliance procedures and systems are in place. Regardless of the sophistication and compliance systems of the domestic funder, under the existing statutes direct global philanthropy to indigenous charitable groups and organizations created and operating in economically developing and politically repressed countries is particularly problematic. This is not the lone view of the author, supported only by participants in her empirical study; others concur.n433 Their interest in this subject is one indicator of its current topicality and importance. The general shared view is that sections 4942 and 4945 and the relevant Treasury Regulations should be updated, simplified, and adapted to changed and changing circumstances of world globalization.An ABA Task Force of the Exempt Organization Committee of the Section of Taxation, composed of six experts in the area of tax-exempt law,n434 advocated in its May, 2002 Gallagher-Ferguson White Paper,


a draft report on "Revision and Simplification of Rules Applicable to Private Foundations," n435 that the tax rules impacting private foundations' international philanthropy be updated to make them more workable. n436 The Gallagher-Ferguson White Paper, with which I concur, include the following five particularly relevant [*142] recommendations: (1) Private foundations' direct grants to foreign charitable organizations should be permitted under the control and discretion rules of Revenue Ruling 66-79 that currently apply to direct foreign grants from public charities.n437 (2) The expenditure responsibility requirements should continue to apply to grants made to non-charitable foreign organizations, but the requirements should be eliminated where a private foundation makes a good faith determination that a foreign organization is charitable under its resident country laws and that it will spend the grant funds for charitable purposes consistent with the requirements imposed on domestic charitable section 501(c)(3) organizations. In the alternative, the expenditure responsibility rules should be restricted to requiring a grant agreement that incorporates appropriate limitations on the grantee's use of grant funds, but the rules should not require reporting except for purposes of section 4942 to have grants to nonpublic charities treated as qualifying distributions. (3) The three-year expenditure responsibility reporting rule for grants to foreign grantees for endowment or capital purposes should be applied consistently to foreign grantees, and the grant should be deemed fully expended and further reporting unnecessary at the earlier of (a) three years from the date of the grant if the grant-making private foundation has no information that the grant is being used or has been used for other than intended purposes, or (b) when the grant becomes part of the principal of the foreign grantee's endowment fund, n438 or (c) if the grant is for capital equipment or building purposes, when the money has been spent for the intended purpose. n439 (4) The prohibition against lobbying activities should be eliminated from the expenditure responsibility rules, and private foundations should be subject to the same substantiality requirements as public charities. n440 (5) The Service position that foreign organizations cannot renounce their section 501(c)(3) status once the Service issues a determination letter should be eliminated. n441 [*143] Another group that has responded to the complexities and inefficiencies of our tax laws with affirmative action is United States International Grantmakers (USIG), a working group of general counsels of domestic private foundations. As part of its effort to facilitate private foundations' knowledge of and compliance with relevant domestic and foreign laws and regulations, USIG formed an informational web site accessible to domestic grant-makers and foreign grantees that contains relevant forms, such as an affidavit form for equivalency determination purposes.n442 To assist grant-makers in their initial evaluation of the charitable status of a foreign organization, the web site also contains simple summaries of laws of foreign countries. The Council on Foundations also has taken a lead role in representing private foundations' interests and concerns. At various times over the past several years, John A. Edie, the Council's general counsel and senior vice president, requested that the Service provide clarifying guidance to grant-making domestic private foundations with respect to various Treasury Regulations and Service procedures. According to Rob Buchanan, Director, International Programs at the Council on Foundations, requests were made for clarifications of the Treasury Regulations regarding (1) the consequences of making a grant to a foreign grantee under the expenditure responsibility rules without undertaking or completing an equivalency determination, and (2) the longevity requirement for expenditure responsibility reports for grants for endowments and capital purposes. The desire for guidance on the income tax withholding rules also was expressed. To date, guidance in the form of a response letter (from Thomas J. Miller of the Service) has been issued only with respect to the first topic.n443 2. Reformation All of these shared concerns speak to reformation of Code chapter 42A, sections 4942 and 4945, and even of the recently adopted income tax withholding Treasury Regulations. In the best of all worlds, reconsideration of the entirety of chapter 42A with respect to its appropriateness in the global context should be undertaken. As the empirical study clearly suggests, numerous provisions within these statutes have a chilling effect on global philanthropy . Nonetheless, I [*144] venture to say that this country's current political climate would make policy makers extremely wary of any sweeping transformation, and wholesale reformation may be unnecessary to enhance efficient and effective global philanthropy.

That’s key to expand private democracy assistanceCrimm, 5(Law Prof-St. John’s, Democratization, Global Grant-Making, and the Internal Revenue Code Lobbying Restrictions, 79 Tul. L. Rev. 587)

The U.S. government is committed to spreading democracy throughout the world. This goal has become particularly urgent in recent years. To achieve success in this challenge requires the peaceful creation of


the necessary conditions for, and attributes of, democracy within other countries, including legitimate and representative governments backed by laws and policies designed to support democratic ideals and values.The shaping of appropriate laws and policies to govern emerging and developing democracies abroad depends on lawmakers' and policymakers' hearing the pluralistic voices of their citizens. Foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can be critical mediating actors in this endeavor, representing peoples' voices and contributing to the democratic formulation of their countries' laws and policies. But, the few success stories of foreign NGOs' crucial and effective participation in the democratizing legislative processes of their countries suggest that outside financial resources often are required.Political circumstances may militate against the U.S. government directly providing pecuniary support to the foreign NGOs . On the other hand, for many years, U.S. public charities and private foundations have been influentia l figures in promoting democracy abroad. It now is time for the U.S. government to encourage our philanthropic institutions to aid financially foreign NGOs that, through their own legislative activities, can be crucial in the development of the necessary conditions for, and attributes of, democracy in their respective countries. The current federal tax regime , however , deters U.S. philanthropies from making such financial commitments. That need not continue. The old justifications for the Internal Revenue Code (I.R.C.) lobbying restrictions were formed in the preglobalization era. The lobbying restrictions do not advance the complex democratization processes in foreign countries transitioning from oppressive or repressive governments. Moreover, there are venerable theoretical and practical political notions of democracy that suggest, and justify in the specific circumstances of global grant-making addressed in this Article, liberalization of the relevant I.R.C. lobbying restrictions. This Article thus urges reform of the I.R.C. provisions so that our domestic tax policy will better support our foreign policy in the twenty-first century. As the National Public Radio quotation at the beginning of this introduction indicates, foreign NGOs play crucial roles in democratization processes within their countries. n23 In this setting, U.S. philanthropic institutions - public charities and private foundations n24 - may be able to supplant or, in some circumstances, to complement or supplement U.S. governmental involvement in spreading democracies worldwide by granting financial support to foreign NGOs. Many did so during the twentieth century, sometimes at the tacit request, or at least with the understood consent, of the U.S. government. n25 Their outreach efforts and expenditures overseas advanced, n26 even as U.S. governmental nonmilitary financial aid abroad dramatically decreased from the Cold War and into the post-Cold War era. n27 Through delivery of services and financial aid, these philanthropic institutions supported many human rights and humanitarian causes, health and education initiatives, economic development programs, and other valuable foreign affair matters. These activities occurred within the constraints of the federal income tax laws, sometimes at great cost or difficulty to the philanthropic institutions. But now, in the twenty-first century, the U nited S tates must adopt tax laws that facilitate and encourage these institutions to contribute philanthropically to the renewed global democracy challenge facing our nation. n28 Previously, I have addressed the need for a cohesive global philanthropy policy, supported by tax laws and policies, in order to remove impediments on private foundations' global philanthropy presented by special I.R.C. rules regarding "equivalency determination" and "expenditure responsibility." n29 The focus of this Article is one additional aspect of our federal income tax laws that, according to private foundation officials, is important to America's philanthropies' global grant-making potential: the current I.R.C. lobbying restrictions on section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt domestic philanthropies. In 1934, Congress enacted these tax restrictions, after giving thought only to constraining domestic lobbying by philanthropic entities enjoying public subsidization from tax-exempt status. n31 Subsequently, in 1969 when it enacted section 4945, Congress effectively barred private foundations, a special category of section 501(c)(3) organizations, from expending funds for their own or a grantee's lobbying activities (interchangeably referred to as "legislative activities"). n32 Again, Congress limited its deliberation of the I.R.C. lobbying restraints to domestic considerations despite its awareness that private foundations funded initiatives abroad. n33 Congress had an opportunity once again to consider foreign interests in 1976, when it enacted sections 501(h) and 4911 to provide most public charities a means of safely determining a limited, but permissible, level of expenditures for lobbying activities. Nonetheless, testimony and debate of the legislation focused exclusively on domestic considerations. It was the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) at the beginning of the postindustrial globalization era that clearly communicated its position that congressional lobbying constraints extend to legislative processes in foreign countries. n34 As a consequence of this mere administrative position, while the United States now endeavors to spread democracy abroad, our philanthropic institutions are impeded from fully supporting such democratization processes through grant-making to foreign NGOs that actively lobby in attempts to influence legislation in their countries. This Article urges reconsideration of these possibly outdated restrictions. In Part II, the


Article addresses the roles of foreign NGOs and provides examples of foreign NGOs whose legislative activities contributed significantly to the democratization of South Africa and Kenya. Part III briefly discusses how the U.S. system of taxation embodies economic notions of democracy that would be furthered by [*596] reformation of the I.R.C. lobbying constraints. Part IV explains the historical justifications and the relevant current rules that restrict the lobbying expenditures by U.S. public charities and private foundations. While the I.R.C. lobbying restrictions have been justified on numerous historical grounds, most of these do not relate to the goal of advancing democracy abroad and consequently do not foster our global democracy policy. Part V explains why liberalization of the I.R.C. lobbying restrictions is important for global grant-making purposes. Thereafter, Part VI presents and reflects on several theoretical and practical political notions of democracy that suggest, and warrant, the recommended liberalization of the current lobbying restrictions as they now apply to U.S. philanthropies as grant-makers to foreign NGOs. Reformation would empower these foreign NGOs , through their own legislative activities, to contribute crucially to democratization , particularly in countries transitioning from oppressive or repressive authoritarian regimes. Part VII presents some general thoughts on how we might proceed with modification of those restraints. The Conclusion suggests that current I.R.C. lobbying restrictions are too large a price to pay at a time when countries struggle to transform into democracies from authoritarian rule. Now is the time to consider the numerous relevant domestic and foreign interests in order to debate appropriate and effective alterations of these constraints. II. Roles of Foreign Nongovernmental Organizations The notion of a democratization paradigm places foreign NGOs into the context of a country transitioning from authoritarian rule to an emerging political democracy. Because authoritarian regimes are characteristically hostile to civil society institutions, n35 it is not until after authoritarian rule is replaced and democratization moves ahead that the political environment becomes sufficiently receptive for officials to tolerate and encourage the emergence, proliferation, and participation of foreign NGOs. A timely illustration is Iraq. n36 The media recently reported that Saddam Hussein prohibited NGOs during his regime. n37 Within fifteen months of his downfall, however, more [*597] than 1000 Iraqi NGOs existed within Iraq. n38 While Iraqi NGOs are the "best defense against the emergence of a new dictatorship," their survival is uncertain. n39 The initial writing of this Article in summer 2004 preceded the departure from Iraq of the U.S.-led Provisional Authority and the assumption of power by a new Iraqi interim government whose ability to restrain insurgents and other antidemocratic forces and to move the country toward democratization was unclear. n40 Even now upon my final review of this Article just prior to the scheduled January 30, 2005, Iraqi elections, it appears that through violent actions deliberately intended for worldwide broadcast, antidemocratic forces heartily are attempting to return Iraq to some form of authoritarian rule. Nonetheless, there are some continuing signs of an Iraqi NGO community. As recently as December 8, 2004, the media reported that representatives of Iraqi NGOs have participated in a Czech-sponsored program designed to teach the Iraqis how to establish NGO structures, prepare projects, acquire financing, and work with the media. n41 Globalization n42 has fostered worldwide sharing of information, and consequently has broadened awareness of Iraq's and other countries' particular domestic problems. This has revealed a general, but not one definitive, pattern in foreign NGOs' efforts during transformation to democracies. n43 Initially, foreign NGOs often focus locally, largely on providing direct service delivery of humanitarian aid, such as hunger relief and medical attention, denied to a populace under an autocratic regime. n44 Some organizations may push for better conditions for specific groups of citizens. n45 Only afterwards, as a more [*598] open political environment develops and the country moves from rehabilitation to reconstruction and then to redevelopment, do sustainable foreign NGOs truly proliferate. n46 Many foreign NGOs may concentrate on accomplishing their publicly beneficial missions through the direct delivery of services locally or more broadly. Other foreign NGOs, aware of the many critical matters in their countries, recognize that some problems can be resolved most effectively by other means. n47 Those foreign NGOs structure their objectives and approaches to fully or partially focus on transforming governmental policies and laws. n48 They at least partly pursue their missions singularly or in coalitions through legislative activities by pressing for system-wide or a more directed alteration of laws on behalf of the collective public. n49 This Article focuses on the latter group of foreign NGOs, whose endeavors are critical to the democratization processes , perhaps especially in the earliest phases of consolidation. n50 These crucial foreign NGOs often cannot rely on financial (and other) support from national, regional, or local resources. n51 Instead, they frequently must obtain aid from sources outside their own countries. With financial support from outside sources, foreign NGOs have proliferated in recent years and achieved significant and recognized successes. n52 Their numbers and achievements attest to their importance and legitimacy as service providers; as agents to mobilize resources; as advocates of issues of local, regional, and national interest; and as facilitators of reformation and democratic development processes in many


countries. n53 Two scholars' testimonials capture their importance: "NGOs are the real DNA of democracy." n54 The documented triumphs of foreign NGOs as facilitators of legislative and governmental policy changes in democratizing countries, especially emerging and developing countries, however, only rarely have been directly linked to funding from U.S. private foundations. n55 In those few reported instances, little detailed information is available. n56 As a result, by necessity, this Article is relatively general and conclusory. It is intended to highlight, and question the wisdom of, the existing I.R.C. lobbying restrictions , which were developed with only domestic considerations in mind, as [*600] they impact global grant-making to foreign NGOs whose own legislative activities can contribute to crucial democratization processes in their respective countries after the collapse of oppressive or repressive authoritarian regimes. n57 A few examples, however, indicate the potential importance and impact that could ensue from altering the existing tax constraints on legislative activities. One of the extremely small number of reported successful examples occurred during the 1980s in South Africa, then an oppressed nation, socially divided and economically unstable. n58 Only a very few NGOs critical of apartheid in South Africa existed prior to the 1980s. n59 They had been effectively "banned" as hostile to the apartheid governments of prime ministers H.F. Verwoerd and John Vorster. n60 The situation changed after Prime Minister P.W. Botha came to power. n61 Prime Minister Botha's government did not financially or otherwise support NGOs, but he did allow them "to emerge, organize, and serve the disenfranchised and marginalized majority black population" in South Africa. n62 Thereafter, the antiapartheid South African NGOs sought and obtained direct financial support from abroad without South African governmental intervention. n63 With direct funding from Scandinavian countries, the European Union, and U.S. private foundations, n64 [*601] antiapartheid South African NGOs worked to weaken the apartheid political environment, establish universal suffrage, n65 modify governmental policies, strengthen democratic institutions, and repeal apartheid legislation. n66 The South African NGOs had identified democratic participation as critical to the economic development of South Africa and its black population. n67 During the transition from apartheid to democracy, South African NGOs engaged in lobbying efforts aimed at government officials, often at the provincial and local levels. n68 A significantly large group of South African NGOs engaged predominantly in policymaking issues with governmental officials. n69 During the transition period, NGOs also worked with the government and political parties to establish new laws that would affect NGOs' operations and funding, as well as their access to the government's premier policymaking arm. n70 In sum, with direct funding from foreign sources, including U.S. foundations, n71 the South African NGOs engaged in legislative activities that helped democratize South Africa. The case of Kenyan NGOs provides another compelling example. In 1986, when Kenya was a one-party state, the government noted with consternation the third sector's ability to set priorities divergent from those of the state. n72 Indeed, by 1990, the state passed legislation to [*602] control and restrict the nonprofit sector by effectively subjecting it to administrative control. n73 Kenyan NGOs were incensed and coalesced in opposition. In an attempt to reverse the legislation, "undercurrents" recruited the direct assistance of local missions from such major donor countries as Britain, the United States, Germany, and Japan, as well as multilateral bodies, to pressure or lobby the Kenyan government to repeal the legislation. n74 The Kenyan NGOs, however, dismissed as potentially too brazen the tactic of directly approaching these locally based foreign representatives. n75 Instead, the Kenyan NGOs contacted the Ford Foundation, USAID, n76 UNICEF, the United Nations Development Fund, the World Bank, and other philanthropies and agencies to solicit support. n77 With their intentional financial aid, n78 the Kenyan NGOs brought to bear sufficient pressure on the state, through "low profile lobbying" and other strategies, to have the offensive legislation substantially modified. n79 It is precisely these types of worthwhile, and frequently critical, endeavors that are instrumental in creating and advancing conditions for, and attributes of, a democracy, especially a democracy emerging and developing after a repressive or oppressive regime. These are the kinds of efforts, however, that frequently may be denied funding by U.S. section 501(c)(3) public charities and private foundations, largely as a result of the current I.R.C. lobbying restrictions. This Article, therefore, argues that we experiment by significantly modifying or [*603] eliminating these restrictions in order to encourage our philanthropic institutions to financially aid foreign NGOs in their participation in the democratizing legislative processes of their countries. We can only assume that, without the tax constraints, more foreign NGOs would be able to participate constructively in the transformation of their countries' laws and governmental policies. We should undertake the experiment now. The price to be paid domestically and abroad for not doing so far outweighs the risks of refraining from cautious experimentation.


STABILITY

Assad strong – clergy support, divided opposition, and defections are low-level AMEC 1-6, Afro-Middle East Centre, non-profit thinktank based in Johannesburg, (“Unravelling the Syrian crisis,” 2012, http://www.just-international.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5053:unravelling-the-syrian-crisis&catid=45:recent-articles&Itemid=123)

The past weeks have seen fierce fighting in the Idlib province with high death tolls resulting. Most fatalities are of armed people – defectors and soldiers, with others being mostly civilians caught in the crossfire. A large number of soldiers have been killed in the fighting, and the army has also lost a number of vehicles and equipment.None of this , however, points to any possibility of a military victory by the opposition over the state. The Syrian army has still not used its strongest units in areas like Idlib and Homs. It is likely that, despite the confidence of the state that it will prevail, it is not willing entirely to discount the possibility that its army might be confronted by foreign forces and thus does not want to exhaust all its forces on internal battles. Furthermore, the areas where fighting is taking place –notably Homs – are not under the control of the opposition . Skirmishes are frequent ; deaths occur on

both sides, but by no stretch of the imagination are these areas incontestably in the hands of any opposition formation.In broader terms, the internal opposition remains split . While there is some coordination of protests exercised by the LCC,

there is not a general cohesiveness within the opposition. The internal opposition is also split between those who support dialogue with the state (notably long-time dissenters from the left and nationalist groups) and those who oppose any dialogue and wantonly the downfall of the regime (such as those in the LCC). The vastness of the country also makes coordination difficult.The external opposition seems to have found some sense of organisational coherence within the Syrian National Council which has, of late, been very active on the diplomatic front. However, not all is rosy within the SNC . The organisation is plagued by internal bickering , criticism that it has an Islamist bent and, because of the many exiles in its ranks, is not representative of the protesters in Syria. There remain differences between the various components of the coalition, with the dominant group – the Muslim Brotherhood – using its position to ignore other groups and deal directly with SNC president Burhan Ghalioun. Furthermore, there is currently a re-evaluation within the SNC regarding its position on the Arab League plan. The regime’s signing of the plan – with most of its amendments taken on board – has somewhat undermined the SNC’s position and caused it to reassess how it relates to the League and to the League’s attempts at facilitating dialogue between the regime and the opposition. The SNC has, thus far, been keener on some forms of intervention (diplomatic and even, possibly,

military) by western powers and Turkey than action by the League. Indeed, the SNC currently seems to be in a position where, rather than determining a programme and agenda for which it can win support, is looking to western proposals that it can support. The SNC’s recent conference in Tunis emerged with some concrete resolutions, mainly with regard to building its internal structures. The conference established bureaus for foreign relations, human rights and revolutionary support, among others. Interestingly, its vision for a future Syria includes an important role for the military. Indeed, among the discussions at the conference were how the military might be won over and the possibility of having Asad hand over power to the military while he goes into exile. Some SNC members claim they have already made contact with senior military officers who have agreed to defect if provided with protection. This is significant as it indicates an acceptance by the SNC that the Syrian military is central to a resolution of the crisis and to the future in Syria - despite the fact that it is this same military that is daily killing protesters and that the military is an integral part of the regime.While there is – at a public level – respectful discussion between the SNC and the FSA, indications are that the relationship between the military opposition and the SNC is a difficult one . One indication of this is the

fact that no FSA representatives were invited for the SNC conference in Tunis. In summary, neither the state of the uprising and armed conflict nor the state of the opposition can lead one to believe that there is impending change form that quarter.A disturbing turn in the uprising has been the increasingly sectarian expressions that have emerged, with sectarian attacks, killings and other brutalities now having become a usual part of the battle between the regime and the opposition.Regime supportDespite seven months of sustained protests and fighting , it is clear that the Syrian nation as a whole has not risen up against the regime . On the one hand, there is a large number of people who oppose the regime but are

concerned about the repercussions for the country of a revolution-type scenario. On the other hand, the regime still has substantial active support. Large demonstrations continue to be held in support of Asad and the government, and this support for the regime shows no sign of altering radically any time soon. The business community and clergy maintain their support. Asad got a boost earlier this month when a range of clerics - of various Christian denominations, Sunni Muslim, Shi’a Muslim and Alawi – publicly expressed support for him and confidence in his ability to maintain stability in Syria. There is also no indication that the army or the security forces – or even significant sections of either – will switch sides. Defections in the army are of a small number of mostly junior soldiers rather than officers.

http://www.just-international.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5053:unravelling-the-syrian-crisis&catid=45:recent-articles&Itemid=123




No escalationFettweis, Asst Prof Poli Sci – Tulane, Asst Prof National Security Affairs – US Naval War College, ‘7(Christopher, “On the Consequences of Failure in Iraq,” Survival, Vol. 49, Iss. 4, December, p. 83 – 98)

Without the US presence, a second argument goes, nothing would prevent Sunni-Shia violence from sweeping into every country where the religious divide exists. A Sunni bloc with centres in Riyadh and Cairo might face a Shia bloc headquartered in Tehran, both of which would face enormous pressure from their own people to fight proxy wars across the region. In addition to intra-Muslim civil war, cross-border warfare could not be ruled out. Jordan might be the first to send troops into Iraq to secure its own border; once the dam breaks, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia might follow suit. The Middle East has no shortage of rivalries, any of which might descend into direct conflict after a destabilising US withdrawal. In the worst case, Iran might emerge as the regional hegemon, able to bully and blackmail its neighbours with its new nuclear arsenal. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would soon demand suitable deterrents of their own, and a nuclear arms race would envelop the region . Once again, however, none of these outcomes is particularly likely. Wider warNo matter what the outcome in Iraq, the region is not likely to devolve into chaos . Although it might seem counter-intuitive, by most traditional measures the Mid dle East is very stable. Continuous, uninterrupted governance is the norm, not the exception; most Middle East regimes have been in power for decades. Its monarchies, from Morocco to Jordan to every Gulf state, have generally been in power since these countries gained independence. In Egypt Hosni Mubarak has ruled for almost three decades, and Muammar Gadhafi in Libya for almost four. The region's autocrats have been more likely to die quiet, natural deaths than meet the hangman or post-coup firing squads. Saddam's rather unpredictable regime, which attacked its neighbours twice, was one of the few exceptions to this pattern of stability, and he met an end unusual for the modern Middle East. Its regimes have survived potentially destabilising shocks before, and they would be likely to do so again.The region actually experiences very little cross-border warfare, and even less since the end of the Cold War. Saddam again provided an exception, as did the Israelis, with their adventures in Lebanon. Israel fought four wars with neighbouring states in the first 25 years of its existence, but none in the 34 years since. Vicious civil wars that once engulfed Lebanon and Algeria have gone quiet , and its ethnic conflicts do not make the region particularly unique.The biggest risk of an American withdrawal is intensified civil war in Iraq rather than regional conflagration. Iraq's neighbours will likely not prove eager to fight each other to determine who gets to be the next country to spend itself into penury propping up an unpopular puppet regime next door. As much as the Saudis and Iranians may threaten to intervene on behalf of their co-religionists, they have shown no eagerness to replace the counter-insurgency role that American troops play today. If the United States, with its remarkable military and unlimited resources, could not bring about its desired solutions in Iraq, why would any other country think it could do so?17Common interest, not the presence of the US military, provides the ultimate foundation for stability. All ruling regimes in the Middle East share a common (and understandable) fear of instability. It is the interest of every actor - the Iraqis, their neighbours and the rest of the world - to see a stable, functioning government emerge in Iraq. If the United States were to withdraw, increased regional cooperation to address that common interest is far more likely than outright warfare.

Leakage of funds from government aid kills effectivenessDesai, 10(Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution, and Associate Professor of International Development in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, 42 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 1111, Summer)

Official aid is perceived to have low transaction costs because it operates at large scale. But official aid travels a long route, with costs at each stage . The first stage is the cost of tax collection when money is transferred from individuals to the treasury. In this stage, costs consist of the direct administrative costs of tax collection as well as deadweight losses from taxation. These costs can be substantial . n24 In the second stage, official donor agencies transfer funds to recipient country governments to support specific development projects and programs. The administrative costs of these agencies have average d between


4 to 5 percent , according to statistics reported by the OECD Development Assistance Committee. n25 The third stage involves costs associated with transferring the money from the recipient government to final beneficiaries through project implementation. Administrative costs of the project, corruption, and other leakages mean that only about half the funds actually reach their stated end purpose. n26 [*1127] In all, transaction costs on official aid could amount to 60 percent or more. Private aid , particularly internet-based, offers a more direct connection between donors and recipients and potentially reduces transaction costs . At both GlobalGiving or Kiva, the flow of funds route is short: money goes from an individual to the online platform, where it is pooled and transferred to a financial or project intermediary in a recipient country, which then disburses to the final beneficiaries. The long route of passing through government bureaucracies is avoided.

And, government aid bureaucracy destroys innovationCarothers, 9(October, Carnegie Endowment VP for Studies, Democracy and Rule of Law Program and Carnegie Europe Director, "Revitalizing Democracy Assistance: The Challenge of USAID," http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=24047)

USAID’s basic operating procedures —a term used here as shorthand for the rules, regulations, and procedures that underpin the agency’s programming—are a major cause of the lamentable patterns of inflexibility , cumbersomeness, lack of innovation, and mechanical application that hobble much of its democracy and governance work . These basic operating procedures are a study in dysfunctional bureaucratization. Some career professionals at the agency liken them to an enormous accumulation of barnacles on the hull of a ship. They are attached one by one over the years by Congress or the agency itself in response to some particular incident or concern, but then they are never removed or rationalized over time, and the accumulated mass threatens to eventually sink the ship. These basic operating procedures are much more intrusive and constraining than just “normal” government bureaucracy. They reflect years of trying to spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on assistance programs carried out in difficult foreign contexts under the constant fear that even a scrap of evidence that any money has been misspent will trigger howls of righteous protest in Congress . Over time this pressure produces an institutional culture of paralyzing risk avoidance , leading to ponderous controls and deadening requirements, as well as the pervasive mistrust noted above between the agency and the recipients of its funding. The highly problematic nature of USAID’s basic operating procedures manifests itself at every stage of programming. The work involved in preparing requests for proposals or requests for assistance and then negotiating and finalizing contracts or grants is extremely burdensome. It greatly slows the development of new programs, encourages the use of cookie-cutter approaches that have already paved a path through the procurement jungle, and limits the number and range of organizations that compete for and take part in the assistance programs. The procedures relating to the implementation of programs are similarly troublesome. USAID’s implementing partners reserve some of their harshest criticism for this part of the assistance process. They describe the role of USAID officers overseeing their programs as often being petty, unhelpful micromanagement in service of a thicket of regulatory and procedural complexities that make even simple actions , like hiring a short-term consultant or arranging a training seminar, slow and difficult. They lament that basic elements of the implementation process make it a struggle to be nimble, to innovate as learning occurs, or to adapt easily when basic circumstances change.

Compliance conflicts make government-based democracy assistance ineffectiveNatsios, 10(Prof of Diplomacy and Government-Georgetown and former administrator of USAID, Center for Global Development, “The Clash of the Counter-bureaucracy and Development”, July)

The Counter-bureaucracyOne of the little understood, but most powerful and disruptive tensions in established aid agencies lies in the clash between the compliance side of aid programs and the technical, program side. The essential balance between these two tensions in development programs— accountability and control versus good development practice—has now been skewed to such a degree in the U.S. aid system (and in the World Bank as well) that the imbalance threatens program integrity . The regulatory pressures in Washington created a force of auditors, accountants, lawyers, and procurement and contracts officers whose job it is


to make sure the aid program is managed: (1) in accordance with federal law and regulation―principally the 450-page Foreign Assistance Act, a volume of OMB management circulars, and the 1977 pages of Federal Acquisition Regulations; (2) to produce rapid, measureable program success tracked through quantitative performance indicators usually based on U.S. domestic models of program management or of private industry; and (3) to follow good federal management and accounting practices as demanded by law and regulation. The compliance officers often clash with the technical program specialists over attempts to measure and account for everything and avoid risk. These technical program specialists are experts in the major sector disciplines of development: international health, agriculture, economic (both macro and micro) growth, humanitarian relief, environment, infrastructure, and education. Undertaking development work in poor countries with weak institutions involves a high degree of uncertainty and risk , and aid agencies are under constant scrutiny by policy makers and bureaucratic regulatory bodies to design systems and measures to reduce that risk. In practice, this means compromising good development practices such as local ownership, a focus on institution building, decentralized decisionmaking and long-term program planning horizons to assure sustainability in order to reduce risk, improve efficiency (at least as it is defined by federal administrative practice), and ensure proper recordkeeping and documentation for every transaction. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, over several decades, the compliance side of U.S. government aid programs has grown at the expense of the technical, program side. This has happened as a result of four factors. First, the size of the career USAID staff has declined over three decades, stabilizing after 9/11 (and only beginning to rise slowly again in 2005), even as spending more than doubled since 9/11. Second, is the emergence of what Georgetown professor, William Gormley, has called the ―counter-bureaucracy—a set of U.S. government agencies charged with command and control of the federal bureaucracy through a set of budgeting, oversight, accountability, and measurement systems that have grown over several decades to a massive degree, with extraordinary layer upon layer of procedural and compliance requirements. Third, the counter-bureaucracy has become infected with a very bad case of Obsessive Measurement Disorder (OMD), an intellectual dysfunction rooted in the notion that counting everything in government programs (or private industry and increasingly some foundations) will produce better policy choices and improved management. Fourth, demands of the oversight committees of Congress for ever more information, more control systems, and more reports have diverted professional USAID (and now MCC) staff from program work to data collection and reporting requirements. The counter-bureaucracy ignores a central principle of development theory—that those development programs that are most precisely and easily measured are the least transformational, and those programs that are most transformational are the least measurable. This brings us to a central question: what is it that USAID does in its programs that is considered transformational? USAID‘s humanitarian and development work may be broadly broken into three categories: (1) the delivery of goods and services (e.g., distributing of food aid and humanitarian assistance after a disaster, doing immunizations, distributing bed nets to control malaria, building of schools and roads), often through USAID partner contractors, universities, and nongovernmental organizations, (2) the building of local self-sustaining institutions—government, private sector, and nonprofit—through the training of staff, construction of business systems, and development of regular organizational procedures and institutional cultures, and (3) policy dialogue and reform, which means an ongoing discussion and debate about reform and policy changes, between development professionals in USAID missions, in the field, and with cabinet ministers, heads of state, local NGOs and civil society leaders, parliamentarians, and business leaders. The first of these missions―service delivery―includes outcomes that can be counted and seen and that are under the control of the USAID program implementers, while the latter two missions often are neither easily measured nor very visible, and require a long time horizon to achieve success; more important, they require the cooperation and consent of the power structure and leadership in the developing countries, which makes their outcomes more problematic and unpredictable. (A USAID-funded NGO can do a mass immunization of children successfully, but providing funding, training, and equipment to a local health ministry to do the same thing will usually have a more problematic outcome). For that reason, those latter two functions are increasingly underfunded and neglected, yet they are the most important in the long run, as they are more transformational and more central to what development—and state building—is all about. The counter- bureaucracy , dominated by civil servants trained in schools of public administration and business management, employs the measurements and program standards of U.S. domestic government agencies , foundations, and private industry and misapplies them to development programs in poor countries. Nothing could be further from good development theory and practice . When the Federal Highway Administration funds and oversees a highway building project, it uses the managerial standards of domestic transportation departments to judge whether the project was managed properly. When GM or


Ford builds a car, it uses assembly-line processes developed over the past century. The purpose of these efforts is the building of a highway or assembly of a car. Development, on the other hand, is at its root an effort to build or strengthen institutions (public, private profit-making, and nonprofit civil society) in poor and fragile states, with the ultimate goal of developing a capable state, market economy, and civil society that can manage public services, design good policies, create jobs, and protect human rights and the rule of law on a reliable, sustainable basis after the aid program is over and funding ends. All construction or service delivery projects should be subordinate to the larger institution-building task. The counter-bureaucracy, with its elaborate control mechanisms, misunderstands this central development doctrine and thus misapplies a domestic management lens to aid programs by turning the means into an end. The demands of the counter-bureaucracy are now so intrusive that they have distorted, misdirected, and disfigured USAID ‘s development practice to such a degree that it is compromising U.S. national security objectives and challenging established principles of good development practice. This regulatory apparatus has created an incentive structure that has led to an emphasis on process over program substance and, in so doing, has produced a perverse bureaucratic result ; as the career staff has declined in size absolutely and proportionately to the size of the aid budget, the compliance side of aid has taken over management and decision making at the agency. When the agency does not comply with the commands of the counter- bureaucracy, it faces stiff penalties, but there is no legal or regulatory consequence if agency staff do not regularly interact with government officials, civil society organizations, and the business people in developing countries about political, economic, and social policy reform— i.e., the central practices of development work. The newest addition to the counter-bureaucracy—the State Department‘s Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance—is making matters worse, creating an even more dysfunctional set of incentives that are compromising the integrity of aid programs by the demand for metrics for every program and through the laborious and time-consuming annual process of each USAID mission writing an Annual Operating Plan. The question remains whether under sustained pressure from the counter-bureaucracy and the Congress, USAID is now spending as much money on oversight and control as on implementation of the aid program itself. What is more, the staff time needed to comply with all of these paperwork requirements has crowded out any remaining available time for the actual implementation of programs in the field offices. A point can be reached when compliance becomes counterproductive. I believe we are well past that point. What happened, why it happened, and how it happened is a disturbing, but also fascinating, story of good intentions—accountability and transparency—gone bad. The consequences of these counter-bureaucratic trends explain a great deal about why USAID business systems are designed as they are. But, before we get to the story of compliance and bureaucracy ―gone bad, we need a framework for our analysis. The source for that framework comes from the work of political scientist and scholar on public administration practice in U.S. state and national governments—and my former professor—James Q. Wilson.

USAID democracy work undermines local ownership—kills effectivenessCarothers, 9(October, Carnegie Endowment VP for Studies, Democracy and Rule of Law Program and Carnegie Europe Director, "Revitalizing Democracy Assistance: The Challenge of USAID," http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=24047)

A second key problem for USAID’s democracy and governance work also rooted in its basic operating procedures is the externality of the assistance and the consequent lack of local ownership. Externality refers to the dominant role of external actors (external to the country toward which the assistance is directed) in every stage of the aid process. For most projects, the USAID mission brings in a U.S. organization to design the project. The mission then hires another U.S. organization to implement the project. At the end of the project, it hires yet another U.S. organization to evaluate the project.During the design phase, of course, the U.S. organization carrying out the work consults with people in the recipient country. The U.S. implementing organization normally works with various local actors. The U.S. evaluators will base many of their findings on information gathered from people within the country. Yet despite these local consultations and participation, by far the greatest weight of control throughout the assistance process remains on the U.S. side. Moreover, USAID habitually seeks to exert substantial control over defining what the projects will do and how they will do it . This is especially true in contracts-based assistance. USAID contracts usually specify precisely what the U.S. contracting partners are to do at every step of the way throughout a project. Yet it is also an issue with at least some USAID grants (which often take the form of “cooperative agreements”), with USAID setting out detailed specifications for


work to be performed under the grant. It is striking when talking with USAID officers and many of their implementing partners about democracy and governance programs to note how frequently they refer to “our goals” and “our successes,” with the “our” referring only to themselves, rather than to people in the host countries. This systematic externality of the assistance process creates endemic problems of ownership. Obviously enough, when outsiders come to a society, decide what areas they wish to assist, design the projects, implement the projects, and eventually evaluate them, the recipient society is unlikely to feel a strong sense of ownership about the work. Yet perhaps the single most widely agreed-upon “best practice ” in the international assistance world is the importance of doing everything possible to nurture local ownership of assistance .6 Such ownership is vital to all areas of development assistance but is especially crucial in democracy and governance work given the special sensitivities surrounding political interventionism across borders. If people in a country struggling to reform its political system perceive that sensitive endeavors such as strengthening political parties, revamping democratic civic education, or reforming the legislature are the work of outside actors (especially foreign governments with significant geopolitical interests), the legitimacy of such efforts will be questioned . Just to make vivid the extraordinary externality of the USAID contract-based project method, consider a recent USAID “Request for Task Order Proposal” for work on legislative strengthening and decentralization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The request sets out some of the performance results that the U.S. implementing organization will be required to produce (“all indicators are mandatory”). Among the many specified results are a whole series of particular actions by the DRC government (at both the national and provincial levels) that the U.S. implementer is supposed to make happen, including the following: ƒ “30 public forums resulting from the USG assistance”; ƒ “80 public forums resulting from USG assistance in which provincial legislatures and members of the public interact”; ƒ “7 laws or amendments promoting decentralization drafted with USG assistance”; ƒ “12 national executive oversight actions, such as special investigative committees or public hearings taken by legislatures receiving USG assistance”; ƒ “8 provincial executive actions taken by legislatures receiving USG assistance”; ƒ “20 draft laws accompanied by technical analysis and subject to review by legislative committees receiving USG assistance.”7 Leaving aside the surreal specificity of outcomes that USAID insists on in a country roiled by profound instability, the assumption of U.S. directiveness regarding the country’s own domestic political agenda is breathtaking. Adding a dispiriting accent to the externality of USAID’s basic methods is its requirement of branding. As part of its effort to assure Congress that USAID is doing all it can to try to use its funds to win over foreign hearts and minds, USAID requires its implementing partners to brand USAID-funded activities with a USAID stamp. This may mean, for example, a public ribbon-cutting ceremony with the U.S. ambassador present to launch a project with a national parliament. Or it might mean displaying USAID signage at a training seminar for judges or affixing the USAID logo to materials published under a civic education program. This requirement underscores the lack of local ownership in USAID’s assistance activities while also undercutting efforts to keep a low U.S. profile on political assistance programs touching on sensitive areas. Some implementing organizations have managed to get exceptions from the branding requirement for certain activities. Yet an effort several years back from within USAID to obtain a blanket exemption from branding for democracy and governance programs was unsuccessful, and the requirement remains in place.

The plan doesn’t solve opposition unity – they say no, and differences are ideological not organizational Landis, 8-29Joshua Landis, 8-29-2011, “Opposition Disunity Becomes the Problem as the West Gets its Ducks in a Row,” http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=11683&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Syriacomment+%28Syria+Comment%29&utm_content=Google+ReaderA full fledged food fight has broken out among opposition leaders over who should assume control over the revolution, whether it should take up arms, and what role foreign powers are playing. Underlying these overt clashes is the question of how much play should be given to Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood; Arabism versus Syrianism (the Kurds want recognition of their national and linguistic rights within a Syria that is not defined ethnically), and can ex-patriots lead or do they establish a “Chalabi effect?” Distrust of the West remains strong in Syria . Activists inside Syria don’t appreciate how Western governments must be brought along step by step. They cannot get out too far ahead of their people, who don’t want to spend money right now. Expats believe that Western governments are going to be crucial in bringing down the Assad regime and must be treated with


respect and brought along. Some in Washington are already warning that the Syrian opposition will soon begin calling for external military intervention and that Washington should prepare itself and NATO to intervene.

The plan undermines opposition legitimacy – only organic leadership can create opposition unity and solve civil war Landis, 8-9Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, 8-9-2011, “Syrians must win the revolution on their own,” Foreign Policy, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/09/syrians_must_win_the_revolution_on_their_ownDoran and Shaikh's addition is the notion of an official contact group and the idea that the U.S. can help form a transitional government out of Syria's divisive opposition activists: "engagement with the Syrian opposition movement would prove invaluable to increase its effectiveness and professionalize its efforts." As for the Syrian Army, they write: The United States must promote defections from the Syrian security services with an eye both to convincing Assad to leave and to preserving the Syrian Armed Forces as a future national institution. In doing so, Washington must warn officers, down to the brigade level, that they are being monitored and that they will be held personally accountable for the atrocities that are committed under their command. (This should not be a bluff.) Can Washington do this? Has it learned enough from its nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to make the third time a charm? Or should the U.S. be more modest and pay heed to the warnings of Wissam Tarif, who insists that the formation of an opposition leadership is an "internal process" that "no one can control?" Randa Slim proposes a Doran-lite sanctions scenario, aimed at convincing Syria's business elite to dump Assad and embrace the revolution. In a Middle East Channel article, entitled, "Where's Syria's business community?" she insists that Turkey must lead. The U.S. is too tainted to assume dominance in the contact group. In the eyes of Syrians, a close relationship with Washington will delegitimize Syria's opposition leaders. The U.S. and the West in general, she cautions, must leave a "lighter footprint ." This is wise advice. Slim is clear about one thing: disunity among Syria's opposition could doom the desire for regime change. The absence of an opposition leadership is the major stumbling block preventing the Syrian business elite from ditching the Assads, she argues. The key to success for the revolution is getting Aleppo and Damascus to rise up with the people of Deraa and Jisr ash-Shaghour. Syrian businessmen are a conservative and self-interested lot. They have a refined disdain for peasants and tribesmen alike; neither are they big on leftists, philosophers, religious fanatics, or zealots of any stripe. Indeed, Syria's merchants and capitalists have rather high regard for themselves and few others. In their eyes, they are the true guardians of the Syrian nation. Their wisdom and moderation guided Syria to independence in the 1940s, avoiding sectarian bloodletting or humiliating foreign treaties. They bore with the Baathist mishandling of the economy, and spurned the Brotherhoods' Jihadist pretensions in the 1980s. The only wisdom of the Assads, according to the Sunni elite, was their willingness to temper the nationalizations of the Nasserists, cut short the communism of the Jadidists, and most importantly take Syria's capitalists seriously. Before they will help overthrow the Assads, they need a safe alternative. They are not going to embrace -- not to mention fund -- a leaderless bunch of young activists who want to smash everything that smells of Baathist privilege, corruption, and cronyism. After all, who are the CEOs of Syria's crony capitalism if not the business elites of Aleppo and Damascus? Only five weeks ago, the head of Aleppo's Chamber of Commerce, Faris Al-Shihabi, decried the return of socialist and communist ideas among the opposition. He warned: We do not want this opposition to be molded by the left, which will be accompanied by lectures, theorizing and calamity for society and the economy. Steps to bring about reconciliation must be taken with the other sectors of civil society, particularly with national capital. Syria's capitalists are not suicidal. They fear having their property expropriated twice in 50 years. Furthermore, they have become inextricably linked with the regime over the last 40 years, according to a number of analysts. Washington would be wiser to allow Syria to fill its own power vacuum . Once a united leadership emerges in Syria, it will be able to win the confidence of the majority and topple the regime on its own. There are dangers to short-circuiting that painful process. Doran and Shaikh argue that the

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http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/05/wheres_syrias_business_community

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/05/wheres_syrias_business_community

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/09/syrians_must_win_the_revolution_on_their_own

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC06.php?CID=1705


U.S. should hasten both the destruction of the old regime and construction of a new one - in short, that it can nation-build and help guide the emergence of a new Syria. This will save Syrian lives, they project, because it will prevent a drawn out battle. But by helping to "fast forward" the Syrian revolution, the U.S. could be creating a Frankenstein . If the opposition doesn't have time to produce a leadership that emerges organically out of struggle, Syria may never unite . The U.S. may cause more destruction and death , not less. To be truly successful, the opposition must come together under one set of leaders who win the confidence of the people by their intelligence, canniness, and most importantly, by their success.


IRAN

Democratic Syria won’t adopt a pro-US or Israeli foreign policyLeverett(s), 9-1Flynt Leverett, directs the Iran Project at the New America Foundation, former Director of Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council and CIA Senior Analyst, and Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of Strategic Energy and Global Analysis, and Senior Research Fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, 9-1-2011, “Iran And Syria: America’s Middle East Pundits Get It Wrong Again,” http://www.raceforiran.com/iran-and-syria-america%E2%80%99s-middle-east-pundits-get-it-wrong-again Second, while most Iranian policymakers and foreign policy elites would almost certainly prefer to see Assad remain in office, it is wrong to assume that Tehran has no options or i s even a net “loser ” if the current Syrian government is replaced. A post-Assad government , if it is even minimally representative of its people, is going to pursue an independe nt foreign policy. It will not be enamored of the prospect of strategic cooperation with the United States, and may be less inclined than the Assad regime (under both Bashar and his father, the late Hafiz al-Assad) to keep Syria’s southern border with Israel “stable ”. Tehran can work with that.

Iraq makes the impact inevitableThe National, 7/7/’11(“Iran grooms Iraq to replace Syria,” http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/iran-grooms-iraq-to-replace-syria)

There is a debate at the highest levels about how far Iran may go to spare its ally, Syria, from a free fall, Tareq Alhomayed, of the, wrote in a leader article."I asked an analyst well-versed in Syrian issues about the Iranian role and he said that there are indications that Tehran is preparing Iraq to replace Syria as its closest ally in the region, in case the regime in Damascus falls."This is seen in an increase in violent operations undertaken by militias backed by Iran in Iraq, especially in Sunni areas, with the approach of the US withdrawal.Of course, this implies that Tehran' s foreign policy cares less about resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and more about extending its influence in the Arabian Gulf, a goal set by Iran since early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution.So by shifting attention to Iraq, Iran is keen to ensure dominance in the region , and this policy may turn out to be less costly. Unlike Syria, Iraq is rich in resources and may not need financial support from Iran. Iraq, thus, will serve as a remote outpost for both Tehran and Hizbollah.

Multiple barriers to Iran hegSavyon, director – Iranian Media Project @ Middle East Media Research Institute, 7/4/’11(A, “Iran's Defeat in the Bahrain Crisis: A Seminal Event in the Sunni-Shi'ite Conflict,” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5424.htm#_ednref6)

Despite its image as a looming superpower, which revolutionary Iran has sought for years to cultivate, its actual policy reveals a deep recognition of its weakness as a representative of the Shi'ites, who constitute a 10% minority in a Sunni Muslim region. Historically persecuted over centuries, the Shi'ites developed various means of survival, including taqiya – the Shi'ite principle of caution, as expressed in willingness to hide one's Shi'ite affiliation in order to survive under a hostile Sunni rule – and passivity, reflected in the use of diplomacy alongside indirect intimidation, terrorism, etc.The ideological change pioneered by the founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – who transformed the passive perception characteristic of the of the Shi'a (which was based on the legend of the martyrdom of Hussein at the Battle of Karbala) into an active perception of martyrdom (shahada)[26] – is not being carried out by Iran. Tehran is refraining from sending Iranian nationals to carry out martyrdom operations , despite its years-long glorification of this principle. It is also not sending Iranians to Gaza , either on aid missions or to carry out suicide attacks – and this despite the fact that regime-sponsored organizations are recruiting volunteers for such efforts.

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5424.htm#_ednref6


Moreover, it appears that the Shi'ite regime in Iran is utilizing the legend of Hussein's martyrdom solely for propaganda purposes, in order to glorify its own might and intimidate the Sunni and Western world. Such intimidation is in keeping with Shi'ite tradition, as a way to conceal Tehran's unwillingness to take overt military action against external challenges.ConclusionTehran's defeat in the Bahrain crisis reflects characteristic Shi'ite restraint , stemming from recognition of its own weakness in the face of the vast Sunni majority. The decade during which Iran successfully expanded its strength and power exponentially via threats and creating an image of superpower military strength has collapsed in the Bahrain crisis; Iran is now revealed as a paper tiger that will refrain from any violent conflict. When it came to the crunch, it became clear that the most that Iran could do was threaten to use terrorism or to subvert the Shi'ite citizens of other countries – in keeping with customary Shi'ite behavior – and these threats were not even implemented.It can be assumed that the Sunni camp, headed by Saudi Arabia, is fully aware of the political and military significance of Iran's weakness and its unwillingness to initiate face-to-face conflict. This will have ramifications on both the regional and the global levels.In addition to having its weakness exposed by the Bahrain situation, Tehran has also taken several further hits to its prestige and geopolitical status. These include: the popular uprisings in Syria against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, weakening the Tehran-Damascus axis; post-revolutionary Egypt's refusal to renew relations with Iran; and the fact that the E.U. was capable of uniting and leading a military attack against the regime of Libyan leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi as well as its refusal to renew the nuclear negotiations with Tehran based on Iran's demands. All this, added to the serious internal rift between Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his long-time ally Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have today left the Iranian regime in clearly reduced circumstances.

No Iran/Saudi warAlexander, 10-10Vatutin Alexander, political analyst, 10-10, “ Saudi Arabia-Iran tensions posing threat to global oil market,” http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/10/58461134.html Trying to predict the consequences of confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, experts rule out the use of force but agree that tensions will continue to grow in the region. Military expert Vladimir Anokhin continues: "Iran has been seeking leadership in the Islamic world. Meanwhile, this status belongs to Saudi Arabia, which certainly stirs up conflict. However, Iran will hardly let this result in a military campaign because the Saudis are strong enough to attract the entire Arab world to their side in a war against Iran. They can boast a high level of authority, which is exactly what the West expects from them." Mr. Anokhin thinks that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia is interested in military confrontation. Otherwise it might affect oil exports , which will be a serious blow to the House of Saud. Apart from this, Mecca and Medina, the holiest places for all Muslims, attract billions into the country’s budget each year during the Hajj. As far as Iran is concerned, it risks becoming a rogue state because of its nuclear ambitions. In its recent statements, Riyadh said it was going to seek nukes to have a mechanism of deterrence against Tehran. Saudi Arabia even discussed the issue with Pakistan. One should not forget that security of Saudi Arabia is also guarded by the US and NATO, which will never allow to interrupt oil supplies from the Arabian Peninsula. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not a Mideast leader the West could sacrifice like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya or Bashar Assad in Syria. Expert Sergei Demidenko believes that a part of criticism is the only thing the King of Saudi Arabia might face: "The Saudis are not ready to join a war. They simply do not know how to do it. Secondly, their responsibility is a matter of concern for the US and NATO . It means that if Iran attempts to escalate tensions further, it will have to deal with the alliance."

Sitting back in the region doesn’t kill hegGause, 12/21(Pol Sci-Vermont, Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/21/america_arab_spring_do_nothing?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full)

Thus, the United States should approach regimes in the region, new and old, autocratic and democratic, with a minimalist agenda based on state-to-state interests. New democratic regimes will be as concerned about balancing dynamics as their old authoritarian predecessors. They will turn to Washington for help in


their own balance-of-power games (to some extent, this is already happening on Syria). If one state chooses to adopt a hostile position toward the United States, its neighbors will probably seek out U.S. help. America can afford to take a less involved, less intense interest in the region and step in as needed to prevent the worst outcomes -- which can be done without a large U.S. land-based military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. The term of art in the international relations scholarship is "offshore balancing." That should be the overriding guide to American Middle East policy, not intense involvement in the domestic politics of regional states. I am not advocating a complete U.S. political or military disengagement from the region. Maintaining U.S. bases in the small Gulf states is a relatively cost-effective way of sustaining a military capability in an important area. (Bahrain is becoming more problematic on this score; the United States has no interest in having bases in unstable countries and getting caught up in their domestic politics.) Washington should engage with all regional governments, even Iran, on a regular basis. It should encourage balancing dynamics, bolstering those threatened by America's regional enemies. If circumstances are propitious (though I think this will be rare in the immediate future), Washington should push for progress on the Arab-Israeli front. But America should avoid plunging into the domestic affairs of Arab states, even when it thinks it has influence there. Egypt is the perfect example. America's $1.3 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian military certainly gives the United States some leverage over it. But America should not use that to try to micromanage what will inevitably be a complex and drawn-out process of negotiations among the Army, the newly empowered Islamists, other factions in the new parliament, and the body selected to write a new constitution about just what the relationship between the Army and new political order will be. The United States should simply make it clear that continued aid to the Egyptian military depends on Egyptian foreign-policy decisions toward America and on Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Of course, the ground rules of U.S . foreign policy have changed , even for an offshore balancer. The United States needs to communicate those ground rules to allied Arab governments and their publics: Washington cannot provide aid to militaries that brutally suppress nonviolent popular demonstrations as a matter of regular policy. Washington will issue statements in support of democratic reform and human rights across the board, affecting allies and adversaries equally. If allies do not like that, tough for them. But these minimal guidelines are far different from the interventionist programs being put forward by both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists in an effort to guide the politics of the Arab world. The United States is well positioned to restrain itself in this period of flux in the Middle East. It needs only to make the choice to do so. U.S. vital interests are not threatened. America's power to prevent such threats is still significant. Regional balance-of-power dynamics work in America's favor. The U nited S tates can afford to let developments play out, not getting too exercised by the Islamist wave in the region but not encouraging it through active democracy promotion either. America can husband its resources rather than waste them in the pursuit of chimeras, like liberal democratic Arab states at peace with Israel and strongly allied with the United States. It can take the moral high ground in a way that neoconservatives and liberal interventionists do not appreciate, by not interfering in the domestic politics of Arab states. America can confidently stand aside and wait for regional states , driven by regional dynamics, to come to it for assistance and support. A decade of failed efforts to remake the politics of the region should be enough. Washington needs to learn the wisdom of the White Rabbit and just stand there in the Middle East.

Data disproves hegemony impactsFettweis, 11Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University, 9/26/11, Free Riding or Restraint? Examining European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 30:316–332, EBSCO

It is perhaps worth noting that there is no evidence to support a direct relationship between the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do have suggest the opposite may be true. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990.51 To internationalists, defense hawks and believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible “peace dividend” endangered both national and global security. “No serious analyst of American military capabilities,” argued Kristol and Kagan, “doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America’s responsibilities to itself and to world peace.”52 On the other hand, if the pacific trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, one would not have expected an increase in global instability and violence.


The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable United States military, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races , and no regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished . The rest of the world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. Most of all, the United States and its allies were no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped the spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated.Military spending figures by themselves are insufficient to disprove a connection between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once again, one could presumably argue that spending is not the only or even the best indication of hegemony, and that it is instead U.S. foreign political and security commitments that maintain stability. Since neither was significantly altered during this period, instability should not have been expected. Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather than absolute spending is decisive in bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending during the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered.However, even if it is true that either U.S. commitments or relative spending account for global pacific trends, then at the very least stability can evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words, even if one can be allowed to argue in the alternative for a moment and suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement below which the United States cannot drop without increasing international disorder, a rational grand strategist would still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until that level is determined. Grand strategic decisions are never final; continual adjustments can and must be made as time goes on. Basic logic suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of its blood and treasure while seeking the maximum return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many believe it to be, no increase in conflict would ever occur irrespective of U.S. spending, which would save untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation.It is also perhaps worth noting that if opposite trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S. defense spending with more aggressive or insecure behavior, then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. If increases in conflict would have been interpreted as proof of the wisdom of internationalist strategies, then logical consistency demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a problem. As it stands, the only evidence we have regarding the likely systemic reaction to a more restrained U nited S tates suggests that the current peaceful trends are unrelated to U.S. military spending . Evidently the rest of the world can operate quite effectively without the presence of a global policeman. Those who think otherwise base their view on faith alone.

No challengersKaplan, senior fellow – Center for a New American Security, and Kaplan, frmr. vice chairman – National Intelligence Council, ‘11(Robert D and Stephen S, “America Primed,” The National Interest, March/April)

But in spite of the seemingly inevitable and rapid diminution of U.S. eminence, to write America’s great- power obituary is beyond premature. The United States remains a highly capable power. Iraq and Afghanistan, as horrendous as they have proved to be—in a broad historical sense—are still relatively minor events that America can easily overcome. The eventual demise of empires like those of Ming China and late-medieval Venice was brought about by far more pivotal blunders.Think of the Indian Mutiny against the British in 1857 and 1858. Iraq in particular—ever so frequently touted as our turning point on the road to destruction—looks to some extent eerily similar. At the time, orientalists and other pragmatists in the British power structure (who wanted to leave traditional India as it was) lost some sway to evangelical and utilitarian reformers (who wanted to modernize and Christianize India—to make it more like England). But the attempt to bring the fruits of Western civilization to the Asian subcontinent was met with a violent revolt against imperial authority. Delhi, Lucknow and other Indian cities were besieged and captured before being retaken by colonial forces. Yet, the debacle did not signal the end of the British Empire at all, which continued on and even expanded for another century. Instead, it signaled the transition from more of an ad hoc imperium fired by a proselytizing lust to impose its values on others to a calmer and more pragmatic empire built on international trade and technology.1 There is no reason to believe that the fate of America need follow a more doomed course.


Yes, the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan have been the United States’ own, but, though destructive, they are not fatal. If we withdraw sooner rather than later, the cost to American power can be stemmed. Leaving a stable Afghanistan behind of course requires a helpful Pakistan, but with more pressure Washington might increase Islamabad’s cooperation in relatively short order.In terms of acute threats, Iran is the only state that has exported terrorism and insurgency toward a strategic purpose, yet the country is economically fragile and politically unstable, with behind-the-scenes infighting that would make Washington partisans blanch. Even assuming Iran acquires a few nuclear devices—of uncertain quality with uncertain delivery systems—the long-term outlook for the clerical regime is itself unclear. The administration must only avoid a war with the Islamic Republic.To be sure, America may be in decline in relative terms compared to some other powers, as well as to many countries of the former third world, but in absolute terms, particularly military ones, the United States can easily be the first among equals for decades hence.China, India and Russia are the only major Eurasian states prepared to wield military power of consequence on their peripheries. And each, in turn, faces its own obstacles on the road to some degree of dominance.The Chinese will have a great navy (assuming their economy does not implode) and that will enforce a certain level of bipolarity in the world system. But Beijing will lack the alliance network Washington has , even as China and Russia will always be —because of geography—inherently distrustful of one another. China has much influence, but no credible military allies beyond possibly North Korea, and its authoritarian regime lives in fear of internal disruption if its economic growth rate falters. Furthermore, Chinese naval planners look out from their coastline and see South Korea and a string of islands—Japan, Taiwan and Australia—that are American allies, as are, to a lesser degree, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. To balance a rising China, Washington must only preserve its naval and air assets at their current levels.India , which has its own internal insurgency, is bedeviled by semifailed states on its borders that critically sap energy and attention from its security establishment, and especially from its land forces; in any case, India has become a de facto ally of the United States whose very rise, in and of itself, helps to balance China.Russia will be occupied for years regaining influence in its post-Soviet near abroad , particularly in Ukraine, whose feisty independence constitutes a fundamental challenge to the very idea of the Russian state. China checks Russia in Central Asia, as do Turkey, Iran and the West in the Caucasus. This is to say nothing of Russia’s diminishing population and overwhelming reliance on energy exports. Given the problems of these other states, America remains fortunate indeed.The United States is poised to tread the path of postmutiny Britain. America might not be an empire in the formal sense, but its obligations and constellation of military bases worldwide put it in an imperial-like situation, particularly because its air and naval deployments will continue in a post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan world. No country is in such an enviable position to keep the relative peace in Eurasia as is the United States—especially if it can recover the level of enduring competence in national-security policy last seen during the administration of George H. W. Bush. This is no small point. America has strategic advantages and can enhance its power while extricating itself from war. But this requires leadership—not great and inspiring leadership which comes along rarely even in the healthiest of societies—but plodding competence, occasionally steely nerved and always free of illusion.


***2NC


2NC IMPACT OV

No value to life under coercionRaz, Philosopher, 1986(Joseph, The Morality of Freedom, page 307)One way to test the thesis of the primacy of action reasons is to think of a person who is entirely passive and is continuously led, cleaned, and pumped full with hash, so that he is perpetually content, and wants nothing but to stay in the same condition. It’s a familiar imaginary horror. How do we rank the success of such a life? It is not the worst life one can have. It is simply not a life at all. It lacks activity, it lacks goals. To the extent that one is tempted to judge it more harshly than that and to regard it as a ‘negative life’ this is because of the wasted potentiality. It is a life which could have been and was not. We can isolate this feature by imagining that the human being concerned is mentally and physically effected in a way which rules out the possibility of a life with any kind of meaningful pursuit in it. Now it is just not really a life at all. This does not preclude one from saying that it is better than human life. It is simply sufficiently unlike human life in the respects that matter that we regard it as only a degenerate case of human life. But clearly not being alive can be better than that life .

Extinction is justified to protect libertyShue, 89 – Professor of Ethics and Public Life at Princeton University (Henry, Nuclear Deterrence and Moral Restraint, p. 64-5)The issue raises interesting problems about obligations among generations. What obligations do we owe to future generations whose very existence will be affected by our risks? A crude util itarian calculation would suggest that since the pleasures of future generations may last infinitely (or until the sun burns out), no risk that we take to assure certain values for our generation can compare with almost infinite value in the future. Thus we have no right to take such risks. In effect, such an approach would establish a dictatorship of future generations over the present one. The only permissible role for our generation would be biological procreation. If we care about other values in addition to survival, this crude utilitarian approach produces intolerable consequences for the current generation. Moreover, utility is too crude a concept to support such a calculation. We have little idea of what utility will mean to generations very distant from ours. We think we know something about our children, and perhaps our grandchildren, but what will people value 8,000 years from now? If we do not know, then there is the ironic prospect that something we deny ourselves now for the sake of a future generation may be of little value to them. A more defensible approach to the issue of justice among generations is the principle of equal access. Each generation should have roughly equal access to important values. We must admit that we shall not be certain of the detailed prefer ences of increasingly distant generations , but we can assume that they will wish equal chances of survival. On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that they would want survival as a sole value any more than the current generation does . On the contrary, if they would wish equal access to other values that give meaning to life, we could infer that they might wish us to take some risks of species extinction in order to provide them equal access to those values. If we have benefited from "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," why should we as sume that the next generation would want only life?

Turns the case – you can’t impose change on the Mid EastGause, 11(Columnist-National Interest, 5/26, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/misdiagnosing-the-middle-east-5368?page=show)

There is a dangerous consensus about the Middle East based on the assumption that authoritarian politics are the root of instability, violence and anti-Americanism. Thus the United States is obliged, for both its own security and the furtherance of its values, to encourage democracy and liberal, market-oriented economic reform in the region. In other words, the United States has to change the domestic politics of the region’s states. There might not be agreement about the means to be used—though the Libyan adventure indicates that Democrats are not completely averse to the use of force—but the diagnosis of the problem is the same. The president is fully aboard this consensus that has come to unite

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/misdiagnosing-the-middle-east-5368?page=show

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/misdiagnosing-the-middle-east-5368?page=show


much of the American political class since the attacks of September 11, 2001. It is a belief system that unites Bush Republicans and Clinton Democrats, neoconservatives and liberal interventionists, Charles Krauthammer and Thomas Friedman, Paul Wolfowitz and Samantha Power. When such disparate people agree on something, you just know it has to be wrong. Our public debate is not open to the alternative argument that our problems in the region might stem more from our own deep military and political involvement there rather than from local pathologies . But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that this consensus is correct in its diagnosis of the problems the United States faces in the region. Its prescription—even more direct American involvement in the Middle East—assumes that Washington can have a meaningful role in directing domestic political change there. That is where our political class is woefully misguided. Consider the goals President Obama set out in his May 19 speech. The United States is going to “promote reform across the region and…support transitions to democracy.” We will oppose “an attempt by any group to restrict the rights of others and to hold power through coercion and not consent.” We will “work to see that this spirit [of religious tolerance and freedom] prevails.” We will “insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men.” We will support prosperity by “ensuring financial stability, promoting [economic] reform and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy.” That commits the United States to “tearing down walls that stand in the way of progress—the corruption of elites who steal from their people; the red tape that stops an idea from becoming a business; the patronage that distributes wealth based on tribe or sect.” Whew! Might as well commit to parting the Red Sea to encourage Egyptian trade with the Arab East. Can the United States really do these things? Will we like what we see in the region if we do? These kinds of means-ends calculations are not part of the post-9/11, post-Arab Spring American approach to the region. If it must be done, we will do it. But the evidence so far is that we as a country are extremely bad at changing the domestic politics of Mid dle East ern countries , and that once we get involved in these efforts, they tend to end up in places we would not have imagined when we started. Consider the ancient history of the George W. Bush administration. I realize that was eons ago, but we might learn something from its experience. It launched a war with Iraq to turn that country into a stable, democratic American ally in the Middle East, with a market economy, the rule of law and legally ensured women’s rights. How did that turn out? The democratic forms are there, but is Iraq well governed? Is it stable? Do good liberals lead it? These results were obtained with the investment of an eight-year military occupation, the cost of thousands of American (and tens of thousands, if not more, Iraqi) lives and nearly a trillion U.S. dollars. All that effort for the results we see. This should be a cautionary tale about the inability of the U nited S tates to reengineer the politics of the Mid dle East . But it seems to have been forgotten. The Bush administration introduced the Middle East Partnership Initiative and a series of other reform programs to leverage our financial aid and trade to the region in order to promote economic openness and market economic reform. And how is that working? The Bush administration also forthrightly pushed for democratic reform in the region, and Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. The Obama administration now wants to walk the same path, but it is unclear why it expects to be able to direct regional events more effectively than its predecessor. It does not have the means that the Bush administration brought to bear in the region. Bush sent armies; Obama sends an airforce, and reluctantly. Bush spent hundreds of billions; Obama offers Egypt $1 billion (while Saudi Arabia offers it $4 billion). The fall of friendly authoritarians opens up the political arena, to be sure, but such openness benefits the best-organized groups. Those groups happen to be Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, with which the United States has had no dialogue for decades. We had leverage over Mubarak; we will have much less over an elected Egyptian government. We hope to promote “Washington consensus” economic policies, but the two Arab states that went the furthest in adopting market-reform policies were Tunisia and Egypt. It is not clear why Arab leaders, new or old, elected or authoritarian, would want to follow the policy path of Ben Ali and Mubarak.The American political class refuses to realize the limits of American power to reconstruct foreign societies, their economies and their politics. Thus, we will always be both surprised and disappointed by what we get for our well-intentioned lectures (and more than lectures) about how other people should live their lives. There is an alternative path, one that recognizes both our interests in the region and the limits on our ability to remold a foreign reality. It is a forthright acknowledgement that policies based on changing the domestic politics of Middle Eastern states have failed. It is a retreat from the political engineering of the last ten years that has brought so much destruction to the lives of so many in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a recognition that our interests in the Middle East are more limited than we realize, and can be achieved with many fewer resources and a much smaller footprint. Our core interest in the region is preventing any hostile power from dominating it politically and militarily, and thus being able to affect the production and flow of oil there. That interest is not particularly at risk now. There is a natural


multipolarity in the region—Iran, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. They will balance each other aggressively in their own interests. They will do that no matter what their domestic political arrangements are. We can assist in that process, shoring up the weak against the strong and standing ready to intervene against any effort to establish military control over the Persian Gulf. We can do that from offshore. Preventing Arab-Israeli conflict is an important part of avoiding regional upheaval. We should continue in that diplomatic effort, recognizing that the conditions on the ground are not particularly propitious for progress right now. We can acknowledge that military bases in unstable countries are more trouble than they are worth, and thus reconsider our basing arrangements in Bahrain. We can recognize that the day of the stable Arab authoritarian is over, and wish the forces of democracy and freedom in the region well, being the friends of liberty for all but the champion only of our own. President Obama said on May 19, as he laid out his ambitious agenda to promote political, economic and social change in the Middle East, that “we must proceed with a sense of humility.” President Bush said something similar during his 2000 election campaign. Let us really heed those words and leave the future of Arab politics to Arabs themselves. They deserve the chance to make their own history, whether we like it or not. We should leave them alone.



AT: PERM

Government involvement destroys private aid credCrimm, 5(Law Prof-St. John’s, Democratization, Global Grant-Making, and the Internal Revenue Code Lobbying Restrictions, 79 Tul. L. Rev. 587)

Despite the many uncertainties, after further input and deliberation, we should cautiously experiment at least temporarily, perhaps five years, with either a substantial reformation of the tax lobbying restrictions or their elimination. Because there are governmental controls and guidelines intended to prevent funds from intentionally or inadvertently being channeled to terrorist causes, there appears to be little risk in such an experiment. n329 Regardless of the course selected, any outcome from alteration of the tax constraints must ensure the accountability and transparency of our public charities and private foundations in their foreign aid endeavors. These philanthropies must be entitled to utilize resources for the purposes discussed in this Article as their best business judgments dictate . In this process, their attention must focus on the many possible domestic and foreign dangers and interests. But, whether or not fully aligned with our government's particular political agenda, the philanthropic institutions must maintain their independence from all governments to ensure their legitimacy . Additionally, it is important for the sake of democracy that our philanthropies should be able to support foreign NGOs whose interests represent those of their constituents but might not coincide entirely with U.S. values or concerns. Foreign countries must be encouraged to mold their own democratic laws and governmental policies, and, through the democratization process, the natural outcome should at least produce a country whose values are neither repugnant to, nor intolerant of, U.S. values.

Independence key to private aid effectivenessJenkins, 7(Law Prof-The Ohio State University & Former COO and General Counsel of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, “Soft Power, Strategic Security, and International Philanthropy, 85 N.C.L. Rev. 773)

[*826] One of the key strengths of nonprofit institutions and a source of their effectiveness stems from their independence . Because they are neither government nor business, nonprofit organizations occupy a unique space between the public and private sectors, unfettered from both the constraints of the political system faced by government and those of market ownership faced by corporations. n221 Although the sector's activities may generate advantageous and even important byproducts for government or business, n222 and some charitable organizations frequently work directly with government or business, nonprofits remain independent and apart from their public and corporate sector brethren. Even the nomenclature encapsulates this fundamental feature, as the term "nongovernmental organization," emphasizing such organizations' unique role apart from government, has gained global acceptance. n223 Because of this independence , international funders are able to use their position to bring diverse coalitions together : foreign governments, the private sector, other funders, and citizen stakeholders who are normally excluded from decisionmaking processes. n224 Since U.S. security interests are linked to the development of civil societies and stable states abroad, policies exact security costs when they undermine - even marginally - the unique contributions that American nonprofits make in advancing overseas development. The Guidelines are contributing to the erosion of the vital independence and separateness from government that has been a hallmark of the nonprofit sector.There are three principal problems with these efforts to conscript funders into carrying out these investigatory functions: (1) the process does not provide the transparency and fairness that typically accompanies government processes; (2) nonprofit organizations, especially smaller organizations, are not equipped to effectively carry out investigatory functions; and (3) the process diminishes the credibility of nonprofits operating abroad. The role thrust upon nonprofits by the Treasury ATF Guidelines is not comparable to those instances in which private entities choose to conduct certain functions traditionally associated with the state; n225 here nonprofits are coerced into the role without corresponding benefit to themselves or society.As previously noted, most nonprofit entities feel compelled to follow the Guidelines because of the catastrophic effects of having their assets frozen if the government were to deem the organization uncooperative. n226 This enlistment of private citizens (i.e., charitable organizations) to gather information - essentially to undertake an investigatory function - represents a partial shifting of traditional


governmental functions and responsibilities. Significantly, the supplemental data that the Treasury ATF Guidelines ask nonprofits to collect are not necessary or helpful to improve the quality of grantmaking. n227 In practice, most funders find that they can gather enough information about the potential grantee, its leadership, its track record, and its uses of funds without the additional steps and information outlined in the Guidelines. As such, the information gathering in accordance with the Treasury ATF Guidelines appears to be for investigatory purposes on behalf of the government with the burdens and expenses placed on the nonprofit sector. Moreover, since the prescribed efforts generate no additional benefit for the nonprofit sector and speculative benefit, at best, for society, the government has not adequately justified the coercion of charitable organizations. Such coercion is troubling: transferring a public function to NGOs leads to a less transparent process, both to the public as a whole and to the constituency under investigation, and as [*828] a result potentially makes it more difficult to hold the government accountable. To the extent that potential grantee organizations investigated would like to challenge the results, criticize the manner of investigation, or even subject the process of the required investigation to public scrutiny or inquiry, the government has immunized itself from complaints regarding the ways such investigations are handled by shifting responsibilities to private charitable organizations doing work that more suitably falls under the government's direct purview. Assigning investigatory tasks to nonprofits is ill-conceived because nonprofits are not likely to be well-equipped or effective investigatory agents. The Guidelines place nonprofits in the position of carrying out functions beyond those usually required to ensure the efficacy of charitable uses of grant funds. The suggested "data mining" tasks from the Guidelines fall outside the usual due diligence measures and expertise of charitable organizations. n228 Such organizations cannot be viewed as agents of the U.S. government if they are to effectively carry out their work. Several international philanthropists have expressed concern that the information collection activities will undermine the reputation of nonprofit organizations "for impartiality and operational independence from governments," which is a significant source of organizational strength that permits nongovernmental organizations to operate effectively in disaster areas and places of armed conflict. n229 Extensive government entanglement in ways that undermine independence may blur the lines between legitimate NGOs and less-respected government-organized NGOs ("GONGOs"). n230 [*829] The programmatic effectiveness of international funders depends, to a great extent, on relations with key stakeholders. Grantmakers often find that "stakeholder interactions improve the ability of foundations to achieve their missions in ways that help people and communities." n231 However, some recommendations of the Treasury ATF Guidelines seem to exacerbate tensions of cross-border philanthropy and underestimate the potentially delicate relationships at stake. For instance, the Guidelines direct grantors to generate lists containing background information (names, nicknames, nationality, citizenship, place and date of birth, residential information, etc.) on staff and board members at foreign recipient organizations. n232 Requesting the type of information recommended, however, could undermine relationships between grantors and prospective grantees. n233 In many parts of the world, "there appears to be a pervasive lack of trust and confidence in nonprofit organizations," n234 which may lead some U.S. grantmakers to be viewed with greater suspicion ; these invasive inquiries can support the perception that the nonprofit is working on behalf of foreign or domestic governments. And these fears may actually be warranted. In fact, in some countries, seeking the background information suggested may be misinterpreted as "intelligence-gathering" efforts on behalf of hostile local government officials, and may actually place organization staff at risk. n235 In addition to harm by insurgents, many foreign nonprofit employees around the world fear physical abuse at the hands of their government if their affiliation with certain humanitarian or pro-democracy NGOs were made public. For instance, in recent congressional testimony, a senior U.S. State Department official acknowledged unjust government harassment, [*830] beatings, and arrests of local NGO employees in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. n236Further, because of the unequal power dynamics in the funding relationship and the perception of U.S. foundations as elitist, U.S. grantors have been seeking to develop symbiotic partnership relationships with their grant recipients. n237 When they follow these measures and request a written certification that the foreign organization does not deal with terrorists or "support terrorism," n238 grantmakers may jeopardize the working relationship with their new partners before it even begins. This issue is particularly sensitive in dealings in certain parts of the world, such as the Middle East. Moreover, obtaining certification regarding terrorist support is a futile exercise because it is unlikely to deter a nefarious grantee seeking to dupe a U.S. charitable organization into donating funds that can be diverted to support terrorism.Insofar as regulatory reforms interfere with grantor-grantee relationships between U.S. funders and foreign recipient organizations, charitable effectiveness may be undermined, thus lessening the ability of nonprofit organizations to contribute to America's soft power. Global nonprofits draw strength and


influence from their ability to "represent[] broad public interests beyond the purview of individual states." n239 The credibility and trustworthiness that nonprofits bring to communities are just as important, perhaps even more important, to the long-term success of funded projects as their funds and resources. n240 Much of that virtue is a function of their independence from national governments. If they become an extension of government or even perceived as such, nonprofits forsake the high middle ground between the public and private spheres . n241 Paradoxically, much of the benefit that nonprofits confer on government through the enhancement of soft power is dependent on the theoretical and actual separation between private nonprofit associations and official government entities. Security interests, it would appear, are thus tied into the effectiveness and the independence of charitable organizations.

Joint action limits flexibility and encourages wasteLittle, 10(Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Deputy Director of the Center for Global Prosperity, 42 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 1091, Summer)

The proponents of increased harmonization of aid, such as the U.S. government, claim it will result in greater aid effectiveness. In reality, however, many of these efforts rely on exogenous mechanisms such as regulations, working groups, coordinating councils, and targeted campaigns for efforts like famine relief. Consequently, they attempt to force burgeoning and innovative private and public-private development efforts back into existing development paradigms . This has the potential to limit the most promising aspects of private development assistance: its flexibility and ability to experiment , its grassroots nature, and its inherent competitiveness. This , in turn, will limit the effectiveness of private aid and encourage waste .


AT: PERM – DO CP

Severs assistance because aid is quantified by moneyBread for the World, Christian NGO, ‘11(“What is Foreign Assistance?” http://www.bread.org/hunger/foreign-aid/)

Foreign assistance or foreign aid refers to funding the United States provides to other countries. Sometimes foreign assistance is given directly to a country’s government either in cash or “in-kind,” meaning physical items such as tents, food, or weapons. But U.S. development assistance is mainly delivered by nongovernmental organizations directly to local communities to address their needs and support their development efforts.

http://www.bread.org/hunger/foreign-aid/


2NC AT: SIGNAL

CP sends a strong signal – Obama signs a bill authorizing a huge increase in aid. That’s exactly how the plan is perceive.

Be skeptical of any signal solvency deficit---all their evidence is very vague about how the US can send a signal—just says the US takes the lead. The CP is US government action, just not through USAID.

Also CX of the 1AC proves they don’t do what their authors recommend---proves they’re insufficient too:

---Tabler about speeding up regime collapse says we need sanctions and humanitarian corridors through a contact group---Badran (managing regional players) says economic pressure, kicking out the Syrian diplomat, and military action---Fly says financial aid to striking workers, messaging to Alawite generals, giving internet access, and internet buffer zones

We’ll impact turn the question of who sends a better signal on the ground – private aid captures any positive signal and avoids backlashJenkins, 7(Law Prof-The Ohio State University & Former COO and General Counsel of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, “Soft Power, Strategic Security, and International Philanthropy, 85 N.C.L. Rev. 773)

Nye primarily views international nonprofit organizations as attracting their own followers, giving them clout to influence governments. n98 To the extent that Nye is principally conceiving of NGOs as large, multinational public charities, his assessment is surely accurate. However, that perspective requires reformulation when thinking about the broader spectrum of private foundations and smaller public charities. A nonprofit organization that is able to [*799] generate its own soft power is the rare exception. Indeed, perhaps only a small handful of major "brand name" nonprofit organizations with substantial resources, such as Human Rights Watch, the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a few others, can mobilize publics and attract their own followers, thereby accruing their own soft power. Most nonprofit organizations , however, especially smaller and less well-known funders acting abroad, directly contribute to the goodwill and attractiveness of their home governments based on the national affiliation of grantors. Simply put, when an American foundation gives money for a humanitarian project, beneficiaries are likely to associate the end product as produced by "American aid ," rather than narrowly as generated by a specific foundation. For example, in the late 1970s when U.S.-based Rotary International embarked on a campaign to eradicate polio in the Philippines by immunizing six million Filipino children, n99 the philanthropic nature and reputation of the United States as a whole was enhanced. Today, Accion International's support for microfinance n100 and the Global Fund for Women's focus on educational opportunities for girls n101 in the world's least developed countries accrue reputational benefits to the United States. In fact, many of the largest and most active international grantmakers are not particularly well-known and do not wield substantial independent soft power. For instance, the listing of the twenty largest international donors among U.S. private foundations includes such unfamiliar organizations as the Freeman Foundation, Lincy Foundation, and Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. n102 Moreover, the Foundation Center reports that the median grant dedicated to international affairs is $ 50,000, n103 indicating that many grants are of such a small size that they are unlikely to generate enough attention and visibility to create a separate brand identity for the nonprofit donor. Accordingly, the collective efforts of little-known and smaller foundations are more likely to create cumulative soft power for the U.S. government rather than for those organizations individually. Given this link, the United States, in order to fortify its soft power, should value international philanthropy and grantmaking by U.S. private foundations and public charities as a contributing source to its soft power. Recent foreign public opinion trends n104 and the lingering negative


public relations effects associated with the "war on terrorism" have diminished U.S. attractiveness and standing, and limited its power to persuade on moral principle. n105 Thus, the United States should pursue a variety of means to attract others because that attraction is a form of power. Persuasion through soft power can yield more concession, cooperation, and enduring support for desired U.S. policy outcomes than coercion alone. n106 As one commentator has noted, "in the old adage of catching flies, soft power is the honey and hard power is the vinegar." n107 Nye and others seem to have it right: hard power and soft power are both essential elements of sound U.S. policy on national security. n108 Our government policies, however, must be designed in a way that does not undercut our strategic interests, which requires taking international philanthropy into account as a valuable component in enhancing soft power. Paradoxically, the contributions of nonprofit organizations to government soft power are, in part, a direct result of the sector's independence from government. As distinct from the state, the nonprofit sector can leverage altruistic values without being beholden to the government, its policies, or its geopolitical interests (which are often advanced through hard power). As a result, not only does the sector's independence enhance the effectiveness of its own philanthropic efforts n109 (and the attendant reputational contributions of the work), but this independence also allows nonprofits to contribute to governmental soft power. Put differently, international philanthropy - precisely because of its independence from the state - [*801] offers a direct, tangible , and genuine manifestation of culture, values, and people through action on the ground. This production of attractive cultural values , in turn, produces benefit - in the form of soft power - that i nures to the state writ large.

The CP sends a clear message of US support for democracy but official aid undermines goodwillPozen, 6(JD-Yale Law School, “Remapping the Charitable Deduction”, 39 Conn. L. Rev. 531)

On the other hand, increasing government aid at the expense of the charitable deduction may dampen goodwil l on a number of fronts . [*598] Individual and corporate giving are likely to fall substantiall y; n282 displeased American donors may convey their anger to groups abroad ; foreign recipients may be more skeptical of government aid than private aid ; and a more centralized process for distributing charity will tend to reduce the diversity of recipients and exacerbate the democratic-process pathology of systematically underweighting long-term risks. n283 More basically, however, the tension between the charitable deduction and direct aid may be artificial. One to two billion dollars is not a vast amount in the scheme of the foreign affairs budget, which in recent years has included over $ 16 billion annually for official development assistance. n284 If the charitable deduction is failing to generate goodwill commensurate with its economic cost, the failure could be seen as one of marketing. By clarifying to the international community that the charitable deduction not only subsidizes foreign charity , but also does so in a resolutely apolitical way , the U.S. government has a chance to bolster the deduction's utility as an instrument of soft power and stimulate greater overall goodwill . In the current political clime, opacity may not be worth it. VI. ConclusionFor better and worse, tax deductions for internationally-targeted donations are already raising oversight concerns, already delegating foreign policy to individual donors, already transforming civil society across the world. A notoriously problematic policy, the charitable deduction only becomes more problematic in the international context. Yet it also becomes a more powerful vehicle for generating collective benefits-for enhancing social welfare, distributive justice, and communitarian values not just globally, but also domestically. This Article has tried to situate the charitable deduction in a broader critical and spatial context, and to show how it has provided a vital, underexplored link between U.S. tax policy and the "global associational revolution." n285 The analysis suggests that any deduction policy should aim to effectuate an ideal of geographic neutrality. Replacing or supplementing the water's edge policy with a less restrictive alternative would better comport with tax theory, across a wide range of normative [*599] commitments, and better capitalize on the deduction's virtues. It would also be an act of political symbolism. Against the widespread belief that the U.S. government is stingy with international aid, dismantling the water's edge policy would demonstrate our commitment to foreign charity . It would send the message that- conditionally, consistent with our national security and national interest, yet wholeheartedly-America supports the revolution .

Uniquely true for the Mid East – delegating to private aid key to avoid perceptions of imperialism


Yacoubian, 5(Special Adviser-United States Institute of Peace’s Muslim World Initiative, “Promoting Middle East Democracy II”, http://www.usip.org/files/file/sr136.pdf)

• Bolstering U.S. credibility in the region stands as a key priority for policymakers. However, given the United States’ faltering credibility in the Arab world, U.S. policymakers should steer clear of publicly endorsing any particular initiative . While the Beirut Letter and the Doha Declaration hold the greatest promise, any direct U.S. endorsement of these efforts could doom them. With a few exceptions, Arab reformers repeatedly suggest that any public association with the United States would dramatically diminish their credibility at home. Instead, U.S. policymakers should raise the urgent need for reform, as emphasized by Arab reformers, at the bilateral level. Consistent yet quiet diplomatic pressure, coupled with financial enticements for positive movement on reform (see below), offers the greatest chance of success. Both Washington and diplomats in the field need to signal that reform is a key objective by repeatedly pressing for the release of imprisoned reformers, an end to press censorship, and the cessation of repressive emergency laws.Engagement with moderate Islamist reformers is essential. Given the Islamists’ strong popular appeal, the United States can no longer afford to call for democratic change in the region while ignoring one of its most powerful political forces. The United States should underscore the commonalities among the demands of secular and Islamist reformers, leveraging the overlap between them to inject greater momentum toward broad reform in the region.Positive conditionality, which involves offering financial and other incentives for forward movement on reform, deserves further exploration. Specifically, U.S. policymakers should work to identify key “benchmarks” that adequately measure the progress of political reform. In particular, the creation of bulleted “action plans”—that is, laying out specific reform-oriented goals, a model favored by the European Union—might offer a useful format for the United States and its Arab counterparts. Incentives such as increased aid or enhanced market access could then be tied to the completion of specific action items, offering a stepped, benefit-based approach to reform. Greater cooperation and coordination with the United States’ European allies could also improve the prospects for successful Arab reform efforts. The United States and its European allies can undertake several key measures to help move Arab reform forward. These include enhancing the transatlantic policy dialogue on Middle East reform; identifying shared transatlantic interests and objectives; coordinating more closely public statements on key reform-related events, such as elections; and synchronizing reform incentives. (For further elaboration on these and other recommendations, see “Transatlantic Cooperation on Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: Ten Recommendations for Enhanced Cooperation,” http://www.usip.org/research/ reports/usipfride.pdf.) In addition, the United States should consider establishing a quasi-public, private ly run Middle East foundation as the key mechanism for administering political-reform promotion projects. A Middle East foundation would provide the necessary “ arm’s length” from the U.S. government , creating an important buffer for sensitive political-reform projects . Indeed, U.S. policymakers should resist the urge to publicly promote U.S. aid in the region, as U.S. credibility there will be enhanced through solid progress on reform than through flashy public rollouts and prominent U.S. branding of projects. A Middle East foundation would also provide an instrument for addressing policy interests that, by nature, are extremely long term and go beyond the purview of the traditional policymaking apparatus.

Creates face-to-face contacts – reduces resentment of the USValentine, 1 Free Market Columnist, http://www.anti-state.com/valentine/valentine2.html

A laissez-faire approach in matters pertaining to taxation of Americans, can go far in alleviating the anger and resentment directed toward the USA , by citizens in many countries around the world. The laissez-faire tax would involve all tax revenues collected domestically, being used

domestically. In other words, programs like foreign aid would be privatized, like private charities. Tax levels to US citizens could be reduced, so as to allow citizens to donate to the charity of their choice. Private foreign aid involves people helping people directly, instead of the government to government approach which now prevails. The latter spectacle is little more than an ego-stroking obscenity for a few high-ranking people, who are probably well aware that the money they give to the another nation was forcibly coerced from their own citizens. A system whereby private people in one nation trade directly with other private people around the world, could enable people from very diverse backgrounds , culture and religion to realize value from peaceful, person to person exchange . I personally have engaged in such trading, finding articles of interest at various websites. More often than

not, the seller was located in a different nation to me. Consistently, after making contact by e-mail expressing my interest in an item they had for sale, a cordial interpersonal and economic exchange followed. There was a benefit for both buyer and seller in

developing such a mutually cordial relationship, especially if there was the prospect future trading. In both the areas of trade as well as charity, direct contact between private citizens living in


different nations fosters levels of mutual trust, understanding , acceptance and peaceful co- existence than pompous bureaucrats could achieve around a negotiating table. Eliminating government -to-government foreign aid charades may leave many a bureaucrat long-faced, at home and abroad. It would reduce , if not eliminate needless squandering of resources (Remember the thousands of pairs of shoes owned by Imelda Marcos, paid for by the US taxpayer). Repressive, oppressive, tyrannical and dictatorial political behavior which generous government-to-government foreign aid packages encouraged, could be curtailed if not eliminated. A despot in need of funds from the USA, would have to appeal directly to the US

population at large and not to their government in Washington. It may be an embarrassment for the tyrant to do so, yet it could ensure that the recipient engages in more humane and civilized behavior toward their citizens.

Elimination of government-to-government foreign aid would greatly reduce the anger felt worldwide toward the U SA. At least the citizens of the world would know that under a direct system of people helping people, the would all stand an equal chance of pleading their cases to the US population. In a direct system of people helping people, international tensions could subside. The role of government would be to maintain polite and cordial relations

with other governments, or doing constructive things like eliminating trade barriers. If a foreign government is in a crisis, the head of that government has the choice of solving their problem at home, or if the wish to appeal to aid from the USA, then they would have

to make a direct appeal to the American people and not their government. Elimination of government-to-government foreign aid programs could create a more peaceful world order. Leaders of countries in need would have an incentive to protect their foreign guests as well as their own citizens.

That outweighsLawton, 10(Lt. Governor-Wisconsin, http://uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org/images/pdfs/summit-reports/Roundtables/RT_Role-of-states.pdf)

In an era of increasing globalization , more and more people develop their most lasting impressions through face-to-face, personal encounters, when people visit the United States or when Americans travel abroad. In this context, the “citizen diplomat” is a powerful force in defining the United States to the rest of the world. The potential benefits of citizen diplomacy extend beyond creating a network of individual relationships that sustain goodwill when formal diplomacy suffers disruptions. Citizen diplomacy drives positive outcomes in other realms as well, including state and national economic security, workforce development, improved public policy , and education. As distances collapse with internet access and increased travel , more individual actors today can exert significant influence on an international stage than ever before. State governments are uniquely positioned to connect, elevate, and leverage citizen diplomacy to maximize its impact and generate higher levels of activity . And as states take a more prominent place on the global stage, they will see economic opportunities increase, and a more globally literate workforce develop and thrive in more culturally aware communities.


AT: NOT SOLVE SYRIA

Infrastructure for philanthropy and foundations to engage the Syrian opposition exists now---diaspora communities and umbrella groups in the regionQayyum, 11(Fellow—The Middle East Institute, August, Syrian Diaspora, “Cultivating a New Public Space Consciousness,” http://www.mei.edu/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=HHPUvt1JpOI%3D&tabid=539)

Diaspora communities in both the US and UK have mobilized to echo Syria’s civilian protests . Beyond mobilizing in the moment, diaspora communities may influence the pace at which proto-civil societies may mobilize into more sustained , collective voices that comprise a role within civil society . According to the World Bank, the term ‘civil society’ refers to the wide array of non-governmental and not-for-profit organizations that have a presence in public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) therefore refer to a wide of array of organizations: community groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, indigenous groups, charitable organizations , faith- based organizations, professional associations, and foundations. Based on the above definition, civil society that lacks indigenous faith-based organizations, community groups, and labor unions also lack the voices to express the interests of those members. In the case of Syria , where there are no organized labor unions and faith-based groups are banned, there are no indigenous civil society outlets for expatriates. As such, diaspora communities address the civil society gap by coalescing around other interests, like philanthropic institutions and humanitarian relief efforts. Moreover, key Syrian human rights activists have mobilized outside Syria to operate within their new public spaces — both virtually and physically — through reform organizations. For example, the National Initiative for Change (NIC) represents a spectrum of Syrian activist group members and operates as an umbrella group. An umbrella group marks one virtual step towards civil society engagement. NIC specifically calls for two actions: 1) it requests that the Syrian military should lead a transition period, similar to Egypt’s current situation; and 2) it implores the international community to expand the sanctions against 13 political figures as well as security forces involved in violence against protestors. The fact that NIC does not take any religious position may provide a sustainable model, or even an outlet, for local Syrian opposition groups to express their grievances. Diaspora communities do not limit themselves to political opposition groups. They also civically engage by organizing humanitarian missions and organizations. For example, the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) was formulated as a secular, apolitical organization. SAMS was founded by many first-generation Syrian physicians who recognized that many Syrians outside of the public sector could not gain access to basic healthcare needs and that advanced medical training in the US produced an outflow of Syrian medical professionals to Europe and North America (in addition to the security-related “brain drain” mentioned earlier). As a result, SAMS received permission to directly deliver humanitarian and health services and initiated a telemedicine program for Syrian physicians to consult with their US colleagues. In the wake of Syria’s protests, SAMS expanded its mission to deliver healthcare and supplies to the increasing number of Syrians seeking refuge in Turkey. Since SAMS mobilized within weeks to address Turkey’s pressing Syrian refugee problem, perhaps SAMS represents one track for civil society initiatives to take root within Syria if local Syrians assume ownership of the efforts by way of participation and engagement. Currently, the US offers one outlet for strengthening Syria’s civil society through the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). However, MEPI hones in on only the political facet of civil society by offering grants regarding “Participatory Politics” — civil society development includes many other elements. Post Bashar al-Asad, political reform will still not address the social and economic challenge of brain drain. Humanitarian assistance and economic reform will require diaspora support. The International Red Crescent Society will not be able to address humanitarian needs alone; nor do they have the mission to address the economic and political reforms post-Bashar. Diaspora communities will have to shift from virtual, online participation to on-the-ground support. Perhaps Syrian Americans’ grassroots organizational and online efforts in the US also signal the next phase of a developing civil society — where Syrian American public space extends back into Syria . Documenting names and testimonies, as done here and in Years of Fear, illustrates the first step in moving from the individual action to the collective diaspora community in demanding government accountability. The second and third steps, advocacy and legal action, are already underway as the American-based Syrian Emergency Task Force supports a US civil lawsuit to set the precedent of using the US legal system to hold the Syrian government accountable: Abdul Aziz, et al. v. The Syrian Arab republic. Meanwhile, the


Syrian diaspora will have to undertake humanitarian and other civil society initiatives that move beyond the al-Asad regime and hold whatever government comes next accountable to the beginnings of a civil society in Syria and beyond.

There are tons of organizations in Syria that could receive supportNGO Reg Network, 11(http://www.ngoregnet.org/country_information_by_region/Middle_East_and_North_Africa/Syria.asp)

The NGO sectorCivil and charitable work has long played a part in Syria n society; the first official society, “Mayal Quraysh for Charitable Action”, was created in 1880. Although there has been a steady growth in numbers of NGOs in Syria over the years, for some decades there was no active Government encouragement for the establishment of associations and/or for the development of civil society. Since 2000 however, there has been an upsurge in interest and a new wave of n on- g overnmental o rganisation s have since been established , including those focusing on new areas such as the environment and youth issues. The number of associations has roughly doubled since 2003 - when the current Minister of Social Affairs and Labour (MoSAL) was appointed - and now stands at around 1400 officially registered (excluding branches). There are also some unregistered entities involved in small scale local activities.


2NC NO SOLVENCY DEFICIT

No solvency deficit—official aid already uses backdoor privatization—ground work is done through private contractorsSpence, 4(Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law Stanford University, http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20741/Spence-_CDDRL_10-4_draf1.pdf)

Moreover, the agency’s programs offered host governments few incentives to change their behavior. USAID was not in the business of giving money to democratizing governments or putting money into the domestic economy. In fact, roughly 78% of funds for USAID programs are spent on U.S. good and services. By the end of the 1990s, Congress virtually forbade the agency from giving any money to the central governments of their host countries, because these governments were not reforming or promoting democracy. U.S. foreign aid legislation prohibited using funds to try to influence domestic political outcomes, such as foreign elections. Despite the understandable concern about preventing U.S. funds from fixing foreign votes, and thus undermining democracy, this prohibition was often broadly interpreted to prevent the very involvement in domestic politics that is central to promoting democracy. Instead of managing aid programs that were carrots or sticks to induce changes in behavior, USAID provided “technical assistance,” which meant advisors or training programs. USAID distributed the bulk of its funds through private groups, NGOs and for-profit “democracy contractors ,” with an average of half a dozen employees in the field.43 With high Western salaries and costly overhead, even much of that money did not go into the local economy—eliminating a side benefit that many assume foreign aid provides. Fourth, U.S. domestic politics created some disincentives for effective programs. Bureaucratic inertia kept programs alive that many USAID officials felt were foolish. Grantees and contractors had few incentives to report failing projects—even if an intransigent government was to blame—because their income came from continuing a project. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, through 1999 a foreign contractor voluntarily ended only one project, because the host government was not cooperating as expected. 45 Some USAID-funded groups had patrons on the Hill, whom they could appeal to when their funds were threatened. This added tensions to the relationship between USAID officials and their grantees. Faced with these constraints, USAID pursued a strategy of democracy promotion that I call “the privatization of U.S. foreign policy. ” The agency’s strategy around the world entailed giving limited funds to U.S. NGOs and for-profit democracy contractors, who would try to build grassroots demand for reform and provide “technical assistance ” —purportedly objective advice about how to make a reform more effective. In effect, the U.S. government did not provide democracy assistance, but instead outsourced it to private groups on the ground. In addition to the problems of coordinating the efforts of so many private groups, USAID’s strategy of promoting democracy by providing “technical assistance” suffered from the fatal flaw that the biggest obstacles to democratization were political, not technical, in nature. U.S. officials understandably could not simply buy a newspaper or take over a television station to pump in favorable ideas of democracy. But the exclusive reliance on technical assistance was that USAID officials would help draft a law, but could do little in the short-term when that law stalled in the parliament but wait for a political opening. Doing more than that was the job for diplomacy—in USAID parlance, “the policy dialog.” Unfortunately, that diplomatic support rarely came.

Their government key arguments are full of institutional biasParajuli, 10(Columnist-The Concord Review, 7/8, http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=20776)

This brings us to another argument – that the aid agency has become self-perpetuating and thus is at loggerheads with its explicit aims. Dambisa Moyo argues in her book “Dead Aid” that aid has become a self-perpetuating industry. She argues that “some people actually have a vested interest to see the continual cycle of (Nepal) in despair so that they can justify their existence . ” Miller-Adams (1999) argue, noting that organizations strive to ensure organizational survival and better their bargaining power with others through steady growth , of the World Bank’s continued moves to increase its branches even in areas where other development banks are present. This despite the potential for duplication of duties and conflict in those regions. This sort of overlap just highlights at the macro level the perpetuation


tendencies within aid organizations where livelihood and careers are now planned specifically for the sector and many have a vested interest in seeing it continue . If we are to agree that at some stage we want to see a world that does not need aid, we have to set timelines. President Obama by setting a clear deadline for troop withdrawal from Africa has made it clear to President Hamid Karzai that he needs to get his act together because US involvement is not a blank check. So, are there any alternatives? Can aid be replaced by investment that is responsible to a bottom line and does not crowd out the private sector. Justin Muzinich and Eric Werker (the latter an assistant professor at Harvard Business School) have a suggestion. The US Congress, they say, should provide a 39-cent tax credit for every dollar of American investment in developing countries. If Company X were to build a $100 million factory in Nepal, its tax bill would be reduced by $39 million. Because for-profit companies are focused on the bottom line, they will be more protective than government agencies of the money they invest in developing countries.


TAX CREDITS INCREASE AID

Expanding tax incentives crucial to spur private givingEnders, 5(Grand Valley State University, http://www.learningtogive.org/papers/index.asp?bpid=63)

Historic Roots Taxes have been an economic factor in most of recorded world history. In the United States, Abraham Lincoln implemented federal income taxation in 1862 in order to finance the Civil War. Although this income tax was repelled in 1872, the 16 th Amendment established the Internal Revenue Service in 1913 and the federal income tax system has been in existence since that year (Internal Revenue Service "History"). "President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs forced an increase in taxes to generate needed funds. The Revenue Act of 1935 introduced the Wealth Tax, a new progressive tax that took up to 75 percent of the highest incomes. Many wealthy people used loopholes in the tax code" (Internal Revenue Service "Wealth"). Taxpayers inherently seek methods to reduce their personal tax burden in order to increase their discretionary income. Charitable contributions offer one way to reduce taxes. Consequently, "Incentives to donate to charity have existed in the tax code almost as long as the income tax itself" (Greene and McClelland 2001, 433). In the 1980s, under the Ronald Reagan administration, the tax structure was simplified and tax rates were lowered for taxpayers. "The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the amount of money owed by the wealthy. The government hoped to encourage them to pay taxes and also hoped that the wealthy would invest their money in a way that would eventually benefit all workers and taxpayers" (Internal Revenue Service "Tax"). Nonprofits receive funds from three major sources: fees charged, government grants and charitable giving. The largest source is fees charged, accounting for 54 percent pf total revenue. Government grants rank second, providing 36 percent of total funds. Charitable giving funds the remaining 10 percent of revenues. Although charitable giving appears to provide only a small portion of overall nonprofit funding, the source becomes more significant in certain sub sectors of the nonprofit community. Charitable giving is 20 percent of the revenue for social service agencies while the art, culture and recreation nonprofits depend on the donations for 41percent of their income (Salamon1999). The significance becomes greater within each of these segments as some agencies receive 100 percent of income solely from donations. Donations represent a significant amount on an annual basis. "Charitable giving reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 1997 amounted to over $120 billion, about 1.5 percent of GPD. Giving USA reported charitable giving in 1997 of $153.77 billion (about 2 percent of GPD), which includes giving by foundations and non-itemizing individuals; these figures are not obtainable from tax returns" (Greene and McClelland 2001, 433). Individuals give 77 percent of these donations. The remaining 23 percent is received from bequests, corporations and foundations. The magnitude of charitable giving highlights its role in sustaining nonprofit agencies. A recent study indicates, "Americans give not out of empathy, but for tax write-offs. The report concludes that a flat tax or a national sales tax where charitable write-offs are eliminated, donations would drop by nearly a third or more" (National Center for Policy Analysis 1987).

The trend of government abandoning some needed services makes the need critical for philanthropy. "Every culture depends on philanthropy and nonprofit organizations to provide essential elements of a civil society" (Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University). Often, government action is based on the assumption the nonprofit sector will fill the remaining void. In filling this void, nonprofits become more dependent on charitable giving to fund the services. Since philanthropy is comprised of three major traditions: "voluntary association, voluntary giving, and voluntary action" (ibid.), charitable giving is an essential part of the philanthropic sector. Tax incentives encourage the type of behavior required to create effective philanthropy . Current tax incentives are limited to those taxpayers itemizing deductions or designating bequests. This structure leads to lost opportunities in higher levels of donations . A recent study indicates that tax deductibility encourages charitable giving at all levels of income (Independent Sector "Deducting").

Expanding tax credits can increase private philanthropyRoodman, 6(Research Fellow-Center for Global Development, Tax policies to promote private charitable giving in DAC countries, Working Paper Number 82 January)

Researchers have written hundreds of papers on the causes and consequences of official foreign aid, while paying almost no attention to private overseas giving, by individuals, universities, foundations, and corporations. Yet private giving is significant —some $15.5 billion/year, compared to more than $60 billion/year in public giving—and is in no small part an outcome of public policy. In most rich countries, tax deductions and credits lower the “price” of charity to donors . And governments with low tax revenue/GDP ratios leave more money in private pockets for private charity. To correct the near- complete lack of information on this de facto aid policy, we survey officials of 21 donor nations on the use of tax incentives to promote private charity. From the results, we develop an index of the overall incentive for private charity, expressed as a percentage increase over the hypothetical giving level absent incentives. France’s tax code creates the largest price incentive while those of Austria, Finland, and Sweden offer none. Factoring in the income effect of the tax ratio, Australia, Ireland, Germany, and the United States move to the top, with combined price and income effects sufficient to double private giving. As a result, tax policy appears to have nearly doubled private overseas giving from donor countries in 2003, from a counterfactual $8.0 billion. Two-thirds of the $7.5 billion increase occurred in the United


States. Of that, nearly 40% appears to be U.S. charity to Israel. According to 21-country scatter plots, countries with lower church attendance and more faith in the national legislature have lower taxes (stronger income effect), but average levels of targeted tax incentives. Income (GDP/capita) does correlate with private overseas aid/capita, but also with public aid/capita, so that the two aid flows are complementary in magnitude. 1. Introduction Private charitable giving from rich countries to poor countries is an important component of foreign aid, broadly defined. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee(OECD/DAC), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in the 22 donor countries that are members of DAC delivered over $15 billion worth of private aid in 2003,3 more than official bilateral assistance from every individual DAC country except the United States.4 Evidence also suggests that governments can influence the level of private giving from their citizens through tax policy (Feldstein and Taylor 1976; Clotfelter 1985; Schiff 1990; Greene and McClelland 2001; Brooks 2004; Gilbert 2005). Specifically, private giving is encouraged by a low tax ratio as a share of GDP—which leaves citizens more money to spend on charity—and by targeted tax incentives that lower the “price” of donations. Thus private giving to developing countries is partly an outcome of public policy.



2NC – NO ESCALATION

No Middle East escalation – leaders value stability and use proxy groups instead of militaries, that’s Fettweis.

Empirics are conclusive. Prefer it --

a) Best prediction modelFettweis, Asst Prof Poli Sci – Tulane, Asst Prof National Security Affairs – US Naval War College, ‘7(Christopher, “On the Consequences of Failure in Iraq,” Survival, Vol. 49, Iss. 4, December, p. 83 – 98)

Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, policymakers should keep in mind that the unprecedented is also unlikely . Outliers in international behaviour do exist, but in general the past is the best guide to the future. Since the geopolitical catastrophes that pessimists expect will follow US withdrawal are all virtually without precedent, common sense should tell policymakers they are probably also unlikely to occur . Five years ago, US leaders should have realised that their implicit prediction for the aftermath of invasion - positive, creative instability in the Middle East that would set off a string of democratic dominoes - was without precedent. The policy was based more on the president's unshakeable faith in the redemptive power of democracy than on a coherent understanding of international relations. Like all faith-based policies, success would have required a miracle; in international politics, miracles are unfortunately rare. Faith is once again driving predictions of post-withdrawal Iraq, but this time it is faith in chaos and worst- case scenarios.Secondly, imagined consequences are usually worse than what reality delivers . Human beings tend to focus on the most frightening scenarios at the expense of the most likely , and anticipate outcomes far worse than those that usually occur. This is especially true in the United States, which for a variety of reasons has consistently overestimated the dangers lurking in the international system.3 Pre-war Iraq was no exception; post-war Iraq is not likely to be either.

b) Best Middle East methodologyLuttwak, senior associate – CSIS, professor – Georgetown and Berkeley, 5/26/’7(Edward, “The middle of nowhere,” Prospect Magazine)

Why are middle east experts so unfailingly wrong? The lesson of history is that men never learn from history, but middle east experts , like the rest of us, should at least learn from their past mistakes. Instead, they just keep repeating them.The first mistake is “five minutes to midnight” catastrophism. The late King Hussein of Jordan was the undisputed master of this genre. Wearing his gravest aspect, he would warn us that with patience finally exhausted the Arab-Israeli conflict was about to explode, that all past conflicts would be dwarfed by what was about to happen unless, unless… And then came the remedy—usually something rather tame when compared with the immense catastrophe predicted, such as resuming this or that stalled negotiation, or getting an American envoy to the scene to make the usual promises to the Palestinians and apply the usual pressures on Israel. We read versions of the standard King Hussein speech in countless newspaper columns, hear identical invocations in the grindingly repetitive radio and television appearances of the usual middle east experts, and are now faced with Hussein’s son Abdullah periodically repeating his father’s speech almost verbatim.What actually happens at each of these “moments of truth ”—and we may be approaching another one—is nothing much; only the same old cyclical conflict which always restarts when peace is about to break out, and always dampens d own when the violence becomes intense enough. The ease of filming and reporting out of safe and comfortable Israeli hotels inflates the media coverage of every minor affray. But humanitarians should note that the dead from Jewish-Palestinian fighting since 1921 amount to fewer than 100,000—about as many as are killed in a season of conflict in Darfur.


2NC LEAKAGE DA

US assistance has huge transactional costs---taxes, government fees, administrative costs, and corruption cause less than half of allocated funds to reach targets—that’s Desai---this takes-out the case---makes increases in aid irrelevantCarothers, 9(October, Carnegie Endowment VP for Studies, Democracy and Rule of Law Program and Carnegie Europe Director, "Revitalizing Democracy Assistance: The Challenge of USAID," http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=24047)

As a complement to these larger aid reform endeavors, it is important to examine USAID’s democracy work and identify ways to strengthen it. This report seeks to do that. Debates in Washington over USAID’s role in democracy support often center around how much money it is devoting to such efforts, and on what countries USAID is spending the money. Although spending levels and geographic allocations are certainly important, a crucial prior issue is how effectively the organization handles the funds it devotes to the task. If the aid is ineffectively delivered, increasing it will not make much difference . Therefore, after presenting an overview of USAID’s democracy work, including a thumbnail sketch of its evolution from the 1980s to the present, this report seeks to pinpoint key problems with how USAID functions in the democracy support domain. It then considers both moderate and more radical options for remedying the problems.


2NC INNOVATION DA

Government aid fails---risk-averse culture encourages over-regulation, mistrust, and crippling inflexibility – makes implementation impossible – that’s Carothers.

Private aid drives innovation—more info access and less regulationKapur, 10(Director, Center for Advanced Study of India, and Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India, University of Pennsylvania, 42 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 1143, Summer)

Much of the debate on accountability has centered on motivation (incentives) and authority (clarifying roles and power). Enhancing motivation and authority can increase the exercise of accountability. But good accountability also requires good information, and this is where private aid n40 offers exciting possibilities. Private aid --especially from newer and smaller funders-- is likely to drive innovations in information for two reasons. First, private funders will have to generate their own information because the traditional sources of information n41 on aid activities are often unavailable to them. Second, private funders often make decisions using different types of information than the data supposedly used by official agencies and governments. As we will see, new tech nologies and approaches in private aid are creating new feedback mechanisms that could hopefully migrate to official funders as well.

Vote neg on presumptionBicchi, 10 (London School of Economics IR Professor, "Dilemmas of implementation: EU democracy assistance in the Mediterranean," Democratization, Volume 17, Issue 5, October)

There is a broad literature addressing the margins of discretion that public officials have when implementing decisions. The study of implementation is fundamentally a study of change, i.e. of the change that takes place after the adoption of formal decisions and as action progresses. Implementation has been conceptualized in many different ways, but at its core implementation research assumes that, contrary to the classic Weberian model of bureaucracy, the policy-making process continues during the implementation stage in ways that were generally not foreseen or intended at its beginning.10The main argument of this article is that policy analysis and implementation research specifically contribute to the understanding of EU democracy assistance (and more generally of EU foreign policy) in a variety of ways. First, they suggest distinguishing between stages of the policy cycle. Despite criticisms, the policy cycle retains some heuristic utility if only as an organizing principle for analysis, as it highlights the difference between decision-making, implementation and evaluation.11 This distinction is very useful to counter the current trend towards assessing the impact of democracy assistance without taking into account whether it has actually been implemented. Implementation cannot be assumed ; in fact, it is extremely rare for decisions to include automatic implementation. If there is complete 'policy evaporation' during the implementation stage and rhetoric fails to turn into reality , then it makes little sense to evaluate the potential impact of the policy .

Prefer our evidence—Carothers is the leading expert on democracy assistanceBrookings, 4http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/2004/criticalmission.aspx

Thomas Carothers is founder and director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment. He is a leading authority on democracy promotion and democratization worldwide as well as an expert on U.S. foreign policy. SELECTED REVIEWS " Carothers's examinations have helped us think harder and more critically about our work and we are better at what we do because of his insights." Kenneth Wollack, president, National Democratic Institute "The promotion of democracy has never had a more thoughtful advocate or a tougher critic than Thomas Carothers. Balanced, incisive, steeped in local knowledge and yet focused on the big picture , this remarkable collection of trenchant essays is full of good judgments and sharp insights. Essential reading for both democracy's critics and its advocates." Michael W. Doyle, author, WAYS OF WAR AND PEACE "Thomas Carothers is the world's leading authority on democracy promotion . Though a passionate believer in the virtues of democracy,


Carothers is no romantic. His analysis is as rigorous as it is compelling. This brilliant collection of essays reveals his unique sensibility: both hardheaded and humane. For anyone interested in the promise and pitfalls of promoting democracy around the world, Carothers's book is a gold mine." Robert Kagan, author, of PARADISE AND POWER


2NC CTR-BUREAUCRACY DA

US democracy aid fails—layers of red tape ensure compliance conflicts and causes focus on accounting over project outcomes —that’s Natsios.

Prefer our evidence—his experience inside the agency makes him qualifiedJayawickrama, 10(Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University., http://hausercenter.org/iha/2010/07/09/when-aid-bureaucracy-and-development-clash-a-former-usaid-administrator-speaks-out/)

A newly-published essay by Andrew Natsios – who served as USAID Administrator from 2001 to 2006 – lays bare the tension between the compliance side of aid bureaucracies and the programmatic side of those same agencies. He argues that the balance has now tipped so strongly toward compliance that the integrity of programs is under threat. He also asserts that the compliance side of aid has taken over management and decision-making at USAID. It is interesting to see Natsios, who presided over this “counter-bureaucracy” for five years, rip into the compliance culture that he oversaw. He does so with a clarity and insight that should not be ignored as development and foreign assistance policies are being redefined by the Obama Administration and on Capitol Hill. Ironically, Natsios’ account of these tensions and imbalances may also reveal why these policy processes seem to be so bogged down and delayed. Natsios provides a historical perspective of how the compliance culture came to be dominant within the U.S. foreign assistance bureaucracy – he calls it “a painful story of good intentions gone bad.” He is unsparing in his critique of what this has resulted in, and declares that it is well past the point where compliance has become counter-productive. Natsios argues that the demands of this compliance culture “are now so intrusive that they have distorted, misdirected and disfigured USAID’s development practice to such a degree that it is compromising U.S. national security objectives and challenging established principles of good development practice.” The argument that Natsios makes – that increasing pressure to measure outcomes or impacts can lead to a tendency to invest in interventions that can be easily measured – is not a new one, but his “view from the inside” gives even more credence to this perspective. Natsios starts from the principle that development programs that are most precisely and easily measured are often the least transformational, and those programs that are most transformational are often the least measurable. He posits that health programs have become the most favored sector in U.S. foreign assistance because health outcomes are more easily measured, and that democracy and governance programs have been underfunded because their results are hard to measure (especially within short timeframes). I suspect that Natsios paints this picture so starkly in order to get his central arguments across: that measurability does not equal development significance, that good development must be the unequivocal goal of U.S. foreign assistance and that foreign aid systems and processes must not unintentionally undermine that goal.


2NC LOCAL OWNERSHIP DA

USAID democracy projects undermine local ownership—that’s Carothers---it’s a prerequisite to effective assistance for the Arab SpringKuttab, 11(December, Founder-Arab Foundations Forum and the Arab Human Rights Fund, “Which way now for Arab philanthropy?,” Alliance Magazine)

Recent moves to build the infrastructure of philanthropy in the region have envisaged gradual progress, but this year’s events have shown that this is not enough. In today’s climate, people are demanding justice and ‘ ownership of the agenda’ . This will require a new level of transparency in donor-grantee relations, and western foundations will require local guidance to ensure that what they are offering fits local needs rather than the donor’s agenda.The philanthropy thrust in recent years, driven by a surge in private sector foundations, has been guided mainly by an Anglo-Saxon discourse not rooted in the local culture. My efforts over the last six years to build the infrastructure of philanthropy, through institutions like the Arab Foundations Forum and SAANED for Philanthropy Advisory in the Arab Region, have had the modest aim of fostering the ability to learn from other regions, redeveloping the local discourse, and reinvigorating local traditions and practices to enable the local philanthropy sector to find sustainable solutions to the chronic problems of the region: the lack of relevant education, high youth unemployment, the absence of democracy, the lack of space for citizens to express themselves, etc. Progress, if any, was supposed to be gradual and undramatic. But the Arab Spring showed that Arabs couldn’t wait. The wave of protests across the Arab region triggered by events in Tunisia last January has become a ‘Tunisami’, moving from one country to another. Having denied them for many years, some governments are allowing reforms to establish the basic rights of citizens while others are still fighting to cling to the old ways. Young people aged 15-24 represent more than a third of the population of the region, and they are the ones who continue to be at the eye of this Tunisami. What has happened in the last few months in the Arab region was more than the cumulative changes that have taken place in the last 50 years. For the first time in their modern history, Arab societies are demanding, as Fateh Azzam argues in his article, that the principles and standards of human rights constitute the substantive content of ‘justice’ that they should enjoy as a right. The philanthropy sector, and specifically foundations, has been slow to react. However, several activities have taken place in the last few months to guide its efforts. The Arab Foundations Forum meeting in Beirut in early May, and a session at the European Foundation Centre annual meeting in Portugal in June, recommended the convening of a conference of foundations interested in fostering democratic change in the region (making sure to learn from others who have undergone similar experiences from Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and South Africa) and expanding the public space to allow foundations to function freely and promote a culture of citizenship and civic engagement. What should the philanthropy sector aspire to? In a session that I was moderating at the Grantmakers East Forum in Riga in early October, someone asked a pertinent question. The colour revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe looked to the West for their social/economic models. Where do Arab countries, and specifically their philanthropy sectors, look for models following their ‘Spring’? There is no easy answer. The western model remains attractive to many in the Arab region, a feeling that was strengthened by President Obama’s trip to Cairo last year and his sympathetic remarks about Arab aspirations. However, the US – and some European – government’s recent blocking of the Palestinians’ candidacy for UN membership has shaken faith in western government standards and seems to show that human values are not equally applicable to all people, and in fact stop when you reach Israel. Likewise, the fact that multilaterals like the World Bank and the IMF as recently as September 2010 held up countries like Tunisia as models to follow in the implementation of structural programmes has undermined the integrity of those institutions. (Pictured: an election rally held at the Cité Olympique in Tunis on 21 October, two days before the Tunisian elections.) Donors and foundations that work or intend to work in the region come with their governments’ baggage so people are suspicious of their plans and cynical about their values. To mitigate this, they need to listen to voices on the ground. People in the Arab region do aspire to western models of treatment of citizens, democracy, and the transparency and accountability of governments, but they feel that those values are only skin-deep and that western support will not necessarily go to those governments that wholeheartedly embrace them but rather to those that best support western interests. In the new paradigm, people expect and demand ‘ownership of the agenda’, which will require a new level of


transparency in donor-grantee relations. If local philanthropy does not support this, it will be discredited. Key elements of support should focus on the following.


2NC AT: SIGNAL ADVANTAGE

Implementation failures take out symbolic benefit of the planBrown and Deutch, 9Harold Brown, CSIS Senior Counselor, Former Defense Secretary, and John Deutch, MIT Professor, Former CIA Director, 2/28/2009, “Reassessing U.S. nuclear weapons policy,” http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/policy/-ReassesUSNuclearPolicyOpEd.pdf

A U.S. pledge to adopt a world free of nuclear weapons as a practical goal can serve initially to attract international cooperation for some counter proliferation measures. But in the long run this promise is likely to lose good will and cooperation in nonproliferation efforts, when it becomes clear that there is no concrete prospect for doing so.



2NC IRAQ FILL-INIraq is key to Iranian power projectionFriedman, CEO – Stratfor, 5/24/’11(George, “Obama and the Arab Spring,” http://marketspost.com/obama-arab-spring/)

Meanwhile, U.S. troops are being withdrawn from Iraq, but that does not mean the conflict is over. Instead, the withdrawal has opened the door to Iranian power in Iraq . The Iraqis lack a capable military and security force. Their government is divided and feeble. Meanwhile, the Iranians have had years to infiltrate Iraq. Iranian domination of Iraq would open the door to Iranian power projection throughout the region . Therefore, the United States has proposed keeping U.S. forces in Iraq but has yet to receive Iraq’s approval. If that approval is given (which looks unlikely), Iraqi factions with clout in parliament have threatened to renew the anti-U.S. insurgency.

http://marketspost.com/obama-arab-spring/


2NC NO IRAN/SAUDI WAR

Proxy conflict won’t escalate to war – deterrence and concerns over oil – that’s Alexander.

US detersBarzegar, 2011 Kayhan Barzegar, 4-20-2011, Faculty Member, Department of International Relations, Science and Research University, Tehran, Iran, Former Associate, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program, 2010–2011; Former Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/international Security Program, 2007–2010, "Iran's Interests and Values and the 'Arab Spring'" http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/20954/irans_interests_and_values_and_the_arab_spring.html

Iran will not initiate any military expedition in the Persian Gulf in the near future, because this policy would fortify the adversarial and entrenched strategy of the U nited S tates and Israel, which represents Iran as the main source of regional instability. Such a policy will become even more precarious when it relates to Iran's nuclear program. It is highly unlikely that Iran will make the same mistake as Saudi Arabia did with Bahrain, since this policy would increase political-security divisions in the region and provide an ideal justification for foreign forces by legitimizing their continued presence in the Persian Gulf.

They’ll mess with the Saudis in Lebanon insteadJayedanfar, 2011Meir Javedanfar, Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst, 3-24-2011, “Iran and Saundi Arabia cold war has entered a new era,” The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/24/iran-saudi-arabia-bahrain-cold-war

It is unlikely that Iran would send its forces across the Gulf into Bahrain. This move would be very risky , both politically and militarily. Instead, the Iranians will most probably to continue to focus on undermining the Saudis in places such as Lebanon . In fact, Iran's own actions there also fanned the flames of the cold war, especially its support for Hezbollah, which in 2008 attacked local Sunnis, leaving 11 dead and 30 wounded. This infuriated the Saudis, who are close to Lebanon's Sunni community and have backed them. Hezbollah's show of force boosted its leverage significantly, and thus helped it acquire its much-desired veto in Lebanon's cabinet.

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/20954/irans_interests_and_values_and_the_arab_spring.html

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/20954/irans_interests_and_values_and_the_arab_spring.html



IMPACT OVERVIEW

Water wars outweigh—most likely extinction scenarioIn These Times 2(11/11, http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/25/culture1.shtmlin These Times is a nonprofit, independent, national magazine published in Chicago. We’ve been around since 1976, fighting for corporate accountability and progressive government. In other words, a better worldcites environmental thinker and activist Vandana Shiva Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke—probably North America’s foremost water experts

The two books provide a chilling, in-depth examination of a rapidly emerging global crisis. “Quite simply,” Barlow and Clarke write, “unless we dramatically change our ways, between one-half and two-thirds of humanity will be living with severe fresh water shortages within the next quarter-century. … The hard news is this: Humanity is depleting , diverting and polluting the planet’s fresh water resources so quickly and relentlessly that every species on earth—including our own— is in mortal danger .” The crisis is so great, the three authors agree, that the world’s next great wars will be over water . The Middle East, parts of Africa, China, Russia , parts of the U nited S tates and several other areas are already struggling to equitably share water resources. Many conflicts over water are not even recognized as such : Shiva blames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in part on the severe scarcity of water in settlement areas. As available fresh water on the planet decreases , today’s low-level conflicts can only increase in intensity

It specifically causes miscalc in the Horn of Africa – that escalatesGlick 7 Caroline Glick 7, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Center for Security Policy, “Condi's African holiday”, December 11, http://www.rightsidenews.com/20071211309/editorial/us-opinion-and-editorial/our-world-condis-african-holiday.html

The Horn of Africa is a dangerous and strategically vital place. Small wars, which rage continuously, can easily escalate into big wars. Local conflicts have regional and global aspects. All of the conflicts in this tinderbox, which controls shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, can potentially give rise to regional, and indeed global conflagrations between competing regional actors and global powers.

Specifically Ethiopia and Eritreavan Beurden, 2K(Law and Peace at the Universities of Utrecht, Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands, http://www.conflict-prevention.net/page.php?id=40&formid=73&action=show&surveyid=20)In the opinion of most experts, the atmosphere in which NGOs work in Ethiopia or Eritrea is not conducive to involvement in such sensitive matters as the border dispute. At the same time there has been a signal lack of co-ordinated and consolidated efforts from international NGOs, both inside Ethiopia and Eritrea with like-minded organisations in the other country, to prevent the conflict from escalating into a full- scale war . Some international NGOs are so close to the former liberation movements, i.e. the TPLF in Tigray and the EPLF in Eritrea, that they are unable to recognise their weaknesses and have turned a blind eye to the lack of democracy after 1991. It took some time before they acknowledged the inability of both regimes to solve this conflict peacefully. Some experts compare Eritrea's attitude in this conflict with its approach to the Hanish-islands dispute. In both cases Eritrea first made a display of military force yet eventually accepted international arbitration. If it comes to arbitration in this conflict with Ethiopia, these experts believe Eritrea will accept the conclusion. Fears are rising that the border conflict will spread beyond the two countries. The conflict has already increased tensions between Eritrea and Djibouti . France has warned both countries that it will invoke its military agreements with Djibouti if Djibouti becomes a military target for either Eritrea or Ethiopia. The two belligerents have been distributing arms to factions in Somalia. In June 1999 Ethiopian troops helped capture the strategic town of Baidoa, previously held by the Eritrean ally Hussein Aideed. Ethiopia has helped Eritrean opposition groups to form a front and take action against the Government in Asmara, while Eritrea has made similar overtures

***1NR

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/25/culture1.shtml


to the oppositional OLF in Ethiopia. The latter resulted in an Ethiopian army attack on OLF-units in Kenyan territory.

Link turns the case – reallocation will be slow and inefficient – jacks implementationMcInerney, 11(Stephen, “The Federal Budget and Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2012, DEMOCRACY, GOVERNANCE, AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” POMED, July)

These problems on the Congressional side are compounded by an excessively slow and inflexible budgeting process within the administration. The Office of the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance (F) was created in 2006 to help streamline the budgeting process for foreign aid within the executive branch, centralize that process, and better align U.S. assistance with broader policy priorities. While the creation of F has improved transparency of the budgeting process and improved the coordination of foreign assistance among various departments and offices of the executive branch, the process remains rigid to a degree that exacerbates the current problems on the Congressional side of the budget process . For example, if the administration had been able to adapt the numbers in its budget request submitted in February, March, and April to account for the uprising in Tunisia that began in mid-December and forced Ben Ali from power by January 14, that would have helped make the budget more meaningful. Likewise, if the administration had been able to more quickly finalize its FY11 budget allocations following the passage of the FY11 appropriations bill in April, that would mitigate to some degree the effects of the extremely late passage of the bill by Congress.

US-Egypt education programs key to restore US credibility with Arab publicKetterer, 11(Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST, based in Cairo. He previously served as Vice Chancellor for Policy & Planning and Deputy Provost-SUNY, http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/01/28/us-egypt-use-power-softly-and-forget-the-stick/)

To think through the central challenge of the future of U.S./Egyptian relations, the President should convene a colloquium of experts who would gather immediately to advise him and Secretary Clinton on the road forward between Egypt and the U.S. and inferentially the region. As indicated in the recently completed Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, this road to the future should indeed be based upon a new level of civilian engagement i.e., significantly strengthened educational and cultural relations need to be the hallmarks of how we will move forward now so that none will misread, as the President said, “the purpose behind our power.” The last thing that Egypt or Tunisia needs is so-called technical assistance that deliver consultants and technology in the name of democracy. They have been tried for years and produced minimal results, at best – and at a great cost. Such programs put the U.S. in the position of the world’s ponderous pedant lecturing on governance, wagging a finger and seeking to teach new lessons on how things should be carried out in a real democracy. No, what is needed now is for the U.S . to offer programs in real partnership and the promise of sustained value: educational and cultural exchanges that involve students , faculty , young political leaders, artists and others. This is not just a nice thing to do, it is at the heart of how we can re-set a relationship between the American people and the Arab world. Military aid and boondoggle development projects have not worked (and have often pitted the U.S. against the citizens in Arab countries). Ask most Egyptians who Mubarak’s chief sponsor is and they will say it is the US. Do you think, then, that they are brimming with good feelings toward the U.S. as they stand up against the batons and water guns of Mubarak’s security forces? But America’s universities, its culture and openness still garner great support in the Arab world. Take another look at John Waterbury’s 2003 article in Foreign Affairs, “Hate Your Policies, Love Your Institutions.” It is as true now as it was eight years ago. The sad fact is that the U.S. policies are widely perceived around the Arab world to be on the wrong side of history, and as history shifts so rapidly today in the streets of Cairo and Tunis we must take careful next steps. The long wager on stability over reform is coming up empty.


UQ

US-Egypt science programs are competing for unused ESF to expand their programming nowMargolis, 11(6/23, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs-Dept. of State, Request for Applications Announcement: Building Opportunity Out of Science and Technology (BOOST): Energizing Young Middle Eastern and North African Scientists, URL Not Available—Google the Title)

New discoveries in science and technology can be transformative to societies and economies. However, many nations, including Middle Eastern and North African countries, have not achieved maximum return on investment in science and technology (S&T). Strengthened human capital in the scientific research sector is necessary to realize this potential. MENA countries represent a diverse group of cultures, economies, and scientific capacity that directly impact the transformative capability of scientific research to these nations. While the majority of MENA countries have invested in education and research, many of these nations face a youth bulge of highly educated, underemployed 18-30 year-olds. Successful investment in science capacity encompasses more than numbers of PhDs issued or square meters of laboratory space. Training and support is necessary to strengthen this demographic’s ability to access research funding and link to and collaborate with the outside research community . To achieve these goals, young scientists also require enhanced ability to access, critically analyze, and communicate research findings in oral and written form. High impact virtual training and mentorship opportunities in these areas, as well as engaging in hands-on learning experiences are therefore necessary to fill gaps in existing scientific capacity and infrastructure in many countries. Department of State has allocated up to $247,500 USD in FY 2010 E conomic S upport F unds for a suite of science and technology capacity building activities under the Building Opportunity Out of Science and Technology (BOOST) program. Should additional funds become available, OES may consider expanding initial programs and/or considering additional awards. BOOST aims to excite and empower young scientists through education and training that extends beyond book learning and laboratory skills to create a cohort of young scientists able to advance research that addresses key challenges facing the globe.


2NC LINK

Increasing democracy aid trades-off with other ESF priorities—education gets cutKessler, 11(2/10, Washington Post Columnist, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/follow_the_egyptian_money.html)

"A major contributing factor to the limited achievements for some of these programs resulted from a lack of support from the Government of Egypt," the report said. "According to a mission official, the Government of Egypt has resisted USAID/Egypt's democracy and governance program and has suspended the activities of many U.S. NGOs because Egyptian officials thought these organizations were too aggressive." Toward the end of Bush's term, his fiscal year 2009 budget proposed spending $ 45 million on democracy and good-governance programs in Egypt, including more than $20 million on promoting civil society. This would have kept the amount earmarked for democracy programs the same as 2008, even as spending in other areas, such as health, education and economics, was scheduled to be reduced in what is known as the E conomic S upport Fund as part of a reordering of priorities. "The United States has developed strategic partnerships with reformers from Egyptian civil society and within governmental institutions," the administration said in a document to Congress. "While some democracy and governance activities, such as reforming the judiciary, will be implemented through direct assistance to the GOE [Government of Egypt], assistance to civil society and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will be funded directly." But that nascent effort was largely shelved when the Obama administration took office . For fiscal year 2009, the administration immediately halved the money for democracy promotion in Egypt; the civil society funds were slashed 70 percent, to $7 million.


AT: MCINERNEY-REGIONAL RESPONSE FUND

4. Regional response fund gets bogged down in Congress – internal tradeoffs are much easier and more likelyBoston Globe, 8/23/’11(“Congress could resist additional aid to Libya”)

This year’s federal budget includes a $160 million “regional response fund ” for aiding nascent democracies in the Middle East and North Africa. The money has already been appropriated, and the administration would likely have to notify Congress if it wanted to use some of those funds for Libya, according to Cole Bockenfeld, the director of advocacy for the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington organization that advocates for democratic reform in that region.Members of Congress opposed to aid could hinder that process , Bockenfeld said, by seeking delays in committee or putting holds on Senate votes. Such opposition is most likely to come from isolationist members of Congress. Blocking aid, he said, would send a mixed message to the nascent government in Libya.


INTRIN

Politics tests a key opportunity costSaideman, associate professor of political science - McGill University, 7/25/’11(Steve, “Key Constraint on Policy Relevance,” http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2011/07/key-constraint-on-policy-relevance.html)

Dan Drezner has a great post today about how the foreign policy smart set (his phrase) gets so frustrated by domestic politics that they tend to recommend domestic political changes that are never going to happen.I would go one step further and suggest that one of the key problems for scholars who want to be relevant for policy debates is that we tend to make recommendations that are "incentive incompatible." I love that phrase. What is best for policy may not be what is best for politics , and so we may think we have a good idea about what to recommend but get frustrated when our ideas do not get that far.Lots of folks talking about early warning about genocide, intervention into civil wars and the like blame "political will." That countries lack, for whatever reason, the compulsion to act. Well, that is another way of saying that domestic politics matters, but we don't want to think about it . Dan's piece contains an implication which is often false--that IR folks have little grasp of domestic politics. Many IR folks do tend to ignore or simplify the domestic side too much, but there is plenty of scholarship on the domestic determinants of foreign policy/grand strategy/war/trade/etc. Plenty of folks look at how domestic institutions and dynamics can cause countries to engage in sub-optimal foreign policies (hence the tradeoff implied in my second book--For Kin or Country).The challenge, then, is to figure out what would be a cool policy and how that cool policy could resonate with those who are relevant domestically. That is not easy, but it is what is necessary . To be policy relevant requires both parts--articulating a policy alternative that would improve things and some thought about how the alternative could be politically appealing.Otherwise, we can just dream about the right policy and gnash our teeth when it never happens.


A2 NO WATER WARS

Water war skeptics wrong; Nile specific conflict triggers make war likelyPearce 5/14/9http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_truth_about_water_wars/ Fred Pearce is an environmental journalist and author of numerous books, including When the River Runs Dry: Water—The Defining Crisis of the 21st Century.

Water, unlike land, is hard to “capture.” It flows. As Barnaby points out, countries have a lot of reasons for cooperating over water that flows between nations. And many do. She’s also right in acknowledging the importance of trade in thirsty products like food—often termed “virtual water.” There would have been many more wars in the Middle East in the past 30 years but for this trade, which keeps Egypt, Jordan, and others fed. But that approach will not always work. There are serious potential conflicts around the world where upstream countries can withhold water from arid downstream countries that need or want it. India and Pakistan constantly bicker over the Indus. How long will a fully functioning Iraqi state settle for Turkey controlling the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates with large dams? Meanwhile Egypt’s insistence on its prior right to the majority of the flow of the Nile is an unresolved tension afflicting a quarter of a continent. If wars arise over grievances, then water is a common source of grievances between nations. Israeli and Palestinian technocrats may cooperate over day-to-day water management, but that does not stop an absolute ban, imposed by Israel, on West Bank Palestinians sinking new wells to tap water beneath their feet. Water is a major grievance there. And as water shortages become more intense in much of the world over the coming decades, the potential for conflicts will grow. It is dangerous to “blame” a resource like water for wars. It can too easily become an excuse for failing to resolve conflicts. To “blame” water for genocide in Sudan is obscene. But to go to the other extreme and deny water as a potential factor in wars is equally foolish. Yes, management of water can become a meeting point for nations as well as a source of conflict. But many rivers and other sources of water that cross international boundaries are today not subject to treaties for sharing. That is dangerous. If we are to avoid water wars, there is an urgent need for more water diplomacy.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_truth_about_water_wars/


***2NR


CP

Expanding tax benefits improves the effectiveness of private aid---allows donors to more efficiently control qualityPozen, 6(JD-Yale Law School, “Remapping the Charitable Deduction”, 39 Conn. L. Rev. 531)

2. UtilitarianismInvestment efficiency may be a more meaningful evaluative construct than treasury efficiency, but it too provides a limited window onto the desirability of the deduction. A more robust conception of efficiency, notes Mark Gergen, would look to see "not how much extra money is spent on charity as a result of a deduction [but] rather, how much people benefit from that extra expenditure compared to the alternative use of the lost revenues." n127 This aggregate cost-benefit analysis is a utilitarian inquiry; the normative criterion on which it evaluates the deduction is social welfare maximization. It is by now the most important theory of the deduction in the literature. n128Scholars who have defended the deduction on utilitarian grounds-almost never explicitly, for deduction theorists have been coy about their normative premises n129 -have raised two main arguments. The first concerns the mix of goods and services generated by the deduction. Professor Burton Weisbrod has famously argued that because government entities in a majoritarian democracy tend to provide public goods only at the level that satisfies the median voter, nonprofit organizations arise to fulfill residual demand with supplementary provision. n130 Nonprofits, and [*558] the deductions that support them, correct for government failure by facilitating the closer matching of voter preferences. The more heterogeneous the community, the more value nonprofits will add. The charitable deduction also corrects for another form of governmental failure, by stimulating the production of goods and services that are widely demanded but that the government is constrained from providing by the Constitution (as with religion) or by its very nature (as with monitoring and criticism of the government itself). n131 In its facilitation of a larger, richer mix of public goods than the government alone would provide, the deduction's opaqueness may prove a virtue. The reality of taxpayers being coerced into supporting each other's pet causes-some of which they may not care for, some of which they may positively dislike-is masked by the deduction's decentralized operation. As a matter of game theory and practical politics, this opacity likely makes the deduction a more effective broker of compromise, and a more powerful enhancer of social welfare, than a more explicit process would be. n132 The second main strain of utilitarian argument for the charitable deduction focuses not on the quantity and type of outputs that the deduction supports, but on the quality of these outputs. As a market-based mechanism for allocating the subsidy, the deduction spurs nonprofits to compete for donations from individual donors, rather than from a centralized charity apparat. If individual donors are reasonable judges of nonprofit performance, higher- quality organizations should benefit from this system . And , indeed, the deduction helps turn donors into better judges of performanc e because it empowers them as consumers and raises the stakes of their decisional role. The deduction's "ongoing" nature also enhances decisionmaking , Professor Saul Levmore has argued, by allowing the uncertain donor to "receive information regarding charities' receipts as the year progresses" and thereby assess in a dynamic process which [*559] charities would be able to use her donation most effectively. n133 In addition, the deduction incorporates two legal checks on quality in the utilitarian sense of aggregate welfare effects. The common law "public policy" doctrine, articulated by the Supreme Court in Bob Jones University v. United States, disallows deductions for gifts to organizations that violate fundamental public policies such as racial nondiscrimination. n134 The statutory prohibition on deductions for gifts to political or lobbying organizations, meanwhile, prevents subsidies from flowing to causes that will have a predictably widespread, mobilized opposition- causes whose furtherance will substantially decrease as well as increase social welfare. n135 The nonpartisan charities that garner the vast majority of the deduction subsidy are more likely to command a broad base of support or, at least, not to arouse a broad base of opposition. Combining these two strains of utilitarian argument, the deduction is seen to foster community benefits by generating a greater quantity, quality, and diversity of public goods than would result in its absence . Although it is practically impossible to measure these benefits or even to locate their recipients, n136 the basic argument is sensible: the nonprofit activity facilitated by the deduction contributes to the increase of social welfare both by fulfilling the demand schedules of a greater number of individuals (a pluralism of ends) and by generating innovation and experimentation in the delivery of goods and services, thereby spurring the marketplace to


higher-quality modes of production (a pluralism of means). But the utilitarian defense of the deduction is vulnerable at the level of fact as well as the level of political ethics.

No oversight and accountability issues---private giving harnesses new technologies that allow innovative monitoring methodsKapur, 10(Director, Center for Advanced Study of India, and Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India, University of Pennsylvania, 42 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 1143, Summer)

In the marketplace, competition (choice) is one way to achieve accountability . For instance, in the business world, it takes an average of fifty-eight ideas to successfully launch one product. n42 And once a successful product is introduced, it is periodically updated to respond to customer feedback. The companies that are most effective at experimenting with new ideas and updating their products succeed more often against their competitors. Companies that fail to develop rapid-cycle experimentation and design refinement decline or go out of business, paving the way for new, innovative companies to enter the market. n43 The good news is that tech nological advances have made possible new mechanisms for ensuring accountability in giving . However, these new mechanisms are only just beginning to emerge. While there are no silver bullets, this paper argues that these mechanisms have the potential to significantly advance the effective exercise of accountability in foreign aid. It seems that the trend for increased private giving is here to stay. In addition to large foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, new "marketplaces" for aid and microfinancing, such as GlobalGiving and Kiva, n50 are making it far easier for regular people to conduct what Nicholas Kristoff calls "do-it-yourself foreign aid." n51 This trend allows private donors to direct their funds to specific uses in the developing world and then to track their impact . In itiatives such as the Acumen Fund are using venture capital approaches to invest in companies overseas whose missions are to improve lives. Overall, the buzz of entrepreneurs, business techniques, venture capital models of social investing, promising startups, and funding models conditional on performance has created a strong belief that private foreign aid is much more creative, effective, and accountable. But how valid is this belief? New private aid actors are piloting technology that holds the potential to radically change the way that information flows and accountability are exercised. This tech nology increasingly makes it possible for principals to (a) observe beneficiary outcomes much more directly and quickly and /or (b) hear directly from beneficiaries regarding their own satisfaction with the outcomes. Private aid can create strong accountability pressure through its method of project selection by leveraging networks of relationships. When combined with new technology platforms, these networks can create strong ex ante pressures for quality and can also (at least theoretically) create incentives to support success during implementation. Thus, GlobalGiving depends heavily on formal and informal networks to validate the quality of organizations that are permitted to list projects on the marketplace. In the early stages, nearly all organizations listing projects on GlobalGiving had to be formally sponsored by a reputed international field-based organization with which GlobalGiving had a legal agreement. The sponsoring organizations would refer community-based organizations with [*1162] which they had worked in the past and in whom they had confidence in terms of leadership and project quality. Since the names of these sponsoring organizations appeared publicly on the home pages of the projects they sponsored on GlobalGiving, the sponsoring organizations had an incentive to preserve their reputations by referring high-quality organizations--and also by keeping an eye on the projects during implementation. Often, donors on GlobalGiving will decide to support a small community-based project organization because they recognize and trust its sponsor. Once listed on GlobalGiving, project organizations begin building a track record on the site that donors can see. This track record enables the small project organization to build a reputation of its own, and it creates a self-reinforcing incentive for performance. As the GlobalGiving marketplace grows, even donors who are not transacting through the marketplace are beginning to check out organizations' track record on GlobalGiving. Several groups in the U.S. have already begun to provide information about independent ratings of nonprofit service providers. This approach is akin to Consumer Reports' rating of service reliability of different brands and helps the principal determine whether funding an organization is likely to result in a positive impact. Competition among these groups is resulting in innovations that improve quality and relevance of the ratings over time. These organizations include Guidestar, n61 which makes available broad financial and legal information about many U.S. nonprofits, Charity Navigator, n62 which provides ratings of one to four stars for a select group of nonprofits, and GiveWell, n63 which provides in-depth analysis of certain programs and initiatives. Philanthropedia n64 ranks nonprofits based on an aggregation of reviews by


nonprofit professionals. These efforts are relevant to accountability in foreign aid for two reasons. First, all of these platforms offer funders independent information about U.S. intermediaries and service providers--something that is not available to the foreign aid sector. The official aid agencies and even large nonprofits have effectively muffled outside pressure for better accountability by creating costly in-house evaluation mechanisms that tend to operate with different methodologies and whose findings are often carefully framed before release. n65 Second, the rating agencies themselves have been forced to innovate by competition and by market signals related to what principals care about. For example, Charity Navigator used to rank nonprofits largely based on overhead costs. However, after many users and competitors in the marketplace [*1167] noted that overhead costs were a very poor proxy for effectiveness, Charity Navigator was forced to change its methodology. This move was applauded by its competitors, who believe that the change helps advance the popular conception of accountability and enables the different organizations to focus on more relevant indicators. n66 The rapid decline in the cost of audio and video recording devices, the ability to transmit the information over the internet, and the availability of such free or low-cost tools such as Google Earth enable funders to get much more raw data about what is actually happening on the ground and to make sense of that data by using annotation and sharing features in tools such as Google Maps. n67 These new information sources help funders reduce the principal-agent problems inherent in funding activities through service providers, since funders are now able, in some cases, to directly observe the impact of the activities they are funding. A recent example of this is a tool called FORMA (Forestry Monitoring for Action), developed by the Center for Global Development and the government of Denmark. n68 It uses satellite imagery to produce monthly maps of deforestation down to a very small scale. Another example is the use of satellite images by the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya to promote better use of fertilizer in African agriculture projects. n69 These tools tend to be most effective in monitoring the impact of physical outputs rather than projects involving personal interactions. Recently, the availability of cheap cameras (and camera phones) has allowed for monitoring personal interactions. In India, an experiment to reduce teacher absenteeism provided teachers with a camera with a tamper-proof date and time function, along with instructions to have one of the children photograph the teacher with other students at the beginning and end of the school day. The time and date stamp on the photographs were used to track teacher attendance which was then linked to her/his salary. The result was an immediate decline in teacher absenteeism and, over time, positive child learning outcomes. n70 C. Community feedback n71 The popularity of community feedback on sites ranging from commercial sites like eBay n72 and Amazon n73 to pure ratings sites like TripAdvisor n74 and Yelp n75 has led to the adoption of similar mechanisms on sites related to private aid. Even before the advent of online feedback mechanisms, the Kecamatan Development Project in Indonesia pioneered a system of providing transparent information to villagers about local aid projects and their costs, and solicited feedback from the villagers themselves. n76 This transformed the accountability chain in this program. About five years ago, GlobalGiving began to encourage donor feedback on progress updates posted by community service providers. Many other online marketplaces now do the [*1169] same. The GlobalGiving website has permitted comments by donors, beneficiaries, and intermediaries themselves for several years, and in 2009 it piloted and structured initiative to solicit beneficiary feedback, with encouraging results in Kenya. n77 A new startup called Great Non-Profits n78 is collaborating with Guidestar and GlobalGiving to promote community feedback more broadly. An organization called Keystone n79 is trying to standardize the customer satisfaction question for participating nonprofits. They provide a free web survey that automatically compares one organization's results with the average of peers in the sector. While collecting and interpreting this type of feedback poses certain challenges, n80 its availability is nonetheless a major innovation in the sector. n81 The next step is to integrate these three strands of information flows and make them available to principals (funders), intermediaries, service providers, and beneficiaries themselves. The FORMA system described above is a great step in this direction, since it makes available satellite imagery and then allows users to upload photos and provide comments about each plot of land to either dispute the findings or help explain why [*1170] the deforestation is happening. The initial reception of the FORMA mechanism has been positive, but the tool is too new to assess its impact. As organizations, particularly aid and philanthropy marketplace platforms, begin to integrate this new information, it will be important to (a) understand what types of information actually matter to the principals, intermediaries, and beneficiaries and (b) present the information in a way that is digestible and actually influences behavior. The online marketplaces have all found that too much information--even relevant information--can lead to decision paralysis among funders. n82 It is likely that different principals, intermediaries, and beneficiaries will require different approaches to information aggregation. Yet there may be a compelling reason (discussed below) to have a common basic platform that allows


comparability across different agencies, sectors, and initiatives. VII. New Roles for the Public through Community and Beneficiary Feedback Of these three new information channels, community feedback holds particular promise in increasing accountability. Traditional accountability chains rely mostly on formal , periodic evaluations by experts. Such evaluations are both expensive and easily gamed. Because service providers are generally able to prepare well in advance, evaluators see things only in the most favorable light. n83 There is often an inherent conflict of interest, since the evaluators work for the service provider (the agent) rather than the funder (the principal). The agent often has the opportunity and incentive to massage the findings before release to the principal. By contrast, community feedback enables the principal to hear directly from the beneficiaries about the effect of the intervention. Such information directly from beneficiaries can inform a modification of an ongoing initiative. A. How Community Feedback Can Improve Accountability in Aid The traditional aid cycle relies heavily on experts (working for either the principal or the agent) to diagnose a community's needs and design a program intended to address those needs. By contrast, a community feedback mechanism can be used ex ante to hear directly from the beneficiaries (and others with a knowledge of the local context) (a) what they feel their greatest needs are and (b) what solutions would be most appropriate. While community feedback provides highly valuable sources of information for the accountability process, interpreting the feedback is not always simple. The boundaries and membership of a community are not always self-evident. This is particularly the case in societies that are socially heterogeneous, as evident in studies that suggest a negative link between the quality of public goods provision and social heterogeneity. n84 This implies that the inferences drawn from community feedback will depend in part on the community's characteristics and the representativeness of the people giving feedback. The smaller the size of the community, the more homogeneous will be the community's preferences. Since private aid projects tend to cover smaller communities, community feedback is likely to be a reasonable "truth revelation" device. By contrast, government aid programs are much larger and cover much larger groups of people who may or may not form "communities." Consequently, they will necessarily need to go beyond community feedback in order to evaluate project performance. Additionally, the smaller the size of the project, the smaller the incentives in gaming feedback mechanisms. n85 Private aid projects are generally smaller. Consequently the incentives for gaming such mechanisms are also less, and the shorter chains of delegation make them easier to monitor. One must, of course, recognize intrinsic limitations to the quality of information that may be obtained from any feedback mechanisms. The most obvious limitation stems from selection mechanisms, i.e. selection effects of who actually gives the feedback. Callers-in to talk radio programs or letters to the editor can either be more motivated or more kooky. Large numbers address this in a sort of statistical averaging, but large numbers come with their own caveats. Democratic majorities could indeed reflect the broad will of a community or (at least in some cases) simply reflect the tyranny of the majority. In the abstract, community feedback should reflect the "wisdom of crowds"; it could, however, occasionally reflect the "madness of mobs" and a "herd mentality." Another caveat is that more information is not alone a guarantee of better accountability. Financial markets are flooded with information, yet the recent financial crisis demonstrates that, if risk and reward are so large and so asymmetric, competition and availability of information is no match for skewed incentives. However, these conditions are very unlikely in the case of private aid--the private pecuniary rewards are simply not that large. Online marketplaces such as GlobalGiving and Donors Choose require intermediaries to report back on progress at the end of a project and/or periodically throughout the year. n86 These reports are both sent to donors and posted online for anyone to see. The public nature of these reports is a major step forward because it provides an additional disincentive for intermediaries ("agents") to post wrong or misleading information. Posting misleading information is much more risky when beneficiaries or others can scrutinize the validity of claims. n87 To some extent, this feature follows the trend of the official aid sector, which has been posting more and more reports online. It is certainly the case that initially poor beneficiaries [*1173] are unlikely to access these reports. But other agents of civil society will do so on their behalf. This is a dynamic process that can unfold over time, as beneficiaries gradually begin to exercise agency over projects purportedly for their benefit. However, in most cases, there are still significant transaction costs for third parties to flag misinformation even when it is in the public domain. For example, it is often difficult to know who to call or who can take remedial action. n88 That is why the next step in the process--community feedback--has such high marginal returns. Community feedback allows people to comment directly on publicly available reports via the web, e-mail, or other means and, significantly, to make those comments public. The community can include beneficiaries, experts with knowledge of the project but who are not directly involved, or simply visitors to the project. Because the reports and comments are publically available they can radically increase not only the information available, but also the pressure to take action. B. The Special Potential of Beneficiary Feedback


Community feedback can come from other development experts--or any concerned person or organization--outside the traditional foreign aid system. Beneficiary feedback is a subset of community feedback, and it deserves special attention. Though in some sense funders are the "principals" in the accountability process, some would argue that beneficiaries should have the final say in what development projects are funded and how they are assessed. n89 There is a strong normative case for this view: those whose lives are affected the most by a project should surely have an important voice in that project. Though there are well-known issues related to aggregation of choice and externalities, n90 it is difficult to argue with [*1174] the proposition that the views of beneficiaries on the impact of a project should have serious weight. All other agents in the accountability chain should in some sense be accountable to the beneficiaries. Rapidly spreading new technologies, particularly mobile phones and SMS-to-web interfaces like Twitter, now allow villagers to report continuously in real time on project progress. n91 Mobile phones in particular are now so ubiquitous that even very poor communities have reasonable access. n92 This means that the beneficiaries can ultimately guide implementers. In the future, these technology-aided feedback loops can enable clients to guide practitioners throughout implementation and drive donors during the funding process. They also open the possibility of soliciting the views of beneficiaries even before a project. n93 This promises to break the monopoly of experts and intermediaries in deciding what people need most. Beneficiaries could be canvassed about both the type of project that is highest priority for them. Once a type of project is selected, then beneficiary input into the design could be solicited. The importance of community involvement and feedback for accountability systems is not a panacea, and it must be accompanied by other sources of information and feedback. An analysis of corruption in infrastructure projects in Indonesia found that government audits appear to do a better job than community monitoring in reducing missing expenditures, as measured by discrepancies between official project costs and [*1175] an independent engineer's estimates of costs. n94 Increasing grassroots participation in monitoring had little average impact. In some cases, grassroots participation reduced missing expenditures only in situations with limited free-rider problems and limited elite capture. The results of that study suggest that traditional top-down monitoring can indeed play an important role in reducing corruption, even in a highly corrupt environment. In India, a flagship government program on universal primary education has sought to organize both locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools into committees. The program gives these groups powers over both resource allocation and monitoring and management of school performance. In addition, the program provides information, trains community members in a new testing tool, and organizes volunteers to hold remedial reading camps for illiterate children. However, an impact evaluation found no impact on community involvement in public schools and no impact on teacher effort or learning outcomes in those schools. n95 It is likely, however, that feedback itself is a "learned" process. One should not expect long-disempowered communities to become strongly engaged, especially if hard experience has taught them that promises made by outside agencies are rarely kept. There are also well-known challenges with aggregating choice, which suggests that doing so is not a panacea. Nonetheless, new media technologies, by providing real- time feedback , can become much more empowering to beneficiaries. n96 This empowerment can have dynamic effects over time, gradually improving their capacity for "social agency," i.e. their ability and willingness to participate. In any case, these types of mechanisms offer at least the possibility of obtaining beneficiary input. With time, it will become difficult to argue against [*1176] the idea that beneficiary input should become the norm, with intermediaries having to justify each time they do not solicit it. Ex ante beneficiary input and community feedback during implementation emphasize our point that an important objective of better accountability mechanisms should be to improve project design from inception, beginning with a better understanding of the communities' own sense of their needs. Input should come not only from beneficiaries but also other interested parties, enabling implementers to refine their approach as the project progresses. Accountability mechanisms can speed learning much faster than the current approaches, which feature a multi-year project cycle followed by a formal evaluation.


DA

Thousands of years of data proveGlecik 5/29/9http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_truth_about_water_wars/ Peter Gleick is co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security and the UN’s Expert Group on Policy Relevance of the World Water Assessment Program. He is editor of the biennial book The World’s Water and has recently begun blogging at Water By the Numbers.

Far more important, and far easier to answer, is the question: Is there any connection between fresh water and conflict, including violent conflict? And the answer has to be an unambiguous “yes.” History going back 5,000 years is rife with examples where water has been a goal of violence, a target or tool of conflict, or a source of disputes and political strife. Our Water Conflict Chronology, at worldwater.org, lists hundreds of these examples.And if there is a strong connection between water and conflicts, two new questions come up: Are the risks of these conflicts growing, and how can we reduce them? I think the answer to the first is, yes, the risks of water-related conflicts appears to be growing.

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