Imperialism K Neg

1NC
The economic intervention of the affirmative into Latin America
is a form of imperialism which precludes self-determination
and subjugates recipient countries
Slater, Dept of Geography Loughborough University, 2006(David, Imperial powers and democratic imaginations, Third World
Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 8)

One response to this question is to suggest that, unlike other Western powers, the imperiality of US power emerged out of a postcolonial
anchorage, or, in other words, a project of imperial power gradually emerged out of an initial anti-colonial struggle for independence from
British rule. This fact of emergence has given the USA a contradictory identity of being a 'post-colonial imperial power', with the determining
emphasis falling on the 'imperial' (Slater, 2004a). The postcolonial essentially refers to the specificity of origin, and does not preclude the
possibility of a coloniality of power, as was exemplified in the case of the Philippines, or as is argued continues to apply to Puerto Rico
(Pantojas-Garcia, 2005). Such a paradoxical identity has two significant implications. First, one finds juxtaposed an
affirmation of the legitimacy of the self-determination of peoples with a belief in the geopolitical
destiny of the USA. Such a belief dates at least from the time of 'Manifest Destiny' and notions of
'benevolent assimilation' to the present where, as the Mexican political scientist Orozco (2005: 54)
expresses it, the USA sees itself as the 'first universal nation'. Historically, the contradiction
between support for the rights of people to decide their own fate and a belief in the geopolitical
destiny of 'America' (rather than Jose Marti's nuestra America see Santos de Souza, 2001) has
necessitated a discursive 'bridge'. This bridge has been formed through the invocation of a
democratic mission that combines the national and international spheres. In order to transcend
the contradiction between an identity based on the self-determination of peoples and another rooted
in Empire, a horizon is created for other peoples who are encouraged to choose freedom and
democracy, thereby embedding their own struggles within an Americanising vision and practice.
Second, the primacy of self-determination provides a key to explaining the dichotomy frequently present in the discourses of US geopolitical
intervention, where a split is made between a concept of the people and a concept ofthe rulers. Given the historical differentiation of the New
(American) World of freedom, progress and democracy from an Old (European) World of privilege and colonial power, support for anti-
colonial struggles has been accompanied by a separation between oppressed people and tyrannical rulers. For example, in the case of US
hostility towards the Cuban Revolution, the Helms- Burton Act of 1996 makes a clear separation between the Cuban people who need
supporting in their vulnerability and the Castro government, which is seen as a tyrannical oppressor of its own people and a security threat to the
international community (Slater, 2004b). Similar distinctions have been made in the contexts of interventions in Grenada (1983) and Panama
(1989). Overall it can be suggested that geopolitical interventions have been couched in terms of a prominent
concern for the rights of peoples who are being oppressed by unrepresentative and totalitarian
regimes. The USA is thus represented as a benevolent guardian of the rights of a subordinated
people. An imperial ethic of care is projected across frontiers to provide one form of legitimisation
for interventions. This particular ethic of care needs to be kept in mind as a constitutive feature of
the imperial and, although imperial power includes the capacity for force, equally it requires
discourses of legitimisation wherein ideas of care and guidance continue to play a leading role.
Geopolitical interventions have been a permanent feature of the landscape of North - South
relations and can be viewed in terms of the interconnections between desire, will, capacity and
legitimisation. The will to intervene can be represented as a crystallisation of a desire to expand, expressed for example in the notion of
'Manifest Destiny' (see Pratt, 1927). Such a will can only be made effective when the capacities-military,
economic, political-to intervene are sufficiently developed. Will and capacity together provide a
force, but their effectiveness is only secured as a hegemonic power through the deployment of a
discourse of justification. A political will that focuses desire and is able to mobilise the levers of
intervention seeks a hegemonic role through the ability to induce consent by providing leadership,
while retaining the capacity to coerce. The desire to intervene, to penetrate another society and help
to reorder, readjust, modernise, develop, civilise, democratise that other society is an essential
part of any imperial project. The geopolitical will is provided by changing agents of power working
in and through the apparatuses of the imperial state. The processes of legitimisation for that will
to power are produced within the state but also within civil society (see Joseph et al, 1998; Salvatore, 2005).
In the case of the USA and its relations with the societies of the global South and especially the
Latin South the processes of discursive legitimisation have been particularly significant in
supporting its power and hegemonic ambition. Specifically in this regard the aim of spreading or
diffusing democracy, or a particular interpretation of democracy, has been and remains a
crucial element in the process of justification of geopolitical power.

This imperialism creates a violent global police state which

normalizes endless cycles of racism, sexism, and heterosexism

MOHANTY in 6 (CHANDRA TALPADE, Department of Womens Studies, Syracuse

University, Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 720, February 2006, US
Empire and the Project of Womens Studies: Stories of citizenship, complicity and
dissent, http://www.uccs.edu/~pkeilbac/courses/intlpol/readings/US%20Empire.pdf)
The clearest effects of US empire building in the domestic arena are thus
evident in the way citizenship has been restructured, civil rights violated
and borders repoliced since the commencement of the war of drugs, and now the
war on terrorism and the establishment of the homeland security regime. While
the US imperial project calls for civilizing brown and black (and now Arab)
men and rescuing their women outside its borders, the very same state
engages in killing, imprisoning, and criminalizing black and brown and now
Muslim and Arab peoples within its own borders. Former political prisoner Linda
Evans (2005) calls the US a global police state one that has adopted a
mass incarceration strategy of social control since the Reagan years.
Analyzing the militarization of US society, Evans argues that the new definition of
domestic terrorism heralds the now legal return of the Counter Intelligence
Program (COINTELPRO) that conducted illegal covert operations in the 1960s and
1970s against the Black Panther party, the American Indian movement, the Puerto
Rican Independence movement, and left/socialist organizations. Racial profiling,
once illegal, is now legitimated as public policy, including a requirement that
Arab and Muslim men from over 25 countries register and submit to INS
interrogation. Similarly, Julia Sudbury analyzes the global crisis and rise in the mass
incarceration of women, suggesting that we must be attentive to the ways in which
punishment regimes are shaped by global capitalism, dominant and subordinate
patriarchies and neocolonial, racialized ideologies (see Sudbury, 2005, p. xiii). This
prison industrial complex is supported by the militarization of domestic
law enforcement. As Anannya Bhattacharjee (2002) suggests, there have been
dramatic increases in funding, increasing use of advanced military technology,
sharing of personnel and equipment with the military, and the general promotion of
a war-like culture in domestic law enforcement and also in a range of public
agencies (welfare, schools, hospitalsand now universities?) that are subjected to
an accelerated culture of surveillance and law enforcement (see Silliman &
Bhattacharjee, 2002). The effects of these conjoined economic/military
policies of the US imperial state represents an alarming increase of
violence against women, children and communities bearing the brunt of
US military dominance around the world. In the US, policies clearly target
poor and immigrant communities. In her new work, Jacqui Alexander (2005)
analyzes the primacy of processes of heterosexualization in the consolidation of
empire. She suggests that the mobilization of the loyal heterosexual citizen
patriot is achieved through the collapse of constructions of the enemy, the
terrorist and the sexual pervert. Similarly, Jasbir Puar and Amit Rai (2002)
analyze the terrorism industry since 9/11, exploring the production of the monster,
the fag, and the terrorist as figures of surveillance and criminalization. This clearly
gendered, sexualized, and racialized culture of militarism and surveillance
is buttressed by a hegemonic culture of consumption and neo-liberal
conservatism wherein discourses of advancement and technological
superiority, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiments dovetail with
ideologies of patriotism, and faith-based initiatives and ideologies to
justify the war at home and the war abroad. Take Abu Ghraib for instance.

Alternative: Vote negative to interrogate the epistemological

framework of the 1AC. Breaking down boundaries of
knowledge is key to counteract otherwise inevitable neo-
imperialist violence

McLaren and Kincheloe in 5 (Peter Professor of Education, Graduate School of

Education and Information Studies @ UCLA and Joe, professor and Canada Research
Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition, Eds Norman Denzin
and Yvonna Lincoln)
In this context, it is important to note that we understand a social theory as a
map or a guide to the social sphere. In a research context, it does not determine
how we see the world but helps us devise questions and strategies for
exploring it. A critical social theory is concerned in particular with issues of
power and justice and the ways that the economy; matters of race, class, and
gender; ideologies; discourses; education; religion and other social
institutions; and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system
(Beck-Gernsheim, Butler, & Puigvert, 2003; Flccha, Gomez, & Puigvert, 2003). Thus,
in this context we seek to provide a view of an evolving criticality or a
reconceptualized critical theory. Critical theory is never static; it is always
evolving, changing in light of both new theoretical insights and new problems and
social circumstances. The list of concepts elucidating our articulation of critical
theory indicates a criticality informed by a variety of discourses emerging after the
work of the Frankfurt School Indeed, some of the theoretical discourses, while
referring to themselves as critical, directly call into question some of the work of
Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse. Thus, diverse theoretical traditions have
informed our understanding of criticality and have demanded understanding of
diverse forms of oppression including class, race, gender, sexual, cultural, religious,
colonial, and ability-related concerns. The evolving notion of criticality we present is
informed by, while critiquing, the post-discoursesfor example, postmodernism,
poststructuralism, and postcolonialism. In this context, critical theorists become
detectives of new theoretical insights, perpetually searching for new and
interconnected ways of understanding power and oppression and the ways
they shape everyday life and human experience. In this context, criticality and
the research it supports are always evolving, always encountering new ways
to irritate dominant forms of power, to provide more evocative and
compelling insights. Operating in this way, an evolving criticality is always
vulnerable to exclusion from the domain of approved modes of research. The forms
of social change it supports always position it in some places as an
outsider, an awkward detective always interested in uncovering social
structures, discourses, ideologies, and epistemologies that prop up both
the status quo and a variety of forms of privilege. In the epistemological
domain, white, male, class elitist, heterosexist, imperial, and colonial privilege
often operates by asserting the power to claim objectivity and neutrality.
Indeed, the owners of such privilege often own the "franchise" on reason
and rationality. Proponents of an evolving criticality possess a variety of
tools to expose such oppressive power politics. Such proponents assert that
critical theory is well-served by drawing upon numerous liberatory discourses and
including diverse groups of marginalized peoples and their allies in the
nonhierarchical aggregation of critical analysts {Bello, 2003; Clark, 2002;
Humphries, 1997). In the present era, emerging forms of neocolonialism and
neo-imperialism in the United States move critical theorists to examine
the wavs American power operates under the cover of establishing
democracies all over the world. Advocates of an evolving criticality argue
as we do in more detail later in this chapterthat such neocolonial power
must be exposed so it can be opposed in the United States and around the
world. The American Empires justification in the name of freedom for
undermining democratically elected governments from Iran (Kincheloe, 2004),
Chile, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to Liberia (when its real purpose is to acquire
geopolitical advantage for future military assaults, economic leverage in
international markets, and access to natural resources) must be exposed
by critical-ists for what it isa rank imperialist sham (McLaren, 2003a,
2003b; McLaren & Jaramillo, 2002; McLaren & Martin, 2003). Critical researchers
need to view their work in the context of living and working in a nation-
state with the most powerful military-industrial complex in history that is
shamefully using the terrorist attacks of September 11 to advance a ruthless
imperialist agenda fueled by capitalist accumulation by means of the rule of force
(McLaren & Farahmandpur,2003). Chomsky (2003), for instance, has accused the
U.S. government of the "supreme crime" of preventive war (in the case of its
invasion of Iraq, the use of military force to destroy an invented or imagined threat)
of the type that was condemned at Kuremburg. Others, like historian Arthur
Schlesinger (cited in Chomsky, 2003), have likened the invasion of Iraq to Japan's
"day of infamy'' that is, to the policy that imperial Japan employed at the time of
Pearl Harbor. David G. Smith (2003) argues that such imperial dynamics are
supported by particular epistemological forms. The United States is an
epistemological empire based on a notion of truth that undermines the
knowledges produced by those outside the good graces and benevolent
authority of the empire. Thus, in the 21 st century, critical theorists must
develop sophisticated ways to address not only the brute material
relations of class rule linked to the mode and relations of capitalist
production and imperialist conquest (whether through direct military
intervention or indirectly through the creation of client states) but also
the epistemological violence that helps discipline the world Smith refers
to this violence as a form of "information warfare" that spreads deliberate
falsehoods about countries such as Iraq and Iran. U.S. corporate and
governmental agents become more sophisticated in the use of such
episto-weaponry with every day that passes. Obviously, an evolving
criticality does not promiscuously choose theoretical discourses to add to the
bricolage of critical theories. It is highly suspiciousas we detail laterof
theories that fail to understand the malevolent workings of power, that
fail to critique the blinders of Eurocentrism, that cultivate an elitism of
insiders and outsiders, and that fail to discern a global system of inequity
supported by diverse forms of ideology and violence. It is uninterested in
any theoryno matter how fashionablethat does not directly address the
needs of victims of oppression and the suffering they must endure. The
following is an elastic, ever-evolving set of concepts included in our evolving notion
of criticality. With theoretical innovations and shifting Zeitgeists, they evolve. The
points that are deemed most important in one time period pale in relation to
different points in a new era.
 2NC O/V

The K turns the caseimperialist domination is the root cause

of all war and violence
Eckhardt 90 (William, Lentz Peace Research Laboratory of St. Louis, JOURNAL OF PEACE
RESEARCH, February 1990, p. 15-16)
Modern Western Civilization used war as well as peace to gain the whole world as a
domain to benefit itself at the expense of others: The expansion of the culture and
institutions of modern civilization from its centers in Europe was made possible by
imperialistic war It is true missionaries and traders had their share in the work of expanding world civilization, but always with the support, immediate
or in the background, of armies and navies (pp. 251-252). The importance of dominance as a primary motive in civilized war in general was also emphasized for modern war in
[Dominance] is probably the most important single element in the causation of
particular: '

major modern wars' (p. 85). European empires were thrown up all over the world in this
processof benefiting some at the expense of others, which was characterized by armed violence contributing to structural violence: 'World-empire
is built by conquest and maintained by force Empires are primarily organizations of
violence' (pp. 965, 969). 'The struggle for empire has greatly increased the disparity
between states with respect to the political control of resources, since there can never be
enough imperial territory to provide for all' (p. 1190). This 'disparity between states', not to mention the
disparity within states, both of which take the form of racial differences in life expectancies,

has killed 15-20 times as many people in the 20th century as have wars and
revolutions (Eckhardt & Kohler, 1980; Eckhardt, 1983c). When this structural violence of 'disparity between states' created by civilization is taken into
account, then the violent nature of civilization becomes much more apparent. Wright concluded that
'Probably at least 10 per cent of deaths in modern civilization can be attributed directly or indirectly to war The trend of war has been toward greater cost, both absolutely
and relative to population The proportion of the population dying as a direct consequence of battle has tended to increase' (pp. 246, 247). So far as structural
violence has constituted about one-third of all deaths in the 20th century (Eckhardt & Kohler,
1980; Eckhardt, 1983c), and so far as structural violence was a function of armed violence, past and present, then Wright's estimate was very conservative indeed. Assuming
civilization is responsible for one-third of 20th century deaths.
that war is some function of civilization, then

This is surely self-destruction carried to a high level of efficiency. The structural situation has been
improving throughout the 20th century, however, so that structural violence caused 'only' 20% of all deaths in 1980 (Eckhardt, 1983c). There is obviously room for more
improvement. To be sure, armed violence in the form of revolution has been directed toward the reduction of structural violence, even as armed violence in the form of
imperialism has been directed toward its maintenance. But imperial violence came first, in the sense of creating
structural violence, before revolutionary violence emerged to reduce it. It is in this sense that structural
violence was basically, fundamentally, and primarily a function of armed violence in
its imperial form. The atomic age has ushered in the possibility, and some would say
the probability, of killing not only some of us for the benefit of others, nor even of
killing all of us to no one's benefit, but of putting an end to life itself! This is surely
carrying self-destruction to some infinite power beyond all human comprehension. It's too much, or superfluous, as the
Existentialists might say. Why we should care is a mystery. But, if we do, then the need for civilized peoples to respond to the ethical challenge is very urgent indeed. Life

itself may depend upon our choice.

The K outweighsimperialism destroys value to life by

breaking down society psychologically and colonizing the mind
Thiongo 86 (Ngugi wa Thiongo Distinguished Professor of University of California, Irvine. Decolonising the Mind: The
Politics of Language in African Literature. 1986.)
The oppressed and the exploited of the earth maintain their defiance: liberty from theft. But the
biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective
defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a peoples belief in
their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their
unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one
wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that
wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from
themselves; for instance, with other peoples languages rather than their own. It makes them
identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop their
own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle.
Possibilities of triumph or victory are seen as remote, ridiculous dreams. The intended
results are despair, despondency and a collective death-wish. Amidst this wasteland
which it has created, imperialism presents itself as the cure and demands that the dependant
sing hymns of praise with the constant refrain: Theft is holy. Indeed, this refrain sums up the
new creed of the neo-colonial bourgeoisie in many independent African states.
Links
 Economic Engagement

Economic engagement is imperialism

Moon 7 Student of business at Michigan
William J. Moon: The Pillars of American Imperialism:Rationalizing U.S. Cold War
Involvement in the Republic of Korea. Lethbridge Undergraduate Research
Journal. 2007. Volume 2 Number 1.

In a bi-polar world, the economic well-being of a nation is intricately linked with

security of that nation. This notion is well explained by Joanne Gowa's security
externalities thesis, which argues that economic engagement between two
states can affect not only real income but also the security of the state
concerned. Essentially, economic engagement between two states
increases potential military power for the nations involved in it, and in
doing so, it can disrupt the preexisting balance of power among the
contracting states (Gowa 1246). In the bi-polar world created by the Soviet-
American conflict, initial choice of an alliance partner was thus explicitly linked with
the economic and security well-being of the United States. Stabilizing South
Korea's political economy, for instance, was an important objective that
would provide the United States with the strategic flexibility to disengage
from the peninsula (Lee, Stevens 31). Thus, giving monetary and military aid
to Korea was economically rational, since the more economic growth
Korea experienced, the more potential military power it could contribute
to the American side.

Economic engagement is a form of imperialismcontradictions

of capitalism are the driving factor
Nbete 12- PHD. In philosophy
Alubabari Ogoni as an Internal Colony: A Critique of Imperialism
[http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_10_Special_Issue_May_2012/6.pdf]

Imperialism is a broad term; it manifests in different forms ranging from

literature and culture to politics and economy, but economic drives usually
constitute its most crucial initial impetus. This partly explains why much of the
existing literature on the concept tends to either omit or downplay other
manifestations of it, such as cultural imperialism. Our present work, in suchlike
manner, acknowledges its variety of forms but dwells more on its
economic and institutional aspects. It is in this context that we find much of the
causal connection between it and the phenomenon of internal colonialism or
domestic colonialism (or, as Ken Saro-Wiwa also calls it when it occurs within black
countries, black colonialism). Claude Ake defines imperialism as The economic
control and exploitation of foreign lands arising from the necessity for
counteracting the impediments to the accumulation of capital engendered
by the internal contradictions of the domestic capitalist economy.5 There
are, according to Ake, about five contradictions of capitalism which tend
to lead to imperialism. One of them arises as the drive for maximization of
surplus value leads, necessarily, to the expansion of production. This
occurs because capitalist production goes on in a context in which
capitalists compete among themselves for the market. At the same time,
increase in production or output tends to create excess of supply over demand,
which leads to disequilibrium.

USs individualistically economic exploitation of other

countries is a form of dangerous e economic imperialism
Fine, 00 (Ben, Department of Economics, the University of London, Economics
Imperialism and Intellectual Progress: The Present as History of Economic
Thought?, History of Economics Review, p. 25) BF

The alternative is for the re-emergence and strengthening of a genuine political

economy, inspired by the clashes between social theory and economics imperialism.
By this, I mean an approach to economics that is systemic (understands the
social as distinct from aggregation over individuals), is socially and
historically specific (as opposed to universal and timeless, thus dealing
with the nature of capital and of capitalism), and addresses issues of
class, conflict, power, tendencies, structures, and so on. In part, this
depends upon reclaiming the knowledge lost by social theory in its
postmodernist turn and that lost by the discipline of economics through
lack of interest in, and tolerance of, its own history and traditions. It also
depends upon theoretical advance by taking account of the economic
realities of contemporary capitalism, woefully overlooked in the rush to
test ever more esoteric theories against empirical evidence. Whilst
economics imperialism has delivered a terrible beating to political economy, the
latter has the opportunity to prosper once more as its host discipline collapses
under the weight of its own ambition and rotten core. The parallel with the rise and
fall of the Roman Empire should not be taken too seriously. But political economy
will only prosper if it seizes the initiative as opportunities open up to raise the
economic content of the social sciences. Otherwise, scholarly barbarism is ready to
divide up the analytical spoils, already apparent in case of globalization and
social capital, ultimately relying upon methodological individualism albeit
with a protective belt of eclecticism and empiricism.

Economic engagement including the need for expanding markets is

imperialism.
Galtung in '71
[Johan, Chair in peace and conflict studies, at the University of Oslo, A Structural Theory of Imperialism, Volume 8,
Number 2]

Thus, imperialism is a species in a genus of dominance and power

relationships. It is a subtype of something, and has itself subtypes to be explored later. Dominance relations
between nations and other collectivities will not disappear with the disappearance of imperialism; nor will the end
to one type of imperialism (e.g. political, or economic) guarantee the end to another type of imperialism (e.g.
economic or cultural). Our view is not reductionist in the traditional sense pursued in marxist-leninist theory, which
imperialism as an economic relationship under private
conceive sod
capitalism, motivated by the need for expanding markets, and which
bases the theory of dominance of a theory of imperialism. According to this
view, imperialism and dominance fall like dominoes when the capitalistic conditions for economic imperialism no
imperialism is a more general
longer obtain. According to the view we develop here,
structural relationship between two collectives, and has to be understood at a general
level in order to be understood and counteracted in its more specific manifestations -- just like smallpox is better
understood in a context of theory of epidemic diseases, and these diseases better understood in a context of
general pathology.

Empirically, despite the U.S having a reputation as a democracy it

still has the potential to impose imperialism.
Schwarz and Ray in 04
[Henry and Sangeeta, Director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University and Director,
Graduate Studies, A Companion to Postcolinial Studies, Page 206]

Early New England settlers successfully tailed the incorporation of vast

expanses of the natives' geography with this belief. But following the settlers'
separation from the "mother country," the religious aspects of the doctrine of exceptionalism underwent
But historical events never in fact coincided with
transformation into a state credo.
the credo's idealized image of the US as a democracy founded in defiance
of imperial norms. In accomplishing a position of dominance in the
hierarchy of nations, the US practiced the imperialism that it
disavowed in principle.

Foreign aid is a mask for coercive neo-imperialism

DiLorenzo, 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 diminishing the liberty of the people. Worse yet, it leads to the centralization of governmental
power, since the transfers are always to the recipient countrys central government.
 Latin America

US economic intervention into Latin America only strengthens

the imperialist grasp of the global ruling class
Petras 11 (James, Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, Social
movements in Latin America: neoliberalism and popular resistance, Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 18-19)

The Contras war closed one chapter in US imperialism in Latin America,

while the installation of client collaborator regimes opened another-a
chapter characterized not by armed force, the projection of military power,
but rather by what we might term "economic imperialism"-engineering of
free marker "structural reforms" in national policy, the penetration of
foreign capital in the form of the multinationals, and a free trade regime.
The agents of this imperialism included the IMF, the World Bank, and the World
Trade Organization (WTO), as well as the host of neoconservative foreign policy
advisors, neoliberal economists, and policy makers who serve the "global ruling
class" as described by Pilger (2003). The new imperial order was made
possible not only by a political turn toward neoconservatism but by a new
reserve of ideological power: the idea of globalization, presented as the
only road to "general prosperity," the necessary condition for reactivating
a growth and capital accumulation process. The idea of globalization, used
to justify the neoliberal "structural adjustment program" (SAP),
complemented the call for a new world order. The World Bank's 1995 World
Development Report, Workers in an Integrating World, can be seen as one of its
most important programmatic statements-a capitalist manifesto on the need to
adjust to the requirements of a new world order in which the forces of freedom
(big business) would be liberated from the regulatory constraints of the
welfare-development state and hold sway over the global economy.
Regarding the need for political adjustments to the "new world order," the
United States with its client electoral regimes firmly ensconced in power
in most of Latin America declared its mission to spread democracy and
free markets to make the world safe for freedom, and to support
movement in diverse regions toward pro-US electoral regimes. The
stabilization measures and "structural reforms" implemented in the 1990s
were unpopular to say the least, with the core opposition coming from
pockets of organized labor. A few governments put up some resistance but
eventually succumbed, as in Jamaica and Mexico, which were reluctant to sign
up for the structural reform agenda. In most cases structural adjustment programs
were introduced by presidential decree or administrative fiat.
The U.S. has empirically treated Latin America as
economically backward in hopes to bring these countries
under the umbrella of neoliberalism and colonialism
Petras 11 (James, Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, Social
movements in Latin America: neoliberalism and popular resistance, Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 18-19)

The Second World War ended with the United States as a dominant world
economic power, commanding 40 percent of the world's industrial capacity
and more than half of the financial resources. However, conditions were
not favorable for the unilateral exercise of its dominant military power. For
one thing, the Soviet Union had emerged from the war with a loss of over twenty
million citizens but with its industrial production apparatus rebuilt and the potential
of constituting a major economic power and as such a major threat to the imperial
interests of the United States, forcing the government to opt for the creation of a
multilateral system of military alliances modeled on the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and regional economic treaties designed to facilitate US
projections of power in Europe and the Third World. But Latin America was a
different matter. It was historically within the US sphere of economic and
political domination, and the state set about to ensure the compliance of
governments in the hemisphere to US hegemony. First there was the
overthrow of democratic socialist Cheddi lagan in Guyana (1953) and the
successful intervention in Guatemala (1954) to topple democratically
elected President Arbenz. But then came Cuba (1959) with a successful
socialist revolution that abrogated the rules of empire, challenging US
hegemony and directly threatening US imperial interests in the country
and elsewhere, forcing the US government to open up another front in the
war against social revolution and the lure of "communism." The first front
was established in 1948 in the form of International Cooperation for
Development, a system of bilateral and multilateral support for the
economic advancement of the "economically backward" countries
emerging from the yoke of European colonialism pursuing national more
than 100 billion dollars in profit over a decade of neoliberal policies.
Imperialism in the past has helped the underdevelopment of
Latin America
Petras 11 (James, Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University,
Social movements in Latin America: neoliberalism and popular
resistance, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 18-19) JFP

US imperialism has shaped the major conditions for capitalist development or

underdevelopment in Latin America, through direct military intervention
and through proxies. Between and against these imperial intrusions,
popular movements based on labor, peasants, and unionized public
employees have succeeded in electing leftist and center-left governments,
and in the case of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada carrying out social
revolutions. The outcomes of these epic struggles had enormous socioeconomic
and political consequences in terms of the economic models that subsequently
emerged. The great alterations in income and class inequalities, concentrations to
wealth and property, popular participation and representation, individual freedoms
and social rights have been profoundly affected by the strength and ascendancy of
these two determinant forces in Latin America's equation of power.
The rise of neoliberalism and the regressive socioeconomic patterns that
dominated the region from the 1970s to the 1990s were, in the first instance,
the result of the violent political triumph of the United States and its Latin
allies over the working class in the great social confrontations of the
1970s. The defeat of labor laid the groundwork for the implementation of
the neoliberal agenda and set the stage for the rise of rural based social
movements as the motor force for social transformations.
Foreign aid is directly associated with the goals of imperialism in
Latin America (ODI is the Overseas Development Institute)

Hayter in '71
[Teresa, Activist on Migration and Anti-Racism Issues, Aid as Imperialism, Page 7 Preface]
Research at the ODI was based on the assumption that 'aid' was good
and that the major objective of 'aid' could reasonably be expected to
be 'development' in, and for, the Third World. Aid could be criticized for
falling short of this objective, and proposals could be made for
improving its contribution to development. But the central assumption
was that the imperialist countries were 'helping' the Third World to
develop. The possibility that they were, on the contrary, stunting and
distorting development in the Third World through exploitation, and
that the Third World could not develop until imperialism was destroyed,
was not considered. Nor could it be, since ODI, like aid, is merely the smooth
surface of imperialism.

We forced our free-market system on Latin America in the

past, we dont need to make the same mistake twice
Wiarda 05 (Howard, Professor of International Relations at the
University of Georgia, Dilemmas of democracy in Latin America :
crises and opportunity, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 155) HJW

Every once in a while in foreign policy, as well as in other policy and

scholarly issues, it becomes necessary to go back to first principles, to
reexamine assumptions that have long been taken for granted. It is now
time to do that with regard to the assumptions underlying the so-called
Washington consensus on U.S, policy toward Latin America, which holds
that the United States should promote democracy, open markets, and free
trade in the region. We also need to discuss U.S. counternarcotic policy in the
area, the issue is complicated by the fact that few of us disagree with
these policy goals per se. To be opposed to democracy, open markets, free
trade, and counternarcotic efforts would be akin to being against God,
motherhood, and apple pie-assuming we still believe in these latter items, The
issues are thus mainly of shadings, nuance, meanings, as well as the ever
present traps posed by the ingrained Wilsonian missionary, patronizing
urge to bring the blessings of American civilization to "less fortunate"
peoples, The issue relates also to the deeper difficulty the United States
has in understanding and empathizing with other countries: the
ethnocentrism issue.
When the US tries to exploit Latin American countries, success
is limited and imperialism and collapse are the result
Wiarda 05 (Howard, Professor of International Relations at the
University of Georgia, Dilemmas of democracy in Latin America:
crises and opportunity, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 155) HJW

The Washington consensus was based on quite a number of very large

assumptions about the economies, societies, and political systems of Latin
America and the Third World that in the end proved not to be true-Or
perhaps only partly true. Here we examine what those assumptions were
and why in the developing world they did not work out as expected. First,
there was a belief that freeing up these economies would give rise to a
dynamic entrepreneurial class that could substitute for the state's role in
the economy, seize the initiative, and stimulate economic growth. But
dynamic entrepreneurial groups don't emerge out of thin air; they take a
long time to develop and their emergence is related to other changing
elements in society-for example, growth of the rule of law, honesty, and
transparency in the administration of the public accounts, protected property rights,
and so forth. In most developing countries, there is no dynamic entrepreneurial
class or it is very small. What passes for entrepreneurs is usually the friends,
relatives, and cronies of the regime in power; they often have special
access to government contracts and monopolies. They are parasites whose
goal is to rip off the system to line their own pockets, not to provide jobs and growth
to the economy as a whole. The worst case is Russia, where some 90 percent of the
former public patrimony-under socialism owned by the state-has been diverted in
this way, with little or no benefit to the public at large. We may wish that a dynamic
private sector would emerge to replace the state in the developing nations, but the
fact is what passes for a private sector is usually in it mainly, even exclusively, for
themselves and not to benefit society as a whole. A second assumption was
that, as these economies were freed up, a host of financial institutions
would emerge that would assist in the development process. But banks,
lending agencies, financial service agencies, capital markets, stock
exchanges, and the like in developing countries also tend to be weak and
cannot be created quickly. Generations are required for these institutions
to grow, not a few years. In addition, the few banks and financial institutions that
exist in most developing countries tend not to be in business to give loans to small
businessmen and dynamic start-up companies; rather, they are holding companies,
often tied closely with the regimes or elites in power, that profit from insider
connections and monopolistic government contracts. They are concerned not with
changing the system but with protecting their stake in It. Third, the Washington
consensus posited that the freeing up of the economies in the developing
world would produce growth, Jobs, and benefits that would trickle down to
the lower and middle classes. But this assumption ignored the class
structure and class attitudes in Latin America and most developing
countries. These tend to be very rigid, elitist, hierarchical, and
inegalitarian. In fact, what has happened in too many cases under the new
neoliberal economic order is that the elites, who already had the money
and the political connections described above, have become enormously
richer the small middle classes in the developing nations have been
squeezed by salary freezes or job losses in the face of inflation; and the
throbbing lower classes have received few benefits at all and have often
become worse off.

Cuban embargo shields from globalization, prevents exploitation

Huish 08 [ Robert, Assistant Professor, International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Cuba vs.
Globalization: Chronicle of Anti-imperialism, solidarity and Co-operation, Centre for Research Ethics, University of
Montreal, Online, 7/6/13 http://globalautonomy.ca/global1/dialogueItem.jsp?index=SN08_Huish.xml ]

While Cuba was forced out of globalization, many countries in the South
that were "invited in" have fared poorly, and the poor of those countries
have fared miserably. Case by case, country by country, the story of globalization
from the point of view of the destitute has seen intentional de-investment
in public services in order to repay foreign debts. Restructuring
economies and restructuring lives so the South exports soybeans,
flowers, and peanuts but imports milk, medicine, tourists, and TV shows
at extortionist prices. Although the United States is the world's most indebted country no one seems
rushed to demand payments from Washington. Yet, at the turn of the millennium the Global South was repaying its
foreign debt at the rate of US $250,000 per minute (Galeano 2000). In India the economy sees children stitch
soccer balls rather than go to school .
In Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua the export-
oriented economy sees many of tomorrow's scholars go as far as grade
six before setting out on a long-life of banana picking, because from the
point of view of financial directors bananas are more important than
public schools. In places like Haiti medical clinics are few and trained
doctors fewer, loan repayments limit the imagination of financial directors
to seldom invest in clinics and rarely train doctors. Within this economic climate, the
800 million souls suffering from chronic hunger are doomed to the fate of the empty plate until the free market
decides to lower food prices.
 Immigration

Promoting expansion of visa policies perpetuates imperialism

Campbell 92
[David: An Australian Political scientist he has written four books and has been a
professor at several universities. Book: Writing Security publisher: University of
Minnesota Press Minneapolis page number: 42]
For
To officially join the society of the United States, these are among the questions that you will have to answer.
a citizen of a country other than the United States wishing to change
status from that of 'nonresident alien' to 'permanent resident alien,'
document number 1-130 of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
specifies the undesirable qualities that mark those who will not be
permitted to enter the indivisible union which seeks domestic tranquility.l The
passage from difference to identity as marked by the rite of citizenship is concerned with
the elimination of that which is alien, foreign, and perceived as a threat to
a secure state. Accordingly, this passage shares a similar purpose to those undertakings we associate with
conventional understandings of foreign policy. Moreover, the figurations of identity/ difference which characterize
this process remind us of the texts of foreign policy considered in the previous chapter. But is there a connection
between the daily activities of a domestic government agency which scrutinizes immigration applications for their
Is the
evidence of naturalization, and those practices we traditionally associate with foreign policy?
foreignness of 'aliens' something that is qualitatively distinct from the
character of the existing citizenry in whose name presidents, secretaries of states, and
diplomats are represented to the world? Does the foreign-ness of the characteristics
indicated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service's questions afflict
only those from the external realm? Does the inside of a state exist in marked contrast to the
outside? What is at stake in the attempt to screen the strange, the
unfamiliar, and the threatening associated with the outside from familiar
and safe, which are linked to the inside?
 Democracy
Democracy perpetuates imperialismcreates cycles of endless
violence and oppression
Itwaru 09 ( Arnold, psychotherapist, educator, and editorial consultant on the project
named Researching Caribbean Teaching and Learning at the University of the West
Indies, Jamaica Master Race, Murder and Gory Globalization in The White Supremacist State:
Eurocentrism, Imperialism, Colonialism, Racism Arnold H. Itwaru, ed. 2009 p. 25-79 deven)

Democracy" is the globalizational credo of the new Western imperialism. It resounds with the
incessant chant of freedom. It talks of liberating the world. This is its totalitarian thrust. It is about
global control. This means reducing the entire world into a Western capitalist monopoly and the
destruction of other and more humanizing forms of the organization of political and economic
livelihood. But this seems lost to those who are caught the clamor for democracy. We have a
situation where capitalist White supremacist Western liberal democracies are invading and
destroyirlg people and countries to increase their exploitative control while the chant for democracy
goes on in other places. This is an ideologized chant. It is where "democracy" is erroneously seen as
a panacea for the resolution of the forms and practices of oppressive rule everywhere. The spread of
"democracy" is the restructuring of target societies , the re-organization of political and economic
formation in the world to accommodate the interests of the White supremacist West , united under
capital. Democracy is used as the medium for the brutal globalization of capitalism, and its
insertion is enforced by the most undemocratic of measures - authoritarian, command-obedience
violent totalitarian military control. The use of the concept "democracy" both romanticizes and
violates its Greek originary, demos which idealizes the notion of people's rule - which has never
happened in the history of Greek imperial state culture. We should note that in its political inception
in Greece women were not included in the state craft of "Democracy." Democracy was the purview
of the male order of state power. It was the phallocentric elitist politics of the state rule of people
through select male representatives who constituted the echelon of political power. Far from being
people's rule, it was rather the ruling of people by giving them the illusion that they had a
significant say in the rule of the state over them. And its contemporary Western deployment is.
about the regulation of the lives of peoples to ensure their exploitation . But there is a great deal of
dissembling going on. Eurocentric master race culture has attempted to sanitize itself of the
odiousness of racism and the smear of racial mastery in its development of the discourse of
"democracy" which it thinks is the best way to organize the politics of representationality in state
power for the good of all peoples everywhere on earth. This is presented as being sensible, practical,
and "civilized," in fact as the only way to organize political life. This is the reification of
imperialism. It is where the ordinary Western citizen resolutely believes this and sees it as
commonsense and does not understand what all the fuss is about . We have here the leveling
absorption of the imperial patriot-subject who is now passionately committed and ready to defend
and spread Western political control in the enforcement of "democracy" every where. And if you go
along with it, you are likely to conclude that there is no racism here and that it is simply the best
culture on earth, doing the right thing. Armored to the point of having the capacity to kill everyone
in the world several times over, the West has wrapped itself in discourses of democratizing
imperializing "peace"- while it manufactures and exports arms and other weapons of mass
destruction, much of which it has used against many of the racialized peoples of the world . It
organizes, supports and wages war to construct the peace required to facilitate its repressive order.
It talks of freedom when it has been the historical destroyer of the freedoms of the millions it has
used, abused, deprived of their independence, tortured, worked to death, robbed and killed to acquire
wealth. It upholds liberty and fraternity - but only among its own kind - and even here this civic ideal
is differentially implemented. Liberty and fraternity are not meant for the inferiorized Other. It is
for the privileged in the order of White solidarity. And this order of things is disturbed when its
designated inferior tries to change the terms and parameters of the discourse of the West's claim
superiority.

The process of US democratization focuses on top down civil

society groups and away from grassroots organizations,
furthering imperialist control
Rachner et al. 2007 (Lise Chr. Michelson Inst., http://www.cmi.no/publications/publication/?2761=democratisations-
third-wave-and-the-challenges-of)

However, donor support during this period faced a number of criticisms. Firstly, critics argued that donors tended to reduce the concept of civil
donors
society to a depoliticised technical tool (Jenkins, 2001; Robinson and Friedman, 2005). Secondly, during this first phase of support
relied on a rather limited definition of civil society, equating it with Western-style advocacy
groups or NGOs and leading them to concentrate their assistance on a narrow set of organisations.
In particular, organisations that form an important part of civil society in most advanced democracies, such
as sports clubs, cultural associations and religious associations, have been absent from most programmes
(Carothers and Ottaway, 2000). Thirdly, in many instances, the views of NGOs that have emerged as a response to democracy
promotion programmes reflect donors views of democracy, both in their immediate goals and in the means they use to pursue them.
Fourthly, many of the NGOs favoured by democracy assistance programmes have a small membership and
therefore lack a mandate from a wider constituency, putting both their sustainability and
representativeness in doubt. Finally, there is evidence that donor assistance can actually militate against grassroots participation
because the NGOs it helps to bring about are perceived as depoliticised, too closely aligned with donor service delivery agendas, too dependent
on external funding, and out of touch with the grassroots (Howell and Pearce, 2001). Taken together, these factors meant that donors often
focused on particular types of social organisation (urban-based and poorly rooted in society, top-down
rather than grassroots, trustee rather than representative organisations and heavily reliant
on external funding for their continued existence) and, as a result, bypassed other significant
agents of social and political change.

Democratization creates a violent, disingenuous imperial

relation to the countries it claims to help
Slater, Dept of Geography Loughborough University, 2006(David, Imperial powers and democratic imaginations, Third World
Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 8)

But how do these varied points relate to the question of imperial democracy? In the context of global politics the
attempt to export
and promote one vision of democracy as a unifying project across frontiers clashes with the logic of differences,
but in a way that is deeply rooted in nationalist discourses. In the formulations developed by Laclau, Lefort and Mouffe
there is an assumption that one is dealing with a territorially intact polity, that the conceptual terrain can be developed in accordance with a
guiding assumption of territorial sovereignty. However, in the context of imperial powers one needs to remember that the autonomy of other
democratic experiments has been terminated by interventions organised by Washington (eg Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua during
the 1980ssee Slater, 2002). In this sense the internal tension between the logic of unity and the logic of
difference has been overshadowed by an imperial logic of incursion, followed by the imposition of a
different set of political rules. In the example of the USA it can be suggested that there is a logic of democracy for export and a logic of
terminating intervention for other democratic processes that have offered a different political pathway. Furthermore, interventions which have led
to the overthrow of dictatorial regimes, as in Iraq in 2003, ought not to lead us into forgetting the realities of Western support for military
dictatorships in the global South throughout the 20th century.12 Nor, as Callinicos (2003: 24) reminds us, should we turn a blind eye to the fact
that there are contemporary examples of support for non-democratic regimes, as shown in the case of the Bush administrations backing for the
Karimov regime in Uzbekistan, despite its numerous violations of human rights, and for Musharrafs regime in Pakistan, which receives US
support yet is scarcely to be considered a fully fledged democracy. The imperative to democratise , just as the injunction to
globalise, creates, as Dallmayr (2005) suggests, an asymmetry between those announcing the imperative and
those subjected to it, between those who democratise and those who are democratised. Such an
asymmetry has a long history. Jeffersonian notions of both an empire of liberty and an empire for liberty
represented an initial framing of the conflicting juxtaposition of emerging American imperial powerexpressed for
instance in the phrase that the USA has a hemisphere to itselfwith a benevolent belief in Americas mission to spread
democracy and liberty to the rest of the world. This juxtaposition, which is also closely tied to the founding importance of the self-
determination of peoples, is characterised by an inherent tension between strong anti-colonial sentiment and the
projection of power over peoples of the Third World. Discourses of democracy are deployed in ways
that are intended to transcend such dissonances and to justify the imperial relation, even though such a relation is
frequently denied (for a critical review, see Cox, 2005). What is also significant in this context is the idea that democracy US-style is being called
for, being invited by peoples yearning for freedom, so that more generally imperial power is being invited to spread its
wings (see Maier, 2005). Rather than democracy being imposed, it is suggested that the USA is responding to
calls from other societies to be democratised, so that through a kind of cellular multiplication a US model can
be gradually introduced; the owners will be the peoples of other cultures who will find ways of adapting the US
template to their own circumstances. As it is expressed in the National Security Strategy for 2006, it is the
policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and
culture (White House, 2006: 1). What is on offer here is a kind of viral democracy, whereby the politics of guidance
is merged into a politics of benign adaptation.13 Nevertheless, at the same time, a specific form of democratic rule
is being projected and alternative models that include a critique of US power and attempts to introduce
connections with popular sovereignty and new forms of socialism are singled out for opprobrium. This is reflected
in the commentary on Hugo Chavezin Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money is undermining democracy and
seeking to destabilize the region (White House, 2006: 15). This is despite the fact that the Venezuelan leader has won
more elections in the past seven years than any other Latin American leader.
 Hegemony
U.S. military interventions in foreign countries are steeped in
imperialist ulterior motivesensures backlash and violence
Grossman 02

(Dr. Zoltan, faculty member in Geography and Native American & World Indigenous Peoples Studies at The
Evergreen State College, February 05, 2002 New US Military Bases: Side Effects Or Causes Of
War? http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/grossmanbases.html

Whether we look at the U.S. wars of the past decade in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, the Balkans, or Afghanistan, or at
the possible new wars in Yemen, the Philippines, or Colombia/Venezuela, or even at Bushs new "axis of
evil" of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, the same common themes arise. The U.S. military interventions cannot
all be tied to the insatiable U.S. thirst for oil (or rather for oil profits), even though many of the recent wars do
have their roots in oil politics. They can nearly all be tied to the U.S. desire to build or rebuild military bases.
The new U.S. military bases, and increasing control over oil supplies, can in turn be tied to the historical shift
taking place since the 1980s: the rise of European and East Asian blocs that have the potential to replace the
United States and Soviet Union as the worlds economic superpowers.
Much as the Roman Empire tried to use its military power to buttress its weakening economic and political hold
over its colonies, the United States is aggressively inserting itself into new regions of the world to prevent its
competitors from doing the same. The goal is not to end "terror" or encourage "democracy," and Bush will
not accomplish either of these claimed goals. The short-term goal is to station U.S. military forces in regions
where local nationalists had evicted them. The long-term goal is to increase U.S. corporate control over the oil
needed by Europe and East Asia, whether the oil is in around the Caspian or the Caribbean seas. The ultimate
goal is to establish new American spheres of influence, and eliminate any obstacles-- religious militants,
secular nationalists, enemy governments, or even allies--who stand in the way.
U.S. citizens may welcome the interventions to defend the "homeland" from attack, or even to build new
bases or oil pipelines to preserve U.S. economic power. But as the dangers of this strategy become more
apparent, Americans may begin to realize that they are being led down a risky path that will turn even more
of the world against them, and lead inevitably to future September 11s.

Promotion of US hegemony leads to domination

Flint 2- Student at Pennsylvania university
Colin [http://www.colorado.edu/IBS/PEC/gadconf/papers/flint.html]
In this word-systems analysis interpretation of the current economic processes, the
one I adopt in this paper, the role of hegemonic powers is vital in explaining what is
diffused, and why, from where, and when. In other words, it offers a geohistorical
contextualization of contemporary globalization (Taylor, 1999). The world-systems
understanding of hegemony has become more complete over time. It began with an
initial concentration upon economic prowess (Wallerstein, 1984), through a
connection with the establishment of geopolitical world-orders (Taylor, 1996; Taylor
and Flint, 2000), to the important inclusion of the role of social and cultural
practices defined and disseminated by the hegemonic power (Taylor, 1999).
Hegemony is founded upon the clustering of dominant production
processes and technological innovation within the borders of one state
(with intra-state uneven development) that allow for dominance in
commerce that, ultimately provides for global financial domination.
Economic hegemony allows for, and is facilitated by, political domination
of the world that is reflected in the establishment of periods of geopolitical
stability, otherwise known as hegemonic geopolitical world orders. But the power
and dominance of the hegemonic power is not just a product of economic strength
or political might. The power base is based upon a subtler tactic the
definition of a modern way of life that is, on the whole, desired and
emulated by social groups within the hegemonic power and across the
globe.

Pleas by the U.S. military to help other countries is a mask

to expand American spheres of influence which makes
reductions of military presence a sham
Grossman 02

(Dr. Zoltan, faculty member in Geography and Native American & World Indigenous Peoples Studies at The
Evergreen State College, February 05, 2002 New US Military Bases: Side Effects Or Causes Of
War? http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/grossmanbases.html

Since the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the U.S. has gone to war in Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and
Afghanistan. The interventions have been promoted as "humanitarian" deployments to stop aggression, to
topple dictatorships, or to halt terrorism. After each U.S. intervention, the attention of supporters and critics
alike has turned to speculate on which countries would be next. But largely ignored has been what the U.S.
interventions left behind.
As the Cold War ended, the U.S. was confronted with competition from two emerging economic blocs in Europe and
East Asia. Though it was considered the worlds last military superpower, the United States was facing a decline of
its economic strength relative to the European Union, and the East Asian economic bloc of Japan, China and the
Asian "Four Tigers." The U.S. faced the prospect of being economically left out in much of the Eurasian land
mass. The major U.S. interventions since 1990 should be viewed not only reactions to "ethnic cleansing" or
Islamist militancy, but to this new geopolitical picture. Since 1990, each large-scale U.S. intervention has left
behind a string of new U.S. military bases in a region where the U.S. had never before had a foothold. The
U.S. military is inserting itself into strategic areas of the world, and anchoring U.S. geopolitical influence in
these areas, at a very critical time in history. With the rise of the "euro bloc" and "yen bloc," U.S. economic
power is perhaps on the wane. But in military affairs, the U.S. is still the unquestioned superpower. It has
been projecting that military dominance into new strategic regions as a future counterweight to its economic
competitors, to create a military-backed "dollar bloc" as a wedge geographically situated between its major
competitors. As each intervention was being planned, planners focused on building new U.S. military
installations, or securing basing rights at foreign facilities, in order to support the coming war. But after the
war ended, the U.S. forces did not withdraw, but stayed behind, often creating suspicion and resentment
among local populations, much as the Soviet forces faced after liberating Eastern Europe in World War II. The new
U.S. military bases were not merely built to aid the interventions, but the interventions also conveniently
afforded an opportunity to station the bases. Indeed, the establishment of new bases may in the long run be
more critical to U.S. war planners than the wars themselves, as well as to enemies of the U.S. The massacre
of September 11 was not directly tied to the Gulf War; Osama bin Laden had backed the Saudi fundamentalist
dictatorship against the Iraqi secular dictatorship in the war. The attacks mainly had their roots in the U.S. decision
to leave behind bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The permanent stationing of new U.S. forces in and
around the Balkans and Afghanistan could easily generate a similar terrorist "blowback" years from now. This
is not to say that all U.S. wars of the past decade have been the result of some coordinated conspiracy to make
Americans the overlords of the belt between Bosnia and Pakistan.But it is to recast the interventions as opportunistic
responses to events, which have enabled Washington to gain a foothold in the "middle ground" between Europe to the west,
Russia to the north, and China to the east, and turn this region increasingly into an American "sphere of influence." The series of
interventions have also virtually secured U.S. corporate control over the oil supplies for both Europe and East Asia. It's not a
conspiracy; it's just business as usual.
 Terrorism
The War on Terror is a guise for imperial euro-supremacism
ensures continual violence
Itwaru 09 ( Arnold, psychotherapist, educator, and editorial consultant on the project named Researching
Caribbean Teaching and Learning at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica Master Race, Murder and
Gory Globalization in The White Supremacist State: Eurocentrism, Imperialism, Colonialism,
Racism Arnold H. Itwaru, ed. 2009 p. 25-79 deven)

The murderous mode of reasoning is situated in and informs the glorification of mass murder
institutionalized in the West as "war." It has been instrumental in history of the White supremacist
European colonizational practice of murdering people whose land they were occupying and exploiting
wherever they imposed themselves in the world. The gruesome pyres of hundreds of millions of racialized
bodies upon which the empyres of Western supremacy proudly and imperiously stand, grimly attest to this. The
current "War on Terrorism" which has so far killed and maimed more than a million people in
Iraq and Afghanistan alone in this century of Western aggression, is the blatant demonstration of
the murderous means through which the White supremacist American-led West is expanding
its conquest project of global domination. This is the fundamental objective of globalization,
despite the nice ties in which it continues to be dressed and promoted. These self-professed Christian
states have joined forces in what amounts to their unstated but nevertheless holy war against an imputed terrorism which so far has
been aimed at Islamic peoples and cultures for the strategic implementation of additional Western control and economic gain. New
technologies and techniques of terror, torture and killing have been implemented in the murderous mode of
scientific reasoning and used to continue the same heinous historical killing of racialized peoples. This has
been a central feature in the history of Western imperial culture. It has procured the blood money upon
which much of its pompous wealth is based, and has informed much of the social and political psyche in
these racist orders. There is strong support for these atrocities from the majority of patriotic Western
citizens who ironically believe they are bright, informed, free and peace-loving good people.
These constitute the moral cultural force which legitimates the force of their armies of death
in the military industrial complex of ever expanding Western capitalist exploitation. Proud of
their toughness which they uphold as a cruel virtue, they are unmoved by the slaughter of
defenseless men, women, children, the elderly and the ill in the current invasion of Iraq and
Afghanistan, for example, or anywhere else for that matter in the racialized world outside of the White
supremacist West. In the murderous mode of reasoning these racialized Others are not considered human.
They are reduced into the dangerous threatening Enemy-Other who must be killed. The murder of the
caricatured terrorist is believed to ensure the safety of all Western citizens. Hence it has become a matter of
patriotic duty for such citizens to believe they are defending their country when they support the
preemptive attacks of the invading American led White West who have been directing their assaults against
the peoples and cultures thousands of miles and continents away from the domesticities of the imperial
Western fortress homeland. The culture informed by this mode of reasoning is where the murderous
patriot-subject is produced and highly exalted. In the supra-militarized, settler-occupier, armed, aggressive and
dangerous, United States of America and its fawning settler-occupier northern neighbor and reliable ally, the
Dominion of Canada, waning troops are tearfully loved and admired by sections of the patriotic populace as they
are deployed to attack the racialized evil Enemy-Other. This emotional display is in effect the militarization of
affection and patriotism in the culture of murderous aggression. These troops are the state trained military killers
who are patriotically loved as "our troops" as they go out in "harm's way" - to do what they are trained to do - to
kill, to maim, to destroy people. These are not the "nice guys" and "nice gals" we are repeatedly told they are.
"Nice guys" and "nice gals" do not undergo military training to go out and kill people. And we should seriously
rethink the repeated claims being made that when these "nice guys" and "nice gals" slaughter innocent and
helpless people in distant regions across the world that they are ensuring safety "at home," given that there is no
verifiably credible danger "at home" in the first place. The murderous mode of reasoning celebrates military killers
and deifies them as heroes. This mode of reasoning has historically framed the imposition of the racial
mastery of euro-supremacism in its colonial conquests which for hundreds of years have debased, enslaved,
exploited and murdered, willfully and knowingly killed large numbers of people, to assert its domineering
control.
 Economic Growth
Globalization is a form of imperialism
Vilas 2002 (Vilas, Professor of Sociology and Political science, UNAM,
Globalization as Imperialism, University of Toronto, 70-71)

Considered from a historical perspective, globalization is the present stage of economic

imperialism. In accordance with the definition formulated by Hilferding and Lenin at the beginning of the
twentieth century, imperialism is a set of basic characteristics: th e
development of monopoly
capital, the emergence of finance capital through the fusion of industrial
capital and the banks, the export of investments from the center to the
periphery, and interimperialist competition for the control of foreign
markets. In the present circumstances, these features are exacerbated. Recent technological
innovations with regard to the flow of information and immense
international liquidity have favored the increased growth of finance
capital and huge transnational monopoly corporations. The magnitude and rate of
international investment flows have also multiplied, and the implosion of the Soviet bloc has opened new spaces for
been,
investment in underdeveloped areas. Capitalist control of the world is greater today than it has ever
leading to the intensification of the stratification of international power in
which the United States appears to have unquestionable hegemony.

Economic principles and diplomacy build upon the image of

American soft power. This is used to expand US imperial goals
Kennedy and Lucas in 5 (Liam, Prof at Univ of Birmingham, Scott, Prof at Univ of
Birmingham, American Quarterly, Enduring Freedom: Public Diplomacy and U.S.
Foreign Policy, 57(2)) MAT

Fulbright educational and cultural exchanges, and pointed toward the development
of new activities. (We use the term state-private network to refer to the
extensive, unprecedented collaboration between official U.S. agencies
and private groups and individuals in the development and
implementation of political, economic, and cultural programs in support of
U.S. foreign policy from the early cold war period to today.)13 Legislative
backing was obtained in 1948 with the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange
Act, popularly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, for the preparation, and
dissemination abroad, of information about the U.S., its people, and its policies,
through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, and other information media,
and through information centers and instructors abroad . . . to provide a better
understanding of the U.S. in other countries and to increase mutual
understanding.14 With these mandates, public diplomacy could carry forth
the rhetorical command of the Truman Doctrine to support free peoples
who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by
outside pressures. In an expansion supporting, but also constructed as
distinct from, the extension of U.S. political and economic influence, U.S.
projects by early 1951 covered ninety-three countries, broadcasting in
forty-five languages and disseminating millions of booklets, leaflets,
magazines, and posters. Touring exhibitions, already established by the late
1940s, received more coherent if often contested support and were common
throughout the 1950s.15 In 1953 the organization of public diplomacy moved
beyond the State Department with the formation of the autonomous
United States Information Agency (USIA) to tell Americas story to the
world.16 The modern history of U.S. public diplomacy is often focused on
the USIA, telling the story of its contributions to the winning of the cold
war and of its decline as the agency was downsized in the 1990s. This
story tends to separate public diplomacy from the system of political
warfare that emerged in the late 1940s, limiting understanding of the
intersections between overt and covert practices. The overt measures of
sponsored media production and cultural exhibitions, though central to
the formation of cold war public diplomacy, need, however, to be
understood as part of a broader restructuring of the national security
state and of a strategic framework designed to promote an America that
would win a total campaign for hearts and minds. The authority granted to
the State Department by NSC 4, forged in the immediacy of a crisis in which the
NSC feared communists might legitimately take power in France and Italy through
elections, was complementary and potentially secondary to another mandate, NSC
4-A, which directed the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to initiate
and conduct, within the limit of available funds, covert psychological operations
designed to counteract Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities.17 With the threat of
French and Italian communism always at the forefront in the wider American
objective of securing Western Europe through the Marshall Plan, NSC 4-A, like its
more mundane counterpart, was the cornerstone of a regional and indeed global
strategy. A special clause in the Marshall Plan, when it was passed in April 1948, set
aside 5 percent of counterpart funds for undefined operations under NSC 4-A. This
translated into hundreds of millions of dollars for propaganda and covert action.18
Thus public diplomacy, beyond providing the informational overlay for
containment, was already part of a broader operational conception for a
more ambitious objective. In May 1948, George Kennan, the head of the State
Departments Policy Planning Staff, drafted a proposal for The Inauguration of
Organized Political Warfare against the Soviet Union. The national security state
would support liberation committees and underground activities
behind the Iron Curtain as well as indigenous anti-Communist elements
in threatened countries of the Free World.19 Victory over the Soviets,
achieved with the liberation of captive peoples, which went beyond
containment, would come not only through the reality of American
economic and diplomatic superiority but also through the projection of
that superiority as inherent to the American system and way of life. The
sanction of NSC 4-A and the testing grounds of France and Italy were only the first
stages of this campaign. The NSC endorsed Kennans plan in November 1948, and
within months the Policy Planning Staff, CIA, and Office of Policy Coordination (OPC),
a new agency created to carry out covert operations, converted the proposal for a
public American organization which will sponsor selected political refugee
committees into the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE). The NCFEs
guidelines came from the State Department and 75 percent of its funding from the
CIA; its chief executive officers were psychological warfare veterans from the army
and the CIAs forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Its best-known
operation, Radio Free Europe, was on air in 1951, but even before that, the NCFE
was already promoting the idea of liberation from communism through pamphlets,
magazines, books, and a Free European University in Strasbourg, France. 20
 State
State action requires a build up of empire through the militarization of
daily life. This ratchets up racist, sexist, and directly violent policies on
the population.
MOHANTY in 6 (CHANDRA TALPADE, Department of Womens Studies, Syracuse
University, Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 720, February 2006, US
Empire and the Project of Womens Studies: Stories of citizenship, complicity and
dissent, http://www.uccs.edu/~pkeilbac/courses/intlpol/readings/US%20Empire.pdf)
In an earlier essay charting the colonial legacies and imperial practices of the late
twentieth century US State, Jacqui Alexander and I (1997) argued that the US
State facilitates the transnational movement of capital within its own
borders as well as internationally. We referred to the US State as an
advanced capitalist state with an explicit imperial project, engaged in
practices of re-colonization, prompting the reconfiguration of economic,
political, and militarized relationships globally. We argued that
postcolonial and advanced capitalist states had specific features in
common. They own the means of organized violence, which is often
deployed in the service of national security. Thus, for instance, the USA Patriot
Act is mirrored by similar post-9/11 laws in Japan and India. Second, the
militarization of postcolonial and advanced capitalist states essentially
means the re-masculinization of the state apparatus, and of daily life. Third,
nation-states invent and solidify practices of racialization and
sexualization of their peoples, disciplining and mobilizing the bodies of women,
especially poor and third world women, as a way of consolidating patriarchal and
colonizing processes. Thus the transformation of private to public patriarchies in
multinational factories, and the rise of the international maid trade, the sex
tourism industry, global militarized prostitution, and so on. Finally, nation-states
deploy heterosexual citizenship through legal and other means. Witness the
US dont ask, dont tell/gays in the military debate in the Clinton years, and
decade-long national struggles over the Defense of Marriage Act of 1993, as well as
similar debates about sexuality and criminalization in the Bahamas and Trinidad and
Tobago.3 The deployment of race, gender, sexuality, and class in the
internal and external disciplining of particular groups evident in the
Bush/Cheney war state necessitates looking at these analytic and
experiential categories simultaneously, and, since 9/11, the acceleration of the
project of US empire necessitates developing a feminist antiimperialist frame. US
feminists have always engaged the US nation-state, but it was always the
democratic nation-state that merited such attentionnot the imperialist US
State. Feminist engagement in the latter context requires making the project of
empire visible in the gendered and sexualized state practices of the US, looking
simultaneously at the restructuring of US foreign and domestic policy. It also
requires an explicit analysis of the complicities and potentially imperialist
complicities of US feminism. And it requires examining feminisms own alternative
citizenship projects in relation to racialized stories of the nation, of home and
belonging, insiders and outsiders. Both US foreign policy and domestic policy
at this time are corporate and military driven. Both have led to the
militarization of daily life around the world and in the USspecifically for
immigrants, refugees, and people of colorand militarization inevitably means
mobilizing practices of masculinization and heterosexualization.4 Both can
be understood through a critique of the racialized and gendered logic of a
civilizational narrative mobilized to create and recreate insiders and
outsiders in the project of empire building. Thus, for instance, as Miriam
Cooke (2002) argues, saving brown women in Afghanistan justifies US
imperial aggression (the rescue mission of civilizing powers), just as the
increased militarization of domestic law enforcement, the border patrol,
and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (now renamed the
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration) can be justified in the name of a War
on Drugs, a War on Poverty, and now a War on Terrorism.
 Soft Aid

The help the affirmative attempts to give only serves to

foster a savior-victim relationship. This is a new-age form of
imperialism, and only serves neoliberalist, corporate goals
Vardalos 09 (Marianne, Professor of sociology and cultural studies at Laurentian University, Raising Good global
citizens: Liberal Humanism as a Philanthropic Rationale for Imperialism in The White Supremacist State:
Eurocentrism, Imperialism, Colonialism, Racism Arnold H. Itwaru, ed. 2009 p. 243-260 deven)

spreading liberal humanism as the divine imperative of humankind, that the

It is within this context of
act of giving becomes the perfect exercise of power over another. In Foucault's understanding, the
most emblematic feature of power is that it cannot be readily recognized; it is made
inconspicuous- innocuous - and power is truly elegant when those subject to it stubbornly deny its
existence because they are, in fact, deluded by the idea of freedom (Foucault, 1975 ). As such,
colonialism's aggressive strategy of 'taking' has prudently metamorphasized into liberal
humanism's strategy of giving. The Good global citizens do not "rule" as the children of
colonialism did. They "help." And such help is the result of the conscious motivation of one's
own advantage. The need may be to please parents, find meaning, appease guilt, build a resume, or
acquire cultural capital with self-serving benefits into the future. In liberal humanist societies, aid
activities orchestrated and staged by corporations and learning institutions as "causes for kids"
aren't about helping those in need ... they are about helping one's self. Helping the other is
about the conquest of neoliberalism over other ways of doing and other ways of knowing. This
perception is not held so much by the recipients as by the helpers. Recipients of help are not
equal collaborators, rather, their needs are diagnosed from outside the culture, by foreigners
whose social, economic, and political power permits them to judge other cultures by their
external standards of normality. Whoever desires help is agreeing to be made subject to the watchful gaze of the
helper and is made beholden to the helpers assessment and conditions and the kind of help the helpers are prepared to give.
The very act of identifying the need for amelioration in the living standards of another echoes
the universalizing projects of modernization, which predate the neo-liberalism of this age. The
conclusion of these projects is always that the needs of the less fortunate must not only be sated
by foreign goods, money, visits, and leadership, but must also be determined by the moral
values of the white middle classes of the western world. Survivors of earthquakes in India need to be less
vulnerable in times of natural disaster, instead they are 'helped' with shipments of rice in areas where there is no water to cook it.
The children of Afghanistan need Western invaders to leave their country, instead they are
'helped' with air drops of peanut butter and crackers less than kilometers from where the
bombs are dropped. The African girl requires the security that comes with her traditional community being left in tact,
instead she is helped' with birth-control pills. The impoverished and working poor in Ontario need higher incomes, job security
and healthcare instead they are 'helped' with toys and turkeys through the Christmas Cheer Board. The good citizen
thinks, "what possible fate would these less fortunate have had we not acted as their saviors?"
And why not? The good citizen is giving freedom, for It Is their compassion; their visit to the soup
kitchen; their UNICEF collection which offers the possibility for the less fortunate to break out from the
shackles of their culture of poverty and join the ordered, organized abundance of the global
culture. The act of helping, In Its quest for equality and justification, has adopted the
ideological tactics of neoliberalism. In the end, caring for another, turns Into the act of saving
oneself, because help is extended not for the sake of the other, but for the sake of the
achievements of one's own western civilization, raised to the level of a worldwide validity. The
ghost of universality returns. What makes domination through helping more insidious than
through taking is that it eliminates any thought of resistance from either side.

The benevolence of the United States is another form of imperialism.

Kaplan in 4 (Amy, President of the American Studies Association, American
Quarterly, Violent Belongings and the Question of Empire Today Presidential Address
to the American Studies Association, 56(1), p. 4-5)pl
Another dominant narrative about empire today, told by liberal
interventionists, is that of the reluctant imperialist.10 In this version, the
United States never sought an empire and may even be constitutionally
unsuited to rule one, but it had the burden thrust upon it by the fall of earlier
empires and the failures of modern states, which abuse the human rights of their
own people and spawn terrorism. The United States is the only power in the
world with the capacity and the moral authority to act as military
policeman and economic manager to bring order to the world.
Benevolence and self-interest merge in this narrative; backed by
unparalleled force, the United States can save the people of the world
from their own anarchy, their descent into an uncivilized state. As Robert Kaplan
writesnot reluctantly at allin Supremacy by Stealth: Ten Rules for Managing the
World: The purpose of power is not power itself; it is a fundamentally liberal
purpose of sustaining the key characteristics of an orderly world. Those
characteristics include basic political stability, the idea of liberty,
pragmatically conceived; respect for property; economic freedom; and
representative government, culturally understood. At this moment in time it is
American power, and American power only, that can serve as an organizing
principle for the worldwide expansion of liberal civil society.11 This narrative
does imagine limits to empire, yet primarily in the selfish refusal of U.S. citizens to
sacrifice and shoulder the burden for others, as though sacrifices have not already
been imposed on them by the state. The temporal dimension of this narrative
entails the aborted effort of other nations and peoples to enter modernity, and its
view of the future projects the end of empire only when the world is remade in our
image.

Usage of soft power is the basis of imperialism.

Mabee in 4 (Bryan, Sr. lecturer at Oxford Brookes Institute, Third World Quarterly,
Discourses of Empire: The US 'Empire', Globalisation and International Relations,
25(8), p. 1365-1366)pl
In terms of the first, the present system of economic globalisation is often compared
to the open international economy of the late-nineteenth century: as Krugman puts
it, 'it is a late twentieth-century conceit that we invented the global economy
yesterday'.43 This has been primarily discussed in terms of the level of international
trade, the mobility of capital and the overall high interdependence of the era of the
Gold Standard. As Hirst and Thompson summarise, 'the level of autonomy under the
Gold Standard up to the First World War was much less for the advanced economies
than it is today. This is not to minimise the level of that integration now ... but
merely to register a certain scepticism over whether we have entered a radically
new phase in the internationalisation of economic activity' .4 However, narrowly
focusing on the economic openness misses the connection between
economic power and globalisation. Ferguson has described the period as
'Anglobalisation', pointing specifically to the connection between empire
and an open international economy.45 While similar arguments have been
made within international relations regarding the development of hegemonic power,
these arguments tend to avoid the questions concerning the imperial nature of
Britain's hegemony in comparison to today.46 While it is certainly not the case that
all historical empires were 'empires of trade', the comparison between the present
system and the nineteenth century is useful for the parallels with the global
economy and the ideology surrounding the pursuit of an open economy. The guiding
role of British informal rule in the nineteenthc entury was to 'open up' states to
British commerce47 A nd the role of this facet of globalisation is no different,
according to both proponents and critics. Along these lines as well, the force of
American 'soft power', as Nye has described it, should not be seen as
detrimental to empire, but conducive of it.48 Soft power, in essence, also
forms one part of a drive to gain a legitimate basis for imperial rule.
Link Soft Power

Diplomatic measures of the US disguise neo-imperialism.

Kennedy and Lucas in 5 (Liam and Scott, Dir. of the Clinton Institute for American
Studies and dir. Of Center for US foreign policy, American Quarterly, Enduring
Freedom: Public Diplomacy and U.S. Foreign Policy, 57(2), p. 310-311)pl
Public diplomacywhich consists of systematic efforts to communicate not with
foreign governments but with the people themselveshas a central role to play in
the task of making the world safer for the just interests of the United States, its
citizens, and its allies.5 In the last few years, U.S. public diplomacy has
undergone intensive reorganization and retooling as it takes on a more
prominent propaganda role in the efforts to win the hearts and minds of
foreign publics. This is not a new role, for the emergent ideas and activities of
public diplomacy as the soft power wing of American foreign policy have
notable historical prefigurations in U.S. international relations. In this essay we
situate the history of the cold war paradigm of U.S. public diplomacy within the
broader framework of political warfare that combines overt and covert forms of
information management.6 However, there are distinctive features to the
new public diplomacy within both domestic and international contexts
of the contemporary American imperium. It operates in a conflicted space
of power and value that is a crucial theater of strategic operations for the
renewal of American hegemony within a transformed global order. We
consider the relation of this new diplomacy to the broader pursuit of political
warfare by the state in its efforts to transform material preponderance (in terms of
financial, military, and information capital) into effective political outcomes across
the globe. In a post-9/11 context, we argue, public diplomacy functions not
simply as a tool of national security, but also as a component of U.S.
efforts to manage the emerging formation of a neoliberal empire. The term
public diplomacy was coined by academics at Tufts University in the mid-1960s to
describe the whole range of communications, information, and propaganda under
control of the U.S. government.7 As the term came into vogue, it effectively glossed
(through the implication of both public and diplomatic intent) the political valence
of both its invention and object of study through emphasis on its role as an applied
transnational science of human behaviour.8 The origin of the term is a valuable
reminder that academic knowledge production has itself been caught up in the
historical foundations and contemporary conduct of U.S. public diplomacy, with the
American university a long-established laboratory for the study of public opinion
and of cross-cultural knowledge in service of the state.9 American studies, of
course, has had a particularly dramatic entanglement with public diplomacy and the
cold war contest for hearts and minds, and legacies of that entanglement still
haunt the field imaginary today.10 We do not intend to directly revisit that history
here, but we do contend that the current regeneration of public diplomacy by
the U.S. government is an important topic for critical study by American
studies scholars, in particular as they negotiate the internationalization of
their field in the context of post- and transnational impulses, now
conditioned by the new configurations of U.S. imperialism. In this essay we
posit a need to retheorize the modes and meanings of public diplomacy in order to
reconsider the ways in which the power of the American state is manifested in its
operations beyond its national borders, and to examine the conditions of
knowledge-formation and critical thinking shaped by the operations of this power. At
issue is not so much the way in which American studies has been shaped
internationally through diplomatic patronage (though this remains an important and
underexamined issue) but rather the articulation of field identities in the expanding
networks of international and transnational political cultures.

Softpower is not benign-the expansion of influence through seemingly

harmless institutions is still intertwined with an oppressive form of
power. It limits the scope of what constitutes legitimate knowledge
and allows oppression to seem natural and inevitable.
McLaren and Kincheloe in 2k5 (Peter Professor of Education, Graduate School of
Education and Information Studies @ UCLA and Joe, professor and Canada Research
Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition, Eds Norman Denzin
and Yvonna Lincoln)
A Reconcept utilized Critical Theory of Power; Hegemony. Our conception of a
reconceptualized critical theory is intensely concerned with the need to
understand the various and complex ways that power operates to
dominate and shape consciousness. Power, critical theorists have learned, is
an extremely ambiguous topic that demands detailed study and analysis. A
consensus seems to be emerging among criticalists that power is a basic
constituent of human existence that works to shape the oppressive and
productive nature of the human tradition. Indeed, we are all empowered and
we are all unempowered, in that we all possess abilities and we are all limited in the
attempt to use our abilities. Because of limited space, we will focus here on critical
theory's traditional concern with the oppressive aspects of power, although we
understand that an important aspect of critical research focuses on the productive
aspects of powerits ability to empower, to establish a critical democracy, to
engage marginalized people in the rethinking of their sociopolitical role (Apple, 19%;
Fiske, 1993; A.M.A. Freire. 2000; Giroux, 1997; Macedo, 1994; Nicholson & Seidman,
1995). In the context of oppressive power and its ability to produce
inequalities and human suffering, Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony is
central to critical research. Gramsci understood that dominant power in
the 20th century was not always exercised simply by physical force but
also was expressed through social psychological attempts to win people's
consent to domination through cultural institutions such as the media, the
schools, the family, and the church. Gramscian hegemony recognizes that
the winning of popular consent is a very complex process and must be
researched carefully on a case-by-case basis. Students and researchers of
power, educators, sociologists, all of us are hegemonized as our field of knowledge
and understanding is structured by a limited exposure to competing definitions of
the sociopolitical world. The hegemonic field, with its bounded
sociopsychological horizons, garners consent to an inequitable power
matrixa set of social relations that are legitimated by their depiction as
natural and inevitable. In this context, critical researchers note that hegemonic
consent is never completely established, as it is always contested by various groups
with different agendas (Grossberg, 1997; Lull, 1995; McLaren. 1995a, 1995b;
McLaren, Hammer, Reilly, & Shollc, 1995; West, 1993). We note here that Gramsci
famously understood Marx's concept of laws of tendency as implying a new
immanence and a new conception of necessity and freedom that cannot be grasped
within a mechanistic model of determination (Bensaid.2002). A Reconceptualized
Critical Theory of Power: Ideology. Critical theorists understand that the formation
of hegemony cannot be separated from the production of ideology. If
hegemony is the larger effort of the powerful to win the consent of their
"subordinates," then ideological hegemony involves the cultural forms, the
meanings, the rituals, and the representations that produce consent to the
status quo and individuals' particular places within it. Ideology vis-a-vis
hegemony moves critical inquirers beyond explanations of domination that
have used terms such as "propaganda" to describe the ways media,
political, educational, and other sociocultural productions coercively
manipulate citizens to adopt oppressive meanings. A reconceptualized critical
research endorses a much more subtle, ambiguous, and situationally specific form
of domination that refuses the propaganda model's assumption that people are
passive, easily manipulated victims. Researchers operating with an awareness
of this hegemonic ideology understand that dominant ideological practices
and discourses shape our vision of reality (Lemke, 1995,1998). Thus, our
notion of hegemonic ideology is a critical form of epistemological
constructivism buoyed by a nuanced understanding of powers complicity
in the constructions people make of the world and their role in it (Kincheloc,
1998). Such an awareness corrects earlier delineations of ideology as a
monolithic unidirectional entity that was imposed on individuals by a secret
cohort of ruling-class czars. Understanding domination in the context of
concurrent struggles among different classes, racial and gender groups, and
sectors of capital, critical researchers of ideology explore the ways such
competition engages different visions, interesls, and agendas in a variety
of social localesvenues previously thought to be outside the domain of
ideological struggle (Brosio, 1994; Steinberg, 2001). <309-310>
Link Soft Power

Soft power disguises the US' cultural imperialism.

Mirrlees in 6 (Tanner, member of York and Ryerson Uni.s Joint Program of
Communication and Culture, Oneworld, The New Imperialists, p. 208-209)pl
Second, Nye describes soft power as the noncoercive means through which the U.S.
state struggles to organize the consent of non-American states, organizations, and
populations to the values associated with American national identity (soft power in
the first instance). Soft power is the ability [of the American state] to get what
it want[s] through attraction rather than coercion or payments,29 co-
opts people rather than coerces,30 and has the ability to attract.31 The
U.S. states central instruments of soft power are government communication and
cultural agencies and corporate media industries. Government soft power
apparatuses include: the State Departments Office of Public Diplomacy,
the radio station Voice of America, the universities, the military (including
psychological warfare operations), and the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.).
Corporate industries of American soft power include: Hollywood and television, news
media, nongovernmental organizations (N.G.O.s), U.S. corporations and their
commodities, and the art market. In Nyes third description, soft power refers to
something akin to U.S. ideological dominance or global hegemony. Soft
power describes the extent to which America is perceived as a morally legitimate
global leader by non-American states, organizations, and populations: The soft
power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it
is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and
abroad), and its domestic and foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate
and having moral authority).32 Here, soft power (as consent to Americas
morally legitimate global leadership) appears as the desired effect or outcome
of soft power in the second sense: the U.S. states strategies and means of
ideological suasion, its struggle on the terrain of communication and media culture
to manufacture and organize international consent to the values of Americas
national identity. Nye rationalizes American soft power by investing it with two
moral functions. American soft powers first moral obligation is to rid the world of
the evils of terrorist networks,33 and thus is aligned with the Bush administrations
national and global security imperatives. Soft powers second moral duty is to
help the Middle East to modernize more efficiently,34 and thus bestows
America with a new white mans burden, a civilizing mission. Nyes political
solution to the apparent problem of Middle Eastern anti-modernity is soft power,
which must educate people there about the just and benevolent intentions of
America. Nye recommends that the public diplomacy missionaries of American soft
power work with Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya to respond to what he feels is distorted
coverage of U.S. intervention, explain U.S. foreign policies more effectively, and
develop a long term strategy of cultural and educational exchanges that develop a
richer and more open civil society in Middle Eastern countries.35 Like the
colonialist intelligentsia of the British Empire that rationalized cultural
imperialism as part of a civilizing mission to bring a backward Other into
modernity, Nye imagines America and American soft power as bringing
enlightenment to the Middle East. The process and effect to which Nyes soft
power discourse refers resembles the process and effect once described
by the critical discourse of U.S. cultural imperialism. Government
communication apparatuses and corporate media globally export and
legitimize American values to international audiences. The ideal effect of this
process is the organization of international consent to American values, the
establishment of Americas moral legitimacy as a global superpower, and the
realization of U.S. foreign policy objectives (which entails the remaking of different
social formations in Americas image).However, by denying the existence of an
American empire and universalizing American multiculturalism as reflective of an
emergent global culture, Nye attempts to differentiate his soft power discourse from
the discourse of U.S. cultural imperialism.
 Trade

United States trade policies with Latin America only serve to

benefit the United States and put other countries at a
disadvantage
Gardini 12 (Gian Luca, University of Bath, Latin America in the 21st Century,
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 99-100)

Trade relations between the United States and Latin America at the
beginning of the new millennium were centered on the plan to build a Free
Trade Area of the Americas. Given the difficulties and ensuing stalling of
negotiations, the United States, often with the consent of Latin American countries,
has favored switching to a case-by-case approach. One of the main traits of
continuity in the US Latin American policy is the attempt to propose, if not
impose, its approved rules and economic models on the rest of the
continent. The United States, under both Republican and Democratic
administrations, has historically been in favor of free markets and
deregulation of international trade, but only as long as this is beneficial to
the United States. The FTAA would provide ample opportunities to expand US
industrial production and services sectors. However, there are still doubts over
whether or not Latin American countries also have relevant interests in and
potential benefits to gain from the conclusion of such an agreement, or a series of
bilateral agreements with the same purpose. Critics of the FTAA claim that it is
simply an instrument for the US to perpetuate its economic hegemony
over the Americas in the era of globalization. They claim that it is a tool
which uses asymmetric and conditional openness in markets and Customs
barriers to promote the US economy, providing only negligible benefits for
Latin economies. In addition, they state that this openness would result in
an intensification of the imbalanced exchange system between the raw
materials and agricultural produce of the South and the high-added-value
manufactured products of the North, thus exacerbating rather than
lessening the disparity in exchange flows, As at the end of the 1800s,
Latin American countries, or at least the leading lights among them,
hesitate today when faced with a possible Pan-American agreement.
Impacts
 Racism
Imperialismisgroundedinracismandstripscountriesoftheirculture

Narobi 86.[James, Professor of NHU, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics

of Language in African Literature. July 6th, 2013 London:Heinemann
Kenya, New Hampshire http://www.swaraj.org/ngugi.htm ]

ForthesepatrioticdefendersofthefightingculturesofAfricanpeople,imperialismisnotaslogan.Itis
real;itispalpableincontentandformandinitsmethodsandeffects.Imperialismistheruleof
consolidatedfinancecapitalandsince1884thismonopolisticparasiticcapitalhasaffectedand
continuestoaffectthelivesevenofthepeasantsintheremotestcornersofourcountries.Ifyouare
indoubt,justcounthowmanyAfricancountrieshavenowbeenmortgagedtoIMFthenew
InternationalMinistryofFinanceasJuliusNyerereoncecalledit.Whopaysforthemortgage?Every
singleproducerofrealwealth(usevalue)inthecountrysomortgaged,whichmeanseverysingleworker
andpeasant.Imperialismistotal:ithaseconomic,political,military,culturalandpsychological
consequencesforthepeopleoftheworldtoday.Itcouldevenleadtoholocaust.Thefreedomfor
westernfinancecapitalandforthevasttransnationalmonopoliesunderitsumbrellatocontinue
stealingfromthecountriesandpeopleofLatinAmerica,Africa,AsiaandPolynesiaistoday
protectedbyconventionalandnuclearweapons.Imperialism,ledbytheUSA,presentsthe
strugglingpeoplesoftheearthandallthosecallingforpeace,democracy.andsocialismwiththe
ultimatum:accepttheftordeath.Theoppressedandtheexploitedoftheearthmaintaintheir
defiance:libertyfromtheft.Butthebiggestweaponwieldedandactuallydailyunleashedby
imperialismagainstthatcollectivedefianceistheculturalbomb.Theeffectofaculturalbombisto
annihilateapeoplesbeliefintheirnames,intheirlanguages,intheirenvironment,intheir
heritageofstruggle,intheirunity,intheircapacitiesandultimatelyinthemselves.Itmakesthem
seetheirpastasonewastelandofnonachievementanditmakesthemwanttodistancethemselves
fromthatwasteland.Itmakesthemwanttoidentifywiththatwhichisfurthestremovedfrom
themselves;forinstance,withotherpeopleslanguagesratherthantheirown.Itmakesthemidentify
withthatwhichisdecadentandreactionary,allthoseforceswhichwouldstoptheirownspringsof
life.Itevenplantsseriousdoubtsaboutthemoralrightnessofstruggle.Possibilitiesoftriumphor
victoryareseenasremote,ridiculousdreams.Theintendedresultsaredespair,despondencyanda
collectivedeathwish.Amidstthiswastelandwhichithascreated,imperialismpresentsitselfasthe
cureanddemandsthatthedependantsinghymnsofpraisewiththeconstantrefrain:Theftisholy.
Indeed,thisrefrainsumsupthenewcreedoftheneocolonialbourgeoisieinmanyindependentAfrican
states.Theclassesfightingagainstimperialismeveninitsneocolonialstageandform,haveto
confrontthisthreatwiththehigherandmorecreativecultureofresolutestruggle.Theseclasses
havetowieldevenmorefirmlytheweaponsofthestrugglecontainedintheircultures.Theyhave
tospeaktheunitedlanguageofstrugglecontainedineachoftheirlanguages.Theymustdiscover
theirvarioustonguestosingthesong:Apeopleunitedcanneverbedefeated Colonialism
dehumanizes individuals of all races
Hardt and Negri 2k
[Michael and Antonio, Political Philosopher and Literary Theorist at Duke University, Political Philosopher, Empire,
page 129]
The work of numerous authors, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and

Franz Fanon, who have recognized that colonial representations and colonial sovereignty are dialectical in form has
proven useful in several respects. First of all, the dialectical construction demonstrates that there is nothing
The White and the Black, the European and
essential about the identities in struggle.
the Oriental, the colonizer and the colonized are all representations
that function only in relation to each other and (despite appearances)
have noreal necessary basis in nature, biology, or rationality.
Colonialism is an abstract machine that produces alterity and identity .
And yet in the colonial situation these differences and identities are
made to function as if they were absolute, essential, and natural. The
first result of the dialectical reading is thus the denaturalization of
racial and cultural difference. This does not mean that once recognized as artificial constructions,
colonial identities evaporate into thin air; they are real illusions and continue to function as if they were essential.
This recognition is not a politics in itself, but merely the sign that an anti colonial politics is possible. In the second
the dialectical interpretation makes clear that colonialism and
place,
colonialist representations are grounded in a violent struggle that must
be continually renewed. The European Selfneeds violence and needs to confront its Other to feel and
maintain its power, to remake itself continually. The generalized state of war that continuously subtends colonial
representations is not accidental or even unwantedviolence is the necessary foundation of colonialism itself.
Third, posing colonialism as a negative dialectic of recognition makes clear the potential for subversion inherent in
the situation. For a thinker like Fanon, the reference to Hegel suggests that the Master can only achieve a hollow
form of recognition; it is the Slave, through life-and-death struggle, who has the potential to move forward toward
full consciousness. The dialectic ought to imply movement, but this dialectic of European sovereign identity has
fallen back into stasis. The failed dialectic suggests the possibility
of a proper dialectic that through negativity will move history forward.
 Ethics
Imperialism destroys ethics by valuing security risks over collateral
damage
McNally 6 (David, Professor of political science at York University The new
imperialists Ideologies of Empire Ch 5 Pg 92) JL
Yet, even on Ignatieff s narrow definition, in which human rights are about stopping
unmerited cruelty and suffering, the crucial question is how we are to do so. What if
some means to this ostensible end say, a military invasion can reasonably be
expected to produce tens of thousands of civilian casualties and an almost certain
breakdown in social order? Ignatieff s doctrine of human rights provides absolutely
no ethico-philosophical criteria in that regard. Instead, he offers a pragmatic
judgement and a highly dubious one that only U.S. military power can be
expected to advance human rights in the zones where barbarians rule.
But note: this is an utterly ad hoc addition to his theory. In no respect can it be said
to flow from any of his reflections on human rights per se. Moreover, others
proceeding from the same principle of limiting cruelty and suffering have
arrived at entirely opposite conclusions with respect to imperial war.
Ignatieff s myriad proclamations for human rights thus lack any
demonstrable tie to his support of empire and imperial war. This is
convenient, of course, since the chasm between moralizing rhetoric and
imperial advocacy allows Ignatieff to pump out empty platitudes as if
these contained real ethical guidance. Concrete moral choices, involving
historical study and calibrations of real human risk, never enter the
equation. So, Ignatieff can drone on about the world being a better place
without Saddam, never so much as acknowledging the cost of this result: some
25,000 Iraqis killed as a result of armed conflict since the start of the U.S.
invasion, and probably more than 100,000 dead as a result of all the consequences
of the U.S. war.24 Nowhere does he offer any kind of calculus for
determining if these tens of thousands of deaths are ethically justified.
Instead, banalities about being rid of Saddam are offered up without even
countenancing the scale of human suffering that Ignatieff s preferred course of
action war and occupation has entailed. But then, Ignatieff shows little regard for
ordinary people in the zones of military conflict. His concern is for the security of the
West and of the U.S.A. in particular. Ruminating about Americas new vulnerability
in the world, for instance, he writes, When American naval planners looked south
from the Suez Canal, they had only bad options. All the potential refuelling stops
Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Yemen are dangerous places for American
warships. As the attack on the U.S.S. Cole made clear, none of the governments in
these strategically vital refuelling stops can actually guarantee the safety of their
imperial visitors.25
 Environment
U.S.Imperialismhasenvironmentalandlethalconsequences

LLCO2011[LeadingLightCompany,ImperialismkillsandkeepsonkillinginVietnam,Iraq,
etcLLCOPublisher,July6th,2013http://llco.org/imperialismkillsandkeepsonkillingin
vietnamiraqetc/]

Accordingtoarecent,2009studybytheVietnamVeteransofAmericaFoundationand
VietnamsMinistryofDefense,landminesandunexplodedordnancedotthelandscapeof
Vietnameventhoughthewarendednearly35yearsago.Morethanonethirdoftheland
insixcentralVietnameseprovincescontinuestobeaserioushazard.Accordingto
VietnamsMinistryofDefense,6.6millionhectares(6.3millionacres)arestillcontaminated.
Landmineshaveresultedin42,000deathssincethewarsendin1975.QuangTriand
QuangBinharetwoprovincesthathavesufferedmanydeaths.7,000deathsintheformer,
6,000inthelatter.Deathresultingfromsuchexplosionsarepartoftheongoinglegacyof
imperialisminVietnam.Inaddition,theVietnamesepeoplestillsufferfromthe
consequencesofthemassiveamountsofchemicalagentsdumpedintotheirenvironmentby
theUS.MillionsofgallonsofAgentOrangeweresprayedacrosstheVietnamese
countryside.AgentOrangecontainedastrainofdioxinknownasTCCDwhichisoneofthe
strongestpoisonsknowntohumanity.In2003,thesoilwassampledinVietnamandfoundto
contain180milliontimesthesafedioxinlevelsasprescribedbytheUSEnvironmental
ProtectionAgency.Thereareroughly150,000childrenwhosebirthdefectscanbetracedto
theirparentscontaminationtoAgentOrange.AccordingtotheVietnamVictimsofAgent
OrangeAssociation,threemillionVietnamesewereexposedtothechemicalduringthewar.
Asaresult,serioushealthproblemsaffectonemillionofthevictims.TheUSpaysupto
1,500amonthforAmericanswhohaveproblemsresultingfromdioxinexposureduringthewar.
TheUSrefusestopayanythingtothevastnumbersoftheVietnamesevictimsthe
underlyingassumptionbytheUSisthataVietnameselifeisworthlessthanthatofan
American.AccordingtotheformerpresidentoftheVietnameseRedCross,UStacticswere
amassiveviolationofhumanrightsofthecivilianpopulation,andaweaponofmass
destruction.Contaminatingtheenvironmentofawholecountrywithexplosivesand
poisonssuchthat,decadeslater,peoplearestillsufferinginthethousandsasaresultis
tantamounttogenocide.Suchactionsendupaffectingtheentirepopulation,including
futuregenerations.Eventhoughimperialismwasdefeatedforatimein,theUScontinues
tokill,cripple,andmaim.Imperialismkillsandkeepsonkilling.

Environmental consequences lead to extinction

Hoah 2006 [Hannah, Published Author, Global Warming Already Causes Extinction,
National Geographics News, July 5th, 2013
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061128-global-warming.html]
Parmesan and most other scientists hadn't expected to see species extinctions from global warming
until 2020. But populations of frogs, butterflies, ocean corals, and polar birds have already gone
extinct because of climate change, Parmesan said. Scientists were right about which species would
suffer firstplants and animals that live only in narrow temperature ranges and those living in
cold climates such as Earth's Poles or mountaintops. "The species dependent on sea icepolar
bear, ring seal, emperor penguin, Adlie penguinand the cloud forest frogs are showing massive
extinctions," Parmesan said. Her review compiles 866 scientific studies on the effects of climate change
on terrestrial, marine, and freshwater species. The study appears in the December issue of the Annual
Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. Global Phenomenon Bill Fraser is a wildlife ecologist
with the Polar Oceans Research Group in Sheridan, Montana. "There is no longer a question of whether
one species or ecosystem is experiencing climate change. [Parmesan's] paper makes it evident that it is
almost global," he said. "The scale now is so vast that you cannot continue to ignore climate change,"
added Fraser, who began studying penguins in the Antarctic more than 30 years ago. "It is going to have
some severe consequences." Many species, for example, have shifted their ranges in response to rising
temperatures.

US imperialism creates the most environmental destruction.

Buell in 1 (Frederick, professor of English at Queens College Globalization without
Environmental Crisis:
The Divorce of Two Discourses in U.S. Culture, Pg 64
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu:2048/journals/symploke/v009/9.1buell.
html) JL
The global biodiversity crisis is another multi-source crisis, created by a
wide variety of local actors acting as a part of an extended global system; but
the damage these actors do is to local systems, not to the biosphere as a
whole. It becomes global in its accumulation not just of individual actions
(primarily habitat destruction), but localized effects. Many other new global
problems resemble the biodiversity crisis in being globalized through the
bootstrapping of local actions and instances of local damage into a global
nightmare. Many of John Bellamy Foster's [End Page 62] long list of "urgent
problems" are global today, thanks to the spread of industrial systems and practices
and the worldwide accumulation of small impacts this creates. These include: loss
of genetic diversity, acid rain, nuclear contamination, tropical deforestation, the
elimination of climax forests, wetland destruction, soil erosion, desertification,
floods, famine, the despoliation of lakes, streams and rivers, the drawing down and
contamination of ground water, the pollution of coastal waters and estuaries, the
destruction of coral reefs, oil spills, overfishing, expanding landfills, toxic wastes,
the poisonous effects of insecticides and herbicides, exposure to hazards on the job,
urban congestion, and the depletion of nonrenewable resources. (Foster 11-2) But
environmental crisis has taken on an even more contemporary global feel
as it has begun to share in the contemporary topos of the trans(-): the evocation of
the transnational, transcultural, and (a necessary part of this, though less
commonly added) the transgenic. One sign is that environmental crisis has become
hyperaware of global interactions occurring painfully and even riskily in real time.
These days, lungs in the U.S. contract as fearfully at information about the
deforestation of the Amazon as they do at disputes over national clean air
standards. In 1932, Aldo Leopold complained that "when I go birding in my Ford, I
am devastating an oil field and re-electing an imperialist to get me rubber"; he
meant this, Lawrence Buell notes, as "a reductio ad aburdam of purist thinking"
(2001, 302). Contemporary globalization, in the meantime, has institutionalized
such discourse as a part of our normality, not something ridiculous. 7 It is now a
staple of social justice rhetoric and global activism, as when Noam Chomsky points
out that American children use baseball bats hand-dipped in toxic chemicals by
Haitian women and corporations are scrutinized for their overseas labor practices. It
is equally a staple of environmental crisis thought, expressed in several ways. For
example, environmental imperialism by a resource-hogging, pollution-
generating North is now a commonplace perception ("a baby born in the
United States creates thirteen times as much environmental damage over
the course of its lifetime as a baby born in Brazil, and thirty-five times as
much as an Indian baby") (Hertsgaard 196); the huge environmental footprints
of consumer items purchased by innocent consumers extend well across
the world, as environmentalists chart these effects; and linkages between
apparently innocent first world choices are exposed as having drastic effects-at-a-
distance [End Page 63] (as when Theordore Roszak unhappily discovers that "the
material from which my eyeglass frames are made comes from an endangered
species, the hawksbill turtle" and is told that whenever he turns on a light bulb
powered by nuclear energy, he is "adding to the number of anecephalic babies in
the world" (Rozak 36).
 War
Imperialism leads to warWWI proves
TAHC 2012 [The Authentic History Center, The Origins of WWI Primary Source for
American Pop Culture, July 6th, 2013, http://www.authentichistory.com/19141920/1
overview/1origins/index.html]

OneofthemaincausesoftheFirstWorldWarwasimperialism:anunequalrelationship,
oftenintheformofanempire,forcedonothercountriesandpeoples,resultingin
dominationandsubordinationofeconomics,culture,andterritory.Historiansdisagreeon
whethertheprimaryimpetusforimperialismwasculturaloreconomic,butwhateverthereason,
Europeansinthelate19thcenturyincreasinglychosetosafeguardtheiraccesstomarkets,
rawmaterials,andreturnsontheirinvestmentsbyseizingoutrightpoliticalandmilitary
controloftheundevelopedworld.Betweenthe1850sand1911,allofAfricawascolonized
exceptforLiberiaandEthiopia.TheBritish,whohadimposeddirectruleonIndiain
1858,occupiedEgyptin1882,probablyastrategicnecessitytoprotecttheirIndianinterests.The
French,whohadbegunmissionaryworkinIndochinainthe17thcentury,finishedtheir
conquestsoftheregionin1887,andin1893theyaddedtoitneighboringLaosandasmallsliver
ofChina.

U.S. Imperialism creates world-wide tensions and fails by every

measure

Ottaway and Lacina 2003 [Marina and Bethany, Social Sciences Authors, International
Interventions and Imperialism, Muse, July 6th, 2013 http://muse.jhu.edu/login?
auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/sais_review/v023/23.2ottaway.html]

First,theUnitedStatesisseekingtoshiftfinalauthorityforauthorizinginternal
interventionsawayfromtheUNandtowarditself,relegatingtheUNtoapositionof
secondaryimportance,tobecalleduponwhenconvenientasamarginalcontributorto
essentiallyAmericanundertakings.Second,byarguingthattheUnitedStateshasthe
righttointervenenotonlytoeliminatethreatstoitselfandinternationalpeace,but
alsotoputinplacenewregimes,thedoctrineofpreemptiveinterventionposesanew
threattotheprincipleofstatesovereignty.Notsurprisingly,thedebateonimperialism
hasintensifiedunilateralAmericaninterventionismconstitutesafargreaterthreat
tothefoundationsoftheinternationalsystemthaneventhemostaggressive
multilateralmissionsofthe1990s.In[EndPage86]Namibia,Haiti,andSierraLeone
multilateralinterventionssupportedregimechange,butthesecaseshavebeenjustifiedas
thereturnoflegallyrecognizedpowersinplaceofanillegaldefactoregime.The
unilateralistAmericanprojectappearstogomuchfurther.Itjustifiesregimechange
notsimplyasameansofrestoringalegitimategovernment,butasameansof
removingthreatstoU.S.securityinterestsasdefinedbytheU.S.administration.
 Thoughallstateshavetherighttodefendtheirsecurityinterests,U.S.unilateral
interventions,basedonpreemptionofvaguelydefinedthreatsandundertaken
withoutaninternationalprocessoflegitimization,wouldprovokewidespread
internationalresentmentagainsttheUnitedStates,asthewarinIraqalreadyhas.U.S.
unilateralismmayalsofurnishalicenseforunilateralinterventionsbyotherstates,and
thusbecomeasourceofinstability.Inadditiontothethreatunilateralinterventionspose
totheinternationalsystemandU.S.moralcredibility,theexperienceofmultilateralpost
conflictreconstructionduringthe1990sshouldbeamajorcheckonsuchaproject.That
experiencedemonstratesthatinterventions,eventhosewithimperialcharacteristicsand
significantresources,oftenresultinverylittlechangetointernalpowerdynamics.Even
thetremendousmilitarypowerandfinancialresourcesoftheUnitedStatescannot
necessarilykeepitsattemptstorebuildstatesandsupportstable,benign,and
democraticregimesfrombeingthwartedbylocalpoliticalrealities.Rapidly
transformingrogueandfailedstateswillproveadauntingtask,andunilateral
intervention,shackledbyinternationalresentmentandchargesofimperialism,is
especiallyunlikelytoproveaneffectivetool.

The only thing an imperialist country does is bring violence

Feldman2008[Keith,ProfessorofUniversityofWashington,BlackPowersPalestineandthe
End(s)ofCivilRights,Muse,July6th,2013
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_centennial_review/v008/8.2.feldman.html]
Theconceptimperialformation,recentlydistilledbyAnnLauraStoler,capturesthe
mobileterrainonwhichthesebattlesforanantiracisthistoricallegibilityhavebeen
waged.Imperialformationsuggeststheshiftingdegreesofrights,scale,rule,and
violencethroughwhichthestateprojectssovereigntybothwithinandoutside
internationallyagreeduponborders.Theyaremacropolitieswhosetechnologiesofrule
thriveontheproductionofexceptionsandtheirunevenandchangingproliferation.
Theythriveonturbidtaxonomiesthatproduceshadowpopulationsandeverimproved
coercivemeasurestoprotectthecommongoodagainstthosedeemedthreatstoit.Finally,
imperialformationsgiverisebothtonewzonesofexclusionandnewsitesofandsocial
groupswithprivilegedexemption(2006,128).Thistheoryoftheshiftingcartography
ofempireasonebuiltondifferentialformsofexclusionandexemptionthatoperate
throughracistsocialstructuresbeginstohelpusseehowSNCCand,increasingly,many
othersinvolvedintheblackfreedommovementbegantoseeinPalestinefacts...that
pertaintoourstrugglehere.AcritiqueofthewidespreaddiscourseofU.S.supportfor
PalestinesoccupationcouldchallengethestaidexceptionalistargumentsthattheUnited
StatesandIsraelweresomehowuniqueinachievingtheirphilosophicalcommitmentsand

politicalpracticesoffreedomanddemocracy.Indeed,U.S.exceptionalistdiscourse ,as
StolerandDavidBondcogentlynoteandtheblackfreedommovementspost1967
engagementwithPalestinegivesdepth,complexity,andspecificitytohashistorically
constructedplacesexemptfromscrutinyandpeoplespartiallyexcludedfromrights
(2006,95),whatEtienneBalibarcallsafluctuatingcombinationofcontinued
exteriorizationandinternalexclusion

U.S.interventioncausedmillionsofexcessdeathsinTheKoreanWar

Lucas2007[JamesA.,CounterCurrentsAuthor,DeathsInOtherNationsSinceWWIIDueTo
UsInterventionsCCNews,July6th,2013http://www.countercurrents.org/lucas240407.htm]

TheKoreanWarstartedin1950when,accordingtotheTrumanadministration,NorthKorea
invadedSouthKoreaonJune25th.However,sincethenanotherexplanationhasemergedwhich
maintainsthattheattackbyNorthKoreacameduringatimeofmanyborderincursionsbyboth
sides.SouthKoreainitiatedmostoftheborderclasheswithNorthKoreabeginningin1948.The
NorthKoreagovernmentclaimedthatby1949theSouthKoreanarmycommitted2,617armed
incursions.ItwasamyththattheSovietUnionorderedNorthKoreatoattackSouthKorea.(1,2)
TheU.S.starteditsattackbeforeaU.N.resolutionwaspassedsupportingournations
intervention,andourmilitaryforcesaddedtothemayheminthewarbyintroducingthe
useofnapalm.(1)DuringthewarthebulkofthedeathswereSouthKoreans,North
KoreansandChinese.Foursourcesgivedeathscountsrangingfrom1.8to4.5million.
(3,4,5,6)Anothersourcegivesatotalof4millionbutdoesnotidentifytowhichnationthey
belonged.(7)JohnH.Kim,aU.S.ArmyveteranandtheChairoftheKoreaCommitteeof
VeteransforPeace,statedinanarticlethatduringtheKoreanWartheU.S.Army,AirForce
andNavyweredirectlyinvolvedinthekillingofaboutthreemillionciviliansbothSouth
andNorthKoreansatmanylocationsthroughoutKoreaItisreportedthattheU.S.
droppedsome650,000tonsofbombs,including43,000tonsofnapalmbombs,duringthe
KoreanWar.ItispresumedthatthistotaldoesnotincludeChinesecasualties.

US imperialism threatens to spur major world conflict

Kuang et al 5 (Xinnian, teaches modern Chinese literature at Tsinghua University,
Preemptive War and a World Out of Control
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/positions/v013/13.1kuang.html) JL
The existing world order was constructed under the leadership of the United States
following World War II. The United Nations, the representative of this order, is
certainly not an entirely democratic organization. Since its inception, the United
Nations has been controlled by two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet
Union. These two superpowers used the United Nations as a stage on which to vie
for power. But it is important to note that [End Page 159] neither the United States
nor the Soviet Union doubted the significance or efficacy of the United Nationsand
the United States, in particular, used the United Nations to export its values to the
rest of the world. Both their confrontations and their mutual hold on power gave the
second half of the twentieth century a long peace. However, after the collapse of
the U.S.S.R., the surviving hegemon, the United States, no longer had the
patience to use the United Nations to put forward its own values, but
rather pursued what might be referred to as peace under imperial
domination (diguo tongzhi xia de heping). America's invasion of Iraq has
damaged the authority of the United Nations and the principle of the
inviolability of national sovereignty. Before the war broke out, Bush repeatedly sent
out warnings in which he stated that if the Security Council refused to pass a
resolution authorizing the use of force, the United Nations would become irrelevant.
Some hawks in the administration and conservative newspapers even threatened
that the United States could withdraw from the United Nations, bringing it to an
ignominious end. The strategy of preemption as espoused by American
neoconservatism, along with new interpretations of sovereignty, will bring
about a revolution in the twenty-first century, and the war in Iraq will serve as
a model. The United States will use its neo-imperialist imagination in an
attempt to recreate the so-called rogue states and restore world order.
The strategy of preemption is a sign of America's abandonment of both
traditional Western international regulatory systems and the principle of rule
by law as established under the U.N. charter. Instead, America is bringing about
the return to an era where naked power takes preeminence. At a press
conference held June 27, 2003, after talks with the French minister of foreign affairs,
Dominique de Villepin, Nelson Mandela commented on this shift: "Since the
establishment of the U.N., there have been no world wars; therefore, anybody, and
particularly the leaders of the superpowers, who takes unilateral action outside the
frame of the U.N. must receive the condemnation of all who love peace." On a visit
to Ireland on June 20, 2003, he went on to say, "Any organization, any country, any
movement that now decides to sideline the United Nations, that country
and its leader are a danger to the world. We cannot allow the world to
again degenerate into a place where the will of the powerful dominates
over all other considerations."4 [End Page 160] The strategy of preemption
is not simply a military strategy, but is, in fact, a kind of barbaric politics,
a serious attack against civilized humanity. It is ultimately tied to the question
of whether the world is seeking civilization and order, or whether it is entering into a
period of violence and chaos. The United States' adoption of this strategy
provoked the intense opposition of Europe and, indeed, the entire world
because many believe that a strategy of preemption would take the world in the
latter direction. As a result of the Iraq War, a deep rift was opened up between
America and its western European allies, to which the media now frequently affix
the label "Old Europe." Modern history, beginning in 1492, has been a Eurocentric
history of colonialism, imperialism, and expansion. However, the United States
has replaced Europe as imperialist colonizer. The imagination of American
neoconservative politics has inspired the United States to become a
tyrannical and self-appointed hegemon, willfully changing global
boundaries, and a particularly intense force for the destruction of world
order. Europe, on the other hand, has become a force for rationality and civilization.
The dispute that arose between Europe and America during the Iraq War was both a
conflict of potential profit and a sign of civilizational disparity.

Imperialist ideals cause us to rush ignorantly into unnecessary violence

and wars
Harris, 08 (Jerry, US Imperialism after Iraq, Race & Class, 50(1), p.
41) JH
In light of this assessment, counter-insurgency wars, in Iraq or elsewhere, would
clearly lead to attacks on the local population insofar as it constitutes a support
network for insurgents. This review of changing tactics in Iraq is important because
it sets the stage for future wars. Overwhelming force and counter-insurgency
doctrine are strategies for occupation. But all imperialist occupations face
the same political problem. They are opposed by local people who yearn
for self-determination. This fundamental truth is something no
Washington think tank or Pentagon general can admit, not even to
themselves. They always believe in the rightness of their cause, be it the
white mans burden or the war against terror. Such hubris blinds
military/industrial intellectuals time and time again. Their understanding
of conditions is framed by the bias and dogmas formed in the imperial
centre, leaving them ignorant of the complexities of Third World societies.
National chauvinism that originates in power and wealth never accepts
that less powerful, less wealthy and less technologically endowed
societies can run their affairs better than the imperialist centre;
consequently, defeat seems unimaginable. Just listen to the eloquent
arrogance of neoconservative Richard Perle shortly before the war: Those
who think Iraq should not be next may want to think about Syria or Iran or
Sudan or Yemen or Somalia or North Korea or Lebanon or the Palestinian
Authority if we do it right with respect to one or two we could deliver
a short message, a two-word message, Youre next.
The continuance of violence causes extinction
Holmes 89 (Robert, Professor at Princeton University, On war and
morality, Princeton University Press, p. 1)

The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has

been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four
decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying
ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of
preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of
"respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent
argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not just nuclear
war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a
wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions
about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of
persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich
panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman
Kahn.
Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion
both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls
"militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the
majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while
supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks
eventual human extinction.

Imperialism leads to world war

Boyle 12 [ Francis, Professor of international Law, University of Illinois, Unlimited Imperialism and the
Threat of World War III. U.S. Militarism at the Start of the 21st Century, Global Research, Online, 7/6/13,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/unlimited-imperialism-and-the-threat-of-world-war-iii-u-s-militarism-at-the-start-of-the-
21st-century/5316852]
This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau
denominated unlimited imperialism in his seminal work Politics Among
Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53): The outstanding historic examples of
unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great,
Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and
Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no
rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a
superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will
not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination
a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the
conquerors lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the
aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited
imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of
this kind It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander,
Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American
foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of
both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like
twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.
Indigenous Rights
Imperialism deteriorates the culture of indigenous people
Galeota2004[Julia,TheHumanist,ArticleCulturalImperialism:AnAmericanTradition
http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/essay3mayjune04.pdf]
Inhis1976workCommunicationandCulturalDomination,HerbertChillerdefinescultural
imperialismas:thesumoftheprocessesbywhichasocietyisbroughtintothemodern
worldsystem,andhowitsdominatingstratumisattracted,pressured,forced,and
sometimesbribedintoshapingsocialinstitutionstocorrespondto,oreventopromote,the
valuesandstructuresofthedominantcenterofthesystem.Thus,culturalimperialism
involvesmuchmorethansimpleconsumergoods;itinvolvesthedisseminationof
ostensiblyAmericanprinciples,suchasfreedomanddemocracy.Thoughthisprocess
mightsoundappealingonthesurface,itmasksafrighteningtruth:manyculturesaround
theworldaregraduallydisappearingduetotheoverwhelminginfluenceofcorporateand
culturalAmerica.ThemotivationsbehindAmericanculturalimperialismparallelthe
justificationsforU.S.imperialismthroughouthistory:thedesireforaccesstoforeign
marketsandthebeliefinthesuperiorityofAmericanculture.ThoughtheUnitedStates
doesboasttheworldslargest,mostpowerfuleconomy,nobusinessiscompletelysatisfied
withcontrollingonlytheAmericanmarket;Americancorporationswanttocontrolthe
other95percentoftheworldsconsumersaswell.However,onemustquestionwhetherthis
projectedsocietyistrulybeneficialforallinvolved.Isitworthsacrificingcountless
indigenousculturesfortheunlikelypromiseofaworldwithoutconflict?Aroundtheworld,the
answerisanoverwhelmingNo!Disregardingthefactthataworldofhomogenized
culturewouldnotnecessarilyguaranteeaworldwithoutconflict,thecomplexfabricof
diverseculturesaroundtheworldisafundamentalandindispensablebasisofhumanity.
Throughoutthecourseofhumanexistence,millionshavediedtopreservetheirindigenous
culture.Itisafundamentalrightofhumanitytobeallowedtopreservethemental,
physical,intellectual,andcreativeaspectsofonessociety.Asingleglobalculturewouldbe
nothingmorethanashallow,artificialcultureofmaterialismreliantontechnology.
Thankfully,itwouldbenearlyimpossibletocreateoneblandcultureinaworldofoversix
billionpeople.Andnorshouldwewantto.ContrarytoRothkopfs(andGeorgeW.Bushs)
beliefthat,Goodandevil,betterandworsecoexistinthisworld,therearenosuchabsolutesin
thisworld.TheUnitedStatesshouldnotbeabletorelentlesslyforceothernationstoacceptits
definitionofwhatisgoodandjustorevenmodern.Fortunately,manyvictimsof
Americanculturalimperialismarentblindtothesubversionoftheircultures.
 Democracy
Imperialism is the greatest enemy of Democracy
Rahman, November 16, 2010 [Fazal PHD War on Iraq in perspective: The
developing US imperialism and demonocracy July 5, 2013
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/war-on-iraq-in-perspective-the-
developing-us-imperialism-and-demonocracy/]

In the imperialist center itself also, imperialism has been the greatest enemy of democracy , in spite of some
superfluous appearances and contradictions. For example, in the US, American people have been treated
to constant bombardment of lies, hypocrisies, deceptions, secrecies and disinformation by their
leaders to cover up and misrepresent their international imperialist operations. Consenting to such
lies, hypocrisies, and deceptions of the democratic government, some of them of extremely
sinister and evil nature, by the general populace, destroys the very essence of democracy, which
consists of people consenting to policies and actions based upon truth. The dialectical interactions
between imperialism and democracy in the advanced capitalist societies play the most powerful role in the
development and evolution of these, both at the center as well as in the periphery. These play particularly powerful
role in case of the US, which is, by far, the most powerful, militarist, aggressive, conceited, and deceptive imperialism
of all history. Because of its power and its nature, it is wreaking havoc with genuine democracy everywhere, at its
center, in the periphery, in other imperialist countries, and in socialist societies. It is the most powerful distortion,
perversion, erosion, militarization, and imperialismization of democracy everywhere, all over this planet. A more
sinister, evil, and antidemocratic force is hardly imaginable. The reality of democracy is eroded in such a
context even if the mechanical formalities and appearances are maintained. As is self-evident, even
the formalities and appearances of democracy are being greatly eroded at this stage of the
development of US imperialism-democracy complex. US imperialism-democracy system has been
routinely transformed into fascism in various developing countries, e.g., Nicaragua, Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Zaire, Philippines, Iran, Indonesia, El Salvador
etc. etc. under various dictatorships in the service of US imperialism and its big capital . The chickens
are coming home to roost now and the transition to the uniquely American form of fascism has already begun at the
center. Internationally also, the fascist nature of US imperialism is becoming transparent more than
ever. The so-called war on terrorism and war on Iraq are manifestations of the naked fascism
of US imperialism. These are the self-evident expressions of the most brutal, most plunderous, and
most mass murderous domination of rich oil, natural gas, and other resources of Central Asia and
Caspian Sea and of Iraq on behalf of the giant US oil and military-industrial transnational
corporations by the US government and military. Some leftovers may be thrown into the bowls of UK
corporations too for the participation of UK in this imperialist-fascist plunder.

Lack of democracy leads to extinction

Diamond December 1995 [Larry- Senior fellow at the hoover institution, Promoting
Democracy in the 1990s:Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives July 5, 2013
http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/Promoting%20Democracy%20in%20the%201990s
%20Actors%20and%20Instruments,%20Issues%20and%20Imperatives.pdf]
OTHER THREATS this hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well
being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist
aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of
illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates
that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly
corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on
Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of
these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or
aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions
for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offer important
lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do
not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their
neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic
governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they
are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor
terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass
destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries
form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long
run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are
more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own
citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments.
They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to
breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders,
they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of
law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world
order of international security and prosperity can be built.
 V2L
Calculating life allows it to be devalued-this justifies the worst
atrocities in history and has real effects on populations
Dillon 99 (Michael, Professor of International Relations at the University of
Lancaster, Another Justices Political Theory, Vol 27, No. 2, 164-5)
Quite the reverse. The subject was never a firm foundation for mono, It was
never in possession of that self-possession which was supposed to secure
the certainty of itself, of a self-possession that would enable it ultimately to
adjudicate everything The very indexicality required of sovereign subjectivity gave
rise rather to a commensurability much more amenable to the expendability
required of the political and material economies of mass societies than it did to the
singular invaluable and uncanny uniqueness of the self. The value of the subject
became the standard unit of currency for the political arithmetic of States
and the political economies of capitalism'. They trade in it still to
devastating global effect. The technologisation of the political has become
manifest and global. Economies of evaluation necessarily require
calculability. Thus no valuation without mensuration and no mensuration without
indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, unit, of amount are
necessarily submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to
devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point of counting as
nothing. Hence, no mensuration without deaf either. There is nothing abstract
about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of
holocaust. However liberating and emancipating systems of valuerights
may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the
invaluable. Counted. the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life.
Herewith, then, the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must
never forget that, "we are dealing always with whatever exceeds whatever exceeds
measure. But how do that necessity present itself? Another Justice answer: as the
surplus of the duty to answer to One claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with
the advent of another Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way
of being. The event of this lack is not a negative experience. Rather, it is an
encounter with a reserve charged with possibility. As possibility, it is that which
enables life to be lived in excess without the overdose of actuality. What also means
is that the human is not decided. lt is precisely undecidable. Undecidability
means being in position of having so decide without having already been
fully determined end without being capable of bringing an end to the
requirement for decision.
 Terrorism
Imperialism encourages fundamentalism which leads to terrorist
organizations.

Gagnon 12
[Jean, Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Greater China Studies, Journal of South Asian Development, The
Taliban Did Not Create the Taliban, Imperialism Did, vol. 7 no. 1]
Sir Karl Poppers (2002) method of historicism has been neglected in the analysis of the radicalization of
Afghanistans society in the form of the Taliban. Poppers historicism is the idea that the past may allow the
forecasting of the future by understanding the state of the present in one specific line of historical inquiry. It is
by analyzing periods of imperialismthose eras of social
argued herein that
injustice, violence and oppressionit is seen that such imperialism led
to radical fundamentalism, as many had no choice but to lash out. The
push to strenuous religious identity, heavily laden with violent tactics,
was the natural response of peoples trying to maintain their identities
and collective destiny from imperial domination. Furthermore, as
evidence continues to show, most often those individuals that are first
to radicalize are the poorest of the poor, the dispossessed, or those
who have experienced violent injustices. Using Poppers method, it is possible to
explain how imperialism breeds radicalism (using Afghanistan as an
example) and as such provide some general recommendations to swing the pendulum in reverse so as to
minimize radical behavior. This article has implications for international relations, foreign policies and aid.

Nuclear technology is easily accessible to terrorist groups, enabling them

to inflict maximum damage.

O'Neill 97 from the Institute for Science and International Security

[Kevn, Editor at the Institute for Science and International Security, The Nuclear Terrorist Threat
http://www.isisonline.org/publications/terrorism/threat.pdf]

The proliferation of nuclear weapons or radiological dispersal devices

to terrorist groups is perhaps one of the most frightening threats to
U.S. security. Nuclear materials, technologies and know-how are more
widely available today than ever before. Small quantities of both fissile
materials and highly radioactive materials, sufficient to manufacture a
radiological dispersal device, are actively traded on the black market. A
nuclear detonation by a terrorist group would likely result in an
unprecedented number of casualties. In contrast, a radiological
dispersal attack would probably be less violent, but could significantly
contaminate an urban center, causing economic and social disruption.
Both types of attacks would have significant psychological impacts on
the entire population.
 Human Rights
U.S. Imperialism leads to global holocausts
Foster 03
[John, Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon, The New Age of Imperialism Volume 55, Issue 03 (July-
August)]
This new age of U.S. imperialism will generate its own contradictions,
amongst them attempts by other major powers to assert their
influence, resorting to similar belligerent means, and all sorts of
strategies by weaker states and non-state actors to engage in
asymmetric forms of warfare. Given the unprecedented
destructiveness of contemporary weapons, which are diffused ever
more widely, the consequences for the population of the world could
well be devastating beyond anything ever before witnessed. Rather than
generating a new Pax Americana the United States may be paving the way to new
global holocausts.
 Alternative
The alternative is key to break down epistemological boundaries currently
perpetuating violent power dynamics between the US and Latin America
Slater, Dept of Geography Loughborough University, 2006(David, Imperial powers and democratic imaginations, Third World
Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 8)

In the post-9/11 period the 'war on terror', with its attendant corrosion of civil liberties,
denigration of human rights and overall insinuation of a politics of fear, has tended to undermine
the effectiveness of a positive vision on the diffusion of US democracy. Both at home and abroad,
market-based democracy as the universal model for the rest of the world has come to be
associated more with a bellicose unilateralism than with a seductive system for political emulation
and potential hegemony. Moreover, other democratic imaginations emanating from Latin America
have been offering vibrant alternatives to the US model. Most notably, at the national level Hugo
Ch'avez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia have put on to the agenda critiques of US power
in the Americas and are offering different visions of developing democratic polities more related
to policies of redistribution, social justice, indigenous rights and national autonomy.
Transnationally the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which is a large coalition of civil society groups
located throughout the Americas, has argued that the entire process of negotiating trade agreements
should be democratised, just as the World Social Forums, originating in Porto Alegre, have similarly
argued for a democratisation of global organisations such as the World Trade Organiza- tion, World
Bank and IMF (Doucet, 2005).14 While imperial powers are being challenged, there is an
amplification of democratic politics. In the context of US-Latin American relations the mission
to universalise a US model of democracy is being contested by a wide gamut of political forces and
social movements. The promotion of democracy from above may be sustained by imperial
sentiment at home but it is actively called into question in a continent increasingly impatient
with being framed as the passive recipient. For democracy to flourish, it has to be home-grown
and autonomously sustained, not exported as part of a legitimisation of subordinating power.
When the imperial and the democratic are conjoined, a number of unresolveable contradictions
emerges. As was noted above, the imperial relation entails processes of penetration, violation,
imposition and ethno- centric universalism. Equally, such a relation requires legitimisation to
enhance its effectiveness and, in this context, notions of promoting and sustaining a form of democratic
politics assume their central relevance. While imperial power requires a discourse of justification,
the effectiveness of a democratic mantle is continually undermined by the subordinating practices
of the actual deployment of such power. As a consequence, the interface between the imperial and
the democratic is forever characterised by a dynamic series of tensions which can only be resolved
through a democratic geopolitics that challenges and transcends the imperial.
 A2 Perm (Do Both)
Any inclusion of state action dooms the permutation to failure
Biswas 07
(Shampa BISWAS, Prof Politics, Whitman, 2007 "Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward
Said as an International Relations Theorist" Millennium 36 (1))
While it is no surprise that the US academy should find itself too at that uneasy confluence of neoliberal globalising dynamics and exclusivist
nationalist agendas that is the predicament of many contemporary institutions around the world, there is much reason for concern
and an urgent need to rethink the role and place of intellectual labour in the democratic
process. This is especially true for scholars of the global writing in this age of globalisation and empire. Edward Said has written
extensively on the place of the academy as one of the few and increasingly precarious spaces
for democratic deliberation and argued the necessity for public intellectuals immured from the
seductions of power.14 Defending the US academy as one of the last remaining utopian spaces,
the one public space available to real alternative intellectual practices: no other institution like it on such a scale exists
anywhere else in the world today15, and lauding the remarkable critical theoretical and historical work of many academic intellectuals in a lot of his
work, Said also complains that the American University, with its munificence, utopian sanctuary, and remarkable diversity, has defanged
(intellectuals)16. The most serious threat to the intellectual vocation, he argues, is professionalism
and mounts a pointed attack on the proliferation of specializations and the cult of expertise with their focus on relatively narrow areas of
and most worrisome of all, their ability and willingness
knowledge, technical formalism, impersonal theories and methodologies,
to be seduced by power.17 Said mentions in this context the funding of academic programmes and
research which came out of the exigencies of the Cold War18, an area in which there was considerable
traffic of political scientists (largely trained as IR and comparative politics scholars) with institutions of policy-
making. Looking at various influential US academics as organic intellectuals involved in a dialectical relationship with foreign policy-makers and
examining the institutional relationships at and among numerous think tanks and universities that create convergent perspectives and interests,
Christopher Clement has studied US intervention in the Third World both during and after the Cold War
made possible and justified through various forms of intellectual articulation.19 This is not simply a
matter of scholars working for the state, but indeed a larger question of intellectual orientation. It is not uncommon for IR scholars
to feel the need to formulate their scholarly conclusions in terms of its relevance for global
politics, where relevance is measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom. Edward Saids searing indictment
of US intellectuals policy-experts and Middle East experts - in the context of the first Gulf War20 is certainly even more resonant in the contemporary
context preceding and following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Total rejection is keycolonizing discourse in any form leads

to de-legitimization and disempowerment
Escobar, 1995
(Arturo, associate professor of anthropology at University of Mass,
Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, p.53)

Even those who opposed the prevailing capitalist strategies were obliged to couch their critique in terms of the need for development, through concepts such as another
development, participatory development, socialist development, and the like. In short, one could criticize a given approach and propose modifications or improvements
,
accordingly, but the fact of development itself, and the need for it, could not be doubted. Development had achieved the status of a certainty in the social imaginary. Indeed

it seemed impossible to conceptualize social reality in other terms. Wherever one

looked, one found the repetitive and omnipresent reality of development: governments designing and
implementing ambitious development plans, institutions carrying out development programs in city and countryside alike, experts of all kinds studying

underdevelopment and producing theories ad nauseam. The fact that most peoples conditions

not only did not improve but deteriorated with the passing of time did not seem to bother most
experts. Reality, in sum, had been colonized by the development discourse, and those who were dissatisfied with this state
of affairs had to struggle for bits and pieces of freedom within it, in the hope that in the process a different reality could be constructed. More recently, however, the
development of new tools of analysis, in gestation since the late 1960s but the application of which became widespread only during the 1980s, has made possible analyses of
this type of colonization of reality which seek to account for this very fact: how certain representations become dominant
and shape indelibly the ways in which reality is imagined and acted upon . Foucaults work on the
dynamics of discourse and power in the representation of social reality, in particular, has been instrumental in unveiling the mechanisms by which a certain

order of discourse produces permissible modes of being and thinking while

disqualifying and even making others impossible.

The permutation promotes an imbalanced relationship in

where there is always a giver and a recipientthis creates
cycles of dependence and debt which prevent autonomy and
justice
Arrigo and Williams 2k
(Bruce A., Christopher R., professor of @ the University of North Carolina, associate professor of criminology @ the University of
West Georgia, Possibility of Democratic Justice and the "Gift" of the Majority : On Derrida, Deconstruction, and the Search for
Equality Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice)
Derrida's explication of the gift provides an insightful metaphor with which to analyze the
current state of sociopolitical affairs regarding traditionally subjugated populations. The
advances made by the state regarding minority citizen groups, particularly within the
context of employment (economic) and education (social), are gifts.13 Legislative
enactments designed to foster the growth of equality and thereby democratic justice (i.e.,
standards of what is "right and fair") produce hegemonic effects constitutive only of nar-
cissistic power.14 These effects are eclipsed by counterfeit, although impactful, offerings. The
omnipotence of majority sensibilities in Western cultures, particularly in the United States, has
produced an exploitative and nongiving existence for under- and nonrepresented citizen groups.
Despite the many rights-based movements during the past several decades that have
ostensibly conferred to minorities such abstract gifts as liberty, equality, and freedom,
there remains an enduring wall dividing the masses from those on whom such awards are
bestowed. This fortified separation is most prominent in the (silent) reverberations of state and
federal legislative reforms.15 Relying on Derrida's (1991,1992,1997) critique, we can regard
such statutory reform initiatives as gifts; that is, they are something given to non-
majority citizens by those in power; they are tokens and emblems of empowerment
in the process of equality and in the name of democratic justice. The majority is
presenting something to marginalized groups, something that the giver holds in its
entirety: power.16 The giver or presenter of such power will never, out of capitalistic
conceit and greed, completely surrender that which it owns. It is preposterous to
believe that the narcissistic majority would give up so much as to threaten what they
own; that is, to surrender their hospice and community while authentically welcoming in the
other as stranger. This form of open-ended generosity has yet to occur in Western
democratic societies and, perhaps, it never will. Thus, it is logical to assume that, although
unconscious in some respects, the efforts of the majority are parsimonious and intended
to secure (or accessorize) their own power.17 The following two means by which a gift
enables self-empowerment were already alluded to by Derrida (1997): (a) the giver (i.e., the
sender or majority) either bestows to show off his or her power or (b) gives to
mobilize a cycle of reciprocation in which the receiver (i.e., the minority) will be
indebted. It is for these reasons that the majority gives. This explanation is not the same as
authentically supporting the cause of equality in furtherance of a cultural politics of difference
and recognition.
Imperialism K AFF
 Perm
Their protest against imperialism empirically fails and creates
the illusion that they create change only the perm solves

Clammer 07,[Chelsey How nonviolence protects the state,

http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-nonviolence-protects-state.html]

Do anti-war protests really stop the United States from invading another country?
Do pro-choice marches affect legislation on abortion? Did sit-ins during the
Civil Rights movement help to end racism? These are the questions that
Peter Gelderloos asks in his new book How Nonviolence Protects the State.
With a wealth of experience in anti-prison work, prisoner support
organizations,and the anti-war and anti-globalization movements,
Gelderloos brings his seasoned perspective to these important issues .
Drawing on large historical events, such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights
movement, Gelderloos shows how pacifists and nonviolent protests have not
achieved the same results that active resistance has. At a time when everyone
in the world, except for the US government, is realizing that US troops need
to leave Iraq now, Gelderloos book argues how ineffective the current peace movement
has been at stopping the war and creating any sort of political change . Before the war
broke out over four years ago, [s]ome groups, like United for Peace and
Justice, suggested the protests might avert the war. Of course, they were
totally wrong, and the protests totally ineffective. The invasion occurred as planned, despite the
millions of people nominally, peacefully, and powerlessly opposed to it. So
how do we switch our peace movement from marching in the streets to
actually resisting our government and creating change? It is this question
that Gelderloos has a difficult time answering. How Nonviolence Protects the
State is not meant to change any minds. Instead, it reads as a reassurance
for those who already know the ineffectiveness of peace movements.
Gelderloos language is aggressive at times, as he conflates peace activists
with good sheep. But perhaps this is his point . Maybe if we started to realize that
marches and nonviolent protests were ultimately tools of society to make people feel as if
they are creating change, then we would actually find a way to resist our government and
create the change we want on our own terms . Covering a diverse range of topics,
from how nonviolence is racist to how nonviolence is patriarchal, How
Nonviolence Protects the State is an important book to read for anyone who
recognizes the ineffectiveness of peace activism today. And while the text
doesnt provide many answers, it does inspire the reader to reconsider her
notions of activism and change.
Imperialism Impact Answers
 Imperialism Good

Imperialism is necessary to solve poverty, democracy, human

rights, warwe are not the type of empire the neg claims
Barnett, Professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research
Department, U.S. Naval War College, 11
(Thomas P.M.,The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and
Globalization, at Crossroads, March 7
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/8099/the-new-rules-leadership-
fatigue-puts-u-sand- globalization-at-crossroads,)

It is worth first examining the larger picture: We live in a time of arguably

the greatest structural change in the global order yet endured, with this
historical moment's most amazing feature being its relative and absolute
lack of mass violence. That is something to consider when Americans
contemplate military intervention in Libya, because if we do take the step to
prevent larger-scale killing by engaging in some killing of our own, we will
not be adding to some fantastically imagined global death count stemming
from the ongoing "megalomania" and "evil" of American "empire." We'll be
engaging in the same sort of system-administering activity that has marked
our stunningly successful stewardship of global order since World War II. Let
me be more blunt: As the guardian of globalization, the U.S. military has
been the greatest force for peace the world has ever known. Had America
been removed from the global dynamics that governed the 20th century,
the mass murder never would have ended. Indeed, it's entirely
conceivable there would now be no identifiable human civilization left,
once nuclear weapons entered the killing equation. But the world did not
keep sliding down that path of perpetual war. Instead, America stepped up
and changed everything by ushering in our now-perpetual great-power
peace. We introduced the international liberal trade order known as
globalization and played loyal Leviathan over its spread. What resulted
was the collapse of empires, an explosion of democracy, the persistent
spread of human rights, the liberation of women, the doubling of life
expectancy, a roughly 10-fold increase in adjusted global GDP and a
profound and persistent reduction in battle deaths from state-based
conflicts. That is what American "hubris" actually delivered.

US imperialism is benevolentnot the same type of

imperialism your authors are talking about
Bil 2006 (Max, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "Power for Good", The Weekly Standard. 10
April. Vol. 11, Issue 28, Factiva)
Ever since the end of the Cold War, experts of various stripes have been
grappling with the nature of American power. Clearly, with the demise of its
only major rival, the United States became really, really powerful. So
powerful that the old term superpower doesnt seem to cut it anymore. A
French foreign minister suggested that hyperpower was more appropriate,
but that hasnt caught on. Other analysts have called the United States a
hegemon, a global policeman, even an empire. Ive been known to use the
latter label myself, even though the United States is no longer a
territorial empire of the Roman type (as it was in the days of
Manifest Destiny). Michael Mandelbaum, professor of American foreign
policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies,
doesnt think much of those who want to cloak the old Republic in imperial
ermine. American influence in the world is certainly considerable, he
writes, but the United States does not control, directly or indirectly, the
politics and economics of other societies , as empires have always done, save
for a few special cases that turn out to be the exceptions that prove the
rule. He prefers to label the United States the worlds government,
though its hard to see why thats much of an improvement. As Mandelbaum
himself admits, There aremany governments in the world and the global
role of the United States, expansive though it is, does not look much like any
of them. His case for labeling the United States a global government,
rather than a global empire, rests on a rickety foundation. Traditionally,
he notes, the imperial power has been seen as a predator, drawing
economic profit and political gain from its control of the imperial
possession, while the members of the society it controls suffer.
The United States, he correctly notes, does not exploit any states in
this way. Instead, it provides the whole world with valuable public
goodsprincipally protection from predatorsthat are welcomed
by most of the worlds states. But that hardly makes it that different
from the British Empire, which also performed all sorts of public services,
such as stamping out the slave trade and piracy. Mandelbaum may see the
United States as a particularly benign great power, and he is not wrong to
do so; but most empires of the past also saw themselves as advancing a
mission civilisatrice. His assurance that the United States means it
honestly!is not likely to mollify Americas critics. Nor is his choice of
terminology particularly reassuring. I cant see some mandarin at the Quai
dOrsay (the French foreign ministry) slapping himself on the forehead and
exclaiming, So they are not an empire after all. Theyre only the worlds
government. What a relief. Vive les Etats-Unis! The value of The Case for
Goliath does not lie in its central conceitthe United States as the worlds
governmentbut in the arguments Mandelbaum advances for why
American power serves the interests of other countries. The case he makes
is not particularly novel (William Odom and Robert Dujarric made similar
points in their 2004 book, Americas Inadvertent Empire), but it bears
repeating at a time when the publishing industry is churning out reams of
paranoid tomes with titles like Rogue Nation, The Sorrows of Empire, and
The New American Militarism. Mandelbaum begins by listing five security
benefits the United States offers the world. First, the continuing
deployment of American troops in Europe is a reassurance that no
sudden shifts in Europes security arrangements would occur.
Second, the United States has reduced the demand for nuclear
weapons, and the number of nuclear-armed countries, to levels
considerably below what they otherwise have reached, both by
attempting to stop rogue states from acquiring nukes and by
providing nuclear protection to countries such as Japan, South
Korea, and Taiwan that would otherwise go nuclear. Third, the
United States has fought terrorists across the world and waged
preventive war in Iraq to remove the threat posed by Saddam
Hussein. Fourth, the United States has undertaken humanitarian
interventions in such places as Bosnia and Kosovo, which Mandelbaum
likens to the practice, increasingly common in Western countries, of
removing children from the custody of parents who are abusing them. Fifth,
the United States has attempted to create the apparatus of a
working, effective, decent government in such dysfunctional
places as Haiti and Afghanistan. Mandelbaum also points to five
economic benefits of American power. First, the United States
provides the security essential for international commerce by, for
instance, policing Atlantic and Pacific shipping lanes. Second, the
United States safeguards the extraction and export of Middle
Eastern oil, the lifeblood of the global economy. Third, in the
monetary realm, the United States has made the dollar the
worlds reserve currency and supplied loans to governments in
the throes of currency crises. Fourth, the United States has
pushed for the expansion of international trade by midwifing the
World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and
other instruments of liberalization. And fifth, by providing a ready market for
goods exported by such countries as China and Japan, the United States
became the indispensable supplier of demand to the world. Naturally, the
United States gets scant thanks for all these services provided gratis. But
Mandelbaum points out that, for all their griping, other countries have
not pooled their resources to confront the enormous power of the
United States because, unlike the supremely powerful countries of
the past, the United States [does] not threaten them. Instead, the
United States actually helps other nations achieve shared goals
such as democracy, peace, and prosperity.
 A2 Root Cause

Saying imperialism is the root cause for all oppression masks

more violent forms of oppression

Halliday 99
[Fred, Middle East Report, The Middle East at the Millennial Turn
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer213/213_hallliday.html]

Recent developments in the Middle East and the onset of new global trends and
uncertainties pose a challenge not only to those who live in the region but also to
those who engage it from outside. Here, too, previously-established patterns of
thought and commitment are now open to question. The context of the l960s, in
which journals such as MERIP Reports (the precursor of this publication) and the
Journal of the North American Committee on Latin America (NACLA) were founded,
was one of solidarity with the struggles of Third World peoples and opposition to
external, imperialist intervention. That agenda remains valid: Gross inequalities of
wealth, power and access to rightsa.k.a. imperialismpersist. This agenda has been
enhanced by political and ethical developments in subsequent decades. Those who
struggle include not only the national groups (Palestinians and Kurds) oppressed by
chauvinist regimes and the workers and peasants (remember them?) whose labor
sustains these states, but now also includes analyses of gender oppression, press
and academic suppression and the denial of ecological security. The agenda has
also elaborated a more explicit stress on individual rights in tandem with the
defense of collective rights. History itself and the changing intellectual context of
the West have, however, challenged this emancipatory agenda in some key
respects. On the one hand, oppression, denial of rights and military intervention are
not the prerogative of external states alone: An anti-imperialism that cannot
recognizeand denounceindigenous forms of dictatorship and aggression,
or that seeks, with varying degrees of exaggeration, to blame all oppression and
injustice on imperialism, is deficient. The Iranian Revolution, Bathist Iraq,
confessional militias in Lebanon, armed guerrilla groups in a range of countries,
not to mention the Taliban in Afghanistan, often represent a much greater
immediate threat to human rights and the principles in whose name solidarity
was originally formulated than does Western imperialism. Islamist movements
from below meet repressive states from above in their conduct. What many people
in the region want is not less external involvement but a greater commitment by the
outside world, official and non-governmental, to protecting and realizing rights that
are universally proclaimed but seldom respected. At the same time, in a
congruence between relativist renunciation from the region and critiques of
"foundationalist" and Enlightenment thinking in the West, doubt has been cast on
the very ethical foundation of solidarity: a belief in universal human rights and the
possibility of a solidarity based on such rights. Critical engagement with the region
is now often caught between a denunciation of the West's failure actively to pursue
the democratic and human rights principles it proclaims and a rejection of the
validity of these principles as well as the possibility of any external encouragement
of them. This brings the argument back to the critique of Western policy, and of the
relation of that critique to the policy process itself. On human rights and
democratization, official Washington and its European friends continue to speak in
euphemism and evasion. But the issue here is not to see all US involvement as
inherently negative, let alone to denounce all international standards of rights as
imperialist or ethnocentric, but rather, to hold the US and its European allies
accountable to the universal principles they proclaim elsewhere. An anti-
imperialism of disengagement serves only to reinforce the hold of
authoritarian regimes and oppressive social practices within the Middle East.
 Neoliberalism Good

United states economic dominance prevents conflict

Griswold, Associated Director of the Center for Trade Policy
Studies at the CATO Institute in Washington, 02
(Daniel, seven Moral Arguments for Free Trade, The Insider, 01 May,
http://www.insideronline.org/feature.cfm?id=106)

In an 1845 speech in the British House of Commons, Richard Cobden called

free trade that advance which is calculated to knit nations more together in
the bonds of peace by means of commercial intercourse. Free trade does
not guarantee peace, but it does strengthen peace by raising the cost of
war to governments and their citizens. As nations become more integrated
through expanding markets, they have more to lose should trade be
disrupted. In recent years, the twin trends of globalization and
democratization have produced their own peace dividend: since 1987, real
spending on armaments throughout the world has dropped by more than
one-third. Since the end of the Cold War, the threat of major international
wars has receded. Those nations most closely associated with international
terrorism Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea are
among the least globalized countries in the world in terms of non-oil trade
and foreign investment. Not one of them belongs to the World Trade
Organization. During the 1930s, the industrialized nations waged trade wars
against each other. They raised tariffs and imposed quotas in order to
protect domestic industry. The result, however, was that other nations only
raised their barriers even further, choking off global trade and deepening
and prolonging the global economic depression. Those dark economic times
contributed to the conflict that became World War II. Americas post-war
policy of encouraging free trade through multilateral trade agreements
was aimed at promoting peace as much as it was prosperity.

Neoliberalism is key to democracychecks war

Griswold, Associated Director of the Center for Trade Policy
Studies at the CATO Institute in Washington, 2007
(Daniel, Trade, Democracy and Peace: The Virtuous Cycle, 20 April 2007,
http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)

The good news does not stop there. Buried beneath the daily stories about
suicide bombings and insurgency movements is an underappreciated but
encouraging fact: The world has somehow become a more peaceful place.
A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back
reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say." In 2006, a survey by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the number of
armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for the past half-
century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to
17, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest
report found that 2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations
were at war with one another. What a remarkable and wonderful fact. The
death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press
report, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-
World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure.
Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Current
estimates of people killed by war are down sharply from annual tolls ranging
from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951
during the Korean War. Many causes lie behind the good news--the end of
the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them--but expanding
trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting
world peace. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American
author argued in a forgettable book, growing commercial ties between
nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would
argue that free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways.
First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced
the trend toward democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights
with each other. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the
world's countries today are democracies--a record high. Some studies have
cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight wars. While
it's true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a
rare occurrence for democracies to engage in wars with nondemocracies. We
can still hope that has more countries turn to democracy, there will be fewer
provocations for war by non-democracies.

Neoliberalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty

Pipe, staff writer at The South Australia Globalist, 2011
(Nicholas, The South Australia Globalist, "The Global Financial Crisis", 2011,
perspectivist.com/business/the-global-financial-crisis)

When assisted by the other neo-liberal views of globalisation and foreign

investment, this economic growth leads to other social benefits; it
trickles down to marginalised populations, while open borders ensure
the most efficient distributions of goods worldwide. As a result, closing
the gap between affluent and marginalised populations is encouraged.
Ergas summarises the effects of this phenomenon as: (liberalism) works, while the
interventionist prescription doesnt. Ask the hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indians
and Vietnamese whom liberalisation has lifted out of poverty. The benefits of
neo-liberalism are clear, and it is fallacious to overlook them when
judging the system itself in the wake of the GFC. Yet there is something
else that any critic of neo-liberalism must consider the fact that, like it
or not, neo-liberalism is here to stay. As Chris Brown notes, the system has
become hegemonic and so deeply entrenched in society that its ideals are now part
of how things really are. You only have to look at the US Governments need to bail
out and protect several corporations at the height of the GFC to see how deep
rooted the neo-liberalism system is, and how its influence lives on.