The U.S. regime should be disarmed

I’d like to start off by thanking my opponent for developing an interesting premise to debate. Since Pro did not define their terms or the parameters of the debate, I will assume disarm to mean the abolishment of conventional arms owned and utilized by the US government. I will also assume that Pro means disarmed solely in the international environment and not in domestic law enforcement situations, as I believe that is the spirit of the resolution. As Con I will be arguing that there is no compelling reason to disarm the US, whereas I assume Pro will be providing reasoned arguments as to why it should be. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I’m going to begin by addressing several claims my opponent made in their opening statement. 1) Most of the wars in the world are started by the U.S. and or its allies Since the resolution concerns only the US, I will ignore conflicts involving allies – which is an ambiguous term either way, especially regarding the US. Looking at a list of essentially all recognized international conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries, we can see that the US was involved in only 20 / 247 global conflicts – or approximately 8% of conflicts occurring in the last century (1). Determining who “started” the conflicts the US was involved in can be a subjective affair; however, it can be assumed that the US did not start every conflict it was involved in (most notably it did not start WWI or WWII), and therefore it is reasonable to assume that it is directly responsible for much less than 8% of wars in the last century. In contrast, China and the UK have been involved in a greater number of conflicts in the last century (11% and 12% respectively), and both are arguably responsible for a greater number of deaths. We can clearly see that Pro’s assertion that the US is responsible for “most” of the wars in the world is erroneous. It is a common mistake made by people from the Western Diaspora – it is a simply fact that the majority of the world’s conflicts do not involve the US, and assuming otherwise is a rather ego-centric bias. This fact removes the one main argument supporting Pro’s position that disarming the US would benefit civilization at large. 2) Their [U.S.] dominance of the world market is based on military aggression U.S. dominance of certain sectors of the world economy is not a direct result of military aggression, and if you believe it is you need to provide clear proof to support it. Arguably the only economic sector the US dominates - mostly as a result of its enormous capital investment rather than its aggression - would be international arms sales – although Russia, Britain, France, and North Korea also sell billions of dollars worth of arms annually as well. Again, this comment demonstrates a clear bias that assumes the US is not only dominant in all international economic sectors which is clearly ludicrous, but also that it is dominant simply as a result of its military which is a gross simplification. Furthermore, this point is dangerously close to be irrelevant to the resolution of why the US should be disarmed – I only address it here because I assume that you think US “dominance” of certain economic sectors is inherently “bad” and should be rectified by disarming the country. I would appreciate you clarifying both how US prowess in certain economic sectors is fundamentally negative, and also how disarming the US would affect that dominance in any reasonable way. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I await Pro’s response demonstrating more compelling reasons for why the US should be disarmed. As it stands, the evidence so far is rather lackluster. (1) http://www.war-memorial.net...