Resolved: the U.S. should intervene to promote democracy

Framework: Con concedes he is taking the non-interventionist side and must therefore oppose all forms of intervention. He then asserts (without any warrant) that I must defend all types of pro-democratic interventions. This is absurd. (1) The resolution is about whether the U.S. should intervene to promote democracy and does not stipulate which kind of intervention. (2) This assertion is absurd since it would mean I would have to defend interventions in which the means the U.S. chooses is wanton genocide, and there is nothing in the resolution that even implies this. I merely have to show that the U.S. SHOULD intervene to promote democracy, and I can fulfill this burden without defending ALL types of intervention or interventions the U.S. chooses to engage in, including the ones to which he conveniently chose to appeal. If we can promote democracy through peaceful means, and there are good reasons to do it, I win the debate even if some forms of interventions are bad, since he must deny all of them.Military Intervention:My opponent drops the systemic analysis I provided. When we look only to the 1/3 of cases in which the U.S. sought to proliberalize, we were 70% successful. This means military interventions, on net, have been successful and are a means to promote democracy. While examples can be used, they cannot legitimately overrule systemic analyses. While prolib was a goal in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was not the primary goal, so my evidence holds more weight. Iraq:Sanctions: This is embarrassing. His own source says the “trade sanctions” were imposed after Hussein invaded Kuwait, in response to his aggression. This is an indict to generic intervention, not pro-democracy intervention since that was not the goal. Also, it was UN, not U.S. and the 1997 act he cites makes no mention of sanctions. TURN: The Liberation Act intervenes to HELP pro-democracy movements in Iraq, which is good in light of sanctions. “Democracy” or any derivative thereof is not even found in his source. War: This does not prove we should not generally intervene to promote democracy, at best it proves we should not have done it by total war in Iraq. By this logic, Obama would not be an interventionist!!! This does NOT prove his BOP, it just indicts one example. Afghanistan1.The casualties would happen independent of demo promo since we originally intervened in our defense, demo promo became a goal later. 2.Casualties are not a reason not to intervene if the people desire democracy. By that logic, all revolutions would be immoral and we should always have autocracies. 82% of Afghans support the current regime, 4% want the Taliban. Death is bad, but it is necessary in their struggle for democracy. [1] 3.On net, lives saved now: health access increased from 9% to over 80%. [2] As a result, there are 80,000 more infants who survive [3] and 89,000 more children who survive than was the case under the Taliban. 4.Basic human rights: only 900k students in schools under Taliban, of whom none were women. Now, there are 6.2 million, of whom 35% are girls and there are 42k women teachers, none under Taliban. [5] 5. Violence is declining: 70% of the violence occurs in areas that only account for 6% of the population. This will decrease, since the U.S. will win if we continue: Taliban control dropped from 90% to 4%. [6] 6. GDP Growth: 2008: 9%, 2009: 13%, 2010: 16%. [7] 7. Jobs: 8 million in 2000. 15 million in 2009. [8] 8. HDI is just an arbitrary standard. There are significant benefits in basic human rights, economy, health, and the people prefer it. Extend: Collier evidence was dropped. He just asserts that this is not explicitly to promote democracy and its UN. (1) That’s not the argument I made. I said this proves that we can SUSTAIN democracy after its been implemented by peacekeeping. Collier says this reduces violence by 30% which answers Cons objections about violence later on in the case. (2) UN intervention is often a form of U.S. intervention, since we provide them with most of their troops. (3) Extend econ benefits of trade, these are net benefits for the U.S. Power Differentials: (1)Examples don’t overrule systemic analyses. Rebels are 79% likely to win with foreign aid (and the source says nominal military aid) whereas it falls to under 10% without it. Which means when there is a struggle, demo promo succeeds. (2)Even if his argument were true, the rebels would have been slaughtered without U.S. intervention. Remember, he appealed to casualties. Insofar as the rebels/protesters would have been routed without us, that is a reason to vote for me. This is a case where our intervention was positive for casualties, which proves that we should intervene in these circumstances, he opposes them, which means he would have genocidal autocracies win the day. We intervened, there were less casualties than otherwise might have been. EVEN IF YOU ACCEPT CASUALTIES IN IRAQ, we have one case where intervention decreases them, and he cannot support ANY intervention! I win. DPT He misunderstands DPT. DPT is merely a theory that says democracies tend not to go to war with other democracies, not that they don’t go to war. His study talks about internal stability and violence, not DPT. Even if there is violence, the violence is not directed toward democracies but to autocratic neighbors OR internal insurgencies, which is ameliorated with FOREIGN INTERVENTION! I never said dem=peace, I said dem=peace with other dem, which means there is less risk of conflict for the U.S. Autocratic Peace: TURN: This proves DPT since regimes are just less likely to war against similar regimes. Democracies don’t war with democracies; that is the argument. Democracy, however, is comparatively better than autocracies in every other aspect. Cold War: Cool story- According to Harvard, among 29,000 instances of conflict evaluated in post-1991 sample, only one war between democracies occurred. [9] Well above a 99% success FOR DPT. Dems might go to war, but not with each other. EXTEND DPT, he misunderstood it! Intrastate Conflict: TURN: Without voting “on ethnic lines” you have an autocracy, which necessarily means one ethnic leader rules over many. Dem is comparatively better. Plus, look to systemic analyses in terms of conflict: Mcfaul: Only 16% of democratizing states experienced civil war or interstate war between 1973-2004. [10] So overall, there is not much violence. Plus, this just means the U.S. should PEACEKEEP AFTER INTERVENTION to maintain stability. EXTEND dropped Collier evidence: violence drops from 38% to 7% if we stay to keep the peace after a conflict. Genocide: He fails: Sure, democracies could revert back into dictatorships. That would be bad. So (1) He concedes democracies are better and (2) if they are better, we should stay intervening until the democracies are stable eough such that they do not revert. So this just turns his entire case! 99% of deaths come from autocracies which means we should stay to make sure the democracy does not revert. Extend this benefit, I save more lives. Motives: This is not topical. The motivations of the U.S. are irrelevant. I am arguing that the U.S. SHOULD intervene for democracy. What is and what should be are different, an I argue for the latter. If the U.S. props up autocracy, cool story, I am saying they shouldn’t, which is why we only look to the 1/3 which he conceded in the FWK section. OTHER AVENUE: Foreign Aid: Professor Steven Finkel reports that based on existing USAID dollars in the promotion of democracy, ten million USAID dollars cause a 500% increase in the amount of democratic change within a country. [11] This is a form of intervention that is casualty-free, cheap and effective. I have met my burden in showing that we can, with little harms, intervene and that we should cites in comments