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

Framework: Pro is correct when he states that I have to defend complete non-intervention by the US. I’m not disputing that. The problem is that he thinks that he should have to defend a fairy tale about US intervention against non-intervention, rather than the reality of US intervention. Recall my analogy about the war debate from my last round. If we were debating the resolution, “The US should go to war with country X”, I, as Con, would have to defend not going to war with country X at all. But Pro would have to defend the US going to war the way the US generally goes to war with countries. He couldn’t say, “Yeah, I think we should go to war, but not the killing civilians and destroying infrastructure part, the military should only do good things.” And that is exactly what Pro is trying to do with this debate—he is Pro on the resolution ‘The US should intervene to promote democracy’, but refuses to defend the way the US *actually* promotes democracy, preferring to cherry pick what he sees as good interventions, and say the US should only do those. Military Intervention:Recall that “success” in Pro’s 70% statistic just means success at making the country more democratic, not “success” as in the interventions actually being beneficial. Iraq, for example, would count as a successful intervention under this metric, even if the benefits didn’t actually outweigh the costs. It may be the case that the benefits did outweigh the costs in some or even many of these interventions. But Pro fails to provide evidence of that.Sanctions- Here, Pro argues that while we did want to use the sanctions to remove Saddam, we didn’t necessarily want to replace him with a democracy. But, also, we did aid pro-democracy movements with the Iraq Liberation Act, because we wanted to replace Saddam with a democracy. The two aren’t unconnected—the US had a single foreign policy toward Iraq. They wanted to replace Saddam, and, as evidenced by the Iraq Liberation Act, they wanted his replacement to be a democracy.War- It doesn’t matter what other reasons the US had for going to war with Iraq, the Iraq war was still obviously one of democracy promotion, because that’s what the US did there.Afghanistan-1. Pro says this as if having other reasons for a war, in addition to democracy promotion, makes it not a war for democracy promotion. In addition, see point about “success” meaning creating democracy, not the intervention being beneficial. Afghanistan would count as one of those successes—if it was beneficial on net is relevant.2. The civilians dying are fighting for democracy? No—they just got caught in the crossfire. Clearly not the same thing as revolutionaries dying. 3. So Pro agrees that the fact that child mortality decreased less during the 2000s than during the 1990s can be attributed to NATO. OK, I accept his concession. Pro also argues that life expectancy increased more in the 2000s than during the 1990s, but the 2000s increase is about the same as the increase during the 1980s, according to the same source. Did the Soviet invasion that killed millions help the Afghani people? Obviously not—there were other factors that caused the increase. 4. Pro counts more concentrated violence as a decrease. I’d say that a better way to measure a decrease in violence is by the amount of people killed. I’ll leave this up to the voters’ own judgment.5. OK. See HDI, comprehensive vs. cherry picking.6. It could be. But, as I said before, it’s absurd to expect that the first 5 years of the war were better for the Afghani people than the last 5, since the first 5 were when the initial mass bombing was. Also, a 1 year jump shows nothing, as the HDI has increased and decreased over the past few years. And even if it was starting to improve now, that wouldn’t show anything, since we’re talking about the benefits of the war as a whole, not about withdrawing now.Power:1) Pro said “rebel movements,” not pro-democracy movements. Not all rebels are democrats. He has to separate the two, and compare the costs of the pro-democracy rebellions to the benefits if he wants to prove anything.2) Pro states that the rebels were on the verge of defeat, and then, 3 months ago, we intervened and now the fighting continues. This is hardly evidence that the intervention reduced casualties.Mubarak was arrested, but only because he didn’t leave his country after he stepped down. The dictator of Tunisia did leave, and wasn’t arrested. So Gaddafi still had the option of leaving and not being arrested before.DPT: Pro states that I dropped his autocratic peace turn, but only because it’s irrelevant. The point of that evidence was to show that even if making a country a democracy made it more peaceful toward other democracies, it would be less peaceful toward autocracies. And the evidence Pro dropped showed that making a country a democracy wouldn’t make it more peaceful toward other democracies—democratic peace was due to democratic countries tending to be rich and working together during the Cold War. Pro drops evidence that shows that among poor countries, democracies tend to be more warlike, which is particularly relevant to US interventions, since they’re always in poor countries.Intrastate violence: Pro argues that intrastate violence in democracies is because of the aggression of surrounding autocracies. Of course, he fails to explain why aggression of surrounding dictatorships is the cause of INTRAstate violence (violence within a single state, not between states). Also Pro drops my point about not comparing his 16% figure to a figure for autocracies, conceding that his statistic is meaningless.Genocide: First, Pro has failed to show that democracy necessarily leads to less genocide. It’s possible that, after controlling for democracies that led to worse dictatorships than the ones that preceded them, democracy does lead to less genocide. I don’t know. But Pro failed to show this, so it can’t be assumed.Second, Pro failed to show that if the US were intervening to promote democracy, it would do so in a way that reduces genocide. The resolution is not, ‘The US should intervene to promote democracy in the places and ways that I want them to.’ Pro must accept American democracy promotion as it is, not as he wishes it to be. And American democracy promotion has tended to be in areas strategically important to America, not areas that necessarily needed the US the most. See Motives and Framework.Motives: “I am saying the U.S. should do X.”Note the bolded part. Advocating the US government do something implies that you are advocating the US government that actually exists do that thing, not the US government Pro wishes existed. See Framework.AID: Pro drops my point about aid perpetuation poverty, conceding the point. As Pro points out, one of the authors I cite for this evidence does say that aid can be beneficial, if the US did it differently. But it doesn’t matter if the US could help people with its aid money. If Pro wants the US to give out aid money, he must accept the US as it actually is. And the US as it actually is gives out aid money in such a way that perpetuates poverty.Conclusion: Pro tries to use comprehensive studies to prove his points, but either uses studies that aren’t about the US promoting democracy, or are about the success of democracy promotion, rather than whether the interventions are beneficial overall. He’s failed to show even a single pro-democracy intervention that was net beneficial. He tries to show that democracy will make countries more peaceful and less likely to commit genocide, but fails to show this. And, in fact, the evidence shows that democracy makes countries less peaceful. There may be benefits of democracy other than DPT and genocide, but since Pro didn’t mention any of them, they are not part of this debate.