Economic Sanctions ought not be used to achieve foreign policy objectives

For the issue of whether she plagiarized, you may see the citations for her case in the comments sections. -------------------- CON Position (rebuilt) -------------------- My opponent makes a huge mistake by under-covering my interpretation of ought. Her response is a question, "But even if you grant him the definitions, shouldn't we try our best to make sure that our duties are moral? Why should we take on a duty that is not moral? So ought should still be bound with some sort of moral conscience." What she doesn't attack, however, is the warrants that are apparent in my interpretation of "ought". The first warrant is that the "duties of nations are politically rather than ethically grounded because...nations are a aggregation of multiple individual's choices". This means that IF the nation were to act "morally", then that nation would have to succumb to the morality presented by the sovereign. The issue with this is that every individual has their own distinct interpretation of morality. Thus, policy actions that are purely grounded in morality are impossible to implement because some sector of the sovereign body will be ignored. The second warrant is that "value-laden statements have no empirical referents and [thus] moral rules cannot be objectively justified..." This means that absent some way to determine which morals are the best, the ideal government that my opponent has presented would be unable to engage in any political maneuver. The last warrant is that "international politics is a self-help world. Because there is no central global authority to create and enforce rules for the behavior of nations, the sole obligation of states is to exploit whatever opportunities are available to secure their survival and thereby uphold their commitment to secure the rights of citizens". This is self-explanatory and this alone justifies my standard of "the principle that states ought to take whatever actions necessary to promote their security". Standard: (ref. to my third warrant) C1: 1st: Remember, that their is a distinct difference between a business man and a nation (ref. to my third warrant). The nation lives in a political sphere of anarchy (there isn't a global authority) and the nation has one obligation and that is to protect itself. The notion that the nation ha an inherent obligation to other nations (cosmopolitanism) has not been effectively warranted by my opponent due to lack of necessity for morally influenced policies. 2nd: My opponent still hasn't show you - outside of morality - why realism is not the best policy. C2: My argument was very clear: Sanctions help hegemony. So then, her "Ahem...Joy Gordon" does nothing but help my cause. Her Gordon evidence indicates that the stated objective was not achieve, but rather that they may have been because of "political movements within and outside the country". Remember the Ripsman evidence indicates that, "sanctions can achieve important political objectives—such as deterring third parties from taking unwelcome actions—even if they fail to achieve their stated purposes". This means that even if the stated purpose was not achieved, the target nation changed their opinion of the sender nation, and this is all I need to win this point. Costs: Here my opponent doesn't fully take into consideration what I meant by "costs". 1st: The option is not money vs citizen's lives, but rather saving money AND citizen's lives. Remember "sanctions require little or no troop deployment and minimal resource expenditure, making them a valuable option for powers on the brink of being overstretched". This means that because sanctions equate to less military officials than the competing option of war, they cost less lives. 2nd: Economic sanctions, historically, have been utilized as the last resort. Oftentimes economic sanctions aren't even used, but we ought to have them as a "tool in the toolbox". 3rd: Regarding her Losman evidence. Her evidence does not falsify my claim. My claim is that economic sanction costs less than the alternative of war. This means that her evidence doesn't take into considerations the costs of war if diplomacy and other soft-power failed. -------------------- PRO's case -------------------- Value: The warrant for this was articulated earlier in my speech. "duties of nations are politically rather than ethically grounded because...nations are a aggregation of multiple individual's choices". This means that IF the nation were to act "morally", then that nation would have to succumb to the morality presented by the sovereign. However, as I stated earlier, this isn't feasible. Criterion: The conflict that I was referring two was what do we do when the nation is at risk because another nation is threatening them? Does the nation protect itself, or does the nation do nothing because they might harm another nation. My opponent tries to paint a pretty picture, however the conflict is apparent and purely analyzing morality is not always the answer. C1: These are all cross applications of arguments that I have already refuted earlier in this speech. Remember, the sanction causes less harm that other options and intends on preventing human rights crisis. (ref. to the Hughes evidence). Also, the idea of morality has already been answered, and so has the issue of efficiency. (ref. to the Ripsman evidence). C2: Morality has been answered. Sanctions prevent genocide (ref. to Rwanda ex.), and other ideological conflicts (ref. to Hughes evidence), thus they are moral. Additionally, morality is not all that binds policy actions because there are no absolute notions of morality accepted by even the majority of the sovereign due to many competing nuances of moral theories. It is thus for these reasons that it apparent that we ought to keep the option of economic sanctions on the table. Happy Holidays, - Protagoras of Abdera Sources: All sources have already been posted above.