The United States has a moral obligation to mitigate international conflicts

== Burden of proof ==In Round 1, I argued that my opponent must prove that the US is obligated to intervene in every conflict between two or more nations. My opponent responds by saying: (1) intervening is not mitigating and (2) moral obligation is singular, so he only has to prove one or two interventions to prove the resolution.Response to #1: Intervention is not mitigationThe only way to mitigate an armed conflict between two or more nations is to intercede militarily. I challenge my opponent to cite a single example of when "asking nicely" (diplomacy) or economic sanctions have ever succeeded in ending a war. Sanctions empirically fail. For example, when we imposed brutal economic sanctions on Iraq to get Saddam Hussein to end his nuclear program, Hussein did not change his behavior. However, the sanctions were responsible for killing 576,000 Iraqi children who could not get food or medical necessities. [1]Conclusion: military intervention is the only way to actually do peacekeeping.Response to #2: Moral obligation is singularMy opponent's resolutional analysis is flawed. While the term "moral obligation" is singular, a single moral obligation can obligate you to act in more than one circumstance. In fact, an obligation is meaningless if it does not force you to act in all instances in which the obligation applies. For example, if one were to conclude that "I am morally obligated to save a child from drowning," and I encounter five circumstances in my life where I have an opportunity to save a child from drowning, then the moral obligation requires me to act in all of these circumstances. I cannot satisfy the obligation by saving the *first* drowning child, but letting the next four children die. The obligation would be meaningless if I could choose to let the latter four children die without violating the obligation.Thus, it doesn't matter that obligation is singular. A singular obligation requires that you act in all circumstances giving rise to the obligation. Conclusion: my opponent's resolutional analysis if flawed. He must defend that the US should intercede in all wars between two or more nations. If my opponent could win just with the examples of WWI and WWII, then supposedly the obligation is already "satisfied" by these wars, and we never have to intervene again to satisfy the obligation. This interpretation, however, seems absurd. It seems to say, "yes, we are obligated to intervene, but we fought in WWI and II, so we're good." That is not how moral obligations work.== Extending my case ==Extend C1, cost and opportunity cost.My opponent's only response is "national security outweighs cost." However, my opponent fails to show how every single war between two or more nations directly threatens US national security. To the extent that some wars *do not* affect US national security, my argument carries the day. In addition, even if an intervention *did* increase national security by a small amount, it is possible that the cost of the intervention did not merit the increase in national security. Iraq is a good example - $3 trillion was not worth the marginal improvement in our national security from knowing *for certain* that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.It's naive for my opponent to say "costs don't matter." Every great empire (from the Romans to the British) has had a period of constant warfare to try to maintain their empire, followed by bankruptcy due to the cost of constant war, followed by the collapse of their empire. The United States is no different. If we continue to view a threat to *any country in the world* as a direct threat to the United States, we will bankrupt ourselves fighting war, after war, after war. Extend C2: intervention undermines our national securityThis is where my opponent really loses the debate because he concedes my turns. Intervening in other nation's undermines our national security because (1) it overstretches our military, and (2) it breeds resentment. On the first point, our military can only fight in one place at a time. When we enter an armed conflict, we lose the ability to project power elsewhere, making it more likely that our other allies will be attacked or that our own country will be attacked. On the second point, when we attack another country, we are eventually seen as occupiers, which stokes terrorist sentiment towards us and causes us to get attacked. The first Gulf War and our occupation of Kuwait spurred bin Laden to form al Qaeda and to decide to attack the United States. In this way, the first Gulf War is directly responsible for 9/11.This argument turns my opponent's case, since his whole case is about national security. Intervening in other countries' business actually makes us less safe by overstretching our military resources and by causing resentment among the local populations.Extend C3: regional actorsWe are not morally obligated to intervene in every conflict because neighbors, who have more of an incentive to intervene, should do so instead of us. The US is not the "indispensible nation." There is no reason that we have to be involved with every single military conflict that springs up anywhere on the globe.Extend my "global response," which I will call C4 from now onVoting Con allows us to intervene *not* out of a moral obligation, but when it serves our own self-interest. Assuming that you buy the argument that we needed to intervene in WWI, WWII, and the first Gulf War, you would still want to vote Con because we did so because it was in our self-interest, not because we were morally obligated to do so. The first two wars had to do with protecting really important allies and shielding ourselves from a global threat that would eventually threaten our homeland. The latter war had to do with protecting our oil interests. We did not intervene out of a sense of moral obligation to protect countries from themselves. So voting Con preserves choice, whereas voting Pro means we are obligated to intervene whenever the circumstances of a war between two nations arises.Rebuttal, cont'dWWI and WWII: my opponent drops my argument that these past examples are not proof that we should intervene in future. It was in our self-interest to intervene and it was relatively easy to rebuild Europe under the Marshall Plan, etc. because Europe was composed of industrialized countries. Future interventions will most likely be in developing countries, so future interventions will mirror the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the second one), not WWI and II.Gulf War I: my opponent drops my arguments that (1) the first Gulf War led to a nuclear armed Iran, and (2) that the first Gulf War necessitated the second Gulf War. Both are proof of how intervention undermines our national security due to its collateral consequences. It is better to protect the homeland and save our resources than to expend an infinite amount of money meddling in complex regional politics that we don't fully understand.[1] http://www.nytimes.com...;