R; The practice of hegemonic soft-power and hard-power are immoral.

I hope that we can have an educational discursive discussion on this topic as we both tread into the waters of online debate. As per the resolution, I am asserting that hegemonic practices are immoral as a whole and it is my burden to prove them both to be immoral. In the actor of the United States, I will offer the implications of Hegemony as a case example. While there may be problems with focusing on this actor, we can see the implications of it's Hegemony more clearly because of it's hegemonic strength. Finally, I will review how Hegemonic practice is immoral by interrogating the methodology of the practice and a indictment of it's harms. Actions of Soft-Power:The United States regularly takes a leading role in world affairs, utilizing it's position as the economic, political and military power house of the international stage. It uses the practice of hegemony to attempt to maintain it's dominance by spreading democracy. Politically, using “Soft-Power”, we can agree that the U. S. A. displays dominance in the U. N. where it is both a founding member and a permanent member of the Security Council where it has veto power over U. N. resolutions. The U. S. A. has regularly used it's veto power to protect unpopular allies such as The State of Israel and South Africa during Apartheid, such as condemnations and termination of military & nuclear collaboration. [1] Additionally, the United States has used their veto power to protect themselves from scrutiny: The 1999 resolution calling the U. S. A. to end it's trade embargo on Cuba, which by that time had been widely opposed by the international community. The 1989 resolution condemning U. S. A. support for the Contra army in Nicaragua who were fighting the SNLF, a major democratic socialist political party in Nicaragua. [2] There are a number of other examples but in the interest of brevity we will only cite these. Economically, using “Soft-Power”, again the U. S. A. displays dominance in it's economic policies. For instance, the United States has utilized it's economic Soft-Power over Cuba in order to prompt regime change through embargo. However, clearly, there has been none. Instead this policy has only served to hurt the people of Cuba, both in putting them at higher risk of death and socioeconomic suffering. [3] Additionally, the embargoes have actually empowered Fidel Castro by giving him an ever-present foreign enemy and an excuse for the failures of his command economy [4] causing opposition within Cuba to be nearly nonexistent because of the population's dependence on the Cuban government. This same scenario has been played out throughout the world; Iran, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and North Korea are a few examples of current and historic failures of economic Soft-Power that have only served to hurt the local population. Economic Another form of “Soft-Power” is food aid. The examples here are numerous but a common trend between them all is that:1. The food aid was captured and used by dominant political & military entities to enforce cooperation on their people. For an example, we can look to Somalia where local warlords intercepted food aid and used it in conjunction with their Monopoly on Death to enforce their will, which essentially meant they had the Monopoly on Life and Death.2. The food aid had the effect of crippling local agrarian economies with demotivation and causing dependence on foreign aid in order to survive. “The primary concerns are that beneficiaries will lose the motivation to work to improve their own livelihoods after receiving benefits, or that they will deliberately reduce their work efforts in order to qualify for the (food aid). ” [5]Actions of Hard-Power:“Hard-Power” is most often observed through the use of military force and deployment. This takes several forms; Conventional Warfare (Iraq & Afghanistan), Covert Warfare (the “War on Terrorism”) and Deployment of Intimidation (Turkey & Japan). All forms have similar effects so we will consider them together:The typical implications of warfare are economic destruction (both instantaneous and continuous) widespread casualties, political unrest and cultural objectification by one party or the other. While the material implications of war are reason enough to shy away from it, the cultural implications are just as powerful because they have both a large scope and a multi-generational lifetime. What are these implications?1. Objectification; during and after conflict, adversaries socially construct the other as an enemy, a threat. This creates unfounded prejudice upon all people associated with that “enemy”. For example, when George H. W. Bush implicated Muslims as the ones responsible for the 9/11 attacks, hate crime against people of Middle Eastern heritage and other groups such as Indians and Turks skyrocketed 3000%. This indicates a drastically shifted attitude that views persons from the Middle East, even other groups not even related to the issue, were reduced to a common denominator: "terrorists", an enemy. This stripped individuals of their humanity and enabled them to be treated as non-humans. 2. Threat Rhetoric; both sides of conflict use rhetoric that construct the other as an ever-present threat which enables two clear responses:a. Asymmetrical Violence: The construction of threat rhetoric, in addition to the pains inflicted by warfare, creates cultural responses among subaltern populations that favor radical actions against the “other”. [6] This can be observed in the origin of Al-Queda and it's growth during the Iraq War and in response to efforts in Somalia: “The U. S. -led war on Iraq gave Al Qaeda the opportunity to reinvigorate its weakened terrorist network with new recruits and more funding” [7] “In response to the intervention of U. S. -backed Ethiopian forces (largely Christians) in July 2006, Somali Islamists looked to al-Qaeda for support. “ [8]b. Fascism: Naomi Wolf argues that any state, including our own, can quickly move to fascism in ten steps, the most critical of which is “invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy. ” [9] We can observe this in Iran currently and Somalia which is trending towards fascism in it's opposition parties. This has implications for U. S. citizens as well however as they (we) are subject to the same rhetoric that enables the development of fascism. Moral Weighing:So, how is this all immoral? In order to answer this, we will use a utilitarian framework: that which does the most good with the least harm is moral. While “harm” is a generic consideration, anything that causes suffering is a harm, we will evaluate what is “good” through the Western ideological championing of democracy, liberty and freedom. Essentially, if these ideas become manifest directly because of some action, then that action is “good”. These are ideals that, in some ways, Hegemonic practices attempt to spread. However, the harms caused by Hegemony not only inhibits this spread but reverses it. Now, while I will admit that the quantification of such comparisons of "most" and "least" are subjective, it provides our audience to use their own interpretations of our arguments instead of using a tit-for-tat approach which serves only to reduce the debate to "who can make the most arguments" instead of who can make compelling & educational arguments. With that said, let us continue. Hegemonic practice causes a large amount of harm; the effects of embargoes and food aid on local populations which both serve to empower their leaders instead of causing uprisings, the effects of threat rhetoric and objectification. At the same time, these effects are counter productive to the supposed "good" that the practices could do by enabling and encouraging fascism. Therefore, the practices of Hegemony are neither good nor cause little harm. They are wholly and completely immoral.