The United States has a moral obligation to mitigate international conflicts

To open, I am excited about this debate and hope we both have fun. I have realized I have not presented sources for my definitions, as I failed to remember when I was writing my last speech. My definition of national security was from Random House Dictionary, and the others were from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, except for obligation, which was from free dictionary. com I agree with his " correction" of the definition of the term national security, and hope that no more argument about that topic will take place. Moral and mitigate are pretty standard terms, and so I am glad we agree on the definitions. However, I do beg to differ with his counter definition of obligation. Both sources are credible sources, and I hope that we can find a way to work around this. It is true that not all obligations originate from morality, and I understand where my opponent is coming from. However, he is making an unsupported claim here. He has not proven that all obligations stem from morality. Although at close look you make think that that is not the case, I challenge my opponent with respect to bring up support so that we may further discuss this issue. Under his first point under "Social Contract theory" He said that CSU defined social contract as something quite different then what I said it was. However, my "definition" of social contract was the principle and the way it was set up by John Locke, and the others that helped him develop it. My definition of social contract is not the "modern" form of it, as I originally defined it as the more "original" version of it. Under his second point, I must say he has not "proven" that social contract is only within the country. He failed to provide a source so this claim is not fully justified. Social contract theory, as explained by John Locke in his book "The Social Contract theory of John Locke," is keeping the people safe with the surrender of some freedom on the people's part. So its safety, and however we achieve safety, is what social contract justifies. SCT says nothing about keeping it "inside" the country. Safety is safety, and it is extremely important to everyone, and the reason social contract theory is so successful is because the government does most Anything, even if it is outside the country, to keep the people safe. For instance, earlier this year, North Korea was threatening the US with nuclear weapons. Clearly, our safety was on the line. The US sent troops to South Korea and Guam, making it an INTERNATIONAL affair, for the sake of our safety. Why did they do this? To keep us safe. So Social Contract theory is not limited to being "inside" the country. Under his response of my Application of the Pax Romana, I want to clarify that this is solely proving that international stability leads to national security. This is a claim that is purely political. This does not relate to Social Contract theory, so the fact that Rome was an empire does not matter for the purposes of this claim. Indeed my opponent is correct in saying that this "stability" was achieved through force, but once again, we are talking about this claim and this claim only. This application proves this claim and this claim only to be correct. This is not support for other claims, but only this one. So no I am not upholding force, but still, this application supports this claim. I never said this application supports my other claims. Under his response of my 2nd application, he said that it was a period of national stability, but not international stability. Let me clarify the definition of international stability. The fact that Germany was unstable does not say the world was unstable. International stability is stability internationally, so stability BETWEEN countries. The fact that Germany is unstable just shows that Germany did not have NATIONAL stability. For instance, after WW1, many countries were in debt, making the countries unstable. However, because they are in debt, they intentionally are not in any conflicts, and intentionally are just focusing on growth. What does this mean? Conflict is at a low. If conflict is at a low, then this keeps the whole international picture more stable. So international stability is not the stability of each country, but the stability of countries as an international picture. I can explain in more detail if needed. Moving on to some other points, it was Germany that caused WWII, not the world. Germany was unstable, upset, and so they caused a war. But after WW1, International Conflict was at a low, because so many countries were in debt. The US was stable because of this minimal conflict. I believe the rest of his argument is based on the fact that international stability is a result of the particular stability of certain countries being stable. Indeed, the Soviet Union did collapse in 1991, but did not result in conflict, not upsetting the peace and tranquility of there set of the world. Stability is not exactly the preservation of the status quo, but International Stability was not upset greatly because of the Soviet Union collapsing. Even if it is a terrorist group, it is still an international conflict, because the terrorist group has some base and military storage in another country. Indeed Iraqi's did not want American's occupying their country, but we were doing it for OUR OWN safety. And I doubt my opponent would like to argue against our safety. If the country poses no threat to national security, we should not mitigate the conflict, it is only if it does. I never said otherwise. I think my opponent is not quite understanding the definition of "mitigate," which, is understandable, because it is a somewhat difficult term to grasp. Mitigate is to "make less severe" so if we mitigate conflict, we make it less severe. However, if we get involved, and it makes people mad, and another war breaks out, we have not made the conflict less severe, thus we have not mitigated it. If we fail to make something less severe, than that may or may not lead to international stability, however, if we fail to make something less severe, we have not mitigated it. I'm not saying the US is infallible in its interventions. But if we get involved and failed, then we HAVE NOT mitigated it, and therefore does not apply to the resolution. Mitigation I would also like to say is not intervention. You do not have to get involved to make something less severe. In the Gulf War, we sent a minimal amount of troops, costing only a small amount of money, and these troops were soon pulled out. The main mitigation was not by getting involved, but by political big talk.