Governments must consider the moral implications of their actions when formulating foreign policy

I'll do away with the opening statement, except to say that my opponent made a vital concession in admitting that we we ought look to preserving the national interest. This narrows my burden for the round to simply proving that such a pursuit is incompatible with looking to morality. If I meet this burden, I win the round. A. My opponent's arguments do not accurately respond to the point I was making; for example, the policy we have regarding our airspace may be the "moral" solution, but that morality is purely by accident; it also happens to be the most cold heartedly rational course of action as well. A government that did not consider morality would arrive at the same policy as one that did in this situation, and thus is non-unique. His second point attacks a particular example and thus you cannot view this as a referendum on the argument itself. Nonetheless, I'll refute it. I was not trying to infer that the war in Iraq caused 9/11; I would have to have been in a coma for the last decade to get my time line that mixed up! However, I do believe that the war in Iraq was instigated primarily on moral grounds, and that this war proved an effective tool for Al Qaeda in regards to enlistment and the benevolence of the population at large. It has taken us eight years, and we are still not back to where we were militarily against Al Qaeda and the Taliban before our invasion. Thus, these moral acts had major national security ramifications. B. My opponents primary refutation against my second point is to point to the moral problems created by the policies I refer to. I believe that the United States Government has an obligation to its citizens and its citizens only; if broader sanctions will be more effective in preserving the national interest, than we ought use them. I concede that in the event that two different actions produce the same effect on our national interest, then in the absence of another measurement, we can look to the one that is more moral. In the cases mentioned by my opponent, the United States clearly believes that the best way to uphold the national interest is to use broader sanctions. Thus, they have the right to use them. Also, I find it interesting that my opponent chose to point out the humanitarian crisis created by the war in Iraq (which he conceded through silence was caused by a feeling of moral duty); I had not really considered the possibility that trying to be moral could lead to moral problems, but I suppose he's right! My opponent makes one other argument here that I find interesting. He states that we are the "world's policeman." This is exactly the kind of thinking that I am attempting to dispel with my arguments. He doesn't really back up this idea that we should be the world's policemen, so I will have to infer his reasoning. The most common reason I have heard can best be summed up by the famous quote from the Marvel Comic Strips: "with great power comes great responsibility." People say that as the world's hegemon, it is our duty to protect freedom and democracy everywhere. This claim is patently false. Perhaps the original statement is true, but I'd say the government's greatest power is that which is invested in it by the people who elected them; they have an obligation, a contractual obligation at the very least, to uphold the best interests of these people before all others. We received a reputation for standing up for the little guy and protecting democracy because of the Truman doctrine, and that policy ended up getting us embroiled in the Vietnam war as well as the Korean war, and we still have troops patrolling the Korean Border to this day. Why should it be our job to clean up other people's messes? We succeeded in establishing a democracy, and it's not our fault that others haven't. The only reason the United States should interfere militarily in the world is to protect the national interest, for example: stopping nuclear proliferation, or stopping Al Qaeda. C. This is a very interesting argument, and when I first read it I thought I'd been beaten. However upon re-reading it I found a few flaws in my opponents thinking that take this argument apart. Firstly, It does not actually address the argument I was making in contention C. My entire argument is that there cannot be a universal morality, and while he apparently disagrees, it is entirely necessary for him to address that point in order to win the debate. While that argument might eliminate my points about individual morality, it certainly does not address my argument that different nations have different moral codes; if anything it supercharges it. While this does not decrease the validity of the argument, it means that Contention C is not responded to, and, as the debate adage goes, "silence is concession," which therefore means that Contention C becomes clear way to vote con in the round. But now I will respond to my opponent's argument substantively. Essentially, as I understand it, he states that the government is elected to represent their people's collective morality. This is quite frankly not accurate. To use the United States as a particularly mild example, there are deep-seated and powerful divisions on ethics that will most likely never be decided, and that cut the country more or less in half. This means that in 2004, While our president may have represented me officially, he was not in any way representative of my moral views. And in fact, the kind of thinking my opponent is advising has lead to many moral catastrophes; South Africa's free, democratic elections brought in an era of Apartheid whose repercussion are being felt to this day. In our home country, these moral divisions lead to the university riots during the Vietnam war that killed so many of this country's most promising. Pretty much any civil war in the history of the planet is proof that a government does not reflect all of its constituents' moral codes. These are not problems I can claim to solve through my plan of preserving the national interest (or at least not entirely). But they do speak to the fact that morality is most definitely not universal and thus it is entirely impossible that a government can accurately reflect the differing views of its constituents. Secondly, the reason that "The US is not going to stand by as ..… a Triad gang commits heinous crimes on US soil" is hardly even a moral question. This Triad gang would be harming American citizens, destroying American property. It would clearly be in the national interest to keep such a thing from happening. Funnily enough, I already talked about the Truman doctrine and explained why it was invalid. Secondly, the idea that we were fighting communism because it was immoral is preposterous. The United states has shown a remarkable ability to ignore moral repugnance. Indeed, we were close allies with the Soviets while they were helping us to destroy the Nazi Army. The reason we fought their influence was because their policies of subversion clearly intended to entangle the entire world, including the United States, in communist dictatorships, satellites orbiting Mother Russia. Combine that with the fact that they had nukes, and morality never entered the question. Do I even need to mention why falling to Communism would be against the national interest? So to conclude, my contentions A and C are so mishandled as to allow me to characterize them as conceded points. I have conclusively proved that considering morality in foreign policy would lead to national security crises, is logistically impossible to uphold as a policy, is incompatible with preserving the national interest, and finally that the entire question makes the fallacious assumption that a universal morality can exist. With that, it is safe to say that I have proved my point beyond the shadow of a doubt. The negative rests.