DDO Tournament - Top Tier: Intervention to Stop Rights Abuses

Thank to TN05 for a great debate!PRO's CASEC1: Helping the MistreatedI posited two ways in which helping others wasn't morally permissible: (1) when rights are violated, and (2) when "helping" others actually leads to more harm.Pro ONLY addresses the first reason, meaning that the second reason is DROPPED. The impact is clear: if intervention, on balance, causes more harm then good, it is not permissible. But, even if you don't buy this, then we can still affirm the rights paradigm with the evidence I presented last round [1]. This shows that sovereignty imposes a priori restrictions which generate a strong presumption against intervention. In other words, in the absence of compelling evidence for intervention over sovereignty, we default Con.C2: Government + the PeopleLet's look at the precise implications of Pro's claim. R2P can be applied "when appropriate." This links in with my argument about pretextual interventions. This threshold is unclear, and easily subject to interpretation. So, if nation X wants to intervene in nation Y, it can use the ambiguity of the brightline to justify and otherwise impermissible intervention. Pro says that governments must respond to insurgencies. I agree. Pro uses the example of ISIS; the Iraqi government is responding to ISIS, albeit ineffectively. Simply put, Iraq isn't strong enough to enforce the peace. Therefore, it is meeting its obligation to do what it can for its people, and so it hasn't surrendered its sovereignty. As I said earlier: "The outside world cannot intervene in those instances (without prior permission from the sitting governments) because the governments themselves were duly elected and law-abiding, on balance."As for the argument about the legality of intervention, there are three things we can say here: (1) Legality is not the same as moral permissibility, (2) sovereignty is still prioritized within the UN legal system, and (3) there are some unfortunate impacts of Pro's argument that turn it my way. Point 1 seems intuitively correct. Point 2 is evidenced by my card from last round: "'[A]nyone who considers with some measure of objectivity the Charter's normative logic, its allocation of coercive jurisdiction, its omissions, as well as the preferences manifested by most participants in the drafting process and their immediately subsequent behaviour, cannot help concluding that the promotion of human rights ranked far below the protection of national sovereignty and the maintenance of peace as organizational goals.'" [1] So, even if there are criteria proposed by this resolution, sovereignty is still weighed far more heavily in the judicial process. Point 3 is key too. Consider that a responsibility equates to an obligation, i.e. something one is required to do. [2] Pro even writes (R2): "the international community is obligated to help end human rights abuses." Therefore, if we use R2P to justify intervention, the unavoidable implication of that argument is that we are saying that there is an OBLIGATION to protect.So, for example, Pro's argument would mean that everywhere that human rights abuses are occurring with any severity, the U.S., as part of the international community, would have an obligation to intervene. This is clearly a ridiculous statement to make. The U.S. has limited resources and manpower, and it should use those resources to benefit its own people vice the denizens of other countries. R2P presupposes an obligation to assist exists, but this is clearly disproven by the fact that such an obligation would be untenable, and cannot exist in light of a nation's sovereign duties.Pro says that he doesn't have to argue for an obligation. Sure, he doesn't have to, but the arguments that he chose to use are ones about moral obligations. Pro put himself into that box. In effect, R2P creates an unending duty to intervene whenever it was deemed necessary--which is patently ridiculous.C3: Covert InterventionPro agrees that he must also defend military interventions, so any harms arising from these are still valid when applied to Pro. Regarding sanctions, Pro has not offered a single concrete example as to when they were effective and how, nor has he provided any evidence as to why they work. Instead, he lists 3 reasons why they are bad. On balance then, Pro has defeated his own argument here.Ultimately, Pro offers just two examples of effective intervention via support for opposition groups. Irrespective of my cherry-picking argument, two examples are insufficient for Pro to meet his BOP, i.e. to show that, in general, intervention is morally permissible. Additionally, the Syrian example is an example of failed intervention insofar as it highlights the difficulties of ascertaining conditions on the ground to make sure that the support one gives to the opposition actually reflects the goals of the intervention. If the U.S. intervenes in a situation as complex as the one in Syria, mistakes are apt to be made, leading to failures and worse outcomes. Furthermore, it is a perversion of the idea of humanitarian intervention to say that supporting someone who violated human rights was a humanitarian intervention. Ultimately, Pro shouldn't be arguing that the U.S. was justified in supporting Mubarak, because Mubarak was guilty of the severe rights violations that would justify R2P. In this sense, Pro is being a bit incoherent.My argument is that sometimes the U.S. must make unsavory decisions, such as supporting leaders like Mubarak, to fulfill it's primary obligation to do what is in the interests of it's own citizens. As George Kennan writes, "let us recognize that the functions, commitments and obligations of governments are not the same as those of the individual. Government is an agent, not a principal. Its primary obligation is to the interests of the national society it represents, not to the moral impulses that individual elements of that society may experience." Pro's own argument about a government for the people and by the people supports Kennan's analysis. The impact of this argument is clear: the U.S. must sometimes accept that human rights abuses are occurring, in order to maximize its own welfare.P1: Nat'l InterestPro says my article was "debunked." By that all he means is that the article is specific to regional wars. But the logic underpinning the card goes further. Consider that electoral abuses in Myanmar have very little to do with U.S. strategic interests, for example. Also, Pro--in R3--agrees that "most [human rights abuses] are caused by insurgents," i.e. regional wars. This means that this card applies often. Pro then suggests that political considerations don't have bearing on morality. Yet, my whole argument is that a country's prime moral duty is to do what is best for its people. Pro even concurred with this in his opening round! So, if R2P imposes an obligation to intervene, and if that intervention is not in our strategic interests, then we essentially have an obligation to waste our resources. This is clearly absurd.P2: Some, Not AllPro says you need to triage intervention based on priority. Yet, as my card implies, nations don't intervene where intervention is most needed. If you buy Pro's argument that political considerations have no bearing on morality, then the fact that nations are intervening in their strategic interests--in other words, playing favorites--you agree that this is immoral.P3: LocalsPro says this point is irrelevant because it is situational, not universal. Yet, if we can intervene when we're not wanted, we can end up making the problem worse, as seen with anti-American backlash post-Iraq. Moreover, if the people of nation X don't want us to intervene in nation X, by what right can we violate their sovereignty? P4: Slippery SlopePro misconstrues my point here, assuming it is about a nation's "to do whatever they want inside their borders." In fact, this argument is about pretextual interventions. Pro's rebuttal was totally non-responsive to this point; it's DROPPED. Please extend it. The impact is that because the threshold for when intervention is legitimate is subject to interpretation, nations can more easily excuse otherwise inexcusable interventions by claiming that they were acting under a certain interpretation of the rules. In other words, it makes intervention too easy, undermining the concept of sovereignty and jeopardizing global stability.VOTING ISSUESBecause Pro has dropped the utility criterion, we can use that to assess the round. If you buy any ONE of these points, I win.1. Pro has failed to uphold his BOP Pro's BOP is to uphold the resolution on balance; recall, Pro has the sole BOP. His examples of Poland and South Africa are just two examples, and cannot show that the resolution is true "on balance." Moreover, he provides no evidence of the successfulness of sanctions. On the contrary, I have given evidence showing that Pro's world could lead to abusive interventions, a loss of stability, a cycle of violent escalation (my C5 was dropped by Pro), unnecessarily deadly form of intervention, and also have a risk of backfiring. Even if you buy none of this other offense, my C5 was cold conceded, and in light of Pro's lack of evidence, shows that, under a utilitarian analysis, Pro has failed to affirm his case. 2. Sovereignty Sovereignty, while not absolute, has a strong presumptive value in its favor. In fact, evidence I've cited shows that International Law prioritizes sovereignty over human rights. This creates a presumption in favor of Con. 3. National Interest A nation's primary moral duty is to act in a way that benefits its own people. Since R2P interferes with that duty (by obligation resource go elsewhere), it contradicts a moral principle/duty, and is thus impermissible. Remember, Pro himself called R2P an obligation. SOURCES1 - R4, Source 52 - R2, Source 1