Resolved: Economic sanctions ought not be used to achieve foreign policy objectives.

To avoid any potential case-stealing efforts, I'm just going to write up some quick arguments. Ought is defined as desirability. Thus the negative has the burden to prove economic sanctions are desirable, else you err aff. Both sides have the burden to defend their side as a general principle in order to insure competitive equity. It would be unfair, for example, for the negative to only defend a specific sanction (or subset thereof) because there is no way for me to predict what he is going to advocate before the debate which gives him ample time to prepare and find sources and citations, while I only have the duration of the debate to do so. Thus, we need to determine what constitutes sanctions as a general principle. First, sanctions are most often unilateral. "We see that 38% of the security sanctions are multilateral, versus only 10% of the non-security cases." "In total, there are 99 cases where sanctions were imposed due to security related disputes, which corresponds to approximately 19% of the cases. In the remaining 423 cases, sanctions were imposed for reasons other than security." [Navin A. Bapat & T. Clifton Morgan. Unilateral versus Multilateral Sanctions Reconsidered. 2009. http://www.unc.edu... ] 99 + 423 = 522 99 / 522 = .189 | .189 * 38% = 7.21% 423/522 = .81 | .810 * 10% = 8.10% 7.21 + 8.10 = 15.31% According to Navin A. Bapat, 80 of all 522 sanctions imposed so far have been multilateral, only 15%. The vast majority of sanctions have been imposed by a single country. Second, economic sanctions are not often implemented in self-defense. Bapat continues, (same quote as above) "In total, there are 99 cases where sanctions were imposed due to security related disputes, which corresponds to approximately 19% of the cases. In the remaining 423 cases, sanctions were imposed for reasons other than security." The value is morality, as LD is a morals debate. Morality must be determined by rationality, first because it is the only thing all moral agents have in common, thus determining morality based on anything else (such as circumstance) would allow morality to change from person to person, and second because only rationality can hold agents to a moral obligation. For example, a realist would argue that there are definitive moral facts that people must find, but such a view of morality is nonsensical. Could I hold you accountable for not wishing me 'Happy Birthday' is you didn't know today was my birthday? Would we punish an avalanche for killing people? Of course not! Neither made the rational choice to do so. We only reward people for conciously choosing to act rightly, and we only punish people for choosing to act wrongly, because we only hold rational choices to moral standards. Thus, to determine the criterion we ought to appeal to solely rationality. As philosopher John Rawls would suggest, we would do this by considering what an unbiased, outside observer would do, a person who does not know his particular talents, nor his place in society. This, my criterion, is known as the Original Position. Rawls makes multiple conclusions about the Original Position. The one's I'll address are: (1) A person in the Original Position would choose to order society in such a way that class of origin does not affect one's ability to succceed in life. There is no morally significant distinction between those of different social classes, thus discrimination between them cannot be justified. (2) A person in the Original Position would reject a Utilitarian moral system (where 'good enough' ends can justify any means) in favor of a Deontological one (where persons are given rights that are unconditionally inalienable.) a. Because only deontology affirms an individual's worth. In a Utilitarian system, one is only valuable so long as he has something to benefit society. Should he be unbeneficial, he is worthless. A Deontological system guarantees worth to an individual unconditionally. b. An outside observer would choose to enter a society based on Deontological morals so as to guarantee himself rights. Choosing to live in a Utilitarian society means gambling with your rights, hoping you won't be one of the ones thrown under the bus for society's benefits. Societies can run (and run well) based on Deontological principles, as evidenced by America and its Bill of Rights which is a long list of inalienable rights. Thus my first contention is that sanctions further stratify social classes. A. Only powerful countries can use sanctions to their advantage because it takes a major economy to effect change. B. Poorer countries are disproportionately the targets of sanctions because they are easily swayed. In fact, the average sender of sanctions thus far has been 187 times larger than the average receiver.[1] C. Sanctions stratify social classes within target countries by allowing the rich to further leech the weak to their benefit. The United Nations' Secretary General, Kofi Annan explained this, last April: "When robust and comprehensive economic sanctions are directed against authoritarian regimes, a different problem is encountered. Then, tragically, it is usually the people who suffer, not the political elites whose behavior triggered the sanctions in the first place. Indeed those in power not only transfer the cost to the less privileged, but perversely often benefit from such sanctions by their ability to control and profit from black market activity, by controlling the distribution of the limited resources, and by exploiting them as a pretext for eliminating domestic sources of political opposition. In some cases, the existence of a sanctions regime has transformed a society for the worse, as sanctions-evaders, smugglers and the like rise to the top of the socio-economic ladder because of their skill at manipulating the situation to their advantage."[2] My second contention is that sanctions violate innocent civilians' rights, using them as means to an end. Sanctions are used to punish regimes for wrongdoing; they are used to stop soldiers committing genocide; they target terrorist groups. However, to do this, they punish the citizens who reside in the same countries as these people (hardly a crime!) Sanctions in Iraq, for example, killed 4,500 innocent children every month.[2] I don't feel that much elaboration on this point is necessary. It's fairly clear: Sanctions use innocent civilians as means to an end, and they do it on a larger scale, making them horribly immoral. [1] [http://www.iie.com...] [2] [Annan, Kofi. International Peace Academy Seminar. 17 April, 2009. http://www.un.org... ] [3] [Cortright, David and George A Lopez. Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Chair of the Board of the Fourth Freedom Forum. "Are Sanctions Just? The Problematic Case of Iraq." Journal of International Affairs (1999). http://web.nps.navy.mil... ]