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

I debated this topic awhile back and really enjoyed it. I dont have my exact case from back when this was the LD topic so i shall use another. Goodluck. 1 CX question; Is it moral to give weapons to terrorist? To begin: "The Precondition to freedom is security." B/c i agree with Rand Beers i stand negated. To begin with i will offer two observations. OB1) Because the resoution does not specify the agent of action it can be inferred that it will be the sanctioning government, furthmore the resoultion also doesnt state the size of the sanctions. Therefore Economic Sanctions can be unilateraly or mutilaterly imposed. OB2) The affirmative must prove that economic sanctions are always and "Ought not" action. In other words the affirmative must prove that something within ES makes them alwasy an ought not action. On the other hand the negative must prove that ES are not inherently an action that ought not be done. My Value: National Securtiy. Again the agent of action for this debate is government. A government is always looking at its own security as a paramount value, therefore we should as well. Without security Death and things like the holocacust could go on unchecked. My criterion will be a CBA. We must see the harms and benefits of our actions to provide the best political situations. Contention 1) Economic sanctions Ought to be used to stop the trading of weapons and preventing Proliferations. A) Direct sanctions on Nuclear war materials. If a nations foriegn policy objective were to stop other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons, the smartest course of action would be a mutillateral sanction on Enriched Uranium. If all the nuclear-capable countries of the world were to put a mutilateral sanction on a sole country it would be impossible to attain the resource. This would Save Billions of lives in the process and not harm a single innocent civilian. in this situation, ES are moral in that they save lives while doing no harm. A burdan is placed on the affirmative to prove how the sanction would be Immoral in this instance. B) Indirect sanctions of weapons stops war. A nation can use sanctions on resources in s economy to discourage the sanctioning country to not attain weapons, thus attaining its foriegn policy objective. Newsweek in 08' said "hitting the economy hard would force the mullahs to make a choice. Iran has profound economic vurnabilities. Smart Sanctions would force Iran's leaders to see the high cost of their behavior." Again a monolpy on scarce resources by the use of smart sanctions would save the lives of millions. Your case! To begin with, a real peeve of mine is how debaters always find a way to bring up the holocaust in debates. Then they use the suffering of those people as a symbol for how they should win debate. So, The holocaust was the systematic murder of 6 millions jews in germany, or a real definiton:: a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire. Economic sanctions are not systematic intentional ways of killing people. the ideas behind sanctions are to protect the public of both countries; in no way can ES, especially smart sanctions, lead to the mass intentional murders of innocent people. therefore this argument should fall. On your first observation. You say that since the resoultion doesnt say "ought never be" then you only have to prove how ES, in general, suck. Well there are two flaws that statement. 1) Its impossible in this round to outline and debate every type of ES in the world to generalize it. You can not place limits on which sanctions we can or cant debate. that is simply unfair and abusive. You must defende The Entire Resoution in that it says, economic sanctions Ought not be used. cross apply my 2nd observation 2) Literature abuse. I cant research every sanction nor can i find evidence on ES "in general" which you havent defined. (by that i mean general) therfore we should be and will debate on specific ES such as smart sanctions. Next. You imply a value of moraltiy, but first define morality. it is impossible to debate over subjective values such as morality. Who gets to define what is or isnt moral? I can offer an example. " A train is running down the track with broken brakes, it has a choice. Throw one man out to stop the train and save the other 5 lives or crash and kill them all. the moral choice is throw the man ought to save the lives." now same example "A healthy man walks into a hospital, 5 people are on their beds in dire need of 5 essential organs, would the moral choice again be, to kill the one man in order to save the other 5?" Therfore your value can not be affirmed b/c it cannot stand nor be competed against since it is subjective. your criterion; i agree CBA is the way to go BUT should be used to achieved something far more calcuable and objective. National securtiy. Also in general on your framework; if economic sanctions were not imposed and nuclear weapons were to fall into the hands of an evil regime, would the lives of million compare to your 40,000 your mueller cards is indicitive of? your Contention 1) There is no link from the negative to this argument. the use of smart sanctions on enriched uranium would 1) not harm a single innocent person, also no one would die PERIOD 2) save the lives of millions, thus being moral. it is a more moral decision to NOT give terrorist weapons Contention 2) your evidence is extrremly non specific to sanctions and just refers to the US trying to help in general well 1) there is no link to this argument 2) the neg controls the Internal link to this argument. If terrorist were unable to obtain weapons then terrorism would stop and 3) If you vote AFF terrorism will still happen in general, dont read impacts you cant solve Lastly Contention 3) still no linik. Smart sanctions help prevent war and do not cause violence in any country. the use of smart sanctions on a rogue regime will, if anything prevent war, therefore the neg also controls the impacts to this argument along with the internal link. So in general, My framework is the only one that can be evaluated since i am the only one that can be achieve it. In the aff world, terrorist and evil regimes would obtain weapons and kill million, thus being immoral. His criterion is cool and DOESNT achieve his value while achieveing mine. And if Smart sanctions save lives, cause no harm to innocent civilians, stop war, and dont link to any of his contentions and in fact impact and internal link turn all of his arguments then you should negate. I will provde more analysis in my next speech since i ran outta room:( sorry for the spelling too:P