Resolved: That the United States should intervene in another nation's struggle for democracy.

During this debate, my opponent has relied on at best speculative evidence of benefits gained from democracy promotion. Empirically, democracies may support free trade more than autocracies, but that's because most of them happen to be capitalist, and not because they are democracies. Communist China is not a democratic nation, but it engages in free trade and has made its economy second only to the US. This case illustrates that nations engage in free trade out of national interest, and national interest is not going to change whether the nation is under an autocracy or a democracy. My opponent also argues that we need to keep Iran from gaining regional hegemony. The situation he depicts is very unlikely. As my opponent himself has stated, Saudi Arabia acts as a counter-balance to Iran's power. There is no way Iran would dare attack Saudi Arabia since they know we would then declare war on them and they can just wait to be crushed. My opponent argues that declaring war on Iran later instead of keeping control of the region now is more costly. First, this would only happen if Iran was rash enough to attack Saudi Arabia. Second, no one complained about the cost of driving Iraqi forces from Kuwait during the Kennedy era, but there are a lot of complaints now about the cost of Afghanistan ad Iraq. This should illustrate that staying in a particular country is more expensive than the occasional war. My opponent also argues that we need to defend human rights. Human rights is a very general term that can comprise anything from natural rights to US citizenship rights. He fails to state how autocracies fail to follow human rights obligations and does not define what human rights are. The resolution is that the United States should intervene in another nation's struggle for democracy, so it is a debate on can and should. My opponent says that since we can intervene in the event that a country asks us to, that automatically means we should intervene. Beware the costs of intervening for democracy. We went to Iraq to get rid of Saddam, and we've spent $800 billion and eight years there so far. That brings me to my contentions. I stated that democracy may not be the best form of government for certain countries, and my opponent argues that there are no good autocrats and that failed democracies failed because of illiberality and economic hardship. First, there are good autocrats, like the ones I've mentioned in the debate although my opponent apparently disagrees. Even if all autocrats were bad, that doesn't leave democracy as the only viable option. Other options include theocracy. Second, illiberality and economic hardship are things rampant in the Middle East. If democracy fails under those two circumstances, then it will most likely fail in the Middle East, and any alleged benefits from democracy promotion that my opponent brings up would be void. We've failed before and we can fail again. My opponent argues that Vietnam was lost because we "relied on man power and not our technological prowess" and "had the USSR and China". We sent planes to bomb North Vietnam. According to my opponent that is not technological prowess. We got defeated by the Viet Cong (Communists in South Vietnam), not North Vietnam, and my opponent blames the USSR and China for sending weapons to North Vietnam. He says Afghanistan doesn't have a national protector, but he forgot that we sent weapons to the Taliban during the Cold War to fight the Soviets, and the Taliban still have those weapons, plus IE D's. I've also stated that democracy in other nations is none of our business. The exception is if we are asked to help set up a democracy. Otherwise we are just meddling in the affairs of others, and we will make a lot of enemies. My opponent argues that democracy promotion will reap us a lot of economic benefits, but as I've said before, these benefits are speculative. The US might as well promote capitalism in the Middle East. Regional hegemony is equivalent to imperialism, and my opponent has conceded that the definitions are similar. I hope you don't believe his argument about hegemony giving the power to imperialize instead of actually being the act of imperializing. I can say that acts of genocide (a term the government uses when it doesn't want to intervene) gives the power to commit genocide but that doesn't mean acts of genocide is equivalent to committing genocide. My 3rd contention states that intervention is expensive. Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate this point perfectly. We spent eight years and $800 billion on Iraq and nine years and $444 billion on Afghanistan so far. Suppose Obama keeps his promise of completing the mission in Afghanistan by 2014 (notice this is an extension from 2011, when he promised to start bringing the troops home). We would have spent 12 years and at least $600 billion on the Afghan War. There are over 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa [1], and we can expect similar results with these. It's apparent that we cannot afford to continue to promote democracy in the Middle East. It simply will take too long and cost too much. Any free trade benefits that my opponent says will come out of democracy promotion are 1) merely speculative, whether or not they will be realized is still in question, and 2) will come too late if they do come and won't bring us enough money to pay for the costs of war. Sources: [1] geography.about.com/od/lists/a/officiallist.htm