A Just Society Sould Never Deliberately Initiate War

So, it is normally customary for the NC to be presented after the AC, but this order has been flipped in this debate. So, instead of just presenting the affirmative constructive (AC) speech as usual, I will also present my affirmative rebuttal (AR) at this time. Therefore, order will be AC, NC. Thanks to Lt.Cmdr.Data for instigating this debate... PRO's CASE/AC Definitions: 1. Deliberate- as "unimpulsive" according to Black"s Law 2. Plato in his book, In Crito, describes a just society. He observes that totalitarians cannot be just because they inherently disregard their citizenries' freedoms. Therefore, a just society must respect the freedoms of its people. Additionally, a just society should have concern for the rights of all peoples and societies in order to remain free of malice. Observation One: Stanford Encyclopedia offers the following explanation of war: "The mere threat of war, and the presence of mutual disdain between political communities, do not suffice as indicators of war. The conflict of arms must be actual...for it to count as war. Further, the actual armed conflict must be...widespread: isolated clashes between rogue officers, or border patrols, do not count as actions of war." Furthermore, Stanford notes that, "the onset of war requires a commitment, and a significant mobilization, on the part of the belligerents in question. There's no real war, so to speak, until a fighter intends to go to war and until it does so with a heavy quantum of force." In this way, the onset of war is triggered by an original, offensive act or by "a state of ongoing violence." Thus, we can extrapolate that to "initiate" war is both mobilization of forces and the actualization of violence. http://plato.stanford.edu... Observation Two: Never is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as being very rare, this is evidenced by such statements as, "You never win the lottery." I agree with Con's Value and his Criterion for this round. It is my Sole Contention that deliberately initiating war is destructive, and thus it should be avoided. Sub-point A: Deliberate initiations of war lead to more devastating warfare. According to Prof. Andrew Alexandra, "the financial costs of the preparation and waging of deliberate war have increased, as has the devastation caused by those war...Such deliberate initiations spur the desire for more potent weaponry. And as one armed force gains weapons of greater destructive power and delivery systems capable of carrying these weapons further and faster, others strive to match them, for fear that they will be overwhelmed by these weapons in potential future conflicts. So the deadly spiral of the arms race escalates. The effect of this escalation is to make us less, not more, secure. And as more weapons are made, so more and more of the world's productive resources are diverted to their production. At the same time, states are forced to tighten control of their populations: to tax and conscript them, against their wills, to provide the resources and personnel necessary for war..." Alexandra also notes that this intensification is also likely to lead to a greater reliance on the vastly deleterious "total war" model. Sub-point B: Deliberate Initiations of War engender aggression and intensified violence. According to Prof. Frederick Schuman, "Since other powers feeling themselves threatened by an expanding power, they will at some point resist its further aggrandizement; relentless pursuit of power spells war--which is the ultimate negation of all morality." By this, Schuman indicates that aggression results in a pushback as a counter to the initial aggression, creating an endless cycle of violence and retaliation that will result in incalculable harms. Prof. Steven Murdoch concurs, arguing, "For many experts, weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists and rogue nations change the self-defense analysis. In a world with these catastrophic weapons, they believe that countries should be allowed to strike preemptively. But how far these experts are willing to stray from a strict rule of self-defense, which requires actual enemy attack, turns upon what they emphasize. Some lawyers worry that a lower threshold for self-defense interventions, decided upon unilaterally, will impinge on nations" sovereignty and increase cycles of violence." Sub-point C: Limited strategic information makes deliberate initiations of war unwise. Prof. Dan Reiter, cites the following examples from his study: "In July 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated that the Soviet Union would not be able to construct a nuclear weapon until mid-1951, though the first Soviet nuclear test occurred only some weeks later in August 1949...The day before the first Chinese nuclear test, the CIA estimated a Chinese test within 6 to 8 months." Reiter goes on to summarize his meta-analysis of various military actions over the past 50 years, stating simply, "that in this modern era, intentionally beginning war fails or is made more destructive more than it succeeds as there is usually an incomplete intelligence picture of the situation." Sub-point D: Deliberate Initiations of War reduce global cooperation. Prof. David Cole claims deliberate initiations of war "both make it less likely that societies will obtain cooperation from other societies and engender intersocietal animus. Reduced cooperation, poor communication, and increased hostility breed intensified violence and reduce global cooperation." If the global society feels as if an individual society is likely to aggress, the global society tends to isolate and closely monitor this society, sometimes even striking first out of fear, whether that fear is rational or not. Additionally, in a global culture where aggression is more prevalent, societies will tend to be more individualistic and isolationist as a whole. Sub-point E: Deliberate initiation of war should not be preferred as there are viable alternatives, including diplomacy, homeland security, and defensive counterterrorism. According to Prof. Dan Reiter, deliberate wars "often consume resources which might otherwise be allocated to these three essential approaches, costing hundreds of billions of dollars over just the medium term. The unfortunate reality is that societies do not have an infinite amount of money to spend." It follows that other, equally effective policies, could be pursued rather than resorting to deliberate war. He notes that statistically, diplomacy and defensive counterterrorism have been equally, if not more effective, than deliberate initiations of war. Reiter therefore urges counterterrorism initiatives, including ballistic missile defense, fissile material recovery, and port security, among other recommendations. NGOs are another means of achieving objectives, as they can often provide peaceful assistance on the ground and act as neutral interlocutors for various factions. Furthermore, according to Prof. Patrick Regan, NGOs tend to be 12% more effective than state actors in reducing armed conflict. CON/NC: Overview: A just society would not use violence as it has regard for human life. If justice is giving each their due, and innocents are not due death, and innocents will inevitably die in war, then war is unjust. If war is unjust, a just society would never do it. This takes out the NC. Obs. 1 - Never does not connote an absolute. My grandma says she'll "never win publisher's clearing house lottery," but yet she could. In this sense, "never" is more similar to "very rare." Obs. 2 - I concur. Obs. 3 - I agree; a JS should just not use war as its response. Point One: I am not endorsing frivolous hopes, I am endorsing prudence--and war is not prudent. Vigilance in self-defense is always desirable, and if you cross-apply my sub-point E here, you can see that war is not necessary in order to respond to myriad external threats. Moreover, the ills of war could actually cause more harms to the JS than a policy of preemption. Point Two: I looked up the Western and Goldstein card--it's from the '70s, which is not exactly up-to-date. Finally, without a link to the Canterbury evidence, it is very hard for me to evaluate its validity; I cannot find it online. Also, cross-apply my case here--war is ineffective. Point Three: Nonviolence does have benefits. Alexandra argues, "There is ample historical evidence, for example, of the ways in which measures supposed to increase military security--development of armaments, strengthening of border posts, and so on--can undermine trust between states, and actually make conflict more, not less, likely, as well as the tendency for low-level military conflicts to escalate. The unilateral adoption of a pacifist stance by one nation removes these potential provocations for invasion. We also have a good deal of evidence for the effectiveness of non-military resistance to armed invasion. That evidence itself must have some deterrent force for those who contemplate military occupation of a state that has institutionalized pacifist resistance." Point Four: There are alternatives to war that could achieve the exact same thing that the Burke-White card is referring to. Moreover, war forces tradeoffs. According to Reiter, "preventive attacks...consume resources which might otherwise be allocated to [alternative] approaches. Preventive attacks are tremendously expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars over just the medium term. The unfortunate reality is that a society does not have an infinite amount of money to spend." So, we trade peaceful alternatives for violent war? That's not pragmatic. Point Five: Never = very rare. I'm not ruling anything out absolutely. I will provide my source's citations in the comment section of this debate. I message Lt.CmdrData and he has no objection to my doing this. Thanks for a good round, and for an unusually fast response time. I look forward to see how this debate unfolds. Thank you!