Economic Sanctions ought not be used to Achieve Foreign Policy Objectives.

I resolve: I affirm that Economic sanctions ought not be used to achieve foreign policy objectives. To begin with, I would like to define the necessary terms to fully understand the round, and our resolution. Economic Sanctions, as defined by Businessdictionary.com, "Economic penalties, such as stoppage of trade and financial transactions, imposed upon a country to force compliance with another country's or UN's or WTO's demands." Foreign Policy, as defined by Merriam-Webster.com, "the policy of a sovereign state in its interaction with other sovereign states." Objectives, as defined by Merriam-Webster.com, "a strategic position to be attained or a purpose to be achieved by a Military Operation." Justice, as defined by Merriam-Webster.com, "to prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable." The premise of my case is Justice; the criterion would be increasing the quality of life. The Quality of Life, as defined by the Quality of Life Research Unit, University of Toronto: The degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his/her life. Possibilities result from the opportunities and limitations each person has in his/her life and reflect the interaction of personal and environmental factors. Enjoyment has two components: the experience of satisfaction and the possession or achievement of some characteristic, as illustrated by the expression: "She enjoys good health." Three major life domains are identified: Being, Belonging, and Becoming. The conceptualization of Being, Belonging, and Becoming as the domains of quality of life were developed from the insights of various writers. The Quality of Life is hoped to be increased by preventing the downgrade of it by Economic Sanctions. 1st Contention: The applied economic sanctions can lead to deaths in the foreign country that the country halted trade with. Joy Gordon, a Philosophy department teacher at Fairfield University, helps to further explain how deaths can occur, with a brief look at the 1991 document of deaths due to Economic Sanctions. Joy Gordon had the following to explain: "Since 1991, international agencies have documented Iraq's explosion in child mortality rates, water-borne diseases from untreated water supplies, malnutrition in large sectors of the population, and on and on. The most reliable estimate holds that 237,000 Iraqi children under five are dead because of sanctions, with other estimates going as high as one million. The deaths from sanctions are far greater than the number of Iraqis directly killed in the Persian Gulf War -- an estimated 40,000 casualties, both military and civilian." Thus, as given in the example above, great deaths have resulted from Economic Sanctions. The Associated Press States: "…more than 110,600 Iraqis had been killed since the start of the war to April 2009." The Iraq Family Health Survey for the World Health Organization concluded: "an Estimated 151,000 deaths due to violence." Both separate pieces of results, as given, show how even Economic Sanctions give more harm than war; thus, showing how bad they can truly be, and how they help cause deaths. John Mueller & Karl Mueller, help to give more information on that same example. The two had the following to say: "No one knows with any precision how many Iraqi civilians have died as a result, but various agencies of the United Nations, which overseen the sanctions, have estimated that they have contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths. By 1998 Iraqi infant mortality had reportedly risen from the Pre-Gulf War rate of 3.7 percent to 12 percent. Inadequate food and medical supplies, as well as breakdowns in sewage and sanitation systems and in the electrical power systems needed to run them, reportedly cause an increase of 40,000 deaths annually of children under the age of 5 and of 50,000 deaths annually of older Iraqis." Together, they both, the Muellers' and Gordon explained how much damage to the population the sanctions had caused. 2nd Contention: Economic Sanctions can reduce the amount of resources the foreign country that its used upon has. Mr. Bossuyt2 had words to describe this, using an example from the country of Burundi. He had the following to say: "While the sanctions were in place, serious shortages of fuel, spare parts, medicines and fertilizers were experienced, with corresponding dramatic price increases and inflation. Commerce and industry were paralyzed by the lack of raw materials and spare parts, unemployment skyrocketed and incomes plummeted. Agriculture also suffered because of the shortage of seeds and fertilizers. Development assistance, approximately $250 million annually, was cut off and foreign currency reserves were exhausted. Burundi's health infrastructure was heavily hit, and the inability to obtain even emergency medical supplies led to severe shortages of medicines and vaccines. Sanitation and water programs were scaled down or eliminated. Humanitarian aid agencies were left helpless in the face of escalating need and increasingly difficult working conditions - the World Food Program (WFP) alone was distributing emergency food assistance to an average of 218,000 people each month in 1998." Thus, it proves how Economic Sanctions are proven to reduce the amount of resources for a foreign country it is used upon. Therefore, it connects to my first contention as a means of causing deaths as my next card provides. Cotright and Lopez gave a brief talk about both resource reduction, and deaths in the case of the Iraq Sanction. They had the following to say: "Never before has a country faced such prolonged economic strangulation, with the value of lost revenues from prohibited oil exports amounting to more than $130 billion, industrial output dropping by 50 percent, inflation rising by more than 5,000 percent and per capita income plummeting to levels equivalent to those found in the poorest nations. Most critically at stake is the survival of the Iraqi people, especially the most vulnerable, who suffer doubly under the oppression of a totalitarian dictatorship and the grueling consequences of one of the harshest economic blockades in history. The social impacts of the Iraq crisis reveal a shocking human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people have died prematurely from the health disaster that has swept Iraq in the wake of war and during more than eight years of comprehensive sanctions. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported in 1996 that 4,500 children under the age of five were dying every month in Iraq from hunger and disease." Thus, the resource reduction causes death in the population when they're put under a sanction. Thus, providing a link between the two contentions; not to mention the criterion of increasing quality of life. With completion of my case, I look open to any clarification questions, and then the case of my opponent, along with their rebuttal.