LD Jan/Feb 2019 - Military Aid to Authoritarian Governments - Introduction

Resolved: The United States ought not provide military aid to authoritarian regimes.

Introduction

This may be a timely resolution as we live in an era in which we perceive an increase in authoritarianism around the world and a corresponding decline of democracy. We live in a particularly dangerous time, in which weapons of mass destruction are often in the hands of governments which oppose the U.S. and the boundaries which define the reach of international terrorism are constantly expanding, shrinking and moving.

One of the truly great things about Lincoln-Douglas debate, is it permits some flexibility in how to frame cases. While it is expected that traditional LD debaters will establish a framework with a value premise and value criterion, it is possible to win the debate on the strength of the contentions which setup a side-by-side evaluation of relative advantages which can potentially, outweigh an opponent's value premise. It is even better if the impact-calculus of the relative advantages support the value framework. But the point is, even if the impacts do not always support the value, LD still provides several routes to winning a ballot, depending upon the judge's preferences.

One of the key requirements for a good resolution is to provide a balanced debate, in which either side has reasonable grounds upon which to frame justifications for their relative positions. Does this resolution provide equal ground on both sides? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but the multi-dimensional nature of LD debate allows one to shift the ground into a hypothetical examination of an ideal domain where arguments can be made in a purely imaginary world where the debate space becomes a sort of first step toward righting all the wrongs of the world. This debate has the potential to cross that plane.

Definitions

The United States

There is no reason to provide a definition for the United States (U.S.) as every debater and judge should have sufficient interpretation as to what is the United States; a country in the western-hemisphere, comprised of fifty-states and various territories around the globe. What is noteworthy, in the context of this resolution, is the U.S. is considered one of the wealthiest nations on earth and one of the most powerful in terms of its military power and political influence. While other nations may provide military aid to other countries, the U.S. provides a significant amount of aid to various nations around the world. The point is, the context of this resolution is limited to the United States. It does not say, "Resolved: states ought not provide military aid to authoritarian regimes." For more about this, see the analysis section below.

ought (not)

For the purposes of this resolution, we can refer to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which defines ought as "used to express obligation, advisability, natural expectation, or logical consequence". As a verb, we understand ought as an action to be taken or more specifically in this case, an action which should NOT be taken.

(to) provide

For this definition, once again, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is adequate with "to supply or make available (something wanted or needed), to make something available to".

military aid

Generally, we can presume military aid is any kind of military assistance the U.S. provides to another country. Usually we think of arms, such as guns of various types, missiles, bombs, military machinery, and other kinds of offensive and defensive hardware. It may also include advisers, trainers, spotters, and strategic intelligence provided to others by the U.S. Military aid may also include credits or financing provided to other governments so they can purchase the goods and services they need for defense.

military and aid

Merriam Webster defines military, as an adjective, as "of or relating to soldiers, arms and war" and defines aid as "to provide with what is useful or necessary in achieving an end". These separate definitions provide the insight that military aid is the provision of soldiers and arms for the purpose of meeting some objective.

We can get further insight into the definition of military as a form of assistance with "strings attached" from the following source.

Sullivan, et al 2011:

The United States spends more than eleven billion dollars per year on direct military assistance to foreign governments and substate groups (USAID 2009). The American government expresses a wide variety of goals motivating their use of military assistance as a foreign policy tool. Frequently, US administrations have explicitly linked military aid or arms transfers to a quid-pro-quo expectation of compliance from a government (Sislin 1994). More generally, military assistance is expected to augment US national security by increasing recipient state cooperation with US objectives. According to the State Department’s 2007 Report to Congress: Section 1206(f) of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act:
Security cooperation remains a critical foreign policy tool that allows the United States to advance its national security interests worldwide…. Building partner nation security capacity is one of the most important strategic requirements for the United States to promote international security, advance U.S. interests and prevail in the war against terrorism. (275-6)

authoritarian regimes

Authoritarian regimes are generally thought of as governments headed by a small, possibly singular ruling elite that provides limited democratic choice for citizens. However, a more precise definition is available at the following source.

CIAS (undated)

The term 'authoritarian regimes' ('a.r.') in its broadest sense encompasses all forms of undemocratic rule. Compared to democracies, an a.r. does not maintain the institutions and procedures of participation and political competition, fundamental rights and control of power (separation of powers, parliaments, elections, plurality of parties, etc.) characteristic of a democracy, and thus does not possess democratic legitimacy. In a more narrow view of the term, a.r. represents a specific form of autocratic rule which has been especially distinguished from totalitarian regimes ('t.r.', also totalitarian states) (Arendt 1951, Friedrich/ Brzezinski 1956).
Juan Linz's frequently applied definition (1975: 264) of a.r. names three characteristics through which a.r. can be differentiated both from democratic systems and from t.r.: (1) limited pluralism contrasted with the principally unlimited pluralism of democracies and monism of t.r.; (2) limited political participation (de-politicization) and (except for in limited phases) neither an extensive nor an intensive mobilization; (3) in contrast to totalitarianism there is no legitimation of the system through a common and dominating ideology, but rather through mentalities, psychological predispositions and values in general (patriotism, nationalism, modernization, order, etc.). Polity IV defines a.r. (without differentiating it from t.r.) through stronger restrictions on political participation, a completely exclusive restriction in the selection of the heads of the executive and very sparse limitations on the executive.
A precise distinction of a.r. from t.r. is often made more difficult by the fact that the individual definitions take different characteristics or levels of characteristics into account. These days it has become broadly accepted that in order to differentiate between a.r., t.r. and democratic regimes, the same categories or dimensions should be used; e.g. degree of freedoms, political equality and control (Lauth 2004). When distinguishing, the different forms within this category should be noted, which in turn serve in the identification of the individual regimes (basic types), where t.r. and democratic regimes mark opposite ends of a polar scale. A.r. lies in between and forms an area with a much more clearly distinctive functional logic. A.r.s should not be confused with hybrid regimes, which display characteristics of different basic types.

The above definition provides a very clear distinction between autocratic and totalitarian regimes but I don't believe it is necessary to draw these kinds of distinctions to frame a case. Unless it is pertinent to make such a division, most judges will tend to see totalitarians as a particularly oppressive subset of authoritarians.

Analysis of the Resolution

In the status quo, the United States federal government is providing military aid to authoritarian governments. This is supported by the Center for Research on Globalization which, in 2017, claimed, the "US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of the World’s Dictatorships". This is useful for providing some kind of framing around how pervasive is the practice being banned by the resolution. It is also interesting to note the article provides a definition somewhat different than the one provided above and so gives some insight into how important definitions could be in this debate. (Let's hope not.) It is now contingent upon the Affirmative debater to understand the framer's intent and discover why this "fact" is a problem which warrants a change. In the current political climate, the so-called America First movement may provide some insight or maybe we can look back to the events following the 9-11 terrorist attack on New York City and the rise of the strategy of democratization as a means to promote global peace which many analysts have concluded led to much of the instability and conflict existing in many parts of the world today. Perhaps, on a broader scale, we can learn that strategy of arms or securitization in exchange for reciprocal benefits for the U.S. is generally a bad idea which often ends in unintended ways. On the other hand, the Negative will need to understand why the U.S. is currently providing military aid to nations which are not necessarily considered models of ideal governance, assuming of course, the U.S. mode of governance it one worthy to be modeled globally.

The resolution forces us to consider a policy action by the United States federal government and mandates the U.S. has an obligation to not make military assistance available to any nation which meets the definition of an authoritarian country. The resolution is specific to the United Sates, even though many U.S. allies also provide military aid to others (a fact that Neg can leverage since voting Affirmative can shift the bulk of aid to allies such as the EU and thus, the status quo harms continue and the EU just gets richer). On face, this resolution provides a sharp division between the Affirmative and Negative positions, in that, it leaves virtually no grounds by which the Affirmative may equivocate or suggest under certain conditions, providing military aid to authoritarian countries may be justified. Perhaps there exists the possible, unsavory, idea that a certain amount of wiggle room can be found in the definition of authoritarian but LD judges are unlikely to enjoy a kind of topicality focused, argument over definitions. The Affirmative needs to find a values-based justification for its position or be forced to make a number of contention-level claims that military aid to authoritarians is always a bad idea.

The Negative burden can be as simple as finding one example in which military aid to an authoritative country is advantageous enough to offset any Affirmative claims to the contrary and Negative wins the ballot. It would seem this would not be too difficult. After all, the U.S. has found sufficient justification for supplying military assistance to a number of authoritarian regimes in the status quo. The decision to expend billions of U.S. taxpayers dollars for military support of authoritarian governments has seemingly passed the system of checks and balances inherent in American politics and would can presume the U.S. is receiving some type of justifiable recompense.

This resolution is open to a number of critiques for those judges who accept such kinds of debates. Based on our definition of authoritarian, the implication is made that only democratic nations are "deserving" of military aid and so the Negative can leverage a number of strong arguments that the modern forms of democratic government, as criticized by many philosophers and political scientists, inevitably devolves into a kind of elitist manipulation of the citizens both abroad and in the U.S. 

For more information on this and other LD topics, click here.

Sources:

Patricia L. Sullivan, P.L.; Tessman, B.F.; Li, X; (2011), US Military Aid and Recipient State Cooperation, Foreign Policy Analysis (2011) 7, 275–294.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bf4e/e4125c4d788098a9fc326cb32856b49df5b7.pdf

CIAS (undated), Center for American Studies, Bielefeld University, InterAmericanWiki.
https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/wiki/a_Authoritarian%20Regimes.html

Whitney, R (2017), US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of the World’s Dictatorships, Global Research, Sept. 2017.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-provides-military-assistance-to-73-percent-of-the-worlds-dictatorships/5611021