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

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

Negative

One disputed but widely supported feature of Lincoln-Douglas debate is the idea there is no presumption for the status quo. Unlike policy debate, this means there is no reason for the judge to default to the status quo if the Affirmative cannot prove its case will achieve certain burdens (such as solvency) which meet the judge's expectation. Personally, I like the idea the Affirmative has the complete and only burden of proof that a change to the status quo is warranted, but other debate theorists and judge's disagree. Therefore, the Negative does need to make a reasonable case the status quo is preferable. But, as I said in the Introduction to this resolution, the Negative should only be required to present a single instance of when providing military aid to an authoritarian regime resulted in significant advantages. But perhaps even this is insufficient if the Affirmative is able to assert that on balance, such aid to autocrats is bad; meaning, basically, more times than not the ends are just too harmful to ignore. This analysis to the Negative position will examine some key questions as to what is accomplished should the judge Affirm, but there is much uncertainty as what the Affirmative will be claiming as benefits to voting Affirmative until the case is presented. Despite the uncertainty, we can still cast some serious doubt as to whether the judge's Affirmative ballot would benefit anyone and whether the Affirmative value framework can be upheld. If counterplans (CP) were legal in traditional LD, it may be possible to subsume the entire Affirmative framework and call it a day. In general, plans and counterplans are NOT legal in traditional LD but it can be effective to at least convince the judge there are better ways to solve the harms without presenting an explicit plan or CP. In effect, the judge imagines the counterplan for you, but admittedly the judge may be the biggest independent variable in the room.

Since the Affirmative must defend the topic, let's begin by critiquing the resolution.

Why Military Aid?

The resolution specifies 'military aid' as a particularly unique kind of foreign assistance which ought not be provided to authoritarians. This seems like a convenient target since the implication is, autocrats can use weapons to defeat their opponents and hold on to their positions of authority. In truth, any kind of aid can be weaponized and used to repress and control the populations of autocratic countries. Elimination of military aid is not enough. Why not eliminate all foreign aid and allow the people to solve their own problems?

Easterly 2014:

Too much of America’s foreign aid funds what I call authoritarian development. That’s when the international community–experts from the U.N. and other bodies–swoop into third-world countries and offer purely technical assistance to dictatorships like Uganda or Ethiopia on how to solve poverty.
Unfortunately, dictators’ sole motivation is to stay in power. So the development experts may get some roads built, but they are not maintained. Experts may sink boreholes for clean water, but the wells break down. Individuals do not have the political rights to protest disastrous public services, so they never improve. Meanwhile, dictators are left with cash and services to prop themselves up–while punishing their enemies.
But there is another model: free development, in which poor individuals, asserting their political and economic rights, motivate government and private actors to solve their problems or to give them the means to solve their own problems.

Moreover, the Negative claims there are alt-causes to repression and human rights abuses. These harms are not unique to military aid.

Mann 2013:

Chinese aid from 1998-2011 as measure by AidData was found to not have a significant relationship with human rights performance as measured by PTS’s data from Amnesty International and the State Department. This demonstrates that Chinese aid does not cause countries to become more repressive. As a result, I argue two possible explanations for this phenomenon. The first is repression and the potential for repression already exists in countries that receive Chinese foreign aid. The second is that there are other factors that may cause repression in countries that receive Chinese aid.
The implication that countries that receive Chinese foreign aid are already repressive is important to improving understanding of China’s development in Africa. Previous research argues that China’s aid to African countries is elite centered and defends autocratic regimes (Tull 2006). While these two contentions cannot be accurately addressed by empirical data, it is important to note that Chinese aid may not be the cause of human rights violations since Chinese aid has no relationship with an increase in repression as defined by PTS. This is contrary to my theory which argues that because Chinese aid has no stipulations for pursuing democracy or human rights policy and goes to elites and autocrats alike, it will be abused and cause an increase in repression.

Why Autocratic Regimes?

The resolution specifies 'autocratic regimes' because the language invokes the mindset that autocratic governments are innately undesirable, repressive, cruel, prone to malfeasance, or generally inferior to the U.S. model of democracy.

Becker & Posner 2010:

Visionary leaders can accomplish more in autocratic than democratic governments because they need not heed legislative, judicial, or media constraints in promoting their agenda. In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping made the decision to open communist China to private incentives in agriculture, and in a remarkably short time farm output increased dramatically. Autocratic rulers in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Chile produced similar quick turnabouts in their economies by making radical changes that usually involved a greater role for the private sector and private business.
Of course, the other side of autocratic rule is that badly misguided strong leaders can cause major damage. Mao’s Great Leap Forward is one prominent and terrible example, but so too are Castro’s forcing Cuba into a centrally planned government-controlled inefficient economy, or Iran’s mullah-led government that created monopolies controlled by religious foundations and other groups.  The overall effect of autocratic governments is some average of the good results produced by visionaries, and the bad results produced by deluded leaders.

Additionally, the implication in the wording of the resolution is that military cooperation with autocratic regimes has no benefits and yet historical evidence disproves these assumptions. 

Sargent 2018:

On recurrent occasion, realistic calculations of national interest have led to compromise with bloodthirsty regimes. Some instances have been notorious and consequential. In 1941, to cite the most famous such collaboration, the United States aligned itself with Joseph Stalin to defeat Adolf Hitler. During the 1970s, the United States cultivated a relationship with the People’s Republic of China—still in the late throes of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution—to tilt the Cold War’s balance of power. Such grand strategic calculations may or may not be unsavory, but they are consistent with tradition and even defensible on ethical grounds. The practice of collaboration with not so like-minded states dates all the way back to 1776—and Franklin’s efforts to build an alliance with an absolutist France. Nor is it self-evident that the renunciation of such collaborations of convenience would even be an ethical course, as the counterfactual prospect of U.S. abstention from World War II suggests.

And even if you don't buy any of these arguments as justification for rejecting the implied premises of the resolution, Negative claims the source of harms may be inherent in failing states rather than stable, functioning autocracies.

Parks, et al 2017:

There are many reasons to focus on reforming weak, inefficient and corrupt government institutions in failed and fragile states. It is difficult for aid agencies to achieve long-lasting gains in the countries where they work unless their host governments can independently maintain law and order, collect taxes, deliver public services, and create an environment in which the private sector can flourish.
Weak states are also destabilizing to the international order — and a threat to U.S. national security. The 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy concluded that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.” Subsequent versions of this strategy document (in 2006, 2010 and 2015) echoed this point, noting that terrorism, complex humanitarian crises, disease outbreaks, and drug and arms trafficking often accompany state failure and fragility.

Why the United States?

The resolution limits the Affirmative action to a single source of military aid, in a world where many nations provide military aid and export weapons. Globalization assures that when one market recedes another will take its place.

Reuters 2018:

Meanwhile, the US confirmed it had blocked a $255 million military aid to Pakistan, saying the country was reviewing Islamabad’s cooperation in security areas. On Monday, Trump said that the United States had “foolishly” handed Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid in the last 15 years and had been rewarded with “nothing but lies and deceit”. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Pakistani officials say tough US measures threaten to push Pakistan further into the arms of China, which has deepened ties with Islamabad after pledging to invest $57 billion in infrastructure as part of its vast Belt and Road initiative.

And the fact that China is itself is autocratic is non-unique. Even other democratic regimes are exporting military aid, to autocratic regimes that even the U.s. will not support.

Carden 2016:

Perhaps not surprisingly, the country at the forefront of the push for a new cold war with Russia—Ukraine—has, since the crisis there began in the spring of 2014, turned itself into a veritable arms bazaar. The Obama administration has repeatedly boasted that by the end of 2015, Ukraine had received upwards of $780 million in US security assistance and $2 billion in loan guarantees, while Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has made no secret of his intention to divert IMF loans to fund the war effort in the east. What has resulted is that, according to a recent AP report, “Ukraine has turned into a supermarket for illegal weapons.”
It has also become the black-market exporter of choice for some of the more odious regimes on the planet. Amnesty International recently reported that Ukraine has been busy exporting weapons to South Sudan. In 2014, Ukraine sold South Sudan light and heavy machine guns, and in 2015 it authorized the further export of “an undisclosed number of operational Mi-24 attack helicopters.” Brian Wood, head of arms control at Amnesty International, condemned the arms sale, noting that “it is impossible to square Ukraine’s arms export decisions with what is happening in South Sudan where civilians sheltering is hospitals and places of worship…have been attacked and killed.”

The impact to this contention, is the international, arms black market and perpetuation of harms in an Affirmative world. Many nations, both autocratic and democratic will fill the voids left by the withdrawal of U.S. military aid and thus the Affirmative cannot achieve any universal value framework based on solving the harms inherent in military aid.

An Alternative Paradigm

For this contention, I cross-apply the Mann '13 card seen above. There is no empirical evidence that Chinese aid has any impact on human rights violations. This is important to establish in the event Affirmative claims that U.S. military aid perpetuates or increases human rights abuses. The Mann evidence strongly supports alt-causation for human rights abuses and repression. Even more importantly, for those Affirmative arguments which claim that U.S. aid is an expansion of colonialism or imperialism, we look to China for an alternative relationship paradigm which mitigates imperialist ambitions.

Lootz 2016:

Aspects that support this thesis are the non-conditionality of Chinese aid, shown on the one hand by the fact that governance does not play a role for the allocation, on the other hand by the circumstance that China respects local ownership by not attaching any obligations of structural reform in exchange for aid. Following the norm of non-interference, Beijing does not demand political adjustment or good governance from countries that receive foreign aid (Ambrosio 2010, 383). As the Chinese State Council puts it, providing aid, China is

Furthermore, it is a different terminology that identifies foreign aid from Beijing. When speaking about foreign aid, the authorities do not label it as donor-recipient relation but rather stress South-South cooperation morality and mutual opportunity as major themes (Mawdsley 2014, 643).[22]

Imposing no political conditions. China upholds the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, respects recipient countries’ right to independently select their own path and model of development, and believes that every country should explore a development path suitable to its actual conditions. China never uses foreign aid as a means to interfere in recipient countries’ internal affairs or seek political privileges for itself” (State Council White Paper on Foreign Aid, 2011)

Lootz and other sources support that view China exploits the non-conditionality, partnership paradigm to expand other economic assistance opportunities which benefit both sides, and empirical evidence confirms the positive outcomes when democratic donors support democracy promotion.

Lootz 2016:

Sarah Bermeo evaluated 159 countries, which received aid from multilateral and bilateral donors organized in the OECD with multiple regression analysis in the time period between 1992 and 2007. Controlling for Oil Wealth, Income as GDP per capita, Growth as GDP growth per capita, regime age and number of previous transitions, and relying on a logit specification statistical model, Bermeo tests the effect of aid on regime change, operating with a binary dependent variable classifying authoritarian and democratic regimes. She finds that receiving more aid from democratic donors increases the likelihood of democratic transition. She describes that many democratic donors state democracy promotion as a foreign policy goal. Her analysis shows that the donor’s intent is effective and conditional aid has a positive effect on democratization (Bermeo 2011, 1-23). [34-5]

Lootz continues -

A further study finding a positive relation between foreign aid and democratization is from Finkel et al (2007), who test the effect of US foreign aid in 165 countries, which are “potential recipients of democracy assistance” between 1990 and 2003 (Finkel et al 2007, 414). Including ethnic fractionalization, income inequality, population, state failure, Political violence and per capita GDP growth as explaining factors in their statistical model, the authors’ findings indicate a positive effect from US democracy assistance on democracy levels in the recipient countries, measured in Freedom House and Polity IV indices (Ibid., 404-436). [35]

The mutual cooperation inherent under the alternative is essential to support the transition of repressive regimes toward democratic rule without invoking cries of imperialism. The paradigm imposes no conditions and mandates no outcomes. By rejecting the Affirmative support for the resolution we make possible a mutually agreeable and positive outcome. Former Secretary of State Jeane Kirkpatrick reminds us that the path to democracy is difficult and imposes its own demands. We needn't add to them.

Kirkpatrick 1979: 

Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic government. Many of the wisest political scientists of this and previous centuries agree that democratic institutions are especially difficult to establish and maintain-because they make heavy demands on all portions of a population and because they depend on complex social, cultural, and economic conditions.
Two or three decades ago, when Marxism enjoyed its greatest prestige among American intellectuals, it was the economic prerequisites of democracy that were emphasized by social scientists. Democracy, they argued, could function only in relatively rich societies with an advanced economy, a substantial middle class, and a literate population, but it could be expected to emerge more or less automatically whenever these conditions prevailed. Today, this picture seems grossly over-simplified. While it surely helps to have an economy strong enough to provide decent levels of well-being for all, and “open” enough to provide mobility and encourage achievement, a pluralistic society and the right kind of political culture–and time–are even more essential.
In his essay on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill identified three fundamental conditions which the Carter administration would do well to ponder. These are: “One, that the people should be willing to receive it [representative government]; two, that they should be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation; three, that they should be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them.”
Fulfilling the duties and discharging the functions of representative government make heavy demands on leaders and citizens, demands for participation and restraint, for consensus and compromise. It is not necessary for all citizens to be avidly interested in politics or well-informed about public affairs–although far more widespread interest and mobilization are needed than in autocracies. What is necessary is that a substantial number of citizens think of themselves as participants in society’s decision-making and not simply as subjects bound by its laws. Moreover, leaders of all major sectors of the society must agree to pursue power only by legal means, must eschew (at least in principle) violence, theft, and fraud, and must accept defeat when necessary. They must also be skilled at finding and creating common ground among diverse points of view and interests, and correlatively willing to compromise on all but the most basic values.
In addition to an appropriate political culture, democratic government requires institutions strong enough to channel and contain conflict. Voluntary, non-official institutions are needed to articulate and aggregate diverse interests and opinions present in the society. Otherwise, the formal governmental institutions will not be able to translate popular demands into public policy.

The Value Framework

This analysis has taken a slightly different approach to defending the Negative side than you typically see on this site. Nevertheless, I trust you can take useful ideas from this analysis for the creation of your own case. This approach is based upon a premise the resolution views military aid to autocratic regimes as a kind of disease that warrants amputation rather than treatment. The Negative view is the problem, if indeed it is a disease, is systemic and so the best approach is found in some other alternative. For this analysis, I look to the principle values of social progress and human dignity. Social progress is achieved by increasing international cooperation which means we find solutions which are mutually beneficial and without imposing the burdens of ideologies. This also supports human dignity because the leaders of autocratic regimes can better achieve the kind of balance needed to ensure the permanence of the state and upholding the natural rights of its citizens. At least that is what we hope is a step in the right direction.

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

Sources:

Becker G; Posner, R (2010), Democracy or Autocracy: Which is Better for Economic Growth? The Becker-Posner Blog, 10/10/2010. https://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2010/10/democracy-or-autocracy-which-is-better-for-economic-growth-becker.html


Carden, J (2016), The US Defense Industry and the ‘Weaponization’ of American Foreign Policy, The Nation, Aug 29, 2016. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-defense-industry-and-the-weaponization-of-american-foreign-policy/


Easterly, W (2014), Stop Sending Aid to Dictators, Time Magazine, March 13, 2014. http://time.com/23075/william-easterly-stop-sending-aid-to-dictators/

Kirpatrick, J (1979), Dictatorships & Double Standards, The Classic Essay That Shaped Reagan's Foreign Policy, Commentary Magazine, Nov. 1979. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/dictatorships-double-standards/

Lootz M (2016), Using aid for autocracy promotion? A quantitative analysis'of'China’s'foreign' aid effect on regime types., Georg-August-University Göttingen. https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/10bbb3c9-9f90-40c7-8245-ba5ec95b059c.pdf


Mann, G (2013), Did My Aid Do That? Chinese Aid and Human Rights Performance, The Eagle Feather, University of North Texas, 2013 issue. https://eaglefeather.honors.unt.edu/2013/article/279#.XCu3-1VKjIU


Parks, B; Buntaine, M; Buch, B (2017), Why international aid so often falls short -- and sometimes makes things worse, The Washingon Post, September 19, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/09/19/do-aid-agencies-help-countries-develop-solid-institutional-frameworks-for-development/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4ae86535284f


Reuters (2018), China backs Pakistan as US cuts military aid following Trump's remarks, The Express Tribune, january 2, 2018. https://tribune.com.pk/story/1598851/1-china-backs-pakistan-trump-barb/


Sargent, D (2018), RIP American Exceptionalism, 1776-2018, Foreign Policy, July 23, 2018. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/23/rip-american-exceptionalism-1776-2018/


Tseng H-K; Krog, R (2017), No Strings Attached: Chinese Foreign Aid and RegimeStability in Resource-Rich Recipient Countries, Department of Political ScienceGeorge Washington University. https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2017/preliminary/paper/ZKsQeFh2