The January 2015 debate topic is perhaps one of the most important topics of the year. The month of January is highly active and filled with a vast variety of diverse, high quality tournaments. The larger number of debates on the topic combined with the extra preparation time afforded by the holiday break means that debates in January tend to be of a higher caliber than almost any other month of the year1. For that reason, I am profoundly excited to see how this topic unfolds as the month progresses.
“What’s in a Name?” An Intervention Brigade by Any Other Name Would Still Shoot Bullets
The empirical literature which is applicable to this topic is substantially broader than most debaters initially imagine (see more about this next week in “My Kingdom for a Card”). In fact – for better or worse – the Public Forum debate community has debated iterations of this topic dozens of times2. The debates on this topic involve the concepts3, theories4, and conflict examples5 that are familiar to varsity Public Forum debaters and coaches. The mechanism in the topic is also familiar to debaters: international intervention in conflicts. To be sure, the interventions are conducted by the UN – but does that matter? If so, to what extent are UN interventions comparable to the interventions of other states or international coalitions? Other offensive interventions are relevant to this topic.
Affirmative Analysis
The substantive arguments in the literature that favor the affirmative are simple and straightforward: offensive peacekeeping operations are key to stopping conflict. This argument is articulated with varying degrees of nuance as scholars explore the various mechanisms by which offensive operations diminish the frequency and intensity of conflict6. Because the affirmative’s core argument is relatively straightforward and explored thoroughly in the topic analyses in the Champion Briefs file, I am going to focus my affirmative analysis on an underexplored affirmative strategic concern: burden analysis.
In any debate, the affirmative’s burden is established by the wording of the topic. On this topic, the affirmative only has the burden to prove that UN peacekeepers should have the power7 to engage in offensive operations. The affirmative does not need to prove that offensive operations are always appropriate or even that offensive operations are occasionally appropriate. The affirmative must only prove that there a category of cases – regardless of how narrow that category is – that require offensive operations to properly address.
Phrased as such, it becomes clear that the affirmative has a light burden of proof. Affirmative cases could explicitly identify this burden, and limit their cases to proving offensive operations should be used in exceptional circumstances such as genocide or clear and egregious human rights violations. Affirmatives should note that negative examples of bad interventions do not necessarily disprove the topic, because those interventions might be contextual to examples that the affirmative does not need to defend8.
Affirmatives should structure their cases around this principle. This burden analysis hedges against nearly every negative argument on the topic. It makes alternative actors irrelevant because the general capability of alternative actors does not speak to the desirability of UN offensive action in narrow, specific circumstances. It makes historical failures irrelevant for the same reason. It makes generalized risks – such as the loss of perceived impartiality – irrelevant because they are not contextual to circumstances that change those risks, such as circumstances where partiality may be desirable9.
Affirmatives that rely heavily on burden analysis may face complaints that their interpretation of the topic is unfair because it makes affirming easy. Affirmatives may comfortably respond that the complaint is misdirected: the negative should complain to the topic committee rather than the affirmative. The affirmative’s burden analysis is legitimate because it directly flows from the phrasing of the resolution. Any unfairness is not a reason to reject the affirmative, because it is inherent in the resolution rather than the affirmative’s interpretation.
Negative Analysis
The negative has the benefit of an overwhelming literature base to weigh against the affirmative’s light burden. The academic literature is nearly universal in its condemnation of offensive interventions in complex social and political climates. This is especially true when the interventions have missions that are constructive rather than destructive10. As a result, negative debaters have a diverse array of strategies available to them. These strategies can be divided into three general categories.
First, negative debaters can attack UN offensive operations specifically. Negative debaters should identify solvency concerns for the affirmative, including chronic underfunding of peacekeeping forces, the lack of political will for mission follow through from force-contributing member states, the rampant corruption that plagues peacekeeping forces11, the propensity of offensive forces to escalate conflicts rather than de-escalating them, and the failure to account for specific cultural and political circumstances in designing and implementing missions.
Negative debaters that pursue this strategy should also suggest that offensive operations come at the cost of independent disadvantages as well. For example, negative debaters can identify the increased risk to all international humanitarian workers that is created by the UN choice to break the impartiality principle. Clever negative debaters should argue that these disadvantages outweigh the affirmative case12.
The second broad negative strategy is to endorse offensive operations, but suggest that the UN is an inept actor to conduct the operations. This strategy focuses more heavily on the UN’s effectiveness at implementing offensive operations than on the effectiveness of offensive operations generally. Negatives who pursue this strategy should identify alternative actors13 who might implement offensive operations more effectively. “Alternative Actors” contentions should be paired with reasons why those actors are effective and reasons why the UN is ineffective. The “UN bad” reasons can either be specific to offensive peacekeeping operations – such as the lack of cultural literacy training – or can be generic indicts of the UN as an actor – such as the rampant corruption in peacekeeping forces.
Third, negative debaters can attack the concept of offensive operations while offering offer diplomatic and political alternatives to intervention. For example, negative debaters could suggest sanctions, arms embargos14, democracy promotion, democracy assistance, international trade programs targeted at developing local industry, corruption assistance, humanitarian aid and more.15 Because they are essentially nonviolent, these alternatives avoid nearly every major disadvantage to violent intervention without sacrificing effectiveness. For example, the majority of the M23 Movement’s funding and military supplies originated from the Rwandan government. When the US threatened Rwanda with sanctions, Rwanda complied and M23’s gun fund quickly went dry. M23’s rapidly deteriorating military capability as an indirect result of US sanctions is arguably a bigger cause of peace in the DRC than the UN’s Force Intervention Brigade16.
Conclusion
Champion debaters must always be cognizant of the actual wording of the topic, and this topic is no exception. Both affirmative and negative debaters should tailor their contentions to prove the burdens created by the topic. In a close round, the ability to tie a case back to the topic may tip the scales in favor of one debater over another. Debaters should also play to the strengths of their respective side; affirmative debaters should focus on crafting small, strategic affirmatives that meet the topic. In contrast, negative debaters should utilize the immense literature base to craft powerful, specific, and detailed cases. The combined unbalanced literature base and unbalanced topical phrasing make the 2015 January Public Forum topic likely to produce diverse and interesting debates over the course of the month.
Footnotes and Works Cited
[1] January debates are arguably even better than TOC and NSDA debates because both the TOC and NSDA tournaments have highly limited preparation schedules. Because most state tournaments are in March, they cut into preparation for the April TOC which in turn cuts into the preparation for the NSDA. In contrast, the December topic is largely ignored – and sometimes even replaced by the January topic during December. Preparation for January is also easier because much of it occurs during a break, absent the pressures of school final exams that are present during the preparation times for the TOC and NSDA.
[2] Literally dozens – twenty six times to be precise. International security and military interventions are the single most dominant subject matters in the history of the event.
[3] Concepts include the “rally around the flag effect” (where rebels consolidate support by pointing to intervenors as threats) and the “hearts and minds principle” (which suggests that successful state-building interventions require garnering the support of locals)
[4] Theories about the genesis of conflict are highly familiar to seasoned Public Forum debaters; the community has discussed ethnic conflict, poverty, environmental aggravating factors. Public Forum debaters have even discussed a highly similar version of this topic on the January 2014 topic about the Sahel region: they argued the effectiveness of military aid versus other solutions in addressing conflict.
[5] Literally every asymmetric conflict discussed in Public Forum is pertinent to this topic.
[6] This includes the relationship between neutrality and mission success as well as the relationship between the newly available offensive strategic options and mission success.
[7] Perhaps a better common use synonym is “capacity” or “ability”. Rephrased, the topic asks if UN peacekeepers should have the ability to conduct offensive operations.
[8] For example, if the negative argues “offensive peacekeeping operations fail at statebuilding”, the affirmative can respond by agreeing, and then arguing that offensive operations are effective at ending genocide. Failure in one context does not suggest failure in another. Because the topic does not ask for a cost-benefit or “on balance” analysis, the affirmative literally only need prove a single instance that offensive operations are appropriate to win the debate.
[9] It seems immoral not to take a stance against genocide or systematic rape. In those circumstances, impartiality is unethical complicity with evil while partiality is both morally and strategically necessary. Affirmatives can conduct incisive cross-examinations on this subject: questions such as “should we object to rape?” and “should we stop genocide?” both decisively end the “partiality good/bad” debate quickly.
[10] A destructive mission is what it sounds like: destroy a target, individual, or institution. Constructive missions, in contrast, deal with physical and social institution building. These nation-building missions are immensely complicated, because it is easier to destroy institutions than to create them. The dichotomy of constructive/destructive is itself somewhat illusory because destructive missions may easily turn into constructive missions. For example, when the US invaded Iraq, it succeeded in killing Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein relatively rapidly. The assassination of the Iraqi head of state left the country in turmoil, though, which led the US to take responsibility for fixing the mess it made. The subsequent nation-building project in Iraq remains a miserable failure to this day. In that sense, a simple destructive mission may quickly become a draining constructive mission when the social results of the destructive mission create political pressure to begin constructive actions.
[11] Even the UN admits that its peacekeepers are notorious for child rape. A UNICEF report on child prostitution rings found that “[i]n 6 out of 12 country studies prepared for a research report ... the arrival of peace-keeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution”. See http://www.unicef.org/graca/women.htm for further details. UN soldiers have also gang raping local women and children, but have not been punished for their misconduct because the UN lacks jurisdiction to do so. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7420798.stm.
[12] Using the Humanitarian Workers Disadvantage, the negative can argue that increased risks to humanitarian workers will lead workers to withdraw, drastically increasing the lethality of combat for civilians who will no longer have access to humanitarian resources.
[13] NATO and the African Union are two alternative actors with an enormous literature base.
[14] UN member states sell arms to the rebels in the DRC who they are subsequently sent to disarm. The violent circle of creating problems and then violently eradicating them (at significant human cost) is plainly baffling.
[15] This article outlines effective alternatives to violent military intervention: http://www.irenees.net/bdf_fiche-analyse-707_en.html
[16] This article suggests the peacekeepers would “still be bogged down” without US action – which begs the question of how much success it is possible to disaggregate and uniquely attribute to the PKO. http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/11/15/is-un-offensive-intervention-in-congo-a-new-model-of-peacekeeping/