1AC lay China 1NC innovation DA econ DA case 1AR all 2NR all 2AR all
Greenhill
2
Opponent: Guyer SB | Judge: David Asafu-Adjaye
1AC CRISPR 1NC Nebel T patent pools CP biotech DA case 1AR all 2NR biotech DA patent pools CP case 2AR case CP DA
Greenhill
4
Opponent: Plano East AW | Judge: Andrew Gong
1AC CRISPR 1NC spec science diplomacy CP set col K case 1AR condo private actor fiat all 2NR theory case 2AR case
Greenhill
5
Opponent: Harker AS | Judge: Tarun Ratnasabapathy
1AC CRISPR 1NC Nebel T T-Medicine midterms DA case 1AR RVI all 2NR Nebel T 2AR Nebel T
Greenhill
Doubles
Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Panel
1AC CRISPR 1NC debt ceiling DA fishing DA warming CP universities CP case 1AR all 2NR debt ceiling DA case 2AR case debt ceiling DA
Greenhill RR
2
Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Panel
1AC CRISPR 1NC Nebel T innovation DA harmonization CP case 1AR condo all 2NR CP DA case 2AR case CP DA
Greenhill RR
3
Opponent: Harrison AA | Judge: Panel
1AC CRISPR 1NC Nebel T Kant NC case 1AR all 2NR Nebel T 2AR Nebel T
Harvard Westlake
2
Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Elmer Yang
1AC China 1NC mining DA US-China relations CP weather monitoring CP case 1AR all 2NR weather monitoring CP US-China relations CP 2AR case CPs
Harvard Westlake
3
Opponent: Apple Valley KW | Judge: Tarun Ratnasabapathy
1AC China 1NC T-just advantage CP gifts CP case 1AR condo bad PICs bad all 2NR theory adv CP case 2AR case CP
Harvard Westlake
5
Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Quentin Clark
1AC China 1NC T-Nebel T-policy Xi lashout DA deterrence DA heg CP security K case 1AR condo bad RVI all 2NR deterrence DA theory case 2AR case DA
Harvard Westlake
Doubles
Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Panel
1AC Ukraine 1NC T-Nebel ballistic missiles CP asteroid mining PIC Russian adventurism DA consult ICJ CP case 1AR condo bad PICs bad all 2NR mining PIC ballistic missiles CP theory case 2AR case CPs
Harvard Westlake
Octas
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Panel
1AC China 1NC asteroid mining CP Xi lashout DA econ DA case 1AR all 2NR DA CP case 2AR case CP DA
Loyola
1
Opponent: Harvard Westlake JH | Judge: Richard Li
1AC COVID 1NC cap K disband CP case 1AR condo all 2NR all 2AR all
Loyola
4
Opponent: McNeil AG | Judge: Chris Castillo
1AC genomic medicines 1NC cap K case 1AR private actor fiat all 2NR cap K 2AR cap K
Loyola
6
Opponent: Strake Jesuit KS | Judge: Tej Gedela
1AC genomic medicines v2 1NC Nebel T spec IP heg DA case 1AR all 2NR heg DA case 2AR case heg DA
Loyola
Semis
Opponent: Sidwell SW | Judge: Panel
1AC COVID 1NC biocap K case 1AR condo all 2NR K case 2AR case K
Meadows
2
Opponent: Presentation NR | Judge: Jacob Smith
1AC malaria 1NC set col K T-Medicine case 1AR private actor fiat all 2NR K case 2AR case K
Meadows
3
Opponent: Westwood DL | Judge: Connor Lindquist
1AC malaria 1NC US PIC tech transfer CP T-Medicine case 1AR condo all 2NR condo case 2AR case
Meadows
5
Opponent: Stockdale RP | Judge: KD Bond
1AC malaria 1NC spec reduction Nebel T truth testing and NIBs util K case 1AR condo all 2NR K condo case 2AR case K
Nano Nagle
1
Opponent: Honor AP | Judge: Emmiee Malyugina
1AC CRISPR 1NC ableism K case 1AR all 2NR all 2AR all
Nano Nagle
6
Opponent: Lynbrook SY | Judge: Vanessa Nguyen
1AC COVID 1NC Preciado K counterfeits DA case 1AR all 2NR K 2AR case K
Nano Nagle
4
Opponent: Harker AR | Judge: Margaret Strong
1AC CRISPR 1NC T-Medicine plans bad case 1AR all 2NR case 2AR case
Nano Nagle RR
1
Opponent: Saratoga AG | Judge: Samantha McLoughlin
1AC CRISPR 1NC Nebel T DSB CP cap K case 1AR condo private actor fiat process cps bad all 2NR T 2AR T
Palm Classic
1
Opponent: Gate TH | Judge: Ben Erdmann
1AC Mars 1NC T-Can't Spec PPWT DA innovation DA adv CP 1AR all 2NR T innovation DA 2AR case T innovation DA
Palm Classic
3
Opponent: Marlborough HL | Judge: Nick Fleming
1AC China 1NC T-Nebel info-sharing CP dialogue CP mining PIC case 1AR all 2NR mining PIC dialogue CP case 2AR case CP's
Palm Classic
5
Opponent: Catonsville AT | Judge: Serena Lu
1AC China 1NC T-Unjust adv CP case 1AR condo all 2NR condo CP 2AR cp
Palm Classic
Doubles
Opponent: Vestavia Hills DS | Judge: Panel
1AC China 1NC T-Nebel T-queer queer pess K spark case 1AR all 2NR T-queer 2AR T
Peninsula
1
Opponent: Valley AM | Judge: Sam Larson
1AC China 1NC lib NC case 1AR all 2NR all 2AR al
Peninsula
5
Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Anish Ramireddy
1AC China 1NC T-Nebel cooperation CP ASATs PIC asteroid mining PIC Xi lashout DA case 1AR condo RVI all 2NR theory ASATs PIC mining PIC 2AR case CPs
Peninsula
Doubles
Opponent: Memorial BD | Judge: Panel
1AC China 1NC T-Policy T-Nebel relations CP IR K determinism NC case 1AR condo all 2NR CP case
Peninsula
4
Opponent: Monta Vista KR | Judge: Eric He
1AC China 1NC T-Nebel Xi lashout DA resource wars DA case 1AR condo all 2NR condo resource wars DA case 2AR case DA
Presentation
4
Opponent: Yerba Buena KN | Judge: Scott Brown
1AC COVID 1NC cap K case 1AR private actor fiat all 2NR case K 2AR K
St Marks
2
Opponent: Westlake AK | Judge: Elijah Smith
1AC COVID 1NC Beller K case 1AR all 2NR all 2AR all
St Marks
4
Opponent: Marlborough WR | Judge: Nick Fleming
1AC CRISPR 1NC harmonization CP innovation DA Nebel T case 1AR condo bad all 2NR CP DA case 2AR case CP DA
St Marks
6
Opponent: Harvard Westlake IC | Judge: Mohul Aggarwal
1AC CRISPR 1NC T-Medicine innovation DA case 1AR all 2NR T 2AR T
St Marks
Doubles
Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Panel
1AC Malaria 1NC new affs bad T-Can't Spec China PIC Kant NC case 1AR condo bad all 2NR new affs bad 2AR new affs bad
St Marks
Octas
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Panel
1AC malaria 1NC US PIC consult WHO CP tech transfer CP case 1AR condo bad consult bad all 2NR case 2AR case
UT
1
Opponent: Southlake Carroll PK | Judge: Ben Erdmann
1AC Brazil 1NC T-Can't Spec elections DA truckers PIC case 1AR condo bad pics bad all 2NR case 2AR condo
UT
4
Opponent: LC Anderson AS | Judge: Joseph Wofford
1AC Brazil 1NC T-Can't Spec brain drain DA case 1AR all 2NR all 2AR all
UT
5
Opponent: Strake Jesuit JW | Judge: Nevin Gera
1AC Brazil 1NC T-Can't Spec elections DA truck drivers PIC warming CP case 1AR condo bad PICs bad all 2NR T 2AR T
UT
Doubles
Opponent: Dulles TY | Judge: Panel
1AC Brazil 1NC mask theory CSA disclosure truth testing Kant case 1AR all 2NR mask theory 2AR mask theory
To modify or delete round reports, edit the associated round.
Cites don't work for a ton of positions – check open source!
9/16/21
JANFEB - AC - China
Tournament: CPS | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough OO | Judge: Alex Mork AC 1AC – Plan Plan: The appropriation of outer space by private entities in the People’s Republic of China is unjust. Chinese space industrial base is set to surpass the US Patel 21 (Neel, space reporter for MIT Technology Review, and I also write The Airlock newsletter, your number one source for everything happening off this planet. Before joining, he worked as a freelance science and technology journalist, contributing stories to Popular Science, The Daily Beast, Slate, Wired, the Verge, and elsewhere. Prior to that, he was an associate editor for Inverse, where I grew and led the website’s space coverage.) “China’s surging private space industry is out to challenge the US” MIT Technology Review, 1/21/2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ BC How did China get here—and why? Until recently, China’s space activity has been overwhelmingly dominated by two state-owned enterprises: the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited (CASIC) and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). A few private space firms have been allowed to operate in the country for a while: for example, there’s the China Great Wall Industry Corporation Limited (in reality a subsidiary of CASC), which has provided commercial launches since it was established in 1980. But for the most part, China’s commercial space industry has been nonexistent. Satellites were expensive to build and launch, and they were too heavy and large for anything but the biggest rockets to actually deliver to orbit. The costs involved were too much for anything but national budgets to handle. That all changed this past decade as the costs of making satellites and launching rockets plunged. In 2014, a year after Xi Jinping took over as the new leader of China, the Chinese government decided to treat civil space development as a key area of innovation, as it had already begun doing with AI and solar power. It issued a policy directive called Document 60 that year to enable large private investment in companies interested in participating in the space industry. “Xi’s goal was that if China has to become a critical player in technology, including in civil space and aerospace, it was critical to develop a space ecosystem that includes the private sector,” says Namrata Goswami, a geopolitics expert based in Montgomery, Alabama, who’s been studying China’s space program for many years. “He was taking a cue from the American private sector to encourage innovation from a talent pool that extended beyond state-funded organizations.” As a result, there are now 78 commercial space companies operating in China, according to a 2019 report by the Institute for Defense Analyses. More than half have been founded since 2014, and the vast majority focus on satellite manufacturing and launch services. For example, Galactic Energy, founded in February 2018, is building its Ceres rocket to offer rapid launch service for single payloads, while its Pallas rocket is being built to deploy entire constellations. Rival company i-Space, formed in 2016, became the first commercial Chinese company to make it to space with its Hyperbola-1 in July 2019. It wants to pursue reusable first-stage boosters that can land vertically, like those from SpaceX. So does LinkSpace (founded in 2014), although it also hopes to use rockets to deliver packages from one terrestrial location to another. Spacety, founded in 2016, wants to turn around customer orders to build and launch its small satellites in just six months. In December it launched a miniaturized version of a satellite that uses 2D radar images to build 3D reconstructions of terrestrial landscapes. Weeks later, it released the first images taken by the satellite, Hisea-1, featuring three-meter resolution. Spacety wants to launch a constellation of these satellites to offer high-quality imaging at low cost. To a large extent, China is following the same blueprint drawn up by the US: using government contracts and subsidies to give these companies a foot up. US firms like SpaceX benefited greatly from NASA contracts that paid out millions to build and test rockets and space vehicles for delivering cargo to the International Space Station. With that experience under its belt, SpaceX was able to attract more customers with greater confidence. Venture capital is another tried-and-true route. The IDA report estimates that VC funding for Chinese space companies was up to $516 million in 2018—far shy of the $2.2 billion American companies raised, but nothing to scoff at for an industry that really only began seven years ago. At least 42 companies had no known government funding. And much of the government support these companies do receive doesn’t have a federal origin, but a provincial one. “These companies are drawing high-tech development to these local communities,” says Hines. “And in return, they’re given more autonomy by the local government.” While most have headquarters in Beijing, many keep facilities in Shenzhen, Chongqing, and other areas that might draw talent from local universities. There’s also one advantage specific to China: manufacturing. “What is the best country to trust for manufacturing needs?” asks James Zheng, the CEO of Spacety’s Luxembourg headquarters. “It’s China. It’s the manufacturing center of the world.” Zheng believes the country is in a better position than any other to take advantage of the space industry’s new need for mass production of satellites and rockets alike. A strong space industrial base makes government sponsored operations in space economically feasible Patel 21 (Neel, space reporter for MIT Technology Review, and I also write The Airlock newsletter, your number one source for everything happening off this planet. Before joining, he worked as a freelance science and technology journalist, contributing stories to Popular Science, The Daily Beast, Slate, Wired, the Verge, and elsewhere. Prior to that, he was an associate editor for Inverse, where I grew and led the website’s space coverage.) “China’s surging private space industry is out to challenge the US” MIT Technology Review, 1/21/2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ BC China’s space program might have been slowed by the pandemic in 2020, but it certainly didn’t stop. The year’s highlights included sending a rover to Mars, bringing moon rocks back to Earth, and testing out the next-generation crewed vehicle that should take taikonauts into orbit—and possibly to the moon—one day. But there were a few achievements the rest of the world might not have noticed. One was the November 7 launch of Ceres-1, a new type of rocket that, at just 62 feet in height, is capable of taking 770 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit. The launch sent the Tianqi 11 communications satellite into space. At first glance, the Ceres-1 launch might seem unremarkable. Ceres-1, however, wasn’t built and launched by China’s national program. It was a commercial rocket—only the second from a Chinese company ever to go into space. And the launch happened less than three years after the company was founded. The achievement is a milestone for China’s fledgling—but rapidly growing—private space industry, an increasingly critical part of the country’s quest to dethrone the US as the world’s preeminent space power. The rivalry between the US and China, whose space program has surged over the last two decades, is what most people mean when they refer to the 21st-century's space race. China is set to build a new space station later this year and will likely attempt to send its taikonauts to the moon before the decade ends. But these big-picture projects represent just one aspect of the country’s space ambitions. Increasingly, the focus is now on the commercial space industry as well. The nation's growing private space business is less focused on bringing prestige and glory to the nation and more concerned with reducing the cost of spaceflight, increasing its international influence—and making money. “The state is really great at large, ambitious projects like going to the moon or developing a large reconnaissance satellite,” says Lincoln Hines, a Cornell University researcher who focuses on Chinese foreign policy. “But it’s not responsive to meeting market needs”—one big way to encourage rapid technological growth and innovation. “I think the government thinks its commercial space sector can be complementary to the state,” he says. What are the market needs that Hines is referring to? Satellites, and rockets that can launch them into orbit. The space industry is undergoing a renaissance thanks to two big trends spurred by the commercial industry: we can make satellites for less money by making them smaller and using off-the-shelf hardware; and we can also make rockets for less money, by using less costly materials or reusing boosters after they’ve already flown (which SpaceX pioneered with its Falcon 9). These trends mean it is now cheaper to send stuff into space, and the services and data that satellites can offer have come down in price accordingly. China has seen an opportunity. A 2017 report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that the space industry could be worth up to $2.7 trillion by 2030. Setting foot on the moon and establishing a lunar colony might be a statement of national power, but securing a share of such a highly lucrative business is perhaps even more important to the country’s future. “In the future, there will be tens of thousands of satellites waiting to launch, which is a major opportunity for Galactic Energy” says Wu Yue, a company spokesperson. The problem is, China has to make up decades’ worth of ground lost to the West. The PRC uses the private sector to develop “wish-list” military assets and pursue counterbalancing with Russia Curcio 8/24 (Blaine, an Affiliate Senior Consultant for Euroconsult, based in Hong Kong. Since joining Euroconsult in 2018, he has contributed to a wide range of consulting missions and research reports, primarily covering the satcom sector globally, and broader space industry in China.) “Developments in China's Commercial Space Sector” The National Bureau of Asian Research, 8/24/2021. https://www.nbr.org/publication/developments-in-chinas-commercial-space-sector/ BC There has been discussion that China and Russia might partner to develop a lunar space station. How is this affecting China-Russia space cooperation as well as China’s commercial space sector? The Russian and U.S. space industries are the two oldest. They have a lot of space programs, experts, and related intellectual property and have been integrated into the space ecosystem. The Chinese space sector has developed primarily independently from the U.S.-Russia system. There has been some collaboration between China and Europe since the Wolf Amendment, but the absence of any kind of commercial space companies until recently, combined with the sensitivity around the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (a U.S. export-control regime), has forced the Chinese space ecosystem to develop pretty much independently. Russia, though a nation in decline, still likes projects involving space to bolster national pride. As a result, there has been a broader trend over the last five to ten years of a gradual realignment of the Russian space sector toward China in terms of both the government and the industrial base. More Russian companies are looking to China to buy products. Historically these companies have bought material from Europe, but they have recently turned more to China because of how weak the Russian ruble is, making imports more expensive. At the same time, Chinese companies are looking to Russia as an export market as well as to Russia and former Soviet states as investment opportunities. There is synergy, for example, between a Chinese rocket company that sees a relatively cheap Ukrainian rocket company with specific technology that it wants and a Ukrainian company that has all the technology, intellectual property, and “know-how,” but does not have that much money. The international lunar research station is beneficial to the commercial space sector to the extent that the national team would be occupied with the space station. As the national team gets bigger and takes on more sophisticated projects, this may help free up the kind of lower-end work companies were doing before and create more room for commercial competition. Moving forward, if there are massive lunar projects and a large Chinese space station, these developments are all things that will occupy a lot of top engineers and SOEs. There will be a need for a bigger commercial sector to contribute to emerging projects and complete the technological development of the more commercial, as opposed to institutional or national-level, projects in the space sector. What is the relationship between China’s space industry development and its Military-Civil Fusion strategy, and how is this affecting the commercial space sector? There are two main types of impact: the technological impact and the broader policy impact. As part of the Military-Civil Fusion strategy, the Chinese government wants to develop specific capabilities and emphasize specific technologies, which produce the technological impact. From that perspective, this strategy dictates what the commercial space sector does in terms of RandD, and the technological direction it takes. Zhuhai satellite is an example of this strategy. Since Zhuhai satellite was a spinoff from the Harbin Institute of Technology, which has a military link, there is a possibility that it is pursuing more space technologies that are related to Military-Civil Fusion. The second type is the broader policy impact. Because the central government makes Military-Civil Fusion a significant policy objective, there will be industrial bases that are built to support related technologies. More money and resources will be available for a startup that will support China’s strategic and tech ambitions. Because of the money and resources that are available, the development of the space industry will change as companies adapt their activities to what the government is emphasizing and to what kind of support they can get from different stakeholders in order to survive. China does not currently have a huge commercial space sector. The only real way that these companies can grow is either by selling products to the existing space sector—which is not particularly easy at this stage—or by raising money from existing shareholders and trying to guess where the market is moving. Scenario one is space militarization: Sino-Russian space alliance undermines existing treaties and greenlights space militarization Bowman and Thompson 3/31 (Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) (Jared Thompson, a U.S. Air Force major and visiting military analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.) “Russia and China Seek to Tie America’s Hands in Space” Foreign Policy 3/31/2021. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/31/russia-china-space-war-treaty-demilitarization-satellites/ BC Consider the actions of the United States’ two great-power adversaries when it comes to anti-satellite weapons. China and Russia have sprinted to develop and deploy both ground-based and space-based weapons targeting satellites while simultaneously pushing the United States to sign a treaty banning such weapons. To protect its vital space-based military capabilities—including communications, intelligence, and missile defense satellites—and effectively deter authoritarian aggression, Washington should avoid being drawn into suspect international treaties on space that China and Russia have no intention of honoring. The Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects (PPWT), which Beijing and Moscow have submitted at the United Nations, is a perfect example. PPWT signatories commit “not to place any weapons in outer space.” It also says parties to the treaty may not “resort to the threat or use of force against outer space objects” or engage in activities “inconsistent” with the purpose of the treaty. On the surface, that sounds innocuous. Who, after all, wants an arms race in space? The reality, however, is that China and Russia are already racing to field anti-satellite weapons and have been for quite some time. “The space domain is competitive, congested, and contested,” Gen. James Dickinson, the head of U.S. Space Command, said in January. “Our competitors, most notably China and Russia, have militarized this domain.” Beijing already has an operational ground-based anti-satellite missile capability. People’s Liberation Army units are training with the missiles, and the U.S. Defense Department believes Beijing “probably intends to pursue additional anti-satellite weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous Earth orbit.” That is where America’s most sensitive nuclear communication and missile defense satellites orbit and keep watch. Similarly, Moscow tested a ground-based anti-satellite weapon in December that could destroy U.S. or allied satellites in orbit. That attack capability augments a ground-based laser weapon that Russian President Vladimir Putin heralded in 2018. In a moment of candor, Russia’s defense ministry admitted the system was designed to “fight satellites.” To make matters worse, both countries are also working to deploy space-based—or so-called “on-orbit”—capabilities to attack satellites. Meanwhile, at the United Nations and other international forums, China and Russia are pushing the PPWT and advocating for a “no first placement” resolution—saying all governments should commit not to be the first to put weapons in space. Yet more than two years ago, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency noted that both China and Russia were already putting in space capabilities that could be used as weapons. The PPWT would thus protect their weapons while tying Washington’s hands. In a thinly veiled attempt to mask their intentions, the two countries claim that their on-orbit capabilities are simply for peaceful purposes—for assessing the condition of broken satellites and conducting repairs as needed. This “dual-use” disguise permits Beijing and Moscow to put into orbit ostensibly peaceful or commercial capabilities that those countries can actually use to disable or destroy U.S. military and intelligence satellites. China, for example, has tested several so-called scavenger satellites, which use grappling arms to capture other satellites. China has also demonstrated the capability to maneuver a satellite around the geosynchronous belt, allowing its satellites to sidle up to other satellites in space. Not to be outdone, Russia deployed a pair of “nesting doll” satellites that shadowed a U.S. satellite in space. One Russian satellite birthed another, with Russia’s defense ministry claiming its purpose was to assess the “technical condition of domestic satellites.” But later, the second satellite conducted a weapons test, firing what appeared to be a space torpedo. The Kremlin never explained how a fast-moving one-time projectile provided superior inspection benefits compared with the other Russian satellite flying persistently nearby. Instead of falling prey to China and Russia’s treaty trap, Washington must urgently work with allies to improve spaced-based military and intelligence capabilities. A well-crafted treaty that clearly defines acceptable and unacceptable actions in space and includes tough and realistic inspection and verification mechanisms could promote security and stability. But the PPWT is decidedly not that kind of treaty. For starters, the proposed treaty does not explicitly prohibit the ground-based anti-satellite weapons that China and Russia have already fielded. Nor does the proposed treaty prevent the deployment of space-based weapons under the cloak of civilian or commercial capabilities. The PPWT also does not prohibit the development, testing, or stockpiling of weapons on Earth that could be quickly put into orbit. Even if these deficiencies were addressed, the PPWT lacks any verification plan to ensure compliance. Instead, the treaty calls for “transparency and confidence-building measures” implemented on a “voluntary basis.” In other words, Beijing and Moscow want the United States to trust but never verify. But then again, Americans should not be surprised by the PPWT. Moscow habitually seeks to use international arms control treaties to constrain the United States while viewing treaty strictures as optional when they become inconvenient or when the Kremlin sees an opportunity to seize a military advantage. For more than a decade before its demise in 2019, Moscow used the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to constrain the United States while the Kremlin produced, flight-tested, and fielded a ground-launched intermediate-range cruise missile in direct contravention of the treaty. Beijing, for its part, often exhibits an allergy to serious international arms control treaties. The willingness of the Chinese Communist Party to support the PPWT is, therefore, cause for some additional reflection in Washington. So instead of falling prey to China and Russia’s PPWT trap, the United States must urgently work with allies to improve the resilience and redundancy of spaced-based military and intelligence capabilities. Washington should also advance nascent efforts to establish rules of the road in space. “There are really no norms of behavior in space,” Gen. John Raymond, the chief of space operations at U.S. Space Force, said this month. “It’s the wild, wild West.” In a notable and positive step, the U.N. General Assembly passed a British-introduced resolution in December that seeks to establish “norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviours” in space, which could reduce the chances for dangerous miscalculation. The vote was 164 in favor, including the United States—and a mere 12 opposed. Any guesses regarding who voted no? You guessed it: China and Russia. They were joined by their friends Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. So much for a Chinese and Russian desire to pursue constructive and peaceful policies in space. Their duplicity continues. Extinction – destruction of satellites, diminished future use of near space, and terrestrial war Gilliard 19 (Alexandra, a Senior Editor and interviewer of international relations experts for the International Affairs Forum. She holds an M.S. in Global Studies and International Relations from Northeastern University, and a B.A. in International Relations from Boston University, with expertise in conflict resolution, arms control, human rights issues, and the MENA region.) “What Are The Consequences Of Militarizing Outer Space?” Global Security Review, 6/10/2019. https://globalsecurityreview.com/consequences-militarization-space/ BC Consequences of Armament and Aggression in Space The consequences of weapons testing and aggression in space could span generations, and current technological advances only increase the urgency for policymakers to pursue a limitations treaty. As it stands, there are three major ramifications of a potential arms race in space: The destruction of satellites As both financial and technological barriers to the space services industry have decreased, the number of governmental and private investors with assets in space has inevitably increased. There is now an abundance of satellites in space owned by multiple states and corporations. These satellites are used to not only coordinate military actions, but to perform more mundane tasks, like obtaining weather reports, or managing on-ground communications, and navigation. Should states begin weapons testing in space, debris could cloud the orbit and make positioning new satellites impossible, disrupting our current way of life. More pressing, however, is that if a country’s satellites are successfully destroyed by an enemy state, military capabilities can be severely hindered or destroyed, leaving the country vulnerable to attack and unable to coordinate its military forces on the ground. Diminished future use of near space Whether caused by weapons testing or actual aggression, the subsequent proliferation of debris around the planet would damage our future ability to access space. Not only would debris act as shrapnel to preexisting assets in space, but it would also become much more difficult to launch satellites or rockets, hindering scientific research, space exploration, and commercial operations. From the past fifty-odd years of activity in space alone, the debris left behind in Earth’s orbital field has already become hazardous to spacecraft — a main reason why the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not continue with ASAT testing during the Cold War. If greater pollution were to occur, space itself could be become unusable, resulting in the collapse of the global economic system, air travel, and various communications. Power imbalances and proliferation on the ground Only so many states currently have access to space—which means any militarization be by the few, while other states would be left to fend for themselves. This would establish a clear power imbalance that could breed distrust among nations, resulting in a more insecure world and a veritable power keg primed for war. Additionally, deterrence measures taken by states with access to space would escalate, attempting to build up weapons caches not dissimilar to the nuclear weapons stockpiling activities of the Cold War. In any arms race, it is inevitable that more advanced weaponry is created. Yet, this does not only pose a risk to assets in space. Should a terrestrial war break out, this weaponry may eventually be deployed on the ground, and space-faring states would be able to capitalize on the power imbalance by using these new developments against states that have not yet broken into the space industry or developed equally-advanced weaponry. Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr 15 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons, nuclear firestorms would burn simultaneously over a total land surface area of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires, many of which would rage over large cities and industrial areas, would release many tens of millions of tons of black carbon soot and smoke (up to 180 million tons, according to peer-reviewed studies), which would rise rapidly above cloud level and into the stratosphere. For an explanation of the calculation of smoke emissions, see Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts. The scientists who completed the most recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter discovered that the sunlight would heat the smoke, producing a self-lofting effect that would not only aid the rise of the smoke into the stratosphere (above cloud level, where it could not be rained out), but act to keep the smoke in the stratosphere for 10 years or more. The longevity of the smoke layer would act to greatly increase the severity of its effects upon the biosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke (predicted to be produced by a range of strategic nuclear wars) would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere. Such an enormous loss of warming sunlight would produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth in a matter of weeks. For a period of 1-3 years following the war, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in the central agricultural zones of North America and Eurasia. For an explanation of nuclear winter, see Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. Nuclear winter would cause average global surface temperatures to become colder than they were at the height of the last Ice Age. Such extreme cold would eliminate growing seasons for many years, probably for a decade or longer. Can you imagine a winter that lasts for ten years? The results of such a scenario are obvious. Temperatures would be much too cold to grow food, and they would remain this way long enough to cause most humans and animals to starve to death. Global nuclear famine would ensue in a setting in which the infrastructure of the combatant nations has been totally destroyed, resulting in massive amounts of chemical and radioactive toxins being released into the biosphere. We don’t need a sophisticated study to tell us that no food and Ice Age temperatures for a decade would kill most people and animals on the planet. Would the few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment? Scenario two is hegemony: Chinese space leadership encourages ASAT proliferation – only the plan solves – China will not honor international commitments Rajagopalan 5/12 (Dr Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Dr Rajagopalan was the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) (July 2018-July 2019). She was also a Non-Resident Indo-Pacific Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre from April-December 2020. As a senior Asia defence writer for The Diplomat, she writes a weekly column on Asian strategic issues. Dr Rajagopalan joined ORF after a five-year stint at the National Security Council Secretariat (2003-2007), Government of India, where she was an Assistant Director. Prior to joining the NSCS, she was Research Officer at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Politics, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan in 2012. Dr Rajagopalan has authored or edited nine books including Global Nuclear Security: Moving Beyond the NSS (2018), Space Policy 2.0 (2017), Nuclear Security in India (2015), Clashing Titans: Military Strategy and Insecurity among Asian Great Powers (2012), The Dragon's Fire: Chinese Military Strategy and Its Implications for Asia (2009). She has published research essays in edited volumes, and in peer reviewed journals such as India Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Air and Space Power Journal, International Journal of Nuclear Law and Strategic Analysis. She has also contributed essays to newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Times of India, and The Economic Times. She has been invited to speak at international fora including the United Nations Disarmament Forum (New York), the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) (Vienna), Conference on Disarmament (Geneva), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the European Union.) “China’s irresponsible behaviour: A threat to space security” Observer Research Foundation, 5/12/2021. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/chinas-irresponsible-behaviour-a-threat-to-space-security/ BC With China planning an ambitious space programme that includes its own space station, it is likely that there will be more such risky incidents in the future as well. It is somewhat disturbing because China’s space programme has advanced to a degree that it undertakes missions including landing on the South Pole-Aitken Basin (on the far side of the Moon), returning rocks from the moon, and an interplanetary mission to Mars, which clearly demonstrates China has the technical capability to design and launch rockets whose spent stages can land without putting others at risk. That it has not done so is odd. It is not exactly what can be characterised as responsible behaviour in space. Another example of China breaking norms and engaging in irresponsible behaviour in space is its ASAT test. China’s first successful anti-satellite (ASAT) test in January 2007, at an altitude of 850 kilometres, resulted in creating around 3,000 pieces of space debris. More significantly, it broke the unwritten moratorium that was in place for two decades. Beijing also started developing various counterspace capabilities with the goal of competing with the US. Nevertheless, each of China’s actions have led to a spiral effect, with others seeking to match China’s actions, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, given the contested nature of Asian and global geopolitics. For example, China’s repeated ASAT tests have led to the US’ own ASAT test (Operation Burnt Frost in 2008), and India’s ASAT test (Mission Shakti in 2019). India had no plans to go down this path until China’s first ASAT test, which became a gamechanging moment for India. Even so, India did not react to it for more than a decade, but the final decision was a carefully calibrated and a direct response to China’s growing military space capabilities and its less-than responsible behaviour. Other countries like Japan and France are also contemplating moves in this direction. Australia may not be far behind either. Even though it may not be linked to the uncontrolled re-entry of the Chinese rocket, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University noted that “about six minutes after Tianhe and the CZ-5B separated, they both came close to the ISS—under 300 km, which given uncertainties in trajectory is a tad alarming.” Making this point, he added “it’s *possible* that this ISS/Tianhe close encounter was one of those unlikely coincidences. I’m open to that possibility, but they should still have spotted the closeness and warned NASA (or better, called a collision avoidance hold in the count).” Rocket re-entries are not uncommon, but space powers have tried to avoid the freefalls by usually conducting controlled re-entries so that they may fall in the ocean, or they may be directed towards the so-called “graveyard” orbits that may lie there for decades. But Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University argues that the Chinese rocket was designed in a manner that “leaves these big stages in low orbit.” And even in the case of controlled re-entries, there are failures sometimes and they can be dangerous too. SpaceX’s rocket debris landing on a farm in Washington in March this year is a case in point. Moriba Jah, an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin argues in a media interview that such events are going to become more common, and will happen more frequently and, therefore, humanity should come together to “jointly manage near earth space as a commons in need of coordination, protocols, and practices to maximise safety, security, and sustainability.” On the NASA Administrator’s statement, Jah said this should not be “singling out China.” Certainly, this is not about apportioning blame, but China’s actions cannot be condoned either. What can be done? Given that usable orbits in space are finite in nature, there will need to be steps taken by all the space players to ensure that their actions do not contribute to further pollution of space and make it unusable in the near term. States have to invest in technologies that would aid in cleaning up and getting rid of some of the debris. States also need to come together in developing norms, rules of the road, and legally binding and political instruments on large rocket body re-entries. The Long March 5B episode has yet again rekindled the debate on the need for rules for rocket and large body re-entries. Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation, for instance, questioned why, despite all ranting about China’s rocket re-entry issues, the US State Department has “consistently opposed anything stronger than voluntary guidelines.” Weeden has provided a useful Twitter thread on the US hesitancy to get on board with legal agreements on outer space. One problem is that while the US abides by international obligations, other do not. This is a concern that Weeden notes “has a grain of truth” but adds the caveat that “reality is not that definitive”. While he is correct to note that the issue is complicated, it is also true that countries like China have a terrible track record when it comes to meeting their treaty commitments. China’s violation of its own commitments with respect to nuclear non-proliferation, or in the South China Sea and East China Sea are well-known. Given this history, it is difficult to believe that China will allow itself to be bound by any restraints on its space programme, even if it signs any of these agreements. But given the US’ almost allergic reaction to signing legal agreements that others like China may violate, it doesn’t hurt China to keep bringing up PPWT-like (Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects) measures every now and then. This puts the whole international community in a bind. If we have to ensure safe and uninterrupted access to space, creating a secure, sustainable, and predictable outer space framework is essential. But unless all states demonstrate a commitment to living up to existing rules and norms, creating new ones will be difficult. Chinese ASAT development emboldens Taiwan invasion – either US doesn’t follow through on its defense commitments, which kills alliances, or it defends Taiwan, which goes nuclear Chow and Kelley 8/21 (Brian G., policy analyst for the Institute of World Politics, Ph.D in physics from Case Western Reserve University, MBA and Ph.D in finance from the University of Michigan, and Brandon, graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service ) “China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Could Conquer Taiwan—Or Start a War,” National Review, 8/21/2021 JL If current trends hold, then China’s Strategic Support Force will be capable by the late 2020s of holding key U.S. space assets at risk. Chinese military doctrine, statements by senior officials, and past behavior all suggest that China may well believe threatening such assets to be an effective means of deterring U.S. intervention. If so, then the United States would face a type of “Sophie’s Choice”: decline to intervene, potentially leading allies to follow suit and Taiwan to succumb without a fight, thereby enabling Xi to achieve his goal of “peacefully” snuffing out Taiwanese independence; or start a war that would at best be long and bloody and might well even cross the nuclear threshold. This emerging crisis has been three decades in the making. In 1991, China watched from afar as the United States used space-enabled capabilities to obliterate the Iraqi military from a distance in the first Gulf War. The People’s Liberation Army quickly set to work developing capabilities targeted at a perceived Achilles’ heel of this new American way of war: reliance on vulnerable space systems. This project came to fruition with a direct ascent ASAT weapons test in 2007, but the test was limited in two key respects. First, it only reached low Earth orbit. Second, it generated thousands of pieces of long-lasting space junk, provoking immense international ire. This backlash appears to have taken China by surprise, driving it to seek new, more usable ASAT types with minimal debris production. Now, one such ASAT is nearing operational status: spacecraft capable of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs). Such spacecraft are inevitable and cannot realistically be limited. The United States, European Union, China, and others are developing them to provide a range of satellite services essential to the new space economy, such as in situ repairs and refueling of satellites and active removal of space debris. But RPO capabilities are dual-use: if a satellite can grapple space objects for servicing, then it might well be capable of grappling an adversary’s satellite to move it out of its servicing orbit. Perhaps it could degrade or disable it by bending or disconnecting its solar panels and antennas all while producing minimal debris. This is a serious threat, primarily because no international rules presently exist to limit close approaches in space. Left unaddressed, this lacuna in international law and space policy could enable a prospective attacker to pre-position, during peacetime, as many spacecraft as they wish as close as they wish to as many high-value targets as they wish. The result would be an ever-present possibility of sudden, bolt-from-the-blue attacks on vital space assets—and worse, on many of them at once. China has conducted at least half a dozen tests of RPO capabilities in space since 2008, two of which went on for years. Influential space experts have noted that these tests have plausible peaceful purposes and are in many cases similar to those conducted by the United States. This, however, does not make it any less important to establish effective legal, policy, and technical counters to their offensive use. Even if it were certain that these capabilities are intended purely for peaceful applications—and it is not at all clear that that is the case—China (or any other country) could at any time decide to repurpose these capabilities for ASAT use. There is still time to get out ahead of this threat, but likely not for much longer. China’s RPO capabilities have, thus far, lagged about five years behind those of the United States. There are reasons to believe this gap may close, but even assuming that it holds, we should expect to see China demonstrate an operational dual-use rendezvous spacecraft by around 2025. (The first instance of a U.S. commercial satellite docking with another satellite to change its orbit occurred in February 2020.) At the same time, China is expanding its capacity for rapid spacecraft manufacturing. The Global Times reported in January that China’s first intelligent mass production line is set to produce 240 small satellites per year. In April, Andrew Jones at SpaceNews reported that China is developing plans to quickly produce and loft a thirteen thousand-satellite national internet megaconstellation. It is not unreasonable to assume that China could manufacture two hundred small rendezvous ASAT spacecraft by 2029, possibly more. If this happens, and Beijing was to decide in 2029 to launch these two hundred small RPO spacecraft and position them in close proximity to strategically vital assets, then China would be able to simultaneously threaten disablement of the entire constellations of U.S. satellites for missile early warning (about a dozen satellites with spares included); communications in a nuclear-disrupted environment (about a dozen); and positioning, navigation, and timing (about three dozen); along with several dozen key communications, imagery, and meteorology satellites. Losing these assets would severely degrade U.S. deterrence and warfighting capabilities, yet once close pre-positioning has occurred such losses become almost impossible to prevent. For this reason, such pre-positioning could conceivably deter the United States from coming to Taiwan’s aid due to the prospect that intervention would spur China to disable these critical space systems. Without their support, the war would be much bloodier and costlier—a daunting proposition for any president. Should the United States fail to intervene, the consequences would be disastrous for both Washington and its allies in East Asia, and potentially the credibility of U.S. defense commitments around the globe. Worse yet, however, might be what could happen if China believes that such a threat will succeed but proves to be wrong. History is rife with examples of major wars arising from miscalculations such as this, and there are many pathways by which such a situation could easily escalate out of control to a full-scale conventional conflict or even to nuclear use. Space dominance is key to US hegemony Weichert 17 (Brandon J., a former Congressional staff member who holds a Master of Arts in Statecraft and National Security Affairs from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. He is the founder of The Weichert Report: An Online Journal of Geopolitics, and is currently completing a book on national security space policy.) “The High Ground: The Case for U.S. Space Dominance,” Science Direct, 2017. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438717300108 RR The global order is currently disordered. New states with completely different values from the United States are rising to prominence. Many of those states possess strategic cultures opposed to the American hegemony that has defined the post-Cold War order. Yet, the United States still maintains greater power, wealth, and capabilities than the other states seeking to displace her. For the United States to maintain its hegemonic position, it must also maintain a dominant position in space. As has been noted before, space is the ultimate high ground from which a state can dominate all of the other strategic domains (land, air, sea, and cyberspace). The United States has enjoyed the benefits from dominating this region. Yet, states like China and Russia are moving forward with their own plans not only to deny America access to space, but also to dominate this realm. These states would then benefit from commanding the high ground of space at America’s expense. Since at least the Nixon Administration, space has come to be viewed in a militarized light. By the end of the Cold War, space had not only been militarized, but many were searching for a way to weaponize it. Just as the drift toward militarization of space was inexorable, so too is the desire for weaponization. As rival states begin to hone their space skills, the United States should seek to obtain the first move advantage by capitalizing on its already sizable lead in space by weaponizing it first. The placing of weapons in orbit would not only increase the costs of attacking existing U.S. space architecture, but it would also lend itself to increasing global stability by raising the costs of aggressive behavior on belligerents. Whatever negatives the weaponization of space may have, nothing is more negative for America than to find itself losing its dominance of space to a state that has placed weapons in orbit first. To be passive and allow temporary budgetary constraints to dictate longterm space strategy will damage irrevocably the U.S. position in orbit. Our enemies are aware of our shortsighted preference for space superiority over dominance and are moving toward degrading the American advantage in space.23 Space dominance will not only rebuff rising states from challenging the United States, but it will also lend stability to the world order. This proactive stance was the goal of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. It must be the goal of U.S. policymakers today.24 US leadership in this decade solves global war and results in a peaceful end to Chinese revisionism Erickson and Collins 10/21 (Andrew, A professor of strategy in the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute)(Gabriel, Baker Botts fellow in energy and environmental regulatory affairs at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy) “A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power Is Here,” Foreign Policy, 10/18/2021 U.S. and allied policymakers are facing the most important foreign-policy challenge of the 21st century. China’s power is peaking; so is the political position of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) domestic strength. In the long term, China’s likely decline after this peak is a good thing. But right now, it creates a decade of danger from a system that increasingly realizes it only has a short time to fulfill some of its most critical, long-held goals. Within the next five years, China’s leaders are likely to conclude that its deteriorating demographic profile, structural economic problems, and technological estrangement from global innovation centers are eroding its leverage to annex Taiwan and achieve other major strategic objectives. As Xi internalizes these challenges, his foreign policy is likely to become even more accepting of risk, feeding on his nearly decadelong track record of successful revisionist action against the rules-based order. Notable examples include China occupying and militarizing sub-tidal features in the South China Sea, ramping up air and maritime incursions against Japan and Taiwan, pushing border challenges against India, occupying Bhutanese and Tibetan lands, perpetrating crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, and coercively enveloping Hong Kong. The relatively low-hanging fruit is plucked, but Beijing is emboldened to grasp the biggest single revisionist prize: Taiwan. Beijing’s actions over the last decade have triggered backlash, such as with the so-called AUKUS deal, but concrete constraints on China’s strategic freedom of action may not fully manifest until after 2030. It’s remarkable and dangerous that China has paid few costs for its actions over the last 10 years, even as its military capacities have rapidly grown. Beijing will likely conclude that under current diplomatic, economic, and force postures for both “gray zone” and high-end scenarios, the 2021 to late 2020s timeframe still favors China—and is attractive for its 68-year-old leader, who seeks a historical achievement at the zenith of his career. U.S. planners must mobilize resources, effort, and risk acceptance to maximize power and thereby deter Chinese aggression in the coming decade—literally starting now—and innovatively employ assets that currently exist or can be operationally assembled and scaled within the next several years. That will be the first step to pushing back against China during the 2020s—a decade of danger—before what will likely be a waning of Chinese power. As Beijing aggressively seeks to undermine the international order and promotes a narrative of inevitable Chinese strategic domination in Asia and beyond, it creates a dangerous contradiction between its goals and its medium-term capacity to achieve them. China is, in fact, likely nearing the apogee of its relative power; and by 2030 to 2035, it will cross a tipping point from which it may never recover strategically. Growing headwinds constraining Chinese growth, while not publicly acknowledged by Beijing, help explain Xi’s high and apparently increasing risk tolerance. Beijing’s window of strategic opportunity is sliding shut. China’s skyrocketing household debt levels exemplify structural economic constraints that are emerging much earlier than they did for the United States when it had similar per capita GDP and income levels. Debt is often a wet blanket on consumption growth. A 2017 analysis published by the Bank for International Settlements found that once the household debt-to-GDP ratio in a sample of 54 countries exceeded 60 percent, “the negative long-run effects on consumption tend to intensify.” China’s household debt-to-GDP ratio surpassed that empirical danger threshold in late 2020. Rising debt service burdens thus threaten Chinese consumers’ capacity to sustain the domestic consumption-focused “dual circulation” economic model that Xi and his advisors seek to build. China’s growth record during the past 30 years has been remarkable, but past exceptionalism does not confer future immunity from fundamental demographic and economic headwinds. As debt levels continue to rise at an absolute level that has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade, China also faces a hollowing out of its working-age population. This critical segment peaked in 2010 and has since declined, with the rate from 2015 to 2020 nearing 0.6 percent annually—nearly twice the respective pace in the United States. While the United States faces demographic challenges of its own, the disparity between the respective paces of decline highlights its relative advantage compared to its chief geopolitical competitor. Moreover, the United States can choose to access a global demographic and talent dividend via immigration in a way China simply will not be able to do. Atop surging debt and worsening demographics, China also faces resource insecurity. China’s dependence on imported food and energy has grown steadily over the past two decades. Projections from Tsinghua University make a compelling case that China’s oil and gas imports will peak between 2030 and 2035. As China grapples with power shortages, Beijing has been reminded that supply shortfalls equal to even a few percentage points of total demand can have outsized negative impacts. Domestic resource insufficiency by itself does not hinder economic growth—as the Four Asian Tigers’ multi-decade boom attests. But China is in a different position. Japan and South Korea never had to worry about the U.S. Navy interdicting inbound tankers or grain ships. In fact, the United States was avowedly willing to use military force to protect energy flows from the Persian Gulf region to its allies. Now, as an increasingly energy-secure United States pivots away from the Middle East toward the Indo-Pacific, there is a substantial probability that energy shipping route protection could be viewed in much more differentiated terms—with oil and liquefied natural gas cargoes sailing under the Chinese flag viewed very differently than cargoes headed to buyers in other regional countries. Each of these dynamics—demographic downshifts, rising debts, resource supply insecurity—either imminently threatens or is already actively interfering with the CCP’s long-cherished goal of achieving a “moderately prosperous society.” Electricity blackouts, real estate sector travails (like those of Evergrande) that show just how many Chinese investors’ financial eggs now sit in an unstable $52 trillion basket, and a solidifying alignment of countries abroad concerned by aggressive Chinese behavior all raise questions about Xi’s ability to deliver. With this confluence of adverse events only a year before the next party congress, where personal ambition and survival imperatives will almost drive him to seek anointment as the only Chinese “leader for life” aside from former leader Mao Zedong, the timing only fuels his sense of insecurity. Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns and ruthless removal of potential rivals and their supporters solidified his power but likely also created a quiet corps of opponents who may prove willing to move against him if events create the perception he’s lost the “mandate of heaven.” Accordingly, the baseline assumption should be that Xi’s crown sits heavy and the insecurity induced is thereby intense enough to drive high-stake, high-consequence posturing and action. While Xi is under pressure to act, the external risks are magnified because so far, he has suffered few consequences from taking actions on issues his predecessors would likely never have gambled on. Reactions to party predations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been restricted to diplomatic-signaling pinpricks, such as sanctioning responsible Chinese officials and entities, most of whom lack substantial economic ties to the United States. Whether U.S. restraint results from a fear of losing market access or a belief that China’s goals are ultimately limited is not clear at this time. While the CCP issues retaliatory sanctions against U.S. officials and proclaims a triumphant outcome to its hostage diplomacy, these tactical public actions mask a growing private awareness that China’s latitude for irredentist action is poised to shrink. Not knowing exactly when domestic and external constraints will come to bite—but knowing that when Beijing sees the tipping point in its rearview mirror, major rivals will recognize it too—amplifies Xi and the party’s anxiety to act on a shorter timeline. Hence the dramatic acceleration of the last few years. Just as China is mustering its own strategic actions, so the United States must also intensify its focus and deployment of resources. The United States has taken too long to warm up and confront the central challenge, but it retains formidable advantages, agility, and the ability to prevail—provided it goes all-in now. Conversely, if Washington fails to marshal its forces promptly, its achievements after 2030 or 2035 will matter little. Seizing the 2020s would enable Beijing to cripple destroy the free and open rules-based order and entrench its position by economically subjugating regional neighbors (including key U.S. treaty allies) to a degree that could offset the strategic headwinds China now increasingly grapples with. Deterrence is never certain. But it offers the highest probability of avoiding the certainty that an Indo-Pacific region dominated by a CCP-led China would doom treaty allies, threaten the U.S. homeland, and likely set the stage for worse to come. Accordingly, U.S. planners should immediately mobilize resources and effort as well as accept greater risks to deter Chinese action over the critical next decade. The greatest threat is armed conflict over Taiwan, where U.S. and allied success or failure will be fundamental and reverberate for the remainder of the century. There is a high chance of a major move against Taiwan by the late 2020s—following an extraordinary ramp-up in People’s Liberation Army capabilities and before Xi or the party state’s power grasp has ebbed or Washington and its allies have fully regrouped and rallied to the challenge. So how should policymakers assess the potential risk of Chinese action against Taiwan reaching dangerous levels by 2027 or possibly even earlier—as emphasized in the testimonies of Adms. Philip Davidson and John Aquilino? In June, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified to the House of Representatives that Xi had “challenged the People’s Liberation Army to accelerate their modernization programs to develop capabilities to seize Taiwan and move it from 2035 to 2027,” although China does not currently have the capabilities or intentions to conduct an all-out invasion of mainland Taiwan. U.S. military leaders’ assessments are informed by some of the world’s most extensive and sophisticated internal information. But what’s striking is open-source information available to everyone suggests similar things. Moving forward, a number of open-source indicators offer valuable “early warning lights” that can help policymakers more accurately calibrate both potential timetables and risk readings as the riskiest period of relations—from 2027 onward—approaches. Semiconductors supply self-sufficiency. Taiwan is the “OPEC+” of semiconductors, accounting for approximately two-thirds of global chip foundry capacity. A kinetic crisis would almost certainly disrupt—and potentially even completely curtail—semiconductor supplies. China presently spends even more each year on semiconductor imports (around $380 billion) than it does on oil, but much of the final products are destined for markets abroad. Taiwan is producing cutting-edge 5-nanometer and 7-nanometer chips, but China produces around 80 percent of the rest of the chips in the world. The closer China comes to being able to secure “good enough” chips for “inside China-only” needs, the less of a constraint this becomes. Crude oil, grain, strategic metals stockpiles—the commercial community (Planet Labs, Ursa Space Systems, etc.) has developed substantial expertise in cost-effectively tracking inventory changes for key input commodities needed to prepare for war. Electric vehicle fleet size—the amount of oil demand displaced by electric vehicles varies depending on miles driven, but the more of China’s car fleet that can be connected to the grid (and thus powered by blockade-resistant coal), the less political burden Beijing will face if it has to weather a maritime oil blockade imposed in response to actions it took against Taiwan or other major revisionist adventures. China’s passenger vehicle fleet, now approximately 225 million units strong, counts nearly 6.5 million electric vehicles among its ranks, the lion’s share of which are full-battery electrics. China’s State Council seeks to have 20 percent of new vehicles sold in China be electric vehicles by 2025. This target has already basically been achieved over the last few months, meaning at least 3.5 to 4 million (and eventually many more) new elective vehicles will enter China’s car fleet each year from now on. Local concentration of maritime vessels—snap exercises with warships, circumnavigations, and midline tests with swarms of aircraft highlight the growing scale of China’s threat to Taiwan. But these assets alone cannot invade the island. To capture and garrison, Beijing would need not only air, missile, naval, and special operations forces but also the ability to move lots of equipment and—at the very least—tens of thousands of personnel across the Taiwan Strait. As such, Beijing would have to amass maritime transport assets. And given the scale required, this would alter ship patterns elsewhere along China’s coast in ways detectable with artificial intelligence-facilitated imagery analysis from firms like Planet Labs (or national assets). Only the most formidable, agile American and allied deterrence can kick the can down the road long enough for China’s slowdown to shut the window of vulnerability. Holding the line is likely to require frequent and sustained proactive enforcement actions to disincentivize full-frontal Chinese assaults on the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. Chinese probing behavior and provocations must be met with a range of symmetric and asymmetric responses that impose real costs, such as publishing assets owned by Chinese officials abroad, cyber interference with China’s technological social control apparatus, “hands on” U.S. Navy and Coast Guard enforcement measures against Maritime Militia-affiliated vessels in the South China Sea, intensified air and maritime surveillance of Chinese naval bases, and visas and resettlement options to Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and other threatened Chinese citizens—including CCP officials (and their families) who seek to defect and/or leave China. U.S. policymakers must make crystal clear to their Chinese counterparts that the engagement-above-all policies that dominated much of the past 25 years are over and the risks and costs of ongoing—and future—adventurism will fall heaviest on China. Bombastic Chinese reactions to emerging cohesive actions verify the approach’s effectiveness and potential for halting—and perhaps even reversing—the revisionist tide China has unleashed across the Asian region. Consider the recent nuclear submarine deal among Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Beijing’s strong public reaction (including toleration of nuclear threats made by the state-affiliated Global Times) highlights the gap between its global information war touting China’s irresistible power and deeply insecure internal self-perception. Eight nuclear submarines will ultimately represent formidable military capacity, but for a bona fide superpower that believes in its own capabilities, they would not be a game-changer. Consider the U.S.-NATO reaction to the Soviet Union’s commissioning of eight Oscar I/II-class cruise missile subs during the late Cold War. These formidable boats each carried 24 SS-N-19 Granit missiles specifically designed to kill U.S. carrier battle groups, yet NATO never stooped to public threats. With diplomatic proofs of concepts like the so-called AUKUS deal, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and hard security actions like the Pacific Deterrence Initiative now falling into place, it is time to comprehensively peak the non-authoritarian world’s protective action to hold the line in the Indo-Pacific. During this decade, U.S. policymakers must understand that under Xi’s strongman rule, personal political survival will dictate Chinese behavior. Xi’s recreation of a “one-man” system is a one-way, high-leverage bet that decisions he drives will succeed. If Xi miscalculates, a significant risk given his suppression of dissenting voices while China raises the stakes in its confrontation with the United States, the proverbial “leverage” that would have left him with outsized returns on a successful bet would instead amplify the downside, all of which he personally and exclusively signed for. Resulting tensions could very realistically undermine his status and authority, embolden internal challengers, and weaken the party. They could also foreseeably drive him to double down on mistakes, especially if those led to—or were made in the course of—a kinetic conflict. Personal survival measures could thus rapidly transmute into regional or even global threats. If Xi triggered a “margin call” on his personal political account through a failed high-stakes gamble, it would likely be paid in blood. Washington must thus prepare the U.S. electorate and its institutional and physical infrastructure as well as that of allies and partners abroad for the likelihood that tensions will periodically ratchet up to uncomfortable levels—and that actual conflict is a concrete possibility. Si vis pacem, para bellum (“if you want peace, prepare for war”) must unfortunately serve as a central organizing principle for a variety of U.S. and allied decisions during the next decade with China. Given these unforgiving dynamics and stakes, implications for U.S. planners are stark: Do whatever remains possible to “peak” for deterrent competition against China by the mid-to-late 2020s, and accept whatever trade-offs are available for doing so. Nothing we might theoretically achieve in 2035 and beyond is worth pursuing at the expense of China-credible capabilities we can realistically achieve no later than the mid-to-late 2020s. Be highly skeptical of heg bad arguments – their evidence is epistemologically suspect Gilsinan 20 (Kathy, a St. Louis-based contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her book, The Helpers: Profiles From the Front Lines of the Pandemic, comes out in March 2022. She was previously an editor at World Politics Review.) “How China Is Planning to Win Back the World” The Atlantic, 5/28/2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/china-disinformation-propaganda-united-states-xi-jinping/612085/ BC This was a bizarre salvo in China’s propaganda war with the United States over the coronavirus, and it showcased Beijing’s latest information weaponry. Misleading spin, obfuscation, concealment, and hyperbole have been hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda campaign, before and during the coronavirus era. But the pandemic appears to have given rise to more forceful attacks on foreign governments, as well as a new level of flirtation with outright disinformation. The party has never waged a global struggle quite like this one—and its battle with the U.S. over where the virus came from and whose failures made the pandemic worse have marked a serious deterioration in the two countries’ ties. Just months ago, Trump was praising Xi Jinping for how he handled the outbreak; now Trump is toying with cutting off relations with the Chinese government altogether. Seven decades ago, Mao Zedong publicly embraced a benevolent view of propaganda, as if he were a latter-day prophet spreading the communist gospel: “We should carry on constant propaganda among the people on the facts of world progress and the bright future ahead so that they will build their confidence in victory,” he mused in 1945. Just a few months ago, Xi Jinping urged state journalists to spread “positive propaganda” for the “correct guidance of public opinion.” Indeed, Beijing’s global propaganda efforts in recent years have been more about promoting China’s virtues than about spreading acrimony and confusion, à la Russian information ops and election meddling. Moscow wants a weakened and divided West, one that leaves Russia free to dominate its self-appointed sphere of influence—but Russia in 2016 was also an economically sluggish, oil-dependent nation with an economy a tenth the size of America’s, and lacked the resources to remake the world in its image. Beijing has a much bigger prize in mind and a much longer-term plan to get it: The contest isn’t about who gets to run the U.S. It’s about who deserves to run the world. And China, with its economy poised to overtake that of the United States, has already plowed billions into crafting an image as a responsible global leader, and billions more into cultivating global dependence on Chinese investments and Chinese markets. “While the Chinese Communist Party has long sought to be a global influencer, their efforts today are aggressive and sophisticated,” Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, wrote in an email. “In short, they’re looking to reshape the history of coronavirus and protect their reputation at home and around the world.” Before the coronavirus hit, the party was becoming bolder in its propaganda efforts overseas as China grew richer and more powerful, trying to promote around the world the orthodoxy it enforced at home, about the beneficence and goodness of the CCP. This involved publicizing Chinese investments in the developing world, arm-twisting diplomats to toe a pro-China line, ruthlessly trying to stifle even other countries’ freedom to dissent—to the point of sanctioning Norway in 2010 when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its peace prize to the imprisoned democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017. Xi has elevated the role of propaganda even further as he has vowed to build China’s power and prosperity, declaring, “The superiority of our system will be fully demonstrated through a brighter future.” The coronavirus outbreak and the global outcry against China’s failures of transparency and containment were not part of the plan. They sparked an international backlash that, by Beijing’s reported reckoning, was worse than anything it had faced since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. So Beijing leaped to seize, or at least confuse, the global story of the virus and its cast of heroes and villains. This has involved unleashing techniques Russia perfected during the U.S. presidential election in 2016. “We’ve seen China adopt Russian-style social media manipulation tactics like using bots and trolls to amplify disinformation on COVID-19,” Lea Gabrielle, the special envoy and coordinator for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, wrote to me in an email. “Both countries repress information within their countries while taking advantage of the open and free information environments in democracies to push conspiracy theories that seek to undermine those environments.” As the world realized the virus was spreading out of control, Chinese diplomats, official media, and Twitter influencers launched an aggressive frenzy of defense, scrambling to preserve the Chinese Communist Party’s cratering reputation at home and overseas. And then they went on offense, with an assist from perhaps thousands of fake or hacked Twitter accounts, according to the investigative site ProPublica. The result was a coordinated campaign of attacks on the United States, and the spread of disinformation and confusion about where the virus really came from and whose screwup it was, really, that led to so much death. Other countries’ faltering responses to the virus have only bolstered this narrative, and the CCP has gleefully trumpeted America’s failures in particular. “Loose political system in the US allows more than 4000 people to die of pandemic every day,” Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of the Global Times newspaper, tweeted in April. “Americans are so good tempered.” Beyond the immediate crisis, this kind of narrative also serves the longer-term goal. In the words of Matt Schrader, a former China analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund: “Ultimately it’s about the Chinese Communist Party being the most powerful political entity on the planet.” The CCP has evolved in its themes and tactics over the course of the coronavirus information war so far, as it battles to bolster its own reputation and degrade that of the United States. The campaign has been widespread and highly focused at the same time. And the party has grown even more emboldened in the belief that it’s too big to fail, and that the reeling world may condemn it but still depends on it.
1AC – Framing The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
12/18/21
JANFEB - AC - China v2
Tournament: Debate LA RR | Round: Quarters | Opponent: Prospect ST | Judge: Panel AC 1AC – Plan Plan: The People’s Republic of China should ban the appropriation of outer space by private entities. Chinese space industrial base is set to surpass the US Patel 21 (Neel, space reporter for MIT Technology Review, and I also write The Airlock newsletter, your number one source for everything happening off this planet. Before joining, he worked as a freelance science and technology journalist, contributing stories to Popular Science, The Daily Beast, Slate, Wired, the Verge, and elsewhere. Prior to that, he was an associate editor for Inverse, where I grew and led the website’s space coverage.) “China’s surging private space industry is out to challenge the US” MIT Technology Review, 1/21/2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ BC How did China AND and rockets alike. A strong space industrial base makes government sponsored operations in space economically feasible Patel 21 (Neel, space reporter for MIT Technology Review, and I also write The Airlock newsletter, your number one source for everything happening off this planet. Before joining, he worked as a freelance science and technology journalist, contributing stories to Popular Science, The Daily Beast, Slate, Wired, the Verge, and elsewhere. Prior to that, he was an associate editor for Inverse, where I grew and led the website’s space coverage.) “China’s surging private space industry is out to challenge the US” MIT Technology Review, 1/21/2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ BC China’s space program AND to the West. The PRC uses the private sector to develop “wish-list” military assets and pursue counterbalancing with Russia Curcio 8/24 (Blaine, an Affiliate Senior Consultant for Euroconsult, based in Hong Kong. Since joining Euroconsult in 2018, he has contributed to a wide range of consulting missions and research reports, primarily covering the satcom sector globally, and broader space industry in China.) “Developments in China's Commercial Space Sector” The National Bureau of Asian Research, 8/24/2021. https://www.nbr.org/publication/developments-in-chinas-commercial-space-sector/ BC There has been AND market is moving. Scenario one is space militarization: Sino-Russian space alliance undermines existing treaties and greenlights space militarization Bowman and Thompson 3/31 (Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) (Jared Thompson, a U.S. Air Force major and visiting military analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.) “Russia and China Seek to Tie America’s Hands in Space” Foreign Policy 3/31/2021. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/31/russia-china-space-war-treaty-demilitarization-satellites/ BC Consider the actions AND Their duplicity continues. Sino-Russian space militarization causes nuclear war Rogin 11/30 (Josh, a columnist for the Global Opinions section of The Washington Post. He writes about foreign policy and national security. Rogin is also a political analyst for CNN. He previously worked for Bloomberg View, the Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week and Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper.) “Opinion: A shadow war in space is heating up fast” Washington Post, 11/30/2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/30/space-race-china-david-thompson/ BC When Russia blows AND recognize this reality.
Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr 15 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD While it is AND radioactive, toxic environment? Scenario two is hegemony: Chinese space leadership encourages ASAT proliferation – only the plan solves – China will not honor international commitments Rajagopalan 5/12 (Dr Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Dr Rajagopalan was the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) (July 2018-July 2019). She was also a Non-Resident Indo-Pacific Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre from April-December 2020. As a senior Asia defence writer for The Diplomat, she writes a weekly column on Asian strategic issues. Dr Rajagopalan joined ORF after a five-year stint at the National Security Council Secretariat (2003-2007), Government of India, where she was an Assistant Director. Prior to joining the NSCS, she was Research Officer at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Politics, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan in 2012. Dr Rajagopalan has authored or edited nine books including Global Nuclear Security: Moving Beyond the NSS (2018), Space Policy 2.0 (2017), Nuclear Security in India (2015), Clashing Titans: Military Strategy and Insecurity among Asian Great Powers (2012), The Dragon's Fire: Chinese Military Strategy and Its Implications for Asia (2009). She has published research essays in edited volumes, and in peer reviewed journals such as India Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Air and Space Power Journal, International Journal of Nuclear Law and Strategic Analysis. She has also contributed essays to newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Times of India, and The Economic Times. She has been invited to speak at international fora including the United Nations Disarmament Forum (New York), the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) (Vienna), Conference on Disarmament (Geneva), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the European Union.) “China’s irresponsible behaviour: A threat to space security” Observer Research Foundation, 5/12/2021. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/chinas-irresponsible-behaviour-a-threat-to-space-security/ BC With China planning AND will be difficult. Chinese ASAT development emboldens Taiwan invasion – either US doesn’t follow through on its defense commitments, which kills alliances, or it defends Taiwan, which goes nuclear Chow and Kelley 8/21 (Brian G., policy analyst for the Institute of World Politics, Ph.D in physics from Case Western Reserve University, MBA and Ph.D in finance from the University of Michigan, and Brandon, graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service ) “China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Could Conquer Taiwan—Or Start a War,” National Review, 8/21/2021 JL If current trends AND to nuclear use. US leadership in this decade solves global war and results in a peaceful end to Chinese revisionism Erickson and Collins 10/21 (Andrew, A professor of strategy in the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute)(Gabriel, Baker Botts fellow in energy and environmental regulatory affairs at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy) “A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power Is Here,” Foreign Policy, 10/18/2021 *brackets for ableist language U.S. and allied AND the mid-to-late 2020s.
China and Russia are comparatively worse Rogan 18 (Tom, foreign policy and national security writer for the Washington Examiner, Bachelor of Arts in War Studies from King's College London, a Master of Science in Middle East politics from SOAS, and a Graduate Diploma in Law from the University of Law, London, has previously written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Atlantic, National Review, the Telegraph, and the Guardian) “China, Russia, and the greater morality of American realism,” Washington Examiner, 12/10/2018 JL Crucially, however, unlike AND disastrous for humanity.
1AC – Framing The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start AND matters of value. 2. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several AND away from pain?27 3. Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on AND any existential catastrophe. 4. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if WE AND such an action. 5. No act-omission distinction – choosing to omit is an act itself – governments actively decide not to act so there is no omission. Also, If we foresee a consequence, then it is intrinsic to our action since we intend it to happen 6. Reject calc indicts: Empirically denied—both individuals and policymakers carry out effective cost-benefit analysis which means even if decisions aren’t always perfect it’s still better than not acting at all 7. Independent of considerations of future happiness or life, death is the worst evil since it destroys the subject itself Paterson, 03 – Department of Philosophy, Providence College, Rhode Island (Craig, “A Life Not Worth Living?”, Studies in Christian Ethics, http://sce.sagepub.com) Contrary to those AND all human possibility.82 8. Permissibility and presumption affirm – when I tell you my name is Jane you believe me absent reason to believe otherwise – we assume things to be true or we’d never be able to take action – prior question since voting neg is also an action – winning the aff advantage means you should default aff on this question – even if they deny the ability to make moral claims, I’ve won the aff is true – the 4min 1AR has to answer 7min of offense and hedge against 2nr collapse, if they can’t prove the aff false you should presume its true
1/14/22
JANFEB - AC - China v3
Tournament: Emory | Round: 3 | Opponent: Lexington BF | Judge: Priya George 1AC – Framework I value morality. The criterion is maximizing expected well-being.
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen in 2016 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. 2. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure. Moen in 2016 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 3. Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom in 2012 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. 1AC – Resolution I defend that, Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities in the People’s Republic of China is unjust. For clarity, “Appropriation of outer space” by private entities refers to: TIMOTHY JUSTIN TRAPP, JD Candidate @ UIUC Law, in 2013, TAKING UP SPACE BY ANY OTHER MEANS: COMING TO TERMS WITH THE NONAPPROPRIATION ARTICLE OF THE OUTER SPACE TREATY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW Vol. 2013 No. 4 The issues presented in relation to the nonappropriation article of the Outer Space Treaty should be clear.214 The ITU has, quite blatantly, created something akin to “property interests in outer space.”215 It allows nations to exclude others from their orbital slots, even when the nation is not currently using that slot.216 This is directly in line with at least one definition of outer-space appropriation.217 Start Footnote 217Id. at 236 (“Appropriation of outer space, therefore, is ‘the exercise of exclusive control or exclusive use’ with a sense of permanence, which limits other nations’ access to it.”) (quoting Milton L. Smith, The Role of the ITU in the Development of Space Law, 17 ANNALS AIR and SPACE L. 157, 165 (1992)). End Footnote 217The ITU even allows nations with unused slots to devise them to other entities, creating a market for the property rights set up by this regulation.218 In some aspects, this seems to effect exactly what those signatory nations of the Bogotá Declaration were trying to accomplish, albeit through different means.219
“Private entities” are: UpCounsel ND (UpCounsel is an interactive online service that makes it faster and easier for businesses to find and hire legal help solely based on their preferences. “Private Entity: Everything You Need to Know”, UpCounsel, https://www.upcounsel.com/private-entity#importance-of-private-entities, No Date SS A private entity can be a partnership, corporation, individual, nonprofit organization, company, or any other organized group that is not government-affiliated. Indian tribes and foreign public entities are not considered private entities.
Unjust means: Merriam Webster ND (Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries.),“unjust”, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unjust, No Date SS Legal Definition of unjust
characterized by injustice : deficient in justice and fairness an unjust sentence
1AC – Contention My sole contention is space dominance. Currently, the Chinese space industry is set to surpass the US space industry Patel in 2021 (Neel, space reporter for MIT Technology Review, and I also write The Airlock newsletter, your number one source for everything happening off this planet. Before joining, he worked as a freelance science and technology journalist, contributing stories to Popular Science, The Daily Beast, Slate, Wired, the Verge, and elsewhere. Prior to that, he was an associate editor for Inverse, where I grew and led the website’s space coverage.) “China’s surging private space industry is out to challenge the US” MIT Technology Review, 1/21/2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ BC How did China get here—and why? Until recently, China’s space activity has been overwhelmingly dominated by two state-owned enterprises: the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited (CASIC) and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). A few private space firms have been allowed to operate in the country for a while: for example, there’s the China Great Wall Industry Corporation Limited (in reality a subsidiary of CASC), which has provided commercial launches since it was established in 1980. But for the most part, China’s commercial space industry has been nonexistent. Satellites were expensive to build and launch, and they were too heavy and large for anything but the biggest rockets to actually deliver to orbit. The costs involved were too much for anything but national budgets to handle. That all changed this past decade as the costs of making satellites and launching rockets plunged. In 2014, a year after Xi Jinping took over as the new leader of China, the Chinese government decided to treat civil space development as a key area of innovation, as it had already begun doing with AI and solar power. It issued a policy directive called Document 60 that year to enable large private investment in companies interested in participating in the space industry. “Xi’s goal was that if China has to become a critical player in technology, including in civil space and aerospace, it was critical to develop a space ecosystem that includes the private sector,” says Namrata Goswami, a geopolitics expert based in Montgomery, Alabama, who’s been studying China’s space program for many years. “He was taking a cue from the American private sector to encourage innovation from a talent pool that extended beyond state-funded organizations.” As a result, there are now 78 commercial space companies operating in China, according to a 2019 report by the Institute for Defense Analyses. More than half have been founded since 2014, and the vast majority focus on satellite manufacturing and launch services. For example, Galactic Energy, founded in February 2018, is building its Ceres rocket to offer rapid launch service for single payloads, while its Pallas rocket is being built to deploy entire constellations. Rival company i-Space, formed in 2016, became the first commercial Chinese company to make it to space with its Hyperbola-1 in July 2019. It wants to pursue reusable first-stage boosters that can land vertically, like those from SpaceX. So does LinkSpace (founded in 2014), although it also hopes to use rockets to deliver packages from one terrestrial location to another. Spacety, founded in 2016, wants to turn around customer orders to build and launch its small satellites in just six months. In December it launched a miniaturized version of a satellite that uses 2D radar images to build 3D reconstructions of terrestrial landscapes. Weeks later, it released the first images taken by the satellite, Hisea-1, featuring three-meter resolution. Spacety wants to launch a constellation of these satellites to offer high-quality imaging at low cost. To a large extent, China is following the same blueprint drawn up by the US: using government contracts and subsidies to give these companies a foot up. US firms like SpaceX benefited greatly from NASA contracts that paid out millions to build and test rockets and space vehicles for delivering cargo to the International Space Station. With that experience under its belt, SpaceX was able to attract more customers with greater confidence. Venture capital is another tried-and-true route. The IDA report estimates that VC funding for Chinese space companies was up to $516 million in 2018—far shy of the $2.2 billion American companies raised, but nothing to scoff at for an industry that really only began seven years ago. At least 42 companies had no known government funding. And much of the government support these companies do receive doesn’t have a federal origin, but a provincial one. “These companies are drawing high-tech development to these local communities,” says Hines. “And in return, they’re given more autonomy by the local government.” While most have headquarters in Beijing, many keep facilities in Shenzhen, Chongqing, and other areas that might draw talent from local universities. There’s also one advantage specific to China: manufacturing. “What is the best country to trust for manufacturing needs?” asks James Zheng, the CEO of Spacety’s Luxembourg headquarters. “It’s China. It’s the manufacturing center of the world.” Zheng believes the country is in a better position than any other to take advantage of the space industry’s new need for mass production of satellites and rockets alike. A thriving private space industry is crucial in order for government sponsored operations in space to be economically feasible Patel 21 (Neel, space reporter for MIT Technology Review, and I also write The Airlock newsletter, your number one source for everything happening off this planet. Before joining, he worked as a freelance science and technology journalist, contributing stories to Popular Science, The Daily Beast, Slate, Wired, the Verge, and elsewhere. Prior to that, he was an associate editor for Inverse, where I grew and led the website’s space coverage.) “China’s surging private space industry is out to challenge the US” MIT Technology Review, 1/21/2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/21/1016513/china-private-commercial-space-industry-dominance/ BC At first glance, the Ceres-1 launch might seem unremarkable. Ceres-1, however, wasn’t built and launched by China’s national program. It was a commercial rocket—only the second from a Chinese company ever to go into space. And the launch happened less than three years after the company was founded. The achievement is a milestone for China’s fledgling—but rapidly growing—private space industry, an increasingly critical part of the country’s quest to dethrone the US as the world’s preeminent space power. The rivalry between the US and China, whose space program has surged over the last two decades, is what most people mean when they refer to the 21st-century's space race. China is set to build a new space station later this year and will likely attempt to send its taikonauts to the moon before the decade ends. But these big-picture projects represent just one aspect of the country’s space ambitions. Increasingly, the focus is now on the commercial space industry as well. The nation's growing private space business is less focused on bringing prestige and glory to the nation and more concerned with reducing the cost of spaceflight, increasing its international influence—and making money. “The state is really great at large, ambitious projects like going to the moon or developing a large reconnaissance satellite,” says Lincoln Hines, a Cornell University researcher who focuses on Chinese foreign policy. “But it’s not responsive to meeting market needs”—one big way to encourage rapid technological growth and innovation. “I think the government thinks its commercial space sector can be complementary to the state,” he says. What are the market needs that Hines is referring to? Satellites, and rockets that can launch them into orbit. The space industry is undergoing a renaissance thanks to two big trends spurred by the commercial industry: we can make satellites for less money by making them smaller and using off-the-shelf hardware; and we can also make rockets for less money, by using less costly materials or reusing boosters after they’ve already flown (which SpaceX pioneered with its Falcon 9). These trends mean it is now cheaper to send stuff into space, and the services and data that satellites can offer have come down in price accordingly. China has seen an opportunity. A 2017 report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that the space industry could be worth up to $2.7 trillion by 2030. Setting foot on the moon and establishing a lunar colony might be a statement of national power, but securing a share of such a highly lucrative business is perhaps even more important to the country’s future. “In the future, there will be tens of thousands of satellites waiting to launch, which is a major opportunity for Galactic Energy” says Wu Yue, a company spokesperson. The problem is, China has to make up decades’ worth of ground lost to the West. If the Chinese space industry surpasses the U.S. space industry, they will proliferate extremely dangerous Anti-Satellite Weapons – only the affirmative can prevent this – China has a history of foregoing international commitments Rajagopalan on May 12th (Dr Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Dr Rajagopalan was the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) (July 2018-July 2019). She was also a Non-Resident Indo-Pacific Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre from April-December 2020. As a senior Asia defence writer for The Diplomat, she writes a weekly column on Asian strategic issues. Dr Rajagopalan joined ORF after a five-year stint at the National Security Council Secretariat (2003-2007), Government of India, where she was an Assistant Director. Prior to joining the NSCS, she was Research Officer at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Politics, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan in 2012. Dr Rajagopalan has authored or edited nine books including Global Nuclear Security: Moving Beyond the NSS (2018), Space Policy 2.0 (2017), Nuclear Security in India (2015), Clashing Titans: Military Strategy and Insecurity among Asian Great Powers (2012), The Dragon's Fire: Chinese Military Strategy and Its Implications for Asia (2009). She has published research essays in edited volumes, and in peer reviewed journals such as India Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Air and Space Power Journal, International Journal of Nuclear Law and Strategic Analysis. She has also contributed essays to newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Times of India, and The Economic Times. She has been invited to speak at international fora including the United Nations Disarmament Forum (New York), the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) (Vienna), Conference on Disarmament (Geneva), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the European Union.) “China’s irresponsible behaviour: A threat to space security” Observer Research Foundation, 5/12/2021. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/chinas-irresponsible-behaviour-a-threat-to-space-security/ BC With China planning an ambitious space programme that includes its own space station, it is likely that there will be more such risky incidents in the future as well. It is somewhat disturbing because China’s space programme has advanced to a degree that it undertakes missions including landing on the South Pole-Aitken Basin (on the far side of the Moon), returning rocks from the moon, and an interplanetary mission to Mars, which clearly demonstrates China has the technical capability to design and launch rockets whose spent stages can land without putting others at risk. That it has not done so is odd. It is not exactly what can be characterised as responsible behaviour in space. Another example of China breaking norms and engaging in irresponsible behaviour in space is its ASAT test. China’s first successful anti-satellite (ASAT) test in January 2007, at an altitude of 850 kilometres, resulted in creating around 3,000 pieces of space debris. More significantly, it broke the unwritten moratorium that was in place for two decades. Beijing also started developing various counterspace capabilities with the goal of competing with the US. Nevertheless, each of China’s actions have led to a spiral effect, with others seeking to match China’s actions, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, given the contested nature of Asian and global geopolitics. For example, China’s repeated ASAT tests have led to the US’ own ASAT test (Operation Burnt Frost in 2008), and India’s ASAT test (Mission Shakti in 2019). India had no plans to go down this path until China’s first ASAT test, which became a gamechanging moment for India. Even so, India did not react to it for more than a decade, but the final decision was a carefully calibrated and a direct response to China’s growing military space capabilities and its less-than responsible behaviour. Other countries like Japan and France are also contemplating moves in this direction. Australia may not be far behind either. Even though it may not be linked to the uncontrolled re-entry of the Chinese rocket, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University noted that “about six minutes after Tianhe and the CZ-5B separated, they both came close to the ISS—under 300 km, which given uncertainties in trajectory is a tad alarming.” Making this point, he added “it’s *possible* that this ISS/Tianhe close encounter was one of those unlikely coincidences. I’m open to that possibility, but they should still have spotted the closeness and warned NASA (or better, called a collision avoidance hold in the count).” Rocket re-entries are not uncommon, but space powers have tried to avoid the freefalls by usually conducting controlled re-entries so that they may fall in the ocean, or they may be directed towards the so-called “graveyard” orbits that may lie there for decades. But Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University argues that the Chinese rocket was designed in a manner that “leaves these big stages in low orbit.” And even in the case of controlled re-entries, there are failures sometimes and they can be dangerous too. SpaceX’s rocket debris landing on a farm in Washington in March this year is a case in point. Moriba Jah, an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin argues in a media interview that such events are going to become more common, and will happen more frequently and, therefore, humanity should come together to “jointly manage near earth space as a commons in need of coordination, protocols, and practices to maximise safety, security, and sustainability.” On the NASA Administrator’s statement, Jah said this should not be “singling out China.” Certainly, this is not about apportioning blame, but China’s actions cannot be condoned either. What can be done? Given that usable orbits in space are finite in nature, there will need to be steps taken by all the space players to ensure that their actions do not contribute to further pollution of space and make it unusable in the near term. States have to invest in technologies that would aid in cleaning up and getting rid of some of the debris. States also need to come together in developing norms, rules of the road, and legally binding and political instruments on large rocket body re-entries. The Long March 5B episode has yet again rekindled the debate on the need for rules for rocket and large body re-entries. Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation, for instance, questioned why, despite all ranting about China’s rocket re-entry issues, the US State Department has “consistently opposed anything stronger than voluntary guidelines.” Weeden has provided a useful Twitter thread on the US hesitancy to get on board with legal agreements on outer space. One problem is that while the US abides by international obligations, other do not. This is a concern that Weeden notes “has a grain of truth” but adds the caveat that “reality is not that definitive”. While he is correct to note that the issue is complicated, it is also true that countries like China have a terrible track record when it comes to meeting their treaty commitments. China’s violation of its own commitments with respect to nuclear non-proliferation, or in the South China Sea and East China Sea are well-known. Given this history, it is difficult to believe that China will allow itself to be bound by any restraints on its space programme, even if it signs any of these agreements. But given the US’ almost allergic reaction to signing legal agreements that others like China may violate, it doesn’t hurt China to keep bringing up PPWT-like (Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects) measures every now and then. This puts the whole international community in a bind. If we have to ensure safe and uninterrupted access to space, creating a secure, sustainable, and predictable outer space framework is essential. But unless all states demonstrate a commitment to living up to existing rules and norms, creating new ones will be difficult. Development of Chinese Anti-Satellite Weapons emboldens China to invade Taiwan. If China invades, the U.S. has two options. First, it doesn’t follow through on its defense commitment to Taiwan, which will hurt its alliances. Second, it defends Taiwan, which will lead to nuclear war. Chow and Kelley on August 21st (Brian G., policy analyst for the Institute of World Politics, Ph.D in physics from Case Western Reserve University, MBA and Ph.D in finance from the University of Michigan, and Brandon, graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service) “China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Could Conquer Taiwan—Or Start a War,” National Interest, 8/21/2021 JL If current trends hold, then China’s Strategic Support Force will be capable by the late 2020s of holding key U.S. space assets at risk. Chinese military doctrine, statements by senior officials, and past behavior all suggest that China may well believe threatening such assets to be an effective means of deterring U.S. intervention. If so, then the United States would face a type of “Sophie’s Choice”: decline to intervene, potentially leading allies to follow suit and Taiwan to succumb without a fight, thereby enabling Xi to achieve his goal of “peacefully” snuffing out Taiwanese independence; or start a war that would at best be long and bloody and might well even cross the nuclear threshold. This emerging crisis has been three decades in the making. In 1991, China watched from afar as the United States used space-enabled capabilities to obliterate the Iraqi military from a distance in the first Gulf War. The People’s Liberation Army quickly set to work developing capabilities targeted at a perceived Achilles’ heel of this new American way of war: reliance on vulnerable space systems. This project came to fruition with a direct ascent ASAT weapons test in 2007, but the test was limited in two key respects. First, it only reached low Earth orbit. Second, it generated thousands of pieces of long-lasting space junk, provoking immense international ire. This backlash appears to have taken China by surprise, driving it to seek new, more usable ASAT types with minimal debris production. Now, one such ASAT is nearing operational status: spacecraft capable of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs). Such spacecraft are inevitable and cannot realistically be limited. The United States, European Union, China, and others are developing them to provide a range of satellite services essential to the new space economy, such as in situ repairs and refueling of satellites and active removal of space debris. But RPO capabilities are dual-use: if a satellite can grapple space objects for servicing, then it might well be capable of grappling an adversary’s satellite to move it out of its servicing orbit. Perhaps it could degrade or disable it by bending or disconnecting its solar panels and antennas all while producing minimal debris. This is a serious threat, primarily because no international rules presently exist to limit close approaches in space. Left unaddressed, this lacuna in international law and space policy could enable a prospective attacker to pre-position, during peacetime, as many spacecraft as they wish as close as they wish to as many high-value targets as they wish. The result would be an ever-present possibility of sudden, bolt-from-the-blue attacks on vital space assets—and worse, on many of them at once. China has conducted at least half a dozen tests of RPO capabilities in space since 2008, two of which went on for years. Influential space experts have noted that these tests have plausible peaceful purposes and are in many cases similar to those conducted by the United States. This, however, does not make it any less important to establish effective legal, policy, and technical counters to their offensive use. Even if it were certain that these capabilities are intended purely for peaceful applications—and it is not at all clear that that is the case—China (or any other country) could at any time decide to repurpose these capabilities for ASAT use. There is still time to get out ahead of this threat, but likely not for much longer. China’s RPO capabilities have, thus far, lagged about five years behind those of the United States. There are reasons to believe this gap may close, but even assuming that it holds, we should expect to see China demonstrate an operational dual-use rendezvous spacecraft by around 2025. (The first instance of a U.S. commercial satellite docking with another satellite to change its orbit occurred in February 2020.) At the same time, China is expanding its capacity for rapid spacecraft manufacturing. The Global Times reported in January that China’s first intelligent mass production line is set to produce 240 small satellites per year. In April, Andrew Jones at SpaceNews reported that China is developing plans to quickly produce and loft a thirteen thousand-satellite national internet megaconstellation. It is not unreasonable to assume that China could manufacture two hundred small rendezvous ASAT spacecraft by 2029, possibly more. If this happens, and Beijing was to decide in 2029 to launch these two hundred small RPO spacecraft and position them in close proximity to strategically vital assets, then China would be able to simultaneously threaten disablement of the entire constellations of U.S. satellites for missile early warning (about a dozen satellites with spares included); communications in a nuclear-disrupted environment (about a dozen); and positioning, navigation, and timing (about three dozen); along with several dozen key communications, imagery, and meteorology satellites. Losing these assets would severely degrade U.S. deterrence and warfighting capabilities, yet once close pre-positioning has occurred such losses become almost impossible to prevent. For this reason, such pre-positioning could conceivably deter the United States from coming to Taiwan’s aid due to the prospect that intervention would spur China to disable these critical space systems. Without their support, the war would be much bloodier and costlier—a daunting proposition for any president. Should the United States fail to intervene, the consequences would be disastrous for both Washington and its allies in East Asia, and potentially the credibility of U.S. defense commitments around the globe. Worse yet, however, might be what could happen if China believes that such a threat will succeed but proves to be wrong. History is rife with examples of major wars arising from miscalculations such as this, and there are many pathways by which such a situation could easily escalate out of control to a full-scale conventional conflict or even to nuclear use. Cementing America’s lead in the commercial space industry is key to preserve hegemony Autry and Kwast in 2019 (Greg, a clinical professor of space leadership, policy, and business at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management. He served on the 2016 NASA transition team and as the White House liaison at NASA in 2017. He is the chair of the Safety Working Group for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee.) (Steve, a Lieutenant General and commander of Recruiting, Training, Educating and Development for the Air Force. He is an astronautical engineer and Harvard Fellow in Public Policy.) “America Is Losing the Second Space Race to China” Foreign Policy, 8/22/2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/22/america-is-losing-the-second-space-race-to-china/ BC The private sector can give the United States a much-needed rocket boost. The current U.S. space defense strategy is inadequate and on a path to failure. President Donald Trump’s vision for a Space Force is big enough. As he said on June 18, “It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space.” But the Air Force is not matching this vision. Instead, the leadership is currently focused on incremental improvements to existing equipment and organizational structures. Dominating the vast and dynamic environment of space will require revolutionary capabilities and resources far deeper than traditional Department of Defense thinking can fund, manage, or even conceive of. Success depends on a much more active partnership with the commercial space industry— and its disruptive capabilities. U.S. military space planners are preparing to repeat a conflict they imagined back in the 1980s, which never actually occurred, against a vanished Soviet empire. Meanwhile, China is executing a winning strategy in the world of today. It is burning hard toward domination of the future space markets that will define the next century. They are planning infrastructure in space that will control 21st-century telecommunications, energy, transportation, and manufacturing. In doing so, they will acquire trillion-dollar revenues as well as the deep capabilities that come from continuous operational experience in space. This will deliver space dominance and global hegemony to China’s authoritarian rulers. Despite the fact that many in the policy and intelligence communities understand exactly what China is doing and have been trying to alert leadership, Air Force leadership has convinced the White House to fund only a slightly better satellite command with the same leadership, while sticking a new label onto their outmoded thinking. A U.S. Space Force or Corps with a satellite command will never fulfill Trump’s call to dominate space. Air Force leadership is demonstrating the same hubris that Gen. George Custer used in convincing Congress, over President Ulysses S. Grant’s better experience intuition, that he could overtake the Black Hills with repeating rifles and artillery. That strategy of technological overconfidence inflamed conflict rather than subduing it, and the 7th Cavalry were wiped out at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The West was actually won by the settlers, ranchers, miners, and railroad barons who were able to convert the wealth of the territory itself into the means of holding it. They laid the groundwork that made the 20th century the American Century and delivered freedom to millions of people in Europe and Asia. Of course, they also trampled the indigenous people of the American West in their wake—but empty space comes with no such bloody cost. The very emptiness and wealth of this new, if not quite final, frontier, however, means that competition for resources and strategic locations in cislunar space (between the Earth and moon) will be intense over the next two decades. The outcome of this competition will determine the fate of humanity in the next century. China’s impending dominance will neutralize U.S. geopolitical power by allowing Beijing to control global information flows from the high ground of space. Imagine a school in Bolivia or a farmer in Kenya choosing between paying for a U.S. satellite internet or image provider or receiving those services for free as a “gift of the Chinese people.” It will be of little concern to global consumers that the news they receive is slanted or that searches for “free speech” link to articles about corruption in Western democracies. Nor will they care if concentration camps in Tibet and the Uighur areas of western China are obscured, or if U.S. military action is presented as tyranny and Chinese expansion is described as peacekeeping or liberation. China’s aggressive investment in space solar power will allow it to provide cheap, clean power to the world, displacing U.S. energy firms while placing a second yoke around the developing world. Significantly, such orbital power stations have dual use potential and, if properly designed, could serve as powerful offensive weapons platforms. China’s first step in this process is to conquer the growing small space launch market. Beijing is providing nominally commercial firms with government-manufactured, mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles they can use to dump launch services on the market below cost. These start-ups are already undercutting U.S. pricing by 80 percent. Based on its previous success in using dumping to take out U.S. developed industries such as solar power modules and drones, China will quickly move upstream to attack the leading U.S. launch providers and secure a global commercial monopoly. Owning the launch market will give them an unsurmountable advantage against U.S. competitors in satellite internet, imaging, and power. The United States can still build a strategy to win. At this moment, it holds the competitive advantage in every critical space technology and has the finest set of commercial space firms in the world. It has pockets of innovative military thinkers within groups like the Defense Innovation Unit, under Mike Griffin, the Pentagon’s top research and development official. If the United States simply protects the intellectual property its creative minds unleash and defend its truly free markets from strategic mercantilist attack, it will not lose this new space race. The United States has done this before. It beat Germany to the nuclear bomb, it beat the Soviet Union to the nuclear triad, and it won the first space race. None of those victories was achieved by embracing the existing bureaucracy. Each of them depended on the president of the day following the only proven path to victory in a technological domain: establish a small team with a positively disruptive mindset and empower that team to investigate a wide range of new concepts, work with emerging technologies, and test innovative strategies. Today that means giving a dedicated Space Force the freedom to easily partner with commercial firms and leverage the private capital in building sustainable infrastructure that actually reduces the likelihood of conflict while securing a better economic future for the nation and the world. United States hegemony in this decade is critical to prevent global war and peacefully end violent Chinese power-grabs Erickson and Collins on October 21st (Andrew, A professor of strategy in the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute)(Gabriel, Baker Botts fellow in energy and environmental regulatory affairs at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy) “A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power Is Here,” Foreign Policy, 10/18/2021 U.S. and allied policymakers are facing the most important foreign-policy challenge of the 21st century. China’s power is peaking; so is the political position of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) domestic strength. In the long term, China’s likely decline after this peak is a good thing. But right now, it creates a decade of danger from a system that increasingly realizes it only has a short time to fulfill some of its most critical, long-held goals. Within the next five years, China’s leaders are likely to conclude that its deteriorating demographic profile, structural economic problems, and technological estrangement from global innovation centers are eroding its leverage to annex Taiwan and achieve other major strategic objectives. As Xi internalizes these challenges, his foreign policy is likely to become even more accepting of risk, feeding on his nearly decadelong track record of successful revisionist action against the rules-based order. Notable examples include China occupying and militarizing sub-tidal features in the South China Sea, ramping up air and maritime incursions against Japan and Taiwan, pushing border challenges against India, occupying Bhutanese and Tibetan lands, perpetrating crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, and coercively enveloping Hong Kong. The relatively low-hanging fruit is plucked, but Beijing is emboldened to grasp the biggest single revisionist prize: Taiwan. Beijing’s actions over the last decade have triggered backlash, such as with the so-called AUKUS deal, but concrete constraints on China’s strategic freedom of action may not fully manifest until after 2030. It’s remarkable and dangerous that China has paid few costs for its actions over the last 10 years, even as its military capacities have rapidly grown. Beijing will likely conclude that under current diplomatic, economic, and force postures for both “gray zone” and high-end scenarios, the 2021 to late 2020s timeframe still favors China—and is attractive for its 68-year-old leader, who seeks a historical achievement at the zenith of his career. U.S. planners must mobilize resources, effort, and risk acceptance to maximize power and thereby deter Chinese aggression in the coming decade—literally starting now—and innovatively employ assets that currently exist or can be operationally assembled and scaled within the next several years. That will be the first step to pushing back against China during the 2020s—a decade of danger—before what will likely be a waning of Chinese power. As Beijing aggressively seeks to undermine the international order and promotes a narrative of inevitable Chinese strategic domination in Asia and beyond, it creates a dangerous contradiction between its goals and its medium-term capacity to achieve them. China is, in fact, likely nearing the apogee of its relative power; and by 2030 to 2035, it will cross a tipping point from which it may never recover strategically. Growing headwinds constraining Chinese growth, while not publicly acknowledged by Beijing, help explain Xi’s high and apparently increasing risk tolerance. Beijing’s window of strategic opportunity is sliding shut. China’s skyrocketing household debt levels exemplify structural economic constraints that are emerging much earlier than they did for the United States when it had similar per capita GDP and income levels. Debt is often a wet blanket on consumption growth. A 2017 analysis published by the Bank for International Settlements found that once the household debt-to-GDP ratio in a sample of 54 countries exceeded 60 percent, “the negative long-run effects on consumption tend to intensify.” China’s household debt-to-GDP ratio surpassed that empirical danger threshold in late 2020. Rising debt service burdens thus threaten Chinese consumers’ capacity to sustain the domestic consumption-focused “dual circulation” economic model that Xi and his advisors seek to build. China’s growth record during the past 30 years has been remarkable, but past exceptionalism does not confer future immunity from fundamental demographic and economic headwinds. As debt levels continue to rise at an absolute level that has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade, China also faces a hollowing out of its working-age population. This critical segment peaked in 2010 and has since declined, with the rate from 2015 to 2020 nearing 0.6 percent annually—nearly twice the respective pace in the United States. While the United States faces demographic challenges of its own, the disparity between the respective paces of decline highlights its relative advantage compared to its chief geopolitical competitor. Moreover, the United States can choose to access a global demographic and talent dividend via immigration in a way China simply will not be able to do. Atop surging debt and worsening demographics, China also faces resource insecurity. China’s dependence on imported food and energy has grown steadily over the past two decades. Projections from Tsinghua University make a compelling case that China’s oil and gas imports will peak between 2030 and 2035. As China grapples with power shortages, Beijing has been reminded that supply shortfalls equal to even a few percentage points of total demand can have outsized negative impacts. Domestic resource insufficiency by itself does not hinder economic growth—as the Four Asian Tigers’ multi-decade boom attests. But China is in a different position. Japan and South Korea never had to worry about the U.S. Navy interdicting inbound tankers or grain ships. In fact, the United States was avowedly willing to use military force to protect energy flows from the Persian Gulf region to its allies. Now, as an increasingly energy-secure United States pivots away from the Middle East toward the Indo-Pacific, there is a substantial probability that energy shipping route protection could be viewed in much more differentiated terms—with oil and liquefied natural gas cargoes sailing under the Chinese flag viewed very differently than cargoes headed to buyers in other regional countries. Each of these dynamics—demographic downshifts, rising debts, resource supply insecurity—either imminently threatens or is already actively interfering with the CCP’s long-cherished goal of achieving a “moderately prosperous society.” Electricity blackouts, real estate sector travails (like those of Evergrande) that show just how many Chinese investors’ financial eggs now sit in an unstable $52 trillion basket, and a solidifying alignment of countries abroad concerned by aggressive Chinese behavior all raise questions about Xi’s ability to deliver. With this confluence of adverse events only a year before the next party congress, where personal ambition and survival imperatives will almost drive him to seek anointment as the only Chinese “leader for life” aside from former leader Mao Zedong, the timing only fuels his sense of insecurity. Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns and ruthless removal of potential rivals and their supporters solidified his power but likely also created a quiet corps of opponents who may prove willing to move against him if events create the perception he’s lost the “mandate of heaven.” Accordingly, the baseline assumption should be that Xi’s crown sits heavy and the insecurity induced is thereby intense enough to drive high-stake, high-consequence posturing and action. While Xi is under pressure to act, the external risks are magnified because so far, he has suffered few consequences from taking actions on issues his predecessors would likely never have gambled on. Reactions to party predations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been restricted to diplomatic-signaling pinpricks, such as sanctioning responsible Chinese officials and entities, most of whom lack substantial economic ties to the United States. Whether U.S. restraint results from a fear of losing market access or a belief that China’s goals are ultimately limited is not clear at this time. While the CCP issues retaliatory sanctions against U.S. officials and proclaims a triumphant outcome to its hostage diplomacy, these tactical public actions mask a growing private awareness that China’s latitude for irredentist action is poised to shrink. Not knowing exactly when domestic and external constraints will come to bite—but knowing that when Beijing sees the tipping point in its rearview mirror, major rivals will recognize it too—amplifies Xi and the party’s anxiety to act on a shorter timeline. Hence the dramatic acceleration of the last few years. Just as China is mustering its own strategic actions, so the United States must also intensify its focus and deployment of resources. The United States has taken too long to warm up and confront the central challenge, but it retains formidable advantages, agility, and the ability to prevail—provided it goes all-in now. Conversely, if Washington fails to marshal its forces promptly, its achievements after 2030 or 2035 will matter little. Seizing the 2020s would enable Beijing to cripple destroy the free and open rules-based order and entrench its position by economically subjugating regional neighbors (including key U.S. treaty allies) to a degree that could offset the strategic headwinds China now increasingly grapples with. Deterrence is never certain. But it offers the highest probability of avoiding the certainty that an Indo-Pacific region dominated by a CCP-led China would doom treaty allies, threaten the U.S. homeland, and likely set the stage for worse to come. Accordingly, U.S. planners should immediately mobilize resources and effort as well as accept greater risks to deter Chinese action over the critical next decade.
The greatest threat is armed conflict over Taiwan, where U.S. and allied success or failure will be fundamental and reverberate for the remainder of the century. There is a high chance of a major move against Taiwan by the late 2020s—following an extraordinary ramp-up in People’s Liberation Army capabilities and before Xi or the party state’s power grasp has ebbed or Washington and its allies have fully regrouped and rallied to the challenge. So how should policymakers assess the potential risk of Chinese action against Taiwan reaching dangerous levels by 2027 or possibly even earlier—as emphasized in the testimonies of Adms. Philip Davidson and John Aquilino? In June, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified to the House of Representatives that Xi had “challenged the People’s Liberation Army to accelerate their modernization programs to develop capabilities to seize Taiwan and move it from 2035 to 2027,” although China does not currently have the capabilities or intentions to conduct an all-out invasion of mainland Taiwan. U.S. military leaders’ assessments are informed by some of the world’s most extensive and sophisticated internal information. But what’s striking is open-source information available to everyone suggests similar things. Moving forward, a number of open-source indicators offer valuable “early warning lights” that can help policymakers more accurately calibrate both potential timetables and risk readings as the riskiest period of relations—from 2027 onward—approaches. Semiconductors supply self-sufficiency. Taiwan is the “OPEC+” of semiconductors, accounting for approximately two-thirds of global chip foundry capacity. A kinetic crisis would almost certainly disrupt—and potentially even completely curtail—semiconductor supplies. China presently spends even more each year on semiconductor imports (around $380 billion) than it does on oil, but much of the final products are destined for markets abroad. Taiwan is producing cutting-edge 5-nanometer and 7-nanometer chips, but China produces around 80 percent of the rest of the chips in the world. The closer China comes to being able to secure “good enough” chips for “inside China-only” needs, the less of a constraint this becomes. Crude oil, grain, strategic metals stockpiles—the commercial community (Planet Labs, Ursa Space Systems, etc.) has developed substantial expertise in cost-effectively tracking inventory changes for key input commodities needed to prepare for war. Electric vehicle fleet size—the amount of oil demand displaced by electric vehicles varies depending on miles driven, but the more of China’s car fleet that can be connected to the grid (and thus powered by blockade-resistant coal), the less political burden Beijing will face if it has to weather a maritime oil blockade imposed in response to actions it took against Taiwan or other major revisionist adventures. China’s passenger vehicle fleet, now approximately 225 million units strong, counts nearly 6.5 million electric vehicles among its ranks, the lion’s share of which are full-battery electrics. China’s State Council seeks to have 20 percent of new vehicles sold in China be electric vehicles by 2025. This target has already basically been achieved over the last few months, meaning at least 3.5 to 4 million (and eventually many more) new elective vehicles will enter China’s car fleet each year from now on. Local concentration of maritime vessels—snap exercises with warships, circumnavigations, and midline tests with swarms of aircraft highlight the growing scale of China’s threat to Taiwan. But these assets alone cannot invade the island. To capture and garrison, Beijing would need not only air, missile, naval, and special operations forces but also the ability to move lots of equipment and—at the very least—tens of thousands of personnel across the Taiwan Strait. As such, Beijing would have to amass maritime transport assets. And given the scale required, this would alter ship patterns elsewhere along China’s coast in ways detectable with artificial intelligence-facilitated imagery analysis from firms like Planet Labs (or national assets). Only the most formidable, agile American and allied deterrence can kick the can down the road long enough for China’s slowdown to shut the window of vulnerability. Holding the line is likely to require frequent and sustained proactive enforcement actions to disincentivize full-frontal Chinese assaults on the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. Chinese probing behavior and provocations must be met with a range of symmetric and asymmetric responses that impose real costs, such as publishing assets owned by Chinese officials abroad, cyber interference with China’s technological social control apparatus, “hands on” U.S. Navy and Coast Guard enforcement measures against Maritime Militia-affiliated vessels in the South China Sea, intensified air and maritime surveillance of Chinese naval bases, and visas and resettlement options to Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and other threatened Chinese citizens—including CCP officials (and their families) who seek to defect and/or leave China. U.S. policymakers must make crystal clear to their Chinese counterparts that the engagement-above-all policies that dominated much of the past 25 years are over and the risks and costs of ongoing—and future—adventurism will fall heaviest on China.
Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr in 2015 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons, nuclear firestorms would burn simultaneously over a total land surface area of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires, many of which would rage over large cities and industrial areas, would release many tens of millions of tons of black carbon soot and smoke (up to 180 million tons, according to peer-reviewed studies), which would rise rapidly above cloud level and into the stratosphere. For an explanation of the calculation of smoke emissions, see Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts. The scientists who completed the most recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter discovered that the sunlight would heat the smoke, producing a self-lofting effect that would not only aid the rise of the smoke into the stratosphere (above cloud level, where it could not be rained out), but act to keep the smoke in the stratosphere for 10 years or more. The longevity of the smoke layer would act to greatly increase the severity of its effects upon the biosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke (predicted to be produced by a range of strategic nuclear wars) would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere. Such an enormous loss of warming sunlight would produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth in a matter of weeks. For a period of 1-3 years following the war, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in the central agricultural zones of North America and Eurasia. For an explanation of nuclear winter, see Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. Nuclear winter would cause average global surface temperatures to become colder than they were at the height of the last Ice Age. Such extreme cold would eliminate growing seasons for many years, probably for a decade or longer. Can you imagine a winter that lasts for ten years? The results of such a scenario are obvious. Temperatures would be much too cold to grow food, and they would remain this way long enough to cause most humans and animals to starve to death. Global nuclear famine would ensue in a setting in which the infrastructure of the combatant nations has been totally destroyed, resulting in massive amounts of chemical and radioactive toxins being released into the biosphere. We don’t need a sophisticated study to tell us that no food and Ice Age temperatures for a decade would kill most people and animals on the planet. Would the few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment?
1/28/22
SEPTOCT - AC - COVID
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake JH | Judge: Richard Li 1AC – Plan Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization should reduce intellectual property protections for COVID-19 medicines. 1AC – Inherency Contention 1 is Inherency.
Rich countries are blocking a WTO patent-waiver proposal necessary to boost global production of COVID vaccines. Meredith 21. (Sam Meredith is a Correspondent at CNBC in London, covering international politics, energy and business news) “Rich countries are refusing to waive the rights on Covid vaccines as global cases hit record levels,” CNBC, April 22, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/covid-rich-countries-are-refusing-to-waive-ip-rights-on-vaccines.html TDI LONDON — The U.S., Canada and U.K. are among some of the high-income countries actively blocking a patent-waiver proposal designed to boost the global production of Covid-19 vaccines. It comes as coronavirus cases worldwide surge to their highest level so far and the World Health Organization has repeatedly admonished a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of vaccines amid the pandemic. Members of the World Trade Organization will meet virtually in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday to hold informal talks on whether to temporarily waive intellectual property and patent rights on Covid vaccines and treatments. The landmark proposal, which was jointly submitted by India and South Africa in October, has been backed by more than 100 mostly developing countries. It aims to facilitate the manufacture of treatments locally and boost the global vaccination campaign. Six months on, the proposal continues to be stonewalled by a small number of governments — including the U.S., EU, U.K., Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Canada, Australia and Brazil. “In this Covid-19 pandemic, we are once again faced with issues of scarcity, which can be addressed through diversification of manufacturing and supply capacity and ensuring the temporary waiver of relevant intellectual property,” Dr. Maria Guevara, international medical secretary at Medecins Sans Frontieres, said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is about saving lives at the end, not protecting systems.” The urgency and importance of waiving certain intellectual property rights amid the pandemic have been underscored by the WHO, health experts, civil society groups, trade unions, former world leaders, international medical charities, Nobel laureates and human rights organizations. Why does it matter? The waiver, if adopted at the General Council, the WTO’s highest-level decision-making body, could help countries around the world overcome legal barriers preventing them from producing their own Covid vaccines and treatments. Advocates of the proposal have conceded the waiver is not a “silver bullet,” but argue that removing barriers toward the development, production and approval of vaccines is vital in the fight to prevent, treat and contain the coronavirus. The pandemic is raging through developing economies and inflicting loss on a horrific scale. Lindsey 21. (Brink Lindsey) “Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix,” Brookings Institution, June 3, 2021. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/ TDI Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference. 1AC – WTO Credibility Contention 2 is WTO Credibility.
The new head of the WTO is on track to push for reform and an increased role in the international arena, but is hindered now due to lack of vaccine agreement. Baschuk 4-27. (Bryce Baschuk is a Bloomberg Reporter) "WTO Chief Pursues a ‘Hectic’ Agenda to Fix World Trade’s Referee," Bloomberg, April 27, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/wto-chief-pursues-a-hectic-agenda-to-fix-world-trade-s-referee TDI The head of the World Trade Organization raised an alarm about the credibility of the multilateral trading system, urging leaders to act fast to bolster the global economy with steps like fairer vaccine distribution and cooperate to resolve longer-term problems like overfishing. During her first two months, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has met with trade ministers around the globe to communicate a message that the WTO is important, it needs to be reformed and it needs to deliver results. So far, she says the reception from world leaders has been positive, but quickly translating that goodwill into substantive outcomes during a global pandemic is just as daunting as she anticipated. “The word I would use to describe it is absolutely hectic,” Okonjo-Iweala said in a phone interview on Tuesday when asked about her first few months in the job. “The challenges we thought were there are there and getting an agreement is not as easy because of longstanding ways of negotiating business positions.” Read More: Arcane WTO Pact Moves to Center of Vaccine Debate: Supply Lines Countries need to move past the notion that one country’s gain in international commerce is another’s loss, she said. “We need to break out of the zero-sum deadlock,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “We need to remind the countries and members that the WTO is here to deliver for people. We can’t take 20 years to negotiate something.” Okonjo-Iweala said her top priority is to use trade to alleviate the pandemic and said her recent meeting with trade ministers and vaccine manufacturers provided a positive step in the right direction. ‘More Pragmatism’ “That meeting yielded quite a lot,” she said. “I see more pragmatism on both sides.” An important component of the WTO’s trade and health agenda is a proposal from India and South Africa that seeks to temporarily waive enforcement of the WTO’s rules governing intellectual property for vaccines and other essential medical products. Read More: U.S. Trade Chief Meets Pfizer, AstraZeneca About Vaccine Supply As of this week there are fresh signals that the Biden administration, which currently opposes a waiver to the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, wants vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc to help ramp up U.S. pandemic assistance to the rest of the world. “There is movement,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “Are we there yet? No, but there is a little bit of change in the air among members. I think hopefully we will be able to come to some sort of a framework for the WTO ministers to bless.” “We don’t have time,” she added. “People are dying.” Okonjo-Iweala said this month’s vaccine meeting also revealed areas where the developing world can increase its capacity to produce more doses rather than waiting for rich countries to send them their excess supplies. She said various emerging markets such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Senegal, Indonesia and Egypt already have some capacity to begin producing vaccines for people living in developing economies. Patent waiver is necessary to revitalize WTO’s credibility as an international dispute mechanism – creates momentum for further reform. Meyer 6-18-21. (David Meyer is the Editor of CEO Daily and a senior writer on Fortune’s European team. Author of the digital rights primer, Control Shift: How Technology Affects You and Your Rights. “The WTO’s survival hinges on the COVID-19 vaccine patent debate, waiver advocates warn,” Fortune, June 18, 2021. https://fortune.com/2021/06/18/wto-covid-vaccines-patents-waiver-south-africa-trips/ TDI The World Trade Organization knows all about crises. Former U.S. President Donald Trump threw a wrench into its core function of resolving trade disputes—a blocker that President Joe Biden has not yet removed—and there is widespread dissatisfaction over the fairness of the global trade rulebook. The 164-country organization, under the fresh leadership of Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has a lot to fix. However, one crisis is more pressing than the others: the battle over COVID-19 vaccines, and whether the protection of their patents and other intellectual property should be temporarily lifted to boost production and end the pandemic sooner rather than later. According to some of those pushing for the waiver—which was originally proposed last year by India and South Africa—the WTO's future rests on what happens next. "The credibility of the WTO will depend on its ability to find a meaningful outcome on this issue that truly ramps-up and diversifies production," says Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter, South Africa's ambassador to the WTO. "Final nail in the coffin" The Geneva-based WTO isn't an organization with power, as such—it's a framework within which countries make big decisions about trade, generally by consensus. It's supposed to be the forum where disputes get settled, because all its members have signed up to the same rules. And one of its most important rulebooks is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, which sprang to life alongside the WTO in 1995. The WTO's founding agreement allows for rules to be waived in exceptional circumstances, and indeed this has happened before: its members agreed in 2003 to waive TRIPS obligations that were blocking the importation of cheap, generic drugs into developing countries that lack manufacturing capacity. (That waiver was effectively made permanent in 2017.) Consensus is the key here. Although the failure to reach consensus on a waiver could be overcome with a 75 supermajority vote by the WTO's membership, this would be an unprecedented and seismic event. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine IP waiver, it would mean standing up to the European Union, and Germany in particular, as well as countries such as Canada and the U.K.—the U.S. recently flipped from opposing the idea of a waiver to supporting it, as did France. It's a dispute between countries, but the result will be on the WTO as a whole, say waiver advocates. "If, in the face of one of humanity's greatest challenges in a century, the WTO functionally becomes an obstacle as in contrast to part of the solution, I think it could be the final nail in the coffin" for the organization, says Lori Wallach, the founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a U.S. campaigning group that focuses on the WTO and trade agreements. "If the TRIPS waiver is successful, and people see the WTO as being part of the solution—saving lives and livelihoods—it could create goodwill and momentum to address what are still daunting structural problems." Those problems are legion. Reform needs Top of the list is the WTO's Appellate Body, which hears appeals in members' trade disputes. It's a pivotal part of the international trade system, but Trump—incensed at decisions taken against the U.S. —blocked appointments to its seven-strong panel as judges retired. The body became completely paralyzed at the end of 2019, when two judges' terms ended and the panel no longer had the three-judge quorum it needs to rule on appeals. Anyone who hoped the advent of the Biden administration would change matters was disappointed earlier this year when the U.S. rejected a European proposal to fill the vacancies. "The United States continues to have systemic concerns with the appellate body," it said. "As members know, the United States has raised and explained its systemic concerns for more than 16 years and across multiple U.S. administrations." At her confirmation hearing in February, current U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai reiterated those concerns—she said the appellate body had "overstepped its authority and erred in interpreting WTO agreements in a number of cases, to the detriment of the United States and other WTO members," and accused it of dragging its heels in settling disputes. "Reforms are needed to ensure that the underlying causes of such problems do not resurface," Tai said. "While the U.S. has been engaging with the WTO it hasn't indicated it would move quickly on allowing appointments to the Appellate Body," says Bryan Mercurio, an economic-law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who opposes the vaccine waiver. "This is not a good sign. In terms of WTO governance, it's a much more important step than supporting negotiations on an intellectual property waiver." It's not just the U.S. that wants to see reform at the WTO. In a major policy document published in February, the EU said negotiations had failed to modernize the organization's rules, the dispute-resolution system was broken, the monitoring of countries' trade policies was ineffective, and—crucially—"the trade relationship between the U.S. and China, two of the three largest WTO members, is currently largely managed outside WTO disciplines." China is one of the key problems here. It became a WTO member in 2001 but, although this entailed significant liberalization of the Chinese economy, it did not become a full market economy. As the European Commission put it in February: "The level at which China has opened its markets does not correspond to its weight in the global economy, and the state continues to exert a decisive influence on China's economic environment with consequent competitive distortions that cannot be sufficiently addressed by current WTO rules." "China is operating from what it sees as a position of strength, so it will not be bullied into agreeing to changes which it sees as not in its interests," says Mercurio. China is at loggerheads with the U.S., the EU and others over numerous trade-related issues. Its rivals don't like its policy of demanding that Chinese citizens' data is stored on Chinese soil, nor do they approve of how foreign investors often have to partner with Chinese firms to access the country's market, in a way that leads to the transfer of technological knowhow. They also oppose China's industrial subsidies. Mercurio thinks China may agree to reforms on some of these issues, particularly regarding subsidies, but "only if it is offered something in return." All these problems won't go away if the WTO manages to come up with a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies, Wallach concedes. "But," she adds, "the will and the good faith to tackle these challenges is increased enormously if the WTO has the experience of being part of the solution, not just an obstacle." Wallach points to a statement released earlier this month by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers, which called for urgent discussions on the waiver. "The WTO must demonstrate that global trade rules can help address the human catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitate the recovery," the statement read in its section about WTO reform. Okonjo-Iweala's role The WTO's new director general, whose route to the top was unblocked in early 2021 with the demise of the Trump administration, is certainly keen to fix the problems that contributed to the early departure of her predecessor, Brazil's Robert Azevedo. "We must act now to get all our ambassadors to the table to negotiate a text" on the issue of an IP waiver for COVID vaccines, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, has said. Dursun Aydemir—Anadolu/Bloomberg/Getty Images Earlier this week, when the U.S. and EU agreed a five-year ceasefire in a long-running dispute over Boeing and Airbus aircraft subsidies, Okonjo-Iweala tweeted: "With political will, we can solve even the most intractable problems." However, Mercurio is skeptical about her stewardship having much of an effect on the WTO's reform process. "Upon taking over she stated it was time for delegations to speak to each other and not simply past each other, but at the recent General Counsel meeting delegations simply read prepared statements in what some have described as the worst meeting ever," he says. "On the other hand, Ngozi is very much someone who will actively seek solutions to problems, and in this way different to her predecessor. If the role of mediator is welcomed, she could have an impact not in starting discussions but in getting deals over the finish line." No alt causes – how the WTO acts now with Covid will shape its role in the international economy for decades to come. Evenett and Baldwin 20. (Simon J. Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Co-Director of the CEPR Programme in International Trade and Regional Economics. Richard E. Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI Purposeful, pragmatic steps towards noble goals Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that tireless campaigner against Apartheid, once remarked that “there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time”. After a decade of drift and backsliding, the task of revitalising multilateral trade cooperation may seem daunting. It may seem even more so after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant slump in world trade. Yet, in the same emergency lies the seeds of revival – especially, if trade diplomats can demonstrate the relevance of the WTO to national governments fighting this pandemic – ideally through an accord that eases the cross-border shipment of needed medical goods and medicines. Step by pragmatic step, the WTO can regain its centrality in the world trading system. Ultimately, the pandemic affords the opportunity to reframe discussions on multilateral trade cooperation away from the stalemate, frustration of recent years between governments, and the Uruguay Round mindset that ran into diminishing returns years ago. Rather, discussions between governments need to draw lessons from the second global economic shock in 15 years so as to rebuild a system of global trade arrangements capable of better tackling systemic crises and, more importantly, better able to contribute to the growing number of first-order challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Doing so will require revisiting the very purpose of the WTO. Specifically, action now over Covid creates goodwill to establish global trade as a norm and preserve the relevance of the trading system post-Covid. González 20. (Anabel Gonzalez is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and former Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY ACTION As of 2 November 2020, there are 46.9 million COVID-19 cases across all regions, with the number of deaths exceeding 1.2 million, and rising.2 The economic and social impacts of the pandemic and its containment measures are not less daunting. Global growth is estimated at -4.9 in 2020, with over 95 of countries projected to have negative per capita income growth (IMF 2020). Trade volumes are expected to decrease by between 13 and 32 from last year,3 while foreign direct investment flows could plunge by up to 40 (UNCTAD 2020). Is it estimated that the equivalent of 555 million jobs have been lost in the first half of this year (ILO 2020), which in turn could push up to 100 million more people into extreme poverty and would almost double the number of persons suffering from acute hunger (FAO 2020). While there is some evidence that goods trade may be rebounding and that the worst-case trade scenario projected in April could be averted (CPB 2020, WTO 2020a), the recovery from the deepest global recession since World War II will depend on the sustained and effective containment of the virus and the quality of government policies. The World Bank/IMF Development Committee warned that the pandemic has the potential to erase development gains for many countries (World Bank 2020a). Some consequences may also be long-lasting, such as lower investment, erosion of human capital, and a retreat from global trade and supply linkages (World Bank 2020b). It is no understatement to say these are extraordinary times. In many countries, governments are providing significant levels of fiscal support to try to stabilise their economies, sustain companies and minimise the impact on workers; in many others, limited fiscal space and informality constraint governments’ capacity to mitigate the damage. For advanced and developing economies alike, trade is a powerful, cost-effective tool to alleviate the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the health and economic fronts. And yet, protectionism is gaining an upper hand, deepening some of pre-pandemic confrontations that were already threatening the global economy. The short-term response to the virus and longer-term growth prospects depend on strong multilateral cooperation to scale back obstacles to trade and investment, increase business certainty and leverage opportunities which the pandemic has accelerated in areas like the digital economy. It is also needed to preserve stable and coordinated international relations to avoid that heavy threats implicit in the pandemic could result in catastrophic disorders or conflicts (Jean 2020). But it will not happen automatically. Unless governments accelerate their efforts to collaborate, growing protectionism and increased distortions to global value chains (GVCs) risk being a by-product of the virus, at the same time further exacerbating its negative implications. This demands extraordinary action. This chapter addresses the question of what role for trade ministers at the WTO in times of crises with a view to activating global cooperation to overcome COVID-19. In addition to the introductory section, the second section explores the need to reactivate the WTO to underpin collaboration among governments, the third section argues that trade ministers should call the shots during crisis, the fourth section suggests eight actions for ministers to rein in protectionism and mitigate further damage, the fifth section refers to the mechanics on how and when to do it, and a final section offers concluding remarks. REACTIVATE THE WTO Trade needs to be part of the response to COVID-19 and its upshots, and countries cannot afford the WTO, hobbled as it has been lately, to muddle through. Moreover, as the world confronts more frequent and severe profound shocks such as financial crises, terrorism, extreme weather and pandemics (McKinsey Global Institute 2020), the WTO needs to step up its role during systemic crises. The fact that the organisation has been faltering, that there is a leadership vacuum and that distrust runs high among major traders will not make it any easier. Exacerbated tensions related to the pandemic can only add to the feeling that WTO rules have been conceived for a very different context, increasing the risk of a loss of legitimacy (Jean 2020). This is not about a major reset of the WTO. It is about (re)activating the organisation to serve its members as they combat the devastating impact of the pandemic and the global recession. The WTO needs broader reform, in particular to address structural changes in the global economy. While extremely important, this discussion should not hamper the ability of the WTO to deliver at times of systemic crisis. Moreover, should the WTO – or more accurately, its members – demonstrate they can actually rise to the occasion in the context of COVID-19, they will also contribute to increasing trust levels on the ability of the organisation to produce results. The starting point is a shift in mindset: governments need to understand that international trade is not a problem in the crisis, but rather a core element of the solution (Baldwin and Evenett 2020). Take the shortages of medical supplies. There are three methods of assuring supply: stockpiling, investments in manufacturing capacity and trade. Of these options, relying on international trade is the most efficient and economic choice, provided the WTO can help assure security of this method of supply (Wolff 2020a). To be sure, many nations have taken unilateral steps to facilitate trade, especially in medical supplies and medicines. The Global Trade Alert reports that while 91 jurisdictions have adopted a total of 202 export controls on these goods since the beginning of 2020, 106 jurisdictions have executed 229 import policy reforms on these goods over the same period.4 After initial border closures, some neighbouring countries are beginning to facilitate the cross-border flow of goods. At the regional level and among subsets of countries, governments have issued different statements to keep trade lanes open and supply chains moving (see Table A1 in the Annex). After a tepid declaration from G20 leaders, trade ministers reaffirmed their determination to cooperate and coordinate to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade and investment and to lay a solid foundation for a global economic recovery. They also endorsed a set of short-term collective actions on trade regulation, trade facilitation, transparency, operation of logistics networks and support for small enterprises, and a group of longer-term actions on WTO reform, GVC resilience and investment; monitoring of implementation was left to senior officials (G20 2020). These actions are positive and reflect the political will of governments to collaborate to some extent – even if they have not fully countered the flurry of barriers and restrictions surrounding trade in critical medical gear. They are no substitute for trade cooperation at the global level, either. In the case of medical products, for example, the EU, the US and China account for almost three-quarters of world exports (WTO 2020b); cooperation initiatives that do not include these members would fall short on impact. The venue for cooperation should be global and open to all, even if not all 164 WTO members opt to engage in all initiatives. TRADE MINISTERS SHOULD CALL THE SHOTS DURING CRISES Challenges notwithstanding, governments need to act now to empower the WTO to play an active part in coordinating the response to the pandemic. The WTO is more than an organisation immersed in myriad drama on the shores of Lake Geneva; it is a solid framework for global trade cooperation. It is in countries’ interest to preserve the relevance of the WTO; its role can be critical in helping members help themselves. In a member-driven organisation such as the WTO, the role of the Director-General and the Secretariat is important and can and should be enhanced, for example with greater power of initiative and strengthened monitoring and analytics capabilities. The WTO dedicated page on the pandemic is a step in the right direction.5 But the ultimate responsibility to provide direction and act rests with governments. The WTO is nothing more and nothing less than the collectivity of its members (Steger 2020), a point that is frequently forgotten in the public discourse. Without strong leadership, frequent engagement and serious interest among members in addressing its challenges, the WTO itself cannot deliver results (Cutler 2020). Paraphrasing VanGrasstek (2013), the multilateral trading system receives its inspiration from economists and is shaped primarily by lawyers, but it can only operate within the limits set by politicians. Post Covid WTO legitimacy and credibility re necessary to prevent a downward spiral of protectionism. Solís 20. (Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. “The post COVID-19 world: Economic nationalism triumphant?” July 10, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/10/the-post-covid-19-world-economic-nationalism-triumphant/ TDI The damage caused by the worst global health crisis in a century is vast. The new coronavirus has traveled far and fast, infecting more than 8.7 million people and killing more than 460,000. One after another, economies have gone into lockdown to slow down the spread of the disease. The combined supply and demand shocks have ravaged the world economy with the most severe downturn since the Great Depression; anticipated drops to international trade and investment flows of 30 and 40, respectively; and unemployment spikes in many countries. The pandemic has cost lives and livelihoods and has erased the chances of returning to the status quo ante, but it has also brought little clarity regarding what kind of international order it will usher in. Is the future one of deglobalization, decoupling, and reshoring of economic activity? The pandemic hit an already wounded multilateral trading system. The chances that the World Trade Organization (WTO) can deliver a multilateral round of trade negotiations to slash tariffs across the board and update the trade and investment rulebook are nil. But the WTO has also lost its central role as arbiter of trade disputes among its members. In December 2019, the Appellate Body ceased to function due to the U.S. block of new appointments, citing judicial overreach. At a time of rising protectionism, the erosion of a rules-based mechanism to adjudicate disputes bodes ill. Longstanding challenges to the WTO have been exacerbated by an abdication of leadership from the great powers to ensure its survival. China has been the godchild of globalization, leveraging its accession to the WTO to become workshop for the world and a huge domestic market coveted by foreign firms. But China lost its appetite for economic reform, reinvesting on a state capitalism model that imposes heavy costs on other nations. Unchecked subsidies and privileges awarded to its state-owned enterprises, insufficient protection of intellectual property, foreign investment restrictions, forced technology transfers, and cyber protectionism all make the Chinese government’s self-proclamation as champion of global free trade ring hollow. The Trump administration judges the WTO incapable of tackling the China challenge, but instead of creating coalitions of like-minded countries to bring about effective multilateral trade governance, it appears determined to further harm cripple the international organization. It has offered no blueprint to fix the dispute settlement mechanism, has abused the national security exemption to raise tariffs against allies, and is gearing up for its most fundamental assault to date on the WTO: a tariff reset through which the U.S. may unilaterally abandon its commitments on bound tariffs and apply larger duties to force other countries to open their markets. Trade spats as other countries retaliate in kind is a more likely result. Tariff wars and the battle for technology supremacy have come to define U.S.-China great power competition. After a grueling trade conflict, the United States and China reached a limited trade agreement in January 2020. The deal marked a pause in the tariff war and addressed some non-tariff barriers on foreign direct investment and intellectual property; but it left intact the core of Chinese industrial policy (public subsidies and state-owned enterprises) and retained U.S. duties on $360 billion worth of Chinese products. China’s massive purchase commitments ($200 billion) were quickly rendered unattainable by the severe economic downturn in China due to COVID-19. In fighting for the new economic order, setting standards on cutting-edge technologies will be at the forefront. China is using all the levers of industrial policy to gain technological primacy in areas like AI and quantum computing. Telecom and the battle over 5G offer a preview of quarrels to come. Deeply concerned with the cybersecurity risks that Chinese telecom giants like Huawei pose, the U.S. government placed the company on its Entity List, banning American exports without a license. It has since tightened the restrictions by barring foreign companies from supplying Huawei with products manufactured with American equipment and technology. National security concerns are increasingly encroaching on existing webs of economic interdependence. Wary of China’s acquisition of critical technology, countries like the United States, Australia, and Japan have tightened their screening of foreign direct investment. The pandemic has only exacerbated concerns that weakened companies in strategic sectors are at risk of foreign takeover. COVID-19’s impact on the international trading system is twofold. It has reinforced existing trends such as the deceleration and now drop in the volume of international trade, the rise of economic security as governments expand their toolkit to restrict trade and investment flows, and it has laid bare the fallout in U.S.-China relations. But the pandemic also brought new challenges that exposed the extent to which trade cooperation is in short supply. Export protectionism has risen in prominence with national restrictions on shipments of essential medical supplies and personal protective equipment. The WTO allows for such curbs for public health purposes – provided the measures are temporary and transparent. Few countries, however, have bothered to comply with their notification commitments. The blow comes at a time when the WTO is adrift with the decision of Director General Roberto Azevedo to step down early, opening the search for new leadership in a climate of divisiveness. Graph detailing the number of countries that imposed export restrictions on various categories of medical supplies and devices in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Are we on the eve of a renationalized world economy? That is the aspiration of several American and European public officials who fault extended global supply chains and overdependence on China for the current mishaps in tackling the pandemic. But the view that economic nationalism and reshoring of manufacturing is a fail-safe path to security and prosperity is wrong. For one, it skirts the responsibility of governments to properly stockpile essential medical supplies. Furthermore, the export curbs will be counterproductive, eliminating incentives for producers to expand capacity and increasing the cost of much needed medicines and medical devices. If the recent lockdowns have taught us anything, it is that exclusive reliance on the domestic market is too risky. Diversification of supply, redundancies in the manufacturing chain, and stockpiling programs are better alternatives. In this endeavor, global supply chains are part of the solution, not the problem. COVID-19 will not produce an exodus of foreign companies from the Chinese market. Recent surveys of American companies with operations in China show that most firms intend to stay put. A February survey of Japanese companies conducted by Tokyo Shoko Research shows that only a fraction (4) are considering exit from China. Therefore, the Japanese government’s $2.2 billion fund to restructure supply chains should be understood as risk management, not decoupling. When international companies map out their business strategies, they must factor in heightened risks – protectionism, national security controls, and economic lockdowns. Hence, efforts by middle powers to offer an interim arbitration mechanism at the WTO to handle trade disputes and to commit to maintaining open supply chains in essential medical goods are the right antidote to rising economic nationalism. As a staunch supporter of rules-based trade and with its decision to forego export protectionism in the current crisis, Japan has much to contribute to these efforts. Trade solves great power competition – regionalism causes militarized crises. Lake 18. (David Lake is a Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. "Economic Openness and Great Power Competition: Lessons for China and the United States,” April 30, 2018. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171196/ TDI I develop two central arguments. First, historically, great power competition has been driven primarily by exclusion or fears of exclusion from each power’s international economic zone, including its domestic market. Great powers in the past have often used their international influence to build zones in which subordinate polities – whether these be colonies or simply states within a sphere of influence – are integrated into their economies. These economic zones, in turn, are typically biased in favor of the great power’s firms and investors, with the effect of excluding (in whole or part) the economic agents of other great powers. These other great powers, in response, are then compelled to develop or expand their own exclusive economic zones. The “race” for economic privilege can quickly divide the world up into economic blocs. Like the security dilemma, great powers need not actually exclude one another from their zones; the fear of exclusion alone is enough to ignite the process of division. The race for privilege then draws great powers into over-expanding into unprofitable regions and, more important, militarized competition. Economic and military competition are thus linked, with the former usually driving the latter. The most significant military crises have, historically, been over where to draw the boundaries between economic zones and subsequent challenges to those boundaries. Economic closure and fear of closure have been consistent sources of great power conflict in the past – and possibly will be in the future. The major exception to this trend was the peaceful transfer of dominance in Latin America from Britain to the United States in the late nineteenth century. This suggests that economic closure and great power competition is not inevitable, but a choice of the great powers themselves. Second, this international competition is driven, in turn, by domestic, rent-seeking groups and their economic interests. In all countries, scarce factors of production, import competing sectors, and domestically-oriented firms have concentrated and intense preferences for market restricting policies, including tariffs and the formation of exclusive economic zones. Consumers and free trade-oriented groups have diffuse preferences for market enhancing policies, and thus tend to lose at the ballot box and in the making of national policy. This inequality in preference intensity does not mean protectionists always win; after 1934, the United States insulated itself by shifting authority to the executive and negotiating reductions through broad, multi-product international agreements.8 Yet, as the recent return to economic nationalism of the Trump administration suggests, protectionism often wins out. Rent-seeking is a central tendency, not an inevitable success. Contemporary great power relations are at a critical juncture. As China’s influence expands, the role of special economic interests in China is especially worrisome. In pursuit of stability, political support, or private gains, the government will always be tempted to create economic zones that favor its nationals. In this way, China will be no different than the majority of great powers before it. But, given the expansive role of the state in the Chinese economy, especially its backing of outward foreign investments by its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the close ties between business elites and its authoritarian political leaders, however, it will be even harder for China to resist biasing any future economic zone to benefit its own firms. Although China has gained greatly from economic openness, its domestic political system will be prone to rent-seeking demands by important constituents in areas of future influence. Critically, the United States is also moving toward economic closure with the election of President Trump on a platform of economic nationalism. Demands for protection against Chinese goods have been growing over time.9 The “China shock” that followed Beijing’s joining the World Trade Organization was a huge disruption to the international division of labor, U.S. comparative advantage, and especially U.S. industry.10 The Trans-Pacific Partnership, though now defunct, was “marketed” by President Barak Obama as a means of “containing” China, both economically and militarily, but was opposed by virtually all of the candidates in the 2016 presidential election for its trade-enhancing potential. President Trump has already signaled a much more hostile and protectionist stance toward China – as well as calling for the repeal of NAFTA and even questioning the utility of the European Union. Not only has he imposed tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, steel and aluminum, dangerously declaring the latter two issues of national security, he is making exceptions on these tariffs for friends and allies. 11 Implicitly targeting China, these protectionist moves by the administration risk creating preferential trading blocs not seen since the 1930s. He has also now proposed punitive tariffs on over $60 billions of imports from China into the United States.12 Acknowledging his inconsistencies on many policy issues, Trump’s economic nationalism has remained the core of his political agenda. The threat to the liberal international economy is not only that China might seek an economic bloc in the future, but that the United States itself is turning more exclusionary. For each great power to fear that the other might seek to exclude it from its economic zone is not unreasonable. If so, great power competition could break out in the twenty-first century not because of bipolarity or any inevitable tendency toward conflict, but because neither great power can control its own protectionist forces nor signal to the other that it would not exclude it from its economic zone. The British-U.S. case, again, suggests that exclusion and competition are not inevitable, but the current danger of economic closure is real and increasing. This article is synthetic in its theory and merely suggestive in its use of historical evidence. The theory aims to integrate current work on political economy and national security, not to develop a completely original take on this relationship. In turn, rather than testing the theory in any rigorous sense or delving into particular cases to show the theoretical mechanisms at work, so to speak, it surveys selected historical episodes to illustrate central tendencies. It is the recurring pattern across multiple cases that suggests why we should worry today. The remainder of this essay is divided in three primary sections. Section I briefly outlines the analytics of economic openness and great power competition. Section II focuses on historical instances of great power competition, highlighting the role of economic openness as a central cleavage in international politics. Section III examines contemporary policies in and between China and the United States. The conclusion suggests ways that the potential for conflict may be mitigated. The Open Economy Politics of Great Power Competition All states have a tendency towards protectionism at home and exclusive economic zones abroad. A tendency, though, is not an inevitability. The pursuit of protection and economic zones by domestic interests is conditioned by the political coalition in power at any given time and institutions that aggregate and bias the articulation of social groups. 13 The tendency is also influenced, however, by the actions of other countries. Protectionism can sour great power relations, but it is the desire for exclusive economic zones that drives great power competition and, given the possibility of coercion, influences grand strategy. Thus, the theory sketched here integrates insights from international political economy (see below), the literature on domestic politics and grand strategy,14 and systemic theories of international relations.15 Independently, WTO cred solves nuclear war – allows an off-track for nuclear weapons. Hamann 09. (Georgia Hamann is a J.D. Candidate, Vanderbilt University Law School, “Replacing Slingshots with Swords: Implications of the Antigua-Gambling 22.6 Panel Report for Developing Countries and the World Trading System,” 2009. TDI Voluntary compliance with WTO rules and procedures is of the utmost importance to the international trading system.'0 0 Given the increasingly globalized market, the coming years will see an increase in the importance of the WTO as a cohesive force and arbiter of disputes that likely will become more frequent and injurious. 01' The work of the WTO cannot be overstated in a nuclear-armed world, as the body continues to promote respect and even amity among nations with opposing philosophical goals or modes of governance. 10 2 Demagogues in the Unites States may decry the rise of China as a geopolitical threat, 0 3 and extremists in Russia may play dangerous games of brinksmanship with other great powers, but trade keeps politicians' fingers off "the button. ' 10 4 The WTO offers an astounding rate of compliance for an organization with no standing army and no real power to enforce its decisions, suggesting that governments recognize the value of maintaining the international construct of the WTO. 105 In order to promote voluntary compliance, the WTO must maintain a high level of credibility. 106 Nations must perceive the WTO as the most reasonable option for dispute resolution or fear that the WTO wields enough influence to enforce sanctions. 10 7 The arbitrators charged with performing the substantive work of the WTO by negotiating, compromising, and issuing judgments are keenly aware of the responsibility they have to uphold the organization's credibility. 108 Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr 15 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons, nuclear firestorms would burn simultaneously over a total land surface area of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires, many of which would rage over large cities and industrial areas, would release many tens of millions of tons of black carbon soot and smoke (up to 180 million tons, according to peer-reviewed studies), which would rise rapidly above cloud level and into the stratosphere. For an explanation of the calculation of smoke emissions, see Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts. The scientists who completed the most recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter discovered that the sunlight would heat the smoke, producing a self-lofting effect that would not only aid the rise of the smoke into the stratosphere (above cloud level, where it could not be rained out), but act to keep the smoke in the stratosphere for 10 years or more. The longevity of the smoke layer would act to greatly increase the severity of its effects upon the biosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke (predicted to be produced by a range of strategic nuclear wars) would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere. Such an enormous loss of warming sunlight would produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth in a matter of weeks. For a period of 1-3 years following the war, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in the central agricultural zones of North America and Eurasia. For an explanation of nuclear winter, see Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. Nuclear winter would cause average global surface temperatures to become colder than they were at the height of the last Ice Age. Such extreme cold would eliminate growing seasons for many years, probably for a decade or longer. Can you imagine a winter that lasts for ten years? The results of such a scenario are obvious. Temperatures would be much too cold to grow food, and they would remain this way long enough to cause most humans and animals to starve to death. Global nuclear famine would ensue in a setting in which the infrastructure of the combatant nations has been totally destroyed, resulting in massive amounts of chemical and radioactive toxins being released into the biosphere. We don’t need a sophisticated study to tell us that no food and Ice Age temperatures for a decade would kill most people and animals on the planet. Would the few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment?
1AC – Developing Economies Contention 3 is Developing Economies.
Scenario 1 is India. India is in crisis – the recent COVID surge is fundamentally different from that of the past. Khullar 21. (Dhruv Khullar is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, where he writes primarily about medicine, health care, and politics. He is also a practicing physician and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College) “India’s Crisis Marks a New Phase in the Pandemic,” The New Yorker, May 13, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/indias-crisis-marks-a-new-phase-in-the-pandemic TDI Laxminarayan’s walks have changed in recent weeks. Coronavirus deaths in India have skyrocketed, and a frightening atmosphere has descended. New Delhi is roughly as dense as New York City, with some thirty thousand residents per square mile. But now Laxminarayan passes just a few scattered people; almost everyone stays inside if they can, venturing out only in search of food, medication, or medical care. Before the surge, mask-wearing had declined, but now everyone’s face is covered again. “You need public-health enforcement when the pandemic is invisible,” Laxminarayan told me. “Now fear is the dominant force changing people’s behavior.” Government statistics indicate that the virus is newly infecting millions of Indians each week, and that some twenty thousand or thirty thousand people are dying weekly. But most experts, including Laxminarayan, believe that those numbers capture a fraction of the true covid-19 toll. “It’s a war zone,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s worse than what you’re reading in the papers or seeing on TV. Whatever the numbers are, they don’t tell the full story. The human toll is devastating.” The current surge differs fundamentally from India’s experience last year. “This is truly a national wave,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s not urban. It’s not rural. It’s not north or south. It’s everywhere.” He went on, “During the first wave, the poor suffered the bulk of the health and economic toll. Now everyone is affected. I personally don’t know a single family that doesn’t have covid in it right now. I don’t mean in their extended family. I mean in their nuclear family.” In late April, after his dentist’s parents both died and after a colleague fell ill and couldn’t get oxygen, Laxminarayan decided to shift from covid research to covid relief. He and his team at C.D.D.E.P. decided to focus on India’s oxygen-supply problem, which has fundamentally limited the nation’s hospital capacity. They launched an initiative called OxygenForIndia, raising eight and a half million dollars in two weeks; with the help of corporate partners, among them Verizon Media, Logitech, and UiPath, they have secured more than two thousand oxygen concentrators—portable devices that remove nitrogen from the air to produce purified oxygen—and thirty thousand cylinders to store gaseous oxygen. By some estimates, those cylinder donations add up to more gaseous oxygen than India has received through foreign aid to date. “Right now, no one wants to leave a hospital bed they’re in,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s the only place they know perhaps they can get oxygen. We want to assure people they will have oxygen at home, so that hospital capacity is freed up for the sickest patients.” Laxminarayan thinks that bolstering critical-care capacity is a long-term proposition—“You can’t make doctors and nurses overnight”—and that India is better served today by making more efficient use of its existing infrastructure. OxygenForIndia has already started delivering oxygen to people’s homes, but the organization’s larger goal is to partner with hospitals in urban areas: Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata, among others. Doctors, along with algorithms, will triage patients upon presentation or as they improve before discharge. Those deemed safe to go home with supportive oxygen will be given a Q.R. code to be scanned at a nearby warehouse, where they can collect an oxygen cylinder or concentrator to keep as long as they need. (Cylinders must be refilled at the warehouse each day; concentrators can be used continuously at home.) “I’m hoping this is a scalable model that can be used by other countries when they face their big covid wave,” Laxminarayan said. “Because there’s no reason to believe they won’t.” The air around us, which contains twenty-one-per-cent oxygen, must be concentrated and purified to produce the medical-grade gas that people need when the coronavirus besieges their lungs. The most efficient way to accomplish this—the default in wealthy countries—is for factories to produce liquid oxygen, which tanker trucks then deliver to hospitals, where it can be stored in large containers and then piped into patients’ rooms. Many hospitals in poor countries, however, aren’t equipped to store liquid oxygen, and must rely on an external supply. If a hospital is in a remote location, this can be a serious logistical challenge. Another option is to install on-site plants that extract oxygen from the air. These systems, which use a technology known as pressure swing adsorption, or P.S.A., are expensive, and require maintenance. In October, the Indian government announced plans to build a hundred and sixty-two such plants around the country; thus far, thirty-three have been installed. Laxminarayan’s organization also hopes to create dozens of oxygen-generation plants at Indian hospitals. For now, many hospitals rely on simpler, decentralized technology, which comes with disadvantages: the gaseous oxygen contained in cylinders can cost ten times as much as its liquid equivalent, and oxygen concentrators are usually intended for only one or a few patients at a time. Whatever the process, it’s clear that too many Indians are going without the oxygen they need. Since this February, India’s oxygen requirements have increased fifteenfold; it now needs nearly three times as much medical-grade oxygen as it did during the height of its first wave. Some hospitals have run out of oxygen, and others are on the precipice. Hospitals won’t admit patients whom they can’t treat; many Indians therefore suffer a suffocating illness at home. The government is doing what it can: granting oxygen-transport vehicles an ambulance-like status on roads; leveraging the national railway service to move tankers around the country; enlisting the air force to transport empty containers back to factories to be refilled. On Wednesday, India’s Supreme Court ordered the federal government to present a more comprehensive plan to meet New Delhi’s oxygen needs. Meanwhile, foreign governments and international aid organizations are sending ventilators, concentrators, and cylinders. Still, each day brings fresh reports of people dying because they can’t get oxygen. (The shortage is likely to spread: globally, the deficit of medical oxygen—the gap between what’s needed and what’s being produced—has tripled in recent months, in part owing to the unmet need in India but also because of growing demand in South America and the Middle East.) Technically, Indians have access to universal health coverage: the country’s constitution guarantees everyone a “right to life,” and people can receive care at government facilities free of charge. But, over decades, low levels of public financing have led to poor quality and severe staff and supply shortages. India’s federal government spends around one per cent of G.D.P. on health care—far less than most large economies. Moreover, states share responsibility with the federal government for health-care delivery, and that has resulted in a large variation in funding and quality. Many Indians therefore opt to pay for private health care, if they can afford it, and the private sector now provides most care in India, even though commercial health insurance is available to only a fraction of the population and out-of-pocket costs can be devastating. In 2018, the central government launched a major effort aimed at insuring that low-income people could receive care at private facilities. But relatively few Indians have a regular place of care where they can receive ongoing management of their medical conditions or outpatient testing and treatment for covid-19. The coronavirus has severely strained India’s critical-care capacity, which was lacking even before the pandemic: during normal times, the country has around fifteen per cent of the critical-care specialists it needs. More generally, India has nine doctors for every ten thousand people—about half the global average, and only a third as many as the U.S. There’s also the issue of maldistribution: two-thirds of India’s population lives in rural areas, where only twenty per cent of the nation’s doctors work. (Shortages of nurses and other clinicians can be even worse.) VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER The Pandemic Through the Eyes of a Three-Year-Old Still, India’s physician-to-patient ratio is higher than that of Bangladesh, Nepal, or any nation in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the globe’s myriad health-care systems share the fundamental constraints that have transformed India’s second wave into a humanitarian crisis—including an oxygen-delivery infrastructure that is unable to meet the demands of a vast viral surge. Many Indians have experienced the current surge as a surprise. But the forces driving it are fundamentally familiar. “Society opened up without restraint,” K. Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India and the former chair of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, told me. “It was widely perceived that the pandemic is behind us, that we are unlikely to have a second wave. We didn’t just return to 2019—we entered 2021 with an extra degree of exuberance.” Politicians encouraged people to gather at massive rallies; cricket stadiums filled with fans; malls opened to shoppers and weddings welcomed guests. The government sanctioned the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival, and millions of people made the pilgrimage to Haridwar, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, to wash in the River Ganges. The festival started on April 1st and continued for nearly three weeks before the coronavirus toll became unbearable and undeniable. Afterward, people carried the virus back to far-flung cities and villages. “The euphoria of putting the pandemic behind us was a widely prevalent emotion, and it suited everyone,” Reddy said. “Industry wanted to get back to full production. Small traders wanted to get back to business. Ordinary citizens wanted to get back to their lives.” Many countries have engaged in wishful thinking during the pandemic; all have struggled to fight the virus while avoiding economic collapse. The Indian experience speaks specifically to the problem of endurance, and raises the question of how long low- and middle-income countries can maintain pandemic protocols absent a clear time line for widespread vaccination. The U.S. and much of Europe have navigated the pandemic while looking forward to early and reliable access to vaccines; if we didn’t have a firm end date, we at least knew that an end was approaching. Under such conditions, politicians and the public can examine, debate, and accept the costs of restrictions. But that calculus is harder, perhaps impossible, without some assurance that pandemic life is temporary. ADVERTISEMENT The global vaccination effort has faltered, with poor countries receiving a fraction of the vaccines they had expected. covax, the world’s primary initiative to promote vaccine equity, had planned to deliver two billion doses in 2021; so far, it’s sent out about fifty million. Less than half of one per cent of all covid-19 vaccines have been administered in poor nations. “We’re now in this very strange situation where we’re talking about fourteen-year-olds in America getting vaccinated, while older people around the world remain vulnerable and entire countries are devastated,” Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown’s public-health school, told me. “It’s a moral issue, but it’s also an epidemiological one. We’re placing everyone at risk when we let the virus run rampant. It creates a huge substrate for new variants. We need to quadruple our efforts to get the world vaccinated. That has to be the No. 1 priority for the Biden Administration going forward.” The U.S. has committed four billion dollars to covax, which still faces a funding shortfall of tens of billions of dollars. Last week, the Biden Administration also announced its support for waiving intellectual-property protections for covid-19 vaccines. The proposed waiver—it must be approved by the World Trade Organization—has been hailed by many public-health practitioners; the director-general of the W.H.O., Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called Biden’s support for the proposal “a monumental moment” in the fight against the pandemic. But others have sounded a cautionary note, raising the possibility that the spectre of patent waivers will disincentivize companies from investing in vaccine and drug development in the future. “I wonder whether we want to send potential firms the message that the larger the health crisis, the less we will respect and protect your I.P.,” Craig Garthwaite, a professor at Northwestern University, tweeted, after the Biden Administration’s announcement. “That’s a great system if you think this is the last pandemic we’ll face.” That causes Indo-Pak conflict escalation. Somos 20. Christy Somos is a CTVNews.ca Writer) “COVID-19 has escalated armed conflict in India, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and the Philippines, study finds,” CTV News, December 17, 2020. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/covid-19-has-escalated-armed-conflict-in-india-pakistan-iraq-libya-and-the-philippines-study-finds-1.5236738 TDI INDIA India saw a rise in armed conflict during the study period, with violent clashes in the Kashmir region between Kashmiri separatists facing off against the Indian military, as well as conflicts between Pakistan and India. “So what mostly drove the increase in conflict intensity…were basically due to two factors,” Ide said. “The first being that there is some evidence that Pakistan sponsors or supports these insurgents in Kashmir, to encourage them to increase their attacks on Indian forces because they perceived them to be weak and struggling with the pandemic.” The second factor, Ide explained, was that while Indian government enacted a “pretty comprehensive lockdown in Kashmir, and sealing it way from international media attention…launched more intense counter-insurgency efforts and…cracked down on any pro-Pakistani sympathy expressions.” IRAQ Iraq had an increase in armed conflict, but Ide noted that the overall intensity did not change that much – a “very slight upward trend” in scale that was not linear. What did increase were attacks by ISIS in April, May, and June. “The Iraqi government was really in trouble,” he said. “They had enormous economic loss, they had to go head-to-head and use troops and funds to combat the pandemic – the international coalition supporting the government partially withdrew troops or stopped their activities.” “The Iraqi government was really in a position of weakness.” Ide said the Islamic State exploited the pandemic and the thin resources at hand to the government to expand territorial control, conquer new areas and to stage more attacks. LIBYA The civil war in Libya between the Government of National Accord’s (GNA) forces and the Libyan National Army escalated during the study period, after a ceasefire brokered in January was broken, Ide said. “As soon as international attention shifted to the pandemic…they really escalated the conflict, tried to make gains while hoping the other side is weakened because of the pandemic, hoping to score an easy military victory” Ide said. “It didn’t happen.” The UN Security Council noted in a May report that the pandemic was bolstering the 15-month conflict, citing the history of more than 850 broken ceasefire agreements and “a tide of civilian deaths” on top of a worsening outbreak. PAKISTAN The ongoing conflict with India saw a rise in armed conflict in Pakistan during the study period – which were unrelated to the pandemic, but also a rise in Taliban-affiliated groups and anti-government sentiments due to pandemic restrictions, Ide said. “There were a lot of anti-government grievances,” Ide said. “There were restrictions on religious gatherings, which religious groups did not like, and there were some negative economic impacts which affected the local people.” Ide said those two factors could have been exploited by the Taliban in a quest to recruit more followers. Later in the study period, a swath Pakistani government officials were struck with COVID-19, leaving the country with a leadership crisis, which saw an increase of attacks by Taliban groups in May. Extinction. Roblin 21. (Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China, "If the Next India-Pakistan War Goes Nuclear, It Will Destroy the World," The National Interest, March 26, 2021. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/if-next-india-pakistan-war-goes-nuclear-it-will-destroy-world-181134 TDI Here's What You Need to Remember: India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result. Between February 26 and 27 in 2019, Indian and Pakistani warplanes launched strikes on each other’s territory and engaged in aerial combat for the first time since 1971. Pakistan ominously hinted it was convening its National Command Authority, the institution which can authorize a nuclear strike. The two states, which have retained an adversarial relationship since their founding in 1947, between them deploy nuclear warheads that can be delivered by land, air and sea. However, those weapons are inferior in number and yield to the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by Russia and the United States, which include megaton-class weapons that can wipe out a metropolis in a single blast. Some commenters have callously suggested that means a “limited regional nuclear war” would remain an Indian and Pakistani problem. People find it difficult to assess the risk of rare but catastrophic events; after all, a full-scale nuclear war has never occurred before, though it has come close to happening. Such assessments are not only shockingly callous but shortsighted. In fact, several studies have modeled the global impact of a “limited” ten-day nuclear war in which India and Pakistan each exchange fifty 15-kiloton nuclear bombs equivalent in yield to the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Their findings concluded that spillover would in no way be “limited,” directly impacting people across the globe that would struggle to locate Kashmir on a map. And those results are merely a conservative baseline, as India and Pakistan are estimated to possess over 260 warheads. Some likely have yields exceeding 15-kilotons, which is relatively small compared to modern strategic warheads. Casualties Recurring terrorist attacks by Pakistan-sponsored militant groups over the status of India’s Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state have repeatedly led to threats of a conventional military retaliation by New Delhi. Pakistan, in turn, maintains it may use nuclear weapons as a first-strike weapon to counter-balance India’s superior conventional forces. Triggers could involve the destruction of a large part of Pakistan’s military or penetration by Indian forces deep into Pakistani territory. Islamabad also claims it might authorize a strike in event of a damaging Indian blockade or political destabilization instigated by India. India’s official policy is that it will never be first to strike with nuclear weapons—but that once any nukes are used against it, New Dehli will unleash an all-out retaliation. The Little Boy bomb alone killed around 100,000 Japanese—between 30 to 40 percent of Hiroshima’s population—and destroyed 69 percent of the buildings in the city. But Pakistan and India host some of the most populous and densely populated cities on the planet, with population densities of Calcutta, Karachi and Mumbai at or exceeding 65,000 people per square mile. Thus, even low-yield bombs could cause tremendous casualties. A 2014 study estimates that the immediate effects of the bombs—the fireball, over-pressure wave, radiation burns etc.—would kill twenty million people. An earlier study estimated a hundred 15-kiloton nuclear detonations could kill twenty-six million in India and eighteen million in Pakistan—and concluded that escalating to using 100-kiloton warheads, which have greater blast radius and overpressure waves that can shatter hardened structures, would multiply death tolls four-fold. Moreover, these projected body counts omit the secondary effects of nuclear blasts. Many survivors of the initial explosion would suffer slow, lingering deaths due to radiation exposure. The collapse of healthcare, transport, sanitation, water and economic infrastructure would also claim many more lives. A nuclear blast could also trigger a deadly firestorm. For instance, a firestorm caused by the U.S. napalm bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more people than the Fat Man bomb killed in Nagasaki. Refugee Outflows The civil war in Syria caused over 5.6 million refugees to flee abroad out of a population of 22 million prior to the conflict. Despite relative stability and prosperity of the European nations to which refugees fled, this outflow triggered political backlashes that have rocked virtually every major Western government. Now consider likely population movements in event of a nuclear war between India-Pakistan, which together total over 1.5 billion people. Nuclear bombings—or their even their mere potential—would likely cause many city-dwellers to flee to the countryside to lower their odds of being caught in a nuclear strike. Wealthier citizens, numbering in tens of millions, would use their resources to flee abroad. Should bombs beginning dropping, poorer citizens many begin pouring over land borders such as those with Afghanistan and Iran for Pakistan, and Nepal and Bangladesh for India. These poor states would struggle to supports tens of millions of refugees. China also borders India and Pakistan—but historically Beijing has not welcomed refugees. Some citizens may undertake risky voyages at sea on overloaded boats, setting their sights on South East Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Thousands would surely drown. Many regional governments would turn them back, as they have refugees of conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar in the past. Fallout Radioactive fallout would also be disseminated across the globe. The fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, for example, wounds its way westward from Ukraine into Western Europe, exposing 650,000 persons and contaminating 77,000 square miles. The long-term health effects of the exposure could last decades. India and Pakistan’s neighbors would be especially exposed, and most lack healthcare and infrastructure to deal with such a crisis. Nuclear Winter Studies in 2008 and 2014 found that of one hundred bombs that were fifteen-kilotons were used, it would blast five million tons of fine, sooty particles into the stratosphere, where they would spread across the globe, warping global weather patterns for the next twenty-five years. The particles would block out light from the sun, causing surface temperatures to decrease an average of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit across the globe, or 4.5 degrees in North American and Europe. Growing seasons would be shortened by ten to forty days, and certain crops such as Canadian wheat would simply become unviable. Global agricultural yields would fall, leading to rising prices and famine. The particles may also deplete between 30 to 50 percent of the ozone layer, allowing more of the sun’s radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, causing increased sunburns and rates of cancer and killing off sensitive plant-life and marine plankton, with the spillover effect of decimating fishing yields. To be clear, these are outcomes for a “light” nuclear winter scenario, not a full slugging match between the Russian and U.S. arsenals. Global Recession Any one of the factors above would likely suffice to cause a global economic recession. All of them combined would guarantee one. India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result. A massive decrease in consumption and production would obviously instigate a long-lasting recessionary cycle, with attendant deprivations and political destabilization slamming developed and less-developed countries alike. Taken together, these outcomes mean even a “limited” India-Pakistan nuclear war would significantly affect every person on the globe, be they a school teacher in Nebraska, a factory-worker in Shaanxi province or a fisherman in Mombasa. Unfortunately, the recent escalation between India and Pakistan is no fluke, but part of a long-simmering pattern likely to continue escalating unless New Delhi and Islamabad work together to change the nature of their relationship. Scenario 2 is South Africa. The third wave of the pandemic is fueling instability in South Africa. Egwu 21. (Patrick Egwu is a Nigerian freelance journalist currently based in Johannesburg, where he is an Open Society Foundations fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand) “South Africa’s Twin Crises Are Feeding Each Other,” Foreign Policy, July 20, 2021. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/20/south-africa-covid-19-struggles-deadly-third-wave-zuma-violence/ TDI South Africa is coping with two crises at once—a political storm caused by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, whose followers have caused chaos on the streets, and a deadly new wave of COVID-19 that’s hospitalizing thousands of people a day. On July 3, South Africa hit a record 26,000 cases of COVID-19, one of the highest new daily totals reported since the pandemic started over a year ago. The country has been battling a deadly third wave of the pandemic, following previous peaks during the first and second waves between April and December 2020. As of July 19, South Africa has recorded 2.3 million cases and 67,000 deaths since the pandemic started, according to the country’s Department of Health. On June 27, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would move to adjusted alert level 4 of lockdown for 14 days as the country faced a rising number of COVID-19 infections. After the end of the two-week lockdown and with a continuous spike in cases, Ramaphosa addressed the nation again on July 11 and announced an additional 14 days of restrictions. Ramaphosa was facing both the COVID-19 situation and the violence across the country by pro-Zuma supporters.. Banks and government buildings temporarily closed to avoid attacks. On July 12, Ramaphosa addressed the nation over persistent public violence and announced the deployment of soldiers to two provinces—Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the hometown of Zuma, where the violence started. As of July 13, more than 70 people had been killed and about 1,200 arrested. “This violence may indeed have its roots in the pronouncements and activities of individuals with a political purpose and in expressions of frustration and anger,” Ramaphosa said, but added that no grievance or political cause could justify the violence and destruction. The violence has affected access to health services, with front-line workers unable to reach vaccination stations and pharmacies often shuttered to avoid vandalism and looting. The unemployment and visible inequalities in the country exacerbated the violence. Thousands of South Africans have lost their jobs following lockdown restrictions, and there has been little government support for the economy. The violence created an opportunity to explore illegal options of survival. On top of this, the brutal police enforcement of the lockdown last year has aggravated existing tensions around police brutality, contributing to the unrest. Ramaphosa acknowledged this in his address: “This moment has thrown into stark relief what we already knew: that the level of unemployment, poverty, and inequality in our society is unsustainable.” As in so many other countries, the delta variant of COVID-19 now appears to be dominant, although the government has not published separate statistics for the different variants yet. Hospitals and front-line workers in the country are overwhelmed with the number of patients they are receiving each day. In some provinces, such as Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, many hospitals are operating above capacity, with shortage of spaces and oxygen for patients. Front-line health care workers have been hit hard. As of December 2020, over 38,000 health care workers in South Africa had tested positive for the virus, with more than 390 dead, according to data cited by Ramaphosa. Dozens Killed in South Africa Protests COLM QUINN The government is responding by calling for massive recruitment of health volunteers to beef up the staff strength at public hospitals. Earlier on in the pandemic, African countries made some gains against the virus through precautionary measures such as border closures. For instance, in March 2020, South Africa was the first country on the continent to declare a state of national disaster on the pandemic, and stiffer restrictions were announced. But these initial successes are gradually being lost with the new wave of infections and growing death rate. The gradual relaxation of restrictions to save South Africa’s ailing economy, which started last June, has worsened the situation. The World Bank says South Africa is among the most unequal countries in the world—something the pandemic has only inflamed. The unemployment rate in the country stood at 33 percent at the end of March and is highest among youth aged 15 to 24. As the third wave continues to ravage the country, just 4 million people—about 7 percent of South Africa’s population of 60 million—have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Department of Health. COVID is pummeling South Africa’s fragile economy and fueling the worst rioting since 1994. Steinhauser and Parkinson 21. (Gabriele Steinhauser writes about politics and economics in southern Africa and beyond and helps manage The Wall Street Journal's reporters on the continent. Joe Parkinson is the Wall Street Journal’s Africa Bureau Chief, leading a team of correspondents chronicling business, policy and geopolitical trends across the continent. “Third Covid Wave Upends Fragile South Africa, a Warning for Developing World,” The Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-pandemic-south-africa-riots-a-warning-for-developing-world-11626711622 TDI Wave after wave of coronavirus is pummeling South Africa’s fragile economy and its largely unvaccinated population, creating a spiral of death, lockdowns and anger that has fueled the country’s worst rioting since the collapse of white minority rule in 1994. At least 215 people died in the violence across South Africa’s two most populous provinces, and more than 3,400 have been arrested. While the looting had quieted by Monday, the situation remains tense in parts of the country. Saaberie Chishty paramedic Farah Williams said that after weeks of back-to-back calls from patients, the phones went quiet last week during the riots. The violence was initially sparked by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma earlier this month, and has exacerbated a power struggle within the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party since Nelson Mandela’s election as the country’s first Black president 27 years ago. President Cyril Ramaphosa has said the unrest was an attempted insurrection against South Africa’s democracy and intended to sabotage its economy. The political protest quickly devolved, becoming an outlet for the frustrations of an impoverished majority long shut out of the country’s economy. South Africa is struggling to emerge from a record contraction of 7 last year. Each surge of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns are putting more pressure on the divided nation, where 43 of workers were without a job at the end of March. “We were sitting on a dormant volcano here, where all of us might perish if it erupts,” said Xolani Dube, a political analyst with the Xubera Institute for Research and Development, a nonpartisan think tank in the southeastern city of Durban. “Now the volcano has erupted.” The human and economic dislocation in South Africa, where just 2.8 of people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, shows how difficult it will be for many emerging economies to recover from the pandemic. The violence in South Africa—as well as in countries including Colombia and Sudan—offers a stark example of how diminishing incomes and the rising cost of food are adding to more than a year of pandemic suffering, exacerbating political instability. The World Bank estimates that more than 160 million people will have been pushed into poverty as a result of Covid by the end of 2021, widening the gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations. The pandemic has led 41 million people to the brink of famine, according to the World Food Program. Africa instability goes nuclear. Mead 13. (Walter Mead is a James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities, Bard College) “Peace in The Congo? Why the World Should Care,” The American Interest, December 15, 2013. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/12/15/peace-in-the-congo-why-the-world-should-care/ One of the biggest questions of the 21st century is whether this destructive dynamic can be contained, or whether the demand for ethnic, cultural and/or religious homogeneity will continue to convulse world politics, drive new generations of conflict, and create millions more victims. The Congo conflict is a disturbing piece of evidence suggesting that, in Africa at least, there is potential for this kind of conflict. The Congo war (and the long Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighboring countries) is not, unfortunately alone. The secession of South Sudan from Sudan proper, the wars in what remains of that unhappy country, the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia and the rise of Christian-Muslim tension right across Africa (where religious conflict often is fed by and intensifies “tribal”—in Europe we would say “ethnic” or “national”—conflicts) are strong indications that the potential for huge and destructive conflict across Africa is very real. But one must look beyond Africa. The Middle East of course is aflame in religious and ethnic conflict. The old British Raj including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka offers countless examples of ethnic and religious conflict that sometimes is contained, and sometimes boils to the surface in horrendous acts of violence. Beyond that, rival nationalisms in East and Southeast Asia are keeping the world awake at night. The Congo war should be a reminder to us all that the foundations of our world are dynamite, and that the potential for new conflicts on the scale of the horrific wars of the 20th century is very much with us today. The second lesson from this conflict stems from the realization of how much patience and commitment from the international community (which in this case included the Atlantic democracies and a coalition of African states working as individual countries and through various international institutions) it has taken to get this far towards peace. Particularly at a time when many Americans want the US to turn inwards, there are people who make the argument that it is really none of America’s business to invest time and energy in the often thankless task of solving these conflicts. That might be an ugly but defensible position if we didn’t live in such a tinderbox world. Someone could rationally say, yes, it’s terrible that a million plus people are being killed overseas in a horrific conflict, but the war is really very far away and America has urgent needs at home and we should husband the resources we have available for foreign policy on things that have more power to affect us directly. The problem is that these wars spread. They may start in places that we don’t care much about (most Americans didn’t give a rat’s patootie about whether Germany controlled the Sudetenland in 1938 or Danzig in 1939) but they tend to spread to places that we do care very much about. This can be because a revisionist great power like Germany in 1938-39 needs to overturn the balance of power in Europe to achieve its goals, or it can be because instability in a very remote place triggers problems in places that we care about very much. Out of Afghanistan in 2001 came both 9/11 and the waves of insurgency and instability that threaten to rip nuclear-armed Pakistan apart or with trigger wider conflict India. Out of the mess in Syria a witches’ brew of terrorism and religious conflict looks set to complicate the security of our allies in Europe and the Middle East and even the security of the oil supply on which the world economy so profoundly depends. Africa, and the potential for upheaval there, is of more importance to American security than many people may understand. The line between Africa and the Middle East is a soft one. The weak states that straddle the southern approaches of the Sahara are ideal petri dishes for Al Qaeda type groups to form and attract local support. There are networks of funding and religious contact that give groups in these countries potential access to funds, fighters, training and weapons from the Middle East. A war in the eastern Congo might not directly trigger these other conflicts, but it helps to create the swirling underworld of arms trading, money transfers, illegal commerce and the rise of a generation of young men who become experienced fighters—and know no other way to make a living. It destabilizes the environment for neighboring states (like Uganda and Kenya) that play much more direct role in potential crises of greater concern to us. The plan solves both scenarios and WTO IP rules are a barrier to scaled-up vaccine production. Pandey 21. (Ashutosh Pandey) “Rich countries block India, South Africa's bid to ban COVID vaccine patents,” DW, April 2, 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/rich-countries-block-india-south-africas-bid-to-ban-covid-vaccine-patents/a-56460175 The World Trade Organization (WTO) talks on a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily suspend intellectual property (IP) rules related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments hit a roadblock on Thursday after wealthy countries balked at the idea, Germany's dpa news agency reported. The two developing countries say the IP waiver will allow drugmakers in poor countries to start production of effective vaccines sooner. India and South Africa had approached the global trade body in October, calling on it to waive parts of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The suspension of rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information would ensure "timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines and medicines or to scaling-up of research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products essential to combat COVID-19," they said. The proposal was vehemently opposed by wealthy nations like the US and Britain as well as the European Union, who said that a ban would stifle innovation at pharmaceutical companies by robbing them of the incentive to make huge investments in research and development. This would be especially counterproductive during the current pandemic which needs the drugmakers to remain on their toes to deal with a mutating virus, they argue. The WTO talks are taking place as some wealthy countries face criticism for cornering billions of COVID shots — many times the size of their populations — while leaving poor countries struggling for supplies. Experts say the global scramble for vaccines, or vaccine nationalism, risks prolonging the pandemic. "We have to recognize that this virus knows no boundaries, it travels around the globe and the response to it should also be global. It should be based on international solidarity," said Ellen 't Hoen, the director of Medicines Law and Policy — a nonprofit campaigning for greater access to medicines. "Many of the large-scale vaccine manufacturers are based in developing countries. All the production capacity that exists should be exploited…and that does require the sharing of Not enough production capacity Supporters of the waiver, which include dozens of developing and least-developed countries and NGOs, said the WTO's IP rules were acting as a barrier to urgent scale-up of production of vaccines and other much needed medical equipment in poor countries. 1NC – Framing The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing
First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. 2. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 3. Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. 4. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
9/4/21
SEPTOCT - AC - COVID v2
Tournament: Loyola | Round: Semis | Opponent: Sidwell SW | Judge: Panel 1AC – Plan Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization should reduce intellectual property protections for COVID-19 medicines. 1AC – Inherency Contention 1 is Inherency.
Rich countries are blocking a WTO patent-waiver proposal necessary to boost global production of COVID vaccines. Meredith 21. (Sam Meredith is a Correspondent at CNBC in London, covering international politics, energy and business news) “Rich countries are refusing to waive the rights on Covid vaccines as global cases hit record levels,” CNBC, April 22, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/covid-rich-countries-are-refusing-to-waive-ip-rights-on-vaccines.html TDI LONDON — The U.S., Canada and U.K. are among some of the high-income countries actively blocking a patent-waiver proposal designed to boost the global production of Covid-19 vaccines. It comes as coronavirus cases worldwide surge to their highest level so far and the World Health Organization has repeatedly admonished a “shocking imbalance” in the distribution of vaccines amid the pandemic. Members of the World Trade Organization will meet virtually in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday to hold informal talks on whether to temporarily waive intellectual property and patent rights on Covid vaccines and treatments. The landmark proposal, which was jointly submitted by India and South Africa in October, has been backed by more than 100 mostly developing countries. It aims to facilitate the manufacture of treatments locally and boost the global vaccination campaign. Six months on, the proposal continues to be stonewalled by a small number of governments — including the U.S., EU, U.K., Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Canada, Australia and Brazil. “In this Covid-19 pandemic, we are once again faced with issues of scarcity, which can be addressed through diversification of manufacturing and supply capacity and ensuring the temporary waiver of relevant intellectual property,” Dr. Maria Guevara, international medical secretary at Medecins Sans Frontieres, said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is about saving lives at the end, not protecting systems.” The urgency and importance of waiving certain intellectual property rights amid the pandemic have been underscored by the WHO, health experts, civil society groups, trade unions, former world leaders, international medical charities, Nobel laureates and human rights organizations. Why does it matter? The waiver, if adopted at the General Council, the WTO’s highest-level decision-making body, could help countries around the world overcome legal barriers preventing them from producing their own Covid vaccines and treatments. Advocates of the proposal have conceded the waiver is not a “silver bullet,” but argue that removing barriers toward the development, production and approval of vaccines is vital in the fight to prevent, treat and contain the coronavirus. The pandemic is raging through developing economies and inflicting loss on a horrific scale. Lindsey 21. (Brink Lindsey) “Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix,” Brookings Institution, June 3, 2021. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/ TDI Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference. 1AC – WTO Credibility Contention 2 is WTO Credibility.
The new head of the WTO is on track to push for reform and an increased role in the international arena, but is hindered now due to lack of vaccine agreement. Baschuk 4-27. (Bryce Baschuk is a Bloomberg Reporter) "WTO Chief Pursues a ‘Hectic’ Agenda to Fix World Trade’s Referee," Bloomberg, April 27, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/wto-chief-pursues-a-hectic-agenda-to-fix-world-trade-s-referee TDI The head of the World Trade Organization raised an alarm about the credibility of the multilateral trading system, urging leaders to act fast to bolster the global economy with steps like fairer vaccine distribution and cooperate to resolve longer-term problems like overfishing. During her first two months, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has met with trade ministers around the globe to communicate a message that the WTO is important, it needs to be reformed and it needs to deliver results. So far, she says the reception from world leaders has been positive, but quickly translating that goodwill into substantive outcomes during a global pandemic is just as daunting as she anticipated. “The word I would use to describe it is absolutely hectic,” Okonjo-Iweala said in a phone interview on Tuesday when asked about her first few months in the job. “The challenges we thought were there are there and getting an agreement is not as easy because of longstanding ways of negotiating business positions.” Read More: Arcane WTO Pact Moves to Center of Vaccine Debate: Supply Lines Countries need to move past the notion that one country’s gain in international commerce is another’s loss, she said. “We need to break out of the zero-sum deadlock,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “We need to remind the countries and members that the WTO is here to deliver for people. We can’t take 20 years to negotiate something.” Okonjo-Iweala said her top priority is to use trade to alleviate the pandemic and said her recent meeting with trade ministers and vaccine manufacturers provided a positive step in the right direction. ‘More Pragmatism’ “That meeting yielded quite a lot,” she said. “I see more pragmatism on both sides.” An important component of the WTO’s trade and health agenda is a proposal from India and South Africa that seeks to temporarily waive enforcement of the WTO’s rules governing intellectual property for vaccines and other essential medical products. Read More: U.S. Trade Chief Meets Pfizer, AstraZeneca About Vaccine Supply As of this week there are fresh signals that the Biden administration, which currently opposes a waiver to the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, wants vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc to help ramp up U.S. pandemic assistance to the rest of the world. “There is movement,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “Are we there yet? No, but there is a little bit of change in the air among members. I think hopefully we will be able to come to some sort of a framework for the WTO ministers to bless.” “We don’t have time,” she added. “People are dying.” Okonjo-Iweala said this month’s vaccine meeting also revealed areas where the developing world can increase its capacity to produce more doses rather than waiting for rich countries to send them their excess supplies. She said various emerging markets such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Senegal, Indonesia and Egypt already have some capacity to begin producing vaccines for people living in developing economies. Patent waiver is necessary to revitalize WTO’s credibility as an international dispute mechanism – creates momentum for further reform. Meyer 6-18-21. (David Meyer is the Editor of CEO Daily and a senior writer on Fortune’s European team. Author of the digital rights primer, Control Shift: How Technology Affects You and Your Rights. “The WTO’s survival hinges on the COVID-19 vaccine patent debate, waiver advocates warn,” Fortune, June 18, 2021. https://fortune.com/2021/06/18/wto-covid-vaccines-patents-waiver-south-africa-trips/ TDI The World Trade Organization knows all about crises. Former U.S. President Donald Trump threw a wrench into its core function of resolving trade disputes—a blocker that President Joe Biden has not yet removed—and there is widespread dissatisfaction over the fairness of the global trade rulebook. The 164-country organization, under the fresh leadership of Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has a lot to fix. However, one crisis is more pressing than the others: the battle over COVID-19 vaccines, and whether the protection of their patents and other intellectual property should be temporarily lifted to boost production and end the pandemic sooner rather than later. According to some of those pushing for the waiver—which was originally proposed last year by India and South Africa—the WTO's future rests on what happens next. "The credibility of the WTO will depend on its ability to find a meaningful outcome on this issue that truly ramps-up and diversifies production," says Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter, South Africa's ambassador to the WTO. "Final nail in the coffin" The Geneva-based WTO isn't an organization with power, as such—it's a framework within which countries make big decisions about trade, generally by consensus. It's supposed to be the forum where disputes get settled, because all its members have signed up to the same rules. And one of its most important rulebooks is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, which sprang to life alongside the WTO in 1995. The WTO's founding agreement allows for rules to be waived in exceptional circumstances, and indeed this has happened before: its members agreed in 2003 to waive TRIPS obligations that were blocking the importation of cheap, generic drugs into developing countries that lack manufacturing capacity. (That waiver was effectively made permanent in 2017.) Consensus is the key here. Although the failure to reach consensus on a waiver could be overcome with a 75 supermajority vote by the WTO's membership, this would be an unprecedented and seismic event. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine IP waiver, it would mean standing up to the European Union, and Germany in particular, as well as countries such as Canada and the U.K.—the U.S. recently flipped from opposing the idea of a waiver to supporting it, as did France. It's a dispute between countries, but the result will be on the WTO as a whole, say waiver advocates. "If, in the face of one of humanity's greatest challenges in a century, the WTO functionally becomes an obstacle as in contrast to part of the solution, I think it could be the final nail in the coffin" for the organization, says Lori Wallach, the founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a U.S. campaigning group that focuses on the WTO and trade agreements. "If the TRIPS waiver is successful, and people see the WTO as being part of the solution—saving lives and livelihoods—it could create goodwill and momentum to address what are still daunting structural problems." Those problems are legion. Reform needs Top of the list is the WTO's Appellate Body, which hears appeals in members' trade disputes. It's a pivotal part of the international trade system, but Trump—incensed at decisions taken against the U.S. —blocked appointments to its seven-strong panel as judges retired. The body became completely paralyzed at the end of 2019, when two judges' terms ended and the panel no longer had the three-judge quorum it needs to rule on appeals. Anyone who hoped the advent of the Biden administration would change matters was disappointed earlier this year when the U.S. rejected a European proposal to fill the vacancies. "The United States continues to have systemic concerns with the appellate body," it said. "As members know, the United States has raised and explained its systemic concerns for more than 16 years and across multiple U.S. administrations." At her confirmation hearing in February, current U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai reiterated those concerns—she said the appellate body had "overstepped its authority and erred in interpreting WTO agreements in a number of cases, to the detriment of the United States and other WTO members," and accused it of dragging its heels in settling disputes. "Reforms are needed to ensure that the underlying causes of such problems do not resurface," Tai said. "While the U.S. has been engaging with the WTO it hasn't indicated it would move quickly on allowing appointments to the Appellate Body," says Bryan Mercurio, an economic-law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who opposes the vaccine waiver. "This is not a good sign. In terms of WTO governance, it's a much more important step than supporting negotiations on an intellectual property waiver." It's not just the U.S. that wants to see reform at the WTO. In a major policy document published in February, the EU said negotiations had failed to modernize the organization's rules, the dispute-resolution system was broken, the monitoring of countries' trade policies was ineffective, and—crucially—"the trade relationship between the U.S. and China, two of the three largest WTO members, is currently largely managed outside WTO disciplines." China is one of the key problems here. It became a WTO member in 2001 but, although this entailed significant liberalization of the Chinese economy, it did not become a full market economy. As the European Commission put it in February: "The level at which China has opened its markets does not correspond to its weight in the global economy, and the state continues to exert a decisive influence on China's economic environment with consequent competitive distortions that cannot be sufficiently addressed by current WTO rules." "China is operating from what it sees as a position of strength, so it will not be bullied into agreeing to changes which it sees as not in its interests," says Mercurio. China is at loggerheads with the U.S., the EU and others over numerous trade-related issues. Its rivals don't like its policy of demanding that Chinese citizens' data is stored on Chinese soil, nor do they approve of how foreign investors often have to partner with Chinese firms to access the country's market, in a way that leads to the transfer of technological knowhow. They also oppose China's industrial subsidies. Mercurio thinks China may agree to reforms on some of these issues, particularly regarding subsidies, but "only if it is offered something in return." All these problems won't go away if the WTO manages to come up with a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies, Wallach concedes. "But," she adds, "the will and the good faith to tackle these challenges is increased enormously if the WTO has the experience of being part of the solution, not just an obstacle." Wallach points to a statement released earlier this month by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers, which called for urgent discussions on the waiver. "The WTO must demonstrate that global trade rules can help address the human catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitate the recovery," the statement read in its section about WTO reform. Okonjo-Iweala's role The WTO's new director general, whose route to the top was unblocked in early 2021 with the demise of the Trump administration, is certainly keen to fix the problems that contributed to the early departure of her predecessor, Brazil's Robert Azevedo. "We must act now to get all our ambassadors to the table to negotiate a text" on the issue of an IP waiver for COVID vaccines, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, has said. Dursun Aydemir—Anadolu/Bloomberg/Getty Images Earlier this week, when the U.S. and EU agreed a five-year ceasefire in a long-running dispute over Boeing and Airbus aircraft subsidies, Okonjo-Iweala tweeted: "With political will, we can solve even the most intractable problems." However, Mercurio is skeptical about her stewardship having much of an effect on the WTO's reform process. "Upon taking over she stated it was time for delegations to speak to each other and not simply past each other, but at the recent General Counsel meeting delegations simply read prepared statements in what some have described as the worst meeting ever," he says. "On the other hand, Ngozi is very much someone who will actively seek solutions to problems, and in this way different to her predecessor. If the role of mediator is welcomed, she could have an impact not in starting discussions but in getting deals over the finish line." No alt causes – how the WTO acts now with Covid will shape its role in the international economy for decades to come. Evenett and Baldwin 20. (Simon J. Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Co-Director of the CEPR Programme in International Trade and Regional Economics. Richard E. Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI Purposeful, pragmatic steps towards noble goals Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that tireless campaigner against Apartheid, once remarked that “there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time”. After a decade of drift and backsliding, the task of revitalising multilateral trade cooperation may seem daunting. It may seem even more so after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant slump in world trade. Yet, in the same emergency lies the seeds of revival – especially, if trade diplomats can demonstrate the relevance of the WTO to national governments fighting this pandemic – ideally through an accord that eases the cross-border shipment of needed medical goods and medicines. Step by pragmatic step, the WTO can regain its centrality in the world trading system. Ultimately, the pandemic affords the opportunity to reframe discussions on multilateral trade cooperation away from the stalemate, frustration of recent years between governments, and the Uruguay Round mindset that ran into diminishing returns years ago. Rather, discussions between governments need to draw lessons from the second global economic shock in 15 years so as to rebuild a system of global trade arrangements capable of better tackling systemic crises and, more importantly, better able to contribute to the growing number of first-order challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Doing so will require revisiting the very purpose of the WTO. Specifically, action now over Covid creates goodwill to establish global trade as a norm and preserve the relevance of the trading system post-Covid. González 20. (Anabel Gonzalez is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and former Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY ACTION As of 2 November 2020, there are 46.9 million COVID-19 cases across all regions, with the number of deaths exceeding 1.2 million, and rising.2 The economic and social impacts of the pandemic and its containment measures are not less daunting. Global growth is estimated at -4.9 in 2020, with over 95 of countries projected to have negative per capita income growth (IMF 2020). Trade volumes are expected to decrease by between 13 and 32 from last year,3 while foreign direct investment flows could plunge by up to 40 (UNCTAD 2020). Is it estimated that the equivalent of 555 million jobs have been lost in the first half of this year (ILO 2020), which in turn could push up to 100 million more people into extreme poverty and would almost double the number of persons suffering from acute hunger (FAO 2020). While there is some evidence that goods trade may be rebounding and that the worst-case trade scenario projected in April could be averted (CPB 2020, WTO 2020a), the recovery from the deepest global recession since World War II will depend on the sustained and effective containment of the virus and the quality of government policies. The World Bank/IMF Development Committee warned that the pandemic has the potential to erase development gains for many countries (World Bank 2020a). Some consequences may also be long-lasting, such as lower investment, erosion of human capital, and a retreat from global trade and supply linkages (World Bank 2020b). It is no understatement to say these are extraordinary times. In many countries, governments are providing significant levels of fiscal support to try to stabilise their economies, sustain companies and minimise the impact on workers; in many others, limited fiscal space and informality constraint governments’ capacity to mitigate the damage. For advanced and developing economies alike, trade is a powerful, cost-effective tool to alleviate the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the health and economic fronts. And yet, protectionism is gaining an upper hand, deepening some of pre-pandemic confrontations that were already threatening the global economy. The short-term response to the virus and longer-term growth prospects depend on strong multilateral cooperation to scale back obstacles to trade and investment, increase business certainty and leverage opportunities which the pandemic has accelerated in areas like the digital economy. It is also needed to preserve stable and coordinated international relations to avoid that heavy threats implicit in the pandemic could result in catastrophic disorders or conflicts (Jean 2020). But it will not happen automatically. Unless governments accelerate their efforts to collaborate, growing protectionism and increased distortions to global value chains (GVCs) risk being a by-product of the virus, at the same time further exacerbating its negative implications. This demands extraordinary action. This chapter addresses the question of what role for trade ministers at the WTO in times of crises with a view to activating global cooperation to overcome COVID-19. In addition to the introductory section, the second section explores the need to reactivate the WTO to underpin collaboration among governments, the third section argues that trade ministers should call the shots during crisis, the fourth section suggests eight actions for ministers to rein in protectionism and mitigate further damage, the fifth section refers to the mechanics on how and when to do it, and a final section offers concluding remarks. REACTIVATE THE WTO Trade needs to be part of the response to COVID-19 and its upshots, and countries cannot afford the WTO, hobbled as it has been lately, to muddle through. Moreover, as the world confronts more frequent and severe profound shocks such as financial crises, terrorism, extreme weather and pandemics (McKinsey Global Institute 2020), the WTO needs to step up its role during systemic crises. The fact that the organisation has been faltering, that there is a leadership vacuum and that distrust runs high among major traders will not make it any easier. Exacerbated tensions related to the pandemic can only add to the feeling that WTO rules have been conceived for a very different context, increasing the risk of a loss of legitimacy (Jean 2020). This is not about a major reset of the WTO. It is about (re)activating the organisation to serve its members as they combat the devastating impact of the pandemic and the global recession. The WTO needs broader reform, in particular to address structural changes in the global economy. While extremely important, this discussion should not hamper the ability of the WTO to deliver at times of systemic crisis. Moreover, should the WTO – or more accurately, its members – demonstrate they can actually rise to the occasion in the context of COVID-19, they will also contribute to increasing trust levels on the ability of the organisation to produce results. The starting point is a shift in mindset: governments need to understand that international trade is not a problem in the crisis, but rather a core element of the solution (Baldwin and Evenett 2020). Take the shortages of medical supplies. There are three methods of assuring supply: stockpiling, investments in manufacturing capacity and trade. Of these options, relying on international trade is the most efficient and economic choice, provided the WTO can help assure security of this method of supply (Wolff 2020a). To be sure, many nations have taken unilateral steps to facilitate trade, especially in medical supplies and medicines. The Global Trade Alert reports that while 91 jurisdictions have adopted a total of 202 export controls on these goods since the beginning of 2020, 106 jurisdictions have executed 229 import policy reforms on these goods over the same period.4 After initial border closures, some neighbouring countries are beginning to facilitate the cross-border flow of goods. At the regional level and among subsets of countries, governments have issued different statements to keep trade lanes open and supply chains moving (see Table A1 in the Annex). After a tepid declaration from G20 leaders, trade ministers reaffirmed their determination to cooperate and coordinate to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade and investment and to lay a solid foundation for a global economic recovery. They also endorsed a set of short-term collective actions on trade regulation, trade facilitation, transparency, operation of logistics networks and support for small enterprises, and a group of longer-term actions on WTO reform, GVC resilience and investment; monitoring of implementation was left to senior officials (G20 2020). These actions are positive and reflect the political will of governments to collaborate to some extent – even if they have not fully countered the flurry of barriers and restrictions surrounding trade in critical medical gear. They are no substitute for trade cooperation at the global level, either. In the case of medical products, for example, the EU, the US and China account for almost three-quarters of world exports (WTO 2020b); cooperation initiatives that do not include these members would fall short on impact. The venue for cooperation should be global and open to all, even if not all 164 WTO members opt to engage in all initiatives. TRADE MINISTERS SHOULD CALL THE SHOTS DURING CRISES Challenges notwithstanding, governments need to act now to empower the WTO to play an active part in coordinating the response to the pandemic. The WTO is more than an organisation immersed in myriad drama on the shores of Lake Geneva; it is a solid framework for global trade cooperation. It is in countries’ interest to preserve the relevance of the WTO; its role can be critical in helping members help themselves. In a member-driven organisation such as the WTO, the role of the Director-General and the Secretariat is important and can and should be enhanced, for example with greater power of initiative and strengthened monitoring and analytics capabilities. The WTO dedicated page on the pandemic is a step in the right direction.5 But the ultimate responsibility to provide direction and act rests with governments. The WTO is nothing more and nothing less than the collectivity of its members (Steger 2020), a point that is frequently forgotten in the public discourse. Without strong leadership, frequent engagement and serious interest among members in addressing its challenges, the WTO itself cannot deliver results (Cutler 2020). Paraphrasing VanGrasstek (2013), the multilateral trading system receives its inspiration from economists and is shaped primarily by lawyers, but it can only operate within the limits set by politicians. Post Covid WTO legitimacy and credibility re necessary to prevent a downward spiral of protectionism. Solís 20. (Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. “The post COVID-19 world: Economic nationalism triumphant?” July 10, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/10/the-post-covid-19-world-economic-nationalism-triumphant/ TDI The damage caused by the worst global health crisis in a century is vast. The new coronavirus has traveled far and fast, infecting more than 8.7 million people and killing more than 460,000. One after another, economies have gone into lockdown to slow down the spread of the disease. The combined supply and demand shocks have ravaged the world economy with the most severe downturn since the Great Depression; anticipated drops to international trade and investment flows of 30 and 40, respectively; and unemployment spikes in many countries. The pandemic has cost lives and livelihoods and has erased the chances of returning to the status quo ante, but it has also brought little clarity regarding what kind of international order it will usher in. Is the future one of deglobalization, decoupling, and reshoring of economic activity? The pandemic hit an already wounded multilateral trading system. The chances that the World Trade Organization (WTO) can deliver a multilateral round of trade negotiations to slash tariffs across the board and update the trade and investment rulebook are nil. But the WTO has also lost its central role as arbiter of trade disputes among its members. In December 2019, the Appellate Body ceased to function due to the U.S. block of new appointments, citing judicial overreach. At a time of rising protectionism, the erosion of a rules-based mechanism to adjudicate disputes bodes ill. Longstanding challenges to the WTO have been exacerbated by an abdication of leadership from the great powers to ensure its survival. China has been the godchild of globalization, leveraging its accession to the WTO to become workshop for the world and a huge domestic market coveted by foreign firms. But China lost its appetite for economic reform, reinvesting on a state capitalism model that imposes heavy costs on other nations. Unchecked subsidies and privileges awarded to its state-owned enterprises, insufficient protection of intellectual property, foreign investment restrictions, forced technology transfers, and cyber protectionism all make the Chinese government’s self-proclamation as champion of global free trade ring hollow. The Trump administration judges the WTO incapable of tackling the China challenge, but instead of creating coalitions of like-minded countries to bring about effective multilateral trade governance, it appears determined to further harm cripple the international organization. It has offered no blueprint to fix the dispute settlement mechanism, has abused the national security exemption to raise tariffs against allies, and is gearing up for its most fundamental assault to date on the WTO: a tariff reset through which the U.S. may unilaterally abandon its commitments on bound tariffs and apply larger duties to force other countries to open their markets. Trade spats as other countries retaliate in kind is a more likely result. Tariff wars and the battle for technology supremacy have come to define U.S.-China great power competition. After a grueling trade conflict, the United States and China reached a limited trade agreement in January 2020. The deal marked a pause in the tariff war and addressed some non-tariff barriers on foreign direct investment and intellectual property; but it left intact the core of Chinese industrial policy (public subsidies and state-owned enterprises) and retained U.S. duties on $360 billion worth of Chinese products. China’s massive purchase commitments ($200 billion) were quickly rendered unattainable by the severe economic downturn in China due to COVID-19. In fighting for the new economic order, setting standards on cutting-edge technologies will be at the forefront. China is using all the levers of industrial policy to gain technological primacy in areas like AI and quantum computing. Telecom and the battle over 5G offer a preview of quarrels to come. Deeply concerned with the cybersecurity risks that Chinese telecom giants like Huawei pose, the U.S. government placed the company on its Entity List, banning American exports without a license. It has since tightened the restrictions by barring foreign companies from supplying Huawei with products manufactured with American equipment and technology. National security concerns are increasingly encroaching on existing webs of economic interdependence. Wary of China’s acquisition of critical technology, countries like the United States, Australia, and Japan have tightened their screening of foreign direct investment. The pandemic has only exacerbated concerns that weakened companies in strategic sectors are at risk of foreign takeover. COVID-19’s impact on the international trading system is twofold. It has reinforced existing trends such as the deceleration and now drop in the volume of international trade, the rise of economic security as governments expand their toolkit to restrict trade and investment flows, and it has laid bare the fallout in U.S.-China relations. But the pandemic also brought new challenges that exposed the extent to which trade cooperation is in short supply. Export protectionism has risen in prominence with national restrictions on shipments of essential medical supplies and personal protective equipment. The WTO allows for such curbs for public health purposes – provided the measures are temporary and transparent. Few countries, however, have bothered to comply with their notification commitments. The blow comes at a time when the WTO is adrift with the decision of Director General Roberto Azevedo to step down early, opening the search for new leadership in a climate of divisiveness. Graph detailing the number of countries that imposed export restrictions on various categories of medical supplies and devices in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Are we on the eve of a renationalized world economy? That is the aspiration of several American and European public officials who fault extended global supply chains and overdependence on China for the current mishaps in tackling the pandemic. But the view that economic nationalism and reshoring of manufacturing is a fail-safe path to security and prosperity is wrong. For one, it skirts the responsibility of governments to properly stockpile essential medical supplies. Furthermore, the export curbs will be counterproductive, eliminating incentives for producers to expand capacity and increasing the cost of much needed medicines and medical devices. If the recent lockdowns have taught us anything, it is that exclusive reliance on the domestic market is too risky. Diversification of supply, redundancies in the manufacturing chain, and stockpiling programs are better alternatives. In this endeavor, global supply chains are part of the solution, not the problem. COVID-19 will not produce an exodus of foreign companies from the Chinese market. Recent surveys of American companies with operations in China show that most firms intend to stay put. A February survey of Japanese companies conducted by Tokyo Shoko Research shows that only a fraction (4) are considering exit from China. Therefore, the Japanese government’s $2.2 billion fund to restructure supply chains should be understood as risk management, not decoupling. When international companies map out their business strategies, they must factor in heightened risks – protectionism, national security controls, and economic lockdowns. Hence, efforts by middle powers to offer an interim arbitration mechanism at the WTO to handle trade disputes and to commit to maintaining open supply chains in essential medical goods are the right antidote to rising economic nationalism. As a staunch supporter of rules-based trade and with its decision to forego export protectionism in the current crisis, Japan has much to contribute to these efforts. Trade solves great power competition – regionalism causes militarized crises. Lake 18. (David Lake is a Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. "Economic Openness and Great Power Competition: Lessons for China and the United States,” April 30, 2018. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171196/ TDI I develop two central arguments. First, historically, great power competition has been driven primarily by exclusion or fears of exclusion from each power’s international economic zone, including its domestic market. Great powers in the past have often used their international influence to build zones in which subordinate polities – whether these be colonies or simply states within a sphere of influence – are integrated into their economies. These economic zones, in turn, are typically biased in favor of the great power’s firms and investors, with the effect of excluding (in whole or part) the economic agents of other great powers. These other great powers, in response, are then compelled to develop or expand their own exclusive economic zones. The “race” for economic privilege can quickly divide the world up into economic blocs. Like the security dilemma, great powers need not actually exclude one another from their zones; the fear of exclusion alone is enough to ignite the process of division. The race for privilege then draws great powers into over-expanding into unprofitable regions and, more important, militarized competition. Economic and military competition are thus linked, with the former usually driving the latter. The most significant military crises have, historically, been over where to draw the boundaries between economic zones and subsequent challenges to those boundaries. Economic closure and fear of closure have been consistent sources of great power conflict in the past – and possibly will be in the future. The major exception to this trend was the peaceful transfer of dominance in Latin America from Britain to the United States in the late nineteenth century. This suggests that economic closure and great power competition is not inevitable, but a choice of the great powers themselves. Second, this international competition is driven, in turn, by domestic, rent-seeking groups and their economic interests. In all countries, scarce factors of production, import competing sectors, and domestically-oriented firms have concentrated and intense preferences for market restricting policies, including tariffs and the formation of exclusive economic zones. Consumers and free trade-oriented groups have diffuse preferences for market enhancing policies, and thus tend to lose at the ballot box and in the making of national policy. This inequality in preference intensity does not mean protectionists always win; after 1934, the United States insulated itself by shifting authority to the executive and negotiating reductions through broad, multi-product international agreements.8 Yet, as the recent return to economic nationalism of the Trump administration suggests, protectionism often wins out. Rent-seeking is a central tendency, not an inevitable success. Contemporary great power relations are at a critical juncture. As China’s influence expands, the role of special economic interests in China is especially worrisome. In pursuit of stability, political support, or private gains, the government will always be tempted to create economic zones that favor its nationals. In this way, China will be no different than the majority of great powers before it. But, given the expansive role of the state in the Chinese economy, especially its backing of outward foreign investments by its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the close ties between business elites and its authoritarian political leaders, however, it will be even harder for China to resist biasing any future economic zone to benefit its own firms. Although China has gained greatly from economic openness, its domestic political system will be prone to rent-seeking demands by important constituents in areas of future influence. Critically, the United States is also moving toward economic closure with the election of President Trump on a platform of economic nationalism. Demands for protection against Chinese goods have been growing over time.9 The “China shock” that followed Beijing’s joining the World Trade Organization was a huge disruption to the international division of labor, U.S. comparative advantage, and especially U.S. industry.10 The Trans-Pacific Partnership, though now defunct, was “marketed” by President Barak Obama as a means of “containing” China, both economically and militarily, but was opposed by virtually all of the candidates in the 2016 presidential election for its trade-enhancing potential. President Trump has already signaled a much more hostile and protectionist stance toward China – as well as calling for the repeal of NAFTA and even questioning the utility of the European Union. Not only has he imposed tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, steel and aluminum, dangerously declaring the latter two issues of national security, he is making exceptions on these tariffs for friends and allies. 11 Implicitly targeting China, these protectionist moves by the administration risk creating preferential trading blocs not seen since the 1930s. He has also now proposed punitive tariffs on over $60 billions of imports from China into the United States.12 Acknowledging his inconsistencies on many policy issues, Trump’s economic nationalism has remained the core of his political agenda. The threat to the liberal international economy is not only that China might seek an economic bloc in the future, but that the United States itself is turning more exclusionary. For each great power to fear that the other might seek to exclude it from its economic zone is not unreasonable. If so, great power competition could break out in the twenty-first century not because of bipolarity or any inevitable tendency toward conflict, but because neither great power can control its own protectionist forces nor signal to the other that it would not exclude it from its economic zone. The British-U.S. case, again, suggests that exclusion and competition are not inevitable, but the current danger of economic closure is real and increasing. This article is synthetic in its theory and merely suggestive in its use of historical evidence. The theory aims to integrate current work on political economy and national security, not to develop a completely original take on this relationship. In turn, rather than testing the theory in any rigorous sense or delving into particular cases to show the theoretical mechanisms at work, so to speak, it surveys selected historical episodes to illustrate central tendencies. It is the recurring pattern across multiple cases that suggests why we should worry today. The remainder of this essay is divided in three primary sections. Section I briefly outlines the analytics of economic openness and great power competition. Section II focuses on historical instances of great power competition, highlighting the role of economic openness as a central cleavage in international politics. Section III examines contemporary policies in and between China and the United States. The conclusion suggests ways that the potential for conflict may be mitigated. The Open Economy Politics of Great Power Competition All states have a tendency towards protectionism at home and exclusive economic zones abroad. A tendency, though, is not an inevitability. The pursuit of protection and economic zones by domestic interests is conditioned by the political coalition in power at any given time and institutions that aggregate and bias the articulation of social groups. 13 The tendency is also influenced, however, by the actions of other countries. Protectionism can sour great power relations, but it is the desire for exclusive economic zones that drives great power competition and, given the possibility of coercion, influences grand strategy. Thus, the theory sketched here integrates insights from international political economy (see below), the literature on domestic politics and grand strategy,14 and systemic theories of international relations.15 Independently, WTO cred solves nuclear war – allows an off-track for nuclear weapons. Hamann 09. (Georgia Hamann is a J.D. Candidate, Vanderbilt University Law School, “Replacing Slingshots with Swords: Implications of the Antigua-Gambling 22.6 Panel Report for Developing Countries and the World Trading System,” 2009. TDI Voluntary compliance with WTO rules and procedures is of the utmost importance to the international trading system.'0 0 Given the increasingly globalized market, the coming years will see an increase in the importance of the WTO as a cohesive force and arbiter of disputes that likely will become more frequent and injurious. 01' The work of the WTO cannot be overstated in a nuclear-armed world, as the body continues to promote respect and even amity among nations with opposing philosophical goals or modes of governance. 10 2 Demagogues in the Unites States may decry the rise of China as a geopolitical threat, 0 3 and extremists in Russia may play dangerous games of brinksmanship with other great powers, but trade keeps politicians' fingers off "the button. ' 10 4 The WTO offers an astounding rate of compliance for an organization with no standing army and no real power to enforce its decisions, suggesting that governments recognize the value of maintaining the international construct of the WTO. 105 In order to promote voluntary compliance, the WTO must maintain a high level of credibility. 106 Nations must perceive the WTO as the most reasonable option for dispute resolution or fear that the WTO wields enough influence to enforce sanctions. 10 7 The arbitrators charged with performing the substantive work of the WTO by negotiating, compromising, and issuing judgments are keenly aware of the responsibility they have to uphold the organization's credibility. 108 Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr 15 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons, nuclear firestorms would burn simultaneously over a total land surface area of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires, many of which would rage over large cities and industrial areas, would release many tens of millions of tons of black carbon soot and smoke (up to 180 million tons, according to peer-reviewed studies), which would rise rapidly above cloud level and into the stratosphere. For an explanation of the calculation of smoke emissions, see Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts. The scientists who completed the most recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter discovered that the sunlight would heat the smoke, producing a self-lofting effect that would not only aid the rise of the smoke into the stratosphere (above cloud level, where it could not be rained out), but act to keep the smoke in the stratosphere for 10 years or more. The longevity of the smoke layer would act to greatly increase the severity of its effects upon the biosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke (predicted to be produced by a range of strategic nuclear wars) would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere. Such an enormous loss of warming sunlight would produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth in a matter of weeks. For a period of 1-3 years following the war, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in the central agricultural zones of North America and Eurasia. For an explanation of nuclear winter, see Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. Nuclear winter would cause average global surface temperatures to become colder than they were at the height of the last Ice Age. Such extreme cold would eliminate growing seasons for many years, probably for a decade or longer. Can you imagine a winter that lasts for ten years? The results of such a scenario are obvious. Temperatures would be much too cold to grow food, and they would remain this way long enough to cause most humans and animals to starve to death. Global nuclear famine would ensue in a setting in which the infrastructure of the combatant nations has been totally destroyed, resulting in massive amounts of chemical and radioactive toxins being released into the biosphere. We don’t need a sophisticated study to tell us that no food and Ice Age temperatures for a decade would kill most people and animals on the planet. Would the few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment?
1AC – Developing Economies Contention 3 is Developing Economies.
Vaccine imperialism inevitably commodifies medicine and results in vaccine nationalism that magnifies North-South health disparities. Seklala et al 21 – Sharifah Sekalala, Warwick Law School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK; Lisa Forman, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Timothy Hodgson, International Commission of Jurists, Johannesburg, South Africa,;Moses Mulumba, Center for Health, Human Rights and Development, Kampala, Uganda; Hadijah Namyalo-Ganafa, School of Law, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; Benjamin Mason Meier, Department of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA (“Decolonising human rights: how intellectual property laws result in unequal access to the COVID-19 vaccine,” 2021, pg. 2-4) julian The development and dissemination of COVID-19 vaccines has highlighted how the international legal system pertaining to global health is driving global health inequalities instead of alleviating them. As a result, in part, of neocolonial ‘development’ models that promote inequitable IP laws, most of the vaccine supply has been manufactured in the Global North and purchased by governments in those countries to be stockpiled for their own populations—a practice sometimes described as ‘vaccine hoarding’ or ‘vaccine nationalism’.19 20 Even where countries in the Global South have produced vaccines themselves in significant quantities, they have sometimes been guilty of perpetuating inequity of other Global South countries through vaccine nationalism and vaccine diplomacy, in which vaccines are offered to poorer countries in order to achieve geopolitical objectives.21 22 A decolonised approach to global health enables us to conceptualise this behaviour as a reproduction of a neocolonial system which pits some formerly colonised countries against others.23 24 This has meant that some countries in the Global South also benefit from this uneven system, and they too contribute to the exploitation of poorer countries in the Global South.21 Although the WHO cocreated the COVAX Facility, a donor-funded mechanism that seeks to pool procurement to enhance access to vaccines for LMICs, the charitable funding scheme is facing a serious shortfall in meeting global needs. The WHO has estimated that most people in LMICs will not be vaccinated until the end of 2023,25 and even this estimate may be optimistic, given the delays in initial distributions through COVAX.26 This prompts the obvious question: How is it that existing legal mechanisms, or at least the prevailing interpretations and understandings of them, have permitted and even enabled this inequity? International IP law embedded in international trade agreements allows pharmaceutical companies time-limited rights to prevent others from making, using or selling their patented invention without permission. Under the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which was included in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiation, pharmaceutical companies have at least 20 years from filing a patent to profit from their investments in developing, testing and upscaling pharmaceutical products throughout the world.27 This protection is given to pharmaceutical companies to incentivise them to engage in greater research and development for new drugs. However, there is evidence that challenges previous assumptions about the linkages between Research and Development spending and innovation for essential medicines.28 The current COVID-19 crisis has brought this into sharp focus, with projections that the global public sector had spent at least €93 billion on the development of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics—€85.6 billion of this on vaccines.29 Global IP rights, whether adopted in accordance with TRIPS, or subsequent bilateral and multilateral agreements, are part of a wider legal system which facilitates global neocolonialism. For instance, powerful actors such as the European Union (EU) and the USA have included TRIPS-plus provisions in bilateral and multilateral agreements. These agreements often force countries of the Global South to concede to more stringent patent protections in order to gain trade advantages and also to escape trade sanctions.30 In so doing, IP law commodifies medicines that are essential to human survival and well-being, and sacrifices the lives and health of the poor and otherwise marginalised on the altar of corporate profitability.31 Common interpretations and understandings of the international IP system are that healthcare goods and services derive their value from their tradability.14 (‘We use the term “public good” as it is used in global health to mean a good that should be available universally because of its critical importance to health, and not as the term is used in economics to mean a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.’)14 32 However, many, including critical Global South scholars, have questioned the prioritisation of property rights (including IP rights) over other rights (especially the rights to health, life and equal benefit from scientific progress) in a manner that is inconsistent with international human rights law.31 Many low-income countries have long been active in resisting the IP system as an unjust extension of a colonial trade system. At the height of the HIV pandemic, in which millions of people in the Global South were denied lifesaving medicines, civil society treatment access campaigns galvanised states within the World Trade Organization (WTO) into agreeing to the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.33 This WTO Declaration recognises human rights and allows states to use all of the ‘flexibilities’ within the TRIPS regime to protect public health, acknowledging the need for access to medicines in a public health emergency.34 However, this international consensus on IP has always been strongly contested by pharmaceutical companies and their host governments, predominantly in the Global North. This remarkably strong resistance to employing TRIPS flexibilities has continued in the current COVID-19 crisis, as the attempts of countries largely from the Global South to try to obtain a TRIPS waiver to increase their supply of vaccines for COVID-19 have been unsuccessful. Although the USA has recently supported a watered-down version of a TRIPS waiver, it remains far from certain whether other states in the Global North will support this prioritisation of health over IP rights, or whether this would be sufficient, as we discuss in the section on flexibilities below. Rather than allowing for equitable vaccine access as a human right for all people everywhere, states have instead turned to a charitable donation and market purchase scheme through the COVAX initiative. This type of model, which focuses on charity and not rights, is consistent with exactly the kind of understandings of human rights and public health that are in need of decolonisation. While there have been public consensus statements issued by the Human Rights Council, in which states have agreed that all states have the right to access vaccines and the right to use TRIPS flexibilities, this statement reflects a disappointing failure to acknowledge any corresponding state obligations to employ such flexibilities.35 This has allowed countries from the Global North, and their few Global South allies, to agree to this statement and support the right to vaccine access rhetorically, and in principle within the Human Rights Council, while resisting any calls for a TRIPS waiver within the WTO, and thus consolidating a denial of their obligations to employ TRIPS flexibilities.
Scenario 1 is India. India is in crisis – the recent COVID surge is fundamentally different from that of the past. Khullar 21. (Dhruv Khullar is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, where he writes primarily about medicine, health care, and politics. He is also a practicing physician and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College) “India’s Crisis Marks a New Phase in the Pandemic,” The New Yorker, May 13, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/indias-crisis-marks-a-new-phase-in-the-pandemic TDI Laxminarayan’s walks have changed in recent weeks. Coronavirus deaths in India have skyrocketed, and a frightening atmosphere has descended. New Delhi is roughly as dense as New York City, with some thirty thousand residents per square mile. But now Laxminarayan passes just a few scattered people; almost everyone stays inside if they can, venturing out only in search of food, medication, or medical care. Before the surge, mask-wearing had declined, but now everyone’s face is covered again. “You need public-health enforcement when the pandemic is invisible,” Laxminarayan told me. “Now fear is the dominant force changing people’s behavior.” Government statistics indicate that the virus is newly infecting millions of Indians each week, and that some twenty thousand or thirty thousand people are dying weekly. But most experts, including Laxminarayan, believe that those numbers capture a fraction of the true covid-19 toll. “It’s a war zone,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s worse than what you’re reading in the papers or seeing on TV. Whatever the numbers are, they don’t tell the full story. The human toll is devastating.” The current surge differs fundamentally from India’s experience last year. “This is truly a national wave,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s not urban. It’s not rural. It’s not north or south. It’s everywhere.” He went on, “During the first wave, the poor suffered the bulk of the health and economic toll. Now everyone is affected. I personally don’t know a single family that doesn’t have covid in it right now. I don’t mean in their extended family. I mean in their nuclear family.” In late April, after his dentist’s parents both died and after a colleague fell ill and couldn’t get oxygen, Laxminarayan decided to shift from covid research to covid relief. He and his team at C.D.D.E.P. decided to focus on India’s oxygen-supply problem, which has fundamentally limited the nation’s hospital capacity. They launched an initiative called OxygenForIndia, raising eight and a half million dollars in two weeks; with the help of corporate partners, among them Verizon Media, Logitech, and UiPath, they have secured more than two thousand oxygen concentrators—portable devices that remove nitrogen from the air to produce purified oxygen—and thirty thousand cylinders to store gaseous oxygen. By some estimates, those cylinder donations add up to more gaseous oxygen than India has received through foreign aid to date. “Right now, no one wants to leave a hospital bed they’re in,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s the only place they know perhaps they can get oxygen. We want to assure people they will have oxygen at home, so that hospital capacity is freed up for the sickest patients.” Laxminarayan thinks that bolstering critical-care capacity is a long-term proposition—“You can’t make doctors and nurses overnight”—and that India is better served today by making more efficient use of its existing infrastructure. OxygenForIndia has already started delivering oxygen to people’s homes, but the organization’s larger goal is to partner with hospitals in urban areas: Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata, among others. Doctors, along with algorithms, will triage patients upon presentation or as they improve before discharge. Those deemed safe to go home with supportive oxygen will be given a Q.R. code to be scanned at a nearby warehouse, where they can collect an oxygen cylinder or concentrator to keep as long as they need. (Cylinders must be refilled at the warehouse each day; concentrators can be used continuously at home.) “I’m hoping this is a scalable model that can be used by other countries when they face their big covid wave,” Laxminarayan said. “Because there’s no reason to believe they won’t.” The air around us, which contains twenty-one-per-cent oxygen, must be concentrated and purified to produce the medical-grade gas that people need when the coronavirus besieges their lungs. The most efficient way to accomplish this—the default in wealthy countries—is for factories to produce liquid oxygen, which tanker trucks then deliver to hospitals, where it can be stored in large containers and then piped into patients’ rooms. Many hospitals in poor countries, however, aren’t equipped to store liquid oxygen, and must rely on an external supply. If a hospital is in a remote location, this can be a serious logistical challenge. Another option is to install on-site plants that extract oxygen from the air. These systems, which use a technology known as pressure swing adsorption, or P.S.A., are expensive, and require maintenance. In October, the Indian government announced plans to build a hundred and sixty-two such plants around the country; thus far, thirty-three have been installed. Laxminarayan’s organization also hopes to create dozens of oxygen-generation plants at Indian hospitals. For now, many hospitals rely on simpler, decentralized technology, which comes with disadvantages: the gaseous oxygen contained in cylinders can cost ten times as much as its liquid equivalent, and oxygen concentrators are usually intended for only one or a few patients at a time. Whatever the process, it’s clear that too many Indians are going without the oxygen they need. Since this February, India’s oxygen requirements have increased fifteenfold; it now needs nearly three times as much medical-grade oxygen as it did during the height of its first wave. Some hospitals have run out of oxygen, and others are on the precipice. Hospitals won’t admit patients whom they can’t treat; many Indians therefore suffer a suffocating illness at home. The government is doing what it can: granting oxygen-transport vehicles an ambulance-like status on roads; leveraging the national railway service to move tankers around the country; enlisting the air force to transport empty containers back to factories to be refilled. On Wednesday, India’s Supreme Court ordered the federal government to present a more comprehensive plan to meet New Delhi’s oxygen needs. Meanwhile, foreign governments and international aid organizations are sending ventilators, concentrators, and cylinders. Still, each day brings fresh reports of people dying because they can’t get oxygen. (The shortage is likely to spread: globally, the deficit of medical oxygen—the gap between what’s needed and what’s being produced—has tripled in recent months, in part owing to the unmet need in India but also because of growing demand in South America and the Middle East.) Technically, Indians have access to universal health coverage: the country’s constitution guarantees everyone a “right to life,” and people can receive care at government facilities free of charge. But, over decades, low levels of public financing have led to poor quality and severe staff and supply shortages. India’s federal government spends around one per cent of G.D.P. on health care—far less than most large economies. Moreover, states share responsibility with the federal government for health-care delivery, and that has resulted in a large variation in funding and quality. Many Indians therefore opt to pay for private health care, if they can afford it, and the private sector now provides most care in India, even though commercial health insurance is available to only a fraction of the population and out-of-pocket costs can be devastating. In 2018, the central government launched a major effort aimed at insuring that low-income people could receive care at private facilities. But relatively few Indians have a regular place of care where they can receive ongoing management of their medical conditions or outpatient testing and treatment for covid-19. The coronavirus has severely strained India’s critical-care capacity, which was lacking even before the pandemic: during normal times, the country has around fifteen per cent of the critical-care specialists it needs. More generally, India has nine doctors for every ten thousand people—about half the global average, and only a third as many as the U.S. There’s also the issue of maldistribution: two-thirds of India’s population lives in rural areas, where only twenty per cent of the nation’s doctors work. (Shortages of nurses and other clinicians can be even worse.) VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER The Pandemic Through the Eyes of a Three-Year-Old Still, India’s physician-to-patient ratio is higher than that of Bangladesh, Nepal, or any nation in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the globe’s myriad health-care systems share the fundamental constraints that have transformed India’s second wave into a humanitarian crisis—including an oxygen-delivery infrastructure that is unable to meet the demands of a vast viral surge. Many Indians have experienced the current surge as a surprise. But the forces driving it are fundamentally familiar. “Society opened up without restraint,” K. Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India and the former chair of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, told me. “It was widely perceived that the pandemic is behind us, that we are unlikely to have a second wave. We didn’t just return to 2019—we entered 2021 with an extra degree of exuberance.” Politicians encouraged people to gather at massive rallies; cricket stadiums filled with fans; malls opened to shoppers and weddings welcomed guests. The government sanctioned the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival, and millions of people made the pilgrimage to Haridwar, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, to wash in the River Ganges. The festival started on April 1st and continued for nearly three weeks before the coronavirus toll became unbearable and undeniable. Afterward, people carried the virus back to far-flung cities and villages. “The euphoria of putting the pandemic behind us was a widely prevalent emotion, and it suited everyone,” Reddy said. “Industry wanted to get back to full production. Small traders wanted to get back to business. Ordinary citizens wanted to get back to their lives.” Many countries have engaged in wishful thinking during the pandemic; all have struggled to fight the virus while avoiding economic collapse. The Indian experience speaks specifically to the problem of endurance, and raises the question of how long low- and middle-income countries can maintain pandemic protocols absent a clear time line for widespread vaccination. The U.S. and much of Europe have navigated the pandemic while looking forward to early and reliable access to vaccines; if we didn’t have a firm end date, we at least knew that an end was approaching. Under such conditions, politicians and the public can examine, debate, and accept the costs of restrictions. But that calculus is harder, perhaps impossible, without some assurance that pandemic life is temporary. ADVERTISEMENT The global vaccination effort has faltered, with poor countries receiving a fraction of the vaccines they had expected. covax, the world’s primary initiative to promote vaccine equity, had planned to deliver two billion doses in 2021; so far, it’s sent out about fifty million. Less than half of one per cent of all covid-19 vaccines have been administered in poor nations. “We’re now in this very strange situation where we’re talking about fourteen-year-olds in America getting vaccinated, while older people around the world remain vulnerable and entire countries are devastated,” Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown’s public-health school, told me. “It’s a moral issue, but it’s also an epidemiological one. We’re placing everyone at risk when we let the virus run rampant. It creates a huge substrate for new variants. We need to quadruple our efforts to get the world vaccinated. That has to be the No. 1 priority for the Biden Administration going forward.” The U.S. has committed four billion dollars to covax, which still faces a funding shortfall of tens of billions of dollars. Last week, the Biden Administration also announced its support for waiving intellectual-property protections for covid-19 vaccines. The proposed waiver—it must be approved by the World Trade Organization—has been hailed by many public-health practitioners; the director-general of the W.H.O., Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called Biden’s support for the proposal “a monumental moment” in the fight against the pandemic. But others have sounded a cautionary note, raising the possibility that the spectre of patent waivers will disincentivize companies from investing in vaccine and drug development in the future. “I wonder whether we want to send potential firms the message that the larger the health crisis, the less we will respect and protect your I.P.,” Craig Garthwaite, a professor at Northwestern University, tweeted, after the Biden Administration’s announcement. “That’s a great system if you think this is the last pandemic we’ll face.” That causes Indo-Pak conflict escalation. Somos 20. Christy Somos is a CTVNews.ca Writer) “COVID-19 has escalated armed conflict in India, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and the Philippines, study finds,” CTV News, December 17, 2020. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/covid-19-has-escalated-armed-conflict-in-india-pakistan-iraq-libya-and-the-philippines-study-finds-1.5236738 TDI INDIA India saw a rise in armed conflict during the study period, with violent clashes in the Kashmir region between Kashmiri separatists facing off against the Indian military, as well as conflicts between Pakistan and India. “So what mostly drove the increase in conflict intensity…were basically due to two factors,” Ide said. “The first being that there is some evidence that Pakistan sponsors or supports these insurgents in Kashmir, to encourage them to increase their attacks on Indian forces because they perceived them to be weak and struggling with the pandemic.” The second factor, Ide explained, was that while Indian government enacted a “pretty comprehensive lockdown in Kashmir, and sealing it way from international media attention…launched more intense counter-insurgency efforts and…cracked down on any pro-Pakistani sympathy expressions.” IRAQ Iraq had an increase in armed conflict, but Ide noted that the overall intensity did not change that much – a “very slight upward trend” in scale that was not linear. What did increase were attacks by ISIS in April, May, and June. “The Iraqi government was really in trouble,” he said. “They had enormous economic loss, they had to go head-to-head and use troops and funds to combat the pandemic – the international coalition supporting the government partially withdrew troops or stopped their activities.” “The Iraqi government was really in a position of weakness.” Ide said the Islamic State exploited the pandemic and the thin resources at hand to the government to expand territorial control, conquer new areas and to stage more attacks. LIBYA The civil war in Libya between the Government of National Accord’s (GNA) forces and the Libyan National Army escalated during the study period, after a ceasefire brokered in January was broken, Ide said. “As soon as international attention shifted to the pandemic…they really escalated the conflict, tried to make gains while hoping the other side is weakened because of the pandemic, hoping to score an easy military victory” Ide said. “It didn’t happen.” The UN Security Council noted in a May report that the pandemic was bolstering the 15-month conflict, citing the history of more than 850 broken ceasefire agreements and “a tide of civilian deaths” on top of a worsening outbreak. PAKISTAN The ongoing conflict with India saw a rise in armed conflict in Pakistan during the study period – which were unrelated to the pandemic, but also a rise in Taliban-affiliated groups and anti-government sentiments due to pandemic restrictions, Ide said. “There were a lot of anti-government grievances,” Ide said. “There were restrictions on religious gatherings, which religious groups did not like, and there were some negative economic impacts which affected the local people.” Ide said those two factors could have been exploited by the Taliban in a quest to recruit more followers. Later in the study period, a swath Pakistani government officials were struck with COVID-19, leaving the country with a leadership crisis, which saw an increase of attacks by Taliban groups in May. Extinction. Roblin 21. (Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China, "If the Next India-Pakistan War Goes Nuclear, It Will Destroy the World," The National Interest, March 26, 2021. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/if-next-india-pakistan-war-goes-nuclear-it-will-destroy-world-181134 TDI Here's What You Need to Remember: India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result. Between February 26 and 27 in 2019, Indian and Pakistani warplanes launched strikes on each other’s territory and engaged in aerial combat for the first time since 1971. Pakistan ominously hinted it was convening its National Command Authority, the institution which can authorize a nuclear strike. The two states, which have retained an adversarial relationship since their founding in 1947, between them deploy nuclear warheads that can be delivered by land, air and sea. However, those weapons are inferior in number and yield to the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by Russia and the United States, which include megaton-class weapons that can wipe out a metropolis in a single blast. Some commenters have callously suggested that means a “limited regional nuclear war” would remain an Indian and Pakistani problem. People find it difficult to assess the risk of rare but catastrophic events; after all, a full-scale nuclear war has never occurred before, though it has come close to happening. Such assessments are not only shockingly callous but shortsighted. In fact, several studies have modeled the global impact of a “limited” ten-day nuclear war in which India and Pakistan each exchange fifty 15-kiloton nuclear bombs equivalent in yield to the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Their findings concluded that spillover would in no way be “limited,” directly impacting people across the globe that would struggle to locate Kashmir on a map. And those results are merely a conservative baseline, as India and Pakistan are estimated to possess over 260 warheads. Some likely have yields exceeding 15-kilotons, which is relatively small compared to modern strategic warheads. Casualties Recurring terrorist attacks by Pakistan-sponsored militant groups over the status of India’s Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state have repeatedly led to threats of a conventional military retaliation by New Delhi. Pakistan, in turn, maintains it may use nuclear weapons as a first-strike weapon to counter-balance India’s superior conventional forces. Triggers could involve the destruction of a large part of Pakistan’s military or penetration by Indian forces deep into Pakistani territory. Islamabad also claims it might authorize a strike in event of a damaging Indian blockade or political destabilization instigated by India. India’s official policy is that it will never be first to strike with nuclear weapons—but that once any nukes are used against it, New Dehli will unleash an all-out retaliation. The Little Boy bomb alone killed around 100,000 Japanese—between 30 to 40 percent of Hiroshima’s population—and destroyed 69 percent of the buildings in the city. But Pakistan and India host some of the most populous and densely populated cities on the planet, with population densities of Calcutta, Karachi and Mumbai at or exceeding 65,000 people per square mile. Thus, even low-yield bombs could cause tremendous casualties. A 2014 study estimates that the immediate effects of the bombs—the fireball, over-pressure wave, radiation burns etc.—would kill twenty million people. An earlier study estimated a hundred 15-kiloton nuclear detonations could kill twenty-six million in India and eighteen million in Pakistan—and concluded that escalating to using 100-kiloton warheads, which have greater blast radius and overpressure waves that can shatter hardened structures, would multiply death tolls four-fold. Moreover, these projected body counts omit the secondary effects of nuclear blasts. Many survivors of the initial explosion would suffer slow, lingering deaths due to radiation exposure. The collapse of healthcare, transport, sanitation, water and economic infrastructure would also claim many more lives. A nuclear blast could also trigger a deadly firestorm. For instance, a firestorm caused by the U.S. napalm bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more people than the Fat Man bomb killed in Nagasaki. Refugee Outflows The civil war in Syria caused over 5.6 million refugees to flee abroad out of a population of 22 million prior to the conflict. Despite relative stability and prosperity of the European nations to which refugees fled, this outflow triggered political backlashes that have rocked virtually every major Western government. Now consider likely population movements in event of a nuclear war between India-Pakistan, which together total over 1.5 billion people. Nuclear bombings—or their even their mere potential—would likely cause many city-dwellers to flee to the countryside to lower their odds of being caught in a nuclear strike. Wealthier citizens, numbering in tens of millions, would use their resources to flee abroad. Should bombs beginning dropping, poorer citizens many begin pouring over land borders such as those with Afghanistan and Iran for Pakistan, and Nepal and Bangladesh for India. These poor states would struggle to supports tens of millions of refugees. China also borders India and Pakistan—but historically Beijing has not welcomed refugees. Some citizens may undertake risky voyages at sea on overloaded boats, setting their sights on South East Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Thousands would surely drown. Many regional governments would turn them back, as they have refugees of conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar in the past. Fallout Radioactive fallout would also be disseminated across the globe. The fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, for example, wounds its way westward from Ukraine into Western Europe, exposing 650,000 persons and contaminating 77,000 square miles. The long-term health effects of the exposure could last decades. India and Pakistan’s neighbors would be especially exposed, and most lack healthcare and infrastructure to deal with such a crisis. Nuclear Winter Studies in 2008 and 2014 found that of one hundred bombs that were fifteen-kilotons were used, it would blast five million tons of fine, sooty particles into the stratosphere, where they would spread across the globe, warping global weather patterns for the next twenty-five years. The particles would block out light from the sun, causing surface temperatures to decrease an average of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit across the globe, or 4.5 degrees in North American and Europe. Growing seasons would be shortened by ten to forty days, and certain crops such as Canadian wheat would simply become unviable. Global agricultural yields would fall, leading to rising prices and famine. The particles may also deplete between 30 to 50 percent of the ozone layer, allowing more of the sun’s radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, causing increased sunburns and rates of cancer and killing off sensitive plant-life and marine plankton, with the spillover effect of decimating fishing yields. To be clear, these are outcomes for a “light” nuclear winter scenario, not a full slugging match between the Russian and U.S. arsenals. Global Recession Any one of the factors above would likely suffice to cause a global economic recession. All of them combined would guarantee one. India and Pakistan account for over one-fifth world’s population, and therefore a significant share of economic activity. Should their major cities become irradiated ruins with their populations decimated, a tremendous disruption would surely result. A massive decrease in consumption and production would obviously instigate a long-lasting recessionary cycle, with attendant deprivations and political destabilization slamming developed and less-developed countries alike. Taken together, these outcomes mean even a “limited” India-Pakistan nuclear war would significantly affect every person on the globe, be they a school teacher in Nebraska, a factory-worker in Shaanxi province or a fisherman in Mombasa. Unfortunately, the recent escalation between India and Pakistan is no fluke, but part of a long-simmering pattern likely to continue escalating unless New Delhi and Islamabad work together to change the nature of their relationship. Scenario 2 is South Africa. The third wave of the pandemic is fueling instability in South Africa. Egwu 21. (Patrick Egwu is a Nigerian freelance journalist currently based in Johannesburg, where he is an Open Society Foundations fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand) “South Africa’s Twin Crises Are Feeding Each Other,” Foreign Policy, July 20, 2021. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/20/south-africa-covid-19-struggles-deadly-third-wave-zuma-violence/ TDI South Africa is coping with two crises at once—a political storm caused by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, whose followers have caused chaos on the streets, and a deadly new wave of COVID-19 that’s hospitalizing thousands of people a day. On July 3, South Africa hit a record 26,000 cases of COVID-19, one of the highest new daily totals reported since the pandemic started over a year ago. The country has been battling a deadly third wave of the pandemic, following previous peaks during the first and second waves between April and December 2020. As of July 19, South Africa has recorded 2.3 million cases and 67,000 deaths since the pandemic started, according to the country’s Department of Health. On June 27, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would move to adjusted alert level 4 of lockdown for 14 days as the country faced a rising number of COVID-19 infections. After the end of the two-week lockdown and with a continuous spike in cases, Ramaphosa addressed the nation again on July 11 and announced an additional 14 days of restrictions. Ramaphosa was facing both the COVID-19 situation and the violence across the country by pro-Zuma supporters.. Banks and government buildings temporarily closed to avoid attacks. On July 12, Ramaphosa addressed the nation over persistent public violence and announced the deployment of soldiers to two provinces—Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the hometown of Zuma, where the violence started. As of July 13, more than 70 people had been killed and about 1,200 arrested. “This violence may indeed have its roots in the pronouncements and activities of individuals with a political purpose and in expressions of frustration and anger,” Ramaphosa said, but added that no grievance or political cause could justify the violence and destruction. The violence has affected access to health services, with front-line workers unable to reach vaccination stations and pharmacies often shuttered to avoid vandalism and looting. The unemployment and visible inequalities in the country exacerbated the violence. Thousands of South Africans have lost their jobs following lockdown restrictions, and there has been little government support for the economy. The violence created an opportunity to explore illegal options of survival. On top of this, the brutal police enforcement of the lockdown last year has aggravated existing tensions around police brutality, contributing to the unrest. Ramaphosa acknowledged this in his address: “This moment has thrown into stark relief what we already knew: that the level of unemployment, poverty, and inequality in our society is unsustainable.” As in so many other countries, the delta variant of COVID-19 now appears to be dominant, although the government has not published separate statistics for the different variants yet. Hospitals and front-line workers in the country are overwhelmed with the number of patients they are receiving each day. In some provinces, such as Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, many hospitals are operating above capacity, with shortage of spaces and oxygen for patients. Front-line health care workers have been hit hard. As of December 2020, over 38,000 health care workers in South Africa had tested positive for the virus, with more than 390 dead, according to data cited by Ramaphosa. Dozens Killed in South Africa Protests COLM QUINN The government is responding by calling for massive recruitment of health volunteers to beef up the staff strength at public hospitals. Earlier on in the pandemic, African countries made some gains against the virus through precautionary measures such as border closures. For instance, in March 2020, South Africa was the first country on the continent to declare a state of national disaster on the pandemic, and stiffer restrictions were announced. But these initial successes are gradually being lost with the new wave of infections and growing death rate. The gradual relaxation of restrictions to save South Africa’s ailing economy, which started last June, has worsened the situation. The World Bank says South Africa is among the most unequal countries in the world—something the pandemic has only inflamed. The unemployment rate in the country stood at 33 percent at the end of March and is highest among youth aged 15 to 24. As the third wave continues to ravage the country, just 4 million people—about 7 percent of South Africa’s population of 60 million—have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Department of Health. COVID is pummeling South Africa’s fragile economy and fueling the worst rioting since 1994. Steinhauser and Parkinson 21. (Gabriele Steinhauser writes about politics and economics in southern Africa and beyond and helps manage The Wall Street Journal's reporters on the continent. Joe Parkinson is the Wall Street Journal’s Africa Bureau Chief, leading a team of correspondents chronicling business, policy and geopolitical trends across the continent. “Third Covid Wave Upends Fragile South Africa, a Warning for Developing World,” The Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-pandemic-south-africa-riots-a-warning-for-developing-world-11626711622 TDI Wave after wave of coronavirus is pummeling South Africa’s fragile economy and its largely unvaccinated population, creating a spiral of death, lockdowns and anger that has fueled the country’s worst rioting since the collapse of white minority rule in 1994. At least 215 people died in the violence across South Africa’s two most populous provinces, and more than 3,400 have been arrested. While the looting had quieted by Monday, the situation remains tense in parts of the country. Saaberie Chishty paramedic Farah Williams said that after weeks of back-to-back calls from patients, the phones went quiet last week during the riots. The violence was initially sparked by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma earlier this month, and has exacerbated a power struggle within the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party since Nelson Mandela’s election as the country’s first Black president 27 years ago. President Cyril Ramaphosa has said the unrest was an attempted insurrection against South Africa’s democracy and intended to sabotage its economy. The political protest quickly devolved, becoming an outlet for the frustrations of an impoverished majority long shut out of the country’s economy. South Africa is struggling to emerge from a record contraction of 7 last year. Each surge of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns are putting more pressure on the divided nation, where 43 of workers were without a job at the end of March. “We were sitting on a dormant volcano here, where all of us might perish if it erupts,” said Xolani Dube, a political analyst with the Xubera Institute for Research and Development, a nonpartisan think tank in the southeastern city of Durban. “Now the volcano has erupted.” The human and economic dislocation in South Africa, where just 2.8 of people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, shows how difficult it will be for many emerging economies to recover from the pandemic. The violence in South Africa—as well as in countries including Colombia and Sudan—offers a stark example of how diminishing incomes and the rising cost of food are adding to more than a year of pandemic suffering, exacerbating political instability. The World Bank estimates that more than 160 million people will have been pushed into poverty as a result of Covid by the end of 2021, widening the gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations. The pandemic has led 41 million people to the brink of famine, according to the World Food Program. Africa instability goes nuclear. Mead 13. (Walter Mead is a James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities, Bard College) “Peace in The Congo? Why the World Should Care,” The American Interest, December 15, 2013. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/12/15/peace-in-the-congo-why-the-world-should-care/ One of the biggest questions of the 21st century is whether this destructive dynamic can be contained, or whether the demand for ethnic, cultural and/or religious homogeneity will continue to convulse world politics, drive new generations of conflict, and create millions more victims. The Congo conflict is a disturbing piece of evidence suggesting that, in Africa at least, there is potential for this kind of conflict. The Congo war (and the long Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighboring countries) is not, unfortunately alone. The secession of South Sudan from Sudan proper, the wars in what remains of that unhappy country, the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia and the rise of Christian-Muslim tension right across Africa (where religious conflict often is fed by and intensifies “tribal”—in Europe we would say “ethnic” or “national”—conflicts) are strong indications that the potential for huge and destructive conflict across Africa is very real. But one must look beyond Africa. The Middle East of course is aflame in religious and ethnic conflict. The old British Raj including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka offers countless examples of ethnic and religious conflict that sometimes is contained, and sometimes boils to the surface in horrendous acts of violence. Beyond that, rival nationalisms in East and Southeast Asia are keeping the world awake at night. The Congo war should be a reminder to us all that the foundations of our world are dynamite, and that the potential for new conflicts on the scale of the horrific wars of the 20th century is very much with us today. The second lesson from this conflict stems from the realization of how much patience and commitment from the international community (which in this case included the Atlantic democracies and a coalition of African states working as individual countries and through various international institutions) it has taken to get this far towards peace. Particularly at a time when many Americans want the US to turn inwards, there are people who make the argument that it is really none of America’s business to invest time and energy in the often thankless task of solving these conflicts. That might be an ugly but defensible position if we didn’t live in such a tinderbox world. Someone could rationally say, yes, it’s terrible that a million plus people are being killed overseas in a horrific conflict, but the war is really very far away and America has urgent needs at home and we should husband the resources we have available for foreign policy on things that have more power to affect us directly. The problem is that these wars spread. They may start in places that we don’t care much about (most Americans didn’t give a rat’s patootie about whether Germany controlled the Sudetenland in 1938 or Danzig in 1939) but they tend to spread to places that we do care very much about. This can be because a revisionist great power like Germany in 1938-39 needs to overturn the balance of power in Europe to achieve its goals, or it can be because instability in a very remote place triggers problems in places that we care about very much. Out of Afghanistan in 2001 came both 9/11 and the waves of insurgency and instability that threaten to rip nuclear-armed Pakistan apart or with trigger wider conflict India. Out of the mess in Syria a witches’ brew of terrorism and religious conflict looks set to complicate the security of our allies in Europe and the Middle East and even the security of the oil supply on which the world economy so profoundly depends. Africa, and the potential for upheaval there, is of more importance to American security than many people may understand. The line between Africa and the Middle East is a soft one. The weak states that straddle the southern approaches of the Sahara are ideal petri dishes for Al Qaeda type groups to form and attract local support. There are networks of funding and religious contact that give groups in these countries potential access to funds, fighters, training and weapons from the Middle East. A war in the eastern Congo might not directly trigger these other conflicts, but it helps to create the swirling underworld of arms trading, money transfers, illegal commerce and the rise of a generation of young men who become experienced fighters—and know no other way to make a living. It destabilizes the environment for neighboring states (like Uganda and Kenya) that play much more direct role in potential crises of greater concern to us. The plan solves both scenarios and WTO IP rules are a barrier to scaled-up vaccine production. Pandey 21. (Ashutosh Pandey) “Rich countries block India, South Africa's bid to ban COVID vaccine patents,” DW, April 2, 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/rich-countries-block-india-south-africas-bid-to-ban-covid-vaccine-patents/a-56460175 The World Trade Organization (WTO) talks on a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily suspend intellectual property (IP) rules related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments hit a roadblock on Thursday after wealthy countries balked at the idea, Germany's dpa news agency reported. The two developing countries say the IP waiver will allow drugmakers in poor countries to start production of effective vaccines sooner. India and South Africa had approached the global trade body in October, calling on it to waive parts of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The suspension of rights such as patents, industrial designs, copyright and protection of undisclosed information would ensure "timely access to affordable medical products including vaccines and medicines or to scaling-up of research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products essential to combat COVID-19," they said. The proposal was vehemently opposed by wealthy nations like the US and Britain as well as the European Union, who said that a ban would stifle innovation at pharmaceutical companies by robbing them of the incentive to make huge investments in research and development. This would be especially counterproductive during the current pandemic which needs the drugmakers to remain on their toes to deal with a mutating virus, they argue. The WTO talks are taking place as some wealthy countries face criticism for cornering billions of COVID shots — many times the size of their populations — while leaving poor countri es struggling f
or supplies. Experts say the global scramble for vaccines, or vaccine nationalism, risks prolonging the pandemic. "We have to recognize that this virus knows no boundaries, it travels around the globe and the response to it should also be global. It should be based on international solidarity," said Ellen 't Hoen, the director of Medicines Law and Policy — a nonprofit campaigning for greater access to medicines. "Many of the large-scale vaccine manufacturers are based in developing countries. All the production capacity that exists should be exploited…and that does require the sharing of Not enough production capacity Supporters of the waiver, which include dozens of developing and least-developed countries and NGOs, said the WTO's IP rules were acting as a barrier to urgent scale-up of production of vaccines and other much needed medical equipment in poor countries. 1NC – Framing The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing
First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. 2. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 3. Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. 4. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
9/7/21
SEPTOCT - AC - Malaria
Tournament: St Marks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Panel New vaccines have the potential to solve malaria, but will be patented Hackett 4/17 (Don, serves as the publisher for the Precision Vax information network. Don first entered the news industry in 1967, when he began selling the Philadelphia Bulletin after grade school in Ardmore, PA. His focus on vaccines began with the completion of the Human Genome project in 2003, which forecasted scientific breakthroughs and the future delivery a personalized medicine and vaccines. More recently, Donald has been publishing digital health information for patients and healthcare providers. Since 1996, Don has helped launch digital companies such as Physician Computer Network, drKoop.com, 1-800-Doctors, myDNA, Mirixa, Digital Pharmacist, and Precision Vax. Donald has served on the advisory boards of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Task Force, CDC Vaccine Information Project, University of Texas College of Pharmacy, Texas eHealth Alliance, CMS Pharmacist eCare Plan, CDC's Immunization Information System, and was a founding member of the HIPAA work-group in 1995.) “Yale Researchers Patent Next-Gen Malaria Vaccine Candidate” Precision Vaccinations, 4/17/2021. https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/yale-researchers-patent-next-gen-malaria-vaccine-candidate BC A Yale researcher has partnered with Novartis to develop an RNA vaccine to protect against the malaria parasite, reported Yale News. According to the Yale research team, if the Malaria vaccine candidate is approved, it could be revolutionary to the pharmaceutical field. The RTS,S vaccine, which was developed about two and a half years ago, grants about 30 protection, which decreases very quickly in about two to three years, said this Yale article written by Beatriz Horta. The vaccine patent, originally applied for in 2014 by Yale researchers, was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office this year on February 4, 2021. The Yale School of Medicine Chief of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology Richard Bucala, M.D., Ph.D., ’79 and his lab used self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) technology to improve the effectiveness and speed of production of the vaccine by decreasing the amount of genetic material needed in each shot. sRNAs are pieces of genetic material that contain the code for the protein to be targeted by the body’s antibodies after getting the vaccine but also hold the code for an enzyme that allows the genetic material to replicate itself several times. This means that a much smaller amount of genetic material needs to be injected for the vaccine to provide adequate immunization. According to Dr. Bucala, one of the issues with developing a malaria vaccine is that there is no natural sterilizing immunity, which prevents reinfection in the long-term or, ideally, throughout a person’s lifetime. This means that vaccines developed against malaria will usually provide only a short protection period or provide low immunity. Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable. Also, different from many other vaccine-preventable diseases, malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite rather than a virus, which means the organism has a more significant number of genes and has developed more mechanisms to trick the body’s immune system. “The malaria parasite has evolved elaborate strategies to circumvent destruction by the host immune system, complete its life cycle, and be passed on by mosquitoes to another person so they can be infected,” Bucala added. The main target of the saRNA vaccine is the parasite’s PMIF protein, which enables the organism to suppress the host’s immune response and prevents it from producing memory T-cells, which generate immunity. By inhibiting the activity of this protein, the vaccine will allow the body to attack the parasite naturally and generate longer-term immunity to the disease. Bucala’s lab developed the new RNA vaccine in partnership with Andrew Geall, former RNA vaccine platform leader at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. According to Geall, he had worked previously with Bucala on malaria research and has been interested in developing a vaccine for some time. However, the team faced challenges because of the novelty of the saRNA technology, which was tested for the first time in humans a year ago. “The main challenge was getting the work published,” Geall wrote in an email to the News. “This is a new concept and the mode of action for the vaccine is very different to the current approaches. The reviewers required extensive data validation.” According to Geall, the technology behind this vaccine could also significantly boost pharmaceutical companies’ abilities to produce the genetic material and distribute the shots, given the fact that less RNA is required in each dose. This aspect of the vaccine is critical for a disease that infects such a large number of people each year. “Malaria is the second leading cause of infectious disease death in the world last year, about over 400,000 individuals died,” Bucala said. “They’re usually young children under the age of five.” According to the World Health Organization, children under five account for over 67 of worldwide fatalities related to malaria each year. In 2019, there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria worldwide. Malaria vaccination is just one of several travel-vaccines suggested by the U.S. CDC when an international traveler visits certain countries. The CDC recommends travelers speak with a travel vaccine specialist one-month before traveling abroad. IP prevents vaccine success:
Non-industry patents allow companies to over charge for malaria vaccines - that kills RandD and vaccine purchasing Årdal and Røttingen 14 (Christine, Department of International Public Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway. Section for Global Health, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway) (John-Arne, Division of Infectious Disease Control, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway. Department of Health Management and Health Economics, Institute for Health and Society, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America) “An Open Source Business Model for Malaria” PLoS ONE, 2/6/2015. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0117150 BC The standard protection measure for pharmaceutical RandD is the patent, used by both the public sector (including academia, national research institutes and PDPs) and the private sector. MMV is listed in The World Intellectual Property Organization’s patent database, Patentscope, as owning 15 patents, which encompass four different patent groups. Three of these are filed through the global Patent Cooperation Treaty, which includes the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO). This initial filing must be followed up by national or regional filings in order to obtain the actual patent for the designated country. Since ARIPO does not have up-to-date data in Patentscope, it is not possible to determine whether MMV has filed in African countries, and MMV does not itemize its patent ownership or costs in its annual reports Based upon our results, we wonder if patenting of malaria treatments by non-industry organizations, like MMV, is justified. The cost of patenting is not immaterial, requiring patent applications to be filed and followed up in each individual country. Additionally the purpose of a patent is to protect against infringement, through costly lawsuits. The question is—why would a publicly or philanthropically funded body that has developed a new medicine to treat malaria (where there is market failure) want to monopolize a medicine with no or very modest revenues? One possibility is that they may want to maintain control of the new medicine to ensure that only quality-assured manufacturers are allowed to produce it. However, this should rather be controlled through the regulatory approval process. Another argument is that a patent is necessary to incentivize the participation of industry in commercialization. Industry expertise is indeed valuable in development and necessary for manufacturing and distribution. However, early WHO prequalification may also be a large enough incentive to gain the participation of industry, particularly generic manufacturers or those located in low and middle-income countries. Many of the manufacturers that MMV works with are from middle-income countries. For a Chinese or Indian manufacturer a modest profit may be sufficient if they receive financial (and potentially technical) assistance for WHO prequalification. This too can be achieved without patents. MMV can partner with UNITAID and tender out WHO prequalification support to the most qualified applicant. This is not to say that pharmaceutical manufacturers that develop a new antimalarial should not be allowed to patent. Of course, they should protect their private investment where relevant. But the utility of patenting publicly-funded innovation is questionable when the main aim of these public funds is to improve global public health. Business model To sum up, our analysis finds that malaria RandD could benefit from much greater transparency and openness. Since malaria RandD is largely publicly and philanthropically funded and the end result purchased by these same governments or philanthropies, efficiencies gained mean that these monies can be used elsewhere, potentially funding additional RandD or purchasing more medicines or vaccines. We would encourage publicly-funded institutions to re-evaluate their financing of patents and examine if similar benefits can be achieved with first-mover status on WHO prequalification. 2. “Patent thickets” delay the delivery of vaccines and prevent companies from experimenting with different antigen combinations which is necessary to develop the optimal vaccine Shotwell 07 (Sandra, Managing Partner, Alta Biomedical Group) “Patent Consolidation and Equitable Access: PATH’s Malaria Vaccines” Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: A Handbook of Best Practices, 2007. http://www.iphandbook.org/handbook/ch17/p21/ BC 2.3 IP challenges The possibility of commercializing an effective malaria vaccine raises significant IP challenges. Many patents, some with overlapping claims, cover malaria antigens that may be needed for vaccine development. Such a “patent thicket” is daunting because it is likely that more than one antigen will be needed for an effective vaccine. Unfortunately, accessing many patents one at a time via traditional licensing or partnering could tie up resources needed to develop and deliver the vaccines. Moreover, the negotiations required to access key patents could delay the delivery of the vaccine. Indeed, access to key patents might not even be available, which would affect investment decisions upstream in the development pipeline about vaccine candidates. Because of this, it may not be possible to pursue the most powerful vaccine candidates if companies holding valuable malaria-vaccine IP are unwilling to license to others even if they are not developing a malaria vaccine themselves. Assessing the availability of access to key patents becomes a priority. 3. IPP prevents vaccine market development - that’s key to the development of affordable generics and boosting global vaccine supply Aars et al. 6/16 (Ole Kristian, Spark Street Advisors, New York) Clark (Michael, Spark Street Advisors, New York) Schwalbe (Nina, Spark Street Advisors, New York. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg-Braamfontein, Gauteng, ZA, South Africa orresponding author at: Heilbrunn School of Population and Family Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health) “Increasing efficiency in vaccine Production: A primer for change” Elsevier, 6/16/2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590136221000218#! 4.4. Market development In theory, intellectual property incentivizes companies to make substantial investments in RandD and manufacturing. However, it also deters new entrants – both for existing products that are off-patent and for those that build on previous innovations 45. Patents and other intellectual property protections for vaccine manufacturers are numerous and diverse and address most of the specificities of vaccine “knowledge” and “know-how” (trade secrets). For example, a study done in 2012 by the World Intellectual Property Organization 46 found that 11,800 patent families had been filed between 1921 and 2011 for active constituents of prophylactic vaccines against infectious diseases. Among these, 516 patent families related to flu vaccines, 165 patent families related to pneumococcal conjugated vaccines, and 36 patent families related to typhoid conjugated vaccines. Patents include technologies required for manufacturing (cell cultures, nucleic acid sequences, viral vector technology, virus/cell bank technologies, egg-based virus replication, etc.), active ingredients (antigens, adjuvants), production technologies, and processes (e.g., filtration, purification, conjugation, freeze-drying, etc.). The safeguarding of know-how and patenting of smaller components of the vaccine development process can be important to vaccine manufacturers as it extends protection in time far beyond the initial patent for active ingredients. However, when such patenting does not reflect substantial technological advancements, it may lead to unreasonably long patent protection. Such an unjustified extension of the exclusivity period can impede price competition and follow-up innovation, ultimately limiting access to potentially life-saving products 45. This is an area that could benefit, for example, from additional scrutiny of regulatory authorities granting of an extension of protections. Since patents are, for the most part, not transferrable across jurisdictions, vaccine developers will often need to file their patents in multiple jurisdictions. Specific licenses are also required before exporting a vaccine; for example, the importing country may require the manufacturer to conduct country-specific clinical trials 3. Such barriers add to the difficulties around logistics and production economics for vaccine manufacturers 47. Some patents are also the subject of complex licensing cross-agreements and royalty payments between several intellectual property rights (IPR) holders as a result of negotiations to terminate disputes 44. This may generate high financial stakes for several patent holders and make potential IPR negotiations further complex 3. For example, Bio-Manguinhos had to pay 4–5 running royalties on the Hib vaccine to GSK 48. Despite the growth in manufacturing in India and China in recent years 49, 50, the IPR landscape for vaccines – from discovery to delivery – creates substantial obstacles for new players 2. Understanding the landscape requires costly expertise, resources, and a capacity to undertake difficult and lengthy navigations around IPR. This could be in part addressed by a dedicated clearinghouse that focuses on reducing IPR-related barriers for DCVMN manufactures and potentially facilitates access to patent licenses. Activities to consider include: the creation of a vaccine patents database on strategically selected areas; supporting targeted freedom to operate analyses and solution-based resource tools; and, potentially, support DCMVN manufacturers with skills like legal expertise and negotiation strategy.
Malaria kills 2.7 million annually – climate change increases cases by 80 million Buck and Finnigan 8/11 (Emily, Madigan Army Medical Center) (Nancy, Campbell University) “Malaria” StatPearls, 8/11/2021. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551711/ BC Forty percent of the total global population resides in or visits malaria-endemic regions annually.1 P. falciparum is present in Western and sub-Saharan Africa and displays the highest morbidity and mortality of the Plasmodia species.2 P. vivax is present in South Asia, the Western Pacific, and Central America.2 P. ovale and P. malariae are present in Sub-Saharan Africa.2 P. knowlesi is present in Southeast Asia.2 As many as 500 million cases of malaria occur annually, with 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths.1 Ninety percent of fatalities occur in Africa.1 Those at highest risk include children under age 5, pregnant women, and disease naïve populations, including refugee populations in Central and Eastern Africa, nonimmune civilian and military travelers, and immigrants returning to their place of origin.214 Of the 125 million travelers who visit endemic locations each year, 10000 to 30000 develop malaria, and 1 of these will die from complications of their disease.24 Rising average global temperatures and changes in weather patterns are projected to expand the burden of malaria; a rise of 3 degrees Celsius is postulated to increase malaria incidence by 50 to 80 million.1
Independently, malaria prolongs and encourages civil war Bagozzi 16 (Benjamin, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota) “On Malaria and the Duration of Civil War” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2016. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24755897.pdf?refreqid=excelsior3Aec750bfda9401e7eb1568fe006fea131 BC Drawing upon this logic, I argue subsequently that high malaria prevalence (within a conflict region) will similarly serve to asymmetrically enhance rebel groups' defensive capabilities and thus prolong the duration of civil war. Stated briefly, malaria prevalence does so in three complementary ways. First, while malaria can inflict costs on both government and rebel groups, these costs are often multiplied for larger and denser groups. Hence, the costs of malaria—and the likelihood of an epidemic—will be higher for (what are typically larger in size and less diffuse) government troop deployments. Second, because government troops are rotated in and out of conflict zones whereas insurgents typically are not, the former are likely to have a higher nonimmune exposure rate than the latter, which further ensures that government soldiers will be more susceptible to contracting and spreading malaria. Third, high malaria prevalence also prevents a government from successfully constructing infrastructure, providing services, and establishing a political presence within a conflict region. As such, malaria can indirectly pro long civil war by helping to maintain a socio-geographic environment that is conducive to insurgency. Taken together, these three complementary factors thereby advantage rebel groups' abilities to (1) resist defeat by government forces and (2) prolong civil conflict The first factor mentioned previously—which posits that larger and denser social groups will be more susceptible to malaria—is rooted in the literature on "frontier malaria." This literature argues that the costs of malaria follow an inverted "U" shape with respect to human settlement in malarial regions: one first observes a relatively low malaria rate in areas with sparse, widely dispersed human populations (phase 1), then a spike in malaria rates during the initial stage of organized settlement (phase 2), and finally a decline in malaria rates as an area becomes increasingly urbanized (phase 3).2 There are two reasons for the malaria spike in phase 2. First, relative to very sparse human populations, denser and larger populations of individuals—such as those accompanying organized mining, logging, or farming communities—directly increase the potential human transmission points for malaria by adding to the "tropical aggregation of labor" (Martens and Hall 2000, 105). Observing this process at work in the Congo, for example, Trape and Zoulani (1987, 23) note that "each human settlement initially favours the multiplication of breeding places and the presence of high density populations of A. gambiae" mosquitos, whereas Singer and de Castro (2001, 203) similarly observe among Amazonian frontier settlements that the "combination of high human density, high vector density, and lack of immunity was destined to produce a malaria outbreak." Second, and again relative to the sparse and diffuse human settlements found in phase 1, these denser (phase 2) human settlements are also necessarily accompanied by larger proximate sources of standing water (for water collection or irrigation), more deforestation, and higher rates of animal displacement (the mosquito's alternate food source)—each of which further increases human expo sure to mosquitos (Sawyer 1993; Martens and Hall 2000, 105). Hence, the initial disturbance of the natural environment by human settlement facilitates conditions that encourage more breeding of mosquitos, and more targeting of human hosts. These high malaria rates then typically persist within an area until a settlement becomes sufficiently urbanized (phase 3), wherein malaria declines alongside an urbanized settlement's increased areas of cleared land, elimination of major sources of standing water, improvements in housing, better knowledge of the disease and access to health care, and higher rates of resistance (Barbieri, Sawyer, and Soares-Filho 2005, 851)—a process that can take 10 to 20 years to complete (Sawyer 1993, 1132). Regarding government and rebel forces during civil conflicts, I argue that the dispersed, guerilla fighting styles of insurgent groups will help to situate these rebel actors within a phase 1 environment of low malaria exposure, whereas the typically larger, and more dense military structures of government forces instead align this group much more closely with the high malaria rates found within phase 2. Indeed, by virtue of being smaller in absolute number, and pursuing more diffuse styles of combat and habitation, insurgents are less likely to be deployed and stationed in semipermanent camps of medium to large groups, whereas government soldiers will often establish large-scale military bases and camps of these sorts when pursuing activities in conflict regions.3 These latter practices accordingly help to ensure that government troops will be more prone to transmitting malaria between one another both directly, through their larger group size and density, and indirectly, through increased proximate standing water resources, semipermanent habitat construction, clear-cutting, and animal displacement—all of which foster conditions for higher vector contact and hence malaria transmission. Thus, taken together, traditional government military forces will asymmetrically bear the burden of conflict-zone malaria during times of war. Historical accounts suggest that these factors do indeed severely harm and limit traditional military forces in malarial regions, especially as the size and density of a military force expands. Beadle and Hoffman (1993, 320) report, for example, that when the size of US naval forces in Vietnam during the Vietnam War was "increased by about 50 from fiscal year 1966 to fiscal year 1969, the incidence of malaria increased almost eightfold" (1993, 320),4 whereas when the number of US naval forces then decreased dramatically during 1969-1970, the "malarial incidence rate among the personnel still in Vietnam decreased as well" (p. 321). Earlier US military occupations of Cuba and Haiti experienced similar, if not more severe, casualty rates as the result of malaria prevalence in conflict areas (Allen 1923; McCullough 1977,406). Similarly, while observers at the time noted that Panama's 1903 revolt against Colombia could have likely been quelled by a mere 600 Colombian troops, "a Colombian force of some two thousand men did attempt an overland march through the Darien wilderness, but ravaged by fever, they gave up and turned back" (McCullough 1977, 379), and with a US blockade in Panama's Caribbean port, the Panamanian revolution was successful. Additional evidence also suggests that modern rebel groups recognize the costs imposed upon government forces by malaria. For example, as a Karen National Union spokesman noted with respect to his group's rebellion against the Myanmar military junta (State Law and Order Restoration Council SLORC) in 1997, "this will be a decisive engagement, either SLORC will triumph or they will be dragged down by the cost of the war, by heavy casualties and by growing disaffection within their army. And because they are operating in an endemic malaria area, they stand to lose as many men from sickness as from fighting."5 In full, these anecdotes accordingly suggest that state-based military forces have historically, and disproportionately, incurred high costs as a result of malaria prevalence. Moreover, it is unlikely that these disadvantages will be offset by superior access to medicine among government forces. Most civil wars are fought in the developing world and in such contexts, government troops, like rebel groups, are often significantly underfunded in health and human services (Elbe 2002; Henk and Rupitya 2001, 18). For instance, in assessing the Filipino government's counterinsurgent troops in 1986, Filipino president Corazon Aquino "noted that inadequate rations force government troops to steal from civilians and that heavy casualties from pneumonia and malaria, as well as combat deaths, could be traced to a lack of clothing and an almost complete absence of field doctors and medicine."6 Even among those government troops that are well funded, successful use of malaria abatement technologies has proved to be near-impossible for soldiers in the field. Joy (1999) observes for US troops in the Pacific during World War II, for example, that "environmental control could not be performed in forward combat areas (including the use of bed nets). Even with clothing discipline, hands and faces were exposed, and repellent, even if used, was rapidly removed in the sweat" (p. 203), whereas in more recent US conflicts, "Gambel et al. (1998) reviewed the use of personal preventive measures, to include application of topical insect repellents and permethrin treat ment of clothing and netting, among deployed personnel. Their study demonstrated that deployed soldiers do not understand the use of these measures and as a result fail to use them properly, if at all" (Kotwal et al. 2005,215). Furthermore, as argued subsequently, any natural immunity to malaria gained by government troops operating in malarial regions will be rapidly undone (especially relative to rebel groups) as a result of governments' practices of frequent troop rotation in to and out of conflict zones. Hence, it is improbable that government troops will hold a superior medical advantage with respect to malaria—which has no known vaccine—in civil war settings. As alluded to previously, a second socially disruptive feature of malaria that may also asymmetrically burden government troops during times of civil war concerns the relationship between military troop rotations and malaria immunity. Troop movements and rotations have been argued to exacerbate disease epidemics throughout history (Smallman-Raynor and Cliff 2004) as well as in more recent civil war torn regions such as Sierra Leone (Bazergan 2002). Regarding malaria immunity specifically, extant findings suggest that whereas individuals living in malarial regions build up immunity over time, newcomers to a malarial region typically have low-level immunity or are nonimmune, which in turn increases newcomers' likelihoods of both catching malaria and spreading it (Martens and Hall 2000). Accordingly, research has found that "outsiders" face higher malaria burdens when visiting a malaria region than do local inhabitants, which is a reality that has historically limited intergroup contact, inhibited the transmissions of ideas, and prevented movements of labor (Sachs and Malaney 2002; Letendre, Fincher, and Thornhill 2010). Furthermore, because local acquired immunity often dissipates over the course of a year or so, local inhabitants that have acquired immunity but leave a malarial region for schooling or work will face the same burdens as migrants when they return home (Sachs and Malaney 2002, 684). In sum then, the presence of malaria in a given region imposes asymmetric costs upon individuals and groups, which counterintuitively are highest for those individuals or groups that have had the least amount of constant exposure to that region. The newcomer characteristics described previoulsy closely resemble the troop deployment practices that governments undertake, to a disproportionate degree, while fighting civil wars. Civil conflicts are typically fought far from a government's command center and resource base, within the regions of a country or territory that insurgents actively reside in (Buhaug, Gates, and Lujala 2009). As the civil conflict literature reviewed earlier suggests, these features help rebels to evade capture, and thus, enhance insurgents' defensive capabilities. Accordingly, leaving conflict regions can be costly for rebel actors, as doing so often entails travel to areas that (1) are under more direct government control and (2) exhibit fewer opportunities for rebels to blend in or receive aid from sympathizers. Thus, the dynamics of civil war often necessitate that rebels occupy (malarial) conflict zones full-time, which in turn ensures that rebel actors will accordingly build a degree of immunity to malaria over time. By contrast, government soldiers generally live and train far from a civil war's active conflict zones and are only deployed to conflict zones for military activity, thereby ensuring a higher malarial nonimmune rate among government soldiers. In addition, government troops, unlike rebels, are commonly provided with paid leave periods, or are otherwise rotated in and out of conflict regions over time (e.g., for medical treatment). This latter feature further guarantees that even if some government troops do acquire malaria resistance, the playing field will not remain level for long. Taken together, government soldiers will frequently experience higher malaria burdens due to nonimmunity than will rebel forces, even as the latter exhibit more persistent exposure to a malarial region. These phenomena were observed succinctly in one recent study of an consequent heavy transmission of falciparum malaria among the tribals perennially contributes to the local tribal developing some immunity, leading to a stable state of malaria in them (Manson-Bahr 1982). This makes the nomadic service population who come in contact with such tribal areas within flight range of vector mosquitos highly vulnerable because of their non-immune status. These can raise additional problems in that the very presence of such non-immunes may convert an endemic stable malaria into an epidemic. (Banerjee 2001, 290) Hence, malaria has the potential to asymmetrically burden government troop deployments within a conflict region. To the extent that this increases rebel groups' abilities to resist a total military defeat, malaria will prolong civil war. Third, malaria also enhances rebels' defensive capabilities by preventing governments from successfully constructing infrastructure, providing services, and establishing a broader physical presence within a conflict region. Insurgents gain defensive advantages in civil wars when they possess, among other factors, deeper knowledge of local populations; favorable recruitment pools arising from poor socio-geographic conditions; and rugged terrains that preclude government transportation, occupation, or communication (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Buhaug, Gates, and Lujala 2009; Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009). By inhibiting governments' abilities to (1) construct transportation and communication infrastructure, (2) provide public services, and (3) maintain a political and bureaucratic presence in an area, malaria helps to ensure that those socio-geographic features that are favorable to insurgency, when already in place, will remain so. Herein, research sug gests that frontier malarial regions, even when devoid of insurgency, will be dominated by political marginalization, unplanned development, agricultural failures, weak institutions, and low community cohesion (Singer and de Castro 2001 ; de Cas tro et al. 2006,2452). At the same time, major public works projects and government attempts to build transportation infrastructure in malarial regions will often also be severely impeded or will fail altogether, which can further exacerbate existing malaria exposure levels (McCullough 1977; Martens and Hall 2000). In effect, these dynamics thus help to erode, or to maintain low existing levels of, state capacity within conflict regions, which itself has been shown to be related to civil war (Hendrix 2011). Consequently, malaria prevalence will maintain a socio-geographic setting that is conducive to insurgency, to rebel recruitment, and to rebel defensive cap abilities more generally. As such, malaria prevalence can indirectly foster long, drawn-out civil wars, essentially by ensuring that rebels have access to the very resources that past scholarship suggests will allow them to resist total defeat African civil wars escalate – they ensure US, Russia, and China draw in Hicks et al. 3/4 (Marcus, a retired Air Force Major General who served as Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, Africa, from 2017 to 2019. He previously was Chief of Staff at the U.S. Special Operations Command and a career AC-130 pilot.) Atwell (Kyle, an active-duty U.S. Army Officer, a Ph.D. student at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a cohost of the Irregular Warfare Podcast.) Collini (Dan, an active-duty U.S. Army Officer and a Joint Chiefs of Staff Fellow.) “Great-Power Competition Is Coming to Africa” Foreign Affairs, 3/4/2021. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/africa/2021-03-04/great-power-competition-coming-africa BC The shift in U.S. strategy toward Africa reflects an assumption—shared by many in Washington—that counterterrorism and other long-standing U.S. priorities in Africa will diminish in importance as competition between the United States, China, and other significant powers intensifies. But that assumption is wrong. In fact, far from being a distraction from great-power competition, Africa promises to become one of its important theaters. And if anything, great-power competition will increase the need for the United States to battle terrorists and safeguard democracy, trade, and free enterprise in Africa—but to do so with particular attention to limiting the malign influence of Russia and China. President Joe Biden’s administration needs a new strategy that pursues these ends together, sustainably, and at an acceptable cost. For as long as the United States has had an Africa policy, it has run day-to-day operations through its ambassadors, tailoring its approach to each of the continent’s 54 countries individually. But today’s most pressing issues—terrorism, climate change, pandemics, and irregular migration, for instance—would be better served by regional coordinators whose authority transcends national borders. To safeguard its interests on the continent and to limit the influence of its rivals, the United States must start thinking regionally instead of nationally. Devising such a policy is a matter of some urgency. As current and former military officers, one of whom led the U.S. Special Operations Command for Africa from 2017 to 2019, we believe that the United States must position itself as the partner of choice for African countries in the era of great-power competition. Failure to do so will imperil U.S. interests on the continent—and possibly U.S. security at home. PARTNER OF CHOICE Like it or not, a twenty-first century “scramble for Africa” is underway. Russia and China in particular are ramping up economic and military activity on the continent at the same time as the United States is scaling back. Both countries see opportunities to build economic relationships, secure access to natural resources and rapidly growing markets, forge political alliances, and promote their own illiberal models of government. Russia has dramatically expanded its footprint in Africa in recent years, signing military deals with at least 19 countries since 2014 and becoming the top arms supplier to the continent. Just days after the United States announced its plans to withdraw from Somalia in December 2020, Russia said it had reached an agreement to establish a new naval base in Port Sudan. Its mercenary companies, including the Wagner Group, which fought a deadly firefight against U.S. Special Operations Forces in Syria in 2018, now operate across the continent, from Libya to the Central African Republic to Mozambique. China, too, is angling for influence in Africa. It established its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 and spends vast sums on infrastructure projects to secure access to resources and to buy goodwill and votes in international organizations such as the United Nations. China’s leaders have promoted their country’s authoritarian bureaucratic system as a model for African leaders seeking to expand their economies without allowing democratic reforms. Their attractive lending practices and noninterference policy regarding human rights, market liberalization, and corruption give them additional influence over poor African governments. Increased Russian and Chinese activity is already transforming Africa into a theater of competition with the United States—just as Soviet and U.S. jockeying made the continent a venue for Cold War rivalry. In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Iran, and North Korea provided military assistance to governments and rebels across Africa. These countries became embroiled in proxy wars, sometimes even sending their own troops into combat. Russia and Cuba, for instance, sent tens of thousands of soldiers to fight in the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia and in the Angolan civil war. The United States might prefer to avoid becoming embroiled in African proxy wars during this new era of great-power competition, but it must be prepared for such conflicts nonetheless. Already, Libya has become a theater for proxy warfare between Russia, Turkey, and other countries backing opposite sides in an increasingly bloody civil-turned-proxy war. The United States has played a peripheral role in that conflict, but that did not stop Russia from allegedly shooting down a U.S. drone over Libya in 2019. The United States cannot simply withdraw from Africa without leaving its interests exposed. Salafi jihadi insurgencies, political instability, and authoritarianism still threaten U.S. businesses and commercial interests as well as the security of U.S. partners. Like the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s, insurgent groups in Africa are mostly motivated by local and regional concerns. These groups draw recruits from the continent’s large and rapidly growing population, which is particularly vulnerable to radicalization due to persistent poverty, environmental degradation, and all too often, poor governance. But many of the groups’ leaders have links to al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and are increasingly aligned with transnational Salafi jihadi causes. At the direction of al Qaeda’s senior leadership, al Qaeda franchises in the Sahel have conducted attacks against high-profile Western targets in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger in recent years. And the Somali insurgent group al Shabab has attacked Western targets in Kenya and Somalia and even plotted to hijack a commercial airplane and fly it into a building in the United States, as the U.S. Justice Department revealed in a recent indictment. Moreover, Salafi jihadi groups create political instability that in turn degrades governance, depresses economic activity, allows transnational crime to flourish, unleashes refugee flows, and invites health crises such as the 2014–16 Ebola pandemic in West Africa. In an interconnected world, what happens in Africa does not stay in Africa. Fortunately, the United States and African countries share a common interest in countering Salafi jihadi groups. By offering sustained and effective counterterrorism assistance, the United States can become the partner of choice for African countries, encouraging them to develop their economies and political systems in accordance with Western norms. Successful great-power competition in Africa hinges on the United States’ ability to win over African governments with a holistic counterinsurgency strategy, one that addresses the root causes of terrorism and lays the political, economic, and developmental groundwork for future stability and prosperity. Increased Chinese and Russian influence in Africa kills US primacy – they don’t have control now, but military conflict lets them assert dominance in the region Turse 19 (Nick, contributing writer for The Intercept, reporting on national security and foreign policy. He is the author, most recently, of "Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan," as well as "Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa," and "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam." He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, and Village Voice, among other publications. He has received a Ridenhour Prize for Investigative Reporting, a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Turse is a fellow at The Nation Institute and the managing editor of TomDispatch.com.) “U.S. GENERALS WORRY ABOUT RISING RUSSIAN AND CHINESE INFLUENCE IN AFRICA, DOCUMENTS SHOW” The Intercept, 8/13/2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/08/13/russia-china-military-africa/ BC THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION and the Pentagon have repeatedly warned that China and Russia are expanding their influence across Africa, where the two longtime American adversaries “interfere with U.S. military operations and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests,” national security adviser John Bolton said last December. That view was echoed by the former head of U.S. Africa Command, Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, who left the job last month, and his replacement, Stephen Townsend, both of whom testified publicly before Congress earlier this year. But the two generals went further in written responses to Congress obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act, describing an Africa ever more likely to fall under the sway of Beijing and Moscow — with Russia exerting influence in as many as 10 different African countries and China likely to open more bases across the continent. Beijing and Moscow have steadily increased their economic ties across Africa and, with them, their diplomatic sway. Trade between China and Africa has risen from $765 million to more than $170 billion in the last 40 years, and 39 of 54 African nations have now signed on to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a trillion-dollar plan to link infrastructure and trade via a vast new network of roads, rail lines, ports, and pipelines across Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa. Russia’s trade with Africa increased from $5.7 billion in 2009 to $17.4 billion in 2017, and the country has been aggressively promoting nuclear infrastructure and technology partnerships as well as oil and gas investments there. Both nations have also aimed to increase their cultural influence. The number of Chinese-government-sponsored Confucius Institutes in Africa, which promote Chinese language and culture, have risen from zero in 2004 to 48 last year, according to data compiled by Development Reimagined, a Beijing-based international consulting firm. AFRICOM documents note that these centers are located in 20 different African countries. The Russian equivalent, Russkiy Mir Foundation, a nongovernmental and nonprofit organization, is active in nine African countries, according to AFRICOM. Russia and China have also been forging stronger military ties with African nations through arms sales, security agreements, and military training programs. Russian private military companies are active in 15 African nations, according to AFRICOM. Last month, Beijing hosted the first China-Africa Peace and Security Forum, which brought together nearly 100 security officials from 50 African countries and the African Union, including 15 defense ministers and chiefs of general staff, according to China’s Ministry of Defense. While that gathering was underway, the Russian news agency Tass announced that roughly 35 African leaders had confirmed their attendance at the first Russia-Africa Summit – co-chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi — set to be held in Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi in October. IN HIS TESTIMONY before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Waldhauser mostly focused on Russia’s increasing inroads in Central African Republic and, to a lesser extent, Algeria, Libya, and Sudan. But in his written responses, Waldhauser mentioned six other nations that were also involved with Russia or susceptible to its influence including Angola, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, and Tunisia. Russia is leveraging or seeking to leverage military aid in return for mining rights and energy partnerships, according to Waldhauser. “To thwart Russian exploitative efforts, USAFRICOM continues to work with a host of partners to be the military partner of choice in Africa,” he wrote. In the Central African Republic, “Russia has bolstered its influence with increased military cooperation including donations of arms, with which it has gained access to markets and mineral extraction rights,” Waldhauser explained in his public testimony. “With minimal investment, Russia leverages private military contractors, such as the Wagner Group.” He noted that the president of the Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, had recently installed “a Russian civilian as his National Security Advisor. The President also promised the armed forces would be deployed nationwide to return peace to the country by forces likely trained, equipped, and in some cases, accompanied by Russian military contractors. Russia’s ability to import harsh security practices, in a region already marred by threats to security, while systematically extracting minerals, is concerning.” Asked to privately explain these “harsh security practices,” Waldhauser mentioned reports of Russian contractor cooperation with militias and acquiescence to their human rights violations; the abuse of local security force trainees as well as civilians “who approach Russian mining interests”; and the possibility of involvement in the deaths of Russian journalists who were murdered in the Central African Republic while investigating the activities of Russian military contractors. In his public testimony, Townsend ranked China just below Russia as a threat to U.S. primacy in Africa but said he expected the People’s Republic to eclipse Russia. “I think that they are after access and influence to our detriment,” the new AFRICOM commander said of China. Behind the scenes, Townsend also badmouthed China’s efforts on multiple fronts, including arms sales, and explained that the U.S. needed to emphasize the shoddy nature of Chinese military technology to African countries. “China has provided Nigeria with armed unmanned aerial systems … but the poor quality of the platforms has contributed to infrequent use,” he wrote. “Low cost and short delivery timelines entice African partners to purchase Chinese equipment, but purchases frequently do not address the underlying military need. We need to tell this story to a greater extent.” In his written remarks, Waldhauser explained that current Chinese efforts in Africa were unlikely to inhibit U.S. military access and operations in the near term but warned that “China could gain that capability within the next decade.” While China only opened its first overseas military base, located six miles from the U.S. military’s Camp Lemonnier in the Horn-of-Africa nation of Djibouti in 2017, Waldhauser mentioned more Chinese facilities on the horizon. “China is actively working with African partners to open new bases in several locations across the continent,” he wrote. “By working with other African nations … we may be able to ensure that when China or Russia do gain military access to ports, bases, or airspace, that they are unable to take full advantage of that access to threaten U.S. freedom of maneuver in and around Africa.” Primacy prevents great-power conflict — multipolar revisionism fragments the global order and causes nuclear war Brands and Edel, 19 — Hal Brands; PhD, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Charles Edel; PhD, Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. (“The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order;” Ch. 6: Darkening Horizon; Published by Yale University Press; GrRv) Each of these geopolitical challenges is different, and each reflects the distinctive interests, ambitions, and history of the country undertaking it. Yet there is growing cooperation between the countries that are challenging the regional pillars of the U.S.-led order. Russia and China have collaborated on issues such as energy, sales and development of military technology, opposition to additional U.S. military deployments on the Korean peninsula, and naval exercises from the South China Sea to the Baltic. In Syria, Iran provided the shock troops that helped keep Russia’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, in power, as Moscow provided the air power and the diplomatic cover. “Our cooperation can isolate America,” supreme leader Ali Khamenei told Putin in 2017. More broadly, what links these challenges together is their opposition to the constellation of power, norms, and relationships that the U.S.-led order entails, and in their propensity to use violence, coercion, and intimidation as means of making that opposition effective. Taken collectively, these challenges constitute a geopolitical sea change from the post-Cold War era. The revival of great-power competition entails higher international tensions than the world has known for decades, and the revival of arms races, security dilemmas, and other artifacts of a more dangerous past. It entails sharper conflicts over the international rules of the road on issues ranging from freedom of navigation to the illegitimacy of altering borders by force, and intensifying competitions over states that reside at the intersection of rival powers’ areas of interest. It requires confronting the prospect that rival powers could overturn the favorable regional balances that have underpinned the U.S.-led order for decades, and that they might construct rival spheres of influence from which America and the liberal ideas it has long promoted would be excluded. Finally, it necessitates recognizing that great-power rivalry could lead to great-power war, a prospect that seemed to have followed the Soviet empire onto the ash heap of history. Both Beijing and Moscow are, after all, optimizing their forces and exercising aggressively in preparation for potential conflicts with the United States and its allies; Russian doctrine explicitly emphasizes the limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve escalation dominance in a war with Washington. In Syria, U.S. and Russian forces even came into deadly contact in early 2018. American airpower decimated a contingent of government-sponsored Russian mercenaries that was attacking a base at which U.S. troops were present, an incident demonstrating the increasing boldness of Russian operations and the corresponding potential for escalation. The world has not yet returned to the epic clashes for global dominance that characterized the twentieth century, but it has returned to the historical norm of great-power struggle, with all the associated dangers. Those dangers may be even greater than most observers appreciate, because if today’s great-power competitions are still most intense at the regional level, who is to say where these competitions will end? By all appearances, Russia does not simply want to be a “regional power” (as Obama cuttingly described it) that dominates South Ossetia and Crimea.37 It aspires to the deep European and extra-regional impact that previous incarnations of the Russian state enjoyed. Why else would Putin boast about how far his troops can drive into Eastern Europe? Why else would Moscow be deploying military power into the Middle East? Why else would it be continuing to cultivate intelligence and military relationships in regions as remote as Latin America? Likewise, China is today focused primarily on securing its own geopolitical neighborhood, but its ambitions for tomorrow are clearly much bolder. Beijing probably does not envision itself fully overthrowing the international order, simply because it has profited far too much from the U.S.-anchored global economy. Yet China has nonetheless positioned itself for a global challenge to U.S. influence. Chinese military forces are deploying ever farther from China’s immediate periphery; Beijing has projected power into the Arctic and established bases and logistical points in the Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa. Popular Chinese movies depict Beijing replacing Washington as the dominant actor in sub-Saharan Africa—a fictional representation of a real-life effort long under way. The Belt and Road Initiative bespeaks an aspiration to link China to countries throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe; BRI, AIIB, and RCEP look like the beginning of an alternative institutional architecture to rival Washington’s. In 2017, Xi Jinping told the Nineteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that Beijing could now “take center stage in the world” and act as an alternative to U.S. leadership.38 These ambitions may or may not be realistic. But they demonstrate just how significantly the world’s leading authoritarian powers desire to shift the global environment over time. The revisionism we are seeing today may therefore be only the beginning. As China’s power continues to grow, or if it is successful in dominating the Western Pacific, it will surely move on to grander endeavors. If Russia reconsolidates control over the former Soviet space, it may seek to bring parts of the former Warsaw Pact to heel. Historically, this has been a recurring pattern of great-power behavior—interests expand with power, the appetite grows with the eating, risk-taking increases as early gambles are seen to pay off.39 This pattern is precisely why the revival of great-power competition is so concerning—because geopolitical revisionism by unsatisfied major powers has so often presaged intensifying international conflict, confrontation, and even war. The great-power behavior occurring today represents the warning light flashing on the dashboard. It tells us there may be still-greater traumas to come. The threats today are compelling and urgent, and there may someday come a time when the balance of power has shifted so markedly that the postwar international system cannot be sustained. Yet that moment of failure has not yet arrived, and so the goal of U.S. strategy should be not to hasten it by giving up prematurely, but to push it off as far into the future as possible. Rather than simply acquiescing in the decline of a world it spent generations building, America should aggressively bolster its defenses, with an eye to preserving and perhaps even selectively advancing its remarkable achievements. Retrenchment causes nationalism, war, and protectionism – optimists falsely assume current cooperative trends will continue without the US security guarantee Matthew Fay 17, Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies @ The Niskanen Center, 11/16/17, “America Unrestrained?: Engagement, Retrenchment, and Libertarian Foreign Policy,” https://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/America-Unrestrained.pdf A number of the arguments libertarians make in favor of retrenchment have merit, but the cost-benefit analysis derived from them is based on a deterministic view of international politics. Libertarian retrenchers assume that international politics would remain more or less the same absent American engagement and that America’s domestic politics would remain the same even if the international system become more conflict-prone. Given the inherent uncertainty of forecasting, the costs and benefits of engagement and retrenchment need to be considered in a more probabilistic fashion.86 This section begins by exploring a number of scenarios that could occur should the United States adopt a grand strategy of retrenchment. It then reassesses the costs and benefits of retrenchment for a free society. In a system with more independent states balancing against one another, is war more or less likely? Libertarians are placing a bet that all else would remain equal in international politics if the United States retrenches. While they assume a world where an increased number of states are balancing against one another would remain peaceful, the reality is not entirely clear. Using basic realist premises about state behavior under international anarchy, it is easy to identify a number of scenarios less rosy than the one libertarians assume would occur should the United States retrench. These scenarios might include a world of increased nationalism, eroding norms against military aggression, increased economic autarky, and the further spread of nuclear weapons as states look to produce security for themselves. Some states may also fail to balance against threats in the wake of American retrenchment, increasing the likelihood the United States will be drawn into a major war. Libertarians assume that in the absence of an alliance with the United States, other countries would simply increase their defense spending if they felt threatened. However, internal balancing is not a mechanical process. According to John Mearsheimer, leaders of states facing security competition are likely to use nationalism to garner support from their populations for the necessary regeneration of military capabilities.87 Writing at the end of the Cold War, Mearsheimer suggested that Europe would revert to a pattern of recurrent warfare. The absence of the United States and the Soviet Union would leave Europe, once again, an anarchic multipolar system. The structure of the system would force the states to compete with one another, as they had prior to the Cold War. Mearsheimer argued that pre-1945 “hypernationalism” was a product of “security competition among the European states, which compelled elites to mobilize public support for national defense efforts.”88 American retrenchment could similarly lead to an anarchic, multipolar Europe—thus increasing the chances of war on the continent. Such a system could engender nationalist sentiments among the populations of Europe, heightening animosities between national groups. These heightened animosities could help erode norms against military aggression that have facilitated the decline in interstate war. Nationalist groups within a country can seize on these sentiments to pursue confrontational and expansionist policies.89 Encouraging support for increased military capabilities through nationalism might lead populations to see war as once again a means to national glory or maintaining national honor. Matters of national prestige and honor can lead to the initiation of wars when bound up in territorial claims, while at the same time increasing the intensity and duration of a conflict.90 Nationalism and security competition might also erode the pacifying effects of economic openness. Realism suggests states are concerned about relative gains.91 States in security competition might be wary of trading with one another due to concerns about how a potential rival’s economic gains might provide it with an advantage if translated into military power. They may also adopt autarkic policies for fear of undermining their economic and military self-sufficiency.92 Territorial conquest has become increasing anachronistic in international politics. However, the proliferation of protectionist policies might once again make aggression and preventive war seem like strategically sensible ways for states to secure the resources necessary to reduce the ability of potential rivals to cut them off economically. If the risk of territorial aggression increases, the possession of nuclear weapons would become an attractive option for some states whose security was previously guaranteed by the United States. Nuclear weapons are most useful for deterring major territorial aggression, meaning their potential utility increases as the potential for war does.93 A number of U.S. allies have either previously pursued nuclear weapons or have the capability to do so. They might choose to obtain a nuclear arsenal once responsible for their own security. Pursuit is inevitable Wright 20 (Thomas, director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, former lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School for Public Policy, PhD from Georgetown University and M.Phil. from Cambridge University) “The Folly of Retrenchment: Why America Can’t Withdraw From the World,” Foreign Affairs, 4/2020 JL A fifth problem with retrenchment is that it lacks domestic support. The American people may favor greater burden sharing, but there is no evidence that they are onboard with a withdrawal from Europe and Asia. As a survey conducted in 2019 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found, seven out of ten Americans believe that maintaining military superiority makes the United States safer, and almost three-quarters think that alliances contribute to U.S. security. A 2019 Eurasia Group Foundation poll found that over 60 percent of Americans want to maintain or increase defense spending. As it became apparent that China and Russia would benefit from this shift toward retrenchment, and as the United States’ democratic allies objected to its withdrawal, the domestic political backlash would grow. One result could be a prolonged foreign policy debate that would cause the United States to oscillate between retrenchment and reengagement, creating uncertainty about its commitments and thus raising the risk of miscalculation by Washington, its allies, or its rivals. Heg is sustainable – America has strong bones Ikenberry 18 (John, Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University) reviewing book by Beckley (Michael, Fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs) “Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2018 It has become conventional wisdom that the United States is in decline, the uni-polar era is ending, and China is on the rise. In this smart and sophisticated book, Beckley tackles this thesis head-on. He does not dispute that the United States has its problems or that misguided leaders often squander its advantages. But he points out that the United States’ deep geographic, demographic, and institutional reserves give the country unique resilience. The United States is the only great power without regional rivals. Its companies and universities dominate the world. And most important, Beckley argues that it has by far the best fundamentals for future economic growth, thanks to its abundant natural resources, favorable demographics, secure property rights, and lasting political institutions. China’s growth prospects, in contrast, are “dismal.” Beckley also thinks the declinists use the wrong measures of power. GDP, for example, exaggerates the influence of populous but poor countries, such as China, while overlooking problems that drain those countries’ economic and military resources. He does not argue that the United States can—or should—try to preserve the unipolar era, but he does think that it will long remain the world’s leading power.
Solvency Plan: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should reduce intellectual property protections for anti-malarial medicines. Todd 19 (Matthew, Professor of Drug Discovery, Pharma and Biochemistry at the UCL School of Pharmacy. He founded and currently leads the Open Source Malaria (OSM) and Open Source Mycetoma (MycetOS) consortia and is a founder of a broader Open Source Pharma movement. He is on the Editorial Boards of PLoS One, ChemistryOpen and Nature Scientific Reports.) “Open Source Malaria” Global Innovation Exchange, 5/24/2019. https://www.globalinnovationexchange.org/innovation/open-source-malaria BC Open Source Malaria is already in progress and delivering for sustainable development. The project aims to take candidate molecules through from discovery to patients. Given the IP-free (Creative Commons) licencing applied throughout, the resulting medicine would be widely and sustainably available to patients at the lowest possible price via the generics industry. This would have significant impact on the 3.2 billion people at risk of the disease, and on the current scale of the disease’s terrible human cost: malaria takes the lives of 1200 people each day, mostly young children. The occurrence of resistance to the current front line drugs used worldwide (the artemisinins, used in combination therapies) means new, inexpensive medicines are urgently needed. Since beginning operations in 2011, Open Source Malaria has examined four series of molecules with the potential to become new antimalarials. The first three series were derived from molecules identified by GlaxoSmithKline which were placed in the public domain in 2010. The compounds in Series 1 possessed a molecular problem that could not be engineered out, and this series is described in a major publication submitted to the peer-reviewed literature. A second series was abandoned when it became clear that another, closed, research group was pursuing the same structures. Series 3 was stopped when it was discovered that even the slightest alterations to the molecule’s structure eliminated all potency against the parasite. The current series, Series 4, originated from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The series includes molecules with remarkable potency, and, crucially, with the ability to cure mice infected with a model of malaria. This “in vivo” activity is a major strength of these compounds and mean they need to be pursued further. OSM is now working to solve two remaining liabilities of these molecules: they are metabolized too quickly and they do not dissolve sufficiently well in water. The consortium is also seeking to understand the molecular details of how these simple compounds are killing the parasite. If the molecular liabilities can be overcome, it is likely that Series 4 could progress to the clinical trial phase of drug development. This would be the first time a “born open” compound has progressed from discovery through the clinical phase and finally to market, and raises the possibility that an IP-free, potent new antimalarial might be able to reach people in this way. Should this occur, the structure of how we research and develop medicines will be irreversibly changed. It ends the outbreak and overcome past challenges in combating the illness Willman 4/29 (Marnie, Virology, University of Manitoba Bannatyne and National Microbiology Laboratory) “Researchers create an effective RNA vaccine for malaria” MassiveSci, 4/29/2021. https://massivesci.com/articles/malaria-mrna-vaccine-covid-biotech-patents/ BC Malaria remains a significant problem facing Africa. Of the 409,000 worldwide malaria deaths estimated by the WHO in 2019, 94 percent of all cases occurred in Africa. Malaria is caused by a parasite, carried and transmitted to humans by female Anopheles mosquitoes (there are more than 400 species of this particular type of mosquito, and 30 of them can carry malaria). The battle between malaria and science remains because of a handy trick this parasite plays on the immune system. Our immune system has a component called “MIF” which stands for “cytokine macrophage migration inhibitory factor.” The job of MIF is to regulate the movement of immune cells to the site of an infection (either attracting them to the site, or stopping them from continuing to arrive once the invader or injury is gone). Plasmodium, the one-celled parasite that causes malaria, can produce a nonfunctional “decoy” of MIF, causing our confused immune system to then fail to make the T cells that would normally be stimulated as a result of regular MIF activity during infection. The ultimate result is no production of T cells, which would normally make memory B cells that would generate long-lasting immunity against the malaria. Now you might be able to see why designing a vaccine is challenging for malaria. In a typical vaccine, a bit of protein or a deactivated virus or bacteria is used to stimulate the immune system. Your immune system then pumps out antibodies against that invader, and you’re left with memory B cells that remember that infection; the body is then primed and ready to fight a future infection. The Plasmodium parasite interferes with the process of T cells leading to those long-lived memory B cells that would fight off future infections faster and more efficiently. So, your next encounter with this parasite would be the same as your first, with no built-up immunity from previous infections. Thankfully, there is hope. Yale researchers recently filed a patent for a malaria vaccine using a RNA platform. mRNA vaccines are a relatively new technology that uses non-infectious and non-integrating (this means it won’t accidentally become part of your healthy cells) piece of genetic material from the pathogen of interest (in our case, malaria). mRNA is kind of like instructions for generating a protein. By delivering the mRNA as a vaccine, your body takes the genetic material up into cellular cytoplasm (the liquid inside of your cells), and begin to make the protein by following instructions within the mRNA. This new protein is then released, spotted by your vigilant immune system, and flagged. As your body becomes aware of the threat, your T cells and immune system are activated, and memory B cells are formed against the pathogen. Just like that — you’re immune! This new vaccine, generated by Richard Bucala and Andrew Geall is an saRNA (similar to mRNA, but more efficient) vaccine that encodes the PMIF that Plasmodium normally uses to disarm our immune system. As Bucala and Geall discovered, immunizing patients with saRNA that encodes PMIF uses the parasite’s own gene against it, and confers protection. These results were also seen in a study from 2018, in which MIF was tested successfully used as a treatment for malaria infection in a mouse model. Malaria and COVID-19 have two thin in common. Both are serious problems continuing to cause high caseloads and fatality rates globally. Both have had mRNA-based vaccines suggested as their solution (malaria is an experimental vaccine, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have now been approved and are in use). Researchers continue to test mRNA vaccine candidates for a variety of diseases in the hopes that more solutions to deadly pathogens will be found. Bucala and Geall’s new malaria vaccine candidate is a great example of a new technology being applied to a previously unsolvable problem. This is what science is all about. mRNA vaccines have been applied to a number of problematic pathogens including COVID-19, rabies, Zika virus. Perhaps the most famous mRNA vaccines are the ones developed in the last year to target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The Pfizer Inc and BioNTech vaccine (almost 94 million doses have been administered in the US alone in recent months) is an mRNA vaccine, as is the Moderna vaccine, which is ramping up production and distribution. Researchers and doctors alike continue to hope that this technology will help us see the end of the most significant global outbreak in recent history. Only the vaccine can eradicate the disease Piper 4/28 (Kelsey is a Staff Writer for Vox's new vertical with a focus on the global poor, animal welfare, and risks affecting a stable future for our world. She previously worked as the head of the writing team at Triplebyte, and ran Stanford Effective Altruism during college.) “The new malaria vaccine is a total game changer” Vox, 4/28/2021. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22399386/malaria-vaccine-r21mm-public-health-global-child-mortality BC The big picture Malaria isn’t just one of the world’s biggest killers of children. It’s also one of the biggest barriers to good childhood health and development in affected areas. Malaria infection causes long-term problems including cognitive impairment, and likely has long-term developmental impacts on children even when they survive it. The world has done a lot over the past few decades to fight malaria. Interventions like insecticide-treated bed nets and seasonal preventive treatment in the form of medications have driven death rates down from around 1 million every year as recently as the 1990s to around 400,000 today. But without an effective vaccine that can be distributed everywhere, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to eradicate the disease. Researchers know that, and malaria vaccine research is one of the most active areas of vaccine research, with human challenge trials in the UK (meaning clinical trials where volunteers are deliberately infected with the disease), phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials throughout areas with high malaria prevalence, and other promising ideas being pursued based on encouraging results in mice. Now, all that effort is starting to pay off. In general, writing about malaria vaccines means emphasizing that everything is still early-stage, that there’s lots of reason to expect a new innovation or development to fall through, and that while every avenue is worth pursuing, the public should know that most of them won’t pay off. That’s not true this time. This is a late-stage result, and there’s every reason to expect it to hold up. “This is excellent work,” Lowe told me. “This is the best news in the malaria vaccine world ever.” This is the first vaccine to meet the World Health Organization’s threshold of 75 percent effectiveness for a malaria vaccine. With many other vaccine candidates making their way through trials, it almost definitely won’t be the last. The more we know about malaria — and about vaccination — the better we can design vaccines that are cheap, simple to store and administer, that don’t require too many booster doses, and that provoke a strong and enduring immune response. . 1AR – Framing The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.
10/18/21
SEPTOCT - AC - Malaria v2
Tournament: Meadows | Round: 5 | Opponent: Stockdale RP | Judge: KD Bond Advantage New vaccines have the potential to solve malaria, but will be patented Hackett 4/17 (Don, serves as the publisher for the Precision Vax information network. Don first entered the news industry in 1967, when he began selling the Philadelphia Bulletin after grade school in Ardmore, PA. His focus on vaccines began with the completion of the Human Genome project in 2003, which forecasted scientific breakthroughs and the future delivery a personalized medicine and vaccines. More recently, Donald has been publishing digital health information for patients and healthcare providers. Since 1996, Don has helped launch digital companies such as Physician Computer Network, drKoop.com, 1-800-Doctors, myDNA, Mirixa, Digital Pharmacist, and Precision Vax. Donald has served on the advisory boards of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Task Force, CDC Vaccine Information Project, University of Texas College of Pharmacy, Texas eHealth Alliance, CMS Pharmacist eCare Plan, CDC's Immunization Information System, and was a founding member of the HIPAA work-group in 1995.) “Yale Researchers Patent Next-Gen Malaria Vaccine Candidate” Precision Vaccinations, 4/17/2021. https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/yale-researchers-patent-next-gen-malaria-vaccine-candidate BC A Yale researcher has partnered with Novartis to develop an RNA vaccine to protect against the malaria parasite, reported Yale News. According to the Yale research team, if the Malaria vaccine candidate is approved, it could be revolutionary to the pharmaceutical field. The RTS,S vaccine, which was developed about two and a half years ago, grants about 30 protection, which decreases very quickly in about two to three years, said this Yale article written by Beatriz Horta. The vaccine patent, originally applied for in 2014 by Yale researchers, was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office this year on February 4, 2021. The Yale School of Medicine Chief of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology Richard Bucala, M.D., Ph.D., ’79 and his lab used self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) technology to improve the effectiveness and speed of production of the vaccine by decreasing the amount of genetic material needed in each shot. sRNAs are pieces of genetic material that contain the code for the protein to be targeted by the body’s antibodies after getting the vaccine but also hold the code for an enzyme that allows the genetic material to replicate itself several times. This means that a much smaller amount of genetic material needs to be injected for the vaccine to provide adequate immunization. According to Dr. Bucala, one of the issues with developing a malaria vaccine is that there is no natural sterilizing immunity, which prevents reinfection in the long-term or, ideally, throughout a person’s lifetime. This means that vaccines developed against malaria will usually provide only a short protection period or provide low immunity. Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable. Also, different from many other vaccine-preventable diseases, malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite rather than a virus, which means the organism has a more significant number of genes and has developed more mechanisms to trick the body’s immune system. “The malaria parasite has evolved elaborate strategies to circumvent destruction by the host immune system, complete its life cycle, and be passed on by mosquitoes to another person so they can be infected,” Bucala added. The main target of the saRNA vaccine is the parasite’s PMIF protein, which enables the organism to suppress the host’s immune response and prevents it from producing memory T-cells, which generate immunity. By inhibiting the activity of this protein, the vaccine will allow the body to attack the parasite naturally and generate longer-term immunity to the disease. Bucala’s lab developed the new RNA vaccine in partnership with Andrew Geall, former RNA vaccine platform leader at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. According to Geall, he had worked previously with Bucala on malaria research and has been interested in developing a vaccine for some time. However, the team faced challenges because of the novelty of the saRNA technology, which was tested for the first time in humans a year ago. “The main challenge was getting the work published,” Geall wrote in an email to the News. “This is a new concept and the mode of action for the vaccine is very different to the current approaches. The reviewers required extensive data validation.” According to Geall, the technology behind this vaccine could also significantly boost pharmaceutical companies’ abilities to produce the genetic material and distribute the shots, given the fact that less RNA is required in each dose. This aspect of the vaccine is critical for a disease that infects such a large number of people each year. “Malaria is the second leading cause of infectious disease death in the world last year, about over 400,000 individuals died,” Bucala said. “They’re usually young children under the age of five.” According to the World Health Organization, children under five account for over 67 of worldwide fatalities related to malaria each year. In 2019, there were an estimated 229 million cases of malaria worldwide. Malaria vaccination is just one of several travel-vaccines suggested by the U.S. CDC when an international traveler visits certain countries. The CDC recommends travelers speak with a travel vaccine specialist one-month before traveling abroad. IP prevents vaccine success:
Non-industry patents allow companies to over charge for malaria vaccines - that kills RandD and vaccine purchasing Årdal and Røttingen 14 (Christine, Department of International Public Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway. Section for Global Health, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Oslo, Norway) (John-Arne, Division of Infectious Disease Control, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway. Department of Health Management and Health Economics, Institute for Health and Society, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America) “An Open Source Business Model for Malaria” PLoS ONE, 2/6/2015. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0117150 BC The standard protection measure for pharmaceutical RandD is the patent, used by both the public sector (including academia, national research institutes and PDPs) and the private sector. MMV is listed in The World Intellectual Property Organization’s patent database, Patentscope, as owning 15 patents, which encompass four different patent groups. Three of these are filed through the global Patent Cooperation Treaty, which includes the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO). This initial filing must be followed up by national or regional filings in order to obtain the actual patent for the designated country. Since ARIPO does not have up-to-date data in Patentscope, it is not possible to determine whether MMV has filed in African countries, and MMV does not itemize its patent ownership or costs in its annual reports Based upon our results, we wonder if patenting of malaria treatments by non-industry organizations, like MMV, is justified. The cost of patenting is not immaterial, requiring patent applications to be filed and followed up in each individual country. Additionally the purpose of a patent is to protect against infringement, through costly lawsuits. The question is—why would a publicly or philanthropically funded body that has developed a new medicine to treat malaria (where there is market failure) want to monopolize a medicine with no or very modest revenues? One possibility is that they may want to maintain control of the new medicine to ensure that only quality-assured manufacturers are allowed to produce it. However, this should rather be controlled through the regulatory approval process. Another argument is that a patent is necessary to incentivize the participation of industry in commercialization. Industry expertise is indeed valuable in development and necessary for manufacturing and distribution. However, early WHO prequalification may also be a large enough incentive to gain the participation of industry, particularly generic manufacturers or those located in low and middle-income countries. Many of the manufacturers that MMV works with are from middle-income countries. For a Chinese or Indian manufacturer a modest profit may be sufficient if they receive financial (and potentially technical) assistance for WHO prequalification. This too can be achieved without patents. MMV can partner with UNITAID and tender out WHO prequalification support to the most qualified applicant. This is not to say that pharmaceutical manufacturers that develop a new antimalarial should not be allowed to patent. Of course, they should protect their private investment where relevant. But the utility of patenting publicly-funded innovation is questionable when the main aim of these public funds is to improve global public health. Business model To sum up, our analysis finds that malaria RandD could benefit from much greater transparency and openness. Since malaria RandD is largely publicly and philanthropically funded and the end result purchased by these same governments or philanthropies, efficiencies gained mean that these monies can be used elsewhere, potentially funding additional RandD or purchasing more medicines or vaccines. We would encourage publicly-funded institutions to re-evaluate their financing of patents and examine if similar benefits can be achieved with first-mover status on WHO prequalification. 2. “Patent thickets” delay the delivery of vaccines and prevent companies from experimenting with different antigen combinations which is necessary to develop the optimal vaccine Shotwell 07 (Sandra, Managing Partner, Alta Biomedical Group) “Patent Consolidation and Equitable Access: PATH’s Malaria Vaccines” Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: A Handbook of Best Practices, 2007. http://www.iphandbook.org/handbook/ch17/p21/ BC 2.3 IP challenges The possibility of commercializing an effective malaria vaccine raises significant IP challenges. Many patents, some with overlapping claims, cover malaria antigens that may be needed for vaccine development. Such a “patent thicket” is daunting because it is likely that more than one antigen will be needed for an effective vaccine. Unfortunately, accessing many patents one at a time via traditional licensing or partnering could tie up resources needed to develop and deliver the vaccines. Moreover, the negotiations required to access key patents could delay the delivery of the vaccine. Indeed, access to key patents might not even be available, which would affect investment decisions upstream in the development pipeline about vaccine candidates. Because of this, it may not be possible to pursue the most powerful vaccine candidates if companies holding valuable malaria-vaccine IP are unwilling to license to others even if they are not developing a malaria vaccine themselves. Assessing the availability of access to key patents becomes a priority. 3. IPP prevents vaccine market development - that’s key to the development of affordable generics and boosting global vaccine supply Aars et al. 6/16 (Ole Kristian, Spark Street Advisors, New York) Clark (Michael, Spark Street Advisors, New York) Schwalbe (Nina, Spark Street Advisors, New York. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg-Braamfontein, Gauteng, ZA, South Africa orresponding author at: Heilbrunn School of Population and Family Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health) “Increasing efficiency in vaccine Production: A primer for change” Elsevier, 6/16/2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590136221000218#! 4.4. Market development In theory, intellectual property incentivizes companies to make substantial investments in RandD and manufacturing. However, it also deters new entrants – both for existing products that are off-patent and for those that build on previous innovations 45. Patents and other intellectual property protections for vaccine manufacturers are numerous and diverse and address most of the specificities of vaccine “knowledge” and “know-how” (trade secrets). For example, a study done in 2012 by the World Intellectual Property Organization 46 found that 11,800 patent families had been filed between 1921 and 2011 for active constituents of prophylactic vaccines against infectious diseases. Among these, 516 patent families related to flu vaccines, 165 patent families related to pneumococcal conjugated vaccines, and 36 patent families related to typhoid conjugated vaccines. Patents include technologies required for manufacturing (cell cultures, nucleic acid sequences, viral vector technology, virus/cell bank technologies, egg-based virus replication, etc.), active ingredients (antigens, adjuvants), production technologies, and processes (e.g., filtration, purification, conjugation, freeze-drying, etc.). The safeguarding of know-how and patenting of smaller components of the vaccine development process can be important to vaccine manufacturers as it extends protection in time far beyond the initial patent for active ingredients. However, when such patenting does not reflect substantial technological advancements, it may lead to unreasonably long patent protection. Such an unjustified extension of the exclusivity period can impede price competition and follow-up innovation, ultimately limiting access to potentially life-saving products 45. This is an area that could benefit, for example, from additional scrutiny of regulatory authorities granting of an extension of protections. Since patents are, for the most part, not transferrable across jurisdictions, vaccine developers will often need to file their patents in multiple jurisdictions. Specific licenses are also required before exporting a vaccine; for example, the importing country may require the manufacturer to conduct country-specific clinical trials 3. Such barriers add to the difficulties around logistics and production economics for vaccine manufacturers 47. Some patents are also the subject of complex licensing cross-agreements and royalty payments between several intellectual property rights (IPR) holders as a result of negotiations to terminate disputes 44. This may generate high financial stakes for several patent holders and make potential IPR negotiations further complex 3. For example, Bio-Manguinhos had to pay 4–5 running royalties on the Hib vaccine to GSK 48. Despite the growth in manufacturing in India and China in recent years 49, 50, the IPR landscape for vaccines – from discovery to delivery – creates substantial obstacles for new players 2. Understanding the landscape requires costly expertise, resources, and a capacity to undertake difficult and lengthy navigations around IPR. This could be in part addressed by a dedicated clearinghouse that focuses on reducing IPR-related barriers for DCVMN manufactures and potentially facilitates access to patent licenses. Activities to consider include: the creation of a vaccine patents database on strategically selected areas; supporting targeted freedom to operate analyses and solution-based resource tools; and, potentially, support DCMVN manufacturers with skills like legal expertise and negotiation strategy.
Malaria kills 2.7 million annually – climate change increases cases by 80 million Buck and Finnigan 8/11 (Emily, Madigan Army Medical Center) (Nancy, Campbell University) “Malaria” StatPearls, 8/11/2021. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551711/ BC Forty percent of the total global population resides in or visits malaria-endemic regions annually.1 P. falciparum is present in Western and sub-Saharan Africa and displays the highest morbidity and mortality of the Plasmodia species.2 P. vivax is present in South Asia, the Western Pacific, and Central America.2 P. ovale and P. malariae are present in Sub-Saharan Africa.2 P. knowlesi is present in Southeast Asia.2 As many as 500 million cases of malaria occur annually, with 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths.1 Ninety percent of fatalities occur in Africa.1 Those at highest risk include children under age 5, pregnant women, and disease naïve populations, including refugee populations in Central and Eastern Africa, nonimmune civilian and military travelers, and immigrants returning to their place of origin.214 Of the 125 million travelers who visit endemic locations each year, 10000 to 30000 develop malaria, and 1 of these will die from complications of their disease.24 Rising average global temperatures and changes in weather patterns are projected to expand the burden of malaria; a rise of 3 degrees Celsius is postulated to increase malaria incidence by 50 to 80 million.1
Independently, malaria prolongs and encourages civil war Bagozzi 16 (Benjamin, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota) “On Malaria and the Duration of Civil War” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2016. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24755897.pdf?refreqid=excelsior3Aec750bfda9401e7eb1568fe006fea131 BC Drawing upon this logic, I argue subsequently that high malaria prevalence (within a conflict region) will similarly serve to asymmetrically enhance rebel groups' defensive capabilities and thus prolong the duration of civil war. Stated briefly, malaria prevalence does so in three complementary ways. First, while malaria can inflict costs on both government and rebel groups, these costs are often multiplied for larger and denser groups. Hence, the costs of malaria—and the likelihood of an epidemic—will be higher for (what are typically larger in size and less diffuse) government troop deployments. Second, because government troops are rotated in and out of conflict zones whereas insurgents typically are not, the former are likely to have a higher nonimmune exposure rate than the latter, which further ensures that government soldiers will be more susceptible to contracting and spreading malaria. Third, high malaria prevalence also prevents a government from successfully constructing infrastructure, providing services, and establishing a political presence within a conflict region. As such, malaria can indirectly pro long civil war by helping to maintain a socio-geographic environment that is conducive to insurgency. Taken together, these three complementary factors thereby advantage rebel groups' abilities to (1) resist defeat by government forces and (2) prolong civil conflict The first factor mentioned previously—which posits that larger and denser social groups will be more susceptible to malaria—is rooted in the literature on "frontier malaria." This literature argues that the costs of malaria follow an inverted "U" shape with respect to human settlement in malarial regions: one first observes a relatively low malaria rate in areas with sparse, widely dispersed human populations (phase 1), then a spike in malaria rates during the initial stage of organized settlement (phase 2), and finally a decline in malaria rates as an area becomes increasingly urbanized (phase 3).2 There are two reasons for the malaria spike in phase 2. First, relative to very sparse human populations, denser and larger populations of individuals—such as those accompanying organized mining, logging, or farming communities—directly increase the potential human transmission points for malaria by adding to the "tropical aggregation of labor" (Martens and Hall 2000, 105). Observing this process at work in the Congo, for example, Trape and Zoulani (1987, 23) note that "each human settlement initially favours the multiplication of breeding places and the presence of high density populations of A. gambiae" mosquitos, whereas Singer and de Castro (2001, 203) similarly observe among Amazonian frontier settlements that the "combination of high human density, high vector density, and lack of immunity was destined to produce a malaria outbreak." Second, and again relative to the sparse and diffuse human settlements found in phase 1, these denser (phase 2) human settlements are also necessarily accompanied by larger proximate sources of standing water (for water collection or irrigation), more deforestation, and higher rates of animal displacement (the mosquito's alternate food source)—each of which further increases human expo sure to mosquitos (Sawyer 1993; Martens and Hall 2000, 105). Hence, the initial disturbance of the natural environment by human settlement facilitates conditions that encourage more breeding of mosquitos, and more targeting of human hosts. These high malaria rates then typically persist within an area until a settlement becomes sufficiently urbanized (phase 3), wherein malaria declines alongside an urbanized settlement's increased areas of cleared land, elimination of major sources of standing water, improvements in housing, better knowledge of the disease and access to health care, and higher rates of resistance (Barbieri, Sawyer, and Soares-Filho 2005, 851)—a process that can take 10 to 20 years to complete (Sawyer 1993, 1132). Regarding government and rebel forces during civil conflicts, I argue that the dispersed, guerilla fighting styles of insurgent groups will help to situate these rebel actors within a phase 1 environment of low malaria exposure, whereas the typically larger, and more dense military structures of government forces instead align this group much more closely with the high malaria rates found within phase 2. Indeed, by virtue of being smaller in absolute number, and pursuing more diffuse styles of combat and habitation, insurgents are less likely to be deployed and stationed in semipermanent camps of medium to large groups, whereas government soldiers will often establish large-scale military bases and camps of these sorts when pursuing activities in conflict regions.3 These latter practices accordingly help to ensure that government troops will be more prone to transmitting malaria between one another both directly, through their larger group size and density, and indirectly, through increased proximate standing water resources, semipermanent habitat construction, clear-cutting, and animal displacement—all of which foster conditions for higher vector contact and hence malaria transmission. Thus, taken together, traditional government military forces will asymmetrically bear the burden of conflict-zone malaria during times of war. Historical accounts suggest that these factors do indeed severely harm and limit traditional military forces in malarial regions, especially as the size and density of a military force expands. Beadle and Hoffman (1993, 320) report, for example, that when the size of US naval forces in Vietnam during the Vietnam War was "increased by about 50 from fiscal year 1966 to fiscal year 1969, the incidence of malaria increased almost eightfold" (1993, 320),4 whereas when the number of US naval forces then decreased dramatically during 1969-1970, the "malarial incidence rate among the personnel still in Vietnam decreased as well" (p. 321). Earlier US military occupations of Cuba and Haiti experienced similar, if not more severe, casualty rates as the result of malaria prevalence in conflict areas (Allen 1923; McCullough 1977,406). Similarly, while observers at the time noted that Panama's 1903 revolt against Colombia could have likely been quelled by a mere 600 Colombian troops, "a Colombian force of some two thousand men did attempt an overland march through the Darien wilderness, but ravaged by fever, they gave up and turned back" (McCullough 1977, 379), and with a US blockade in Panama's Caribbean port, the Panamanian revolution was successful. Additional evidence also suggests that modern rebel groups recognize the costs imposed upon government forces by malaria. For example, as a Karen National Union spokesman noted with respect to his group's rebellion against the Myanmar military junta (State Law and Order Restoration Council SLORC) in 1997, "this will be a decisive engagement, either SLORC will triumph or they will be dragged down by the cost of the war, by heavy casualties and by growing disaffection within their army. And because they are operating in an endemic malaria area, they stand to lose as many men from sickness as from fighting."5 In full, these anecdotes accordingly suggest that state-based military forces have historically, and disproportionately, incurred high costs as a result of malaria prevalence. Moreover, it is unlikely that these disadvantages will be offset by superior access to medicine among government forces. Most civil wars are fought in the developing world and in such contexts, government troops, like rebel groups, are often significantly underfunded in health and human services (Elbe 2002; Henk and Rupitya 2001, 18). For instance, in assessing the Filipino government's counterinsurgent troops in 1986, Filipino president Corazon Aquino "noted that inadequate rations force government troops to steal from civilians and that heavy casualties from pneumonia and malaria, as well as combat deaths, could be traced to a lack of clothing and an almost complete absence of field doctors and medicine."6 Even among those government troops that are well funded, successful use of malaria abatement technologies has proved to be near-impossible for soldiers in the field. Joy (1999) observes for US troops in the Pacific during World War II, for example, that "environmental control could not be performed in forward combat areas (including the use of bed nets). Even with clothing discipline, hands and faces were exposed, and repellent, even if used, was rapidly removed in the sweat" (p. 203), whereas in more recent US conflicts, "Gambel et al. (1998) reviewed the use of personal preventive measures, to include application of topical insect repellents and permethrin treat ment of clothing and netting, among deployed personnel. Their study demonstrated that deployed soldiers do not understand the use of these measures and as a result fail to use them properly, if at all" (Kotwal et al. 2005,215). Furthermore, as argued subsequently, any natural immunity to malaria gained by government troops operating in malarial regions will be rapidly undone (especially relative to rebel groups) as a result of governments' practices of frequent troop rotation in to and out of conflict zones. Hence, it is improbable that government troops will hold a superior medical advantage with respect to malaria—which has no known vaccine—in civil war settings. As alluded to previously, a second socially disruptive feature of malaria that may also asymmetrically burden government troops during times of civil war concerns the relationship between military troop rotations and malaria immunity. Troop movements and rotations have been argued to exacerbate disease epidemics throughout history (Smallman-Raynor and Cliff 2004) as well as in more recent civil war torn regions such as Sierra Leone (Bazergan 2002). Regarding malaria immunity specifically, extant findings suggest that whereas individuals living in malarial regions build up immunity over time, newcomers to a malarial region typically have low-level immunity or are nonimmune, which in turn increases newcomers' likelihoods of both catching malaria and spreading it (Martens and Hall 2000). Accordingly, research has found that "outsiders" face higher malaria burdens when visiting a malaria region than do local inhabitants, which is a reality that has historically limited intergroup contact, inhibited the transmissions of ideas, and prevented movements of labor (Sachs and Malaney 2002; Letendre, Fincher, and Thornhill 2010). Furthermore, because local acquired immunity often dissipates over the course of a year or so, local inhabitants that have acquired immunity but leave a malarial region for schooling or work will face the same burdens as migrants when they return home (Sachs and Malaney 2002, 684). In sum then, the presence of malaria in a given region imposes asymmetric costs upon individuals and groups, which counterintuitively are highest for those individuals or groups that have had the least amount of constant exposure to that region. The newcomer characteristics described previoulsy closely resemble the troop deployment practices that governments undertake, to a disproportionate degree, while fighting civil wars. Civil conflicts are typically fought far from a government's command center and resource base, within the regions of a country or territory that insurgents actively reside in (Buhaug, Gates, and Lujala 2009). As the civil conflict literature reviewed earlier suggests, these features help rebels to evade capture, and thus, enhance insurgents' defensive capabilities. Accordingly, leaving conflict regions can be costly for rebel actors, as doing so often entails travel to areas that (1) are under more direct government control and (2) exhibit fewer opportunities for rebels to blend in or receive aid from sympathizers. Thus, the dynamics of civil war often necessitate that rebels occupy (malarial) conflict zones full-time, which in turn ensures that rebel actors will accordingly build a degree of immunity to malaria over time. By contrast, government soldiers generally live and train far from a civil war's active conflict zones and are only deployed to conflict zones for military activity, thereby ensuring a higher malarial nonimmune rate among government soldiers. In addition, government troops, unlike rebels, are commonly provided with paid leave periods, or are otherwise rotated in and out of conflict regions over time (e.g., for medical treatment). This latter feature further guarantees that even if some government troops do acquire malaria resistance, the playing field will not remain level for long. Taken together, government soldiers will frequently experience higher malaria burdens due to nonimmunity than will rebel forces, even as the latter exhibit more persistent exposure to a malarial region. These phenomena were observed succinctly in one recent study of an consequent heavy transmission of falciparum malaria among the tribals perennially contributes to the local tribal developing some immunity, leading to a stable state of malaria in them (Manson-Bahr 1982). This makes the nomadic service population who come in contact with such tribal areas within flight range of vector mosquitos highly vulnerable because of their non-immune status. These can raise additional problems in that the very presence of such non-immunes may convert an endemic stable malaria into an epidemic. (Banerjee 2001, 290) Hence, malaria has the potential to asymmetrically burden government troop deployments within a conflict region. To the extent that this increases rebel groups' abilities to resist a total military defeat, malaria will prolong civil war. Third, malaria also enhances rebels' defensive capabilities by preventing governments from successfully constructing infrastructure, providing services, and establishing a broader physical presence within a conflict region. Insurgents gain defensive advantages in civil wars when they possess, among other factors, deeper knowledge of local populations; favorable recruitment pools arising from poor socio-geographic conditions; and rugged terrains that preclude government transportation, occupation, or communication (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Buhaug, Gates, and Lujala 2009; Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan 2009). By inhibiting governments' abilities to (1) construct transportation and communication infrastructure, (2) provide public services, and (3) maintain a political and bureaucratic presence in an area, malaria helps to ensure that those socio-geographic features that are favorable to insurgency, when already in place, will remain so. Herein, research sug gests that frontier malarial regions, even when devoid of insurgency, will be dominated by political marginalization, unplanned development, agricultural failures, weak institutions, and low community cohesion (Singer and de Castro 2001 ; de Cas tro et al. 2006,2452). At the same time, major public works projects and government attempts to build transportation infrastructure in malarial regions will often also be severely impeded or will fail altogether, which can further exacerbate existing malaria exposure levels (McCullough 1977; Martens and Hall 2000). In effect, these dynamics thus help to erode, or to maintain low existing levels of, state capacity within conflict regions, which itself has been shown to be related to civil war (Hendrix 2011). Consequently, malaria prevalence will maintain a socio-geographic setting that is conducive to insurgency, to rebel recruitment, and to rebel defensive cap abilities more generally. As such, malaria prevalence can indirectly foster long, drawn-out civil wars, essentially by ensuring that rebels have access to the very resources that past scholarship suggests will allow them to resist total defeat African civil wars escalate – they ensure US, Russia, and China draw in Hicks et al. 3/4 (Marcus, a retired Air Force Major General who served as Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, Africa, from 2017 to 2019. He previously was Chief of Staff at the U.S. Special Operations Command and a career AC-130 pilot.) Atwell (Kyle, an active-duty U.S. Army Officer, a Ph.D. student at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a cohost of the Irregular Warfare Podcast.) Collini (Dan, an active-duty U.S. Army Officer and a Joint Chiefs of Staff Fellow.) “Great-Power Competition Is Coming to Africa” Foreign Affairs, 3/4/2021. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/africa/2021-03-04/great-power-competition-coming-africa BC The shift in U.S. strategy toward Africa reflects an assumption—shared by many in Washington—that counterterrorism and other long-standing U.S. priorities in Africa will diminish in importance as competition between the United States, China, and other significant powers intensifies. But that assumption is wrong. In fact, far from being a distraction from great-power competition, Africa promises to become one of its important theaters. And if anything, great-power competition will increase the need for the United States to battle terrorists and safeguard democracy, trade, and free enterprise in Africa—but to do so with particular attention to limiting the malign influence of Russia and China. President Joe Biden’s administration needs a new strategy that pursues these ends together, sustainably, and at an acceptable cost. For as long as the United States has had an Africa policy, it has run day-to-day operations through its ambassadors, tailoring its approach to each of the continent’s 54 countries individually. But today’s most pressing issues—terrorism, climate change, pandemics, and irregular migration, for instance—would be better served by regional coordinators whose authority transcends national borders. To safeguard its interests on the continent and to limit the influence of its rivals, the United States must start thinking regionally instead of nationally. Devising such a policy is a matter of some urgency. As current and former military officers, one of whom led the U.S. Special Operations Command for Africa from 2017 to 2019, we believe that the United States must position itself as the partner of choice for African countries in the era of great-power competition. Failure to do so will imperil U.S. interests on the continent—and possibly U.S. security at home. PARTNER OF CHOICE Like it or not, a twenty-first century “scramble for Africa” is underway. Russia and China in particular are ramping up economic and military activity on the continent at the same time as the United States is scaling back. Both countries see opportunities to build economic relationships, secure access to natural resources and rapidly growing markets, forge political alliances, and promote their own illiberal models of government. Russia has dramatically expanded its footprint in Africa in recent years, signing military deals with at least 19 countries since 2014 and becoming the top arms supplier to the continent. Just days after the United States announced its plans to withdraw from Somalia in December 2020, Russia said it had reached an agreement to establish a new naval base in Port Sudan. Its mercenary companies, including the Wagner Group, which fought a deadly firefight against U.S. Special Operations Forces in Syria in 2018, now operate across the continent, from Libya to the Central African Republic to Mozambique. China, too, is angling for influence in Africa. It established its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 and spends vast sums on infrastructure projects to secure access to resources and to buy goodwill and votes in international organizations such as the United Nations. China’s leaders have promoted their country’s authoritarian bureaucratic system as a model for African leaders seeking to expand their economies without allowing democratic reforms. Their attractive lending practices and noninterference policy regarding human rights, market liberalization, and corruption give them additional influence over poor African governments. Increased Russian and Chinese activity is already transforming Africa into a theater of competition with the United States—just as Soviet and U.S. jockeying made the continent a venue for Cold War rivalry. In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Iran, and North Korea provided military assistance to governments and rebels across Africa. These countries became embroiled in proxy wars, sometimes even sending their own troops into combat. Russia and Cuba, for instance, sent tens of thousands of soldiers to fight in the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia and in the Angolan civil war. The United States might prefer to avoid becoming embroiled in African proxy wars during this new era of great-power competition, but it must be prepared for such conflicts nonetheless. Already, Libya has become a theater for proxy warfare between Russia, Turkey, and other countries backing opposite sides in an increasingly bloody civil-turned-proxy war. The United States has played a peripheral role in that conflict, but that did not stop Russia from allegedly shooting down a U.S. drone over Libya in 2019. The United States cannot simply withdraw from Africa without leaving its interests exposed. Salafi jihadi insurgencies, political instability, and authoritarianism still threaten U.S. businesses and commercial interests as well as the security of U.S. partners. Like the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s, insurgent groups in Africa are mostly motivated by local and regional concerns. These groups draw recruits from the continent’s large and rapidly growing population, which is particularly vulnerable to radicalization due to persistent poverty, environmental degradation, and all too often, poor governance. But many of the groups’ leaders have links to al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and are increasingly aligned with transnational Salafi jihadi causes. At the direction of al Qaeda’s senior leadership, al Qaeda franchises in the Sahel have conducted attacks against high-profile Western targets in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger in recent years. And the Somali insurgent group al Shabab has attacked Western targets in Kenya and Somalia and even plotted to hijack a commercial airplane and fly it into a building in the United States, as the U.S. Justice Department revealed in a recent indictment. Moreover, Salafi jihadi groups create political instability that in turn degrades governance, depresses economic activity, allows transnational crime to flourish, unleashes refugee flows, and invites health crises such as the 2014–16 Ebola pandemic in West Africa. In an interconnected world, what happens in Africa does not stay in Africa. Fortunately, the United States and African countries share a common interest in countering Salafi jihadi groups. By offering sustained and effective counterterrorism assistance, the United States can become the partner of choice for African countries, encouraging them to develop their economies and political systems in accordance with Western norms. Successful great-power competition in Africa hinges on the United States’ ability to win over African governments with a holistic counterinsurgency strategy, one that addresses the root causes of terrorism and lays the political, economic, and developmental groundwork for future stability and prosperity. Increased Chinese and Russian influence in Africa kills US primacy – they don’t have control now, but military conflict lets them assert dominance in the region Turse 19 (Nick, contributing writer for The Intercept, reporting on national security and foreign policy. He is the author, most recently, of "Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan," as well as "Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa," and "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam." He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, and Village Voice, among other publications. He has received a Ridenhour Prize for Investigative Reporting, a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Turse is a fellow at The Nation Institute and the managing editor of TomDispatch.com.) “U.S. GENERALS WORRY ABOUT RISING RUSSIAN AND CHINESE INFLUENCE IN AFRICA, DOCUMENTS SHOW” The Intercept, 8/13/2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/08/13/russia-china-military-africa/ BC THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION and the Pentagon have repeatedly warned that China and Russia are expanding their influence across Africa, where the two longtime American adversaries “interfere with U.S. military operations and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests,” national security adviser John Bolton said last December. That view was echoed by the former head of U.S. Africa Command, Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, who left the job last month, and his replacement, Stephen Townsend, both of whom testified publicly before Congress earlier this year. But the two generals went further in written responses to Congress obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act, describing an Africa ever more likely to fall under the sway of Beijing and Moscow — with Russia exerting influence in as many as 10 different African countries and China likely to open more bases across the continent. Beijing and Moscow have steadily increased their economic ties across Africa and, with them, their diplomatic sway. Trade between China and Africa has risen from $765 million to more than $170 billion in the last 40 years, and 39 of 54 African nations have now signed on to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a trillion-dollar plan to link infrastructure and trade via a vast new network of roads, rail lines, ports, and pipelines across Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa. Russia’s trade with Africa increased from $5.7 billion in 2009 to $17.4 billion in 2017, and the country has been aggressively promoting nuclear infrastructure and technology partnerships as well as oil and gas investments there. Both nations have also aimed to increase their cultural influence. The number of Chinese-government-sponsored Confucius Institutes in Africa, which promote Chinese language and culture, have risen from zero in 2004 to 48 last year, according to data compiled by Development Reimagined, a Beijing-based international consulting firm. AFRICOM documents note that these centers are located in 20 different African countries. The Russian equivalent, Russkiy Mir Foundation, a nongovernmental and nonprofit organization, is active in nine African countries, according to AFRICOM. Russia and China have also been forging stronger military ties with African nations through arms sales, security agreements, and military training programs. Russian private military companies are active in 15 African nations, according to AFRICOM. Last month, Beijing hosted the first China-Africa Peace and Security Forum, which brought together nearly 100 security officials from 50 African countries and the African Union, including 15 defense ministers and chiefs of general staff, according to China’s Ministry of Defense. While that gathering was underway, the Russian news agency Tass announced that roughly 35 African leaders had confirmed their attendance at the first Russia-Africa Summit – co-chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi — set to be held in Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi in October. IN HIS TESTIMONY before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Waldhauser mostly focused on Russia’s increasing inroads in Central African Republic and, to a lesser extent, Algeria, Libya, and Sudan. But in his written responses, Waldhauser mentioned six other nations that were also involved with Russia or susceptible to its influence including Angola, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, and Tunisia. Russia is leveraging or seeking to leverage military aid in return for mining rights and energy partnerships, according to Waldhauser. “To thwart Russian exploitative efforts, USAFRICOM continues to work with a host of partners to be the military partner of choice in Africa,” he wrote. In the Central African Republic, “Russia has bolstered its influence with increased military cooperation including donations of arms, with which it has gained access to markets and mineral extraction rights,” Waldhauser explained in his public testimony. “With minimal investment, Russia leverages private military contractors, such as the Wagner Group.” He noted that the president of the Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, had recently installed “a Russian civilian as his National Security Advisor. The President also promised the armed forces would be deployed nationwide to return peace to the country by forces likely trained, equipped, and in some cases, accompanied by Russian military contractors. Russia’s ability to import harsh security practices, in a region already marred by threats to security, while systematically extracting minerals, is concerning.” Asked to privately explain these “harsh security practices,” Waldhauser mentioned reports of Russian contractor cooperation with militias and acquiescence to their human rights violations; the abuse of local security force trainees as well as civilians “who approach Russian mining interests”; and the possibility of involvement in the deaths of Russian journalists who were murdered in the Central African Republic while investigating the activities of Russian military contractors. In his public testimony, Townsend ranked China just below Russia as a threat to U.S. primacy in Africa but said he expected the People’s Republic to eclipse Russia. “I think that they are after access and influence to our detriment,” the new AFRICOM commander said of China. Behind the scenes, Townsend also badmouthed China’s efforts on multiple fronts, including arms sales, and explained that the U.S. needed to emphasize the shoddy nature of Chinese military technology to African countries. “China has provided Nigeria with armed unmanned aerial systems … but the poor quality of the platforms has contributed to infrequent use,” he wrote. “Low cost and short delivery timelines entice African partners to purchase Chinese equipment, but purchases frequently do not address the underlying military need. We need to tell this story to a greater extent.” In his written remarks, Waldhauser explained that current Chinese efforts in Africa were unlikely to inhibit U.S. military access and operations in the near term but warned that “China could gain that capability within the next decade.” While China only opened its first overseas military base, located six miles from the U.S. military’s Camp Lemonnier in the Horn-of-Africa nation of Djibouti in 2017, Waldhauser mentioned more Chinese facilities on the horizon. “China is actively working with African partners to open new bases in several locations across the continent,” he wrote. “By working with other African nations … we may be able to ensure that when China or Russia do gain military access to ports, bases, or airspace, that they are unable to take full advantage of that access to threaten U.S. freedom of maneuver in and around Africa.” Primacy prevents great-power conflict — multipolar revisionism fragments the global order and causes nuclear war Brands and Edel, 19 — Hal Brands; PhD, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Charles Edel; PhD, Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. (“The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order;” Ch. 6: Darkening Horizon; Published by Yale University Press; GrRv) Each of these geopolitical challenges is different, and each reflects the distinctive interests, ambitions, and history of the country undertaking it. Yet there is growing cooperation between the countries that are challenging the regional pillars of the U.S.-led order. Russia and China have collaborated on issues such as energy, sales and development of military technology, opposition to additional U.S. military deployments on the Korean peninsula, and naval exercises from the South China Sea to the Baltic. In Syria, Iran provided the shock troops that helped keep Russia’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, in power, as Moscow provided the air power and the diplomatic cover. “Our cooperation can isolate America,” supreme leader Ali Khamenei told Putin in 2017. More broadly, what links these challenges together is their opposition to the constellation of power, norms, and relationships that the U.S.-led order entails, and in their propensity to use violence, coercion, and intimidation as means of making that opposition effective. Taken collectively, these challenges constitute a geopolitical sea change from the post-Cold War era. The revival of great-power competition entails higher international tensions than the world has known for decades, and the revival of arms races, security dilemmas, and other artifacts of a more dangerous past. It entails sharper conflicts over the international rules of the road on issues ranging from freedom of navigation to the illegitimacy of altering borders by force, and intensifying competitions over states that reside at the intersection of rival powers’ areas of interest. It requires confronting the prospect that rival powers could overturn the favorable regional balances that have underpinned the U.S.-led order for decades, and that they might construct rival spheres of influence from which America and the liberal ideas it has long promoted would be excluded. Finally, it necessitates recognizing that great-power rivalry could lead to great-power war, a prospect that seemed to have followed the Soviet empire onto the ash heap of history. Both Beijing and Moscow are, after all, optimizing their forces and exercising aggressively in preparation for potential conflicts with the United States and its allies; Russian doctrine explicitly emphasizes the limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve escalation dominance in a war with Washington. In Syria, U.S. and Russian forces even came into deadly contact in early 2018. American airpower decimated a contingent of government-sponsored Russian mercenaries that was attacking a base at which U.S. troops were present, an incident demonstrating the increasing boldness of Russian operations and the corresponding potential for escalation. The world has not yet returned to the epic clashes for global dominance that characterized the twentieth century, but it has returned to the historical norm of great-power struggle, with all the associated dangers. Those dangers may be even greater than most observers appreciate, because if today’s great-power competitions are still most intense at the regional level, who is to say where these competitions will end? By all appearances, Russia does not simply want to be a “regional power” (as Obama cuttingly described it) that dominates South Ossetia and Crimea.37 It aspires to the deep European and extra-regional impact that previous incarnations of the Russian state enjoyed. Why else would Putin boast about how far his troops can drive into Eastern Europe? Why else would Moscow be deploying military power into the Middle East? Why else would it be continuing to cultivate intelligence and military relationships in regions as remote as Latin America? Likewise, China is today focused primarily on securing its own geopolitical neighborhood, but its ambitions for tomorrow are clearly much bolder. Beijing probably does not envision itself fully overthrowing the international order, simply because it has profited far too much from the U.S.-anchored global economy. Yet China has nonetheless positioned itself for a global challenge to U.S. influence. Chinese military forces are deploying ever farther from China’s immediate periphery; Beijing has projected power into the Arctic and established bases and logistical points in the Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa. Popular Chinese movies depict Beijing replacing Washington as the dominant actor in sub-Saharan Africa—a fictional representation of a real-life effort long under way. The Belt and Road Initiative bespeaks an aspiration to link China to countries throughout Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe; BRI, AIIB, and RCEP look like the beginning of an alternative institutional architecture to rival Washington’s. In 2017, Xi Jinping told the Nineteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that Beijing could now “take center stage in the world” and act as an alternative to U.S. leadership.38 These ambitions may or may not be realistic. But they demonstrate just how significantly the world’s leading authoritarian powers desire to shift the global environment over time. The revisionism we are seeing today may therefore be only the beginning. As China’s power continues to grow, or if it is successful in dominating the Western Pacific, it will surely move on to grander endeavors. If Russia reconsolidates control over the former Soviet space, it may seek to bring parts of the former Warsaw Pact to heel. Historically, this has been a recurring pattern of great-power behavior—interests expand with power, the appetite grows with the eating, risk-taking increases as early gambles are seen to pay off.39 This pattern is precisely why the revival of great-power competition is so concerning—because geopolitical revisionism by unsatisfied major powers has so often presaged intensifying international conflict, confrontation, and even war. The great-power behavior occurring today represents the warning light flashing on the dashboard. It tells us there may be still-greater traumas to come. The threats today are compelling and urgent, and there may someday come a time when the balance of power has shifted so markedly that the postwar international system cannot be sustained. Yet that moment of failure has not yet arrived, and so the goal of U.S. strategy should be not to hasten it by giving up prematurely, but to push it off as far into the future as possible. Rather than simply acquiescing in the decline of a world it spent generations building, America should aggressively bolster its defenses, with an eye to preserving and perhaps even selectively advancing its remarkable achievements.
China and Russia are comparatively worse Rogan 18 (Tom, foreign policy and national security writer for the Washington Examiner, Bachelor of Arts in War Studies from King's College London, a Master of Science in Middle East politics from SOAS, and a Graduate Diploma in Law from the University of Law, London, has previously written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Atlantic, National Review, the Telegraph, and the Guardian) “China, Russia, and the greater morality of American realism,” Washington Examiner, 12/10/2018 JL Crucially, however, unlike U.S. influence towards Saudi Arabia on issues like Yemen, neither China or Russia have any interest in influencing Maduro toward a greater morality. On the contrary, Xi and Putin are absolutely happy to see Venezuela's people starve, beg, and prostitute themselves just as long as Maduro does what they want him to do. What's equally telling is that neither Xi nor Putin attempt to hide their selfish disregard for humanity. Just last week Putin threw out the red carpet for Maduro as he visited Moscow to beg for investment. And Putin's whole offer of engagement with Saudi Arabia is built on the principle of absolute moral latitude. In September, Maduro found similar friendliness as he visited China. In neither case did either leader privately or publicly pressure their ally to take greater action to reduce his peoples' grotesque human suffering. Predictably, Putin simply resorted to his worn KGB encyclopedia of trope-tastic un-realities. "We support," Putin told Maduro, "your efforts to achieve mutual understanding in society and all your actions aimed at normalizing relations with the opposition." Putin knows that Maduro's "efforts" have nothing to do with "normalizing relations" and everything to do with smashing the opposition. But Putin also knows his words lend fabric to his propaganda weavers. Regardless, all the world should pay heed to the divergence between American realism and Sino-Russian realism, because the two doctrines are far from similar. Indeed, their divergence speaks to a multitude of other international realities such as China's concentration camp industry and Pacific Ocean thievery, and Russia's treatment of Syrian lungs, and assassination adventurism. This speaks to a simple truth: Were China or Russia ever to displace the realism of the American-led international order, it would be disastrous for humanity. Retrenchment causes nationalism, war, and protectionism – optimists falsely assume current cooperative trends will continue without the US security guarantee Matthew Fay 17, Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies @ The Niskanen Center, 11/16/17, “America Unrestrained?: Engagement, Retrenchment, and Libertarian Foreign Policy,” https://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/America-Unrestrained.pdf A number of the arguments libertarians make in favor of retrenchment have merit, but the cost-benefit analysis derived from them is based on a deterministic view of international politics. Libertarian retrenchers assume that international politics would remain more or less the same absent American engagement and that America’s domestic politics would remain the same even if the international system become more conflict-prone. Given the inherent uncertainty of forecasting, the costs and benefits of engagement and retrenchment need to be considered in a more probabilistic fashion.86 This section begins by exploring a number of scenarios that could occur should the United States adopt a grand strategy of retrenchment. It then reassesses the costs and benefits of retrenchment for a free society. In a system with more independent states balancing against one another, is war more or less likely? Libertarians are placing a bet that all else would remain equal in international politics if the United States retrenches. While they assume a world where an increased number of states are balancing against one another would remain peaceful, the reality is not entirely clear. Using basic realist premises about state behavior under international anarchy, it is easy to identify a number of scenarios less rosy than the one libertarians assume would occur should the United States retrench. These scenarios might include a world of increased nationalism, eroding norms against military aggression, increased economic autarky, and the further spread of nuclear weapons as states look to produce security for themselves. Some states may also fail to balance against threats in the wake of American retrenchment, increasing the likelihood the United States will be drawn into a major war. Libertarians assume that in the absence of an alliance with the United States, other countries would simply increase their defense spending if they felt threatened. However, internal balancing is not a mechanical process. According to John Mearsheimer, leaders of states facing security competition are likely to use nationalism to garner support from their populations for the necessary regeneration of military capabilities.87 Writing at the end of the Cold War, Mearsheimer suggested that Europe would revert to a pattern of recurrent warfare. The absence of the United States and the Soviet Union would leave Europe, once again, an anarchic multipolar system. The structure of the system would force the states to compete with one another, as they had prior to the Cold War. Mearsheimer argued that pre-1945 “hypernationalism” was a product of “security competition among the European states, which compelled elites to mobilize public support for national defense efforts.”88 American retrenchment could similarly lead to an anarchic, multipolar Europe—thus increasing the chances of war on the continent. Such a system could engender nationalist sentiments among the populations of Europe, heightening animosities between national groups. These heightened animosities could help erode norms against military aggression that have facilitated the decline in interstate war. Nationalist groups within a country can seize on these sentiments to pursue confrontational and expansionist policies.89 Encouraging support for increased military capabilities through nationalism might lead populations to see war as once again a means to national glory or maintaining national honor. Matters of national prestige and honor can lead to the initiation of wars when bound up in territorial claims, while at the same time increasing the intensity and duration of a conflict.90 Nationalism and security competition might also erode the pacifying effects of economic openness. Realism suggests states are concerned about relative gains.91 States in security competition might be wary of trading with one another due to concerns about how a potential rival’s economic gains might provide it with an advantage if translated into military power. They may also adopt autarkic policies for fear of undermining their economic and military self-sufficiency.92 Territorial conquest has become increasing anachronistic in international politics. However, the proliferation of protectionist policies might once again make aggression and preventive war seem like strategically sensible ways for states to secure the resources necessary to reduce the ability of potential rivals to cut them off economically. If the risk of territorial aggression increases, the possession of nuclear weapons would become an attractive option for some states whose security was previously guaranteed by the United States. Nuclear weapons are most useful for deterring major territorial aggression, meaning their potential utility increases as the potential for war does.93 A number of U.S. allies have either previously pursued nuclear weapons or have the capability to do so. They might choose to obtain a nuclear arsenal once responsible for their own security. Pursuit is inevitable Wright 20 (Thomas, director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, former lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School for Public Policy, PhD from Georgetown University and M.Phil. from Cambridge University) “The Folly of Retrenchment: Why America Can’t Withdraw From the World,” Foreign Affairs, 4/2020 JL A fifth problem with retrenchment is that it lacks domestic support. The American people may favor greater burden sharing, but there is no evidence that they are onboard with a withdrawal from Europe and Asia. As a survey conducted in 2019 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found, seven out of ten Americans believe that maintaining military superiority makes the United States safer, and almost three-quarters think that alliances contribute to U.S. security. A 2019 Eurasia Group Foundation poll found that over 60 percent of Americans want to maintain or increase defense spending. As it became apparent that China and Russia would benefit from this shift toward retrenchment, and as the United States’ democratic allies objected to its withdrawal, the domestic political backlash would grow. One result could be a prolonged foreign policy debate that would cause the United States to oscillate between retrenchment and reengagement, creating uncertainty about its commitments and thus raising the risk of miscalculation by Washington, its allies, or its rivals. Heg is sustainable – America has strong bones Ikenberry 18 (John, Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University) reviewing book by Beckley (Michael, Fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs) “Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2018 It has become conventional wisdom that the United States is in decline, the uni-polar era is ending, and China is on the rise. In this smart and sophisticated book, Beckley tackles this thesis head-on. He does not dispute that the United States has its problems or that misguided leaders often squander its advantages. But he points out that the United States’ deep geographic, demographic, and institutional reserves give the country unique resilience. The United States is the only great power without regional rivals. Its companies and universities dominate the world. And most important, Beckley argues that it has by far the best fundamentals for future economic growth, thanks to its abundant natural resources, favorable demographics, secure property rights, and lasting political institutions. China’s growth prospects, in contrast, are “dismal.” Beckley also thinks the declinists use the wrong measures of power. GDP, for example, exaggerates the influence of populous but poor countries, such as China, while overlooking problems that drain those countries’ economic and military resources. He does not argue that the United States can—or should—try to preserve the unipolar era, but he does think that it will long remain the world’s leading power.
Nuclear war causes extinction – famine and climate change Starr 15 (Steven, Director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility) “Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter, and Human Extinction,” Federation of American Scientists, 10/14/2015 DD
While it is impossible to precisely predict all the human impacts that would result from a nuclear winter, it is relatively simple to predict those which would be most profound. That is, a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Following the detonation (in conflict) of US and/or Russian launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons, nuclear firestorms would burn simultaneously over a total land surface area of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires, many of which would rage over large cities and industrial areas, would release many tens of millions of tons of black carbon soot and smoke (up to 180 million tons, according to peer-reviewed studies), which would rise rapidly above cloud level and into the stratosphere. For an explanation of the calculation of smoke emissions, see Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts. The scientists who completed the most recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter discovered that the sunlight would heat the smoke, producing a self-lofting effect that would not only aid the rise of the smoke into the stratosphere (above cloud level, where it could not be rained out), but act to keep the smoke in the stratosphere for 10 years or more. The longevity of the smoke layer would act to greatly increase the severity of its effects upon the biosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the smoke (predicted to be produced by a range of strategic nuclear wars) would rapidly engulf the Earth and form a dense stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke from a war fought with strategic nuclear weapons would quickly prevent up to 70 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Southern Hemisphere. Such an enormous loss of warming sunlight would produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth in a matter of weeks. For a period of 1-3 years following the war, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in the central agricultural zones of North America and Eurasia. For an explanation of nuclear winter, see Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. Nuclear winter would cause average global surface temperatures to become colder than they were at the height of the last Ice Age. Such extreme cold would eliminate growing seasons for many years, probably for a decade or longer. Can you imagine a winter that lasts for ten years? The results of such a scenario are obvious. Temperatures would be much too cold to grow food, and they would remain this way long enough to cause most humans and animals to starve to death. Global nuclear famine would ensue in a setting in which the infrastructure of the combatant nations has been totally destroyed, resulting in massive amounts of chemical and radioactive toxins being released into the biosphere. We don’t need a sophisticated study to tell us that no food and Ice Age temperatures for a decade would kill most people and animals on the planet. Would the few remaining survivors be able to survive in a radioactive, toxic environment?
Solvency Plan: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should reduce intellectual property protections for anti-malarial medicines. Todd 19 (Matthew, Professor of Drug Discovery, Pharma and Biochemistry at the UCL School of Pharmacy. He founded and currently leads the Open Source Malaria (OSM) and Open Source Mycetoma (MycetOS) consortia and is a founder of a broader Open Source Pharma movement. He is on the Editorial Boards of PLoS One, ChemistryOpen and Nature Scientific Reports.) “Open Source Malaria” Global Innovation Exchange, 5/24/2019. https://www.globalinnovationexchange.org/innovation/open-source-malaria BC Open Source Malaria is already in progress and delivering for sustainable development. The project aims to take candidate molecules through from discovery to patients. Given the IP-free (Creative Commons) licencing applied throughout, the resulting medicine would be widely and sustainably available to patients at the lowest possible price via the generics industry. This would have significant impact on the 3.2 billion people at risk of the disease, and on the current scale of the disease’s terrible human cost: malaria takes the lives of 1200 people each day, mostly young children. The occurrence of resistance to the current front line drugs used worldwide (the artemisinins, used in combination therapies) means new, inexpensive medicines are urgently needed. Since beginning operations in 2011, Open Source Malaria has examined four series of molecules with the potential to become new antimalarials. The first three series were derived from molecules identified by GlaxoSmithKline which were placed in the public domain in 2010. The compounds in Series 1 possessed a molecular problem that could not be engineered out, and this series is described in a major publication submitted to the peer-reviewed literature. A second series was abandoned when it became clear that another, closed, research group was pursuing the same structures. Series 3 was stopped when it was discovered that even the slightest alterations to the molecule’s structure eliminated all potency against the parasite. The current series, Series 4, originated from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The series includes molecules with remarkable potency, and, crucially, with the ability to cure mice infected with a model of malaria. This “in vivo” activity is a major strength of these compounds and mean they need to be pursued further. OSM is now working to solve two remaining liabilities of these molecules: they are metabolized too quickly and they do not dissolve sufficiently well in water. The consortium is also seeking to understand the molecular details of how these simple compounds are killing the parasite. If the molecular liabilities can be overcome, it is likely that Series 4 could progress to the clinical trial phase of drug development. This would be the first time a “born open” compound has progressed from discovery through the clinical phase and finally to market, and raises the possibility that an IP-free, potent new antimalarial might be able to reach people in this way. Should this occur, the structure of how we research and develop medicines will be irreversibly changed.
Intellectual property protections are USFG 14 (US Mission to International Organizations in Geneva) “Key Forms of Intellectual Property Protection,” 4/24/2014 JL The key forms of intellectual property protection are patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. Because intellectual property shares many of the characteristics of real and personal property, associated rights permit intellectual property to be treated as an asset that can be bought, sold, licensed or given away. Intellectual property laws enable owners, inventors and creators to protect their property from unauthorized use.
It ends the outbreak and overcome past challenges in combating the illness Willman 4/29 (Marnie, Virology, University of Manitoba Bannatyne and National Microbiology Laboratory) “Researchers create an effective RNA vaccine for malaria” MassiveSci, 4/29/2021. https://massivesci.com/articles/malaria-mrna-vaccine-covid-biotech-patents/ BC Malaria remains a significant problem facing Africa. Of the 409,000 worldwide malaria deaths estimated by the WHO in 2019, 94 percent of all cases occurred in Africa. Malaria is caused by a parasite, carried and transmitted to humans by female Anopheles mosquitoes (there are more than 400 species of this particular type of mosquito, and 30 of them can carry malaria). The battle between malaria and science remains because of a handy trick this parasite plays on the immune system. Our immune system has a component called “MIF” which stands for “cytokine macrophage migration inhibitory factor.” The job of MIF is to regulate the movement of immune cells to the site of an infection (either attracting them to the site, or stopping them from continuing to arrive once the invader or injury is gone). Plasmodium, the one-celled parasite that causes malaria, can produce a nonfunctional “decoy” of MIF, causing our confused immune system to then fail to make the T cells that would normally be stimulated as a result of regular MIF activity during infection. The ultimate result is no production of T cells, which would normally make memory B cells that would generate long-lasting immunity against the malaria. Now you might be able to see why designing a vaccine is challenging for malaria. In a typical vaccine, a bit of protein or a deactivated virus or bacteria is used to stimulate the immune system. Your immune system then pumps out antibodies against that invader, and you’re left with memory B cells that remember that infection; the body is then primed and ready to fight a future infection. The Plasmodium parasite interferes with the process of T cells leading to those long-lived memory B cells that would fight off future infections faster and more efficiently. So, your next encounter with this parasite would be the same as your first, with no built-up immunity from previous infections. Thankfully, there is hope. Yale researchers recently filed a patent for a malaria vaccine using a RNA platform. mRNA vaccines are a relatively new technology that uses non-infectious and non-integrating (this means it won’t accidentally become part of your healthy cells) piece of genetic material from the pathogen of interest (in our case, malaria). mRNA is kind of like instructions for generating a protein. By delivering the mRNA as a vaccine, your body takes the genetic material up into cellular cytoplasm (the liquid inside of your cells), and begin to make the protein by following instructions within the mRNA. This new protein is then released, spotted by your vigilant immune system, and flagged. As your body becomes aware of the threat, your T cells and immune system are activated, and memory B cells are formed against the pathogen. Just like that — you’re immune! This new vaccine, generated by Richard Bucala and Andrew Geall is an saRNA (similar to mRNA, but more efficient) vaccine that encodes the PMIF that Plasmodium normally uses to disarm our immune system. As Bucala and Geall discovered, immunizing patients with saRNA that encodes PMIF uses the parasite’s own gene against it, and confers protection. These results were also seen in a study from 2018, in which MIF was tested successfully used as a treatment for malaria infection in a mouse model. Malaria and COVID-19 have two thin in common. Both are serious problems continuing to cause high caseloads and fatality rates globally. Both have had mRNA-based vaccines suggested as their solution (malaria is an experimental vaccine, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have now been approved and are in use). Researchers continue to test mRNA vaccine candidates for a variety of diseases in the hopes that more solutions to deadly pathogens will be found. Bucala and Geall’s new malaria vaccine candidate is a great example of a new technology being applied to a previously unsolvable problem. This is what science is all about. mRNA vaccines have been applied to a number of problematic pathogens including COVID-19, rabies, Zika virus. Perhaps the most famous mRNA vaccines are the ones developed in the last year to target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The Pfizer Inc and BioNTech vaccine (almost 94 million doses have been administered in the US alone in recent months) is an mRNA vaccine, as is the Moderna vaccine, which is ramping up production and distribution. Researchers and doctors alike continue to hope that this technology will help us see the end of the most significant global outbreak in recent history. Only the vaccine can eradicate the disease Piper 4/28 (Kelsey is a Staff Writer for Vox's new vertical with a focus on the global poor, animal welfare, and risks affecting a stable future for our world. She previously worked as the head of the writing team at Triplebyte, and ran Stanford Effective Altruism during college.) “The new malaria vaccine is a total game changer” Vox, 4/28/2021. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22399386/malaria-vaccine-r21mm-public-health-global-child-mortality BC The big picture Malaria isn’t just one of the world’s biggest killers of children. It’s also one of the biggest barriers to good childhood health and development in affected areas. Malaria infection causes long-term problems including cognitive impairment, and likely has long-term developmental impacts on children even when they survive it. The world has done a lot over the past few decades to fight malaria. Interventions like insecticide-treated bed nets and seasonal preventive treatment in the form of medications have driven death rates down from around 1 million every year as recently as the 1990s to around 400,000 today. But without an effective vaccine that can be distributed everywhere, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to eradicate the disease. Researchers know that, and malaria vaccine research is one of the most active areas of vaccine research, with human challenge trials in the UK (meaning clinical trials where volunteers are deliberately infected with the disease), phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials throughout areas with high malaria prevalence, and other promising ideas being pursued based on encouraging results in mice. Now, all that effort is starting to pay off. In general, writing about malaria vaccines means emphasizing that everything is still early-stage, that there’s lots of reason to expect a new innovation or development to fall through, and that while every avenue is worth pursuing, the public should know that most of them won’t pay off. That’s not true this time. This is a late-stage result, and there’s every reason to expect it to hold up. “This is excellent work,” Lowe told me. “This is the best news in the malaria vaccine world ever.” This is the first vaccine to meet the World Health Organization’s threshold of 75 percent effectiveness for a malaria vaccine. With many other vaccine candidates making their way through trials, it almost definitely won’t be the last. The more we know about malaria — and about vaccination — the better we can design vaccines that are cheap, simple to store and administer, that don’t require too many booster doses, and that provoke a strong and enduring immune response. . 1AR – Framing The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing First, pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value. Moreover, only pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. All other values can be explained with reference to pleasure; Occam’s razor requires us to treat these as instrumentally valuable. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI I think several things should be said in response to Moore’s challenge to hedonists. First, I do not think the burden of proof lies on hedonists to explain why the additional values are not intrinsic values. If someone claims that X is intrinsically valuable, this is a substantive, positive claim, and it lies on him or her to explain why we should believe that X is in fact intrinsically valuable. Possibly, this could be done through thought experiments analogous to those employed in the previous section. Second, there is something peculiar about the list of additional intrinsic values that counts in hedonism’s favor: the listed values have a strong tendency to be well explained as things that help promote pleasure and avert pain. To go through Frankena’s list, life and consciousness are necessary presuppositions for pleasure; activity, health, and strength bring about pleasure; and happiness, beatitude, and contentment are regarded by Frankena himself as “pleasures and satisfactions.” The same is arguably true of beauty, harmony, and “proportion in objects contemplated,” and also of affection, friendship, harmony, and proportion in life, experiences of achievement, adventure and novelty, self-expression, good reputation, honor and esteem. Other things on Frankena’s list, such as understanding, wisdom, freedom, peace, and security, although they are perhaps not themselves pleasurable, are important means to achieve a happy life, and as such, they are things that hedonists would value highly. Morally good dispositions and virtues, cooperation, and just distribution of goods and evils, moreover, are things that, on a collective level, contribute a happy society, and thus the traits that would be promoted and cultivated if this were something sought after. To a very large extent, the intrinsic values suggested by pluralists tend to be hedonic instrumental values. Indeed, pluralists’ suggested intrinsic values all point toward pleasure, for while the other values are reasonably explainable as a means toward pleasure, pleasure itself is not reasonably explainable as a means toward the other values. Some have noticed this. Moore himself, for example, writes that though his pluralistic theory of intrinsic value is opposed to hedonism, its application would, in practice, look very much like hedonism’s: “Hedonists,” he writes “do, in general, recommend a course of conduct which is very similar to that which I should recommend.”24 Ross writes that “it is quite certain that by promoting virtue and knowledge we shall inevitably produce much more pleasant consciousness. These are, by general agreement, among the surest sources of happiness for their possessors.”25 Roger Crisp observes that “those goods cited by non-hedonists are goods we often, indeed usually, enjoy.”26 What Moore and Ross do not seem to notice is that their observations give rise to two reasons to reject pluralism and endorse hedonism. The first reason is that if the suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values are potentially explainable by appeal to just pleasure and pain (which, following my argument in the previous chapter, we should accept as intrinsically valuable and disvaluable), then—by appeal to Occam’s razor—we have at least a pro tanto reason to resist the introduction of any further intrinsic values and disvalues. It is ontologically more costly to posit a plurality of intrinsic values and disvalues, so in case all values admit of explanation by reference to a single intrinsic value and a single intrinsic disvalue, we have reason to reject more complicated accounts. The fact that suggested non-hedonic intrinsic values tend to be hedonistic instrumental values does not, however, count in favor of hedonism solely in virtue of being most elegantly explained by hedonism; it also does so in virtue of creating an explanatory challenge for pluralists. The challenge can be phrased as the following question: If the non-hedonic values suggested by pluralists are truly intrinsic values in their own right, then why do they tend to point toward pleasure and away from pain?27 Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. Reducing the risk of extinction is always priority number one. Bostrom 12 Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford., Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority. Forthcoming book (Global Policy). MP. http://www.existenti...org/concept.pdf Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 10 54 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10 52 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1 chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an action.