Example Case – PRO

Syria’s struggle for democracy turned civil war is more than a question for foreign policy analysis. As of March 2013, “Nearly 70,000 people have died in the conflict to date, and one million refugees have fled into neighboring countries, with another 5,000 joining them every day, according to UN estimates” (1). US inaction in the face of this humanitarian crisis is unacceptable and US intervention should not be a question, but a responsibility. Because the US should intervene in Syria and other nations’ struggles for democracy we affirm Resolved: That the United States should intervene in another nation’s struggle for democracy.

We would like to define: Should – Expresses obligation, propriety, or expediency (Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Web. 2013). Should asks for an analysis of obligation and the conventional, or accepted standards of action. Should does not imply a definitive action will take place. Just because the US should act does not mean it will; therefore the PRO case presents a posture that the US should intervene not that it definitively would.

To clarify the round, we would like to make an observation: In order to weigh the merits of US intervention, we should look to the side that diminishes the violence that occurs during struggles for democracy. As can be seen in Syria, displacement and death define these struggles. Therefore analysis of obligation should focus on protecting human rights over other concerns such as economic and political relationships.

Point 1: The US is the Most Effective Intervener in Struggles for Democracy

When struggles for democracy occur, the international community responds. The response is greater if struggles ignite civil war, which has occurred in Syria and other nations. History tells us that the US not only acts as a leader in intervention, but also most successfully prevents further escalation and continuance of conflict. As Erik Voeten, Georgetown professor wrote in 2001: “The first condition for multilateral action is that the United States be willing and able to act alone or with close allies … A U.S. president who is reluctant to engage U.S. troops in foreign conflicts can profoundly affect the opportunities for multilateral action” (2). Furthermore, Voeten’s findings suggest that the US has a statistically significant positive impact on the creation of democracy when intervention occurs. He predicted that intervention would retard democratic reform, but US intervention was the sole example that showed positive effects (3). Another researcher, Mark Peceny of the University of New Mexico found that as of 1999 70% of countries where the US had intervened to promote democracy had successfully become democracies (4). With this successful history of fostering democracy, the US should take the posture of intervention. If posture of intervention is not adopted by the US, we risk missing the opportunity to have a successful intervention. As the RAND Corp reported in 2007, “Democratization tends to occur in waves, with a series of clustered openings followed by a period of retrenchment.” This can be seen in Syria, where the US and other actors have been reluctant to intervene (5). Without a posture of intervention, the US will miss the democratic waves and therefore miss the opportunity for successful intervention.

Point 2: The US’s Moral Imperative to Decrease Violence

The strong link between democracy and peace creates a moral imperative to intervene. The Democratic Peace Theory, or the idea that democratic states never or very rarely go to war with each other, ‘is the most robust, “law like” finding generated by the discipline of international relations’ according to Azar Gat, professor at Tel Aviv University and agreed broadly across the field of political science (6 and 7). A study of the counterclaims to democratic peace theory in 2013 by Dafoe and Oneal found that when methodological problems are corrected, they “find that the peacefulness of democratic pairs has actually increased as the proportion of democracies grew after 1816” (8). Struggles for democracy create violence within the nation, with the region, and ultimately can inflame global conflict if the struggle escalates. Struggles for democracy can tip towards democratic states or towards civil war; the US track record shows that it is a unique actor in bringing about positive democratic progress in these scenarios. For the internal peace of a nation, the opposite of which can be seen in Syria today, and for the broader peace of our world in the long term, fomenting democracy is both something the US should do for itself and for the world. If U.S. intervention does not occur, global violence will cost the US at some point and the US must decide whether it will spend its time, money, and our military on intervening during the democratic wave where we have a chance of success, or spend our resources picking up the pieces and providing piecemeal international aid to another failed state. The US must decide whether to take the bullet or band-aid approach.

Historically the US has shown its ability to bring about democracy and democracy has shown its ability to diminish violence. For these reasons, we urge an affirmative ballot.

Citations

1 – Dunne, Charles (director of Middle East and North Africa Programs FreedomHouse) “The Syrian Crisis: A Case for Greater U.S. Involvement” March 14, 2013  http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/syrian-crisis-case-greater-us-involvement.

2 – Voeten, Erik. 2001. Outside Options and the Logic of Security Council Action. American Political Science Review 95 (4):856. < http://www2.kobe-u.ac.jp/~tago/pdf/Voeten.pdf>

3 – Summarized in: BRUCE BUENO DE MESQUITA AND GEORGE DOWN. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION JOURNAL, VOLUME 60, ISSUE 3. SUMMER, 2006. “INTERVENTION AND DEMOCRACY.” PAGES 627-649.

4 – Mark Peceny, professor at the University of New Mexico, “Democracy at the Point of Bayonets”, 1999.

5 – RAND CORP, 2007. THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NATION BUILDING AUTHOR(S): JAMES DOBBINS, SETH G. JONES, KEITH CRANE, AND BETH COLE DEGRASSI, RAND NATIONAL SECURITY RESEARCH DIVISION, BOOK PP 193, PUB 2007.

6 – The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed: The Impact of Modernity, Azar Gat, World Politics, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Oct., 2005), pp. 73-100, Published by: Cambridge University Press, Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060125.

7 – Larry Diamond, “Universal Democracy?” Policy Review Online, Hoover Institution, 2003 http://www.policyreview.org/jun03/diamond.html.

8 – Dafoe, Allan John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett (2013) The Democratic Peace: Weighing the Evidence and Cautious Inference. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12055

Additional Definitions:
Intervene: to become involved in something (such as a conflict) in order to have an influence on what happens (Merriam-Webster Dictionary Web. 2013). Resolutional analysis: This resolution implies a pre-existing struggle that the US would become involved in after the struggle’s inception. The US would not foment the democratic struggle.

Democracy: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections (“Democracy.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Web. 2013)

Additional Observation: The resolution specifies no particular instance or method of intervention. If a form of intervention can be found within preceding US actions, it should be acceptable in the round.  It is important to note as well that US intervention is not nation building. The 2003 Carnegie report titled “Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building” gives three criteria that must be met for nation-building to apply: “1. Be for the purpose of changing the regime or propping it up. 2. Deploy large numbers of U.S. ground troops. 3. Involve U.S. troops and civilians in the political administration of the country.” Not all interventions will include all three elements, which can be observed in US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Additional evidence:
Voeten’s research shows that even if international bodies such as the UN would prefer to establish a democracy, “when one or even several permanent members would prefer to establish a democracy, that the nature of the Security Council’s collective decision-making rules are likely to undermine the idea.” (2)

The US’s aid to Syria is “too little and too late” and intervention has been postponed even in the fact of grave humanitarian disaster and widespread human rights violations. On the other hand, Russia, China, and Gulf monarchies have been actively aiding both sides of the struggle. The reticence of the US to act has removed the Syrian Opposition force’s faith and supplanted it with anger (Dunne, 2013). (1)