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COVID Vaccine Aff1AC1AC – Plan Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for COVID-19 medicines.1AC – InherencyContention 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. ] TDILONDON — 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. ] TDIAlthough 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 CredibilityContention 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. ] TDIThe 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. ] TDIThe 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. ] TDIPurposeful, 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. ] TDIEXTRAORDINARY 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. ] TDIThe 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. ] TDII 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.15Independently, 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.] TDIVoluntary 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. 1081AC – Developing EconomiesContention 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. ] TDILaxminarayan’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. ] TDIINDIA 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…crack[ed] 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. ] TDIHere'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. ] TDISouth 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. ] 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. 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. 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 & 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. WTO Cred AdvantageAT: A/CNo alt causes – the waiver allows the WTO to res-stablish itselfNavnit 1-18. [(Brajendra Navnit is an Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to WTO.) “Science has delivered, will the WTO deliver?” ] TDITRIPS waiver proposal from India, South Africa and other members A proposal by India, South Africa and eight other countries calls on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to exempt member countries from enforcing some patents, and other Intellectual Property (IP) rights under the organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, known as TRIPS, for a limited period of time. It is to ensure that IPRs do not restrict the rapid scaling- up of manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. While a few members have raised concerns about the proposal, a large proportion of the WTO membership supports the proposal. It has also received the backing of various international organizations, multilateral agencies and global civil society. Unprecedented times call for unorthodox measures. We saw this in the efficacy of strict lockdowns for a limited period, as a policy intervention, in curtailing the spread of the pandemic.International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its October 2020 edition of World Economic Outlook states “…However, the risk of worse growth outcomes than projected remains sizable. If the virus resurges, progress on treatments and vaccines is slower than anticipated, or countries’ access to them remains unequal, economic activity could be lower than expected, with renewed social distancing and tighter lockdowns”. The situation appears to be grimmer than predicted, we have already lost 7% of economic output from the baseline scenario projected in 2019. It translates to a loss of more than USD 6 trillion of global GDP. Even a 1% improvement in global GDP from the baseline scenario will add more than USD 800 billion in global output, offsetting the loss certainly of a much lower order to a sector of economy on account of the Waiver. "While making the vaccines available was a test of science, making them accessible and affordable is going to be a test of humanity" Merely a signal to ensure timely and affordable access to vaccines and treatments will work as a big confidence booster for demand revival in the economy. With the emergence of successful vaccines, there appears to be some hope on the horizon. But how will these be made accessible and affordable to global population? The fundamental question is whether there will be enough of Covid-19 vaccines to go around. As things stand, even the most optimistic scenarios today cannot assure access to Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics for the majority of the population, in rich as well as poor countries, by the end of 2021. All the members of the WTO have agreed on one account that there is an urgent need to scale-up the manufacturing capacity for vaccines and therapeutics to meet the massive global needs. The TRIPS Waiver Proposal seeks to fulfil this need by ensuring that IP barriers do not come in the way of such scaling up of manufacturing capacity. Why existing flexibilities under the TRIPS Agreement are not enough The existing flexibilities under the TRIPS Agreement are not adequate as these were not designed keeping pandemics in mind. Compulsory licenses are issued on a country by country, case by case and product by product basis, where every jurisdiction with an IP regime would have to issue separate compulsory licenses, practically making collaboration among countries extremely onerous. While we encourage the use of TRIPS flexibilities, the same are time-consuming and cumbersome to implement. Hence, only their use cannot ensure the timely access of affordable vaccines and treatments. Similarly, we have not seen a very encouraging progress on WHO’s Covid19-Technology Access Pool or the C-TAP initiative, which encourages voluntary contribution of IP, technology and data to support the global sharing and scale-up of the manufacturing of COVID- 19 medical products. Voluntary Licenses, even where they exist, are shrouded in secrecy. Their terms and conditions are not transparent. Their scope is limited to specific amounts or for a limited subset of countries, thereby encouraging nationalism rather than true international collaboration. Why is there a need to go beyond existing global cooperation initiatives? Global cooperation initiatives such as the COVAX Mechanism and the ACT-Accelerator are inadequate to meet the massive global needs of 7.8 billion people. The ACT-A initiative aims to procure 2 billion doses of vaccines by the end of next year and distribute them fairly around the world. With a two-dose regime, however, this will only cover 1 billion people. That means that even if ACT-A is fully financed and successful, which is not the case presently, there would not be enough vaccines for the majority of the global population. Past experience During the initial few months of the current pandemic, we have seen that shelves were emptied by those who had access to masks, PPEs, sanitizers, gloves and other essential Covid-19 items even without their immediate need. The same should not happen to vaccines. Eventually, the world was able to ramp up manufacturing of Covid-19 essentials as there were no IP barriers hindering that. At present, we need the same pooling of IP rights and know-how for scaling up the manufacturing of vaccines and treatments, which unfortunately has not been forthcoming, necessitating the need for the Waiver. It is the pandemic – an extraordinary, once in a lifetime event – that has mobilized the collaboration of multiple stakeholders. It is knowledge and skills held by scientists, researchers, public health experts and universities that have enabled the cross-country collaborations and enormous public funding that has facilitated the development of vaccines in record time – and not alone IP! Way forward The TRIPS waiver proposal is a targeted and proportionate response to the exceptional public health emergency that the world faces today. Such a Waiver is well-within the provisions of Article IX of the Marrakesh Agreement which established the WTO. It can help in ensuring that human lives are not lost for want of a timely and affordable access to vaccines. The adoption of the Waiver will also re-establish WTO’s credibility and show that multilateral trading system continues to be relevant and can deliver in times of a crisis. Now is the time for WTO members to act and adopt the Waiver to save lives and help in getting the economy back on the revival path quickly. While making the vaccines available was a test of science, making them accessible and affordable is going to be a test of humanity. History should remember us for the “AAA rating” i.e. for Availability, Accessibility and Affordability of Covid19 vaccines and treatments and not for a single “A rating” for Availability only. Our future generations deserve nothing less.AT: Scarce ResourcesThe turn is a form of scientific racism – in reality, developing countries are more than adept at producing vaccines.Annalisa Merelli 5-28. [(Reporter at Quartz) “Big pharma wants you to think sharing vaccine patents overseas is very dangerous” ] TDIWhen it comes to the suspension of patents for Covid-19 vaccines, it’s big pharma against the world—or most of it, anyway. Earlier this month, the US government expressed its support of a waiver to the international agreements governing intellectual property rights. The waiver, proposed in November 2020 by India and South Africa, would allow poor countries to produce Covid-19 vaccines without paying pharmaceutical companies for patent rights, at least until the pandemic is over. This would help increase the global supply of vaccines at a lower price, and make progress toward the goal of vaccinating the global population by the end of the year. The proposal, to be negotiated through the World Trade Organization, gained the support of many countries, especially low- and middle-income, but found resistance among rich ones, including the EU, Switzerland, the UK, Australia, Canada and, initially, the US. However, the US lifted its opposition earlier this month to expand vaccine supply and access to bring the pandemic to a faster end. With the US government putting its weight behind the proposal, its approval is much more likely. Vaccine apartheid Waiving the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPS), while also allowing the sharing of manufacturing know-how, is key to boosting the global production of Covid-19 vaccine, advocates say. Ethically speaking, it’s even more urgent now than when the proposal was introduced. The world is experiencing a two-speed pandemic, with wealthy nations moving back toward normalcy, and poor ones experiencing new outbreaks and dealing with a lack of vaccines and therapeutics. It is a situation the World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced as “vaccine apartheid.” But ethics aren’t the only reason to commit to expanding vaccination capacity by any means possible. As long as there are Covid-19 outbreaks, the chance that vaccine-resistant variants might emerge persists—as goes the global health community‘s mantra “Covid anywhere is Covid everywhere.” Yet the pharmaceutical industry isn’t exactly on board with missing out on patent profits. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) has expressed disappointment at the US’s stand, claiming the patent waiver won’t help produce more doses, and calling instead for a lowering of trade barriers that would make it easier for western manufacturers to sell vaccines to poorer countries. “The TRIPS waiver […] could spur a spate of confusing, mutually inconsistent, and heavy-handed “compulsory” demands by governments all over the world for supply and technology transfer,” warned Michelle McMurry-Heath, the president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, in a statement. A false risk narrative The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade organization representing the biggest US drug companies, has published polling results that shows a majority of Americans oppose the waiver. But the framing of their questions betrays the not-so-subtle suggestion that suspending patents would create safety concerns—for those who would receive the vaccines. In one survey, responders were asked whether poorer countries should be allowed to manufacture the vaccines even though they may be less safe. In another, they were asked whether they were concerned about the fact that other countries might not have the same quality standards as the US, or that the risk of getting counterfeit vaccines might be higher if production was expanded to poor countries. Unsurprisingly, a majority of people found these scenarios concerning. The myth that making vaccines in poor countries might be dangerous is very dear to pharmaceutical companies. “Entities with little or no experience in manufacturing vaccines are likely to chase the very raw materials we require to scale our production, putting the safety and security of all at risk,” wrote Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in a statement. A narrative as old as AIDS “The history behind this particular tactic of questioning the safety of manufacturers in other parts of the world has been played out on various occasions,” says Tahir Amin, the co-founder of I-MAK, a US-based organization working to increase global access to medicines Perhaps the most egregious precedent is the dispute between big pharma and poor countries over the making of antiretroviral drugs for AIDS, which cost about $10,000 per person per year before the introduction of generics that brought the price down to $300 per person per year. A famous episode of that battle culminated in court in 1998, when a coalition of multinational drugmakers and the South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association sued the Nelson Mandela-led South African government for its attempts to encourage the local, patent-free production of more affordable AIDS medications, although eventually the charges were dropped. At the time, western pharmaceutical companies claimed drugs made in developing countries didn’t meet the necessary quality standards, though research repeatedly found that there was no reason to think so. “Had it not been for generics manufacturers in the global south, we wouldn’t have gotten more people treated with antiretrovirals, and we’ve seen that generics are very much safe and the quality is not questioned,” says Amin. A matter of prejudice Granted, vaccines are more difficult than oral drugs to produce, but big vaccine makers in developing countries including India—the biggest vaccine producer in the world—have long been used by UNICEF and other global development agencies to produce their vaccines, with constant scrutiny of their quality. In fact, poor countries have even been able to develop their own vaccines, as is the case of the hepatitis B vaccine developed by Shanta Biotechnics in India. The price of the vaccine made by western countries ($23 per dose in the 1980s) was prohibitive, so a local pharmaceutical company set out to develop its own formulation, at a cost of $1 per dose. This led to a mass inoculation against the virus, with over 120 million doses distributed worldwide to poor countries. “There is this ‘scientific racism’ that exists in the west, that we are still living in colonial times where science was only done by the rich global north,” says Amin. The prejudice that vaccines and drugs made by poorer countries won’t meet the standards of wealthy countries doesn’t just extend to the manufacturing capacity, but to the quality assurance provided by the governing bodies of those countries. Effectively, the US pharma industry is claiming greater expertise at verifying the quality of pharmaceutical products than the national and international bodies working with producers outside the western world. “Nobody wants to see poor quality vaccines, but in this spotlight, I think everyone that is coming up with a version of the vaccine is going to really check their manufacturing practices,” says Amin. What makes the skepticism toward vaccines made in poor countries even more contradictory is that often the actual ingredients bought by western manufacturers to produce their drugs are produced in India or China. So the very same companies that are raising doubts about the quality of products made by manufacturers in poor countries trust them for their raw materials.Indo-Pak Advantage1AR – Developing Countries StrugglingDeveloping countries need assistance. Stone 21. [(Judy Stone is an Infectious Disease specialist) “Covid Vaccine Equity - Developing Countries Need Our Help,” Forbes, May 11, 2021. ] TDIA few months ago India was doing relatively well and the U.S. was getting crushed by a devastating second Covid-19 wave. Now it’s the reverse. Public health measures were implemented too sporadically (U.S.) and reversed too quickly (both), with predictable results. While the U.S. is beginning to focus attention on the growing catastrophe in India, not enough attention is being given to other areas in the region. Countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Laos and others in the region may soon be matching the explosive growth of Covid in India. Nepal is one of the poorest countries. Although it has a population of 30 million people, there are only 1595 ICU beds and 480 ventilators throughout the entire country. (This is not much less than in India, at ~1 ICU bed/19,000, but the US has ~1/3800). There are only 80 physicians per 100,000 people, compared to 93 per 100,000 in India or 259 per 100,000 in the US. With a 50% positivity rate for Covid testing, how long do you think those few beds and limited healthcare will last before being completely overwhelmed. Cases in Nepal have increased by 1,645% in the past month. Thailand had a similar rate of increase, with most of their cases being the U.K. variant B.1.1.7, which is known to be more transmissible. Part of the problem in Nepal is that its Prime Minister, Oli, like India’s PM Modi, and Donald Trump had allowed religious festivals and large political gatherings to continue as politically expedient, at the expense of public health and safety. Heavily reliant on tourism to support its economy, Mount Everest has been opened to climbers; there have been outbreaks reported from the base camp although the government has denied this. And much as our former president recommended injecting bleach, PM Oli has reportedly suggested gargling with guava leaves, which is at least less immediately hazardous, although still as useless as treatment. This uncontrolled pandemic will endanger us all by increasing the likelihood of further mutations emerging and spreading globally. India has a new “variant of interest,” called B.1.617?, which is also spread more rapidly. The South African variant, B.1.351, is also circulating in India, along with the UK’s B.1.1.7?. This—and the huge number of cases—are what prompted the US to ban travel from India. One of the problems in the region is that India’s Serum Institute was to supply much of the area with vaccines. Instead, India is desperate, unable to meet its own country’s needs, and has banned the export of vaccines. Nepal has instead turned to China and Russia, who are engaging in vaccine diplomacy who are donating supplies while the US has been sitting on the sidelines.1AR – Plan SolvesThe plan provides an expedited solution. AC 21. [(Access Campaign) “India and South Africa proposal for WTO waiver from IP protections for COVID-19-related medical technologies,” Access Campaign, May 27, 2021. ] TDIIn a landmark move, India and South Africa on 2 October 2020 asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic, until global herd immunity is achieved. This briefing document includes: A Q&A to provide further details related to this important development. Examples of Article IX waivers that have been granted with respect to provisions under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) Agreement in the past. In today’s global emergency, MSF calls on all WTO members to support this waiver request. As an automatic and expedited solution to address patents and other IP barriers at the international level, the waiver is an important opportunity for all governments to unite and stand up for public health, global solidarity and equitable access.The plan is key to global pandemic eradication – vaccine inequality costs $9 trillion.Fernholz 21. [(Tim Fernholz is a Senior reporter) “Wealthy countries are choosing pharma profits over global immunity,” Quartz, March 15, 2021. ] TDISo far, about 5% of the world’s population has been vaccinated. Around a third of those vaccinated live in the US. And so while the pace of new infections is falling in the US, it is rising around the world. The problem for public health experts is that even if the virus can be defeated in wealthy nations, its continued persistence in other populations could lead to more dangerous mutations that could set back progress toward immunity or seed new outbreaks. At a time when civil liberties have been sacrificed to public health measures, they say that corporations can contribute their fair share. “We have seen governments locking down and entire economies sequestering people in their homes,” Mustaqeem De Gama, a South African diplomat who is one of the country’s WTO representatives, said in February. “What is the problem with intellectual property rights? Why are intellectual property rights so special, given the fact that a lot of the innovation that we see being used today came from government funding.” In the end, rich nations will sacrifice something one way or the other. Katie Gallogly-Swan, a researcher who works with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, estimated that the costs of vaccine inequality to the global economy could reach $9 trillion. And we know that the pandemic will not be truly defeated anywhere until it is eradicated everywhere.Production CP1AR – Production CPThe counterplan fails – only the aff solves and developed countries are capable of vaccine administration. Harman et al 21. [(Sophie Harman is a Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London. Eugene Richardson is an Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Parsa Erfani is a Fogarty Fellow, University of Global Health Equity, Harvard Medical School) “To end COVID-19 we need vaccine justice for developing countries not outdated charity – viewpoint,” The Conversation, June 21, 2021. ] TDIAround 0.8% of all COVID vaccines distributed in the world have gone to poor countries. Most of the 1.65 billion doses of vaccines administered have been in rich countries. We know that this is a problem. Global coverage of the vaccine is imperative to prevent death and disease from COVID-19 and to help stop new variants. Unless we sort out this imbalance the threat of COVID-19 will never go away. As we argue in BMJ Global Health, we can address this imbalance through a call for vaccine justice. We need to move past outdated charitable models of poor countries depending on rich countries for their leftovers. Instead, we need to develop manufacturing and distribution capacity throughout the world to get vaccines to where they are needed and fast. Transparent, research-based, written by experts – and always free. To start, the international community needs to stop pushing charitable models of sharing leftover vaccines and Covax. Sharing leftovers is unsustainable and dependent on the whim of individual countries, often coming too little, too late. Pledges at the G7 are all very well, but these are already too late and mask the substantial problem of vaccine nationalism and hoarding. Covax, the initiative set up to avoid vaccine nationalism and hoarding, was doomed to failure from the outset. It was created to ensure every country in the world has access to doses for 20% of its population in 2021, regardless of ability to pay. Covax has been lauded as an effective model that delivers. However, it is already running into three major problems. The first is perhaps the most obvious: doses for 20% of a population this year will never be enough to build up immunity to COVID-19 quickly enough. The second is supply. India is the main supplier of vaccines to Covax. India’s introduction of vaccine export restrictions to help deal with its devastating outbreak is limiting supply to Covax. The third is perhaps more predictable – a significant funding shortfall. Charitable models like Covax are always under-funded. If they are under-funded in the short term, there is little hope for their medium and long-term funding. We have seen this time and again with financing initiatives from Make Poverty History to the health-related Millennium Development Goals. Institutions will always be going cap in hand to states who will never fully pay up. G7 leaders posing for a photo at the 2021 summit in Cornwall, England. Covax has become a political dead cat in global health. For every accusation on vaccine hoarding or lack of support for sharing intellectual property, states use Covax as evidence that they are committed to vaccinating the world. Covax is used as an example of good intentions, while simultaneously as an excuse for blocking the transfer of technology and passing of intellectual property waivers in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Low and middle-income countries are on to this. This is why they are pushing for the waiver and suspicious of efforts towards a new international pandemic preparedness treaty. Such states accept the charity from Covax as the only offer on the table but know the way out of their situation would be to make vaccines themselves. It doesn’t have to be this way States must be empowered to produce their own vaccines and draw from previous knowledge of effective community vaccination campaigns and mobilisation to stimulate uptake. The role of the international community must be to facilitate technology transfer, vaccine production capacity in-country, and the development of in-country immunisation campaigns. Anything else is just a distraction. A waiver on intellectual property for vaccines is within WTO rules under the trade-related intellectual property rights (Trips) amendment that was introduced at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Countries could be issuing compulsory licenses and making their own COVID-19 vaccines. It is in the rules. Countries understandably don’t do this as they fear punishment in the global trading system. Defenders of intellectual property suggest low and middle-income countries lack the capacity to develop vaccines. This smacks of discrimination as to what is seen to be possible in poor countries.The plan solves better – comparative evidence.Noonan 21. [(Kevin Noonan is at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP) “Is This the WTO Waiver End Game?” JD Supra, July 26, 2021. ] TDIThe negative consequences of the inequities between the developed world and everyone else on both global public health and the intellectual property regime are not now just being appreciated (see, e.g., "A Modest Proposal Regarding Drug Pricing in Developing Countries"; "The Law of Unintended Consequences Arises in Applying TRIPS to Patented Drug Protection in Developing Countries"; "Africa (Still) Depending on the Kindness of Strangers in Anti-AIDS Drug Pricing"; and "Worldwide Drug Pricing Regime in Chaos") but like many issues the COVID-19 pandemic has raised the temperature on the debate. Perhaps the latest developments were the goal of the countries promoting the IP waiver at the WTO all along. Also possible is that continued resistance from European countries to the waiver has convinced waiver proponents to use the leverage they have due to the pandemic to move the needle in the direction of technology transfer as far as they can (or at least create a precedent for it for vaccines). Long term this development is likely to be more positive than merely having low- and middle-income countries rely on vaccine donations as the Biden Administration and others have pledged (such donations are put in context by the Kaiser Family Foundation in Michaud et al., "Putting U.S. Global COVID-19 Vaccine Donations in Context," May 25, 2021). But whether this will be enough to reduce pressure on the industrialized world to reduce or eliminate the IP requirements on less economically developed countries created by the GATT/TRIPS/WTO regime remains to be seen.The reason manufacturing is bottlenecked is because individual components are patented – the aff solves.Lori Wallach 6-17 [(Director, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen.)“Web event — Confronting Joe Biden’s proposed TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments” ]TDILori Wallach: Okay, so I would say it’s not a great case under any circumstances, but it has five main components. So number one, the argument is: The issue is not intellectual property; the issue is a lack of manufacturing. And in fact, the lack of manufacturing is an intellectual property barrier problem because the supply chain, for instance, for making these vaccines, much of the components are also under some form of intellectual property monopolies. So we’re hearing a lot about: There aren’t enough lipids. But if you actually look at the article Burcu wrote in Nature, the prestigious science magazine, she actually mapped out all of the different connected patents. And you can see, part of the reason the supply chain is all jammed is because actually, the lipids are themselves under intellectual property protection. And that is true of many components. So the TRIPS waiver — now is the counterargument. The TRIPS waiver would efficiently, without a lot of transaction costs, be able to lift temporarily, during this enormous crisis, the monopolies such that yes, the companies will get compensated depending on what the domestic laws are in the different countries, but they wouldn’t be able to say, “No, you can’t make any more of this.” So that’s number one. Number two is the argument that the developing countries just aren’t capable. So even if you did lift the intellectual property barriers and other companies could make it, either they couldn’t do it at all, or what they would make wouldn’t be safe. And I just have to say pfront, that is a pretty racist-laden argument because in fact, a lot of times in the US when you get a vaccine, you are probably getting it from the Serum Institute in India, which is a world-class producer of generic versions of a lot of vaccines that are used worldwide. But we have, around the world, world-class producers — some of them a legacy of sort of mid-2000s US government investment for flu vaccination manufacturing where there are numerous companies that are approved by the European — and the FDA — the health authorities to be able to already sell. And so are there companies everywhere? No. Do you need them everywhere? No. There are sufficient ones that are world-class that have the facilities, that have the trained people, that they actually could, were the intellectual property barriers lifted, able to produce safe, top-notch drugs and quickly. The third argument is that this would be the end of rule of law, enormous theft, the end of innovation. And first of all, this is not a permanent destruction of the entire concept of intellectual property. This is in the worst health and related economic crisis in 100 years, trying to figure out how to get supplies to where they need to be. And the temporary waiver is in the context of governments having invested billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, not just in the short term. For many of the vaccines like Moderna, the Europeans have invested in their counterparts in BioNTech and many governments in other of the vaccine candidates, but also in the preceding research so that, for instance, not just the NIH but other government agencies and around the world. Because the mRNA platform has been worked on for 30 years with government funding, with cooperation across universities and governments to get to the point where the miracle of the vaccine being able to be used in this platform was fortuitous. But based on decades of us taxpayers — who are the other people who ought to have been thanked in the intro — who made this possible. This wasn’t pharma and the innovation myth of: They save their money by high prices and “whoa, we get the vaccine.” Thank you, taxpayers around the world, for the investment in science that led us to this moment that we are at a place that we could have this breakthrough when we needed it The fourth argument is: We don’t need more doses because the existing monopoly holders will be able to make enough. And that’s simply empirically wrong. So we keep hearing these great projections from the companies: We’ll have 12 billion doses by 2021. The reality is: We’re not at two and a half million, and we’re halfway — two and a half billion, pardon me — and we’re halfway through the year. And we’re seeing some of the candidate outcome trials that: Do we really want that one being scaled up? That’s not very effective against the variants. So the notion that more production isn’t needed to get to the 10–15 billion doses needed to hit global herd immunity is just empirically not knowable — but in fact, on the data, is wrong. And then factor in: We’re going to need boosters, and that’s assuming we’re not going to get a vaccine-resistant strain that puts us all back at scratch and we have to start over with the whole world. So clearly, more production is needed. And the final argument, which is one you and I have debated, is: If there is a waiver, this is the way for China to steal US technology. And I want to say two things. mRNA is not US technology. It’s been one of those wonderful global collaborations where originally, a Hungarian came up with an idea. And then the research went to the University of Pennsylvania. And then work was done around the world. And the BioNTech vaccine work, which we think of in the US as the Pfizer vaccine, but BioNTech is a Turkish immigrant and a German-born person who, husband and wife, came up with this innovation. This is a global project. But even if it had been the US, because it really isn’t, already, BioNTech licensed a Chinese company for full information to make the so-called Pfizer vaccine in China. So if the cat was in a bag, the cat is out of the bag. But besides that, China already has two of its own domestic mRNA vaccines in final trials, because as I said, scientists around the world have been doing this. So that’s the case, and that’s the “eh” of the case.AT: Vaccine DiplomacyChina and Russia don’t gain geopolitical advantage from supplying vaccines. Bremmer 21. [(Ian Bremmer is a foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at TIME. He is the president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, and GZERO Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs) “Why the Chinese and Russian Vaccines Haven't Been the Geopolitical Wins They Were Hoping For,” TIME, August 2, 2021. ] TDIChina and Russia both thought the pandemic would give them a chance to show that they are scientifically innovative—and more generous—than Western countries, which were slower to roll out vaccines and which have been accused of hoarding supplies. It hasn’t worked out. China’s president Xi Jinping referred to Chinese vaccines as a “global public good.” China’s Sinovac vaccine also offers developing countries some important advantages that the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines can’t match. Sinovac can be stored in a standard refrigerator. The Moderna vaccine must be stored at -20°C and the Pfizer vaccine at -70°C, an obstacle in countries where health infrastructure is lacking. That’s part of why China’s vaccines have been injected into arms in more than 80 countries across the developing world. Doubts about Chinese-made vaccines The trouble is that, when compared with these other vaccines, China’s jabs just aren’t very effective. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines have efficacy rates of more than 90%. The World Health Organization noted in June that the Sinovac vaccine “prevented symptomatic disease in 51% of those vaccinated and prevented severe Covid-19 and hospitalization in 100% of the studied population,” though it acknowledged that few adults over age 60 took part in the trials, , potentially skewing the numbers by with a sample population that’s less vulnerable that the public at large. Data for the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine demonstrated a “vaccine efficacy [rate] for symptomatic and hospitalized disease” at 79%—though here too patients over 60 were underrepresented. Crucially, these studies tested vaccines only against the version of COVID-19 virus that emerged in late 2019 from the city of Wuhan. They provided no data on effectiveness against variants, including the Delta variant, which is becoming the dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2 in many countries, including the U.S. In many of the places where Sinopharm and Sinovac are in use, there has been a sharp spike in the number of COVID-19 infections in recent weeks. Russia’s lousy rollout Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, now in use in nearly 70 countries, has recently been found to be “safe and effective” in international studies, but it remains controversial for other reasons. Not only was Sputnik the world’s first vaccine authorized for use in any country—the Russian Health Ministry okayed it in August 2020, more than a month before its Phase 1 and 2 trial results were published, and before its Phase 3 trial had even begun. Questions about the credibility of Russian government assurances immediately became suspect. Indeed, both the WHO and European Medicines Agency have yet to authorize Sputnik V for emergency use, due to a lack of access to raw data from the trials, and concerns over rare side effects. But countries like India, South Korea, Argentina, Hungary, Iran and many others which lack more transparent alternatives have proven willing to take the risk. COVID-ravaged India, for example, plans to eventually manufacture at least 850 million doses of Sputnik V per year. But beyond questions of efficacy, the Russian rollout of Sputnik has faced a series of embarrassing problems. In April, Brazilian regulators rejected Sputnik as potentially dangerous before reversing the decision in June—when COVID-19 infections were soaring across the country—and allowing a small number of doses at a time into the country. Slovak officials said in April that the Sputnik doses it received from Russia did “not have the same characteristics and properties” as Sputnik doses provided by Russia for evaluation in international studies. Indian officials say delayed supplies from Russia have put big production plans there on hold. The Moscow Times reported earlier this month that “Russia has awarded an Emirati royal the exclusive rights to sell its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to a host of countries in at least three continents in a deal that has seen buyers paying huge premiums for supplies.” Put it all together, and it’s easy to see why Russia’s claim that 800 million people worldwide will be vaccinated with Sputnik by the end of 2021 is farcical. Because of delays that have hampered production of Sputnik in other countries, many of the Sputnik doses administered abroad have come directly from Russia, which sharply limits the number than can be manufactured globally. In May, the Russian edition of Forbes reported that some 16.3 million doses of a two-dose vaccine had been exported. That’s just a bit better than 1% of the target Russia set for global Sputnik vaccinations. But the best tests of the Russian government’s (lack of) credibility comes directly from the Russian people. A poll conducted in March found that a startling 62% of Russians surveyed didn’t want to be vaccinated. As of June 28, just 15% of Russians had received at least one dose of a vaccine that has been authorized inside Russia for nearly a year. This in a country that is breaking records for daily deaths from COVID-19. The bottom line Chinese and Russian vaccines won’t win those countries the geopolitical victories they hoped for. A huge missed opportunity for Moscow and Beijing.US credibility is hurt by blocking the vaccine.PC 5-3. [(Public Citizen is a non-profit, progressive consumer rights advocacy group and think tank based in Washington, D.C., United States) “Don’t Buy Pharma’s Latest Distraction: A Temporary WTO IP Waiver for COVID Meds Would Not Hand “U.S. mRNA Technology” to China,” May 3, 2021. ] TDIReal Geopolitical Threat for U.S. Is in Blocking 100+ Countries’ WTO Initiative While China and Russia Share Vaccine Technology Worldwide Russia’s Sputnik-5 vaccine and the Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines have become the go-to options for countries in the developing world. The Chinese and Russian companies, probably compelled by their governments who seek to leverage the vaccines for geopolitical gain, have engaged in significant tech and know-how transfer and partnerships with firms all over the world. Meanwhile, the U.S. and EU have pre-ordered vaccines for their populations while blocking the vast majority of WTO countries’ efforts to even negotiate the text of a waiver these countries consider necessary for their populations to also obtain vaccines.If the link is true, it’s too late – China and Russia have supplied vaccines to 49 and 22 countries.Serhan 21. [(Yasmeen Serhan is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic) “Here’s How Russia and China Are Helping the U.S.,” The Atlantic, March 30, 2021. ] TDIThat’s where China and Russia come in. The pair have supplied vaccines to 49 and 22 countries, respectively, across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Brazil, which is once again the global epicenter of the pandemic, has struck deals securing tens of millions of doses of Russian and Chinese vaccines. Venezuela is relying solely on Russian and Chinese jabs. In the Middle East, even strategic U.S. partners such as Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates have turned to them for supplies.1AR – No Heg ImpactNo hegemony impact – empirics and political psychology prove US posture is unrelated to great power peace.Christopher Fettweis 17. [(Christopher Fettweis is an associate professor of political science at Tulane University) “Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New Peace,” May 8, 2017. ] TDIBoth strains of the hegemonic-stability explanation assume not only that US power is benevolent, but that others perceive it that way. Hegemonic stability depends on the perceptions of other states to be successful; it has no hope to succeed if it encounters resistance from the less powerful members of the system, or even if they simply refuse to follow the rules. Relatively small police forces require the general cooperation of large communities to have any chance of establishing order. They must perceive the sheriff as just, rational, and essentially nonthreatening. The lack of balancing behavior in the system, which has been puzzling to many realists, seems to support the notion of widespread perceptions of benevolent hegemony.101 Were they threatened by the order constructed by the United States, the argument goes, smaller states would react in ways that reflected their fears. Since internal and external balancing accompanied previous attempts to achieve hegemony, the absence of such behavior today suggests that something is different about the US version.Hegemonic-stability theorists purport to understand the perceptions of others, at times better than those others understand themselves. Complain as they may at times, other countries know that the United States is acting in the common interest. Objections to unipolarity, though widespread, are not “very seriously intended,” wrote Kagan, since “the truth about America’s dominant role in the world is known to most observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world’s population.” 102 In the 1990s, Russian protests regarding NATO expansion—though nearly universal—were not taken seriously, since US planners believed the alliance’s benevolent intentions were apparent to all. Sagacious Russians understood that expansion would actually be beneficial, since it would bring stability to their western border.103 President Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were caught off guard by the hostility of their counterparts regarding the issue at a summit in Budapest in December 1994.104 Despite warnings from the vast majority of academic and policy experts about the likely Russian reaction and overall wisdom of expansion itself, the administration failed to anticipate Moscow’s position.105 The Russians did not seem to believe American assurances that expansion would actually be good for them. The United States overestimated the degree to which others saw it as benevolent.Once again, the culture of the United States might make its leaders more vulnerable to this misperception. The need for positive self-regard appears to be particularly strong in North American societies compared to elsewhere.106 Western egos tend to be gratified through self-promotion rather than humility, and independence rather than interdependence. Americans are more likely to feel good if they are unique rather than a good cog in society’s wheel, and uniquely good. The need to be perceived as benevolent, though universal, may well exert stronger encouragement for US observers to project their perceptions onto others.The United States almost certainly frightens others more than its leaders perceive. A quarter of the 68,000 respondents to a 2013 Gallup poll in sixty-five countries identified the United States as the “greatest threat to world peace,” which was more than three times the total for the second-place country (Pakistan).107 The international community always has to worry about the potential for police brutality, even if it occurs rarely. Such ungratefulness tends to come as a surprise to US leaders. In 2003, Condoleezza Rice was dismayed to discover resistance to US initiatives in Iraq: “There were times,” she said later, “that it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than, perhaps, Saddam Hussein.” 108 Both liberals and neoconservatives probably exaggerate the extent to which US hegemony is everywhere secretly welcomed; it is not just petulant resentment, but understandable disagreement with US policies, that motivates counterhegemonic beliefs and behavior.To review, assuming for a moment that US leaders are subject to the same forces that affect every human being, they overestimate the amount of control they have over other actors, and are not as important to decisions made elsewhere as they believe themselves to be. And they probably perceive their own benevolence to be much greater than do others. These common phenomena all influence US beliefs in the same direction, and may well increase the apparent explanatory power of hegemony beyond what the facts would otherwise support. The United States is probably not as central to the New Peace as either liberals or neoconservatives believe.In the end, what can be said about the relationship between US power and international stability? Probably not much that will satisfy partisans, and the pacifying virtue of US hegemony will remain largely an article of faith in some circles in the policy world. Like most beliefs, it will remain immune to alteration by logic and evidence. Beliefs rarely change, so debates rarely end.For those not yet fully converted, however, perhaps it will be significant that corroborating evidence for the relationship is extremely hard to identify. If indeed hegemonic stability exists, it does so without leaving much of a trace. Neither Washington’s spending, nor its interventions, nor its overall grand strategy seem to matter much to the levels of armed conflict around the world (apart from those wars that Uncle Sam starts). The empirical record does not contain strong reasons to believe that unipolarity and the New Peace are related, and insights from political psychology suggest that hegemonic stability is a belief particularly susceptible to misperception. US leaders probably exaggerate the degree to which their power matters, and could retrench without much risk to themselves or the world around them. Researchers will need to look elsewhere to explain why the world has entered into the most peaceful period in its history.The good news from this is that the New Peace will probably persist for quite some time, no matter how dominant the United States is, or what policies President Trump follows, or how much resentment its actions cause in the periphery. The people of the twenty-first century are likely to be much safer and more secure than any of their predecessors, even if many of them do not always believe it.No revisionism – neg research is bought off.Johnson-Freese 17 [(Joan, Professor and chair of space science and technology @ Naval War College) Space Warfare in the 21st Century, Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978131552917] TDIThe industrial side of the military–industrial complex is comprised of corporations with common interests and distinguishable characteristics from other sectors of transnational capital. They are overwhelmingly dependent on military sales as a percentage of total sales revenue. As of 2012, arms sales accounted for over half of the total sales of Lockheed Martin (76 percent), BAE Systems (95 percent), Raytheon (92 percent), General Dynamics (66 percent), and Northrop Grumman (77 percent). Their products are not easily transferrable to consumer uses and so they are dependent on government contracts. At least 9 of the 25 largest US defense firms have a significant aerospace focus: CACI International, ManTech, Rockwell Collins, Exelis, Computer Science Corporation, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.6 The political implications of this are stark. These companies inherently have a vested interest in maintaining and expanding systems, including weapons systems, which absent clear and direct external threats, may have limited political justification. Additionally, government counterparts to these for-profit companies have concurrently grown—some might even say, “become bloated”—and in many cases, a codependent relationship has developed between them. Since the United States began maintaining a large standing military after World War II, the general attributes of US foreign policymaking have both expanded and intensified the influence of the military–industrial complex. Foreign policy decision-making is supported by a complex array of institutions whose very existence is predicated on and justified by the presence of a broad spectrum of threats from individual terrorists to be hunted down on the ground and with drones to near-peer competitors which must be countered with overwhelming air, naval, and space power. The government agencies and offices with a role in national security have expanded from inner circle policymakers to entire bureaucracies. The National Security Council staff has grown consistently since the Carter Administration from a small secretariat of less than 20 individuals to over 400 people during the Obama Administration. Post 9/11, the military created a Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) in 2002 to defend the homeland and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was stood up “to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards”; these other hazards have come to include the safety hazards of deep-frying turkey and assuring that souvenir shirts sold at the Super Bowl are not Chinese knockoffs.7 DHS is now the third-largest government bureaucracy, employing more than 240,000 people. There are 17 different intelligence agencies occupying 33 building complexes, the equivalent of almost 3 Pentagons or 22 Capitol Buildings, and the intelligence community continues to expand.8 The Pentagon, with its some 23,000 military and civilian personnel, is only the hub of a Roman Empire-like division of the world into geographic military commands, the United States being the only country in the world brazen enough to create such commands. The sheer numbers of individuals, institutions, organizations, bureaucracies, and companies with a vested interest in preserving the self-licking ice cream cone9 that the ever-expanding military–industrial complex has become continues to expand. Government offices like the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security hire private military contractors from such companies as DynCorp International, Tigerswan, Triple Canopy, and Blackwater to protect diplomats and perform security functions. Employees of these companies are often retired Special Forces operators. Companies like Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), formerly a subsidiary of Haliburton and where former Vice President Dick Cheney was once CEO and Chairman, is an engineering, procurement, and construction company doing everything from building embassies to supplying military bases. Think tanks, consulting firms, and lobbying firms focused on defense and security issues have proliferated as well in terms of both quantity and investments. Members of Congress, traditionally elected largely according to the number of jobs they can bring home to their districts—and the campaign contributions they can raise—are part of the witches brew as well as they are largely supportive of defense contracts and the jobs those contracts bring. “Job loss” is among the first claims made by defense contractors in their appeals to Members of Congress when defense budget cuts or sequestration are threatened. Further, retired Members and their staffs are not immune to the lure of high-paying lobbying jobs. Defining Threats There is a wide breadth of individuals and institutions with a vested interest in maintaining threats to the United States that justify a significant defense budget. During the transition to the post-Cold War period, the US military was faced with potentially substantial cuts to military spending: the “peace dividend.” Consequently, the military suddenly found itself talking about taking on military operations other than war (MOOTWA), an acronym and job description that warriors found distasteful at best. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other former Defense Department officials suggested that defense spending could safely be cut in half. Policy planning organizations with close ties to the military or military contractors—think tanks like RAND and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)—were put to work to counter this claim and minimize budget cuts. They focused on the development of a new defense doctrine that would involve the retention of large-scale systems and big-ticket platforms like aircraft carriers, not just after the demise of the Soviet Union, but regardless of the short-term security environment. Contractors play an increasingly large part in the military–industrial complex as well. Political economist Ronald Cox explains the role of defense contractors in shaping that doctrine and defining threats—how the fox guards the henhouse in terms of threat identification: Military producers have a sustained relationship with key US foreign policy bureaucracies, especially the Defense Department. … The extent to which military contractors are embedded within the decision-making framework of identifiable bureaucracies within the US federal government makes their profit-making margins a function of the political process by which those departments and agencies identify long-term strategic threats.10 Thus, as considered in Chapter 1, defense strategies reflect needs but not necessarily national needs. Bureaucratic and corporate needs also play into definition of threats. Writing about the impetus to acquire nuclear weapons, Scott Sagan said, “bureaucratic actors are not … passive recipients of top-down political decisions; instead, they create the conditions that favor weapons acquisition.”11 Bruce DeBlois later applied that premise to space weapons, suggesting that “with an absence of clear top-down policy guidance on space weapons … military doctrine can build an inertia of its own, and impact – or even become – the default policy.”12 Also playing into the definition of long-term threats to US national security are think tanks—organizations often largely supported by the corporations themselves. Think tanks come in all varieties and sizes, some focused, some broad, some partisan, some not. The Heritage Foundation, for example, hosted a nine-city Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour in 2013, headlined by Tea Party movement leader Jim DeMint, thereby clearly evidencing a partisan position. “Some [think] tanks on the left and the right of the ideological spectrum have grown so political that, to avoid losing their tax status as charitable organizations, they have established separate operations dedicated to lobbying and other advocacy work.”13 Some organizations, however, strive to be honest brokers of information in their areas of focus. The Secure World Foundation (SWF), for example, states its mission as “to work with governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society to develop and promote ideas and actions to achieve the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of outer space benefiting Earth and all its peoples.”14 Much of SWF’s ability to be nonpartisan and beyond the reach of corporate influence stems from it being privately funded. That is not the case with many organizations though. William Hartung and David Gibbs have written about the role of the largest defense contractors in the financing of conservative and neoconservative think tanks that have come to prominence in defense policy debates and discussions since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11; The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), for example.15 The Center for Security Policy receives onesixth of its funding from defense industries. CSP states on its website: The process the Center has repeatedly demonstrated is the unique ability that makes the Center the “Special Forces in the War of Ideas”: forging teams to get things done that would otherwise be for a small and relatively low-budget organization. In this way, we are able to offer maximum “bang for the buck” for the donors who make our work possible.16 While most think tanks declare their “intellectual independence,” the reality is that, even if they do not specifically declare an offer of “maximum bang for the buck” to their donors, they largely rely on corporate donations for their existence. Donors rarely support organizations advocating opposition views or producing information counter to their best interests. Relatively new on the block—and billing itself as “Bold. Innovative. Bipartisan.”17—is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), founded by Dr. Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy in 2007. Both Campbell and Flournoy formerly served as heavy-hitters in the Obama Administration, Campbell in the State Department and Flournoy in the Defense Department. CNAS lists Boeing, the Carnegie Corporation, the Government of Japan, Northrup Grumman Aerospace Systems, and the Smith Richardson Foundation on its “honor roll” of those who have contributed more than $250,0000.18 Campbell and Flournoy are among the many former government employees who have gone on to create or work at think tanks. A strong overlapping relationship between the boards of directors of defense contractors, policy think tanks funded by these contractors, personnel in the Defense Department, and high-level cabinet executives is not uncommon.19 Reports and analyses prepared by these think tanks can weigh heavily in government policy decisions. The shaping of the post-Cold War defense posture, specifically in identifying new enemies, exemplifies the role of the expanded military–industrial complex to include influential corporations, think tanks, the Pentagon, and Members of Congress. Any doubt about the need for an identifiable enemy was firmly put to rest in March 1990 by Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an acknowledged ally of the military establishment. In a blistering attack on the Soviet-oriented military posture still officially embraced by Defense Secretary Cheney, Nunn charged that the Pentagon’s proposed spending plans were rendered worthless by a glaring “threat blank”—an unrealistic and unconvincing analysis of future adversaries.20 A 1988 CSIS report had warned against “maverick regimes,” a warning that was resurrected and amplified in response to Nunn’s charge. Reaching back to the Reagan Administration, these “maverick,” soon to be renamed “rogue,” regimes initially included Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Subsequently, the Rogue Doctrine was laid out in White House Fact Sheet in March 1990; it posited that the United States would continue to face considerable post-Cold War security threats, namely from states in the developing world that possessed or potentially would posses weapons of mass destruction and the capability to threaten vital US geostrategic interests in key regions.21 Iraq was added to the list later in the 1990s. Still, regardless of how dangerous they were, rogue states did not justify aircraft carriers and other big-ticket items. Large-scale Cold War weapons programs consequently declined by 17 percent under George H. W. Bush and by 12 percent during the first term of the Clinton Administration.22 That problem had to be addressed. Again, Sam Nunn led the charge to identify at least one worthy new opponent of the United States—one that could justify the retention of a large military structure, platforms, and expensive weapons systems. Concurrent to development of the Rogue Doctrine, Nunn had begun working toward that end with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell in 1988. Eventually, a new class of states called “emerging regional powers” was identified to include Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Pakistan, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, and the two Koreas. Each had different national interests and philosophical underpinnings that, for one reason or another, had justified large growth in their military structures and/or the development of weapons of mass destruction.23 Some countries eventually became US allies and/or recipients of large amounts of US military aid. Others came to be considered as potential threats—more specifically near-peer competitors, particularly China—that the United States might at some point have to confront on the battlefield. Consequently, the United States moved almost seamlessly from the Cold War Containment Strategy to the Rogue Doctrine and identifying potential near-peer competitors. The Plethora of Players Defense and aerospace contractors responded to post-Cold War reduced business opportunities through a mixture of economic and political strategies. Economically, corporate restructuring, layoffs, division sell-offs, and mergers and acquisitions of other firms were among the strategies used, with the Defense Department helping to arrange financing for those mergers and acquisitions from as early as 1993. Those tactics, in combination with the wider economic trends of the 1990s, “contributed to a defense sector whose top four firms were receiving a higher share of DOD contracts than had been true for most of the post-World War II period,”24 even after the Cold War. Politically, however, a new enemy worthy of the United States, a near-peer competitor, still had to be identified. In his 2011 book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the MilitaryIndustrial Complex, William D. Hartung considered the impact Lockheed Martin had on defense policy and the benefits the company and individual company leaders reaped from maintaining a high threat profile.25 During the post-Cold War transition from containment strategy to the Rogue Doctrine and emerging regional powers focus, then Martin Marietta CEO Norman Augustine led the charge to build what he called a “super-company.” While some companies tried to absorb defense spending “peace dividend” cuts by diversifying their base business, Augustine rejected that approach. He felt it was his patriotic duty to keep producing weapons for America and frequently referred to the weapons industry as “the fourth armed service.”26 Beyond acquiring a number of small companies, including the military division of General Electric, Martin Marietta and Lockheed merged in 1995. Martin was clearly the dominant partner as evidenced by Augustine being the new CEO, top management positions being filled by Martin employees, and the new headquarters being based at Martin’s Bethesda, Maryland headquarters. Augustine’s political connections were unmatched. While still running the world’s largest defense contractor, Augustine also served on the Defense Policy Advisory Committee on Trade (DPACT), a group advising the Secretary of Defense on arms export policies; was on the Defense Science Board (DSB), an advisory panel with the power to push forward or scrap emerging weapons programs based on performance; and was President of the Association of the United States Army, a politically robust interest group of retired military personnel and army contractors. Those political connections paid high returns during the transition. Augustine played a central role in convincing the Newt Gingrich-led, Republican-controlled Congress to allocate or add billions in funding to Lockheed Martin projects from the F-22 combat fighter to the “Star Wars” missile defense program. Perhaps his greatest coup, however, was persuading Congress to bankroll the major arms industry mergers that were occurring with taxpayer money for “restructuring costs,” a policy that yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in government support to the creation of Lockheed Martin. As a result of an obscure policy change contained in a one-page memo from John Deutsch, then the Undersecretary of Defense (and a former Augustine business associate), the Pentagon authorized federal funding for closing plants, relocating equipment, paying severance to laid-off workers, and providing “golden parachutes” to board members and executives affected by the merger.27 The policy was not published in the Federal Register, the standard repository of virtually every important government action, and it was enacted without notification to Congress. The benefits that accrued from that policy were both organizational and personal. Lockheed Martin, for example, benefited by almost $1.8 billion. Personally, Augustine was promoted from being CEO of Martin Marietta to being CEO of Lockheed Martin. However, because he “left” Martin as a result of a consolidation merger, he was compensated in the amount of $8.2 million, approximately $2.9 million of that coming from taxpayer dollars.28 The incestuous link between the Pentagon, Congress, and defense companies is sold as being good for America based on the number one concern of voters. Jobs. No one is more sensitive to “jobs” arguments than Members of Congress, with those arguments often presented by lobbyists. In 2015, corporations reported more than $2 billion in congressional lobbying expenditures. K Street in Washington, DC, where many lobbyists’ offices are located, is sometimes known as the “road to riches” for retired Members of Congress, congressional staffers, and military officers who largely populate their ranks. Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.29 More often than not, the job of the lobbyist is to convince Members of Congress that cutting whatever program they are lobbying for will result in job losses in the Members’ district. Unemployed voters aren’t happy voters. In 2011, the aerospace industry put out a report saying that chopping the defense budget would put over a million Americans out of work. Cuts that could total up to a trillion dollars over ten years would “devastate the economy and the defense industrial base and undermine the national security of our country,” said Marion Blakeley, president of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), which sponsored and paid for the report.30 While companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing claim that the number of defense firm employees has dropped to about 10 percent from a peak of 14 percent in 2008, some of those job losses, as in the case of Boeing, have come through moving employees to the commercial side of the business. In other cases, jobs have been lost through divestitures such as Northrop’s spin-off of Huntington Ingalls. Based on executive salaries though, job losses do not seem to come because companies are financially strapped. In 2010, Boeing’s CEO Jim McNerney made $19.7 million while Lockheed Martin’s CEO Robert Stevens took home $19.1 million.31 Stevens made $25.3 million in compensation in 2011, which was more than all but two Wall Street CEOs.32 The revolving door doesn’t just go between industry and the Pentagon, but includes Congress as well. In his 2014 book This Town,33 chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine Mark Leibovich explains a lot about influence peddling with a simple statistic: In 1974, just 3 percent of retiring members of Congress became lobbyists; now, 50 percent of retiring Senators and 42 percent of retiring House members stay in DC and become lobbyists.34 Websites like , affiliated with the Center for Responsive Government, publish the names of former members and who they now lobby for, or become “senior advisors” to, which is basically the same thing.35 Trent Lott, Dick Armey, Tom Daschle, Tom Foley, and Scott Brown are among the bipartisan former Members on their list. President George W. Bush signed the Honest Leadership and Fair Government Act in 2007, intended to limit former Members’ and staffers’ immediate ability to cash in on their insider information in lobbying positions. President Barack Obama called it “the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate.”36 A key provision required ex-Senators and administration executives to wait two years and representatives to wait one year as a “cooling off period” before becoming lobbyists. But loopholes seem to create more of a sieve than a barrier, and according to a 2015 report by the Center for Responsive Government and the Sunlight Foundation, encourage a culture of “shadow lobbying.”37 Of the 104 former congressional members and staffers whose “cooling off” period ends during the first session of the 114th Congress, which opens today, 29 are already in government relations, “public affairs,” or serve as counsel at a firm that lobbies. And 13 of those are even registered as lobbyists, working to shape policy in Congress or the executive branch on behalf of paying clients.38 The door doesn’t just swing only from government to the private sector. It swings both ways. In 2011, Ann Sauer left her position as a Lockheed vice president and lobbyist with a compensation package of $1.6 million. Senator John McCain hired her as the key Republican staffer on the Senate Armed Services committee in February 2012.39 Industry associations also advocate policy positions benefiting their large and continually growing memberships. For example, the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is an organization with 9,000 corporate affiliates, 26,000 individual members, and no foreign membership. “The Association maintains close coordination with the DOD functioning though 56 chapters and 34 committees, each with direct access and a working relationship with the DOD. Divided up among these contractors is the largest single slice of the federal government’s budget.”40 There are also a multitude of industry organizations and associations specifically related to aerospace. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) with “more than 30,000 individual members from 88 countries, and 95 corporate members … is the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.”41 The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) bills itself as a unified voice on satellite industry policy, regulatory, and legislative issues. As a trade association representing the leading global satellite operators, service providers, manufacturers, launch service providers, and ground equipment suppliers … [SIA] actively promotes the benefits and uses of commercial satellite technology and its role in national security, homeland security, disaster relief and recovery, and the global information infrastructure and economy.42 There is an association or organization for every interest, oftentimes more than one. Many of the individuals staffing and connecting this multitude of organizations are retired military officers, many of them three- or four-star generals and admirals. Their rank provides them with substantive knowledge of the defense field and a career’s worth of Rolodex connections. For those seeking post-retirement consulting careers, that means access. According to retired Air Force General Gregory “Speedy” Martin, the practice of flag and general officers moving immediately to private sector jobs is both ethical and beneficial for American defense because it links private sector expertise with important Pentagon missions. “Access sounds sleazy, but it brings a value,” says Martin. “I am interested in doing things that I think the Air Force or [Department of Defense] might benefit from.”43 There is validity in what Gen. Martin says. Most Members of Congress and their staff have never served in the military and have little knowledge of, or even interest in, national security issues and needs unless it directly affects their district. While some staff and Members are or become very knowledge about national security and military issues, first-hand expertise from practitioners can be key to their education. Pentagon officials with broad portfolios of responsibility can also benefit from practitioner input on specific areas, especially technical areas like aerospace. The practice of exporting expertise from the military to the private sector is not inherently nefarious and, indeed, can serve the country. But the lines between education, advising, and persuasion are fine. That can be especially true when former flag officers, turned industry executives, visit the Pentagon. Their rank carries with it a sense of respect, indeed awe, from former subordinates who they are now courting for contracts. “When a general-turned-businessman arrives at the Pentagon, he is often treated with extraordinary deference—as if still in uniform—which can greatly increase his effectiveness as a rainmaker for industry. The military even has a name for it – the ‘bobblehead effect.’”44 Retired generals and admirals with a practiced command voice understand the persuasive effect their authoritative presence can have on former employees. The sheer number of these retired flag officers working as defense consultants or executives—sometimes referenced as “rent-a-general” practice—tells a story, with a significant increase shown during the fat budget years of the Gulf War. Between 2004 and 2008, 80 percent of three- and four-star officers joined defense firms upon retirement, up from less than 50 percent who followed that career path from 1994 to 1998. In some individual years, the move from senior military positions to the defense industry is a virtual clean sweep. In his 2010 investigative report for the Boston Globe, Bryan Bender found that 34 out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 went to work for defense firms—nearly 90 percent.45 In some specialized commands, this feeder system of military officers into lucrative defense jobs is so powerful that the same companies have hired successive generations of flag officers. Bender reported, for example, that the last seven generals and admirals responsible for controlling international arms sales at the Pentagon went to work post retirement as contractors selling weapons and defense technologies overseas. The rules governing post-retirement employment are part of federal statute 18 USC, section 207(c), that statute being known as the “revolving door” restriction. The Air Force explains this restriction in its post-retirement separation rules as follows: ? This means that for one year after their service terminates, senior employees may not knowingly make, with the intent to influence, any communication or appearance before an employee of the agency in which they served in the year prior to their leaving, if the communication or appearance is made on behalf of any other person and official action by the agency is sought. ? The purpose of this “cooling off” period is to allow for a period of adjustment for the former senior employee and personnel at the agency served and to diminish any appearance that government decisions are being improperly influenced by the former senior employee. ? This restriction does not apply to “behind-the-scenes” assistance. However, it does not require that the former senior employee was “personally and substantially” involved in the matter that is the subject of the communication or appearance. ? Instead, it applies to any representation back for the purpose of influencing employees at the agency that the employee just left.46 For two years after retirement, the Pentagon prohibits military officers from participating in “particular matters,” meaning ongoing contracts greater than $10 million that were under their command. But due to another convenient loophole, “new editions of older weapons systems are not considered ‘particular matters.’”47 Beyond loopholes, potential conflict of interest issues arise since these flag officers are often recruited for private sector employment well before they retire, raising questions about their independence in threat assessments, force planning, and general considerations of national interest versus the potential for postretirement gain. Further, the revolving door—perhaps more a blender than a door—is actually promoted and facilitated by the government with taxpayer money. Taxpayer-funded career seminars on how to network into private industry are held, for example, for Navy and Air Force flag officers on Coronado Island near San Diego, sometimes two full years before their retirement.48 Other retirees have been more peripherally involved with linking Pentagon needs to industry desires to fill those needs, acting as what was called Pentagon “Senior Mentors.” The Office of the Secretary of Defense defined a Senior Mentor as a retired flag, general or other military officer or senior retired military official who provides expert experienced-based mentoring, teaching, training, advice, and recommendations to senior military officers, staffs and students, as they participate in war games, warfighting courses, operational panning, operational exercises, and decision-making exercises.49 The Pentagon has stated that it increasingly needs and relies on these retired officer “mentors” to run war games and advise active duty commanders. But a series of media reports in 2010 raised issues about the program, specifically in terms of financial gains and conflicts of interest. In some cases, for example, if payment was made to a retired military officer through a defense company rather than directly, the military services didn’t even have to reveal the identity of the retiree. These were individuals who, in some instances, were making up to $440 an hour as mentors while drawing pensions as high as $220,000 per year and working full-time executive positions with defense companies.50 USA Today reported that of the 158 Senior Mentors they identified, 80 percent had financial ties to defense contractors, including 29 being full-time executives of defense companies. The Senate Armed Services committee took an interest in the Senior Mentors program, and soon thereafter, the Pentagon ordered a program overhaul.51 Consequently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced sweeping changes to the program in April 2010. Mentors were to be converted to Highly Qualified Expert (HQE) positions and, consequently, were held responsible for complying with all applicable federal personnel ethics laws and regulations. Those regulations included financial disclosure statements and imposed a salary cap. The financial disclosure part included revealing employers, earnings, and stocks. The salary cap meant that a HQE could only be paid up to a specific authorized amount, an amount equivalent to the salary authorized for a four-star general officer on active duty—the most they could have made before moving to the private sector. Further, mentors became subject to federal rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest, such as prohibiting mentors from divulging nonpublic information to defense contractors or taking actions that have “a direct and predictable”52 effect on their private interests. In October 2011, the DoD Inspector General reported on compliance with the new policy, focusing on the Navy, Marine Corps, Joint Forces Command, Special Forces Command, and Strategic Command. The Army and Air Force were omitted as they were conducting their own compliance studies.53 Subsequent to the new rules being put into place, 98 percent of the retired officers from the Navy, the Marines, and three combatant commands left the Senior Mentor program. “It appears that, for at least some of the former military officers who dropped out the program, it’s clear which choice they made when it came to patriotism or money.”54 The kind of conflict of interest issue that had bothered the press and the Senate came up again in November 2011. Senator John McCain sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing concern about retired Air Force General turned Boeing executive Charles Robinson’s participation in a 2008 war game called Global Mobility “for a $51 billion aerial tanker contract Boeing was competing to win.”55 Boeing was later awarded the contract. McCain further criticized the Pentagon for taking two years to fulfill a FOIA request related to the subject. It is not just the Pentagon and defense firms who are keen to hire retired general officers. According to retired Army General Wesley K. Clark, private equity firms and Wall Street investors are also increasingly interested in enlisting retired flag officers as consequence of a broader phenomenon: the increasing importance of the military to America’s industrial base. “It’s the militarization of the economy,”56 Clark said; and he would know. Since leaving his position as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in 2000 and running for President from 2002 to 2004, Clark has worked for, often simultaneously, his own firm, Wesley K. Clark and Associates; the lobbying firm James Lee Witt Associates as Vice President and Senior Advisor; Rodman & Renshaw, eleventh largest investment bank in the United States, as former Chairman; Growth Energy, an alternative energy advocacy firm, as Co-Chairman; Geooptics LCC, an environmental data company, on the Board of Advisors; and the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, as Senior Advisor. Clark is not alone in being sought after in the private equity, finance, and energy sectors. Retired Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus was hired in 2013 by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR), a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts, to head its KKR Global Institute. The role of the media—specifically, paying former military members to act as advisors for the media and spokespersons for Pentagon policy—must also be considered as part of the supporting cast of the military–industrial complex. Retired General Jack Keane, for example, appeared on Fox News nine times over a two-month period in 2014 to advocate for air strikes and special forces to defeat ISIS, declaring that a bolder strategy was required. He made similar calls for more military action before Congress. What was left unsaid by the media, though, (and in congressional witness disclosure forms) was that Keane had a very personal interest in seeing military activity ramped up. Keane is a special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics where he was paid over $245,000 in 2013; a “venture partner” to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training; and president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC.57 When the US military is involved in global conflicts, the firms that Keane is associated with benefit. Dean Ed Wasserman of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism was quoted in The Nation as saying, “I think an inclination to use military action a lot is something the defense industry subscribes to because it helps to perpetuate an overall climate of permissiveness towards military spending.”58 Those who profit from conflict certainly weren’t going to argue against it. The Pentagon has a track record of using the media for its own purposes as well. In 2002, during the run-up to the Iraq War, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke launched a program to recruit “key influentials” (retired military officers) to help sell the war to the public. More than 75 individuals were eventually signed up to appear on television and radio shows as military analysts and/or to pen newspaper op–ed columns. Many of these analysts were also lobbyists for defense contractors. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the analysts, providing them “street credibility.” The analysts benefited as the meetings indicated to their clients that they had personal access to the Pentagon, and they benefited the Pentagon by discouraging the analysts from questioning or criticizing Pentagon assertions. The arrangement worked well until New York Times reporter David Barstow reported on the program in 2008.59 As part of the investigation leading up to Barstow’s report, the newspaper sued the Defense Department and eventually gained access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts, and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo for the analysts, and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. Barstow later won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. While issues regarding the military–industrial complex are evidenced across the board in defense policy and program decision-making, those that are space-related can be particularly noteworthy given their cost, endurance, and technical fatuity. When all the wheels are turning in the right direction, a program can become one of those highly lucrative self-licking ice cream cones. Missile defense provides an illustrative example of what that looks like. Within that strategic program, there are multiple smaller, related programs. Many endure for years before collapsing. The $5 billion Airborne Laser, the $1.7 billion Kinetic Energy Interceptor, and the 700 million Multiple Kill Vehicle were all canceled after no, or failed, testing.60 But yet the missile defense program lives on and is a testament to the persistence of its supporters. Innovation DA1AR – Innovation DAInnovation slowing – failing clinical trials, drug prices, econ recovery.Langley 4/21 [(Kare, reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York, where she primarily covers the U.S. stock market), “Biotech Stocks Fall Out of Favor After Disappointing Trial Results, Big Rally “, WSJ, 4/21/2021, ] TDIShares of Sarepta Therapeutics Inc., Amicus Therapeutics Inc. and Frequency Therapeutics Inc. are among the recent losers for biotech investors, having lost more than half their value so far this year. “It’s felt like a kitchen sink in terms of the number of factors weighing on biotech sentiment in the near term,” said Andy Acker, who manages the Janus Henderson Global Life Sciences Fund. Among those are disappointing clinical trials, concern about the possibility of renewed focus on drug prices in Washington and the recent rotation into economically sensitive stocks. Biotech shares enjoyed a powerful rally last year. The Nasdaq biotech gauge soared 26% in 2020 on excitement about the potential for Covid-19 treatments and vaccines as well as a broader rally in shares of companies that can perform when the economy is struggling. The S&P 500, meanwhile, gained 16% last year, and the Nasdaq Composite surged 44%. Rapid gains or losses in share prices following clinical-trial results or regulatory decisions are a feature of biotech investing, but a smattering of negative news has damped enthusiasm in recent months. Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics plunged 51% on Jan. 8 after mixed results from a study of a drug targeting a form of muscular dystrophy. The shares are now down 58% for the year. Amicus Therapeutics shares dropped 33% on Feb. 12 after trial results for its treatment of a rare disorder called Pompe disease disappointed investors. And shares of Frequency Therapeutics plunged 78% on March 23 after the company found its lead drug aimed at treating sensorineural hearing loss didn’t lead to any hearing benefit when given in a four-dose schedule. Those stocks are down 57% and 72%, respectively, this year. Also weighing on sentiment: The Federal Trade Commission has indicated it is preparing to take a harder line on drug-company mergers, which are a source of potential value for investors in small biotech shops. The commission in March said it would reconsider its approach to scrutinizing deals that could harm competition. “Biotech can be driven by mergers,’ said Jeremie Capron, director of research at ROBO Global, a research and investment-advisory firm. “A change at the FTC, it reduces the probability of a favorable outcome in terms of an acquisition.” Analysts will also be keeping an eye on any efforts in Washington to reduce drug prices. Some investors are betting against companies in the industry. Biotech stocks accounted for five of the 10 most-shorted stocks on U.S. exchanges at the end of March, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Short interest in Esperion Therapeutics Inc.stood at 34% of shares outstanding as of March 31, followed by Clovis Oncology Inc. at 31% and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. at 26%, an S&P analysis showed. As Covid-19 vaccines reach more people and the economy picks up, investors have favored shares of banks, energy producers and other companies that tend to do well in a strong economy. They have been less interested in stocks that hold out the prospect of innovation-driven growth in fields like technology and biotech. Expectations of a strong recovery have also been seen in the bond market, where falling prices lifted the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note to 1.566% on Wednesday from 0.913% at the end of last year. As yields climb, borrowing costs for businesses also rise. That often lands hard on biotech companies, where hefty bills for research and development can arrive long before revenue.IP is worse for innovation— it favors developed countries and prevents innovation through imitation. Chao and Mody 15 [(Tiffany E, Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) (Gita N, Program in Global Surgery and Social Change, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) “The impact of intellectual property regulation on global medical technology innovation,” BMJ Journals, 3/5/15. ] TDITechnology innovation has the potential to expand equitable healthcare to underserved populations in global health. At the same time, device patents and their legislation can be barriers to innovation for developing countries. For example, the WHO has developed a ‘Compendium of innovative health technologies for low-resource settings’.1 Most of these technologies are inexpensive to develop, inexpensive to manufacture and relatively easy to use. Nevertheless, the WHO clearly states that inclusion in their Compendium does not necessarily mean “the use of the technologies is…in accordance with the national laws and regulations of any country, including…patent laws.” Of course, it would be a challenge to innovate in the absence of legislation on trademark laws and trade secrets. Since the profitability of devices depends on leveraging existing pathways for device development, manufacturing and distribution, intellectual property (IP) protection is a major aspect of commercialisation of technologies. Certainly investors in new start-ups look for IP protection as a high priority. Regulation of IP, therefore, is necessary to stimulate invention and new technologies. However, for technologies in low-resource settings, IP protection has historically been sparse. The World Intellectual Property Organisation reports that in 2012, high-income countries shared 64.5% of the world's total number of patents, while lower-middle-income countries held only 2.9%, with low-income countries owning only 0.4%.2 This disparity clearly demonstrates limited IP support for frugal innovation emerging from developing countries. Ironically, inventors in low-resource settings are presented with an abundance of important clinical needs and fewer established infrastructure constraints, so that there is a vast untapped potential for innovations to originate in these settings and move to the more developed world (known as reverse innovation).3 Inventors of healthcare devices for the developing world have varying interest in pursuing patent protection of their devices.i High cost, time and logistics are oft-cited reasons for not pursuing patents. Factors influencing the cost include not just the expense of filing (which can be thousands of dollars) but also fees for legal counsel and maintenance of the patent. These costs are a barrier in their own right, and they can also lead to increases in the price of the end product, which can be significant in a highly cost-sensitive market. An additional barrier is limited knowledge of complicated international patent laws with inadequate access to qualified IP lawyers. In cases where out-of-country universities are involved in patenting the technologies, the bureaucracy involved in dealing with the technology transfer office and their inexperience in executing foreign filings is a barrier (though there are counterexamples of very significant university partnerships in developing bottom-of-the-pyramid technologies). Another major reason for limited IP protection of technology for low-resource settings is the spirit behind the innovation in the first place; inventors designing for low-resource settings are often interested in keeping their device design open source, to maximise spread and impact. Also, consumers of the technologies are highly focused on affordability. Prosecution of infringement of IP laws in low-resource settings is limited, and violating IP laws is a pragmatic way for ‘copycats’ to reduce their investment costs in research and development, and quickly sell products, getting healthcare technology to those who need it. Most countries do operate under patent laws compliant with the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, a framework that requires IP laws to resemble those of developed areas. This agreement applies to all WTO member countries. Therefore, unless a developing country wishes to withdraw from the WTO, its IP laws are required to resemble those in the USA or Europe, leaving little flexibility to tailor to local needs.4 This means that international IP laws are often in the economic interests of developed countries rather than in the innovation interests of other countries.5 As a result of these issues, the most prevalent strategy among global health technologies has often been to develop without regard for IP protection. A major advantage of this approach is that it can allow for open-source innovation, permitting technological learning through imitation. This approach can also eliminate the many costs of foreign protection or patent enforcement, allowing for a frugal approach to the initial development of the technology itself. Furthermore, this approach is most in line with the collaborative spirit of global health innovation. Nevertheless, there do exist some opportunities for frugal approaches to IP. Simplified legislation or pro bono opportunities for counsel allow an effective system of justice for inventors to take full advantage of legislation to promote innovation.6 Grants and other forms of non-dilutive funding enable inventors to develop global health technologies without being overly concerned about licensing or investment opportunities. Some potential legislative changes also could be made, such as creation of public–private partnerships that could facilitate government-funded research to be protected and disseminated at affordable cost in such countries.7 Other existing exemptions in international agreements could be implemented, including research exemptions for experimental uses of IP or government imposed non-exclusive or compulsory licensing.8 While there remains potential for more imaginative IP legislation in developing countries, original technologies continue to be developed in these settings. On the international stage, forums such as the WHO Global Forum on Medical Devices highlight emerging technologies that “impact the continuum of care ranging from screening to diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation under the Universal Health Coverage Strategy.”9 These platforms demonstrate that despite the hurdles faced by developing economies in capturing the benefits of IP laws, global health technologies can be and will continue to be developed outside of these limitations.Courts clogged now – COVID, criminal suits.Finnegan and Dolan 4/12 [(Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times reporter covering federal courts and law enforcement in California. Maura Dolan, California-based legal affairs writer for the Los Angeles Times) " Coronavirus shutdown of jury trials upends California's federal courts," Los Angeles Times, 4-12-2021, ] TDIRonald Ware spent five months in a Santa Ana jail awaiting trial after his arrest in Brea last summer on a federal gun charge. His day in court never came. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed the case in January, saying emergency rules that shut down federal jury trials during the pandemic had denied Ware his right to a speedy trial. “Nowhere in the Constitution is there an exception for times of emergency or crisis,” Carney wrote in the ruling that set Ware free. Carney has tossed criminal charges against a jewelry-store robbery suspect and three others for the same reason. The decision to shut down all jury trials, he found, was excessive. The 13-month suspension of trials in the federal court system’s Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and six neighboring counties, has disrupted the prosecution of hundreds of alleged drug dealers, tax cheats, cybercriminals, child porn purveyors and health insurance swindlers. It has clogged the courts with an unprecedented backlog of both criminal and civil cases. While many of those charged with crimes have been free on bail as they await trial, others have remained behind bars, enduring long stretches of solitude as detainees are kept apart to minimize spread of the coronavirus. Guan Lei, a Chinese scholar in the U.S. for research at UCLA, has been detained for eight months on a charge of destroying a hard drive in an attempt to obstruct a federal investigation. After two postponements, Guan’s scheduled May 4 trial will have to be delayed again, because Los Angeles federal court will not yet be open. Guan appeared at a court hearing Thursday by video from a downtown L.A. jail. “Mr. Guan, I’m very sorry it’s taken this long to give you a trial,” U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald told him. Case dismissals have been rare; prosecutors have appealed Carney’s decisions. But an increasing number of defendants are alleging violations of their speedy trial rights, casting uncertainty over their cases as the pandemic subsides and federal courts prepare to reopen. Criminal defendants have the right to a trial within a set time period. In federal court, if they invoke that right, their trial generally must start within 70 days of when charges were filed. Typically, judges grant requests for more time to prepare for trial. Guan Lei and others charged with federal crimes have spent much of the pandemic detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles during a shutdown of federal jury trials. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images) One of the next defendants to seek dismissal of charges on speedy trial grounds in federal court will be Jerome Terry, who has been jailed for three years awaiting trial. He was arrested in connection with his alleged role in a sex-trafficking conspiracy in which two aspiring Canadian models were forced to work as prostitutes in the Hollywood Hills. Terry’s trial was most recently put off until July. “There’s this general feeling of purgatory,” said Meghan Blanco, his attorney. With nearly 20 million residents, California’s Central District is the country’s most populous federal judicial district, spanning Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Even before the pandemic, vacancies on the bench had left overworked judges struggling to keep up with growing caseloads. When jury trials stopped in March 2020, 10 of the district’s 28 judicial slots were unfilled. Six vacancies remain for President Biden to fill. In the year before the trial shutdown, more than 16,000 new cases were filed in the district: 15,514 civil lawsuits and 1,138 criminal prosecutions. Most criminal cases yield guilty pleas, and most civil lawsuits end in settlements. But nearly 150 trials typically occur each year in the district’s three courthouses — in Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Riverside. Pretrial hearings have kept moving over the last 13 months, thanks largely to Zoom. But the strongest incentive for guilty pleas and civil settlements often comes on the eve of a trial, so many cases that might have ended in normal times have instead lumbered along. “Once you open up the courthouse to trials, I think that, in and of itself, helps alleviate the backlog,” said U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez, the chief judge of the Central District. “There’s always going to be that 150 cases that you’re going to have to try, and those are backed up. So I think in the short term, we’re going to be working really hard and trying more cases than we would otherwise try once we get up to speed.” Criminal trials will have top priority, he said, starting with defendants in custody. With the recent decline in California’s coronavirus infections, jury summonses have been issued for federal trials to resume May 10 in Orange County. Gutierrez expects trials in Los Angeles and Riverside to start back up in June. Safety measures will be extensive. Jury selection will be tightly choreographed so it takes place in large courtrooms where everyone can stay six feet apart. Elevator use will be curtailed. Plexiglass will section off each judge, witness and court reporter. Masks will be mandatory, with possible exceptions for witnesses. In many other jurisdictions, trials have moved forward during the pandemic. Most visible is the ongoing murder trial in state court of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd at a time when the coronavirus is far more widespread in Minnesota than in California. State courts in California have also pressed ahead with trials. In January and February, four employees of the Los Angeles County Superior Court system died from COVID-19; it’s unclear whether they caught the coronavirus in court. That destroys the patent process and discourages investment – their impact isn’t unique.Ball and Kesan 10 [(Gwendolyn G. Ball Research Fellow Business, Economics and Law Group Institute for Genomic Biology and Information Trust Institute University of Illinois Jay P. Kesan Professor and Mildred Van.Voorhis Jones Faculty Scholar College of Law Business, Economics and Law Group Institute of Genomic Biology University of Illinois) “Judges, Courts and Economic Development: the Impact of Judicial Human Capital on the Efficiency and Accuracy of the Court System” unpublished manuscript April 30, 2010] TDIThere is a long-standing consensus that the clear definition and enforcement of property rights is an important element in economic development.1 This consensus is of more than scholarly concern; the experience in the reforming socialist economies demonstrates that secure property rights play an major role in market economies.2 But well-designed laws and regulations cannot ensure property rights without an institution that will enforce those rights and settle disputes, and in nearly all countries the final forum for resolving property rights disputes is the court system. Thus, a well-functioning court system is crucial for economic growth. Following this line of reasoning, economists have considered the operations of court systems an important area of study. However, economic study of courts has usually focused on the design of incentive mechanisms to ensure an accountable and impartial judiciary. Much of this literature discusses the inherent tradeoff between judicial independence and judicial accountability.3 Nonetheless, some authors have noted that even if judicial incentives are perfectly designed, the organization of the court system and the rules under which it operates can have a dramatic impact on its effectiveness as an economic institution. While it is true that judges need to be protected from outside influences which could bias their decision, even unbiased decisions must accurately interpret the law. Inaccurate or well meaning but seemingly idiosyncratic decisions will decrease confidence in the legal system and increase uncertainty in economic activity.4 And accuracy alone is not sufficient for a high quality court system. Disputes must be resolved and decisions must be rendered in a timely manner if they are to provide investors with the security and certainty necessary to promote investment. Thus, a judicial system must not only be impartial, it must be accurate and efficient as well. International institutions promoting economic development, such as The World Bank, have recognized this link and launched technical assistance efforts to improve the administration of court systems around the developing world.5 Economic scholarship also recognizes the importance of a well-managed court system. In their study of the relationship between entrepreneurial investment and the “quality” of the legal systems across states in Mexico, Laeven and Woodruff, define “quality” not only as “the impartiality of judges” but also as “the quality of judges; the adequacy of judicial resources; the efficiency of enforcement of rulings; the efficiency of judicial administration more generally; the cost, ease of use and completeness of property registries and the adequacy of local legislation related to contract enforcement.”6 Rosales-Lopez explores the impact of recent reforms in the Spanish court system on its ability to resolve disputes, citing the “problems such as congestion, the high cost and delay of procedures [that weaken] the access and citizens’ equality before the law, as well as the enforcement of laws and the guarantees of property rights and contracts.”7 Choi, Gulati and Posner8 compare compare appointed and judges and find ambiguous results regarding the “independence” of the two judicial systems. However, they also evaluate both the “productivity” (as measured by the number of opinons written) and the “quality” (as measured by the number of citations received by such opinions) of judges in the two systems. Thus, to ensure public confidence and promote investment, courts must not only be impartial in administering justice, but also accurate and efficient in the resolution of disputes.9 . Finally, in their massive international study of adjudication of simple civil cases, Djankov, et. al.[3] analyze the importance of court procedures on both accountability and also on accuracy and case duration. Thus Recent economic scholarship has acknowledged the importance of case duration in analyzing the operation of court systems. However, what this literature generally neglects is that, just as there may be a trade-off between accountability and independence, there may be a trade-off between court reforms promoting accountability and those promoting increased judicial “human capital.”10 The various proposed measures to increase the“openness” and “accountability” of courts–election, versus appointment of judges; term limits; etc.–all involve the actual or threatened removal of judges from office. However, the job of managing a case docket is one which a judge must learn on the job. Presumably, a judge with many years on the bench should have developed a set of skills to keep cases flowing smoothly–scheduling the necessary court procedures, managing lawyers, etc. And previous legal experience may not have exposed a new judge to all the areas of the law s/he may see on the bench; as a judge sees more cases of a particular type, his/her knowledge of that area of the law should become deeper and richer, leading to more accurate decisions and rulings. Thus, the importance of general managerial skills and familiarity with special areas of the law can play a part in discussions of judicial term limits as well as whether judges should be elected or appointed. Maskin and Tirole note this problem by acknowledging that there may be a tradeoff between measures designed to create an unbiased court system and the “set up” costs of a new judge, including the “learning by doing” which occurs on the bench.11 And there is empirical verification that some policies designed to increase accountability may decrease experience and the resultant stock of human capital. In his study of state court judges, for example, Hanssen finds that appointed judges serve 50% longer on average than do elected judges.12 Thus, there is cause to worry that some legal reforms my reduce judicial experience due to a legal “switching cost” which kicks in when judges are removed from the bench. The possibility of such costs could be an important consideration in implementing reforms designed to increase the contribution of the courts to economic development. If the costs are great, reforms which lead to too much “churning” on the bench might be avoided. In fact, it might be worth pursuing policies which increase judicial experience and human capital, even if such changes might lead to a decrease in “impartiality.” For example, many countries employ specialized court systems which cover only one type of particularly complex case case. An argument for such specialized courts is that they lead to greater judicial human capital as judges specialize on one area of the law. But one argument against them is that judges and lawyers practicing in that area might become overly familiar, thereby decreasing impartiality.13 However, behind all the arguments about these potential tradeoffs between openness and experience lies one fact: this underlying hypothesis–that there is a positive relationship between judicial human capital and the accuracy and efficiency of the court system–must be empirically verified. This paper performs such an analysis, utilizing a class of litigation particulary suited to the question: litigation of patent infringement disputes in the United States. All U.S. patent cases must be filed in the U.S. Federal District Court system. Thus all patent cases are litigated using a uniform set of rules and procedures; data drawn form other types of litigation, which can be filed in both federal and state courts, has to account for a wide variety of legal statutes, precedents and procedural rules.14 In addition, all cases in U.S District Courts are randomly assigned to judges through a “round robin” system, freeing our analysis of experience from the type of endogeneity that plagues studies of education. Moreover, patent law is a highly specialized area of the law, allowing for a distinction between the “general” judicial human capital acquired through time on the bench and “specialized” human capital acquired through experience with a particular area of the law. Finally, examination of these issues with respect to patent cases has particular policy relevancy; as of this writing, the U.S. is contemplating the creation of a specialized patent trial court in order to increase the specialized knowledge of judges presiding over such cases. Thus, study of the relationship between judicial experience and the litigation of patent cases is both highly suitable and timely. The rest of the paper pursues this issue as follows. First, we provide some background on patent litigation in the United States and why it provides a good vehicle for the study of the impact of judicial human capital. Then, we outline the data collection procedure, including details about the data generating process which make unobserved heterogeneity a cause for concern, as well as the various methods for defining judicial experience. In the next section, we estimate the relationship between experience and efficiency using a duration model and using appropriate techniques for controlling for the impact of both observed and unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, we explore the relationship between experience and accuracy by analyzing the probability that a case will be reversed on appeal. Through these mechanisms we will examine the relationship between judicial human capital and the accuracy and efficiency of the court system. 2 Accurate and Efficient Patent Litigation and Judicial Human Capital. While most economic scholarship analyzing the importance of the courts has focused on disputes over real property, the relationship between the court system and investment is no less strong for intellectual property. And to a large extent, the relationship between the courts and the patent system depends on the quality of “judicial human capital.” In the United States, as in many countries, the courts are a crucial part of the patent system to the extent that the patent system is can be termed a two-stage process. In the first stage, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants property rights to inventors. In the second stage, inventors can protect those rights through patent infringement suits in the courts and alleged infringers have the right to challenge improvidently granted patents and have them declared invalid. As a consequence, some authors have referred to patent rights as being “probabilistic,” depending not only on whether the innovation embodied in the patent has commercial value, but also on the refinement of that patent property right after litigation.15 Just as with real property, the management of the court system has an impact on both patenting behavior and on investment in research and development. While the majority of all patents are not litigated, those that are disputed in the courts are among the most valuable.16 The rules governing the court system may even “feed back” into patenting behavior; some authors have found evidence that the increasingly “patent friendly” rules17 adopted by the courts are a major factor in the surge in patenting since the 1980s.18 Moreover, the ability to define the “probabilistic” property rights is an important element in determining whether patents fulfill their purpose of promoting innovation.19 Finally, the costs associated with the patent systems can be reduced by an efficient court system; firms may hesitate to invest in new products and technologies which may infringe on existing patents, so any additional delay or cost in clarifying existent rights may slow the process of innovation. The more quickly and cheaply these rights are defined, the more beneficial the patent system will be in promoting and not inhibiting innovation and investment.Biotech fails.Pisano 06 [(Gary P., he Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School where he currently serves as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1988.) “Can Science Be a Business?: Lessons from Biotech” Harvard Business Review, October 2006. ] TDIExcitement about these emerging technologies, the exploding number of biotech start-ups (some 4,000 over three decades), and the sector’s soaring annual revenues (now about $40 billion) only reinforced this optimism. But if the industry’s success is measured by profitability and progress in revolutionizing R&D to generate an avalanche of breakthrough drugs, a troubling picture emerges.First, only a tiny fraction of biotech companies have ever been profitable or generated positive cash flows, and the sector as a whole has lost money. (See the exhibit “Profitless Growth for Biotech.”) Of the firms that have been profitable, only an elite handful of the oldest—including Amgen, Biogen Idec, Genentech, and Genzyme—have generated substantial profits. Only Amgen and Genentech have broken into the league of established pharmaceutical companies. It’s especially noteworthy that Genentech, after pioneering the system for monetizing intellectual property, then took a different path: along with Amgen, Genzyme, and a few others, it vertically integrated by investing heavily in manufacturing and marketing even as it continued to build internal scientific capabilities. In addition, Genentech forged a long-term relationship with Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, which owns 56% of its shares.Profitless Growth for Biotech The revenues of publicly held biotech companies have grown dramatically but their profits have hovered close to zero. ...Second, there is no sign that biotechnology has revolutionized the productivity of pharmaceutical R&D, despite many claims to the contrary. The average R&D cost per new drug launched by a biotech firm is not significantly different from the average cost per new drug launched by a major pharmaceutical company. (See the exhibit “Biotech Has Produced No Breakthrough in R&D Productivity.”) Nor has industrialized R&D dramatically increased the number of compounds that make it to human clinical testing, let alone into the market. (See the exhibit “Industrialized R&D Has Yet to Deliver for Biotech.”) There is no conclusive proof that the unexceptional productivity of biotech firms is due to the complexity and risk of the projects they undertake.Biotech Has Produced No Breakthrough in R(and)D ProductivityAs the graph below indicates, the average R&D cost per new drug launched by biotech firms is not significantly different from ...Industrialized R(and)D Has Yet to Deliver for BiotechSince the mid-1990s, a combination of genomics, combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, and IT ...Nor is there reason to believe that biotech’s productivity will improve with time. Optimists point out that biotech firms account for a growing percentage of drugs in clinical development. This suggests that we should expect a great number of drugs to emerge from the biotech pipeline in the future. But while industry spending on R&D continues to increase substantially, the attrition rate of biotech drugs in development has also grown over time. Thus it is doubtful that biotech’s output per dollar invested in R&D will improve significantly.Finally—and perhaps not surprisingly—the biotech sector appears to be retreating from its distinctive position at the radical and risky end of the R&D spectrum. Since 2001, when the genomics bubble burst, the strategies of start-ups and the preferences of venture capitalists have undergone a marked change. Rather than forming so-called molecule-to-market companies, whose first product revenues might be more than a decade away, entrepreneurs and investors have begun to look for lower-risk, faster-payback models, such as licensing existing projects and products from other companies and then refining them.Refinements such as new formulations, including new technologies for delivery, are certainly valuable. They can lead to significant therapeutic improvements and expanded treatment options. That said, the change in strategies raises a major concern: If young biotech firms are not pursuing cutting-edge science, who will focus on the higher-risk long-term projects that offer potential medical breakthroughs?People involved in biotechnology have long contended that the sector will flourish eventually. Some still say it’s just a matter of time and money. Others insist that technology will save the day. Genomics, proteomics, systems biology, and other advances will make it possible to identify promising drug candidates with a high degree of precision at extremely early stages of the R&D process, which should lead to a dramatic reduction in failure rates, cycle times, and costs.Such optimism assumes that the underlying structure of the sector is healthy and the strategies of the players make sense. My research suggests otherwise. This structure and these strategies cannot solve the fundamental business and scientific challenges facing the sector.US investment in pharma solves. Meller and Ahmed 19 [(Abbey, Confidential Assistant, Congressional Relations at USDA)(Hauwa, a research assistant for Democracy and Government at American Progress.) “How Big Pharma Reaps Profits While Hurting Everyday Americans” Center for American Progress, 8/20/19. ] TDIPharmaceutical companies also benefit from research and development tax credits. The federal R&D tax credit was first introduced in 1981 to encourage private sector investment in pioneering research.21 This tax credit is available to businesses that attempt to develop new, improved, or technologically advanced products or trade processes.22 In 2015, former President Barack Obama signed into law the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act23, which made these tax credits permanent and extended them to small businesses and startup companies. Pharmaceutical industries also receive a tax deduction for their marketing and advertising expenses. According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “From 1997 through 2016, medical marketing expanded substantially, and spending increased from $17.7 to $29.9 billion,24 with direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs and health services accounting for the most rapid growth, and pharmaceutical marketing to health professionals accounting for most promotional spending.” The report also found that from 1997 through 2016, “the number of advertisements … increased from 79,000 (including 72,000 television commercials) in 1997 to 4.6 million (663,000 television25 commercials) in 2016.” Big Pharma’s drug pricing maximizes profits Despite these taxpayer subsidies, prescription drug prices are nonetheless increasing at an alarming rate. In 2019, price increases from drug manufacturers affected more than 3,40026 drugs. For example, Allergan, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, raised prices on 51 drugs, just more than half its portfolio. Some medications that Allergan manufactures saw a 9.5 percent jump in cost, while others saw a 4.9 percent increase in cost.27 Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., the largest generic drug manufacturer in the world, increased its drug prices by more than 9 percent.28 These sharp increases in price occur as companies continue to report millions of dollars in revenue. In 2018, Allergan reported $15.8 million29 in revenue, while Teva Pharmaceuticals reported $18.8 million30 in revenue. Pharmaceutical companies’ profit margins receive significant bumps when they launch new drugs, specifically specialty drugs, used to treat life-threatening conditions. These drugs often cost more than most Americans can afford. Pharmaceutical companies have stated that the prices are high because the drugs are difficult to manufacture. In 2013, for example, industry giant Gilead Sciences launched Sovaldi, a hepatitis C drug, at $1,000 per pill31, or $84,00032 per treatment, which could last 12 to 24 weeks.33 After an 18-month investigation into the company’s pricing, the Senate Finance Committee concluded that Gilead had pursued a marketing and pricing strategy designed to “maximize revenue with little concern for access or affordability.”34 Drug companies also benefit from patents, which give them monopoly power for their on-patent products. These patents ensure that prices remain high by reducing competition. Drug patents last for 20 years after the filing date. Pharmaceutical companies have also employed tactics such as evergreening and thicketing to prolong a drug’s exclusivity. When evergreening, pharmaceutical companies make certain modifications to a drug such as changing its35 chemical composition slightly or making an external change as minor as adding a stripe to a pill36 in order to preserve their patents. A 2018 study in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences found that 78 percent37 of new drug patents awarded in the past decade went to drugs that already existed. Seventy percent 38 of the nearly 100 bestselling drugs extended their exclusivity protections at least once, and 50 percent extended their patents more than once. The second tactic—thicketing—involves flooding the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the courts with excessive patents and applications to make it difficult for competing firms to secure patents. These tactics help preserve pharmaceutical companies’ monopolies and ensure that drug prices remain uncompetitive and thus less affordable for everyday Americans. While consumers continue to pay the price of this market manipulation, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the pharmaceutical industry found that these unfair practices are significantly enriching manufacturers. As the report stated, “Among the largest 25 companies, annual average profit margin fluctuated between 15 and 20 percent.”39 The GAO contextualizes these profits by comparing the pharmaceutical industry’s profits with those of its counterparts, stating that “the annual average profit margin across non-drug companies among the largest 500 globally fluctuated between 4 and 9 percent.” In 2018 alone, the CEOs of major pharmaceutical companies Allergan, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer Inc. made a total of $90 million.40 Meanwhile, according to a CBS News report, Americans spent $535 billion41 on prescription drugs in 2018—an increase of 50 percent since 2010.42 As pharmaceutical industry profits increase43, everyday Americans—whose tax dollars play a critical role in funding the research and development of these medications—are not receiving anything close to a fair return on their investment. A recent Pew Charitable Trusts study found that Americans spent $65.8 billion44 out of pocket in 2016 for retail prescription drugs, up from $59.5 billion in 2012. The high cost of prescription drugs is a significant driver of medical debt45 because Americans are increasingly reliant on medication to manage long-term chronic conditions.46 Additionally, the high cost of prescription drugs has forced many Americans to take drastic measures, including foregoing taking their medications as prescribed or traveling abroad in order to save on medications. A 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that 11.4 percent47 of adults aged 18 to 64 did not take their prescription drugs as prescribed in order to reduce how much they spent on their medications. And, as NPR recently reported, “The U.S government estimates that close to 1 million48 Americans in California alone go to Mexico annually for health care, including to buy prescription drugs.” In May 2019, a group of Americans49 living with Type 1 diabetes traveled to Canada to purchase insulin and call on the U.S. government to regulate the cost of lifesaving drugs. The costs associated with traveling abroad make it logistically and financially impractical for most Americans. Further, traveling abroad presents certain health risks given that some countries have lax drug certification standards compared with FDA standards.AT: Bioterror ImpactNo uniqueness – CBW Prolif and Use high now.Ford, PhD, 19 [(Christopher Ashley, Assistant Secretary Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation) "Biosecurity, Biological Weapons Nonproliferation, and Their Future," US Department of State, 4-11-2017, ] TDIGiven the potentially catastrophic impact of such a man-made biological incident, there would be plenty of reason to take prudential steps to make such mayhem less likely even if the risk of such an incident occurring were quite remote. Unfortunately, however a biological attack is far from a mere hypothetical. As the National Biodefense Strategy notes, multiple nations have pursued clandestine biological weapons programs, and a number of terrorist groups have sought to acquire biological weapons. It is now well understood that the terrorists of al-Qaeda sought weapons of mass destruction, including biological weapons, beginning in the mid-1990s – even to the point that al-Qaeda’s then second-in-command, the former physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, personally oversaw an effort (fortunately unsuccessful) to attack the United States with anthrax. And indeed, a handful of bioterror attacks have actually been attempted or carried out, including an attack using salmonella bacteria in Oregon in 1984 by the Rajnishi religious cult, an anthrax attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan in 1993, and the so-called “Amerithrax” anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened many more in the United States in 2001 – including here in Washington, D.C., where the Hart Senate Office Building in which I worked at the time was closed for weeks to permit decontamination. But the danger doesn’t just come from radicalized terrorists or lunatic cultists: biological weapons in the hands of foreign governments are also a very real threat. President Nixon ended all U.S. offensive research on potential biological weapons in 1969, but after the end of the Cold War, Russian President Yeltsin admitted what we had long known – namely, that the Soviet Union had maintained its formidable and highly advanced offensive biological weapons program throughout the Cold War. Defectors from this program have claimed that it had notable successes in weaponizing high impact diseases such as Marburg hemorrhagic fever and tularemia or diseases like glanders that we have eradicated from America at great expense. The Soviet biological weaponeers also reportedly created a new, highly virulent, weaponized form of anthrax. A leak at one of their weapons facilities in 1979 in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk caused an outbreak of anthrax that resulted in more than 100 deaths – that we know of. Unfortunately, the Russians show no sign of ever having gotten rid of their biological weapons program. Indeed, far from demonstrating its elimination of this program as required by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), Russia has refused to properly declare the termination of the program under the BTWC – and Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, has gone back to denying that Moscow’s biological weapons program ever existed in the first place. U.S. officials have raised BTWC compliance concerns with Russia for years, but the Russians have merely stonewalled. One shudders to think what such people could do when equipped with modern gene-editing technology and other tools of the modern biotechnology revolution. We live today in a time in which norms against chemical weapons use are under coordinated international assault: the Syrian regime and ISIS terrorists have both used chemical weaponry repeatedly; Russia continues to do everything it can to protect Syria against accountability for its repeated chemical use; North Korea used the nerve agent VX as a tool of assassination in 2017; and Russia itself employed chemical weaponry in an assassination attempt on British soil last year. Given these grim developments, it is hard to feel much confidence that terrorists and irresponsible governments would show any more restraint with biological weapons if and when they acquire them. That’s why it is such an important part of our mission to prevent the spread of such horrific tools.No risk of bioterror – even weaponized pathogens can’t be dispersedKolssak 15 [(Spencer, writes about domestic and international terror threats for the Patrick Henry Inteligencer. The Intelligencer‘s mission is to expand public understanding of crucial matters in national security, intelligence, and international relations. The Intelligencer is a student-led special project sponsored by Patrick Henry College’s Strategic Intelligence (SI) program) "Bioterrorism: Neither Likely Nor Practical," The Intelligencer, 10-12-2015, ] TDIPast Bioterrorism Attempts The record of attempted use of biological weapons is very limited. Most nations ended their offensive biological weapons programs with the ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972. The United States ceased its programs in 1970, but continued biological weapons research for defensive purposes. In April 1979, 68 people died in Sverdlovsk, Russia, as a result of an anthrax leak from a Soviet bioweapons facility. In 1995, the Iraqi government admitted that it had a program to research and produce weaponized anthrax.7 The anthrax attacks of 2001, dubbed “Amerithrax”, are the most famous example of a biological weapons attack.1 Letters sent through the mail laden with dried anthrax spores killed five people and sickened seventeen.1 The genetic strain used in the attack was specially engineered, demonstrating that the perpetrator had access to US bioweapons research facilities.7 The investigation eventually centered on Bruce Ivans, a US scientist. Ivans took his own life before federal investigators could bring formal charges.8 Perhaps even more relevant are the failed bioterror attacks by the Japanese cultist group, Aum Sinrikyo. In the late 1980s, Aum spent millions of dollars and employed a team of trained scientists to engineer advanced biological agents. They experimented with botulinum toxin, anthrax, cholera, and even Q fever in hopes of producing enough biological agent to trigger a global Armageddon.9 Aum had access to far more scientific resources than any modern Islamist terror group. In April 1990, the group used a fleet of trucks equipped with aerosol sprayers to disperse liquid botulinum on the Imperial Palace, the National Diet of Japan, the US Embassy in Tokyo, and two US naval bases in Narita. No casualties resulted; no one outside the cult even knew that the terrorist attacks had taken place.9 Three years later, in June and August of 1993, Aum decided to switch to anthrax as its biological agent. This time, in addition to its fleet of trucks, the group used aerosol sprayers mounted on its headquarters building to create a cloud of anthrax over Tokyo. Again, the attacks were unsuccessful and went unnoticed. It was only after a successful 1995 subway attack using Sarin nerve gas (a chemical agent) that investigations discovered the 1990 and 1993 attacks.9 Hollywood Has it Wrong The historical record demonstrates that weaponized biological agents have been used infrequently and ineffectually. Terrorists want to spread destruction by any means they can. If bioterrorism really was effective, more terrorist groups likely would have used pathogens as weapons by now. The absence of widespread bioterrorism helps to show the gap between current misconceptions and reality. One gram of anthrax contained within one of the letters in 2001 had enough spores to kill thousands of people. Combined, the amount of anthrax used in the attacks could have killed millions.10 Yet the attacks only killed five. Even though the anthrax terrorist had enough biological agent to kill millions, he did not have the capability to distribute his weapon effectively. As the Aum Shinrikyo biological attacks demonstrated, even a sophisticated group of scientists working to incite global Armageddon can find it difficult to actually execute biological attacks. Terrorists have to overcome a number of challenges in order to effectively convert biological agents into weapons of mass destruction. The use of a pathogen as a biological agent depends on the group’s ability to isolate a virulent strain, weaponize it, and then distribute it. If the group could successfully isolate a dangerous genetic strain, it would then turn to two possible methods of distribution: aerosolized spray and human carriers.11 Most non-state actors do not possess the technology necessary to refine the aerosol method. Wind patterns and humidity can render such an attack ineffective. The human carrier method is less expensive but also has a number of problems. It requires the pathogen to be a contagion. Once the carrier is infected, he must be mobile while contagious and cannot be visibly ill—a situation that is unlikely with serious diseases like Ebola.11 All other possible means of delivering a biological agent are fraught with even more problems. Each potential biological agent also has individual reasons why it would not make an effective weapon of terror. Ebola is only transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone infected with the disease.12 Anthrax is not easily transmitted across individuals and is unlikely to spark an epidemic. Anthrax can also be treated by readily available antibiotics if noticed in time.9 Even incredibly deadly biological agents like ricin and botulinum are hard to use in mass attacks due to the difficulty in converting them into a weaponized form that can be readily dispersed.AT: Disease ImpactInfectious diseases don’t cause extinction Farquhar et al 17 [Sebastian Farquhar (PhD Candidate in Philosophy at Oxford and Project Manager at Future of Humanity Institute), John Halstead (climate activist and one of the co-founders of 350 Indiana-Calumet), Owen Cotton-Barratt (PhD in pure mathematics at Oxford. Previously worked as an academic mathematician and as Director of Research at the Centre for Effective Altruism), Stefan Schubert (Researcher at Department of Experimental Psychology at University of Oxford), Haydn Belfield (Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He has a background in policy and politics, including as a Senior Parliamentary Researcher to a British Shadow Cabinet Minister, as a Policy Associate to the University of Oxford’s Global Priorities Project, and a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oriel College, University of Oxford), Andrew Snyder-Beattie (Director of Research at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, Holds degrees in biomathematics and economics and is currently pursuing a PhD in Zoology at Oxford), Existential Risk: Diplomacy and Governance, Global Priorities Project (Bostrom’s Institute), 2017-01-23, ] TDIFor most of human history, natural pandemics have posed the greatest risk of mass global fatalities.37 However, there are some reasons to believe that natural pandemics are very unlikely to cause human extinction. Analysis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list database has shown that of the 833 recorded plant and animal species extinctions known to have occurred since 1500, less than 4% (31 species) were ascribed to infectious disease.38 None of the mammals and amphibians on this list were globally dispersed, and other factors aside from infectious disease also contributed to their extinction. It therefore seems that our own species, which is very numerous, globally dispersed, and capable of a rational response to problems, is very unlikely to be killed off by a natural pandemic.One underlying explanation for this is that highly lethal pathogens can kill their hosts before they have a chance to spread, so there is a selective pressure for pathogens not to be highly lethal. Therefore, pathogens are likely to co-evolve with their hosts rather than kill all possible hosts.39Extra – Biotech DownBiotech stocks down now.Gatlin 4/9 [(Allison, Author at Investor's Business Daily “Biotech Stocks Hit A Snag — Why Experts Say The Heyday Isn't Over“, Investor's Business Daily, ), 4-9-2021, )] TDIRegulatory and drug-pricing worries have knocked biotech stocks off their Covid pedestal. After seeing massive gains in 2020 amid the Covid-19 vaccine heyday and hitting a high point in early February, biotech stocks have collectively pulled back 21%. Investors are uneasy after the Federal Trade Commission formed a working group to more deeply scrutinize pharmaceutical mergers. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has delayed a number of drug approvals, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced sweeping drug-pricing legislation. All of this comes amid a backdrop of rising interest rates.Extra – IP Bad TurnNon-US IP and patents stifle innovation; unnecessary expenses and IP violations. University of Notre Dame 19 [(University of Notre Dame, One of America’s leading undergraduate teaching institutions, Notre Dame also has been at the forefront in research and scholarship.) “Intellectual Property Rights: The Good, The Bad, and China” University of Notre Dame, Law and Entrepreneurship, 2/25/19. ] TDI Safeguarding a company’s intellectual property (IP) can be crucial to developing and maintaining a successful business. In a New York Times Magazine article “Z-Burger Case Shows Value of Trademark Protection,” Payam Tabibian, the original owner and creator of the successful Z-Burger fast-food chain, was able to protect his creation precisely because he had registered his trademarks at the outset of creating his business. IP rights not only help preserve an entrepreneur’s business, however, they are also crucial for encouraging innovation, protecting small businesses, and helping to establish brand trust and awareness. Additionally, IP rights can assist in securing secondary revenue streams and can also be used as leverage if an entrepreneur is in possession of a valuable patent they want to use as collateral when financing their startup. Although the United States has relatively strong IP rights, the legal landscape may not protect all IP equally. As Forbes article In Today’s Market, Do Patents Even Matter? points out, a patent does not protect your IP rights from being infringed upon; it simply provides the patent holder a means of legal recourse in the event they are infringed. Even if an entrepreneur decides to sue, most litigation lasts between three to five years and costs millions. Novice entrepreneurs and small startups are not financially equipped to fight in the IP battles that routinely occur between heavy-hitters such as Apple and Samsung. Another issue is larger firms using the IP laws to register patents and then never actually use them, consequently stifling innovation.To make matters worse, around 97% of all patents never even recoup the costs of filing, making them an unnecessary expense in many circumstances. Regardless of the argument whether IP rights are essential for new businesses and entrepreneurs, the facts illustrate that they nevertheless play a vital role in America’s economy. An article in The Economist, America Can’t Control the Global Flow of Ideas, underscores how the desire among businesses for strong IP laws is high because so much is at stake, with American businesses deriving 80% of their market value from intangible assets and own half of the world’s IP. These same businesses rely on selling their products across borders where IP protection is not nearly as a secure, specifically in China. The White House itself published a report accusing China of IP violations, which included accusations of “outright theft and forced transfer of IP to joint-venture partners in China.” As cited in a Forbes article, Feeding the Fire of Genius: Intellectual Property And America’s High-Tech Future, the United States Trade Representative stated that “Chinese theft of American IP currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.” With China being listed as “the world’s principal IP infringer,” startups and large firms alike are advocating for the Trump administration to tighten its grip over China’s unfair trade practices regarding IP. Whether the current administration will be able to successfully curtail such trade violations is still up for debate, with entrepreneurs waiting on the sidelines hoping that the legal system will prevail in protecting their IP rights.IP for biotech is bad— its nonspecific on patents and how it should be developed. Pisano 06 [(Gary P., he Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School where he currently serves as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1988.) “Can Science Be a Business?: Lessons from Biotech” Harvard Business Review, October 2006. ] TDIThanks largely to the emergence of the biotech industry, the tool kit of drug R&D has become much bigger and much more diverse. In the mid-1970s, it was dominated by a single discipline: medicinal chemistry. Today it includes molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, protein chemistry, combinatorial chemistry, genetic engineering, high-throughput screening, and many others. These new tools are opening up new opportunities, but each sheds light on only one piece of a very complex puzzle. Discovering and developing drugs effectively requires that all the pieces come together. Therefore, integration across diverse scientific, technical, and functional domains is more important than ever if the scientific promise of biotech is to be realized. The challenge of integration is not unique to drugs. Virtually all R&D involves solving multiple types of problems. Not only must the many problems be solved, but the solutions must ultimately work together as a whole. In some cases—including highly complex systems such as electronics equipment, automobiles, software, and airplanes—a big R&D problem can be broken down into a set of relatively independent subproblems, to be solved independently and then put together. Modularity makes possible the division of labor among different organizations specializing in different parts of the system, but it generally requires well-defined interfaces and standards that specify how different components of the system are supposed to fit and function together. In addition, modularity requires that intellectual property be codified and the rights to it be clearly defined and protected. Drug R&D lacks these requirements. Most of the numerous functional and technical activities involved in drug R&D tend to be highly interdependent. A case in point is identifying a target for drug discovery. The big questions to be resolved are what the underlying mechanism of the disease is and where drug therapy might intervene in it. Because human biology is extraordinarily complex, target identification is extraordinarily multifaceted. What is the pathway? What genes might be at work? How do they interact? What are the proteins those genes express, and what do they do? What is their structure? How likely is one or more of them to be a “druggable” target? Answering these questions requires insights from different disciplines—including structural genomics, functional genomics, cell biology, molecular biology, and protein chemistry—and also a broad range of approaches, including computational methods, high-throughput experimentation, and traditional “wet” biology. The same kind of integration must also occur further downstream in development but with still other disciplines, such as toxicology, process development, formulation design, clinical research, biostatistics, regulatory affairs, and marketing. It is difficult, if not downright impossible, to successfully develop a drug by solving problems individually in isolation, because each technical choice (the target you pursue, the molecule you develop, the formulation, the design of the clinical trial, the choice of the target patient population, and the choice of manufacturing process) has implications for the others. Arriving at a solution requires that different kinds of scientists repeatedly exchange huge amounts of information. In other words, they must work together in a highly integrated fashion. There are two basic ways of achieving integration. One is by having individual firms own all the requisite pieces of the puzzle (vertical integration). The other is with market-reliant networks, in which independent specialists integrate their work through alliances, licensing arrangements, and collaboration. The traditional pharmaceutical business employs the former, and the biotech industry the latter. Most biotech firms were formed to allow small teams of highly dedicated scientists to focus on exploiting a specific finding or body of work initiated at a university. The result was hundreds of islands of specialized expertise. The biotech sector has relied heavily on the market for know-how to link these islands. There are indications, however, that this market can’t facilitate the flow of information and the collective problem solving needed to develop new drugs. To function in a highly efficient fashion, a market for any property—whether real estate or intellectual property—requires well-defined, well-protected rights. Strong IP protection generally exists in software and semiconductors. A piece of software code, for instance, is a fairly distinct entity that can be protected by legal mechanisms, and its theft can be detected quite easily. In biotechnology, the IP regime is more complex and murkier. It is often not clear what is patentable and what is not. Moreover, the most valuable IP is often not a specific molecule but data, understanding, and insights relating to how that molecule behaves, what it can do, what its potential problems are, and how it might be developed. Such knowledge can be much more difficult to patent. Murky IP creates two problems: It makes its owners think twice about sharing it in the first place, and it provides fertile ground for contract disputes over what will be shared. Biotech has suffered both. Suits between former partners and collaborators have been fairly common. Indeed, Genentech and Lilly, whose recombinant-insulin deal became a template for the industry in many ways, wound up in a legal contest over rights to use genetic-engineering technology to produce human growth hormone. After codeveloping recombinant human erythropoietin, a synthetic protein that stimulates the body’s production of red blood cells, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson fought a bitter legal battle over the division of marketing rights. Years after that, they had another dispute about whether a later version of the drug was a completely new product or an improved form of the original. Another formidable barrier to sharing information is the tacit nature of much of the knowledge critical to drug R&D. Such knowledge cannot be fully described in writing, because the cause-and-effect principles behind the techniques or know-how have not been completely identified. This is common in emerging fields, but the magnitude of tacit knowledge in biotech impedes the pace of learning in the sector, as we shall see. Extra – Government SolvesGovernment involvement in pandemic prevention is key.Lindsey 6/3 [(Brink, Vice President and Director of the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center. Previously he was the Cato Institute's vice president for research) “Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix” Brookings, 6/3/21, ] TDIThe situation is different in a pandemic. Here the government knows exactly what it wants to incentivize: the creation of vaccines to prevent the spread of a specific virus and other drugs to treat that virus. Under these circumstances, the decentralized approach isn’t good enough. There is no time to sit back and let drug makers take the initiative on their own timeline. Instead, the government needs to be more involved to incentivize specific innovations now. As recompense for letting it call the shots (pardon the pun), the government sweetens the deal for drug companies by insulating them from commercial risk. If pharmaceutical firms develop effective vaccines and therapies, the government will buy large, predetermined quantities at prices set high enough to guarantee a healthy return. For the pharmaceutical industry, it is useful to conceive of patent law as the default regime for innovation promotion. It improves pharmaceutical companies’ incentives to develop new drugs while leaving them free to decide which new drugs to pursue – and also leaving them to bear all commercial risk. In a pandemic or other emergency, however, it is appropriate to shift to the direct support regime, in which the government focuses efforts on one disease. In this regime, it is important to note, the government provides qualitatively superior incentives to those offered under patent law. Not only does it offer public funding to cover the up-front costs of drug development, but it also provides advance purchase commitments that guarantee a healthy return. It should therefore be clear that the pharmaceutical industry has no legitimate basis for objecting to a TRIPS waiver. Since, because of the public health crisis, drug makers now qualify for the superior benefits of direct government support, they no longer need the default benefits of patent support. Arguments that a TRIPS waiver would deprive drug makers of the incentives they need to keep developing new drugs, when they are presently receiving the most favorable incentives available, can be dismissed as the worst sort of special pleading. That said, it is a serious mistake to try to cast the current crisis as a morality play in which drug makers wear the black hats and the choice at hand is between private profits and public health. We would have no chance of beating this virus without the formidable organizational capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry, and providing the appropriate incentives is essential to ensure that the industry plays its necessary and vital role. It is misguided to lament that private companies are profiting in the current crisis: those profits are a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering cost of this pandemic in lives and economic damage. What matters isn’t the existence or size of the profits, but how they are earned. We have good reason to want drug makers to profit from vaccinating the world: the comparative price is minuscule, and the incentive effects are a vital safeguard of public health in the event of future crises. What we want to avoid at all costs is putting drug makers in the position where drug companies can profit from standing in the way of rapid global vaccination. That is why intellectual property rights need to be taken out of the equation. Vaccinating the world in any kind of reasonable time frame will require large-scale technology transfer to drug firms in other countries and rapid expansion of their production capacity. And looking beyond the current pandemic to the longer term, we need ample, redundant global vaccine production capacity that is widely distributed around the planet. To achieve these goals as rapidly as possible will require the active cooperation of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which is why the direct support model now needs to be extended. What is needed now is an Operation Warp Speed for the world, in which we make it worth current vaccine producers’ while to share their know-how broadly and ramp up global capacity. Here again, we must recognize that the choice isn’t between people on the one hand and profits on the other. Rather, the key to good pandemic response policy is ensuring that incentives are structured so that drug company profit-seeking and global public health are well aligned. That means opting out of the default, decentralized patent bargain in favor of generous but well-focused direct government support.Bio-tech DANoteDo not read the link turn and impact turn in the same debate. Read one. 1AR – Bio-tech DAChina already geared up to become Biotech lead.CAS 7/20 [(CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, partners with R&D organizations globally to provide actionable scientific insights that help them plan, innovate, protect their innovations, and predict how new markets and opportunities will evolve. Leverage our unparalleled content, specialized technology, and unmatched human expertise to customize solutions that will give your organization an information advantage.), “3 reasons biotech is booming in China: How can you capitalize on the growth?”, , July 20, 2021] TDI3 reasons biotech is booming in China: How can you capitalize on the growth?This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's Reform and Opening Up policy, which was established in 1978. China’s embrace of economic reform and free-market principles has propelled unprecedented business and industry growth since that time, firmly securing its position as the world's second largest economy.In light of the rise of China's economy, a number of global biotech companies—such as Denmark's Novo Nordisk—began to build an early presence there. Building on this foundation, within the past few years biotech has started to grow at an explosive rate in China. In fact, China's biotech industry is anticipated to exceed four percent of GDP by 2020.Why is biotech betting big on China? Here, we explore three factors driving the country's recent biotech boom and what it means for those looking to capitalize on this growthNational innovation strategy attracting top talent Ten years ago, a biotech specialist from China may have needed to look for international career opportunities. But today, thriving government programs and a surge of entrepreneurial investments have created more incentive than ever for top talent to establish careers in China.The Chinese government has made it a priority to transform the country from a manufacturing to an innovation-driven economy by developing five-year national strategic plans that set economic and growth goals. The most recent plan, which put special focus on the biotech industry, outlines the development of 10 to 20 biomedicine life-science parks with an output surpassing $1.5?billion by 2020. This is in addition to the 100 life-science parks already established throughout the country, as well as $100 billion of government investments dedicated to innovation.The government's Thousand Talents Plan—which encourages Chinese scientists, academics and entrepreneurs living abroad to return to China—has recruited 7,000 experts since 2008, with 1,400 of them recruited specifically by the life sciences committee for biotech.The government has also heavily invested to enhance the intellectual property environment in China. The State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), China's patent office, has received additional resources to address the growing volume of patent applications and has implemented an expedited examination process. In 2007, SIPO had 2,672 examiners dedicated to examining patents; by 2017, that number had grown to more than 11,500 (SIPO Annual Reports, 2007 and 2017). SIPO also offers attractive benefits to high-demand patent applications, such as covering filing fees and providing tax incentives and monetary rewards.Beyond the government, Chinese venture capital and private equity funds raised $45?billion for life sciences in two and a half years, which contributed to the development of China's flourishing biotech start-up culture.As a result of all of these factors driving innovation, patent applications have soared—more than 50,000 biotech patents were submitted in 2017, up from less than 20,000 in 2010. Some fields leading this growth are natural products, biologics and bioinformatics.Chinese biotech patent applicationsGrowth in Chinese biotech patent application volume since 2000Demand for new treatments creating an attractive marketAccording to the United Nations, China's population is ageing more rapidly than that of any other country. This fact, along with changing lifestyles and environmental concerns, is driving increasing rates of critical and chronic illness. For example, 36 percent of the world's lung cancer diagnoses come from China, yet the five-year lung cancer survival rate is currently 17 percent lower than the global average.This market landscape creates surging demand for pioneering medical treatments, and investors are turning to Chinese scientists to develop solutions that could not only be sold in China, but enhance treatment worldwide.Major pharmaceutical companies in the west are taking note as well and considering ways to bolster their presence in China as domestic investors gain market share, with many global leaders opening research centers in China and others coordinating research cooperation pacts with Chinese institutions.Globalized approach to regulations easing market entryIn March 2018, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) announced it will merge with other administrative bodies to form a national market supervision administration. As part of the restructuring, a new entity is being created that will focus primarily on medical technologies. This is expected to bring increased efficiency and consistency to regulation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in China.Further, in April 2018, the government launched initiatives to support generic drug research and development as a means to foster innovation and provide more accessible treatment options to Chinese patients. They include providing research grants, as well as expediting the review and approval process of generic drugs based on name-brand drugs with compulsory licenses.These efforts are the latest in a series of reforms aimed at streamlining China's regulatory process to align with international standards. Last August, for example, the CFDA announced it had joined ICH, a global federation of medicines regulators that seeks to harmonize health technology regulations. It also announced it would allow data from clinical trials conducted outside of China to be admitted as part of regulatory filings, a move that fast-tracks new treatments from the lab to the clinic. Overall, these efforts to streamline China's regulatory processes and align them more closely with those outside of China eases entry into the Chinese market for domestic as well as foreign investors and also make it easier for Chinese firms to market their innovations internationally.These developments, along with the impressive growth rate, clearly demonstrate that China is quickly establishing itself as the eastern hub for biotechnology innovation. Organizations looking for growth opportunities in biotech should certainly have China on their radar. However, a successful strategy for growth within any industry sector in China requires a deep understanding of the market and intellectual property landscape, as well as governmental and cultural factors.Zero link – China already has access to MRNA technology. The DA is a big pharma ployPC 5-3. [(Public Citizen -- non-profit, progressive consumer rights advocacy group and think tank based in Washington, D.C., United States. “Don’t Buy Pharma’s Latest Distraction: A Temporary WTO IP Waiver for COVID Meds Would Not Hand “U.S. mRNA Technology” to China” )] TDINew COVID-19 variants are emerging everywhere. An outbreak anywhere could hatch a vaccine-resistant or more deadly or infectious strain that spreads worldwide. Global vaccination to build global herd immunity is the only way to end the pandemic and ensure anyone is safe. But, under current production trends, with a few firms controlling if and how much vaccine is made, many people in developing countries will not have access until 2024. More than 100 nations believe an emergency COVID-19 waiver of certain World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) rules that give monopoly control over medicine production to a few pharmaceutical firms is necessary, so people worldwide get access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments ASAP. Support for the waiver is growing. So, more than 100 Big Pharma lobbyists have descended on D.C. to pressure Congress and the administration to oppose it. That vaccine firms are blocking expanded vaccine production is not a winning story. So, Big Pharma is trying to change the subject. The latest absurd claim: A COVID-19 IP waiver would help China access “U.S. mRNA technology” to create medical innovations. Putting aside the shocking immorality of opposing development of more vaccines and therapeutics for cancer and heart disease, the claim is absurd. Messenger RNA (mRNA) research has been underway collaboratively in numerous countries for decades. It is not a “U.S. technology.” A Hungarian scientist launched the work in the 1970s. Turkish migrants heading the German firm BioNTech developed the mRNA innovations used in the “Pfizer” vaccine. Plus… mRNA vaccines are already being developed in China. Chinese entities already have developed at least two mRNA-platform COVID-19 vaccines. Guangzhou RiboBio’s is working on an mRNA vaccine that can be stored at refrigerator temperature. A 120 million dose annual capacity plant is being built to make an mRNA vaccine developed by Walvax Biotechnology, Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and the Academy of Military Science, which is in phase 3 trials, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). BioNTech already contracted with Chinese firm Fosun to make the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Pharma’s story is premised on the notion that a waiver of WTO “Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property” (TRIPS) rules will grant “China” new access to the technology underlying the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Except that the technology behind the vaccines produced by Pfizer is owned by BioNTech, which already licensed it to a Chinese producer. There are real China IP theft issues. The WTO IP waiver is not one of them. Messenger RNA Research Has Been Underway Collaboratively in Numerous Countries With Significant Government Funding for Decades, It’s Not a “U.S. Technology” Research on using synthetic messenger RNA, or mRNA, to treat or prevent diseases started in Hungary in 1978 with breakthrough research by Professor Katalin Karikó. Since then, researchers from around the world, including Turkey, Thailand, South Africa, India, Brazil, India, Argentina, Malaysia and Bangladesh, have been working on mRNA-based health technologies. While the U.S. firm Moderna has carried out research on this platform for more than a decade, with substantial support from the U.S. government, others in different parts of the world have also worked on it. BioNTech, a German firm founded by Turkish immigrants and where Prof. Karikó is now senior vice president, worked for years on mRNA-based treatments for cancer and a potential flu vaccine. The German government supported BioNTech’s research. BioNTech holds all patents and patent applications related to the BNT162 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, known in the market as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The bottom line is that the mRNA platform has been developed by scientists from all over the world. And people from around the world should reap its benefits. By Hollering “CHINA!!!” Pharma Hopes to Distract from Focus on Its Monopoly Control and the Shortages It Is Causing The vaccine makers stand to make a lot of money whether or not there is a waiver. Pfizer and Moderna projected COVID-19 vaccine revenue of $15 billion and $18.4 billion respectively in 2021 alone. A WTO waiver would not undermine those earning but could boost them. A WTO waiver would NOT free governments and firms from paying royalties or providing other compensation under national laws, as the WTO’s own explanation of its 2001 HIV-AIDS IP flexibilities decision underscores. Payments for compulsorily licensed technology usually are based on costs and a percentage of profit. Pharma’s real concern is losing its current monopoly control of production and thus the prospect of competitors in what it sees as lucrative future sales of COVID-19 boosters in wealthy countries. Yet absent more production in more locations, there simply won’t be sufficient capacity to make enough vaccines and other COVID-19 medicines needed to end the pandemic.US credibility is hurt by blocking the vaccine.PC 5-3. [(Public Citizen is a non-profit, progressive consumer rights advocacy group and think tank based in Washington, D.C., United States) “Don’t Buy Pharma’s Latest Distraction: A Temporary WTO IP Waiver for COVID Meds Would Not Hand “U.S. mRNA Technology” to China,” May 3, 2021. ] TDIReal Geopolitical Threat for U.S. Is in Blocking 100+ Countries’ WTO Initiative While China and Russia Share Vaccine Technology Worldwide Russia’s Sputnik-5 vaccine and the Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines have become the go-to options for countries in the developing world. The Chinese and Russian companies, probably compelled by their governments who seek to leverage the vaccines for geopolitical gain, have engaged in significant tech and know-how transfer and partnerships with firms all over the world. Meanwhile, the U.S. and EU have pre-ordered vaccines for their populations while blocking the vast majority of WTO countries’ efforts to even negotiate the text of a waiver these countries consider necessary for their populations to also obtain vaccines.IP protection enables Chinese biotech advancement. Kazmierczak et al. 19 [(Dr. Mark, a molecular biologist with a special interest in threats to food and agricultural safety. With a PhD in microbiology from Cornell’s Food Safety Laboratory, he pursued post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School and served as an FDA Commissioner’s Fellow where he developed a novel test for Salmonella. Dr. Kazmierczak began his work at Gryphon in 2012, modeling food contamination events. He has since undertaken a range of assignments to use modeling to understand threats and vulnerabilities from any source.) “China’s Biotechnology Development: The Role of US and Other Foreign Engagement” Gryphon Scientific, 2/14/2019] TDIThe first important element of global interaction for Chinese companies is the outright purchase of IP from foreign firms. Patents and trademarks give their owners the right to exclusively use and profit from a technology, brand or trademark in a specified jurisdiction. Patent applications are generally made public after 18 months of filing, and granted patents are in force for a period of 20 years from invention. The purchase of IP from foreign firms is an important component of the catch-up process of Chinese pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as they have relatively little self-developed IP in certain areas, which makes patent acquisitions a prerequisite for expanding into global markets. Most of the patent purchases we found, however, involved medical devices such as prosthetics or traditional (small molecule) pharmaceutical drugs and therefore do not fall under our definition of biotechnology.1AR – CRISPR TurnCurrent food consumption habits are unsustainable – warming, population growth, food requirements, loss of arable land, and demand for resource-intensive foods all mean a shortage is imminent Goldstein and Oken 4/22 [(Gordon, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). From 2010 to 2018, he was also a managing director at Silver Lake, the world’s largest investment firm in the global technology industry. Goldstein represented Silver Lake as a member of the U.S. delegation to the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications in the United Arab Emirates and also served on the American delegation to the 2014 UN International Telecommunication Union Plenipotentiary Conference in South Korea.) (Erik, Global Chairman, Investment Banking, J.P. Morgan Presider) “America’s New Challenge: Confronting the Crisis in Food Security” Council on Foreign Relations, 4/22/2021] TDIThe global dimensions of food instability are staggering. As the global population grows to a projected 10 billion in 2050, with a concurrent growth in income, overall food requirements are forecast to increase [PDF] by more than 50 percent. The demand for resource-intensive foods like meat and dairy is projected to grow by 70 percent.The crisis in food sustainability displays a disturbing daily cadence. The world has lost 1,000 football fields worth of forest every hour, almost 30 million acres annually. According to a recent scientific study, climate change has diminished global food productivity by more than 20 percent over the past 60 years. If crop and pasture yields continue to grow as projected, by 2050 agricultural land will need to increase by an area nearly twice the size of India.Not surprisingly, the world’s most populous and wealthy countries contribute the most to the crisis in food sustainability. Roughly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are clustered in four countries—the United States, China, India and Brazil. Since 1990, roughly 24 percent of global Greenhouse Gas Emissions can be attributed to the food system and our disproportionate reliance on livestock. Further exacerbating the problem is the methane produced in the agriculture industry, which is ~30 to ~80 times as deleterious to the environment as carbon dioxide.CRISPR solves – but only a Chinese lead in initiative can drive more efficient agriculture practicesMolteni 19 [(Megan, a science writer at STAT News. Previously, she was a staff writer at WIRED, covering biotechnology, public health, and genetic privacy.) “Crispr Can Help Solve Our Looming Food Crisis—Here's How” WIRED, 8/8/2019] TDIIn the US, six companies are currently developing Crispr-modified crops. But it’s not clear how many of them will actually help feed the world more sustainably. Corteva, DowDuPont’s agtech arm, will likely bring the first Crispr crop to market in the US—an even waxier waxy corn, which gets processed into food thickeners and adhesives. To see where Crispr might transform the food supply to one that can survive the ravages of climate change, you have to go to China.According to a recent report in Science, China has been ramping up its Crispr crop work, with more than 20 labs dedicated to developing plants to feed the country’s swelling population. In 2013, the most recent year for which comparative figures exist, China outspent the US government on public funding of agricultural research more than twice over, pumping $10 billion into more than 1100 research institutions. And in 2017, the state-owned company ChemChina paid $43 billion for one of the world’s largest agribusinesses, Syngenta, which has a significant Crispr division. China still has yet to decide if it will follow the US’s lead with regards to regulation of Crispr crops, or if it will treat them the same as first-generation GMOs, as the European Union ruled last year.In theory, Crispr and other genetic technologies could help reduce agriculture’s footprint in four big ways. One, it could keep already established croplands productive in the face of a changing climate, preventing the conversion of what remains of the planet’s wild areas to food production. Two, it could reduce farmers’ reliance on fertilizers, by helping companies develop designer microbes that produce nitrogen for crops instead. Three, it could make raising livestock both more efficient, more sustainable, and more humane. And lastly, but probably most realistically, it will help create crops with less spectacular traits that offer more incremental advances in efficiency—they sequester more carbon, pack in more nutrients, and produce more food per acre with fewer inputs.Food insecurity causes state collapse, nuclear war, and terror – extinction DeFeo 17 [(Michael, Regional Organizing Director at Arizona Democratic Party who graduated in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Gettysburg College) “Food Insecurity and the Threat to Global Stability and Security in the 21st Century” Inquires Journal, 2017] TDI Poor Institutional CapacityAlthough the developed world experiences food insecurity, it is the lack of infrastructure and government institutions in developing countries that contribute to civil wars and state fragility. Foreign exchange shortages can provoke food and fuel scarcities that force governments to spend less on essential services and public goods. Accordingly, citizens see their medical and educational entitlements melt away. Such circumstances create breeding grounds for internal conflict.All violent conflicts destroy land, water, and social resources for food production. Developing countries do not have massive industrial machines that can remedy such losses, therefore, the population will suffer. Food insecurity is a recruitment tool for violent extremist groups. Promising food and water to a starving population, especially in urban areas, makes recruiting young and disgruntled youth easier (Messer & Cohen, 2015). Syria had limited institutional capacity to deal with the mass displacement, and that lead to a civilian revolt and recruitment into the Islamic State.Countries that fail to provide their people with basic services often experience gross economic inequality, and even human-rights violations, as was the case in both Syria and Sudan. Both countries are classified as Least Developed Countries (LDCs). LDCs are distinguished not just by their widespread poverty, but also by their structural weaknesses in economic, institutional, and human resources that make them unable to maintain stability during a drought. The combination of drought and political instability or violence led to famine in Somalia (another LDC) in 2011. Even with urgent humanitarian action, the country still plunged into chaos and violence (Messer & Cohen, 2015). Severe drought, like Somalia's, may result in crop failure in major food producing areas, which in turn is a significant threat to social stability and peace (Wischnath, 2014).Sometimes droughts of exceptional severity (and the civil unrest that follows) are attributed to climate change, especially in particularly arid regions. Scholars are divided on whether climate change actually impacts civil conflict. That is why African countries like Somalia and Sudan are prime case studies. Africa has the lowest percentage of irrigated land in the world. Agriculture is the most important sector of most African countries. Very high percentages of civilians in African countries live in rural areas. Those characteristics combined with low economic and state capacity make African, particularly sub-Saharan African countries the most vulnerable to climate change and civil instability. Africa experiences more civil conflict than other parts of the world, therefore, it is possible to argue that a lack of climate variability effect on civil conflict in Africa would make it unlikely to cause civil conflict in other parts of the world (Koubi et al., 2012). Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon attributed the conflict in Darfur to an ecological crisis arising “at least in part from climate change” (Ki-moon, 2007). The Fourth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed that climate change will continue to worsen. As it does, it will increase food shortages, which may lead to conflict (AR4, 2007). The report also stated that forced displacement and rising social instability is the most likely result of food insecurity. This is almost exactly what happened in Syria. The first step towards conflict might be food riots, which often occur during a food shortage or when there is an unequal distribution of food. These are usually caused by food price increases, food speculation, transport problems, or extreme weather. In 1977, Egyptians became so desperate for food that they attacked shops, markets, and government buildings just to obtain bread and grain (Paveliuc-Olariu, 2013).Moreover, civil war can create economic opportunities for certain groups, so they try to avoid resolving the conflict. Urban elites in Somalia profited tremendously off of internal conflict because of the absurd amount of foreign aid that was pumped into the country and then largely stolen (Shortland, Christopoulou, & Makatsoris, 2013). Once a country experiences a food shortage, it may lead to protests, riots, and violence. This all contributes to state instability, but it is not the state alone that suffers. If one country fails, it creates a crisis that could destabilize an entire region.State Failure and the Threat to Regional StabilityAlthough fragile governments in developing countries are at a heightened risk for internal conflict that could topple them, that risk also threatens the country’s neighbors. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Afghanistan found itself alone in regional trade. Without a guaranteed source of cereal, the government had to turn to Iran and Pakistan for support in order to avoid its own collapse (Clarke, 2000). Unlike Afghanistan, many other developing countries have been unable to work together on food and water security. Thirteen of the twenty-two members of the Arab League rank among the most water-scarce nations on the planet. Food cannot be grown without water. The majority of the world is engaged in some sort of agreement with neighboring countries to share water supplies, but thirty-seven countries still do not share their water resources (El Hassan, 2014). Lack of cooperation can cause civil as well as interstate conflict. South Sudan legally has no share of the Nile River and the effects of that lack of water access have been mass starvation and violence.The effects of climate change, water shortages, and mass migrations have resulted in acute food insecurity not just in Syria, but across the region (El Hassan, 2014). Food insecurity, plus an increase in the prices of staple foods have destabilized much of the area. The Arab Spring was the beginning of multiple conflicts that have affected countries like Syria, Egypt, and Libya. In Syria, food insecurity resulted in mass violence and has now created an international crisis involving multiple world powers.Food insecurity is such a threat to entire regions because people cannot live without food and people want to live. When a region experiences food scarcity and that population feels threatened by hunger, it will relinquish dependency on any political authority and take up arms in order to ensure its well-being (Paveliuc-Olariu, 2013). This is human survivalism. It is important for developing countries in areas that are at risk for food insecurity to formulate policy that ensures aid goes to the food insecurity hotspots so as to maintain stability.South Sudan experienced what happens when countries do not work together to feed their people. After gaining its independence from Sudan in 2011, 360,000 South Sudanese refugees returned to the country. This influx of human beings, coupled with drought conditions exacerbated economic strain and drove food prices up. The increases were the result of trade restrictions between Sudan and South Sudan. The overall reason for the food crisis, however, was the government's preoccupation with fighting a political and quasi-ethnic civil war rather than negotiating fair access to the Nile River (Tappis et al., 2013). Because of South Sudan’s weak institutions, it has done little to address the food shortage. That inability to solve the problem fuels insurgent recruitment that continues the bloodshed in South Sudan. The conflict is keeping regional rivalries alive with Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan; all of whom have attempted to intervene in South Sudan militarily to bring about stability (Council on Foreign Affairs 2016). Aside from South Sudan, multiple conflicts across Africa are consuming massive amounts of diplomatic, political, and humanitarian resources in a region that faces a multitude of threats.South Sudan, Somalia, and Syria are all failing states that are experiencing huge food shortages, humanitarian crises, and most importantly, extreme civil violence. South Sudan is mired in a civil war. Somalia is controlled by warlords and terror organizations. Syria has both of those problems. Conflict has turned these countries into “breeding grounds of instability, mass migration, and murder” rather than sovereign states with a monopoly on violence and control over their borders (Rotberg, 2002). To be sure, failing states are a concern because of their ability to destabilize entire regions, but states at risk for failure are also very important. Countries like Pakistan that are politically unstable and have food and water shortages could result in uncontrollable civil upheaval (The Fund for Peace, 2016).Global Consequences of State FailureFailing states and destabilized regions are not just a problem for the developing world. They are a very real concern for the United States and other developed countries as well. The Islamic State fed off of the Syrian Civil War and helped destabilize Iraq, Syria, Libya, and even Afghanistan and the Philippines. They have at also inspired terror attacks in Europe and the United States. They are a threat to both the developed and developing world. State instability allows them to recruit and train without government interference, which in turn allows them to plan attacks outside the region. An important source of income for the Islamic State has been agriculture from Iraq and Syria. While this revenue has received less media attention than oil extraction, it is still an important part of their economy (Jaafar & Woertz, 2016). It is also a key aspect of their political legitimacy because it allows them to feed their soldiers and those they control. Controlling some of the most fertile regions of the two countries has also helped the Islamic State starve off areas that have resisted them (Jaafar & Woertz, 2016). If Syria or Iraq are ever going to stabilize, those breadbaskets must be retaken and the food must reach the civilians in the cut off areas.In the 20th century, state failure had few implications for international peace and security. Thanks to globalization, that is no longer the case. Failed states pose a threat to themselves, their neighbors, and the entire international community (Rotberg, 2002). Islamic State - inspired terror attacks in Belgium and France are a direct result of state collapse in Syria and Iraq. Preventing states from failing, rather than having to intervene militarily when they do, ought to be a top priority in the foreign policy of rich nations. Although the situations in Syria, Somalia, and South Sudan seem beyond repair, nation-building projects have had success in the past. Tajikistan, Lebanon, Cambodia, Kosovo and East Timor are all examples of relatively successful attempts to put failing states back on the right track (Rotberg, 2002). Developed countries must have the political will to ensure that people in developing countries are fed so that they remain pacified. It is often severe food insecurity that precedes ethnic or religious violence, as has been the case in South Sudan, therefore, adequate food is paramount to avoiding humanitarian crises that accompany ethnic and sectarian conflict (The Economist, 2016).While it is true that many developed countries, especially the United States, are weary of providing so much financial aid and intervening militarily in war-torn, developing countries, it is imperative that the rich do not abandon the poor to a fate of internal destruction. Money must not be thrown blindly towards humanitarian crises and military intervention must be the last resort. Developed countries provided $1.4 billion for humanitarian aid in South Sudan in its first year of independence, but without specific conditions, that money went to kleptocrats rather than infrastructure projects or public services (The Economist, 2016).Paying to help developing nations is expensive and will continue to be so. Afghanistan and Iraq are proof of that. But the war on terror, repeated military intervention, and humanitarian aid are expensive as well. In 2002, Robert Rotberg suggested that a new Marshall Plan was required for places like Afghanistan, the DRC, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan. If it is true that food and water security are the keys to keeping relative peace in new and developing countries and their collapse threatens the safety of the developed world, it seems logical that assisting those countries is wise.In 1999, Susan L. Woodward argued that military leaders focus too much on force versus force combat rather than the issues of insurgency and terrorism in failed states. In 2017, military leaders have adjusted their strategies accordingly. Woodward believed that globalization made states less important, but their failure would still be felt around the world. Failed states cannot exercise their monopoly on violence and they cannot control their borders, thus threatening more than just the failed state (Woodward, 1999). Because state failure is so consequential, the United States military must continue to look into measures it can take to prevent it.The Threat of the FutureFinally, the threats from food shortages in South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are important to the United States and the international community at large, but there is one country that, while it is not a failing state right now, could easily become one if the wealthy nations of the world do not ensure its stability. That country is Pakistan. The Fund for Peace ranked Pakistan as the 14th most fragile state in the world in 2016, giving it a “High Alert” designation for state failure (The Fund for Peace, 2016). Its Demographic Pressure Indicator was an 8.9 - 10.2 Although it improved by one-tenth of a point last year, its decade trend is worse by seven-tenths of a point and its five-year trend is worse by four-tenths of a point, suggesting that the food situation is actually worsening overall (The Fund for Peace, 2016). If internal conflict and potential state failure at its most basic level begins with food and water insecurity, then Pakistan could become a real problem very soon.Considering the risk of state failure, Pakistan poses the greatest threat to the rest of the world because of the existence of nuclear weapons within the country. Pakistan is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet it has about 120 nuclear weapons. It also has a Shaheen 1A ballistic missile that can reach targets 550 miles away (Pakistan Defence, 2015). Should a food crisis arise in Pakistan that results in civil war and governmental collapse, those weapons could end up in the hands of a group that intends to use them maliciously as an act of terror. That prospect should be incentive enough for the developed countries to realize that they cannot and must not leave food insecure countries to devour themselves.While it is difficult to argue that food insecurity immediately and directly causes civil conflict, there is no denying that people need food and water and will fight to survive. In South Sudan, ethnic and political armies fight one another. In Syria, rebels and government forces fight each other while also fighting the Islamic State. And in Somalia, warlords and their armies fight. The Syrian Civil War began six years ago after a water shortage forced thousands of migrants into urban centers. Developing countries tend to be most affected by climate change, poor governance, and food price increases. Therefore, they are the most prone to instability that may lead to outright violence. Without the wherewithal to handle civil conflict, these countries may become fragile or even failing states. Once that happens, they represent a threat not just in their region of influence, but the whole world. That is why the developed Western nations must pay attention and provide aid to the developing world in order to maintain stability. There will be more food crises in developing countries in the future, but if the North has the strength to continue aiding the South, perhaps it will be able to curb mass starvation and avoid the horrendous violence that consumes starving countries.1AR – Heg Bad TurnNo hegemony impact – empirics and political psychology prove US posture is unrelated to great power peaceChristopher Fettweis 17, associate professor of political science at Tulane University. 5/8/17, “Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New Peace” strains of the hegemonic-stability explanation assume not only that US power is benevolent, but that others perceive it that way. Hegemonic stability depends on the perceptions of other states to be successful; it has no hope to succeed if it encounters resistance from the less powerful members of the system, or even if they simply refuse to follow the rules. Relatively small police forces require the general cooperation of large communities to have any chance of establishing order. They must perceive the sheriff as just, rational, and essentially nonthreatening. The lack of balancing behavior in the system, which has been puzzling to many realists, seems to support the notion of widespread perceptions of benevolent hegemony.101 Were they threatened by the order constructed by the United States, the argument goes, smaller states would react in ways that reflected their fears. Since internal and external balancing accompanied previous attempts to achieve hegemony, the absence of such behavior today suggests that something is different about the US version.Hegemonic-stability theorists purport to understand the perceptions of others, at times better than those others understand themselves. Complain as they may at times, other countries know that the United States is acting in the common interest. Objections to unipolarity, though widespread, are not “very seriously intended,” wrote Kagan, since “the truth about America’s dominant role in the world is known to most observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world’s population.” 102 In the 1990s, Russian protests regarding NATO expansion—though nearly universal—were not taken seriously, since US planners believed the alliance’s benevolent intentions were apparent to all. Sagacious Russians understood that expansion would actually be beneficial, since it would bring stability to their western border.103 President Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were caught off guard by the hostility of their counterparts regarding the issue at a summit in Budapest in December 1994.104 Despite warnings from the vast majority of academic and policy experts about the likely Russian reaction and overall wisdom of expansion itself, the administration failed to anticipate Moscow’s position.105 The Russians did not seem to believe American assurances that expansion would actually be good for them. The United States overestimated the degree to which others saw it as benevolent.Once again, the culture of the United States might make its leaders more vulnerable to this misperception. The need for positive self-regard appears to be particularly strong in North American societies compared to elsewhere.106 Western egos tend to be gratified through self-promotion rather than humility, and independence rather than interdependence. Americans are more likely to feel good if they are unique rather than a good cog in society’s wheel, and uniquely good. The need to be perceived as benevolent, though universal, may well exert stronger encouragement for US observers to project their perceptions onto others.The United States almost certainly frightens others more than its leaders perceive. A quarter of the 68,000 respondents to a 2013 Gallup poll in sixty-five countries identified the United States as the “greatest threat to world peace,” which was more than three times the total for the second-place country (Pakistan).107 The international community always has to worry about the potential for police brutality, even if it occurs rarely. Such ungratefulness tends to come as a surprise to US leaders. In 2003, Condoleezza Rice was dismayed to discover resistance to US initiatives in Iraq: “There were times,” she said later, “that it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than, perhaps, Saddam Hussein.” 108 Both liberals and neoconservatives probably exaggerate the extent to which US hegemony is everywhere secretly welcomed; it is not just petulant resentment, but understandable disagreement with US policies, that motivates counterhegemonic beliefs and behavior.To review, assuming for a moment that US leaders are subject to the same forces that affect every human being, they overestimate the amount of control they have over other actors, and are not as important to decisions made elsewhere as they believe themselves to be. And they probably perceive their own benevolence to be much greater than do others. These common phenomena all influence US beliefs in the same direction, and may well increase the apparent explanatory power of hegemony beyond what the facts would otherwise support. The United States is probably not as central to the New Peace as either liberals or neoconservatives believe.In the end, what can be said about the relationship between US power and international stability? Probably not much that will satisfy partisans, and the pacifying virtue of US hegemony will remain largely an article of faith in some circles in the policy world. Like most beliefs, it will remain immune to alteration by logic and evidence. Beliefs rarely change, so debates rarely end.For those not yet fully converted, however, perhaps it will be significant that corroborating evidence for the relationship is extremely hard to identify. If indeed hegemonic stability exists, it does so without leaving much of a trace. Neither Washington’s spending, nor its interventions, nor its overall grand strategy seem to matter much to the levels of armed conflict around the world (apart from those wars that Uncle Sam starts). The empirical record does not contain strong reasons to believe that unipolarity and the New Peace are related, and insights from political psychology suggest that hegemonic stability is a belief particularly susceptible to misperception. US leaders probably exaggerate the degree to which their power matters, and could retrench without much risk to themselves or the world around them. Researchers will need to look elsewhere to explain why the world has entered into the most peaceful period in its history.The good news from this is that the New Peace will probably persist for quite some time, no matter how dominant the United States is, or what policies President Trump follows, or how much resentment its actions cause in the periphery. The people of the twenty-first century are likely to be much safer and more secure than any of their predecessors, even if many of them do not always believe it.No revisionism – neg research is bought offJohnson-Freese 17 [(Joan, Professor and chair of space science and technology @ Naval War College) Space Warfare in the 21st Century, Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978131552917] TDIThe industrial side of the military–industrial complex is comprised of corporations with common interests and distinguishable characteristics from other sectors of transnational capital. They are overwhelmingly dependent on military sales as a percentage of total sales revenue. As of 2012, arms sales accounted for over half of the total sales of Lockheed Martin (76 percent), BAE Systems (95 percent), Raytheon (92 percent), General Dynamics (66 percent), and Northrop Grumman (77 percent). Their products are not easily transferrable to consumer uses and so they are dependent on government contracts. At least 9 of the 25 largest US defense firms have a significant aerospace focus: CACI International, ManTech, Rockwell Collins, Exelis, Computer Science Corporation, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.6 The political implications of this are stark. These companies inherently have a vested interest in maintaining and expanding systems, including weapons systems, which absent clear and direct external threats, may have limited political justification. Additionally, government counterparts to these for-profit companies have concurrently grown—some might even say, “become bloated”—and in many cases, a codependent relationship has developed between them. Since the United States began maintaining a large standing military after World War II, the general attributes of US foreign policymaking have both expanded and intensified the influence of the military–industrial complex. Foreign policy decision-making is supported by a complex array of institutions whose very existence is predicated on and justified by the presence of a broad spectrum of threats from individual terrorists to be hunted down on the ground and with drones to near-peer competitors which must be countered with overwhelming air, naval, and space power. The government agencies and offices with a role in national security have expanded from inner circle policymakers to entire bureaucracies. The National Security Council staff has grown consistently since the Carter Administration from a small secretariat of less than 20 individuals to over 400 people during the Obama Administration. Post 9/11, the military created a Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) in 2002 to defend the homeland and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was stood up “to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards”; these other hazards have come to include the safety hazards of deep-frying turkey and assuring that souvenir shirts sold at the Super Bowl are not Chinese knockoffs.7 DHS is now the third-largest government bureaucracy, employing more than 240,000 people. There are 17 different intelligence agencies occupying 33 building complexes, the equivalent of almost 3 Pentagons or 22 Capitol Buildings, and the intelligence community continues to expand.8 The Pentagon, with its some 23,000 military and civilian personnel, is only the hub of a Roman Empire-like division of the world into geographic military commands, the United States being the only country in the world brazen enough to create such commands. The sheer numbers of individuals, institutions, organizations, bureaucracies, and companies with a vested interest in preserving the self-licking ice cream cone9 that the ever-expanding military–industrial complex has become continues to expand. Government offices like the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security hire private military contractors from such companies as DynCorp International, Tigerswan, Triple Canopy, and Blackwater to protect diplomats and perform security functions. Employees of these companies are often retired Special Forces operators. Companies like Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), formerly a subsidiary of Haliburton and where former Vice President Dick Cheney was once CEO and Chairman, is an engineering, procurement, and construction company doing everything from building embassies to supplying military bases. Think tanks, consulting firms, and lobbying firms focused on defense and security issues have proliferated as well in terms of both quantity and investments. Members of Congress, traditionally elected largely according to the number of jobs they can bring home to their districts—and the campaign contributions they can raise—are part of the witches brew as well as they are largely supportive of defense contracts and the jobs those contracts bring. “Job loss” is among the first claims made by defense contractors in their appeals to Members of Congress when defense budget cuts or sequestration are threatened. Further, retired Members and their staffs are not immune to the lure of high-paying lobbying jobs. Defining Threats There is a wide breadth of individuals and institutions with a vested interest in maintaining threats to the United States that justify a significant defense budget. During the transition to the post-Cold War period, the US military was faced with potentially substantial cuts to military spending: the “peace dividend.” Consequently, the military suddenly found itself talking about taking on military operations other than war (MOOTWA), an acronym and job description that warriors found distasteful at best. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other former Defense Department officials suggested that defense spending could safely be cut in half. Policy planning organizations with close ties to the military or military contractors—think tanks like RAND and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)—were put to work to counter this claim and minimize budget cuts. They focused on the development of a new defense doctrine that would involve the retention of large-scale systems and big-ticket platforms like aircraft carriers, not just after the demise of the Soviet Union, but regardless of the short-term security environment. Contractors play an increasingly large part in the military–industrial complex as well. Political economist Ronald Cox explains the role of defense contractors in shaping that doctrine and defining threats—how the fox guards the henhouse in terms of threat identification: Military producers have a sustained relationship with key US foreign policy bureaucracies, especially the Defense Department. … The extent to which military contractors are embedded within the decision-making framework of identifiable bureaucracies within the US federal government makes their profit-making margins a function of the political process by which those departments and agencies identify long-term strategic threats.10 Thus, as considered in Chapter 1, defense strategies reflect needs but not necessarily national needs. Bureaucratic and corporate needs also play into definition of threats. Writing about the impetus to acquire nuclear weapons, Scott Sagan said, “bureaucratic actors are not … passive recipients of top-down political decisions; instead, they create the conditions that favor weapons acquisition.”11 Bruce DeBlois later applied that premise to space weapons, suggesting that “with an absence of clear top-down policy guidance on space weapons … military doctrine can build an inertia of its own, and impact – or even become – the default policy.”12 Also playing into the definition of long-term threats to US national security are think tanks—organizations often largely supported by the corporations themselves. Think tanks come in all varieties and sizes, some focused, some broad, some partisan, some not. The Heritage Foundation, for example, hosted a nine-city Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour in 2013, headlined by Tea Party movement leader Jim DeMint, thereby clearly evidencing a partisan position. “Some [think] tanks on the left and the right of the ideological spectrum have grown so political that, to avoid losing their tax status as charitable organizations, they have established separate operations dedicated to lobbying and other advocacy work.”13 Some organizations, however, strive to be honest brokers of information in their areas of focus. The Secure World Foundation (SWF), for example, states its mission as “to work with governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society to develop and promote ideas and actions to achieve the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of outer space benefiting Earth and all its peoples.”14 Much of SWF’s ability to be nonpartisan and beyond the reach of corporate influence stems from it being privately funded. That is not the case with many organizations though. William Hartung and David Gibbs have written about the role of the largest defense contractors in the financing of conservative and neoconservative think tanks that have come to prominence in defense policy debates and discussions since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11; The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), for example.15 The Center for Security Policy receives onesixth of its funding from defense industries. CSP states on its website: The process the Center has repeatedly demonstrated is the unique ability that makes the Center the “Special Forces in the War of Ideas”: forging teams to get things done that would otherwise be for a small and relatively low-budget organization. In this way, we are able to offer maximum “bang for the buck” for the donors who make our work possible.16 While most think tanks declare their “intellectual independence,” the reality is that, even if they do not specifically declare an offer of “maximum bang for the buck” to their donors, they largely rely on corporate donations for their existence. Donors rarely support organizations advocating opposition views or producing information counter to their best interests. Relatively new on the block—and billing itself as “Bold. Innovative. Bipartisan.”17—is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), founded by Dr. Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy in 2007. Both Campbell and Flournoy formerly served as heavy-hitters in the Obama Administration, Campbell in the State Department and Flournoy in the Defense Department. CNAS lists Boeing, the Carnegie Corporation, the Government of Japan, Northrup Grumman Aerospace Systems, and the Smith Richardson Foundation on its “honor roll” of those who have contributed more than $250,0000.18 Campbell and Flournoy are among the many former government employees who have gone on to create or work at think tanks. A strong overlapping relationship between the boards of directors of defense contractors, policy think tanks funded by these contractors, personnel in the Defense Department, and high-level cabinet executives is not uncommon.19 Reports and analyses prepared by these think tanks can weigh heavily in government policy decisions. The shaping of the post-Cold War defense posture, specifically in identifying new enemies, exemplifies the role of the expanded military–industrial complex to include influential corporations, think tanks, the Pentagon, and Members of Congress. Any doubt about the need for an identifiable enemy was firmly put to rest in March 1990 by Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an acknowledged ally of the military establishment. In a blistering attack on the Soviet-oriented military posture still officially embraced by Defense Secretary Cheney, Nunn charged that the Pentagon’s proposed spending plans were rendered worthless by a glaring “threat blank”—an unrealistic and unconvincing analysis of future adversaries.20 A 1988 CSIS report had warned against “maverick regimes,” a warning that was resurrected and amplified in response to Nunn’s charge. Reaching back to the Reagan Administration, these “maverick,” soon to be renamed “rogue,” regimes initially included Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Subsequently, the Rogue Doctrine was laid out in White House Fact Sheet in March 1990; it posited that the United States would continue to face considerable post-Cold War security threats, namely from states in the developing world that possessed or potentially would posses weapons of mass destruction and the capability to threaten vital US geostrategic interests in key regions.21 Iraq was added to the list later in the 1990s. Still, regardless of how dangerous they were, rogue states did not justify aircraft carriers and other big-ticket items. Large-scale Cold War weapons programs consequently declined by 17 percent under George H. W. Bush and by 12 percent during the first term of the Clinton Administration.22 That problem had to be addressed. Again, Sam Nunn led the charge to identify at least one worthy new opponent of the United States—one that could justify the retention of a large military structure, platforms, and expensive weapons systems. Concurrent to development of the Rogue Doctrine, Nunn had begun working toward that end with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell in 1988. Eventually, a new class of states called “emerging regional powers” was identified to include Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Pakistan, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, and the two Koreas. Each had different national interests and philosophical underpinnings that, for one reason or another, had justified large growth in their military structures and/or the development of weapons of mass destruction.23 Some countries eventually became US allies and/or recipients of large amounts of US military aid. Others came to be considered as potential threats—more specifically near-peer competitors, particularly China—that the United States might at some point have to confront on the battlefield. Consequently, the United States moved almost seamlessly from the Cold War Containment Strategy to the Rogue Doctrine and identifying potential near-peer competitors. The Plethora of Players Defense and aerospace contractors responded to post-Cold War reduced business opportunities through a mixture of economic and political strategies. Economically, corporate restructuring, layoffs, division sell-offs, and mergers and acquisitions of other firms were among the strategies used, with the Defense Department helping to arrange financing for those mergers and acquisitions from as early as 1993. Those tactics, in combination with the wider economic trends of the 1990s, “contributed to a defense sector whose top four firms were receiving a higher share of DOD contracts than had been true for most of the post-World War II period,”24 even after the Cold War. Politically, however, a new enemy worthy of the United States, a near-peer competitor, still had to be identified. In his 2011 book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the MilitaryIndustrial Complex, William D. Hartung considered the impact Lockheed Martin had on defense policy and the benefits the company and individual company leaders reaped from maintaining a high threat profile.25 During the post-Cold War transition from containment strategy to the Rogue Doctrine and emerging regional powers focus, then Martin Marietta CEO Norman Augustine led the charge to build what he called a “super-company.” While some companies tried to absorb defense spending “peace dividend” cuts by diversifying their base business, Augustine rejected that approach. He felt it was his patriotic duty to keep producing weapons for America and frequently referred to the weapons industry as “the fourth armed service.”26 Beyond acquiring a number of small companies, including the military division of General Electric, Martin Marietta and Lockheed merged in 1995. Martin was clearly the dominant partner as evidenced by Augustine being the new CEO, top management positions being filled by Martin employees, and the new headquarters being based at Martin’s Bethesda, Maryland headquarters. Augustine’s political connections were unmatched. While still running the world’s largest defense contractor, Augustine also served on the Defense Policy Advisory Committee on Trade (DPACT), a group advising the Secretary of Defense on arms export policies; was on the Defense Science Board (DSB), an advisory panel with the power to push forward or scrap emerging weapons programs based on performance; and was President of the Association of the United States Army, a politically robust interest group of retired military personnel and army contractors. Those political connections paid high returns during the transition. Augustine played a central role in convincing the Newt Gingrich-led, Republican-controlled Congress to allocate or add billions in funding to Lockheed Martin projects from the F-22 combat fighter to the “Star Wars” missile defense program. Perhaps his greatest coup, however, was persuading Congress to bankroll the major arms industry mergers that were occurring with taxpayer money for “restructuring costs,” a policy that yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in government support to the creation of Lockheed Martin. As a result of an obscure policy change contained in a one-page memo from John Deutsch, then the Undersecretary of Defense (and a former Augustine business associate), the Pentagon authorized federal funding for closing plants, relocating equipment, paying severance to laid-off workers, and providing “golden parachutes” to board members and executives affected by the merger.27 The policy was not published in the Federal Register, the standard repository of virtually every important government action, and it was enacted without notification to Congress. The benefits that accrued from that policy were both organizational and personal. Lockheed Martin, for example, benefited by almost $1.8 billion. Personally, Augustine was promoted from being CEO of Martin Marietta to being CEO of Lockheed Martin. However, because he “left” Martin as a result of a consolidation merger, he was compensated in the amount of $8.2 million, approximately $2.9 million of that coming from taxpayer dollars.28 The incestuous link between the Pentagon, Congress, and defense companies is sold as being good for America based on the number one concern of voters. Jobs. No one is more sensitive to “jobs” arguments than Members of Congress, with those arguments often presented by lobbyists. In 2015, corporations reported more than $2 billion in congressional lobbying expenditures. K Street in Washington, DC, where many lobbyists’ offices are located, is sometimes known as the “road to riches” for retired Members of Congress, congressional staffers, and military officers who largely populate their ranks. Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.29 More often than not, the job of the lobbyist is to convince Members of Congress that cutting whatever program they are lobbying for will result in job losses in the Members’ district. Unemployed voters aren’t happy voters. In 2011, the aerospace industry put out a report saying that chopping the defense budget would put over a million Americans out of work. Cuts that could total up to a trillion dollars over ten years would “devastate the economy and the defense industrial base and undermine the national security of our country,” said Marion Blakeley, president of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), which sponsored and paid for the report.30 While companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing claim that the number of defense firm employees has dropped to about 10 percent from a peak of 14 percent in 2008, some of those job losses, as in the case of Boeing, have come through moving employees to the commercial side of the business. In other cases, jobs have been lost through divestitures such as Northrop’s spin-off of Huntington Ingalls. Based on executive salaries though, job losses do not seem to come because companies are financially strapped. In 2010, Boeing’s CEO Jim McNerney made $19.7 million while Lockheed Martin’s CEO Robert Stevens took home $19.1 million.31 Stevens made $25.3 million in compensation in 2011, which was more than all but two Wall Street CEOs.32 The revolving door doesn’t just go between industry and the Pentagon, but includes Congress as well. In his 2014 book This Town,33 chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine Mark Leibovich explains a lot about influence peddling with a simple statistic: In 1974, just 3 percent of retiring members of Congress became lobbyists; now, 50 percent of retiring Senators and 42 percent of retiring House members stay in DC and become lobbyists.34 Websites like , affiliated with the Center for Responsive Government, publish the names of former members and who they now lobby for, or become “senior advisors” to, which is basically the same thing.35 Trent Lott, Dick Armey, Tom Daschle, Tom Foley, and Scott Brown are among the bipartisan former Members on their list. President George W. Bush signed the Honest Leadership and Fair Government Act in 2007, intended to limit former Members’ and staffers’ immediate ability to cash in on their insider information in lobbying positions. President Barack Obama called it “the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate.”36 A key provision required ex-Senators and administration executives to wait two years and representatives to wait one year as a “cooling off period” before becoming lobbyists. But loopholes seem to create more of a sieve than a barrier, and according to a 2015 report by the Center for Responsive Government and the Sunlight Foundation, encourage a culture of “shadow lobbying.”37 Of the 104 former congressional members and staffers whose “cooling off” period ends during the first session of the 114th Congress, which opens today, 29 are already in government relations, “public affairs,” or serve as counsel at a firm that lobbies. And 13 of those are even registered as lobbyists, working to shape policy in Congress or the executive branch on behalf of paying clients.38 The door doesn’t just swing only from government to the private sector. It swings both ways. In 2011, Ann Sauer left her position as a Lockheed vice president and lobbyist with a compensation package of $1.6 million. Senator John McCain hired her as the key Republican staffer on the Senate Armed Services committee in February 2012.39 Industry associations also advocate policy positions benefiting their large and continually growing memberships. For example, the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is an organization with 9,000 corporate affiliates, 26,000 individual members, and no foreign membership. “The Association maintains close coordination with the DOD functioning though 56 chapters and 34 committees, each with direct access and a working relationship with the DOD. Divided up among these contractors is the largest single slice of the federal government’s budget.”40 There are also a multitude of industry organizations and associations specifically related to aerospace. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) with “more than 30,000 individual members from 88 countries, and 95 corporate members … is the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession.”41 The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) bills itself as a unified voice on satellite industry policy, regulatory, and legislative issues. As a trade association representing the leading global satellite operators, service providers, manufacturers, launch service providers, and ground equipment suppliers … [SIA] actively promotes the benefits and uses of commercial satellite technology and its role in national security, homeland security, disaster relief and recovery, and the global information infrastructure and economy.42 There is an association or organization for every interest, oftentimes more than one. Many of the individuals staffing and connecting this multitude of organizations are retired military officers, many of them three- or four-star generals and admirals. Their rank provides them with substantive knowledge of the defense field and a career’s worth of Rolodex connections. For those seeking post-retirement consulting careers, that means access. According to retired Air Force General Gregory “Speedy” Martin, the practice of flag and general officers moving immediately to private sector jobs is both ethical and beneficial for American defense because it links private sector expertise with important Pentagon missions. “Access sounds sleazy, but it brings a value,” says Martin. “I am interested in doing things that I think the Air Force or [Department of Defense] might benefit from.”43 There is validity in what Gen. Martin says. Most Members of Congress and their staff have never served in the military and have little knowledge of, or even interest in, national security issues and needs unless it directly affects their district. While some staff and Members are or become very knowledge about national security and military issues, first-hand expertise from practitioners can be key to their education. Pentagon officials with broad portfolios of responsibility can also benefit from practitioner input on specific areas, especially technical areas like aerospace. The practice of exporting expertise from the military to the private sector is not inherently nefarious and, indeed, can serve the country. But the lines between education, advising, and persuasion are fine. That can be especially true when former flag officers, turned industry executives, visit the Pentagon. Their rank carries with it a sense of respect, indeed awe, from former subordinates who they are now courting for contracts. “When a general-turned-businessman arrives at the Pentagon, he is often treated with extraordinary deference—as if still in uniform—which can greatly increase his effectiveness as a rainmaker for industry. The military even has a name for it – the ‘bobblehead effect.’”44 Retired generals and admirals with a practiced command voice understand the persuasive effect their authoritative presence can have on former employees. The sheer number of these retired flag officers working as defense consultants or executives—sometimes referenced as “rent-a-general” practice—tells a story, with a significant increase shown during the fat budget years of the Gulf War. Between 2004 and 2008, 80 percent of three- and four-star officers joined defense firms upon retirement, up from less than 50 percent who followed that career path from 1994 to 1998. In some individual years, the move from senior military positions to the defense industry is a virtual clean sweep. In his 2010 investigative report for the Boston Globe, Bryan Bender found that 34 out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 went to work for defense firms—nearly 90 percent.45 In some specialized commands, this feeder system of military officers into lucrative defense jobs is so powerful that the same companies have hired successive generations of flag officers. Bender reported, for example, that the last seven generals and admirals responsible for controlling international arms sales at the Pentagon went to work post retirement as contractors selling weapons and defense technologies overseas. The rules governing post-retirement employment are part of federal statute 18 USC, section 207(c), that statute being known as the “revolving door” restriction. The Air Force explains this restriction in its post-retirement separation rules as follows: ? This means that for one year after their service terminates, senior employees may not knowingly make, with the intent to influence, any communication or appearance before an employee of the agency in which they served in the year prior to their leaving, if the communication or appearance is made on behalf of any other person and official action by the agency is sought. ? The purpose of this “cooling off” period is to allow for a period of adjustment for the former senior employee and personnel at the agency served and to diminish any appearance that government decisions are being improperly influenced by the former senior employee. ? This restriction does not apply to “behind-the-scenes” assistance. However, it does not require that the former senior employee was “personally and substantially” involved in the matter that is the subject of the communication or appearance. ? Instead, it applies to any representation back for the purpose of influencing employees at the agency that the employee just left.46 For two years after retirement, the Pentagon prohibits military officers from participating in “particular matters,” meaning ongoing contracts greater than $10 million that were under their command. But due to another convenient loophole, “new editions of older weapons systems are not considered ‘particular matters.’”47 Beyond loopholes, potential conflict of interest issues arise since these flag officers are often recruited for private sector employment well before they retire, raising questions about their independence in threat assessments, force planning, and general considerations of national interest versus the potential for postretirement gain. Further, the revolving door—perhaps more a blender than a door—is actually promoted and facilitated by the government with taxpayer money. Taxpayer-funded career seminars on how to network into private industry are held, for example, for Navy and Air Force flag officers on Coronado Island near San Diego, sometimes two full years before their retirement.48 Other retirees have been more peripherally involved with linking Pentagon needs to industry desires to fill those needs, acting as what was called Pentagon “Senior Mentors.” The Office of the Secretary of Defense defined a Senior Mentor as a retired flag, general or other military officer or senior retired military official who provides expert experienced-based mentoring, teaching, training, advice, and recommendations to senior military officers, staffs and students, as they participate in war games, warfighting courses, operational panning, operational exercises, and decision-making exercises.49 The Pentagon has stated that it increasingly needs and relies on these retired officer “mentors” to run war games and advise active duty commanders. But a series of media reports in 2010 raised issues about the program, specifically in terms of financial gains and conflicts of interest. In some cases, for example, if payment was made to a retired military officer through a defense company rather than directly, the military services didn’t even have to reveal the identity of the retiree. These were individuals who, in some instances, were making up to $440 an hour as mentors while drawing pensions as high as $220,000 per year and working full-time executive positions with defense companies.50 USA Today reported that of the 158 Senior Mentors they identified, 80 percent had financial ties to defense contractors, including 29 being full-time executives of defense companies. The Senate Armed Services committee took an interest in the Senior Mentors program, and soon thereafter, the Pentagon ordered a program overhaul.51 Consequently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced sweeping changes to the program in April 2010. Mentors were to be converted to Highly Qualified Expert (HQE) positions and, consequently, were held responsible for complying with all applicable federal personnel ethics laws and regulations. Those regulations included financial disclosure statements and imposed a salary cap. The financial disclosure part included revealing employers, earnings, and stocks. The salary cap meant that a HQE could only be paid up to a specific authorized amount, an amount equivalent to the salary authorized for a four-star general officer on active duty—the most they could have made before moving to the private sector. Further, mentors became subject to federal rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest, such as prohibiting mentors from divulging nonpublic information to defense contractors or taking actions that have “a direct and predictable”52 effect on their private interests. In October 2011, the DoD Inspector General reported on compliance with the new policy, focusing on the Navy, Marine Corps, Joint Forces Command, Special Forces Command, and Strategic Command. The Army and Air Force were omitted as they were conducting their own compliance studies.53 Subsequent to the new rules being put into place, 98 percent of the retired officers from the Navy, the Marines, and three combatant commands left the Senior Mentor program. “It appears that, for at least some of the former military officers who dropped out the program, it’s clear which choice they made when it came to patriotism or money.”54 The kind of conflict of interest issue that had bothered the press and the Senate came up again in November 2011. Senator John McCain sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing concern about retired Air Force General turned Boeing executive Charles Robinson’s participation in a 2008 war game called Global Mobility “for a $51 billion aerial tanker contract Boeing was competing to win.”55 Boeing was later awarded the contract. McCain further criticized the Pentagon for taking two years to fulfill a FOIA request related to the subject. It is not just the Pentagon and defense firms who are keen to hire retired general officers. According to retired Army General Wesley K. Clark, private equity firms and Wall Street investors are also increasingly interested in enlisting retired flag officers as consequence of a broader phenomenon: the increasing importance of the military to America’s industrial base. “It’s the militarization of the economy,”56 Clark said; and he would know. Since leaving his position as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in 2000 and running for President from 2002 to 2004, Clark has worked for, often simultaneously, his own firm, Wesley K. Clark and Associates; the lobbying firm James Lee Witt Associates as Vice President and Senior Advisor; Rodman & Renshaw, eleventh largest investment bank in the United States, as former Chairman; Growth Energy, an alternative energy advocacy firm, as Co-Chairman; Geooptics LCC, an environmental data company, on the Board of Advisors; and the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, as Senior Advisor. Clark is not alone in being sought after in the private equity, finance, and energy sectors. Retired Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus was hired in 2013 by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR), a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts, to head its KKR Global Institute. The role of the media—specifically, paying former military members to act as advisors for the media and spokespersons for Pentagon policy—must also be considered as part of the supporting cast of the military–industrial complex. Retired General Jack Keane, for example, appeared on Fox News nine times over a two-month period in 2014 to advocate for air strikes and special forces to defeat ISIS, declaring that a bolder strategy was required. He made similar calls for more military action before Congress. What was left unsaid by the media, though, (and in congressional witness disclosure forms) was that Keane had a very personal interest in seeing military activity ramped up. Keane is a special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics where he was paid over $245,000 in 2013; a “venture partner” to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training; and president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC.57 When the US military is involved in global conflicts, the firms that Keane is associated with benefit. Dean Ed Wasserman of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism was quoted in The Nation as saying, “I think an inclination to use military action a lot is something the defense industry subscribes to because it helps to perpetuate an overall climate of permissiveness towards military spending.”58 Those who profit from conflict certainly weren’t going to argue against it. The Pentagon has a track record of using the media for its own purposes as well. In 2002, during the run-up to the Iraq War, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke launched a program to recruit “key influentials” (retired military officers) to help sell the war to the public. More than 75 individuals were eventually signed up to appear on television and radio shows as military analysts and/or to pen newspaper op–ed columns. Many of these analysts were also lobbyists for defense contractors. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the analysts, providing them “street credibility.” The analysts benefited as the meetings indicated to their clients that they had personal access to the Pentagon, and they benefited the Pentagon by discouraging the analysts from questioning or criticizing Pentagon assertions. The arrangement worked well until New York Times reporter David Barstow reported on the program in 2008.59 As part of the investigation leading up to Barstow’s report, the newspaper sued the Defense Department and eventually gained access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts, and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo for the analysts, and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. Barstow later won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. While issues regarding the military–industrial complex are evidenced across the board in defense policy and program decision-making, those that are space-related can be particularly noteworthy given their cost, endurance, and technical fatuity. When all the wheels are turning in the right direction, a program can become one of those highly lucrative self-licking ice cream cones. Missile defense provides an illustrative example of what that looks like. Within that strategic program, there are multiple smaller, related programs. Many endure for years before collapsing. The $5 billion Airborne Laser, the $1.7 billion Kinetic Energy Interceptor, and the 700 million Multiple Kill Vehicle were all canceled after no, or failed, testing.60 But yet the missile defense program lives on and is a testament to the persistence of its supporters. Unipolarity is specifically responsible for the globalization of extremism – that makes heg unsustainable.Ibrahimi 18 (2/19/18; S. Yaqub Ibrahimi, [researcher and instructor of political science. PhD @ Carleton University] “Unipolar politics and global peace: a structural explanation of the globalizing jihad”; taylor and francis )JSG = Jihadi-Salafi GroupsThree conclusions can be drawn from this paper. First, the peacefulness of the contemporary unipolar system could be discussed beyond the interstate conflict and the likelihood of great powers competition debate. The new forms of asymmetric warfare, particularly the emergence of JSGs and their violent activities at different levels of the global order, could be assessed as another variable in debates on the peacefulness of the system. These actors DYNAMICS OF ASYMMETRIC CONFLICT 59 emerged and operate under the unipolarity conditions. Unipolarity, in this sense, has generated conflict-producing mechanisms and nonstate actors that drove sovereign states in lengthy wars against JSGs. This argument makes a significant contribution to the unipolarity-peace puzzle, which is conventionally addressed from the interstate conflict perspective. Second, unipolarity transformed Islamist-oriented terrorism from domestic to global. In addition to other conflict-generating conditions produced under unipolarity, the United States’ unipolar policies in Muslim regions transformed the traditional near-enemy-centric narrative of jihad into a far-enemy-centric ideology. As a result of the transformation of this doctrine, new forms of JSGs emerged that posed a threat to peace and security at all levels. Finally, because of the unipolarity of the system, global peace depends largely on the sole great power’s foreign and military policies. The US interventionism, due to the absence of a challenging great power, might not generate interstate conflict. However, it would engage the US in asymmetric warfare with nonstate actors that would emerge independently or on behalf of states to disrupt the US hegemony through insurgency, terrorism, and other forms of violence at different levels. These all might not challenge the durability of unipolarity, drastically, but they would disrupt peace and security at all domestic, regional, and global levels.Terrorism causes global nuclear war—collapses internal AND external stability Arguello and Buis, 18 – *Irma, Founder and Chair of the NPSGlobal Foundation (Non-proliferation for Global Security), degree in Phyisics Science from the University of Buenos Aires, Master degree in Business Administration from IDEA/Wharton School, Defense and Security studies (Master level) at the Escuela de Defensa Nacional, Argentina; **Emiliano, lawyer and associate professor of public international law, international humanitarian law, international law of disarmament, and the origins of international law in antiquity (Irma Arguello & Emiliano J. Buis, “The global impacts of a terrorist nuclear attack: What would happen? What should we do?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2018, )But the consequences would go far beyond the effects in the target country, however, and promptly propagate worldwide. Global and national security, economy and finance, international governance and its framework, national political systems, and the behavior of governments and individuals would all be put under severe trial. The severity of the effects at a national level, however, would depend on the countries’ level of development, geopolitical location, and resilience. Global security and regional/national defense schemes would be strongly affected. An increase in global distrust would spark rising tensions among countries and blocs, that could even lead to the brink of nuclear weapons use by states (if, for instance, a sponsor country is identified). The consequences of such a shocking scenario would include a decrease in states’ self-control, an escalation of present conflicts and the emergence of new ones, accompanied by an increase in military unilateralism and military expenditures. Regarding the economic and financial impacts, a severe global economic depression would rise from the attack, likely lasting for years. Its duration would be strongly dependent on the course of the crisis. The main results of such a crisis would include a 2 percent fall of growth in global Gross Domestic Product, and a 4 percent decline of international trade in the two years following the attack (cf. Figure 3). In the case of developing and less-developed countries, the economic impacts would also include a shortage of high-technology products such as medicines, as well as a fall in foreign direct investment and a severe decline of international humanitarian aid toward low-income countries. We expect an increase of unemployment and poverty in all countries. Global poverty would raise about 4 percent after the attack, which implies that at least 30 million more people would be living in extreme poverty, in addition to the current estimated 767 million. In the area of international relations, we would expect a breakdown of key doctrines involving politics, security, and relations among states. These international tensions could lead to a collapse of the nuclear order as we know it today, with a consequent setback of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation commitments. In other words, the whole system based on the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty would be put under severe trial. After the attack, there would be a reassessment of existing security doctrines, and a deep review of concepts such as nuclear deterrence, no-firstuse, proportionality, and negative security assurances. Finally, the behavior of governments and individuals would also change radically. Internal chaos fueled by the media and social networks would threaten governance at all levels, with greater impact on those countries with weak institutional frameworks. Social turbulence would emerge in most countries, with consequent attempts by governments to impose restrictions on personal freedoms to preserve order – possibly by declaring a state of siege or state of emergency – and legislation would surely become tougher on human rights. There would also be a significant increase in social fragmentation – with a deepening of antagonistic views, mistrust, and intolerance, both within countries and towards others – and a resurgence of large-scale social movements fostered by ideological interests and easily mobilized through social media.Pursuit of hegemony leads to Sino-Russia alliance and is unsustainable.Porter, DPhil, 19(Patrick, ModernHistory@Oxford, ProfInternationalSecurityAndStrategy@Birmingham, Advice for a Dark Age: Managing Great Power Competition, The Washington Quarterly, 42:1, 7-25)Even the United States cannot prudently take on every adversary on multiple fronts. The costs of military campaigns against these adversaries in their backyards, whether in the Baltic States or Taiwan, would outstrip the losses that the U.S. military has sustained in decades. Short of all-out conflict, to mobilize for dominance and risk escalation on multiple such fronts would court several dangers. It would overstretch the country. The U.S. defense budget now approaches $800 billion annually, not including deficit-financed military operations. This is a time of ballooning deficits, where the Congressional Budget Office warns that “the prospect of large and growing debt poses substantial risks for the nation.”27 If in such conditions, current expenditure is not enough to buy unchallengeable military preponderance—and it may not be—then the failure lies not in the failure to spend even more. Neither is the answer to sacrifice the quality of civic life at home to service the cause of preponderance abroad. The old “two war standard,” a planning construct whereby the United States configures its forces to conduct two regional conflicts at once, would be unsustainably demanding against more than one peer competitor, or potentially with a roster of major and minor adversaries all at once.28 After all, the purpose of American military power is ultimately to secure a way of life as a constitutional republic. To impose ever-greater debts on civil society and strip back collective provision at home, on the basis that the quality of life is expendable for the cause of hegemony, is perversely to set up power-projection abroad as the end, when it should be the means. The problem lies, rather, in the inflexible pursuit of hegemony itself, and the failure to balance commitments with scarce resources. To attempt to suppress every adversary simultaneously would drive adversaries together, creating hostile coalitions. It also may not succeed. Counterproliferation in North Korea is difficult enough, for instance, but the task becomes more difficult still if U.S. enmity with China drives Beijing to refuse cooperation over enforcing sanctions on Pyongyang. Concurrent competitions would also split American resources, attention and time. Exacerbating the strain on scarce resources between defense, consumption and investment raises the polarizing question of whether preponderance is even worth it, which then undermines the domestic consensus needed to support it. At the same time, reduced investment in infrastructure and education would damage the economic foundations for conducting competition abroad in the first place. Taken together, indiscriminate competition risks creating the thing most feared in traditional U.S. grand strategy: a hostile Eurasian alliance leading to continuous U.S. mobilization against hostile coalitions, turning the U.S. republic into an illiberal garrison state. If the prospect for the United States as a great power faces a problem, it is not the size of the defense budget, or the material weight of resources at the U.S. disposal, or popular reluctance to exercise leadership. Rather, the problem lies in the scope of the policy that those capabilities are designed to serve. To make the problem smaller, Washington should take steps to make the pool of adversaries smaller.1AR – No Heg ImpactNo heg impact.G. John Ikenberry 18, professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, “Why the Liberal World Order Will Survive”, Carnegie Ethics and International Affairs, In this essay I look at the evolving encounters between rising states and the post-war Western international order. My starting point is the classic “power transition” perspective. Power transition theories see a tight link between international order—its emergence, stability, and decline—and the rise and fall of great powers. It is a perspective that sees history as a sequence of cycles in which powerful or hegemonic states rise up and build order and dominate the global system until their power declines, leading to a new cycle of crisis and order building. In contrast, I offer a more evolutionary perspective, emphasizing the lineages and continuities in modern international order. More specifically, I argue that although America’s hegemonic position may be declining, the liberal international characteristics of order—openness, rules, multilateral cooperation—are deeply rooted and likely to persist. This is true even though the orientation and actions of the Trump administration have raised serious questions about the U.S. commitment to liberal internationalism. Just as importantly, rising states (led by China) are not engaged in a frontal attack on the American-led order. While struggles do exist over orientations, agendas, and leadership, the non-Western developing countries remain tied to the architecture and principles of a liberal-oriented global order. And even as China seeks in various ways to build rival regional institutions, there are stubborn limits on what it can do. Power Transitions and International Order There is wide agreement that the world is witnessing a long-term global power transition. Wealth and power is diffusing, spreading outward and away from Europe and the United States. The rapid growth that marked the non-Western rising states in the last decade may have ended, and even China’s rapid economic ascendency has slowed. But the overall pattern of change remains: the “rest” are gaining ground on the “West.” While there is wide agreement that the world is witnessing a global power transition, there is less agreement on the consequences of power shifts for international order. The classic view is advanced by realist scholars, such as E. H. Carr, Robert Gilpin, Paul Kennedy, and William Wohlforth, who make sweeping arguments about power and order.? These hegemonic realists argue that international order is a by-product of the concentration of power. Order is created by a powerful state, and when that state declines and power diffuses, international order weakens or breaks apart. Out of these dynamic circumstances, a rising state emerges as the new dominant state, and it seeks to reorganize the international system to suit its own purposes. In this view, world politics from ancient times to the modern era can be seen as a series of repeated cycles of rise and decline. War, protectionism, depression, political upheaval—various sorts of crises and disruptions may push the cycle forward. This narrative of hegemonic rise and decline draws on the European and, more broadly, Western experience. Since the early modern era, Europe has been organized and reorganized by a succession of leading states and would-be hegemons: the Spanish Hapsburgs, France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, and post-Bismarck Germany. The logic of hegemonic order comes even more clearly into view with Pax Britannica, the nineteenth-century hegemonic order based on British naval and mercantile dominance. The decline of Britain was followed by decades of war and economic instability, which ended only with the rise of Pax Americana. For hegemonic realists, the debate today is about where the world is along this cyclical pathway of rise and decline. Has the United States finally lost the ability or willingness to underwrite and lead the post-war order? Are we in the midst of a hegemonic crisis and the breakdown of the old order? And are rising states, led by China, beginning to step forward in efforts to establish their own hegemonic dominance of their regions and the world? These are the lurking questions of the power transition perspective. But does this vision of power transition truly illuminate the struggles going on today over international order? Some might argue no—that the United States is still in a position, despite its travails, to provide hegemonic leadership. Here one would note that there is a durable infrastructure (or what Susan Strange has called “structural power”) that undergirds the existing American-led order.? Far-flung security alliances, market relations, liberal democratic solidarity, deeply rooted geopolitical alignments—there are many possible sources of American hegemonic power that remain intact. But there may be even deeper sources of continuity in the existing system. This would be true if the existence of a liberal-oriented international order does not in fact require hegemonic domination. It might be that the power transition theory is wrong: the stability and persistence of the existing post-war international order does not depend on the concentration of American power. In fact, international order is not simply an artifact of concentrations of power. The rules and institutions that make up international order have a more complex and contingent relationship with the rise and fall of state power. This is true in two respects. First, international order itself is complex: multilayered, multifaceted, and not simply a political formation imposed by the leading state. International order is not “one thing” that states either join or resist. It is an aggregation of various sorts of ordering rules and institutions. There are the deep rules and norms of sovereignty. There are governing institutions, starting with the United Nations. There is a sprawling array of international institutions, regimes, treaties, agreements, protocols, and so forth. These governing arrangements cut across diverse realms, including security and arms control, the world economy, the environment and global commons, human rights, and political relations. Some of these domains of governance may have rules and institutions that narrowly reflect the interests of the hegemonic state, but most reflect negotiated outcomes based on a much broader set of interests. As rising states continue to rise, they do not simply confront an American-led order; they face a wider conglomeration of ordering rules, institutions, and arrangements; many of which they have long embraced. By separating “American hegemony” from “the existing international order,” we can see a more complex set of relationships. The United States does not embody the international order; it has a relationship with it, as do rising states. The United States embraces many of the core global rules and institutions, such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization. But it also has resisted ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (it being the only country not to have ratified the latter) as well as various arms control and disarmament agreements. China also embraces many of the same global rules and institutions, and resists ratification of others. Generally speaking, the more fundamental or core the norms and institutions are—beginning with the Westphalian norms of sovereignty and the United Nations system—the more agreement there is between the United States and China as well as other states. Disagreements are most salient where human rights and political principles are in play, such as in the Responsibility to Protect. Second, there is also diversity in what rising states “want” from the international order. The struggles over international order take many different forms. In some instances, what rising states want is more influence and control of territory and geopolitical space beyond their borders. One can see this in China’s efforts to expand its maritime and political influence in the South China Sea and other neighboring areas. This is an age-old type of struggle captured in realist accounts of security competition and geopolitical rivalry. Another type of struggle is over the norms and values that are enshrined in global governance rules and institutions. These may be about how open and rule-based the system should be. They may also be about the way human rights and political principles are defined and brought to bear in relations among states. Finally, the struggles over international order may be focused on the distribution of authority. That is, rising states may seek a greater role in the governance of existing institutions. This is a struggle over the position of states within the global political hierarchy: voting shares, leadership rights, and authority relations.? These observations cut against the realist hegemonic perspective and cyclical theories of power transition. Rising states do not confront a single, coherent, hegemonic order. The international order offers a buffet of options and choices. They can embrace some rules and institutions and not others. Moreover, stepping back, the international orders that rising states have faced in different historical eras have not all been the same order. The British-led order that Germany faced at the turn of the twentieth century is different from the international order that China faces today. The contemporary international order is much more complex and wide-ranging than past orders. It has a much denser array of rules, institutions, and governance realms. There are also both regional and global domains of governance. This makes it hard to imagine an epic moment when the international order goes into crisis and rising states step forward—either China alone or rising states as a bloc—to reorganize and reshape its rules and institutions. Rather than a cyclical dynamic of rise and decline, change in the existing American-led order might best be captured by terms such as continuity, evolution, adaptation, and negotiation. The struggles over international order today are growing, but it is not a drama best told in terms of the rise and decline of American hegemony. Extra – China LeadsChina leading in Biotech – new AI software pushes them to the lead.Sender 18 [(Henry, Nikkei Asian Review columnist) “China's great leap forward in biotech”, Nikkei Asia, , October 3, 2018] TDIAccess to vast amounts of patient data fuels innovation -- and controversyHONG KONG -- At 28, Dai Wenyuan quit his job developing artificial intelligence software for Chinese internet giant Baidu to launch his own company. It was a smart move: his AI start-up quickly attracted an initial $4 million investment from Sequoia Capital China in 2015.Three years later, Dai's company is capturing attention for developing a medical tool that uses AI to predict whether patients are at risk of developing diabetes. His company, 4Paradigm, said its accuracy rate was 88%.Key to that success is access to reams of patient data. 4Paradigm's AI software scanned medical information -- including gender, blood sugar levels and weight -- collected from 170,000 patients by researchers at Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital. From there, it used machine learning to predict which patients were most at risk of developing the disease.Dai says that as the company refines its methodology, the techniques can be applied to other diseases -- from heart disease to hyperlipidemia and kidney disease."Our mission is AI for everyone," Dai said.Dai is among the scores of engineers and computer scientists who are combining IT and big data to identify people at risk of developing diseases, then using that information to make early diagnoses and plan the best treatment.The field is booming in China, in large part because researchers have access to patient data that would be off-limits in other countries."China has a very good chance to lead the world in biotech because of the data," Dai said. "A lot of foreign scientists want to apply to work in China because of the [availability of] data."Beijing has identified the pharma and biotech sectors as two main pillars of future growth as China shifts away from the export-led manufacturing that has left its skies yellow and its waterways polluted. Now, some in the U.S. worry that China could soon eclipse it in key areas such as predictive medicine, gene editing and stem cell research."A lot of foreign scientists want to apply to work in China because of the [availability of] data"Dai Wenyuan, founder of 4ParadigmChina has some distinct advantages. Scientists on both sides of the Pacific believe early detection and treatment for diseases such as cancer will come from applying AI and machine learning to the personal health data of large numbers of people -- and no country on earth has more such data with fewer constraints on access to it than China."The bottom line is whoever has the largest, most diverse data sets of different populations wins the day," Edward You, a special agent in the FBI's Biological Countermeasures Unit, told a congressional hearing in Washington last year. That committee was looking into the potential threat that Chinese biotech could pose to the U.S.To accelerate growth in the sector, China introduced a swifter regulatory system in 2017 that expedites approvals for innovative drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are encouraged to focus on high-priority diseases and then manufacture the treatments locally.Many scientists believe the next generation of medical breakthroughs will come from what Kenneth Oye, director of the Program on Emerging Technologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, refers to as the blurring of the lines between information technology, biotechnology and "the great conjunction of DNA sequencing, data, pattern recognition and gene editing."This big idea has translated into an investment boom. Last year, biotech startups in China, broadly defined, raised almost $30 billion, according to data from McKinsey. And while venture inflows in other Chinese tech sectors have slowed, $32 billion was raised in the first half of this year, suggesting that 2018 will break last year's record, Beijing-based merchant bank China Renaissance calculates. International private equity firms such as General Atlantic and Warburg Pincus have also become big investors in the sector.China already becoming world leader in biotech.Mayfield 20 [(Mandy Mayfield, Reporter for the National Defense) “China Pursuing ‘Aggressive’ Biotechnology Strategy”, National Defense Industrial Association, , 7/9/2020] TDIAs rapid innovation in computer sciences helps bolster advances in biotechnologies, China is edging forward as a world leader in the biotech sector, one expert said.“Biotechnologies, including synthetic biology, are going to be foundational to the 21st century economy and they’re also going to be a critical arena for global competition in the geopolitical realm,” said Tara O’Toole, former undersecretary of Homeland Security for science and technology and current executive vice president and senior fellow at In-Q-Tel, an Arlington, Virginia-based investment firm that works with defense and intelligence organizations.“China in particular, is pursuing a very aggressive strategy to become the world leader in biotechnology,” she added.A deepened understanding of biotech has moved the world towards a “biorevolution,” O’Toole said during a webinar hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.This could be the next stage in a series of scientific revolutions that have marked key inflection points in civilizations dating back hundreds of years, she said.This type of revolution is founded on several core biological technologies, “but it is all about being able to read, write and edit the code of life,” O’Toole said.One core technology is DNA sequencing, or the ability to read DNA. Another is DNA synthesis, or the ability to write code for DNA, she noted.“Our ability to write it, to synthesize DNA … is less advanced,” she said. “It’s slower, it’s more expensive, but again we are getting better and better.”Gene editing is another core biotechnology. It allows scientists to alter a DNA sequence by adding, swapping or removing genes. “It is being used a lot, particularly in China,” she said. “It’s being used because it is very fast, cheap and relatively easy to use.”Synthetic biology uses the aforementioned technologies to manipulate multi-cell systems in organisms in a way that can construct new biological parts. Each of these biotechnologies are being accelerated and improved by artificial intelligence methods, O’Toole noted.“AI is going to fundamentally improve the accuracy and the speed and decrease the cost of all of these four biotechnologies,” she said. “It is already happening.”China pulling ahead in biotech.Pauwels 18 [(Eleonore Pauwels, fellow, emerging cyber-technologies, UN University’s Centre for Policy Research) “How China is pulling ahead on AI and biotech”, Axios, , Dec 3, 2018] TDIChina is poised to take the lead in innovations at the intersection of AI and biotech, with clinical applications of gene-editing and cell therapies, as well as blood-based cancer diagnostics.Why it matters: China and Silicon Valley are competing for proprietary access to the genetic data of entire populations, which can be analyzed using machine learning to drastically advance genomic and medical research. Breakthroughs and overall leadership in these fields will have repercussions for the global economy.Background: AI can be used to target specific genetic markers from massive genomics data sets, which is why it is so useful in personalized health monitoring and in designing more precise treatments and tests for diseases.The Chinese government has committed $9.2 billion over 15 years into a precision medicine initiative, which includes funding the use of AI.The NIH's comparable initiative was appropriated funding of just $1.5 billion over ten years. Chinese VC and private investments also dwarf similar American investments.In 2017, China invested an additional $4 billion in the American AI and biotech sectors — and gained access to datasets and potentially to trade secrets.Meanwhile, China also has a receptive regulatory system, high skills in precision manufacturing, and low labor costs.The Chinese company WuXi NextCODE already provides the world’s leading platform for interpreting massive sets of genomic data and diagnosing rare diseases.The big picture: Frost & Sullivan predicts AI technologies will generate $6.7 billion in global revenue from health care by 2021.AI and biotech-dominant countries could use other countries' bio-data for economic growth.China is already working to access the bio-data of emerging markets in Africa.Biotech booming in China – they’re slowly beating the US.Ellis 18 [(Shannon Ellis, a science and business writer specializing in China and biotechnology) “Biotech booms in China”, Nature, , 17 January 2018] TDITiming can make a big difference in a career. Is it worthwhile to stay longer in a comfortable job or is it the right moment to strike out for a new challenge? Similarly, timing can make all the difference when deciding to enter a developing market like China.Just a decade ago, when China-born scientists with overseas experience began returning to the country, lured by their homeland’s fast growth and growing financial means, they found a drug industry dominated by generics. Undeterred, they got busy building the infrastructure for an industry capable of drug discovery and development, buoyed by substantial government support and a thriving economy.Today, biotech specialists arriving in China find an industry at a turning point, with many key elements in place for innovation: a university system churning out doctorates and strong basic research, substantial financial backing from both the private and public sectors, regulations that are becoming globally harmonized and a vibrant group of entrepreneurial leaders with ambitions for China and abroad.They also find a country facing significant unmet medical needs — particularly in cancer, neurology and diabetes — and a rapidly ageing population. Although China is the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market after the United States, some of the most effective modern medicines are not on sale. For example, of the 42 cancer drugs approved globally in the past five years, only four are available in China. But this is set to change. Recent regulatory changes will bring imported drugs to China more quickly, and local biotechs are racing to develop domestic — and, they hope, global — blockbuster drugs. For academics and entrepreneurs, it is an ideal time to build on the biotech investments of the past, says Lan Huang, chief executive of New York-based BeyondSpring Pharmaceuticals, which is running drug trials in China.A hunger for scienceIt only took two visits to Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park to convince Greg Scott to set up a life-science consulting business there, amid a hotbed of drug research and development (R&D) companies. He founded ChinaBio in 2007, and encourages others to consider a move to China. “Do it! It is a great experience,” he says. “If I was helping someone plan their career, China has to be a part of it as the number one drug market outside the United States.”It is not just entrepreneurs and multinational drug company employees; many academic and staff scientists also find working in China a stimulating career move. Ray Stevens, a chemist renowned for determining the crystal structures of the body’s receptors, which are important for identifying drug targets, can recall the exact moment he decided to trade sunny California for Shanghai, uprooting his school-age children and wife. Like many academics, he had visited China several times, but it was not until 2009, after delivering a talk on membrane proteins to colleagues in the neighbouring city of Suzhou, that he decided to make the move.“One of the big attractions was the energy and excitement the students had for science. It won me over,” Stevens says. After he had finished his talk, “a group of students came up to the podium to ask questions. They kept asking questions as I made my way to the bathroom and even followed me in. I was amazed; they were so hungry. It was the moment I decided to spend my sabbatical in China”.Money is flowing into academic life-science research as well. “It is relatively easy to get a good grant for science,” says Xiaodong Wang, director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing and co-founder of the immuno-oncology biotech BeiGene in Beijing. “Because the scale compared to the United States is still relatively small, in terms of relative money, and national young talents can get start-up funds from the central government, it makes things easier.” But Wang points out that research grants are usually submitted in Chinese, which can be a barrier for overseas scientists, who have to rely on translators. Wang himself returned to China from the United States in 2003.Stevens says he has not found accessing funding in China easier than in the United States, but is heartened by the emphasis on high-risk research versus the low-risk research that he says largely gets funded by the US National Institutes of Health. He credits Chinese grant-makers with investing for the long term, taking pressure off the need to generate data quickly to secure another round of funding. In China, academics are also increasingly able to profit from their research — universities are permitting inventors to share the proceeds from patents and set-up their own companies. This is part of a wider initiative to get more discoveries from the bench to the bedside.Biotech bonanzaCompetition for life-science talent in China has shifted. Despite their heavy investment in R&D centres in China in the past decade, multinational biopharma firms are finding themselves battling Chinese biotechnology start-ups to attract talent. Two top pharma recruiters in Shanghai — Jonathan Zhu, head of life sciences in China for Heidrick & Struggles (also a returnee), and Simon Lance, managing director for China at Hays — predict that job growth will increasingly come from Chinese biotech companies, not the foreign biopharma firms. “It’s a sea change,” says Zhang.The president and chief executive of Suzhou-based Innovent Biologics, Michael Yu, says that his company is expanding quickly. “We are constantly looking for employees and hiring people. We have grown more than 20% year-on-year.” Innovent is hunting for employees who have worked in countries such as the United States, where the drug industries are more mature and people have had greater experience of overseeing the development of innovative drugs (see ‘What recruiters want’). “Ten per cent of our team are from overseas,” says Yu. “Returnees have first-hand experience with how drugs are developed and regulated in the United States.” This type of foreign experience will become increasingly important. In July, China became a member of the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH), signalling its intentions to mould its regulatory system in the shape of the ICH’s founding members: the United States, the European Union and Japan.In 2011, Stevens moved to China as a visiting professor. Just a year later, the president of ShanghaiTech University, Mianheng Jiang, came calling, offering the chance to set up his own institute. He now runs the iHuman Institute at ShanghaiTech, is a member of China’s Thousand Talents Plan and was in 2017 awarded a Magnolia Prize, an accolade given to foreigners who have contributed significantly to Shanghai’s development. He has also co-founded a biotech company, RuiYi, in Shanghai.Building biotechThe passion for science that Stevens discovered did not spring up accidentally. It has been fostered by government support for biotechnology that has intensified over the past decade, creating a force attracting scientists and the entrepreneurially inclined to China. Of the 2 million returnees to China over the past 6 years, it is estimated 250,000 work in the life sciences. And, although many scientists making the move were born and raised in China and have a decade or more experience working in the West, non-Chinese speakers such as Stevens and Scott are coming and thriving here, too.The push for innovation comes from the highest levels of government, with the biotech industry receiving special attention in not just one but three of the government’s latest five-year plans: the strategic blueprints that determine the country’s economic goals for the forthcoming half-decade. The latest plan, China’s thirteenth, stipulates that the biotechnology sector should exceed 4% of gross domestic product by 2020 and that there should be 10 to 20 life-science parks for biomedicine with an output surpassing 10 billion yuan (US$1.5?billion). China has more than 100 life-science parks dotted across the country; run by local governments, these hubs lure companies with tax breaks and subsidies. It is estimated that more than $100?billion has already been invested in the life-sciences sector by state, provincial or local governments in an effort to hit the five-year-plan targets.The Thousand Talents Plan has been especially successful at recruiting life-science talent. “Since 2008, 7,000 returnees have been recruited across all disciplines,” says Dan Zhang, former secretary-general of the Thousand Talents programme and chief executive of Fountain Medical Development in Beijing, which helps companies to carry out clinical trials. “The life sciences committee for biotech is one of the largest groups in the programme. We’ve recruited more than 1,400 people, from both science and industry — including company founders, chief scientific officers or leading academics.”Returnees, especially those recruited via the Thousand Talents Plan, have had a “huge impact” on the industry, says Zhang. He says that returnees are the force behind the majority of drug approvals in China, that they fill peer review committees and life-science faculties, and that many are made university deans of schools of pharmacy and medicine. Sheng Ding, for example, has split his time between a biomedical-research facility in California and Tsinghua University in Beijing as dean of the school of pharmaceutical sciences since 2015. The generous grants and prestige of a place on the Thousand Talents Plan or similar programmes can increase an applicant’s attractiveness to employers and enable them to command higher salaries.Deep pocketsSince the global financial crisis, financing for biotechs in China has been on the rise, whereas the sector has taken a hit in the West. Chinese investors who are looking to diversify their portfolios away from property and manufacturing are encouraged by the growth prospects of the life sciences, given China’s unmet medical needs and ageing population. Chinese venture capital and private equity funds raised $45?billion for investment in the life sciences in the two and half years prior to June 2017, according to ChinaBio. So far, only $12?billion has been invested in the industry, with financiers on the hunt for good companies to invest in. Most of the cash is going towards financing innovative biotechs that are, in turn, hiring at a rapid pace (see ‘Three years’).Start-up biotechs, especially those flush with cash from venture-capital financing, are looking to scoop up talent and are willing to pay top dollar. “In the last two to three years, we have seen a change. More R&D heads are considering offers to work for Chinese biotechs, venture capital and clinical research organizations,” says Zhang. “I believe this will continue in the next few years as more investment flows into domestic start-ups and they can make a combined offering: money and equity.” China-based biotechs such as BeiGene, Hutchison MediPharma, Zai Labs and WuXi Biologics have all enjoyed successful public listings, so other biotechs hope that equity offers will entice returnee talent away from corporate jobs and academic positions.For many returnees, working for a start-up is not about the money; it is about increased responsibility and influence. Entrepreneurial biotechs demand more from their team than corporate environments, and returnees feel they can make an important contribution to building China’s biotech industry. “In a large organization, one’s role is minimal in terms of making an impact and being accountable for something that happens,” says Xuefeng Yu, co-founder and chief executive of CanSino Biologics in Tianjin. “But in China, you can really contribute or lead in an effort that will be impactful for the industry and also society.”For Yu, deciding to leave an executive position with the pharmaceutical firm Sanofi in Toronto, Canada, to become an entrepreneur in China seemed like a reasonable risk to take. “I have plenty of experience and considered the chance to be successful to be pretty high,” he says. Today, CanSino can point to its China Food and Drug Administration-approved Ebola vaccine, developed in partnership with the Chinese military, as a measure of its success.Going directly from a corporate job to being your own boss in a new country is a big leap to make, but Yu was already deeply familiar with the Chinese vaccine market before he arrived, and was ready to do more. “I wanted to return to China to make products that would serve the country’s health. It felt like the right time,” he says.A big entranceFor foreign scientists unsure whether China is for them, one well-trodden route is to first arrive in an expatriate role with a multinational pharmaceutical company, or to work with a recruitment firm offering positions overseas. Then, after a few years, many make the leap to a biotech start-up. The time in between provides an education on China. Returnees and foreigners may shine in technical roles, but there is a learning curve when it comes to understanding how to work with local staff and regulators, and run clinical trials. “I am always getting an education in managing talent in China,” says Scott.This path from multinational drug company to biotech is clearly seen in the bios of many of the more ambitious start-up founders (see ‘Meet China’s biotech stars’). Returnees with a few years under their belt in China and an ability to effectively navigate the system are far more valuable to employers than new arrivals.“The advice I give when people first come back to China is: do not think you know China well just because you can speak Chinese,” says Zhang. “People tend to underestimate the speed of change here and local capabilities. In the beginning, I tended to overemphasize my technical advantages and did not understand how to be fully effective in this environment.” Or as Mark Engel, chief executive of Shanghai-based biotech firm Phagelux, puts it, he is looking to hire people with “skills plus a willingness to work within the culture”.University networksAcademics looking to make a move to China can get their feet wet by attending conferences — and they may be able to exploit their existing networks of China-born students and lab mates. Stevens came to China at the invitation of his students, who sought help to set up their lab, and was offered a role as a visiting professor at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica during a sabbatical from Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He later went on to found the iHuman Institute.China’s prestigious universities, such as Fudan, Tsinghua and ShanghaiTech, have had success in attracting international talent and want to open the doors further. Ming-Wei Wang, dean of Fudan University’s school of pharmacy in Shanghai, wants the percentage of overseas faculty members to grow from 3% to 15% and to offer classes taught in English. Stevens has a similar goal for the iHuman Institute and has a target that 25% of his team is made up of overseas scientists. This push for global talent is driven by an understanding that strong science has no borders. But Stevens admits it is not always easy to get others to follow in his footsteps. “Getting non-Chinese foreigners to come to China has been a struggle. People are unaware of the opportunity and it takes an adventurous person to take the risk.”Extra – No LinkNo link – aff doesn’t cause china lead – COVID proves.Public Citizen 21 [(Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people – not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country) “Don’t Buy Pharma’s Latest Distraction: A Temporary WTO IP Waiver for COVID Meds Would Not Hand “U.S. mRNA Technology” to China”, Public Citizen, , MAY 3, 2021] TDIBioNTech Already Licensed a Chinese Firm to Make the “Pfizer” mRNA Vaccine and Chinese Firms Have Developed Their Own mRNA ShotsThis is part of a Global Trade Watch series on the TRIPS Waiver.New COVID-19 variants are emerging everywhere. An outbreak anywhere could hatch a vaccine-resistant or more deadly or infectious strain that spreads worldwide. Global vaccination to build global herd immunity is the only way to end the pandemic and ensure anyone is safe. But, under current production trends, with a few firms controlling if and how much vaccine is made, many people in developing countries will not have access until 2024. More than 100 nations believe an emergency COVID-19 waiver of certain World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) rules that give monopoly control over medicine production to a few pharmaceutical firms is necessary, so people worldwide get access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments ASAP.Support for the waiver is growing. So, more than 100 Big Pharma lobbyists have descended on D.C. to pressure Congress and the administration to oppose it. That vaccine firms are blocking expanded vaccine production is not a winning story. So, Big Pharma is trying to change the subject. The latest absurd claim: A COVID-19 IP waiver would help China access “U.S. mRNA technology” to create medical innovations. Putting aside the shocking immorality of opposing development of more vaccines and therapeutics for cancer and heart disease, the claim is absurd. Messenger RNA (mRNA) research has been underway collaboratively in numerous countries for decades. It is not a “U.S. technology.” A Hungarian scientist launched the work in the 1970s. Turkish migrants heading the German firm BioNTech developed the mRNA innovations used in the “Pfizer” vaccine. Plus…mRNA vaccines are already being developed in China. Chinese entities already have developed at least two mRNA-platform COVID-19 vaccines. Guangzhou RiboBio’s is working on an mRNA vaccine that can be stored at refrigerator temperature. A 120 million dose annual capacity plant is being built to make an mRNA vaccine developed by Walvax Biotechnology, Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and the Academy of Military Science, which is in phase 3 trials, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).BioNTech already contracted with Chinese firm Fosun to make the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Pharma’s story is premised on the notion that a waiver of WTO “Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property” (TRIPS) rules will grant “China” new access to the technology underlying the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Except that the technology behind the vaccines produced by Pfizer is owned by BioNTech, which already licensed it to a Chinese producer. There are real China IP theft issues. The WTO IP waiver is not one of them.Messenger RNA Research Has Been Underway Collaboratively in Numerous Countries With Significant Government Funding for Decades, It’s Not a “U.S. Technology”Research on using synthetic messenger RNA, or mRNA, to treat or prevent diseases started in Hungary in 1978 with breakthrough research by Professor Katalin Karikó. Since then, researchers from around the world, including Turkey, Thailand, South Africa, India, Brazil, India, Argentina, Malaysia and Bangladesh, have been working on mRNA-based health technologies. While the U.S. firm Moderna has carried out research on this platform for more than a decade, with substantial support from the U.S. government, others in different parts of the world have also worked on it. BioNTech, a German firm founded by Turkish immigrants and where Prof. Karikó is now senior vice president, worked for years on mRNA-based treatments for cancer and a potential flu vaccine. The German government supported BioNTech’s research. BioNTech holds all patents and patent applications related to the BNT162 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, known in the market as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The bottom line is that the mRNA platform has been developed by scientists from all over the world. And people from around the world should reap its benefits.By Hollering “CHINA!!!” Pharma Hopes to Distract from Focus on Its Monopoly Control and the Shortages It Is CausingThe vaccine makers stand to make a lot of money whether or not there is a waiver. Pfizer and Moderna projected COVID-19 vaccine revenue of $15 billion and $18.4 billion respectively in 2021 alone. A WTO waiver would not undermine those earning but could boost them. A WTO waiver would NOT free governments and firms from paying royalties or providing other compensation under national laws, as the WTO’s own explanation of its 2001 HIV-AIDS IP flexibilities decision underscores. Payments for compulsorily licensed technology usually are based on costs and a percentage of profit. Pharma’s real concern is losing its current monopoly control of production and thus the prospect of competitors in what it sees as lucrative future sales of COVID-19 boosters in wealthy countries. Yet absent more production in more locations, there simply won’t be sufficient capacity to make enough vaccines and other COVID-19 medicines needed to end the pandemic.Neolib K1AR – Neolib KPerm do both—the plan’s reduction of IP protections is a direct challenge to neoliberalism, but total rejection of WTO reform failsPolychroniou 21 [(CJ, political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States) “The World Trade Organization Is Threatening Vaccine Equity and Climate Goals” Truthout, 5-29-21, ] TDIThe huge COVID-19 vaccine supply gap between rich and poor countries exposes the deadly problem of intellectual property (IP) rights and the dangerous monopoly power of Big Pharma. It also exposes in glaring terms the failures of the entire system of global trading rules regulated by the World Trade Organization (WTO). In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Jayati Ghosh, one of the world’s leading development economists, dissects the question of intellectual property rights relating to vaccines and argues that the WTO is a vehicle for international imperialism. Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for nearly 35 years, and has been professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 2021. This year, the United Nations named her to be on the High-Level Advisory Board on Economics and Social Affairs.C.J. Polychroniou: The COVID-19 health disaster brought to the surface a multitude of issues, problems and faults associated with the workings of a capitalist world, not least of which are the rules of the WTO over intellectual property rights relating to vaccines. What are the facts and the myths behind WTO’s intellectual property rules?Jayati Ghosh: Intellectual property is governed at the global level by a World Trade Organization treaty called the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. This agreement was itself the result of active corporate lobbying: Susan Sell has provided a detailed and devastating account of how 12 powerful men from pharma, software and entertainment effectively lobbied to make the U.S. government insist on inclusion of this agreement in the set of agreements negotiated at the Uruguay Round of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which was signed in 1994. The TRIPS agreement intervened in legal systems of all member countries, by putting the burden of proof on the accused rather than the accuser, adopting a much looser definition of “invention” that allowed much more private control of knowledge, and then by making all the rules much stricter and more stringent so that it became much easier to claim infringement. This effectively grants a monopoly over knowledge that companies can use to limit production and increase their own market power. Over the past decades, this has become a major limitation on the dissemination of knowledge and technology for the common good, and essentially benefited large companies who now hold most of the IP rights in the world.Patents and other intellectual property rules are usually seen as providing a necessary financial reward for invention/innovation, without which technological change would either not occur or be more limited. The pharma industry argues that costs of developing new drugs are very high and there are high risks involved, because the drugs may not succeed even after years of effort, and so they must be granted property rights over this knowledge and be allowed to charge high prices thereafter.But actually, pharma companies typically only do the “last mile” research for most drugs, vaccines and therapeutics: the bulk of the research — not just the basic science, but also more advanced discoveries that enable breakthroughs — is publicly funded. Big companies increasingly just acquire promising compounds and other knowledge from labs and smaller companies that benefit from public investments. Pharma companies in the U.S., for example, have spent relatively little on R&D — much less than they spend on advertising and marketing, and a small fraction of what they pay out to shareholders or spend in share buybacks designed to increase stock prices.In addition, in the specific case of COVID-19 vaccines, big pharma companies not only benefited from prior publicly funded research and reduced costs of clinical testing because of more unpaid volunteers for trials, they received massive subsidies from governments that have mostly covered their R&D costs. In the U.S. alone, the six major vaccine companies received over $12 billion in public subsidies; other rich-country governments also provided subsidies to these companies for developing these vaccines. Yet the companies were granted exclusive rights over this knowledge, which they are now using to limit supply and keep prices high even as the global pandemic rages on in the developing world.In the U.S. alone, the six major vaccine companies received over $12 billion in public subsidies.Consider the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed by a publicly funded lab in Oxford University. The original distribution model was for an open-license platform, designed to make the vaccine freely available for any manufacturer. However, the Gates Foundation, which had donated $750 million to Oxford for health-related research, persuaded the university to sign an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights. The company promised not to make profits on the vaccine during the pandemic, but because of the competition for doses and opacity in contracts, the range of reported prices of vaccines is vast, from $2.19 to as much as $40 per dose. The major pharma companies producing COVID-19 vaccines are already estimating massive super-profits in 2021 because of the artificially created shortage [effected by the] control over knowledge.In October 2020, South Africa and India proposed a waiver of IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines. In an unexpected but welcome move, the Biden administration also backed the waiver and encouraged other countries to do the same on account of some extraordinary circumstances at play. The move has now received support from over 120 countries, but it has been opposed by pharmaceutical companies. Should the waiver be temporary, or apply permanently to all private patents on technologies, knowledge and vaccines related to COVID-19 and vital medicines?India and South Africa requested the WTO to allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other IP related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic, until global herd immunity is achieved. This waiver would apply only to COVID-19-related vaccines, drugs and treatments; it does not mean a waiver from all TRIPS obligations. They could also more easily collaborate in research and development, technology transfer, manufacturing, scaling up and supplying COVID-19 tools.It is clear that the entire system of health-related innovation, which is really subsidized and funded by the public, must be restructured to make sure that it operates for public benefit across the world.This is a very limited demand, which develops the argument already in the TRIPS agreement that intellectual property rules can be waived “in exceptional circumstances.” All it does is to protect countries from having trade-dispute mechanisms brought against them by rich country governments in the WTO — it does not ensure the transfer of the required knowledge, for which further measures are required: for example, by governments forcing the companies that benefited from public subsidies to share their technology with other producers.Some argue that the TRIPS agreement already contains a clause on compulsory licensing by countries that do have production capacity that provides flexibility on patents. But this is too limited in scope and time-consuming, since it must be done item-by-item between companies, and could then be subject to disputes in the WTO.Even this very limited demand is being fought tooth-and-nail by pharma companies (and consequently by some rich country governments). It is good news that President Biden has dropped U.S. opposition to this waiver, but several European governments with big pharma companies are still opposing it. This is surprising, because such suspension would also benefit their own populations if it made available more vaccines quickly, and larger supply would reduce costs of additional vaccines, making them cheaper for governments and taxpayers across the world, with hopes of finally bringing the pandemic under control.This is a system that is broken and needs to be fixed urgently. The only beneficiaries are big pharma companies — people across the world suffer, and so do other businesses, as economic activity cannot recover as long as the virus continues to spread and destroy lives and livelihoods. The current demand for a waiver applies only to this pandemic, but it is clear that the entire system of health-related innovation, which is really subsidized and funded by the public, must be restructured to make sure that it operates for public benefit across the world. Otherwise, future health threats will also be hard to combat collectively. Even the recent report of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines had recommended that governments increase their own investment in health-related innovations and ensure wider access to the outcomes by preventing privatization of the knowledge.What about trade secrets as a class of protected right for intellectual property rights holders? Should they also be suspended?The current proposal in the WTO correctly asks for a waiver on all intellectual property related to preventive, diagnostic and treatment tools, because many of the restrictions in supply come from other IP rights like those for industrial design and trade secrets.The TRIPS agreement is a particularly extreme example of how the WTO rules affect the policy space of developing countries, but it is by no means the only one.For example, it has been estimated that there are around 64 different IP rights involved in the production of the mRNA vaccines, which have been licensed to Moderna and Pfizer — but new producers would then have to also apply for all of these licenses. A waiver would solve that problem. But, I repeat that the TRIPS waiver is only a first step. It does not ensure that the requisite knowledge will be shared — for that, further pressure needs to be applied by governments to the concerned companies.It has been argued that WTO rules restrict the policy space of developing countries in particular. How so, and does world trade really need the World Trade Organization?The TRIPS agreement is a particularly extreme example of how the WTO rules affect the policy space of developing countries, but it is by no means the only one. Many agreements of the WTO operate to restrict development policies of countries, including many of the strategies that were adopted by the rich countries when they were at earlier stages of development. Most industrialized countries protected their “infant industries,” from the U.K. in the 16th and 17th centuries, the U.S. in the 18th and 19th century, and Germany in the 19th century, to Japan, South Korea, and most recently, China in the 20th century. Yet most of the policies they adopted are no longer permitted by the WTO and its various agreements.Even globally desirable environmental goals are threatened by the way that the WTO functions.Even concerns like preventing hunger and ensuring food security for a poor population are under threat. When India sought to implement a National Food Security Act that would ensure access to minimum food grain provision among the poor population by procuring this from farmers and selling at a slightly subsidized price to poor households, it immediately faced a dispute against it in the WTO brought by the U.S. government. This dispute relied on detailed wording in the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, which prevents this even though it allows the U.S. to spend many times that amount in providing food stamps to its own poor population. India had to struggle to obtain a “Peace Clause” to allow it to continue its public food distribution program, but the dispute still hangs over it.Similarly, developed countries keep demanding that developing countries also reduce their carbon emissions (even though their per capita emissions are tiny compared to those of the Global North). But when they try to promote renewable energy by providing subsidies, they once again face cases in the WTO. Both China and India have had to deal with disputes brought by the WTO against the subsidies they have provided to solar and wind energy producers. So even globally desirable environmental goals are threatened by the way that the WTO functions.It is true that in an unequal world in which economic and geopolitical power is so unevenly distributed, multilateralism is always better than a situation in which the powerful players can pick on weaker countries individually. But the way in which the WTO has functioned raises serious questions about its ability to rectify these power imbalances. Instead, it has often been one of the various ways in which the international legal architecture operates to support imperialism.Neoliberalism in Africa is goodTupy 16 [(Marian, PhD in IR from St. Andrews, editor of Human?Progress?.org, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and coauthor of The Simon Project. He specializes in globalization and global well‐?being and politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa.) “Africa Is Growing Thanks to Capitalism” Cato Institute, 7-22-16, ] TDIAfrica may be the world’s poorest continent, but it is no longer a “hopeless continent,” as The Economist magazine described it back in 2000. Since the start of the new millennium, Africa’s average per capita income adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity rose by more than 50 percent and Africa’s growth rate has averaged almost 5 percent per year.Increasing wealth has led to improvements in key indicators of human wellbeing. In 1999, 58 percent of Africans lived on less than $1.90 per person per day. By 2011, 44 percent of Africans lived on that income – all while the African population rose from 650 million to 1 billion. If the current trends continue, Africa’s absolute poverty rate will fall to 24 percent by 2030.Life expectancy rose from 54 years in 2000 to 62 years in 2015. Infant mortality declined from 80 deaths per 1,000 live births to 49 deaths over the same time period. When it comes to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, occurrence, detection, treatment and survival rates have all improved. Food supply exceeds 2,500 calories per person per day (U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends consumption of 2,000 calories) and famines have disappeared outside of warzones. Primary, secondary and tertiary school enrollments have never been higher.Africa may be the world’s poorest continent, but it is no longer a “hopeless continent,” as The Economist magazine described it back in 2000.Some of Africa’s growth was driven by high commodity prices, but much of it, a McKinsey study found in 2010, was driven by economic reforms. To appreciate the latter, it is important to recall that for much of their post‐?colonial history, African governments have imposed central control over their economies. Inflationary monetary policies, price, wage and exchange rate controls, marketing boards that kept the prices of agricultural products artificially low and impoverished African farmers, and state‐?owned enterprises and monopolies were commonplace.That began to change after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Socialism lost much of its appeal and the Soviet Union, which bankrolled and protected many African dictatorships, fell apart. Between 1990 and 2013, economic freedom as measured by the Fraser Institute in Canada rose from 4.75 out of 10 to 6.23. Freedom to trade rose even more, from 4.03 to 6.39. Most impressively, Africa has made much progress in terms of monetary policy, or access to sound money, which rose from a low of 4.9 in 1995 to a remarkable 7.27 in 2013.Africa has made similar strides in terms of microeconomic policy. As the World Bank’s Doing Business report indicates, Africa’s regulatory environment has much improved. Starting a business, for example, has become easier, with Africa’s score rising from 45 out of 100 in 2004 to 72 in 2015. Dealing with construction permits, resolution of insolvencies, enforcement of contracts, access to electricity, the ease of payment of taxes, registering of property and getting of credit, have all much improved.Unfortunately, there has been no substantial improvement in the quality of Africa’s institutions. According to the Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2016 report, there were only 6 free countries in sub‐?Saharan Africa: Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa. While many countries have adopted more “democratic” constitutions that include term limits, and other legislative and institutional checks on the executive branch of government, African rulers have found a way around those provisions in order to maintain power and abuse it.According to the World Bank, corruption continues to thrive among government officials and, importantly, among members of the judiciary. As a consequence, rule of law indicators for African countries have remained, by and large, unchanged. Yet without efficient and impartial courts, Africa’s economic potential will always remain unfulfilled.That said, as experience in other regions shows, institutional development tends to lag behind economic reforms. In the medium to long run, growth of the African middle class might yet result in a political awakening and greater assertiveness of the African populace, and eventual democratization of the continent.The new millennium has been good to Africa, but the continent is still far from being prosperous, let alone democratic. In order for Africa’s economy to go on expanding, Africans will need to continue with their reforms – never forgetting that the world economy keeps on changing and global competition keeps on increasing. That is Africa’s challenge as well as its opportunity.Growth is sustainable and solves the climate. Brook, et al, 15 (Barry, professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania, John Asafu-Adjaye, University of Queensland, Linus Blomqvist, Breakthrough Institute, Stewart Brand, Long Now Foundation, Ruth DeFries, Columbia Univeristy, Erle Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Christopher Foreman, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, David Keith, Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Martin Lewis, Stanford University, Mark Lynas, Cornell University, Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough Institute, Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado, Boulder, Rachel Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund, Joyashree Roy, Jadavpur University, Mark Sagoff, George Mason University, Michael Shellenberger, Breakthrough Institute, Robert Stone, Filmmaker, and Peter Teague, Breakthrough Institute, “AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO,” )Intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts. These socioeconomic and technological processes are central to economic modernization and environmental protection. Together they allow people to mitigate climate change, to spare nature, and to alleviate global poverty. Although we have to date written separately, our views are increasingly discussed as a whole. We call ourselves ecopragmatists and ecomodernists. We offer this statement to affirm and to clarify our views and to describe our vision for putting humankind’s extraordinary powers in the service of creating a good Anthropocene. 1. Humanity has flourished over the past two centuries. Average life expectancy has increased from 30 to 70 years, resulting in a large and growing population able to live in many different environments. Humanity has made extraordinary progress in reducing the incidence and impacts of infectious diseases, and it has become more resilient to extreme weather and other natural disasters. Violence in all forms has declined significantly and is probably at the lowest per capita level ever experienced by the human species, the horrors of the 20th century and present-day terrorism notwithstanding. Globally, human beings have moved from autocratic government toward liberal democracy characterized by the rule of law and increased freedom. Personal, economic, and political liberties have spread worldwide and are today largely accepted as universal values. Modernization liberates women from traditional gender roles, increasing their control of their fertility. Historically large numbers of humans — both in percentage and in absolute terms — are free from insecurity, penury, and servitude. At the same time, human flourishing has taken a serious toll on natural, nonhuman environments and wildlife. Humans use about half of the planet’s ice-free land, mostly for pasture, crops, and production forestry. Of the land once covered by forests, 20 percent has been converted to human use. Populations of many mammals, amphibians, and birds have declined by more than 50 percent in the past 40 years alone. More than 100 species from those groups went extinct in the 20th century, and about 785 since 1500. As we write, only four northern white rhinos are confirmed to exist. Given that humans are completely dependent on the living biosphere, how is it possible that people are doing so much damage to natural systems without doing more harm to themselves? The role that technology plays in reducing humanity’s dependence on nature explains this paradox. Human technologies, from those that first enabled agriculture to replace hunting and gathering, to those that drive today’s globalized economy, have made humans less reliant upon the many ecosystems that once provided their only sustenance, even as those same ecosystems have often been left deeply damaged. Despite frequent assertions starting in the 1970s of fundamental “limits to growth,” there is still remarkably little evidence that human population and economic expansion will outstrip the capacity to grow food or procure critical material resources in the foreseeable future. To the degree to which there are fixed physical boundaries to human consumption, they are so theoretical as to be functionally irrelevant. The amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth, for instance, is ultimately finite but represents no meaningful constraint upon human endeavors. Human civilization can flourish for centuries and millennia on energy delivered from a closed uranium or thorium fuel cycle, or from hydrogen-deuterium fusion. With proper management, humans are at no risk of lacking sufficient agricultural land for food. Given plentiful land and unlimited energy, substitutes for other material inputs to human well-being can easily be found if those inputs become scarce or expensive. There remain, however, serious long-term environmental threats to human well-being, such as anthropogenic climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and ocean acidification. While these risks are difficult to quantify, the evidence is clear today that they could cause significant risk of catastrophic impacts on societies and ecosystems. Even gradual, non-catastrophic outcomes associated with these threats are likely to result in significant human and economic costs as well as rising ecological losses. Much of the world’s population still suffers from more-immediate local environmental health risks. Indoor and outdoor air pollution continue to bring premature death and illness to millions annually. Water pollution and water-borne illness due to pollution and degradation of watersheds cause similar suffering. 2. Even as human environmental impacts continue to grow in the aggregate, a range of long-term trends are today driving significant decoupling of human well-being from environmental impacts. Decoupling occurs in both relative and absolute terms. Relative decoupling means that human environmental impacts rise at a slower rate than overall economic growth. Thus, for each unit of economic output, less environmental impact (e.g., deforestation, defaunation, pollution) results. Overall impacts may still increase, just at a slower rate than would otherwise be the case. Absolute decoupling occurs when total environmental impacts — impacts in the aggregate — peak and begin to decline, even as the economy continues to grow. Decoupling can be driven by both technological and demographic trends and usually results from a combination of the two. The growth rate of the human population has already peaked. Today’s population growth rate is one percent per year, down from its high point of 2.1 percent in the 1970s. Fertility rates in countries containing more than half of the global population are now below replacement level. Population growth today is primarily driven by longer life spans and lower infant mortality, not by rising fertility rates. Given current trends, it is very possible that the size of the human population will peak this century and then start to decline. Trends in population are inextricably linked to other demographic and economic dynamics. For the first time in human history, over half the global population lives in cities. By 2050, 70 percent are expected to dwell in cities, a number that could rise to 80 percent or more by the century’s end. Cities are characterized by both dense populations and low fertility rates. Cities occupy just 1 to 3 percent of the Earth’s surface and yet are home to nearly four billion people. As such, cities both drive and symbolize the decoupling of humanity from nature, performing far better than rural economies in providing efficiently for material needs while reducing environmental impacts. The growth of cities along with the economic and ecological benefits that come with them are inseparable from improvements in agricultural productivity. As agriculture has become more land and labor efficient, rural populations have left the countryside for the cities. Roughly half the US population worked the land in 1880. Today, less than 2 percent does. As human lives have been liberated from hard agricultural labor, enormous human resources have been freed up for other endeavors. Cities, as people know them today, could not exist without radical changes in farming. In contrast, modernization is not possible in a subsistence agrarian economy. These improvements have resulted not only in lower labor requirements per unit of agricultural output but also in lower land requirements. This is not a new trend: rising harvest yields have for millennia reduced the amount of land required to feed the average person. The average per-capita use of land today is vastly lower than it was 5,000 years ago, despite the fact that modern people enjoy a far richer diet. Thanks to technological improvements in agriculture, during the half-century starting in the mid-1960s, the amount of land required for growing crops and animal feed for the average person declined by one-half. Agricultural intensification, along with the move away from the use of wood as fuel, has allowed many parts of the world to experience net reforestation. About 80 percent of New England is today forested, compared with about 50 percent at the end of the 19th century. Over the past 20 years, the amount of land dedicated to production forest worldwide declined by 50 million hectares, an area the size of France. The “forest transition” from net deforestation to net reforestation seems to be as resilient a feature of development as the demographic transition that reduces human birth rates as poverty declines. Human use of many other resources is similarly peaking. The amount of water needed for the average diet has declined by nearly 25 percent over the past half-century. Nitrogen pollution continues to cause eutrophication and large dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico. While the total amount of nitrogen pollution is rising, the amount used per unit of production has declined significantly in developed nations. Indeed, in contradiction to the often-expressed fear of infinite growth colliding with a finite planet, demand for many material goods may be saturating as societies grow wealthier. Meat consumption, for instance, has peaked in many wealthy nations and has shifted away from beef toward protein sources that are less land intensive. As demand for material goods is met, developed economies see higher levels of spending directed to materially less-intensive service and knowledge sectors, which account for an increasing share of economic activity. This dynamic might be even more pronounced in today’s developing economies, which may benefit from being late adopters of resource-efficient technologies. Taken together, these trends mean that the total human impact on the environment, including land-use change, overexploitation, and pollution, can peak and decline this century. By understanding and promoting these emergent processes, humans have the opportunity to re-wild and re-green the Earth — even as developing countries achieve modern living standards, and material poverty ends. 3. The processes of decoupling described above challenge the idea that early human societies lived more lightly on the land than do modern societies. Insofar as past societies had less impact upon the environment, it was because those societies supported vastly smaller populations. In fact, early human populations with much less advanced technologies had far larger individual land footprints than societies have today. Consider that a population of no more than one or two million North Americans hunted most of the continent’s large mammals into extinction in the late Pleistocene, while burning and clearing forests across the continent in the process. Extensive human transformations of the environment continued throughout the Holocene period: as much as three-quarters of all deforestation globally occurred before the Industrial Revolution. The technologies that humankind’s ancestors used to meet their needs supported much lower living standards with much higher per-capita impacts on the environment. Absent a massive human die-off, any large-scale attempt at recoupling human societies to nature using these technologies would result in an unmitigated ecological and human disaster. Ecosystems around the world are threatened today because people over-rely on them: people who depend on firewood and charcoal for fuel cut down and degrade forests; people who eat bush meat for food hunt mammal species to local extirpation. Whether it’s a local indigenous community or a foreign corporation that benefits, it is the continued dependence of humans on natural environments that is the problem for the conservation of nature. Conversely, modern technologies, by using natural ecosystem flows and services more efficiently, offer a real chance of reducing the totality of human impacts on the biosphere. To embrace these technologies is to find paths to a good Anthropocene. The modernization processes that have increasingly liberated humanity from nature are, of course, double-edged, since they have also degraded the natural environment. Fossil fuels, mechanization and manufacturing, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, electrification and modern transportation and communication technologies, have made larger human populations and greater consumption possible in the first place. Had technologies not improved since the Dark Ages, no doubt the human population would not have grown much either. It is also true that large, increasingly affluent urban populations have placed greater demands upon ecosystems in distant places –– the extraction of natural resources has been globalized. But those same technologies have also made it possible for people to secure food, shelter, heat, light, and mobility through means that are vastly more resource- and land-efficient than at any previous time in human history. Decoupling human well-being from the destruction of nature requires the conscious acceleration of emergent decoupling processes. In some cases, the objective is the development of technological substitutes. Reducing deforestation and indoor air pollution requires the substitution of wood and charcoal with modern energy. In other cases, humanity’s goal should be to use resources more productively. For example, increasing agricultural yields can reduce the conversion of forests and grasslands to farms. Humans should seek to liberate the environment from the economy. Urbanization, agricultural intensification, nuclear power, aquaculture, and desalination are all processes with a demonstrated potential to reduce human demands on the environment, allowing more room for non-human species. Suburbanization, low-yield farming, and many forms of renewable energy production, in contrast, generally require more land and resources and leave less room for nature. These patterns suggest that humans are as likely to spare nature because it is not needed to meet their needs as they are to spare it for explicit aesthetic and spiritual reasons. The parts of the planet that people have not yet profoundly transformed have mostly been spared because they have not yet found an economic use for them — mountains, deserts, boreal forests, and other “marginal” lands. Decoupling raises the possibility that societies might achieve peak human impact without intruding much further on relatively untouched areas. Nature unused is nature spared. 4. Plentiful access to modern energy is an essential prerequisite for human development and for decoupling development from nature. The availability of inexpensive energy allows poor people around the world to stop using forests for fuel. It allows humans to grow more food on less land, thanks to energy-heavy inputs such as fertilizer and tractors. Energy allows humans to recycle waste water and desalinate sea water in order to spare rivers and aquifers. It allows humans to cheaply recycle metal and plastic rather than to mine and refine these minerals. Looking forward, modern energy may allow the capture of carbon from the atmosphere to reduce the accumulated carbon that drives global warming. However, for at least the past three centuries, rising energy production globally has been matched by rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Nations have also been slowly decarbonizing — that is, reducing the carbon intensity of their economies — over that same time period. But they have not been doing so at a rate consistent with keeping cumulative carbon emissions low enough to reliably stay below the international target of less than 2 degrees Centigrade of global warming. Significant climate mitigation, therefore, will require that humans rapidly accelerate existing processes of decarbonization. There remains much confusion, however, as to how this might be accomplished. In developing countries, rising energy consumption is tightly correlated with rising incomes and improving living standards. Although the use of many other material resource inputs such as nitrogen, timber, and land are beginning to peak, the centrality of energy in human development and its many uses as a substitute for material and human resources suggest that energy consumption will continue to rise through much if not all of the 21st century. For that reason, any conflict between climate mitigation and the continuing development process through which billions of people around the world are achieving modern living standards will continue to be resolved resoundingly in favor of the latter. Climate change and other global ecological challenges are not the most important immediate concerns for the majority of the world's people. Nor should they be. A new coal-fired power station in Bangladesh may bring air pollution and rising carbon dioxide emissions but will also save lives. For millions living without light and forced to burn dung to cook their food, electricity and modern fuels, no matter the source, offer a pathway to a better life, even as they also bring new environmental challenges. Meaningful climate mitigation is fundamentally a technological challenge. By this we mean that even dramatic limits to per capita global consumption would be insufficient to achieve significant climate mitigation. Absent profound technological change there is no credible path to meaningful climate mitigation. While advocates differ in the particular mix of technologies they favor, we are aware of no quantified climate mitigation scenario in which technological change is not responsible for the vast majority of emissions cuts. The specific technological paths that people might take toward climate mitigation remain deeply contested. Theoretical scenarios for climate mitigation typically reflect their creators’ technological preferences and analytical assumptions while all too often failing to account for the cost, rate, and scale at which low-carbon energy technologies can be deployed. The history of energy transitions, however, suggests that there have been consistent patterns associated with the ways that societies move toward cleaner sources of energy. Substituting higher-quality (i.e., less carbon-intensive, higher-density) fuels for lower-quality (i.e., more carbon-intensive, lower-density) ones is how virtually all societies have decarbonized, and points the way toward accelerated decarbonization in the future. Transitioning to a world powered by zero-carbon energy sources will require energy technologies that are power dense and capable of scaling to many tens of terawatts to power a growing human economy. Most forms of renewable energy are, unfortunately, incapable of doing so. The scale of land use and other environmental impacts necessary to power the world on biofuels or many other renewables are such that we doubt they provide a sound pathway to a zero-carbon low-footprint future. High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an exception and have the potential to provide many tens of terawatts on a few percent of the Earth’s surface. Present-day solar technologies will require substantial innovation to meet this standard and the development of cheap energy storage technologies that are capable of dealing with highly variable energy generation at large scales. Nuclear fission today represents the only present-day zero-carbon technology with the demonstrated ability to meet most, if not all, of the energy demands of a modern economy. However, a variety of social, economic, and institutional challenges make deployment of present-day nuclear technologies at scales necessary to achieve significant climate mitigation unlikely. A new generation of nuclear technologies that are safer and cheaper will likely be necessary for nuclear energy to meet its full potential as a critical climate mitigation technology. In the long run, next-generation solar, advanced nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion represent the most plausible pathways toward the joint goals of climate stabilization and radical decoupling of humans from nature. If the history of energy transitions is any guide, however, that transition will take time. During that transition, other energy technologies can provide important social and environmental benefits. Hydroelectric dams, for example, may be a cheap source of low-carbon power for poor nations even though their land and water footprint is relatively large. Fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage can likewise provide substantial environmental benefits over current fossil or biomass energies. The ethical and pragmatic path toward a just and sustainable global energy economy requires that human beings transition as rapidly as possible to energy sources that are cheap, clean, dense, and abundant. Such a path will require sustained public support for the development and deployment of clean energy technologies, both within nations and between them, though international collaboration and competition, and within a broader framework for global modernization and development. 5. We write this document out of deep love and emotional connection to the natural world. By appreciating, exploring, seeking to understand, and cultivating nature, many people get outside themselves. They connect with their deep evolutionary history. Even when people never experience these wild natures directly, they affirm their existence as important for their psychological and spiritual well-being. Humans will always materially depend on nature to some degree. Even if a fully synthetic world were possible, many of us might still choose to continue to live more coupled with nature than human sustenance and technologies require. What decoupling offers is the possibility that humanity’s material dependence upon nature might be less destructive. The case for a more active, conscious, and accelerated decoupling to spare nature draws more on spiritual or aesthetic than on material or utilitarian arguments. Current and future generations could survive and prosper materially on a planet with much less biodiversity and wild nature. But this is not a world we want nor, if humans embrace decoupling processes, need to accept. What we are here calling nature, or even wild nature, encompasses landscapes, seascapes, biomes and ecosystems that have, in more cases than not, been regularly altered by human influences over centuries and millennia. Conservation science, and the concepts of biodiversity, complexity, and indigeneity are useful, but alone cannot determine which landscapes to preserve, or how. In most cases, there is no single baseline prior to human modification to which nature might be returned. For example, efforts to restore landscapes to more closely resemble earlier states (“indigeneity”) may involve removing recently arrived species (“invasives”) and thus require a net reduction in local biodiversity. In other circumstances, communities may decide to sacrifice indigeneity for novelty and biodiversity. Explicit efforts to preserve landscapes for their non-utilitarian value are inevitably anthropogenic choices. For this reason, all conservation efforts are fundamentally anthropogenic. The setting aside of wild nature is no less a human choice, in service of human preferences, than bulldozing it. Humans will save wild places and landscapes by convincing our fellow citizens that these places, and the creatures that occupy them, are worth protecting. People may choose to have some services — like water purification and flood protection — provided for by natural systems, such as forested watersheds, reefs, marshes, and wetlands, even if those natural systems are more expensive than simply building water treatment plants, seawalls, and levees. There will be no one-size-fits-all solution. Environments will be shaped by different local, historical, and cultural preferences. While we believe that agricultural intensification for land-sparing is key to protecting wild nature, we recognize that many communities will continue to opt for land-sharing, seeking to conserve wildlife within agricultural landscapes, for example, rather than allowing it to revert to wild nature in the form of grasslands, scrub, and forests. Where decoupling reduces pressure on landscapes and ecosystems to meet basic human needs, landowners, communities, and governments still must decide to what aesthetic or economic purpose they wish to dedicate those lands. Accelerated decoupling alone will not be enough to ensure more wild nature. There must still be a conservation politics and a wilderness movement to demand more wild nature for aesthetic and spiritual reasons. Along with decoupling humankind’s material needs from nature, establishing an enduring commitment to preserve wilderness, biodiversity, and a mosaic of beautiful landscapes will require a deeper emotional connection to them. 6. We affirm the need and human capacity for accelerated, active, and conscious decoupling. Technological progress is not inevitable. Decoupling environmental impacts from economic outputs is not simply a function of market-driven innovation and efficient response to scarcity. The long arc of human transformation of natural environments through technologies began well before there existed anything resembling a market or a price signal. Thanks to rising demand, scarcity, inspiration, and serendipity, humans have remade the world for millennia. Technological solutions to environmental problems must also be considered within a broader social, economic, and political context. We think it is counterproductive for nations like Germany and Japan, and states like California, to shutter nuclear power plants, recarbonize their energy sectors, and recouple their economies to fossil fuels and biomass. However, such examples underscore clearly that technological choices will not be determined by remote international bodies but rather by national and local institutions and cultures. Too often, modernization is conflated, both by its defenders and critics, with capitalism, corporate power, and laissez-faire economic policies. We reject such reductions. What we refer to when we speak of modernization is the long-term evolution of social, economic, political, and technological arrangements in human societies toward vastly improved material well-being, public health, resource productivity, economic integration, shared infrastructure, and personal freedom. Modernization has liberated ever more people from lives of poverty and hard agricultural labor, women from chattel status, children and ethnic minorities from oppression, and societies from capricious and arbitrary governance. Greater resource productivity associated with modern socio-technological systems has allowed human societies to meet human needs with fewer resource inputs and less impact on the environment. More-productive economies are wealthier economies, capable of better meeting human needs while committing more of their economic surplus to non-economic amenities, including better human health, greater human freedom and opportunity, arts, culture, and the conservation of nature. Modernizing processes are far from complete, even in advanced developed economies. Material consumption has only just begun to peak in the wealthiest societies. Decoupling of human welfare from environmental impacts will require a sustained commitment to technological progress and the continuing evolution of social, economic, and political institutions alongside those changes. Accelerated technological progress will require the active, assertive, and aggressive participation of private sector entrepreneurs, markets, civil society, and the state. While we reject the planning fallacy of the 1950s, we continue to embrace a strong public role in addressing environmental problems and accelerating technological innovation, including research to develop better technologies, subsidies, and other measures to help bring them to market, and regulations to mitigate environmental hazards. And international collaboration on technological innovation and technology transfer is essential in the areas of agriculture and energy. The economy is sustainable and regulating capitalism is key – market mechanisms facilitate necessary breakthroughs in techBosch 19 (Stephan Bosch, PhD, Institute of Geography, University of Augsburg; Matthias Schmidt, PhD, Institute of Geography, Chair for Human Geography, University of Augsburg; “Is the post-fossil era necessarily post-capitalistic? – The robustness and capabilities of green capitalism”, Ecological Economics, 161, 270–279. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.04.001)6. ConclusionIn this paper, we argued that capitalism is not only much more robust than presumed by its critics, but moreover features promising capabilities with regard to solving the environmental crisis.At the beginning, we elucidated that capitalism is able to prevail even given the end of fossil energy carriers and to maintain its productivity also within a regenerative energy system. Innovative concepts of storage, direct current transmission, and smart grids play a core role herein. Moreover, we were able to show that crisis is an essential element of the capitalist social order, with critical situations even being able to provide the necessary preconditions for the economy's transformation towards sustainability. Innovation is an essential ingredient of this process. We argued that precisely the preconditions given in competitive capitalism generate innovations. Therefore, in our view, the decisive social advantage of a competition-oriented capitalist system is this: as expressed by Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction, it offers maximum incentive for entrepreneurial initiatives. According to the theory of economic development, this incentive cannot be given within the socialist markets or degrowth-oriented societies favoured, but not more specifically detailed, by Harris (2013) and Kallis (2011). Yet this stimulus is crucial as it is accompanied by greater innovational strength, thus providing more auspicious preconditions for groundbreaking innovations, e.g. regarding aspects of technology, education, vocational training, research, social infrastructure, medicine, and nature protection (Schumpeter, 1994; Iversen, 2005; Wangler, 2013). However, we again want to point out the numerous social problems of the deployment of renewable energies (e.g. Aitken, 2010), especially concerning large-scale infrastructure projects (e.g. Avila, 2018).In the context of competitive capitalism as described by Schumpeter, the promising capabilities of green capitalism were presented in detail. Nevertheless, the predominant criticism of capitalism scarcely assumes the Schumpeterian concept of ‘creative destruction’. Rather, it focuses on a much later stage of evolution of the economic system, in which the socio-economic disparities as a result of economic, but also of other factors have manifested themselves distinctly and with great complexity (cf. trustified capitalism). The pure criticism of capitalism thus seems to us to be too superficial as an explanatory model, which relies on arguments that disregard precisely those fertile approaches to surmounting the energetic and environmental crisis that presently arise from numerous processes of creative destruction. The cradle-to-cradle approach illustrated above is only one example of a concept that, by means of innovation, abandons the old and establishes the new. Yet we also think that competition and the market alone will not suffice to concertedly solve the global environmental crisis. This calls for political action that, by creating suitable institutional frame conditions, succeeds in pooling society's forces with regard to the ecological questions of our time, thus specifically promoting innovation.We demonstrated that the usefulness of state measures always also depends on the respective specific national and economic context. An objection to capitalist social orders in general disregards this diversity of contexts and is at risk of overlooking important determinants of crisis management. The decisive difference in the various capitalist systems' innovative strength lies in the degree to which the cooperation of the major market players – state, enterprises, science, and civil society – is institutionalised. This implies that a central part falls to the state in embedding the actions of the most important players into appropriate institutional structures. Only thereby will it be possible to shoulder the heavy load of material, costs, work, and coordination required for the energy system's transformation. A non-committal state runs the risk of failing this task. E.g., Solomon and Krishna (2011) showed that the intended transformation of the energy system in the USA after the oil crisis was unsuccessful due to the lack of suitable preconditions for innovation in niche markets. Moreover, ?etkovi? and Buzogány (2016) found that in liberal manifestations of capitalism, the deficiency of political and institutional instruments inhibits the necessary orchestration of activities on the part of state, industry, and financial sector.In sum, even though fossil fuels and the capitalist system based upon them have given rise to the environmental crisis, surmounting the crisis does not necessarily call for surmounting market-based approaches; rather, market economies based on regenerative energy systems that are competition-oriented and guided by state measures may develop great ecological and socio-economic effectivity.1AR – Alt FailsMovements failEpstein 14 (Barbara, author, former Professor Emerita in the Humanities Division @ UC Santa Cruz, “Prospects for a Resurgence of the U.S. Left”, Tikkun, Volume 29, Number 2, Spring 2014, Project Muse)The United States has no coherent, effective Left. Over the last four decades, since the movements of the sixties and seventies went into decline, the problem of the degradation of the environment has reached a level that threatens the existence of humans and other species on the planet. The neoliberal form of capitalism that has taken hold globally has caused the gap between the wealth and power of those at the top and the rest of us to widen dramatically, undermining the quality of life of the majority and threatening the public arena itself. Despite the depth of the economic crisis of 2008, there is no substantial movement for the abandonment of neoliberalism, the regulation of industry, or the creation of a more egalitarian economy. The environmental movement has grown, but not to the point of having the capacity to reverse environmental degradation. There are undoubtedly more people and projects devoted to economic and social justice—and to environmental sustainability—than there were in the sixties and seventies. The problem has to do with collective impact. No movements of the Left have emerged capable of making a real difference in the conditions that we face. Why is this? And what can be done about it?? A Fatalistic Approach to Gradual Crises? The weakness of the Left is partly due to the fact that these problems have come upon us gradually, allowing us to accommodate ourselves to them. The widening of the gap in wealth and power has been for the most part incremental; it is only in retrospect that one can see how dramatic the effect has been. The same is true of the working day, which has been lengthened, for most people, bit by bit, but at no point by enough to lead to a widespread revolt. Something similar could be said about the environment. Environmental crises for the most part take place somewhere other than where one lives. Such crises are increasingly severe and increasingly common, and there is widespread awareness that at some point in the future we are all likely to be directly affected. But a future crisis does not have the mobilizing capacity of a crisis that confronts one in the present. Most people, including those who are aware of the depths of these problems, go about their business, doing what they—we—have always done, though with increasing apprehension about the future.? “The environmental movement has grown, but not to the point of having the capacity to reverse environmental degradation,” Epstein writes. Environmental activists march in Detroit to protest its air-polluting incinerator.? “The environmental movement has grown, but not to the point of having the capacity to reverse environmental degradation,” Epstein writes. Environmental activists march in Detroit to protest its air-polluting incinerator.? A widespread sense that nothing can be done is probably an even more significant obstacle to effective, collective action than the gradual character of these changes. Mobilization against a system, an institution, or a ruling elite is most likely to take place when it seems not only oppressive but also outmoded, on the way out, or at least on the defensive. The Civil Rights Movement had existed since World War II but gained momentum in the late fifties and early sixties, when the international aspirations of the United States made racism at home a serious embarrassment. Feminism likewise took hold on a mass basis when the entry of women into the labor force on a large scale placed patriarchal authority in question and gave women the leverage to demand equality. Movements for change are most likely to take hold when change seems possible, when there are levers that can be grasped, as when oppressive institutions seem ready to collapse or are widely seen as illegitimate. It helps when some of those in positions of power agree that the existing system is not working and support change. The depression of the 1930s affected the corporate class as well as the rest of society, though not nearly as badly; fear of a continuing downward economic spiral led some among the elite to agree that changes of some sort were necessary. In the wake of 2008, while most people have suffered economic reverses, corporate profits have more than recovered. Neoliberal capitalism is thriving, at least if measured by corporate profits.? The Left is weakened by its deep generational divide and by the fact that “white leftists tend to know little about movements of the Left among people of color,” Epstein writes. Here, members of a Latina immigrant organization participate in a May Day rally in San Francisco.? Click for larger view? The Left is weakened by its deep generational divide and by the fact that “white leftists tend to know little about movements of the Left among people of color,” Epstein writes. Here, members of a Latina immigrant organization participate in a May Day rally in San Francisco.? This is not to argue that movements of the Left take shape and grow only when conditions are propitious. Left-led resistance movements formed in the major ghettos of German-occupied Central and Eastern Europe, despite the fact that the deaths of those involved seemed the most likely outcome. Slave revolts took place in the West Indies and the American South under similar circumstances. But when circumstances are difficult, oppositional movements are most likely to take hold when there are stable organizations that provide a sustained, reliable framework for action, and when such movements have compelling goals and a clear conception of how to achieve these goals—that is, a strategic perspective. The current U.S. Left has none of these.? Fragmentation and Generational Divides? The major organizations of the Left that once provided the framework for ongoing collective action and strategic discussion either no longer exist or have atrophied. There are large numbers of progressive nonprofits but few organizations that those who want to make a difference, but lack special skills or expertise, can join and work with. Among young people, leftist activist projects thrive, but they tend to come and go. The most stable and influential institutions of the Left are its media outlets: published and online journals, radio stations, a few left-wing presses, and books with a left-wing perspective published by mainstream presses. The central role of media leads to a Left that is defined more by what people read and what opinions they hold than by their associations or their practical activity.? We have a fragmented Left held together by a vague commitment to a more just, egalitarian, and sustainable world, but in practical terms lacking a common focus or basis for coordinated action. The fragmented and fluid character of the Left reflects the fragmentation and fluidity of contemporary society: there is probably no going back to the structured and stable organizations of the past (the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, or even the Students for a Democratic Society) consisting of members who were likely to remain active and engaged for many years. But a Left based on individuals with leftist views and a plethora of frequently ephemeral projects has little ability to consider its collective direction and less influence than its numbers would warrant.? The Left is weakened especially by the deep divide between the older generation, veterans of the movements of the sixties and seventies, now in their sixties or older, and the younger generation, in their early forties or younger. The outlook and vocabulary of the older generation, shaped for the most part by perspectives ranging from Marxism to social democracy, tends to clash with the outlook of the younger generation, among whom anarchism has been a major influence. The result is little contact and less cooperation between activists of the two generations. In addition, white leftists tend to know little about (and have little contact with) movements of the Left among people of color. And the sector of the Left that consists largely of professionals and intellectuals has little contact with the labor Left.? The most promising sector of the U.S. Left is the arena of youth activism that tilts toward anarchism and that was at the center of the Occupy movement. Activists in this arena share an opposition to all forms of oppression (racism, sexism, homophobia, and others), a dislike of hierarchy and a deep suspicion of the state, a vision of an egalitarian, cooperative, and decentralized society, and a desire to model that society in their political practice. Many would include an explicit opposition to capitalism.? The Occupy movement was shaped by the idealism, energy, and commitment of a politics influenced by what some call anarchism and others call anti-authoritarianism. Occupy’s protest against the consolidation of wealth and power among the few plus the utopian quality of Occupy communities led to explosive growth of the movement and massive public support. But when police closed the encampments, the movement, as a mass movement, soon collapsed. Valuable organizing projects spun off, but these are quite different from Occupy. One may criticize Occupy activists for not having given much thought to what form the movement would take after the inevitable police closures. But the episodic, fleeting character of Occupy is shared by movements around the world: an incident sets off protest over long-standing grievances, protest mushrooms into a mass movement, the protest is repressed, and the movement collapses, having altered public discourse but leaving no organization or institution capable of bringing about social change. This is the weakness of the ascendant form of leftist or protest politics that emphasizes spontaneity and avoids organizational forms able to last.Alt is impossible – human natureRees 14 (William E, PhD, FRSC UBC School of Community and Regional Planning, ecological economist Professor Emeritus and former director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, “Avoiding Collapse,” ) In theory, opting for this alternative should not be a difficult choice for Homo sapiens . Would an osten - sibly intelligent, forward-thinking, morally conscious, compassionate species continue to defend an economic system that wrecks its planetary home, exacerbates inequality, undermines social cohesion, generates greater net costs than benefits and ultimately threatens to lead to systemic collapse? Remarkably, the answer so far seems to be “yes.” There are simply no strong voices for caution among contemporary leaders and certainly no political constituencies for degrowth. There is no nascent plan for a World Assembly for Mutual Survival. Humanity’s unique capacities for collective intelligence, rational analysis and planning ahead for the common good play no major role in the political arena, particularly when they challenge conventional myths, corporate values and monied elites. On present evidence, there is little possibility that anything like the proposals outlined above will be implemented in time for a smooth transition to sustainability. Daly was right: “evidentally, things still have to get much worse before we will muster the courage and clarity to try to make them better.” 61 We are our own worst enemy. People are naturally both short-sighted and optimistic and thus discount the future; we generally react emotionally/instinctively to things that threaten our social status or political/economic power; those most vested in the status quo therefore vigorously resist significant change; corruption and greed (all but sanctioned by contemporary morality) over - shadow the public interest. Mindless dedication to entrenched beliefs is a particularly powerful blinder to otherwise obvious truths. History shows that the resultant “Woodenheadedness...plays a remarkably large role in gov - ernment. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions (i.e. ideology) while ignoring any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.” 62 Neuroscientists have long recognized the general phenomenon, but the means by which people become so deeply committed to particular concepts has only recently been revealed. In the course of individual development, repeated social, cultural and sensory experiences actually trace a semi-permanent record in the individual’s synaptic circuitry — cultural norms, beliefs and values can acquire a physical presence in the brain. Once entrenched, these neural structures alter the individual’s perception of subsequent experiences. People tend to seek out situations, people and information that reinforce their neural “presets.” Conversely, “when faced with information that does not agree with their internal structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret, or forget that information.” 631AR – Collapse BadCollapse turns all their impacts Monbiot 9 (George, columnist for The Guardian, has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), Oxford Brookes (planning), and East London (environmental science), August 17, 2009, “Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse?,” online: )The interesting question, and the one that probably divides us, is this: to what extent should we welcome the likely collapse of industrial civilisation? Or more precisely: to what extent do we believe that some good may come of it? I detect in your writings, and in the conversations we have had, an attraction towards – almost a yearning for – this apocalypse, a sense that you see it as a cleansing fire that will rid the world of a diseased society. If this is your view, I do not share it. I'm sure we can agree that the immediate consequences of collapse would be hideous: the breakdown of the systems that keep most of us alive; mass starvation; war. These alone surely give us sufficient reason to fight on, however faint our chances appear. But even if we were somehow able to put this out of our minds, I believe that what is likely to come out on the other side will be worse than our current settlement. Here are three observations: 1 Our species (unlike most of its members) is tough and resilient; 2 When civilisations collapse, psychopaths take over; 3 We seldom learn from others' mistakes. From the first observation, this follows: even if you are hardened to the fate of humans, you can surely see that our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others. However hard we fall, we will recover sufficiently to land another hammer blow on the biosphere. We will continue to do so until there is so little left that even Homo sapiens can no longer survive. This is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence, opposable thumbs and an ability to interpret and exploit almost every possible resource – in the absence of political restraint.1AR – WarCapitalism solves war on a massive scale – it creates lock-in mechanisms that bind countries together and economically dampens conflict – robust studies Dafoe 14 (Allan Dafoe & Nina Kelsey; assistant professor in political science at Yale & research associate in international economics at Berkeley; Journal of Peace Research, “Observing the capitalist peace: Examining market-mediated signaling and other mechanisms,” )Countries with liberal political and economic systems rarely use military force against each other. This anomalous peace has been most prominently attributed to the ‘democratic peace’ – the apparent tendency for democratic countries to avoid militarized conflict with each other (Maoz & Russett, 1993; Ray, 1995; Dafoe, Oneal & Russett, 2013).More recently, however, scholars have proposed that the liberal peace could be partly (Russett & Oneal, 2001) or primarily (Gartzke, 2007; but see Dafoe, 2011) attributed to liberal economic factors, such as commercial and financial interdependence. In particular, Erik Gartzke, Quan Li & Charles Boehmer (2001), henceforth referred to as GLB, have demonstrated that measures of capital openness have a substantial and statistically significant association with peaceful dyadic relations. Gartzke (2007) confirms that this association is robust to a large variety of model specifications. To explain this correlation, GLB propose that countries with open capital markets are more able to credibly signal their resolve through the bearing of greater economic costs prior to the outbreak of militarized conflict. This explanation is novel and plausible, and resonates with the rationalist view of asymmetric information as a cause of conflict (Fearon, 1995). Moreover, it implies clear testable predictions on evidential domains different from those examined by GLB. In this article we exploit this opportunity by constructing a confirmatory test of GLB’s theory of market-mediated signaling. We first develop an innovative quantitative case selection technique to identify crucial cases where the mechanism of market-mediated signaling should be most easily observed. Specifically, we employ quantitative data and the statistical models used to support the theory we are probing to create an impartial and transparentmeans of selecting cases in which the theory – as specified by the theory’s creators –makes its most confident predictions.We implement three different case selection rules to select cases that optimize on two criteria: (1) maximizing the inferential leverage of our cases, and (2) minimizing selection bias. We examine these cases for a necessary implication of market-mediated signaling: that key participants drew a connection between conflictual events and adverse market movements. Such an inference is a necessary step in the process by which market-mediated costs can signal resolve. For evidence of this we examine news media, government documents, memoirs, historical works, and other sources. We additionally examine other sources, such as market data, for evidence that economic costs were caused by escalatory events. Based on this analysis, we assess the evidence for GLB’s theory of market mediated costly signaling. Our article then considers a more complex heterogeneous effects version of market-mediated signaling in which unspecified scope conditions are required for the mechanism to operate. Our design has the feature of selecting cases in which scope conditions are most likely to be absent. This allows us to perform an exploratory analysis of these cases, looking for possible scope conditions. We also consider alternative potential mechanisms. Our cases are reviewed in more detail in the online appendix.1 To summarize our results, our confirmatory test finds that while market-mediated signaling may be operative in the most serious disputes, it was largely absent in the less serious disputes that characterize most of the sample of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). This suggests either that other mechanisms account for the correlation between capital openness and peace, or that the scope conditions for market-mediated signaling are restrictive. Of the signals that we observed, strategic market-mediated signals were relatively more important than automatic market-mediated signals in the most serious conflicts. We identify a number of potential scope conditions, such as that (1) the conflict must be driven by bargaining failure arising from uncertainty and (2) the economic costs need to escalate gradually and need to be substantial, but less than the expected military costs of conflict. Finally, there were a number of other explanations that seemed present in the cases we examined and could account for the capitalist peace: capital openness is associated with greater anticipated economic costs of conflict; capital openness leads third parties to have a greater stake in the conflict and therefore be more willing to intervene; a dyadic acceptance of the status quo could promote both peace and capital openness; and countries seeking to institutionalize a regional peace might instrumentally harness the pacifying effects of liberal markets. The correlation: Open capital markets and peace The empirical puzzle at the core of this article is the significant and robust correlation noted by GLB between high levels of capital openness in both members of a dyad and the infrequent incidence of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and wars between the members of this dyad (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001). The index of capital openness (CAPOPEN) is intended to capture the ‘difficulty states face in seeking to impose restrictions on capital flows (the degree of lost policy autonomy due to globalization)’ (Gartzke & Li, 2003: 575). CAPOPEN is constructed from data drawn from the widely used IMF’s Annual Reports on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Controls; it is a combination of eight binary variables that measure different types of government restrictions on capital and currency flow (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001: 407). The measure of CAPOPEN starts in 1966 and is defined for many countries (increasingly more over time). Most of the countries that do not have a measure of CAPOPEN are communist.2 GLB implement this variable in a dyadic framework by creating a new variable, CAPOPENL, which is the smaller of the two dyadic values of CAPOPEN. This operationalization is sometimes referred to as the ‘weak-link’ specification since the functional form is consonant with a model of war in which the ‘weakest link’ in a dyad determines the probability of war. CAPOPENL has a negative monotonic association with the incidence of MIDs, fatal MIDs, and wars (see Figure 1).3 The strength of the estimated empirical association between peace and CAPOPENL, using a modified version of the dataset and model from Gartzke (2007), is comparable to that between peace and, respectively, joint democracy, log of distance, or the GDP of a contiguous dyad (Gartzke, 2007: 179; Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001: 412). In summary, CAPOPENL seems to be an important and robust correlate of peace. The question of why specifically this correlation exists, however, remains to be answered. The mechanism: Market-mediated signaling? Gartzke, Li & Boehmer (2001) argue that the classic liberal account for the pacific effect of economic interdependence – that interdependence increases the expected costs of war – is not consistent with the bargaining theory of war (see also Morrow, 1999). GLB argue that ‘conventional descriptions of interdependence see war as less likely because states face additional opportunity costs for fighting. The problem with such an account is that it ignores incentives to capitalize on an opponent’s reticence to fight’ (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001: 400.)4 Instead, GLB (see also Gartzke, 2003; Gartzke & Li, 2003) argue that financial interdependence could promote peace by facilitating the sending of costly signals. As the probability of militarized conflict increases, states incur a variety of automatic and strategically imposed economic costs as a consequence of escalation toward conflict. Those states that persist in a dispute despite these costs will reveal their willingness to tolerate them, and hence signal resolve. The greater the degree of economic interdependence, the more a resolved country could demonstrate its willingness to suffer costs ex ante to militarized conflict. Gartzke, Li & Boehmer’s mechanism implies a commonly perceived costly signal before militarized conflict breaks out or escalates: if market-mediated signaling is to account for the correlation between CAPOPENL and the absence of MIDs, then visible market-mediated costs should occur prior to or during periods of real or potential conflict (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001). Thus, the proposed mechanism should leave many visible footprints in the historical record. This theory predicts that these visible signals must arise in any escalating conflict, involving countries with high capital openness, in which this mechanism is operative Clarifying the signaling mechanism Gartzke, Li & Boehmer’s signaling mechanism is mostly conceptualized on an abstract, game-theoretic level (Gartzke, Li & Boehmer, 2001). In order to elucidate the types of observations that could inform this theory’s validity, we discuss with greater specificity the possible ways in which such signaling might occur. A conceptual classification of costly signals The term signaling connotes an intentional communicative act by one party directed towards another. Because the term signaling thus suggests a willful act, and a signal of resolve is only credible if it is costly, scholars have sometimes concluded that states involved in bargaining under incomplete information could advance their interests by imposing costs on themselves and thereby signaling their resolve (e.g. Lektzian & Sprecher, 2007). However, the game-theoretic concept of signaling refers more generally to any situation in which an actor’s behavior reveals information about her private information. In fact, states frequently adopt sanctions with low costs to themselves and high costs to their rivals because doing so is often a rational bargaining tactic on other grounds: they are trying to coerce their rival to concede the issue. Bargaining encounters of this type can be conceptualized as a type of war-of-attrition game in which each actor attempts to coerce the other through the imposition of escalating costs. Such encounters also provide the opportunity for signaling: when states resist the costs imposed by their rivals, they ‘signal’ their resolve. If at some point one party perceives the conflict to have become too costly and steps back, that party ‘signals’ a lack of resolve. Thus, this kind of signaling arises as a by-product of another’s coercive attempts. In other words, costly signals come in two forms: self-inflicted (information about a leader arising from a leader’s intentional or incidental infliction of costs on himself) or imposed (information about a leader that arises from a leader’s response to a rival’s imposition of costs). Additionally, costs may arise as an automatic byproduct of escalation towards military conflict or may be a tool of statecraft that is strategically employed during a conflict. The automatic mechanism stipulates that as the probability of conflict increases, various economic assets will lose value due to the risk of conflict and investor flight. However, the occurrence of these costs may also be intentional outcomes of specific escalatory decisions of the states, as in the case of deliberate sanctions; in this case they are strategic. Finally, at a practical level, we identify three different potential kinds of economic costs of militarized conflict that may be mediated by open capital markets: capital costs from political risk, monetary coercion, and business sanctions. TExtra – SustainabilityCausality for every sustainability warrant and impact is backward.Westerg?rd 18 (Rune, Founder, Board member, Partner, Citec Group, Nordic Logistic Center Vaasa, Institute of Technology, Tekniska institutet, Vaasa, One Planet Is Enough, “Chapter 7 Real and Imagined Threats”, 2018)Threatening reports about our ability to create disasters and even exterminate ourselves are not a new idea. A standard example is the British national economist Thomas Malthus in the early 19th century, who predicted that population growth would come to a halt because of starvation.Malthus calculated that the available food in the world couldn’t feed more than one billion people. He extrapolated the development from a still picture of his own time and couldn’t fathom that food production would increase tremendously thanks to new knowledge and technology.Our present food production is sufficient for seven times as many. Malthus didn’t pay attention to the fact that we live in a continuously changing civilisation, and the same kind of miscalculations are still made today.There are people who have even achieved the status of media superstars by presenting various dystopias and catastrophe scenarios. As early as 1968, Professor Paul Erlichs at Stanford University published the bestseller The Population Bomb, where he predicted that an imminent population explosion would result in hundreds of millions of deaths by starvation in the 1970s and 80s. Basically, he made the same mistake as Malthus, i.e. he treated knowledge and technology as if they were static phenomena.The most widely read environment report in the world, State of the World, was a loud whistle-blower when it was first published in the early 1980s. The Swedish version, Tillst?ndet i v?rlden, was published yearly from 1984 and some years into the 2000s by the Worldwatch Institute Norden; I still have some of the early issues left. This report contains many valuable observations and suggestions, but also several basic analytical mistakes. In other words, it acts as an eye-opener, but it suffers from being tainted by political ideology.Its main weakness is that it doesn’t take the intrinsic driving forces of progress into account.State of the World was translated into most major languages and is, as already mentioned, the world’s most widely read environmental report. It has affected us all, directly or indirectly, through school and media. Even if the Swedish version I refer to was written some years ago, it is still worthy of discussion, firstly because it maintains an appearance of scientific validity, and secondly because it has served as a trendsetter for the general ideology which has been adopted by many later books and reports on the subject at hand. It still lives on as an engraved pattern in our conception of the world.In the report we can, for instance, read the following:A world where human desires and needs are fulfilled without the destruction of natural systems demands an entirely new economic order, founded on the insight that a high consumption level, population growth, and poverty are the powers behind the devastation of the environment.The rich have to reduce their consumption of resources so that the poor can increase their standard of living.The global economy simply works against the attempts to reduce poverty and protect the environment.We stubbornly insist to regard economic growth as synonymous with development, even though it makes the poor even poorer.Even if we up to this point have mainly described the environment revolution in economic terms, it is, in its most fundamental meaning, a social revolution: to change our values.Massive threat scenarios are still presented, for instance in the British scientist Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth from 2009, which is one of the most widely read and frequently quoted works in this area. Tim Jackson, who is an economist and professor in sustainable development, explains how we humans are indulging in a ruthless pursuit of new-fangled gadgets in a consumption society running at full speed towards its doom.He also claims that material things in themselves cannot help us to flourish; on the contrary, they may even restrain our welfare. In other words, we cannot build our hopes that the economy, technology or science can help us to escape from the trap of Anthropocene, which has brought us to the brink of an ecological disaster.There are hundreds on books on this theme, and they all agree that the general state of the world is pure misery; everything is getting worse, the resources are being depleted, and that man will soon have destroyed the entire planet. The apparent reason for this, of course, is due to the consumption culture and the present financial system—which exposes man as a greedy, ruthless and ultimately weak creature.This attitude may serve a purpose as an eye-opener. But it is not very credible, and it may even be counterproductive. Of course, we can see a lot of problems ahead of us; but to solve them, we need the correct diagnostics instead of dubious doomsday prophesies.Focus: The ProblemSince the focus of attention is so profoundly fixated on the problems in the climate and environmental debate, the progress already made—and the opportunities at hand—are often overshadowed. The example below will help to illustrate this point:In the year 2014, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three scientists who had invented blue light emitting diodes—a technology that has made high-bright and energy-efficient LED lighting possible. As lighting accounts for 20% of the world’s total electrical consumption, this invention has the potential to radically reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.In an interview made by the major Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, one of the prize winners, Hiroshi Amano, says the following about energy-efficient, inexpensive and high-bright LED lights: “They are now being used all over the world. Even children in the developing countries can use this lighting to read books and study in the evenings. This makes me very very happy”.Shortly after this announcement, the news headlines declared that LED lighting was a threat to the environment. This statement was based on a report showing that LED lighting could be hazardous to flies and moths, which in turn might disturb the eco system.This is a typical example of how progress pessimists and, not least the media, think and act. In this case, they focused on a potential problem associated with LED lighting, and ignored the tremendous possibilities that the new technology offered to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases and thus spare the eco system (not to mention all the other advantages).Books and reports of the kind mentioned above tell us repeatedly about disasters, threats, problems, collapses and famines. On the other hand, they are notoriously silent about the great improvements actually made—the reduction of extreme poverty (not only as a percentage but also in absolute numbers), longer lifespans, dramatic global progress in education and healthcare, etc.The lack of positive media coverage on the environment means that many people believe that too little is being done, which is quite understandable considering the one-sided nature of the information they are presented with. Alarmist reporting almost always reminds me of pirates: they are unreliable and half their vision is blocked by their eye patches.It is vital that the media not only one-sidedly focus on the misery without presenting the progress made and suggesting constructive courses of action. The quality of our decisions in all respects depends on our knowledge, insight and attitude.Real and Imagined ThreatsMany people are convinced that the climate and environmental problems are growing. It is certainly true that our planet has its limitations, but many of the predictions from alarmist literature have been proven false.In the 1980s, the forest dieback was a frequently discussed subject. To quote the well-known German news magazine Der Spiegel, an “ecological Hiroshima” was imminent. Most experts at the time claimed that a wide-spread forest death seemed unavoidable. Additionally, the general mood of impending doom was augmented by the threat of a nuclear disaster during the cold war. I remember the pessimistic discussions among friends and how frequently the gloomy reports appeared in Swedish and Finnish television. The future of humankind appeared to be depressingly bleak.But the forest dieback never happened.On the contrary, the forest area has been constantly expanding in Europe, even during the entire period when the forest was believed to be dying. Today, only two thirds of the yearly accretion in Europe are cut down, according to the Natural Resource Institute in Finland.There are different opinions as to why the large-scale forest dieback didn’t occur. One theory is that the researchers’ evidence and conclusions had been incomplete and too hasty; the forest was actually never in danger. Others suggest that the emission limitations implemented prevented the disaster.My point is that the environmental catastrophe did not happen.Some other environmental problems, exaggerated or not, that have concerned us during the last decades have also disappeared from the immediate agenda: overpopulation, DDT, the ozone hole, heavy metals, lead poisoning, soot particles, the waste mountain, and the acidification of our lakes. Unfortunately, some environmental problems, like soot particles and waste, still remain in some areas, especially in poorer countries, where there are other, even worse problems that have yet to be resolved.The conclusion is, however, that we and our society in most cases have handled threatening situations quite well. When alarming symptoms are noted, scientists and other experts are summoned, and we act according to their diagnoses. It is no big deal that the diagnoses are sometimes wrong, as long as the side effects are not too severe. The main thing is that we do our best to avoid disasters, and on the whole, humankind has succeeded rather well this far.As individuals, we react very differently to various kinds of threats. The closer and more tangible the threat is, the more violent are the reactions—while distant and invisible symptoms, like the depletion of the ozone layer, concern us less. In the latter cases, we have to trust the scientists’ and later the politicians’ reactions. Does this mean that disasters are avoided thanks to war headlines, threats, and anxiety? I don’t think that this is the most important explanation; rather, it is factual and science-based information that produces effective results. But if exaggerated threat scenarios and reports of misery are needed to inspire the necessary political opinion, acquire research funding and create behavioural changes, we will have to live with that.The most important thing to remember in this context is that the actions shouldn’t cause more harm than the original problem itself. The risk with exaggerated threat and misery reporting is that it may inspire an over-reaction based on misleading diagnoses, or the opposite—a paralysing feeling of helplessness. It is necessary to take threats against the climate and the environment seriously, but not to a degree where our ability to reason and act is blocked by fear or anxiety.Many environmental debaters claim that the fall of the Inca and Roman empires were caused by the same causes that are now threatening our present civilisation—a short-sighted over-exploitation and rape of nature. Easter Island is another popular example. However, in my opinion it is both worthless and irresponsible to judge the world situation of today by copying the outcome of earlier cultural endeavours in history. The inhabitants of the Inca empire and Easter Island didn’t have anything even remotely comparable with the organisations, technology, medicine or general knowledge of today.It would be like comparing a case of appendicitis in the past to a case today. In pre-modern times, it was a fatal condition. In this day and age, it is cured by a simple routine operation.Today, humankind is conscious of the climate changes and other ecological challenges. And we also have the knowledge and resources needed to act.Facts, Propaganda and Hidden MessagesDuring all the years I have followed the development of technology and society, I have repeatedly observed how a mishmash of serious research, political propaganda, and the hidden agendas of individuals have been distributed more or less randomly by the media. There are of course many different kinds of alarmism— everything from well-founded research reports to exaggerated prophesies of doom. It is far from simple to separate the wheat from the chaff.The actions taken against ozone depletion, lead emissions and the toxic chemical, dioxin, are all examples of how research has shown the way to successful results. Today, greenhouse gas emissions top the list of issues deserving our gravest attention, as it is a global phenomenon—just as the depletion of the ozone layer once was.There are also a considerable number of local environmental problems, such as drought, air pollution, forest depletion and overfishing. All of these are real threats that have to be acted upon, even though they are not global.However, I am always disturbed when a single global environmental issue is bundled with an assortment of several local issues, rather like a simplified trademark advertisement for the negative consequences of civilisation. This makes the information abstract and inaccurate, ignoring the fact that different locales require different solutions.Fear and alarmism are natural reactions that once protected us when we were living at the mercy of nature—they are evolutionary relics from our life in the savanna. Today, the same properties can be significant drawbacks.The transition from a primitive, animal-like state to the society we have today must, on the whole, be counted as a great success. But many people regard the same world as over-exploited, depleted, unjust, war-ridden and balancing on the brink of destruction. How can people living in the same epoch have so entirely different views of the world?In the sustainability debate, there is one faction dealing with the natural resources and ecosystems, and another focusing on the redistribution of wealth. There is even a third faction discussing a minimalistic lifestyle; for example, downshifting, with less work and less material welfare.When all these ingredients are mixed without discretion, the result is an anxiety soup that many have choked on. In a situation like that, we cannot expect any constructive initiatives to materialise. Instead, it would be far better to explore, research and discuss each dimension separately.What Is the Real State of the Planet?It is easy to generalise and say that we over-exploit the planet’s resources and pollute the world with our waste. But how many care to examine these statements in detail and ask exactly which resources are over-exploited?? Are fish becoming extinct? It is true that overfishing occurs in many places, which is, of course, unsustainable. However, this is not an unavoidable threat to the world’s total food resources. Fortunately, there are several examples of fish stocks that have either recovered or started to replenish once the fishing effort has been eased.? Is the air being poisoned? Many are convinced that the air we breathe is becoming dirtier all the time. But that isn’t true, at least not in the Western world. From the year 1990, emissions of sulphur dioxide have been reduced by 80%, nitrogen oxides by 44%, volatile organic substances by 55%, and carbon monoxide by 62%. Despite these dramatic improvements, 64% of Europeans believe that pollution is increasing.? Are the forests dying? It is a general belief that the forests in the developed countries are dwindling. But that isn’t true; on the contrary, the wooded areas are expanding. However, the forests are decreasing in the poor countries, where forestry and farming are still major sources of income, as they once were in the industrialised countries.? Are we drowning in waste? There are many who believe that we are surrounded by constantly growing mountains of waste. In the developed countries, the truth is that increasing amounts of waste are being recycled and the landfills are decreasing.? Will there be enough phosphorus? Phosphorus is an important nutrient in farming, extracted from phosphate ore. Many scientists fear that the finite natural resource of phosphate ore will become depleted in the future, which may jeopardise the world’s food supply. But there are already working solutions for this problem, such as by reclaiming phosphorus through digestion residues and sewage sludge. There are also technological solutions for the chemical extraction of phosphorus from polluted water—the remediation of lakes and rainwater by removing phosphorus is already a common procedure. Here we achieve a win-win situation—phosphorus is collected while preventing the eutrophication of lakes.? Will there be enough energy to go around? A common statement is that the earth’s population is too large, and that we consume too much energy with respect to the climate. This is one of those issues where we have to think in terms of symptoms, diagnoses, and medication. The symptoms are there for all to see: climate change.On the other hand, the diagnosis that we consume too much energy is wrong. The correct diagnosis is that we are not using the right technology; i.e. energy efficient power production without harmful emissions. Consequently, the correct statement would be that we consume energy that is produced by technologies that are harmful to the climate. The difference in wording is important. As the first diagnosis is “too high energy consumption”, the remedy will be to use a different medication than a diagnosis based on “the wrong technology”.Alarmist reporting can inspire bad decisions if the statements aren’t systematically reviewed and evaluated. It can also be misguiding to express environmental threats in general terms. Actions must be based on precise specific symptoms with corresponding diagnoses. If the doctor discovers that the patient is lame and suffers from a high fever, it doesn’t help to predict imminent death. Maybe the lameness and the fever have different causes altogether! A successful cure would probably include two different diagnoses with separate medications.Several recent surveys of the general conception of the world have been made— one is Project Ignorance by Gapminder and Novus in Sweden. One of the questions asked was whether CO2 emissions per capita and year had increased or decreased in the world during the last 40 years. The surveyed group was large and representative in order to give a fairly accurate picture of the common opinion.No less than 90% believed that CO2 emissions had increased. The truth is that they haven’t increased at all.It is important that decision makers on all levels learn how to see the wood from the trees. Decisions based on false preconditions can halt technological development, and thus also the development of the economy, welfare, and a healthier environment.The flow of innovations in the climate and environmental areas is accelerating rapidly. This can be seen in the number of improvements that have occurred in recent years, which can be counted in the thousands. Such improvements have to be weighted on the same scale as the problems in this area. That is not to say the problems should be ignored—they need to be acted upon. But they should not be allowed to occupy our brains to the extent that our power to act is paralysed.Is the Notion of Sustainable Technology-Driven Growth Over-Optimistic?The development of a technological society has always been questioned. In the 19th century, critics claimed that the technological revolution would create poverty. In the 1970s, it was generally believed that the forest dieback would cause a disaster. In the 1980s, the acidification of lakes and throwaway mentality of society were regarded as manifestations of the devastating properties of growth and industrialisation. Today, many fear the environmental effects of air travel and the production of electronic devices.There are people who seriously wish to halt economic growth and wind back the clock to the society of the 1960s. They recall this time period as small-scaled and down-to-earth, stress-free and idyllic. But they tend to forget that the refrigerators of that time required 90% more electricity than today, and that our teeth were repaired with mercury fillings instead of plastic. There were no X-ray CT scanners and no medicines against ulcers.In addition, there were many more people living without electricity. There was also more widespread malnutrition, a higher infant mortality, and, in fact, more wars. Cars were fuelled by leaded petrol, and sulphur emissions were 90% higher than today. The acidification of lakes, as well as polluted streams and fields, were serious concerns.Studies go aff – decoupling emissions from growth solvesPao 18 (Hsiao-Tien Pao, PhD, Department of Management Science, National Chiao Tung University; Chun-Chih Chen, PhD, Department of Management Science, National Chiao Tung University; “Decoupling strategies: CO emissions, energy resources, and economic growth in 2 the Group of Twenty”, Journal of Cleaner Production, September 2018, DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.190) *Brackets added which provide the full version of each of these abbreviations: Hydro = hydropower; CKC = carbon kuznets curve; Ren = new renewable energy consumption; FF = fossil fuels energy consumption; 3Es = environment, energy, and economy, Nuc = nuclear energy consumption, TCE = total clean energy consumption, EG = economic growthThis study selects the G20 as a representative sample of global economic development to assess the CKC [carbon Kuznets curve], the 3Es dynamics, substitutability between Ren [new renewable energy consumption]/Hydro [hydropower] /Nuc [nuclear energy consumption] and FF [fossil fuels energy consumption], and thus to propose decoupling strategies for sustainable development. We extend the literature on the emission-growth nexus in the case of G20 to the 3Es dynamics by examining the rule of Ren [new renewable energy consumption]/Hydro [hydropower] /Nuc [nuclear energy consumption] and FF [fossil fuels energy consumption]. The descriptive statistical analysis suggests the absolute decoupling effect seems to have occurred with the drop in related environmental pressure and the continuation of economic growth. Within a panel EEO model framework, the per capita TCE [total clean energy consumption] /FF [fossil fuels energy consumption] elasticity of demand for carbon emissions is -0.021/1.04. The existence of the CKC [carbon kuznets curve] is consistent with the results of the descriptive statistical analysis. The results of panel VECM models support the Hydroled and Nuc-led growth hypotheses and the feedback hypothesis between EG [economic growth] and Ren [new renewable energy consumption]/FF and suggest the potential substitutability/symbiosis between Ren/Hydro and FF as evidenced by the negative/positive bidirectional causal relationship between them. Also, note that the use of nuclear energy is a key means of dealing with carbon emissions as evidenced by the positive unidirectional causal relationship running from emissions to Nuc [nuclear energy consumption]. Based on the growing global awareness of environmental protection, these interdependencies between 3Es are not surprising. That provides the main directions of each in the design of energy and energy conservation policies to ensure a diversified, sustainable energy consumption mix and a decoupling of environmental pressure from EG [economic growth]. Policymakers can introduce a wide range of complementary strategies for renewable energy and nuclear energy to improve energy efficiency and safety, reduce CO2 intensity, maintain stable economic growth, and implement the 2030 sustainable development agenda, thus lead the world to absolute decoupling. Absolute decoupling is the only way to achieve a truly sustainable future.Only modernization can solve warmingPollin 18 (Robert Pollin, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, “De-Growth vs A Green New Deal”, New Left Review, 112, July/Aug 2018, )Problems with degrowthAs I emphasized at the outset, degrowth proponents have made valuable contributions in addressing many of the untenable features of economic growth. But on the specific issue of climate change, degrowth does not provide anything like a viable stabilization framework. Consider some very simple arithmetic. Following the ipcc, we know that global co2 emissions need to fall from their current level of 32 billion tons to 20 billion tons within twenty years. If we assume that, following a degrowth agenda, global gdp contracts by 10 per cent over the next two decades, that would entail a reduction of global gdp four times greater than during the 2007–09 financial crisis and Great Recession. In terms of co2 emissions, the net effect of this 10 percent gdp contraction, considered on its own, would be to push emissions down by precisely 10 percent—that is, from 32 to 29 billion tons. It would not come close to bringing emissions down to 20 billion tons by 2040.Clearly then, even under a degrowth scenario, the overwhelming factor pushing emissions down will not be a contraction of overall gdp but massive growth in energy efficiency and clean renewable-energy investments—which, for accounting purposes, will contribute towards increasing gdp—along with similarly dramatic cuts in fossil-fuel production and consumption, which will register as reducing gdp. Moreover, the immediate effect of any global gdp contraction would be huge job losses and declining living standards for working people and the poor. During the Great Recession, global unemployment rose by over 30 million. I have not seen a convincing argument from a degrowth advocate as to how we could avoid a severe rise in mass unemployment if gdp were to fall by twice as much.These fundamental problems with degrowth are illustrated by the case of Japan, which has been a slow-growing economy for a generation now, even while maintaining high per capita incomes. Herman Daly himself describes Japan as being ‘halfway to becoming a steady-state economy already, whether they call it that or not.’footnote22 Daly is referring to the fact that, between 1996 and 2015, gdp growth in Japan averaged an anemic 0.7 per cent per year. This compares with an average Japanese growth rate of 4.8 per cent per year for the 30-year period 1966 to 1995. Nevertheless, as of 2017, Japan remained in the ranks of the large, upper-income economies, with average gdp per capita at about $40,000. Yet despite the fact that Japan has been close to a no-growth economy for twenty years, its co2 emissions remain among the highest in the world, at 9.5 tons per capita. This is 40 per cent below the figure for the United States, but it is four times higher than the average global level of 2.5 tons per capita that must be achieved if global emissions are to drop by 40 per cent by 2040. Moreover, Japan’s per capita emissions have not fallen at all since the mid-1990s. The reason is straightforward: as of 2015, 92 per cent of Japan’s total energy consumption comes from burning oil, coal and natural gas.Thus, despite ‘being halfway to becoming a steady-state economy’, Japan has accomplished virtually nothing in advancing a viable climate-stabilization path. The only way it will make progress is to replace its existing, predominantly fossil-fuel energy system with a clean-energy infrastructure. At present, hydro power supplies 5 per cent of Japan’s total energy needs, and other renewable sources only 3 per cent. Overall then, like all large economies—whether they are growing rapidly or not at all—Japan needs to embrace the Green New Deal.AT: FinancializationFinancialization is stabilizing – speculation socializes and lessens the impact to risk.Konings 18 (Martijn, Professor of Political Economy and Social Theory, Associate Dean (International), “A CRITIQUE OF THE CRITIQUE OF FINANCE”, , February 7, 2018)If there is one theme that unites the various critiques of contemporary finance, it is the emphasis on its speculative character. Financial growth is said to be driven not by the logic of efficient markets, but rather by irrational sentiment, “animal spirits” that do not respect fundamental values.Emphasizing the role of volatility in contemporary capitalism (evident at the time of writing, as the stock market is experiencing a downturn) is important as an antidote to notions of market efficiency and equilibrium. But it is a mistake to think that it provides a sufficient basis for effective critique. Predictions regarding the limits or collapse of neoliberal finance have simply not enjoyed a good track record. Over and over, the contemporary financial system has proven capable of sustaining higher levels of speculative activity than anticipated. This has certainly been true of the past decade. Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason is my attempt to make sense of this—that is, to understand what might be wrong or missing in the existing heterodox critique of speculation, and to advance a more accurate understanding of the role of uncertainty, risk, and speculation in contemporary capitalism.At the heart of the critique of speculation we find a distinction between real and fictitious forms of value. Although “essentialist” (or “foundationalist”) modes of explanation have been under fire across the social sciences for several decades now, when it comes to the critique of finance they have had considerable staying-power: without a notion of real value, it often seems, we lose any objective standard against which to assess the speculative gyrations of capitalist markets.At the heart of the critique of speculation we find a distinction between real and fictitious forms of value.Capital and Time asks what kind of critical theory we might develop if we bracket the anxious attachment to a notion of fundamental value. To that end, it turns to the work of economist Hyman Minsky. Although Minsky has been popularized precisely as a critic of speculation, he in fact insisted that almost all value judgments and investments were to some degree speculative—their success or failure would be determined in an unknown future. For him, the key economic question is how order emerges in a world that offers no guarantees, how more or less stable standards and norms arise amidst uncertainty.Of course, the “endogenous” origin of financial standards is a well-rehearsed theme in heterodox economics—indeed, it is a staple of the “post-Keynesian” literature that claims Minsky’s legacy. But such perspectives have never been able to break with the idea that financial stability is at its core dependent on external interventions that suppress speculative impulses. For Minsky, however, this is to miss the point about endogeneity. To his mind, there was no clear dividing line between financial practices and their governance: central banks and other public authorities are no more able to see into the future and to transcend uncertainty than private investors are.Minsky was therefore highly skeptical about official claims of discretionary precision management: financial governance is always embroiled in the very risk logic that it is charged with managing. That also means that financial policy can appear quite ordinary, even banal: at the heart of capitalist financial management is a logic of backstopping and bailout that responds to the possibility that the failure of an institution may take down wider financial structures.Financial governance is always embroiled in the very risk logic that it is charged with managing.The stability of the post-New Deal financial system is often attributed to the Glass-Steagall separation of the stock market and commercial banking. But Minsky tended to view Glass-Steagall as one of several measures to direct bank credit away from the stock market towards other, no less speculative ends, notably consumer and mortgage financing. To his mind, the stability of the post-war period derived rather from the creation of an extensive financial safety net (which included, for instance, deposit insurance, which removed the rationale behind bank runs) that served to socialize risk.This institutional arrangement turned out to have a significant drawback: a pattern of chronic inflation emerged that, by the late 1970s, was widely perceived as a major problem. Minsky’s lack of faith in the possibility of cleanly staged external interventions led him to feel that that there was no real way out of this predicament. Monetarist doctrines, ascendant during the 1970s under the influence of Milton Friedman, relied on exactly the belief in an arbitrarily defined monetary standard that Minsky rejected as na?ve. Muddling through, it seemed, was the price of avoiding another financial crash and depression.The Volcker shock of 1979 changed this dynamic in a way that Minsky had not foreseen but that is comprehensible when seen through the lens he provided us with. Paul Volcker looked to monetarism not as a means to enforce an external limit or standard on the financial system, but as a politically expedient way to break with accommodating policies and to proactively engage the endogenous dynamics of finance. The consequences of the Volcker shock were predictable (which is exactly why the Federal Reserve had been reluctant to pursue similar policies in previous years): inflation gave way to instability and crisis. Inflation was conquered as jobs were lost and wages stagnated. And, far from money being returned to its neutral exchange function, opportunities for speculation multiplied.The American state was never going to sit idly by as the financial system returned to dynamics of boom and bust: when instability took the form of systemic threats, authorities would bail out the institutions that had overextended themselves. Of course, Volcker would not have been able to predict the specific features of the too-big-to-fail regime as it emerged during the 1980s and evolved subsequently; but the very point of the neoliberal turn in financial management that he had overseen was to create a context where risk could be socialized in ways that were more selective and therefore did not entail generalized inflation.The inflation of asset values that has been such a marked feature of the past four decades has always been premised centrally on the willingness of authorities to view the “moral hazard” of the too-big-to-fail logic as a policy instrument—even if they may have decried it officially as a regrettable corruption of market principles. Spectacular bailouts, mundane policies to protect the key nodes of the payment systems, the “Greenspan put”, the different iterations of quantitative easing—these are all variations on that basic too-important-to-fail logic.Existing critical perspectives tend to view crisis and the need for bank bailouts as manifesting the essential incoherence of neoliberal finance, its lack of solid foundations and the irrationality of speculation. Capital and Time breaks with such moralistic assessments. The way deepening inequality and the speculative growth of asset values continue to feed off each other is troubling for any number of reasons, but there is nothing inherently “unsustainable” about it—the process does not have a natural or objective limit.At this point in time, the critique of speculation does little more than lend credibility to official discourses that present crises as preventable and bailouts as one-off, never-to-be-repeated interventions. In that way, it prevents us from critically relating to a neoliberal reality that has been shaped to its core by the speculative exploitation of risk and uncertainty, and in which regressive risk socialization serves as the everyday logic of financial governance.COVID-Vaccine NegNoteNeg StrategyNote that the US production CP’s internal net benefit and the bio-tech DA have the same impact about US leadership. If you want to read the bio-tech DA, we recommend that you read the production CP without the internal net benefit. If you don’t want to read the bio-tech DA, we recommend that you read the production CP with the internal net benefit. WTO Cred Advantage1NC – A/CThe US has structurally undermined WTO legitimacyBaschuk 2/22 [(Bryce, reporter for Bloomberg Economics based in Geneva, Switzerland, has been published in Bloomberg, the Washington Times, United Press International and National Public Radio) “Biden Picks Up Where Trump Left Off in Hard-Line Stances at WTO,” Bloomberg, 2/22/2021] TDIPresident Joe Biden’s administration dashed hopes for a softer approach to the World Trade Organization by pursuing a pair of his predecessor’s strategies that critics say risk undermining the international trading system.The U.S. delegation to the WTO, in a statement Monday obtained by Bloomberg, backed the Trump administration’s decision to label Hong Kong exports as “Made in China” and said the WTO had no right to mediate the matter because the organization’s rules permit countries to take any action to protect their “essential security interests.”“The situation with respect to Hong Kong, China, constitutes a threat to the national security of the?United States,” the U.S. delegation said. “Issues of national security are not matters appropriate for adjudication in the WTO dispute-settlement system.”Prior to 2016, WTO members generally steered clear of defending their trade actions on the basis of national security because doing so could encourage other nations to pursue protectionist policies that have little or nothing to do with hostile threats.That changed in 2018, when the Trump administration triggered a cold war-era law to justify tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum. In response, a handful of U.S. trade partners, including Canada, the EU, and China filed disputes at the WTO and a ruling in those cases is expected later this year.Since then, more nations -- including Saudi Arabia, India, Russia and others -- have cited the WTO’s national-security exemption in regional trade fights, leading trade experts to warn that such cases could erode the organization’s ability to mediate disputes.The Biden administration on Monday said the U.S. has consistently argued that national-security disputes are not subject to WTO review because it would infringe on a member’s right to determine what is in its own security interests.In spite of the U.S. objection, the WTO granted Hong Kong’s dispute inquiry and will establish a panel of experts to deliberate the matter and render a decision, which could take two to three years.At the same meeting, the Biden administration said it would not agree to appoint new members to the WTO’s appellate body, a seven-member panel of experts who until 2019 had the final say on trade disputes involving billions of dollars worth of international commerce.The Biden administration said it could not do so because the U.S. “continues to have systemic concerns” with the functioning of the appellate body as have all previous administrations over the past 16 years.Though the statement was not entirely unexpected, it confirms America’s bipartisan frustration with the functioning of the WTO appellate body and the new administration’s willingness to block new panelists until changes can be agreed.Once Katherine Tai is confirmed as the U.S. Trade Representative, her office “looks forward to working with” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to tackle the problems with WTO dispute settlement, including the unresolved issues over appellate-body overreach, USTR spokesman Adam Hodge said in an email. “These are long-standing, bipartisan concerns that we?hope?our trading partners will work with us to address,” he said.The Trump administration broke precedent when it refused to consider any nominees to fill vacancies on the panel until there weren’t enough to sign off on new rulings. As a result, the WTO’s dispute-settlement system has been critically damaged because WTO members are now free to veto any adverse dispute rulings by appealing them into a legal void created by the appellate body’s paralysis.Biden and trump terminally thump WTO credAnne O. Krueger 5-24 [(Anne O. Krueger, a former World Bank chief economist and former first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is Senior Research Professor of International Economics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Development at Stanford University.) “Biden's Trumpy Start on Trade” ]TDIWASHINGTON, DC – Former President Donald Trump did enormous damage to the United States’ reputation and future prospects, both domestically and internationally. Yet while President Joe Biden has set about reversing the previous administration’s legacy in many domains, he has yet to focus his attention on US trade policy. That needs to change. Trump’s trade policies were not only a disaster for US and world trade; they also have made it more difficult for the US to achieve a broader range of economic and foreign-policy goals. Reversing those policies thus should be a top priority for the new administration. After all, America’s friends and allies (particularly the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea) remain deeply shaken by Trump’s protectionist impulses. In addition to slapping tariffs on a broad range of goods, his administration forced a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, and withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to which the US had agreed. It declared a “trade war” with China, despite that country’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and with no regard for US trading partners’ own dealings with China. Taken together, these policies have done serious damage to America’s standing in the world. Leading the world toward an open multilateral trading system under the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, which became the WTO in 1995) was one of America’s crowning achievements after World War II. The system works precisely because members willingly commit themselves to open, rules-based trade policies. Among other things, this ensures that foreign traders have the same rights as domestic nationals when disputes between them arise, and that the principle of nondiscrimination among trading partners prevails, except in the case of preferential trading arrangements. Trade flourished under the GATT, with the US leading negotiations for multilateral tariff reductions and the removal of other trade barriers (including quantitative restrictions). In later years, developing countries witnessed the success of open markets and decided to start dismantling their own highly protectionist regimes. For most, this resulted in a remarkable acceleration of growth in output and trade. For more than a half-century, world trade grew roughly twice as fast as world GDP. This growth was far from smooth, of course. Significant slowdowns followed the oil shocks of the 1970s, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and the Great Recession a decade later. Growth in world output and trade has resumed since the 2008 global financial crisis, but not as rapidly as in the years preceding it. And China, following an overhaul of its trade policies in the 1990s and its accession to the WTO in 2001, emerged as the world’s largest trading power. In addition to reducing domestic poverty and improving living standards for its own population, China’s dramatic economic ascent was bound to raise issues with other countries. But thanks to the WTO and its dispute-settlement mechanism, there was a multilateral forum where these issues could be addressed – that is, until Trump came along. Although Biden has reasserted America’s commitment to internationalism and multilateralism, he has moved slowly to repair the damage that Trump did to critical institutions like the WTO. Nor has Biden reversed Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP. Now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, US membership in this 11-country pact would be a boon for US exporters. Currently, US companies are at a distinct disadvantage relative to their competitors in CPTPP countries, because their exports to those economies are subject to duties that do not apply to exports from members of the bloc. Biden also has not ended the trade war with China, even though that effort has utterly failed to achieve its stated objectives. While the US bilateral trade deficit with China has fallen somewhat, the deficits with Vietnam, Malaysia, and others have risen commensurately as their exports have replaced those from China. Although the Biden administration has finally agreed to a new director-general for the WTO, it has done little to reduce Trump’s tariffs, and has even announced that it will strengthen “buy American” provisions in government procurement contracts. Biden says he wants to protect American jobs, yet the Trump administration’s tariffs on imported iron and steel, which have cost a net total of around 75,000 jobs (leaving out the additional losses caused by other countries’ retaliatory tariffs), remain in place. If Biden really wants to help American workers, he should recognize that exports create good jobs, and that the export sector’s contribution to US GDP has doubled as a result of open multilateral trade. As for America’s current-account deficit, that can be addressed only by curtailing US expenditures relative to income, not through protectionism. And because the WTO procurement agreement has led other countries to open up government bidding processes for American exporters, it is doubtful that weakening it will benefit American workers; indeed, doing so may even cost jobs. China is here to stay. Though there are certainly trade issues that need to be addressed, that is best done multilaterally. The US and China have both lost as a result of the trade war. A US offer to remove the tariffs if the Chinese reciprocate and join multilateral discussions on outstanding issues could benefit both countries and the rest of the world. Strong economies make for successful countries. Efforts to protect domestic industries are a sign of weakness, not strength. If the Biden administration wants to achieve its stated goals, it will remove Trump’s protectionist measures, work multilaterally, strengthen US infrastructure, invest in workforce skills and education, and expand America’s research capabilities. It should be obvious by now that continuing the last administration’s trade policies is a recipe for failure.1NC – No ! 2 TradeTrade is irrelevant for warKatherine Barbieri 13, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University, “Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or Source of Interstate Conflict?” Chapter 10 in Conflict, War, and Peace: An Introduction to Scientific Research, google booksHow does interdependence affect war, the most intense form of conflict? Table 2 gives the empirical results. The rarity of wars makes any analysis of their causes quite difficult, for variations in interdependence will seldom result in the occurrence of war. As in the case of MIDs, the log-likelihood ratio tests for each model suggest that the inclusion of the various measures of interdependence and the control variables improves our understanding of the factors affecting the occurrence of war over that obtained from the null model. However, the individual interdependence variables, alone, are not statistically significant. This is not the case with contiguity and relative capabilities, which are both statistically significant. Again, we see that contiguous dyads are more conflict-prone and that dyads composed of states with unequal power are more pacific than those with highly equal power. Surprisingly, no evidence is provided to support the commonly held proposition that democratic states are less likely to engage in wars with other democratic states.? The evidence from the pre-WWII period provides support for those arguing that economic factors have little, if any, influence on affecting leaders’ decisions to engage in war, but many of the control variables are also statistically insignificant. These results should be interpreted with caution, since the sample does not contain a sufficient number wars to allow us to capture great variations across different types of relationships. Many observations of war are excluded from the sample by virtue of not having the corresponding explanatory measures. A variable would have to have an extremely strong influence on conflict—as does contiguity—to find significant results. ? 7. Conclusions This study provides little empirical support for the liberal proposition that trade provides a path to interstate peace. Even after controlling for the influence of contiguity, joint democracy, alliance ties, and relative capabilities, the evidence suggests that in most instances trade fails to deter conflict. Instead, extensive economic interdependence increases the likelihood that dyads engage in militarized dispute; however, it appears to have little influence on the incidence of war. Trade wars don’t go to hot warsDayen 17, New Republic contributor (David “Trump Is Signaling a Trade War, but It’s Not as Disastrous as You May Think”, )Can Trump enact tariffs on his own? Though it would appear to contradict the Origination Clause of the Constitution, Congress has delegated that authority in enough pieces of legislation that Trump could probably raise import duties unilaterally. But what would be the practical effect? Hard-core free traders paint a picture of cataclysm. Tariffs will launch trade wars, increase prices, and destroy the economy. This is all hard-wired into the pro-globalization worldview. Thomas Friedman once famously admitted that he wrote a column supporting a free-trade agreement with Central America without knowing a thing about it: “I just knew two words: free trade,” he told an audience. Presumably the opposite is true for Friedman: He sees one word, “tariff,” and immediately screams in horror. Oddly, many of those same proponents of free trade favor a policy that looks very much like a tariff. The Republican corporate-tax revamp includes something called a border-adjustment tax, which would impose a 20 percent tax on imports while eliminating a tax on exports. Like with tariffs, the goal appears to be to encourage domestic production. In fact, the tax would be much higher than the 5-10 percent tariff being floated. (It also might be illegal under the current global trade regime.) Supporters of border adjustment, particularly economists, argue that it will end up trade neutral, because the exchange rate will fluctuate in response to the tax. In other words, though the tax would make American-made goods more attractive, the value of the dollar would increase, leveling that out. Few of these economists seem to carry over the same analysis to the effects of a tariff. I don’t understand why. There’s no reason to doubt the fact that, if Trump imposed an across-the-board tariff, the dollar would strengthen, thus nullifying the desired effect. Indeed, before Trump has even taken office, the dollar has risen to a 14-year high, in anticipation of a more protectionist stance. Incidentally, for all the one-off announcements by Trump (however factually challenged) about hundreds of jobs he has allegedly rescued here or there, this one development—the rise in the dollar—has likely caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, under standard economic theory. Looked at this way, higher tariffs wouldn’t cause a recession (as Paul Krugman has acknowledged), but would be somewhat pointless, with currency exchanges shifting to account for any changes. Trade wars might temporarily reduce efficiency, as domestic supply chains would have to be rebuilt, but they’re unlikely to radically alter the balance of trade on their own. There are other variables here. Importers and exporters who have lived in a world of floating exchange rates for decades may be fairly nimble in adjusting to them. On the downside, Krugman explains that raising tariffs could inhibit capital flows, meaning that investors will place less money into US markets. You can see how that might reduce economic growth. But Jeff Spross points out that America currently has a problem with too much foreign money flowing in; reducing the flow could arguably make the economy more stable. Trump could also seek to prevent unlawful currency manipulation (not necessarily from China, but from other Asian nations) that artificially disadvantages US manufacturing. The real unknown here is what Trump would do with all that tariff revenue. The border adjustment tax at 20 percent is assumed to bring in $1 trillion over the 10-year budget window. So a tariff of even one-quarter or one-half that size would draw significant funds. What’s the plan for it? Would it get plowed into job-creating investments? Tax cuts for the wealthy? That’s a significant variable as well. We do know that the same pundits who confidently predicted that globalization would be a win-win policy for America repeatedly got it wrong. Those on the losing side saw their jobs shipped out and factories closed down, and weren’t given the kind of assistance needed to offset the disruption. So it’s worth being a little skeptical of the warnings coming from the same corners now. I don’t have a ton of faith in the Trump team to necessarily make their trade agenda work (especially as corporate interests will seek to co-opt the redesigned policies in ways even friendlier to their bottom line). And I think there are smarter ways to balance our trade deficit than a tariff strategy which will just run up against currency exchange rates. But the hysteria accompanying these tariffs (which wasn’t at all present when President Obama imposed his own tariffs on Chinese tires and steel) seems far beyond what little we can assume about the actual results of such a strategy.Emperics prove trade doesn’t solve warMartin et. al. 8 (Phillipe, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, and Centre for Economic Policy Research; Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, Mathias THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris School of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies 75)Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: The main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however, that during the 1870–2001 period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the 19th century, was a period of rising trade openness and multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly, while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts, even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states.Developing Economies Advantage1NC – Turn Restricting IP protections undermines innovation and profit margins – turns case by precluding vaccine distribution to developing countries.Cueni 12/10 [(Thomas, Director General of IFPMA, chair of the AMR Industry Alliance, Industry Co-Chair APEC Biopharmaceutical Working Group on Ethics, MA in politics from the London School of Economics) “The Risk in Suspending Vaccine Patent Rules,” New York Times, 12/10/2020] TDIIt is?unclear?how suspending patent protections would ensure fair distribution. But what is clear is that if successful, the effort would jeopardize future medical innovation, making us more vulnerable to other diseases.Intellectual property rights, including patents, grant inventors a period of exclusivity to make and market their creations. By affording these rights to those who create intangible assets, such as musical compositions, software or drug formulas — people will invent more useful new things.Development of a new medicine is risky and costly. Consider that scientists have spent decades — and billions of dollars — working on Alzheimer’s treatments, but still have little to show for it. The companies and investors who fund research shoulder so much risk because they have a shot at a reward. Once a patent expires, generic companies are free to produce the same product. Intellectual property rights underpin the system that gives us all new medicines, from psychiatric drugs to cancer treatments.In trying to defend these rights, the drug industry has made mistakes in the past that have lost people’s trust. More than 22 years ago, for example, a group of drug companies sued the South African government for trying to import cheaper anti-AIDS drugs amid an epidemic. With price standing between patients and survival, the suit, which the companies?eventually dropped, was a terrible misjudgment. The current situation is not parallel.Several major drug companies, including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, have pledged to offer their vaccines on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic. Others are considering differential pricing for different countries. As of last month, four major pharmaceutical companies had already agreed to eventually?produce?at least three billion vaccine doses for low- and middle-income nations, according to one analysis.In South Africa and India, pharmaceutical companies are already working with local partners to make their vaccines available. Johnson & Johnson has?entered into a technology transfer partnership?for its candidate vaccine with South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare, and AstraZeneca has?reached a licensing agreement?with the Serum Institute of India to develop up to 1 billion doses of its vaccine for low and middle-income panies can afford to license patents for free, or sell drugs at cost, precisely because they know that their intellectual property will be protected. That’s not a flaw in the system; it’s how the system ensures that pharmaceutical research will continue to be funded.IP protections are key to pharmaceutical investment in developing countries.Ezell and Cory 19 [(Stephen, vice president, global innovation policy, at?the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Nigel, associate director covering trade policy?at the?Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, former researcher in the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, MA in public policy from Georgetown University) “The Way Forward for Intellectual Property Internationally,” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4/25/2019] TDIAcademic research also signals a strong correlation between IPR and technology transfer. Lippoldt showed that IPR strengthening in countries—particularly with respect to patents—is associated with increased technology transfer via trade and investment.34?Research has revealed that a country’s level of intellectual property protection considerably affects whether foreign firms will transfer technology into it.35?That matters because the welfare gains from the importation of technology via innovative products, while differing across countries, can be substantial.36?For instance, foreign sources of technology account for over 90 percent of domestic productivity growth in all but a handful of countries.37?The research on this matter is clear and consistent. For example, a 1986 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) study found that direct investment in new technology areas such as computer software, semiconductors, and biotechnology is supported by stronger intellectual property rights policy regimes.38?(However, as this report later clarifies, subsequent UNCTAD reports have lamentably taken a more skeptical view toward IP.) A 1989 study by the United Nations Commission on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) found that weak IP rights reduce computer software direct investment; and a 1990 study by UNCTC found that weak IP rights reduce pharmaceutical investment.39?Mansfield conducted firm-level surveys and found that perceptions of strong IP rights abroad have a positive effect on incentives to transfer technologies abroad. Likewise, survey research by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation found that, with variations by sector, country, and technology, at least 25 percent of American and Japanese high-tech firms refuse to directly invest, or enter into a joint venture, in developing countries with weak intellectual property rights; and a later study confirmed those survey findings with actual foreign direct investment data.40?And an Institute for International Economics study of World Bank data concluded that weak intellectual property rights reduce flows of all these commercial activities, regardless of nations’ levels of economic development.41Studies have also shown how the benefits of intellectual property extend to developing countries. Diwan and Rodrik demonstrated that stronger patent rights in developing countries give enterprises from developed countries a greater incentive to research and introduce technologies appropriate to developing countries.42?Similarly, Taylor showed that weak patent rights in developing countries lead enterprises from developed countries to introduce less-than-best-practice technologies to developing countries.43?Interestingly, the relationship goes in both directions. Branstetter and Saggi showed that strengthened IPR protection not only improves the investment climate in the implementing countries, but also leads to increased FDI in the country producing the original innovation.44?They concluded that IPR reform in the “global South” (e.g., developing countries) may be associated with FDI increases in the “global North” (e.g., developed countries). As northern firms shift their production to southern affiliates, this FDI accelerates southern industrial development, creating a cyclical feedback mechanism that also benefits the North. Another study by Liao and Wong, which focused on firm-level analysis, highlights the inter-relationship of IPR reform in developed and developing countries. Their study concluded that developing countries can entice technology transfer from the North by providing IPR protection for incoming products (although they note there is a need for redoubled R&D efforts in developed countries to spur needed innovations).451NC – Aff FailsA wholesale solution is key---the aff fails. Stone 21. [(Judy Stone is an Infectious Disease specialist) “Covid Vaccine Equity - Developing Countries Need Our Help,” Forbes, May 11, 2021. ] TDIThe real problem is that vax is a good retail (one at a time) solution, whereas in a pandemic you need a wholesale, behavioral semi-solution: masks, ventilation, quarantine. With its nationalistic approach to global problems the previous administration brokered deals that prohibited donation of supplies, in part due to liability concerns of the manufacturers or shortages of raw materials. There has been a great deal of debate over whether we should waive intellectual property rights, given the urgency of the Covid pandemic. Some in industry feel it will stifle their innovation. Others reply that public and non-profits have provided over $10 billion towards research and development of vaccines. Furthermore, the U.S. government holds the patent for a technique for modifying the coronavirus protein used in vaccines produced by the major U.S. manufacturers. Unlike his predecessor, President Biden understands that sharing vaccine with other countries is also in our best interest, and joined the international Covax program. Covax is led by WHO, Gavi (Global vaccine alliance), CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) and the UN’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF). So far, only 0.3% of the vaccines that have been administered have gone to low-income countries, according to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Covax’s goal is vaccinating 20% of the population of poorer countries. Covax had hoped to administer 2 billion vaccine doses in 2021 (that’s more than 25% of the world’s whole population); so far, they’ve only reached 29 million doses. We need at least a 70% vaccination rate to develop herd immunity and stop the pandemic. Another problem is that even if the patent protections are waived, allowing companies to have the “recipe” for producing vaccines, many lack the technical know-how or experience to do so. WHO is proposing a technology transfer hub to assist in this process.1NC – Alt CausesOverreliance on vaccines hurts overall pandemic response.Lovelace 1/13 [(Berkeley, health-care reporter for CNBC, mainly covering pharmaceuticals and the Food and Drug Administration) "WHO says Covid vaccines aren’t ‘silver bullets’ and relying entirely on them has hurt nations," CNBC, 1-13-2021, ] TDIThe World Health Organization said Friday that coronavirus vaccines aren’t “silver bullets” and relying solely on them to fight the pandemic has hurt nations. Some countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas are seeing spikes in Covid-19 cases “because we are collectively not succeeding at breaking the chains of transmission at the community level or within households,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference from the agency’s Geneva headquarters. With global deaths reaching 2 million and new variants of the virus appearing in multiple countries, world leaders need to do all they can to curb infections “through tried and tested public health measures,” Tedros said. “There is only one way out of this storm and that is to share the tools we have and commit to using them together.” The coronavirus has infected more than 93.3 million people worldwide and killed at least 2 million since the pandemic began about a year ago, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The virus continues to accelerate in some regions, with nations reporting that their supply of oxygen for Covid-19 patients is running “dangerously low,” the WHO said. Some countries, including the U.S., have focused heavily on the use of vaccines to combat their outbreaks. While vaccines are a useful tool, they will not end the pandemic alone, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said at the news conference. “We warned in 2020 that if we were to rely entirely on vaccines as the only solution, we could lose the very controlled measures that we had at our disposal at the time. And I think to some extent that has come true,” Ryan said, adding the colder seasons and the recent holidays also may have also played a role in the spread of the virus. “A big portion of the transmission has occurred because we are reducing our physical distancing. ... We are not breaking the chains of transmission. The virus is exploiting our lack of tactical commitment,” he added. “We are not doing as well as we could.” Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor to the WHO’s director-general, echoed Ryan’s comments, saying, vaccines are not “silver bullets” “Things can get worse, numbers can go up,” he said. We have vaccines, yes. But we have limited supplies of vaccines that will be rolled out slowly across the world. And vaccines are not perfect. They don’t protect everyone against every situation.” In the U.S., the pace of vaccinations is going slower than officials had hoped. As of Friday at 6 a.m. ET, more than 31.1 million doses of vaccine had been distributed across the U.S., but just over 12.2 million shots have been administered, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, cases are rapidly growing, with the U.S. recording at least 238,800 new Covid-19 cases and at least 3,310 virus-related deaths each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using Johns Hopkins data. On Thursday, President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a sweeping plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. While his administration will invest billions in a vaccine campaign, it will also scale up testing, invest in new treatments and work to identify new strains, among other measures.1NC – South Africa A/CCorruption prevents South African recovery. 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. ] TDICorruption is certainly slowing South Africa’s fight against the pandemic. Since last year, Corruption Watch, a South African anti-corruption organization, has been tracking corruption related to the pandemic. For instance, in April 2020, the organization raised concerns that corrupt officials might exploit the pandemic to their personal advantage. “You will expect some people to use every opportunity they see to enrich themselves,” said Kavisha Pillay, the head of stakeholder relations and campaigns at Corruption Watch. “That is the situation now, and we are working with law enforcement, especially the financial crime department, to track cases of embezzlement around the pandemic.” A report released in April by the Financial Transparency Coalition, a coalition of civil societies working to end illicit financial flows, reveals a broad lack of accountability in the use of COVID-19 emergency funds.COVID isn’t solely to blame for economic instability in South Africa. Fengler 21. [(Wolfgang Fengler is the World Bank’s Lead Economist in Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Previously, he served as the World Bank’s Lead Economist in the Nairobi office. Also written by Marie-Francoise Nelly, Indermit Gill, Benedicte Baduel, and Facundo Cuevas) “South Africa after COVID-19—light at the end of a very long tunnel,” Brookings, July 13, 2021. ] TDI In this time of crisis, we are often reminded of a famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill during World War II: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” While South Africa is not in the middle of a physical war, it is battling the COVID-19 crisis in full force. Like most other countries, South Africa could not escape the pandemic. It suffered the loss of lives and livelihoods. At the time of writing, in early July 2021, more than 64,000 South Africans have lost their lives. The third wave is hitting the country very hard and infections keep rising every day. But there is also light at the end of a very long tunnel. The government responded swiftly and strongly to the crisis while also spearheading an international alliance for the distribution of vaccines in Africa. If the South African government would carry out with the same determination long-standing economic reform as it was fighting the pandemic, COVID-19 could serve as a turning point in reenergizing South Africa’s economy and labor market. While South Africa is set to emerge from the crisis weaker than it was going into it, the World Bank’s South Africa Economic Update argues that the reasons for low growth and high unemployment do not lie in the government’s crisis response. Instead, the pandemic has exposed long-standing structural weaknesses that have progressively worsened since the global financial crisis of 2008–09. For 2021, the World Bank projects a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4 percent, followed by 2.1 percent in 2022 and 1.5 percent in 2023. South Africa’s weak recovery is putting pressure on public finance. For the first time ever, public debt is now at almost 80 percent of GDP and under the current trajectory debt levels will not stabilize before 2026. However, the current global recovery is helping South Africa, especially the strong rebound in China and the United States—two of its key trading partners. As other emerging markets are recovering faster, South Africa’s economy could have benefited more in 2021 if integration with the rest of the world was stronger (Figure 1). Figure 1. South Africa’s contraction in 2020 was deep, and recovery in 2021 will be moderate Figure 1. South Africa’s contraction in 2020 was deep, and recovery in 2021 will be moderate The crisis has exposed South Africa’s biggest challenge: its job market. Even in the best of times, the labor market has been marked by high levels of unemployment and inactivity. Out of a working-age population of almost 40 million people, only 15 million South Africans are employed, which includes 3 million jobs in the public sector. The COVID-19 crisis has made a difficult situation worse because low-wage workers suffered almost four times more job losses than high-wage workers. In 2021, we saw a modest job recovery, but it is at risk due to the third wave. Against the odds, there are also positive developments in the labor market, and young entrepreneurs are one of South Africa’s best hopes to solve the jobs crisis. There are an increasing number of startups, especially in the digital sector, which are growing fast and could in the future become an engine of jobs growth. Cape Town alone, the “tech capital of Africa”, has over 450 tech firms and employs more than 40,000 people. In 2020, a total of $88 million (1.2 billion rand) disclosed investments went into its tech startups. A focus on young entrepreneurs would also help South Africa to close its large gap in self-employment (own-account workers with own businesses, freelancers), which represents only 10 percent of all jobs—compared to around 30 percent in most upper-middle-income economies such as Turkey, Mexico, or Brazil (Figure 2). If South Africa were to match the self-employment rate of its peers, it could potentially halve its unemployment rates. Figure 2. Self-employment—South Africa’s biggest opportunity to create jobs Figure 2. Self-employment—South Africa’s biggest opportunity to create jobs South Africa’s economy would benefit from measures to preserve macroeconomic stability, to revitalize the jobs market by improving the investment climate to build a better and more inclusive economy after the pandemic. There is a risk that the recovery leaves behind most of the potential economically active population, particularly young job seekers, which would mean that the pandemic permanently impaired the country’s long-term development prospects. Conversely, if South Africa were to engineer a broad-based recovery, this decade could bring new prosperity. Related Books Cvr: Regional Integration in West Africa Regional Integration in West Africa By Eswar Prasad and Vera Songwe 2021 Addressing structural constraints to growth behind and at the border could support exports and higher growth, and so preserve the sustainability of public finances. The experience of major emerging economies shows that the two most potent factors for reducing public debt-to-GDP ratios are economic growth and primary surpluses. The implied priorities are self-evident: a better climate for investment and trade, and prudent fiscal policy. To generate employment, South Africa would have to address three chronic problems in its labor market: extremely high rates of inactivity, high rates of unemployment, and low levels of self-employment. Along with enacting carefully chosen regulations to improve the business climate and investing in the workforce through better education, the government can implement reforms to encourage self-employment and support the growth of micro- and small enterprises.1NC – India A/CLimited manufacturing and poor distribution infrastructure outweigh---their evidence. 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. ] TDIJha told me that he worries less about I.P. and incentives than about the practical obstacles to vaccine production. The primary barriers to vaccine availability, he said, are not rigid intellectual-property protections but limited manufacturing capacity and poor distribution infrastructure. Only a small number of companies have the expertise needed to manufacture covid-19 vaccines, especially ones that use new mRNA technology, and scaling up takes time. “The world wasn’t ready to produce five or ten billion doses of covid vaccines,” Jha said. “We don’t just have all this excess capacity sitting around. You need raw materials, production capabilities, liner bags, a whole bunch of complex machinery and supplies.” Absent “a broader package of funding, supplies, manufacturing, and people with technical know-how,” Jha said, waiving I.P. rights wouldn’t help India escape the crisis that it faces today.1NC – COVID Reduces ConflictCOVID reduces the risk of conflict. Gul 20. [(Ayaz Gul) “Kashmiri Leader: COVID-19 Lowers Chances of Pakistan-India War” VOA News. April 28, 2020. ] TDIISLAMABAD - Pakistan and India are locked in almost daily military clashes across their Kashmir frontier, but the president of the Pakistani-ruled part of the disputed territory says the coronavirus pandemic has for now diminished chances, if any, of the tensions escalating into a full-blown war. Islamabad and New Delhi routinely accuse each other of firing the first shot that started the clashes in violation of a 2003 mutual truce across what is referred to as the Kashmir Line of Control (LoC). Critics say the increased violence in recent years, however, already has rendered the truce ineffective. The clashes have caused dozens of casualties on both sides, mostly civilians living in villages close to the LoC. “I don’t foresee a war in the near future,” said President Masood Khan of Azad (independent) Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), the official name Pakistan uses for the part of the divided region it administers. India controls the remaining two-thirds of the largely Muslim Himalayan region, claimed by both of the nuclear-armed rival nations. “Right now, the world is preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, and nobody seriously expects India and Pakistan to go to war. And we do not know what the world would look like once this pandemic is over,” Khan told VOA in an interview at his camp office in the Pakistani capital. 1NC – No Indo-Pak ImpactDeterrence solves Indo-Pak war.Ganguly 19 [(Sumit, Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University) “Why the India-Pakistan Crisis Isn’t Likely to Turn Nuclear,” Foreign Affairs, 3/5/2019] TDINo one can say for sure, but history suggests that there is cause for optimism. During the Kargil War, India worked to contain the fighting to the regions around Pakistan’s original incursions and the war concluded with no real threat of nuclear escalation.Less than two years later, the two countries plunged into crisis once again. In December 2001, five terrorists from the Pakistan-based groups Lashkar-e-Tabia and Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked the parliament building in New Delhi with AK-47s, grenades, and homemade bombs, killing eight security guards and a gardener. In response, India launched a mass military mobilization designed to induce Pakistan to crack down on terrorist groups. As Indian troops deployed to the border, terrorists from Pakistan struck again. In May 2002, three men killed 34 people in the residential area of an Indian army camp in Kaluchak, in Jammu and Kashmir. Tensions spiked. India seemed poised to unleash a military assault on Pakistan. Several embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad withdrew their nonessential personnel and issued travel advisories. The standoff lasted for several months, but dissipated when it became apparent that India lacked viable military options and that the long mobilization was taking a toll on the Indian military’s men and materiel. The United States also helped ease tensions by urging both sides to start talking. India claimed victory, but it was a Pyrrhic one, as Pakistan failed to sever its ties with a range of terrorist organizations.Other nuclear states have also clashed without resorting to nuclear weapons. In 1969, China, then an incipient nuclear weapons state, and the Soviet Union, a full-fledged nuclear power, came to blows over islands in the Ussuri River, which runs along the border between the two countries. Several hundred Chinese and Soviet soldiers died in the confrontation. Making matters worse, Chinese leader Mao Zedong had a tendency to run risks and dismissed the significance of nuclear weapons, reportedly telling Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that even if half of mankind died in a nuclear war, the other half would survive and imperialism would have been razed to the ground. Yet despite Mao’s views, the crisis ended without going nuclear, thanks in part to the efforts of Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, who took the first step by travelling to Beijing for talks.There’s reason to believe that the current situation is similar. Pakistan’s overweening military establishment undoubtedly harbors an extreme view of India and determines Pakistan’s policy toward its neighbor. The military, however, is not irrational. In India, although Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a jingoistic disposition, he, too, understands the risks of escalation, and he has a firm grip on the Indian military.Another source of optimism comes from what political scientists call the “nuclear revolution,” the idea that the invention of nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the nature of war. Many strategists argue that nuclear weapons’ destructive power is so great that states understand the awful consequences that would result from using them—and avoid doing so at all costs. Indian and Pakistani strategists are no different from their counterparts elsewhere. Even Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, a political neophyte, underscored the dangers of nuclear weapons in his speech addressing the crisis last week. And Modi, for all his chauvinism, has scrupulously avoided referring to India’s nuclear capabilities.The decision by India and Pakistan to allow their jets to cross the border represents a major break with the past. Yet so far both countries have taken only limited action. Their principal aim, it appears, is what the political scientist Murray Edelman once referred to as “dramaturgy”—theatrical gestures designed to please domestic audiences. Now that both sides have gone through the motions, neither is likely to escalate any further. Peering into the nuclear abyss concentrates the mind remarkably.1NC – No Africa ImpactNo great power war over Africa – deterrence solves, and resource interests don’t cause escalation.Thrall 15. [(Lloyd Thrall is an Associate at the RAND corporation, M.A. in international studies and diplomacy, SOAS, University of London, PhD student in War Studies at King’s College London) "China’s Expanding African Relations Implications for U.S. National Security," 2015, ]There is little credible potential for a Sino-American conflict over resources in Africa. Contrary to popular and perennial assumptions about resource wars, industry and energy analysis sources project adequate supply of conventional hydrocarbons beyond 2035.6 Given reservoir depletion curves, any tightening of supply would be gradual. The adequacy of supply is further augmented when tertiary production and unconventional sources are considered (such as shale and tar sands). U.S. strength in unconventional sources, and potential energy independence, further reduces the likelihood of a conflict. Even in a future with vastly inflated hydrocarbon prices, these costs pale in comparison to those associated with a Sino-American war, the economic costs of which likely fall more heavily on China than the United States.7 Global hydrocarbon resources are distributed via a fungible global market, with many stakeholders and moderate diversity of supply. This enables importing states to buy a predictable supply of hydrocarbons at reasonable and competing prices over long contracts. African sources do not constitute a majority of this supply chain, and supposed victory in a theoretical great-power resource war would not guarantee security of resource supply. In sum, the potential for either China or the United States to be willing to enter war with a nuclear adversary over African oil, let alone other, less valuable resources, is extraordinarily small.8Production CP1NC – Production CPThe United States federal government should:- substantially increase production and global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine, specifically providing all necessary vaccines to India and South Africa, and- cooperate with allies to achieve increased production and global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine.That comparatively solves better – IP rights don’t hinder vaccine cooperation, but manufacturing capacity is the current constraint.Hans Sauer 6-17 [(Deputy General Counsel, Biotechnology Industry Organization.) “Web event — Confronting Joe Biden’s proposed TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments” ] TDIBut contrary to what Lori said, there are genuine real problems in the supply chain that are not caused by patents, that are simply caused by the unavailability and the constraints on existing capacity. There is in this world such a thing as maxed-out capacity that just can’t be increased on a dime. It’s not all due to intellectual property. This is true for existing vaccines as well as for vaccine raw materials. There are trade barriers. There are export restrictions that we should all be aware of and that we need to work on. And there are very real political, I think, interests in finding an explanation for how we got to this place that absolve governments around the world from their own policy decisions that they made in the past. In the United States, again, it was the declared policy of the previous administration, as well as this one, that we would vaccinate healthy college kids and go all down the line and offer a vaccine to everybody who wants it before we start sharing any with grandmothers in Burkina Faso. That was the policy. You can agree with it or disagree with it, but that was policy. We had export restrictions in place before a lot of other countries did. And that, too, contributed to unequal access of vaccines around the world. Another thing that was predictable was that politicians and governments around the world who want to be seen as proactive, on the ball, in control, for a long time were actually very indecisive, very unsure about how to address the COVID problem, which has so many dimensions. Vaccines are only one of those. But with respect to vaccines, not many governments took decisive action, put money on the table, put bets on multiple horses, before we knew whether these vaccines would work, would be approved. And it was governments in middle-income countries who now, I think, justifiably are concerned that they’re not getting fast enough access, who didn’t have the means and who didn’t have the decision-making structure to place the same bets on multiple horses, if you will, that were placed in the relatively more wealthy, global North and global West. But there is, I think, a really good and, with hindsight, predictable explanation of how we got to this place, and I think it teaches us something about how to fix the problem going forward. So why will the waiver not work? Well, first of all, with complex technology like vaccines, Lori touched on it, reverse engineering, like you would for a small molecule drug, is much more difficult if not impossible. But it depends very much more than small molecule drugs on cooperation, on voluntary transfer of technology, and on mutual assistance. We have seen as part of the pandemic response an unprecedented level of collaborations and cooperation and no indication that IP has stood in the way of the pandemic response. The waiver proponents have found zero credible examples of where IP has actually been an obstacle, where somebody has tried to block somebody else from developing a COVID vaccine or other COVID countermeasure, right? It’s not there. Second, the myth of this vast global capacity to manufacture COVID vaccines that somehow exists out there is unsubstantiated and frankly, in my opinion, untrue. But there is no such thing as vast untapped, idle capacity that could be turned around on a dime to start making COVID vaccines within weeks or even months. This capacity needs to be built; it needs to be established. And at a time when time is of the essence to beat this pandemic, starting capacity-building discussions is helpful, but it won’t be the answer to beat this pandemic. It will be the answer if we do everything right to beating the next pandemic. And if we learn any lesson of this, and then I will stop, is that the COVID waiver as well as the situation in which we find ourselves — if anything, it’s a reminder that we definitely have to take global capacity-building more seriously than we did in the past. That is true for the global North, as well as for middle-income countries — all of whom have to dedicate themselves much more determinedly to pandemic preparedness. And there’s a need to invest both in preparedness and in public health systems that hasn’t happened in the wake of past pandemic threats. This is what we will need to do. We will need to reduce export restrictions, and we will need to rededicate ourselves to preparing for the next pandemic. As far as this pandemic goes, there are 11 vaccines around the world that are already being shot into arms, only four of which come from the global North. How many more vaccines do we want? I don’t know, maybe 11 is enough if we start making more of them. But there are manufacturers around the world who know how to do this — including in China, including in India, and including in Russia. All developed their homegrown vaccines, apparently without interference by IP rights, right? So let’s make more of those. I think that’s going to be the more practical and realistic answer to solving the problem. And we need to lean on governments to stop export controls and to dedicate themselves to more global equity.1NC – Production CP + INBThe United States federal government should:- substantially increase production and global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine, specifically providing all necessary vaccines to India and South Africa, and- cooperate with allies to achieve increased production and global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine.The US should take the lead – otherwise, China and Russia will use vaccine diplomacy to advance foreign policy goals. The counterplan alone solves and reinvigorates US leadership. Gayle et al 21. [(HELENE GAYLE is President and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust and has served in global health and development roles with CARE, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. GORDON LaFORGE is a Senior Researcher at Princeton University and a lecturer at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management. ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER is CEO of New America and former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department) “America Can—and Should—Vaccinate the World,” Foreign Affairs, March 19, 2021. ] TDIThese initiatives come not a moment too soon. In tackling the worst global crisis of a lifetime, the United States has so far been upstaged. Russia and China have aggressively marketed and distributed their vaccines to foreign countries, largely to advance foreign policy goals. Russia is using the jab to bolster its image and investment prospects and to drive a wedge between EU countries. China is donating doses to gain leverage in territorial disputes and expand its influence under the Belt and Road Initiative. Both Moscow and Beijing have moved to undercut the United States in its own backyard by supplying vaccines to Latin America. The Biden administration is right to want to take the lead in vaccinating the world, for a host of reasons both self-interested and altruistic. But it should not fall into the trap of trying to beat Russia and China at their own game—handing out vaccines to specific countries based on their geostrategic importance and the amount of attention they are receiving from rival powers. Rather, Biden should pursue abroad the sort of “all in” unity approach that he has proclaimed at home. His administration should focus less on strategic advantage than on vaccinating the largest number of people worldwide in the shortest amount of time. In so doing, the United States would concentrate on what the world’s peoples have in common—susceptibility to this and many other viruses—regardless of the nature of their governments. ALL IN AND ALL OUT The United States has successfully mobilized its own and international resources to respond to regional crises in the past. In 2003, President George W. Bush started the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the largest global health program focused on a single disease in history. PEPFAR brought together U.S. agencies, private companies, and local civil society groups to help sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia get the AIDS crisis under control, saving millions of lives. In 2004, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean caused more than 220,000 deaths and billions in damage, and the United States led an urgent, similarly inclusive humanitarian relief and recovery effort that rescued victims, hastened reconstruction, and built lasting goodwill in South and Southeast Asia. Biden can improve on Bush’s precedent by going global, and he has already taken steps toward doing so. Under President Donald Trump, the United States refused to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility, an international partnership that aims to guarantee COVID-19 vaccine access for the entire world. The Biden administration reversed this stance immediately and contributed $4 billion, making the United States the largest donor to the effort. Still, even if COVAX meets the ambitious target of delivering two billion doses to developing nations by the end of 2021, it will be able to vaccinate only 20 percent of those countries’ populations. Just imagine, however, what could happen if Washington were to treat COVID-19 as the equivalent of the enemy in a world war or the pandemic as a global version of the regional AIDS and Ebola epidemics of years past. Imagine, in other words, what all-out mobilization would look like if the United States treated the COVID-19 pandemic like the global threat that it is. The Biden administration is right to want to take the lead in vaccinating the world. Washington would lead a multilateral, whole-of-society effort to help COVAX vaccinate the world. The government would activate the military and call upon allies in the G-7 and NATO for a major assistance operation that speeds the flow of vaccine supplies and strengthens delivery systems. As it has pledged to do in the Quad summit deal, the U.S. government would use the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other civilian agencies and development programs to help countries with their national vaccination programs. And it would enlist companies, nonprofits, and civil society organizations to help increase vaccine production, raise funding, and provide technical assistance to foreign counterparts. The U.S. government should undertake exactly such an effort, right now: an all-out response for an all-in global vaccination campaign. Such a campaign would advance U.S. economic and security interests and reboot American global leadership after years of decline. Rather than perpetuate the transactional, friend-by-friend vaccine diplomacy of China and Russia, a U.S.-led vaccine effort could invigorate a new multilateralism that is more pragmatic and inclusive than the twentieth-century international order and better adapted to tackling twenty-first-century global threats. Washington would do well to remember that if COVID-19 does come back, authoritarian governments will be able to lock down their populations more quickly and effectively than democracies will, so even in competitive terms, America’s best bet really is to eradicate the novel coronavirus. The United States has a momentous opportunity to prove both that democracy can deliver and that American ideals truly are universal. By offering a model of global cooperation that draws on a far wider range of resources than any one government can provide, the United States can lead a vaccine effort that builds on the strengths of its open and pluralist society. President Biden would demonstrate unequivocally that the United States is not only “back” but looking—and leading—far ahead.Maintenance of the ILO is key to reduce a host of existential threats – establishes great-power peace.Brands 18. [(Hal Brands is a Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “America’s Global Order Is Worth Fighting For, Bloomberg Opinion, Politics & Policy,” August 14, 2018, Bloomberg. ] TDIThe first argument is easily disposed of. Yes, the postwar world has been thoroughly imperfect, featuring nuclear arms races, genocides, widespread poverty and other scourges. But the world has always been imperfect, and by any meaningful comparison, the last seven decades have been a veritable golden age. The liberal international economic order has led to an explosion of domestic and global prosperity: According to World Bank data, both U.S. and global per capita income have increased roughly three-fold (in inflation-adjusted terms) since 1960, with U.S. gross domestic product increasing nearly six-fold. The U.S. system of alliances and forward military deployments has contributed critically to the longest period of great-power peace in modern history, and the incidence of war and conquest more broadly have dropped dramatically. The number of democracies in the world has increased from perhaps a dozen during World War II to well over 100 today; respect for basic human rights has also reached impressive levels. As a bevy of scholarship has shown, the policies that the U.S. has pursued and the international order it has built have contributed enormously and directly to these outcomes. If the liberal international order can’t be considered a smashing success, no international order could be. The second critique is also overstated. It is true that Washington, like all great powers throughout history, has been willing to bend the rules to get its way. It is hard to reconcile Cold War-era interventions in Guatemala, Chile and other countries with a professed solicitude for human rights and democracy; the Iraq War of 2003 is only one instance in which the U.S. brushed aside the concerns of international organizations such as the U.N. Security Council. Likewise, when the U.S. government determined that the Bretton Woods system of monetary relations no longer suited its interests in the 1970s, it terminated that scheme and insisted on creating a more favorable one. But again, the proper standard here is not sainthood but reality. And the U.S. has generally enlisted its power in the service of universal values such as democracy and human rights; it has, more often than not, promoted a positive-sum international system in which like-minded nations can be secure and wealthy. This goes back to the very beginning of the liberal order: Washington did not seek to hold its defeated adversaries in subjugation after World War II; it rebuilt Japan and western Germany into thriving, democratic allies that became fierce economic competitors to the U.S. The U.S. has taken this approach not simply because it wanted to do good in the world — powerful as this motivation is — but because of a hard-headed desire to do good for itself. In an interdependent global environment, American officials have long calculated, the U.S. cannot divorce its own well-being from that of the wider world. And in contrast to how other great powers — Imperial Japan, for instance, or the Soviet Union — ruled their spheres of influence, American behavior has been positively enlightened. It is this relatively benign behavior that has convinced so many countries to tolerate American leadership — and it is the emergence of a darker form of U.S. hegemony under the Trump administration that so profoundly worries them today. As for the third critique, the premise is right, but the conclusion can easily go too far. It is always dangerous to become so enraptured by past achievements that one loses sight of the need for adaptation in the future. This is particularly true today, because the strength of the liberal order is being tested from within and without, by issues ranging from unequal burden-sharing among American allies to the ambivalence of the American people themselves. There is little evidence to suggest, however, that either American power or the liberal order it supports have eroded so dramatically that Washington’s postwar project cannot be sustained. Quite the contrary — the U.S. is likely to remain the world’s strongest power for decades to come.1NR – Comparative EvidenceThe cp comparatively solves better – IP rights don’t hinder vaccine cooperation, but manufacturing capacity is the current constraint.Hans Sauer 6-17 [(Deputy General Counsel, Biotechnology Industry Organization.) “Web event — Confronting Joe Biden’s proposed TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments” ]TDIBut contrary to what Lori said, there are genuine real problems in the supply chain that are not caused by patents, that are simply caused by the unavailability and the constraints on existing capacity. There is in this world such a thing as maxed-out capacity that just can’t be increased on a dime. It’s not all due to intellectual property. This is true for existing vaccines as well as for vaccine raw materials. There are trade barriers. There are export restrictions that we should all be aware of and that we need to work on. And there are very real political, I think, interests in finding an explanation for how we got to this place that absolve governments around the world from their own policy decisions that they made in the past. In the United States, again, it was the declared policy of the previous administration, as well as this one, that we would vaccinate healthy college kids and go all down the line and offer a vaccine to everybody who wants it before we start sharing any with grandmothers in Burkina Faso. That was the policy. You can agree with it or disagree with it, but that was policy. We had export restrictions in place before a lot of other countries did. And that, too, contributed to unequal access of vaccines around the world. Another thing that was predictable was that politicians and governments around the world who want to be seen as proactive, on the ball, in control, for a long time were actually very indecisive, very unsure about how to address the COVID problem, which has so many dimensions. Vaccines are only one of those. But with respect to vaccines, not many governments took decisive action, put money on the table, put bets on multiple horses, before we knew whether these vaccines would work, would be approved. And it was governments in middle-income countries who now, I think, justifiably are concerned that they’re not getting fast enough access, who didn’t have the means and who didn’t have the decision-making structure to place the same bets on multiple horses, if you will, that were placed in the relatively more wealthy, global North and global West. But there is, I think, a really good and, with hindsight, predictable explanation of how we got to this place, and I think it teaches us something about how to fix the problem going forward. So why will the waiver not work? Well, first of all, with complex technology like vaccines, Lori touched on it, reverse engineering, like you would for a small molecule drug, is much more difficult if not impossible. But it depends very much more than small molecule drugs on cooperation, on voluntary transfer of technology, and on mutual assistance. We have seen as part of the pandemic response an unprecedented level of collaborations and cooperation and no indication that IP has stood in the way of the pandemic response. The waiver proponents have found zero credible examples of where IP has actually been an obstacle, where somebody has tried to block somebody else from developing a COVID vaccine or other COVID countermeasure, right? It’s not there. Second, the myth of this vast global capacity to manufacture COVID vaccines that somehow exists out there is unsubstantiated and frankly, in my opinion, untrue. But there is no such thing as vast untapped, idle capacity that could be turned around on a dime to start making COVID vaccines within weeks or even months. This capacity needs to be built; it needs to be established. And at a time when time is of the essence to beat this pandemic, starting capacity-building discussions is helpful, but it won’t be the answer to beat this pandemic. It will be the answer if we do everything right to beating the next pandemic. And if we learn any lesson of this, and then I will stop, is that the COVID waiver as well as the situation in which we find ourselves — if anything, it’s a reminder that we definitely have to take global capacity-building more seriously than we did in the past. That is true for the global North, as well as for middle-income countries — all of whom have to dedicate themselves much more determinedly to pandemic preparedness. And there’s a need to invest both in preparedness and in public health systems that hasn’t happened in the wake of past pandemic threats. This is what we will need to do. We will need to reduce export restrictions, and we will need to rededicate ourselves to preparing for the next pandemic. As far as this pandemic goes, there are 11 vaccines around the world that are already being shot into arms, only four of which come from the global North. How many more vaccines do we want? I don’t know, maybe 11 is enough if we start making more of them. But there are manufacturers around the world who know how to do this — including in China, including in India, and including in Russia. All developed their homegrown vaccines, apparently without interference by IP rights, right? So let’s make more of those. I think that’s going to be the more practical and realistic answer to solving the problem. And we need to lean on governments to stop export controls and to dedicate themselves to more global equity.1NR – US SolvesThe United States alone can end the pandemic. Gayle et al 21. [(HELENE GAYLE is President and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust and has served in global health and development roles with CARE, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. GORDON LaFORGE is a Senior Researcher at Princeton University and a lecturer at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management. ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER is CEO of New America and former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department) “America Can—and Should—Vaccinate the World,” Foreign Affairs, March 19, 2021. ] TDIThe United States could bring the formidable logistics capabilities of its military to bear on the effort to supply and deliver vaccines globally, including in difficult and remote locations. The U.S. military excels at exactly such tasks and has a global footprint, along with long-standing partnerships in countries ranging from Colombia to Egypt to the Philippines. As was the case in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami relief effort, U.S. forces could partner with foreign militaries to help expand and administer national vaccination programs. Washington could call upon allies in the G-7 and NATO to build a broad coalition that shares the costs. And in contrast to the interminable stabilization operations in the Middle East, this humanitarian assistance mission would be straightforward, with concrete objectives. The United States already has thousands of civilian officials and locally employed staff with experience in humanitarian assistance operations and immunization campaigns stationed around the world, representing such agencies as USAID, the CDC, and the State Department. Because of past initiatives, such as PEPFAR and the Global Health Security Agenda, the United States has strong public health partnerships in dozens of low- and middle-income nations. As Samantha Power, former ambassador to the United Nations, has argued in these pages, that presence could be directed toward helping countries manage logistics and supply chains, initiate public information campaigns, train local health-care workers, and increase vaccine access for marginalized and isolated communities. A serious global campaign would mark the beginning of a very different era of American leadership. In the same spirit, the United States should work with countries to help develop and increase local vaccine-manufacturing capacity. Several Latin American countries turned to China and Russia for vaccines because they could not meet the strict terms or pay the high prices that Western drug companies demanded. Just as the Biden administration brokered a deal between Johnson & Johnson and Merck—two fierce industry competitors—to increase production of the one-shot vaccine, so should it push U.S. companies to establish production arrangements with foreign manufacturers. China and Russia have already made deals for local manufacturers to produce their vaccines. Companies in Argentina, Brazil, and Italy all plan to begin producing the Sputnik V vaccine. Open, democratic societies have tremendous resources to mobilize in the effort to vaccinate the world. Sister cities, universities, religious denominations, corporations with global supply chains, charities with global networks, diaspora groups—all could be encouraged to reach out to partners abroad and figure out how best to contribute. Involving such diverse actors would help animate a new, more dynamic multilateralism. The Biden administration is right to prioritize vaccinating every American. Ending the pandemic abroad won’t matter if the United States doesn’t vaccinate everyone at home, any more than the reverse. But the country absolutely has the ability to do both at the same time. A serious global campaign to vaccinate everyone as soon as possible would mark the beginning of a very different era of American leadership. The United States would demonstrate its ability to lead through global institutions rather than against them—and those institutions would include more nimble ones than the bureaucratic behemoths of the twentieth century. The United States, alongside as many nations as it can convince to join it, would lead with all its resources and talent, whether public, private, or civic. It would focus more on people than on power games and measure its success in lives saved more than in governments recruited to “our side.” Call it a strategy of all for all.1NR – Internal Net BenefitUnilateral US action is necessary to combat Chinese and Russian vaccine diplomacy – they’re establishing spheres of influence because of few vaccines in developing countries – collapses the LIO.Carman and Carl 21. [(Ezequiel Carman is an Argentine lawyer and global health and trade policy consultant. Previously, he served as a legal advisor to the Ministry of Justice of Buenos Aires, an assistant professor of international public law at the Universidad Católica Argentina, and a research assistant at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Joseph Carl is a graduate of Liberty University, where he studied international relations and strategic international studies. He has worked for the U.S. Department of State and the Heritage Foundation) “A U.S. vaccine diplomacy strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean,” The Global Americans, June 15, 2021. ] TDIOnce again, history seems to be repeating itself. The United States, along with the world’s other rich and mostly Western countries, continue to be accused of hoarding medical supplies, having purchased one billion surplus vaccine doses (more than is required to vaccinate their citizens). In their absence, China—and, to a lesser extent, Russia—have rushed to take advantage of the vaccine gap in the Global South, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. A lack of leadership from Washington in sharing vaccines and their intellectual property (IP) earlier in the pandemic has allowed its geopolitical competitors to take advantage of Latin America’s desperate need to acquire scarce vaccines. Although the region represents only eight percent of the global population, it has experienced nearly one-third of all COVID-19 deaths. Historical precedent demonstrates this is not the first time that Washington’s international moral standing has been damaged during a global health crisis, due to the lack of political will to share lifesaving drugs and other vital resources. However, this time around, unlike in such past episodes, there will be concrete geopolitical consequences to Washington’s inaction. In recent years, the U.S. has lost significant political and economic influence among its southern neighbors; without swift remedial action, its geopolitical rivals may cement such losses through their campaigns of vaccine diplomacy. To rebuild its influence in the region, Washington will need to muster the political will to increase Latin America and the Caribbean’s access to vaccines and develop a sound strategy for its own vaccine diplomacy. Already, some countries in the region have been sufficiently strong-armed by other global powers, the implications of which could be damaging for U.S. interests. As the world transitions into the next stage of the pandemic, those nations that continue to be most ravaged by COVID-19 will likely continue to remember which countries provided them with aid and succor in their time of need. History repeats itself In 1981, the first cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) were reported; the following decade was defined by a devastating global AIDS epidemic (which would eventually be recognized as a pandemic). Analogous to how Latin America and the Caribbean have borne disproportionately the burden of COVID-19, Africa was hit hardest by the AIDS epidemic. Many parallels can be drawn between the international handlings of both the COVID-19 and AIDS pandemics. By the late 1980s, once antiretroviral therapies (ARV) were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), AIDS deaths in the U.S. began to decline immediately. Nevertheless, high levels of AIDS-related deaths in Africa continued for another decade. Africa’s enduring fight against AIDS was largely due to the cost of ARVs, which, at the time, were priced at USD $10,000 per person annually—completely out of reach for most developing countries. Pharmaceutical companies argued that the drug’s high selling price was necessary to procure a return on its investment in the research and development (R&D) of the ARV, and that pricing the drugs at a marginal cost would maximize consumer surplus while also halting future development in the industry. When pricing a drug, a pharmaceutical company needs to factor-in several costs: 1) the cost of R&D for drugs that never enter the market; 2) clinical trials necessary to comply with regulatory requirements; 3) and the marketing cost of promoting the new drug. While the original price of the patented ARV was USD $10,000 per patient per year, the price of the generic version, manufactured by the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla, was only USD $1.00 per day. During the AIDS pandemic, since many developing countries were members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), they were forbidden from importing generic pharmaceutical products because in order to maintain compliance with regulations imposed by the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement. Western pharmaceutical companies—the owners of the IP rights for the medications—blocked access to generic ARV drugs out of fear that the importation of these generic alternatives would ultimately threaten their net profitization. Despite the protests of the pharmaceutical industry, India and South Africa continued to compete with and defy the U.S. and the WTO (a body in which powerful industrialized economies—those of the U.S., Europe, and Japan—wield disproportionate influence). Drug companies eventually sued to keep lifesaving therapies out of the hands of dying AIDS-sufferers in Africa, a state of affairs that engendered a forceful reaction from international activists. After years of political pressure, Washington was forced to yield, eventually pushing for the relaxation of stringent IP protections for ARVs, making generic versions of the drugs more accessible and affordable. Despite its eventual concession, the perception that the U.S. had fought bitterly to prioritize pharmaceutical company profits over human lives in the Global South only helped bolster negative narratives surrounding the Western superpower. However, unlike the unipolarity that characterized the 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. is no longer the only global superpower, and the humanitarian decisions it makes now—during a new global health crisis—have the potential to be hugely consequential for the country’s influence and image. Similar to its trajectory at the height of the AIDS crisis, Washington only recently voiced its desire to back the WTO patent waiver proposal, having come under tremendous international pressure. Granted, the U.S. backed a patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines much faster than it did for ARVs in the 1980s. However, having been presented with a rare opportunity to make amends for past moral missteps—by eliminating vaccine IP protections to ensure that affordable, generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines could be manufactured en masse around the world—the U.S. once again hesitated, limiting opportunities for developing nations to recover from the pandemic and again amplifying criticisms of the United States. Backed by over 100 developing countries, India and South Africa are once again leading the current fight to eliminate IP protections. India and South Africa filed a waiver with the WTO requesting a temporary suspension of patent obligations under TRIPS (Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II) so that developing countries can access vaccines in a timely manner. The intent of this effort is to boost domestic manufacturing capacity by facilitating the widespread production of generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines, evening the odds with respect to global vaccine procurement and accessibility. The waiver would also allow developing countries to procure vaccines more expeditiously, either by producing them themselves or by streamlining the cumbersome institutional and legal requirements of importing pharmaceutical products from other countries that possess the necessary manufacturing capacity. After months of pushback from activists and political leaders, the U.S. finally expressed its support for patent waivers, with several key Western powers (notably France and the European Union (EU)) following suit. However, Germany—a major political player in the patent waiver debate due to its powerful pharmaceutical sector—continues to oppose the move. Other European countries remain similarly split on the patent waiver proposal, reflecting the fact that any patent waiver proposal will still requires extensive negotiation (in order for it to be accepted, there must be unanimous consent among WTO members). Political leaders and activists continue to call on the West to support the waiving of IP protections, noting that current projections anticipate that wealthy countries will be able to immunize their entire populations by the end of 2021, while developing countries will only see the same results in the next three to four years. Unlike the AIDS pandemic, COVID-19 has generated not only massive medical concerns, but also a global economic crisis: vaccination campaigns in richer countries have already allowed them to begin to rebuild their economies, while mass unemployment and lockdowns continue to strangle the economies of many developing nations. Increasing the supply and accessibility of vaccines in the developing world will undoubtedly facilitate a faster, and more equal, economic recovery. Continuing to allow the virus to spread unencumbered throughout the Global South, however, will only increase the likelihood of further viral mutations, possibly jeopardizing the efficacy of existing vaccines and further perpetuating already grave economic and medical concerns. Washington’s initial unwillingness to cross the pharmaceutical industry has undeniably damaged the moral standing of the United States. Moreover, this decision also created a humanitarian void eagerly filled by Beijing and Moscow, as they actively seek to position themselves as the benefactors of the most COVID-19-stricken region of the world: Latin America and the Caribbean. To date, Russian and Chinese vaccine diplomacy have already led to economic, diplomatic, and political losses being felt by Washington; this trend, if allowed to continue, will only further limit U.S. regional influence with its neighbors to the south. A lack of strategy and political will In the absence of an effective vaccine diplomacy strategy from Washington, and with the perpetuation of its current nationalistic vaccine policy, some of the pharmaceutical companies that the U.S. so readily protects have pushed countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean into the waiting arms of Beijing and Moscow. While some Latin American countries have received a few vaccines from Western companies, most nations in the region continue to struggle to obtain doses. Pfizer, a U.S. pharmaceutical company, was accused of bullying Latin American countries during vaccine procurement negotiations, using its own leverage to attempt to force desperate nations to offer sovereign assets—such as their embassies—as collateral. Pfizer’s efforts resulted in a lost deal with Argentina, which has continued to grow increasingly closer to China. While the U.S. possesses a surplus of COVID-19 vaccines, it has failed to develop an effective, far-reaching donation strategy. Only recently did the Biden administration announce its plans to ship 80 million vaccines—a small portion of its surplus supply—abroad. Of the initial 25 million doses destined to be distributed internationally, 19 million will be donated to the largely mismanaged UN-backed COVAX program, with only six million of these COVAX doses designated for Latin America and the Caribbean. In comparison, China alone has donated or sold over 165 million vaccines to Latin America, with countries like Chile and Uruguay having vaccinated 80 and 63 percent of their populations, respectively, with Chinese vaccines. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden previously donated a total of 4.2 million AstraZeneca vaccines to Canada and Mexico, the first vaccines that the U.S. had sent abroad. Still, this relatively modest donation was preceded by repeated calls from prominent Latin American leaders for President Biden to donate vaccines to U.S. allies in Latin America. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was notably rebuffed in his request for shipments of U.S. vaccines, being told by the Biden administration that it was prioritizing the vaccination of the American public (despite the fact that Washington had already bought enough vaccines to inoculate the entire U.S. population several times over). Colombia President Iván Duque of Colombia, a country that is a key regional ally, has also called for the Biden administration to aid countries in the Western Hemisphere that are struggling to procure vaccines. By contrast, some Latin American officials have described easier negotiations, cheaper prices, and overall better terms in their successful agreements with Russia and China. Last year, for example, Beijing offered a USD $1 billion loan to Latin American nations to help finance their purchasing of Chinese-made vaccines—an offer that was well-received by recipient countries. Due to a lack of vaccine support and assurance from Washington, countries are growing closer to Beijing and Moscow, succumbing to rival geopolitical powers that do not align with the diplomatic and economic interests of the United States.Russia and China are using vaccines to coerce and entice vulnerable countries – the US must expand its program to solve. Pratt and Levin 21. [(Simon Frankel Pratt is a lecturer in the School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Jamie Levin is an assistant professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. “Vaccines Will Shape the New Geopolitical Order,” Foreign Policy, April 29, 2021. ] TDIAlready, there are strong indications that vaccine have-nots are vulnerable to diplomatic coercion and enticement. Russia and China have begun supplying vaccines in exchange for favorable foreign-policy concessions, as has Israel. Western countries, meanwhile, are focused on their own domestic vaccination programs—although the United States has recently declared its intention to offer vaccine aid to hard-hit countries, especially India. For the non-vaccine producers, there’s always the market—and at first glance, that has worked out for some. The European Union has begun to round the corner, administering millions of doses among its 27 member states. Israel continues to be an early success story; rather than employing its own considerable pharmaceutical base, it has imported millions of Pfizer-BioNTech doses and administered them rapidly and efficiently. And, despite having no domestic production capacity, Canada is now third for vaccination rates for the top 34 largest countries, behind the United Kingdom and the United States. Its tens of millions of doses have all been imported from Europe and the United States. Similar success stories can be found in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. However, these market success stories are largely confined to preexisting and intense trade relationships between wealthy and advanced industrial economies. Rates of vaccinations in most other countries continue to be very low, and notwithstanding the U.S. pile of AstraZeneca doses, this is a result of supply limits. Intellectual property laws and infrastructure constraints mean a near-total monopolization of production capacities in a small handful of countries and a hierarchy of trade advantages and preferences in which a handful of non-producing countries receive priority while others are left wanting. To overcome these challenges, the World Health Organization set up COVAX, an initiative to coordinate vaccine research and license production in order to guarantee fair and equitable distribution worldwide. To date, however, these efforts have fallen desperately short. Few vaccines have been distributed through this collaborative effort. Instead, facing domestic shortages, the EU and the United States have imposed restrictions on vaccine exports, limiting supply. But while the United States, Canada, and Europe are still focusing on their own domestic vaccination drives, other vaccine producers are willing to exploit global demand and use their own supplies as a diplomatic instrument. China and Russia have both actively engaged in vaccine diplomacy, linking vaccine exports to policy concessions and favorable geopolitical reconfigurations. In February, Russia brokered the release of an Israeli citizen held in Syria in exchange for Israel financing Sputnik V vaccines to be sent to Syria. Russia has similarly supplied vaccines to Central and Eastern European countries, drawing them closer to its orbit. China has declared that its Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines are a “global public good” and has begun supplying them to nearly 100 countries, in many cases at no cost. Some of this seems intended to rapidly undercut and abort deals that states have made with Pfizer through earlier shipments and, potentially, bribery of local officials. Meanwhile, new leaks indicate that China demanded changes to Paraguay’s position on Taiwan and successfully pressured Brazil to open its 5G market to Huawei as preconditions for receiving vaccine shipments. If this is a seize-the-moment, one-time thing, then Russia and China will likely come out ahead. India, too, once it has confronted the rapidly escalating second wave. If boosters or regular vaccinations are not needed more than once every several years, then the world is unlikely to see a significant geopolitical reorientation. But if a yearly shot is needed, as leading epidemiologists have warned may be necessary, it could be another story. One of the main hegemonic goods that aspiring powers provide is national security. Geopolitical dependencies have typically manifested from the provision of military instruments through arms deals, bases, and collective security commitments. During the Cold War, for example, vast quantities of weapons, training, and troops flowed into the global south as the United States and the Soviet Union competed for client states and as those client states opportunistically sought the most generous patron. While these flows have since diminished, they do still continue. In the current market for this good, the United States sits at the top, supported by a few allies. Russia dominates within a small region of satellites, and China seeks the same, with mixed success but obvious aspirations. Concerns about the efficacy of Sinovac and Sinopharm has dented their reputation, even among allies of Beijing. In the global pharmaceutical market, things look different. While still a major player, the United States faces stiff competition from several potential rivals. In Western Europe, Germany and the U.K. enjoy disproportionate influence, as does Russia in its former spheres of influence, Central and Eastern Europe. China and India both have massive production capacity and, most importantly, dominate export markets for generics outside the West. And, despite being a relatively small regional power, Israel also has vastly more significance than its size would indicate as another leading supplier of generics. If demand for vaccines remains high in the long term, competition among these states to become the world’s dominant suppliers will result in a very different global balance of power from today’s.Vaccine availability determines the scope of great-power competition. Heath 21. [(Ryan Heath is the author of Global Translations, POLITICO’s global newsletter and podcast, and previously authored POLITICO’s U.N. Playbook, Brussels Playbook, and Davos Playbook) “Unable to get U.S. vaccines, world turns to Russia and China,” POLITICO, February 25, 2021. ] TDIFor now, Chinese and Russian vaccines are attractive to many governments simply because they’re available. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has bought Chinese and Russian vaccines — to the annoyance of other EU leaders. He said in a Feb. 22 interview with Focus magazine that his obligation is to obtain “as many vaccines as possible, as quickly as possible.” “There’s no such thing as an Eastern vaccine or a Western vaccine: There are only good vaccines and bad vaccines,” said Orbán, who came to prominence and power as an anti-Communist firebrand, adding “under communism we were vaccinated with Soviet vaccines as children; and, as you can see, we’re fine.” Balkan Trojan horse Other countries, including neighboring Serbia, are making political statements with their access to Chinese and Russia vaccines. China and Russia have long sought to exert influence in the Western Balkans, via energy, finance and infrastructure loans and investments. Jilted by the EU — which has stalled membership discussions with Serbia — the country has shifted from being a recipient of China’s “mask diplomacy” in 2020, to a Trump-style deal-making. "I wrote to Xi Jinping in October, and the price was drastically lowered," Serbian President Aleksandar Vu?i? told local media, proud to have bypassed the typical conditions attached to EU funding and aid. There’s no such thing as an Eastern vaccine or a Western vaccine: There are only good vaccines and bad vaccines. Viktor Orbán, Hungarian president Today, Serbia’s 15 percent vaccination rate outstrips every EU country, thanks mostly to Chinese and Russian vaccines. The Serbian government said in a statement it's trying to "act responsibly" and has donated Pfizer and Sputnik vaccines to neighboring countries "thus far unable to procure the vaccines on the world market." The tiny nation of Seychelles (population 98,000) has suffered just a single death from Covid-19 but is already the recipient of 150,000 free vaccine doses — donations from India and the United Arab Emirates. Officials have vaccinated two-thirds of the population: more than any country except Israel. The strings may come later: India is reportedly looking to establish a military presence there, to keep tabs on China’s Indian Ocean activities. The Seychelles Parliament already rejected India’s overtures once; the question is whether locals will feel differently after their free Indian vaccines. From hoarders to donors Western countries stand accused of vaccine hoarding: In some cases, like Canada’s, government have bought around seven doses for every person. Those contracts are insurance policies — a national version of the COVAX system, in which a government spreads its vaccines bets and hopes enough are approved for use that they won’t fall short. If the government bets well, it will have millions of excess doses to share back with other countries. COVAX members are encouraged to “gift” unused excess doses back to other members, rather than sell them.AT: No Heg ImpactPrimacy solves extinction---it’s key to deterrence, containment, and counterterrorism.Hal Brands 17. **Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. **Eric S. Edelman, Counselor, CSBA; Undersecretary of Defense (2005-9). “Avoiding a Strategy of Bluff: The Crisis of American Military Primacy.” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. March 20. strategy is the calculated relation of means to ends, then today America is careening toward strategic insolvency. Following the Cold War, the United States possessed unrivaled military primacy, both globally and in all the world’s key strategic theaters. Yet today, Washington faces military challenges that are both more severe and more numerous than at any time in decades, precisely as its own defense cutbacks have significantly reduced U.S. military capabilities. The United States confronts challenges from revisionist great powers such as China and Russia, aggressive rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, and international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. At the same time, constant-dollar defense spending fell from $768 billion in 2010 to $595 billion in 2015, the fastest drawdown—in percentage terms—since the Korean War. The result has been a creeping crisis of American military primacy, as the margin of superiority to which the United States has become accustomed has diminished, and a growing gap between U.S. commitments and capabilities has emerged. This state of strategic insolvency poses numerous dangers to both the United States and the broader international order that American grand strategy has traditionally supported. It will undermine U.S. alliances, by creating new doubts regarding the credibility of Washington’s guarantees. It will undercut deterrence, by tempting adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran to calculate that the United States may be unwilling—or unable—to oppose aggression. It will make for far harder fights should conflict erupt in key areas from Europe to the Middle East to East Asia, and it may ultimately result in a situation in which the United States simply cannot defend countries it has pledged to defend. The United States would currently face grave difficulties defending the Baltic states from a Russian assault, for instance; the military balance around Taiwan and elsewhere in East Asia has also eroded dramatically. Finally, as U.S. military power becomes less imposing, U.S. diplomacy is likely to encounter greater difficulties as well. American officials continually aver that the U.S. military is the finest fighting force in the history of the world, but today, U.S. military power has become dangerously insufficient relative to the grand strategy and international order it has traditionally supported. Great powers facing strategic insolvency have three basic strategic options. First, the United States could decrease its global commitments, thereby bringing its strategic obligations back into alignment with a diminished military resource base. In practice, this might mean dispensing with U.S. security commitments to the most geographically exposed allies and partners—such as Taiwan and the Baltic states—in hopes of reconsolidating a more defensible strategic perimeter. Yet the appeal of this option is largely illusory, for even reducing defense spending will not come close to balancing the U.S. federal budget absent major changes in tax and entitlement policies, and U.S. retrenchment from East Asia, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe is likely to generate profound geopolitical instability. Aggressive revisionist powers may well be emboldened by U.S. retreat; remaining U.S. allies may lose confidence in the credibility of American defense pledges. Retrenchment may somewhat narrow the gap between U.S. capabilities and commitments in the short run, but only at the likely price of a further erosion of the global order that U.S. strategy has been meant to defend. A second option is living with greater risk. In practice, this would mean either gambling that enemies will not test increasingly precarious commitments or employing riskier approaches—such as relying on nuclear weapons or other escalatory strategies—to sustain those commitments. This approach has a certain intuitive appeal—it substitutes deterrence by punishment for deterrence by denial—and the United States indeed relied on such approaches during the Cold War. Yet it also entails profound liabilities. Simply hoping that exposed commitments will not be challenged could work for a time, but this approach carries enormous risk that those guarantees will eventually be tested and found wanting, with devastating effects. Likewise, more escalatory approaches to deterrence may lack credibility—if America is not willing to bear the fiscal costs associated with making its defense commitments credible through conventional means, would it really risk the astronomically higher costs associated with nuclear escalation in a conflict over Taiwan or the Baltic states? This approach thus risks leading the United States into a trap where, if its interests are challenged, it is confronted with a choice between pursuing escalatory options that carry a prohibitive price or simply acquiescing to aggression.Collapse of unipolarity causes extinction via transition wars. The structure of the international system explains conflict.Michael Beckley 18. Professor of political science at Tufts. Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower. Cornell University Press. The story of world politics is often told as a game of thrones in which a rotating cast of great powers battles for top-dog status. According to researchers led by Graham Allison at Harvard, there have been sixteen cases in the past ?ve hundred years when a rising power challenged a ruling power. 3 Twelve of these cases ended in carnage. One can quibble with Allison’s case selection, but the basic pattern is clear: hegemonic rivalry has sparked a catastrophic war every forty years on average for the past half millennium. The emergence of unipolarity in 1991 has put this cycle of hegemonic competition on hold. Obviously wars and security competition still occur in today’s unipolar world—in fact, as I explain later, unipolarity has made certain types of asymmetric con?ict more likely—but none of these con?icts have the global scope or generational length of a hegemonic rivalry. To appreciate this point, just consider the Cold War—one of the four “peaceful” cases of hegemonic rivalry identi?ed by Allison’s study. Although the two superpowers never went to war, they divided the world into rival camps, waged proxy wars that killed millions of people, and pushed each other to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. For forty-?ve years, World War III and human extinction were nontrivial possibilities. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, by contrast, the United States has not faced a hegemonic rival, and the world, though far from perfect, has been more peaceful and prosperous than ever before. Just look at the numbers. From 1400 to 1991, the rate of war deaths worldwide hovered between 5 and 10 deaths per 100,000 people and spiked to 200 deaths per 100,000 during major wars. 4 After 1991, however, war death rates dropped to 0.5 deaths per 100,000 people and have stayed there ever since. Interstate wars have disappeared almost entirely, and the number of civil wars has declined by more than 30 percent. 5 Meanwhile, the global economy has quadrupled in size, creating more wealth between 1991 and 2018 than in all prior human history combined. 6 What explains this unprecedented outbreak of peace and prosperity? Some scholars attribute it to advances in communications technology, from the printing press to the telegraph to the Internet, which supposedly spread empathy around the globe and caused entire nations to place a higher value on human life. 7 Such explanations are appealing, because they play on our natural desire to believe in human progress, but are they convincing? Did humans suddenly become 10 to 20 times less violent and cruel in 1991? Are we orders of magnitude more noble and kind than our grandparents? Has social media made us more empathetic? Of course not, which is why the dramatic decline in warfare after 1991 is better explained by geopolitics than sociology. 8 The collapse of the Soviet Union not only ended the Cold War and related proxy ?ghting, it also opened up large swathes of the world to democracy, international commerce, and peacekeeping forces—all of which surged after 1991 and further dampened con?ict. 9 Faced with overwhelming U.S. economic and military might, most countries have decided to work within the American-led liberal order rather than ?ght to overturn it. 10 As of 2018, nearly seventy countries have joined the U.S. alliance network—a Kantian community in which war is unthinkable—and even the two main challengers to this community, China and Russia, begrudgingly participate in the institutions of the liberal order (e.g., the UN, the WTO, the IMF, World Bank, and the G-20), engage in commerce with the United States and its allies, and contribute to international peacekeeping missions. 11 History may not have ended in 1991, but it clearly changed in profound ways—and mostly for the better.Both sides miscalc---powers misread the transition.Min-hyung Kim 20. Department of Political Science and International Relations, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea. “A real driver of US–China trade conflict: The Sino–US competition for global hegemony and its implications for the future” Emerald Insight. 02-04-2019. these arguments for an inevitable war between the two superpowers is PTT. PTT originally formulated by Organski (1958) posits that war is likely when the power of the dominant state in the international system (i.e. hegemon) is declining and that a dissatisfied rising challenger substantially reduces the power gap between the hegemon and itself. Unlike balance of power theory, PTT argues that the war is most likely when there is near power parity between a dominant state and a rising and dissatisfied challenger (Organski and Kugler, 1980, pp. 19-20)[5]. A rising power here is generally dissatisfied with the existing international order and initiates war against a declining hegemon in order to impose orders that are more favorable to itself (Organski 1958, pp. 364-367). Layne (2018, p. 110) put these power transition dynamics quite succinctly as follows: “Over time, however, the relative power of states changes, and eventually the international order no longer reflects the actual distribution of power between or among the leading Great Powers. When that happens, the legitimacy of the prevailing order is called into question, and it will be challenged by the rising power(s).” And when the balance of power between a dominant state and a rising challenger changes sufficiently, a new order replaces an old one typically by a hegemonic war (2018, p. 104). Paying close attention to the growing Sino–US competition over hegemony in the twenty-first century, therefore, Shirk (2007, p. 4), China specialist, argues that “History teaches us that rising powers are likely to provoke war.” On the other hand, scholars like Gilpin (1981) contend that the power transition war between great powers is likely to occur when a hegemonic state whose power is declining due to imperial overstretch[6] views “preventive war as the most attractive means of eliminating the threat posed by challengers” (Ned Lebow and Valentino, 2009, p. 391), although they do acknowledge that there might be some “ways to prolong the period of its power preponderance vis-à-vis the rising challenger, so that the rapidly rising power will not dare to challenge the hegemonic leadership” (Kim and Gates, 2015, p. 221). In this case, the initiator of war is a declining hegemon, rather than a rising challenger. The declining hegemon who fears a rising challenger’s overtaking its power in the near future sees war as a better option than other options of maintaining its hegemony such as reducing its commitments abroad and appeasing a rising challenger.Innovation DA1NC – Innovation DABiotech industry strong now.Cancherini et al. 4/30 [(Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey & Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey & Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey & Company), “What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?“, McKinsey & Company, 4-30-2021, ] TDI As the pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, biotech leaders were initially pessimistic, reassessing their cash position and financing constraints. When McKinsey and BioCentury interviewed representatives from 106 biotech companies in May 2020,4 half of those interviewed were expecting delays in financing, and about 80 percent were tight on cash for the next two years and considering trade-offs such as deferring IPOs and acquisitions. Executives feared that valuations would decline because of lower revenue projections and concerns about clinical-trial delays, salesforce-effectiveness gaps, and other operational issues.Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years so far. By January 2021, venture capitalists had invested some 60 percent more than they had in January 2020, with more than $3 billion invested worldwide in January 2021 alone.5 IPO activity grew strongly: there were 19 more closures than in the same period in 2020, with an average of $150 million per raise, 17 percent more than in 2020. Other deals have also had a bumper start to 2021, with the average deal size reaching more than $500 million, up by more than 66 percent on the 2020 average (Exhibit 3).6What about SPACs?The analysis above does not include special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have recently become significant in IPOs in several industries. Some biotech investors we interviewed believe that SPACs represent a route to an IPO. How SPACs will evolve remains to be seen, but biotechs may be part of their story.Fundamentals continue strongWhen we asked executives and investors why the biotech sector had stayed so resilient during the worst economic crisis in decades, they cited innovation as the main reason. The number of assets transitioning to clinical phases is still rising, and further waves of innovation are on the horizon, driven by the convergence of biological and technological advances.In the present day, many biotechs, along with the wider pharmaceutical industry, are taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, biotechs and pharma companies have more than 250 vaccine candidates in their pipelines, along with a similar number of therapeutics. What’s more, the crisis has shone a spotlight on pharma as the public seeks to understand the roadblocks involved in delivering a vaccine at speed and the measures needed to maintain safety and efficacy standards. To that extent, the world has been living through a time of mass education in science research and development.Biotech has also benefited from its innate financial resilience. Healthcare as a whole is less dependent on economic cycles than most other industries. Biotech is an innovator, actively identifying and addressing patients’ unmet needs. In addition, biotechs’ top-line revenues have been less affected by lockdowns than is the case in most other industries.Another factor acting in the sector’s favor is that larger pharmaceutical companies still rely on biotechs as a source of innovation. With the top dozen pharma companies having more than $170 billion in excess reserves that could be available for spending on M&A, the prospects for further financing and deal making look promising.For these and other reasons, many investors regard biotech as a safe haven. One interviewee felt it had benefited from a halo effect during the pandemic.More innovation on the horizonThe investors and executives we interviewed agreed that biotech innovation continues to increase in quality and quantity despite the macroeconomic environment. Evidence can be seen in the accelerating pace of assets transitioning across the development lifecycle. When we tracked the number of assets transitioning to Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, we found that Phase I and Phase II assets have transitioned 50 percent faster since 2018 than between 2013 and 2018, whereas Phase III assets have maintained much the same pace. There could be many reasons for this, but it is worth noting that biotechs with Phase I and Phase II assets as their lead assets have accounted for more than half of biotech IPOs. Having an early IPO gives a biotech earlier access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science.Looking forward, the combination of advances in biological science and accelerating developments in technology and artificial intelligence has the potential to take innovation to a new level. A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute analyzed the profound economic and social impact of biological innovation and found that biomolecules, biosystems, biomachines, and biocomputing could collectively produce up to 60 percent of the physical inputs to the global economy. The applications of this “Bio Revolution” range from agriculture (such as the production of nonanimal meat) to energy and materials, and from consumer goods (such as multi-omics tailored diets) to a multitude of health applications.IPR key to innovation.Bacchus 20 [(James, member of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, the Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida. He was a founding judge and was twice the chairman—the chief judge—of the highest court of world trade, the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland) "An Unnecessary Proposal: A WTO Waiver of Intellectual Property Rights for COVID-19 Vaccines," Cato Institute, 12-16-2020, ] TDIAt the heart of this emerging trade debate is a?belief by many people worldwide that all medicines should be “global public goods.” There is little room in such a?belief for consideration of any rights to IP. As one group of United Nations human rights experts expressed: “There is no room for … profitability in decision‐?making about access to vaccines, essential tests and treatments, and all other medical goods, services and supplies that are at the heart of the right to the highest attainable standard of health for all.”16This view is myopic. Subordinating IP rights temporarily to pressing public needs during a?pandemic or other global health emergency is one thing. Eliminating any consideration of “profitability” in all policymaking relating to “access to vaccines, essential tests and treatments, and all other medical goods, services and supplies” is quite another.17?To be sure, there is a?superficial moral appeal in such a?view. But does this moral appeal hold up if such a “human rights” approach does not result in meeting those urgent public needs?With the belief that medicines should be “public goods,” there is literally no support in some quarters for the application of the WTO TRIPS Agreement to IP rights in medicines. Any protection of the IP rights in such goods is viewed as a?violation of human rights and of the overall public interest. This view, though, does not reflect the practical reality of a?world in which many medicines would simply not exist if it were not for the existence of IP rights and the protections they are afforded.Technically, IP rights are exceptions to free trade. A?long‐?standing general discussion in the WTO has been about when these exceptions to free trade should be allowed and how far they should be extended. The continuing debate over IP rights in medicines is only the most emotional part of this overall conversation. Because developed countries have, historically, been the principal sources of IP rights, this lengthy WTO dispute has largely been between developed countries trying to uphold IP rights and developing countries trying to limit them. The debate over the discovery and the distribution of vaccines for COVID-19 is but the latest global occasion for this ongoing discussion.The primary justification for granting and protecting IP rights is that they are incentives for innovation, which is the main source for long‐?term economic growth and enhancements in the quality of human life. IP rights spark innovation by “enabling innovators to capture enough of the benefits of their own innovative activity to justify taking considerable risks.”18?The knowledge from innovations inspired by IP rights spills over to inspire other innovations. The protection of IP rights promotes the diffusion, domestically and internationally, of innovative technologies and new know‐?how. Historically, the principal factors of production have been land, labor, and capital. In the new pandemic world, perhaps an even more vital factor is the creation of knowledge, which adds enormously to “the wealth of nations.” Digital and other economic growth in the 21st century is increasingly ideas‐?based and knowledge intensive. Without IP rights as incentives, there would be less new knowledge and thus less innovation.In the short term, undermining private IP rights may accelerate distribution of goods and services—where the novel knowledge that went into making them already exists. But in the long term, undermining private IP rights would eliminate the incentives that inspire innovation, thus preventing the discovery and development of knowledge for new goods and services that the world needs. This widespread dismissal of the link between private IP rights and innovation is perhaps best reflected in the fact that although the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 aspire to “foster innovation,” they make no mention of IP rights.19As Stephen Ezell and Nigel Cory of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation wrote, “A fundamental fault line in the debate over intellectual property pertains to the need to achieve a?reasoned balance between access and exclusive rights.”20?This fault line is much on display in the WTO rules on IP rights. These rules recognize that “intellectual property rights are private rights” and that rules and disciplines are necessary for “the provision of effective and appropriate means for the enforcement of trade‐?related intellectual property rights.”21?Yet, where social and economic welfare is at stake, WTO members have sought to strike a?balance in these rules between upholding IP rights and fulfilling immediate domestic needs.Biopharmaceutical innovation is key to prevent future pandemics and bioterror.Marjanovic and Feijao 20 [(Sonja Marjanovic, Ph.D., Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.?Carolina Feijao, Ph.D. in biochemistry, University of Cambridge; M.Sc. in quantitative biology, Imperial College London; B.Sc. in biology, University of Lisbon.) "How to Best Enable Pharma Innovation Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis," RAND Corporation, 05-2020, ] TDIAs key actors in the healthcare innovation landscape, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies have been called on to develop medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for pressing public health challenges. The COVID-19 crisis is one such challenge, but there are many others. For example, MERS, SARS, Ebola, Zika and avian and swine flu are also infectious diseases that represent public health threats. Infectious agents such as anthrax, smallpox and tularemia could present threats in a bioterrorism context.1 The general threat to public health that is posed by antimicrobial resistance is also well-recognised as an area in need of pharmaceutical innovation. Innovating in response to these challenges does not always align well with pharmaceutical industry commercial models, shareholder expectations and competition within the industry. However, the expertise, networks and infrastructure that industry has within its reach, as well as public expectations and the moral imperative, make pharmaceutical companies and the wider life sciences sector an indispensable partner in the search for solutions that save lives. This perspective argues for the need to establish more sustainable and scalable ways of incentivising pharmaceutical innovation in response to infectious disease threats to public health. It considers both past and current examples of efforts to mobilise pharmaceutical innovation in high commercial risk areas, including in the context of current efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In global pandemic crises like COVID-19, the urgency and scale of the crisis – as well as the spotlight placed on pharmaceutical companies – mean that contributing to the search for effective medicines, vaccines or diagnostics is essential for socially responsible companies in the sector. 2 It is therefore unsurprising that we are seeing industry-wide efforts unfold at unprecedented scale and pace. Whereas there is always scope for more activity, industry is currently contributing in a variety of ways. Examples include pharmaceutical companies donating existing compounds to assess their utility in the fight against COVID19; screening existing compound libraries in-house or with partners to see if they can be repurposed; accelerating trials for potentially effective medicine or vaccine candidates; and in some cases rapidly accelerating in-house research and development to discover new treatments or vaccine agents and develop diagnostics tests.3,4 Pharmaceutical companies are collaborating with each other in some of these efforts and participating in global R&D partnerships (such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative effort to accelerate the development of potential therapies for COVID-19) and supporting national efforts to expand diagnosis and testing capacity and ensure affordable and ready access to potential solutions.3,5,6 The primary purpose of such innovation is to benefit patients and wider population health. Although there are also reputational benefits from involvement that can be realised across the industry, there are likely to be relatively few companies that are ‘commercial’ winners. Those who might gain substantial revenues will be under pressure not to be seen as profiting from the pandemic. In the United Kingdom for example, GSK has stated that it does not expect to profit from its COVID-19 related activities and that any gains will be invested in supporting research and long-term pandemic preparedness, as well as in developing products that would be affordable in the world’s poorest countries.7 Similarly, in the United States AbbVie has waived intellectual property rights for an existing combination product that is being tested for therapeutic potential against COVID-19, which would support affordability and allow for a supply of generics.8,9 Johnson & Johnson has stated that its potential vaccine – which is expected to begin trials – will be available on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.10 Pharma is mobilising substantial efforts to rise to the COVID-19 challenge at hand. However, we need to consider how pharmaceutical innovation for responding to emerging infectious diseases can best be enabled beyond the current crisis. Many public health threats (including those associated with other infectious diseases, bioterrorism agents and antimicrobial resistance) are urgently in need of pharmaceutical innovation, even if their impacts are not as visible to society as COVID-19 is in the immediate term. The pharmaceutical industry has responded to previous public health emergencies associated with infectious disease in recent times – for example those associated with Ebola and Zika outbreaks.11 However, it has done so to a lesser scale than for COVID-19 and with contributions from fewer companies. Similarly, levels of activity in response to the threat of antimicrobial resistance are still low.12 There are important policy questions as to whether – and how – industry could engage with such public health threats to an even greater extent under improved innovation conditions. Bioterror causes extinction.Millett & Snyder-Beattie ‘17 [(Piers Millett: Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford. Andrew Snyder-Beattie: M.S., Director of Research, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.) " Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity," Health Security, 15(4), 08-01-2017, ] TDIIn the decades to come,?advanced?bioweapons?could?threaten?human existence.?Although?the?probability?of human extinction from bioweapons?may be low, the expected?value?of reducing the risk could?still?be?large, since such risks jeopardize the existence of all future generations. We provide an overview of biotechnological extinction risk, make some rough initial estimates for how severe the risks might be, and compare the cost-effectiveness of reducing these extinction-level risks with existing biosecurity work.?We find?that?reducing human extinction risk?can be?more cost-effective than reducing smaller-scale risks, even when using conservative estimates.?This suggests that the?risks are?not low enough to ignore?and that?more ought to be done to prevent the worst-case scenarios. How worthwhile is it spending resources to study and mitigate the chance of human extinction from biological risks? The risks of such a catastrophe are presumably low, so?a skeptic might argue that addressing such risks would be a waste of scarce resources. In this article,?we investigate this position?using a cost-effectiveness approach?and ultimately conclude that the expected value of reducing these risks is large, especially since such risks jeopardize the existence of all future human lives.?Historically, disease?events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls?on humanity. The 1918 flu was responsible for more than 50 million deaths,1 while smallpox killed perhaps 10 times that many in the 20th century alone.2 The Black Death was responsible for killing over 25% of the European population,3 while other pandemics, such as the plague of Justinian, are thought to have killed 25 million in the 6th century—constituting over 10% of the world's population at the time.4 It is an open question whether?a future pandemic could result in outright human extinction or the irreversible collapse of civilization.?A?skeptic?would have many good reasons to?think?that existential risk from disease is?unlikely. Such a disease would need?to spread?worldwide?to?remote populations,?overcome?rare?genetic resistances, and?evade detection, cures,?and countermeasures. Even evolution itself may work in humanity's favor:?Virulence and transmission?is?often a trade-off,?and?so?evolutionary pressures?could?push against?maximally lethal wild-type pathogens.5,6?While?these arguments?point to a?very?small risk of human extinction, they?do not rule the possibility out?entirely.?Although rare,?there are?recorded instances of species going extinct due to disease—primarily in amphibians, but also in 1 mammalian species of rat on Christmas Island.7,8?There are?also?historical examples of large human populations?being almost entirely?wiped out?by disease, especially when multiple diseases were simultaneously introduced into a population without immunity. The most striking examples of total population collapse?include?native American tribes?exposed to European diseases, such as the Massachusett?(86% loss of population),?Quiripi-Unquachog?(95% loss of population),?and the Western Abenaki?(which suffered a staggering 98% loss of population).9?In the modern context, no single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to countermeasures, and global reach. But?many diseases are proof?of principle?that?each worst-case attribute can be realized independently. For example,?some diseases exhibit nearly a 100% case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague.?Other diseases have a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide, such as the 1918 flu,10?and seroprevalence studies indicate that other pathogens, such as chickenpox and HSV-1, can successfully reach over 95% of a population.11,12 Under optimal virulence theory,?natural evolution?would be an?unlikely?source for pathogens with the?highest possible levels of transmissibility, virulence, and global reach. But?advances in biotechnology might allow the creation of diseases that?combine such traits.?Recent controversy has?already emerged?over?a number of?scientific experiments?that resulted in viruses with enhanced transmissibility, lethality, and/or the ability to overcome therapeutics.13-17 Other experiments demonstrated that mousepox could be modified to have a 100% case fatality rate and render a vaccine ineffective.18 In addition to transmissibility and lethality, studies have shown that other disease traits, such as incubation time, environmental survival, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-21?Although?these experiments had scientific merit and were?not?conducted?with malicious intent, their implications are?still worrying. This is especially true given that there is also?a?long historical track record?ofstate-run bioweapon research?applying cutting-edge science?and?technology to design agents not previously seen in nature. The Soviet bioweapons program developed agents with traits such as enhanced virulence, resistance to therapies, greater environmental resilience, increased difficulty to diagnose or treat, and which caused unexpected disease presentations and outcomes.22 Delivery capabilities have also been subject to the cutting edge of technical development, with Canadian, US, and UK bioweapon efforts playing a critical role in developing the discipline of aerobiology.23,24 While there is no evidence of state-run bioweapons programs directly attempting to develop or deploy bioweapons that would pose an existential risk,?the logic of?deterrence and?mutually?assured?destruction could?create?such?incentives?in more unstable political environments?or following a breakdown of the Biological Weapons Convention.25?The?possibility of a war?between great powers could also?increase?the?pressure to use?such weapons—during the World Wars, bioweapons were?used across multiple continents, with Germany targeting animals in WWI,26 and Japan using plague to cause an epidemic in China during WWII.272NR – LinkLack of IP protection makes medical innovation prohibitively risky and expensiveGrabowski et al 15 [(Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) “The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation,” Health Affairs, 2/2015] TDIThe essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in the form of continued future innovation by pioneer or brand-name drug manufacturers outweigh the relatively short-term restrictions on imitative cost competition associated with market exclusivity. Regardless, the entry of other branded agents remains an important source of therapeutic competition during the patent term.Several economic characteristics make patents and intellectual property protection particularly important to innovation incentives for the biopharmaceutical industry.?5?The R&D process often takes more than a decade to complete, and according to a recent analysis by Joseph DiMasi and colleagues, per new drug approval (including failed attempts), it involves more than a billion dollars in out-of-pocket costs.?6?Only approximately one in eight drug candidates survive clinical testing.?6As a result of the high risks of failure and the high costs, research and development must be funded by the few successful, on-market products (the top quintile of marketed products provide the dominant share of R&D returns).?7,8?Once a new drug’s patent term and any regulatory exclusivity provisions have expired, competing manufacturers are allowed to sell generic equivalents that require the investment of only several million dollars and that have a high likelihood of commercial success. Absent intellectual property protections that allow marketing exclusivity, innovative firms would be unlikely to make the costly and risky investments needed to bring a new drug to market.Patents confer the right to exclude competitors for a limited time within a given scope, as defined by patent claims. However, they do not guarantee demand, nor do they prevent competition from nonidentical drugs that treat the same diseases and fall outside the protection of the patents.New products may enter the same therapeutic class with common mechanisms of action but different molecular structures (for example, different statins) or with differing mechanisms of action (such as calcium channel blockers and angiotensin receptor blockers).?9?Joseph DiMasi and Laura Faden have found that the time between a first-in-class new drug and subsequent new drugs in the same therapeutic class has been dramatically reduced, from a median of 10.2?years in the 1970s to 2.5?years in the early 2000s.?10?Drugs in the same class compete through quality and price for preferred placement on drug formularies and physicians’ choices for patient treatment.Patents play an essential role in the economic “ecosystem” of discovery and investment that has developed since the 1980s. Hundreds of start-up firms, often backed by venture capital, have been launched, and a robust innovation market has emerged.?11?The value of these development-stage firms is largely determined by their proprietary technologies and the candidate drugs they have in development. As a result, the strength of intellectual property protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms.IP protection is critical to innovation –?it incentivizes risk-taking by boosting investmentsEzell and Cory 19 [(Stephen, vice president, global innovation policy, at?the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Nigel, associate director covering trade policy?at the?Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, former researcher in the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, MA in public policy from Georgetown University) “The Way Forward for Intellectual Property Internationally,” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4/25/2019] TDIIPR reforms also introduce strong incentives for domestic innovation. Sherwood, using case studies from 18 developing countries, concluded that poor provision of intellectual property rights deters local innovation and risk-taking.47?In contrast, IPR reform has been associated with increased innovative activity, as measured by domestic patent filings, albeit with some variation across countries and sectors.48?For example, Ryan, in a study of biomedical innovations and patent reform in Brazil, found that patents provided incentives for innovation investments and facilitated the functioning of technology markets.49?Park and Lippoldt also observed that the provision of adequate protection for IPRs can help to stimulate local innovation, in some cases building on the transfer of technologies that provide inputs and spillovers.50?In other words, local innovators are introduced to technologies first through the technology transfer that takes place in an environment wherein protection of IPRs is assured; then, they may build on those ideas to create an evolved product or develop alternate approaches (i.e., to innovate). Related research finds that trade in technology—through channels including imports, foreign direct investment, and technology licensing—improves the quality of developing-country innovation by increasing the pool of ideas and efficiency of innovation by encouraging the division of innovative labor and specialization.51?However, Maskus notes that without protection from potential abuse of their newly developed technologies, foreign enterprises may be less willing to reveal technical information associated with their innovations.52?The protection of patents and trade secrets provides necessary legal assurances for firms wishing to reveal proprietary characteristics of technologies to subsidiaries and licensees via contracts.The relationship between IPR rights and innovation can also be seen in studies of how the introduction of stronger IPR laws, with regard to patents, copyrights, and trademarks, affect R&D activity in an economy. Studies by Varsakelis and by Kanwar and Evenson found that R&D to GDP ratios are positively related to the strength of patent rights, and are conditional on other factors.53?Cavazos Cepeda et al. found a positive influence of IPRs on the level of R&D in an economy, with each 1 percent increase in the level of protection of IPRs in an economy (as measured by improvements to a country’s score in the Patent Rights Index) equating to, on average, a 0.7 percent increase in the domestic level of R&D.54?Likewise, a 1 percent increase in copyright protection was associated with a 3.3 percent increase in domestic R&D. Similarly, when trademark protection increased by 1 percent, there was an associated R&D increase of 1.4 percent. As the authors concluded, “Increases in the protection of the IPRs carried economic benefits in the form of higher inflows of FDI, and increases in the levels of both domestically conducted R&D and service imports as measured by licensing fees.”55?As Jackson summarized, regarding the relationship between IPR reform and both innovation and R&D, and FDI, “In addition to spurring domestic innovation, strong intellectual property rights can increase incentives for foreign direct investment which in turn also leads to economic growth.”56Reducing IP protections stifles innovation by undermining incentivesBacchus 12/16 [(James, member of the?Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, the Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida) “An Unnecessary Proposal: A?WTO Waiver of Intellectual Property Rights for COVID-19 Vaccines,” Cato Institute, 12/16/2020] TDIThe primary justification for granting and protecting IP rights is that they are incentives for innovation, which is the main source for long‐?term economic growth and enhancements in the quality of human life. IP rights spark innovation by “enabling innovators to capture enough of the benefits of their own innovative activity to justify taking considerable risks.”18?The knowledge from innovations inspired by IP rights spills over to inspire other innovations. The protection of IP rights promotes the diffusion, domestically and internationally, of innovative technologies and new know‐?how. Historically, the principal factors of production have been land, labor, and capital. In the new pandemic world, perhaps an even more vital factor is the creation of knowledge, which adds enormously to “the wealth of nations.” Digital and other economic growth in the 21st century is increasingly ideas‐?based and knowledge intensive. Without IP rights as incentives, there would be less new knowledge and thus less innovation.In the short term, undermining private IP rights may accelerate distribution of goods and services—where the novel knowledge that went into making them already exists. But in the long term, undermining private IP rights would eliminate the incentives that inspire innovation, thus preventing the discovery and development of knowledge for new goods and services that the world needs. This widespread dismissal of the link between private IP rights and innovation is perhaps best reflected in the fact that although the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 aspire to “foster innovation,” they make no mention of IP rights.192NR – Solves Future PandemicsBiopharma key to solve future pandemics – turns case.Macdonald 5/4 [(Gareth John, Freelance Journalism, 5-4-2021, “Biopharma’s Resilience to Future Pandemics Relies on Manufacturing Innovation“, GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, accessed: 8-8-2021, ] TDIManufacturing innovation and collaboration with technology developers will be vital to maintaining the supply of medicines in future public health emergencies, according to the organizations behind a new study. The research—called the Global Biopharma Resilience Index—was carried out by Cytiva and consulting firm Longitude. The aim was to rank biopharma capabilities and resilience in 20 countries, scoring each on five factors critical to meeting demand during a public health crisis.The study also revealed some major shortcoming chains, says Cytiva chief innovation officer, Dirk Voelkel, PhD.“We identified challenges in supply chain, talent, research and development, manufacturing, and government policy and regulation that require attention and focus to solve,” he explains. To develop greater manufacturing “agility” biopharmaceutical companies will need to invest in innovative technologies, notes Voelkel, citing product quality as an example.“Automation is a key to improving the quality of drug products, increasing the speed to market as well as lowering manufacturing cost,” he continues.AT: Biotech WeakBiotech innovation strong – differentiation, product pipelines, investment, FDA approval, etc.Stuart 5/19 [(Jordan, Client Portfolio Manager), “Why we're (still) positive on biotech“, Federated Hermes, 5-19-2021, ] TDIWhile its performance is currently on pause, this sector’s innovation is unstoppable.During this period of market rotation, investors who have reaped years of rewards by investing in the high-growth biotech sector are currently feeling some pain. As long-time investors in this area, we believe it’s a good time to take perspective.While biotech has some headwinds including the potential for more regulation, a steepening yield curve and volatility, our view as growth investors is that the long-term outlook for biotech remains strong. Here’s why:Opportunity for differentiation Investors looking for differentiation beyond the broad market indexes favor promising biotech firms that typically are excluded from large index universes.Accelerating innovation leading to robust product pipelines The link between computing power, genomic research and medical science is growing exponentially. Researchers can now apply powerful computing capacity to mine vast database networks that contain everything from an individual’s genetic blueprint and lifestyle information to the pharmacological properties of virtually every known compound to a store of information about previously used treatments. Biotech innovators can cross-reference this data in seconds, as they work to develop more targeted and effective therapies for cancer, diabetes, viruses and myriad diseases. The rapid and highly effective development of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics underscores these capabilities.Abundant investment Year-to-date, more than 40% of initial public offerings were health-care-related with much of that investment going to biotech firms for building facilities, hiring scientists and funding research.Food and Drug Administration is increasingly on board Clearly, the FDA’s complex approval process has the potential to present biotech firms—and their leading-edge therapies—with substantial obstacles. But facing pressure from patients, industry and Congress over the years, the agency has adopted a more innovation-friendly approach. The FDA continues to streamline its approval approach by applying the information they have gathered from one company’s trials to others wherever appropriate. Previously, each approval process existed as a separate silo, which was both inefficient and costly. The accelerating ability to collect, analyze and cross-reference enormous amounts of data from around the world is likely to support even more robust, timely and effective review of innovative therapies.Historical outperformance DRG, the pharmaceutical index representing “big pharma” has outperformed the S&P 500 in only seven of the past 20 years. Meanwhile, the biotech index—BTK—has outperformed the S&P 500 in 15 of past 20 years. More bark than bite from politicians Although investors may worry about Washington imposing price limits and other regulations on biotech firms, keep in mind the Democrats’ very narrow Senate majority. It would take just one “nay” vote from a big pharma/biotech state, such as New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts or California, to eliminate this sector overhang.Amazing breakthroughs in biotech will increase, but when investing in such a complex, niche and less-covered area, two attributes are essential: patience and industry knowledge. Most drugs/treatments take 10 years to develop at an average cost of $2 billion. Plus, fewer than 12% of Phase I trial drugs receive FDA approval—despite an accelerated FDA approval process. When evaluating such an enormous array of potential opportunities, understanding the science, the industry, the key players and the competitive landscape is essential—as is being highly selective. Investing in biotech is nothing less than investing in the future of health care.Biotech is stable now – increased investment in biotech and finding treatment for Covid.Cancherini et al. 4/30 [(Laura, a consultant in McKinsey’s Brussels office) (Joseph Lyndon, is an associate partner in the Zurich office) (Jorge Santos de Silva, a senior partner) (Alexandra Zemp, a partner at McKinsey and Company.) “What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?” McKinsey and Company, 4/30/21. ] TDIUnlike most industries in these extraordinarily challenging times, biotech is experiencing a high. Executives in many other sectors are becoming more pessimistic about the outlook for their businesses as the global pandemic continues to spread. 1 But the search to understand and find treatment or preventive solutions to COVID-19 has focused intense government, media, and public attention on science and medicine, reinforcing the perception that biotech acquisitions and partnerships represent a good investment.In an effort to understand worldwide biotech financing in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, McKinsey analyzed the sector’s financial performance and interviewed 20 C-level executives from small and midsize biotechs and venture-capital (VC) firms.The pandemic has had an enormous financial impact on many sectors, but biotech has weathered the storm: after a brief downturn early in the crisis, it recovered quickly (Exhibit 1). Between January 2020 and January 2021, the average share price for European and US biotechs increased at more than twice the rate of the S&P 500, and Chinese biotechs performed more than six times better, with their average share price more than doubling in a year. Overall, biotech is outperforming its sister industry, pharmaceuticals, as well as many household-name consumer-goods and technology companies.With acquisitions, partnerships, IPOs, and fundraising still increasing, biotech’s star has, if anything, risen higher than it was before the pandemic. The industry’s response to the crisis, its record of innovation, and its reputation as a safe haven for investment have all served it well. But whether biotech can sustain this performance is open to question. This article looks at the industry’s record of growth, its resilience during the global pandemic, and the factors that could determine whether the biotech wave continues.The great biotech accelerationBetween 2019 and 2020, biotech saw double-digit annual growth in fundraising from VCs and deals such as partnerships, codevelopments, and joint ventures. It also saw triple-digit growth in IPOs (Exhibit 2).Venture capitalVC activity in biotechs grew by 45 percent in a year, taking the 2020 global total to $36.6 billion. US biotechs still led on investments, although Europe and China were not far behind. In Europe, mean funding size grew at more than twice the rate than in the United States. In China, the number of funding rounds grew four times faster than in Europe and the United States.Some VC investors believe that biotech has matured as a business and that it carries lower risk than it did in the early days. Others think it has suffered from underinvestment in the past. Still others note that investment in the sector is partly driven by the need to diversify VC portfolios. In any case, the fact that more conservative markets such as Europe’s are having larger funding rounds indicatas that the local life-science offer is more advanced in its development cycle, or that investors are able to place larger bets.DealsThe value of codevelopments, partnerships, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and other deals almost doubled between 2019 and 2020 to reach $170.6 billion. However, this total represents only those deals with disclosed value—which accounts for 26 percent of all deals—so the true magnitude will be much higher. 2 Biotechs partnered with a broad range of other organizations, from big pharma to investment funds and other biotechs. Pharma companies have long used acquisitions to sustain their portfolio strategy while also pursuing pipeline and top-line growth.Deal growth was mostly driven by the United States, where the average deal size doubled and the number of deals increased by 25 percent. 3 China and Europe also saw strong growth as they started to catch up from a smaller base.IPOsIPO activity has grown faster than any other category of fundraising, with companies raising $34.3 billion in 2020, an increase of 186 percent on the previous year. Although US biotechs represented the lion’s share of IPOs, companies based elsewhere, particularly in China, have also seen significant growth in the past few years. Biotechs tend to source opening capital from their local stock market, with the United States (mainly NASDAQ) being the preferred nonlocal option.As part of our research, McKinsey asked biotech executives whether they were likely to seek an IPO in the next few years and, if they did, whether they would look for capital at home or abroad. The answers were mixed. Some biotechs want to make the most of their local network and feel more comfortable listing at a market they know; others prefer to follow investors, crossing oceans if need be. But they all agreed on choosing a market where biotech and science are not seen as a risky investment, which often means a foreign stock exchange, and specifically a US one.Unexpected resilienceAs the pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, biotech leaders were initially pessimistic, reassessing their cash position and financing constraints. When McKinsey and BioCentury interviewed representatives from 106 biotech companies in May 2020, 4 half of those interviewed were expecting delays in financing, and about 80 percent were tight on cash for the next two years and considering trade-offs such as deferring IPOs and acquisitions. Executives feared that valuations would decline because of lower revenue projections and concerns about clinical-trial delays, salesforce-effectiveness gaps, and other operational issues.Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years so far. By January 2021, venture capitalists had invested some 60 percent more than they had in January 2020, with more than $3 billion invested worldwide in January 2021 alone. 5 IPO activity grew strongly: there were 19 more closures than in the same period in 2020, with an average of $150 million per raise, 17 percent more than in 2020. Other deals have also had a bumper start to 2021, with the average deal size reaching more than $500 million, up by more than 66 percent on the 2020 average (Exhibit 3). 6What about SPACs?The analysis above does not include special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have recently become significant in IPOs in several industries. Some biotech investors we interviewed believe that SPACs represent a route to an IPO. How SPACs will evolve remains to be seen, but biotechs may be part of their story.Fundamentals continue strongWhen we asked executives and investors why the biotech sector had stayed so resilient during the worst economic crisis in decades, they cited innovation as the main reason. The number of assets transitioning to clinical phases is still rising, and further waves of innovation are on the horizon, driven by the convergence of biological and technological advances.In the present day, many biotechs, along with the wider pharmaceutical industry, are taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, biotechs and pharma companies have more than 250 vaccine candidates in their pipelines, along with a similar number of therapeutics. What’s more, the crisis has shone a spotlight on pharma as the public seeks to understand the roadblocks involved in delivering a vaccine at speed and the measures needed to maintain safety and efficacy standards. To that extent, the world has been living through a time of mass education in science research and development.Biotech has also benefited from its innate financial resilience. Healthcare as a whole is less dependent on economic cycles than most other industries. Biotech is an innovator, actively identifying and addressing patients’ unmet needs. In addition, biotechs’ top-line revenues have been less affected by lockdowns than is the case in most other industries.Another factor acting in the sector’s favor is that larger pharmaceutical companies still rely on biotechs as a source of innovation. With the top dozen pharma companies having more than $170 billion in excess reserves that could be available for spending on M&A, the prospects for further financing and deal making look promising.For these and other reasons, many investors regard biotech as a safe haven. One interviewee felt it had benefited from a halo effect during the pandemic.More innovation on the horizonThe investors and executives we interviewed agreed that biotech innovation continues to increase in quality and quantity despite the macroeconomic environment. Evidence can be seen in the accelerating pace of assets transitioning across the development lifecycle. When we tracked the number of assets transitioning to Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, we found that Phase I and Phase II assets have transitioned 50 percent faster since 2018 than between 2013 and 2018, whereas Phase III assets have maintained much the same pace. There could be many reasons for this, but it is worth noting that biotechs with Phase I and Phase II assets as their lead assets have accounted for more than half of biotech IPOs. Having an early IPO gives a biotech earlier access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science.Looking forward, the combination of advances in biological science and accelerating developments in technology and artificial intelligence has the potential to take innovation to a new level. A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute analyzed the profound economic and social impact of biological innovation and found that biomolecules, biosystems, biomachines, and biocomputing could collectively produce up to 60 percent of the physical inputs to the global economy. The applications of this “Bio Revolution” range from agriculture (such as the production of nonanimal meat) to energy and materials, and from consumer goods (such as multi-omics tailored diets) to a multitude of health applications.What will it take to create value in the future?Our interviews with biotech executives and investors suggest that if the industry is to maintain its recent strong growth, it will need to address three key areas: building talent, handling complexity, and improving commercial and development execution.If the industry is to maintain its recent strong growth, it will need to address three key areas: building talent, handling complexity, and improving commercial and development execution.Building talentAs one biotech investor put it, “There is much more capital available than talent.” Many companies struggle to attract and retain executives with experience in biotech, business development, and commercialization. In addition, a third of the executives and investors we interviewed think that European biotechs lack a sufficiently entrepreneurial mindset. Clinical-development expertise is also in short supply.The talent pool has been growing in recent years, particularly in the United States, with Europe, China, and other regions still a ways behind. Some companies are establishing a global footprint early on to target the widest possible talent pool, such as the European biotechs that have set up US affiliates and distributed their business-development, access, marketing, and strategy teams across continents. Other biotechs are experimenting with outsourcing models, keeping select talent in-house but looking outside the organization for multiple specialist capabilities. Whichever approach companies choose to pursue, their ability to build, attract, and retain biotech talent will be fundamental to their success.Handling complexityAs well as staying on top of accelerating technological and biological advances, biotechs must navigate an increasingly complex ecosystem of competitors, service providers, investors, and customers. We see three challenges for the future. One is for biotech companies to rethink supply chains in order to facilitate the scale-up of new biologic innovations and technologies, such as personalized therapies and cell and gene therapies. A second challenge is to maintain focus on the business while dealing with a new financing and investing ecosystem that includes novel investment vehicles such as SPACs, an increasing number of noninstitutional investors, and a broadening of the geographic footprint of investors. The third challenge, for smaller biotechs in particular, is simply to keep up with the speed of technological evolution.Improving commercial and development executionA recent McKinsey analysis of launch performance shows that first-time launchers have a lower share of successful launches than their more experienced peers. Many struggle to realize the expected value from their launches: the median first-time launcher reaches just 63 percent of analysts’ expectations, compared with 93 percent for experienced launchers.Clearly, scientific promise does not necessarily translate into business performance. A stronger focus on execution could help biotechs create more value from their assets and technologies. For instance, investing early to develop a deep understanding of the market in relevant disease areas could help biotechs make better decisions about how to position their product in relation to competitors’ offerings, both during clinical development and in the marketplace. Biotechs could also benefit from tailoring their go-to-market approaches to the needs and potential of their products rather than the resources available to them. Having defined an appropriate go-to-market approach, they could then work to secure sufficient funding or set up partnerships to support it.Biotechs also have scope to improve the pace and quality of their clinical development, which is critical in meeting investors’ expectations and securing funding. As innovation increases, so does competition for clinical-trial sites and investigator capacity. Getting to market quickly requires biotechs to intensify their focus on clinical operations, plan early, and find ways to derisk clinical development.Biotech is unlike any other sector. Buoyed up by advances in science and technology, it bucked the downward trend seen in many industries and attracted record levels of investment through 2020 and into early 2021. More broadly, the pandemic has brought biological science to the attention of patients, families, healthcare workers, healthcare suppliers, governments, and agencies worldwide. What remains to be seen is whether biotechs and their ecosystems can continue to scale up rapidly and keep riding the wave for some time to come.Bio-tech DA1NC – DAUS dominance is secured in biotech now, but China’s closing the gap fast – that allows geopolitical and economic advantagesScott Moore 2020 [(Director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Moore was a Young Professional and Water Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank Group, and Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the U.S.) “China’s Role In The Global Biotechnology Sector And Implications For U.S. Policy” ]TDIEXECUTIVE SUMMARY Even by the standards of emerging technologies, biotechnology has the potential to utterly transform geopolitics, economics, and society in the 21st century. Yet while the United States has long been the world leader in most segments of the global biotechnology sector, China is fast becoming a significant player. This brief assesses the implications of China’s changing role in biotechnology for the United States, which span national security, data security, and economic competitiveness. On current trends the United States is likely to remain the world leader in most biotechnology areas. However, the gap between China and the U.S. is narrowing in the biotechnology sector, and U.S. policymakers must boost public investment, liberalize immigration and foreign student visa policies, and enact regulatory reforms to ensure America remains competitive. At the same time, areas like vaccine development and regulation of emerging technologies like synthetic biology present rich opportunities for Sino-U.S. cooperation. INTRODUCTION Thanks to extensive government funding for biomedical research, an unparalleled ability to translate basic research into commercial products and applications, and strong intellectual property protections, the United States has been the dominant global player in developing and commercializing biotechnology for decades.1 This dominance is reflected in the fact that United States accounted for almost half of all biotechnology patents filed worldwide from 1999 to 2013.2 However, in the intervening years, and just as in the case of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, other nations, including South Korea and Singapore, have invested heavily in developing their biotechnology sectors and industries. These efforts pale, however, in comparison to those of China, and the sheer size and scale of the Chinese biotechnology industry pose a range of economic, security, and regulatory issues for American policymakers. The determination of China’s one-party state to become a leading player in biotechnology is reflected by the rapid growth in investment in the sector. Some estimates claim that collectively, China’s central, local, and provincial governments have invested over $100 billion in life sciences research and development. Regardless of the true figure, official encouragement has led to a torrid place of investment. In just the two-year period from 2015 to 2017, venture capital and private equity investment in the sector totaled some $45 billion.3 The value of commercial deals concluded in the fields of biology, medicine and medical machine technology, meanwhile increased from 25.8 billion renminbi (RMB), or $3.6 billion, in 2011 to over 75 billion RMB ($10.6 billion) in 2017.4 Annual research and development expenditures by Chinese pharmaceutical firms, the foundation of the biotechnology sector, rose from some 39 billion RMB in 2014 ($5.5 billion) to over 53 billion RMB (US$7.5 billion) by 2017. Expenditure on new product development among these firms, an important indicator of future growth potential, increased from just over 40 billion RMB ($5.6 billion) to almost 60 billion ($8.4 billion).5 By Western standards, some of these figures are still low. Swiss drugmaker Roche, the world leader in biotechnology research and development, spent some $11 billion in 2018 alone.6 As these figures suggest, the development of China’s biotechnology sector paints a nuanced picture for U.S. policymakers. On one hand, the sector’s rapid growth, and high-level commitment to continued investment, means that China will inevitably become an increasingly important player in the global biotechnology sector, with implications for national security, economic competitiveness, and regulation. An executive from In-Q-Tel, the U.S. government’s inhouse national security venture capital fund, warned Congress in a November 2019 hearing, for example, that China “intends to own the biorevolution… and they are building the infrastructure, the talent pipeline, the regulatory system, and the financial system they need to do that.”7 The CEO of European drugmaker AstraZeneca has similarly opined that “Much of [China’s] innovation in the last three to four years has been ‘me too,’ but now on the horizon we can see firstin-class innovation.”8 Yet on the other hand, while China’s biotechnology sector will almost certainly continue to grow in scale, sophistication, and competitiveness, there is little reason to believe on current trends that the United States will lose its edge in the sector. Indeed, the biggest risk to the global competitiveness of the U.S. biotechnology industry likely comes from the prospect of declining public investment and reduced mobility for world-class researchers and industry professionals. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis underscores both the importance of continued investment in biotechnology and the many challenges to promoting effective international cooperation on global health security. This brief first examines the key policies and actors in China’s biotechnology sector, then offers an assessment of the sector’s current capabilities and future trends, and finally further explores the implications of developments in Chinese biotechnology for U.S. policy. The aff’s waiving of IP doesn’t solve but it does give away sensitive national security information that allows China to lead ahead in biotechJosh Rogin 4-8. [(Washington Post Columnist covering National Security Issues.) “Opinion: The wrong way to fight vaccine nationalism” ] TDIAmericans will not be safe from covid-19 until the entire world is safe. That basic truth shows why vaccine nationalism is not only immoral but also counterproductive. But the simplest solutions are rarely the correct ones, and some countries are using the issue to advance their own strategic interests. The Biden administration must reject the effort by some nations to turn our shared crisis into their opportunity. As the inequities of vaccine distribution worldwide grow, a group of more than 50 developing countries led by India and South Africa is pushing the World Trade Organization to dissolve all international intellectual property protections for pandemic-related products, which would include vaccine research patents, manufacturing designs and technological know-how. The Trump administration rejected the proposal to waive the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for the pandemic when it was introduced in October. Now, hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and dozens of Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Biden administration to support the proposal. But many warn the move would result in the United States handing over a generation of advanced research — much of it funded by the U.S. taxpayer — to our country’s greatest competitors, above all China. In Congress, there’s justified frustration with the United States’ failure to respond to China’s robust vaccine diplomacy, in which Beijing has conditioned vaccine offers to pandemic-stricken countries on their ignoring security concerns over Chinese telecom companies or abandoning diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. There’s also a lot of anger at Big Pharma among progressives for profiting from the pandemic. “We are in a race against time, and unfortunately Big Pharma is standing in the way of speedily addressing this problem,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who supports the effort to waive intellectual property protections, told me in an interview. “I think the real security issue is that while the United States balks in making sure that we help ourselves, that these adversaries will just jump right in.” Schakowsky argued that alternative measures for helping poor countries manufacture vaccines are simply not moving fast enough to save lives and that the United States has a duty to respond. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) personally conveyed her support for the waiver to President Biden, Schakowsky said. But Big Pharma is just one piece of the puzzle. Countries such as India and South Africa have been trying to weaken WTO intellectual property protections for decades. The mRNA technology that underpins the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was funded initially by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and has national security implications. Inside the Biden administration, the National Security Council has already convened several meetings on the issue. The waiver is supported by many global health officials in the White House and at the U.S. Agency for International Development, who believe the United States’ international reputation is suffering from its perceived “America First” vaccine strategy. On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai spoke with WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala about the waiver issue. USTR is convening its own interagency meetings on the issue, which many see as a move to reassert its jurisdiction over WTO matters. If and when this does get to Biden’s desk, he will also hear from national security officials who believe that waiving TRIPS would result in the forced transfer of national security-sensitive technology to China, a country that strives to dominate the biotechnology field as part of its Made in China 2025 strategy. Once countries such as China have this technology, they will apply their mercantilist industrial models to ensure their companies dominate these strategically important industries, potentially erasing thousands of U.S. jobs. “We would be delivering a competitive advantage to countries that are increasingly viewed as our adversaries, at taxpayer expense, when there are other ways of doing this,” said Mark Cohen, senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley Law School. A preferable approach would be to build more vaccine-manufacturing capacity in the United States and then give those vaccines to countries in need, said Cohen. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry would surely benefit, but that’s preferable to being dependent on other countries when the next pandemic hits. “If there’s anything that the pandemic has taught us, it’s that we need to have a robust supply chain, for ourselves and for the world generally,” Cohen said. What’s more, it’s not clear that waiving the TRIPS agreement for the pandemic would work in the first place. Bill Gates and others involved in the current vaccine distribution scheme have argued that it would not result in more vaccines, pointing out that licensing agreements are already successfully facilitating cooperation between patent-holding vaccine-makers and foreign manufacturers. Critics respond that such cooperation is still failing to meet the urgent needs in the developing world. Vaccine equity is a real problem, but waiving intellectual property rights is not the solution. If the current system is not getting shots into the arms of people in poor countries, we must fix that for their sake and ours. But the pandemic and our responses to it have geopolitical implications, whether we like it or not. That means helping the world and thinking about our strategic interests at the same time.China will convert biotechnology gains to military advantages, undermining US primacy – specifically true in the context of vaccinesMercy A. Kuo 2017 [(Executive Vice President at Pamir Consulting.) “The Great US-China Biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence Race” ] TDITrans-Pacific View author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into the U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Eleonore Pauwels – Director of Biology Collectives and Senior Program Associate, Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C. – is the 104th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.” Explain the motivation behind Chinese investment in U.S. genomics and artificial intelligence (AI). With large public and private investments inland and in the U.S., China plans to become the next AI-Genomics powerhouse, which indicates that these technologies will soon converge in China. China’s ambition is to lead the global market for precision medicine, which necessitates acquiring strategic technological and human capital in both genomics and AI. And the country excels at this game. A sharp blow in this U.S.-China competition happened in 2013 when BGI purchased Complete Genomics, in California, with the intent to build its own advanced genomic sequencing machines, therefore securing a technological knowhow mainly mastered by U.S. producers. There are significant economic incentives behind China’s heavy investment in the increasing convergence of AI and genomics. This golden combination will drive precision medicine to new heights by developing a more sophisticated understanding of how our genomes function, leading to precise, even personalized, cancer therapeutics and preventive diagnostics, such as liquid biopsies. By one estimate, the liquid biopsy market is expected to be worth $40 billion in 2017. Assess the implications of iCarbonX of Shenzhen’s decision to invest US$100 million in U.S.-company PatientsLikeMe relative to AI and genomic data collection. iCarbonX is a pioneer in AI software that learns to recognize useful relationships between large amounts of individuals’ biological, medical, behavioral and psychological data. Such a data-ecosystem will deliver insights into how an individual’s genome is mutating over time, and therefore critical information about this individual’s susceptibilities to rare, chronic and mental illnesses. In 2017, iCarbonX invested $100 million in PatientsLikeMe, getting a hold over data from the biggest online network of patients with rare and chronic diseases. If successful, this effort could turn into genetic gold, making iCarbonX one of the wealthiest healthcare companies in China and beyond. The risk factor is that iCarbonX is handling more than personal data, but potentially vulnerable data as the company uses a smartphone application, Meum, for customers to consult for health advice. Remember that the Chinese nascent genomics and AI industry relies on cloud computing for genomics data-storage and exchange, creating, in its wake, new vulnerabilities associated with any internet-based technology. This phenomenon has severe implications. How much consideration has been given to privacy and the evolving notion of personal data in this AI-powered health economy? And is our cyberinfrastructure ready to protect such trove of personal health data from hackers and industrial espionage? In this new race, will China and the U.S. have to constantly accelerate their rate of cyber and bio-innovation to be more resilient? Refining our models of genomics data protection will become a critical biosecurity issue. Why is Chinese access to U.S. genomic data a national security concern? Genomics and computing research is inherently dual-use, therefore a strategic advantage in a nation’s security arsenal. Using AI systems to understand how the functioning of our genomes impacts our health is of strategic importance for biodefense. This knowledge will lead to increasing developments at the forefront of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, antibiotics, and targeted treatments relying on virus-engineering and microbiome research. Applying deep learning to genomics data-sets could help geneticists learn how to use genome-editing (CRISPR) to efficiently engineer living systems, but also to treat and, even “optimize,” human health, with potential applications in military enhancements. A $15 million partnership between a U.S. company, Gingko Bioworks, and DARPA aims to genetically design new probiotics as a protection for soldiers against a variety of stomach bugs and illnesses. China could be using the same deep learning techniques on U.S. genomics data to better comprehend how to develop, patent and manufacture tailored cancer immunotherapies in high demand in the United States. Yet, what if Chinese efforts venture into understanding how to impact key genomics health determinants relevant to the U.S. population? Gaining access to increasingly large U.S. genomic data-sets gives China a knowledge advantage into leading the next steps in bio-military research. Could biomedical data be used to develop bioweapons? Explain. Personalized medicine advances mean that personalized bio-attacks are increasingly possible. The combination of AI with biomedical data and genome-editing technologies will help us predict genes most important to particular functions. Such insights will contribute to knowing how a particular disease occurs, how a newly-discovered virus has high transmissibility, but also why certain populations and individuals are more susceptible to it. Combining host susceptibility information with pathogenic targeted design, malicious actors could engineer pathogens that are tailored to overcome the immune system or the microbiome of specific populations. Maintenance of the ILO is key to reduce a host of existential threats – establishes great-power peace.Brands 18. [(Hal Brands is a Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “America’s Global Order Is Worth Fighting For, Bloomberg Opinion, Politics & Policy,” August 14, 2018, Bloomberg. ] TDIThe first argument is easily disposed of. Yes, the postwar world has been thoroughly imperfect, featuring nuclear arms races, genocides, widespread poverty and other scourges. But the world has always been imperfect, and by any meaningful comparison, the last seven decades have been a veritable golden age. The liberal international economic order has led to an explosion of domestic and global prosperity: According to World Bank data, both U.S. and global per capita income have increased roughly three-fold (in inflation-adjusted terms) since 1960, with U.S. gross domestic product increasing nearly six-fold. The U.S. system of alliances and forward military deployments has contributed critically to the longest period of great-power peace in modern history, and the incidence of war and conquest more broadly have dropped dramatically. The number of democracies in the world has increased from perhaps a dozen during World War II to well over 100 today; respect for basic human rights has also reached impressive levels. As a bevy of scholarship has shown, the policies that the U.S. has pursued and the international order it has built have contributed enormously and directly to these outcomes. If the liberal international order can’t be considered a smashing success, no international order could be. The second critique is also overstated. It is true that Washington, like all great powers throughout history, has been willing to bend the rules to get its way. It is hard to reconcile Cold War-era interventions in Guatemala, Chile and other countries with a professed solicitude for human rights and democracy; the Iraq War of 2003 is only one instance in which the U.S. brushed aside the concerns of international organizations such as the U.N. Security Council. Likewise, when the U.S. government determined that the Bretton Woods system of monetary relations no longer suited its interests in the 1970s, it terminated that scheme and insisted on creating a more favorable one. But again, the proper standard here is not sainthood but reality. And the U.S. has generally enlisted its power in the service of universal values such as democracy and human rights; it has, more often than not, promoted a positive-sum international system in which like-minded nations can be secure and wealthy. This goes back to the very beginning of the liberal order: Washington did not seek to hold its defeated adversaries in subjugation after World War II; it rebuilt Japan and western Germany into thriving, democratic allies that became fierce economic competitors to the U.S. The U.S. has taken this approach not simply because it wanted to do good in the world — powerful as this motivation is — but because of a hard-headed desire to do good for itself. In an interdependent global environment, American officials have long calculated, the U.S. cannot divorce its own well-being from that of the wider world. And in contrast to how other great powers — Imperial Japan, for instance, or the Soviet Union — ruled their spheres of influence, American behavior has been positively enlightened. It is this relatively benign behavior that has convinced so many countries to tolerate American leadership — and it is the emergence of a darker form of U.S. hegemony under the Trump administration that so profoundly worries them today. As for the third critique, the premise is right, but the conclusion can easily go too far. It is always dangerous to become so enraptured by past achievements that one loses sight of the need for adaptation in the future. This is particularly true today, because the strength of the liberal order is being tested from within and without, by issues ranging from unequal burden-sharing among American allies to the ambivalence of the American people themselves. There is little evidence to suggest, however, that either American power or the liberal order it supports have eroded so dramatically that Washington’s postwar project cannot be sustained. Quite the contrary — the U.S. is likely to remain the world’s strongest power for decades to come.2NR – O/VTurns case – companies say no if they think sensitive information will be handed over Reuters 5-8 [“U.S. wants COVID vaccine patent waiver to benefit world, not boost China biotech” ]TDIMay 8 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is examining ways to ensure that a waiver of COVID-19 vaccine patents to aid poor countries will not hand sensitive U.S. biopharmaceutical technology to China and Russia, responding to a chorus of concerns, U.S. and industry officials say. President Joe Biden on Wednesday backed the U.S. entering negotiations at the World Trade Organization for the waiver of intellectual property rights as a means to boost vaccine supplies by allowing poorer countries to make their own. So far, vaccines have gone overwhelmingly to richer nations, which scooped up contracts for them earlier this year. COVID-19 infection rates in wealthy countries have dropped as vaccination rates increased this year, but infections are still rising in 36 countries, with India’s daily cases skyrocketing to nearly 400,000 a day. Western pharmaceutical companies, many of which have received government support to develop vaccines, strongly oppose the transfer of intellectual property to make them. They say poorer countries will be slow to set up manufacturing capacity and compete for scarce supplies, hitting production. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer Inc, said on Friday that the proposed waiver would disrupt progress made so far in boosting vaccine supplies. “It will unleash a scramble for the critical inputs we require in order to make a safe and effective vaccine. Entities with little or no experience in manufacturing vaccines are likely to chase the very raw materials we require to scale our production, putting the safety and security of all at risk.” Many companies and now some U.S. officials fear the move would allow China to leapfrog years of research and erode the U.S. advantage in biopharmaceuticals. A senior Biden administration official said that while the priority is saving lives, the United States "would want to examine the effect of a waiver on China and Russia before it went into effect to ensure that it's fit for purpose." A question and answer document produced by the administration and shared with industry representatives also acknowledges concerns that intellectual property sharing could damage the United State's competitive advantage over China, an industry source familiar with the discussions told Reuters. The contents of the document read to a Reuters reporter by an industry representative said the Biden administration believes it can address those concerns through the WTO negotiations, but did not specify how. The source added that some agencies in the Biden administration have conflicting views of how to address the concerns in negotiations that are expected to take months. Spokespersons at the White House and U.S. Trade Representative's office had no immediate comment on the matter. Pfizer and Moderna spokespersons did not respond to requests for comment on technology transfer concerns, while a Novavax spokesperson referred Reuters to the company's statement opposing the waiver on Friday, which said proposals to "weaken intellectual property protections would not achieve equitable vaccine access." Enforcing limits on use of the technology could be very difficult, once handed over, some analysts say. Messenger RNA, used in COVID-19 vaccines by leaders Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, is a newly developed biotechnology that holds promise for treatments far beyond vaccines. China and Russia have their own vaccines that do not use this biotechnology. "It took Pfizer and Moderna years and years of research to develop these vaccines," said Gary Locke a former U.S. ambassador to China and U.S. Commerce Secretary. "China, Russia, India, South Africa and others want to gain access. Their intention is to get the underlying know-how so they can use it to develop further vaccines," Locke said. China's Fosun Pharma has struck a deal with BioNTech on COVID-19 vaccine product development, which would potentially give it access to some of the technology. China has high ambitions for its pharma industry and already is developing its own mRNA vaccine. Patents themselves are publicly accessible, noted James Pooley, intellectual property attorney and former deputy director general of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization. But trade secrets developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and others, "cook books" of manufacturing processes such as temperature and growing conditions, have not been made public. That may ultimately be a dual problem for negotiators. Before they protect the knowledge, U.S. officials would have to ensure access to it. Those companies would need to be persuaded to come to the bargaining table to give up such trade secrets. “What happens when it turns out that the U.S. can’t actually deliver the information that is critically important to implementing the inventions?” Pooley asked. “This will be seen as another failure by the U.S. and other rich countries to keep their promises.”2NR – UQUS wins the biotech race now but it’s not locked inMoore 21 Scott Moore, [(Scott Moore is a political scientist and administrator at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a forthcoming book, “How China Shapes the Future,” on China’s role in public goods and emerging technologies.) 8-8-2021, "In Biotech, the Industry of the Future, the U.S. Is Way Ahead of China," Lawfare, ]TDIIt was supposed to be China’s moment of technological triumph—one that would show the world Beijing had not only conquered the coronavirus but also emerged as a biotechnology superpower. But when clinical data on China’s flagship CoronaVac vaccine finally flowed in, they showed it was barely more than 50 percent effective—just clearing the minimum standard set by the World Health Organization. In contrast, not one but two vaccines developed by U.S. firms have been found to be upward of 95 percent effective, a standard no other country’s vaccines have yet met in rigorous clinical trials. The United States’s overall track record in responding to the pandemic has been awful. Yet the success of its vaccine development efforts shows that when it comes to biotechnology, the industry of the future, the U.S. is way ahead of China and most of its other rivals. A continuing refrain from Washington in recent years has been that the United States is falling behind China in the development of critical emerging technologies. In some fields, this may be true. But not in biotechnology. To be sure, China’s biotech sector is growing at a torrid pace, and some of its firms are becoming leaders in certain areas, such as cancer treatment. Yet the U.S. retains a dominant position in research, development and commercialization, accounting for almost half of all biotech patents filed from 1999 to 2013. The triumph of its biotechnology industry during the coronavirus pandemic, producing two highly effective vaccines using an entirely new approach based on messenger RNA, and in record time, shows that the U.S.’s competitive edge in biotechnology remains largely intact. And that has important implications as Washington gears up for a sustained period of geopolitical competition with Beijing. Biotech is such a critical area for technological competition between the U.S. and China because it is transforming fields from medicine to military power. The great advances of the 19th century, like chemical fertilizers, resulted from mastering chemistry. In the 20th century, mastery of physics led to nuclear energy—and, more ominously, nuclear weapons. In the 21st century, biology offers a similar mix of peril and promise. This was illustrated dramatically by the award of the 2020 Nobel Prize for the discovery of an enzyme system known as CRISPR-Cas9, which allows an organism’s genomes to be edited with high precision. It is a transformational breakthrough. But while CRISPR shows great promise in the development of new cures for long-untreatable diseases, it could also lead to a whole new generation of deadly bioweapons. That’s a prospect that increasingly alarms U.S. intelligence officials. In 2016, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Congress that “[r]esearch in genome editing conducted by countries with different regulatory or ethical standards than those of western countries probably increases the risk of the creation of potentially harmful biological agents or products.” Although Clapper didn’t name specific countries, it soon became clear that he was referring mainly to China. Four years later, his successor, John Ratcliffe, issued a far more pointed warning that “China has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities. There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.” Such capabilities are almost certainly only speculative—but they underscore why biotech leadership is so important for national security as well as economic competitiveness. Beijing has long envied the United States’s dominant position in biotechnology and spent heavily to overtake it. Biotech has been a priority sector for state investment since the 1980s, and by one estimate Beijing had poured some $100 billion into the sector by 2018. Nowhere did it lavish more attention or invest more of its propaganda power than in developing a coronavirus vaccine. State media have spent months crowing that “China is working around the clock for breakthroughs in COVID-19 vaccines.” Yet despite this push, China’s vaccine program quickly took on a Potemkin air. In February 2020, barely two months after the onset of the pandemic and after a supposedly crash vaccine effort, a military doctor stood in front of a Chinese flag to receive what was billed as an experimental vaccine dose but was widely suspected to be a staged photo op. Now, having spent months talking up its two primary vaccine candidates to developing countries like Brazil and Indonesia, both of which have entered into purchase agreements with Chinese biotech firms, Chinese officials face severe mistrust among their nation’s overseas partners. For China’s leaders, the disappointing returns on their big bet on biotechnology look likely to cause them more headaches at home as well as abroad—there are already signs that affluent Chinese place more trust in foreign-developed coronavirus vaccines than the homegrown ones produced at such great expense. For U.S. officials, though, China’s relative underperformance in vaccine development presents an opportunity to reassert the United States’s leadership in biotechnology and public health and bolster the nation’s depleted soft power in the process. The Biden administration has already signaled it will reengage in multilateral bodies such as the World Health Organization. Yet the U.S. shouldn’t stop there. Washington should begin thinking now about how to emulate the success of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)—which, though imperfect, is widely regarded as one of the most successful single public health interventions in history—to address growing disparities in access to coronavirus vaccines between countries. At the moment, vaccine supplies are controlled largely by rich countries, creating the risk of moral and public health failure if the gap persists. While COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, differs in many respects from AIDS, PEPFAR combined research, prevention, and access to therapeutics. Developing a comparable institutional structure to close the coronavirus vaccine access gap is the right thing to do—but it would also go a long way to restoring America’s battered global reputation. At the same time, the United States can’t afford to rest on its laurels in biotechnology, or any other field. Aside from China, other nations like Singapore and Israel have also invested heavily to develop their biotechnology sectors, with Israel in particular giving rise to a thriving biotech industry. U.S. public investment in basic scientific research and development has meanwhile been on the decline for decades, and there are worrying signs that America’s once world-beating innovation ecosystem is less productive, and less entrepreneurial, than it once was. Despite strengths in translational research, moreover, the frontiers of biology increasingly sit at the intersection with other disciplines like computer science, meaning that funding agencies, universities and other organizations need to break down disciplinary silos. Boosting support for biotechnology research, while reforming how that money is used, will go a long way toward shoring up the United States’s leading position in the global biotech sector. The U.S. biotechnology sector also faces other threats, not least growing espionage and intellectual property theft by foreign actors, especially those linked to China. Several high-profile cases brought by the U.S. Department of Justice’s China Initiative have involved biotechnology researchers, and American biotech firms have been top targets for cyber theft and intrusion. Sustained outreach to researchers and research institutions is critical to preventing such theft. But efforts to clamp down on the threats posed by espionage and intellectual property theft can easily go too far and must preserve the researcher mobility and data-sharing that is essential to doing cutting-edge science. Beyond its shores, the United States should work with its partners and allies to enhance export controls on dual-use biotechnology—used for both peaceful and military gain—especially DNA templates. Many forms of genetic material and synthetic biology products are already subject to U.S. export controls, but gaps remain, and screening for genetic sequence orders relies primarily on voluntary regulation by biotech firms. Better coordinating export controls among major economies and U.S. allies can dramatically reduce the risk of sophisticated bioweapons development in the decades to come. When it comes to biotechnology, the industry of the future, the U.S. remains well ahead of its rivals, including China. That’s something Americans can, and should, take pride in. But the U.S. must make proactive investments and undertake significant reforms now to ensure that things stay that way. US beats china now but its closeCher 20 Audrey Cher, [”‘Superpower marathon’: U.S. may lead China in tech right now — but Beijing has the strength to catch up,” CNBC, ]TDIThe United States might be leading in some areas of its technology race with China — but experts warn against the world’s largest economy resting on its laurels, urging instead for cooperation with allies and shifts in domestic policy. Alongside trade war developments between the U.S. and China, both parties have been embroiled in growing competition to dominate various fields of next-generation technology, such as 5G networks and artificial intelligence (AI). 5G refers to the latest mobile networking technology that promises super-fast download speeds and the ability to underpin critical infrastructure. That’s one reason why it is seen as crucial technology for both countries. In the last few years, Beijing has laid out a number of plans it hopes will turn China into a world leader in various tech areas: The country is currently gearing up to release a 15-year blueprint — known as “China Standards 2035” — that will outline its plans to set the global standards for future technologies. In 2017, China announced ambitions to become a global leader in the field of artificial intelligence by 2030. Five years ago, in 2015, Beijing unveiled a “Made in China 2025” plan to dominate global high-tech manufacturing. U.S.-China competition is essentially about who will control the global information technology infrastructure and standards. Frank Rose SENIOR FELLOW FOR SECURITY AND STRATEGY AT THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION The China Standards 2035 blueprint is essentially the technical specifications and rules that define how many of the technologies that are in use everyday, like mobile networks, operate. Being able to influence what those look like could have wide-ranging implications for power Beijing wields in various areas of technology globally. “U.S.-China competition is essentially about who will control the global information technology infrastructure and standards,” said Frank Rose, senior fellow for security and strategy in the Foreign Policy program at The Brookings Institution, at a webinar earlier this month. US leading in A.I. competitiveness A recent report by Citi that studied AI competitiveness of 48 economies found that the U.S. still leads significantly. The other 47 economies included in the index would face “severe difficulties in catching up to the U.S.’s AI industry in 2020-30,” the report said. This was attributed to the U.S.’s strength, particularly in AI patents, investment and academic research. Citi said the ranking was not a surprise, given that major software companies are headquartered in the U.S. WATCH NOW VIDEO06:15 China’s rise in artificial intelligence The ranking was calculated by weighing five factors, namely: academic research, patents, investment, labor and hardware in the field of artificial intelligence. However, the report also found that only China, ranked second behind the U.S. in the index, would be likely to “cultivate an independent strong ecosystem for the AI industry due to both economic and geopolitical reasons.” No resting on laurels China would still need to catch up in two areas, namely jet engines and semiconductor, according to Michael Brown, director of the defense innovation unit at the U.S. Department of Defense. “So they’re (China) not quite there yet, but I think we can’t rest on our laurels,” he said at the Brookings Institution webinar. “I think they very much can compete, and that’s what makes me very concerned, if we don’t wake up and see what we need to do to compete.” Even though many countries have invested efforts to boost their domestic biotech sector, China is the “only one whose scale could potentially ... pose a threat to American pre-eminence” in biotech, said Scott Moore, director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania, during the same webinar. China’s policy target is for biotech to account for roughly 4% of Chinese GDP by 2020, and in comparison, biotech makes up around 2% of the U.S.’s GDP, Moore said. ‘Superpower marathon’ Experts have pointed out that the U.S. could tap on alliances with other nations and re-orientate domestic policy to increase competitiveness. “The U.S. and its allies comprise almost two-thirds of global R&D and there’s extraordinary ways we can try to leverage that pool of research and development and coordinate on shared priorities,” said Andrew Imbrie, senior fellow with the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University during the webinar. Investing in research undertaken by both the government and academia is a “proven strategy” from the Cold War era that can be used again in this current situation, Brown said. However, “the more important and more difficult strategy” would involve the “need to reform our business thinking, and our capital markets, to move away from short-term thinking, to be more long-term oriented,” he argued. He pointed to the short-term thinking that is ingrained in the business community in the U.S. — a result, he said, of measures including a focus on quarterly earnings, increasing short-term stock price, and shorter periods for holding stock. In contrast, China takes a very long-term view, and sees technology and innovation as key to developing national capability as part of its overall national strategy, he said. Short-term thinking is not the right approach if the U.S. is preparing for a “superpower marathon” with China, Brown said. “We have to reform this or we’re not going to be successful in competing with China.”2NR – LinkDivulges national security informationStephen Ezell 4-9. [(Vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)). “Ten Reasons Why a COVID-19 TRIPS IP Waiver Is Unwarranted” ] TDIMoreover, the United States has invested billions to become a global leader in life-sciences innovation, including with regard to the novel mRNA technologies underpinning many of the innovative vaccines and therapeutics now at the heart of responding to this crisis. Indeed, as Josh Rogin notes, “The mRNA technology that underpins the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was funded initially by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and has national security implications.” Endorsing the TRIPS waiver may well result in the forced transfer of national security-sensitive technology to China or other adversarial nations, like Russia. As Mark Cohen, distinguished senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, explains, “We would be delivering a competitive advantage to countries that are increasingly viewed as our adversaries, at taxpayer expense, when there are other ways of doing this.” Throughout the pandemic, it’s been clear that state-sponsored hackers from a number of countries—including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—have been engaging in concerted attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine secrets. Why would the United States now embrace a petition that compels U.S. enterprises to freely and unconditionally divulge that IP, especially when they are already working to do so in a responsible, structured way through voluntary licensing which ensures that selected partners have the necessary capacity and expertise to manufacture the needed vaccines and therapeutics?China only has limited mRNA capacity now – a waiver hands them the keys to the kingdomReuters 5-8 [“U.S. wants COVID vaccine patent waiver to benefit world, not boost China biotech” ] TDIMay 8 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is examining ways to ensure that a waiver of COVID-19 vaccine patents to aid poor countries will not hand sensitive U.S. biopharmaceutical technology to China and Russia, responding to a chorus of concerns, U.S. and industry officials say. President Joe Biden on Wednesday backed the U.S. entering negotiations at the World Trade Organization for the waiver of intellectual property rights as a means to boost vaccine supplies by allowing poorer countries to make their own. So far, vaccines have gone overwhelmingly to richer nations, which scooped up contracts for them earlier this year. COVID-19 infection rates in wealthy countries have dropped as vaccination rates increased this year, but infections are still rising in 36 countries, with India’s daily cases skyrocketing to nearly 400,000 a day. Western pharmaceutical companies, many of which have received government support to develop vaccines, strongly oppose the transfer of intellectual property to make them. They say poorer countries will be slow to set up manufacturing capacity and compete for scarce supplies, hitting production. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer Inc, said on Friday that the proposed waiver would disrupt progress made so far in boosting vaccine supplies. “It will unleash a scramble for the critical inputs we require in order to make a safe and effective vaccine. Entities with little or no experience in manufacturing vaccines are likely to chase the very raw materials we require to scale our production, putting the safety and security of all at risk.” Many companies and now some U.S. officials fear the move would allow China to leapfrog years of research and erode the U.S. advantage in biopharmaceuticals. A senior Biden administration official said that while the priority is saving lives, the United States "would want to examine the effect of a waiver on China and Russia before it went into effect to ensure that it's fit for purpose." A question and answer document produced by the administration and shared with industry representatives also acknowledges concerns that intellectual property sharing could damage the United State's competitive advantage over China, an industry source familiar with the discussions told Reuters. The contents of the document read to a Reuters reporter by an industry representative said the Biden administration believes it can address those concerns through the WTO negotiations, but did not specify how. The source added that some agencies in the Biden administration have conflicting views of how to address the concerns in negotiations that are expected to take months. Spokespersons at the White House and U.S. Trade Representative's office had no immediate comment on the matter. Pfizer and Moderna spokespersons did not respond to requests for comment on technology transfer concerns, while a Novavax spokesperson referred Reuters to the company's statement opposing the waiver on Friday, which said proposals to "weaken intellectual property protections would not achieve equitable vaccine access." Enforcing limits on use of the technology could be very difficult, once handed over, some analysts say. Messenger RNA, used in COVID-19 vaccines by leaders Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, is a newly developed biotechnology that holds promise for treatments far beyond vaccines. China and Russia have their own vaccines that do not use this biotechnology. "It took Pfizer and Moderna years and years of research to develop these vaccines," said Gary Locke a former U.S. ambassador to China and U.S. Commerce Secretary. "China, Russia, India, South Africa and others want to gain access. Their intention is to get the underlying know-how so they can use it to develop further vaccines," Locke said. China's Fosun Pharma has struck a deal with BioNTech on COVID-19 vaccine product development, which would potentially give it access to some of the technology. China has high ambitions for its pharma industry and already is developing its own mRNA vaccine. Patents themselves are publicly accessible, noted James Pooley, intellectual property attorney and former deputy director general of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization. But trade secrets developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and others, "cook books" of manufacturing processes such as temperature and growing conditions, have not been made public. That may ultimately be a dual problem for negotiators. Before they protect the knowledge, U.S. officials would have to ensure access to itThe plan hands over decades of American innovation to ChinaWSJ Editorial Board 5-6 ["Biden’s Vaccine IP Debacle" .] TDIThe economic self-damage is also hard to fathom. The U.S. currently has a competitive advantage in biotech and biologics manufacturing, which could be a growing export industry. Waiving IP protections for Covid vaccines and medicines will give away America’s crown pharmaceutical jewels and make the U.S. and world more reliant on India and China for pharmaceuticals. Moderna has been working on mRNA vaccines for a decade. Covid represents its first success. Ditto for Novavax, which has been at it for three decades. Small biotech companies in the U.S. have been studying how to create vaccines using nasal sprays, pills and patches. Thanks to Mr. Biden, all this could become the property of foreign governments. Licensing agreements allow developers to share their IP while maintaining quality control. Breaking patents and forcing tech transfers will enable China and low-income countries to manufacture U.S. biotech products on their own. China’s current crop of vaccines are far less effective than those in the West, but soon Beijing might be able to purvey Pfizer knock-offs. The U.S. has spent years deploring China’s theft of American IP, and now the Biden Administration may voluntarily let China could reap profits from decades of American innovation. Instead of handing over American IP to the world, Mr. Biden could negotiate bilateral vaccine agreements and export excess U.S. supply. If Mr. Biden wants to increase global supply safely, the U.S. could spend more to help the companies produce more for export. Then the jobs would go to Americans. We thought this was the point of the production deal Mr. Biden negotiated between J&J and Merck.US leniency in vaccine IPR jeopardizes competitiveness across sectors – green tech, AI, semiconductors, aerospace, biotech, and roboticsDuesterberg 21 Thomas J. (Thomas J. Duesterberg is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. An expert on trade, manufacturing, economics and foreign policy, he leads project work on trade with Europe and China.), 6-3-2021, "Biden says he wants to out-compete China — so why attack US medical innovation?," TheHill, ] TDICongress has been burning the midnight oil to pass legislation aimed at investing billions of dollars to out-compete China in critical sectors and champion American innovation. Yet at the very moment that value of the U.S. model of medical innovation is being most vindicated, that model has come under attack from our own government, as well as long-time critics in the developing world. These critics are proposing to waive the intellectual property (IP) rights guaranteed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) for vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 — a move that would undermine the economic model of innovation that produced the historically unprecedented effectiveness, and speed to market, of vaccines developed by major U.S. and British firms. The assault — spearheaded by South Africa and India — is not only unlikely to help get more vaccines to the developing world in a timely manner, but has the potential to unravel decades of progress in building an internationally agreed regime for IP rights, which incentivizes and rewards fundamental research and long-term capital investment. This could harm not only the medical products industry, but also spill over to other high-technology sectors that require long years of research and huge, risky capital investments before bearing fruit. Proponents of the waiver argue that it would facilitate more rapid production and distribution of much-needed shots for hard hit regions in South Asia and Africa. However, it’s well-established that any increased production — even in India, which is home to the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines — would require at least a year of preparation and investment to begin large-scale production of the newer vaccines. What’s more, opponents to the waiver — led by European countries, home to the world’s second leading medicines industry — can delay the waiver approval for months at the WTO, if not bury the idea altogether. And with plans in place to ramp up production of approved vaccines in the U.S., Europe and India, there will be sufficient surplus production to start exporting to the global South later this summer. Any forced transfer of the new vaccines technologies almost certainly will benefit China, with its growing manufacturing prowess and ambitions to spend whatever is required to offset the damage to its reputation resulting from its attempt to mask the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the early days of the pandemic. A closer look at the South Africa-India waiver proposal, which is supported by some 100 other nations, gives insight into the longer-term and broader danger of the reversal of IP rights protections for advanced technologies. Their language tabled at the WTO in late May calls for waiving not only the fundamental patents behind COVID-19 vaccines but extending the waiver to products including “diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices, personal protective equipment” and to the raw materials and “means of manufacture” of anything used to contain this virus. It is not a huge leap of logic to speculate that such broad waivers, in the future, could be suggested for any severe threat to world health, with the example of treatments for AIDS as a reminder. The proposed waiver would extend for a period of “at least three years,” and could be lifted only by agreement in the General Council of the WTO, which requires unanimous consent of all 164 members and rarely has been achieved since its inception in 1995. It is hard to imagine that once the long-sought goal of removing IP rights protection for medical technologies — supported by developing countries and by progressive groups in developed countries alike — is achieved, it can be reversed easily. Other high-technology industries characterized by the need for long-term investments in basic research and the development of new manufacturing technologies such as semiconductors, medical equipment or aerospace, or nascent industries such as quantum computing, robotics or 3D printing, would be wise to pay attention to the debate over waiving IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines. While the acute and existential issues arising from a pandemic represent a perhaps unique set of circumstances, one can conceive of arguments to justify the social goal of sharing some newer technologies. For example, if innovations in “green hydrogen,” more powerful batteries, or more efficient photovoltaic cells are achieved and promise early returns to combat climate change, the advantages of sharing the technologies for the global common good could be adduced to justify waivers in the appropriate enabling technologies. Or, would a waiver be considered for the advanced semiconductors and computers required for artificial intelligence and needed to find cures for cancer and to perfect climate mitigation strategies? U.S. support for the vaccine IP rights waiver is especially baffling because it affects one of its most successful industries in terms of global technology leadership and market share, responsible for so many advances of enormous benefit for global health. It is not a mystery why the rapid discovery and ramping up of production for new vaccines came from the unique U.S. innovation ecosystem, in contrast to the more highly regulated and centrally controlled health care sectors in much of the rest of the world. There are better ways to achieve the goal of eradicating COVID-19, and U.S. actions would be more effective if directed toward expanding production and assisting in the distribution of vaccines. This includes the use of foreign aid and help with purchasing agreements for countries in the global South, as well as facilitating licensing agreements. (For example, Johnson & Johnson is arranging a major project with Indian manufacturers, which has the support of the other Quad countries, Japan, Australia and the U.S.) If Congress truly cares about protecting American innovation, it ought to assert its constitutional authority over international trade to block this danger to domestic high-technology industries. 2NR – AT: China mRNA NowChina admitted they’re behind us nowJoseph Allen 5-10 [(Featured Contributor on . )“Assessing the Damage from Our COVID Technology Giveaway” ] TDIWe’re Handing the Chinese Critical Technologies they Have Been Trying Hard to Steal One year ago, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a high-level warning that Chinese agents were “attempting to identify and illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property and public health data related to vaccines, treatments, and testing from networks and personnel affiliated with COVID-19- related research.” China prioritized stealing mRNA technology and know-how. It’s a revolutionary new way of making drugs and vaccines, with applications far beyond COVID. Moderna worked on it for over 10 years and Novavax for three decades, according to The Wall Street Journal. The article added: “Waiving IP protections for Covid vaccines and medicines will give away America’s crown pharmaceutical jewels and make the U.S. and the world more dependent on India and China for pharmaceuticals.” The top Chinese disease control official acknowledged their current COVID vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates” while praising the benefits of the mRNA vaccines considered most effective, those of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. China must be astounded that we’re giving them an essential tool to end our domination of the life sciences. And to make it even sweeter, our U.S. Trade Representative– who’s talking tough about cracking down on Chinese IP theft– will take the lead in the effort to hand it over. No wonder the Chinese see us as a nation in decline. They may have a point.2NR – I/LBiotech has large geopolitical implicationsScott Moore 2020 [(Director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Moore was a Young Professional and Water Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank Group, and Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the U.S.) “China’s Role In The Global Biotechnology Sector And Implications For U.S. Policy” ] TDIIMPLICATIONS The certainty that China will play an increasingly important role in the global biotechnology sector poses several issues for U.S. policymakers. The gravest of these pertain to national security. Though there is presently no sign that China’s capabilities exceed those of the United States, some researchers have noted that biotechnology is a focus of increasing attention by the People’s Liberation Army.42 U.S. policymakers and security analysts have also raised concerns that the dominant market position of Chinese firms in producing active pharmaceutical ingredients might allow Beijing to disrupt U.S. access to lifesaving drugs in the event of a conflict.43 On the other hand, the use of tools like CRISPR, which is increasingly inexpensive and easy to use, by terrorists and non-state actors to potentially create novel bioweapons poses severe security threats to both the United States and China. It would seem to be in the interest of all states, including China, to strengthen efforts, currently led mostly by the private sector, to prevent dangerous actors from gaining access to DNA templates and other relevant materials.44 Though these prospects are alarming, the theft and use of biomedical data presents more immediate policy concerns. American life sciences research institutions have been subject to what U.S. officials characterize as prolific intellectual property theft and non-traditional intelligence collection by Chinese actors.45 At home, Beijing has already incorporated biometric data on certain populations, such as the Uighur minority group, into its already-formidable social control and surveillance apparatus.46 Chinese actors also appear to have targeted foreign citizens for covert biomedical data collection.47 Last year, the U.S. government forced a Chinese firm to sell its majority stake in an American social network that aggregates health care data from users, primarily over worries this information could be used to persuade Americans with access to sensitive information to spy for China.48 Such added U.S. government scrutiny has contributed to a sharp decline in Chinese investment in the U.S. biotechnology sector. Though small overall, such investment had been growing rapidly, and in 2018 the biotechnology sector constituted the single largest source of Chinese investment in the U.S. overall, surpassing real estate.49 As this impact suggests, access to and control over biomedical data also has profound implications for the economic competitiveness of the U.S. biotechnology sector. Many frontier areas of biotechnology, including the use of artificial intelligence for biomedical applications, depend on access to large quantities of individual patient data. Chinese biotechnology firms are likely to have access to larger quantities of such data than their competitors elsewhere thanks to the size of China’s population and relatively weak rules governing data collection and sharing. An existing biomedical database of patients from China’s national health care system, for example, allegedly covers some 600 million patients.50 The Chinese government is moreover increasingly aggressive about preventing foreign firms and organizations from accessing such data. In 2016, biomedical data was proclaimed a “national strategic resource,”51 and the export of such data is strictly controlled. Rules specifically bar any foreign use of Chinese biomedical data that “may jeopardize national security, national interests, or public security,” and in 2018 these were used to shut down several high-profile scientific collaborations including one involving Peking University and the University of Oxford.52 It should be noted, however, that while data quantity is important, so is data quality, and a combination of poor and inconsistent record-keeping and limited population diversity may diminish the utility of biomedical data produced in China for key applications like therapeutics development.53 In any case, the availability of biomedical datasets will be a key determinant of the relative competitiveness of the U.S. and Chinese biotechnology industries going forward. A final, and more hopeful, policy implication of China’s growing role in biotechnology is its potential to help address shared global challenges like infectious disease prevention and biodiversity protection. In the near term, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for expanded international cooperation on epidemiological data collection and analysis, vaccine development, and other areas related to biotechnology. While China’s openness to such cooperation at the moment is unclear, there are likely to be future opportunities to engage China in COVID-19 tracing, vaccine development, and deployment initiatives in third countries, especially in the less-developed world. In the longer term, synthetic biology, especially the use of gene drives to rapidly spread genetic modifications throughout a population, offers great promise to eliminate insect-borne diseases like malaria, and could also help endangered species adapt to climate change effects. As the 21st century advances, advanced biotechnology will both demand new forms of global governance and present new arenas for both competition and cooperation between researchers, business leaders, and policymakers.542NR – CRISPR BadCrispr causes extinction— lack of verification on projects.Pandya 19 [(Jayshree, Ph.D., the founder and chief executive officer of Risk Group LLC is working passionately to define a new security centric operating system for humanity. Her efforts towards building a strategic security risk intelligence platform are to equip the global strategic security community with the tools and culture to collectively imagine the strategic security risks to our future and to define and design a new security centric operating system for the future of humanity) “Evolution Or Extinction: Where Will The Gene Editing Revolution Take Us” Forbes, 6/9/19. ] TDIThere is no doubt that gene editing tools bring great potential for the future of humanity. However, it is a dual-use technology and can be used for both good and bad. While it will likely revolutionize disease treatment, perhaps enhance intelligence, and give control to humans to evolve on our terms and timeline, it can also become a powerful tool of destruction and maybe even extinction. The emerging potential of the “democratization of destruction” amidst a do-it-yourself movement is a cause of great concern as there is no way of knowing what changes are being made to the human or any living biological species genome, where, by who, with what intention, and with what consequences.The human ecosystem will inevitably move beyond natural evolution as scientists across nations are already using gene editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9. Gene editing in human embryos is frankly a reality now, as gene editing, genome editing, or genomic engineering processes -- in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified, or replaced by making use of specific proteins that can cut DNA precisely in selected targeted locations -- is already being reported from across nations. These examples already show us the potential for danger in gene editing. In 2018, He Jiankui, a now-disgraced Chinese scientist, announced that he had successfully used CRISPR to give two twin baby girls immunity against HIV. However, scientists worldwide condemned not only the ethical ramifications of his work but also the results, noting that he likely focused on too specific of a mutation to properly give the babies immunity and that the gene he used has been linked with premature death. That brings us an important question: what security implications are emerging from gene editing, and are we prepared for the evolutionary implications?Since DNA is involved in many biological processes: from building cells and controlling their number and type, to energy production, metabolism regulation, disease immunity, and so on, when gene editing is on its way to disrupting fundamental biological processes, it is vital to understand and evaluate its risks by evaluating how genome editing is used today. Acknowledging this emerging reality, Risk Group initiated a much-needed discussion on The Rise of Gene Editing with Dr. Rajesh Chowdhury Ph.D., on Risk Roundup.While the process of natural biological evolution involves a series of natural changes over time that causes a species to evolve, adapt to the environment, or become extinct, the question is whether the ongoing gene editing revolution accelerates our timeline of evolution or extinction.We, informed, intelligent, and conscious individuals across nations, must control our species’ evolutionary future. The scientist within us needs to be cautious of our actions with the human species (and any other biological species) and focus on security—to help us get through the expected turmoil brought on by gene editing tools, technological transformation, revolution, and evolution.Let us be cautious and evolve with caution.CRISPR raises ethical concerns and editing humans genomes potentially causes cancer. van Hooijdonk 19 [(Richard, Trendwatcher, futurist and international keynote speaker Richard van Hooijdonk takes you to an inspiring future that will dramatically change the way we live, work and do business.) “The good, the bad, and the ugly of CRISPR gene editing” , 8/5/19. ] TDIAs with any other transformative technology that came before it, the use of CRISPR raises numerous safety and ethical concerns. The biggest concern associated with CRISPR is that it could have unintended consequences, inadvertently cutting out large sections of DNA away from the target site and endangering human health. In fact, several recent studies have shown that using CRISPR to edit the human genome could potentially cause cancer. That’s particularly troubling in the case of human germline editing, in which there’s a risk that the genetic changes could be passed down to future generations. Some have also expressed concerns that CRISPR could be used to create ‘designer babies’ with enhanced physical features, intelligence, or athleticism.Gene editing has been the subject of a heated debate for quite some time now, and judging by some of the recent developments, the argument is unlikely to die down anytime soon. There’s no doubt that gene editing could provide numerous benefits for our society, helping us develop new treatments for a wide variety of diseases and bring an end to some rare genetic disorders. It could also help us create healthier plants that produce better yields and are better equipped to handle the ravages of climate change. On the other hand, some of the concerns mentioned by the technology’s detractors are more than justified, most notably the risks to human health. The truth is that we simply don’t know enough about how CRISPR works or what the possible side effects might be, so we need to proceed with caution, especially when it comes to human testing.AT: Food WarsFood insecurity won’t cause war.Allouche 11. [(Jeremy Allouches) “The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade,” Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK, January 22, 2011] TDI At sub-national scales (i.e. the intra-state level and the local level), the link between scarcity and conflict is more complex. At the intra-state level, recent research on civil wars shows that countries suffering from environmental degradation (soil degradation, deforestation and freshwater supply linked to high population density) were indeed more likely to experiance civil war, but that the magnitude of the effects was secondary to political and economic factors (see for example [Urdal, 2005] and [Hauge and Ellingsen, 1998]). The same is true for hunger and food insecurity as a cause of conflict. The work of Collier and the US State Failure Task Force seems to suggest a possible correlation between food insecurity and civil wars. Collier found a strong relationship between indicators of deprivation (such as low per capita income; economic stagnation and decline; high income inequality; and slow growth in food production per capita) and violent civil strife (Collier, 1999). The US State Failure Task Force found that infant mortality, a surrogate measure of food insecurity and standard of living, was one of three variables most highly correlated with civil war (Goldstone et al., 2003). However, a number of specialists have challenged the notion that food insecurity is a proximate cause of conflict and prefer to emphasize ethnic and political rivalry (Paalberg, 1999). Nonetheless, most analysts would agree that structural conditions of inequality and hunger are among the underlying causes of conflict. But again, ‘physical resource scarcity’ is not in most cases the result of insufficient production or availability but is usually linked to the politics of inequality.Neolib K1NC – Neolib KThe WTO is a fundamentally unnecessary institution that functions solely to preserve US neoliberal hegemony. Reform is the wrong approach and merely props up WTO legitimacy—every empiric flows neg.Bello 99 [(Walden, Filipino academic, environmentalist, and social worker who served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.) “Why Reform of the WTO is the Wrong Agenda” Focus on Trade, No. 43, December 1999, ] TDIIn the wake of the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial, there has emerged the opinion that reform of the WTO is now the program that NGOs, governments, and citizens must embrace. The collapse of the WTO Ministerial is said to provide a unique window of opportunity for a reform agenda.Cited by some as a positive sign is United States Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky's comment, immediately after the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial, that the WTO has outgrown the processes appropriate to an earlier time. An increasing and necessary view, generally shared among the members, was that we needed a process which had a greater degree of internal transparency and inclusion to accommodate a larger and more diverse membership'. (1)Also seen as an encouraging gesture is UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Stephen Byers' recent statement to Commonwealth Trade Ministers in New Delhi that the WTO will not be able to continue in its present form. There has to be fundamental and radical change in order for it to meet the needs and aspirations of all 134 of its members. (2)These are, in our view, damage control statements and provide little indication of the seriousness about reform of the two governments that were, pre-Seattle, the stoutest defenders of the inequalities built into the structure, dynamics, and objectives of the WTO. It is unfortunate that they are now being cited to convince developing countries and NGOs to take up an agenda of reform that could lead precisely to the strengthening of an organization that is very fundamentally flawed.What civil society, North and South, should instead be doing at this point is radically cutting down the power of the institution and reducing it to simply another institution in a pluralistic world trading system with multiple systems of governance.Does World Trade Need the World Trade Organization?This is the fundamental question on which the question of reform hinges.World trade did not need the WTO to expand 17-fold between 1948 and 1997, from $124 billion to $10,772 billion. (3) This expansion took place under the flexible GATT trade regime. The WTO's founding in 1995 did not respond to a collapse or crisis of world trade such as happened in the 1930's. It was not necessary for global peace, since no world war or trade-related war had taken place during that period. In the seven major inter-state wars that took place in that period-the Korean War of 1950-53, the Vietnam War of 1945-75, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1982 Falklands War, and the Gulf War of 1990-trade conflict did not figure even remotely as a cause.GATT was, in fact, functioning reasonably well as a framework for liberalizing world trade. Its dispute-settlement system was flexible and with its recognition of the 'special and differential status' of developing countries, it provided the space in a global economy for Third World countries to use trade policy for development and industrialization.Why was the WTO established following the Uruguay Round of 1986-94? Of the major trading powers, Japan was very ambivalent, concerned as it was to protect its agriculture as well as its particular system of industrial production that, through formal and informal mechanisms, gave its local producers primary right to exploit the domestic market. The EU, well on the way of becoming a self-sufficient trading bloc, was likewise ambivalent, knowing that its highly subsidized system in agriculture would come under attack. Though demanding greater access to their manufactured and agricultural products in the Northern economies, the developing countries did not see this as being accomplished through a comprehensive agreement enforced by a powerful trade bureaucracy but through discrete negotiations and agreements in the model of the Integrated Program for Commodities (IPCs) and Commodity Stabilization Fund agreed upon under the aegis of UNCTAD in the late seventies.The founding of the WTO served primarily the interest of the United States. Just as it was the US which blocked the founding of the International Trade Organization (ITO) in 1948, when it felt that this would not serve its position of overwhelming economic dominance in the post-war world, so it was the US that became the dominant lobbyist for the comprehensive Uruguay Round and the founding of the WTO in late eighties and early nineties, when it felt that more competitive global conditions had created a situation where its corporate interests now demanded an opposite stance.Just as it was the US's threat in the 1950's to leave GATT if it was not allowed to maintain protective mechanisms for milk and other agricultural products that led to agricultural trade's exemption from GATT rules, so was it US pressure that brought agriculture into the GATT-WTO system in 1995. And the reason for Washington's change of mind was articulated quite candidly by then US Agriculture Secretary John Block at the start of the Uruguay Round negotiations in 1986: [The] idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on US agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at much lower cost. (4) Washington, of course, did not just have developing country markets in mind, but also Japan, South Korea, and the European Union.It was the US that mainly pushed to bring services under WTO coverage, with its assessment that the in the new burgeoning area of international services, and particularly in financial services, its corporations had a lead that needed to be preserved. It was also the US that pushed to expand WTO jurisdiction to the so-called 'Trade-Related Investment Measures' (TRIMs) and 'Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights' (TRIPs) The first sought to eliminate barriers to the system of internal cross-border trade of product components among TNC (transnational corporations) subsidiaries that had been imposed by developing countries in order to develop their industries; the second to consolidate the US advantage in the cutting-edge knowledge-intensive industries.And it was the US that forced the creation of the WTO's formidable dispute-resolution and enforcement mechanism after being frustrated with what US trade officials considered weak GATT efforts to enforce rulings favorable to the US. As Washington's academic point man on trade, C. Fred Bergsten, head of the Institute of International Economics, told the US Senate, the strong WTO dispute settlement mechanism serves US interests because we can now use the full weight of the international machinery to go after those trade barriers, reduce them, get them eliminated. (5)In sum, it has been Washington's changing perception of the needs of its economic interest-groups that have shaped and reshaped the international trading regime. It was not global necessity that gave birth to the WTO in 1995. It was the US's assessment that the interests of its corporations were no longer served by a loose and flexible GATT but needed an all-powerful and wide-ranging WTO. From the free-market paradigm that underpins it, to the rules and regulations set forth in the different agreements that make up the Uruguay Round, to its system of decision-making and accountability, the WTO is a blueprint for the global hegemony of Corporate America. It seeks to institutionalize the accumulated advantages of US corporations.Is the WTO necessary? Yes, to the United States. But not to the rest of the world. The necessity of the WTO is one of the biggest lies of our time, and its acceptance is due to the same propaganda principle practised by Joseph Goebbels: if you repeat a lie often enough, it will be taken as truth.Can the WTO Serve the Interests of the Developing Countries?But what about the developing countries? Is the WTO a necessary structure - one that, whatever its flaws, brings more benefits than costs, and would therefore merit efforts at reformWhen the Uruguay Round was being negotiated, there was considerable lack of enthusiasm for the process by the developing countries. After all, these countries had formed the backbone of UNCTAD, which, with its system of one-country/one-vote and majority voting, they felt was an international arena more congenial to their interests. They entered the Uruguay Round greatly resenting the large trading powers' policy of weakening and marginalizing UNCTAD in the late seventies and early eighties.Largely passive spectators, with a great number not even represented during the negotiations owing to resource constraints, the developing countries were dragged into unenthusiastic endorsement of the Marrakesh Accord of 1994 that sealed the Uruguay Round and established the WTO. True, there were somedeveloping countries, most of them in the Cairns Group of developed and developing country agro-exporters, that actively promoted the WTO in the hope that they would gain greater market access to their exports, but they were a small minority.To try to sell the WTO to the South, US propagandists evoked the fear that staying out of the WTO would result in a country's isolation from world trade ('like North Korea') and stoked the promise that a 'rules-based system' of world trade would protect the weak countries from unilateral acts by the big trading powers.With their economies dominated by the IMF and the World Bank, with the structural adjustment programs pushed by these agencies having as a central element radical trade liberalization, much weaker as a bloc owing to the debt crisis compared to the 1970's, the height of the 'New International Economic Order', most developing country delegations felt they had no choice but to sign on the dotted line.Over the next few years, however, these countries realized that they had signed away their right to employ a variety of critical trade measures for development purposes.In contrast to the loose GATT framework, which had allowed some space for development initiatives, the comprehensive and tightened Uruguay Round was fundamentally anti-development in its thrust. This is evident in the following:Loss of Trade Policy as Development ToolIn signing on to GATT, Third World countries were committed to banning all quantitative restrictions on imports, reduce tariffs on many industrial imports, and promise not to raise tariffs on all other imports. In so doing, they have effectively given up the use of trade policy to pursue industrialization objectives. The way that the NICs, or 'newly industrializing countries', made it to industrial status, via the policy of import substitution, is now effectively removed as a route to industrialization.The anti-industrialization thrust of the GATT-WTO Accord is made even more manifest in the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). In their drive to industrialize, NICs like South Korea and Malaysia made use of many innovative mechanisms such as trade-balancing requirements that tied the value of a foreign investor's imports of raw materials and components to the value of his or her exports of the finished commodity, or 'local content' regulations which mandated that a certain percentage of the components that went into the making of a product was sourced locally.These rules indeed restricted the maneuvering space of foreign investors, but they were successfully employed by the NICs to marry foreign investment to national industrialization. They enabled the NICs to raise income from capital-intensive exports, develop support industries, bring in technology, while still protecting local entrepreneurs' preferential access to the domestic market. In Malaysia, for instance, the strategic use of local content policy enabled the Malaysians to build a 'national car', in cooperation with Mitsubishi, that has now achieved about 80 per cent local content and controls 70 per cent of the Malaysian market. Thanks to the TRIMs accord, these mechanisms used are now illegal.The Restriction of Technological DiffusionLike the TRIMs agreement, the TRIPs regime is seen as effectively opposed to the industrialization and development efforts of Third World countries. This becomes clear from a survey of the economic history not only of the NICs but of almost all late-industrializing countries. A key factor in their industrial take-off was their relatively easy access to cutting-edge technology: The US industrialized, to a great extent by using but paying very little for British manufacturing innovations, as did the Germans. Japan industrialized by liberally borrowing US technological innovations, but barely compensating the Americans for this. And the Koreans industrialized by copying quite liberally and with little payment US and Japanese product and process technologies.But what is 'technological diffusion' from the perspective of the late industrializer is 'piracy' from that of the industrial leader. The TRIPs regime takes the side of the latter and makes the process of industrialization by imitation much more difficult from hereon. It represents what UNCTAD describes as 'a premature strengthening of the intellectual property system... that favors monopolistically controlled innovation over broad-based diffusion'. (6)The TRIPs regime provides a generalized minimum patent protection of 20 years; increases the duration of the protection for semi-conductors or computer chips; institutes draconian border regulations against products judged to be violating intellectual property rights; and places the burden of proof on the presumed violator of process patents.The TRIPs accord is a victory for the US high-tech industry, which has long been lobbying for stronger controls over the diffusion of innovations. Innovation in the knowledge-intensive high-tech sector - in electronic software and hardware, biotechnology, lasers, opto-electronics, liquid crystal technology, to name a few - has become the central determinant of economic power in our time. And when any company in the NICs and Third World wishes to innovate, say in chip design, software programming, or computer assembly, it necessarily has to integrate several patented designs and processes, most of them from US electronic hardware and software giants like Microsoft, Intel, and Texas Instruments. (7) As the Koreans have bitterly learned, exorbitant multiple royalty payments to what has been called the American 'high tech mafia' keeps one's profit margins very low while reducing incentives for local innovation.The likely outcome is for a Southern manufacturer simply to pay royalties for a technology rather than to innovate, thus perpetuating the technological dependence on Northern firms.Thus, TRIPs enables the technological leader, in this case the United States, to greatly influence the pace of technological and industrial development in rival industrialized countries, the NICs, and the Third World.Watering Down the 'Special and Differential Treatment' PrincipleThe central principle of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) - an organization disempowered by the establishment of the WTO - is that owing to the critical nexus between trade and development, developing countries must not be subjected to the same expectations, rules, and regulations that govern trade among the developed countries. Owing to historical and structural considerations, developing countries need special consideration and special assistance in leveling the playing field for them to be able to participate equitably in world trade. This would include both the use of protective tariffs for development purposes and preferential access of developing country exports to developed country markets.While GATT was not centrally concerned with development, it did recognize the 'special and differential status' of the developing countries. Perhaps the strongest statement of this was in the Tokyo Round Declaration in 1973, which recognized the importance of the application of differential measures in developing countries in ways which will provide special and more favourable treatment for them in areas of negotiation where this is feasible. (8) Different sections of the evolving GATT code allowed countries to renegotiate tariff bindings in order to promote the establishment of certain industries; allowed developing countries to use tariffs for economic development and fiscal purposes; allowed them to use quantitative restrictions to promote infant industries; and conceded the principle of non-reciprocity by developing countries in trade negotiation. (9) The 1979 Framework Agreement known at the Enabling Clause also provided a permanent legal basis for General System of Preferences (GSP) schemes that would provide preferential access to developing country exports. (10)A significant shift occurred in the Uruguay Round. GSP schemes were not bound, meaning tariffs could be raised against developing country until they equaled the bound rates applied to imports for all sources. Indeed, during the negotiations, the threat to remove GSP was used as a form of bilateral pressure on developing countries. (11) SDT was turned from a focus on a special right to protect and special rights of market access to one of responding to special adjustment difficulties in developing countries stemming from the implementation of WTO decisions. (12) Measures meant to address the structural inequality of the trading system gave way to measures, such as a lower rate of tariff reduction or a longer time frame for implementing decisions, which regarded the problem of developing countries as simply that of catching up in an essentially even playing field.STD has been watered down in the WTO, and this is not surprising for the neoliberal agenda that underpins the WTO philosophy differs from the Keynesian assumptions of GATT: that there are no special rights, no special protections needed for development. The only route to development is one that involves radical trade (and investment) liberalization.Fate of the Special Measures for Developing CountriesPerhaps the best indicators of the marginal consideration given to developing countries in the WTO is the fate of the measures that were supposed to respond to the special conditions of developing countries. There were three key agreements which promoters of the WTO claimed were specifically designed to meet the needs of the South:The Special Ministerial Agreement approved in Marrakesh in April 1994, which decreed that special compensatory measures would be taken to counteract the negative effects of trade liberalization on the net food-importing developing countries;The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, which mandated thart the system of quotas on developing country exports of textiles and garments to the North would be dismantled over ten years;The Agreement on Agriculture, which, while 'imperfect', nevertheless was said to promise greater market access to developing country agricultural products and begin the process of bringing down the high levels of state support and subsidization of EU and US agriculture, which was resulting in the dumping of massive quantities of grain on Third World markets.What happened to these measures?The Special Ministerial Decision taken at Marrakesh to provide assistance to 'Net Food Importing Countries' to offset the reduction of subsidies that would make food imports more expensive for the 'Net Food Importing Countries' has never been implemented. Though world crude prices more than doubled in 1995/96, the World Bank and the IMF scotched an idea of any offsetting aid by arguing that the price increase was not due to the Agreement on Agriculture, and besides there was never any agreement anyway on who would be responsible for providing the assistance. (13)The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing committed the developed countries to bring under WTO discipline all textile and garment imports over four stages, ending on January 1, 2005. A key feature was supposed to be the lifting of quotas on imports restricted under the Multifiber Agreement (MFA) and similar schemes which had been used to contain penetration of developed country markets by cheap clothing and textile imports from the Third World. Developed countries retained, however, the right to choose which product lines to liberalize when, so that they first brought mainly unrestricted products into the WTO discipline and postponed dealing with restricted products till much later. Thus, in the first phase, all restricted products continued to be under quota, as only items where imports were not considering threatening-like felt hats or yarn of carded fine animal hair - were included in the developed countries' notifications. Indeed, the notifications for the coverage of products for liberalization on January 1, 1998 showed that even at the second stage of implementation only a very small proportion" of restricted products would see their quotas lifted. (14)Given this trend, John Whalley notes that the belief is now widely held in the developing work that in 2004, while the MFA may disappear, it may well be replaced by a series of other trade instruments, possibly substantial increases in anti-dumping duties. (15)When it comes to the Agreement on Agriculture, which was sold to developing countries during the Uruguay Round as a major step toward providing market access to developing country imports and bringing down the high levels of domestic support for first world farming interests that results in dumping of commodities in third world markets, little gains in market access after five years into developed country markets have been accompanied by even higher levels of overall subsidization-through ingenious combinations of export subsidies, export credits, market support, and various kinds of direct income payments.The figures speak for themselves: the level of overall subsidization of agriculture in the OECD countries rose from $182 billion in 1995 when the WTO was born to $280 billion in 1997 to $362 billion in 1998! Instead of the beginning of a New Deal, the AOA, in the words of a former Philippine Secretary of Trade, has perpetuated the unevenness of a playing field which the multilateral trading system has been trying to correct. Moreover, this has placed the burden of adjustment on developing countries relative to countries who can afford to maintain high levels of domestic support and export subsidies. (16)The collapse of the agricultural negotiations in Seattle is the best example of how extremely difficult it is to reform the AOA. The European Union opposed till the bitter end language in an agreement that would commit it to 'significant reduction' of its subsidies. But the US was not blameless. It resolutely opposed any effort to cut back on its forms of subsidies such as export credits, direct income for farmers, and 'emergency' farm aid, as well as any mention of its practice of dumping products in developing country markets.Oligarchic Decision-Making as a Central, Defining ProcessIs the system of WTO decisionmaking reformable?While far more flexible than the WTO, the GATT was, of course, far from perfect, and one of the bad traits that the WTO took over from it was the system of decision-making. GATT functioned through a process called 'consensus'. Now consensus responded to the same problem that faced the IMF and the World Bank's developed country members: how to assure control at a time that the numbers gave the edge to the new countries of the South. In the Fund and the Bank, the system of decision-making evolved had the weight of a country's vote determined by the size of its capital subscriptions, which gave the US and the other rich countries effective control of the two organizations.In the GATT, a one-country one-vote system was initially tried, but the big trading powers saw this as inimical to their interests. Thus, the last time a vote was taken in GATT was in 1959. (17) The system that finally emerged was described by US economist Bergsten as one that does not work by voting. It works by a consensus arrangement which, to tell the truth, is managed by four - the Quads: the United States, Japan, European Union, and Canada.(18) He continued: Those countries have to agree if any major steps are going to be made, that is true. But no votes. (19)Indeed, so undemocratic is the WTO that decisions are arrived at informally, via caucuses convoked in the corridors of the ministerials by the big trading powers. The formal plenary sessions, which in democracies are the central arena for decision-making, are reserved for speeches. The key agreements to come out of the first and second ministerials of the WTO-the decision to liberalize information technology trade taken at the first ministerial in Singapore in 1996 and the agreement to liberalize trade in electronic commerce arrived at in Geneva in 1998-were all decided in informal backroom sessions and simply presented to the full assembly as faits accompli. Consensus simply functioned to render non-transparent a process where smaller, weaker countries were pressured, browbeaten, or bullied to conform to the 'consensus' forged among major trading powers.With surprising frankness, at a press conference in Seattle, US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, who played the pivotal role in all three ministerials, described the dynamics and consequences of this system of decision-making:The process, including even at Singapore as recently as three years ago, was a rather exclusionary one. All meetings were held between 20 and 30 keycountries...And that meant 100 countries, 100, were never in the room... [T]his led to an extraordinarily bad feeling that they were left our of the process and that the results even at Singapore had been dictated to them by the 25 or 30 privileged countries who were in the room. (20)Then, after registering her frustration at the WTO delegates' failing to arrive at consensus via supposedly broader 'working groups' set up for the Seattle ministerial, Barshefsky warned delegates: ...[I] have made very clear and I reiterated to all ministers today that, if we are unable to achieve that goal, I fully reserve the right to also use a more exclusive process to achieve a final outcome. There is no question about either my right as the chair to do it or my intention as the chair to do it.... (21)And she was serious about ramming through a declaration at the expense of non-representativeness, with India, one of the key developing country members of the WTO, being routinely excluded from private talks organized by the United States in last ditch efforts to come up with a face-saving deal. (22)In damage-containment mode after the collapse of the Seattle Ministerial, Barshefsky, WTO Director General Mike Moore, and other rich country representatives have spoken about the need for WTO 'reform'. But none have declared any intention of pushing for a one-county/one-vote majority decision-making system or a voting system weighted by population size, which would be the only fair and legitimate methods in a democratic international organization. The fact is, such mechanisms will never be adopted, for this would put the developing countries in a preponderant role in terms of decision-making.Should One Try to Reform a Jurassic Institution?Reform is a viable strategy when the system is question is fundamentally fair but has simply been corrupted such as the case with some democracies. It is not a viable strategy when a system is so fundamentally unequal in purposes, principles, and processes as the WTO. The WTO systematically protects and the trade and economic advantages of the rich countries, particularly the United States. It is based on a paradigm or philosophy that denigrates the right to take actvist measures to achieve development on the part of less developed countries, thus leading to a radical dilution of their right to 'special and differntial treatment'. The WTO raises inequality into a principle of decisionmaking.The WTO is often promoted as a 'rules-based' trading framework that protects the weaker and poorer countries from unilateral actions by the stronger states. The opposite is true: the WTO, like many other multilateral international agreements, is meant to instututionalize and legtimize inequality. Its main purpose is to reduce the tremendous policing costs to the stronger powers that would be involved in disciplining many small countries in a more fluid, less structured international system.It is not surprising that both the WTO and the IMF are currently mired in a severe crisis of legitimacy. For both are highly centralized, highly unaccountable, highly non-transparent global institutions that seek to subjugate, control, or harness vast swathes of global economic, social, political, and environmental processes to the needs and interests of a global minority of states, elites, and TNCs. The dynamics of such institutions clash with the burgeoning democratic aspirations of peoples, countries, and communities in both the North and the South. The centralizing dynamics of these institutions clash with the efforts of communities and nations to regain control of their fate and achieve a modicum of security by deconcentrating and decentralizing economic and political power. In other words, these are Jurassic institutions in an age of participatory political and economic democracy.Dispute settlement is neoliberal—judges are ideological, not neutral arbitersStoppioni 20 [(Edoardo, Senior Research Fellow (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law) “A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Neoliberal Discourse of the WTO Judge (IEL Collective Symposium II)” University of Bristol Law School Blog, March 2020, ] TDIThis post aims at using the work of Gramsci to analyse the hegemonic structures of the discourse of the WTO judge and to disentangle its relation to the neoliberal structural bias of its normative space. The objective is to transpose to international economic law the critical lenses that neo-Gramscian scholars, like Robert Cox, used in international relations. A neo-Gramscian approach focuses on the ? material structure of ideology ?, in order to show how certain norms and practices emerge in a certain context and what is their emancipatory potential concerning a given legal order. By so doing, Cox enlarged the notion of hegemony to include those institutional practices of internalization of a certain ideology and the way they project it externally.Critical doctrines on international law’s “fragmentation” have demonstrated that certain jurisdictions are capable of exercising hegemonic power in the international legal sphere and that a link should be established in that regard with the peculiar bias of economic jurisdictions, such as the WTO judge and the investment arbitrator. The WTO judge is a perfect example thereof (“judge” as, en passant, I find the judicial nature of the mechanism largely demonstrated and recently reaffirmed). As I previously theorized using Gramscian concepts, its discourse constantly oscillates between two poles. The first pole is the one of “prestige” or hegemony via expansion: the judge uses a language of dissemination; it exercises pedagogy to make its own idiom (the language of trade values) the dominating form of legal expression. The second pole is the one of “economism”, or of hegemony via isolation. The judge prefers using a discourse of self-containment to make its power uncontested. It refuses to listen to a foreign language not to put into danger its domination over its own normative regime.This latter form of hegemony comes from what Gramsci theorized as a pattern of those discourses with an economic tropism. In the Notebooks, he had linked this tendency of isolation to the ideology of free-trade: “the theoretical separation of the economic dimension from a social and political ensemble: more specifically, the reduction of this ensemble to its economic causes” (Fogacs, The Gramscian Reader, 2000, 422). Following Gramsci, the free-trade prism can lead to an artificial separation of the economical from the rest of the normative sphere, which can describe the self-contained attitude of the judges.The neoliberal twist translates in WTO case law in different discursive elements, making the idea of market a pillar of international trade law, silencing any other possible vision. This is visible in the way the Appellate Body progressively structured its case law on the “similarity test”, a fundamental judicial test to verify the existence of trade discrimination, as a market-based test. Robert Hudec had explained that ? since GATT is a commercial agreement, it seems reasonable to start with the assumption that ‘likeness’ is (or should be) a commercial concept, meant to describe one or more market phenomena. The central commercial concept that comes to mind is competitiveness ?. Only a dissenting opinion in the Asbestos case questioned this approach, generally theorized as ineluctable. This competitiveness reading of the similarity test places the focus on the product as it stands on the market, on the capitalistic product of consumption and not on its production process, that can be flawed with abuses and egregious violations of human rights.A similar tendency can be observed in the “four corners of the GATT” doctrine, whereby the activity of the judge “would be limited in its activities and findings within the four corners of GATT”. This prism provides a restrictive interpretation of the jurisdictional specialization of the WTO judge to the observation of the impact of WTO Agreements violations exclusively, which explains its restrictive interpretation of the principle of systemic interpretation of Article 31(3)(3) VCLT, as attested in the Biotech or in Large Civil Aircraft cases.One could challenge the impact of the hegemonic discourse of economism in WTO case law as being a “false contingency”, as ? what seems to be given and presupposed is merely what we have temporarily refrained from challenging and remaking ?. Interestingly enough, Quinn Slobodian claimed that this unchallenged vision comes from the historical project of those who like Wilhelm R?pke and Michael Heilperin used the WTO to insulate the markets against sovereign social justice policies. This type of hegemonic discourse has therefore strong historical roots on one particular vision of world economic regulation that has been injected in the agreements.Liberal international law parlance and indeterminacy allow the normalization of such neoliberal bias. Following Chantal Mouffe, the topicality of Gramsci’s work lies in his radical reading of the economistic problematic of ideology. Gramsci showed the “vagueness and imprecision characterizing the mechanism of subordination of politics and ideology to economics”. With this prism of analysis, adopting a neo-Gramscian approach to international trade law should raise awareness over the impact of this neoliberal bias on the WTO judicial discourse and question its hegemonic structures.If Robert Howse has analyzed the role of the Appellate Body in cutting the link between its jurisprudence and the neoliberal aspirations of the secretariat, discourse analysis has shown that neoliberal elements are still present in the judicial practice. The objective of a Gramscian theory of international trade adjudication is therefore to add to a static discourse analysis a dynamic reading of the impact of neoliberalism on the functioning of WTO dispute settlement.The aff’s rhetoric of helping developing economies is the Trojan Horse for neoliberal privatization which destroys healthcare and is a vehicle for imperialism.Gatwiri et al 19 [(Kathomi Gatwiri, lecturer based at Southern Cross University where she teaches Social Work & Social Policy; Julians Amboko, finance and economics correspondent with the Nation Media Group; and Darius Okolla, Bachelor of Commerce - Finance degree, from Kenyatta University) “The implications of Neoliberalism on African economies, health outcomes and wellbeing: a conceptual argument” Soc Theory Health. 18(1): 86–101. 6-26-19, ] TDISince the late 1980s, the sub-Sahara has been struggling to address the issues of inequality that have been inflated by neoliberal policies and capitalist development policies that focus on production of labour and little on the health and wellbeing of the “producers” of the said labour. Globally, the rolling out of neoliberal policies has led to a plethora of harmful socioeconomic consequences, including increased poverty, unemployment, and deterioration of income distribution (Rotarou and Sakellariou 2017; Collins et al. 2015). Hartmann (2016, p. 2145) states that “neoliberalism typically refers to minimal government intervention, laissez-faire market policies, and individualism over collectivism [which] has been adopted by—and pressed upon—the majority of national governments and global development institution.” She further states that “neoliberal policies have contributed to the privatization and individualization of healthcare, resulting in growing health inequalities.” By privatising healthcare, education, electricity, water and housing, neoliberals argue that private institutions are more capable, effective and efficient in providing social services. Harvey (2007) states that neoliberalism is “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, … free trade” and a “hands-off” approach from the government. This is what Friedman referred to as the system of “free market capitalism” (Friedman 2009). However, (Garnham (2017) argues that decreasing public spending and government involvement in the welfare of people through the rhetoric of choice and freedom has a harmful impact on people’s health and wellbeing.The biggest conceptual challenge is that neoliberal ideology adopts the language of freedom and choice, increased foreign investments, and open markets and trade to progress policies that lead to privatisation of basic needs such as education, healthcare, water, electricity and housing. The rich can often afford these services and can compete “fairly” in the “free market”, but the poor—unable to afford health care, education or decent housing—are left marginalised. Njoya (2017) explored the use of language in promoting inequality in the healthcare system. She argued that “neoliberalism uses the language of social policy and justice but [insidiously] drives a very corporate and unequal agenda.”Neoliberalism has radically shifted the African public health space in the last two decades. Most sub-Saharan African countries drastically reduced their healthcare budgets following the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Structural Adjustment programs (SAPs) directives. As Hartmann (2016, p. 2146) wrote, it “decentralized health care decision-making and funding, resulting in wide-scale privatization of health care services, delivery, and insurance, which led to structural segmentation and fragmentation.” SAPs have had myriad negative impacts on African economies, including, but not limited to, “inflationary pressures, the marginalization of the poor in the distribution of educational and health benefits and a reduction in employment” (Rono 2002, p. 84). As the main impetus of the SAPs was to reduce and ration expenditure, structural adjustment in the healthcare sector slashed public spending on primary healthcare, and aided the privatisation of health systems and services. In Kenya, for example, The Bamako Initiative of 1987 anchored cost-sharing as a central tenet of public health policy, in which patients were required to pay for nearly all costs of diagnosis and treatment (Rono 2002). Outside of an emergency, patients were required to provide proof of payment before medical services are availed. By channelling funding to narrow medical interests, structural adjustment policies resulted in an uneven medical landscape, with a few prestigious fields surrounded by poorly resourced departments. Clinicians had to tailor their decisions about treatment to the limited medicine, technologies and resources available.The increased number of private healthcare organisations, coupled with a significant reduction in the role of government in the provision of healthcare services, contributed to extensive negative outcomes on the quality, effectiveness, cost and access of health systems and services, which severely impacted on people’s wellbeing. Rotarou and Sakellariou (2017, p. 497) state that the private institutions, “with their focus on increasing profits, and not on providing affordable and good-quality healthcare, have led to the deterioration of public health systems, increase in urban–rural divide, as well as increase in inequality of access to healthcare services.” Privatisation of healthcare has made services more unaffordable and less available to the population of people that need it the most. As a result, life expectancy has stagnated or fallen in most African countries, and mortality from preventable infections and diseases continues to rise. Further to this, the politics of healthcare through a neoliberal lens are often framed as “individual” issues rather than “structural and ideological” issues. This implies that the neoliberal approach to health has diminished the idea of healthcare as a universal human right.Reframing, reshaping, rethinking and re-politicising healthcare reveals the colonial attitudes that dictate who “deserves” good healthcare. Njoya (2017) states,[Politicians in Kenya] come to the rescue of the poor by paying hospital bills but will not have a conversation about the fact that we the taxpayers are paying millions [worth of] medical cover for each of them and will not engage in a conversation about the underfunding of healthcare, and the looting of the little money given to healthcare. When [the] Netherlands and the UN are helping foreign companies purchase Kenyan hospitals, [they are] supporting our government’s deafness to [our right to basic healthcare] and [promoting their] refusal to fund public hospitals.The privatisation and buying out of African hospitals by foreign companies in an attempt to “help and rescue them” is a capitalist response that undercuts universal healthcare for Africans by appropriating the language of care and inclusion. In reality, this “white saviour approach” is layered with nothing but racism, disempowerment, exploitation of people, and exclusion of those who cannot afford those “privatised” services. Access to health services, therefore, remains both a political as well as a human rights issue that’s closely tied to social justice (Braveman and Gruskin 2003b); but Africa’s colonial history, fuelled by Western greed for her resources, promotes discriminatory policies that continue to impact Africans and their wellbeing.The alternative is to decentralize global trade. A pluralistic global system allows for flexible industrial development while avoiding the pitfalls of centralized neoliberalism. Alternative indicts are unfounded fearmongering.Bello 99 [(Walden, Filipino academic, environmentalist, and social worker who served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.) “Why Reform of the WTO is the Wrong Agenda” Focus on Trade, No. 43, December 1999, ] TDIBuilding a More Pluralistic System of International Trade GovernanceIf there is one thing that is clear, it is that developing country governments and international civil society must not allow their energies to be hijacked into reforming these institutions. This will only amount to administering a facelift to fundamentally flawed institutions. Indeed, today's need is not another centralized global institution, reformed or unreformed, but the deconcentration and decentralization of institutional power and the creation of a pluralistic system of institutions and organizations interacting with one another amidst broadly defined and flexible agreements and understandings.It was under such a more pluralistic global system, where hegemonic power was still far form institutionalized in a set of all encompassing and powerful multilateral organizations that the Latin American countries and many Asian countries were able to achieve a modicum of industrial development in the period from 1950-70. It was under a more pluralistic world system, under a GATT that was limited in its power, flexible, and more sympathetic to the special status of developing countries, that the East and Southeast Asian countries were able to become newly industrializing countries through activist state trade and industrial policies that departed significantly from the free-market biases enshrined in the WTO.The alternative to a powerful WTO is not a Hobbesian state of nature. It is always the powerful that have stoked this fear. The reality of international economic relations in a world marked by a multiplicity of international and regional institutions that check one another is a far cry from the propaganda image of a 'nasty' and 'brutish' world. Of course, the threat of unilateral action by the powerful is ever present in such a system, but it is one that even the powerful hesitate to take for fear of its consequences on their legitimacy as well as the reaction it would provoke in the form of opposing coalitions.In other words, what developing countries and international civil society should aim at is not to reform the WTO but, through a combination of passive and active measures, to radically reduce its power and to make it simply another international insitution coexisting with and being checked by other international organizations, agreements, and regional groupings. These would include such diverse actors and institutions as UNCTAD, multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labor Organization (ILO), evolving trde blocs such as Mercosur in Latin America, SAARC in South Asia, SADCC in Southern Africa, and ASEAN in Southeast Asia. It is in such a more fluid, less structured, more pluralistic world with multiple checks and balances that the nations and communities of the South will be able to carve out the space to develop based on their values, their rhythms, and the strategies of their choice.Try-or-die for the alt—collapse of neoliberalism is inevitable but alternative leftist visions are necessary to counter reactionary right populismGalant 19 [(Michael, coordinator of the Wire Pillar of the Progressive International) “The Battle of Seattle: 20 years later, it's time for a revival” Open Democracy, 11-30-19, ] TDIGlobalization and its dissentNeoliberal globalization is a political project intended to raise the power of capital to the international level – to cement its supremacy as an immutable universal law beyond the reach of political communities. “Free trade” agreements and WTO rules establish the primacy of profit over democracy, labor, environmental, and consumer protections. World Bank and IMF loan conditions impose austerity, privatization, and deregulation on nations of the Global South. An international system of tax havens allows corporations and wealthy individuals to hoard their plundered resources. Global supply chain fragmentation shields multinationals from accountability for their abuses. Investment treaties unleash finance and corporations to cross borders in search of opportunities for exploitation, setting off a regulatory race to the bottom. If there was doubt before that capitalism must be confronted at the global level to be defeated, the power grab that is neoliberal globalization puts those doubts to rest. Capital is global. Labor must be too.Yet there are forces preventing such global solidarity. Beginning during the Cold War, the majority of Northern labor accepted a compromise: support a foreign policy that enacts the interests of capital, and benefit from a share of the spoils in the form of minor concessions, a tempered welfare state, and cheap consumer goods. This tacit agreement survived largely intact into the neoliberal era – dividing the interests of a global working class and quelling demands for systemic global change.The Alter-Globalization Movement rejected the compromise. While activists in the Global South had long resisted destructive free trade agreements and World Bank austerity, occasionally with solidarity from the North, the extremity of turn-of-the-century neoliberalism led to the explosion of a movement that refused to accept the mere crumbs of neocolonial extraction, and sought instead to build an alternative global economy for the many, both North and South.This was a movement that brought together American anarchists with Korean peasants; libertarian socialist indigenous groups in Mexico with US anti-sweatshop activists; the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions with the Industrial Workers of the World; the Brazilian Movement for Landless Workers with Greenpeace; Filipino anti-capitalist scholars with French farmer activists best known for physically dismantling a McDonald’s. Their demands were many and varied – from land redistribution to the abolition of the World Bank, from a renegotiated NAFTA to the protection of indigenous knowledge of seeds from privatization – but all shared a vision of a global solidarity that would overcome the forces of neoliberal anizing under such a big tent, the AGM is better understood as a dispersed, informal network – a “movement of movements” – than a unified political structure. This fluid network manifested in many forms. The flagship World Social Forum regularly convened activists in an alternative to the annual World Economic Forum. Transnational advocacy networks campaigned on issues such as Global South debt relief. Northern activists used their positions of relative privilege to support local campaigns in the South, fighting water privatization in Bolivia and indigenous displacement from hydroelectric dams in India. And, as in Seattle, meetings of international organizations became rallying points for major global demonstrations.With these organizing methods, the movement achieved substantial victories. The Jubilee 2000 campaign led to significant debt relief for Southern nations. Potentially disastrous trade agreements from the FTAA to TPP have been, at least temporarily, defeated. International Financial Institutions like the IMF and World Bank – while still agents of global capital – have vastly improved their lending practices since the 90’s. But its greatest successes were intangible: the AGM undermined the hegemonic ambitions embodied in Thatcher’s “There Is No Alternative”, slowed neoliberal globalization’s seemingly inexorable onslaught, and kept alive the flame of resistance during an otherwise nadir of Leftist politics.The AGM should not, however, be romanticized. Emerging in a moment when the failures of 20th century socialist politics weighed heavily on the Left’s imagination, the AGM turned too far in the opposing direction. Big-tentism led to a dilution of demands and paved the way for the NGO-ization of the World Social Fora. A preference for all things decentralized made grabbing headlines easy, but building lasting political structures difficult. Resistance was often treated as an intrinsically valuable ends, rather than a means to taking power. And criticisms of “neoliberalism” typically fell short of identifying the true enemy – capitalism – or advancing a coherent alternative – socialism.Ultimately, the neoliberal plan for the global economy succeeded more than not. While resistance to neoliberal globalization would rage on in the South, Northern solidarity faded. The September 11th attacks were the beginning of the end. Energy shifted to the anti-war movement, the state expanded its repression of Leftist organizing, and increased pressures toward “patriotism” led some to reconsider the old foreign policy compromise. By the mid-2000’s, little was left of what the AGM once was.A call for revivalIt’s time to rekindle the flame.The global economy is still structured in the interest of capital. But the neoliberal consensus has begun to waver under the weight of its own contradictions.The Right has a response to the crisis. Reactionary nationalists like Trump and Johnson seize upon existing systems of oppression to scapegoat the symptoms of a failed economic model. The problem is not that the global working class has lost out to a global capital class. The problem is that “we” – White, Christian, cishet, native-born Americans – have lost out to “them” – People of Color, immigrants, entire foreign countries, feminists, LGBTQ+ folks, and all those who threaten our supremacy in their struggles for liberation.The Left must offer an alternative vision. The dramatic growth of socialist organizing and rise in popularity of social democratic politicians should offer great hope. But as the AGM understood, social democracy for the North is not enough. Our socialism must not mean merely a greater share of neocolonial extraction for Northern workers. Our socialism must rightly identify the global nature of our challenge, and unite across borders to confront a globalized capital.That means internationalizing labor organizing to confront multinational corporations. Changing the rules of trade and investment. Ending tax havens. Building alternatives to the existing intellectual property regime. Holding corporations accountable for abuses in their supply chains. Supporting the struggles of peasants, indigenous peoples, and all global subaltern groups. Democratizing global governance. Opening borders to those displaced by the ravages of global capitalism. Advancing alternative models of development. Transforming, if not abolishing and replacing, the Bretton Woods Institutions. And confronting the all-important threat of climate collapse with, to begin with, a global Green New Deal. These are not minor addendums to a socialist platform. Class war is global. Internationalist demands are anizations that remain from the AGM, international labor, and newcomers like Justice Is Global, the Fight Inequality Alliance, and Bernie Sanders and Yanis Varoufakis’s Progressive International, are already struggling for this vision. But its fruition depends on the backing of a far broader movement.Like the AGM, we must take a global frame of analysis, and see neoliberal globalization as a concerted effort to undermine our power. Unlike the AGM, we must understand that neoliberalism is merely one manifestation of a greater enemy.Like the AGM, we must build diverse, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-xenophobic movements that transcend borders. Unlike the AGM, we must not allow fears of centralization to undermine a coherent platform.Like the AGM, we must reject a class compromise that sacrifices the possibility of a better world for the crumbs of colonialism. Unlike the AGM, we must build lasting political structures that back our rejection with political power.20 years ago, the streets of Seattle echoed with a chant that would become the defining motto of the movement: “another world is possible!” It still is – if we’re willing to fight for it.Neoliberal exploitation causes extinction.Clark 18 (Brett, associate professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah; Stefano B. Longo, Assistant Professor specializing in Environmental Sociology at NC State; “Land–Sea Ecological Rifts”, Land–Sea Ecological Rifts, )Covering approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the World Ocean is “the largest ecosystem.”1 Today all areas of the ocean are affected by multiple anthropogenic effects—such as overfishing, pollution, and emission of greenhouse gases, causing warming seas as well as ocean acidification—and over 40 percent of the ocean is strongly affected by human actions. Furthermore, the magnitude of these impacts and the speed of the changes are far greater than previously understood.2 Biologist Judith S. Weis explains that “the most widespread and serious type of [marine] pollution worldwide is eutrophication due to excess nutrients.”3 The production and use of fertilizers, sewage/waste from humans and farm animals, combustion of fossil fuels, and storm water have all contributed to dramatic increases in the quantity of nutrients in waterways and oceans. Research in 2008 indicated that there were over 400 “dead zones,” areas of low oxygen, mostly near the mouths of rivers.4 Nutrient overloading thus presents a major challenge to maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems.Nutrients are a basic source of nourishment that all organisms need to survive. Plants require at least eighteen elements to grow normally; of these, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are called macronutrients, because they are needed in larger quantities. While all essential nutrients exist in the biosphere, these three are the ones most commonly known to be deficient in commercial agricultural production systems. Beginning in the early twentieth century with the Haber-Bosch process, atmospheric nitrogen was converted into ammonia to create synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The fixation of nitrogen, an energy-intensive process, made the nutrient far more widely available for use in agriculture. This in turn dramatically changed production systems, which no longer depended on legumes and manures to biologically supply nitrogen for other crops such as wheat, corn, and most vegetables.In the modern era, particularly since the Second World War, the increased production and use of fertilizers served to greatly expand food production and availability. Major macronutrients are routinely applied to soils in order to maintain and increase the growth of plant life on farms, as well as private and public landscapes such as golf courses, nurseries, parks, and residences. They are used to produce fruits, vegetables, and fibers for human and non-human consumption, expand areas of recreation, and beautify communities. However, like many aspects of modern production, given the larger social dynamics and determinants that shape socioecological relationships, these technological and economic developments have generated serious negative—often unforeseen—consequences. The wide expansion and increasing rates of nitrogen and phosphorus application have caused severe damage to aquatic systems in particular. Rivers, streams, lakes, bays (estuaries), and ocean systems have been inundated with nutrient runoff, which has had far-reaching effects.Here we examine the socioecological relationships and processes associated with the transfer of nutrients from terrestrial to marine systems. We employ a metabolic analysis to highlight the interchange of matter and energy within and between socioecological systems. In particular, we show how capitalist agrifood production contributes to distinct environmental problems, creating a metabolic rift in the soil nutrient cycle. We emphasize how the failure to mend nutrient cycles in agrifood systems has led to approaches that produce additional ruptures, such as those associated with nutrient overloading in marine systems. This analysis reveals the ways that the social relations of capitalist agriculture tend to produce interconnected ecological problems, such as those in terrestrial and aquatic systems. Further, we contend that these processes undermine the basic conditions of life on a wide-ranging scale. It is important to recognize that nutrient pollution of groundwater as well as surface waters has been a major concern since the rise of modern capitalist agriculture and the development of the global food regime.5 The failure to address the metabolic rupture in the soil nutrient cycle and the contradictions of capital are central to contemporary land-sea ecological rifts.2NR – UnsustainabilityFinancialization and unsustainable ag make global crisis inevitableTilzey 18 (Mark, Senior Research Fellow in Governance of Food and Farming Systems, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, Political Ecology, Food regimes, and Food Sovereignty: Crisis, Resistance, and Resilience, “The Neoliberal Food regime in crisis” (Chapter 7), 197-225, )Until the turn of the new millennium, neoliberalism appeared to be carrying all before it, without serious contradiction for this regime of accumulation. The collapse of state communism and the opening up of China and other centres of super-cheap labour as manufacturing zones for Northern transnational corporations enabled the attack on labour in the imperium to be mitigated by the import of ‘cheaps’ from the global South. As we have seen, this served a crucial legitimation function as well as maintaining satisfactory consumption levels in the global North. Environmental contradictions of productivist agriculture, of manufacturing, and of energy production in the imperium could also be mitigated through shifting these activities to the periphery. As the first decade of the new millennium progressed, however, a variety of contradictions, in terms of capital accumulation, in terms of the supply of basic needs to the global majority (perhaps most notably food), and in terms of the biophysical fabric of the planet and resource supply (all the while representing contradictions of capital for the subaltern classes and extra-human nature), began to ‘come home to roost’ as mounting contradictions for capital, and for neoliberalism in particular.From the perspective of the ‘classes of labour’, the contradictions of neoliberalism are those of wage stagnation, increasing job insecurity, and increasing indebtedness (global North), and increasing poverty and hunger, lack of access to land and other basic necessities (food, water, shelter, healthcare) (global South). From the perspective of ‘ecology’, the contradictions are those of increased extraction of non-renewable resources, depletion of renewable resources, loss of biodiversity, and global climate change due to capital’s profligate consumption of fossil fuels. In short, from the biophysical perspective, this represents the generalized overconsumption of commodities to feed capital’s ‘treadmill of production’. From the perspective of capital, however, the contradictions for neoliberalism comprise, firstly, an under-consumption (over-accumulation) of commodities arising from competitive pressure to lower wages globally— capital, in other words, cannot sell the commodities that it needs to in order to survive by means of the treadmill of production. We can see clearly, therefore, that the aims of ecological sustainability and the aims of capitalist reproduction are diametrically opposed. Perversely, however, under-consumption leads to a further competitive downward spiral of labour shedding through automation, wage stagnation, and the search for ever-cheaper labour sources in order to lower prices so that market share can be retained. Meanwhile consumption, located largely in the global North, is sustained only by increasingly risky credit-lending and by never-ending product innovation and premature obsolescence. These dynamics can be explained only by reference to the ‘political’, Level 4, in our model, since they are essentially questions of class struggle in the authoritative domain.But while capital needs to produce and sell more and more commodities to infinity, this unavoidable impulse constitutes a looming and potentially fatal second contradiction for capital in terms of the necessarily finite supply of energy and raw materials required for their manufacture. With the major means of keeping the cost of commodities down, and available in abundance—fossil fuel—having now passed the point of peak supply, the future prospect is one of dwindling stocks, and secularly increasing cost, of these crucial energy sources. Since renewable energy, despite the claims of ‘green capitalists’, cannot generate the cheap, abundant, and continuously expanding supply of energy required to feed capital’s insatiable appetite, the demise of fossil fuel would appear to constitute an insuperable obstacle to capital’s reproduction, unless some equivalent substitute can be found. These are ‘ecological’ or Level 3 dynamics where the ‘political’ dynamics of capital are enabled or constrained by biophysical affordances. At the same time, environmental contradictions for capital as reflexive political response, usually at the level of the state, in terms of regulatory climate change mitigation, generates constraints on capital through tendential restrictions on fossil-fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This leads, in turn, to the search for, and implementation of, fossil-fuel ‘substitutes’ in the form of, inter alia, the ‘bio-economy’. Since the ‘bio-economy’ requires land, in contrast to the ‘subterranean forest’ of fossil fuel, this inevitably leads to conflicts with food production, particularly in the global South, generating further reflexive political resistance by subaltern classes. These dynamics comprise a dialectic between Level 3 and Level 4.The issue of land therefore assumes an importance in the current conjuncture that it appeared to have lost during the era of apparently limitless fossil-fuel production and consumption. Thus, as neoliberalism’s expansionary dynamic encounters the looming constraint represented by the exhaustion of the ‘subterranean forest’ of fossil fuel, so land, as in the pre-industrial era, again becomes the principal focus of contention as the basis for either the production of renewable energy, or for the production of food. And the contention is also focused on questions of ‘energy for whom?’ and ‘food for whom?’ Should energy and food be directed towards profligate consumption by the global minority in the North, or towards basic need satisfaction by the global majority in the South? In land, therefore, the different strands of the ‘political’ and ‘ecological’ contradictions of neoliberalism coalesce, culminating in strained social relations and struggles over land, between social classes within the global South, and between the global South and North. This is reflected in the revival of issues long eclipsed during the heyday of neoliberalism (and still largely eclipsed in the global North for the reasons earlier explained), such as land inequality, redistributive land reform, the organization of agriculture, its role in the social division of labour, and its relationship to non-agricultural sectors.Contradictions for?Neoliberalism in?GeneralAs we have seen, the crisis of the Keynesian regime of accumulation comprised a supply-side (under-accumulation) crisis, stimulating the turn to neoliberalism. The latter has, in turn, generated the current underconsumption (over-accumulation), or demand side crisis. These are ‘political’ or ‘internal’ contradictions, although enabled concurrently by ‘ecological’ or ‘external’ conditions of production. ‘Internal’ supply-side crisis tends to stimulate technological innovation and the exploitation of new and cheaper conditions of production to exert downward pressure on prices in order to sustain and enhance the rate of profit—hence the impulse towards globalization from the 1970s. The present conjuncture is characterized by the juxtaposition of demand-side crisis, due to the power of capital over labour (Level 4), with a supply-side crisis in the conditions of production, defined by increases in the cost of conditions of production, most particularly oil (Level 3), and the ramifications of political attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions (together with knockon effects for fossil-fuel-based agriculture and consequent rise in the cost of food) (Level 3 and 4). The demand-side crisis is exacerbated by the supply-side crisis in the conditions of production, representing structural contradictions, compounded by the conjunctural tendency of monopoly finance capital to profit from speculation in newly de-regulated futures commodities such as food (Ghosh 2010; Isakson 2014). The result is a paradoxical situation in which financial surplus continues to increase even as the under-consumption crisis deepens, and the conditions of production exhibit a secular, if uneven, rise in cost. The current plethora of commodities on the market is the product of global competition to produce masses of products on the basis of low wages and ever-lower costs in the biophysical conditions of production (the ‘cheaps’ of labour power in capitalist production and the ‘zone of appropriation’ that lies behind this). There is a frantic race to introduce new commodities in order to sustain sales, such that supply has become divorced from demand, resulting in major imbalances between the two. The outcome is a frenzied search for consumers that encounters the insurmountable constraint of limits to absorption. This comprises the perennial dilemma for capitalism of seeking reductions in wage costs whilst simultaneously desiring expanded consumption. It also comprises the characteristic capitalist paradox of poverty, or lack of ability to pay, in the midst of abundance. The rise in global trade above production reinforces global competition, while productivity growth in excess of wage increases hinders the realization of the value of goods through sales. The short-term imbalances caused by over-accumulated capital, over-produced commodities, and asymmetrically exchanged goods between South and North are inscribed in the contradictions that culminated in the financial crisis of 2007/8. These imbalances take the form of two fundamental contradictions for neoliberalism in the sphere of demand and in the rate of profit. This means that these contradictions of neoliberalism take place in two spheres, namely, the realization of the value of commodities, and the valorization of capital.With respect to the crisis of realization, there are, as noted, severe imbalances between production and consumption. By reducing salaries and increasing unemployment and poverty, neoliberalism has eroded the purchasing power of the ‘classes of labour’ (of primary significance in the global North). This has created impediments to the realization of the value of commodities and has led, therefore, to a re-emergence of difficulties in realizing the surplus value that capitalists extract from their labour force. While the Fordist model included, as we have seen, a link between wage and productivity increases, the neoliberal model, by contrast, is premised on the prioritization of competition to reduce wage costs, thereby creating a widening gap between increases in production and purchasing power. The impacts of this have been most severe in the global South, as we have seen, where the labour force plays an insignificant role in global consumption but is vital in reducing costs of production. In addition to the removal of people, wholly or partially, from the land, the superexploitation of workers employed in capitalist production in the periphery is one of the main reasons for the food crisis that erupted almost simultaneously with the financial crisis. As we have seen, superexploitation is compounded by extractivism, founded on ‘accumulation by dispossession’. ‘Neoliberal capitalism has amputated the basic sources of subsistence for one-sixth of the global population’ (Katz 2015, 283).Significantly, however, these effects have been mitigated in the global North by a number of compensatory mechanisms which have been of benefit even for the ‘working classes’. However, the latter’s ability to purchase even luxury items, in addition to essentials, produced in the global South, is now linked not to improvements in income, but rather to debt. In other words, the realization crisis of neoliberalism has been kept within certain bounds through recourse to credit-lending, that is, to debt. This countervailing factor allowed purchasing power to be maintained despite wage stagnation, the creation of a ‘precariat’, and the spread of unemployment. Workers drew on credit relief, with this credit sustaining consumption levels until debt liabilities reached such a level that default became inevitable. Financial crisis, as we have seen, was the consequence. Clearly these structural proclivities have not been removed, so it seems only a matter of time before another financial crisis descends on the global North. (The financial crisis did not impact as severely on the global South simply because its workers are too poor for larger banks to consider lending to.)It should be evident, then, that consumption is based on a highly polarized distributive structure at the global level based on the imperium as main consumer, and the periphery as main producer. Thus, 80 per cent of the planet’s population engages in just 14 per cent of private consumption (Katz 2015). In other words, 20 per cent of the global population (overwhelmingly in the global North) consumes 76 per cent of commodities produced. This casts doubt on assertions by alter-globalists such as Hardt and Negri that Marxian class analysis based on the labour theory of value is dead, and that the ‘pain’ of neoliberalism is distributed equally among the ‘multitude’, whether North or South.With respect to the crisis of valorization, it is the case, as Marx foresaw, that the dynamic of accumulation increases the organic composition of capital, which, in turn, tends to reduce the rate of profit based on the surplus value extracted from the labour force. There are three indications that there has been an increase in the organic composition of capital under neoliberalism. Firstly, there were very significant increases in investment in Asian economies, particularly, most notably China, from the 1980s, which became the new ‘workshops of the world’. High rates of exploitation, particularly of semi-proletarian migrants from rural areas, made the average level of investment in China, particularly, extremely high in relative terms (see case study below). Secondly, despite increased rates of labour exploitation, there has been a uniform process of capitalization (the use of machinery in preference to labour) across all regions and sectors, North and South, associated with the activity of transnational capital. These capitals have sought to increase productivity, even in combination with super-cheap labour, by means of intense computerization of the production process. This has brought about a reduction in the surplus value created by living labour. Increasingly, there is little difference in productivity between labour in the global South and in the global North, but, despite this, wage differentials between the two remain huge. This is the key to super-exploitation in production in the South and the confinement of consumption to the global North. This phenomenon is known as ‘labour arbitrage’ (Smith 2016). Thirdly, the loss of jobs generated by capitalization has generated structural unemployment.These three processes—high foreign investment by transnational capital, the information revolution, and structural unemployment—have increased the organic composition of capital, resulting in a relative deterioration of the rate of profit. As in the case of the realization imbalances, declining valorization of capital has generated countervailing tendencies. The prevailing countervailing tendency is that identified as number two earlier—driving wages down below the reproductive cost of labour power through an increased rate of exploitation. This is the principle mechanism identified by Smith (2016) in his unification of Lenin’s theory of imperialism with Marx’s labour theory of value. Herein lies the essence of neoliberal imperialism in its authoritative dimension.Hitherto, these countervailing tendencies of a ‘political’ or ‘internal’ kind in the ‘zone of exploitation’ have been complemented by another, ‘ecological’ or ‘external’, tendency in the ‘zone of appropriation’—that is, a secular decline in the cost of raw materials. But the first decade of the new millennium began to witness a reversal of this countervailing tendency as the cost of the conditions of production exhibited an upward, if uneven, trend. Thus, neoliberalism’s ‘internal’ over-production crisis is compounded by an ‘external’ under-production crisis in the supply of the cheap and abundant energy and raw materials required to sustain the ever-enlarging scale of capital’s production and productivity.Contradictions for?the?Neoliberal Food RegimeThese relationships between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ contradictions of neoliberalism are exemplified particularly well by the food crisis of 2007/8. The ultimate, or structural, causes of the food crisis may be attributed to the basic accumulation dynamic of the class alliance of disarticulated capital described in the previous chapter, predicated, in the global South, upon a deepening process of primitive accumulation, engendering semi-proletarianization or proletarianization, and the superexploitation of labour. Alternatively, extractivism, through accumulation by dispossession, renders the expropriated work force surplus to requirements from capital’s perspective. Neoliberalizing agriculture has, through its symbiotic relationship with the disarticulated alliance, favoured and reinforced strongly skewed patterns of land distribution and production in much of the global South, particularly in Latin America and Asia, whereby agri-industrial producers, as a small minority, occupy much of the land and produce the bulk of export crops through the socio-naturally alienating techniques of market productivism (Kay 2006; Tilzey 2006; Weis 2007). As an outcome of such skewed land tenure structures, however, the majority of the rural population occupies insufficient land to meet its own food needs (the semi-proletarians), or has no access to land at all (the proletarians). Structurally, such populations therefore occupy a spectrum of class positions. These range from semi-proletarian, producing as much as they can on their small plots, usually for themselves and any surplus for the home market, and selling their labour on the large estates, or in the urban centres (see de Janvry 1981), to fully proletarian. Such ‘classes of labour’ comprise the growing numbers who now depend on the sale of their labour power for their own daily reproduction (Bernstein 2009). Such lack of adequate access to land, a direct consequence of class structures both supporting and supported by neoliberalism, therefore generates market dependence and vulnerability to price volatility.Following the era of developmentalism, the neoliberal food regime has been characterized by the prising open of Southern markets through the bilateral class interests of neoliberalism, and further exacerbated by reductions in, or elimination of, support for domestic agricultural production, and other entitlement structures, by structural adjustment policies. Structural adjustment policies created new opportunities for the South to become increasingly export-oriented (Petras and Veltmayer 2001), favouring the agro-export fractions of capital in supplying cheap food and facilitating downward pressure on global labour from the 1980s. This has entailed the marginalization of other, sub-hegemonic, capitalist class fractions in favour of the agri-food oligarchy. Bilateral neoliberalization has thus enabled reconstruction of a global food regime that bears certain similarities to the Imperial food regime of the late nineteenth century, to the extent that cheap food is again siphoned off from the periphery to the consumption hubs of the global North (Araghi 2009b).The consequence for growing numbers of rural producers in the global South has been increased poverty and an enforced process of semiproletarianization, or permanent rural–urban migration and consequent proletarianization. The consequence has been chronic levels of unemployment and under-employment throughout the burgeoning cities of the global South, together with their rural hinterlands (Davis 2006), leading to severe vulnerability and exposure to global market volatility, increasingly manipulated by the power of financialized transnational capital. The corollary is the displacement of local farming systems, the loss of associated biodiversity, and the general degradation of ecosystems and the biophysical resource base. As Araghi has noted, the [neoliberal] enclosure food regime, as the agrarian programme of a reenergized, re-globalizing capital, represents a reversal of the suspension of global value relations [of the state developmentalist era], with drastic consequences for the masses of agrarian direct producers who become redundant on a daily basis, and who are thrown out of collapsing national divisions of labour into the vortex of globalization as masses of surplus labour in motion. (2009b, 135).This neoliberal ‘enclosure’ food regime, comprising the symbiosis of transnationalized fractions of Northern agri-food capital with extroverted class fractions of the South, has entailed a systematic emasculation of the developmentalist state in much of the periphery. This has involved a concomitant dismantling of government credit and protection for nationally oriented agriculture, together with progressive abandonment of public structures to ensure appropriate domestic food distribution and availability of strategic food staple reserves (Moyo and Yeros 2005). Heavily indebted states, now confronted by increasingly volatile international markets in food commodities and dominated by re-energized agroexport fractions of capital, are unable, or unwilling, to counteract such volatility since they are themselves, due to imperialist rent, privatization and contraction of the tax base, constrained by internal and external fiscal deficits (Ghosh 2010). The consequence is that many states in the global South are today characterized by a triple crisis of increasing semiproletarianization or proletarianization, increased international price volatility for food staples, and decreased capacity, or willingness, to address the consequences of such enhanced vulnerability.The foregoing affords an ultimate explanation for the structural and immanent vulnerability of the majority of rural (and urban) poor to globalized market ‘forces’, and therefore to food crisis, through their sundering, wholly or partially, from the means of production, and through the consequent generation of market dependence. This constitutes an ‘internal’ (Level 4) contradiction of capital, although one that is inherently conjoined to the exploitation of ‘external’ socio-natural affordances in the generation of ecological surplus as a second structural, ‘external’ contradiction. This second contradiction arises both from the direct impacts of, and indirect and reflexive responses to, the ever-increasing metabolic rift between accumulation and the environmental conditions of production (Araghi 2009a). In this way, the increase in oil prices, and their consequences for global warming, led the ‘automobile-oil complex’, for example, to initiate investment of large sums of capital in the production of agro-fuels, especially in the production of sugar cane and maize for ethanol, and soybean, peanut, rapeseed, and oil palm for vegetable oil. This resulted in ‘an unmitigated attack by financial capital and transnational companies on Southern tropical agriculture’ (Stedile 2015, 37). This structural contradiction in the contraction of ‘ecological surplus’ through secular increase in the cost of fossil energy, combined with more conjunctural and reflexive responses by capital, to generate the causes of the food crisis in 2007/8. These Level 3 to Level 4 dynamics may be summarized as follows: (1) anthropogenic climate-change-induced declines in agricultural output, arising from the impacts of capital’s treadmill of production; (2) oil price rises, impacting upon agro-chemically based agriculture and leading to food price rises, as a result of impending peak oil, compounded by neoliberalism’s reluctance to invest in extractive infrastructure; (3) the diversion of land for the production of agro-fuels as a response to climate change and energy insecurity, again leading to food price rises as the area under food grains declines and, in the global South, peasant production is displaced by productivist, or extractivist, agro-fuel plantations.Another proximate, or conjunctural, cause of food crisis derived from one of the more specific impacts of global financialization as an internal contradiction—the deregulation of commodity futures markets (Ghosh 2010). The resultant trend towards greater market volatility in agri-food and fuel commodities was compounded by a further ramification of the financial crisis in the global North. Northern finance capital sought a more ‘secure’ home in peripheral economies through investment in fixed assets such as land, minerals, agricultural raw materials, water, agricultural production in addition to the control of renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric power and ethanol plants (Stedile 2015). This ‘internal’ contradiction has served further to reinforce agri-food productivism, or extractivism, in the global South, to marginalize subaltern classes, and to create immanent and actual conditions for food crisis.This analysis suggests, then, that both the ultimate, structural, and proximate, conjunctural, causes of food crisis arise from the dynamics of the neoliberalizing agri-food system within a disarticulating coreperiphery structure, and are linked intimately to the wider crisis of underconsumption in world accumulation. Thus, the newly disarticulating structure of transnationalized accumulation has facilitated downward pressure on labour costs and conditions of production, leading to underconsumption crisis and enhanced accumulation by neoliberal class fractions as financial surplus. This is the key ‘internal’ contradiction, as the generation of a huge reserve army of labour through primitive accumulation, and accumulation by dispossession, has kept wages low, leading to realization crisis. This is a crisis now increasingly both of and for capital, marking, at a minimum, a signal, and possibly also a developmental, crisis for neoliberalism. But while the cost of labour power has stayed down due to primitive accumulation and super-exploitation, counteracting increases in the cost of wage foods, selective and strategic conditions of production costs have risen progressively, basically through approaching/attained peak oil but also reflexive responses to global warming (agrofuels), manifest in steadily increasing energy and food prices. Thus, the first crisis is one of under-consumption through low wages; the second is through increasing costs in the conditions of production, representing an unusual and significant juxtaposition of demand-side crisis with supplyside crisis in the conditions of production.Only immediate transition solves Climate Change. The consensus of models prove tech is too slow and there’s no chance of decoupling. Kallis 19 (Jason Hickel, anthropologist at the London School of Economics and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Giorgos Kallis, ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, environmental scientist working on ecological economics and political ecology, formerly Marie Curie International Fellow at the Energy and Resources Group of the University of California at Berkeley, PhD in Environmental Policy and Planning from the University of the Aegean in Greece; “Is Green Growth Possible?”, New Political Economy, 1–18, 2019, doi:10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964)Carbon Emissions – Is Growth Compatible with the Paris Agreement?Unlike with resource use, there is a steady long-term trend toward relative decoupling of GDP from carbon emissions, and we know that absolute reductions in carbon emissions are possible to achieve. When it comes to climate change, however, the objective is not simply to reduce emissions (a matter of flows), but to keep total emissions from exceeding specific carbon budgets (a matter of stocks). For green growth theory, then, the question is not only whether we can achieve absolute decoupling and reduce emissions, but whether we can reduce emissions fast enough to stay within the carbon budgets for 1.5°C or 2°C, as per the Paris Agreement, while still continuing economic growth.A number of high-income countries have seen declining emissions in the twenty-first century, despite continued economic growth. Figure 4(a) shows declining emissions in the US and EU28, in both territorial and consumption-based terms, from 2006 to 2016 (i.e. absolute decoupling). However, emissions from the global South have continued upward, albeit at a slower rate than GDP (i.e. relative decoupling). China’s emissions declined slightly between 2014 and 2016 (a brief period of absolute decoupling), before growing again in 2017.On a global level, CO2 emissions have increased steadily, falling only during periods of economic recession (Figure 4(b)). Global emissions did level off in 2015 and 2016 while GDP continued to rise, prompting the International Energy Agency, a research arm of the OECD, to announce ‘Decoupling of global emissions and economic growth confirmed’ (IEA 2016), while media outlets celebrated ‘peak emissions’ (Meyer 2016). This news briefly came to constitute a key element of optimistic green growth narratives, until global emissions began to rise again in 2017 (1.6 per cent) and 2018 (2.7 per cent). Analysts attribute the temporary plateau to a shift in China away from coal and (mostly) toward oil and gas, and a shift in the US to natural gas.5 Once these shifts were complete, continued economic growth drove emissions up again.Overall, global carbon productivity has been slowing. World Bank data shows that carbon productivity (CO2 per 2010 $US GDP) improved steadily from 1960 to 2000, with decarbonisation happening at an average rate of 1.28 per cent per year (relative decoupling). However, from 2000 to 2014 there was no improvement in carbon productivity – in other words, not even relative decoupling has been achieved in the twenty-first century.6 High-income nations have done better, at least in terms of territorial emissions (the World Bank does not track consumption-based emissions), but even so progress has slowed, from an average rate of 1.91 percent per year from 1970 to 2000, down to 1.61 percent per year from 2000 to 2014.Existing trends are incompatible with the Paris Agreement targets. Business-as-usual is set to lead to 4.2°C of warming (2.5°C to 5.5°C) by 2100. Even with the Nationally Determined Contributions and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, global warming is still projected to reach 3.3°C (1.9°C to 4.4°C) – an improvement over the BAU scenario but still far exceeding the 1.5°C and 2°C thresholds.7 In order to keep warming below these thresholds, the world will have to make much more aggressive emissions reductions.The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) includes 116 mitigation scenarios that are consistent with Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6 (RCP2.6), which offers the best chances of staying below 2°C. All of these scenarios are green growth scenarios in that they stabilise global temperatures while global GDP continues to rise. Rising GDP is a built-in feature of the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs), which form the basis for the IPCC mitigation scenarios (Kuhnhenn 2018). AR5 warns, however, that these scenarios ‘typically involve temporary overshoot of atmospheric concentrations’ and ‘typically rely on the availability and widespread deployment of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)’ (2014, p. 23). Indeed, the vast majority scenarios for 2°C (101 of the 116) rely on BECCS to the point of achieving negative emissions.8 BECCS entails growing large tree plantations to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, harvesting the biomass, burning it for energy, capturing the CO2 emissions at source and storing it underground. Relying on these ‘negative emissions technologies’ allows for a much larger carbon budget (about double the actual size) by assuming that we can successfully reduce global atmospheric carbon in the second half of the century.BECCS is highly controversial among climate scientists. It was first proposed by Obersteiner et al. (2001) and Keith (2001) at the turn of the century. IPCC modelling teams began including it in their scenarios from 2005, despite having no firm evidence of its feasibility. With the publication of AR5, BECCS was enshrined as a dominant assumption. Obersteiner has expressed alarm at the rapid uptake of his idea; he considers BECCS to be what he calls a ‘risk-management strategy’, or a ‘backstop technology’ in case climate feedback loops turn out to be worse than expected, and says the IPCC has ‘misused’ it by including it in regular scenarios to take pressure off of conventional mitigation pathways (i.e. emissions reductions) (Hickman 2016). In Keith’s (2001) initial formulation of the idea, he noted that while ‘measured use’ of biomass could help mitigate environmental problems, ‘large scale use of cropped biomass will not.’Anderson and Peters (2016) point out that the ‘allure’ of BECCS is due to the fact that it allows politicians to postpone the need for rapid emissions reductions: ‘BECCS licenses the ongoing combustion of fossil fuels while ostensibly fulfilling the Paris Commitments.’ There are a number of concerns. First, the viability of power generation with CCS has never been proven to be economically viable or scalable; it would require the construction of 15,000 facilities (Peters 2017). Second, the scale of biomass assumed in the AR5 scenarios would require plantations covering land two to three times the size of India, which raises questions about land availability, competition with food production, carbon neutrality, and biodiversity loss (Smith et al. 2016; Heck et al. 2018). Third, the necessary storage capacity may not exist (De Coninck and Benson 2014, Global CCS Institute 2015). Anderson and Peters conclude that ‘BECCS thus remains a highly speculative technology’ and that relying on it is therefore ‘an unjust and high stakes gamble’: if it is unsuccessful, ‘society will be locked into a high-temperature pathway.’ This conclusion is shared by a growing number of scientists (e.g. Fuss et al. 2014, Vaughan and Gough, 2016, Larkin et al. 2017, Van Vuuren et al. 2017), and by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (2018).It is not clear that we can justifiably rely on BECCS, an unproven technology, to underwrite green growth theory. If we accept this point, then we must return to asking whether it is possible to maintain growth without relying on BECCS to stay within the carbon budgets consistent with the Paris Agreement. Without BECCS, global emissions need to fall to net zero by 2050 for 1.5°C, or by 2075 for 2°C.9 This entails reductions of 6.8 per cent per year and 4 per cent per year, respectively (Figure 5). Theoretically, this can be accomplished with (a) a rapid shift to 100 per cent renewable energy to eliminate emissions from fossil fuel combustion (Jacobson and Delucchi 2011); plus (b) afforestation and soil regeneration to eliminate emissions from land use change; plus (c) a shift to alternative industrial processes to eliminate emissions from the production of cement, steel, and plastic. The question is, can all of this be accomplished quickly enough?Only 6 of the 116 scenarios for 2°C in AR5 exclude BECCS. These work by assuming ‘optimal full technology’ in all other areas, plus mass afforestation, and with high mitigation costs. These represent theoretically possible pathways, but without any empirical evidence as to their feasibility.Results of empirical studies are not promising. Schandl et al. (2016) model what might be achieved with aggressive mitigation policies, without relying on BECCS. Their high-efficiency scenario has a carbon price starting at $50 per ton (rising by 4 per cent per year to $236 by 2050) plus a doubling in the material efficiency of the economy due to technological innovations (improving from a historical average rate of 1.5 per cent per year up to 4.5 per cent). Schandl et al provide no evidence for the feasibility of the efficiency improvements that they assume. Even so, the result shows that with global growth of 3 per cent per year, annual emissions plateau to 2050 but do not decline. In this scenario, growth in energy demand outstrips the rate of decarbonisation, violating the carbon budgets for 1.5°C and 2°C.The International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA 2018) have modelled a scenario for continued GDP growth compatible with 2°C by relying on a rapid shift to renewable energy (consistent with Jacobson and Delucchi 2011). The scenario requires adding 12,200 GW of solar and wind capacity by 2050, with a dramatic increase in installation rates (2.3 to 4.6 times faster than the present).10 The scenario also requires that the energy intensity of the global economy falls by twothirds (by 2.8 per cent per year, double the historical rate), lowering energy demand in 2050 to slightly less than 2015 levels.11 This is feasible inasmuch as the transition to wind and solar itself improves energy efficiency (Jacobson and Delucchi 2011).12 Still, even this optimistic scenario accomplishes only 90 per cent of the necessary emissions reductions for 2°C (likely because it pays no attention to emissions from land use change and cement production). The model relies on negative emissions technology to cover most of the remainder.Van Vuuren et al. (2018) consider ‘alternative pathways’ for meeting the Paris Agreement targets without relying on widespread use of negative emissions technologies. They model rising GDP in accordance with SSP2. In addition to a carbon tax and other aggressive mitigation strategies, their optimistic scenario includes the following settings: global population peaks at 8.4 billion in 2050 and declines to 6.9 billion by 2100; meat consumption declines 80 per cent by 2050; all new cars and airplanes are efficient from 2025; the world shifts to the most efficient technologies for steel and cement production, etc. Even with these highly optimistic assumptions in place, they find that the pressures of continued growth drive emissions to exceed the carbon budgets for 1.5°C and 2°C, without negative emissions technologies.Another way to approach this question is by looking at projected rates of decoupling. If we assume global GDP continues to grow at 3 per cent per year (the average from 2010 to 2014), then decoupling must occur at a rate of 10.5 percent per year for 1.5°C, or 7.3 per cent per year for 2°C. If global GDP grows at 2.1 per cent per year (as PWC predicts), then decoupling must occur at 9.6 per cent per year for 1.5°C, or 6.4 per cent per year for 2°C. All of these targets are beyond what existing empirical models indicate is feasible. The Schandl et al model indicates that decoupling can happen by at most 3 percent per year under optimistic conditions. Other models arrive at similar conclusions. Before adopting BECCS assumptions, the IPCC (2000) projected decoupling of 3.3 percent per year in a global best-case scenario. The C-ROADS tool (developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan) projects decoupling of at most 4 per cent per year under the most aggressive possible abatement policies: high subsidies for renewables and nuclear power, plus high taxes on oil, gas and coal. All of these results fall short of the decoupling rate that must be achieved if the global economy continues to grow at expected rates. Holz et al. (2018) find that if we rule out widespread use of negative emissions technologies, the required rate of decarbonisation for meeting the Paris Agreement is ‘well outside what is currently deemed achievable, based on historical evidence and standard modelling.’The challenge is even more difficult for rich nations. Anderson and Bows (2011) have modelled the emissions reductions necessary for achieving a 50 per cent chance of staying under 2°C (more relaxed than the two-thirds chance that the UNFCC calls for), without BECCS. They proceed from the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’, whereby rich nations (Annex-1 nations) make more aggressive emissions reductions than poor nations, owing to their greater historical responsibility for emissions and their greater capacity for managing the costs of transition. They assume that Non-Annex 1 nations defer peak emissions until 2025, and thereafter reduce emissions by 7 per cent per year. They acknowledge that these are extremely ambitious assumptions but consider them to be the most feasible compromise between practicality and equity. To stay within the remaining carbon budget, Annex 1 nations need to reduce emissions by 8–10 per cent per year, beginning in 2015. This model was developed with data up to 2010; as the remaining carbon budget is now smaller, Anderson estimates that Annex 1 nations need to reduce emissions by 12 per cent per year.13If we accept that Annex 1 nations need to achieve emissions reductions of 12 per cent per year, and if we assume that GDP growth in Annex 1 nations continues at 1.86 percent per year (the average from 2010 to 2014), then decoupling must occur at a rate of 15.8 per cent per year.14 For perspective, this is eight times faster than the historic rate of decoupling in Annex 1 nations (viz., 1.9 per cent per year from 1970 to 2013), and it is important to bear in mind that the rate of decoupling has generally slowed over this period.15 It also exceeds the decoupling rate implied by the average G20 Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement (viz., 3 per cent per year) by a factor of five.There is one empirical model that feasibly accomplishes emissions reductions consistent with the Paris Agreement, without relying on negative emissions technologies. Published by Grubler et al. (2018), it was included in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C (2018) in response to growing critiques of the IPCC’s reliance on BECCS. The scenario, known as ‘Low Energy Demand’ (LED), accomplishes emissions reductions compatible with 1.5°C by reducing global energy demand by 40 per cent by 2050. In addition to decarbonisation and afforestation, the key feature of this scenario is that global material production and consumption declines significantly: ‘The aggregate total material output decreases by close to 20 per cent from today, one-third due to dematerialization, and twothirds due to improvements in material efficiency.’ Dematerialisation is accomplished by shifting away from private ownership of key commodities (like cars) towards sharing-based models. LED differentiates between the global North and South. Industrial activity declines by 42 per cent in the North and 12 per cent in the South. With efficiency improvements, this translates into industrial energy demand declining by 57 per cent in the North and 23 per cent in the South.The LED scenario projects continued GDP growth at just over 2 per cent per year, which would make it consistent with green growth theory. However, the empirical basis for this GDP trend is not robust. It is derived from the MESSAGE-Globium model, which calculates GDP from only two inputs: labour supply (population size and productivity) and energy. The low energy demand in the LED scenario does not affect growth because it is offset by efficiency improvements. As the model is insensitive to changes in material throughput, reductions in production and consumption do not affect output. The paper offers no evidence that GDP will continue to grow despite such reductions. Charlie Wilson, one of the paper’s authors, acknowledged that ‘we did not consider broader questions of GDP growth or degrowth, and we did not explicitly report relationships between our scenario and GDP outcomes for this reason.’ 16Conclusions and discussionThe empirical data demonstrate that while absolute decoupling of GDP from emissions is possible and is already happening in some regions, it is unlikely to happen fast enough to respect the carbon budgets for 1.5°C and 2°C against a background of continued economic growth. Growth increases energy demand, making the transition to renewable energy more difficult, and increases emissions from land use change and industrial processes. Models that do project green growth within the constraints of the Paris Agreement rely heavily on negative emissions technologies that are either unproven or dangerous at scale. Without these technologies, the rates of decarbonisation required for 1.5°C or 2°C are significantly steeper than extant models suggest is feasible even with aggressive mitigation policies.This conclusion changes somewhat if we adjust the baseline growth rate. All of the studies cited above project global GDP growth at 2–3 per cent per year. A lower rate of growth requires a lower rate of decarbonisation. A growth rate of 0 per cent requires decarbonisation of 6.8 per cent per year (for 1.5°C) and 4 per cent per year (for 2°C). There is no empirical evidence that 6.8 per cent can be achieved on a global scale, but 4 per cent is nearly within reach. In other words, it is empirically feasible to achieve green growth within a carbon budget for 2°C with the most aggressive possible mitigation policies if the growth rate is very close to zero and if mitigation starts immediately. This conclusion is in line with research by Schroder and Storm (2018), which finds that reducing emissions in line with the 2°C target is feasible (under optimistic assumptions) only if global economic growth is less than 0.45 per cent per year. This conclusion does not hold for 1.5°C, however; emissions reductions in line with 1.5°C are not empirically feasible except in a de-growth scenario.AT: Tech SolvesAny tech revolution to save global agriculture causes mass social crisis and extinctionTilzey 18 (Mark, Senior Research Fellow in Governance of Food and Farming Systems, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, Political Ecology, Food regimes, and Food Sovereignty: Crisis, Resistance, and Resilience, 2018)As a consequence, we may ask, perhaps rhetorically, whether the ‘modernization’ of agriculture in the South by capitalist means is possible or desirable? In an ‘optimistic’ (and therefore probably unrealistic) reformist scenario, we might hypothesize a strategy for the development of agriculture that attempts systematically to reproduce in the South the course of modern family agriculture in the North. We should recall, however, that the ‘efficiency’ of the agricultural family business typical of North America and Western Europe is due to its high capitalization, the product in turn of its predication on cheap fossil energy and agro-chemical inputs. Energetically, then, it is grossly inefficient, since fossil fuels and agro- chemical inputs have been substituted for human labour, animal traction, and organic manures. Ecologically it is inefficient (and unsustainable) because it relies on the perpetual simplification of agro-ecosystems (the suppression of all species other than the monocrop) to conform to the demands of mechanization and profit maximization. The only criterion on which this agriculture is ‘efficient’ is the ratio of human labour input to production output (productivity), the sole criterion of interest to capital since it is the sole source of profit. Mechanization and its energetic ‘inefficiencies’ also permit, of course, the generation and support of large non-agricultural populations, separated from their original means of production, on which capitalism depends. But the demise of energy and resource cheaps portends the commensurate demise of highly capitalized agriculture and the simultaneous feasibility of sustaining large non- agricultural populations and complex divisions of labour. Both highly capitalized agriculture and associated complex divisions of labour have been premised on the systematic discounting, through productivism, of ecological and energetic ‘costs’, the ‘unpaid debts’ of which are now being ‘called in’ in the form of climate change, soil exhaustion, water pollution and depletion, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, to say nothing of the social unsustainability and cultural deracination that accompanies the stripping of the countryside of its agrarian population. Nonetheless, were such a ‘farmer road’ to capitalist agriculture politically feasible, this strategy might entail the establishment of some 50 million farms across the global South, each awarded access to land through expropriation of the middle and lower peasantry. This would comprise the best land, of course, and were these farms to secure access to capital markets for capitalization, they could potentially supply the essentials that creditworthy urban consumers currently obtain from peasant agriculture. What, however, would become of the billions of ‘non- competitive’ peasant producers under this scenario? Were the ‘logic of the market’ permitted to take its course, these peasants would be further marginalized or eliminated, swelling the already overflowing ranks of the global Southern ‘labour reserve’, most of whom, despite precarity, currently contrive to feed themselves and provision their peers. No industrial development, even in the far-fetched hypothesis of high growth rates for three quarters of humanity, has the capacity to absorb even a third of this massive labour reserve. But, as we have seen, such a scenario represents, politically, an heroic assumption given the extremely selective process of industrialization, and industrialization ‘without jobs’, that is increasingly characteristic of contemporary capitalism. Chronic commodity oversupply and under-consumption render this ‘farmer road’ plus labour- absorbing industrialization scenario thoroughly utopian, politically. And ecologically and energetically it is equally utopian, even ignoring the far greater ecological fragility and irresilience of soils, water resources, and biodiversity in the global South by comparison to the more provident temperate environments of the North. We must conclude, therefore, that capitalism, whether Keynesian/Polanyian or neoliberal, cannot resolve the peasant question politically or ecologically. Indeed, the only prospects it can offer are a planet of slums, inhabited by a ‘surplus’ population of billions, and a world rendered increasingly uninhabitable ecologically for humans and non-humans alike. We have reached the point, therefore, where to open up a new field for the expansion of capital, entailing the ‘modernization of agricultural production’, would entail the destruction of entire societies and ecosystems, an ‘achievement’ sustainable only so long as cheap fossil fuels persisted. According to our ‘optimistic’, reformist scenario, this might entail the creation of 50 million new, ‘efficient’ producers (200 with their families) on the one hand, and some 3 billion excluded people on the other. Capitalism has thus entered the early phases of an epochal crisis whereby the logic of the system is not only incapable of ensuring the simple survival of humanity (even if this were ever the case), but is?also actively destroying the means of that long-term survival through ‘political’ marginalization and ‘ecological’ despoliation. AT: WarWars are necessary for the expansion of capital – new ground for accumulation is cleared through conquest – every recent war provesAdams 02 (Dr. David Adams, former UNESCO Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, former Professor of Psychology (for 23 years) at Wesleyan University, specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior and the evolution of war, “Chapter 8: The Root Causes of War,” The American Peace Movements, p. 22-28,?)To take a scientific attitude about war and peace, we must carry the causal analysis a step further. If peace movements are caused by wars and war threats, then we must ask, what are the causes of these wars, both in the short term and in the long term? Before analyzing the causes of wars, it is necessary to dismiss a false analysis that has been popularized in recent years, the myth that war is caused by a "war instinct." The best biological and anthropological data indicate that there is no such thing as a war instinct despite the attempt of the mass media and educational systems to perpetuate this myth. Instead, "the same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace" (note 15). Since there are several kinds of war, it is likely that there are several different kinds of causes for war. There are two kinds of war in which the United States has not been engaged for over two centuries. The first are wars of national liberation such as the American Revolution or today's revolutions in Nicaragua and South Africa being waged by the Sandinistas and the African National Congress. The second are wars of revolution in which the previous ruling class is thrown out and replaced by another. In the British and French Revolutions of earlier eras the feudal land-owners were overthrown by the newly rising capitalist class. In the revolutions of this century in Russia, China, Cuba, etc. the capitalists, in turn, were overthrown by forces representing the working class and landless farmers. The six wars and threats of war that have caused American peace movements in this century have been wars of imperial conquest, inter-imperialist rivalry, and capitalist-socialist rivalry. What are the root causes of these wars in the short term? For the following analysis, I will rely upon some of America's best economic historians (note 16). The Spanish-American and Philippine Wars of 1898, according to historian Walter LaFeber, were inevitable military results of a new foreign policy devoted to obtaining markets overseas for American products. The new foreign policy was the response to a profound depression that began in 1893 with unemployment soaring to almost 20 percent. Farm and industrial output piled up without a market because American workers, being unemployed, had no money to buy them. Secretary of State Gresham "concluded that foreign markets would provide in large measure the cure for the depression." To obtain such markets, the U.S. went into competition with the other imperialist empires such as Britain and Spain. The U.S. intervened with a naval force to help overthrow the government of Hawaii in 1893, intervened diplomatically in Nicaragua in 1894, threatened war with England over Venezuela in 1895, and eventually went to war with Spain in 1898 and invaded the Philippines in 1898. To quote from the title of LaFeber's book, the U.S. established a "new empire." American intervention in World War I again rescued the economy from a depression. In 1914 and 1915, as war between the European imperialist powers broke out, American unemployment was rising towards ten percent and industrial goods were piling up without a market. One industrial market was expanding, however, the market for weapons in Europe. The historian Charles Tansill concludes that "it was the rapid growth of the munitions trade which rescued America from this serious economic situation." And since the sales went to Britain and France, it committed the U.S. to their side in the war. Finance capital was equally involved: "the large banking interests were deeply interested in the World War because of wide opportunities for large profits." When bank loans to Britain and France of half a billion dollars went through in 1915, "the business depression, that had so worried the Administration in the spring of 1915, suddenly vanished, and 'boom times' prevailed." Of course, German imperialism did not stand idly by while the U.S. profited from arms shipments and loans to their enemies in the war. German submarine warfare against these shipments finally provoked American involvement in the War. The rise of fascism in Europe was the direct result of still another cyclical depression, the Great Depression that gripped the entire capitalist world in the Thirties. In his recent book on the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism, David Abraham has documented how major capitalists turned to Hitler to fill the vacuum of political leadership when the economy collapsed. In part, the absence of political leadership "with the collapse of the export economy at the end of 1931...drove German industry to foster or accept a Bonapartist solution to the political crisis and an imperialist solution to the economic crisis. The "Bonapartist solution", as Abraham calls it, was found in Hitler's Nazi Party. As he says, "By mid-1932, the vast majority of industrialists wanted to see Nazi participation in the government." For these industrialists, "an anti-Marxist, imperialist program was the least common denominator on which they could all agree, and the Nazis seemed capable of providing the mass base for such a program." The appeasement of Hitler's promise to smash the communists and socialists at home and to destroy the Soviet Union abroad expressed a new cause of capitalist war. Up until that time, inter-imperialist wars were simply the response to economic contradictions at home and capitalist competition abroad. In part, World War II was yet another inter-imperialist war. But now a new cause of war was emerging alongside of the old. The rise of socialism was a direct threat to the entire capitalist world. In addition to glutted domestic markets and competition for foreign markets, the capitalists now had to face the additional problem that the overall foreign market itself was shrinking. Thus, they tended to support each other in the face of a common enemy. After World War II, there was a particularly sharp shrinkage in the "free world" for capitalist exploitation as socialism and national liberation triumphed through much of the world. The U.S. and its allies responded by demanding that the socialist countries open their doors to investment by capitalism. According to historian William Appleman Williams, "It was the decision of the United States to employ its new and awesome power in keeping with the traditional Open Door Policy which crystallized the cold war." As Williams explains, "the policy of the open door, like all imperial policies, created and spurred onward a dynamic opposition." Diplomatic and military confrontation between the U.S. and USSR were used to justify the Cold War and establishment of NATO, but the underlying issues were economic. As pointed out by historians Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, "The question of foreign economic policy was not the containment of Communism, but rather more directly the extension and expansion of American capitalism according to its new economic power and needs." In addition to the new problem of shrinking world markets, there remained the problem of cyclical depressions. Although unemployment was not bad in 1946 because industry was producing to meet the accumulated needs of the war-deprived American people, the specter of another depression was very much a factor in the Cold War. As the Kolkos point out, "The deeply etched memory of the decade-long depression of 1929 hung over all American plans for the postwar era....In extending its power throughout the globe the United States hoped to save itself as well from a return of the misery of prewar experience." The Vietnam War was a continuation of the Cold War, as the United States tried to prevent further shrinkage of the world capitalist economic system. The U.S. had already fought a similar war in Korea. In his chapter, "The U.S. in Vietnam, 1944-66: Origins and Objectives," Gabriel Kolko calls the intervention of the United States in Vietnam, "the most important single embodiment of the power and purposes of American foreign policy since the Second World War." Elsewhere in his book, Kolko goes into detail about the economic basis of American imperialism: access to raw materials, access to markets for American products, and investment opportunities for American capital. The Vietnam War, he explains, was not a conspiracy or simply a military decision. It was the natural result of "American power and interest in the modern world." Finally we come to the question of what has caused the massive escalation of the arms buildup under Presidents Carter and Reagan (and more recently under Bush, father and son). To some extent, it is a response to the old problem of cyclical depressions. Since World War II, each recession has been deeper than the last, until by 1981 unemployment reached double digits for the first time since the Thirties. Government spending was needed to put people back to work. Would the government spend the money for military weapons or for civilian needs? A long line of Presidential candidates, standing for the military solution, have been supported in their campaigns by the military-industrial complex against other candidates who were unable to wage a serious campaign for civilian spending instead of military spending. The growing power of the military-industrial complex is a new and especially dangerous addition to the economic causes of war. It reflects an economic crisis that goes even deeper than those of the past. In addition to the cyclical depressions and the shrinkage of foreign markets, there is a new imbalance in the entire structure of capitalism. There is an enormous increase in financial speculation and short-term profit schemes. The military-industrial complex has risen to become the dominant sector of the American economy because through the aid of state subsidies it generates the greatest short-term profits. Never mind if the U.S. government goes into debt to banks and other financial institutions in order to pay for military spending. The world of financial speculation does not worry about tomorrow. Not only does this "military spending solution" endanger the security of the planet, but it also increases the risk of a major financial collapse and subsequent depression. To summarize, we may point to the following causes of American wars over the past century: 1) cyclical crises of overproduction and unemployment, 2) exploitation of poor colonial and neo-colonial countries by rich imperialist countries, 3) economic rivalry for foreign markets and investment areas by imperialist powers, 4) the attempt to stop the shrinkage of the "free world" - i.e. the part of the world that is free for capitalist investment and exploitation, and 5) financial speculation and short-term profit making of the military-industrial complex. In the 1985 edition of this book the argument was made that the socialist countries were escaping from the economic causation of war. In comparison to the capitalist countries, they did not have the same dynamic of over-production and cyclical depression, with periods of enhanced structural unemployment. As for exploitation and imperialism, despite the frequent reference in the American media to "Soviet imperialism," the direction of the flow of wealth was the opposite of what holds true under capitalist imperialism. Instead of the rich nations extracting wealth from the poor ones, which is the case, for example between the U.S. and Latin America, the net flow of wealth proceeded from the Soviet Union towards the other socialist countries in order to bring them towards an eventually even level of development. According to an authoritative source associated with the U.S. military-industrial complex, the net outflow from the Soviet Union amounted to over forty billion dollars a year in the mid-1980's. In one crucial respect, however, the 1985 analysis was incorrect. It failed to take account of the military-industrial complex that had grown to be the most powerful force of the Soviet economy, a mirror image of its equivalent in the West. The importance of this was brought home to those of us who attended a briefing on economic conversion from military to civilian production that was held at the United Nations on November 1, 1990, a critical time for Gorbachev's program of Perestroika in the Soviet Union. The speaker, Ednan Ageev, was the head of the Division of International Security Issues at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was asked by the Gorbachev administration to find out the extent to which the Soviet economy was being used for military production. Naturally, he went to the Minister of Defense, where he was told that this information was secret. Secret even to Gorbachev. In conversation, Ageev estimated that 85-90% of Soviet scientific researchers were in the military sector. That seems high until you realize that the Soviet's were matching U.S. military research, development and production on the basis of a Gross National Product only half as large. Since about 40% of U.S. research and development was tied to the military at that time, it would make sense that the Soviets would have had to double the U.S. percentage in order to keep pace. How could the Gorbachev administration convert their economy from military to civilian production if they could not even get a list of defense industries? Keeping this in mind, along with the enormous militarization of the Soviet economy, it is not so surprising that the Soviet economy collapsed, and with it the entire political superstructure. The origins of the Soviet military-industrial complex can be traced back to the Russian revolution which instituted what Lenin, at one point, called "war communism". He warned that war communism could not succeed in the long run and that instead of a top-down militarized economy, a socialist economy needed to be structured as a "cooperative of cooperatives." But war communism was entrenched during the Stalin years, carried out of necessity to an extreme during the Second World War, and then perpetuated by the Cold War. The economic causation of the war system is not new. It originated long before capitalism and socialism. From its beginnings in ancient Mesopotamia, the state was always associated with war, both to capture slaves abroad and to keep them under control at home. As states grew more powerful, war became the means to build empires and to acquire and rule colonies. In fact, the economic causation of war probably extends back even further into ancient prehistory. From the best analysis I know, that of Mel and Carol Ember, using the methods of cross-cultural anthropology, it would seem that war functioned as a means to survive periodic but unpredictable food shortages caused by natural disasters. Apparently, tribes that could make war most effectively could survive natural disasters better than others by successfully raiding the food supplies of their neighbors. While particular wars can be analyzed, as we have done above, in terms of immediate, short-term causes, there is a need to understand the war system itself, which is as old as human history. Particular wars are the tip of a much deeper iceberg. Beneath war, there has developed a culture of war that is entwined with it in a complex web of causation. On the one hand, the culture of war is produced and reinforced by each war, and, on the other hand, the culture of war provides the basis on which succeeding wars are prepared and carried out. The culture of war is a set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that consists of enemy images, authoritarian social structure, training and arming for violence, exploitation of man and nature, secrecy and male domination. Without an enemy, without a social structure where people will follow orders, without the preparation of soldiers and weapons, without the control of information, both propaganda and secrecy, no war can be carried out. The culture of war has been so prevalent in history that we take it for granted, as if it were human nature. However, anthropologists point to cultures that are nowhere near as immersed in the culture of war, and it is the opinion of the best scientists that a culture of peace is possible. Peace movements have not given enough attention to the internal use of the culture of war. The culture of war has two faces, one facing outward and the other inward. Foreign wars are accompanied by authoritarian rule inside the warring countries. Even when there is no war threat, armies (or national guards) are kept ready not just for use against foreign enemies, but also against those defined as the enemy within: striking workers, movements of the unemployed, prisoners, indigenous peoples, just as in an earlier time they were used against slave rebellions. As documented in my 1995 article in the Journal of Peace Research (Internal Military Interventions in the United States) the U.S. Army and National Guard have been used an average of 18 times a year, involving an average of 12,000 troops for the past 120 years, mostly against actions and revolts by workers and the unemployed. During periods of external war, the internal wars are usually intensified and accompanied by large scale spying, deportations and witch hunts. It would appear that we have once again entered such a period in the U.S. We are hardly alone in this matter. Needless to say, the culture of war was highly developed to stifle dissent in the Soviet Union by Stalin and his successors of "war communism." The internal culture of war needs to be analyzed and resisted everywhere. For example, readers living in France should question the role of the CRS. The internal use of the culture of war is no less economically motivated than external wars. The socialists at the beginning of the 20th Century recognized it as "class war," carried out in order to maintain the domination of the rich and powerful over the poor and exploited. Not by accident, it has often been socialists and communists who are the first to be targeted by the internal culture of war in capitalist countries. And they, in turn, have often made the most powerful critique of the culture of war and have played a leading role in peace movements for that reason. Their historical role for peace was considerably compromised, however, by the "war communism" of the Soviet Union. With its demise, however, there is now an opportunity for socialists and communists to return to their earlier leadership against war, both internal and external, and to insist that a true socialism can only flourish on the basis of a culture of peace. In considering future prospects for the American Peace Movements, I shall begin with trends from the past and then consider different factors for the future? First, let us look back over the economic factors and movements of the previous century to see if the trends are likely to continue. 1. Wars are likely to continue because, for the most part, their economic causes remain as strong as ever: 1) cyclical crises of overproduction and unemployment, 2) exploitation of poor colonial and neo-colonial countries by rich imperialist countries, 3) economic rivalry for foreign markets and investment areas by imperialist powers, 4) the attempt to stop the shrinkage of the "free world" - i.e. the part of the world that is free for capitalist investment and exploitation, and 5) financial speculation and short-term profit making of the military-industrial complex. The fourth factor is not as prominent since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but there is still evidence of this factor at work: for example, the attempted overthrow of the government of Venezuela in spring, 2002, was apparently linked to its developing ties with socialist Cuba, especially in terms of its oil resources. Although the coup d'etat failed, there was a risk of plunging Venezuela into warfare, especially considering the increasingly internationalized war next door in Colombia. Although the "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan, Philippines, etc. and the associated military buildup is usually justified as revenge for the attacks of September 11, there seems little doubt that there are economic motives involved as well, including the control of oil resources from Central Asia as a supplement to those of the Middle East. At the same time, the massive expansion of the military-industrial complex in the U.S. appears at some level to be intended as an increase in government spending to hedge against declining non-military production, unemployment and financial crises in the stock markets. 2. The American peace movements have been reactive in the past, developing in response to specific wars or threats of war, and then disappearing when the war is over or the threat is perceived to have decreased. In fact, this observation at the macro level is mirrored by an observation that I have made previously at a micro level: participants in peace movements have been motivated to an important degree by anger against the injustice of war. This dynamic seems likely to continue. Governments, worried about the reactive potential of peace movements may attempt to engage in very brief wars, just as the U.S. government cut short the 1991 Gulf War after several weeks to avoid an escalating peace movement. In the future, peace movements need to be broadened by linkages to other issues and by international solidarity and unity; otherwise they risk being only temporary influences on the course of history, growing in response to particular wars and then disappearing again afterwards. The world needs a sustained opposition to the entire culture of war, not just to particular wars. To be fully successful, the future peace movement needs to be positive as well as negative. It needs to be for a culture of peace at the same time as it is against the culture of war. This requires that activists in the future peace movement develop a shared vision of the future towards which the movement can aspire. I have found evidence, presented in the recent revision of my book Psychology for Peace Activists (note 17), that such a shared, positive vision is now becoming possible, and, as a result, human consciousness can take on a new and powerful dimension in this particular moment of history.The Imperial drive in capital is the single largest cause of violence in the modern world – any other conclusion is racist abstraction cooked up to devalue anyone resisting immiserationPersaud 19 (Randolph B. Persaud, American University; Narendran Kumarakulasingam, University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Built Environment and Development Studies, Development Studies, Durban; “Violence and ordering of the Third World: an introduction”, Third World Quarterly, 40:2, 199-206, 2019, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2019.1578646)IntroductionViolence has been a definitive and structurally constitutive factor in the contact between the rest and the West. This has been the case from the very early period of conquest, through the long centuries of colonisation and occupation, and very much so since independence, much of it plagued by imperialism and new constructions such as ‘humanitarian intervention’. This violence has taken multiple forms, ranging from the everyday rituals of extracting submission for labour exploitation, to outright, total war. These regimes of violence include but are not limited to everyday disciplinary punishment to maintain ‘order’ (especially in slavery and indentureship), massacres (Morant Bay, Jamaica – 1865, Wounded Knee – 1890, Amritsar – 1919, No Gun Ri – 1950, My Lai – 1968, Haditha, Iraq – 2005), saturation bombing of peoples and landscapes (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), genocide (Belgian Congo, German South West Africa) and near extermination (indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the Americas and Australia).Astoundingly, hegemonic discourses of international relations (IR) have been silent about this.1 This silence is neither passive nor innocent, but a form of active forgetting resulting from the discipline’s ‘fetishization of abstraction’.2 Moreover, Susan Buck-Morss’ contention that well-established disciplines tend to consolidate their borders by expelling ‘counterevidence’3 is an apt way of describing established IR’s relationship with the problems under consideration here. Violence in, and against, the Third World is generally treated either as purely internal and cultural, or as a dimension of a larger narrative of historical progress, this latter in the Hegelian sense of the dialectic of History. The task of ‘dissenters and insurgents’4 is not to merely prosecute what we see as the methodological negligence of hegemonic IR, but to embark on the necessary and unremitting work of finding, and showing, the violent and profoundly racialised interconnectedness of the West and its Others. Some of the critiques of hegemonic IR have also, and already, been applied to some branches of Marxian/ World Systems Theory,5 neo-Gramscian theory6 and Foucauldian security studies.7Two important moves are necessary for challenging this silencing. The first calls for a major methodological shift in the production of knowledges, a shift from the positivist and nomothetic to the grounded and historical. Or, as Siba Grovogui puts it, we need to go beyond ‘racial clichés and oversimplified notions of culture’.8 The second challenge is for scholars to investigate, describe and situate violence in the making and reproduction of forms of state/societies and successive world orders. This special issue takes up this task by examining violence in and against the Third World in various forms/modalities and in different historical situations as well as their interconnectedness.Colonial acts of physical destruction and the expropriation of resources during conquest constitute what Achille Mbembe calls ‘founding violence’.9 This founding violence was not simply an effect of racialised ideologies or of great power geopolitical contestations but, instead, worked to ‘create the space over which it was exercised’.10 This founding violence did not work in isolation but in turn enabled a host of regimes and infrastructures of rights for the coloniser and the denial of the same for the colonised. The second form of violence was constitutive in ‘authorizing authority’,11 that is to say, in embedding frameworks of legitimation needed to exercise the hierarchy of rights (and privileges) associated with what Anibal Quijano12 has called the coloniality of power. Thirdly, and as a continuation of the second form, Mbembe sees violence as techniques of reproduction, through the construction of cultural ‘imaginaries. This form of violence is banal ‘crystallized, through a gradual accumulation of numerous acts and rituals’.13If the colony is a place constituted by manifold forms of violence, these forms of violence continue to operate in Third World societies after new flags were raised. Apropos the postcolony, Mbembe notes: ‘Through the harshness of the exactions required, the redeployment of constraints and the new forms of subjection imposed on the most deprived segments of the population, this form of government forces features belonging to the realm of warfare and features proper to the conduct of civil policy to co-exist in a single dynamic’.14 At the same time, the postcolony does not exist in isolation but is also externally shaped by the imperatives of powerful states underwritten by the coloniality of power.15 Thus, there is a need to trace the specific modalities of violence and the precise ways in which they continue to structure global capitalism and world order.16Violence, we realise, is a contested and complicated concept that is most often used to connote the unauthorised or unsanctioned use of force.17 Most commonly, it has been linked to naturalised or cultural conditions of aberrance and pathology. The papers in this volume do not subscribe to a singular understanding of violence but seek to historicise it by focusing on varying historical and contemporary instances such as anti-Black violence in contemporary USA, US conquest of the Philippines, the Global War on Terror, contemporary aerial bombardment of Yemen, counter-insurgency in India, gang violence in Central America and the war on drugs in Latin America. By so doing, they allow us to see the workings of various political, economic and psychological forces and disciplines (legal, religious) in the making and governance of Third World states and societies. It is our hope that this will spur closer examination of the multiple and massive material and other forms of devastation unleashed by colonialism and post-independence anisation of the volumeAlexander Barder makes the argument that world orders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were constituted as a global racial imaginary. Instead of focusing on state to state interactions within the inter-state system, Barder shows how the world could be made ‘intelligible’ by examining the ways in which civilizational factors influenced, and often directly pushed, economic policies and geo-strategic calculations. Social Darwinism and the associated cultural fall-out from eugenic science were pervasive to the point of common sense. The global racial imaginary found articulate expression in writers such as Robert Knox, Charles Hamilton Smith, Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Charles Henry Pearson, Franklin Giddings, Lester Ward, Benjamin Kidd and Madison Grant. Barder goes beneath the surface of inertstate relations and shows how racial ideology profoundly infected strategic thinking and, ultimately, war itself.In order to examine the impact of religion on First World–Third World interactions, Christopher Rhodes makes a heretofore unidentified connection between two truisms concerning European colonialism: the differing reputations for violence and brutality earned by British, French and German colonial states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the notion that European Christian actors – The Catholic Church, various Protestant denominations and movements, and missionary societies – significantly influenced colonial policies. Rhodes’ work draws upon different strands of the political economy of religion literature. In doing so, he takes seriously the impact that differences in religious doctrine – in this case, whether Christian evangelisation is meant to convert nonbelievers as individuals or to transform non-Christian societies on a macro level – have on religious actors’ preferences and strategies. Second, Rhodes identifies how a specific set of political outcomes, the level, nature and variability of organised violence conducted by Western States against the Others, are determined by the interaction between religious organisations’ doctrinally-based preferences and the mechanisms by which these organisations influence states to carry out actions consistent with these religious goals. During instances of high influence by Christian actors over colonial states and prevailing ideas of individual-level evangelisation, a situation that was significantly more characteristic of British colonialism than its French or German counterparts, colonial violence is relatively constrained.Drawn in by critical attempts grappling with the excesses of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), Narendran Kumarakulasingam wonders about the efficacy of theorising violence as horror. Closely attending to the idea of horrorism proposed by the acclaimed philosopher Adriana Cavarero, he underscores horror’s emergence as a response to the events of September 11, 2001. His critique attempts to re-centre colonial violence as the rightful starting point for a discussion on violence as horror, and to not only indicate why the erasure of colonial violence is present in both mainstream and critical discourse, but also to understand why this tendency is so pervasive. Doing so leads him to argue that critical productions of horror end up producing a homecoming for the West, rather than illuminating the traumatic impact of the GWOT. Given this, he wonders if what is needed is not so much increasingly sophisticated modes of critical theorisation but rather the courage on the part of the West to submit itself to honest self-examination in the colonial mirror.The profound impact of race on international relations is also explored by Randolph B. Persaud. His analysis is focused on the entry of the US into the business of empire. Although he agrees that economic and geopolitical factors influenced American foreign policy towards Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he insists that civilizational factors, and specifically a world-view based on race, were deeply embedded in many of the strategic thinkers. Accordingly, he examines the US conquest of the Philippines as an extension of Manifest Destiny, and the execution of notions of duty by America to teach the art of governance to the ‘uncivilised’. The period also coincides with a dramatic expansion of the US navy, and Persaud links this to the ‘civilizing mission’ by arguing that questions of American security (much less survival) were not the driving force.By looking at the murders of two American teenagers – Trayvon Martin and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki – during the Obama presidency, Sankaran Krishna highlights the racism that structures both the foreign and domestic policies of the US. Racialised violence against brown and black ‘terrorists’ abroad complements a racist carceral state within the US that prejudges blacks and other minorities to be inherently criminal and unworthy of life. This structural racism has historically been rendered as marginal, not constitutive, of the US through discourses of American exceptionalism and a creedal narrative that sees it as moving towards ‘a more perfect union’ over time. Obama had to subscribe to both these discourses of exceptionalism and the American creed in order to emerge as a viable Presidential candidate. Yet his subscription to these narratives also ensured that his Presidency would only continue and deepen American racism at home and abroad rather than change it in any consequential manner.Jeff Bachman draws on the literature on genocide in his analysis of massive aerial bombardments of Yemen by a Coalition of Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and backed by the US and UK. The consequences of the war have been immense, not only in terms of the number of deaths, but also the sheer violent inhumanity that is visited on the Yemeni population on a daily basis. In many ways, the carnage in Yemen belies claims that the days of traditional warfare are over. While Bachman’s claims about genocide are grounded in numerous factors within the extant understanding of genocide, he argues that a more holistic approach is needed. Drawing on the Yemen Data Project, he found that two-thirds of 16,749 air attacks between 26 March 2015 and 25 March 2018 were on non-military targets, and that many of these were synchronised attacks against targets that are physical, economic and cultural. The concept of synchronised attacks as developed by R. Lemkin allows for ‘process-oriented conception of genocide’, an approach that facilitates a more comprehensive view of systematically organised violence.18There is a sense in which sanctions are a more diplomatic and humane strategy of coercing a state to comply with the wishes of the ‘international community’ or alternatively, and more critically, as a dastardly set of punishments to elicit submission. Georgis and Gewarges take the second of these perspectives, much so because of the extraordinary suffering and Iraqi lives lost due to the sanctions sponsored, imposed and forcefully enforced by the US, UK and France (albeit under the rubric of the ‘international community’). The hundreds of thousands of lives lost – people killed – were in fact widely criticised by UN officials and many in the West, but it was also masked by the all-too-familiar media construction of a supposedly greater evil, in this case reduced to a single person, a sign, namely Saddam Hussein. Georgis and Gerwarges wrench the sanctions out from the rhetoric of ‘peace and democracy’, and locate it on the masked but intended target – the Iraqi people, Iraqi bodies. They show that sanctions are indeed violence by other means.The coloniality of power, meaning the continuity of the colonial imaginaries (economic, political, cultural) is amplified by Swati Parashar’s article which focuses on the Maoist insurrectional activities in India and the responses by the state apparatus after independence. Parashar connects the architecture of the old colonial state with the current state practices. She demonstrates that the actions of the current Naxalite Maoists are consistent with a centuries-old tradition of peasant revolts. Going beyond the Maoists, Parashar links uprisings by the structurally marginalised Dalits and Adivasis to a tradition of resistance dating back to the specific policies (such as the Forest Act of 1878) put in place by the British Raj. And then, in ‘most cases the draconian colonial era laws and regulations against the tribal societies were further strengthened by the postcolonial Indian state, such as by excluding the bona fide forest communities from forest administration’.19As most critical international relations scholars note, it is important to understand that the domestic and the global are deeply connected, and specifically that forms of state are partially configured through downward pressure from the inter-state system on the one hand, and pressure from below within the domestic political economy on the other. Moreover, the tight separation of economy, security and culture is only a rough guide of convenience. Horace Bartilow’s article falls squarely within this critical political economy tradition. He investigates the ways in which foreign aid and the war on drugs in Latin America are linked to the expansion of capital. State sovereignty, far from being compromised, is actually a conduit for complicated flows of Overseas Development Aid and transnational capital. Thus, foreign aid in the form of counter-narcotic assistance becomes a precursor to foreign direct investment, and for greater embedding of neoliberal forms of economic governance. Bartilow explains the ways in which this anti-narcotic development model has impinged on the rights of indigenous peoples, and the violent confrontations that have emerged on account of determined resistance. Of immense importance here is what Bartilow frames as the ‘privatization of terror’Drawing insights from Marxist and feminist scholarship on work, María José Méndez approaches violence as labour – as violence work – to provide a fuller account of how violence not only destroys but produces livelihoods and social worlds. Méndez uses the notion of violence work to show how banks, state agents of various ranks, inhabitants of marginalised neighbourhoods, etc. derive income and wealth from the extortion economy that gang violence sustains in the Northern Triangle of Central America. Moreover, Méndez argues that the participation of transnational gangs in violent modes of extraction mirrors modes of state wealth accumulation that flourished during the US-sponsored counterinsurgency period in Central America. The complex political-economic entanglements of gang violence that Méndez’s research bears light on provide an important counterpoint to the dominant view of transnational gang violence as a threat to state and world order. In addition to reframing gang violence, Méndez problematises research agendas that foreground the deviations of non-state armed groups and that fail to situate non-state violence within broader landscapes of income and wealth production.The failure to historicise massive physical and psychological devastation is not an accidental oversight but shaped by ideological and political conditions. Emily Mitamura’s concept of abridgement deployed in the context of representations of the Cambodian genocide, shows how the silencing of geopolitical forces and the unthinkability of revolution in Cambodia coalesce to make what happened intelligible as an auto genocide. Knowledge of America’s bombings, its war on Vietnam as well as support of the Khmer Rouge are expunged from the historical record thereby creating the conditions of possibility for the narrativisation of genocide as a form of primitive slaughter lacking any political objective. Consequently, Cambodia becomes yet another instance of violence, sans history and politics; a place where dark-skinned bodies brutalise each other.W. Andy Knight employs a broadened concept of security that spans from outright violence, much of it related to the narco-economy, to vulnerabilities caused by hurricanes, earthquakes and the weakness of Caribbean economies. While it is true that some Caribbean countries have greater political and economic security compared to many other developing countries, it is still the case that the structural economic weakness must be reckoned with. Guyana, Haiti and Jamaica have long been vulnerable to the vicissitudes of commodity prices, a fact directly linked to their colonial past and to the invasive roles of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) – especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While Knight is concerned with many of the proximate effects of insecurities and vulnerabilities, he also adumbrates the more structural and cultural sources that have generated the same. In that vein, it is important to recognise that North American recreational (and addictive) drug-consumption is a leading cause of violence in the Caribbean. The drug-habits of the north, combined with the flow of guns from the US down into Latin America and the Caribbean, must be taken for what they are – threats to livelihoods and lives to the region.ConclusionThese efforts to historicise violence show that it is no longer possible to think of violence in and against the Third World in terms of transition or interruption. Two years ago, Persaud organised a set of panels at the annual convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) inviting contributors to take seriously the materiality of devastation unleashed against the peoples of the Third World. This special issue, arising from those panels, directs us to be attentive to the linkages between visible and invisible forms of violence and the ways in which these connections form an ecology, rather than continuum, of violence. To trace this ecology is to reveal the bloody attempts at governing the international.Mbembe’s call to get back to the more material aspects of historical capitalism and violence, or ‘war capitalism’ in the language of Beckert,20 comes at an especially propitious moment in the liberal discourses and historiographies of violence. Of recent, there has been a growing body of literature suggesting that violence, and especially deaths due to war, is on the decline.21 In this vein, Pinker has argued not only has violence declined but that ‘[t] hough imperial conquest and rule can … be brutal, they do reduce endemic violence among the conquered’.22 Our volume shows that such findings of ‘decline’ are only possible through a platform of abstractionism that restricts violence and silences its articulation with various forms of racialities. 23 In the current conjuncture of the global war of terror, the world is again divided between the ‘saved and the dammed’. This time it is neatly aligning with a new geo-civilizational cartography, perhaps best expressed in Mamdani’s acute observation that, in effect, what we have is a world divided between ‘good Muslims, bad Muslims’, where the good Muslims are on the side of the White West, and the rest are a clear and present danger.24AT: Human NatureThis argument is profoundly Eurocentric and disregards thousands of years of human economic organizationPaulson 17 (Susan Paulson, Professor of Latin American Studies, “Degrowth: culture, power and change,” Special Section of the Journal of Political Ecology, 24: 425-666, 2017)Such dynamics of power change the question of "how do we humans change?" to "how do we change humans?" In countries around the world, longitudinal data show abrupt upswings in behavioral trends ranging from fuel consumption to obesity and use of credit, signaling that some powerful forces have been at work changing modes of being human, and changing them at precipitous speed. With US data from late 20th century, economist Juliet Schor (1993, 1999) charts remarkably steep average increases in hours worked for pay, in material goods consumed, and in personal debt. She also points to legislation, policies and advertisements that interacted to impel adoption of personal habits that would be instrumental to the exponential growth curve emblematic of these times.Despite astounding transformations in human practice and perception in recent decades, actors who are privileged by today's status quo—and even many who are exploited or marginalized—protest that it is neither ethical nor feasible to try to change human behavior or attitudes: "You're never going to convince people to produce and consume less!" Degrowth is vehemently denounced as ecofascism: ideologically-driven imposition that would force unwilling victims to sacrifice their God-given freedoms and to betray innate self-interests. Growth, in contrast, is perceived as apolitical and impartial; modern markets, in particular, appear as timeless mechanisms through which all humans freely organize livelihoods and establish value. Polanyi (1944) showed they are anything but. The commodification of labor and nature, together with the colonization of human habits and worldviews by market-relations and money-value, are historical exceptions brutally imposed in 18th and 19th century England by efforts to "mold human nature" for industrial growth. Moving to late 20th century, David Harvey (2007) and others have exposed the formidable political incursions enacted to force expansion of "free" market relations—together with characteristic forms of unequal exchange—into the most isolated parts of the world and the most intimate realms of human intercourse. A stubborn blindness to these and other historical facts is enabled by certain architectural features of Western language, science and philosophy. Hierarchical binaries of white over non-white, man over woman, human over other nature are engraved in the world in ways that make it difficult to question the mechanisms of unequal exchange and accumulation built into current markets. As the nature-culture binary classifies thinking humans as superior to instinct-driven beasts, it also suppresses attempts to change certain aspects of human life by cementing them as unassailable "natural instincts." Today, the conviction that human biology is responsible for an insatiable drive to increase production and consumption is fostered by powerful cultural and scientific narratives. Featured myths include the innately rational Homo economicus maximizing utility for individual gain; an inherent human propensity to truck and barter avowed by Adam Smith; and that "selfish gene" that makes each of us crave control over resources and strive to take more than our share, condemning to tragedy any attempts at commons management.Even climate change is portrayed as a result of human evolution! Teleological narratives surrounding the Anthropocene are encouraged by scholars such as Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill (2007: 614) who write: "the first use of fire by our bipedal ancestors, belonging to the genus Homo erectus, occurred a couple of million years ago." And "The mastery of fire by our ancestors provided humankind with a powerful monopolistic tool unavailable to other species, that put us firmly on the long path towards the Anthropocene" (for astute critique, see Malm and Hornborg 2014: 65). Antonio Gramsci (1971) taught us to beware the power of cultural constructs that make the status quo appear natural and inevitable. He also noted that historical crises can destabilize that power, opening transformative possibilities. To debunk laissez faire myths impervious to factual contestation, Erik Swyngedouw (2015) and others call for (re)politicization of economic and ecological conversations. Horizons for change can also be opened by learning from diverse socionatural worlds. Against contemporary beliefs that human survival depends on growth, archeological and ethnographic evidence demonstrates that diverse hunter-gatherer-fisher populations characterized by extremely low societal metabolism and little or no market activity have thrived and adapted throughout all 200,000 years of modern human life. Even in the present age, meticulous measurements have documented remarkably low societal metabolism of groups ranging from Andaman Islanders (Singh and Haas 2012) to !Kung San (Lee 1968, 1979).12If Homo sapiens is hard wired for growth, why did per capita ecological footprints increase so late in the game? And so unevenly across human populations? Evidence points to gradual expansion among some groups starting 10,000 years ago with the emergence of agriculture and cities, followed by steeper increases beginning several hundred years ago with European colonial expansion and industrialization. It is not until the twentieth century, however, that a supercharged boom of material and economic growth combined with exponential increase in world population to provoke a tectonic shift in which human activities "rapidly changed from merely influencing the global environment in some ways to dominating it in many ways" (Steffen et al. 2007: 614). Scientists assessing climatic, biological and geochemical signatures of human activity in sediments and ice cores have come to consensus on marking a new epoch, beginning in the mid– 20th century, as "the Anthropocene" (Waters et al. 2016).Putting these extraordinary recent changes into deeper historical and broader cultural context reveals the absurdity of claims that ancient evolutionary traits inexorably led Homo sapiens to destroy earth systems. It also challenges the misleading message—as widespread as it is dangerous—that this new era was provoked by humanity as a whole (the Anthropos), rather than by one group acting in and through a historically specific system of culture and power. Scholars fighting for a more accurate characterization insist that the era be called the "Eurocene" or the "Capitalocene" (e.g. Moore 2016).Cross-cultural and historical studies published in this Section and elsewhere reveal glimpses of worlds not driven by the kind of expansionism that has recently impacted the earth's geology, oceans and atmosphere. Our appreciation of these low-impact lifeways is sometimes reproached as promoting a devolution to so-called "primitive" or "third world" conditions. Looking forward, however, awareness of many possible modes of existence—with myriad sources of richness and pleasure—widens horizons for building unprecedented futures. It does so by liberating us from the fiction that human behaviors currently instrumental to growth are biologically determined universals.However, there is something about human biology that is relevant to this conversation. Species interacting in the earth's ecosystems display an amazing array of characteristics evolved to meet their needs and to assure their descendants' survival: spotted salamanders use solar power, Atlantic wolf fish manufacture antifreeze, and African dung beetles navigate by the Milky Way; cacti grow spines to defend their juicy stems, while nettles puncture predators to inject poison into tiny wounds. Compared to other creatures, individual humans do not shine as particularly strong, quick or tough, not to mention spikey or poisonous.What is unique to Homo sapiens is a biophysical capacity for symbolic thought and communication that enables groups of humans to collaboratively develop systems of culture and power that survive the individual organism, and that shape the production of new generations of humans, their habits and their habitats. These uniquely human systems take the form of languages, religions, economies, sciences, kinship and gender systems, among others. Communities around the world are already managing and adapting these most fundamental common resources in ways that can support equitable and pleasurable degrowth. Other ArticlesAffAff IdeasSouth Africa HIV/Aids Aff mention – ................
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