AFF – Compulsory Voting - Home | The Debate Intensive
AFF – Compulsory Voting1AC – PlanPlan: The United States should make voting compulsory.1AC – Advantage 1Advantage 1 is pulsory voting reinvigorates voter turnout—it’s low now, which crushes democracy. Iovenko 20 – [(Chris, Los Angeles writer) "These Countries Make Voting Mandatory. Could It Work In The United States?," 6-1-2020, HuffPost, ] TDIDespite being members of the modern world’s oldest continuous democracy, Americans aren’t great at turning up to vote. The U.S. has among the lowest voter turnout of developed democratic nations. The reasons are complex and ingrained — from institutionalized voter suppression to individual apathy and distrust in the government. And now, with the 2020 presidential election only five months away, the coronavirus pandemic has added an extraordinary new hurdle on the path to participatory citizenship. While here in the U.S. we have come to see disengagement as a birthright and disenfranchisement a feature of the system, in a number of other countries, voting is more than a right: It’s required. Some experts believe that making voting mandatory — penalizing those who don’t, or rewarding those who do — could get more U.S. voters casting ballots. And that could bring our democracy closer to being truly representative.“Compulsory voting is the most effective way to boost voter turnout,” said Stanford political scientist Emilee Chapman. American voter turnout ranks 26th out of 32 highly developed democracies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which focuses on economic and trade relations between member nations. Voting is typically highest in presidential election years — in 2016, 61% of Americans voted — and dips lower in the midterms. The 2014 midterm elections saw the worst voter turnout in more than seven decades, with a national average of 36.3% turnout by eligible voters. Four years later, the 2018 midterms had the highest turnout in 40 years, yet only a bare majority — 53% — of eligible Americans voted. That jump was fueled in part by youth turnout, which increased dramatically from 20% in 2014 to 36% in 2018, a crucial development that allowed Democrats to take back control of the House of Representatives. The reasons for low voter turnout are socially complex as well as structural. The obstacles to registering and voting are much higher here than they are in other countries. For instance, America is one of the few democracies in the world that doesn’t put the federal government in charge of registering its citizens to vote, leaving it up to individuals to register and putting the burden of maintaining accurate voter rolls on local officials. Nearly one-third of eligible voters in the U.S. are not registered to vote. And even the eligible voters who are registered may still be kept from voting because of voting restrictions; 34 states have laws requiring or requesting voters present a government ID or other approved identification to vote. Voter ID laws often create barriers to voting for both minorities and the poor, since state-issued IDs can be relatively expensive and difficult to obtain. Other factors, like a scarcity of polling places, can make voting more difficult and time-consuming, a situation that disproportionately affects minority voters.Further, unlike other countries, U.S. elections are often administered by state or local elected partisan officials, who have been accused of putting their thumbs on the scales for their own or their party’s political benefit. In 2018, the eventual winner of the Georgia governor’s race, Republican Brian Kemp, was able to oversee and administer his own election as the secretary of state, prompting accusations of voter suppression.An Electoral College that put two losers of the popular vote into the Oval Office in the last five elections and Senate seat apportionment that gives all states equal representation, regardless of population, both contribute to a feeling in the U.S. that individual votes don’t really matter. And it all adds up to Americans’ general cynicism about voting and the sense on both sides of the political spectrum that the system is rigged. While not a panacea, compulsory voting in the United States could help break through the cynicism and apathy surrounding elections and disrupt the longstanding patterns of exclusion that so often dominate American politics. Twenty-two countries mandate that citizens vote, including five European nations and a high concentration of countries in Central and South America (though only half actively enforce their compulsory voting laws). Belgium, which leads the world in voter participation, first mandated voting in 1893 as a way to combat the practice of vote-buying (bribing voters to vote a certain way). Since then, voting has become a patriotic tradition in the country, and the act of going to the polling place is a communal activity that’s part of the social fabric.In the last four decades, voter turnout for federal elections in Belgium has been between 90% and 95%. In the United States during that same period, the voting rate was between 58 and 68%. There is good evidence that making voting mandatory gets more people to the polls. Chile had compulsory voting and then eliminated it in 2012. The next year voter turnout plummeted to 47%, compared to 87% in 2010. Australia, which has one of the highest turnout rates in the world, has compulsory voting. Experts say it also helps minimize political polarization since it requires candidates to appeal not just to their bases, but to the greater majority of voters. In Australia, that effect is bolstered by the addition of ranked voting, the practice of picking second and third choices for office.Proponents of compulsory voting argue that penalties for not voting further the public good by increasing voter turnout, especially in marginalized communities where people might not otherwise have a voice. It could help address the problem that voting in America skews older, whiter and wealthier, while young people, minorities and the poor vote at much lower rates. The form the penalties take matters. Belgium rarely enforces the 10 euro ($11) fines for first-time offenders who refuse to vote. Repeat holdouts, however, could potentially be hit with the punishment of being struck from the voter rolls and prohibited from voting for 10 years. Although this penalty may sound rather minor, not being on the voter rolls prohibits a citizen from being appointed to a job in the civil government or from being promoted if you already have a government job — a rather high price to pay for the roughly 1 in 6 Belgians who work for the government. In Brazil, citizens who refuse to vote are not only banned from public-sector work but can’t obtain a passport or receive a loan from a public bank. Unfortunately, studies have shown that Brazil’s approach can actually increase inequality, since denying passports and loans is more likely to incentivize middle- and upper-class citizens to vote rather than poorer ones.Chapman thinks compulsory voting could be “an important tool for combating political apathy” in the United States. Proponents of compulsory voting argue that requiring underrepresented groups to come out and vote would force politicians to take their concerns seriously, which in turn makes people feel empowered and gives them hope their voices will be heard. “If you want people to care about the political system, it surely helps to show that the political system cares about them and won’t make decisions without hearing from every citizen,” she said.Some 70% of nonvoters in the U.S. are under the age of 50, and roughly one-third are under 30 years old. Low voter turnout among younger people provides little incentive for politicians to support policies that benefit them, which in turn disincentivizes those voters even further. For example, according to polls, 80% of 18- to 29-year-olds feel that climate change is a “major threat” to human survival. However, the issue isn’t a top concern to more conservative high-turnout voters, so even minor action on climate change continues to face entrenched political opposition in Washington, year after year.Reversing low voter turnout restores the credibility of democracy. Moyo 19 – [(Dambisa, economist) "Make Voting Mandatory in the U.S.," 10-15-2019, ] TDIWhile turnouts are higher in United States presidential elections — 60 percent in 2016 — can we say that democracy is thriving when 40 to 50 percent of voters still opt to stay at home? The United States is generally near the bottom of the list of well-off countries in its rate of voter participation.Shortly after the 2014 elections, Senator Bernie Sanders admonished the country, saying “Americans should be embarrassed.” The low voter turnout, he wrote in The Guardian, “was an international disgrace.”Low voter turnout encourages politicians to design policies that cater to the interests of the few over the many. This, in turn, promotes societal division and harms the economy.In the United States, nearly half the people who don’t vote have family incomes below $30,000, and just 19 percent of likely voters come from low-income families. So it’s hardly surprising that the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index downgraded the United States from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2017, based on diminished voter engagement and confidence in the democratic process.This long-term apathy puts the political system at risk. The government’s credibility is threatened when so few people participate. In the interest of preserving democracy, we need engaged citizens to go to the polls.An effective way to address this problem — one that might not appeal to Americans who hate the idea of being told what to do — is mandatory voting, which is currently the law in more than 20 countries.In 1893 Belgium became the first democracy to institute compulsory voting by parliamentary act. Backers saw it as a way to empower the working classes. Australia introduced compulsory voting through an amendment to its Electoral Act in 1924, in response to declining voter numbers. Turnout in 1922 had fallen below 60 percent from more than 70 percent in 1919. The impact of legislation was swift: In 1925, 91 percent of the electorate voted. What’s more, a century later, compulsory voting still works.The bigger the voter pool, the stronger the contract is between citizens and leaders. In this year’s European parliamentary elections, mandatory voting in Belgium and Luxembourg led respectively to turnouts of about 90 percent and 86 percent. By comparison, turnout in France was 50 percent, and in the Netherlands it was 42 percent.If the United States had mandatory voting, there likely would be a greater turnout among lower-income groups and minorities, which could lead to a change in the types of politicians elected. One might think this would favor Democratic candidates, but that’s not necessarily the case. While compulsory voting has been assumed to help Australia’s Labor Party, for example, it has not prevented right-of-center parties from holding power.Otherwise, the status quo locks in disillusionment with elected officials. Silver 18 – [(Ryan, J.D. Candidate, 2018, Drexel University, Thomas R. Kline School of Law; B.S. Accountancy, The College of New Jersey) “FIXING UNITED STATES ELECTIONS: INCREASING VOTER TURNOUT AND ENSURING REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY,” Winter 2018, pg. 249-250] TDIDemocracy unquestionably relies on the continued participation of its members. When examining voter participation in U.S. elections,58 however, a brief look at voter participation in both presidential and congressional elections paints a startling picture. Between 1932 and 2010, the highest voter turnout59 was 62.8% in the 1960 presidential election.60 Even in the historic 2008 presidential election, voter turnout was only 58.23%.61 In congressional elections, the highest voter turnout between 1932 and 2010 was just 57.7% in 1964.62 The 2016 presidential election illustrates a similar trend. In the 2016 presidential election, the Democrats chose Hillary Clinton and the Republicans chose Donald Trump as their parties’ respective nominees. By most accounts, voters were largely disillusioned with both candidates; many voters even believed that either candidate would not make even a decent president.63 Perhaps the reason why so many voters felt uneasy with both candidates has to do with the fact that an overwhelming majority of voters did not choose them. In the party primaries, only 28.5% of estimated eligible voters actually voted.64 At the general election, voter turnout was 59.3%.65 It appears nearly impossible for the United States to have more than 60% of eligible voters participate in any given election. While presidential elections tend to fare slightly better, the fact that the highest voter turnout for representative (midterm) elections between 1932 and 2012 did not even reach 60% is alarming. Arguably, those elections are even more critical to the welfare of our society because Congress creates the laws and possesses the power to override a presidential veto.66 Some argue that approximately 60% voter turnout is not actually a problem, as it is still a majority of eligible voters. When comparing the United States to other democratic nations, it is clear that the United States’ voter participation is lacking.67Democracy solves war and cements US geopolitical advantage. Magsamen et. al 18 – [(Kelly, vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress; Max Bergmann and Michael Fuchs, senior fellows at the Center; Trevor Sutton, fellow at the Center)"Securing a Democratic World," Center for American Progress, 9-5-2018, ] TDIDonald Trump is hardly the only skeptic of a democratic values-based foreign policy. A range of policymakers and scholars of foreign policy, including some progressives, have argued that the United States should de-prioritize the promotion of democratic values in its foreign policy. Some make the argument that the United States needs to take a more hardheaded and transactional approach to advance its security and economic interests. However, this report argues that not only are these false choices but that the United States should see democratic values as a U.S. comparative advantage—and not a weakness—in global competition. America’s liberal democratic values have been key to building, enhancing, and sustaining America’s geopolitical power. With the global backsliding of democracy and the rise of alternative authoritarian models, it is ever more urgent to rediscover the power of core American values to secure U.S. interests in the long term.A democratic values-based foreign policy is worth pursuing for three key reasons.First, it will advance long-term U.S. economic and security interests abroad and create a safer and more prosperous world. Compared with authoritarian regimes, democracies are less likely to go to war against each other, less likely to ally against the United States, less likely to sponsor terrorism, less likely to experience famine or produce refugees, and more likely to adopt market economies and form economic partnerships with other democracies.35 Since liberal democracies tend to share values rooted in rule of law, fair competition, and transparency, they are natural partners in promoting the stable, prosperous, open, and peaceful international environment that the United States ought to cultivate through its foreign policy.It is true that the process of democratization can be long and uneven and can sometimes produce destabilizing and aggressive state behavior. However, mature and established democracies are more stable, peaceful, and prosperous, and more full-fledged democracies mean more economic and security benefits for the United States.36 Furthermore, the global system of democratic alliances, institutions, and norms the United States helped create and lead after World War II has improved material conditions and brought peace and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people across the world. Bolstering that democratic system and the democratic values that underpin it will ensure that future generations can also enjoy the fruits of democracy and a liberal world.Second, this kind of foreign policy will help secure an American advantage in great power competition by advancing a compelling alternative and strengthening the global democratic bulwark. Although the challenge posed by illiberal regimes today has evolved since the Cold War, there are still lessons to be drawn from that era. One of the most significant factors in the collapse of the Soviet Union was the powerful example and contrast set by flourishing democratic societies in the United States and Europe. Today, one of America’s greatest strategic assets is its global network of democratic allies and partners. The power of that democratic network, even underutilized as it is today, stands in stark contrast to what today’s illiberal and authoritarian regimes can offer: namely, political order purchased at the cost of extreme corruption, xenophobia, oligarchy, and arbitrary use of state power. To succeed, any approach to countering the authoritarian playbook must present a compelling alternative. This means that the United States, alongside its democratic allies and partners, must demonstrate that liberal democracy represents the best path to deliver inclusive prosperity, rule of law, and a just and equal society to a country’s citizens.Democratic backsliding causes China rise—reversing it in the United States is key. Patrick 20 – [(Stewart, James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations) "With the U.S. Backsliding, Who Will Defend Democracy in the World?," 3-9-2020, ] TDIAs Democratic voters in America enter a decisive stage in determining who should face Donald Trump in the November presidential election, Freedom House has issued an alarming report on the status of representative government worldwide. The annual report, titled “Freedom in the World 2020,” makes for sobering reading. For the 14th consecutive year, democracy lost ground to tyranny in 2019. Authoritarian regimes are emboldened. Long-established democracies are slipping. And attacks on religious minorities and other vulnerable populations are surging.The human yearning for freedom remains powerful, as evinced by recent protest movements in Hong Kong, Algiers, Khartoum and Tehran. Unfortunately, Freedom House notes, the global struggle for democracy is “leaderless.” The United States, the oldest and most influential democracy, is no longer liberty’s clear champion. India, the largest democracy, has taken a dangerous nativist turn that threatens the foundations of its secular and pluralist society. China has happily filled this vacuum, using new repressive technologies to crush dissent at home and undermine freedom abroad.Each year, Freedom House assigns 195 nations and territories to one of three categories: free, partly free and not free. The percentage of free countries, 42.6 percent, still exceeds those deemed partly free or not free—32.3 percent and 25.1, respectively. But the trend is not moving in freedom’s direction. During 2019, political rights and civil liberties deteriorated in 64 countries, while just 37 countries saw improvements. All regions of the globe experienced setbacks, most dramatically in Africa, where Benin, formerly a good performer on Freedom House’s scale, showed the world’s sharpest decline. The situation is not hopeless. Even in Africa, for instance, Sudan, Madagascar and Ethiopia registered important gains. But it is ominous.Although local factors obviously shape the fortunes of democracy in any given country, the international context can also be critical. Freedom House attributes the global trend toward tyranny to two main causes: “the unchecked brutality of autocratic regimes and the ethical decay of democratic powers.” The former phenomenon is longstanding, the latter more recent. During 2019, fully 25 out of the world’s 41 established democracies saw their democracy scores decline. This erosion of civil liberties has inevitably weakened solidarity among members of the erstwhile “Free World.”Freedom House calls out two established democracies for their egregious behavior. The first is India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is playing with Hindu nationalist fire, at the expense of his country’s 200 million Muslims. His government’s divisive steps include passing a new citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims, depriving citizenship rights to 2 million inhabitants of the northeastern state of Assam, and unleashing a brutal crackdown in Jammu and Kashmir, including revoking that Muslim-majority region’s semi-autonomous status. These actions earned India the largest year-over-year decline among established democracies this year. They also call into question the two-decade U.S. effort to cultivate India as a strategic partner, capable of serving as a democratic regional counterweight to China. While India remains “free,” the lights are blinking amber, if not red.The second democracy of concern is the United States itself, which has become “an unsteady beacon of freedom.” Freedom House criticizes the Trump administration for selective democracy promotion efforts that hammer adversaries like Iran and Venezuela while ignoring pervasive human rights violations by security partners like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Even more worrisome is U.S. backsliding at home. Over the past year, Freedom House claims, Trump and senior U.S. officials have undermined “electoral integrity, judicial independence, and safeguards against corruption,” while violating democratic norms through “fierce rhetorical attacks on the press, the rule of law, and other pillars of democracy.” In Freedom House’s rankings, the United States has slipped well below traditional peers like Denmark and Switzerland, and even below Greece and Slovakia. America’s moral authority to promote democracy globally has suffered accordingly.All this democratic dissonance is music to Beijing’s ears. China is taking advantage of democratic disarray to crack down on liberties at home and export its authoritarian model. According to Freedom House, “One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response … was the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign of cultural annihilation” against the Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, in Xinjiang province. Xi Jinping’s regime is now applying technical innovations it pioneered in that province, which the report describes as a “dystopian open-air prison,” to repress the entire nation, for instance by requiring telecommunications companies to perform facial scans of subscribers, as well as preparing for mass collection of its citizens’ DNA. Abroad, the regime’s impunity emboldens its “relentless campaign to replace international norms with its own authoritarian vision.” Russia may have garnered more global attention, but China is ramping up its own disinformation and electoral interference efforts, as recent revelations in Australia and New Zealand attest.To turn the authoritarian tide, Freedom House says, existing democracies need to take action both domestically and globally. At home, they must rededicate themselves to fundamental principles, invest in civic education, combat misinformation on social media, prevent foreign interference in their elections, fight corruption and money laundering, and restrict the export of surveillance tools to repressive regimes. They also need to play offense, by bolstering foreign assistance to democracy activists abroad, intervening diplomatically and economically to support fragile democratic openings and transitions, and “investing in alliances with other democracies, and in multilateral institutions.”This final recommendation merits emphasis. American democracy promotion efforts have historically been unilateral or bilateral, rather than part of a united front with like-minded Western nations. The Trump administration’s sovereigntist instincts have accentuated this tendency, and Freedom House says that’s a mistake. “Assumptions that a country’s individual sovereignty is threatened by deep cooperation with allies will only isolate democracies from one another, leaving them weaker and less capable of meeting the challenges of resurgent authoritarianism.”“The single biggest thing that could change the trajectory” of democracy globally, said the report’s lead author, Sarah Repucci, in a pre-release press briefing, “would be for the United States to rededicate itself to strengthening democracy at home and promoting it in the world.” Since that is unlikely to unfold under the current occupant of the White House, the outcome of the November election looms with even greater importance.China rise causes extinction.Choi 18— [(Ji Young, associate professor in the Department of Politics and Government and affiliated professor in the International Studies Program and East Asian Studies Program at Ohio Wesleyan University) “Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on the Rise of China: Long Cycles, Power Transitions, and China's Ascent,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 42, Issue 1, January-March 2018, pages 61-84, Available through ProQuest]I have explored in light of historical and theoretical perspectives whether China is a candidate to become a global hegemonic power. The next question I will address is whether the ascent of China will lead to a hegemonic war or not. As mentioned previously, historical and theoretical lessons reveal that a rising great power tends to challenge a system leader when the former's economic and other major capabilities come too close to those of the latter and the former is dissatisfied with the latter's leadership and the international rules it created. This means that the rise of China could produce intense hegemonic competition and even a global hegemonic war. The preventive motivation by an old declining power can cause a major war with a newly emerging power when it is combined with other variables (Levy 1987). While a preventive war by a system leader is historically rare, a newly emerging yet even relatively weak rising power at times challenges a much more powerful system leader, as in the case of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 (Schweller 1999). A historical lesson is that "incomplete catch-ups are inherently conflict-prone" (Thompson 2006, 19). This implies that even though it falls short of surpassing the system leader, the rise of a new great power can produce significant instability in the interstate system when it develops into a revisionist power. Moreover, the United States and China are deeply involved in major security issues in East Asia (including the North Korean nuclear crisis, the Taiwan issue, and the South China Sea disputes), and we cannot rule out the possibility that one of these regional conflicts will develop into a much bigger global war in which the two superpowers are entangled. According to Allison (2017), who studied sixteen historical cases in which a rising power confronted an existing power, a war between the United States and China is not unavoidable, but escaping it will require enormous efforts by both sides. Some Chinese scholars (Jia 2009; Wang and Zhu 2015), who emphasize the transformation of China's domestic politics and the pragmatism of Beijing's diplomacy, have a more or less optimistic view of the future of US-China relations. Yet my reading of the situation is that since 2009 there has been an increasing gap between this optimistic view and what has really happened. It is premature to conclude that China is a revisionist state, but in what follows I will suggest some important signs that show China has revisionist aims at least in the Asia Pacific and could develop into a revisionist power in the future.Beijing has concentrated on economic modernization since the start of pro-market reforms in the late 1970s and made efforts to keep a low profile in international security issues for several decades. It followed Deng Xiaoping's doctrine: "hide one's capabilities, bide one's time, and seek the right opportunity." Since 2003, China's motto has been "Peaceful Rise" or "Peaceful Development," and Chinese leadership has emphasized that the rise of China would not threaten any other countries. Recently, however, Beijing has adopted increasingly assertive or even aggressive foreign policies in international security affairs. In particular, China has been adamant about territorial issues in the East and South China Seas and is increasingly considered as a severe threat by other nations in the Asia Pacific region. Since 2009, for example, Beijing has increased naval activities on a large scale in the area of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. In 2010, Beijing announced that just like Tibet and Taiwan, the South China Sea is considered a core national interest. We can identify drastic rhetorical changes as well. In 2010, China's foreign minister publicly stated, "China is a big country . . . and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact" (Economist 2012). In October 2013, Chinese leader Xi Jinping also used the words "struggle and achieve results," emphasizing the importance of China's territorial integrity (Waldron 2014, 166-167). Furthermore, China has constructed man-made islands in the South China Sea to seek "de facto control over the resource-rich waters and islets" claimed as well by its neighboring countries (Los Angeles Times 2015). As of now, China's strategy is to delay a direct military conflict with the United States as long as possible and use its economic and political prowess to pressure smaller neighbors to give up their territorial claims (Doran 2012). These new developments and rhetorical signals reflect significant changes in China's foreign policies and signify that China's peaceful rise seems to be over.A rising great power's consistent and determined policies to increase military buildups can be read as one of the significant signs of the rising power's dissatisfaction with the existing order and its willingness to do battle if it is really necessary. In the words of Rapkin and Thompson (2003, 318), "arms buildups and arms races . . . reflect substantial dissatisfaction on the part of the challenger and an attempt to accelerate the pace of military catchup and the development of a relative power advantage." Werner and Kugler (1996) also posit that if an emerging challenger's military expenditures are increasing faster than those of a system leader, parity can be very dangerous to the international political order. China's GDP is currently around 60 percent of that of the United States, so parity has not been reached yet. China's military budget, however, has grown enormously for the past two decades (double-digit growth nearly every year), which is creating concerns among neighboring nations and a system leader, the United States. In addition to its air force, China's strengthening navy or sea power has been one of the main goals in its military modernization program. Beijing has invested large financial resources in constructing new naval vessels, submarines, and aircraft carriers (Economist 2012). Furthermore, in its new defense white paper in 2015, Beijing made clear a vision to expand the global role for its military, particularly its naval force, to protect its overseas economic and strategic interests (Tiezzi 2015).Sea power has special importance for an emerging great power. As Mahan (1987 [1890]) explained cogently in one of his classic books on naval strategy, Great Britain was able to emerge as a new hegemonic power because of the superiority of its naval capacity and technology and its effective control of main international sealanes. Naval power has a special significance for China, a newly emerging power, as well as for both economic and strategic reasons. First, its economy's rapid growth requires external expansion to ensure raw materials and the foreign markets to sell its products. Therefore, naval power becomes crucial in protecting its overseas business interests and activities. Second, securing major sea-lanes becomes increasingly important as they will be crucial lifelines for the supply of energy, raw materials, and other essential goods should China become involved in a hegemonic war or any other major military conflict (Friedberg 2011). In light of this, it is understandable why China is so stubborn over territorial issues in the South China and East China Seas. In fact, history tells us that many rising powers invested in sea power to expand their global influence, and indeed all the global hegemons including Great Britain and the United States were predominant naval powers.Another important aspect is that Beijing is beginning to voice its dissatisfaction with the existing international economic order and take actions that could potentially change this order. The Chinese economy has overall benefited from the post-World War II international liberal order, but the Bretton Woods institutions like the IMF and the World Bank have been dominated by the United States and its allies and China does not have much power or voice in these institutions. Both institutions are based in Washington, DC, and the United States has enjoyed the largest voting shares with its veto power. Along with other emerging economies, China has called for significant reforms, especially in the governing system of the IMF, but reform plans to give more power to China and other emerging economies have been delayed by the opposition of the US Congress (Choi 2013). In response to this, Beijing recently took the initiative to create new international financial institutions including the AIIB. At this moment, it is premature to say that these new institutions would be able to replace the Bretton Woods institutions. Nonetheless, this new development can be read as a starting point for significant changes in global economic and financial governance that has been dominated by the United States since the end of World War II (Subacchi 2015).China's historical legacies reinforce the view that China has a willingness to become a global hegemon. From the Ming dynasty in the late fourteenth century to the start of the first Opium War in 1839, China enjoyed its undisputed hegemonic position in East Asia. "Sino-centrism" that is related to this historical reality has long governed the mentality of Chinese people. According to this hierarchical world view, China, as the most advanced civilization, is at the center of East Asia and the world, and all China's neighbors are vassal states (Kang 2010). This mentality was openly revealed by the Chinese foreign minister's recent public statement that I quoted previously: "China is a big country . . . and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact" (Economist 2012). This view is related to Chinese people's ancient superiority complex that developed from the long history and rich cultural heritage of Chinese civilization (Jacques 2012). In a sense, China has always been a superpower regardless of its economic standing at least in most Chinese people's mind-set. The strong national or civilizational pride of Chinese people, however, was severely damaged by "the Century of Humiliation," a period between the first Opium War (1839) and the end of the Chinese Civil War (1949). During this period, China was encroached on by the West and invaded by Japan, experienced prolonged civil conflicts, and finally became a semicolony of Great Britain while its northern territory was occupied by Japan. China's economic modernization is viewed as a national project to lay an economic foundation to overcome this bitter experience of subjugation and shame and recover its traditional position and old glory (Choi 2015). Viewed from this perspective, economic modernization or the accumulation of wealth is not an ultimate objective of China. Rather, its final goal is to return to its traditional status by expanding its global political and military as well as economic influence. What it ultimately desires is recognition (Anerkennung), respect (Respekt), and status (Stellung). These are important concepts for constructivists who see ideational motives as the main driving forces behind interstate conflicts (Lebow 2008). This reveals that constructivist elements can be combined with long cycle and power transition theories in explaining the rise and fall of great powers, although further systematic studies on it are needed.Considering all this, China has always been a territorial power rather than a trading state. China does not seem to be satisfied only with the global expansion of international trade and the conquest of foreign markets. It also wants to broaden its (particularly maritime) territories and spheres of influence to recover its traditional political status as the Middle Kingdom. As emphasized previously, the type or nature and goals or ideologies of a rising power matter. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (territorial powers) experienced rapid economic expansion and sought to expand their territories and influence in the first half of the twentieth century. For example, during this period Japan's goal was to create the Japanese empire in East Asia under the motto of the East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. On the other hand, democratized Germany and Japan (trading powers) that enjoyed a second economic expansion did not pursue the expansion of their territories and spheres of influence in the post-World War II era. Twentiethcentury history suggests that political regimes predicated upon nondemocratic or nonliberal values and cultures (for instance, Nazism in Germany and militarism in Japan before the mid-twentieth century, and communism in the Soviet Union during the Cold War) can pose significant challenges to democratic and liberal regimes. The empirical studies of Lemke and Reed (1996) show that the democratic peace thesis can be used as a subset of power transition theory. According to their studies, states organized similarly to the dominant powers politically and economically (liberal democracy) are generally satisfied with the existing international rules and order and they tend to be status quo states. Another historical lesson is that economic interdependence alone cannot prevent a war for hegemony. Germany was one of the main trade partners of Great Britain before World War I (Friedberg 2011), and Japan was the number three importer of American products before its attack on Pearl Harbor (Keylor 2011). A relatively peaceful relationship or transition is possible when economic interdependence is supported by a solid democratic alliance between a rising great power and an existing or declining one.Some scholars such as Ikenberry (2008) emphasize nuclear deterrence and the high costs of a nuclear war. Power transition theorists agree that the high costs of a nuclear war can constrain a war among great powers but do not view them as "a perfect deterrent" to war (Kugler and Zagare 1990; Tammen et al. 2000). The idea of nuclear deterrence is based upon the assumption of the rationality of actors (states): as long as the costs of a (nuclear) war are higher than its benefits, an actor (state) will not initiate the war. However, even some rationalists admit that certain actors (such as exceedingly ambitious risk-taking states) do not behave rationally and engage in unexpected military actions or pursue military overexpansion beyond its capacity (Glaser 2010). The state's behaviors are driven by its values, perceptions, and political ambitions as well as its rational calculations of costs and benefits. Especially, national pride, historical memories, and territorial disputes can make states behave emotionally. The possibility of a war between a democratic nation and a nondemocratic regime increases because they do not share the same values and beliefs and, therefore, the level of mistrust between them tends to be very high. China and the United States have enhanced their cooperation to address various global issues like global warming, international terrorism, energy issues, and global economic stability. But these issues are not strong enough to bring them together to overcome their mistrust that stems from their different values, beliefs, and perceptions (Friedberg 2011). What is more important is whether they can set mutually agreeable international rules on traditional security issues including territorial disputes.1AC – Advantage 2Advantage 2 is 45.Trump will win—their polls are far-out, which systematically undervalue Republican candidates. Blake 20 – ([(Aaron, Washington Post) “4 things that could swing the 2020 race toward Trump," 7-19-2020, Boston, ] TDIThat said, a lot can happen in 3 1/2 months. We got a taste for that Friday when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced a cancer recurrence, while saying her treatment was going well.The prospect of a Supreme Court vacancy — whether imminent or even perceived as likely — is the kind of thing that could logically shake up the race. But it’s not the only thing that could do so.Below, we look at a few things that could do so in significant ways.1. An imminent Supreme Court vacancyWhile political analysts have spent the better part of the last three-plus years theorizing about how Trump pulled off his surprise 2016 win, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of the Supreme Court.Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, and Senate Republicans made the unprecedented decision to block the confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace him, Merrick Garland. Polls showed Americans disagreed with that gambit.But polls also showed that the vacancy likely accrued to Trump’s benefit. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has written, voters who emphasized the next Supreme Court pick tilted toward Trump, with 26 percent of Trump voters saying Supreme Court nominees were the most important factor in their vote. That compared with 18 percent of Hillary Clinton voters. GOP strategists have credited Trump with releasing a list of possible Supreme Court nominees ahead of the election, which perhaps whetted the appetite of some conservative-leaning voters who harbored reservations about him.Such could plausibly be the impact in 2020. Voters who generally side with the GOP could be reminded of what’s at stake in arguably the most influential branch of government. They’ve already got a 5-to-4 conservative majority on the court, thanks to the second of Trump’s picks, Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced the previous swing vote, Anthony Kennedy. But some recent decisions reinforce even how tenuous that edge can be.At the same time, some Republicans wagered that Kavanaugh’s treatment in his confirmation hearings might be their silver bullet in the 2018 midterms, and that didn’t totally pan out. What’s more, given the most likely vacancies are on the liberal side of the court, perhaps middle-of-the-road voters will reason that having a Democrat like Biden appoint a replacement would be preferable – or may otherwise simply want the court to remain relatively balanced.The upside for Trump here would seem to be the rallying of his base behind a common and very important cause. Whether Ginsburg or anyone else appears to be on the way out, expect him to again play up the importance of a GOP president appointing the next justice.2. The likely voter switchPolls this far from an election generally focus on registered voters, given it’s difficult to gauge who might actually turn out. But as the election approaches, pollsters will shift their models to emphasize likely voters – i.e. those who are not just registered but actually primed to vote.There’s some reason to believe that could benefit Trump.A Monmouth University poll of Pennsylvania this week, for instance, offered three matchups. In the head-to-head among registered voters, Biden led Trump by 13 points. In a model adjusting for high turnout, Biden’s lead dropped to 10. And in a model adjusting for low turnout, Biden’s lead shrunk to seven points.It’s generally assumed that likely-voter screens help Republicans, because their voters are slightly more likely to turn out. There is also more enthusiasm for Trump among his voters than for Biden among his – though that seems to be counterbalanced by Biden voters being enthusiastic not about their candidate, but about voting Trump out.That said, there was little evidence Trump benefited from likely-voter polls in 2016. Some election post-mortems suggested likely-voter screens in some key states actually made Clinton’s lead look slightly bigger than it was.3. Biden’s flubsOne thing that has followed Biden for just about as long as he’s been in politics is his tendency to commit gaffes. The former vice president often says, “No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is, I sometimes say all that I mean.”Biden has mostly avoided one of these kinds of moments in the general election, with the exception of his comment that black people who were considering voting for Trump “ain’t black.” They also cropped up a number of times in the primaries, including when he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” and immediately tried to correct himself, saying “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids.”Biden has kept a low-profile of late — in large part because the coronavirus pandemic makes traditional campaigning difficult. But he also hasn’t done national media interviews or given many news conferences. The Trump campaign and its allies have tried to smoke him out by accusing him of hiding in his basement. Thus far, it’s been clear that letting Trump be the focal point, however deliberate, seems to be a strategy that is working for Biden.But it won’t always be. There will ostensibly be debates. The pandemic might (hopefully) wane, allowing for more traditional and less-scripted campaign moments.There’s an argument to be made that gaffes matter less and less in an election in which both candidates have such tendencies. But each of the last two campaigns have seen such memorable flubs by the loser — Mitt Romney and his 47% comment and Clinton and her deplorables comment, which she has said was a “gift” to Trump.Perhaps the real danger for Biden, though, is that an accumulation of them could undercut the idea that he’s a steadier leader in the face of crises and other big challenges.The risk we are right outweighs the risk we are wrong—if you are uncertain about the uniqueness debate, presume aff because there’s always a chance he wins. Nicholas 20 – [(Peter, staff writer at The Atlantic) “Don’t Count Trump Out,” 7-27-2020, ] TDI1. The economy could come back just enough.Reckless though it was to reopen businesses while the virus raged, states that lifted stay-at-home restrictions gave the economy an unmistakable jolt. A record-setting total of 7.5 million jobs were added in May and June. The numbers might well cool off in the coming months, but Trump can spin what might turn out to be fleeting gains as a full-fledged recovery.“This looks like a very rapid rebound,” Gregory Daco, the chief economist at the consulting firm Oxford Economics, told me, referring to recent job numbers. “But we have to keep in mind that we’re still deep in the hole. We’ve only recouped about one-third of the jobs lost, and the second portion of the recovery phase is likely to be much slower.” To illustrate the point, Daco cited clothing sales, which dropped 90 percent from February to April. Since then, sales have nearly doubled, which may sound like reason to celebrate. But they’re still 70 percent below the peak, Daco told me.For Trump’s purposes, the broader context wouldn’t matter. He’d point to the progress and ignore the rest. And some may be inclined to believe him. Even as voters sour on Trump for other reasons, 50 percent still like the way he handles the economy, a new ABC News-Washington Post survey shows.“The president needs a glimmer of hope in the fall, and that will be enough on the economy,” a former senior White House official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly about Trump’s reelection.2. Polling could be wrong (again).Four years ago, the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton came down to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Trump narrowly won all three. This time around, Biden is leading in each of the same three states by anywhere from 6 to 8 points, the RealClearPolitics average of polls shows.If that sounds familiar, it may be because state surveys also showed Clinton topping Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania ahead of the election. In Pennsylvania alone, seven different state polls taken in the first two weeks of October 2016 showed Clinton beating Trump by no fewer than 4 percentage points and by as many as 9. She wound up losing the state by about a point.Postmortem analyses of state polling turned up serious flaws. In some instances, surveys failed to correct for the overrepresentation of college-educated voters who participate more in polls and tended to favor Clinton. Or they didn’t capture a trend in which most voters who made up their minds late voted for Trump.Franklin, the Marquette Law School poll director, told me that his survey now shows Biden leading the president by 8 points in Wisconsin. But how much weight do such polls deserve, given the debacle in 2016? At the end of that race, Clinton led Trump by an average of more than 6 points in Wisconsin and then lost by nearly a point.“So, that’s a large error,” Franklin said. “Was that a humbling experience?” I asked. “Yes! Absolutely. How could it not be?”It’s not clear that state polling this time around is any better. “You certainly see state polls appearing today that clearly are not reflecting the educational distribution in the states they’re polling,” said Franklin, who took part in a postelection polling study conducted by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. “That’s a bit of a puzzlement.”Kellyanne Conway, a former pollster and a current counselor to the president who served as Trump’s campaign manager in the 2016 race, argues that nothing has been fixed. “The same problems surround the polls this time because many of the people running the polls then are running the polls now. There’s been no course correction whatsoever,” Conway told me. “If polling were run like a business, the C-suite would have been cleaned out, the shareholders would have revolted, the customers would have walked away.”3. Trump can campaign all day long.If they choose, presidents can exploit the office for reelection purposes with brutal efficiency. They can push policies that matter most to prized constituencies, and fly to swing states for campaign stops masquerading as official visits. Trump can no longer hold rallies whenever and wherever he wants, but even during a pandemic, he can capitalize on his surroundings in ways that a challenger can’t.“Most presidents want to be reelected, and so they take full advantage of all those benefits of incumbency,” Barbara Perry, the presidential-studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told me.A president’s sheer ubiquity is enough to reinforce his grip on the office. “For all of his foolishness and craziness, Trump is there. He’s there 24/7. That’s a huge advantage,” Aaron David Miller, the author of a book on the presidency called The End of Greatness, told me.Amid signs that he’s losing ground with seniors, Trump appeared in the Rose Garden in the spring to announce a plan that caps the amount of money they pay for insulin. Two minutes into his speech, he began belittling his opponent: “Sleepy Joe can’t do this, that I can tell you.” Toward the end, the White House aired a video showing a 68-year-old man with diabetes thanking Trump for cutting his expenses.Last week, Trump showed up in the Rose Garden again, ostensibly to talk about Hong Kong, but instead spent most of a free-associative hour lampooning Biden. A “Rose Garden” strategy used to mean that a sitting president would plant himself in the White House and devote himself to governing. Trump is more literal: He’s turned this historic outdoor space into a campaign stage.This week, Trump resurrected the daily coronavirus task-force briefings that he’d dropped a couple of months ago. They give him a captive national TV audience at a moment when he can’t easily hold his beloved rallies.A former White House official told me that some aides were “dead set against” the briefings in the spring. “We were stunned that he was out there doing it,” this person told me. “We lost that battle. There were a group of us in the West Wing who said, ‘He needs to be the commander in chief. He doesn’t need to be the head of the coronavirus task force.’” But to Trump, the briefings are irresistible. “Suggesting the president go on TV is like pushing against an open door,” the former official said.4. Biden’s got his own problems.Biden has suffered personal loss, which has made him a comforting figure to grieving Americans who have lost jobs and loved ones in the pandemic. Yet he still symbolizes a brand of establishment centrism that leaves some younger voters and some in the party’s activist wing uninspired.“We have to be true to ourselves and acknowledge that Biden is a mediocre, milquetoast, neoliberal centrist that we’ve been fighting against in the Democratic establishment,” Cornel West, the Harvard University professor and a Bernie Sanders supporter, told me.If Sanders’s primary voters stay home on Election Day out of pique, that could damage Biden’s chances, especially in must-win swing states.Nina Turner, a co-chair of the Sanders campaign, told me she has no appetite for the choice she faces: “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.”Expect Trump to aggravate a dispute that advances his own interests. As I’ve written, he spent months wooing Sanders voters during the primary, trying to convince them that the senator was the victim of a Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from getting the party’s nomination.5. Biden voters might not get to vote.If the state elections held in recent months are any sort of dry run, November could be a disaster. The number of polling places was slashed in the face of COVID-19, forcing voters to wait hours in line. More than 80 voting locations were shut down or consolidated in the Atlanta metro area last month, while places in Milwaukee were cut from 180 to 5.That amounts to voter suppression. A replay in November might dampen the Biden vote in the Democrats’ urban strongholds within red, blue, and purple states alike. Millions of potential Biden voters would face a bleak choice: Stay home, or go to the polls and risk catching a potentially fatal disease.An obvious work-around is mail-in voting. But Trump has used his megaphone to make the spurious claim that expanded mail-in voting is a plot to defeat Republicans, which sends a clear message to state GOP leaders and election officials that he’s not in favor of greater access. And the mail-in process is already difficult for voters in some states, as my colleague Adam Harris recently wrote.6. What if there’s an October surprise?Ever the showman, Trump could try to shake up the race with a late announcement of dramatic progress in fighting COVID-19. News of a “breakthrough” would get ample attention, and whether he’s right or wrong might not get sorted out until long after the votes are counted. By that time, it wouldn’t matter; Trump could lock in a chunk of voters grateful for any news of an antidote.“He’ll probably announce a vaccine in October,” Charlie Black, the longtime Republican strategist, told me with a pulsory voting boosts the amount of young and minority voters.Weller 16 – [(Chris, senior innovation reporter) "Half of Americans probably won't vote — but requiring them to would change that," 11-7-2016, Business Insider, ] TDIBut there is a simple change the US could make to boost turnout dramatically, something that has worked in at least 26 other democracies.The government could make Americans vote.President Barack Obama has endorsed the idea, and yet it has never taken hold in the US, for a variety of reasons. But many experts think it's a good idea.The two countries leading in voter turnout are Belgium and Turkey, according to Pew Research data. In their most recent elections, those countries saw turnouts of 87% and 84%. The 2012 US presidential election saw just 55% of people rocking the vote.Political scientists worry about this because older and wealthier Americans vote more often than anyone else. This means leaders' policies are more likely to favor their interests over other groups'. It's called "class bias."Compulsory voting is a fairly old solution. Belgium first enacted its law in 1892, and Argentina in 1914, both as ways to keep the general population invested politically.It doesn't take much to get results. In Australia, where voting has been mandatory since 1924, the fine for not voting once is $20. After that, each fine is $50. Those who never pay up could lose their driver's license. In Belgium, after racking up penalties, chronic vote-avoiders risk losing the ability to vote for 10 years.In the US, compulsory voting has started to enter the mainstream conversation. In May of last year, Obama publicly endorsed compulsory voting for the first time, telling a crowd in Cleveland that "it would be transformative if everybody voted" specifically because of the class-bias effect."The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups," Obama said. "There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls."A handful of studies suggest Obama may be right.One 2013 study found Australia's turnout rate was like that of a lot of advanced democracies before it switched, in 1924, at which point the law encouraged working-class people — many of whom were otherwise disengaged from the political process — to learn about politics out of necessity.That phenomenon has been validated in follow-up experiments using smaller-scale incentives: People tend to take an interest in things when there's something specific in it for them. Some have even suggested paying people to vote, rather than fining the apathetic."When Australia passed compulsory voting, the Labor Party did better and you saw more progressive policies in line with what the working class was advocating for," Anthony Fowler, the study's author and a public-policy researcher at the University of Chicago, told Business Insider. "Compulsory voting would have large political consequences that would benefit the poor and working class."Other researchers have challenged the idea that voters start to lean left when voting is mandatory. Jason Brennan, a Georgetown University professor who is a coauthor of "Compulsory Voting: For and Against," said Australia may be an anomaly."The people who vote and the people who don't vote are roughly the same in terms of their partisan preferences," Brennan said in a recent interview with the politics magazine Governing.Doug Chapin, an election expert at the University of Minnesota, disagreed. He said candidates would have an incentive to campaign to everyone, not just the wealthier, older people who disproportionately vote today.Young and minority voters will flip the election to Biden—they prefer liberal stances on popular issues.Struck 20 – [(Kathleen, Digital Managing Editor and Education Editor of Voice of America's Student Union) "Plenty of Signs Surging Youth Vote Will Play Major Role in 2020 US Election," Voice of America, 6-22-2020, ] TDIYet there are plenty of signs that young Americans could play a major role in the 2020 election, helping to determine the outcome of the race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, as well as political control of Congress, and beyond. Their record turnout in the 2018 midterm elections, signs of political activism, and a handful of issues being used as a rallying cry, including soaring college debt, health care and climate change, stand as evidence. “Young people can decide elections, and their participation is central to our politics. Expanding the electorate and addressing inequities in youth voting is a crucial task for strengthening democracy,” according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) based at Tufts University in Massachusetts. While younger generations mimic their elders when they were young — by not engaging at the voting booth — the 2018 midterms saw an upsurge in participation. Election involvement Millennial voting nearly doubled between 2014 and 2018 — from 22% to 42% — according to demographer Richard Fry at the Pew Research Center in Washington. Thirty percent of Gen Zers eligible to vote turned out in the first midterm elections of their lives. And for the first time in a midterm election, more than half of Gen Xers reported they had voted, Pew reported. “This 2020 election cycle is particularly interesting because, for the first time in almost over 25 years, we’re moving from a midterm election where young people’s participation dramatically increased,” Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s director of impact, said.“Now there are 47 million 18- to 29-year-olds who are eligible to vote in the 2020 election, and 15 million of them have turned 18 since the last presidential election,” Kiesa said. While young people — millennials born 1985-1995, GenZers born in 1996 onward — are casually viewed as a homogeneous group of like-minded thinkers, research shows otherwise. In the 2018 midterm elections, two-thirds of all young voters age 18-29 supported the Democratic candidate for Congress. That’s the widest party gap in the past 25 years, CIRCLE said. And the 2020 election will happen amid a huge demographic shift, said Jesse Barba, senior director of external affairs at Young Invincibles, a youth voting and political advocacy group “to expand economic opportunity for our generation.” The U.S. population is poised to move from majority white to majority minority, or mostly non-white voters, by 2045, according to Brookings Institution. “This would be the first time in history where nonwhite people make up the largest electorate,” Barba said. “I think for so long people have been talked down to rather than included and talked with, so … any candidate who wanted to motivate and mobilize young people should have tried to speak about four or five key things.” And they despise Trump’s handling of coronavirus. McLaughlin 20 – [(Seth, reporter on the Politics Desk) “‘Free fall’: Trump loses voters over handling of the coronavirus crisis,” 7-16-2020, ] TDIPresident Trump’s hopes of eating into the Obama coalition have faded in recent weeks as his handling of the coronavirus has left a sour taste in the mouths of minorities, young voters and college graduates.Democratic candidate Joseph R. Biden’s lead among voters younger than 35 has more than tripled since April, from 12 percentage points to 42 points. Among white college-educated voters, he has gone from 9 points to 33 points over Mr. Trump, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.Earlier this year, Mr. Trump was eating into those demographics and also into the share of the minority vote. Some polls suggested that the strong economy could power him to nearly 40% support among Hispanic voters.All of that has changed as the COVID-19 pandemic keeps an icy grip on the country.Glenn Bolger, a Republican Party pollster, said voters used to be split between those who saw the coronavirus as more of a health care problem and those who saw it as an economic problem. No longer.“Now more people say it is a health care problem, and those people are overwhelmingly voting for Biden,” Mr. Bolger said.A CBS News poll released over the weekend showed Mr. Biden winning 72% of the voters in Arizona, 68% of the voters in Texas and 67% of voters in Florida who are “very concerned” about the coronavirus. All three states have become COVID-19 hot spots.Trump 2020 causes extinction. Starr 19 – [(Paul, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction) “Trump’s Second Term,” May 2019, ] TDIThis is one of those moments. After four years as president, Trump will have made at least two Supreme Court appointments, signed into law tax cuts, and rolled back federal regulation of the environment and the economy. Whatever you think of these actions, many of them can probably be offset or entirely undone in the future. The effects of a full eight years of Trump will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to undo.Three areas—climate change, the risk of a renewed global arms race, and control of the Supreme Court—illustrate the historic significance of the 2020 election. The first two problems will become much harder to address as time goes on. The third one stands to remake our constitutional democracy and undermine the capacity for future change.In short, the biggest difference between electing Trump in 2016 and reelecting Trump in 2020 would be irreversibility. Climate policy is now the most obvious example. For a long time, even many of the people who acknowledged the reality of climate change thought of it as a slow process that did not demand immediate action. But today, amid extreme weather events and worsening scientific forecasts, the costs of our delay are clearly mounting, as are the associated dangers. To have a chance at keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius—the objective of the Paris climate agreement—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that by 2030, CO2 emissions must drop some 45 percent from 2010 levels. Instead of declining, however, they are rising.In his first term, Trump has announced plans to cancel existing climate reforms, such as higher fuel-efficiency standards and limits on emissions from new coal-fired power plants, and he has pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. His reelection would put off a national commitment to decarbonization until at least the second half of the 2020s, while encouraging other countries to do nothing as well. And change that is delayed becomes more economically and politically difficult. According to the Global Carbon Project, if decarbonization had begun globally in 2000, an emissions reduction of about 2 percent a year would have been sufficient to stay below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Now it will need to be approximately 5 percent a year. If we wait another decade, it will be about 9 percent. In the United States, the economic disruption and popular resistance sure to arise from such an abrupt transition may be more than our political system can bear. No one knows, moreover, when the world might hit irreversible tipping points such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would likely doom us to a catastrophic sea-level rise.The 2020 election will also determine whether the U.S. continues on a course that all but guarantees another kind of runaway global change—a stepped-up arms race, and with it a heightened risk of nuclear accidents and nuclear war. Trump’s “America first” doctrine, attacks on America’s alliances, and unilateral withdrawal from arms-control treaties have made the world far more dangerous. After pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement (in so doing, badly damaging America’s reputation as both an ally and a negotiating partner), Trump failed to secure from North Korea anything approaching the Iran deal’s terms, leaving Kim Jong Un not only unchecked but with increased international standing. Many world leaders are hoping that Trump’s presidency is a blip—that he will lose in 2020, and that his successor will renew America’s commitments to its allies and to the principles of multilateralism and nonproliferation. If he is reelected, however, several countries may opt to pursue nuclear weapons, especially those in regions that have relied on American security guarantees, such as the Middle East and Northeast Asia.At stake is the global nonproliferation regime that the United States and other countries have maintained over the past several decades to persuade nonnuclear powers to stay that way. That this regime has largely succeeded is a tribute to a combination of tactics, including U.S. bilateral and alliance-based defense commitments to nonnuclear countries, punishments and incentives, and pledges by the U.S. and Russia—as the world’s leading nuclear powers—to make dramatic cuts to their own arsenals.In his first term, Trump has begun to undermine the nonproliferation regime and dismantle the remaining arms-control treaties between Washington and Moscow. In October, he announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. While the Russian violations of the treaty that Trump cited are inexcusable, he has made no effort to hold Russia to its obligations—to the contrary, by destroying the treaty, he has let Russia off the hook. What’s more, he has displayed no interest in extending New START, which since 2011 has limited the strategic nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States. If the treaty is allowed to expire, 2021 will mark the first year since 1972 without a legally binding agreement in place to control and reduce the deadliest arsenals ever created.The prospect of a new nuclear arms race is suddenly very real. With the end of verifiable limits on American and Russian nuclear weapons, both countries will lose the right to inspect each other’s arsenal, and will face greater uncertainty about each other’s capabilities and intentions. Already, rhetoric has taken an ominous turn: After Trump suspended U.S. participation in the INF Treaty on February 2, Vladimir Putin quickly followed suit and promised a “symmetrical response” to new American weapons. Trump replied a few days later in his State of the Union address, threatening to “outspend and out-innovate all others by far” in weapons development.The treaties signed by the United States and Russia beginning in the 1980s have resulted in the elimination of nearly 90 percent of their nuclear weapons; the end of the Cold War seemed to confirm that those weapons had limited military utility. Now—as the U.S. and Russia abandon their commitment to arms control, and Trump’s “America first” approach causes countries such as Japan and Saudi Arabia to question the durability of U.S. security guarantees—the stage is being set for more states to go nuclear and for the U.S. and Russia to ramp up weapons development. This breathtaking historical reversal would, like global warming, likely feed on itself, becoming more and more difficult to undo. ................
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