Simon+&+Chad

toc =Affirmative= reading imagination tunnel or alaska ports depending on judge; email simon for aff info: sheaffly@gmail.com

Status Quo
__...The Bering tunnel is a typical example of Russian folie de grandeur__ __Isn't it wonderful? We'll be able to travel from London to Seattle in ten days instead of ten hours. Freight between America and Russia will be at the mercy of terrorists and caribou__ instead of being locked away in dull container ships. Oh, and armies of navvies will dig up two of the least desecrated spots on earth. __The idea of an Alaska-Siberia rail tunnel under the Bering Strait__, which was floated (technically, refloated) this week by the Russian official responsible for such things, __is so crazy that it somehow **defies you not to will it into being**. It would cost the earth and take centuries to pay for itself, but it has its own bewitching logic__. Goodness, you realise, gazing at the map. These two continents come so close to each other up there near the Arctic that the question should be why they aren't already linked. __Russia's engineers are its most maniacal dreamers,__ and this week they have been hard at it. Viktor Razbegin, the man behind the Bering tunnel plan, also stated calmly but not quite accurately that construction of another mega-tunnel, from Japan to Sakhalin, was due to start this year. Valeri Polyakov, the world record-holder for space flight longevity and deputy director of a Moscow "medico-biological" institute, told Tass with the confidence of one who has, indeed, spent too long in orbit that it's only a matter of time before cosmonauts colonise both the Moon and Mars. An atomic energy official from the far north unveiled fetching balsa models of floating nuclear power stations bringing warmth and light to Russia's most miserable Arctic ports. And then there are the longstanding plans to transport Russian nickel ore around the world in refurbished nuclear submarines, and to link St Petersburg to Helsinki with a series of causeways and suspension bridges. Of these, the only sensible proposal is the last one, and I made it up. The rest are real, and they reveal much about the Great Russian Pickle with which George W. Bush must soon concern himself - however little he wants to. He should not be surprised by them. __Gigantism runs in Russia's blood, and has done since long before the Bolsheviks pumped it full of steroids. This is the only country in the world whose provinces measure themselves in "Western Europes" as units of surface area, and the tsars' surveyors were mapping them and sketching tunnels to Alaska before the Trans-Siberian Railway was even thought of__. So no surprise, please, but plenty of alarm. __Even in Russia, gigantism is ordinarily a form of fantasy__. Stalin changed all that, industrialising 11 time zones in a generation and laying the groundwork for the Soviet space programme and its nuclear arsenal. But Stalin's tools were terror and forced labour on an epochal scale, and his imperative, besides his own paranoia, was the genuine threat of national annihilation in the Second World War. Mr __Putin__ has no such imperative. He __has a population of 140 million souls, numb with cold and poverty, struggling to apportion the fruits of an economy smaller than that of The Netherlands. His only possible excuse for Bering-style projects would be as an exercise in mass escapism__. This does not mean they will not happen. __Escapism, too, has deep roots in Russia__ and on its old imperial fringe. In northern Uzbekistan, for instance, there is a low, brown cliff which may have killed a fine man named Yusup Kamalov on his first and final flight of fancy. When I met him his day job involved agitating for the endangered Aral Sea. His only failing was a hobby he called floppy flight. Yusup fervently believed man can fly if he straps on the right wings and flaps them hard enough. He once showed me the wings and the cliff where he would prove it, and I have not heard from him in far too long. In similar vein, The Los Angeles Times reported this week that a certain Mikhail Puchkov is still piloting a home-made mini-submarine in the Gulf of Finland 20 years after he built it, initially with pedals only, as a personal rebellion against the dead hand of Brezhnev. "I was not satisfied with the fate that was laid out for me," he said. __Some organise their own distractions. Most wait to be distracted. For them, the tsars built palaces to gawp at__. Khrushchev struck lucky with Gagarin. His successors, up to and including Gorbachev, all dallied with the grandest folly of them all, a scheme that mercifully never left the drawing board to divert two of Siberia's mightiest rivers - with the help of controlled nuclear explosions - to refill the Aral Sea. __Russia has never been the home of reason. A__ Pounds 40 billion __Bering tunnel seems quite plausible__ to many here, and n __ot as a bold Keynesian route out of their 100-year economic slump, but as__ precisely what it would be; __a piece of magnificent madness, an up-yours to the bean-counters every bit as rational as climbing Everest__. Mr __Putin has__ so far __sold himself as unimpeachably pragmatic. Sooner or later that spell will break and his power will corrupt him__, or at least corrode him. __That is when Russia's tree-huggers and moss-watchers should assemble__ at the extreme eastern tip of Chukotka __and **ask**__ those of **__us__** who follow them for the exotic dateline __what on earth would travel along a Bering tunnel__.
 * the problem with status quo politics is exemplified by american reactions to the Bering Strait tunnel. An article in one of the West’s most prestigious newspapers casually espouses condescending stereotypes of Russian madness-- Russians are depicted as irrational zealots, obsessed with dreams of gigantic megaprojects despite their backwardness and inferiority-- yet even this critic feels the pull of imagination in the Bering Strait tunnel. we secretly yearn for policies like the tunnel, but we reject them to feel superior to the other.**
 * WHITTELL 2001** (Giles, “Oh no, Ivan, spare us another big idea,” The Times, Jan 6, lexis)

**ENGERMAN 2003** (David, Engerman is Assistant Professor of History at Brandeis University, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development, p. 7-11) American ideas about Russia's predominantly peasant population also built on indigenous Russian ones. Especially in the nineteenth century, which saw the spread of industrialization in western Europe and the rise of Romanticism, __images of the peasant played an important role in arguments about Russia's present conditions and future trajectory__ .'3 Slavophiles, conservatives who emphasized Russia's differences from the west, celebrated the peasant commune and the autocracy as cornerstones of Russian rule and incarnations of Russian character. To them, the special qualities of Russia and its peasantry deserved conservation and protection from western materialism and industrialism. Yet admiration was at a distance. Throughout the nineteenth century, educated Russians described the sharp contrasts between themselves (collectively, obshchestvo, or society) and the bulk of the population {narod, or the people). With a combination of condescension and sympathy, intellectuals saw the narod as an undistinguished mass of simple people who required the help of the obshchestvo if they ever hoped to emerge from their noble suffering. As one member of the Populists (a group of radical heirs to the Slavophiles) put it in 1880, a Populist "does not love the narod only because they are unfortunate ... He respects the narod as a collective whole, constituting in itself the highest level of justice and humanity in our time." Love for the narod. however deep and sincere, was directed not at actual individuals but at an abstraction. Within two decades, though, such __positive sentiments were drowned out by critical ones__. Russian __intellectuals__ in the last decades of the nineteenth century __depicted peasants as savage, helpless, and hopeless__ —not to mention unresponsive to (and even ungrateful for) the obshchestvo's best efforts. Russian intellectuals1 experiences with the peasantry are perhaps best illustrated by the Populists' effort to bring education and enlightenment "to the people" in 1874. "The people" were so uninspired by the message of the radicals that they frequently reported them to police officials. The ensuing disenchantment with the narod was hardly limited to radicals, however. In Russian art, literature, and theater of the late nineteenth century, peasants were no longer repositories of rural virtue. The figurative countryside was instead populated by kulaks, "peasant bloodsucker(s]," and baby, vulgar peasant women who symbolized the moral crisis of the peasantry. Peasants previously lauded as an abstract collective fared much worse (in the minds of educated Russians) as actual individuals. Russian intellectuals' views of their rural compatriots suggest that no great geographic distances are required to turn the subjects of observation into "others." Although they lived close to the peasants, members of the Russian obshchestvo nevertheless remained outside the lives of those they described with such contempt. __America's Russia watchers, without local knowledge, found their suspicions about the peasantry confirmed by Russian writers__ . Recent scholarship on such exterior perceptions has been aided—and, more problematically, defined around—Edward Said's elegant work Orientalism. Said documents a range of assumptions that European scholars, writers, and artists held about the "Orient" and "Orientals." Amid his insightful readings of Flaubert and his broad generalizations about French and British policy in the Near East, __Said offers a convincing criticism of European depictions of the Orient. Europeans__, he writes, __homogenized the Orient's inhabitants and placed them outside historical time. But Said himself pays minimal attention to the differences among depictions of the Orient, and to the ways they changed over time. Ironically enough, then, his critique of homogenization and hypostatization applies equally well to his own analysis of Orientalist discourse. Nevertheless, Said's insights about perceptions as a form of social power—and their intimate connections to imperatives of government rule—are applicable to American views of Russia__ .16 Modernization from the Other Shore invokes Herzen's metaphor of distant shores to emphasize the exteriority upon which Said built his argument. But the metaphor applied across time as well as space. The "far shore" represented not just Herzen's distance from Russia but also the safe haven he reached as the revolutionary storms of 1848 ebbed. Like Herzen's, this book is also written from a far shore—following not the flash-floods of 1848 but the decades-long storm of Soviet rule. The Soviet collapse brings both practical and intellectual changes to the study of Russia's past, and thus to those who interpret it. The opening of once-locked archives and the desire to understand the Soviet past without Cold War blinders have led to a flourishing debate. Once-secret Soviet documents have forced reconsiderations of crucial events in modern history. __Russians' discussions of their country's past are all the more striking for the decrepit physical and desperate financial circumstances in which they take place__. __Writing after the Cold War also offers an opportunity to reflect on American enthusiasm for the USSR in a new and less rancorous political context__. To take one example: previous historians have blamed intellectuals' fascination with the Soviet Union in the 1930s on misguided leftists, or on misguided leftism in general. Yet __the romance of economic development swayed American observers across the political spectrum__. Partisan politics—that is, devotion or opposition to the Communist Party—cannot fully explain this important episode in American intellectual history. __Impressed by grandiose Soviet plans and dismissive of backward Russians, many American intellectuals enthusiastically observed Soviet efforts at modernization. And western enthusiasms for the Soviet Union reverberated long after the Depression decade. They helped define McCarthyism and the early Cold War, as a generation of intellectuals viewed their own— and their friends'—Soviet enchantment with increasing disdain__ .17 Enthusiasm for Soviet industrialization did not require a Party card, either in the United States or in the Soviet Union. Many Russians who praised rapid modernization were not Bolsheviks. So-called bourgeois agricultural experts, engineers, and economists in Russia all found reasons to endorse Soviet goals of collectivization and industrialization. Other Russians leapt at the chance to turn their motherland into a modern great power, meaning an industrial one.18 Western observers, too, appreciated the Bolsheviks' claims about a rationally organized society under the guidance of specialists like themselves. Such enthusiasm also existed outside Russia. James Scott's recent synthesis. Seeing Like a State, suggests parallels between Soviet collectivization and other projects of what he calls "authoritarian high modernism."19 __The idea of creating a new kind of society, organized around production and easily controlled__, Scott shows, __found adherents around the world and all along the political spectrum. The demise of the USSR and the Cold War has already opened new inquiries into the common mindsets behind these projects, past and present.__ __Widespread excitement about universal progress still incorporates regional variations__. Recent debates about "Asian values," for instance, reveal the persistence of a troubled relationship between universalist and particu-larist models of development. Since the 1980s, leaders in Malaysia and Singapore have defended their combination of industrialization and political repression with references to particular Asian values. "Each nation " one argues, "must find its own best social and political arrangements"; there are no universal theories or forms of social organization. Western critics, meanwhile, base their arguments on the notion of human rights—that is, a set of rights that applies universally, transcending culture or government.20 The Asian values debate scrambles political alliances among Americans. Multiculturalists, generally on the left, see their claims of cultural particularism deployed by right-wing dictatorships. Meanwhile universalists, often accused of denigrating other nations and cultures, take the side of oppressed populations. Similarly, __scholars still argue about the relationship between Russian character and economic development in the post-Soviet era. The Soviet collapse, which might have brought down with it the edifice of universalist theories of human behavior, has instead unleashed a potent universalism in which all varieties of humankind are known only as homo oeconomicus. This is evident in recent debates about Russian economic policy__. Taking great pride that they had conquered the "prejudice that 'Russia is different,'" the economists Maxim Boycko, Robert Vishny, and Andrei Shleifer celebrated their own universalism. "The Russian people," they preached in a widely read monograph, "like the rest of the people in the world, were 'economic men' who rationally responded to incentives." Russia, therefore, did not require a special form of economic organization "to compensate for its alleged cultural specificities and deficiencies."21 These economists promoted the immediate establishment of free-market institutions, creating a capitalist Russia with a single big bang. Supremely confident that economic laws applied equally well in all times and places, they were, ironically enough, heirs to Marx's universalism. __As economic "shock therapy" created new ailments in Russia, particu-larist critics blamed the economists' failure to account for Russia's differences from the west__. Russians, argued the longtime Russia-watcher Marshall Goldman, "have almost always seemed more comfortable in a collective or communal, as opposed to an entrepreneurial, environment." Even before the anti-capitalist slogans of the Soviet era, he continued, "the market ethic was never . .. deeply entrenched in the psyche" of Russian peasants. Particularists with a conservative bent, meanwhile, suggested that the problem was not in the economists' methods but in their very aims. Historian Richard Pipes, for instance, lists multiple reasons that Russia has never developed the key institutions of western capitalism and democracy. While explicitly rejecting a national character argument, Pipes leaves little opportunity for Russia to evolve toward the west. In making such claims, he comes all too close to condemning Russia to its own past.22 __We have yet to resolve the tensions between universal progress and national difference__ that Herzen observed a century and a half ago. The questions addressed in this book parallel many of the age-old concerns that preoccupied Herzen. Chief among them is the question of difference. What do cultural differences mean? Are they innate or historical? How do they shape our understandings of human behavior and social change? Related to these are concerns about the universality of progress. How can each society find its own path of progress? Can a nation overcome its historical particularities? Should it? Finally, __there is the balance between present and future. Under what conditions can individuals call for collective sacrifices in the name of future welfare? And with what consequences? Russian history provided the answers to these questions—or so American experts believed.__ __Ideas about the peculiarities of Russian character, belief in economic development, and the reconfiguration of international expertise all shaped American conceptions of Russia__ and the Soviet Union between 1870 and 1940. This book's organization underscores the pervasiveness as well as the significance of these themes. Chronological chapters emphasize the persistence of national-character stereotypes as well as the growing romance of economic development and the evolving structure of expertise. Within most chapters, biographical sections highlight the ubiquity of these beliefs, even among experts with discordant political views and divergent personal experiences.
 * this mix of contempt and fascination spurs a broader trend-- perceptions of Russia vacillate between extremes of cultural relativism and economic universalism**

**These perceptions spill over into our everday lives and pit Russia against the US. The effect of Russian stereotypes outweighs topic education—we will forget the details we learn but retain a general impression of Russia** Numerous analysis have argued that __American media__ presentations of international events tend to fall in line with the policy interests of the U. S. government (Gans 1980; Paletz and Entman 1981; Parenti 1993; Qualier 1985; Wallis and Baran 1990). From the end of World War II until 1989, the American media's role in supporting official policy resulted, at least in part, from the adoption of a conflict perspective in which the United States and Russia were seen as polarized forces. American media __routinely defined American society in contrast to Russia__ (Hallin 1992). __The conflict frame fit well with the American media's game interpretation of the political world as an ongoing series of contests__, each with a set of winners and losers (Davis 1990; Ncuman, Just, and Criglcr 1992, pp. 64-65). Al least until 1989, "in normal times as well as in periods of Red scares, issues tended to be framed in terms of a dichotomized world of Communist and anti-Communist powers, with gains and losses allocated to contesting sides, and __rooting for "our side' was considered entirely legitimate news practice__ " (Herman and Chomsky 1988, pp. 30-31). During the cold war, Soviet media practice mirrored that of U.S. media in adopting a conflict perspective in which Russian society was defined by way of contrast to America (Downing 1988). Russian media devoted considerable attention to the symbolic construc-tion of the United States as a nation in which there was widespread racial conflict, unemployment, homelessness, social and economic inequality, and social injustice. In international affairs, the United States was depicted as the world's leading imperialist power, driven by military-industrial interests. Russian media also constructed a contrasting image of their homeland. While far from being a worker's paradise, Russia was depicted as comparatively free from the social ills that beset America. The nation also was portrayed as the world's leading opponent of capitalist imperialism (McNair 1988; Mickiewicz 1981; Turpin 1995). The importance of the conflict perspective, adopted by U.S. and Russian media alike, is suggested by research indicating that, __while most media listeners/viewers retain **little information**__ from news broadcasts, __they__ do tend to __retain the **generalized conceptions** of the order of things embedded in the categories through which news events are presented__ (Morley 1990, p. 128). __People's view of the order of things provides a frame of reference or orientation with which they can interpret objects and events as they conduct their **everyday lives**__. The objects and events of the world have no inherent or universal meaning apart from this imposed framework (Schutz [1932J1967). As Erving Goffman (1974) points out, the imposed meaning is limited by, and relative to, the social context in which it is created. However, __once meanings are learned__ through the socialization process (today, an important component of which is some attention to media content), __people tend to act on them without reassessment and without awareness of the social forces that created them. They come to identify truth with a particular learned set of socially shared meanings__. __Media organizations construct social reality as they select and prioritize some items of information, omit or ignore others, weave accounts together, and build a "story" using particular types of exposition and articulating verbal discourse together to make a certain kind of sense__ (Entman 1993). The interpretive structure that governs the selection, omission, prioritization, and editing processes has been termed a "news frame" (Gamson 1991). A given frame can be used to structure numerous stories about a variety of actors, conditions, and events (e.g., diverse political and economic conflicts throughout the world). A particular story tends to evoke in an audience a distinct pattern of judgments and opinions about the actor, condition or event that is its subject matter (Iyengar 1988, pp. 815-831). Stuart Hall (1982, p. 69) notes: __The more one accepts the principle that how people act will depend in part on how the situations in which they act are defined, and the less one can assume either a natural meaning to everything or a universal consensus on what things mean—then the more important, socially and politically, becomes the process by means of which certain events get recurrently signified in particular ways. This is particularly the case where events in the world are problematic__ (that is, when they are unexpected); when they break the frame of our previous expectations about the world; where powerful social interested are involved; or where there are starkly opposing interests at play. __The power involved here is an ideological power; the power to signify events in a particular way__.
 * WASHBURN AND BURKE 1997** (Philo, Purdue University, and Barbara, U of Minn Morris, “The Symbolic Construction of Russia and the United States on Russian National Television,” Sociological Quarterly, September)

These questions redounded around the world in the twentieth century. __Under the spell of modernization, American intellectuals endorsed radical forms of social change everywhere except in the United States. They placed at the pinnacle of human achievement a society much like they imagined their own to be__ : industrial, urban, cosmopolitan, rational, and democratic. __Backward nations, they argued, could progress toward modernity only by implementing rapid and violent changes. Modern America, however, would be exempt from such turmoil. With America's expanding global role and intellectuals' increasingly close connections to the centers of power, these ideas shaped nations all over the world__. New ideas of social change and national character also shaped notions of American national identity, which itself underwent significant changes after 1870—from scientific racism and assimilationist theory before World War II to celebrations of common humanity in the 1950s and the valorization of cultural differ-ences since the 1980s. __The way Americans understood the process of social change shaped the way they envisioned their own nation__. Finally, __the tensions between accepting cultural differences and promoting modernization underpinned American-Soviet conflict during the Cold War__. At the same time that scholars analyzed the conflict as one between two industrial powers with opposing ideologies, __American diplomats construed the Cold War enemy as an inherently and irredeemably different nation. These conceptions, supported by America's global reach, made—and continue to make—the American century__. __American writings on Russia__ and the Soviet Union were __shaped by__ three forces, which constitute the three main themes of this book: __a longstanding belief that every nation had its own unique character; a growing enthusiasm for modernization; and the appearance of new professional institutions and norms for interpreting other nations__. First, __American experts used national-character stereotypes to explain Russian and Soviet events. Building on centuries-old notions of Russian peculiarity, western experts enumerated traits that supposedly limited the Russians' ability to function in a modern world. Americans repeated the claims of European commentators who argued that national character emerged from geography and topography: long winters made Russians passive, and endless plains made them melancholy. Russians, in these writings, exhibited instinctual behavior, extreme passivity, and a lethargy shaken only by violence__ .4 __Americans argued that these characteristics—accentuating the negative—affected Russia's economic prospects. Reliance on these notions of national character crossed political boundaries; Russia's avowed enemies and ardent defenders in the United States agreed on what made Russians different__. Herzen himself illustrated the double-edged nature of such characterizations. Living in France and Italy in the 1850s, he gained new perspective on Russian character. He frequently mentioned the "Slavic genius" that set his compatriots apart from Europeans, focusing especially on Russians' soulful and communal natures. Yet he also took for granted that Russians^—especially the peasants who constituted the vast majority of the population—were "improvident and indolent," better at "passive obedience" than political or economic activity.5 Difference did not necessarily mean superiority. __Americans' notions of Russian character often contained within them the idea that Russians were Asian__ —"Asiatic" in the language of the day. __The claim, stated as often in racial as in geographic terms, further legiti-mated violence in Russia. According to an oft-repeated refrain, life meant less to Asians, and therefore to Russians. Personal traits also held political implications. Asians, the argument went, could be ruled only through "Oriental despotism." Writers__ from Baron Charles de Montesquieu to Karl Marx __depicted Asia as an unchanging—even unchangeable—morass of poverty, insularity, and despotism__ .6 __Whether understood as Asian or Slavic, Russians consistently faced claims that they were unready to join the modern world__. Particularist views of Russia, which emphasized the nations unique traditions and character traits, dominated American writings until the 1920s.
 * Depicting Russia as a foreign Other located in a distant Asia apart from the West and incapable of technological transformation encourages violence and constructs an enemy relationship**
 * ENGERMAN 2003** (David, Engerman is Assistant Professor of History at Brandeis University, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development, p. 2-4)

**These cultural discourses determine policy towards Russia** The term ‘critical geopolitics’ had already been coined by the end of the 1980s (Dodds 2001). It usually refers to the approaches that emerged during the 1980s and which challenged traditional geopolitical theories (Dalby 1994). This stance explains why its proponents consider it critical, which according to Painter (1998, p. 144-145) “refers to a particular tradition in social sciences which questions the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin conventional perspectives.” Ó Tuathail (1994, p. 525; 2006a) labels critical geopolitics “a heterogeneous movement of theoretical perspectives and agendas” straddling Political Geography and International Relations. It focuses on three research agendas: examining the meanings of spatial concepts, deconstructing geopolitical traditions and deconstructing contemporary discourses (Ó Tuathail 2004a). __Discourses play a key role__ within critical geopolitics, illustrated by Ó Tuathail’s observation (2006a, p. 1) that geopolitics is commonly understood as “discourse about world politics.” Ó Tuathail and Agnew (1992) see discourses __as a collection of rules used to give meaning to communication. They do not only enable people to write and speak, but also to read, listen and act in a meaningful way__. Furthermore __, discourses give texts, speeches and activities their meaning__. Another of their qualities is that __they are not deterministic, but leave room for a reasoning process that eventually generates meaning__. Finally, it is worth mentioning here that discourses are neither static as human practice constantly modifies them. Most critical geopolitical research aims to “deconstruct hegemonic geopolitical discourses and to question the relationships of power found in the geopolitical practices of dominant states” (Ó Tuathail 2000, p. 166). Methodology Informed by poststructuralism, we assume that “ __representations [of identity] and policy are mutually constitutive and discursively linked__ ” (Hansen 2006, p. 28). Consequently, a think tank aims for consistency between its policy advice (“policy”) and its institutional context (proxy for “identity”) by using representations. this assumption is in line with the claim of Heritage (2010a) that its ideology forms the basis of its policy advice. Moreover, Brookings (Brookings, 2010b) has made it perfectly clear that its activities are meant to foster international cooperation. The second assumption is related to the first and concerns the position of the policy expert within a think tank: (Müller 2008, p. 326): “ __it is not the individual__ [i.e. __policy expert] that structures and manipulates discourse but vice versa – discourses speak through the individual__ .” This assumption holds that the think tank’s institutional context (structure) conditions the autonomy of its policy expert to represent (agency). Alternatively, we could say that that “[ __i]n order to have their texts accepted as reasonable__, geopoliticians [i.e. __policy experts] have to draw upon discourses already granted hegemonic social acceptance__ [i.e. based on the think tank’s institutional context]” (Sharp 1993, p. 493). Our focus on institutional context is based on Dalby’s observation (1990a) that analysing geopolitical discourses requires an examination of the political circumstances, their sources and audiences and the process by which the discourse legitimises the authority of the source. In addition, Dodds (1994) suggests that texts about foreign policy are to be examined within several contexts such as the institutional setting. When interpreting text, we must consider the hermeneutics. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer (1989, p. 298), “the discovery of the true meaning of a text or a work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process.” Gadamer was instrumental in the development of philosophical hermeneutics, which seeks to investigate the nature of human understanding. In his view, someone who analyses a text must be “aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own [prejudices]” (ibid, p. 271-272). Our discourse analysis focuses on representations, informed by Dodds’ observation that (1994, p. 188) “ __[r]epresentational practices have__ increasingly __been recognized as vital to the practices of foreign policy__ .” In addition, Agnew (2003, p. 7) argues that “certain __geopolitical representations underwrite specific policies__ .” Next to representations (“what is being said about Russia?”), __we assign meaning to lines of text by looking into representational practices (“how are things being said about Russia__ ?”). These practices are relevant because “when something is recognized as a representational practice rather than an authoritative description, it can be treated as contentious” (Shapiro 1989, p. 20). We use a definition of discourse based on poststructuralism (Campbell 2007, p. 216): “a specific series of representations and practices through which meanings are produced, identities constituted, social relations established, and political... outcomes made more or less possible.” The usefulness of this definition also follows from its assumption that the think tanks’ representations are linked to both their institutional context (“identities”) and policy advice (“political outcomes”). Our study of discursive practices is informed by the work of three critical geopolitical scholars. First, we discuss __analogies, labels__ and __metaphors__ (Ó Tuathail 2002, 2006). Second, we search for cases of ‘ __geopolitical othering__ ,’ identified by Dalby (1990a, p. 22/23) as “geopolitical processes of cultural dichotomizing, designating identity in distinction from Others.” This representational practice __seeks to create a dualism in which a representation of one country means that the opposite is true for the other country__. The practice implicitly suggests that the two countries have an entirely different set of values, one being “right” and the other “wrong”. Finally, we investigate the use of __narrative closure which could take the form of referring to common truisms and presenting the complex reality “in easy to manage chunks__ ” (Sharp 1993, p. 494). __The practice leads to binary simplicity as the practice avoids complexity and problems that do not generate conclusions in terms of right or wrong. As a result, it dehistoricises, degeographicalises and depoliticises knowledge__.
 * VAN EFFERINK 2010** (Leonhardt, MSc in Financial Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam and an MA in 'Geopolitics, Territory and Security' at King’s College London. He is now working on a PhD with Royal Holloway’s (University of London), “Polar Partner or Poles Apart?” PSA Graduate Network Conference December 2010, http://www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/51/2010/Ppr/PGC2_Van%20EfferinkLeonhardt_Polar_Partners_or_Poles_Apart_PSA_2010.pdf)

__Ever since the Cold War ended, Western officials and commentators have been telling the Russians how they need to grow out of their Cold War attitudes toward the West and Western institutions, and learn to see things in a "modern" and "normal" way__. And there is a good deal of truth in this. At the same time, __it would have been good if we had subjected our own inherited attitudes toward Russia to a more rigorous scrutiny. For like any other inherited hatred, blind, dogmatic hostility toward Russia leads to bad policies, bad journalism, and the corruption of honest debate-and there is all too much of this hatred in Western portrayals of and comments on Russia__. From this point of view, an analysis of __Russophobia has implications that go far beyond Russia. Much of the U.S. foreign policy debate__, especially on the Republican side, __is structured around the belief that American policy should be rooted in a robust defense of national interest-and this is probably also the belief of most ordinary Americans__. However, this straightforward view coexists with another, equally widespread, view that dominates the media. It is, in Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's words, that "the United States stands taller than other nations, and therefore sees further." __The unspoken assumption here is that America is not only wise but also objective__, at least in its perceptions: that U.S. policy is influenced by values, but never by national prejudices. The assumption behind much American (and Western) reporting of foreign conflicts is that the writer is morally engaged but ethnically uncommitted and able to turn a benign, all-seeing eye from above on the squabbles of humanity. __It is impossible to exaggerate how irritating this attitude is elsewhere in the world, or how misleading and dangerous it is for Western audiences who believe it. Not only does it contribute to mistaken policies, but it renders both policymakers and ordinary citizens incapable of understanding the opposition of other nations to those policies. Concerning the Middle East, it seems likely that most Americans genuinely believe that the United States is a neutral and objective broker__ in relations between Israelis and Palestinians- __which can only appear to an Arab as an almost fantastically bad joke. This belief makes it much more difficult for Americans to comprehend the reasons for__ Palestinian and __Arab fury at__ both __the United States__ and Israel. __It encourages a Western interpretation of this anger as the manipulation of sheep-like masses by elites. At worst, it can encourage a kind of racism, in which certain nations are classed as irrationally, irredeemably savage and wicked__
 * Interrogating our perceptions of Russia is key to good foreign policy education overall—the same condescending discourses are spread to others**
 * LIEVEN 2001** (Anatol, Senior Associate for Foreign and Security policy at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Against Russophobia,” World Policy Journal, Winter, http://www.worldpolicy.newschool.edu/journal/lieven.html)

**That makes extinction inevitable—survival is only possible by imagining our connections to others**
 * KEEN 1986** (Sam, author, contributing editor of Psychology Today, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination: The Psychology of Enmity, p. 135-136)

__The two major problems that will have to be solved if we are to survive__ long beyond the twentieth century--the habit of __warfare and ecological pollution--are two sides of a single coin. When we define ourselves as superior to our neighbors__ and to nature, __we inevitably create a hostile environment, an ecology of violence__. __Advertising__, which encourages us to turn the natural world into things, __and____propaganda__ , which __invites us to turn our neighbors into things, are both instruments of a metaphysic of total warfare, a paranoid vision in which we are surrounded by an alien world. The solution to both problems lies in the same vein--the development of a psyche and a polis organized around being //with// rather than being //against//.__ __The task that faces us is nothing less than rethinking and recreating ourselves, our view of nature, our institutions. It is hard to imagine how we can change from a psychology, metaphysic, and politic of alienation to one of kindness. It is harder yet to imagine that we will survive if we cannot get beyond hostility to kinship__.

**Framing**
**We ask you to imagine that the United States federal government increases its investment in transportation infrastructure in the United States necessary to complete a fixed-link Bering Strait crossing.**

**Our framing of the aff is a bridge to others—we explore the tension between universalism and relativism in Western perceptions of Russian infrastructure projects** **ENGERMAN 2003** (David, Engerman is Assistant Professor of History at Brandeis University, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development, p. 13-14) Considering questions of economic progress and cultural difference in early twenty-first century America takes on renewed importance yet brings with it new difficulties. Both universalism and particularism have significant cultural power. Economists and development officials (like Russia's shock therapists) offer startlingly similar prescriptions—usually in-volving more markets —lo a wide variety of societies with strikingly different histories, cultural norms, and economic structures. In cultural and educational spheres, meanwhile, multiculturalists celebrate cultural difference and treat universalism as unabashed ethnocentrism. Studying the history of these ideas highlights the dangers of both particularism and universalism. Valuing cultural difference as the sole social good obscures important material concerns .Cultural difference has already become one of the "collective nouns" Herzen deplored, functioning as an altar at which material goals are sacrificed." Yet the universalist view that all people are the same and should have the same goals is hardly more appealing. It effaces nations' dramatically different pasts and presents, erasing history with a single stroke . "We do not proclaim a new revelation " Herzen wrote in From the Other Shore, "we eliminate the old lie." I, too, am unable to "proclaim a new revelation," a new way of balancing a nation's past circumstances, its present conditions, and its aspirations for the future. I can only hope, to continue I lerzen's words, to **build a bridge** "for the unknown person of the future to pass over ."'4 The rise of universalism in mid-twenlieth-century American thought was one such bridge. It marked a salutary rejection of notions of cultural difference rooted in permanent factors. Universalist continua—from underdeveloped to developed economies, or from backward to advanced nations—allowed for the possibility of improvement.29 They explicitly challenged the notion that blood (race) or soil (geography) delimited and defined a nation's prospects. Celebrating industrialization as an effective means of overcoming national particularities, universalists demolished the particularist notion that a nation was destined for perennial penury. Yet universalism, whether espoused by nineteenth-century European radicals or twentieth-century American social scientists, hardly resolved the tensions between cultural difference and economic progress. Industry, in the prognostications of Marx and Engels, would create a new world order in which nations were irrelevant. They envisioned that industrial capitalism would strip workers of "every trace of national character."26 The fulfillment of this universalist vision, especially under governments proclaiming their patrimony in these radical writers, involved dangerous and ultimately deadly actions. Now that the "specter of communism" celebrated by these revolutionaries has receded, we are in a better position to understand the all-too-present ghosts of cultural difference and modernization.

'North by Northwest', now __it is time to pass between continents__, from the risible __to the sublime__ , which is more challenging to assess. **__A dollar's worth of knowledge__**, then, __must be bought with a **million of speculation**__. Each of these sums will now be spent A tunnel across the North Pacific? __In the 19th century, no one was all that surprised by the prospect. If the Alps could be crossed, and the Suez Canal excavated, then why not a Bering Strait crossing__ to link the rail networks of Eurasia and the Americas? __In this 21st century, the scheme tends to be regarded with disbelief__, which, post-Apollo, seems __a contradictory and timid reaction. Ambition has been out-placed or downsized to mere entertainment or diversion**. Real ambition** has become **politically unacceptable**. Great achievements are confined to the glorious past__, where they belong, __and made safe. Creativity is subverted__, or commercialised. __Imagination is surplus to requirements. High endeavour is displaced by corporate greed or tyranny. Millions are siphoned off to no apparent end__. The engineer and the scientist stand in the way of progress, which can be arrested by squint-eyed accountants and frustrated by dyspeptic lawyers. __If in doubt, **legislate or decree**, but do not **Act**__. No funds arc available for this project, because that project is a rotating black hole for public funds. The fiscal year, or the one after that, maybe. __Policy is eviscerated by indecision. Bureaucrats crouch tall, while innovation is **stunted** and **withers** **on its**__ ancient **__vine__**__. Into this vacuum, bogus soothsayers (always based in the US) step in to muddy those pristine waters__. Is any of this rant (overheard recently in a Fleet Street tavern) true? __What has really become unacceptable is **risk**__. If it's risky, then assess that risk, and set it to one side with a side dish of complacency. Feasibility studies arc much the same, being risk assessments in disguise. __There is talk, but no action__. __For this reason, the Bering Strait fixed-link crossing is already in jeopardy of becoming a post-Modernist myth__. This is not so easy to explain, but there is a sense in which __the scheme has been deconstructed before even it is constructed__. In the real world, away from academic abstractions, consider this: the Black Sea-Danube Canal, first proposed in the time of King Charlemagne, was completed as recently as 1984. In this respect, __the time for the Bering Strait fixed-link has already passed__ (i.e., the transmigration corridor), __or it never was__ (De Lobcl), __or it is the post Cold War present__ (Koumal), __or it is some time in the future, -or, indeed, never. In the strange case of the Bering Strait fixed-link project, the potential for a feasibility study has become the project__. For a scheme so vast in its conception, this is perhaps not surprising. As a result, __there is endless speculation and unrealistic counter-proposals__. The diplomatic community on both sides of the strait are, of course, too diplomatic or bemused to pass any remark one way or the other. For a place that would unite nations, the United Nations has a blind spot. In this sense, __the void of the Intercontinental Divide has become invisible to the eyes of many__, except to the watchers of wildlife and airspace. "I believe that if this project becomes just a **subject** for initial **discussion** between the involved governments of the US, Russia and Canada, it would bring about **profound changes**, changes for the better, to the politics of the world - a world which is a dangerous place and seemingly becoming more dangerous every day." - George Koumal, chairman, hiteriiemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Group (IBSTRG), 2006. The spectrum of questions asked of George Koumal would exert the patience of a saint. Bridge people argue for a bridge, and not a tunnel. Environmentalists want to know about the tundra. Permafrost experts are vexed by the sudden temperature gradients of high summer. Rail enthusiasts are obsessed with the track-gauge changeover between American standard gauge and Russian broad gauge. Equipment manufacturers want to know how to tender for the project (ventilation equipment, say, for the Diomede Islands' vertical shafts). Travellers want to know how to book a ticket for the tunnel crossing. Provincial politicians of the Lower 48 want to know where the Bering Strait might be located. Canada, maybe? Anything to do with that bank that went bust? The **cacophony** is **deafening, soul-destroying**. The anecdotes surrounding the non-tunnel are, like the Siberian wilderness, almost endless. The multi-disciplinary approach of yester-year is almost always never taken. A global view is the **only view**. Find a globe of the Earth (spin, for fun), slow, stop, and then look: see the East-West crossing there to the north. This is the way forward, and the Pacific frontier is the widest horizon of all. One way or another, this boundary, this 21st century frontier between East and West, **must be confronted**. **This is the crossing point**.
 * We must take a leap of imagination—the Bering Strait link is being killed by focus on the details of implementation and the fear of risk. We should start by imagining the crossing, not by debating how government policy is implemented**
 * OLIVER 2007** (James, writer and journalist, The Bering Strait Crossing: A 21st Century Frontier Between East and West, 216-219)

**The plan is a utopian imagination of technology asserted against the gradual erosion of hope that accompanies the focus on detail. Reclaiming the narrative of technological utopianism does not mean blindly embracing all technologies, but it does prevent the destruction of all human meaning** Mannheim concludes his analysis of the concept of utopia after the discussion of the four utopian mentalities. For him, __the typology of utopia constitutes a temporal sequence. The socialist-communist utopia,__ as __the last____form of utopian mentality, is not only less incongruous with reality than the preceding forms, but also__ progressively __more congruous with the actual world.__ His basic argument is that **__the history of utopia constitutes a gradual “approximation to real life” and therefore tolls the death knell of utopia__** in its very success at social transformation: Thus, __after a long tortuous, but heroic development, just at the highest stage of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate, and is becoming more and more man’s own creation, with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and__ therewith his __ability to understand it.__ The socialist idea, in its actualization, has the effect of reducing the utopianism of utopia and leads to the decay of utopia. __Mannheim perceives that the historical process of the dominant forms of the utopian mentality shows__ “a gradual descent and a closer approximation to real life of a utopia that at one time completely transcended history” and reveals __a “general subsidence of utopian intensity__ ” (222-3). Mannheim is unsettled by his own conclusion that implies the end of utopia. He laments that “ __the complete elimination of reality transcending elements from our world would lead us to a matter-of-factness which ultimately would mean the decay of human will”__ (236). Quoting the prophecy of Swiss poet Gottfried Keller, Mannheim wonders whether “[ __t]he ultimate triumph of freedom will be barren__ ” (225). Near the end of the discussion, he suggests the symptoms of this barrenness: __The disappearance of utopia brings about a static state of affairs in which man himself becomes no more than a thing. We would be faced then with the greatest paradox imaginable,__ namely, __that man, who has achieved the highest degree of rational mastery of existence__, left without any ideals, __becomes a mere creature of impulses__. (236) If ideology is false consciousness related to dominant hut declining classes, we can imagine a society without it as “the decline of ideology represents a crisis only for certain strata” (236). However, “ __the complete disappearance of the utopian element from human thought and action would mean that human nature__ and human __development would take on a totally new character”__ (236). **__We cannot imagine the complete abandonment of utopia because a society without utopia would be a society without goals.__** __With the loss of illusions, humanity would lose the sense of direction when the victory of a certain matter-of-factness, or congruence, is realized. Mannheim’s typology is incomplete__, because __he__ in fact __neglects the role played by science and technology in realizing utopia.__ In the following discussion, __I will consolidate the technological utopian mentality as one of the major utopias from both the sociological and literary perspective.__ The conception of science and technology as significant means to achieve utopia has a long lineage. As Nell Eurich points out in her hook Science ¡n Utopia: A Mighty Design (1967), the background for this form of utopia comes principally from Francis Bacon and his New Atlantis. Bacon’s utopia is essentially a triumph of the scientists whose ideas and innovation provide direction and ways for the realization of a technological utopia. However, __humanity’s ambivalent attitude toward science and scientists has essentially suppressed this form of utopia. In the history of civilization, humanity always faces a barrier whenever a new science or technology appears in society. The barrier can be termed the ‘Frankenstein barrier”__ for the significance of Mary Shelley’s first science fiction novel Frankenstein (1818) (Slusser 5). In this work, the scientist Victor __Frankenstein arrives on the verge of giving his new creature a future__, a symbol of the future for new science as well, __when he is asked by his creature to make a bride for it.____Frankenstein cannot overcome his ambivalence and thus refuses its request__. As a result of his refusal, __the scientist is forced to retreat from his expanded search for knowledge__ and the future of his creature is forsaken. __Frankenstein’s refusal signifies the persistence of a significant barrier in humanity__, which has remained deep-rooted in Western culture __and symbolizes the conflict between utilitarian technology and those who greatly doubt the role of science and scientists. In the__ late twentieth century and the beginning of the __twenty-first century, the technological utopia has become__ even __more prominent. This__ form of utopian __mentality is best found in science fiction, which__, at its best, __not only provides the most supple and popular means of exploring questions of diversity and difference, but also opens____up new possibilities and makes us think. In s__ cience __f__ iction, __we can find utopia that effectively addresses the____questions that have defined the age we live in: technology, gender, race, ideology, history__ and so on. As a genre of ideas, __science fiction has been able to portray technological utopia in vivid and popular ways.__ After analyzing eight science fiction texts from the Western and Oriental cultures, I would like to conclude this section by a discussion on the characteristics of technological utopia. __This form of utopia emphasizes the roles of intellectuals and scientists. The dominant desire of this utopian mentality is the technological utopia that embraces the power of science and technology, as well as preserving the identifying and legitimizing power of humanity__ and the present status quo. __The embodiment of forces in ideology and utopia simultaneously makes the progress to technological utopia become a spiral movement.__ Like the socialist-communist utopian mentality, __it is__ also __considered the best possible form to bridge the gap between the dream and the present state of things__ .23 With the progression in science and technology at different strategic moments, especially in the aspects of cyberspace, cyborg and space travel that we have discussed, humanity can realize its ago-old desire of transcending the mind, the body, and space respectively. As the discussion of the science fiction texts shows, __these technological metaphors provide both ideological and utopian functions to humanity and make the technological utopia a spiral movement to the perfect state of being. The sense of time in this form is seen as a series of strategic points in history, rather than a gradual progress in the liberal-humanist idea__. __Every new breakthrough in science or technology__, or a Novum 24 __represents a strategic point__ in technological utopia. The technologies of cyberspace, cyborg, and space travel are most important nova, or utopian metaphors, which transcend the limitations of the mind, body and space respectively for humanity. Nevertheless, technological utopia shares with the liberal ideas that the location of a perfect world is in the future, in the time when various limiting conditions of humanity are transcended by the means of new science and technology as in the case of all the science fiction texts that I have studied. In Neuromancer and “Dream-cutting romance,” the strategic point for the advancement of the spiral movement in technological utopia is signified by the upgrade of cybernetic technology as well as the merge between humanity and technological entities. In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the breakthrough is represented by scientific experiment and the understanding of human mind by dream reading. Similarly, in The Positronic Man, Ghost in the Shell and The Ultimate War of Super-brains, the strategic moment for the spiral movement is embodied by the upgrade of the robotic entities to become more human, mortal and organic. Finally, the breakthrough in achieving technological utopia is shown in the transcendence of Kelvin and Bowman in Solaris and 2001 respectively.
 * Leong 2003** (Leong Hang-tat, Ph.D. candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in philosophy, “Ideology and Utopia in Science Fiction”, ProQuest) BW

__Not since Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth__ 50 years ago __have the Russians grabbed so many headlines for their technological daring__. Last week __the Kremlin approved__ what was described by our Russian correspondent, surely correctly, as " __the greatest railway project of all time__ ". It's the construction of __a__ 65-mile __tunnel__ connecting Asia and North America __under the Bering Strait__, and hence linking the railway networks of Russia and North America. The minor problem that, at present, neither railway network goes anywhere near the Bering Strait only adds to the excitement. On the Russian side a 500-mile link is being built from the Trans-Siberian Railway to Yakutsk, more than 3,000 miles east of Moscow. But this would have to be extended a further 2,400 miles through some of the most savage terrain in the northern hemisphere. And on the Alaskan side the challenge would scarcely be any easier, especially as Alaska's railways aren't connected to any others in North America. __Yet the Russians, Canadians and Americans seem confident that they can muster the political will, technical knowhow and massive funds__ (£60 billion just to dig the tunnel) __to complete the project__ - though not any time soon. The year 2045 is being proposed as the finish date, which would be neatly symbolic: the 100th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Of course, all this depends on humanity not embarking on a Third World War. __Constructing a "dry" crossing__ between Siberia and Alaska __would be symbolic__ for another reason. __Most experts believe that homo sapiens first reached America by walking across the Bering Strait__ - about 30,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower. __And the dream of linking Asia and America by tunnel or a series of bridges has been knocking around for over a century__. The great engineer Joseph Strauss put forward a brilliant plan as long ago as 1892. And he knew a thing or two about designing bridges; he built the Golden Gate in San Francisco. Then in 1905 Tsar Nicholas II approved a tunnel scheme. But the Russian Revolution, two world wars and the Cold War meant that the 20th century was nearly over before the necessary East-West co-operation seemed feasible. Now, however, it seems not just feasible but economically enticing. Experts say that a Siberia-Alaska rail link could carry a huge amount of the world's freight much more cheaply, quickly and cleanly than supertankers or juggernauts do. That's important. __But what really thrills romantics is the prospect of getting on a train at St Pancras and alighting 16 days later at Grand Central Station in New York, having enjoyed the journey of a lifetime through the majestic vistas fringing the Arctic Circle.__ Of course, the reality is that you would probably have to change trains at Brussels, Berlin, Moscow, Yakutsk, Anchorage, Vancouver and Toronto. And if you think about all the things that go wrong every day on the British railway, and imagine them going wrong on trains passing through northeast Siberia, 1,000 miles from the nearest town, it can be a bit disconcerting. What if there's signal failure? Or the loos overflow? Or the buffet runs out of BLTs and beer? You might meet the same fate as some of those early seafarers searching for the Northeast Passage. Even so, __the **sheer** **audacity** of the project makes the **heart beat faster**__. One big reason for that, surely, is our growing disillusion with the mind-numbing hassles of air travel. And that's extraordinary. When I was a boy everyone thought that in the 21st century we would be whizzing to New York, Los Angeles, even Sydney, in a couple of hours - via ever-speedier supersonic aircraft or space rockets. But that dream died with Concorde. Now, __air travel appears to be stuck in a technological impasse. By contrast, it's the earthbound Victorian technology__ of the Brunels and Stephensons __that seems to offer the 21st century its most exciting transport initiatives__. Back in 1870 the opening of the 1,000-mile Bombay to Calcutta railway inspired Jules Verne to write Around the World in Eighty Days. It's bizarre yet delightful that, __140 years on, a great railway project still captures the imagination as no other modes of transport do__. If the Bering Strait tunnel does open in 2045, I'll buy myself a train ticket to New York as a 90th birthday treat.
 * The Bering Strait tunnel is a unique act of imagination which recalls inspiring utopianism of the past—it’s a symbol of hope for global cooperation**
 * MORRISON 2011** (Richard, “A train trip from Moscow to New York?; The proposed construction of a tunnel linking the rail networks of Russia and North America is a brave new world indeed,” The Times, August 26, lexis)

__Transcultural theory needs to articulate__ its own ethics, which can be called __an ethics of__ the __imagination__. Traditionally, imagination was considered to be the capacity least bound to ethical responsibility, incompatible with or even antagonistic to ethical imperatives. The longstanding debates between ethics and aesthetics targeted exactly this opposition between moral norms and free imagination, between duty and desire, between reason and fantasy. However, if we look at the most common and established ethical rule as it is inscribed in the heritage of many cultures—Christian, Chinese, Greek—we find an implicit call for imagination as expressed in the requirement that we "do unto others as we would have them do unto us." This presupposes a kind of commonness between ourselves and others that cannot be found in actual existence and empirical experience—we are all different. __Without imagination a person would be unable to put herself in the position of others or to put others in her own position__. One has to be imaginative to be righteous. One has to imagine what other people may need, dream of, and aspire to in order to respond adequately to their needs. Percy Bysshe Shelly has expressed succinctly this link between morality and imagination in his "A Defence of Poetry" : "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."1 Bur there is much more to this imaginative aspect of ethics than just identifying oneself with others. Two modifications may be added to the golden rule to embrace those aspects of ethics that are not reducible to a commonness between myself and others, between the subjects and objects of ethical actions. The first addition would refer to the uniqueness of the ethical subject as distinct from the ethical object. "Do unto others as we would have them do unto us . . . but as nobody else could do unto them except for us." The uniqueness of the ethical subject would be crucial in cases when among the many needs of others are those to which the given subject is uniquely or exclusively qualified to respond. The action that will be ethically preferable is that which no one can accomplish except for me and that which no one can do better than me. Since I am different from the other, the ethical relationship between us should be based on our mutual irre-ducibility. The basic rule of differential ethics thus can be formulated in this way: Do what no other person in the same situation could do in your place. Act in such a way that your most individual abilities meet the most individual needs of the other. This is also true for our expectations from other people. Not only what we do to others, but whar we expect them to do for us, is an ethically marked position. A totalitarian politics that forced a violinist to take an ax and cut wood to provide heat during an energy shortage was ethically reprehensible though it claimed to be truly humanistic as expressing equal concern about the needs of all people. From the standpoint of the ethics of difference, the musician should not only be allowed but encouraged to respond to those specific needs of people that he is in a unique position to answer. Reduction of individual abilities to the more general needs is what underlies the crude, politically dominated ethics of "mass societies." Thus __an ethical subject has to imagine not only what makes other people similar__ to him __but what makes them different__, which is a more complex task for the imagination. It is easier to imagine that other people need heat and food in the same way as you do than to project their specific intentions and expectations, which might completely escape the range of your interests. This second level of ethical concern involves imagining the other as the other, in his or her irreducibility to any common model of humanness. __Finally__, the third level of __ethics involves__ not others as myself and not others as others but __myself as other. This capacity to be a stranger to oneself, to go beyond one's inborn or socially constructed identity is not just a creative possibility but also an ethical responsibility. Without being different from oneself one can never find points of commonality or dialogi-cal interaction with people of different cultures and ways of life__. As Jacques Derrida rightly observes, "it is because I am not one with myself that I can speak with the other and address the other."- Judeo-Christian ethics is focused on the notion of "neighbor," the nearest and closest one; but what about love of, or at least responsiveness to, the distant ones? Nietzsche attempted to introduce this imperative— "love to a distant one"—into ethics but his anti-Christian stance caused him to ignore love for those nearest and actually grew into contempt toward his own "neighbors"—contemporaries, compatriots, colleagues, co-humans, and others in proximity. It is interesting that although Soviet ethical doctrines never explicitly acknowledged Nietzsche's influence, they were based on a similar principle: The distant ones were privileged over neighbors in the value hierarchy of a typical Soviet citizen. He had to love his comrades, his class brothers, and the exploited toiling masses all over the world but was required to denounce his family members on the basis of their disloyalty to the state. Soviet ethics was devoid of imagination and did not recognize the right of model citizens to multiple identities or alterations of identity. In fact, love for distant ones or at least the ability to interact with them depends on the capacity of a given subject to be different from himself to embrace an unlimited range of virtual or potential identities. In distinction from the ethics of commonality, as prescribed in the golden rule, and in distinction from the differential ethics of uniqueness, the third level can be posited as an interferential ethics of multiplied identities and transformational possibilities that is certainly most appealing to the capacities of the imagination.
 * Our call to imagine what the government might do forces us out of our current subject position—the ability to imagine another role is the foundation of ethical engagement with the Other**
 * EPSTEIN 1999** (Mikhail, Associate Professor in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Emory University, Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication, p. 164-166

**The policy interpretation of fiat makes ethical engagement with others impossible. We should imagine possibilities rather than legislate commands** Though ethics is usually presented as a set of rules and norms of behavior, this does not imply that the contents of ethics should be as normative and prescriptive as its forms are. __Ethical prescriptions include the freedom from prescriptions. This paradoxical element of ethics cannot be__ fully __eliminated__. When Christ said, "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free," He expressed in prescriptive form the freedom from all prescriptions. If we look at the most elementary forms of ethics, such as politeness and courtesy, we find that even these most routine models of morality are based on the presumption of human freedom. __If you need__ somebody to give you a glass of __water, the polite way to express this need will be not an imperative or a command but a suggestion__, "Would you please be so kind as to bring me a glass of water?" "Would it be possible for you to do this or that?" __The politeness is implied in the modality "would," which transforms the action from the actual or imperative modality to a subjunctive mode. My need has to be transformed into somebody else's possibility or opportunity in order to be presented ethically__ (politely). __The imperative "Do this" is applied only__ between parents and children or officers and soldiers, thus __marking the relation of power or authority. But insofar as ethics challenges this power relation, it has to transform any command into a suggestion, every imperative into a subjunctive__. If this is true on the level of elementary politeness, __how much more important it must be on the level of the higher moral initiatives that are addressed to others. Even in the most fundamental and global issues of war and peace, power and freedom, authority and equality, discipline and responsibility, ethics should appeal to possibilities rather than impose necessity and constraints__. __Often the same person who uses the subjunctive "Would you" when asking for a glass of water would use a categorical imperative, demanding that humanity obey__ his __grand ethical schemes and prescriptions. Almost all our discourses and the **procedures of teaching**__ and writing __are imbued with the imperative mode__ : Do as I do, do as I say, do as I write. __Every interpretation avers its conclusive truthfulness instead of suggesting itself as just a possibility, a discourse in a subjunctive mode. **All disciplines of scholarship** and interpretation would benefit by incorporating these zones of__ politeness, __potentiality, and imagination, which are__ not only an "excess" of aesthetic subjectivity but are first of all __modes of ethical responsiveness that **multiply the levels of freedom** in our readers, students, interlocutors, instead of forcing their minds into our own persuasions__. Ethics is the domain of requests rather than commands, the domain of imagination rather than obligation. The commandments pronounced by God cannot help but be obligatory if we identify ourselves with the people of God and recognize the hierarchy that connects heavenly Father and earthly children. However, if ethics should be understood as a specific domain regulating the relationship between brothers and sisrers and distinct from the religious domain regulating the relationship between Father and children, we should formulate the principles of this ethics in a noncommanding mode, as a system of requests and proposals appealing to the freedom of the other person, to his "maybe or maybe not." __Certainly, this ethics "in the subjunctive mood" is much more favorable to the work of the transcultural imagination than an ethics that **prescribes us to obey already established laws**__. Thus, in addition to the golden rule of commonness, __we need a differential and interferential ethics based on imagining others as different from ourselves and **imagining ourselves as possibilities for others**__.
 * EPSTEIN 1999** (Mikhail, Associate Professor in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Emory University, Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication, p. 166-168)


 * Ethics outweigh--We need to combine a change in IR with a change in ethical narratives**
 * Fasching 93** Darrell, professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida, The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Apocalypse or Utopia

When I began work on this book in 1988 __it seemed as if we were living on the brink of nuclear annihilation in a cold war standoff__ between Russia and the United States. In the time that elapsed while writing it, the unimaginable happened-in the Fall of 1989 the Berlin Wall and the entire Iron Curtain collapsed. The dust had barely settled from these events when in December 1991 the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist, breaking up into a loose confederation of republics. __It might seem__, in the light of these events __, as if the utopianism of history has overtaken the apocalyptic alarm__ I have sounded in this book. Indeed, __there are genuine utopian possibilities latent in our new situation__. However, there are also good reasons to be cautious. __We should not equate dramatic changes in the surface structure of events with the needed changes in the deep structure of our world. Although the psychological tension of the cold war__ between Russia and the United States __has thawed, we should not forget that enough nuclear weapons still remain at the ready to annihilate us several times over__. I do not think the events we have witnessed can yet be counted as genuinely utopian. Instead, I fear that __we have just shifted from the depressive apocalyptic phase to the manic utopian phase__ of the Janus-faced myth that governs modern life. And so __we will assume once again that fundamentally nothing needs changing__. But a closer examination of the evidence, I think, will reveal that __the geography of the sacred and the profane is not so much giving way to utopia as it has simply shifted__, splintering along new lines of apocalyptic dualistic confrontation that may disperse the control over nuclear weapons (both within and beyond the former Soviet Union) in ways that are perhaps even more dangerous than before. In any case, __the threat of nuclear war is an extreme symptomone that functions to draw our attention to the demonic tribalistic and technobureaucratic patterns of dehumanization at work in our emerging postmodern world__. The point of this book is to analyze those patterns and suggest strategies for breaking them up so as to open up our world to its genuinely utopian possibilities-possibilities which lie beyond the sacral and demonic Janus-faced myth of apocalypse and utopia that presently governs our lives.

// According to many polls, a majority of scientists think that __the human race is on a "collision course" with nature, that all of Earth's ecosystems are suffering, and that the ability of the planet to sustain lite is in serious jeopardy.__ (1) __There is a threat of rapid global climate change__ that will certainly have profound consequences. __The pollution of rivers, land, and the air we breathe threatens our health, We are destroying non-renewable resources like topsoil and the ozone layer instead of using these resources intelligently. We lace common threats that transcend national boundaries: overpopulation, energy shortages, water scarcity, economic catastrophe, the spread of uncontrollable diseases, and the technological displacement of people by machines,__ to name a few. __Eight hundred and fifty two million people across the world are hungry__. Every day, more than 16.000 children die from hunger-related causes- one child every five seconds. (1) World-wide more than 1 billion people currently live below the international poverty line, earning less than $1 per day, (2) A very small percent of the people own most of the world's wealth and resources. The gap between the rich and poor is widening. In the US as of 2002, the average CEO made 282 times as much as the average worker. (3) In 2005 the compensation of CEOs of major U.S. corporations rose 12% to an average of $9.8 million per year. Oil company CEOs did even better with raises that averaged a whopping 109% to 816.6 million per year. Meanwhile, workers' salaries barely kept up with inflation in most industries and occupations across the U.S. In Oregon, minimum wage workers saw their pay rise by a modest 2.8% to $15080 per year. What has been handed down to us does not seem to be working for the majority of people. With the advances in science and technology over the last two hundred years, you may be asking: "does it have to be this way?" With the observable fact that __scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human welfare and environmental protection, there is no question that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without. But the misuse and abuse of technology seems to make things worse. The problems we face in the world today are mostly of our own making__. We must accept that **__our future depends on us.__** While the values represented by religious leaders over the centuries have inspired many to act in a socially responsible manner, others have gone to war over their differences in religious beliefs. Hopes for divine intervention by mythical characters are delusions that cannot solve the problems of our modern world. The future of the world is our responsibility and it depends upon decisions we make today. **__We are our own salvation or damnation__**. __The shape and solutions of the future rely totally on the collective effort of people working together.__ We are all an integral pan of the web of life. __What affects other people and the environment has consequences in our own lives as well. **What is needed is a change in our sense of direction and purpose -- an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization unlike any in the past.**__ Although this vision is highly compressed here, it is based on years of study and experimental research. These writings offer possible alternatives for striving toward a better world. It arrives at decisions using the scientific method. Like any new approach, **__it requires some imagination and a willingness to consider the unconventional in order to be appreciated.__** Remember that __almost every new concept was ridiculed, rejected, and laughed at when first presented, especially by the experts of the time.__ That's what happened to the first scientists who said the earth was round, the first who said it went around the sun, and the first who thought people could learn to fly. __You could write a whole book, and many have, just on things that people thought were impossible up until the time they happened. Imagine going to the moon__ for example! Your great-grandparents would have laughed at such a notion! __Such notions were the ramblings of science fiction writers__. Many forward thinking people have been locked up and even executed for saying such things as the earth wasn't the center of the universe. Those who fought for social justice and change had even greater difficulties. People advocating change were beaten, abused, put in prison, and brutally murdered. For example, Wangari Maathai, who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Price on December 10, 2004 was tear gassed, beaten unconscious, and imprisoned for fighting against deforestation in Kenya, Africa. Dianne Fosse, the naturalist who actively strived to protect declining gorilla populations from poachers, was found hacked to death in her hut. Unfortunately she did not provide for the needs of the poachers. Any number of volumes could be written on the hardships endured by those who sought change that threatened the status quo. //
 * Reimagining technology is critical to overcome threats to human survival—we must imagine an alternative technological society that brings us together in a common project**
 * Fresco and Meadows 07** (Jacque & Roxanne; Structural designer, architectural designer, philosopher of science, concept artist, educator, and futurist, founder of The Venus Project; B.F.A. from Maryland Institute of Art. She studied technical and architectural rendering and model making under Jacque Fresco for 4 years; “Designing the Future”)//RSW//

// **Every act of imagination has elements of science fiction—the very nature of fiat makes describing the “real world” impossible since every plan is a fictional alternative** // //**FREEDMAN 2000** -- Associate Professor of English at Louisiana State University (Carl, “Critical Theory and Science Fiction” Wesleyan University Press, University Press of London, 20-22) // // It is a priori likely that __most texts display the activity of numerous different genres, and that few or no texts can be adequately described in terms of one genre alone__. __Genre__ in this sense is analogous to the Marxist concept of the mode of production as the latter has gained new explanatory force by being contrasted, in the Althusserian vocabulary, with the category of social formation – a term that is preferred to the more familiar notion of society, because the latter connotes a relatively homogeneous unity, whereas the former is meant to suggest an overdetermined combination of //different //modes of production at work in the same place and during the same time. Though it is thus impossible simply to equate a given social formation with a given mode of production, it is nonetheless legitimate to affirm that (for instance) the United States "is" capitalist, so long as we understand that the copulative signifies not true equation or identity but rather conveys that, of the various and relatively autonomous modes of production active within the U.S. social formation, capitalism enjoys a position of// dominance. //In the same way, __the dialectical rethinking of genre does not in the least preclude generic discrimination. We may validly describe a particular text as science fiction if we understand the formulation to mean that cognitive estrangement is the dominant generic tendency within the overdetermined textual whole.__ Accordingly, __there is probably no text that is a perfect and pure embodiment of science fiction__ ( __no text, that is to say, in which science fiction is the__// __only //generic tendency operative//__// ) **__but also no text in which the science fiction tendency is altogether absent.__** Indeed **__, it might be argued that this tendency is the precondition for the constitution of fictionality__** – __and even of representation – itself__. __For the construction of an alternative world is the very definition of fiction__ : __owing to the character of representation as a nontransparent process that necessarily involves not only similarity but__// __difference //between representation and the "referent" of the latter, an irreducible degree of alterity and estrangement is bound to obtain even in the case of the most "**realistic" fiction** imaginable.//__// The appearance of transparency in that paradigmatic realist Balzac has been famously exposed as an illusion;2 ' nonetheless, __it is important to understand the operation of alterity in realism not as the failure of the latter, but as the sign of the estranging tendency of science fiction that supplies__ (if secretly) __some of the power of great realistic fiction__ 25 Furthermore, just as some degree of alterity and hence estrangement is fundamental to all fiction, finally including realism itself, so the same is true (but here the limit case is fantasy) of that other dialectical half of the science-fiction tendency: __cognition.__ The latter __is after all an unavoidable operation of the human mind__ (however precritical, and even if clinically schizophrenic) __and must exercise a determinant presence for literary production to take place at all.__ Even in //The Lord of the Rings//-to consider again what is perhaps the most thoroughgoing fantasy we possess, by an author who stands to fantasy rather as Balzac stands to realism – __cognition is quite strongly and overtly operative on at least one level: namely that of the moral and theological values that the text is concerned to enforce__. 2 It is, then, in this very special sense that the apparently wild assertions that __**fiction is science fiction and even that the latter is a wider term than the former may be justified**__ : __cognition and estrangement, which together constitute the generic tendency of science fiction, are not only actually present in all fiction, but are structurally crucial to the possibility of fiction and even____of representation in the first place__. Yet in more routine usage, the term of science fiction ought, as I have maintained above, to be reserved for those texts in which cognitive estrangement is not only present but dominant. And it is with this dialectical understanding of genre that we may not reconsider the apparently difficult cases of Brecht, on the one hand, and //Star Wars //on the other.//

//**Traditional conceptions of government fiat are also fiction, they simply present themselves as fact—fiat misrepresents the process of government decision-making, which means it’s neither educational nor predictable**// //**CLAUDE 1988** (Inis, Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, States and the Global System, pages 18-20) // // This view of the state as an institutional monolith is fostered by the notion of sovereignty, which calls up the image of the monarch, presiding over his kingdom. __Sovereignty emphasizes the singularity of the state__, its monopoly of authority, its unity of command and its capacity to speak with one voice. __Thus, France wills__, Iran demands, __China intends__ , New Zealand promises __and the Soviet Union insists. One all too easily conjures up the picture of a single-minded and purposeful state that decides exactly what it wants to achieve, adopts coherent policies__ intelligently adapted to its objectives, knows what it is doing, does what it intends __and always has its act together. This view of the state is reinforced by political scientists’ emphasis upon the concept of__// __policy__ // and upon the thesis that governments derive policy from calculations of national interest. __We thus take it for granted that states act internationally in accordance with rationally conceived__ and consciously constructed __schemes of action, and we implicitly refuse to consider the possibility that alternatives to policy__ -directed behaviour may have importance–alternatives such as random, reactive, instinctual, habitual and conformist behaviour. __Our rationalistic assumption__ that states do what they have planned to do __tends to inhibit the discovery that states sometimes do what they feel compelled to do, or what they have the opportunity to do, or what they have usually done, or what other states are doing, or whatever the line of least resistance would seem to suggest__. __Academic preoccupation with the making of policy is accompanied by academic neglect of the execution of policy. We seem to assume__ that once the state has calculated its interest and contrived a policy to further that interest, the __carrying out__ of __policy is the__ virtually __automatic result__ of the routine functioning of the bureaucratic mechanism of the state. __I am inclined to call this the__// __Genesis// theory of public administration__, taking as my text the passage: ‘ __And God said, Let there be light: and there was light’__. I suspect that, in the realm of government, __policy execution rarely follows so promptly and inexorably from policy statement__. Alternatively, one may dub it the Pooh-Bah/Ko-Ko theory, honouring those denizens of William S. Gilbert’s Japan who took the position that when the Mikado ordered that something e done it was as good as done and might as well be declared to have been done. __In the real world, that which a state decides to do is not as good as done; it may, in fact, never be done. And what states do, they may never have decided to do.__ Governments are not automatic machines, grinding out decisions and converting decisions into actions. __They are agglomerations of human beings, like the rest of us inclined to be fallible, lazy, forgetful, indecisive, resistant to discipline and authority, and likely to fail to get the word or to heed it.__ As in other large organizations, left and right governmental hands are frequently ignorant of each other’s activities, official spokesmen contradict each other, ministries work at cross purposes, and the creaking machinery of government often gives the impression that no one is really in charge. I hope that no one will attribute my jaundiced view of government merely to the fact that I am an American–one, that is, whose personal experience is limited to a governmental system that is notoriously complex, disjointed, erratic, cumbersome and unpredictable. The United States does not, I suspect, have the least effective government or the most bumbling and incompetent bureaucracy in all the world. __Here and there__, now and then, __governments do__ , of course __perform prodigious feats of organization__ and administration: an extraordinary war effort, a flight to the moon, a successful hostage-rescue operation. __More often, states have to make do with governments that are not notably clear about their purposes or coordinated and disciplined in their operations.__ This means that, in international relations, states are sometimes less dangerous, and sometimes less reliable, than one might think. Neither their threats nor their promises are to be taken with absolute seriousness. __Above all, it means that we students of international politics must be cautious in attributing purposefulness and responsibility to governments. To say the that the United States was informed about an event is not to establish that the president acted in the light of that knowledge; he may never have heard about it.__ To say that a Soviet pilot shot down an airliner is not to prove that the Kremlin has adopted the policy of destroying all intruders into Soviet airspace; one wants to know how and by whom the decision to fire was made. To observe that the representative of Zimbabwe voted in favour of a particular resolution in the United Nations General Assembly is not necessarily to discover the nature of Zimbabwe’s policy on the affected matter; Zimbabwe may have no policy on that matter, and it may be that no one in the national capital has ever heard of the issue. We can hardly dispense with the convenient notion that Pakistan claims, Cuba promises, and Italy insists, and we cannot well abandon the formal position that governments speak for and act on behalf of their states, but __it is essential that we bear constantly in mind the reality that governments are never fully in charge and never achieve the unity, purposefulness and discipline that theory attributes to them–and that they sometimes claim.__

**Our act of imagination shapes world politics—representations create the world and are inextricably linked to policy** But this is at best a partial understanding of the relationship between representation and “the real.” The __realities we know— the meanings they have for us— are discursive products__. 14 “ __Because the real is never wholly present to us— how it is real for us is always mediated through some representational practice— we lose something when we think of representation as mimetic__ ” (Shapiro, 1988: xii). __SF is not just a “window” onto an already pre-existing world__. Rather, **__SF texts are part of the processes of world politics themselves__** : __they are implicated in producing and reproducing the phenomena__ that Gregg and __others assume they merely reflect__. 15 **__Instead of reading these texts as simple reflections of the real, we can read__ __“the real__** ”—in our case **__world politics— as itself a social and cultural product__**. “[T __]o read the ‘real’ as a text that has been produced__ (written) is __to disclose an aspect of human conduct that is fugitive in approaches that collapse the process of inscription into a static reality__ ” (ibid.). For instance, __through its overtly liberal ideology__ and mechanisms like the Prime Directive— which forbids interference by the United Federation of Planets in the normal internal development of technologically less developed societies— __Star Trek helps to produce U.S. foreign policy as non-interventionary and benign__ (Weldes, 1999: 124– 127). __World politics, then, is itself a cultural product__. Based as they are on such assumptions, our analyses have more in common with Cynthia Weber’s use of popular film to “access what IR theory says, how it plots its story, and how all this together gives us a particular vision of the world” (2001: 132, emphasis added).
 * WELDES 2003** – Senior Lecturer, Bristol University; PhD (Minn) (Jutta, “Popular culture, science fiction, and world politics: exploring inter textual relations” in “To seek out new worlds: science fiction and world politics” ed. Weldes, Palgrave Macmillan 2003, 12-13)

**Our model of fiat is better for policy-making—we should imagine alternative worlds even if they’re technically impossible, which means you should vote aff even if the Bering Strait tunnel is impossible** __Science fiction has been__ a __popular__ genre at least since Jules Verne’s 19th century work, and arguably longer still. But __can it have practical value as well as be a form of escapist entertainment? C__ lark Miller and Ira Bennett of ASU suggest that it __has potential for use in improving the capacity of the general public “to imagine and reason critically about technological futures” and for being integrated into technology assessment processes__ (“Thinking longer term about technology: is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to constructing futures?" Science and Public Policy 35(8), October 2008, pp. 597-606). Miller and Bennett argue that s __cience fiction can provide a way to stimulate people to wake from “technological somnambulism”__ (Langdon Winner’s term for taking for granted or being oblivious to sociotechnical changes), __in order to recognize such changes, realize that there may be alternative possibilities and that particular changes need not be determined, and to engage with deliberative processes and institutions that choose directions of change.__ Where most **__political planning is short-term and based on projections that simply extend current trends incrementally into the future, science fiction provides scenarios which exhibit “non-linearity” by involving multiple, major, and complex changes from current reality.__** While these scenarios “ __likely provide...little technical accuracy” about how technology and society will actually interact, they may still provide ideas about alternative possibilities, and in particular to provide “clear visions of desirable--and not so desirable--futures.”__ The article begins with a quote from Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute recommending that __“hard science fiction” be used to aid in “long-term”__ (20+ year) __prediction scenarios; she advises, “Don’t think of it as literature,” and focus on the technologies rather than the people.__ Miller and Bennett, however, argue otherwise--that __not only is science fiction useful for thinking about longer-term consequences, but that the parts about the people--how technologies actually fit into society--are just as, if not more important than the ideas about the technologies themselves.__
 * LIPPARD 2010** - Sr. Security Product Manager for Global Crossing and a Ph.D. student in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University (April 29, Jim, “ Science fiction scenarios and public engagement with science ” __[]__)

__Plan__
The United States federal government should substantially increase funding for the development and construction of deep-water ports in Alaska

Oil
Contention 1 is you should cry over spilled oil.

Past Alaskan oil spills were minor, but increased human activity makes the brink now

O’Rourke 6/15 – Specialist in Naval Affairs (Ronald, “Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress”, 6/15/12; < http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41153.pdf>)//AB//

// Climate change impacts in the Arctic, particularly the decline of sea ice and retreating glaciers, have stimulated human activities in the region, many of which have the potential to create oil pollution. A primary concern is the threat of a large oil spill in the area. Although a **__major oil spill has not occurred in the Arctic region ,82 recent economic activity, such as oil and gas exploration and tourism (cruise ships), increases the risk of oil pollution (and other kinds of pollution) in the Arctic. Significant spills in high northern latitudes (e.g., the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and spills in the North Sea) suggest that the “potential impacts of an Arctic spill are likely to be severe for Arctic species and ecosystems.”__**** 83 ** A primary factor determining the risk of oil pollution in the Arctic is the level and type of human activity being conducted in the region. Although climate changes in the Arctic are expected to increase access to natural resources and shipping lanes, the region will continue to present logistical challenges that may hinder human activity in the region. For example (as discussed in another section of this report),84 the unpredictable ice conditions may discourage trans-Arctic shipping. If trans-Arctic shipping were to occur on a frequent basis, it would represent a considerable portion of the overall risk of oil pollution in the region. In recent decades, many of the world’s largest oil spills have been from oil tankers, which can carry millions of gallons of oil.85 Although the level of trans-Arctic shipping is uncertain, many expect **__oil exploration and extraction activities to intensify in the region__** .86 Oil well blowouts from offshore oil extraction operations have been a source of major oil spills, eclipsing the largest tanker spills. The largest unintentional oil spill in recent history was from the 2010 // Deepwater Horizon // incident in the Gulf of Mexico.87 During that incident, the uncontrolled well released (over an 84-day period) approximately 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf.88 The second-largest unintentional oil spill in recent history—the // IXTOC I //, estimated at 140 million gallons—was due to an oil well blowout in Mexican Gulf Coast waters in 1979.89 //

//An Alaskan Oil spill will destroy marine ecology.//

// Dorsett 10 – Researcher at Towson University (Melanie, “Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Continued Effects on the Alaskan Economy”, 10/20/10; [] ) //AB

Some of the short term ecological effects occurred right away, while others were delayed a few years before setting in. One of the immediate negative impacts was death to a great deal of marine wildlife. “About 250,000 sea birds died, along with 22 killer whales, 2800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, and untold numbers of fish eggs ” (Guterman and Pasotti, 2009). Consequently, for the two pods of whales living along the southwest Alaskan coast each pod lost about 40% of their members directly following the spill. Three years later, the death toll estimates for sea birds increased from 250,000 to approximately 435,000 (National Park Conservation Association, pg.13). Many other species death tolls also increased significantly within the first few years. Due to the fact that the spill contaminated more than 1,200 miles of Alaska’s shoreline, it is hard to quantify all of the ecological damage (Ott, 2009). According to Douglas Wolfe, head of the Bioeffects Assessment Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service, by May 1st, 1989, 20% of the toxic compounds in the oil had evaporated into the atmosphere, and 20- 25% of the oil had dispersed into the ocean and was rapidly degraded through natural processes, (O’harra, 1999). The rapid break down of the oil did not last long, within a few years the oil began to degrade at a much slower rate (Short et al, 2004). Therefore, experts have determined that the oil has been having negative effects on the marine ecology and economy since the night of the oil spill.

It only takes one major spill to collapse the ecosystem

National Academy of Engineering 3 – American National Academies (“Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope”, 2003; < http://dels-old.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/north_slope_final.pdf>)//AB//

// Alaska’s North Slope is underlain by permafrost— a thick layer of earth material that stays frozen year round. The permafrost is covered by a thin active layer that thaws each summer and supports plant growth for a brief period. If permafrost thaws, the ground surface and the structures it supports will settle. To minimize disruption to the ground surface, the North Slope industrial infrastructure is specially built—pipelines are generally elevated rather than buried, and roads and industrial facilities are raised on thick gravel berms. For a variety of reasons, nearly all of the roads, pads, pipelines and other infrastructure ever built are still in place. The environmental effects of such structures on the landscape, water systems, vegetation, and animals are manifest not only at the “footprint” itself (physical area covered by the structure) but also at distances that vary depending on the environmental component being affected. The petroleum industry continues to introduce technological innovations to reduce its footprint, for example, directional drilling and the use of ice roads and pads, drilling platforms, and new kinds of vehicles. For some areas of concern, the committee found no evidence that effects have accumulated. For example, despite widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of frequent oil and saltwater spills on the tundra, **__most spills to date have been small and have had only local effects__**. Moreover, damaged areas have recovered before they have been disturbed again. However, a **__large oil spill in marine waters would likely have substantial accumulating effects on whales and other receptors because current cleanup methods can remove only a small fraction of spilled oil, especially under conditions of broken ice. __**//

//Arctic is key to global biodiversity.//

// Arctic Council 11 – Intergovernmental Council of Arctic States (“Arctic Biodiversity”, 5/2/11; < http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/biodiversity/124-arctic-biodiversity>) //AB

The Arctic contains many species not found elsewhere, and many habitats and ecological processes and adaptations that are unique. These include the seasonal bursts of life on land and in the ocean, the ability of some plants to survive extreme cold and dryness, the physiological features that allow mammals to maintain body heat through an Arctic winter, and the presence of life within sea ice. Furthermore, some groups such as willows, sawflies, and sandpipers are found in greater diversity in the Arctic than anywhere else. In a global context, the Arctic is a significant component of the diversity of life on Earth.

Biodiversity is key to life on earth.

Science Daily 11 (ScienceDaily, online science newsletter, 8/11/12 “Biodivserity Key to Earth’s Life-Support Functions in a Changing World” < http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110811084513.htm>)//AB//

//The bio logical diversity of organisms on Earth is not just something we enjoy when taking a walk through a blossoming meadow in spring; it is also the basis for countless products and services provided by nature, including food, building materials, and medicines as well as the self-purifying qualities of water and protection against erosion. These so-called ecosystem services are what makes Earth inhabitable for humans.  They are based on ecological processes, such as photosynthesis, the production of biomass, or nutrient cycles. Since biodiversity is on the decline, both on a global and a local scale, researchers are asking the question as to what role the diversity of organisms plays in maintaining these ecological processes and thus in providing the ecosystem's vital products and services. In an international research group led by Prof. Dr. Michel Loreau from Canada, ecologists from ten different universities and research institutes, including Prof. Dr. Michael Scherer-Lorenzen from the University of Freiburg, compiled findings from numerous biodiversity experiments and reanalyzed them. These experiments simulated the loss of plant species and attempted to determine the consequences for the functioning of ecosystems, most of them coming to the conclusion that a higher level of biodiversity is accompanied by an increase in ecosystem processes. However, the findings were always only valid for a certain combination of environmental conditions present at the locations at which the experiments were conducted and for a limited range of ecosystem processes. In a study published in the current issue of the journal //Nature//, the research group investigated the extent to which the positive effects of diversity still apply under changing environmental conditions and when a multitude of processes are taken into account. They found that 84 percent of the 147 plant species included in the experiments promoted ecological processes in at least one case. The more years, locations, ecosystem processes, and scenarios of global change -- such as global warming or land use intensity -- the experiments took into account, the more plant species were necessary to guarantee the functioning of the ecosystems. Moreover, other species were always necessary to keep the ecosystem processes running under the different combinations of influencing factors. These findings indicate that much more biodiversity is necessary to keep ecosystems functioning in a world that is changing ever faster. The protection of diversity is thus a crucial factor in maintaining Earth's life-support functions. //

//Even if they win the Arctic isn’t key, the Gulf spill was enough to threaten global extinction//

// Adams 10 – The results of an oil spill (Mike, “The Guld Oil Spill: An Extinction Level Event?”, Blogspot, 5/9/10, [|http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-extinction-level-event.html)//MM] *Gender modified //

// The possibility of an extinction event? It's hard to say exactly what's going on in the Gulf right now, especially because there are so many conflicting reports and unanswered questions. But one thing's for sure: if the situation is actually much worse than we're being led to believe, there could be worldwide catastrophic consequences. If it's true that millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil are flooding the Gulf with no end in sight, the massive oil slicks being created could make their way into the Gulf Stream currents, which would carry them not only up the East Coast but around the world where they could absolutely destroy the global fishing industries. Already these slicks are making their way into Gulf wetlands and beaches where they are destroy ing birds, fish , and even oyster beds. This is disastrous for both the seafood industry and the people whose livelihoods depend on it. It's also devastating to the local wildlife which could begin to die off from petroleum toxicity. Various ecosystems around the world could be heavily impacted by this spill in ways that we don't even yet realize. There's no telling where this continuous stream of oil will end up and what damage it might cause. Theoretically, we could be looking at modern humanity's final act of destruction on planet Earth, because this one oil rig blowout could set in motion a global extinction**__ wave that begins with the oceans and then whiplashes back onto human beings themselves. __** We cannot live without life in the oceans. Man is arrogant to drill so deeply into the belly of Mother Earth, and through this arrogance, we may have just set in motion events that will ultimately destroy us. In the future, we may in fact talk about life on Earth as "pre-spill" versus "post-spill." Because a post-spill world may be drowned in oil, devoid of much ocean life, and suffering a global extinction event that will crash the human population by 90 percent or more. //

//Alaskan spill will be worse – lack of transportation infrastructure means it can’t be cleaned//

// Conathan et. al. 12 – writers for the Center of American Progress, an independent nonpartisan educational institute dedicated to critique and analysis of policy. Individual cites are below. “Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic,” February 2012, americanprogress.org/issues/2012 //HO

The decision to move forward with drilling in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth has deeply divided Alaska Native communities, drawn stark criticism from environmental groups, and caused other federal agencies such as the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to raise concerns about the glaring absence of sound science in the region. This is highlighted in a recent letter to the Obama administration, signed by nearly 600 scientists from around the world, calling on the president and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to follow through on their commitment to science and enact recommendations made by the U.S. Geological Survey before approving any drilling activity in the Arctic.3 In addition to the lack of a scientific foundation, the Arctic has inadequate infrastructure to deal with an oil spill, and response technologies in such extreme environmental conditions remain untested. 2 Center for American Progress | Putting a Freeze on Arctic Drilling As we detail in this report, the resources and existing infrastructure that facilitated a grand-scale response to the BP disaster differ immensely from what could be brought to bear in a similar situation off Alaska’s North Slope. Even the well-developed infrastructure and abundance of trained personnel in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t prevent the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Our Arctic response capabilities pale by comparison. There are no U.S. Coast Guard stations north of the Arctic Circle, and we currently operate just one functional icebreaking vessel. Alaska’s tiny ports and airports are incapable of supporting an extensive and sustained airlift effort. The region even lacks such basics as paved roads and railroads. T his dearth of infrastructure would severely hamper the ability to transport the supplies and personnel required for any large-scale emergency response effort.

Major spill will destroy phytoplankton

Earth Gauge 10 – A national environmental education foundation program (Earth Gauge, “Gulf Oil Spill Series: Effects on Invertebrates”, National Environmental Education Foundation, 2010, [] )//MM//

// A variety of factors affect the impact of oil on invertebrate populations, including the type of oil, how long the oil has been in the water, concentration, type of habitat, microbial communities present, weather conditions and water quality. Latitude can also be a factor. Hydrocarbons – organic compounds made up of carbon and hydrogen that are the building blocks of oil – linger longer in high latitude marine environments. In addition, high latitude ecosystems have simple food webs and lower biodiversity; if a keystone species’ population is reduced after an oil spill, there are few to no species that can take its place in the food web. Because oil spills input a large amount of oi l into the marine environment in a short amount of time, marine bacteria that typically digest oil from natural sources cannot break it down fast enough to prevent impacts on other marine life. In addition, if there is more sediment in the water, it mixes with oil, causing the oil to sink or travel farther outside of the spill area. Once it enters the ocean, crude oil breaks down into three main components, which each affect invertebrates in a different way. Volatile compounds evaporate at the surface or dissolve in the water column, impacting animals such as plankton that live close to the surface and take in a large amount of water relative to their body size. Another component of oil forms a thick “mousse,” which coats mammals and birds, in addition to washing onshore and impacting tidal communities. The third is a sinking component that impacts invertebrates, fish and mammals below //

//Scientific studies go aff – that causes extinction//

// Connor ’10 (Steven Connor, Science editor of The Independent, “The dead sea: Global warming blamed for 40 per cent decline in the ocean's phytoplankton Microscopic life crucial to the marine food chain is dying out. The consequences could be catastrophic” 7/29/2010 [] ) //

//Phytoplankton are microscopic marine organisms capable of photosynthesis, just like terrestrial plants. They float in the upper layers of the oceans, provide much of the oxygen we breathe and account for about half of the total organic matter on Earth. A 40 per cent decline would represent a massive change to the global biosphere. "If this holds up, something really serious is underway and has been underway for decades. I've been trying to think of a biological change that's bigger than this and I can't think of one," said marine biologist Boris Worm of Canada's Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He said: "If real, it means that the marine ecosystem today looks very different to what it was a few decades ago and a lot of this change is happening way out in the open, blue ocean where we cannot see it. I'm concerned about this finding." The researchers studied phytoplankton records going back to 1899 when the measure of how much of the green chlorophyll pigment of phytoplankton was present in the upper ocean was monitored regularly. The scientists analysed about half a million measurements taken over the past century in 10 ocean regions, as well as measurements recorded by satellite. They found that phytoplankton had declined significantly in all but two of the ocean regions at an average global rate of about 1 per cent per year, most of which since the mid 20th Century. They found that this decline correlated with a corresponding rise in sea-surface temperatures – although they cannot prove that warmer oceans caused the decline. The study, published in the journal Nature, is the first analysis of its kind and deliberately used data gathered over such a long period of time to eliminate the sort of natural fluctuations in phytoplankton that are known to occur from one decade to the next due to normal oscillations in ocean temperatures, Dr Worm said. " Phytoplankton are a critical part of our planetary life support system. They produce half of the oxygen we breathe, draw down surface CO2 and ultimately support all of our fishes ." he said. But some scientists have warned that the Dalhousie University study may not present a realistic picture of the true state of marine plantlife given that phytoplankton is subject to wide, natural fluctuations. "Its an important observation and it's consistent with other observations, but the overall trend can be overinterpreted because of the masking effect of natural variations," said Manuel Barange of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and a phytoplankton expert. However, the Dalhousie scientists behind the three-year study said they have taken the natural oscillations of ocean temperatures into account and the overall conclusion of a 40 per cent decline in phytoplankton over the past century still holds true. "Phytoplankton are the basis of life in the oceans and are essential in maintaining the health of the oceans so we should be concerned about its decline. "It's a very robust finding and we're very confident of it, " said Daniel Boyce, the lead author of the study. "Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans," Dr Boyce said. //

//Major spill threatens every level of ecology and destroys the Alaskan salmon//

// Cornwall 4 – Seattle Times Staff Reporter (Warren, “Effects of Oil Spill in Alaska could Linger in Remote Bay”, 12/14/04; ) //AB

It took a few hours for the Selendang Ayu to spill thousands of gallons of oil into a remote Alaska bay. The effects could linger for years. The immediate damage has already become apparent, as biologists tell of at least one sea otter and various birds swimming amid oil and thick goo along the western side of Unalaska Island. But the toll of oil lingering amid rocks or settling on the sea bed could prove much harder to gauge, measured in damage to otters' livers and subtle survival problems for fish. " Long-term effects is kind of a black box ," said Jeep Rice, a biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service's Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau. He has spent much of his career studying the effect of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. For those plotting ways to reclaim oil that has spilled from the Selendang Ayu as well as the larger amount still aboard the freighter, the biggest concerns are sea otters and marine birds. The oil can rob otters and birds of insulation by matting-down fur and feathers, potentially lethal in the harsh Bering Sea winter. When the animals try to clean themselves off, they might swallow the oil. The problem could be made worse by the type of oil, known as "bunker C," which is particularly sticky. "I'm sure if I were a bird or an otter and got some on my feathers it would be almost impossible to clean off," said Rice, who dealt with bunker C oil during a 1997 spill on the island. Spill observers in aircraft have reported seeing one otter in the oil and five birds, including three cormorants and a harlequin duck, said Leslie Pearson, emergency response program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. She expected that number could climb once biologists walk the shoreline fouled by the spill. The area around Skan Bay, where the broken freighter sits, is home to Steller's sea lions, which are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Sea otters also live there. The most vulnerable birds include crested auklets, murres, cormorants, bald eagles, ravens and several sea ducks, including eiders, mergansers, black and surf scoters, and harlequins, said Greg Siekaniec, manager for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which includes Unalaska Island. Salmon present another concern because they spawn into streams that flow from nearby lakes into the bays. No salmon are spawning now. But if oil reaches the salmon eggs, it could taint them with toxins or smother them, said Mark Carls, a fishery biologist at the Auke Bay Laboratory. Cleaning up bunker C oil is easier in some ways because it is less likely to soak into sand or gravel than more fluid crude oil. But the oil that's not cleaned up can stay in the environment for years. Alaska's Prince William Sound has become the world's largest laboratory for the study of the long-term effects of oil spills, courtesy of the 11-million-gallon Valdez spill. And disputes continue about how long that damage persisted. Studies there found that oil-spill deposits continued to leach toxic chemicals into the environment for years. Even at minute levels, those toxins can impair the development of fish embryos, Carls said. There's also evidence the toxins show up in animals that forage along the intertidal zone — the area of shoreline inundated by tides, home to abundant food sources such as clams and mussels. Tissue samples from otters' livers and harlequin ducks from Prince William Sound still bear signs of toxic exposure, Carls said. Otter populations in the hardest-hit areas have rebounded slower, or not at all, compared to parts of the sound that largely escaped the spill, Rice said. But the fallout from these problems can be subtle. Some animals may have a slightly harder time surviving or reproducing. But the effects on an entire population can often be difficult to measure, and are disputed even in the closely watched Prince William Sound, Rice said. The 1997 bunker C spill from an errant freighter that grounded near the town of Unalaska killed an estimated 2,000 seabirds, spilled oil into a lake with salmon eggs and forced the temporary closure of mussel beds used by locals, Pearson said. The mussel beds were declared safe in early 1998, Pearson said. But Sharon Svarny-Livingston, environmental coordinator for the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska, waited six years before eating the blue mussels, worried the toxin levels were still too high. She still discovers tar balls on the beach left from the spill.

That’s a keystone species

Helfield and Naiman 6 – Researchers at College of Forest Resources, University of Washington (James M. and Robert J., “Keystone Interactions: Salmon and Bear in Riparian Forests of Alaska”, 2006, < http://myweb.wwu.edu/~helfiej/publications_pdfs/Helfield_Naiman_2006.pdf>)//AB//

// T he term ‘‘ keystone species’’ is used to describe organisms that exert a disproportionately important influence on the ecosystems in which they live. Analogous concepts such as ‘‘keystone mutualism’’ and ‘‘mobile links’’ illustrate how, in many cases, the interactions of two or more species produce an effect greater than that of any one species individually. Because of their role in transporting nutrients from the ocean to river and riparian ecosystems, Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) have been described as keystone species and mobile links, although few data are available to quantify the importance of this interaction relative to other nutrient vectors. Application of a mass balance model to data from a southwestern Alaskan stream suggests that nitrogen (N) influx to the riparian forest is significantly increased in the presence of both salmon and bear, but not by either species individually. The interactions of salmon and bear may provide up to 24% of riparian N budgets, but this percentage varies in time and space according to variations in salmon escapement, channel morphology and watershed vegetation characteristics, suggesting interdependence and functional redundancy among N sources. These findings illustrate the complexity of interspecific interactions, the importance of linkages across ecosystem boundaries and the necessity of examining the processes and interactions that shape ecological communities, rather than their specific component parts. Ecological theory holds that certain animals exert a disproportionately important influence on the ecosystems in which they live. Paine (1966) first described this phenomenon in reporting how a predatory starfish (Pisaster ochraceus) influences the species composition and population density of an intertidal ecosystem. By eating masses of barnacles, Pisaster prevents competitive exclusion by dominant organisms, thereby creating open space for a greater number of species. Paine (1969) subsequently introduced the term ‘‘ keystone species’’ to describe those animals that control the integrity and stability of their communities. Since then, the concept has been widely used in ecology and conservation, and the keystone designation has been applied to a wide range of taxa at various trophic levels in various ecosystems (see Bond 1993; Mills and others 1993; Power and others 1996). Although there is no universally accepted operational definition of what constitutes a keystone species, certain requisite traits have been identified. Animals so designated are generally native species that regulate, through their activities and abundances, the productivity, diversity or physical structure of their communities, with influences extending beyond those organisms directly affected through trophic interactions (Paine 1966, 1969). Implicit in the concept is that keystone species are exceptional in their importance relative to the rest of the community (Mills and others 1993), that they are unique in their functioning within the community (Kotliar 2000), and that their impacts are disproportionately large relative to their abundances (Power and others 1996). Loss of a keystone species results in significant changes in the structure or organization of a given ecosystem, presumably with adverse consequences for the survival of other native species or populations. //

//Response time is key – that means we need infrastructure nearby.//

// O’Rourke 6/15 – Specialist in Naval Affairs (Ronald, “Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress”, 6/15/12; < http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41153.pdf>) //AB

Response time is a critical factor for oil spill recovery. With each hour, spilled oil becomes more difficult to track, contain, and recover, particularly in icy conditions, where oil can migrate under or mix with surrounding ice. 96 M ost response techniques call for quick action, which may pose logistical challenges in areas without prior staging equipment or trained response professionals. Many stakeholders are concerned about a “ response gap” for oil spills in the Arctic region .97 A response gap is a period of time in which oil spill response activities would be unsafe or infeasible. The response gap for the northern Arctic latitudes is likely to be extremely high compared to other regions.98

Independent of response time, shallow ports will cause accidents and major spills

Landrieu 12 – Chairwoman Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security (Mary, “Harbor Maintenance Funds Must Be Put to Intended Use”, 2011/2012 Issue of Seaport Magazine, [|http://digital.sea-portsinfo.com/issue/54053)//MG]

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveys show our harbor channels are getting shallower and narrower. This means vessels carrying American-made goods cannot be filled to capacity, nor can ships with imports for the U.S. market enter many ports with a full load. This drives up the cost of our nation’s exports and imports and increases the risk of vessel grounding and associated oil spills. Ignoring the maintenance of harbors and ports impacts regional and national commerce, reduces our economic competitiveness, and increases the risk of vessel groundings, collisions and pollution incidents.

Investing in Arctic port development is key to safe navigation – prevents oil spills.

NOAA 8 – Federal Scientific Agency within US Department of Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Internal Strategy Paper: Transportation; A Strategy for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” July 2008; < http://www.ppi.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Transportation.pdf>)//AB

NOAA is a leader in providing quality MTS products and services. Applying the range of NOAA skills developed for the contiguous U.S. to the ever-more accessible Alaskan north and Arctic, where there is an urgent need for the infrastructure and information NOAA provides, is a natural and essential path to take. Loss of sea ice and permafrost, rising sea levels and eroding coasts are all occurring at unprecedented rates, and the status quo – limited NOAA service delivery to the region -- is no longer acceptable .A modest investment – on the order of $15M in FY2011 - in the geospatial infrastructure that the rest of the nation takes for granted will enable both the economic promise of the region and environmental protections to unfold. From accurate positioning capability to accurate maps and nautical charts, marine weather forecasts and spill response, NOAA has the opportunity to apply the skills of its oldest, most fundamental missions to maximum return in Alaska and the Arctic. Investing in this suite of services will add immediate benefit to a host of other federal missions dependent upon the same infrastructure to achieve their goals, including Homeland Security, coastal and ocean management, fisheries stewardship, climate change monitoring, and tsunami/ storm surge readiness .The first and most critical step – an improved geo-spatial framework -- will enable NOAA and its partners to monitor and describe the physical changes impacting the natural and socioeconomic environment and aid coastal communities with decisions on flood protection infrastructure; harden roads, bridges and observing systems; ensure safe and efficient marine transportation ; plan evacuation routes; model storm surge; and monitor sea-level. Improving the vertical geospatial infrastructure will eliminate meter errors in heights and allow efficient, centimeter-level measurement of heights using GPS. NOAA's 1998 Height Modernization Report to Congress estimated a $12 billion constituent benefit from national height modernization, including $9.6 billion for maritime safety; this investment will realize similar benefits for Alaska. Further, GPS-based coastal mapping will be tied more accurately to true elevation (orthometric heights), allowing production of more accurate coastline delineations and map products and improved modeling of storm surge and coastal erosion. Tsunami inundation models and wild fire predication/ control will also be improved through this accurate positioning framework. Active mining claims currently cover 3.6 million acres of land in Alaska. The improved geospatial infrastructure will allow precision mining and increased efficiencies in tapping Alaska’s zinc, lead, gold, silver, and coal reserves. Eliminating the large gaps in shoreline, hydrography, tide and current information, and other MTS geospatial data sets will greatly advance NOAA’s ability to fulfill its statutory responsibilities to support safe navigation in the emerging Arctic marine transportation corridor through accurate, timely and reliable products and services such as charts, tidal datums, and precise marine boundaries. Lack of adequately maintained decision support tools will increase the risk of accidents as vessel traffic expands, with potentially catastrophic effects on a pristine environment. The most effective way to mitigate an accident is to prevent it. In addition, lack of accurate MTS geospatial information may impact the award/management of oil and other offshore leases for energy and mineral exploration and extraction as jurisdiction over offshore submerged lands is determined from baseline marine boundaries. Significant revenues can be involved based on where lines are drawn. One such disputed case went all the way to the Supreme Court (521 U.S. 1 (1997)) and NOAA provided the tidal and shoreline information used in the adjudication.

Arctic
Contention 2 is White Dawn. Status quo Arctic strategy fails – navy lacks adequate bases. O’Rourke 6/15 – Specialist in Naval Affairs (Ronald, “Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress”, 6/15/12; < http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41153.pdf>)//AB// // As global warming opens the Arctic Ocean to commercial and industrial traffic, the U.S. Navy is pushing to catch up with Russia, Canada and even Denmark in its Arctic ability. If a crisis were to happen now, the Navy lacks the ability to act in the Arctic without the help of one of those countries or the Coast Guard. Last year, the Navy asked the War Gaming Department of the U.S. Naval War College to find out what the Navy needs for sustained operations in the Arctic. In the resulting 2011 Fleet Arctic Operations Game, the Navy learned how big its Arctic shortcomings are. As a force, the Navy lacks everything from bases and Arctic-capable ships to reliable communications and cold-weather clothing.... The game’s conclusions: the Navy is not adequately prepared to conduct long-term maritime Arctic operations ; Arctic weather conditions increase the risk of failure; and most critically, to operate in the Arctic, the Navy will need to lean on the U.S. Coast Guard, countries like Russia or Canada, or tribal and industrial partners. To sustain operations in the Arctic, the Navy needs ice-capable equipment, accurate and timely environmental data, personnel trained to operate in extreme weather, and better communications systems. Much of the environmental data will come from other Arctic nations.... Navy officials understand the need to conduct exercises in the Arctic so they can get ready for the real thing, but they don't have a strategy. “We are the only Arctic nation without an Arctic strategy,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Blake McBride, Arctic Affairs officer for Task Force Climate Change. “The Coast Guard and Department of Defense are working on a strategy to help answer the issue, and advocate for capabilities.” //

//Arctic arms race now – Russia and other Arctic states are preparing for resource wars.// // Akimoto 9 – Senior Research Fellow at Ocean Policy Research Foundation (Kazumine, “Power Games in the Arctic Ocean” 10/20/09 < http://www.institutenorth.org/assets/images/uploads/files/Power.pdf>) //AB Knowingly or unknowingly, Russia is activating the operations of its naval and air forces in the Arctic Ocean. In May 2008, Tu-95 Bear-H bombers launched a regular patrol over the Arctic along the U.S. and Canadian territories,9 and in June 2008, the Russian Defense Ministry declared that they would, for safeguard of national interests in the Arctic, be ready to go into a fighting trim and increase submarine operations.10 In September 2008, the said ministry also announced that a Delta-III class nuclear submarine traveled the Arctic Ocean underwater and reached the Kamchatka.11 Moreover, the Russian Navy’s North Sea Fleet is reportedly operating a spy submersible B-90 Sarov in the Arctic Ocean with its base in the Kara Peninsular.12 In the background of the increasingly active operations of the Russian Navy and Air Force in the Arctic, there seem to lie Russia’s ambition to secure seabed resources and control the Northeast Passage to prevent intervention from other nations. Russia’s military concerns obviously differ from those of the U nited S tates. As if rivaling with Russia, the other Arctic coastal states are also intensifying their military activity. In August 2008, Canada implemented a ground-sea-air joint exercise “Operation Nanook 08” in the Arctic; and in October 2008, the Norwegian Navy decided to dispatch a frigate to the waters near Svalbard Islands to strengthen its naval presence. Similar actions continued into the year 2009. In June, Denmark decided, as part of its 2010-2014 National Defense Program, to newly create in Greenland a military command and a task force responsible for the Arctic operations. In August, Canada carried out “Operation Nanook 09.” Canadian Premier Harper participated in the exercise. He arrived on a frigate in action by helicopter, and gave a pep talk to Canadian forces personnel and media reporters, saying: “The first principle of Arctic sovereignty is ‘use it or lose it.’” Not only that but Premier Harper ostentatiously boarded a submarine navigating on the surface.13 Parenthetically, it is interesting to note that researches have lately appeared in Norway and other countries that discuss the Arctic Ocean security from the viewpoint of geopolitics. The monthly magazine of Navy League of the United States, SEAPOWER, carried a feature “The Cold War?: US, Canada, Russia, Denmark, rush to stake Arctic Claims ” in its issue of October 2007. The publication reports that claims of the coastal states heat up over the exploitation of seabed resources and the use of Arctic sea routes, both of which diminishing ice helps look more realistic but at the same time turn into the seed of further tension. 14 The magazine introduced the U.S. argument that Russia’s assertion of its continental shelf being extended to Lomonosov Ridge is not acceptable; and since, in the meantime, the Northwest Passage is an international strait for military, commercial and tourism uses, Canada’s assertion of the route being internal waters is unacceptable, either. In August 2008, the Russian newspaper Kommersant carried an article “Cold War Goes North,” and commented that the reaction of the United States and other countries against the posting of a Russian flag in August 2007 may help the prospect of a new Cold War.15 A look at a desk globe from above will clarify the reason why the Arctic Ocean is likened to the Mediterranean of the Arctic --- the Ocean is surrounded by coastal countries as is the real Mediterranean Sea. The ice that had for long covered the Arctic Ocean begins to retreat due to global warming, and now humans will be likely to use the space with impunity. But in the area, territorial seas, contiguous zones, and jurisdictional waters of the coastal states are overlapped with each other, accompanied by various jurisdictional claims. Military access to the Arctic Ocean increases, whereas disputes among the coastal states over their interests are not abated --- such a situation seemingly sparks fear of a new Cold War.

Russia and the West are scrambling for the Arctic – deterrence is key to solve. Pravda 9 – Russian State News Organization (“NATO to melt Arctic Ice as it Triggers Yet Another International Scandal”, 1/22/09; < http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/22-01-2009/106995-nato_arctic-0/>)//AB// //The endless desert of snow and ice has always been a subject for dispute among politicians, diplomats and scientists. The Arctic territory has now become a subject of a military dispute : NATO declared it a strategically important region . The alliance intends to increase its contingent in this part of the globe. The announcement was voiced by NATO spokesman James Appathurai. The official particularly said that NATO has a long-term strategic interest in the region. He also announced a meeting with the participation of high-ranking officials of the alliance: the meeting is to take place January 28-29 in Reykjavik. NATO’s Secretary General, the commander of NATO’s allied forces in Europe, the commander for transformation and the head of the defense committee of the alliance will take part in the meeting too. The entry list does not leave any doubts about NATO’s real goals in the region. The decision of the alliance to declare the northern territories as strategically important will create a tense international situation in the region.The struggle for the Arctic has become the subject of long-term military games. One may not doubt that they will send military units to the Arctic sooner or later. Those, who follow the affairs around the Arctic territories, understand that Appathurai’s remarks became a continuation of the initiatives outlined in the US national security directive. The document says that Washington has fundamental national interests in the Arctic region. The interests are defined as follows: missile defense, strategic deterrence, marine security operations.  There are no references to terrorists or pirates, who prefer the warm waters off the coast of Somali, but not polar bears. Scientists say that the warming of the Arctic region takes place twice as fast as on the rest of the planet. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that the ice core of Greenland melts faster than anyone could ever suppose. As a result, the waters of the region will become navigable for both civil and war ships. The USA, Canada and NATO do not conceal why they need a military group deployed in the Arctic region . NATO’s ice-breakers will arrive in the region to defend national interests of those members of the alliance who claim their right for the natural wealth of this part of the planet. The Arctic contains about 90 billion barrels of unexplored crude and enormous reserves of natural gas, which could be comparable to those of Russia. They make up about 30 percent of global gas reserves. Russia will be using many of its Arctic gas deposits to extract about 50 percent of its natural gas by 2030. For example, the Shtokman deposit in the Barents Sea contains 4 trillion cubic meters of gas. Russia is ready to take adequate measures in response against such a background. That is why NATO is trying to stake out a claim in the region. Russia’s marine doctrine, which was signed during Putin’s presidency, points out the Arctic territory as one of the major directions of the naval policy. Russia’s Security Council is to unveil a new strategy of the Arctic development at the end of January. The key message of the document will be as follows: “ Russia is not going to give the Arctic away .” Russia also plans to considerably intensify the freight traffic activity on the Northern Seaway during the upcoming years. Six new powerful ice-breakers will be built before 2020 for this purpose, Russia ’s Minister for Transport, Igor Levitin said. Five countries of the Arctic Ocean – Russia, Canada, the USA, Norway and Denmark – made a reasonable decision last year to negotiate the separation of the Arctic region on the base of existent conventions only. However, NATO’s plans to add a military constituent to the Arctic dialogue may lead to drastic changes in the approach to the current issues. A new hotspot may appear on the map of the world. //

//China is ready to contest anyone who claims sovereignty militarily// // Blunden 1/20 – contributor to Chatham House International Affairs and author on geopolitics (Margaret, “Geopolitics and the Northern Sea Route”, 1/20/12, < http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/International%20Affairs/2012/88_1/88_1blunden.pdf>) //AB The NSR is a contested waterway, Russian claims of sovereignty conflicting with the official US and EU position that it passes through international straits. Most interested parties have so far not challenged Russia’s de facto control, buttressed by its regional military superiority, or its regulatory regime. The increasingly widespread adoption of the Russian name, the Northern Sea Route, rather than the North-East Passage (the earlier European term), is significant in itself. However, Chinese academic analysts have suggested that China could consider contesting Russian and Canadian sovereignty over, respectively, the Northern Sea Route and the North-West Passage .6 Changes in transport routes have historically been associated with seismic shifts in the balance of economic and political power. The drive to secure port bases and the deployment of naval forces have historically followed in the wake of the merchant ships. The development of the NSR for routine intercontinental transit, a possibility not ruled out in Germany and China, would signal a dramatically changed geopolitical environment. One possible scenario of Chinese naval vessels, tasked with protecting Chinese merchant ships, in the seas north of Russia or in the North Atlantic, would confront Russia and NATO with a challenging new security environment

Absent deterrence measures, conflict is inevitable Grundberger 4/26 – staff writer for John Hopkins Newsletter (Jacob, “Cold Wars: Why Militaries Must Get out of the Arctic” 4/26/12 [|http://www.jhunewsletter.com/op-ed/cold-wars-why-militaries-must-get-out-of-the-arctic-1.2862157#.T-vuSsWs9n8] )//AB// // A disturbing trend has swept the world’s most northern states. Over the last few months, the international community has taken notice of the deployment and expansion of militaries to a new frontier, the Arctic Circle. Despite naysayers, the militaries of states such as the U nited S tates, Russia, Canada and the Scandinavian powers have demonstrated their acknowledgment of global warming by directing their forces in various exercises aimed at understanding and mastering this new battlefield. This is all being done in preparation for the potential for future conflict. Unsurprisingly, the source of this conflict will be energy resources. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the Arctic may contain 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas. In addition, due to global warming, the National Research Council has predicted that sea lanes will be open in the region by the year 2030. Militaries, therefore, have begun to prepare for what they believe to be the inevitable crises that will break out over territorial disputes in the Arctic. It seems to me that the militarization of this pristine territory is not only misguided, but will yield harmful consequences that will cause invariable damage to international and environmental security. One of the biggest problems with the militarization of the Arctic is the insistence of northern military powers to adhere to the fallacious Realist assumption of the inevitability of war. While resource wars have always been a staple of international relations, there is something to be said about the insistence of these states to militarize the region as opposed to seeking any sort of international mediation. //

//That causes great power war// // Rodgers 10 – former senior international correspondent for CNN (Walter, “War over the Arctic? Global warming skeptics distract us from security risks.” 3/2/10; [] ) //AB Skepticism about climate change is going mainstream, and that is worrying. One-third of Americans now say global warming doesn’t exist – triple the percentage of three years ago. This defiance of science isn’t just harmful for the environment. It’s also distracting us from growing threats to US national security. Actual – not theoretical – effects of climate change are turning the Arctic into a potential military flash point. Expected melting of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean means greatly expanded access to increasingly scarce fossil fuels. It also means tensions over Arctic real estate. What the Middle East was to the second half of the 20th century, the Arctic could be to the first half of the 21st. Because America has been so slow to wake up to climate change, it’s lagging behind in protecting its Arctic interests. “Since 1995 we have lost 40 percent of the North Pole ’s icecap,” said Professor Robert Huebert, of the University of Calgary and an adviser to the Canadian government. Mr. Huebert and other experts spoke at a recent conference on climate change security risks hosted by the Center for National Policy. “ It is not a matter of if, but when, the ice will be gone,” he said. Moscow gets this, even if the US public does not. “ The Arctic must become Russia ’s main strategic resource base ,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council , declared last year. “ It cannot be ruled out that the battle for raw materials will be waged by military means ,” a Russian planning document has warned. Partially because of years of climate change denial, “the United States remains largely asleep at the wheel,” according to a Foreign Affairs article last March by Scott Borgerson, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Meanwhile, other Arctic nations are moving to muscularly stake their sovereignty claims while prospecting for hundreds of billions of dollars of treasure buried on the ocean floor up there. Major melting has spurred Russia, Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), and Norway into a new gold rush, except this time it’s about staking claim to huge reservoirs of natural gas, petroleum, and untold deposits of minerals previously inaccessible because of the polar ice shield. Much of the sub-sea Arctic wealth will of necessity be transported by ships because thawing tundra will be too unstable for pipelines. The South Koreans anticipated this more than a decade ago, building giant vessels to secure a big share of the shipping market. The US and other Arctic nations are meeting this month to discuss Arctic sovereignty. Previous summits have included agreements to act responsibly and peacefully as the polar icecap recedes, but nearly all nations involved are rearming militarily to defend their sovereignty. “We are already in an Arctic arms race,” Huebert says. “ The year 2010 in the Arctic is akin to 1935 in Europe .” Russia is building military bases on the Arctic coast and has 10,000 troops deployed near its northern border to assert its expanding claims. Norway has in recent years bought five new supermodern Navy frigates with advanced Aegis weapons systems to defend its undersea claims. Denmark is also increasing military spending to support its polar position. Because of the vagueness of undersea borders, the US and Canada are also arguing about overlapping sovereignty claims with hundreds of billions in petro profits hanging in the balance. China has no polar border, yet it is building an advanced icebreaker to promote “scientific “and “commercial’ pursuits both in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Former US Sen. Gary Hart is worried that the Arctic could become the new Fulda Gap, the cold-war fulcrum of potential battle in Germany, where the West feared Soviet divisions would pour into Western Europe. “ We don’t need to start another cold war,” Mr. Hart said, “but we do need to determine Russia’s intent.” As the Arctic thaws and the Northwest Passage becomes a navigable strait for shipping, there could be seismic consequences. Under international law, the term “strait” also affords flyover rights to other countries. When the Northwest Passage becomes a regularly navigable strait, Russia could legally and perhaps provocatively send its warplanes into North American airspace, something it never would have done in the cold war. Canadian political experts claim the Russians are already becoming more assertive, bordering on aggressive. “ If that’s the case, the Russians need to be stopped now ,” Huebert said. “Most Americans have no clue the United States is an Arctic nation,” said US Coast Guard Rear Adm. Gene Brooks. Such ignorance carries a heavy price. Yet broader public ignorance about climate change is the goal of some skeptics and deniers. It wasn’t that long ago when cigarette manufacturers told Congress that nicotine wasn’t addictive, or when Detroit ’s auto moguls insisted that seat belts were a bad idea. Responsible dissent is one thing. But defiance of facts on the ground that imperil US national and energy security is quite another. Says Brooks: “The age of the Arctic is upon us.”

US Naval access to the Arctic region is key – it’s the ultimate deterrent Conway et al 7 [James T., General, U.S. Marine Corps, Gary Roughead, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Thad W. Allen, Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” October, http://www.navy.mil/maritime/MaritimeStrategy.pdf] Deter major power war. No other disruption is as potentially disastrous to global stability as war among major powers. Maintenance and extension of this Nation’s comparative seapower advantage is a key component of deterring major power war. While war with another great power strikes many as improbable, the near-certainty of its ruinous effects demands that it be actively deterred using all elements of national power.The expeditionary character of maritime forces —our lethality, global reach, speed, endurance, ability to overcome barriers to access, and operational agility — provide the joint commander with a range of deterrent options. We will pursue an approach to deterrence that includes a credible and scalable ability to retaliate against aggressors conventionally, unconventionally, and with nuclear forces. Win our Nation’s wars. In times of war, our ability to impose local sea control, overcome challenges to access, force entry, and project and sustain power ashore, makes our maritime forces an indispensable element of the joint or combined force. This expeditionary advantage must be maintained because it provides joint and combined force commanders with freedom of maneuver. Reinforced by a robust sealift capability that can concentrate and sustain forces, sea control and power projection enable extended campaigns ashore.

New Arctic ports are vital to those deterrence capabilities O’Rourke 6/15 – Specialist in Naval Affairs (Ronald, “Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress”, 6/15/12; < http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41153.pdf>)//AB The Navy and Coast Guard are exploring the potential implications that increased surface ship and aircraft operations in the Arctic may have for required numbers of ships and aircraft, ship and aircraft characteristics, new or enlarged Arctic bases, and supporting systems, such as navigation and communication systems. The Navy and Coast Guard have sponsored or participated in studies and conferences to explore these implications, the Coast Guard has deployed boats and aircraft into the region to better understand the implications of operating such units there,193 and Points or themes that have emerged in studies and conferences regarding the potential implications for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard of diminished Arctic sea ice include but are not limited to the following: • The diminishment of Arctic ice is creating potential new operating areas in the Arctic for Navy surface ships and Coast Guard cutters. • U.S. national security interests in the Arctic include “such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight. ”195 • A mission of potential particular interest for expanded surface ship operations in the Arctic would be defending the U.S. (and European Union) claim that the Northern Sea Route running along Russia’s north coast and the Northwest Passage running through Canada’s northern archipelago constitute international straits which allow right of innocent passage. • Search and rescue in the Arctic is a mission of increasing importance, particularly for the Coast Guard, and one that poses potentially significant operational challenges (see “Search and Rescue” above). • More complete and detailed information on the Arctic is needed to more properly support expanded Navy and Coast Guard ship and aircraft operations in the Arctic. • The Navy and the Coast Guard currently have limited infrastructure in place in the Arctic to support expanded ship and aircraft operations in the Arctic.196

Independent of deterrence, Naval access is key to diplomatic initiatives Vego, 8 — professor of operations at the Naval War College, former commanding officer in the former Yugoslav Navy and former West German merchant marine (Milan N., “On Naval Power”, Joint Forces Quarterly, July 2008, http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/jfq-50/JFQ-50.pdf, Deech) Naval forces are most extensively used in support of peace operations, which are military operations to support diplomatic efforts to reach a long-term political settlement. These actions are conducted in conjunction with diplomacy as necessary to negotiate a truce and resolve a conflict. They may be initiated in support of diplomatic activities before, during, or after the conflict. Peacekeeping and peace enforcement are the principal types of peace operations. Peacekeeping operations are designed to contain, moderate, or terminate hostilities between or within states, using international or impartial military forces and civilians to complement political conflict-resolution efforts and restore and maintain peace. These actions take place after the sides in a conflict agree to cease hostilities ; impartial observers are normally sent to verify the implementation of the ceasefire or to monitor the separation of forces. Peace-enforcement operations involve diverse tasks as authorized by Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The objective is to compel compliance with resolutions or sanctions that have been adopted to maintain or restore peace or order. The tasks of peace enforcement include implementation of sanctions, establishment and supervision of exclusion zones, intervention to restore order, and forcible separation of belligerents. The aim is to establish an environment for a truce or ceasefire. In contrast to peacekeeping operations, peace-enforcement operations do not require the consent of the warring factions involved in a conflict. When used for peace enforcement, naval forces should have at least limited power projection capabilities and be ready to engage in combat. Naval forces may also be involved in expanded peacekeeping and peaceenforcement operations. These operations are larger than peacekeeping operations and can involve over 20,000 personnel. The consent of the sides in the conflict is usually nominal, incomplete, or nonexistent. These operations include more assertive mandates and rules of engagement, including the use of force under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. 8 Expanded peacekeeping/peace-enforcement operations are conducted with strictly limited objectives, such as protecting safe-flight or no-fly zones or relief deliveries. If too intrusive, the operations are likely to draw multinational forces into open hostilities; the naval forces would then have to be either pulled out or committed to full-scale combat. 9

Solvency
Contention 3 is solvency. Only the federal government has necessary resources Reixach, 11 -- Exectutive Port Director and Chief Exectuive Officer Port Freeport Texas and AAPA Chairman of the Board and U.S. Delegation Chairman (A.J., "Are we ready to handle growht in global trade?", Summer, [|http://www.aapa-ports.org/Publications/SeaportsDetail.cfm?itemnumber=18152#seaportsarticle4] ) //NK// // In my welcoming remarks Feb. 1 at the Shifting International Trade Routes Workshop, co-sponsored by AAPA and the U.S.Maritime Administration, I reflected upon a question posed three years earlier by Sean Connaughton, then MARAD’s administrator , at the first such workshop held in Tampa, Fla. In late January 2008, Mr. Connaughton described the expansion of the Panama Canal as “an incredible opportunity” but added, “The question is, ‘ Are we ready for it?" Here in 2011, three years closer to the 2014 target date for completion of canal expansion, that is still the question – “Are we ready?” AAPA’s leadership is diligently at work in efforts to ensure that port and inland infrastructure is sufficient to handle the growing demands of global commerce, but proactive industry support at federal and state levels is critical to chances for success. Clearly, even without impending completion of Panama Canal expansion, we need more money for infrastructure – both at our ports and in road and rail connections into the hinterlands. At the same time, most states’ transportation departments are essentially broke, and we are still awaiting a long-overdue multiyear surface transportation authorization bill and comprehensive National Freight Plan. Grants such as those through the Transportation Investment GeneratingEconomicRecovery, or TIGER, programs have helped,but, aswe have seen fromthe fact that grant applications have been for many times the number of projects – and dollars – that have gained awards, the stimulus money is obviously not enough. The earmark ban in Congress will put further pressure on means for paying for such things as surface infrastructure projects and channel deepening. In May, I met inWashington with leadership at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, senior staff of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and top officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation. During the Corps meeting, I expressed concern over the Obama administration’s lack of funding for deepening projects and discussed the Corps’ involvement with DOT in establishing strategic port priorities and a national transportation system. With T&I Committee staff, the discussion covered the maritime section of the transportation bill, the need for full intended use of billions of dollars in Harbor Maintenance Tax collections, streamlining of the Corps’ process and improved project delivery, and changing the cost-share arrangement for channel projects. //

//State and local ports are bound by federal regulations that mandate federal funding// // Gibbs, 11 – Subcommittee Chairman (Bob, “Memorandum on the Hearing on “The Economic Importance of Seaports: Is the United States Prepared for 21st Century Trade Realities?”, October 21, 2011, [|http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/Media/file/112th/Water/Water%20Briefing%20Memo%20%20%2010-26-11.pdf)//MM] // // Infrastructure Investment Investing in ports not only creates jobs during the construction period, but supports wider and long lasting opportunities. Knowing the value of maritime trade, localities and port authorities have invested in the infrastructure of their ports. The AAPA finds that American ports are investing $2 billion annually in marine terminal capital improvements. The Port of New Orleans has spent $400 million in recent years on landside improvements that make it more efficient and attractive to shippers. Acknowledging that 12% of the country's international containers pass under the Bayonne Bridge, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have pledged $1 billion toward the bridge retrofit that will allow for Post Panamax ships to sail under it and into the Atlantic Coast's busiest port. The cost benefit analysis of the project estimates that this single project will provide a $3.3 billion dollar annual national benefit. Local investments optimize existing infrastructure and increases port efficiency ; however, many projects are required to utilize Federal funds and processes. The operation and maintenance of shipping channels is paid for by the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF), which is funded from a .125% ad valorum tax levied on cargo imports at American ports. The HMTF is a user fee that grows based on the value of cargo coming to ports. These monies pay for the necessary dredging that keeps navigation channels open for business. In fiscal year 2010, t he HMTF grew by $1.3 billion; however, only $828,550,000 was spent in total operations of the fund as the balance was diverted to deficit spending. Because the HMTF is not _off-'book' on paper there is a balance, however the reality is that all of the balance has been used to offset other government spending. Because of this inequitable allocation, many of the country's most valuable navigation channels are under maintained, reducing the cost effectiveness and efficiency of maritime trade. While some FY 2012 presidential budget requests reflect goals of the NEI, in the areas of navigation there appears to be a disconnect between the production of exports and the transportation of exports overseas. The International Trade Administration request was $526 million towards the administration costs of implementation. Thirty million dollars of Small Business Administration grants are to be disbursed to states to support export activities. Transportation is addressed in the President's budget request with a sweeping surface transportation authorization request and $70.5 billion to fund the Federal Highway Administration. However, maritime trade, the most prevalent form of exportation, does not receive as much funding necessary to support a significant development much less doubling exports. The President's Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works program appropriation request in the Administration's FY 2012 budget submittal is $4.631 billion, which is approximately 6.1% below the annualized Continuing Resolution for FY 2011 of $4.929 billion. These funds are distributed to the many missions of the Corps civil works program including investigations, construction, operations and maintenance, levee safety, flood control and environmental restoration. The Corps budget has a profound effect on waterborne commerce as it shoulders the bulk of coastal infrastructure development and operation and maintenance activities. Unlike surface transportation funding, there is no Federal credit assistance programs for the construction, operation and maintenance of ports' navigation channels. Even local ports with willing investors are often required to wait on Federal appropriations to pursue needed projects. Two accounts within the budget of the Corps have significant impact on maritime trade: Construction - The President's budget requests $1.48 billion for the Construction account. This is $210 million less than the FY 2011 annualized Continuing Resolution of $1.69 billion. These funds are used for the construction of river and harbor, flood damage reduction, shore protection, environmental restoration, and related projects specifically authorized or made available for selection by law. Almost half of this budget request is for flood damage reduction projects. However, more alarming is that approximately $470 million are for ecosystem restoration projects that provide Rule or no economic benefits, while navigation projects would only receive $280 million. Operation and Maintenance - The President's budget also requests $2.314 billion for expenses necessary for the preservation, operation, maintenance, and care of existing river and harbor, flood control and related projects. This is $47 million less than the FY 2011 annualized Continuing Resolution of $2.361 billion. The budget would use only $691 million from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund resulting in an increase in the estimated balance from $6.12 billion to $6.93 billion at the end of FY 2012. In addition, while proposing paltry amounts be appropriated from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, the President's budget proposes to expand the authorized purposes of the fund for activities not typically associated with the Corps of Engineers maintenance of navigation channels. Among the persistent barriers to trade, only one-third of the nation's federal navigation projects are currently at their authorized depths and widths, and 8 out of the nation's 10 largest ports are not at their authorized depths and widths. Exporters are required to wait for high tide to get out of port or are forced to ship in lighter loads. This reality is especially burdensome for the many raw material exporters whose products are heavy and whose ships require deeper drafts. Overall, the President's proposal does not address some of the nation's most profound infrastructure needs. It does not direct Congress to pursue multiyear reauthorizations that provide stability and predictable funding to projects. Developing world-class infrastructure cannot be hurried to completion in two years to comply with a truncated funding schedule. Even beyond funding, a transportation infrastructure bill could include no cost policy changes that would support maritime trade. The proposed legislation does not streamline the permitting processes, an action that would expedite valuable projects. Permit backlog delays the timeline for construction and increases costs associated with navigation projects that could promote maritime trade. Also, legislation that would support maritime trade would allow non-federal project sponsors to supply more capital to navigation projects without having to wait on the appropriations process. Re-authorizations, permanent policy changes, and regulatory reduction would unlock private capital and hasten project completion, benefitting maritime trade and the economy as a whole existing river and harbor, flood control and related projects. This is $47 million less than the FY 2011 annualized Continuing Resolution of $2.361 billion. //

//**Obama just passed an initiative to deepen __43 ports__ in the US; DA links are triggered**// // Office of the Press Secretary, 7/19 – White House Office of the Press Secretary (“ We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Announces 5 Major Port Projects to Be Expedited,” 7/19/12, [], //JPL) WASHINGTON, DC – Today, as part of its We Can’t Wait initiative, the Administration announced that 7 nationally and regionally significant infrastructure projects will be expedited to help modernize and expand 5 major ports in the U nited S tates, including the Port of Jacksonville, the Port of Miami, the Port of Savannah, the Port of New York and New Jersey, and the Port of Charleston. As part of a Presidential Executive Order issued in March of this year, the Office of Management and Budget is charged with overseeing a government-wide effort to make the permitting and review process for infrastructure projects more efficient and effective, saving time while driving better outcomes for local communities. These are **__the first 7 of__** the initial **__43 projects__** that will be expedited by the Executive Order – additional expedited infrastructure projects will be announced in the coming weeks. “ One way to help American businesses grow and hire is to modernize our infrastructure ,” said President Obama. “That’s why in March I asked my Administration to identify important projects across the country where Federal review could be expedited. Today’s commitment to move these port projects forward faster will help drive job growth and strengthen the economy.”

Proponents of a more centralized system remind us that __ private sector priorities do not always agree with those of the general public __. For example, __ port facilities may only realize full cost recovery in the long term, and private sector ownership may mistakenly **sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term profits** __. In addition, it has been argued that ports are developed hand-in-hand with capital infrastructure; their operation and development have implications that extend into the public realm and should therefore be kept under the control of public port authorities (Industry Commission 1993 as cited in Everett and Robinson 2007).
 * Privatization fails to take into account long-term benefits.**
 * Northern Economics 11** – Largest professional economics consulting firm in Alaska; report prepared for Army Corps of Engineers and Alaska Department of Transportation (“Alaska Regional Ports: Planning for Alaska’s Regional Ports and Harbors: //Final Report”// January 2011; )//AB


 * Greater P3 use won’t cover the investment gap – too many barriers**
 * Utt 12**- PhD in economics from the Unviersity of Indiana (Ronald, "Can Public-Private Partnerships Fill the Transportation Funding Gap." Heritage Foundation. January 12, [])//TD

Thus, despite the successes beginning with Denver’s E-470 tollway in 1989, P3s are still a minor part of the surface transportation landscape. Opposition to tolling, opposition to private profits from operating public infrastructure, and concern over foreign investment in government assets in the U.S. have generated political opposition in some states. These challenges need to be overcome before the P3 concept can become a significant supplement to taxpayer funding. As a consequence, policymakers should recognize that P3s are not the solution to the transportation infrastructure investment gap that threatens to undermine commerce in the United States. There are too few financially viable P3 projects to meet the national need for new highway capacity and to modernize existing roads. No amount of enabling legislation will bring private investors into projects that are not financeable, and very few highways could support themselves on tolls alone. Thus, some combination of gas taxes, sales taxes, fees, and appropriations of state funds is necessary to make a creditworthy public–private partnership.


 * P3’s risk bankruptcy and public sector takeover – increases overall costs**
 * Rall et al 10** - Policy Specialist, NCSL Transportation Program (Jaime, "Public-Private Partnerships For Transportation A Toolkit for Legislatiors." National Conference of State Legislatures. October 2010. [|www.ncsl.org/documents/transportation/PPPTOOLKIT.pdf)//TD]

Risk of Bankruptcy or Default __Some stakeholders express concern about how default by a private partner could affect the public sector, especially for longterm lease agreements.__ Recent examples of PPP bankruptcies in the United States include the Las Vegas Monorail, South Carolina’s Southern Connector and California’s South Bay Expressway (see Appendix G). __Of special concern are agreements in which the public sector is at particular financial risk in case of bankruptcy—for example, if it has guaranteed the private partner’s loans 65 or is otherwise owed money at the time of default.__ 66 These issues generally are addressed through PPP contract provisions that transfer financial risk and define what happens to the asset should the private entity be unable to pay its debts or declare bankruptcy. __In some cases, the facility reverts to the state, which can either take it over or re-lease it with another private operator. This may create additional, unexpected costs for the public sector, however.__ In other situations—such as the Chicago Skyway—the lenders first have an opportunity to remedy the default and either operate the facility or appoint a successor to do so. 67 If a private concessionaire should need to sell, get out of, or modify a contract during the lease term, final approval generally rests with the state. 68

Brenninkmeijer 11 - Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies @ Geneva, Professor @ CAPA Olivier, Public-Private Partnerships: Success and Failure Factors for In-Transition Countries, p. 74 With the opening of the public sector to private involvement, a potentially enormous market for business is opening at the rate at which national governments modify their policies and laws to allow for this to happen. New industrial consortia are created especially to bid for large PPP contracts, and they receive the active participation from international financial institutions and consulting companies. Private industry is thus moving into a commercialisation of public infrastructure and public services for the long-term and for the life-cycle of projects. This involvement includes financing, design, construction, operation and service to the end-user and the public. This implies important changes away from traditional forms of government procurement, While the potential benefits are often enumerated by proponents of public-private partnerships, real problems challenge governments and private sector partners about the lack of transparency of contracts and public spending and raise expectations for greater accountability to civil society and stakeholders. This is the vision of PPPs that was outlined in the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development of 2002.7 However to date, this vision remain s more an // aspiration // than a reality. In fact PPPs introduce new kinds of trade-off that may favour, for example, economic efficiency over social equity, or security over economic efficiency, etc While the ideal of so-called "win-win" situations is appealing and which proponents of public-private partnership often mention, it is // difficult to envisage // how costs for greater security or // long-term //// sustainability // can be accounted for in projects that also must be socially equitable and financially more efficient than other forms of government procurement.
 * First – efficiency focus of P3’s trade off with sustainability – case is an impact turn**

=Negative= my nickname in lab is cap k; take that for what you will. for neg stuff email jonplangel@gmail.com