cuba affirmative - harvard 2013

8/13/2019 Cuba Affirmative - Harvard 2013

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cuba-affirmative-harvard-2013 1/31

S/O to the Michigan folks; some of this evidence is theirs!

***1AC***

1AC PlanPlan: The United States federal government should remove the economicembargo on Cuba.

1AC ChinaLifting the embargo would normalize relations with CubaTisdall 13 (Simon Tisdall, staff writer Guardian, 5 March 2013, ―Death of Hugo Chávez

brings chance of fresh start for US and Latin America‖,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-dead-us-latin-

america/print

Hugo Chávez's departure furnishes Barack Obama with an opportunity to repair US ties with Venezuela, but also with other Latin American states whose relations with Washington wereadversely affected by Chávez's politics of polarisation and the Bush administration's viscerally unintelligent reaction. In particular,

the change of leadership in Caracas could unlock the deadlock over Cuba, if the White House can summon the

requisite political will. Possibly anticipating a transition, Washington quietly engineered a diplomatic opening with Caracas last November after a lengthy standoff during which ambassadors were withdrawn. Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, telephoned Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's vice-president and Chávez's preferred successor, and discussed,among other things, the restoration of full diplomatic relations. "According to US officials, the Venezuelan vice-president offered to exchange ambassadors on the occasion of the beginning ofPresident Barack Obama's second term. Jacobson, in turn, is said to have proposed a step-by-step approach to improve bilateral relations, starting with greater co-operation in counter-narcotics,counter-terrorism and energy issues," Andres Oppenheimer reported in the Miami Herald. There is much ground to make up. "Relations between the United States and Venezuela have rangedfrom difficult to hostile since Chávez took office in 1999 and began to implement what he calls 21st-century socialism," wrote a former US ambassador to Caracas, Charles Shapiro. "Chávez blameda failed 2002 coup against him on the United States (not true), nationalised US companies, insulted the president of the United States and blamed 'the empire' – his term for the United States – forevery ill … In foreign affairs, the government actively supports the Assad regime in Syria, rejects sanctions on Iran and generally opposes the US at every turn." Despite such strains, economic self-interest always prevented a complete rupture. The US remained Venezuela's most important trading partner throughout Chávez's presidency, buying nearly half its oil exports. Caracas is the fourth

largest supplier of oil to the US. In fact, the US imports more crude oil annually from Mexico and Venezuelathan from the entire Persian Gulf. This shared commerce now provides a formidable

incentive and a launch platform for a fresh start. Whether the opportunity is grasped depends partly on Maduro, a Chávez loyalist but a

reputed pragmatist with close ties to Raúl Castro in Cuba. Yet it depends even more on Obama, whose first term, after a promising start, ended up perpetuating Washington's historical

neglect of Latin America. He now has a chance to do better. The political climate seems propitious.Economic and cultural ties are also strengthening dramatically. Trade between the US and Latin America grew by 82%

between 1998 and 2009. In 2011 alone, exports and imports rose by a massive 20% in both directions. "We do three times more business with Latin America than with China and twice as much business with Colombia [as] with Russia," an Obama official told Julia Sweig of the US Council on Foreign Relations. Latinos now comprise 15% of the US population; the US is the world's second

largest Spanish-speaking country (after Mexico). Despite this convergence, high-level US strategic thinking aboutthe region has continued to lag, Sweig argued. "For the last two decades, US domestic politics have too often driven Washington's Latin

America agenda– whether on issues of trade, immigration, drugs, guns or that perennial political albatross, Cuba, long driven by the supposedly crucial 'Cuban vote' in Florida," she said.

Obama could change this dynamic if he tried and one way to do it would be tounpick the Cuban problem, which continues to colour the way Latin Americans view

Washington. "Having won nearly half of the Cuban American vote in Florida in 2012, again of 15 percentage points over 2008, Obama can move quickly on Cuba. If he were todo so, he would find a cautious but willing partner in Raúl Castro, who needs

rapprochement with Washington to advance his own reform agenda," Sweig said. Amove by Obama to end travel restrictions and the trade embargo on Cuba would beapplauded across the region, explode old stereotypes about gringo oppressors, and help buildconfidence with Venezuela, the Castro regime's key backer, she suggested.

No offense – the embargo has repeatedly failed to liberalize Cubangovernance and solidifies support for regime hardlinersBandow 12 (Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former specialassistant to former US president Ronald Reagan. December 11, 2012, ―Time to End the



Cuba Embargo‖, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo

The U.S. government has waged economic war against the Castro regime for half acentury. The policy may have been worth a try during the Cold War, but the embargo hasfailed to liberate the Cuban people. It is time to end sanctions against Havana. Decades ago the Castro

brothers lead a revolt against a nasty authoritarian, Fulgencio Batista. After coming to power in 1959, they created a police state, targeted U.S. commerce, nationalized American assets, and allied with the Soviet Union. Although Cuba was but a small island nation, the Cold War magnified its perceived importance. Washington reduced Cuban sugar import quotas in July 1960. SubsequentlyU.S. exports were limited, diplomatic ties were severed, travel was restricted, Cuban imports were banned, Havana‘s American assets were frozen, and almost all travel to Cuba was banned. Washington also pressed its allies to impose sanctions. These various measures had no evident effect, other than to intensify Cuba‘s reliance on the Soviet Union. Yet the collapse of the latternation had no impact on U.S. policy. In 1992, Congress banned American subsidiaries from doing business in Cuba and in 1996, it penalized foreign firms that trafficked in expropriated U.S.property. Executives from such companies even were banned from traveling to America. On occasion Washington relaxed one aspect or another of the embargo, but in general continued to tightenrestrictions, even over Cuban Americans. Enforcement is not easy, but Uncle Sam tries his best. For instance, according to the Government Accountability Office, Customs and Border Protectionincreased its secondary inspection of passengers arriving from Cuba to reflect an increased risk of embargo violations after the 2004 rule changes, which, among other things, eliminated the

allowance for travelers to import a small amount of Cuban products for personal consumption. Three years ago, President Barack Obamaloosened regulations on Cuban Americans, as well as telecommunications between the United States and Cuba. However, thelaw sharply constrains the president‘s discretion. Moreover, UN Ambassador Susan Ricesaid that the embargo will continue until Cuba is free. It is far past time to end theembargo. During the Cold War, Cuba offered a potential advanced military outpost for the Soviet Union. Indeed, that role led to the Cuban missile crisis. With the f ailure of the U.S.-

supported Bay of Pigs invasion, economic pressure appeared to be Washington‘s best strategy for ousting the Castro dictatorship. However, the end of the Cold War left Cuba strategicallyirrelevant. It is a poor country with little ability to harm the United States. The Castro regime might still encourage unrest, but its survival has no measurable impact on any important U.S. interest.

The regime remains a humanitarian travesty , of course. Nor are Cubans the only victims: three years ago the regime jailed a State Department

contractor for distributing satellite telephone equipment in Cuba.But Havana is not the only regime to violate human rights.Moreover, experience has long demonstrated that it is virtually impossible for outsidersto force democracy. Washington often has used sanctions and the Office of Foreign

Assets Control currently is enforcing around 20 such programs, mostly to little effect. Thepolicy in Cuba obviously has failed. The regime remains in power. Indeed, it hasconsistently used the embargo to justify its own mismanagement, blaming poverty on

America. Observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: ―It is my personal belief that the Castros donot want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with theUnited States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn‘t happened inCuba in the last 50 years.‖ Similarly, Cuban exile Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group argued that keeping the ―embargo,maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hardliners.‖ Cuban human rights activists also generally oppose sanctions. A decade ago I (legally) visited Havana, where I met

Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, who suffered in communist prisons for eight years. He told me that the ―sanctions policy gives thegovernment a good alibi to justify the failure of the totalitarian model in

Cuba.‖ Indeed, it is only b y posing as an opponent of Yanqui Imperialism that Fidel Castro has achieved an international reputation. If he had been ignored by Washington, he never

would have been anything other than an obscure authoritarian windbag. Unfortunately, embargo supporters never let reality get in the way of their arguments. In 1994, John Sweeney of theHeritage Foundation declared that ―the embargo remains the only effective instrument available to the U.S. government in trying to force the economic and democratic concessions it has beendemanding of Castro for over three decades. Maintaining the embargo will help end the Castro regime more quickly.‖ The latter‘s collapse, he wrote, is more likely in the near term than ever before. Almost two decades later, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, retains faith in the embargo: ―The sanctions on the regime must remain in place and,in fact, should be strengthened, and not be altered.‖ One of the best definitions of insanity is continuing to do the same th ing while expecting to achieve different results. The embargo surviveslargely because of Florida‘s political importance. Every presidential candidate wants to win the Sunshine State‘s electoral v otes, and the Cuban American community is a significant voting bloc. Butthe political environment is changing. A younger, more liberal generation of Cuban Americans with no memory of life in Cuba is coming to the fore. Said Wayne Smith, a diplomat who served inHavana: ―for the first time in years, maybe there is some chance for a change in policy.‖ And there are now many more new young Cuban Americans who support a more sensible approach to Cuba. Support for the Republican Party also is falling. According to some exit polls Barack Obama narrowly carried the Cuban American community in November, after receiving little more than a thirdof the vote four years ago. He received 60 percent of the votes of Cuban Americans born in the United States. Barack Obama increased his votes among Cuban Americans after liberalizing contacts with the island. He also would have won the presidency without Florida, demonstrating that the state may not be essential politically. Today even the GOP is no longer reliable. For instance,though Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan has defended the embargo in recent years, that appears to reflect ambition rather than conviction. Over the years he voted at least threetimes to lift the embargo, explaining: ―The embargo doesn‘t work. It is a failed policy. It was probably justified when the Soviet Union existed and posed a threat through Cuba. I think its become

more of a crutch for Castro to use to repress his people. All the problems he has, he blames the American embargo.‖ There is essentially no internationalsupport for continuing the embargo. For instance, the European Union plans to explore improving relations with Havana. Spain‘s Deputy Foreign

Minister Gonzalo de Benito explained that the EU saw a positive evolution in Cuba. The hope, then, is to move forward in the relationship between the European Union and Cuba. Theadministration should move now, before congressmen are focused on the next election. President Obama should propose legislation to drop (or at least significantly loosen) the embargo. He also

could use his authority to relax sanctions by, for instance, granting more licenses to visit the island. Ending the embargo would have obviouseconomic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from

the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, butrejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban societycould help undermine the ruling system. Despite Fidel Castro‘s decline, Cuban politics remains largelystatic. A f ew human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro h as used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in

and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to

China. Still, more U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, ― American tourists would boost the earnings of Cubans who rent rooms, drive taxis, sell art, and operate restaurants in their homes. Those dollars wouldthen find their way to the hundreds of freely priced farmers markets, to carpenters,repairmen, tutors, food venders, and other entrepreneurs.‖ The Castro dictatorship

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-end-cuba-embargo







ultimately will end up in history‘s dustbin. But it will continue to cause much humanhardship along the way. The Heritage Foundation‘s John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that ―the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by

relaxing or lifting the trade embargo against the communist regime.‖ But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people. Lifting sanctions would be a victory not forFidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. As Griswold argued, ―commercial engagement is the best

way to encourage more open societies abroad.‖ Of course, there are no guarantees. Butlifting the embargo would have a greater

likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed. Some day the Cubanpeople will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that daycome sooner.

Steps have been taken, but only lifting the embargo is keyCreamer 11 (Robert Creamer, political organizer and strategist for four decades,1/18/11, ―Changes in U.S. Cuba Policy Good First Step -- But It's Time to NormalizeRelations‖, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/changes-in-us-cuba-policy_b_810161.html

The changes in U.S. Cuba policy announced Friday by the Obama administration represent a welcomefirst step in changing the failed half-century old policy that has sought to bring change in

Cuba by isolating the island nation from the United States. The administration announced that within the next two weeks it would make it easier for religious and academic organizations to send delegations to Cuba; return regulations governing people-to-people trips to Cuba to those that pertained during the Clinton Administration; and expand the number of airports that can be used by tour operators as embarkation points to the island. In addition, it expanded the amount of money that can be sent by Americans to ordinary Cuban citizens. Administration spokespeople explained that all of these steps were taken to strengthen Cuban civil society. They will certainly have that effect. In fact,

the time has come to completely normalize relations with Cuba, end oureconomic embargo. Here's why: 1). Our policy of isolating Cuba has failed to bring change toCuba. Fidel Castro and his successor Raul Castro, have outlasted presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and two years of the

Obama Administration. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting toget a different result. By that definition, the past policy of attempting to isolate Cuba was,to put it charitably, daft. This failed approach to Cuba was originally justified as part of the Cold War policy of "containment" of the Soviet Union. That policy has now

outlasted the Soviet Union by over two decades. A shooting war in Vietnam in which almost 50,000 Americans were killed has come and gone. Vietnam is now a reliable U.S. trading partner andfavorite tourist destination, but the policy of isolating Cuba -with which we have never had a violent conflict -remains. Richard Nixon long ago made peace with China which, though still an

officially Communist country, is now one of our most crucial trading partners and holds much of our country's debt. But our policy of isolating relativelytiny Cuba -just 90 miles from our shore -continues. Of course one of the reasons for thefailure of this ancient policy is that it was long ago abandoned by every other country in

the world. Canadians vacation at Cuban resorts. South Americans sell Cuban agriculturalproducts. Our European allies all have friendly relations, but our policy of isolating Cubapersists. 2). The only real accomplishment of past isolationist policies toward Cuba was to restrict the rights of U.S. citizens. Even after the changes announced Friday, most ordinary

Americans are still prevented from traveling to Cuba. It is the only place on earth to which our own government prevents us from traveling. It is the freedom of Americans that is being abridged -and we should be just as outraged by that limitation on our freedom as we are by a gag order on our freedom of speech or an abridgment of our freedom of religion. What is particularly galling is

that past restrictions on our freedom to travel to Cuba have actually helped limit the opening of Cuban society that is its alleged rationale. Want to open up Cubansociety? Then engage them in travel and trade. Invite their students to the United Statesand encourage our students to study in their universities. Encourage cultural exchanges,

baseball games, soccer tournaments. The new policy begins to do those things, and it's about time. But to the extent it persists, the policy of isolating Cuba andlimiting American travel there not only limits our freedom -it actually prevents the presumed goal of ourpolicy -to open up Cuba. 3). By maintaining our economic embargo we penalize the American economy and cost American jobs. Our economic "boycott" does not so

much prevent Cuba from getting the things its needs (though it definitely makes the lives of ordinary Cubans more difficult), as it prevents American companies and farmers from selling them American products. Creating American jobs should be our government's number one priority yet the Cuban embargo prevents the sales of American-made products to a customer that would be

ready and willing to buy. The result? Other countries sell Cuba the same products and benefit by the creation of jobs in their countries rather than the United States. 4). Our failureto normalize relations with Cuba undermines American interests throughout the world -and particular in Latin America. U.S. policy towards Cuba has been a major sorepoint with other countries in Latin America, who view it as a vestige of Yankeepaternalism toward the entire region. And it is used by those who want to harm America as another piece of anti-American propaganda. Far from

isolating Cuba, we have isolated ourselves. Virtually all of America's major allies have normal economic andpolitical relationships with Cuba. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly votedfor the seventeenth time -in seventeen years -to condemn our economic embargo of Cuba-this time by a vote of 185 to 3. In December the thirty-three Caribbean and Latin



American nations that are members of the Rio Group voted to give Cuba fullmembership and called on the U.S. to end the embargo.

Normalized relations with Cuba are key to broader Latin American relationsPerez 10 (David A. Perez, J.D. Yale Law School. Working with Koh former Dean of YaleLaw and Legal Advisor to the State Department, ―America's Cuba Policy: The Way

Forward: A Policy Recommendation for the U.S. State Department‖, Spring, 2010,Harvard Latino Law Review, 13 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 187

Anti-Americanism has become the political chant de jour for leaders seeking long-termas well as short-term gains in Latin American elections. In Venezuela, the anti-American rhetoric spewed by Hugo Chavez masks

his otherwise autocratic tendencies, while countries like Bolivia and Ecuador tilt further away from Washington, both rhetorically and substantively. The former expelled the U.S. Ambassador in October 2008, and the latter has refused to renew Washington's lease on

an airbase traditionally used for counter-narcotics missions. The systemic neglect for eight years during the Bush Administrationmeant that political capital was never seriously spent dealing with issues affecting theregion. Because of this, President Bush was unable to get much headway with his proposal to reform immigration, and his free trade agreement with Colombia encountered significant

opposition in Congress. Recent examples of U.S. unilateralism, disregard for international law andnorms, and a growing financial crisis, have all been seized by a new generation of

populist Latin American leaders who stoke anti-American sentiment . The region, however, is

absolutely critical to our national interest and security . Over thirty percent of our oilcomes from Latin America more than the U.S. imports from the Middle East. Additionally, over half of the foreign-

born population in the United States is Latin American, meaning that a significantportion of American society is intrinsically tied to the region. n1 These immigrants, as well as their sons and daughters, have already begun

to take their place amongst America's social, cultural, and political elite. Just south of America's borders,a deepening polarization is spreading

throughout the entire region. In the last few years ideological allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuelahave written and approved newconstitutions that have consolidated the power of the executive, while extending or in Venezuela's

case eliminating presidential term limits. In Venezuela the polarization has been drawn along economic lines, whereby Chavez's base of support continues to be poor

Venezuelans.In Bolivia the polarization has been drawn along racial lines : the preamble to the new Bolivian constitution,

approved in January 2009, makes reference to the "disastrous colonial times," a moment in history that Bolivians of Andean-descent particularly lament. Those regions in Bolivia with the mostpeople of European or mixed descent have consistently voted for increased provincial autonomy and against the constitutional changes proposed by President Morales. Perhaps due to its sweeping

changes, the new Constitution was rejected by four of Bolivia's nine provinces. n2 Like Bolivia, Latin America is still searching for its identity. [*191] Traditionally the U.S.has projected its influence by using varying combinations of hard and soft power. It has

been a long time since the United States last sponsored or supported military action inLatin America, and although highly context-dependent,it is very likely that Latin American citizens and theirgovernments would view any overt display of American hard power in the regionnegatively. n3 One can only imagine the fodder an American military excursion into Latin

America would provide for a leader like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, or Evo Morales of Bolivia.Soft power, on the other hand, can winover people and governments without resorting to coercion, but is limited by otherfactors. The key to soft power is not simply a strong military, though having one helps, but rather an enduring sense oflegitimacy that can then be projected across the globe to advance particular policies. Thekey to this legitimacy is a good image and a reputation as a responsible actor on theglobal and regional stage. A good reputation and image can go a long way towardgenerating goodwill, which ultimately will help the U.S. when it tries to sell unpopularideas and reforms in the region. n4 In order to effectively employ soft power in Latin

America, the U.S. must repair its image by going on a diplomatic offensive andreminding , not just Latin America's leaders, but also the Latin American people, of the important relationship

between the U.S. and Latin America. Many of the problems facing Latin America today cannot be addressedin the absence of U.S. leadership and cooperation. Working with other nations to address these

challengesis the best way to shore up legitimacy , earn respect, and repair America's image. Although this proposal focuses heavily on Cuba, every

country in Latin America is a potential friend. Washington will have to not only strengthen its existing relationships in the region, but also win over new allies, who look to us for "ideas and

solutions, not lectures." n5 When analyzing ecosystems, environmental scientists seek out "keystone species."

These are organisms that, despite their small size, function as lynchpins for, or barometers of, theentire system's stability. Cuba, despite its size and isolation, is a keystone nation in Latin America ,



having disproportionately dominated Washington's policy toward the region for decades.

n6 As a result of its continuing tensions with Havana, America's reputation [*192] in the region has suffered,as has its ability to deal with other countries. n7 For fifty years, Latin Americangovernments that hoped to endear themselves to the U.S. had to pass the Cuba "litmustest." But now the tables have turned, and the Obama Administration, if it wants to repair

America's image in the region, will have to pass a Cuba litmus test of its own.

n8 In short, America must once again be admired if we are going to expect other countriesto follow our example. To that end, warming relations with Cuba would have areverberating effect throughout Latin America, and would go a long way toward creatinggoodwill.

Latin American relations are on the brink – the US must act nowShifter 12 [Michael Shifter, President of Inter- American Dialogue, ―Remaking theRelationship: The United States and Latin America,‖ April, IAD Policy Report,http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD2012PolicyReportFINAL.pdf]

Simply addressing an unfinished agenda is not enough.Both the United States and Latin America need to do more toexploit the enormous untapped opportunities of their relationship in economics, trade,

and energy . They need to work together to deal with global and regional problems. And they need to project common values, including

peace, democracy, human rights, expansion of equal opportunity, and social mobility. They need to breathe new life and vigor intohemispheric relations. If the United States and Latin America do not make the effortnow, the chance may slip away . The most likely scenario then would be marked by a continueddrift in their relationship, further deterioration of hemisphere-wide institutions, areduced ability and willingness to deal with a range of common problems, and a spate of missedopportunities for more robust growth and greater social equity. The United States and Latin America would go theirseparate ways, manage their affairs independently of one another, and forego the opportunitiesthat could be harvested by a more productive relationship. There are risks of simply

maintaining the status quo. Urgent problems will inevitably arise that require trust andeffective collaboration to resolve. And there is a chance that tensions between the United States and Latin America could

become much worse, adversely affecting everyone‘s interests and wellbeing. It is time to

seize the moment and overhaul hemispheric relations.

That‘s necessary to check Chinese influence in the regionBenjamin-Alvadaro 6 (Jonathan, Report for the Cuban Research Institute, FloridaInternational University, PhD, Professor of Political Science at University of Nebraska atOmaha, Director of the Intelligence Community Centers of Academic ExcellenceProgram at UNO, Treasurer of the American Political Science Association, ―The CurrentStatus and Future Prospects for Oil Exploration in Cuba: A Special,‖http://cri.fiu.edu/research/commissioned-reports/oil-cuba-alvarado.pdf)

Additionally, Venezuela remains the fourth largest importer of oil to the United States and one can surmise that the existing trade arrangements between the U.S. and Venezuela will remain intact,the evolution of the Bolivarian revolution under Chavez and a growing Chinese presence in the region notwithstanding. Additionally, pursuing such a path would allow United States policymakersto take advantage of what Cuba has to o ffer in the following areas: domestic technical capabilities; continuing human capital development; strategic positioning in the Caribbean, and an improved

diplomatic stature. Cuba, by any measure,possesses a largely untapped technical capacity owing to advanced

training and education in the core mathematic and scientific areas. This was clearlydemonstrated by its attempt to develop a nuclear energy capability in the 1980s and1990s whereby thousands of Cubans pursued highly technical career paths leaving Cuba

with among the highest ratios of scientists and engineers to the general population in allof the Americas. Moreover, the foundation of Cuba‘s vaunted public education system remains intact and increased investment under various scenarios suggests that

Cuba will continue to produce a welleducated workforce that will be critical to its futureeconomic vitality. This raises an important consideration that being the role that Cuba will play in the region in the 21st century. It suffices to say that Cuba remains the

strategically important state by virtue of its geographical location alone, in efforts against drug and human trafficking and related national and regional security matters.The extentto which a stable Cuban government has cooperated with the U.S. in drug interdiction

http://cri.fiu.edu/research/commissioned-reports/oil-cuba-alvarado.pdf

http://cri.fiu.edu/research/commissioned-reports/oil-cuba-alvarado.pdf



efforts in the past suggests that the results from improved diplomatic relations betweenneighbors would have the effect of improving national security concerns related toterrorist activity , illicit weapons transfers and the like. Ultimately,a successful normalization of relations

between the U.S. and Cuba in these areas may well enhance and stabilize regional relationsthat could possiblylessen (or at a minimum, balancing)fears of a Chinese incursion in hemisphericaffairs. To lessen those fears it may be useful to review the present structure of joint-venture projects in the energy sector in Cuba to ascertain the feasibility and possible success of such

an undertaking become available to American firms. Moreover, it is interesting to note that U.S. firms in the agriculture sector have successfully negotiated and consummated sales to Cuba totalingmore than $1 billion dollars over the past four years under conditions that are less than optimal circumstances but have well-served the commercial interests of all parties involved.

Chinese encroachment is growing and threatens US strategic dominanceGrudgings and Gardner 11 (Stuart Grudgings and Simon Gardner, staff writersReuters, Mar 16, 2011, ―Analysis: Rising China threatens U.S. clout in Latin America‖,http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-latinamerica-china-idUSTRE72F19C20110316

China will loom large over U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Latin America this week as he sends a message that Washington remains relevant

to a region that owes much of its robust economic health in recent years to Chinese demand. In both Brazil and Chile, the two S outh American countries that Obama

will visit,China has recently overtaken the United States as the number-one trade partner.Even in those countries where the United States is still the dominant partner, China is

catching up fast. It has lifted growth for years in commodity producers such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru with its voracious demand for raw goods such as iron ore,

copper, and soy. More recently, it has followed up with a wave of investments and state-backed loansaimed at expanding its access to commodities and tapping demand from Latin America'sgrowing ranks of consumers. In doing so, China has emerged as an alternative source offunding for Latin American countries' development in areas such as infrastructure and energy that were long dependent on World

Bank or IMF loans that came with more strings attached. "It's a real opportunity for Latin America if they play it right and it's a real challenge to theU.S.," said Kevin Gallagher, an international relations professor at Boston University

who co-wrote a book on China in Latin America. "The Chinese are a kick in thepants for the United States to articulate a little bit more of a serious relationship with the region." BEGINNINGS OF A BACKLASH China'sgrowing economic stake in the region may one day raise a threat to Washington'sstrategic dominance too as its deep pockets bring new friends. U.S. ally Colombia recently announced it is intalks with China to build a railway linking its Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a possiblealternative to the Panama Canal that would boost trade flows with Asia. A network of new highways under

construction are due to provide direct links to five ports on Peru's Pacific coast in another sign of how Asian economic power is reshaping regional trade patterns. While still largely focused on

metals and agricultural goods, Chinese investments have begun to spread to the broader economy . China last year

became the biggest direct investor in Brazil, the region's largest economy, with about $15 billion worth of projects ranging from a $5 billion steel plant to the purchase of electricity networks forabout $1 billion. It has also built relations with U.S. nemesis Venezuela, whose firebrand President Hugo Chavez said during a 2004 visit to China he had been a Maoist since childhood. China laterlaunched a $400 million communications satellite for Venezuela, reducing its dependence on U.S. and European satellites. The United States remains the main trade and investment partner forLatin America, accounting for about 40 percent of the region's exports in 2009 compared to China's 7 percent, according to the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the

Caribbean.China is rising fast, though -from virtually nowhere a decade ago -and is on course to overtake theEuropean Union as the region's number-two trade partner by 2015.

That risks accidental war – US influence is necessary to deter ChinaDowd 12 (Alan, Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, ―Crisisin the America's,‖ http://www.ascfusa.org/content_pages/view/crisisinamericas

Focused on military operations in the Middle East, nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea, and the global threat of terrorism, U.S. policymakers have

neglected a growing challenge right here in the Western Hemisphere: the expandinginfluence and reach of China.¶ Eyeing energy resources to keep its economy humming,China is engaged in a flurry ofinvesting and spending in Latin America.¶ In Costa Rica, China is funding a $1.24- billion upgrade of the country‘s oil refinery; bankrolling an

$83-million soccer stadium; backing infrastructure and telecommunications improvements; and pouring millions into a new police academy.¶ In Colombia, China is planning a massive ―dry canal‖to link the country‘s Pacific and Atlantic coasts by rail. At either terminus, there will be Chinese ports; in between, there will be Chinese assembly facilities, logistics operations and distributionplants; and on the Pacific side, there will be dedicated berths to ship Colombian coal outbound to China.¶ In mid-January, a Chinese- built oil rig arrived in Cuba to begin drilling in Cuba‘s swath ofthe Gulf of Mexico. Reuters reports that Spanish, Russian, Malaysian and Norwegian firms will use the rig to extract Cuban oil. For now, China is focusing on onshore oil extraction in Cuba.¶ Newoffshore discoveries will soon catapult Brazil into a top-five global oil producer. With some 38 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast, Brazil expects to pump 4.9 million barrels per day by2020, as the Washington Times reports, and China has used generous loans to position itself as the prime beneficiary of Brazilian oil. China‘s state-run oil and banking giants have inkedtechnology-transfer, chemical, energy and real-estate deals with Brazil. Plus, as the Times details, China came to the rescue of Brazil‘s main oil company when it sought financing for its massivedrilling plans, pouring $10 billion into the project. A study in Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ) adds that Beijing plunked down $3.1 billion for a slice of Brazil‘s vast offshore oil fields.¶ The JFQ studyreveals just how deep and wide Beijing is spreading its financial influence in Latin America: $28 billion in loans to Venezuela; a $16.3-billion commitment to develop Venezuelan oil reserves; $1 billion for Ecuadoran oil; $4.4 billion to develop Peruvian mines; $10 billion to help Argentina modernize its rail system; $3.1 billion to purchase Argentina‘s petroleum company outright. The New York Times adds that Beijing has lent Ecuador $1 billion to build a hydroelectric plant.¶ There is good and bad to Beijing‘s increased interest and investment in the Western Hemisphere.

Investment fuels development, and much of Latin America is happily accelerating development in the economic, trade, technology and infrastructure spheres. ButChina‘s riches

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come with strings.¶ For instance, in exchange for Chinese development funds and loans, Venezuela agreed to increase oilshipments to China from 380,000 barrels per day to one million barrels per day. It‘s worth noting that the Congressional Research Service has reported concerns in

Washington that Hugo Chavez might try to supplant his U.S. market with China. Given that Venezuela pumps an average of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day for the U.S.—or about 11 percent of net

oil imports—the results would be devastating for the U.S.¶That brings us to the security dimension of China‘s checkbookdiplomacy in the Western Hemisphere.¶ Officials with the U.S. Southern Command conceded as early as 2006 that Beijing had ―approached everycountry in our area of responsibility‖ and provided military exchanges, aid or training to

Ecuador, Jamaica, Bolivia, Cuba, Chile and Venezuela.¶ The JFQ study adds that China has ―an important and growing presence inthe region‘s military institutions.‖ Most Latin American nations, including Mexico, ―send officers to professional military education courses in the PRC.‖ In

Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia,Beijing has begun to sell ―sophisticated hardware…such as radars and K -8 and MA-60 aircraft.‖ The

JFQ report concludes, ominously, that Chinese defense firms ―are likely to leverage their experience and agrowing track record for their goods to expand their market share in the region, with the secondary

consequence being that those purchasers will become more reliant on the associated Chinese logistics, maintenance, and training infrastructures that

support those products.‖¶ Put it all together, and the southern flank of the United States is exposed to a range ofnew security challenges.¶ To be sure, much of this is a function of China‘s desire to secure oil markets. But there‘s more at work here than China‘s thirst for oil. Like a

global chess match, China is probing Latin America and sending a message that just as Washington has trade and military ties in China‘s neighborhood, China is developingtrade and military ties in America‘s neighborhood.¶ This is a direct challenge to U.S.primacy in the region—a challenge that must be answered.¶ First, Washington needs to relearn an obvious truth—that China‘s rulers do not share America‘s values—and

needs to shape and conduct its China policy in that context.¶ Beijing has no respect for human rights. Recall that in China, an estimated 3-5 million people are rotting away in laogai slave-laborcamps, many of them ―guilty‖ of political dissent or religious activity; democracy activists are rounded up and imprisoned; f reedom of speech and religion and assembly do not exist; and internalsecurity forces are given shoot-to-kill orders in dealing with unarmed citizens. Indeed, Beijing viewed the Arab Spring uprisings not as an impetus for political reform, but as reason ―to launch itsharshest crackdown on dissent in at least a decade,‖ according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.¶ In short, the ends always justify the means in Beijing. And that makes all the

difference when it comes to foreign and defense policy. As Reagan counseled during the Cold War, ―There is no true international security without respect for human rights.‖¶ Second, theU.S. must stop taking the Western Hemisphere for granted, and instead must reengage in itsown neighborhood economically, politically and militarily .¶ That means no more allowing trade deals—

and the partners counting on them—to languish. Plans for a hemispheric free trade zone have faltered and foundered. The trade-expansionagreements with Panama and Colombia were left in limbo for years, before President Obama finally signed them into law in 2011.¶

Reengagement means reviving U.S. diplomacy. The Wall Street Journal reports that due to political wrangling in Washington, the State

Department position focused on the Western Hemisphere has been staffed by an interim for nearly a year, while six Western Hemisphere ambassadorial posts (Uruguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, ElSalvador, Nicaragua and Barbados) remain empty.¶ Reengagement means reversing plans to slash defense spending. The Joint Forces Command noted in 2008 that China has ―a deep respect forU.S. military power.‖ We cannot overstate how important this has b een to keeping the peace. But with the United States in the midst of massive military retrenchment, one wonders how long that

reservoir of respect will last.¶ Reengagement also means revitalizing security ties. A good model to follow might be what‘s happening in China‘s backyard. To deter Chinaand prevent an accidental war, the U.S. is reviving its security partnerships all across the Asia-Pacific region. Perhaps it‘s timeto do the same in Latin America. We should remember that many Latin Americancountries—from Mexico and Panama to Colombia and Chile— border the Pacific. Given Beijing‘s actions, it makes sense to bringthese Latin American partners on the Pacific Rim into the alliance of alliances that is already stabilizing the Asia-Pacific

region.¶ Finally, all of this needs to be part of a revived Monroe Doctrine. ¶ Focusing on Chineseencroachment in the Americas, this ―Monroe Doctrine 2.0‖ would make it clear to Beijing that theUnited States welcomes China‘s efforts to conduct trade in the Americas but discourages any claims of control—implied orexplicit— by China over territories, properties or facilities in the Americas. In addition, Washington should

make it clear to Beijing that the American people would look unfavorably upon the sale of Chinese arms or the basing of Chinese advisors or military assets in the Western Hemisphere.¶ In short, what it was true in the 19th and 20th centuries must remain true in the 21st: There is room for only one great power in the Western Hemisphere.

Specifically, increased Chinese influence causes conflict over TaiwanFergusson 12 (Robbie, Researcher at Royal Society for the Arts, Featured Contributorat International Business Times, Former Conference & Research Assistant at Security

Watch, Former Researcher at University College London, Master of Science, China in theInternational Arena, The University of Glasgow, ―The Chinese Challenge to the MonroeDoctrine,‖ http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-

threaten-american-interests/

Taiwan – domestic, or foreign policy?¶China‘s goals in the region amount to more than the capture of naturalresources. Although the People‘s Republic of China considers resolution of the Taiwan issue to be adomestic issue, it is with some irony that one of China‘s main foreign policy goals is toisolate Taipei internationally . The PRC and the ROC compete directly forinternational recognition among all the states in the world. . Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin

America, where 12 of the 23 nations that still have official diplomatic relations withthe ROC reside.¶ The historical background¶ Following the mainland Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the nationalist Kuomintang retreated to the island of

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Formosa (Taiwan) where it continued to claim to be the legitimate government of all of China. In June 1950 the United States intervened by placing its 7th fleet in the Taiwan straits to stop aconclusive military resolution to the civil war and slowly the battlefield became primarily political, concerned with legitimacy.¶ When the United Nations was formed in 1945, the Republic of China(ROC) became one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. This gave the ROC a de facto advantage over the PRC in attaining recognition from other nation states; particularly asthe diplomatic clout of the hegemonic United States supported its position as the true representative of the Chinese people, until the rapprochement of the 1970s, when the Nixon administration wished to improve ties with the de facto rulers of China in order to exploit the Sino-Soviet split. UN Resolution 2758 granted the ‘China seat‘ to the PRC at the expense of the ROC who were ineffect exiled from the organization, and the famous 1972 visit of President Nixon to China further added legitimacy to the communist regime. All this resulted in a thawing of world opinion, andgradually as the durability and permanence of the PRC regime became ingrained, countries began switching their diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.¶ The economics of international

recognition¶ In the Americas, the PRC had international recognition and longstanding support from ideological allies such as Cuba. However, the ROC has maintainedmore diplomatic support in the Americas than any other region, mainly due to the smallnature of the states involved and the importance of Taiwanese aid to their economies. Li

notes that ―from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, roughly 10 percent of Taiwan‘s direct foreign investment (FDI) went to Latin America and the Caribbean,‖ [51] highlighting the concerted effort

made in the region. Economic solidarity is increasingly important to the formation of the Taiwan-Latin America relationship, for two reasons. The first is that for Latin American states,the decision of which China to support is less ideological and political than it ever has been; whichmakes the decision a straight up economic zero-sum choice. The second is that Latin

America is home to natural resources which are of great significance to the hungrygrowing economies of the PRC and the ROC regardless of international recognition.¶ However, while the decision is not political for Latin

American countries, for Taiwan, every country which switches its recognition to the PRC damagesits legitimacy as a nation state in the international arena. The Table below shows the designation of diplomatic recognition in

the region in 2008.¶ Countries Recognising the PRC (China)Countries Recognising the ROC (Taiwan)Central AmericaMexico, Costa RicaEl Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua,PanamaCaribbeanAntigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, Trinidad & TobagoBelize, Dominican Republic, Haiti, St Kitts & Nevis, St.

Lucia, St. Vincent & the GrenadinesSouth AmericaArgentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, VenezuelaParaguay¶ On the other hand, for the PRC,every state which withdraws its support for the ROC takes it one step closer to being in aposition where it can resolve the ‗Taiwan issue‘ unilaterally . Subsequently, underminingTaiwan is of the utmost importance to China, and it has taken to ‗outbidding‘ Taiwan inoffers of foreign aid, a strategy made possible by the decline in aid from the defunct Soviet Union, and the West, which is pre occupied with terrorism and the Middle East.

Li notes that ―the region‘s leaders have turned to Asia for help to promote trade and financial assistance, and consequently played the PRC and Taiwan against each other.‖ [53] Despite its smallersize, Taiwan has fared remarkably well in this bidding war; focusing its aid investments on infrastructure such as stadiums in St Kitts & Nevis for th e Cricket World Cup in 2007.¶ However, even

Taiwan‗s economy can be put under strain by the seemingly relentless stream of foreign aid which has brought only debateable and mild gains to the Taiwanese cause. This hascontributed to the PRC picking off the few remaining supporters of the ROC – take for example, the

Dominican case.¶ In early 2004, Commonwealth of Dominica asked Taipei for a $58 million aid, which is unrelated to public welfare. The Caribbean nation had relied on Taiwan to develop itsagriculture-based economy since 1983. Diplomatic relationship was soon broken after Taipei turned down the request. [54]¶ This incident showcased the fact that in economic terms, the PRC is

winning the battle for Latin America.¶ Political strategies of the PRC¶In political terms too; the PRC is in an advantageousposition, thanks in part again to its position within the UN. While it can be argued that China ―provides incentives but does not threaten harm to induce countries to defect from

recognizing Taiwan,‖ [55] the reality is that the use of force and direct harm are not the only means available to an economic entity as powerful as China. It refuses tomaintain official relations with any state that recognises the ROC; an action which can bequite prohibitive to the country being able to take advantage of the growing Chinesemarket. Although Domínguez suggests that the PRC ―has not been punitive toward those states that still recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan),‖ [56] the legitimacy of this claim has to

be brought into question – for example ―in June 1996, China fought the extension of the UN mission in Haiti, to punish the Caribbean nation for its appeal for UN acceptance of Taiwan.‖ [57] This

incident showed that China is prepared to use its global clout to play spoiler and apply indirect pressure on countries to adopt its position. Similarly, China‘sexperience with one-party rule has taught it the importance of party-to-party relations inaddition to state-to-state relations, further cementing the PRC by establishing arelationship based on goodwill and common understanding. Indeed by the start of 1998 ―the CCP had established relations

with almost all major political parties in the countries that were Taiwan‘s diplomatic allies in Latin America,‖ [58] further isolating the ROC.¶ The effect on American interests¶ Were theROC to be deserted by its remaining allies in Latin America, the USA would bedisadvantaged in attempting to maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. A Taiwan that

was not recognised by any state from the Americas, or Europe (with the exception of the Vatican) would not be seen as a genuine sovereign entity whose defence would be more important than the

upkeep of good relations between China and the West. As China‘s economic and political position in the worldimproves vis-à-vis both America and Taiwan, so might its ambitions. The U.S.A mightfind itself in a position where it could no longer withstand the diplomatic pressure to allow thePRC to conclude a settlement on Taiwan, perhaps by force.

China war would go nuclearHunkovic 9 – American Military University (Lee J., ―The Chinese-Taiwanese Conflict:Possible Futures of a Confrontation between China, Taiwan and the United States of

America,‖ http://www.lamp-method.org/eCommons/Hunkovic.pdf)

A war between China, Taiwan and the United States has the potential to escalate into a nuclear conflict

and a third world war, therefore, many countries other than the primary actors could be affected by such a conflict,including Japan, both Koreas, Russia, Australia, India and Great Britain, if they were drawn into the war, as



well as all other countries in the world that participate in the global economy , in which the United States and

China are the two most dominant members.

1AC Cuban EconomyCuba‘s government will collapse in 2013 – ideological weakening andinternal liberalization means it‘s inevitable Sánchez 13 (Yoani Sánchez is the Havana-based author of the blog Generation Y andthe recently published book Havana Real. This article was translated by Mary Jo Porter.January 02, 2013, ―Midnight in Havana: Will the Cuban government fall in 2013?‖,http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2013/01/midnight_in_havana_will_the_cu.html

It's increasingly obvious that the biological clock of the Cuban government -a slow and agonizing journey of the hands that

has lasted 54 years -is closing in on midnight. Every minute that passes brings obsolescence alittle nearer. The existence of a political system should not be so closely linked to the youth or decrepitude of its leaders, but in the case of our island, both ages have come to be the

same thing. Like a creature made in the image and likeness of a man -who believes himself to be God -Cuba's current political model will notoutlive its creators. Every decision made over the past five decades, every step taken in one direction or another,

has been marked by the personalities and decisions of a handful of human beings -two ofthem in particular. One, Fidel Castro, 86, has been convalescing for six long years in a place few

Cubans could find on a map. Although in the last five years Fidel's brother Raúl, 81, has installed some younger faces in the administrative and governmental apparatus, the mostimportant decisions remain concentrated in the hands of octogenarians. (Raúl's successor, Jose Ramon

Machado, is 82.) Like a voracious Saturn devouring his children,the principal leaders of the revolution have not allowed anyfavored sons to overshadow them. The last to be ousted due to the paranoia of the Castro

brothers were Vice President Carlos Lage, a figure who enjoyed popular sympathy, andthe foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque. Both might have made promising successors, but were accused by Fidel Castro himself as having been

"addicted to the honey of power" and removed from their positions in 2009. Their own selfishness has left Cuban leaders without aplan for succession and time has run out to develop it , at least one not sincerely committed to continuing along the path set by old

men dressed in olive green. For Raúl, the picture is worrisome, and he has declared that "time is short"to ready the generation that will replace him and his comrades. In 2013, he will be forced to accelerate this process, andhis

obvious desperation about the future is contributing to the ideological weakeningand the loss of whatever popular support the Castro regime still enjoys. Meanwhile,

Castro's tentative economic reforms are also contributing to the loss of control over thepopulation. Together, the expansion of the private sector, the imposition of taxes, thedistribution of land leases to farmers, and the authorization of cooperatives in businessesother than agriculture, are gradually reducing the state's influence in the daily life ofCubans. Raúl may see these as a desperation move to jumpstart the Cuban economy, butone consequence will be the diminished ideological commitment of the people to agovernment that provides fewer and fewer subsidies and benefits. Every step the authorities take in the direction ofgreater flexibility is like pointing a loaded gun at their own temples. A system

based on keeping every tiny aspect of our national life under tight control cannotmaintain itself when some of these bonds are loosened. Reform is the death of thestatus quo and maneuvers to guarantee financial survival by opening the system toprivate capital are a death sentence written in advance. The year 2013 will be adecisive one in Cuba's move from economic centralism to the fragmentation ofproduction, from absolute verticality to its dismantling. Those who cease to receive theirsalaries from a state institution and come to support their families through self-employment will undoubtedly gain more political autonomy. Despite the best efforts ofthe political police, the opposition today is more energized than it has been since the so-called Black Spring of 2003 -when 75 regime opponents were rounded up, most sentenced to long prison terms. Although 2012 closed with the unfortunate loss of

Oswaldo Paya, the leading figure of the Christian Liberation Movement, other faces are beginning to gain prominence.The number of activists is

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increasing -and they are bringing fresh, modern ideas to the struggle. An emergingcommunity of alternative bloggers and performance artists is blending social criticisminto its creations, and increasingly bold musicians are using the lyrics of hip hop andreggaeton to narrate a reality far removed from the official discourse. Meanwhile,alternative information networks, including Twitter and other social networks via mobilephones, are helping to break the state's monopoly on opinion and to communicate the truth about what is happening on

our island to the rest of the world. The aging of the nomenklatura, the growing opposition, and theexpansion of the private sector are not the only influences that will weaken the system in2013. The worsening health of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez is a catalyst for collapse. In the absence of his greatpatron -and provider of subsidized petroleum -in Caracas, Raúl will have to speed up economic reforms even morequickly to spur growth, further weakening the Communist Party's authority . The emergence of their

Venezuelan acolyte was a godsend to the Castros, who lost their original benefactor with the collapse of Soviet communism. But there doesn't appear to be another country on the horizon willing to

shoulder the burden of 42,000 square miles and its 11 million inhabitants. U.S. President BarackObama will also have a part to play. If the United Statesfinally lifts -or softens -its decades-long embargo, it may give the government a temporaryfinancial respite. But on the other hand, such a move would also take away the Castroregime's favorite political excuse for its economic failures. The country's sad state couldno longer be blamed on our neighbor to the north. It would be a hard ideological

blow. Given all these factors, it's difficult to see how The System can survive the coming year, much less ensure its long-term viability . But it's worth noting that the regime in Havana has long demonstrated its skill in surviving even

the most unfavorable predictions. After all, the Cuban economy has been in a state of crisis for the last 20 years. One could even say that our leaders find tension soothing and perform better underemergency conditions than under prosperity. Material needs can also serve to paralyze people who must spend hours waiting for a bus or standing on line to buy a couple of pounds of chickeninstead of organizing.

Cuba‘s economy is also collapsing – the gov ernment can‘t use materialneeds to keep the population in checkMorris 11 (Emily, London Metropolitan University UK, FORECASTING CUBA‘SECONOMY: 2, 5, AND 20 YEARS, Presented at the international symposium ―CubaFutures: Past and Present,‖ organized by The Cuba Project Bildner Center for WesternHemisphere Studies at The Graduate Center/CUNY,http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/bildn/cuba/cubaforecasting.pdf)

Risks in the short term Political risks arise from the process of transferring leadership from the old guard to a new generation. Evidently conscious of the

hazards, the old guard are seeking to closely manage the generational handover, buttheir control will diminish. So far signs of dissent within the government have been rare and weak, but in 2011 the situation will begin to change radically. At the

special conference of the PCC that will take place after the sixth PCC congress in April 2011, it seems likely that a new set of leaders will take up their posts. None of them will have the authority ofthe Castro brothers, and so for the first time for fifty years there is a possibility of the emergence of factionalism. In the TABLE 5. Two year forecast 2010 2011 2012 Real GDP (% growth) 2.1 3.5 4 .2Inflation (year-end, %)a a. This inflation figure is based on an estimated average household cost of living index that takes into account a reduction in the amount of basic goods available at heavilysubsidised prices on the ration. The impact of the shift from subsidised consumption to market prices will vary widely between households, with the percentage rise in the cost of living beinggreater for those at the lower end of the income scale, who spend a higher proportion of their income on basic goods. 6.3 7.2 5.5 Average labour productivity (% growth) 4.2 5.9 4.5 Governmentspending/GDP ratio (%) 66.5 63.8 60.4 Investment/GDP ratio (%) 10.5 11.1 12.5Forecasting Cuba‘s Economy: 2, 5, and 20 Years 13 context of the rapid changes taking place in the economic

sphere, 2012 is likely to be a testing year. Despite its efforts to dampen expectations, there is a sense among theCuban public that they should see material benefits from the economic reforms. If thesehopes are dashed, the government could face a serious crisis of public confidence. In theeconomic sphere, there are many hazards arising from the process oftransformation. There are risks that monetary growth will outstrip that of supply so thatinflationary pressures could build, at a time when the government is losing its power to

directly control prices. The extent to which the government will be able to manage the fiscal challenge it has set itself —to achieve sufficient savings and raise sufficient tax revenue to maintain

welfare provision whilst phasing out the existing apparatus of social protection— will depend on its ability to respond quickly to difficulties as they arise. A major fiscal crisis would jeopardise the reform process, and hamper the government's ability to respond tosocial pressures created by the extensive realignment of relative incomes that will result from the changes. External risks are heightened

by Cuba‘s lack of access to emergency financing in the case of unanticipated shocks. The largest single riskcomes from Cuba‘s high degree of dependency on Venezuela, and in particular on earnings from the exportof professional services. Hugo Chávez, on whom the relationship rests, does not face re-election until 2012 but if anything were to befall him before then, the Cuban economy

would suffer. The high degree of uncertainty about the global economy also presents risks, with the recovery in OECD countries fragile and signs of strain within the economies of

the growth leaders, China and India. 14 C

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Squo reforms are not enough – only lifting the embargo promotes a stabletransitionPiccone 13 (Joseph, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, ForeignPolicy, Opening to Havana, 1/17/13,http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/opening-to-havana)

Under Raul Castro, the Cuban governmenthas continued to undertake a number of important reforms to modernize itseconomy, lessen its dependence on Hugo Chavez‘s Venezuela, and allow citizens to make their own

decisions about their economic futures. The process of reform, however, is gradual, highly controlled and shorton yielding game-changing results that would ignite the economy. Failure to tap new offshore oil andgas fields and agricultural damage from Hurricane Sandy dealt further setbacks. Independent civil society remains confined,

repressed and harassed, and strict media and internet controls severely restrict the flow of information. The Castro generation is slowly handingpower over to the next generation of party and military leaders who will determine the pace and scope of the reform process. Thesetrends suggest that an inflection point is approaching and that now is the time to try a newparadigm for de-icing the frozen conflict. The embargo — the most complex and strictest embargo against any country in the

world — has handcuffed the UnitedStates and has prevented it from having any positiveinfluence on the island‘s developments. It will serve American interests better to learn how t o work with the emerging Cuban leaders while simultaneously ramping up direct U.S.

outreach to the Cuban people. I recommend that your administration, led by a special envoy appointed by you and reporting to the secretary of state and the national security advisor, open a

discreet dialogue with Havana on a wide range of issues, without preconditions. The aim of the direct bilateral talks would be to

resolve outstanding issues around migration, travel, counterterrorism and counternarcotics, the environment, and trade and investment that are important to protecting U.S. national interests. Outcomes of these talks could include provisionsthat normalize migration flows, strengthen border security, break down the walls of communicationthat hinder U.S. ability tounderstand how Cuba is changing, and help U.S. businesses create new jobs. In the context of such talks

your special envoy would be authorized to signal your administration‘s willingness to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, pointing to its assistance to the Colombian peace

talks as fresh evidence for the decision. This would remove a major irritant in U.S.-Cuba relations, allow agreater share of U.S.-sourced components and services in products that enter Cubancommerce, and free up resources to tackle serious threats to the homeland from other sources like Iran. We should also

considerauthorizing payments for exports to Cuba through financing issued by U.S. banks and granting a general license to allow vessels that

have entered Cuban ports to enter U.S. ports without having to wait six months. You can also facilitate technical assistance on market-oriented reforms from international financial institutions by signaling your intent to drop outright opposition to such moves.

Under this chapeau of direct talks, your administration can seek a negotiated solution to the thorny issue of U.S. and Cuban citizens serving long prison sentences, therebycatalyzing progress toward removing a major obstacle to improving bilateral relations. You

should, in parallel, also take unilateral steps to expand direct contacts with the Cuban people by: • authorizing financial andtechnical assistance to the burgeoning class of small businesses and cooperatives and permitting Americans

to donate and trade in goods and services with those that are certified as independent entrepreneurs, artists, farmers, professionals and craftspeople; • adding newcategories for general licensed travel to Cuba for Americans engaged in services to the independent

economic sector, e.g., law, real estate, insurance, accounting, f inancial services; • granting general licenses for other travelers

currently authorized only under specific licenses, such as freelance journalists, professional researchers, athletes, and representatives of humanitarian organizations and

private foundations; • increasing or eliminating the cap on cash and gifts that non- Cuban Americans can send to individuals,

independent businesses and families in Cuba; • eliminating the daily expenditure cap for U.S. citizens visiting Cubaand removing the prohibition on the use of U.S. credit and bank cards in Cuba ; • authorizing the

reestablishment of ferry services to Cuba; • expanding the list of exports licensed for sale to Cuba, including items like school and art supplies, athletic equipment, water and food preparation

systems, retail business machines, and telecommunications equipment (currently allowed only as donations).The steps recommended above wouldgive your administration the tools to have a constructive dialogue with the Cuban government based on a set

of measures that 1) would engage Cuban leaders in high-level, face-to-face negotiations onmatters that directly serve U.S. interests in a secure, stable, prosperous and free Cuba; and 2) allow you to assertexecutive authority to take unilateral steps that would increase U.S. support to the Cuban people, as

mandated by Congress. To take this step, you will have t o contend with negative reactions from a vocal, well-organized minority of members of Congress who increasingly are out of step with theirconstituents on this issue. Your initiative should be presented as a set of concrete measures to assist the Cuban people, which is well within current congressional mandates, and as a way to breakthe stalemate in resolving the case of U.S. citizen Alan Gross (his wife is calling for direct negotiations). Those are winnable arguments. But you will need to be prepared for some unhelpful

criticism along the way. Conclusion: Current U.S. policy long ago outlived its usefulness and is counterproductive to advancing the goal of helping the

Cuban people. Instead it gives Cuban officials the ability to demonize the UnitedStates in the eyes of Cubans, other Latin Americans

and the rest of the world, which annually condemns the embargo at the United Nations. At this rate, given hardening attitudes in the region against U.S. policy, the Cuba problem may even to rpedo

your next presidential Summit of the Americas in Panama in 2015.It is time for a new approach: an initiative to test the willingness of the Cuban

governmentto engage constructively alongside an effort to empower the Cuban people.



US financing is necessary to avoid hyperinflation and internal violenceMorris ‘11 (Emily, London Metropolitan University UK, FORECASTING CUBA‘SECONOMY: 2, 5, AND 20 YEARS, Presented at the international symposium ―CubaFutures: Past and Present,‖ organized by The Cuba Project Bildner Center for WesternHemisphere Studies at The Graduate Center/CUNY,

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/bildn/cuba/cubaforecasting.pdf)

Risks in the medium term Five years is a very long time in politics, and with the near certainty of both a generational transition and a deep and disruptive overhaul

of the system o f economic management and structure of relative prices, forecasting is particularly hazardous.The one-party political system will beseverely tested. If the government were to collapse, the range of possible scenarios would be huge: the economy might collapse in tochaos and hyperinflation amidst violent conflict, or enjoy a US financed boom,depending on the circumstances. However, It is worth noting that, as ever, the probability of government collapse remains smaller than is estimated by

those hoping for a political transition. If it were not, the exercise of forecasting a survival scenario would perhaps be a futile one. Forecasting Cuba‘s Economy: 2, 5, and 20 Years 21 Evenin the absence of political collapse, there remain substantial risks of economic instabilityand weakness. The reform process, which includes the removal of subsidies and extensive realignment of relative prices and incomes, willcreate inflationary pressures that will be hard to contain. The forecast of a steady rise in average productivity is derived from an

expectation that the positive impact of the introduction of market signals and improvement in incentives will outweigh the disruption costs. The slow rate of average real income

growth would imply continued pressure on the government to maintain subsidies for basic goods and extend welfareprovision to households struggling to adapt to the new conditions, draining fiscal resources and increasing the temptation to raise taxes on productive activity to levels that discourage innovationand enterprise, or push activity back from the formal economy to the informal sector. If Cuba‘s reform wave were to coincide with deteriorating external conditions, rather than the relatively benign scenario presented in the EIU‘s global assumptions, the political and economic risks would be greater. The danger of upsets in the global economy remains heightened by concerns abouthigh debt levels and sluggish growth in the EU and Europe, and inflated asset prices among the rapidly-growing economies of the developing world. A deterioration in global conditions might feedthrough to Cuban economic performance through collapse in the n ickel price or surge in oil or food prices, or a sudden contraction in tourist arrivals. The single event that would have the greatestnegative impact on Cuba‘s economic prospects, however, would be the replacement of Hugo Chávez with a hostile regime in V enezuela, particularly if this were to coincide with high international

oil prices. A similar degree of shock , but on the positive side, would arise from the lifting of theUS travel ban, opening of the US market to Cuban exports or removal ofrestrictions on US and multilateral financial flows to Cuba.

Cuban instability causes Latin American instabilityGorrell 5 (Tim, Lieutenant Colonel, ―CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED

ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?‖ 3/18, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi- bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074

Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy,Cuba‘s problems of a post Castrotransformation only worsen. In addition to Cubans on the island, there will be those in exile who

will return claiming authority. And there are remnants of the dissident community within Cuba

who will attempt to exercise similar authority. A power vacuum or absence of order willcreate the conditions for instability and civil war. Whether Raul or another successor

from within the current governmentcan hold power is debatable. However, that individual will nonetheless extend thecurrent policies for an indefinite period, which will only compound the Cuban situation. When Cuba finallycollapses anarchy is a strong possibility if the U.S. maintains the ―wait and see‖ approach.The U.S. then mustdeal with an unstable country 90 miles off its coast. In the midst of this chaos,thousands will fleethe island. During the Mariel boatlift in 1980 125,000 fled the island.26 Many were criminals;this time the number could beseveral hundred thousand fleeing to the U.S., creating a refugee crisis.¶ Equally important, by adhering

to a negative containment policy,the U.S. may be creating its next series of transnational criminal

problems. Cuba is along the axis of the drug-trafficking flow into the U.S. from Columbia. The Castro government as a matter of policy does not support the drug trade. In fact,

Cuba‘s actions have shown that its stance on drugs is more than hollow rhetoric asindicated by its increasing seizure of drugs – 7.5 tons in 1995, 8.8 tons in 1999, and 13 tons in 2000.27 While there may be individuals within the

government and outside who engage in drug trafficking and a percentage of drugs entering the U.S. may pass through Cuba,the Cuban government is notthe path of least resistance for the flow of drugs. If there were no Cuban restraints, theflow of drugs to the U.S. could be greatly facilitated by a Cuba base of operation andaccelerate considerably.¶ In the midst of an unstable Cuba, the opportunity for radicalfundamentalist groups to operate in the region increases. If these groups can exportterrorist activity from Cuba to the U.S. or throughout the hemisphere then


http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074








the war against this extremism gets more complicated. Such activity couldincrease direct attacks and disrupt the economies, threatening the stability of thefragile democracies that are budding throughout the region. In light of a failed statein the region, the U.S. may be forced to deploy military forces to Cuba, creating theconditions for another insurgency . The ramifications of this action could very well fuel greater anti-Americansentiment throughout the Americas. A proactive policy now can mitigate these potential future problems.¶ U.S. domestic political support is also turning

against the current negative policy. The Cuban American population in the U.S. totals 1,241,685 or 3.5% of the population.28 Most of these exiles reside in Florida; their influence has been a factorin determining the margin of victory in the past two presidential elections. But this election strategy may be flawed, because recent polls of Cuban Americans reflect a decline for President Bush based on his policy crackdown. There is a clear softening in the Cuban-American community with regard to sanctions. Younger Cuban Americans do not necessarily subscribe to the hard-lineapproach. These changes signal an opportunity for a new approach to U.S.-Cuban relations. (Table 1)¶ The time has come to look realistically at the Cuban issue. Castro will rule until he dies. The

only issue is what happens then? The U.S. can little afford to be distracted by a failed state 90 miles off itscoast. The administration, given the present state of world affairs, does not have the luxury or the resources topursue the traditional American model of crisis management. The President and o ther government and military leaders

have warned that the GWOT will be long and protracted. These warnings were sounded when the administration did not anticipate operations in Iraq

consuming so many military, diplomatic and economic resources. There is justifiable concern that Africa and the Caucasus region arepotential hot spots for terrorist activity , so these areas should be secure. North Korea will continue to

be an unpredictable crisis in waiting. We also cannot ignore China. What if Chinaresorts to aggression to resolve the Taiwan situation? Will the U.S. go to war over Taiwan? Additionally,Iran couldconceivably be the next target for U.S. pre-emptive action. These are known andpotential situations that could easily require all or many of the elements of national

power to resolve. In view of such global issues, can the U.S. afford to sustain the status quo and simplylet the Cuban situation play out? The U.S. is at a crossroads: should the policies of the past 40 years remain in effect with vigor? Or should the U.S. pursue a

new approach to Cuba in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

That causes global conflictManwaring ‗5 – adjunct professor of international politics at Dickinson(Max G., Retired U.S. Army colonel, Venezuela‘s Hugo Chávez, Bolivarian Socialism, and

Asymmetric Warfare, October 2005, pg. PUB628.pdf)

President Chávez also understands that the process leading to state failure is the most dangerous long-term securitychallenge facing the global community today . The argument in general is that failing and failed state status is the

breeding ground for instability, criminality, insurgency, regional conflict, and terrorism.

These conditions breed massive humanitarian disasters and major refugee flows. They can host ―evil‖ networks of all kinds, whetherthey involve criminal business enterprise, narco-trafficking, or some form of ideologicalcrusade such as Bolivarianismo.More specifically, these conditions spawn all kinds of things people in general do not like such as murder, kidnapping, corruption, intimidation, and

destruction of infrastructure. These means of coercion and persuasion can spawn further human rights violations, torture, poverty, starvation, disease, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, trafficking in women and body parts,

trafficking and proliferation of conventional weapons systems and WMD, genocide,ethnic cleansing, warlordism, and criminal anarchy. At the same time, these actions are usuallyunconfined and spill over into regional syndromes of poverty, destabilization, andconflict.62 Peru‘s Sendero Luminoso calls violent and destructive activities that facilitate the processes of state failure ―armed propaganda.‖Drug cartelsoperating throughout the Andean Ridge of South America and elsewhere call theseactivities ―business incentives.‖ Chávez considers these actions to be steps that must be taken to bring about the political conditions necessary to

establishLatin American socialism for the 21st century.63 Thus, in addition to helping to provide wider latitude to further their tactical and o perational objectives, state and

nonstate actors‘ strategic efforts are aimed at progressively lessening a targeted regime‘s credibility and capability in ter ms of its ability and willingness to govern and develop its national territoryand society. Chávez‘s intent is to focus his primary attack politically and psychologically on selected Latin American governments‘ ability and right to govern. In that context, he understands thatpopular perceptions of corruption, disenfranchisement, poverty, and lack of upward mobility limit the right and the ability of a given regime to conduct the business of the state. Until a given

populace generally perceives that its government is dealing with these and other basic issues of political, economic, and soc ial injustice fairly and effectively, instability andthe threat of subverting or destroying such a government are real.64 But failing and failed states simply do not go

away. Virtually anyone can take advantage of such an unstable situation. The tendency is that the best motivated and best armed organization on the scene will control that instability. As a

consequence,failing and failed states become dysfunctional states, rogue states, criminal states,narco-states, or new people‘s democracies. In connection with the creation of new people‘s democracies, one can rest assured that Chávez and his Bolivarian populist allies will be

available to provide money, arms, and leadership at any given opportunity. And, of course, the longer dysfunctional, rogue, criminal, and narco-states and people‘s democracies persist, themore they and their associated problems endanger global security, peace, andprosperity .65



***AT: CHINA SPHERE GOOD***

Plan Solves EconomyPlan solves economic development Valencia 13 (Robert Valencia is a New York-based political analyst and is acontributing writer for Global Voices Online. May 20, 2013, ―U.S. and Latin America:Economic Cooperation without Militarization?‖,http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/05/20/us-and-latin-america-economic-cooperation-without-militarization

In May, President Barack Obama visited Mexico and Costa Rica and vowed to strengthen economic ties with these two countries and the rest of Latin America. He pledged to expand renewableenergy development and education initiatives in recognition of the joined fates of the United States and Latin America. This approach to Latin America is refreshing, but its impact on the ongoing War on Drugs remains to be seen. Undoubtedly, the United States bears much of the responsibility for the failed campaign, but the Obama administration has seen that some Latin American

countries are taking their own lead in tackling the drug trade and are increasingly relying less on Washington. The Obama administration, for its part, has realized that shifting thelegendary treatment of Latin America as the U.S.‘ ―backyard‖ to an economic approach

would draw Latin America closer to Washington, especially given the fact that Latin American leaders like

Mexico‘s Enrique Peña Nieto and Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff want to be considered trade partners and not U.S.subordinates. President Obama‘s meeting with Mexico‘s President Enrique Peña Nieto centered on the historic economic relationship between the two countries, and furthered

their conversation on economic and commercial initiatives as well as immigration issues. Additionally, Peña Nieto highlighted Mexico‘s economic growth and the necessity for bolstering studentexchange. Both leaders agreed to create an economic team led by Vice President Joe Biden and Mexican Secretary of the Treasury Luis Videgaray. They resolved to create projects to improveinfrastructure and security along the 3,000 kilometer-long border, one of th e world‘s largest. The issue of security was only briefly discussed during the visit. Obama offered his support in fightingorganized crime and curbing any illegal cash flow and gun trade, as well as measures to reduce drug consumption, but Peña Nieto quickly shifted the conversation back to economic initiatives toavoid thorny issues such as immigration overhaul and drug violence. Some experts claim Peña Nieto‘s aversion to the issue is rooted in his desire to take on violence without U.S. help. Since 1997,the U.S. government has helped Mexican authorities perform a process of vetting officials by way of polygraphs, in order to i dentify any ―rotten apples‖ that cooperate with drug kingpins. Manyexpect to Peña Nieto to change this policy. In addition, Peña Nieto has rejected any U.S. military help. Mexico‘s take on the war on drugs is borne out of desperation for the lack of action by the U.S.to effectively tackle the effects of drug trade. And it very much resembles Latin America‘s approach in the matter. Colombia‘s President Juan Manuel Santos, for example, has called for a sharp break with established policy on drug criminalization, and has stated that he would not oppose the legalization of narcotics if necessary. Santos‘s comments drew support from chiefs of staff fromBrazil, Chile, and Guatemala. Furthermore, the 43rd Assembly of the Organization of American States, which will take place on June 4-6 in Guatemala, is slated to address alternative goals for

combating the drug trade, including prevention and drug treatment, violence reduction, crime-related activities that are connected to drug consumption, and money laundering. Thelingering question is whether economic cooperation will be able to supplant entrenchedsecurity measures in the short term, especially considering how multi-million dollar aidpackages have been earmarked for several Latin American nations for decades . Colombia, for

example, has received $7 billion in U.S. military and police aid grants—the largest of any Latin American nation—followed by Mexico with $2 billion since 1996. President Obama‘s meeting with

seven leaders of Central American countries and the Dominican Republic in Costa Rica proved more successful in discussing immigration and the drug war than his trip to Mexico. Latin American countries with smaller economies, conversely, are seeking more cooperationfrom the United States. El Salvador‘s Mauricio Funes said that the United States should provide more funding to Central America given its greater share of

responsibility for combating illicit drug trade. The new emphasis on economic initiatives between the UnitedStates and Latin American countries represents a welcome break in stale policies. As President

Obama pointed out, ―the stronger the economies and the institutions for individuals seeking legitimate careers, the less powerful those narco-trafficking organizations are going to be.‖

Furthermore,economic initiatives need not eclipse security strategies, but rather work intandem. The White House must take steps to implement economic cooperation as swiftlyas possible, including the addition of including additional Latin American countries into the Trans-Pacific Partnership--a 2005 free trade agreement that includes more Asian

countries--and encouraging more student exchange programs between the U.S. and Latin America. At present, only 40,000 Latin Americans are studying in the U.S., a far cry from the 100,000

slots Obama promised to open this year. Since the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. has seen its clout wane on the realms of diplomacy and Latin America‘s decision-making as the leftist waverose among several Latin American countries , while the region sought to integrate more and more by way of economic and diplomatic blocs

like UNASUR and CELAC. If Obama‘s words are not consequent with immediate actions in the next

couple of months or years and does not take Latin America as a serious trade partner(which hasn‘t been the case in previous administrations due to the Latin America-is-our-

backyard mentality), the U.S. will continue to lose leverage on important issues thatconcern Latin America, and in turn Latin American countries will forge ahead witheconomic and security integration amongst themselves.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/05/20/us-and-latin-america-economic-cooperation-without-militarization






Plan Solves Oil PricesLifting the embargo allows US oil companies to aid oil development – solvespricesPinon 11 (Jorge R. Piñón is a visiting research fellow at the Latin American and

Caribbean Center‘s Cuban Research Institute at FIU. Spring 2011, "Why the UnitedStates and Cuba Collaborate (and What Could Happen If TheyDon't)"casgroup.fiu.edu/pages/docs/2157/1306356964_Hemisphere_Vol._20.pdf

If Cuba‘s suspected but yet undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves are proven real, it willtake between three and five years to develop them fully . Production volumes would have to reach more than 200,000 barrels per

day to have the same positive economic impact currently derived from foreign oil subsidies. If this occurs, significant revenues from oil,natural gas and sugarcane ethanol would integrate Cuba into global andregional markets within the next five years.¶ International oil companies such as Spain‘sRepsol, Norway‘s Statoil Norsk Hydro and Brazil‘s Petrobras are actively exploringCuba‘s Gulf of Mexico waters. Cuban authorities have invited United States oilcompanies to participate in developing the island‘s offshore oil and natural

gas resources, but US law does not allow this.¶

Although US oil, oil equipment andservice companies have the capital, technology and operational knowhow to explore,produce and refine Cuba‘s potential reserves in a safe and responsible manner, thealmost five-decade old unilateral political and economic embargo keeps them on thesidelines.¶ Cuba currently relies on heavily subsidized oil from Venezuela for two-thirds of its petroleum needs. This supply contributes to the Cuban government‘sability to maintain a politically antagonistic and belligerent position towardsthe US.¶ The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made Cuba aware of the political and economic risks and consequences of depending on a single source of imported oil. Only

when Cuba diversifies suppliers and develops its offshore hydrocarbonresources, estimated by the United States Geological Survey at 5.5 million barrels of oiland 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, will it have the economic independence toconsider political and economic reforms. It is in the US interest to develop a newpolicy toward the island based on constructive engagement to support the emergence ofa Cuban state in which Cubans themselves can determine the political and economicfuture of their country through democratic means. Cuba is about to embark on an 18-month oil exploration drilling program to validate the presence of

recoverable hydrocarbon reserves.¶ US support of such endeavors would be beneficial in the framework of a constructive engagement policy. The Deepwater Horizon drilling semi-submersibleincident and the resulting catastrophic oil spill demonstrate the urgency of developing a policy of energy and environmental cooperation between the United States and Cuba. As Cuba develops itsdeepwater oil and natural gas potential, the possible consequences of a spill call for proactive planning by both countries to minimize or avoid an environmental disaster.¶ To respond effectively toan oil-related marine accident, any company operating in Cuba would require immediate access to US oil services companies for the nearinstant technology and know-how needed to halt and limitdamage to the marine environment. Obviously, the establishment of working relations between the US and Cuba in the area of marine environmental protection would assist enormously in thecontingency planning and cooperation necessary for an early and effective response to an oil spill.¶ The United States and Cuba are already parties to a number of multilateral oil pollutionagreements, such as the 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) and the 1983 Convention for the protection and Development of the MarineEnvironment in the Wider Caribbean Region (Cartagena Convention). Both agreements address prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships from o perational or accidental causes.The 1990 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation also offers a precedent for cooperation. The convention is designed to encourage and facilitateinternational cooperation and mutual assistance in preparing for and responding to major oil pollution incidents. Signatory nations are tasked with developing and maintaining adequatecapabilities to deal with such an emergency. In the case of Cuba and the United States, the capabilities must be transnational, as there is no barrier to the movement of oil from one country‘s watersto another‘s. The United States, therefore, must develop appropriate regulatory and procedural frameworks for the free movement of equipment, personnel and expertise between the two countriesas part of any oil spill response.¶ The 1980 Agreement of Cooperation between the United States and Mexico Regarding Pollution of the Marine Environment by Discharges of Hydrocarbons andOther Hazardous Substances (MEXUS Plan) provides the foundation for a similar protocol with Cuba. This would include the establishment of joint response teams, coordinating roles, rapidincident notification mechanisms, joint operations centers and communication procedures, along with regular exercises and meetings. The United States government, irrespective of the current

embargo, has the power to license the sale, lease or loan of emergency relief and reconstruction equipment and the travel of expert personnel to Cuba following an oil spill.¶ Cuba‘slong-term energy challenges will be a consequence of its future economic growth andrising standard of living within a market environment. This anticipated growth will

depend largely on the development of a competitively priced, readily available andenvironmentally sound long-term energy plan. Cuban energy policy should embraceenergy conservation, modernization of the energy infrastructure, and balance in sourcingoil/gas supplies and renewable energy sources that protect the island‘senvironment. The country would benefit from the guidance of a variety ofpartners, including the United States.



China Can‘t Do Oil Foreign rigs can‘t be effectively built or maintained absent US involvementCDA 11 (Center for Democracy in the Americas, ―As Cuba plans to drill in the Gulf ofMexico, U.S. policy poses needless risks to our national interest‖, 2011,

http://democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/Cuba_Drilling_and_US_Policy.pdf)

19. Cuba‘s effort to obtain a rig that complied with the embargo is an example of theperverse effects of U.S. policy . ―Repsol, a Spanish oil company,is paying an Italian firm to build anoil rig in China that will be used to explore for oil off the shores of Cuba.‖ 57 Because ofrestrictions against U.S. content in technology used in Cuba,Repsol was forced to gothrough a circuitous route to secure an offshore drilling rig. 58 Under the embargo,rigs cannotcontain more than 10% U.S. parts. Repsol contracted with Saipem, a subsidiary of Italy‘s Eni, SpA, for a rig that has been built in China at the Yantai

Raffles YRSL.NFF shipyard. 59 The rig, Scarabeo 9, is called by industry sources ―the latest technology for deepwater drilling operations.‖ 60 According to Hunt, several deepwaterdrillships operating in non- Cuban waters in the Gulf Coast were built by the same firm inChina and are similar to the Saipem rig except that they include substantial andcritical U.S. components. Although Jorge Piñon told the Miami Herald that Scarabeo 9 conforms to the U.S. embargo‘s content

requirements, but

contains a blow-out preventer manufactured in the United

States, Lee Hunt is not certain that the blow-out

preventer in the rig destined for Cuba is of U.S. origin, crediting speculation that it was manufactured in Norway. 61 Either way, Hunt argues,this poses problems: • Ifit is a U.S. manufactured BOP (blow-out preventer):Saipem can‘t hire the U.S. manufacturer tocommission the stack, test and certify its integrity because of the embargo. Saipem can‘t buy an OEM

replacement (can‘t replace a damaged part with a U.S. part); it would need a copycat part, requiring the replacement to beflown in from Europe or Asia instead of the U.S. • If it is Norwegian, the need for a replacement part

would also necessitate a back-up to be flown in from overseas.

AT: Oil Shocks ImpactSaudi Arabia will fill in any gaps, but oil traders will be nervous anyway andadd to risk premiums

Moenning ‘11 (David, professional money manager and founder ofTopStockPortfolios.com, ―Surging Oil: Can Obama 'Talk Down' Prices?,‖ 3-7,http://www.businessinsider.com/surging-oil-can-obama-talk-down-prices-2011-3)

How high can oil go? This is always an interesting question when a new trend emerges inthe commodity markets. While Saudi Arabia has already opened up the spigot to increasethe flow of oil in an attempt to ensure there are no shortages and has promisedto do more, traders appear to be adding to the ―risk premium‖ current beingapplied to the price of oil. One glance at the headlines makes this concept easy to understand. "Tension in the Middle East islike a runaway train," said Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets in London. Hewson told CNBC on Friday, "Once it starts, it's verydifficult to stop. And if there is a danger that it impacts the supply chain, people willunderstandably get nervous."

And, no impact:

A. Structural changes to importing economies

Leonardo Maugeri Group Senior Vice President at ENI The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History

and Future of the World‘s Most Controversial Resource Westport: Praeger 2006. Pg. 262-263

Actually,all the great oil producers have learned a lesson from the 1970s: an oil shock can be aterrible experience for the industrial countries, but it is not a fatal blow . As soon as

http://democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/Cuba_Drilling_and_US_Policy.pdf

http://democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/Cuba_Drilling_and_US_Policy.pdf



they perceive the long-term nature of such a shock they react, and their reaction can turninto a permanent nightmare for any producer. Any structural reaction implies not only areduction in demand, but also much more money devoted to research anddevelopment of alternative sources of energy or investments in new oil-producing areas.

B. Disruptions are too short-termLuft 2005, [Gal Luft, Co-Director @ Institute for the Analysis of Global Security,Committee on Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian

Affairs, July 27 2005, ―Terrorist threats to energy security‖,<http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/2005_h/050727-luft.pdf>]

Mr. Chairman, The threat against energy facilities worldwide is severe and not a day goes by without us being reminded of it. Governments, oil companies and pipeline operators are seeking to putin place mechanisms to reduce the impact of the scourge. They are forced to invest increasing sums of money to improve security in their oil installations. We are paying for this at the pump. No

doubt supply disruptions described above could drive oil prices further to where they are today and take a toll of oureconomy. But the impact of such disruptions is not likely to be long lasting. The average duration ofthe 14 supply disruptions as a result of accidents and internal political struggles of thepast 55 years is 6 months with loss of no more than 2.5% of the market. Most pipelines andpumping stations can be repaired within few days or weeks. A blockage of a chokepoint

by a burning tanker is not likely to last more than a couple of weeks. Once the disruptionends prices are likely to be gradually restored. It is important to remember that a loss of 4-5% of supply to the U.S.market can be offset by the 700mb Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR ). At a rate of 1 million

barrels per day the SPR can supply U.S. needs for more than a year and a half . The Energy Policy and Conservation Act

(EPCA), which governs the usage of the SPR, allows for a limited drawdown for circumstances which constitute "a domestic or international energy supply shortage of significant scope or

duration." In addition, simple behavioral changes whichcan be introduced in a time of emergency . According to the InternationalEnergy A gency a number of measures like sensible driving, car pooling,removal of excess weight, engine tuning, tire inflation, replacement of air filters andidling reduction of trucks and planes could provide substantial reductions in transportoil use quickly and cheaply. It has been demonstratedthat a speed reduction of 12mph can reduce fuel consumption

by approximately 20% and a tire inflation public awareness campaign could save approximately3%.

C. Wage flexibility and strong monetary policy checkOliver Blanchard and Jordi Gali, 11/8/2007. The Class of 1941 Professor ofEconomics, is a former MIT economics department head and Research Associate in theNBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth and the Program on MonetaryEconomics. ―The Macroeconomic Effects of Oil Shocks: Why are the 2000s So Differentfrom the 1970s?‖ National Bureau of Economic Research,http://www.nber.org/papers/w13368.

First, real wage rigidities may have decreased over time. The presence of real wage rigiditiesgenerates a trade off between stabilization of inflation and stabilization of the outputgap. As a result, and in response to an adverse supply shock and for a given money rule, inflation willgenerally rise more and output will decline more, the slower real wages adjust. A trendtowards more flexible labor markets, including more flexible wages, could thus explain the smaller

impact of the more recent oil shocks. Second, changes in the way monetary policyis conducted may be responsible for the diff erential response of the economy to the oil shocks. In particular, the stronger commitment

by central banks to maintaining a low and stable rate of inflation, reflected in the widespread adoption of more or less explicit inflation targeting strategies, may have ledto an improvement in the policy tradeoff that make it possible to have a smaller impactof a given oil price increase on both inflation and output simultaneously. Third, the share of oil in the economy may havedeclined sufficiently since the 1970s to account for the decrease in the effects of its pricechanges. Under that hypothesis, changes in the price of oil have increasingly turned into a sideshow, with no significant macroeconomic eff ects (not unlike fluctuations in the price of caviar).

http://www.nber.org/papers/w13368




D. Their evidence is based on flawed data – the impact‘s empirically denied. Oliver Blanchard and Jordi Gali, 11/8/2007. The Class of 1941 Professor ofEconomics, is a former MIT economics department head and Research Associate in theNBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth and the Program on MonetaryEconomics. ―The Macroeconomic Effects of Oil Shocks: Why are the 2000s So Different

from the 1970s?‖ National Bureau of Economic Research,http://www.nber.org/papers/w13368.

Since the 1970s, and at lea st until recently, macroeconomists have viewed changes in the price of oil as asan important source of economic fluctuations, as well as a paradigm of a global shock,likely to affect many economies simultaneously. Such a perception is largely due to thetwo episodes of low growth, high unemployment, and high inflation that char- acterized most industrialized economies

in the mid and late 1970s. Con- ventional accounts of those episodes of stagflation blame them on the large increases in the price of oil triggered by the Yom Kippur war in 1973, and

the Iranian revolution of 1979, respectively.1 The events of the past decade, however, seem to call into question therelevance of oil price changes as a significant source of economic fluctuations. The reason: Sincethe late 1990s, the global economy has experienced two oil shocks of sign and magnitudecomparable to those of the 1970s but, in contrast with the latter episodes, GDPgrowth and inflation have remained relatively stable in much of the

industrialized world. Our goal in this paper is to shed light on the nature of the apparent changes in the macroeconomic eff ects of oil shocks, as well as on some of its possible causes.

Disentangling the factors behind those changes is obviously key to assessing the extent to which the episodes of stagflation o f the 1970s can r eoccur in response to future oils shocks and, if so, to understanding the role that

monetary policy can play in order to mitigate their adverse eff ects. One plausible hypothesis is that the eff ects of the increase in the price of oil proper have been similar across episodes, but have coincided in time with large

shocks of a very diff erent nature (e.g. large rises in other commodity prices in the 1970s, high productivity growth and world demand in the 2000s). That coincidence could significantly distort any assessment of the impactof oil shocks based on a simple observation of the movements in aggregate v ariables around each episode. In order to evaluate this hy pothesis one must isolate the component of macroeconomic fluctuations associated with

exogenous changes in the price of oil. To do so, we identify and estimate the eff ects of an oil price shock u sing structural VAR techniques. We report and compare e stimates for diff erent sample periods and discuss howthey have changed over time. We follow two alternative approaches. The first one is based on a large VAR, and allows for a break in the sample in the mid 1980s. The second approach is based on rolling bivariate VARs,

including the price of oil and one other variable at a time. The latter approach allows for a gradual change in the estimated eff ects of oil price shocks, without imposing a discrete break in a single period. Two conclusions

clearly emerge from this analysis: First, there were indeed other adverse shocks at work in the 1970s; the price of oilexplains only part of the stagflation episodes of the 1970s. Second, and importantly, the eff ects of a givenchange in the price of oil have changed substantially over time. Our estimates point to much larger eff ects of oil price shocks on

inflation and activity in the early part of the sample, i.e. the one that includes the two oil shock episodes of the 1970s. Our basic empirical findings are summarized graphically in Figure 1 (we post pone a description of theunderlying assumptions to Section 3). The left-hand graph shows the responses of U.S. (log) GDP and the (log) CPI to a 1 0 percent increase in the price of oil, estimated using pre-1984 data. The right-hand graph displaysthe corresponding responses, based on post-1984 data. As the Figure makes clear , the response of both variables has become more muted in the more rece nt period. As we show below, that pattern can also be observed for

other variables (prices and quantities) and many (though not all) other countries considered. In sum, the evidence suggests that economies face animproved trade-off in the more recent period, in the face of oil price shocks of a similarmagnitude.

Russia Turn – 2ACHigh oil prices boost the entire Russian economy, as the governmentdistributes revenues and the ruble strengthensBaden 11 (Ben, Reporter at U.S. News & World Report, ―Russia Stocks Soar on RisingOil Prices,‖4-5, http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/mutual-funds/articles/2011/04/05/russia-stocks-soar-on-rising-oil-prices)

Of the rapidly growing "BRIC" countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—Russia has always been a sort of oddman out. While the others have registered double-digit or near double-digit growth for years,the Russian economy has grown at a

much more moderate pace. Experts have even argued that Russia shouldn't be grouped with Brazil, India, and China because its population is much older and its

economy is much more industrialized, therefore it's not expected to grow at a rate comparable to the others. But lately, Russia's economy has been benefiting from what many other nations,

including the United States, are struggling with. "[Russia is] truly one of the major global beneficiaries of higher gasprices," says John Derrick, director of research at U.S. Global Investors. While higher oil prices are a cause for concern in the United States, they are providing alift for resource-rich Russia, the world's largest producer of oil and second-largestproducer of natural gas as well as the largest non-OPEC exporter of oil. Vlad Milev, manager of the Metzler/Payden European Emerging Markets Fund (symbol

MPYMX),says the country's entire economy is reaping the benefits. The Russian governmenttakes a portion of oil revenues and distributes them throughout the economy, Milev says, whichcreates a trickle-down effect for other Russian businesses and consumers. "So that gives a boost to the





economy as well," he says. So far this year, emerging markets have struggled to keep up with developed nationslike the United States for a number of reasons, most notably unrest in the Middle East and higher inflation concerns.

Year-to-date through March 28, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index lost about 1 percent, according to Bloomberg. (The S&P 500, on the other hand, gained about 5 percent over the same time

period.)Of the four BRIC markets, Russia is leading the way . The MICEX Index, which is made up of 30 Russianstocks from 10 sectors of the economy, has returned 15 percent so far this year. The next-best BRICperformer is China, with a 5 percent gain for the Shanghai Composite Index. Brazil's Bovespa Index was down 2 percent as of March 28, and India's Sensex Index lost 10

percent over the same period of time. Russia has also gotten a boost from the ruble, which has gained about 7percent against the U.S. dollar so far this year. Derrick calls the ruble a "commodity currency" because it generally benefits from highercommodity prices. "Roughly half the return [so far this year] has been currency related," says Derrick, who also helps manage the U.S. Global Investors Eastern European

Fund (EUROX). "The dynamics are pretty favorable for the ruble." The largest Russia-focused exchange-traded fund, Market Vectors

Russia (RSX), has had a tremendous run of as late. In 2009 alone, the fund gained a whopping 139 percent. But because of a 74 percent loss during 2008's downturn, the fund has lost an

annualized 3 percent over the past three years. Over the past year, the ETF has returned about 21 percent. It's been a wild ride for investors in Russia-focused funds, butexperts say with higher commodity prices on the horizon, the outlook is fairly positive for Russianstocks. "A lot of people ignore Russia to their peril," says Christian Magoon, CEO of asset management consultant firm Magoon Capital.

Russian economic decline causes nuclear warFILGER 9 (Sheldon, author and blogger for the Huffington Post, ―Russian EconomyFaces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction‖http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com/blog/archives/356)

In Russia historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that israrely encountered in other major industrializedeconomies. It was the economic stagnation of the former Soviet Union that led to its political

downfall. Similarly, Medvedev and Putin, both intimately acquainted with their nation‘s history, are unquestionably alarmed atthe prospect that Russia‘s economic crisis will endanger the nation‘s political stability ,achieved at great cost after years of chaos following the demise of the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-paymentof their salaries. Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev are eroding rapidly. Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have

been forced to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive jets in a desperate attempt to raise cash. Should the Russian economydeteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not out of t he question, the impact will go far beyond the obviousaccelerant such an outcome would be for the Global Economic Crisis . There is a geopolitical dimension that is

even more relevant then the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities and perceived decline from superpower status, Russia remains one of onlytwo nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of sufficient scope and capability to destroythe world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the prospect that a nationaleconomic crisis can transform itself into a virulent and destabilizing social and political upheaval. It

just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obama‘s national security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown in Russia for the peace of the world. After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the Global Economic Crisis represents the greatest national security

threat to the United States, due to its facilitating political instability in the world. During the years Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia, security forces

responsible for guarding the nation‘snuclear arsenal went without pay for months at a t ime, leading to fears that

desperatepersonnel would illicitly sell nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. If the currenteconomic crisis in Russia were to deteriorate much further, how secure would theRussian nuclear arsenal remain? It may be that the financial impact of the Global Economic Crisis is its least dangerous consequence.

Russia Turn – UQRussian growth is strong

AP 2-2-2011 (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9L4GPGO0.htm)

Russia's finance minister says the country's economy grew more than expected over thepast year and that the government is undertaking initiatives to accelerate growth further.

Alexei Kudrin says the economy grew 4 percent in 2010, better than the anticipated 3.8 percent.

Speaking at the Russia Forum, a gathering of business leaders often described as the Russian equivalent of the World Economic Forum inDavos, Kudrin said Tuesday that growth could have been higher if Russia had not suffered severe heat and drought last year that affected

food prices and grain exports. He says Russia is aiming for annual growth of 7 to 8 percent in the nextfew years and aims to reach that goal by reducing government ownership in key sectorsand by slashing bureaucracy .

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Russian economy strong like bull VOICE OF RUSSIA 2-4-2011 (http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/02/04/42836311.html)The Russian economy will preserve its growth trend, forecasts the World Bank‘s LeadEconomist for Russia Zeljko Bogetic. He noted that the Russian economy expanded by 4 percent in2010, which is quite a good result in the current conditions. Bogetic expects to see a further 4.2percent growth this year. The World Bank expert believes that the Russian government learnt the

lessons of the 1998 crisis and introduced a conservative fiscal policy, which allowedRussia to fare better than other countries.

Russian growth will pick up now but it‘s still vulnerable COUNTRY FORECAST SELECT 10-1-2010Russia and Ukraine will both return to growth in 2010, at 4.8% and 4% respectively. InRussia, the government's large stimulus package, an upturn in external demand andlower interest rates now that a degree of financial stabilisation has been achieved willunderpin a robust performance. But growth will still be below recent standards and,given structural problems, is likely to remain so in the medium term. The outlook fordemand for steel, Ukraine's key export, is favourable, and risks to the country's short-term outlook have decreased following its agreement with the IMF in July on a new

lending programme, expected to be confirmed by the IMF board later in the month.There is some downside risk to Russia's growth in 2010 from the recent severe droughtand wildfires in the country, which are likely to have affected the industrial, retail andother services sectors, as well as hitting agriculture.

Russia Turn – High Prices KeyDiversification efforts solve long term unsustainability but high oil pricesare key to fund investment in diversification in the short-term.

What the Papers Say (Russia), 11/28/2007. ―Still Hooked on Oil,‖ Lexis.

Being hooked on oil is the trademark of the Russian economy , and Russian politics as well. But now we see Senior Deputy Prime

Minister Sergei Ivanov smashing stereotypes. "Have we managed to end our dependence on oil and gas exports? " he asks.

And he answers himself: " We haven't done it yet, but we're making progress." The arguments for this are well-known: "We are expecting economic

growth of close to 8% this year. This is the best figure among developed Western nations. Oil and gas will contribute no more than 2% of this 8% growth." Even more convincing evidence can be found to show that we'renot hooked on oil as much as we used to be. Look at the rise in industrial investment: according to the Federal State Statistics Service (RosStat), investment in basic capital grew by 19.6% in October. Experts are alreadysaying that the economy is in danger of overheating. So far, however, this investment is maintaining economic growth prospects. Yes, the investment rise was started by oil revenues and ruble appreciation, but economicgrowth itself is becoming a factor in its own continuation. There's the government, with its innovation-based development policy and the corresponding state corporations. And there are RAO U nified Energy Systems

(RAO UES), Gazprom, and Rosneft - whose interests are not consistent with a policy of developing an innovation-based economy. All the same, I wouldn't advise concludingthat we're no longer hooked on oil . The Russian economy's future is linked to aninnovation-investment growth scenario. The resources to fund the transition to thattrack are oil revenues . Suffice it to recall that the founding capital for the numerous state corporationsthat are supposed to be the driving forces for innovation-based growth comes directlyfrom the Stabilization Fund. But not even this is the main issue here. The point is that the transition to innovation-baseddevelopment certainly won't be simple and smooth .

High oil prices key to ensure Russian reforms.

Vladimir Chizhov, 5/8/2008. Russian Ambassador to the EU, former deputy Ministerof Foreign Affairs. ―Russian Ambassador: 'You will not live to see Putin and Medvedev inconflict,‖ EurActiv, http://www.euractiv.com/en/foreign-affairs/russian-ambassador-live-see-putin-medvedev-conflict/article-172227.

I will not deny that the high price of oil, which is not determined by Russia of course, continues to provide a certain cushion foreconomic reforms in Russia. But I want to give y ou a more multi-faceted picture of what is happening in the Russian economy. Actually two thirds of the GDP is c reated outside the

energy sector. Also three quarters of Russian GDP is generated by the private sector. And indeed the focus of the economic policies of theGovernment is to decrease the reliance on oil and gas exports and to use the money

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accumulated thanks to the high world prices to stimulate the development of othersectors, primarily the innovation sectors, nanotechnologies, high-tech, also improvingthe infrastructure, including transport infrastructure. The vast territory of the Russian Federation means that any king of infrastructure is very investment heavy.

Russia uses high oil revenues to invest in economic diversification—this willdrive growth now.

The Guardian (UK), 1/25/2008. ―Russia investment fund seeks $4 bln/year from2011,‖ http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7256415.

Russia, flush with windfall oil revenues, runs a strong budget surplus but hassubstantially loosened its fiscal policy to accommodate pension and wage hikes as well asinfrastructure and industrial investment needs. The fund, which aims to introduce a concept of private-public partnership

in Russia, has so far approved 20 projects worth 1 trillion roubles with the share of state budget financing at about 30 percent. The budgetinvestment fund is one of several vehicles created in Russia in recent years aimed atchannelling oil wealth into improving infrastructure, diversifying the economy and

boosting economic growth. Cash assigned to the Development Bank and other state-run institutions has so far only been used to support

banking sector liquidity. Analysts see government spending as key for maintaining high growthrates in 2008.

Russia Turn – Impact – LaundryListRussian weakness causes nuclear war, prolif, disease, terrorism, CBW use,

world economic collapse, and US interventionOLIKER AND CHARLICK-PALEY 2002 (Olga and Tanya, RAND CorporationProject Air Force, ―Assessing Russia‘s Decline,‖

www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1442/)The preceding chapters have illustrated the ways in which Russia‘s decline affects that country andmay evolve into challenges anddangers that extend well beyond its borders. The political factors of decline may make Russia a less stable international actor and other factors

may increase the risk of internal unrest. Together and separately,they increase the risk of conflict and the potential scope ofother imaginable disasters. The trends of regionalization, particularly the disparate ratesof economic growth among regions, combined with the politicization of regionaleconomic and military interests, will be important to watch. The potential for locale, orpossibly ethnicity, to serve as a rallying point for internal conflict is low at present, butthese factors have the potential to feed into precisely the cycle of instability that politicalscientists have identified as making states in transition to democracy more likely to

become involved in war. These factors also increase the potential for domestic turmoil, which further increases the risk of international conflict, for instance if Moscow seeks tounited a divided nation and/or demonstrate globally that its waning power remainssomething to be reckoned with. Given Russia‘s conventional weakness, an increased riskof conflict carries with it an increased risk of nuclear weapons use, and Russia‘sdemographic situation increases the potential for a major epidemic with possibleimplications for Europe and perhaps beyond. The dangers posed by Russia‘s civilian andmilitary nuclear weapons complex, aside from the threat of nuclear weapons use, createa real risk of proliferation of weapons or weapons materials to terrorist groups, as well asperpetuating an increasing risk of accident at one of Russia‘s nuclear power plants or other

facilities. These elements touch upon key security interests, thus raising serious concerns for the United States. A declining Russia increases thelikelihood of conflict—internal or otherwise—and the general deterioration that Russia has in common with ―failing‖ states raises serious

questions about its capacity to respond to an emerging crisis. A crisis in large, populous, and nuclear-armed Russia caneasily affect the interests of the United States and its allies. In response to such a

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scenario, the United States, whether alone or as part of a larger coalition,could be asked to send military forces tothe area in and around Russia. This chapter will explore a handful of scenarios that could call for U.S. involvement. A wide range ofcrisis scenarios can be reasonably extrapolated from the trends implicit in Russia‘sdecline. A notional list includes: Authorized or unauthorized belligerent actions by Russia troops introuble-prone Russian regions or in neighboring states could lead to armed conflict.Border clashes with China in the Russian Far East or between Russia and Ukraine, the Baltic states,

Kazakhstan, or another neighbor could escalate into interstate combat. Nuclear-armedterrorists based in Russia or using weapons or materials diverted from Russian facilitiescould threaten Russia, Europe, Asia, or the United States. Civil war in Russia couldinvolve fighting near storage sties for nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons andagents, risking large-scale contamination and humanitarian disaster. A nuclear accidentat a power plant or facility could endanger life and health in Russia and neighboringstates. A chemical accident at a plant or nuclear or nuclear-related facility could endanger life and health in Rusisa and neighboring states. Ethnic pogrom insouth Russia could force refugees into Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and/or Ukraine.Economic and ethnic conflicts in Caucasus could erupt into armed clashes, which wouldendanger oil and gas pipelines in the region. A massive ecological disaster such as an earthquake, famine, or epidemic could spawn refugees and spread illness

and death across borders. An increasingly criminalized Russian economy could create a safe haven forcrime or even terrorist-linked groups. From this base, criminals, drug traders, and

terrorists could threaten the people and economies of Europe, Asia, and the UnitedStates. Accelerated Russian weapons and technology sales or unauthorized diversioncould foster the proliferation of weapons and weapon materials to rogue states andnonstate terrorist actors, increasing the risk of nuclear war.

Russia Turn – AT: Russia EconResilientRussian economy is not resilient—incomplete privatization makes it

vulnerable to shocksBBC WORLDWIDE MONITORING 10-10-2008 (Text of report by popular Russiannewspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets on 6 October) Over the almost two decades that have passed since the collapse of the USSR, oureconomy, it would seem, has changed unrecognizably. But the scourge of the Sovietplanned economy -monopoly-operation -is still alive, as if no one had ever fought it. "Oureconomy has turned into a giant state corporation where officially private structures areplaying the role of mere cogs," a former important official in the government apparatustold me. "And not just a state corporation but a retro-style state corporation. Moreover,the monopoly that exists at a federal level is reproduced in each region and in eachspecific settlement. Look, for example, at the extent to which small and medium-sized

businesses are hemmed in, despite all the solemn statements from the very top! Such asystem kills competition and in the long term is not competitive under crisis conditions."



***AT: CUBA ENVIRONMENT***

Drilling Turn – 2ACCuba will drill inevitably – absent US involvement environmental disaster isinevitableBert and Clayton 12 (Captain Melissa –2011-2012 Military Fellow, U.S. Coast Guard,and Blake – Fellow for Energy and National Security, ―Addressing the Risk of a CubanOil Spill‖, March, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/addressing-risk-cuban-oil-spill/p27515)

Defending U.S. Interests An oil well blowout in Cuban waters would almost certainlyrequire a U.S. response. Without changes in current U.S. law , however, that response

would undoubtedly come far more slowly than is desirable. The Coast Guard would be barred from deploying highly experienced

manpower, specially designed booms, skimming equipment and vessels, and dispersants.U.S. offshore gas and oil companies would also be barred from using well-capping stacks, remotely operated submersibles, and other vital

technologies. Although a handful of U.S. spill responders hold licenses to work with Repsol, their licenses do not extend to well capping or relief drilling.The result ofa slow response to a Cuban oil spill would be greater, perhaps catastrophic , economic and

environmental damage to Florida and the Southeast. Efforts to rewrite current law and

policy toward Cuba, and encouraging cooperation with its government, could antagonize groups opposed to improved relations with the Castro regime. They might protest any decision allowing U.S. federal agencies to assist Cuba or letting U.S. companies operate in Cuban territory. However,

taking sensible steps to prepare for a potential accident at an oil well in Cuban waters would not break new ground or materially alter broader U.S. policy toward Cuba. For years, Washington has worked with Havana on issues of mutual concern. The United States routinely coordinates with Cuba on search and rescue operations in the Straits of Florida as well as to combat illicit drugtrafficking and migrant smuggling. During the hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides Cuba with information on Caribbean storms. Therecommendations proposed here are narrowly tailored to the specific challenges that a Cuban oil spill poses to t he United States. They would not h elp the Cuban economy or military. What they

would do is protect U.S. territory and property from a potential danger emanating from Cuba. Cuba will drill for oil in its territorial waters with or without the blessing of the UnitedStates.Defending against a potential oilspill requires a modicum of advance coordination and preparation with the Cuban government, which need not go beyond spill-related

matters. Without taking these precautions, the United States risks a second DeepwaterHorizon, this time from Cuba.

Lifting the embargo allows US companies to drill – that‘s the only safe way Helman 11 (Christopher – Forbes, ―U.S. Should Drop Cuba Embargo For OilExploration‖, 12/12, http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/12/12/u-s-should-drop-cuba-embargo-for-oil-exploration/)

In a few months Spanish oil company Repsol will start drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba, in a spot just 70 miles south of Key West.

Soon Repsol–and its JV partners Norway‘s Statoil and India‘s ONGC–will be joined b y rigs from PetroVietnam, Malaysia‘s Petronas and Venezuela‘s PDVSA. But you won‘tsee any U.S. companies there. Inexplicably, the U.S. maintains its economic embargo against theCastro regime.This wrong-headed policy represents a dangerous threat to theenvironment and a huge missed opportunity to the U.S. oil industry. The U.S.embargo will do nothing to prevent oil drilling from taking place in Cuban waters. But it will

prevent that work from being done by the most experienced companies with the highest-quality equipment.Norway‘s Statoil is a proven operator with a long history in the North Sea and the Gulf. The rest of those companies are just getting started offshore. A group of U.S. lawmakers in September urgedRepsol (ticker: REPYY.PK) to call off its Cuba plans or face the threat of U.S. lawsuits. Repsol wisely called that bluff. At least the Obama administration is doing something to ensure that Repsol‘sdrilling rig is up to snuff. According to an excellent article from Bloomberg today, Repsol‘s Chinese-built Scarabeo 9 rig will soon by boarded by four U.S. inspectors (two from the Coast Guard, twofrom the Dept. of Interior) who will do what they can to check out the rig and watch some drills. But, according to the article, there will be real limits to what the inspectors can inspect. They won‘tget to check the rig‘s all-important blowout preventor, or the well casing or drilling fluids that are to be used. Though the U.S. inspectors will discuss any concerns they have with Repsol, they willhave no enforcement authority. Although the offshore industry‘s best service companies and parts manufacturers are right here on the U.S. Gulf coast, Repsol will have to train its people andscrounge for spare parts from the rest of the world. But here‘s something that completely blows my mind. The administration, again, according to the Bloomberg article, has granted some U.S.companies the license to respond to an oil spill were it to occur in Cuban waters. The government won‘t say how many companies have that license or who they are, but there‘s at least two of them: Wild Well Control and Helix Energy Solutions Group. Helix plans to stage a subsea containment cap on the U.S. coast so it can quickly respond to any Cuban blowout. Of course it‘s smart and safe

for the U.S. government to put defensive measures in place in the event of a spill, but the message to the industry is clear: we refuse togive superior U.S. operators the license to drill for oil in Cuba , but we want to make sure you‘re

ready to clean up any problems. And the message to Cuba: we‘re not going to let you use our engineers, just our

janitors. Knowing that a top-notch American clean-up crew is on standby in case of a blowout is not a big incentive for Cuba to keep its own regulators on top of things. Think about

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Cuba in relation to U.S. oil adventures in the rest of the world. Even if Cuba really were atyrannical threat to U.S. interests, there‘s myriad countries where U.S. oil companieshave done business that are no more democratic than Cuba . They include Venezuela, Saudi

Arabia, Burma, Libya, Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan. The Castros‘ days as rulers of Cuba are numbered. The embargostick hasn‘t brought regime change, and has only forced Cuba into the arms of autocratslike Venezuela‘s HugoChavez. Better to use the carrot of capitalism to gradually bring Cuba into the U.S.

sphere of influence. The oil industry is a great place to start.

Failed drilling causes catastrophic oil spills – destroys the environment Allen 12 (Greg – NPR, ―U.S. Watches Closely As Oil Drilling Begins Off Cuba‖, 2/13,http://www.npr.org/2012/02/13/146635957/u-s-watches-closely-as-oil-drilling-begins-off-cuba)

There are big plans for oil exploration in the Caribbean , not far off the coast of Florida. A

Spanish company recently began drilling in Cuban waters — just 55 miles from Key West. The well is the first of several exploratory wells planned in Cuba and the Bahamas.Thedrilling has officials and researchers in Florida scrambling to make plans for how they'llrespond in case of a spill. The U.S. currently doesn't allow any drilling for oil off its Atlantic coast or in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. One reason is what's at stake. Florida's tourism-based

economy depends on its beaches, fishing and clear Caribbean water. Environmental ConcernsThe U.S. ban on drilling off of Florida,

however, doesn't affect America's Caribbean neighbors. The exploratory well beingdrilled off of Cuba has many here concerned, including people like Richard Dodge. Dodge is the deanof Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach, near Fort Lauderdale, and what he's really concerned

about is coral. At the school, Dodge and his graduate students raise staghorn coral in outdoor saltwater tanks. Live coral grow in the crystal-clear water, some just finger length. "These arerelatively new ones that we're starting out," Dodge says. "But over here, these are ones we'll be transplanting to the wild." In another tank, large branches of coral will soon be used to help restore

damaged reefs. Florida is home to more than three-quarters of the nation's coral reefs — and they

haven't been doing so well. Development and warming oceans have already weakened many. On a map, Dodge points out the location of what he believes isan even bigger potential threat — the spot where Cuba has approved offshore oildrilling. "The site that will be drilled," he says, "is only about 50 miles from Key West." The rig

drilling off Cuba's northern coast is operating in water that is more than a mile deep. But it's not t he depth that concerns Dodge.In the case of a blowout, it'sthe operation's proximity to the Gulf Stream. "We're worried that it could get into that streamfast and therefore, within days, impact our coastal ecosystem and coastline," Dodge says. A spill couldpotentially affect hundreds of miles of beaches, mangroves and estuaries from theKeys to Palm Beach. Dodge and other marine scientists in Florida are asking the federal government to fund research that would help identify the resources most at risk,

and develop guidelines to protect them. Embargo Could Complicate Cleanup Complicating matters is the fact that this new well is being drilled in the waters of a country that's under a strict U.S. embargo. Unless they apply for and receivespecial permission from the government, U.S. companies are banned from doing any

work on the well — even if there's a spill.

AT: Environment ImpactCollapse impossibleBoucher 96 (Doug, "Not with a Bang but a Whimper," Science and Society, Fall,http://www.driftline.org/cgi-bin/archive/archive_msg.cgi?file=spoon-

archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802&msgnum=379&start=32091&end=32412)

The political danger of catastrophism is matched by the weakness of its scientific foundation. Given the prevalence of the idea that theentire biosphere will soon collapse, it is remarkable how few good examples ecology canprovide of this happening m even on the scale of an ecosystem, let alone a continent orthe whole planet. Hundreds of ecological transformations, due to introductions of alien species, pollution, overexploitation,climate change and even collisions with asteroids, have been documented. They often change the functioning of ecosystems,

and the abundance and diversity of their animals and plants, in dramatic ways. The effects on human society can be far-reaching, and often extremely negative for the majority of the population.

Butone feature has been a constant, nearly everywhere on earth: life goes on. Humans have been able to drive thousands of species to extinction, severely impoverish the soil, alter

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weather patterns, dramatically lower the biodiversity of natural communities, and incidentally cause great suffering for their posterity. They have not generally been able to prevent nature from

growing back. As ecosystems are t ransformed,species are eliminated -- but opportunities are created for newones. The natural world is changed, but never totally destroyed . Levins and Lewontin put it well: "The warning not to

destroy the environment is empty: environment, like matter, cannot be created or destroyed. What we can do is replace

environments we value by those we do not like" (Levins and Lewontin, 1994). Indeed, from a human point of view the most impressive feature of recorded history is that human societies have

continued to grow and develop, despite all the terrible things they have done to the earth. Examples of the collapse of civilizations due totheir overexploitation of nature are few and far between. Most tend to be well in the

past and poorly documented, and further investigation often shows that the reasons forcollapse were fundamentally political.

No impact or spillover—no broader environmental harm or domino effect.Low resilience claims are falseRidder 2008 – PhD, School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University ofTasmania (Ben, Biodiversity And Conservation, 17.4, ―Questioning the ecosystemservices argument for biodiversity conservation‖) *ES = environmental services

The low resilience assumption

Advocates of the conservation of biodiversity tend not to acknowledge the distinction between resilient and sensitive ES. Thi s ‗lowresilience assumption‘ gives rise to, and is reinforced by the almost ubiquitous claim

within the conservation literature that ES depend on biodiversity . An extreme example of this claim is made by the Ehrlichs in Extinction. They state that―all [ecosystem services] will be threatened if the rate of extinctions continues toincrease‖ then observe that attempts to artificially replicate natural processes ―are no more than partially successful in most cases .

Nature nearly always does it better. When society sacrifices natural services for some other gain… it must pay the costs of substitution‖

(Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1982, pp. 95–96). This assertion—that the only alternative to protecting everyspecies is a world in which all ES have been substituted by artificial alternatives—is anextreme example of the ‗low resilience assumption‘. Paul Ehrlich revisits this flawed logic in

1997 i nhis response (with four co-authors) to doubts expressed by Mark Sagoff regarding economic arguments for species conservation(Ehrlich et al. 1997, p. 101).

The claim that ES depend on biodiversity is also notably present in the controversialIssues in Ecology paper on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (Naeem et al. 1999) that sparked the debate mentioned in

the introduction. This appears to reflect a general tendency among authors in this field (e.g., Hector et al. 2001; Lawler et al. 2002; Lyons etal. 2005). Although such authors may not actually articulate the low resilience assumption, presenting such claims in the absence of anyclarification indicates its influence.

That the low resilience assumption is largely false is apparent in the number of examplesof species extinctions that have not brought about catastrophic ecosystem collapse anddecline in ES, and in the generally limited ecosystem influence of species on the cusp ofextinction. These issues have been raised by numerous authors, although given the absence of systematic attempts to verify

propositions of this sort, the evidence assembled is usually anecdotal and we are forced to trust

that an unbiased account of the situation has been presented. Fortunately a number of highlyrespected people have discussed this topic, not least being the prominent conservation

biologist David Ehrenfeld. In 1978 he described the ‗conservation dilemma‘, which ―ariseson the increasingly frequent occasions when we encounter a threatened part of Nature

but can find no rational reason for keeping it‖ (Ehrenfeld 1981, p. 177). He continued with the following observation:

Have there been permanent and significant ‗resource‘ effects of the extinction, in the

wild, of John Bartram‘s great discovery, the beautiful tree Franklinia alatamaha, which had

almost vanished from the earth when Bartram first set eyes upon it? Or a thousand species of tiny beetles that wenever knew existed before or after their probable extermination? Can we even be certainthan the eastern forests of the United States suffer the loss of their passenger pigeonsand chestnuts in some tangible way that affects their vitality or permanence, their valueto us? (p. 192)

Later, at the first conference on biodiversity, Ehrenfeld (1988) reflected that most species ―do not seem to have anyconventional value at all‖ and that the rarest species are ―the ones least likely to be missed…



by no stretch of the imagination can we make them out to be vital cogs in the ecologicalmachine‖ (p. 215). The appearance of comments within the environmental literature that are consistent with Ehrenfeld‘s— and from

authors whose academic standing is also worthy of respect —is uncommon but not unheard of (e.g., Tudge 1989; Ghilarov1996; Sagoff 1997; Slobodkin 2001; Western 2001). The low resilience assumption is also undermined by the overwhelming tendency for theprotection of specific endangered species to be justified by moral or aesthetic arguments,

or a basic appeal to the necessity of conserving biodiversity, rather than by emphasisingthe actual ES these species provide or might be able to provide humanity . Often the only services

that can be promoted in this regard relate to the ‗scientific‘ or ‗cultural‘ value of conserving a particular species, and the tourism revenue

that might be associated with its continued existence. The preservation of such services is of an entirelydifferent order compared with the collapse of human civilization predicted by the morepessimistic environmental authors.

The popularity of the low resilience assumption is in part explained by the increasedrhetorical force of arguments that highlight connections between the conservation of

biodiversity, human survival and economic profit. However, it needs to be acknowledged by those who employ this approach that a number of negative implications are associated with any use of economic arguments to justify the conservation of biodiversity.

Bio-D Alt CauseToo many alt causesPynn 7 (Larry, staff writer at The Vancouver Sun, ―Global warming not biggest threat:expert,‖ The Vancouver Sun,http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=6e2988da-31ab-4697-810d-7a008306d571&p=1)

"We all worry about climate change, as we should, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about protecting habitat," says James Grant, a biology professor at Concordia University in Montreal and

co-author of a new report on threats to endangered species in Canada. "The really immediate causes right now for many speciesare things like farming, urbanization and habitat loss caused by the direct things we do."Research by Grant and his pupils shows the biggest threat is habitat loss at 84 per cent, overexploitation 32 per cent,native species interactions 31 per cent, natural causes 27 per cent, pollution 26 per cent, and introducedspecies 22 per cent. On average, species are threatened by at least two of the six categories.Human activities representing the biggest source of habitat loss and pollution are notindustrial resource extraction, but agriculture at 46 per cent and urbanization at 44 percent. "Farming is huge," Grant said in an interview. "The Prairies are one of the most affected habitats in the world. We've turned them into wheat fields." The southern Okanagan-

Similkameen is another example, home to about one-third of species at risk in B.C. as well as a thriving agricultural industry, including vineyards, and increased urban development.

***AT: POLITICS ***

Plan Popular – GeneralNo opposition – recent actions prove

Wood ‘10 (Roberta, Senators confident on votes to lift Cuba travel ban,http://www.peoplesworld.org/senators-confident-on-votes-to-lift-cuba-travel-ban/)

There are enough votes in the U.S. Senate to lift the travel ban that now bars U.S. citizensfrom traveling to Cuba, according to a joint statement this month from Republican Mike Enzi, Wyo., and

Democrat Byron Dorgan, N.D., who are co-sponsors of the Senate version of the legislation. "It makes no sense to punish the American people by restricting their right to travel simply



because our country is trying to punish the Cuban government, said Dorgan. "Just as has been our policy with China, Vietnam and other communist countries, we should allow Americans to travel freely

to Cuba." The expression of optimism from the two senators followed the passage in the House Agriculture Committee of HR 4645. The bill deals not only withtravel restrictions, but barriers to trade as well. It appears that it is the impact on trade that iscreating the strongest pressure on representatives from agricultural states to remove barriers to tradewith Cuba. Before the 50-year-old embargo, that country was the seventh biggest customer for U.S. exports. For example, Wyoming's entire c ongressional delegation has signed on in support

of the proposed legislation. With a population of only about half a million, Wyoming is a small state, but with two senators and a member of Congress, it wields disproportionate voting power. "This bill isa common-sense step that rights agriculture policies which in the past have made it difficult for farmers and producers to sell their products in Cuba," sai d Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican.

"Wyoming's farmers and ranchers ca nnot afford to lose any opportunities during these challenging economic times," she added.

In fact, the U.S. Chamber ofCommerce has made this legislation a high priority, warning congressional reps that it will monitor their votes for its "scoring" of their

support for business. Currently food exports to Cuba are not banned, but restrictions under the 2000 Trade Sanctions Reform Act (TSRA) make tradeconvoluted and costly. The normal procedure for international trade is for payments to be made directly from the bank of the purchaser to that of the seller. The payment is

typically made just before unloading the g oods at the purchaser's port. However, TSRA does not allow Cuba-bound food and medical supplies even to leave U.S. ports until pa yment is received. Andreceiving that payment is not easy. TSRA requires that the payment from the Cuban bank go to a bank in a third country (which, being a bank, charges a fee of course) before going to the U.S. bank of the

supplier.With that extra cost, time and red tape, U.S. goods are less appealing to their potentialCuban customer than those of their competitors in the world market, U.S. business people complain. John J. Wilson, representing DairyFarmers of America, testified before the House Agricultural Committee in favor of expanding agricultural trade to Cuba. "Cuba is a market where we should be a natural

preferred seller due to our strong proximity advantanges," he stated," but regulatory hurdles imposed by our own government havethwarted our ability to best supply this market." Wilson cited a 2009 study that found that doing away with all fi nancing and travel restrictions

on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and42 percent.

Plan Popular – GOP Anti-Chinese opposition generates GOP supportBolstad 8 (Erika, “GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue”, 6/11,http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/06/11/40776/gop-claim-about-chinese-oil-drilling.html#.UZwkw8rSmp4)Why, ask some Republicans, should the UnitedStatesbe thwarted from drilling in its own territory whenjust 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cubanleases? Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida

who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR. "China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center forHemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of M exico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in

Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production. Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that "drilling is under way 60 miles offFlorida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drillingcloser to South Florida than U.S. companies are." In his speech, Cheney described the Chinese as being "in cooperation with the Cuban

government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply." "But Congress says no to drilling in ANWR, no to drilling on the East Coast, no to drilling onthe West Coast," Cheney added. The office of House Minority Leader John Boehner defended the GOP drilling claims. "A 2006 New York Times story highlights lease agreements negotiated between Cubaand China and the fact that China was planning to drill in the Florida Strait off the coast of Cuba," said spokesman Michael Steel. The China-Cuba connection also appeared in an editorial Monday inInvestor's Business Daily, which wrote that "the U.S. Congress has voted consistently to keep 85 percent of America's offshore oil and gas off-li mits, while China and Cuba drill 60 miles from Key West,Fla."

Drilling lobbyists support the plan – generates GOP support and shields thelinks

Kraus 10 (Clifford – NYT, “Drilling Plans Off Cuba Stir Fears of Impact on Gulf”, 9/30,

http://naturalresources.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=209452)New Mexico’s governor, Bill Richardson, a Democrat who regularly visits Cuba, said Cuba’s offshore

drilling plans are a “potential inroad” for loosening the embargo. During a recent humanitarian

trip to Cuba, he said, he bumped into a number of American drilling contractors — “all Republicanswho could eventually convince the Congress to make the embargo flexible in this area ofoil spills.”

Policymakers support the plan because of China – that outweighs the linkFranks 11 (Jeff, “China to play major role in Cuban oil development”, 6/8,http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/cuba-china-oil-idUSN08140650201106)



The prospect of Cuban drilling has touched off opposition from Florida lawmakers who say it threatens the state's environment and helps the Cuban government so hated by ma ny in Miami, the c enter of

the Cuban exile community. They have filed bills in Washington attempting to thwart the drill ing by punishing foreign companies and individuals who take part i n Cuba's exploration. U.S. oilcompanies cannot work in Cuba due to the longstanding U.S. trade embargo against the island. Repsol

representatives met with U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week to assure him they have solid safety plans in place should there be a blowout like that at the BP well last year off the Louisiana coast."It sounds as if the (U.S.) administration is trying to figure out how to work cooperatively with Repsol, and that is definitely in the U.S. national interest," said Cuba expert Phil Peters at the Lexington

Institute think tank in Arlington, Virginia. "Florida wants high standards of environmental protection in the gulf and Florida also

doesn't want the U.S. to talk to Cuba. You can't have it both ways," he said. Chinese involvement in Cuban waters would add a new

element to the U.S. debateover relations with Cuba. Former Vice President Dick Cheney mistakenly said in 2008 that China was drilling in Cuban waters 60 miles (96 km)

from Florida, and used it to argue the U.S. should step up its own drilling. But China's presence also might be used by lawmakers who want to

justify a hard line against Cuba's exploration plans. In 2005, the Chinese National Offshore Corp. tried to buy California-based oil company Unocal, but there was strong

opposition in the U.S. Congress on grounds of national security. CNOOC withdrew its bid and China learned a lesson, Pinon said. "China learnedhow sensitive this country is to China's activities," he said. "China is a good political whipping

boy."

Winners Win/PC Not KeyPolitical capital doesn‘t exist but winners-win and issues determineoutcomesMichael Hirsch, 2-7, 13, ―There‘s No Such Thing as Political Capital,‖ National Journal,

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207 (Michael Hirsh ischief correspondent for National Journal. He also contributes to 2012 Decoded. Hirsh previously served asthe senior editor and national economics correspondent for Newsweek, based in its Washington bureau. He was also Newsweek‘s Washington web editor and authored a weekly column for Newsweek.com, ―The Worldfrom Washington.‖ Earlier on, he was Newsweek‘s foreign editor, guiding its award-winning coverage of theSeptember 11 attacks and the war on terror. He has done on-the-ground reporting in Iraq, Afghanistan, andother places around the world, and served as the Tokyo-based Asia Bureau Chief for Institutional Investorfrom 1992 to 1994.)

On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do what everypresident does this time of year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling andambitious wish list highlighted by gun control and immigration reform, climate changeand debt reduction. In response, the pundits will do what they always do this time of

year: They will talk about how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions ofteninformed by sagacious reckonings of how much ―political capital‖ Obama possesses to push his program through. Most of this talk will have no bearing on whatactually happens over the next four years. Consider this: Three months ago,

just before the November election, if someone had talked seriously about Obamahaving enough political capital to oversee passage of both immigrationreform and gun-control legislation at the beginning of his second term—evenafter winning the election by 4 percentage points and 5 million votes (the actual finaltally)—this person would have been called crazy and stripped of his pundit‘slicense. (It doesn‘t exist, but it ought to.) In his first term, in a starkly polarized country, the president had been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited

executive order last August permitting immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years. Obama didn‘t dare to even bring up gun

control, a Democratic ―third rail‖ that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been even less popular on the right than the president‘s health care law. And yet,for reasons that have very little to do with Obama‘s personal prestige or

popularity —variously put in terms of a ―mandate‖ or ―political capital‖—chances are fair that both will now happen. What changed? In the case of gun control, of course, it wasn‘t the election. It was

the horror of the 20 first-graders who were slaughtered in Newtown, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weaponseemed to precipitate a sudden tipping point in the national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association marginalized himself with poorlychosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot inthe head two years ago and is still struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle of gun owners. Then she gave riveting and poignant testimony tothe Senate, challenging lawmakers: ―Be bold.‖ As a result, momentum has appeared to build around some kind of a plan to curta il sales of the most dangerous weapons and ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It‘s impossible to say now whether such a bill will pass and, if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing isclear: The political tectonics have shifted dramatically in very little time. Whole new possibilities exist now that didn‘t a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Republican members of the Senate‘s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the GOP standard-bearer declared he would make lifeso miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would ―self -deport.‖ But this turnaround has very little to do with Obama‘s personal influence—his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely to do with just two numbers: 71 and 27. That‘s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdow n of the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election.Obama drove home his advantage by giving a speech on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage points inNovember. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out of the Republican Party‘s recent introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio ofFlorida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that white birthshave fallen into the minority. It‘s got nothing to do with Obama‘s political capital or, indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that ―political capital‖ is a meaningless term. Often it is a synonym for―mandate‖ or ―momentum‖ in the aftermath of a decisive election—and just about every politician ever elected has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can saythat because he was elected and Romney wasn‘t, he has a better claim on the country‘s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend political capital as a useful metaphor at least. ―It‘s an

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207


http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/contributors/michael-hirsh







unquantifiable but meaningful concept,‖ says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. ―You can‘t really look at a president and say he‘s got 37 ounces of political capital. But the f act

is, it‘s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.‖ The real problem is that the idea ofpolitical capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined thatpresidents and pundits often get it wrong. ―Presidents usually over-estimateit,‖ says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. ―The bestkind of political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—is veryrare. It almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree i n 1980.‖ For thatreason, political capital is a concept that misleads far more than it enlightens.It is distortionary. It conveys the idea that we know more than we really doabout the ever-elusive concept of political power, and it discounts the wayunforeseen events can suddenly change everything. Instead, it suggests,erroneously, that a political figure has a concrete amount of political capitalto invest, just as someone might have real investment capital—that aparticular leader can bank his gains, and the size of his account determines

what he can do at any given moment in history . Naturally, any president has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a

majority in both chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy —at the moment, still stuck —or some other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less he will be able to get done. Going into the midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid

any concessions that make him (and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration andgun-control issues illustrates how suddenly shifts in mood can occur andhow political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly . Indeed, the pseudo-concept of

political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don‘t know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself once wrote years ago, ―Winning wins.‖ In theory, and in practice, depending on Obama‘s handling of any particular issue, even in a polarized time, he could still deliver on a lot of his second-term goals, depending on his skill andthe breaks. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown. Epiphanies can dawn, such as when many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in th e Hispanic

vote. Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of how to passlegislation and run successful presidencies say that political capital is, at

best, an empty concept, and that almost nothing in the academic literaturesuccessfully quantifies or even defines it. ―It can refer to a very abstract thing, likea president‘s popularity, but there‘s no mechanism there. That makes it kind ofuseless,‖ says Richard Bensel, a government professor at Cornell University.Even Ornstein concedes that the calculus is far more complex than the termsuggests. Winning on one issue often changes the calculation for the nextissue; there is never any known amount of capital. ―The idea here is, if an issuecomes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what he

wants, and he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the otheractors‖ Ornstein says. ―If they think he‘s going to win, they may changepositions to get on the winning side. It‘s a bandwagon effect.‖

ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ

Sometimes, a clever practitioner of power can get more done just becausehe‘s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well. Texas A&M‘s Edwards is right to say that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson‘s landslide victory

over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few th at conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater‘s ineptitude as a candidate) was President Johnson‘smasterful use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest volume in his exhaustive studyof LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the presidency from the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late 1963. Don‘t focus ona long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers‘ support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president needed. ―One of the wise, practicalpeople around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn‘t to expend it on this,‖ Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital was called in those days.) Johnson replied, ―Well, what the hell‘s the presidency for?‖ Johnson didn‘t worry about coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else: Medicare,a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he possessed in the lingering mood of national grief anddetermination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. ―Momentum is not a mysterious mistress,‖ LBJ said. ―It is a controllable fact of political life.‖ Johnson had the sk ill and wherewithal torealize that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he handled the politics right. He did. (At least until Vietnam, that is.) And then there are the presidents who get thepolitics, and the issues, wrong. It was the last president before Obama who was just starting a second term, George W. Bush, who really revived the claim of political capital, which he was very fondof wielding. Then Bush promptly demonstrated that he didn‘t fully understand the concept either. At his first news conference after his 2004 victory, a confident-sounding Bush declared, ―I earnedcapital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. That‘s my style.‖ The 43rd president threw all of his political capital at an o verriding passion: the partial privatization of

Social Security. He mounted a full-bore public-relations campaign that included town-hall meetings across the country . Bush failed utterly, of course.

But the problem was not that he didn‘t have enough political capital. Yes, hemay have overestimated his standing. Bush‘s margin over John Kerry was thin—helpedalong by a bumbling Kerry campaign that was almost the mirror image of Romney‘sgaffe-filled failure this time— but that was not the real mistake. The problem was that

whatever credibility or stature Bush thought he had earned as a newlyreelected president did nothing to make Social Security privatization a

better idea in most people‘s eyes. Voters didn‘t trust the plan, and four years later, at the end of Bush‘s term, the stock -market collapse bore out

the public‘s skepticism. Privatization just didn‘t have any momentum behind it, no matter who was pushing it or how much capital Bush spent to sell it. The mistake that Bush made with SocialSecurity, says John Sides, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and a well-followed political blogger, ―was that just because he won an election, he thought hehad a green light. But there was no sense of any kind of public urgency on Social Security reform. It‘s like he went into the garage where various Republican policy ideas were hanging up and pickedone. I don‘t think Obama‘s going to make that mistake.… Bush decided he wanted to push a rock up a hill. He didn‘t understand how steep the hill was. I think Obama has more momentum on his



side because of the Republican Party‘s concerns about the Latino vote and the shooting at Newtown.‖Obama may also get his way on thedebt ceiling, not because of his reelection, Sides says, ― but becauseRepublicans are beginning to doubt whether taking a hard line on fiscalpolicy is a good idea,‖ as the party suffers in the polls. THE REAL LIMITS ON POWER

Presidents are limited in what they can do by time and attention span, of course, just as much as they are by electoral balances in the House and Senate. But this, too, has nothing to do with political capital. Anotherwell-worn meme of recent years was that Obama used up too much political capital passing the health care law in his first term. But the real problem was that the plan was unpopular, the economy was bad, and the president didn’t realize that the national mood (yes, again, the national mood) was at a t ipping point against big-government intervention, with the tea-party revolt about to burst on the scene. For Americans in 2009and 2010 — haunted by too many rounds of layoffs, appalled by the Wall Street bailout, aghast at the amount of federal spending that never seemed to find its way into their pockets — government-imposed health carecoverage was simply an intervention too far. So was the idea of another economic stimulus. Cue the tea party and what ensued: two titanic fights over the debt ceiling. Obama, like Bush, had settled on pushing anissue that was out of sync with the country’s mood. Unlike Bush, Obama did ultimately get his idea passed. But the bigger political problem with health care reform was that it distracted the government’s attentionfrom other issues that people cared about more urgently, such as the n eed to jump-start the economy and financial reform. Various congressional staffers told me at the ti me that their bosses didn’t really ha ve the timeto understand how the Wall Street lobby was r iddling the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation with loopholes. Health care was sucking all the oxygen out of the r oom, the aides said. Weighing the imponderablesof momentum, the often-mystical calculations about when the historic moment is ripe for an issue, will never be a science. It is mainly int uition, and its best practitioners have a long history in American politics. Thisis a tale told well in Steven Spielberg’s hit movie Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lewis’s Abraham Lincoln attempts a lot of behind-the-scenes vote-buying to win passage of the 13th Amendment, banning slavery, along witheloquent attempts to move people’s hearts and minds. He appears to be using the political capital of his reelection and the t urning of the tide in the Civil War. But it ’s clear that a surge of conscience, a sense of thechanging times, has as much to do with the final vote as all the backroom horse-trading. “The reason I think the i dea of political capital is kind of distorting is that it implies you have chits you can give out to people.It really oversimplifies why you elect politicians, or why they can do what Lincoln did,” says Tommy Bruce, a former political consultant in Washington. Consider, as another example, the storied political career ofPresident Franklin Roosevelt. Because the mood was ripe for dramatic change in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR was able to push an astonishing array of New Deal programs through a largely compliantCongress, assuming what some described as near-dictatorial powers. But in his second term, full of confidence because of a landslide victory in 1936 that brought in unprecedented Democratic majorities in theHouse and Senate, Roosevelt overreached with his in famous Court-packing proposal. All of a sudden, the political capital that experts thought was limitless disappeared. FDR’s plan to expand the Supreme Court by

putting in his judicial allies abruptly created an unanticipated wall of opposition from newly reunited Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats. FDR thus inadvertently handed back to Congress, especiallyto the Senate, the power and influence he had seized in his first term. Sure, Roosevelt had loads of popularity and momentum in 1937. He seemed to have a bank vault full of political capital. But, once again, a president simply chose to take on the wrong issue at the wrong time; this time, instead of most of the political interests in the country aligning his way, they opposed him. Roosevelt didn’t fully recover until WorldWar II, despite two more election victories. In terms of Obama’s second-term agenda, what all these shifting tides of momentum and political calculation mean is this: Anything goes. Obama has no more elections towin, and he needs to worry only about t he support he will have in th e House and Senate after 2014. But if he picks issues that the country’s mood will support— such as, perhaps, immigration reform and gun

control —there is no reason to think he can’t win far more victories than any of the careful calculators of political capital now believe is possible, including battles over tax reform and deficit reduction. Amid

today’s atmosphere of Republican self -doubt, a new, more mature Obama seems to

be emerging, one who has his agenda clearly in mind and will ride the mood of thecountry more adroitly. If he can get some early wins — as he already has, apparently, onthe fiscal cliff and the upper-income tax increase — that will create momentum, and one

win may well lead to others. “Winning wins.” Obama himself learned some hard lessons over the past four years about the falsity of the

political-capital concept. Despite his decisive victory over John McCain in 2008, he fumbled the selling of his $787 billion stimulus plan by portraying himself naively as a “post- partisan” president who somehowhad been given the electoral mandate to be all things to all people. So Obama tried to sell his stimulus as a long-term restructuring plan that would “lay the groundwork for l ong-term economic growth.” The presidentthus fed GOP suspicions that he was just another big-government liberal. Had he understood better that the country was digging in against yet more government intervention and had sold the stimulus as what itmainly was — a giant shot of adrenalin to an economy with a stopped heart, a pure emergency measure — he might well have escaped the worst of t he backlash. But by laying on ambitious programs, and following upquickly with his health care plan, he only sealed his reputation on the right as a closet socialist. After that, Obama’s public posturing provoked automatic opposition from the GOP, no matter what he said. If the president put his personal imprimatur on any plan — from deficit reduction, to health care, to immigration reform — Republicans were virtually guaranteed to come out against it. But this year, when he sought toexploit the chastened GOP’s newfound willingness to compromise on immigration, his approach was different. He seemed to under stand that the Republicans needed to reclaim immigration reform as their own issue,and he was willing to l et them have some credit. When he mounted his bully pulpit in Nevada, he delivered another new message as well: You Republicans don’t have to listen to what I say anymore. And don’tworry about who’s got the political capital. Just take a hard look at where I’m saying this: in a state you were supposed to have won but lost because of the rising Hispanic vote. Obama was cleverly pointing the GOPtoward conclusions that he knows it is already reaching on its own: If you, the Republicans, want to have any kind of a future in a vastly changed electoral map, you have no choice but to move. It ’s your choice.

PC Not KeyCapital barely affects the DA – 8% swingBeckman and Kumar 11 (Matthew, associate professor of political science UC Irvine,and Vimal – economic professor at the Indian Institute of Tech, Opportunism inPolarization, Presidential Studies Quarterly, September, 41.3)

The final important piece in our theoretical model—presidents' political capital— also finds support in these analyses, though the

results here are less reliable. Presidents operating under the specter of strong economy andhigh approval ratings get an important, albeit moderate, increase in their chances forprevailing on "key" Senate roll-call votes (b = .10, se = .06, p < .10). Figure 4 displays the substantive implications of these results in the context of

polarization, showing that going from the lower third of political capital to the upper third increasespresidents' chances for success by 8 percentage points (in a setting like 2008).Thus, politicalcapital's impact does provide an important boost to presidents' success on Capitol Hill,

but it is certainly not potent enough to overcome basic congressional realities .

Political capital is just strong enough to put a presidential thumb on the congressionalscales, which often will not matter, but can in close cases.

Polarization means PC is useless for Obama – their evidence assumes pastsituationsDickenson, 9 (Matthew, Professor of political science at Middlebury College,Sotomay er, Obama and Presidential Power, Presidential Power, ―There Is No There,



There: Obama and the Polarized Congress‖, March 30,http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2009/03/30/there-is-no-there-there-obama-and-the-polarized-congress/)Neither perspective is correct. Instead, as I have argued since before Obama‘s inauguration, there was never muchprobability that we would see a decline in the partisan polarization that hascharacterized presidential-congressional relations during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama‘s best intentions to the

contrary notwithstanding. Change, in this case, means more of the same. And the reason has almost nothing to do with Republican desires to ―wreck‖ Obama‘s presidency any more than thepolarization during Bush‘s presidency can be blamed on Democratic efforts to thwart his leadership. Nor should we accuse Obama – as many critics have – of pulling a bait and switch on American voters; although many Republicans view his calls for a more bipartisan relationship as insincere, I think he was (and continues to be) strongly committed to finding a middle ground on

which Democrats and Republicans can come together to address the nation‘s problems. The problem, of course, is that there is no such middleground on most issues, particularly those pertaining to the economy and the budget. Democrats

and Republicans are polarized because they do not agree on how best to solve problems related to the economic recession, health care, the energy crisis, or cap and trade emissions policies, to

name only a few pressing issues. Faced with this lack of agreement, Obama is essentially powerless to broker a bipartisan compromise on any of these fronts. If he moves Right to attract Republican votes, Democrats rebuke him. If he sides with his

party, Republicans accuse him of bargaining in poor faith. Given these two unpalatable options, I have predicted from Day 1 that Obama would, on most polarizing issues, opt for going with hisparty majority, just as George Bush ultimately opted to govern primarily (albeit not exclusively) through the Republican majority, until he lost t hat majority in 2006. . But what of the 2008election results? Didn‘t they indicate Americans‘ desire for change in the form of a more bipartisan governing stance? Participants at a recent talk I gave on a paper I wrote about the lack of bipartisanship under Obama made essentially this claim in taking my argument to task. Republicans‘ obstructionism, they argue, runs contrary to prevailing public opinion. Americans voted forchange, and Republicans are out of line for not recognizing this. This line of reasoning fundamentally misreads how our political system works and what the 2008 election results signify. Ours isnot a parliamentary system whose members are selected from party ―lists‖. Nor is it a ―presidential‖ system in which the president‘s election dictates what voters believe Congress will (or should)do. Rather, we are governed by a congressional system, in which Senators and Representatives represent geographically distinct locales. And for most Republicans (and not a few Democrats) themost recent elections did not signal a commitment to bipartisanship if that meant abandoning party principles. Consider the following graph. It sho ws the relative influence of ―local‖ versus―national‖ forces on midterm congressional elections during the period 1954-2006. Most notably, even in 2006, which most pundits interpreted as a midterm election that was largely areferendum on the Bush presidency, the impact of ―local‖ factors dwarfs ―national‖ factors in explaining House results. (I urge those interested in how these figures are calculated to email me [email protected] and I‘ll take you through the process. I‘m currently working to calculate the 2008 results and will present them when I can). The same pattern is revealed when looking

at presidential election years; local forces typically outweigh national forces in determing the outcomes of House elections. Note, in particular, the 2004 election. The point, I hope, is clear: members of Congress respond to different political incentives than does Obama because

they represent different constituencies. Even in years when national tides run strong, as in 2004 and 2006, the primary influences on House

elections are still local forces. So while it is true thatmost voters want Obama to govern in bipartisan fashion, they also want their electedRepresentative or Senator to stick up for local interests. And that often means espousing party principles, at the risk of appearing partisan.

That‘s why Obama failed so miserably at keeping earmarks out of his budget proposal – his interests were trumped by the interests ofmembers of Congress looking to the needs of their own constituents. Given these incentives, Obama decided to

declare victory and move on, rather than upholding his campaign pledge to end the use of earmarks and opposing the bill. It was a pragmatic decision. As further evidence of the difficulty Obamafaces in developing bipartisan congressional voting coalitions, consider the following data (see here). Congressional Quarterly has calculated that only 19% (83) of the 435 House districts splittheir vote by supporting a member of one party for the House and the presidential candidate of the o pposing party. Similarly, exit polls indicate that only 19% of individual voters in Houseelections split their ballot in this manner. The number of House districts with split votes is the second smallest number since 1952, trumped only by the lowest number that occurred four yearsearlier, in 2004, when only 59 districts (14%) split their vote as Bush won reelection along with a 232-member House Republican majority. In short, the two most recent presidential elections havereturned the smallest number of split districts in the last half century of national elections. Put another way, there is a dwindling number of districts in which a House representative has anyincentive to work with a president of the opposing party. To quote the well- known political scientist Gertrude Stein, when it comes t o the moderate middle in Congress, ―There is no there, there.‖In the next several posts I will present more data developing this basic point: voters may wish for bipartisanship in the abstract, but the signals they send in specific elections often belie that wish. We may decry the lack of bipartisanship in national politics today. But the cure means reducing, if not eliminating, the ability of members of Congress to represent their constituents‘ interests, asindicated in their votes. In opposing Obama on many domestic issues, Republicans aren‘t being obstructionist – they are being effective representatives, just as Democrats believed they wererepresenting their districts when they used the threat of filibusters to bring Senate consideration of Bush‘s judicial nominees to a grinding halt when Democrats were in the minority. This is not tosay that bipartisanship will never occur during Obama‘s presidency. In fact, we have already seen signs of i t, contrary to what the pundits who claim Republicans will never support Obama wouldhave you believe. I will develop this point in greater detail in another post, but in the areas of prisoner rendition, surveillance techniques, troop levels in Iraq and the strategy in Afghanistan,Obama‘s choices have been largely consistent with Bush‘s, and have attracted broad Republican support even at the risk of of f ending the Far Left of the Democratic Party. The reason, of course, isthat voters in Republican-represented districts largely support Obama‘s initiatives in these areas. But it is also the case that Obama has a bit more freedom to maneuver in these areas, because – as

yet – they involve actions that do not require a congressional vote. Can Obama govern in bipartisan fashion? Yes – but only when Republicans believe their constituents will support Obama‘s policies, and Democrats do not oppose

such initiatives. For reasons I have described in multiple posts,the incentives for members of Congress in both parties to do sohave declined in recent years .

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