Syria is cracking down on social media and internet connection to quell dissent
Muhammad Shukri, Middle East Media analyst at BBC Monitoring, “Syria trying to contain internet influence,” BBC College of Journalism, 6/16/2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/06/syria-trying-to-contain-intern.shtml
The internet in Syria has been disrupted in
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difficulty accessing and uploading material since 3 June.
Syrian governmental legitimacy is waning—providing encrypted laptops, internet, and phone access gives opposition groups critical communicative infrastructure to overwhelm harsh crackdown
Radwan Ziadeh, former Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, “Democracies must support ‘the most liberal and Western-friendly’ of Arab Spring uprisings,” Democracy Digest, 6/8/2011, http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2011/06/democracies-must-support-the-most-liberal-and-western-friendly-of-arab-spring-uprisings/
The democratic West has provided substantial assistance to
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searching for friends who might someday become allies.
Current state department efforts to develop cheap satellite internet and telephone connections solve—they just need to be distributed in Syria
James Glanz and John Markoff, “U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors,” New York Times (NYT), 6/12/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world/12internet.html?pagewanted=all
The Obama administration is leading a global effort
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ways of getting it out of the country.”
Syrian oppression is the most likely internal link to regional conflict outbreak between Sunni and Shiite groups—democratic stabilization now checks conflict and critically dampens Iranian regional influence
Vali Nasr, professor at Tufts University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, “If the Arab Spring Turns Ugly,” New York Times, 8/27/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/the-dangers-lurking-in-the-arab-spring.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
THE Arab Spring is a hopeful chapter in
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great cost to the region and the world.
Conflict breakout in the Middle East escalates globally and goes nuclear
Yevgeny Primakov, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and member of the editorial board of Russia in Global Affairs, “The Fundamental Conflict,” New Eastern Outlook, 1/2/2010, http://www.journal-neo.com/?q=node/102
The Middle East conflict is unparalleled in terms
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does not completely rule out such a possibility.
Regional conflict also causes oil shocks which collapse the global economy
Yevgeny Primakov, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and member of the editorial board of Russia in Global Affairs, “The Fundamental Conflict,” New Eastern Outlook, 1/2/2010, http://www.journal-neo.com/?q=node/102
The Arab-Israeli conflict has one more
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the Gulf area provide good prerequisites for that.
Economic decline causes global war
Royal, director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010 (Jedediah, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal, and Political Perspectives, pg 213-215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline
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here should be considered ancillary to those views.
Cutting Iran off from Syria stymies Tehran’s regional influence, eliminating critical support for Iranian prolif
Bilal Y. Saab, visiting fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, “How Saudi Arabia can contain Iran – and other benefits from Syria’s turmoil,” Christian Science Monitor, 8/31/2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/406474
All of a sudden, Saudi Arabia finds
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allow the kingdom’s Lebanese allies to breathe again.
Iran prolif destroys NPT credibility
James Timbie, former Senior Advisor to Dr. Robert Joseph, who was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security under GWB, “SYMPOSIUM: A NUCLEAR IRAN: THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF A PREEMPTIVE NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM,” 57 Syracuse L. Rev. 433, 2007, lexis
Third, Iran: Perhaps the greatest test
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would increase - by design or through diversion.
NPT collapse causes snowballing nuclear prolif, making nuclear conflict inevitable
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Presidential Task Force, “Preventing a Cascade of Instability,” March 2009, accessed 8/18/09 http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubPDFs/PTF-Iran.pdf
If Iran “gets away” at low
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the military nuclearization of the region is inevitable.
The US is lagging on credibility now—increasing telecommunications assistance to Arab spring countries reinvigorates American soft power
Jonathan M. Katz, “Internet freedom key to Arab revolts, says Amnesty,” AP, 5/13/2011, http://www.arabnews.com/middleeast/article399566.ece
NEW YORK: The United States should promote
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AP at Amnesty’ International USA’s New York headquarters.
Soft power is the strongest internal link to global leadership—strengthens coalitions, discourages opposition, and ensures public support
Robert Jervis, professor of international politics at Columbia University, “Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective,” World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1, January 2009
To say that the system is unipolar is
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vision and believe that its leadership is benign.
Hegemony ensures global stability and prevents multiple scenarios for conflict breakout
Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to the UN and Iraq, still writing the best cards in debate, “The Economy and National Security,” National Review, 8 February 2011, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/259024/economy-and-national-security-zalmay-khalilzad?page=1
American retrenchment could have devastating consequences. Without
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most significant barrier facing Chinese hegemony and aggression.
