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1		-Anti-war activism is alive and larger than ever – social media technologies and movement miscibility allow movements to gain wider audiences and challenge US militarism broadly – now is the key time for the movement to flourish
2		-Vasi 06 Ion Bogdan Vasi (2006) The New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations, Social Movement Studies, 5:2, 137-153 AT
3		-Mobilization against war has been one of the most visible forms of collective action in recent times. Since 11 September 2001, a number of massive demonstrations for peace have brought hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets of many cities in the USA and around the world. Just during the last weekend of October 2002, more than 100,000 people participated in anti-war protests in Washington, DC, over 40,000 in San Francisco, and many others in different cities in the USA in what the media have called ‘the biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War’.1 Two weeks later, the peace protests in the European city of Florence were described as ‘the largest peace marches Europe has ever seen, an enormous festival of music and costumes’.2 While considerable debates exist regarding the ‘true nature’ of these protests – i.e. whether they represent a strong new peace movement or merely ‘a weak and provincial movement’3 – there is a widespread recognition of the fact that these protests express many people’s growing dissatisfaction with the prospect of war. Scholars and activists share a broad consensus that the peace movement has gone through many different cycles of protest and its mobilization has periodically waxed and waned. During the Cold War, the highest peaks in mobilization were against nuclear weapons: the test ban campaign from 1955 to 1963, and the nuclear freeze movement from 1980 to 1984 (Meyer, 1993). The mobilization for peace peaked again in mid-January 1991, when over 25,000 people per day gathered in Washington over one weekend to protest against the Gulf War, but fell sharply in the next decade, when there were virtually no mobilizations for peace. Anti-war protests reemerged in 2001: on 29 and 30 September, Washington, DC and other American cities witnessed major peace demonstrations, with estimates ranging from over 25,000 people – according to the organizers – and over 7,000 – according to the police. Smaller demonstrations of up to 5,000 people were held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities across the USA. The anti-war protests from late September 2001 represent a turning point in the history of anti-war mobilization in the USA. They are crucial for understanding the new peace protests for a number of reasons. First, they were the largest protests for peace seen in the USA since the Gulf War; second, unlike many past anti-war protests, they appeared before the beginning of the armed conflicts; third, they appeared after more then a decade of constant decline in the number and strength of peace movement organizations; fourth, they took place despite the fact that the political opportunity structure was unfavorable to mobilization against war. Therefore, to explain the relative successes of the recent mobilizations for peace, I argue that it is essential to analyze the anti-war protests from the end of September 2001. Why is it that the peace movement mobilized so vigorously at a particular point in time? In other words, where did the protests against the war in Afghanistan from 29 and 30 September 2001 come from? I argue that these relatively successful mobilizations cannot be explained by any of the resource mobilization, political process, or new social movement theories of mobilization if they are applied narrowly to the peace movement. Instead, one has to develop a synthesis between these theories and focus the analysis on how trigger events and new information technologies influence ‘fluid’ or miscible mobilizations. Subsequently, I will review briefly the literature on social movement mobilization and then examine in detail the first significant anti-war protests of the twenty-first century. Traditional resource mobilization and political process theories have recognized that mobilization is shaped by a number of factors. An important factor is the presence of social movement organizations (SMOs) which offer selective incentives (Klandermans, 1984; Klandermans and Oegema, 1987) and can help turn the bystander public into adherents and adherents into constituents (McCarthy and Zald, 1977). Moreover, owing to the alliances formed between SMOs that possess organizational flexibility and ideological pluralism, movements could gain new ‘mesomobilization’ resources (Gerhards and Rucht, 1992). Another important factor is the structure of social networks, either those of individuals or those of organizations (Diani, 2003). Social networks serve a number of key functions such as socialization, structural connection and decision shaping and, although attitudinal affinity may create a ‘push’ toward a movement, movements grow fastest when they are able to recruit new members through a ‘pull’ to participation by using individuals’ social networks (Klandermans and Oegema, 1987; Friedman and McAdam, 1992; McAdam and Paulsen, 1993; Passy, 2003). Still another important factor which affects social movements’ mobilization is the structure of political opportunity. Favorable political opportunity structures could stimulate mobilization even for disorganized challengers, as in the case of 138 I. B. Vasi weak movements which benefit from a favorable political context by gaining legitimacy and protection from their influential allies (Tarrow, 1998). The ‘new social movement’ and collective identity theories have also recognized that mobilization is influenced by collective identities. Individuals are transformed into political actors when movement sympathizers construct collective identities through boundary definition, consciousness raising and symbolic negotiation (Taylor and Whittier, 1992). Yet the process of identity construction does not take place in a vacuum but in a space shaped by ‘invisible, submerged networks’, which allow multiple membership, require only part-time commitment, and depend on the affective solidarity of those who belong to them (Melucci, 1988, 1994). Collective identities are dependent on the previous existence of ‘cat-nets’ (Tilly, 1978) and social networks are the structural foundation that a social category requires in order to generate a collective identity (McAdam, 1986; Johnston, 1991; Stryker, 2000). The mobilization against war from late September 2001 cannot be explained by narrow application of the resource mobilization, political process, or new social movement theories of mobilization to the peace movement. From these perspectives, this anti-war mobilization is puzzling since it occurred despite the fact that the peace movement has been in decline for over a decade and that the political context was unfavorable for peace protests. The peace movement’s decline during the last two decades could be seen most clearly from the dissolution of its traditional SMOs. Starting from the mid-1980s, traditional peace SMOs had weakened such that by 1988 almost 60 percent of SMOs were operating in some sort of affiliate relationship and only 14 percent of all SMOs were formally organized (Edwards, 1993). Moreover, 35 percent of the peace movement organizations active in 1988 had ceased operations by 1992 (Edwards and Marullo, 1995). Despite a spike in mobilization against the Gulf War in early 1991, the movement remained weak throughout the 1990s; during this time the ‘pacifist’ collective identity had become something of a Cold War relic. That the US political context was detrimental to any form of political protests after 11 September could be observed from the changes that appeared in the structure of political opportunities. First, the peace movement lacked influential allies and there were no visible splits among the political elites. In the first weeks after the terrorist attacks, the political elites were united in their support of the war and no politicians criticized publicly the president’s declaration of ‘war on terrorism’. Second, the public overwhelmingly supported the USA’s foreign policy and the president enjoyed unprecedented popularity. For instance, 89 percent approved of President Bush’s response to the terrorist attacks, while his general approval rating was higher than his father’s during the Gulf War in 1990, and virtually the same as that of President Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.4 Moreover, the public mood was unfavorable to any form of protest: as one journalist observed, a serious hazard for peace protesters was that many people would find the dissenters ‘distasteful at best and traitors at worst’.5 Third, the state had an increased capacity to repress popular dissent. In the weeks following the attacks, the police had increased power to ban demonstrations and an unprecedented number of police were brought out on the streets of many American cities, especially in Washington, DC. Finally, the fact that the political opportunity structures were unfavorable to anti-war protests could be seen from the negative response of the mainstream media toward the anti-war demonstrations. Thus, at best the media ignored the demonstrations, and at worst they distorted the peace protesters’ message.6 New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 139 Social movement scholars have recently recognized that contemporary society is a ‘movement society’, characterized by a variety of ebbing-and-flowing, wave-like mobilizations, and have urged us to develop dynamic models of mobilization (Meyer and Tarrow, 1998; McAdam et al., 2001; Rucht and Neidhardt, 2002). Some studies have documented that mobilizations are influenced by spillover effects between similar movements. Spillover effects may result from the fact that movements can influence each other through mechanisms such as organizational coalitions, overlapping communities, shared personnel and broader changes in the external environment (Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Yet it is unclear from these studies why communities overlap, when coalitions are likely to form, or which changes in the environment are likely to lead to these transformations. Moreover, the concept of spillover effects can create the false impression that movements are separated by rigid divides; indeed, the imagery of spillover evokes the flow between two or more separate containers. The spillover effect terminology suggests that a movement can temporarily increase its mobilization potential when activists and organizations from other movements spill into it but the movements remain separated from one another. I argue that contemporary mass mobilizations such as the anti-war protests can be better understood by employing the concepts of ‘miscible’ movements and mobilizations. I conceptualize miscible movements as social movements with compatible ideologies, or beliefs systems that can ‘dissolve’ in each other, and activist communities and SMOs that overlap to a considerable degree. Conversely, immiscible movements have incompatible ideologies and distinct activist communities and SMOs.7 Miscible and immiscible movements, however, are two extremes on a continuum: most movements are miscible to a certain degree. For instance, the anti-nuclear, environmental, peace and global justice movements are highly miscible since they have congruent belief systems and they share activist communities and non-profit organizations. Many of those who support the antinuclear and environmental movement, because they believe that nuclear and chemical pollution poses a serious threat to life on Earth, are also likely to support the peace and global justice movements, because they believe that wars and global injustices bring environmental destruction and human suffering. Indeed, NGOs such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are campaigning not only to protect the environment from industrial pollution but also to stop wars and prevent global social injustices.8 Yet the environmental and conservative movements have low miscibility, since they have opposing ideologies and separate activist communities and SMOs (McCright and Dunlap, 2003). Miscible mobilizations result from the simultaneous mobilization efforts of highly miscible movements, not from a single movement’s mobilization efforts. Moreover, miscible mobilizations are influenced by external processes or variations in movements’ environment that can either increase or decrease the degree of miscibility between movements.9 The degree of miscibility between movements is a function of the compatibility between their belief systems and a function of the degree of overlap between their activist communities and SMOs. Although ideologies remain relatively stable, the degree of overlap between activist communities and SMOs can fluctuate over time as a result of two main external processes. The first is the occurrence of a catalyzing or ‘trigger event’ that increases the degree of miscibility between movements by raising the salience of an issue for passive movement sympathizers and motivating them to mobilize, as well as by moving an issue to the top of SMOs’ agenda for mobilization. For instance, the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were trigger events that increased 140 I. B. Vasi the miscibility between the anti-nuclear, peace and environmental movements because they motivated many environmental and peace activists to mobilize against nuclear energy and they determined many environmental and peace movement organizations to engage in sustained anti-nuclear campaigns. A second external process that shapes miscible mobilizations is the availability of modern communication technologies. Miscible movements are likely to engage in simultaneous mobilization efforts when social movement sympathizers and activists have easy access to alternative sources of information and are easily connected to one another as well as to SMOs. This conceptualization of social movement mobilizations has a number of advantages. First, it emphasizes the fact that social movements are not rigid and clearly divided social phenomena but fluid events with various degrees of miscibility between them. Second, the examination of miscible mobilizations implies going beyond an analysis of framing processes and refocusing attention on ideologies, understood as coherent systems of ideas which provide theories of society and involve social construction processes such as educating and socializing (Oliver and Johnston, 2000).10 Third, the concept of miscible mobilizations leads us to study the mobilization efforts not only of isolated movement entrepreneurs but also of ‘critical communities’, or groups of activists that spread new ideas into the broader culture and ideology (Rochon, 1998). Finally, this concept draws attention to the fact that mobilizations are influenced by external trigger events which create new grievances and can stimulate the formation of organizational coalitions (Rochon and Meyer, 1997).11 Based on these considerations, I hypothesize that the new mobilization for peace from late September 2001 was a miscible mobilization, i.e. it was the result of simultaneous mobilization efforts of miscible movements. This miscible mobilization was shaped by two factors: trigger events, and the use of new information technologies. The threat posed by the new ‘war on terrorism’ acted as a trigger event which created grievances for movements with compatible ideologies and joint activist communities and SMOs. Since many politically involved citizens and activists from various social movements feared that the impending war in Afghanistan would contribute to a vicious circle of violence and would aggravate their concerns about various social injustices, they decided to mobilize against the perceived threat of war. Additionally, the use of new information technologies such as the Internet offered efficient resources for the rapid mobilization of activists and the development of new SMOs, despite the fact that the new war on terrorism created a political environment that was hostile to any form of dissent. To search for empirical support for this hypothesis, I conducted research during the demonstrations from 29 September 2001. The main data were collected using a survey which was administered to a sample of anti-war protesters in Freedom Plaza, Washington, DC. To insure that the sample was representative, the area of protests was divided in equal parts among six survey administrators, who first distributed randomly and then collected self-administered surveys. Though not everybody who was asked to complete a survey responded to this request, every attempt was made to reach out to the diverse population of anti-war protesters.12 The overall rate of return was relatively high, such that approximately seven out of ten people who were asked completed and returned a survey. After eliminating a few incomplete questionnaires, 299 surveys were available for final analysis. Further data were generated from participant observation and from examining the mass media articles covering the peace protests. New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 141 Compatible Ideologies and Shared Activist Communities I use a number of indicators to measure the possibility that the late September 2001 peace protests were the result of highly miscible movements’ mobilization efforts. The first indicator is the participants’ compatibility of ideologies or congruence of belief systems. To test the congruence of attitudes and beliefs, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements, which were intended to measure their egalitarian and postmaterialist attitudes.13 Results showed that most of the peace protesters scored significantly higher than the general population on the scales of postmaterialism and egalitarianism. Over 97 percent of the respondents had postmaterialist values, while less than 3 percent had materialist values. Similarly, most respondents scored high on the egalitarianism index: 79 percent of them agreed with the statements about the need to reduce the world’s inequalities.14 Furthermore, correlation analysis shows that these beliefs correlate significantly and substantively ( p , 0.001; r ¼ 0.33). Given that anti-war protesters share a similar worldview, which stands in sharp contrast with the mainstream society’s beliefs and attitudes toward a number of issues such as egalitarianism and materialism, it is plausible that many of those who participated in these protests perceived war to be related to other social movements’ grievances. The available data show that many perceived the protests from late September 2001 to be directed not only against war but also as part of a general struggle for social justice. When asked about the main goals of the protests, respondents mentioned mostly promoting peace (91 percent), but also expressing their discontent with American foreign policies and the breakdown of civil rights (41 percent). As one demonstrator put it: We want to demonstrate to world media that many citizens oppose the manufactured war hysteria, blank check to the Pentagon, missile defense fantasy, the intransigence of our foreign policy, the savaging of social services and civil liberties at home, and to build a coherent coalition around progressive issues and anti-war sentiment. In addition, a number of people included protesting against racism (26 percent) and capitalism (6 percent) as a goal. Moreover, the great majority of respondents (77 percent) perceived the protests as part of multiple movements with mostly common goals; an additional minority (15 percent) considered that the protests were part of a single movement with unified goals, while only a small minority (8 percent) perceived the protests to be part of different movements with mostly different goals. The second indicator of miscible mobilization is the degree to which activist communities are shared, and was measured by asking protesters about their past involvement in various movements.15 Similar percentages of respondents said they were activists in the peace movement (33 percent) and in the social justice movement (32 percent), while the number of respondents who self-identified as activists in the global justice movement was lower (14 percent) (see Table 1). The lowest numbers of activists were those involved in the labor movement (8 percent), the anti-nuclear movement (10 percent), and gay and lesbian rights movements (13 percent), while women’s rights (23 percent) and environmental movements had somewhat higher numbers of activists (20 percent) (Table 1). A significantly higher degree of shared communities was found between the communities of sympathizers or occasional participants; thus, a majority of participants in the anti-war protests declared themselves to be sympathizers of 142 I. B. Vasi the environmental, gay and lesbian rights, and social justice movements (56 percent, 51 percent, and 50 percent, respectively). Many of the respondents also identified themselves as sympathizers of the women’s rights, peace, and global justice movements (49 percent, 48 percent, and 45 percent, respectively) (Table 1). Moreover, all respondents answered that they were sympathizers or occasional participants in more than one movement and almost 16 percent responded that they were sympathizers or occasional participants in all eight movements they were asked about. When asked about their involvement with different movement organizations, respondents indicated that they were mostly involved in peace (32 percent) and social justice (34 percent) SMOs and, to a lesser degree, in global justice organizations (23 percent) (see Table 2).16 Formal involvement was lowest for the labor and anti-nuclear organizations (12 percent and 10 percent, respectively) while involvement with women’s rights, environmental, and gay and lesbian rights SMOs was moderate (18 percent, 21 percent, and 13 percent, respectively) (Table 2). These results show a consistent pattern in which the peace movement’s communities of activists, occasional participants, and SMO personnel are shared to a considerable degree with the communities of activists and sympathizers from other movements, most notably the social justice, women’s rights, global justice, and environmental movements. Remarkably, all respondents answered that they were somewhat involved in more than one movement and almost 16 percent responded that they were involved in all eight movements they were asked about.17 The correlation analysis measuring the degree of association between general involvement in different movements shows that general Table 1. Percentage of anti-war protesters who have been involved as activists and sympathizers in different social movements in the past Activists () Sympathizers () Total () (activists and sympathizers) Social justice 32 50 82 Peace 33 48 81 Environmental 20 56 76 Women’s rights 23 49 72 Gay and lesbian rights 13 51 64 Global justice 14 45 59 Labor 8 41 49 Anti-nuclear 10 38 48 Table 2. Percentage of anti-war protesters who have been active as personnel in different SMOs SMO personnel () Social justice 34 Peace 32 Global justice 23 Environmental 21 Women’s rights 18 Gay and lesbian rights 13 Labor 12 Anti-nuclear 10 New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 143 involvement in most movements is significantly associated ( p , 0.001) with involvement in the peace movement (see Table 3). Moreover, the degree of association between some of these movements is very strong, with the value of the Pearson correlation coefficient being 0.5 or higher. As shown in Table 3, if one is somewhat involved in the peace movement, one also has a 59 percent chance of being involved in the social justice movement, a 55 percent chance of being involved in the gay rights movements, and a 50 percent chance of being involved in the anti-nuclear or women’s rights movements. The chance of being somewhat involved in the global justice movement is lower, but nevertheless impressive: 34 percent. Consequently, it appears that the communities of occasional participants in the peace movement overlap to a considerable degree with the communities of occasional participants in other movements. The results also show that some activists were not previously involved in the peace movement. A significant percentage of peace protesters (19 percent) were neither past activists nor past sympathizers or occasional participants in the peace movement. Since all participants in the peace protests indicated that they have been involved either as activists or as occasional participants in at least one social movement, it follows that at least 19 percent of the anti-war demonstrators were totally new to the peace movement, but not to other movements. Hence, it is likely that a significant number of the participants in the September 2001 anti-war protests responded to the call for mobilization despite the fact that they were not directly involved with the peace movement, simply because they were involved to different degrees in other movements with grievances that were related to those of the peace movement. The third indicator of the probability that these anti-war protests were the consequence of miscible mobilizations comes from the data about protesters’ social networks and collective identities. Almost 80 percent of the respondents had at least one friend who accompanied them to the protests, while 26 percent had at least one colleague or coworker and 23 percent came with at least one family member. In fact, a mere 8 percent of the respondents had come alone, but it is possible that even these people had a friend or a relative who participated, even if they didn’t come together. Moreover, the majority of friends, family, coworkers and significant others were supportive of respondents’ participation in the protests against war.18 Results from the questions about collective identity show that identification with the group of protesters against the war was relatively strong: 94 percent of the protesters felt that they shared most common values with other protesters. In contrast, the perception of shared common values with other groups was significantly lower: only 68 percent felt they shared values with the people in their own country, 40 percent with national government employees, 35 percent with the police, and 23 percent with World Bank and International Monetary Fund employees. These results suggest that participants in the peace protests had multiple ties to other protesters and had Table 3. Correlation analysis predicting involvement in different movements (very and somewhat involved) Global justice Labor Environment Social justice Anti-nuclear Women Gay rights Peace 0.34*** 278 0.24*** 276 0.31*** 278 0.59*** 276 0.50*** 277 0.50*** 277 0.55*** 275 ***p , 0.001. 144 I. B. Vasi developed a relatively strong collective identity. This conclusion may seem surprising, since the peace movement had been weakened by the decline of its SMOs over the past decade. Yet it is entirely consistent with the argument that shared activist communities offer resources for mobilization even for weak movements with compatible ideologies. In other words, it is likely that the strength of social networks and collective identities are at least partially due to the fact that many of the participants in the peace protests were involved in miscible movements. Finally, additional support for the hypothesis that the anti-war protests were the result of miscible movements’ mobilization efforts comes from data about individual attributes. For instance, many of the participants in the new peace protests were extremely educated and placed themselves overwhelmingly towards the left pole of the political spectrum, which makes them more likely to become involved in a range of so-called ‘new social movements’ (Kriesi, 1989). Moreover, women were slightly more numerous than men, offering some support to the idea of a significant overlap between women’s rights and peace movements (Meyer and Whittier, 1994) and to the observation that women constitute ‘the backbone of the peace movement in America’ (Wittner, 1984, p. 5).19 Shared SMOs and the Internet Miscible movements are characterized not only by compatible ideologies and shared activist communities but also by shared SMOs. Here I examine how the anti-war protests from late September 2001 were influenced by the formation of new shared SMOs as a result of a series of trigger events and the use of the Internet. The peace movement in the USA has a long and irregular history, reflected in the cyclical growth and decline of peace SMOs. The movement developed rapidly during the first decade of the twentieth century into an affluent movement consisting of many of the country’s political, business, religious and academic leaders, organized in a few but well-funded organizations (Marchand, 1972). After the First World War, the number of peace SMOs grew rapidly from a small number of mostly conservative organizations to multiple and various organizations, such that by the 1930s the American peace movement included both conservative and radical SMOs (Wittner, 1984). Following the drastic decline in the number of peace organizations as a result of the Second World War, peace SMOs slowly multiplied during the Cold War and reached a peak of about 10,000 in the mid- 1980s (Lofland, 1993). Since then, these organizations have declined rapidly: Edwards and Marullo (1995) estimate that in the period between 1988 and 1992 the annual mortality rate of peace SMOs was approximately 9 percent. Moreover, most of these SMOs operated in some affiliate relationship and very few were formally organized (Edwards, 1993). Social movement scholars have shown that wars, or the mere perception of the threat of armed conflicts, typically create a ‘bellwether issue’ representing what activists view as the most urgent problem, which unifies a broad spectrum of groups with similar concerns (Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Thus, wars frequently act as trigger events which affect the political context by changing partisan alignment or elite allegiance and also by changing the boundaries of legitimate discourse (Meyer, 1993; Koopmans, 1999). Moreover, while peace organizations have traditionally defined their goals differently, the peace movement has always been interconnected with various social movements which aim to reduce social injustices. Peace groups from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, such as the Quaker or New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 145 Mennonite peace churches, and organizations from the early twentieth century, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, have advocated social justice as well as peace. More recently, during the 1980s, many local peace organizations such as the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition explicitly linked peace and anti-nuclear issues with various social inequality issues (Benford, 1993). The degree of miscibility between the peace movement and other progressive movements increased in the 1990s when, as a result of the end of the Cold War, peace movement frames became more inclusive and radical. Peace activists became socialized through their activism and developed more sophisticated analyses of the problems they tried to remedy, making more explicit linkages among issues and using the concept of social justice to connect them (Marullo et al., 1996). As former peace activists developed more radical and systemic critiques of US foreign policy, they shared SMOs which represent simultaneously the demands of various movements such as peace, social and global justice, women’s rights or gay and lesbian rights. The International Action Center, for instance, is an organization created in 1992 by radical anti-war activists which aims to ‘incorporate the demands to end racism, sexism and poverty in the U.S. with opposition to U.S. militarism and exploitative domination around the world’.20 While peace activists have moved into the economic realm, global justice activists have begun to articulate a sustained critique of the state and of its war-making tendencies. However, unlike traditional peace SMOs, global justice SMOs went through a waxing phase throughout the 1990s; since the vast majority of these SMOs are loose coalitions of grassroots organizations with a website but no headquarters, they are relatively easy to form and flourished during the last decade (Smith, 2001). Many global justice SMOs are shared by movements that have developed similar ideologies of the state and its relationship to capital. Thus, when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in late September 2001 were cancelled, most of the global justice SMOs that were planning the anti-WB and -IMF protests chose to support either directly or indirectly the new demonstrations for peace. For instance, some shared SMOs such as the Mobilization for Global Justice canceled their plans for street demonstrations but went ahead with teach-ins on the global economy, and encouraged their individual members to join the anti-war protests. As one member of the Mobilization for Global Justice acknowledged, the issues of peace and justice are intertwined: I think the fight for global justice is not just economic, but it also deals with issues of peace and war. I think there’s a sense of breaking through the media blackout of voices that want restraint and justice instead of revenge.21 Other SMOs such as the Anti-capitalist Convergence endorsed the peace protests openly, noting that the militaristic American foreign policy is responsible to a large degree for creating the global economic inequalities that foster terrorism. For instance, the Anticapitalist Convergence’s call to protest from 19 September states: Instead of emphasizing blocks and autonomous cells, we must unite in our vision for a better world. It is for these reasons that we call for a massive march on Washington DC on September 29th where we will unite as a community and ask ‘Why? – why most of the world hates the US, why the US chooses to go to war, why there is such stark inequality and poverty in this country and others?’ 146 I. B. Vasi Finally, a number of shared SMOs formed coalitions and took an active role in organizing the peace demonstrations; for instance, activists from organizations such as International Action Center, Nicaragua Network or American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice formed a new organization called Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER). This organization had the explicit goal of coordinating new protests against the impending war in Afghanistan while maintaining the momentum of the global justice protests. According to their call to join the ANSWER coalition: On September 29, tens of thousands of people had planned to demonstrate against the Bush administration’s reactionary foreign and domestic policy and the IMF and World Bank. In light of the current crisis, with its tragic consequences for so many thousands of people, we refocused the call for our demonstration to address the immediate danger posed by increased racism and the grave threat of a new war. The terrorist attacks from 11 September acted as trigger events which imposed a new provocation for the peace movement. Moreover, by closing the opportunity to protest against the WB and IMF, these events encouraged the formation of alliances between new and old SMOs. Thus, the new ANSWER coalition joined forces with older peace and justice SMOs such as the Washington Peace Center and the American Friends Service Committee in order to organize the demonstrations and obtain permits for 29 and 30 September 2001.22 Results from our survey of peace protesters support the thesis that the organizational coalitions between shared peace and social justice SMOs contributed to the mobilization against war. For instance, when asked whether they had planned to participate in the antiIMF and WB protests programmed initially to take place on the same date in Washington, 36 percent of the respondents indicated they definitely planned to participate, and an additional 21 percent answered that they were probably planning to participate. When asked whether they had participated in previous global justice protests, 32 percent of the respondents answered that they had participated in one or more of these protests. Shared SMOs such as the ANSWER coalition played two important roles in the mobilization against war.23 The first was that of providers of resources for coordinating collective action, by obtaining legal permits for demonstrations, organizing street protests, and conducting mobilizing campaigns on the Internet. Thus, the ANSWER coalition obtained a permit for a march on 29 September from Lafayette Park to the White House and, when the police and the Secret Service banned demonstrations in these areas, ANSWER negotiated a permit for a march from Freedom Plaza to Capitol Hill. The organization also provided loudspeakers, banners (with the slogan ‘War is not the ANSWER’), and other paraphernalia necessary for street demonstrations, and led an intense mobilizing campaign before the demonstrations. One aspect of the mobilizing campaign led by these organizations which deserves to be emphasized is the fact that it was based mostly on the Internet. Without the possibility of rapid communication through the Internet, these protests could not have been organized in such a short time – in fact, the ANSWER coalition itself was formed only two weeks before the planned protests. As many organizers acknowledge, the Internet has played a major role in their mobilization campaigns; according to one of the ANSWER organizers, ‘the character of political action organizing has completely shifted since the Gulf War. Instead of a physical location like our office, the Web site has become our mobilization headquarters.’24 Results from our survey of the demonstrators support this New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 147 assertion: 57 percent of the respondents indicated that their desire to participate in the protests was significantly influenced by the information they found on the Internet, while only 25 percent were influenced very little and 18 percent were not influenced at all. Moreover, 80 percent have used emails and websites to gather information about these protests, 52 percent have used listservs and 5 percent have used chatrooms.25 Since the mainstream media were critical or, at best, indifferent to the peace protests, the Internet worked as an alternative medium and was used widely for disseminating information and distributing calls on mobilization. As a result, SMOs could reach their sympathizers faster and form coalitions more easily, while the cost of joining any one group was decreased and multiple memberships in different SMOs was encouraged for both regular and occasional participants in social movements. Hence, due to the creation of ‘virtual protest organizations’, civic-minded individuals were encouraged to participate in multiple social movements.26 The second role played by shared SMOs is that of developers of collective action frames. For instance, ANSWER’s engagement in ‘meaning-work’ or framing was especially important in the context in which the patriotic zeal was peaking and many people considered anti-war protesters to be traitors. Unlike other wars in the past fifty years, the USA’s ‘war on terrorism’ was a response to a direct attack on its own territory; thus, the anti-war protesters faced the serious danger of being stigmatized by the mass media, ostracized by mainstream society and, consequently, of alienating their sympathizers. The peace and social justice SMOs attempted to avoid this danger by building a collective action frame that combined two key elements: pacifism and justice. The ‘peaceful justice’ frame was intended to deflect accusations of anti-patriotism by pointing out that war is not efficient in stopping terrorism since it indiscriminately punishes terrorists and civilians and further fuels anti-American resentments. Simultaneously, this frame was offering as an alternative the pursuit of justice through international justice courts and structural changes that would address the roots of the problem, namely world poverty and social injustices. Scholars have shown that innovative master frames contribute significantly to the emergence of protest cycles (Snow and Benford, 1992). In the case of the peace movement, a number of new protest cycles have emerged when SMOs were capable of developing innovative frames that challenged the dominant interpretation of American foreign policy. Throughout history the peace movement had the general goal of preventing wars; yet the peace protesters’ grievances have been framed in various ways, depending on the particular political context. Both old and more recent peace movements demanded international arbitration and a world court for solving the problems that led to war. Nevertheless, while the early peace movement was ‘uncritically nationalistic in its vision of a world order reshaped in the American image’ (Marchand, 1972), the more recent peace movement has criticized in various ways American foreign policy and the USA’s role as a world leader. Social movement scholars have pointed out that the surge in protests witnessed by the peace movement in the early 1980s was partially determined by the innovative idea of a nuclear freeze. This idea provided not only a diagnosis but also a viable prognosis for the aggressive Reaganite foreign policy posing the threat of a nuclear war (Snow and Benford, 1992). The rise of another protest cycle in the early 1990s was determined by the innovative framing of the Gulf War as a conflict over economic interests and not as ‘a morally inspired battle for the liberation of a small, innocent country from the claws of a “new Hitler”’ (Koopmans, 1999, p. 58).27 This framing was popular because it resonated with the belief system of many groups that considered that the American government is serving the interests of Big Business and not of ordinary people.28 Similarly, shared SMOs such as ANSWER developed an innovative framing of the ‘war on terrorism’ which transformed the ‘infinite justice crusade’ against fundamentalist terrorists into a militaristic campaign against people in a poor country that would negatively affect Arabs and Muslims around the world, perpetuating the vicious circle of violence.29 Yet, in contrast to the anti-Gulf War protests, the peace protests from September 2001 were centered on a frame of collective action that viewed peace protests as directed not only against the militaristic US foreign policy but also as part of a more general struggle for social justice. Results from the survey show that a significant percentage of the respondents (41 percent) considered that the main goal of the protests was to express discontent with American foreign policy and the global injustices it creates. Conclusion In late September 2001 many US cities witnessed mobilizations against war comparable in size with those against the Gulf War from 1991, despite the fact that the peace movement had weaker organizational resources and had encountered less favorable political opportunities. Since then, anti-war mobilizations have increased significantly, such that, approximately one year later, mobilizations against war registered similar numbers of participants as those from the Vietnam era. I have argued that these successful mobilizations cannot be explained without examining the role of trigger events such as the terrorist attacks on the USA and the US government’s declaration of the war on terrorism. These trigger events imposed new grievances for many politically involved citizens and, combined with the use of the Internet as a mobilization tool, acted as catalysts for what I call miscible mobilizations, or simultaneous mobilization efforts by movements with compatible ideologies and shared activist communities and SMOs. Results from a survey of the participants in the protests against the war in Afghanistan confirm that participants in these protests were involved in highly miscible movements. Indeed, it appears that many peace protesters are part of an informal network of ‘politicized individuals’ who share common goals with different movements and form a ‘progressive community’ of social movements (Taylor and Whittier, 1992; Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Similar to other wars, the impending war in Afghanistan represented a bellwether issue for activists involved in a number of movements, including social justice, women’s rights, global justice, environmental, and gay and lesbian rights.30 By using the Internet as a mobilization tool, shared SMOs were able to develop organizational coalitions and to mobilize rapidly and efficiently shared communities of activists. These results point to the need to synthesize the traditional resource mobilization, political process, and new social movement theories of mobilization and to focus further research on the fluid processes of miscible mobilizations.
4		-Resolve is the THE determiner of American hegemony – it’s key to deterrence and conflict effectiveness – anything else just prolongs violence
5		-Eyago ‘5 7 / 8 / 05 Political Commentary – Sound Politics Reporter http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/004721.html, Sound Commentary on Current Events in Seattle, Puget Sound and Washington State
6		-Finally, I am angry at those who undermine our efforts to conduct this war. I am angry at people, who through their words, and efforts contribute to the injury and death of our soldiers, who provide encouragement to the enemy, who weaken our efforts and prolong the war, who, for political gain put our soldiers, our people, and our nation at greater risk. There is a LOT of anger going on. Many times it is inappropriately acted upon. Islamists are angry, so they blow up people. Conservatives are angry so they advocate indiscriminate retaliation. Liberals are angry so they advocate undermining the war. All this anger is misdirected. We can see how the killing of innocents is wrong, but sometimes we cannot see how allowing innocents to be killed is wrong. One should seriously consider the impacts of certain types of dissention in this country before embarking on said dissentious course. I have many issues with the war in Iraq, but I will focus on just a couple. When President Bush pronounced to the world that he would defeat terrorism, he made a promise. He promised that he would not only pursue the terrorists wherever they may be, but he promised to go after the countries that enable those terrorists. When the UN made resolution after resolution against Iraq those too were promises. The difference comes in whether one follows up a promise or not. You see, no one embarks on a major undertaking with the expectation of losing. The choices any person or group are almost always predicated on the fact that the reward exceeds the price or risk. Hitler would not have invaded Czechoslovakia unless he though he could get away with it. He would not have invaded Poland unless he though he could get away with it. The success of those events and reaction of Europe convinced him that he could press on and take all of Europe. Saddam would not have invaded Kuwait unless he thought he could get away with it. He would not have defied the UN unless he though he could get away with it. In those cases, the acting party decided that they could attain their goals using the methods employed. The same thing goes for the terrorists. They methods they employ are based on the expectation of ultimate success. The methods they employ are also based on their own capabilities, capabilities that stem from the support of governments both passive and active, the support of moneyed benefactors, and the support of powerful influencers such as media and high profile personalities. This brings me back to promises made. Part of the reason these terrorists became so bold is that there were few significant reprisals for their actions. In the same way Hitler moved on Poland and Hussein defied the UN, Al Qaeda flew planes into our buildings. Ultimately it was because they could and that the reprisals had insufficient deterrent effect. Now, when President Bush announced that he would pursue the nations that supported terrorism, he basically set the stage for action. The choice was, rattle the saber and hope it is enough, or draw the saber and demonstrate our commitment to living up to our promises. It is fair to debate whether Iraq was the best choice for an operation, but the stage had also been set there as well. With promises being made at the UN, the choice was to continue to prove that promises meant nothing or to prove that they did. I believe that the lack of consequences in the past was a key factor in the terrorist activity leading up to and including 9/11. Without the resolve to back up our promises, our enemies will be emboldened to act. It does not get any simpler than that. Iraq was a promise kept. Now, some people want us to renege on that promise and others. That is a dangerous position to be advocating. The thing is, the debate about Iraq belongs BEFORE we took action. And that debate DID occur. It occurred BEFORE the war. And the result was overwhelmingly in FAVOR of action. The congress granted President Bush the authority to act. The fact that they did not like his decision is moot. If they did not trust his ability to act, they were wrong to have given him the authority to do so. NOW they are wrong for challenging his decision after the fact. That brings us back to the concept of one's expectation of the results of one's actions. In many cases throughout history, the winner of a conflict was not always the one with the bigger army, the better equipment, and the best trained, or any of those factors. The winner quite often was the one with the greater will to win. Wars are won by will in far greater weight then in anything else. I would say that will is THE determining factor in success in any conflict. Obviously will is not enough. A greater force can sap the will of another army, but not always. The revolutionary war was won by will, not by military might. Vietnam was lost by will not by military might. And, Iraq will be won or lost by will alone. The consequences of this outcome will have long lasting impacts on the security of our nation. At this point, it does not matter whether we should have gone into Iraq. The fact is we are there now. We either complete the job and fulfill our promises to rebuild that nation and leave it with a stable and free society or we cut and run and have the world know with certainty that our word is null and void and that we have no resolve. That is the stakes. That is the goal of the terrorists: to prove they have resolve, to prove that we do not. Their victory will ensure increased attacks on all nations because the terrorists will have unimpeachable proof that their tactics will ultimately succeed. Bombings, beheadings, gross atrocities will be the weapons of choice in the future. Tactics that have been proven to bring down the mighty. If will is the factor that determines the outcome, then will is the place where we must consider here and now. As far as our enemy is concerned, we MUST make them believe that they cannot succeed. We MUST make them sure that WE will prevail. We MUST prove to them that their tactics are ineffectual. There is a down side to that. Once an enemy realizes their tactics are not succeeding, they will change them. With an enemy of this nature, that could result in greater atrocities than we have yet seen. Yet, even then we must prevail. We must continue to demonstrate OUR resolve and OUR willingness to see this to the end and DEFEAT them. Since they have shown little regard for decency and life, since they have shown that our very existence is provocation to them, no amount of diplomacy or concessions will achieve an end satisfactory to our nation. The only solution is the demonstration of our willingness to defeat them despite their tactics. Our goal is to defeat the will of the enemy. His goal is to defeat ours. Any indication that the enemy's will is faltering will bolster our own will. However, the opposite is true as well. Any indication that our will is faltering will embolden the enemy's will. Unfortunately, from the very first minute of this conflict, parts of our country have shouted from the very mountain tops just how little will they have to win the war. They demonstrate clearly for our enemies that we don't want to fight. They give clear indication that enemy tactics are successful. In effect, they give aid and comfort to the enemy and spur them on to continued fighting because they tell the enemy in clear messages that if they continue in their tactics, the United States will be defeated. As I said before, the debate about whether we go to war is over. We are now at war, and the ONLY debate we should have is on what tactics are most appropriate for prosecuting that war. It is marginally fair to state that you are unhappy about our decision to go to war, but beyond that, anything else will embolden the enemy. Think very long and about what is at stake here. It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to be pro America while actively dissenting on ongoing conflict. It is bordering on treason for a public official to undermine the war effort, the Commander in Chief and the military publicly for all the world to see. We have started down this path, and there are but two choices: to win or to lose. There is no "suing for peace" with this enemy. Now, that does not mean you have to become militaristic and be a war monger. You can be a peacenik, but you need to consider that unless you want to see the United States harmed, you should cease criticism of the war itself until after it is won. There is plenty of time to castigate the people who made what you perceive as errors AFTER we have finished the job. However, if you persist in presenting disunity and a weakened resolve to the enemy, you take direct responsibility for the lives of all Americans, Iraqis and foreign terrorists that will die subsequently. The quickest way to end the war is to be united, to demonstrate unshakable resolve, and to have the enemy surrender. Or, YOU can surrender to the enemy. Anything else will just prolong the killing. This goes infinitely more so for our public leaders. What they do for political gain is completely unconscionable.
7		-That’s key to solve great power war and existential governance crises
8		-Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13 (Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College “Don’t Come Home America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)
9		-A core premise of deep engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security dilemmas in the world’s core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional proxy wars and arming of client states—all of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79 Usually carried out in dyadic terms, the debate over the stability of proliferationchanges as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces—seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of “unforeseen crisis dynamics” that could spin out of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage, and a world with overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet more worrisome. The argument that maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging that U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between retrenchment and deep engagement. For many supporters of retrenchment, the optimal strategy for a power such as the United States, which has attained regional hegemony and is separated from other great powers by oceans, is offshore balancing: stay over the horizon and “pass the buck” to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore balancing only when local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the midtwentieth century. The problem is that China’s rise puts the possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term. As Mearsheimer notes, “The United States will have to play a key role in countering China, because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves.” 81 Therefore, unless China’s rise stalls, “the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.” 82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would compromise its capacity to move to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia— just what the United States is doing. 83 In sum, the argument that U.S. security commitments are unnecessary for peace is countered by a lot of scholarship, including highly influential realist scholarship. In addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is unnecessary for U.S. security is weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security consequences as well as the need to retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover, switching between offshore and onshore balancing could well be difªcult. Bringing together the thrust of many of the arguments discussed so far underlines the degree to which the case for retrenchment misses the underlying logic of the deep engagement strategy. By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management, the United States lowers security competition in the world’s key regions, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse atmosphere for growing new military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top of all this, the United States’ formidable military machine may deter entry by potential rivals. Current great power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are at historical lows, and thus far other major powers have shied away from seeking to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition, they have so far been careful to avoid attracting the “focused enmity” of the United States. 84 All of the world’s most modern militaries are U.S. allies (America’s alliance system of more than sixty countries now accounts for some 80 percent of global military spending), and the gap between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many measures growing rather than shrinking. 85
10		-TURN: War engenders worse forms of oppression and suppression of rights
11		-Goldstein 1—Prof PoliSci @ American University, Joshua, War and Gender , P. 412
12		-First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace. Many peace scholars and activists support the approach, "if you want peace, work for justice". Then if one believes that sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps among others) in order to pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way. War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influences wars' outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices. So, "if you want peace, work for peace." Indeed, if you want justice (gener and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis from types of individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes toward war and the military may be the most important way to "reverse women's oppression/" The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies and moral grounding, yet, in light of this book's evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of war seems to be empirically inadequate.
13		-
14		-Society-wide optimism about the power of the US military is key to heg
15		-Flynn, Ph.D. in IR, 8 – President of the Center for National Policy, Ph.D. in International Politics from Tufts, Senior Fellow for CFR National Security Studies (Stephen, March/April, America the Resilient, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87201/stephen-e-flynn/america-the-resilient.html?mode=print, AG)
16		-When it comes to managing the hazards of the twenty-first century, it is reckless to relegate the American public to the sidelines. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear weapons placed the fate of millions in the hands of a few. But responding to today's challenges, the threats of terrorism and natural disasters, requires the broad engagement of civil society. The terrorists' chosen battlegrounds are likely to be occupied by civilians, not soldiers. And more than the loss of innocent lives is at stake: a climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness in the face of adversity are undermining faith in American ideals and fueling political demagoguery. Sustaining the United States' global leadership and economic competitiveness ultimately depends on bolstering the resilience of its society. Periodically, things will go badly wrong. The United States must be prepared to minimize the consequences of those eventualities and bounce back quickly. Resilience has historically been one of the United States' great national strengths. It was the quality that helped tame a raw continent and then allowed the country to cope with the extraordinary challenges that occasionally placed the American experiment in peril. From the early settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts to the westward expansion, Americans willingly ventured into the wild to build better lives. During the epic struggles of the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the two world wars; occasional economic downturns and the Great Depression; and the periodic scourges of earthquakes, epidemics, floods, and hurricanes, Americans have drawn strength from adversity. Each generation bequeathed to the next a sense of confidence and optimism about the future. But this reservoir of self-sufficiency is being depleted. The United States is becoming a brittle nation. An increasingly urbanized and suburbanized population has embraced just-in-time lifestyles tethered to ATM machines and 24-hour stores that provide instant access to cash, food, and gas. When the power goes out and these modern conveniences fail, Americans are incapacitated. Meanwhile, two decades of taxpayer rebellion have stripped away the means necessary for government workers to provide help during emergencies. Most city and state public health and emergency-management departments are not funded adequately enough for them to carry out even their routine work. A flu pandemic or other major disaster would completely overwhelm them. A report on disaster preparedness released in June 2006 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security found that only 25 percent of state emergency operations plans and 10 percent of municipal plans were sufficient to cope with a natural disaster or a terrorist attack; the majority of the plans were deemed "not fully adequate, feasible, or acceptable to manage catastrophic events." And even as community and individual preparedness is in decline, nine out of ten Americans now live in locations that place them at a moderate to high risk of experiencing damaging high wind, earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, or wildfires. Climate change will increase the frequency of such calamities. The United States' aging infrastructure compounds the risk of destruction and disruption. One of the rationales for building the interstate highway system was to support the evacuation of major cities if the Cold War turned hot; in 2006, the year the system turned 50, Americans spent a total of 3.5 billion hours stuck in traffic. Public works departments construct "temporary" patches for dams, leaving Americans who live downstream one major storm away from having water pouring into their living rooms. Bridges are outfitted with the civil engineering equivalent of diapers. Like the occupants of a grand old mansion who elect not to do any upkeep, Americans have been neglecting the infrastructure that supports a modern society. In 2005, after a review of hundreds of studies and reports and a survey of more than 2,000 engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a scathing report card on 15 categories of infrastructure: the national power grid, dams, canal locks, and seven other infrastructure sectors received Ds; the best grade, a C+, went to bridges, and even in that case, 160,570 bridges, out of a total of 590,750, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. These downward trends in preparedness and infrastructural integrity could be reversed by stepped-up investment and more effective leadership. Unfortunately, Washington has been leading the nation in the opposite direction. Since September 11, 2001, the White House has failed to draw on the legacy of American grit, volunteerism, and ingenuity in the face of adversity. Instead, it has sent a mixed message, touting terrorism as a clear and present danger while telling Americans to just go about their daily lives. Unlike during World War II, when the entire U.S. population was mobilized, much of official Washington today treats citizens as helpless targets or potential victims. This discounting of the public can be traced to the culture of secrecy and paternalism that now pervades the national defense and federal law enforcement communities. After decades of combating Soviet espionage during the Cold War, the federal security establishment instinctively resists disclosing information for fear that it might end up in the wrong hands. Straight talk about the country's vulnerabilities and how to cope in emergencies is presumed to be too frightening for public consumption. This is madness. The overwhelming majority of Americans live in places where the occurrence of a natural disaster is a matter of not if, but when. And terrorist groups' targets of choice are noncombatants and infrastructure. These are hazards that can be managed only by an informed, inspired, and mobilized public. Both the first preventers and the first responders are likely to be civilians. continues The good news is that most of the things people can do at the individual level to prepare themselves, their families, and their employees are relatively easy. These measures include purchasing a three-day emergency kit, developing a family emergency contact plan, and visiting Web sites maintained by the Red Cross and other organizations that provide instructive what-to-do lists. Such efforts can provide real peace of mind and save lives when disaster strikes. They would also represent tangible expressions of American support for the U.S. soldiers who put their lives on the line beyond U.S. shores to protect a nation that today remains recklessly exposed to the consequences of a successful terrorist attack. Rebuilding the resilience of U.S. society is an agenda that could reverse the debilitating politics and mounting cynicism now bedeviling the U.S. electorate. Whereas increasing security measures is an inevitable answer to a society's fears, resilience rests on a foundation of confidence and optimism. It involves taking stock of what is truly precious and ensuring its durability in a way that would allow Americans to remain true to their ideals no matter what tempest the future may bring.

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