Tournament: YeeHaw | Round: Triples | Opponent: Davod Minnn | Judge: WEsley HU
We affirm Resolved: The United States should no longer pressure Israel to work toward a two-state solution.
The resolution is a question of policy, but what the government should do is not justified only in policy terms. Normative terms provide the basis for government action. Every policy is specific to the interests and states of affairs of the agents involved. For example, I can say I should end all violence in the Middle East, but we cannot affirm that question because I am limited in my ability to perform that kind of action.
Therefore, the question of the resolution is whether United States pressure is consistent with its own interests and capabilities as a country. However, we are uncertain about our capabilities, aims, and moral standing as a society. Although we can ascertain that broad concepts are objectively good or bad, there will always be uncertainty about the specific course of action we should take. We can broadly state that horrible things such as murder are wrong, but that doesn’t provide us with the best course of action on how to combat issues of violence. Evan Willams writes:
Evan G. Williams (2013). Promoting Value As Such. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (2):392-416.
Our best prospect for making valuable states of affairs more likely to occur is by strengthening the final of the three correlations. Hopefully people are at least somewhat motivated by value judgments which are at least somewhat truth-tracking; if so, then giving people more control over which states of affairs occur—and thus more opportunities to implement their value judgments—should make actually-valuable states of affairs more likely to occur. There are two approaches we can take here. One would be to try to learn what goals the people around us are pursuing and then pursue those same goals ourselves. We want to focus on ones which seem to be motivated by more than mere self-interest, and which are being pursued by people who seem relatively intelligent and well-informed. The second and more interesting approach is to try to provide Rawlsian ‘‘primary goods’’ to people: that is, try to increase their access to information and material resources, improve their health and self-respect, and ensure that they have the freedom to take advantage of these other goods, and so on, so as to increase their likelihood of achieving whatever goals they might pursue. In short, we could build a free and prosperous society. This is something we have reason to do anyway, insofar as we suspect freedom and prosperity to be intrinsically valuable, but my point is that in addition to whatever intrinsic value such a society would possess, it would also be likely to be instrumental to bringing about whatever other valuable states of affairs which people eventually manage to recognize as valuable.
Therefore, we propose a framework of minimalist state action. In the case that we are uncertain about our course of action, then we should default to letting people pursue their own idea of the good. This means, the United States should no longer be manipulating international affairs for multiple reasons.
Contention One. We can never be certain that a two-state solution is the most valuable option. For years people have debates over whether the two-state solution is a good thing or a bad thing. This indicates a sufficient amount of uncertainty to justify the United States not intervening in a region that they are separate from.
Contention Two. Letting Israel and Palestine pursue their own conception of the good means it is more likely that we find the best solution. Williams 2:
(2):392-416.
Also It is important is that we try to help people—again, this includes our own future selves—gain information which is morally relevant. They can hardly be expected to make accurate evaluations of various states of affairs if they are misinformed about what those states of affairs would involve. Questions like ‘‘at what age—or ages, if a gradual process—does a fetus become conscious?’’ or ‘‘are homosexual couples as good at raising children as heterosexual couples are?’’ are largely scientific questions rather than ethical ones, but still clearly important for making sound moral judgments. So we should encourage the studying, and sharing, of this kind of information as well. At the level of social policy, rather than individual action, there are several key ways to encourage ethical and scientific progress of the above sort. One is by promoting education, so that people acquire what information is already known to experts, while learning useful habits of thought for producing more such information. Another is by protecting individual free speech, so that people feel safe in sharing their ideas. Lastly is by allowing other sorts of decisions—e.g., about how people shall live their lives, how they shall interact with other animals, how their cities shall be designed and regulated, etc.—to be made at the individual or local level so that we can compare, at first hand, the results of diverse approaches to these decisions.
Evan G. Williams (2013). Promoting Value as Such. _Philosophy and Phenomenological Research_ 87
Insofar as the United States continues to intervene and impose its conception of the good on the Middle East we shut off other avenues for determining solutions. We get more information and resolve uncertainty if we refrain from pressuring countries and the Middle East.
It is important to note that this is not a question of whether the two state solution is good or bad. Rather, it outweighs the cons arguments because it says that we can get better information and a course of feasible action absent United States interference. Further, the pro is a prior question to the cons argument because we cannot act unless we are certain that good things will result. Insofar as we prove that some level of uncertainty exists, then we should err on the side of not pressuring people.
Even if the status quo is bad, pressuring for a two-state solution exacerbates problems. Our argument is not that the status quo is better than two-state solution. However, we are uncertain about the events that our actions will cause especially in a complex region of the world. Therefore, we should prefer not acting over actively worsening the situation on the ground. Thomas Carothers writes that the presence of the United States in the region is complicating the peace process and clouding our judgment.
The law is also a sign of an equally disturbing and much broader trend. After two decades of the steady expansion of democracy-building programs around the world, a growing number of governments are starting to crack down on such activities within their borders. Strongmen-some of them elected officials-have begun to publicly denounce Western democracy assistance as illegitimate political meddling. They have started expelling or harassing Western NGOS and prohibiting local groups from taking foreign finds-or have started punishing them for doing so. This growing backlash has yet to coalesce into a formal or organized movement. But its proponents are clearly learning from and feeding off of one another. The recent "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and the widespread suspicion that U.S. groups such as the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), Freedom House, and the Open Society Institute played a key behind-the-scenes role in fomenting these upheavals have clearly helped trigger the backlash. Politicians from China to Zimbabwe have publicly cited concerns about such events spreading to their own shores as justification for new restrictions on Western aid to NGOS and opposition groups. Yet there is something broader at work than just a fear of orange (Ukraine's revolution came to be known as the Orange Revolution). The way that President George W. Bush is making democracy promotion a central theme of his foreign policy has clearly contributed to the unease such efforts (and the idea of democracy promotion itself) are creating around the world. Some autocratic governments have won substantial public sympathy by arguing that opposition to Western democracy promotion is resistance not to democracy itself, but to American interventionism. Moreover, the damage that the Bush administration has done to the global image of the United States as a symbol of democracy and human rights by repeatedly violating the rule of law at home and abroad has further weakened the legitimacy of the democracy-promotion cause.
(Thomas, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) “Backlash Against Democracy Promotion” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2006), pp. 55-68
Therefore, because the United States is making the peace process worse our uncertainty over the outcome of our actions has increased. Therefore we should stop pressuring Israel and pull back from acting significantly in the region.
Contention Three In the case that we are uncertain about the correct course of action, we should focus on empowering people on the ground in the middle east to pursue their own ends. This doesn’t mean the standard is creating the best consequences, but rather states that we should focus on respecting material resource access and preserving freedoms to take advantage of goods.
There are extreme costs that come with not accepting a two-state solution, including economic loss and safety threats. Ross:
The overall cost of not agreeing to the two-state solution includes a mixture of economic and security costs for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. On the economic side, as shown in Table 5.1, by not agreeing to a two-state solution, Israel forgoes nearly $23 billion in additional economic output in 2024 and the Palestinians forgo approximately $7 billion in economic output in 2024. On the security front, both the Israelis and Palestinians will face new threats. Although these threats will differ, both Israel and the Palestinians will require significant resources to address these threats. From a security perspective, a successful two-state agreement requires both states to feel safe. The security equation for Israel includes the immediate environment—that is, the Palestinians and their ability to keep those borders quiet—and potential cross-border trouble from other Arab neighbors, principally Syria and Lebanon, but, increasingly, Egypt’s Sinai as well. The Israelis will expect enhanced cooperation on those fronts to ensure that those cross-border variables are managed. And, of course, Israel’s biggest long-term and over-the-horizon threat is Iran—principally, the nuclear threat that Israel perceives. We can expect, in the context of a long-term agreement that creates a Palestinian state, for the Israelis to be even more insistent that their interests are taken into consideration with regard to any deal that is struck with Iran
Anthony, C. Ross, Daniel Egel, Charles P. Ries, Craig Bond, Andrew Liepman, Jeffrey Martini, Steven Simon, Shira Efron, Bradley D. Stein, Lynsay Ayer and Mary E. Vaiana. The Costs of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015.
