Ross K Smith, Wake Forest University

1998 - (De)Baiting the Bear: Policy Options Toward Russia

One way to look at a topic is to turn it into a question. This year the question would be, "Should the United States change its foreign policy toward Russia?" One potential answer would be, "No, the United States shouldn't change, Japan should." For instance, if the affirmative said the United States should give environmental aid to Russia to solve pollution problems there, the negative might argue that Japan has excellent environmental aid and were Japan to increase its aid to Russia, U.S. aid would be unnecessary. This fairly common negative approach is the subject of this article. While the basic logic of the position may appear simple, there are a number of practical, strategic and theoretical issues worth exploring. To consistently win international counterplan debates on the affirmative or the negative requires more than a surface understanding of these issues.

The Counterplan Text

Counterplans, like affirmative plans, need a text, a precise wording. Negatives who simply blurt "Counterplan: have Japan do the affirmative plan," might get away with it occasionally. but are basically announcing that they are lazy. (Besides, how could Japan do the affirmative plan if the affirmative plan is to have the United States take the action?). A precise text allows the negative team to not only skirt affirmative accusations of being unfairly vague, but also to incorporate counterplan provisions that take into account potential solvency or disadvantage arguments the affirmative may make against the counterplan.

One way of devising the text of the counterplan is fairly simple. The method most commonly used is to simply mimic the wording of the affirmative plan, substituting "Japan" (or the country or international organization of your choice) for "United States". Still, one must be careful. If the affirmative plan says, "The United States Agency for International Development (AID) shall...," the counterplan needs to name the international equivalent of AID. A good working knowledge of the governmental structure of Japan is necessary so that your Japan counterplan ends up being a mirror image of the U.S. policy.

Other basic counterplan wording issues such as "intent clause" and funding sources should not be ignored, either. An intent clause, stating that the negative team reserves the right to clarify the counterplan text can be helpful if a dispute about the counterplan's wording arises. Funding and enforcement issues should be thought of in advance by the negative. If counterplan wording can help resolve such issues, then the negative should have a standard component of their counterplan text that covers such issues. Finally, as with any counterplan, the negative should decide in advance of the debate whether or not it will be run conditionally.

Following the introduction of the counterplan text into the round, the negative traditionally makes a few basic observations. First, the counterplan is not topical, since the United States doesn't act. That one is easy. The second basic observation to make is that the counterplan solves for the affirmative advantage. The issue of counterplan solvency is an important part of the competitiveness of the counterplan, so solvency will be discussed in that context, to which we now turn.

Competitiveness

The international counterplan is not mutually exclusive with the affirmative plan. After all, both the United States and Japan could give assistance to Russia. The argument the negative needs to win is that given a policy of increased Japanese aid, the affirmative plan is no longer desirable. Put another way, the negative is arguing that the single policy of Japanese aid is preferable to both the single policy of U.S. aid and to any combination of U.S. and Japanese aid that includes the entire affirmative plan. This approach is commonly referred to as "net benefits competitiveness." (While this might seem basic or familiar, my experience has been that most high school students, even those who have been to summer workshops, would do themselves a favor by rereading the preceding two sentences.)

The simplest way to establish that the counterplan is competitive is to argue that the counterplan solves for the affirmative advantage and that there is a disadvantage to the affirmative plan that the counterplan avoids. Let's use the example of environmental aid. The negative could read evidence that Japan has good environmental technology and expertise, and that they have experience aiding Russia and/or other nations. The negative says there is no reason why U.S. aid is uniquely better for Russia's environmental problems than Japanese aid is.

But note that the negative still has not provided a reason not to have both the U.S. and Japan act to aid Russia. The solvency of the counterplan functions just like a case argument to reduce the affirmative advantage. In most cases, however, the advantage is not reduced to zero. The question is, if some aid is good, why isn't more aid better? That's where the disadvantage enters into the picture. If there is a disadvantage to U.S. action that is big enough to outweigh just the extra increment of solvency from the U.S. action, then Japanese aid alone is preferable to Japanese aid plus U.S. aid. Disadvantages like Clinton, aid trade-off, U.S. hegemony, and U.S.-Russian relations are all disadvantages that are uniquely linked to U.S. action. Japanese aid does not trigger these disadvantages. So in the end, the competitiveness of the counterplan is comprised of its ability to solve for Russian pollution combined with its ability to avoid the disadvantages.

A somewhat more complex approach argues that while Japanese aid by itself will solve, the combination of U.S. and Japanese aid will not solve as much as Japanese aid alone. This is a solvency tam approach to net-benefits competitiveness. One argument might be that U.S. and Japanese aid agencies end up offering contradictory advice, confusing the aid recipient. Note that in this case the affirmative can argue that U.S. aid by itself does not cause this solvency problem, so why not just do the affirmative plan and not the counterplan? The negative answer needs to be that the counterplan alone is better than the affirmative plan alone, even if either one by itself is better than the combination of the two.

The third, and most tenuous, approach is to argue that the counterplan attains net-benefits competitiveness by virtue of an advantage to the counterplan that the affirmative plan undermines. For example, the negative might argue that Japan needs to be seen as more of a leader in Asia, and that if it works alongside the U.S., it appears that Japan is just a follower. This argument is not a disadvantage to U.S. action absent the counterplan (unless the negative can prove Japan is acting in the area now, in which case the negative doesn't need to counterplan). The argument is an argument against doing both the plan and the counterplan, but just as with the solvency turn approach, the negative also needs to be prepared to argue that the counterplan alone gets more advantage than the affirmative plan alone. The difference is that in this case, some of that advantage comes from outside the affirmative harm area. The negative might admit they don't solve the environmental problems as well as the affirmative, but argue that the extra benefit of Japanese leadership in Asia outweighs the environmental solvency deficit.

The Strategic Power of the Counterplan

International counterplans have been run on foreign policy topics over the years because they have two major strategic benefits as a negative approach: generic reach, and the capacity to shift the ground of the debate.

The generic reach of the international counterplan, is not all-encompassing, but does allow the negative to be "prepared" to debate a wide variety of cases. On this year's topic, the Japan counterplan example we have been discussing can be used against virtually any form of aid case. So, instead of researching the specifics of every environmental, health care, or energy technology aid case, the negative would just focus on learning about all of the areas Japan has aid capacity, and spend the remainder of their preparation on fine tuning the disadvantages that help the net-benefit calculus.

Two caveats regarding the generic reach of the counterplan are in order, however. First, as mentioned, the counterplan's reach is not all-encompassing. The Japan counterplan will do little good against a NATO expansion case, for instance. Second, the counterplan cannot become an excuse to do less work. To be successful with the counterplan a negative team must thoroughly research Japan's aid capacity, must be prepared to defend the counterplan against disadvantages specific to Japanese action, and must be prepared to defend against the theory arguments the affirmative might make (more on those below). Furthermore, as we saw in our discussion of competitiveness, the more specific evidence the negative has regarding the affirmative solvency evidence, the better able the negative is to argue against combinations of affirmative and negative plans. The basic purpose of the counterplan is usually to act as a take-out to the case advantage. But minimizing the case advantage is usually not enough by itself to win a debate. So, while the counterplan is a powerful tool, it is not always applicable, does require research, and must be thought of as one element of a larger negative strategy in a debate.

The second major strategic benefit of the counterplan, its ground shifting capacity, is fairly powerful. The advantage for the negative is that they are discussing issues about which they are (relatively) the experts. You might not know much about pollution or health care, but by using the Japan counterplan, you shift the debate onto ground where your evidence is better and where you sound better by virtue of your familiarity with the issues. Furthermore, by finding a way to minimize the case advantage, your disadvantages gain relative weight. If the case advantage distinction between the counterplan and the affirmative plan becomes tiny, then disadvantages that in other cases might seem too small to do any good can in this instance become decisive. In sum, by shifting the ground, the counterplan both gives the negative a rhetorical and evidentiary edge, and changes which issues are ultimately decisive.

Affirmative Strategies

While the international counterplan does provide the negative with a powerful weapon, there are a number of affirmative strategies to blunt the force of the counterplan. Case selection, plan writing, theory, and old-fashioned research all combine to give the affirmative a strong variety of arguments.

The affirmative needs to begin by considering whether or not they want to run a case that is subject to the international counterplan. As our example has shown, cases that give aid are most commonly the kinds of cases that are attacked by the counterplan. Some cases, however, completely eliminate the possibility of the counterplan. A case to change U.S. nuclear force alerts policy is one example. The reason is perhaps obvious, but is worth stating broadly: cases with advantages that stem intrinsically from what the United States is currently doing (or not doing) are not subject to the counterplan. On a topic as broad as this, the affirmative should be able to find a number of such cases. One other example would be cutting off aid we are currently giving if the affirmative can prove that that aid is directly responsible for some harm.

Even if the affirmative does decide to run a case that appears to be subject to the counterplan, careful attention to plan writing can sometimes create good competitiveness answers. For instance, Russia might need the equivalent of $100 million to help fight AIDS. The plan might state that the U.S. will supplement the sum of international aid to Russia for AIDS prevention such that the total of international contributions is $100 million greater than the current amount. This way, if the counterplan has Japan give $100 million more, the affirmative plan doesn't have to result in the spending of a single U.S. dollar. Such an approach helps the affirmative get out of disadvantages ranging from spending, aid trade-off, and hegemony, to Clinton (if the link is merely that aid spending is unpopular). Other affirmatives might choose to write into their plans phrases such as, "in consultation with other donors," so as to provide mechanisms to coordinate U.S. aid with potential counterplan aid, avoiding some of the solvency based turns discussed earlier.

Besides plan writing, or choosing, a different case, the affirmative can also make some good old-fashioned research pay off. First, it is important for the affirmative to find solvency evidence that highlights the unique benefits of U.S. aid. Evidence on AIDS saying the U.S. has more experience with the problem, more expertise, or a proven track record helping other nations can go a long way, especially if the counterplan solvency evidence is not quite as specific. Second, it is important to research various potential international agents to discover what might be flaws in their ability to solve. Japan, for instance, is accused of having little international credibility on the AIDS issue because of their government's past attempts to hide the problem in their own country. Third, a good affirmative team will be prepared to run disadvantages against the counterplan. Japanese spending and economy disadvantages, Japanese political disadvantages (the Japanese equivalent of the Clinton disadvantage), and other disadvantages to the counterplan are powerful offensive arguments that require the negative to make multiple answers and offset some of the ground shifting benefit of the strategy.

Hard work often pays off best when simplest. This may seem obvious, but it is often overlooked in the confusion and excitement of what seems to be a different kind of debate: the best approach to beating the counterplan is often to focus on beating the disadvantages. Just beat the net-benefit! After all, the counterplan is only competitive by virtue of the notion that doing both the plan and the counterplan has some disadvantage that doing the counterplan alone avoids. Often, the disadvantage is simply Clinton, spending, or some other run-of-the-mill position that the affirmative is presumably prepared to beat anyway. And the best way to beat the disadvantage is to tam it- In that case, the disadvantage becomes an advantage that the counterplan cannot capture.

The final affirmative tactic against the international counterplan is to argue flat theory. The theory of international fiat is the subject of the next section.

Fiat Theory

In spite of the fact that international counterplans have been run with some frequency on recent high school and college topics, their theoretical legitimacy is still the subject of a great deal of controversy. And while most judges might have a "bias" toward on side or the other of the controversy, it is also the case that most judges will judge the theory debate "on the basis of the debating in the round." So it behooves negative and affirmative teams to be well versed in the theory of international fiat.

As with any theory issue, debaters need to keep two fundamental concepts in mind in order to maintain a perspective about their arguments. First, theory debates usually boil down to arguments about what, in principle, is better for the activity of debate as a whole. It is easy to get distracted by "no abuse" and other relatively nit-picky arguments. Second, debaters must distinguish between offensive and defensive arguments. An offensive argument in this context is an argument explaining why your theoretical view is good for the activity (or, conversely, why the opposition's view is bad for the activity). A defensive argument merely argues why your view is not bad for the activity (or why the opposition's view is not good). A successful team on either side of a theory debate will use a mix of offensive and defensive theory arguments.

Negative teams will defend the legitimacy of international fiat by making, five kinds of arguments. The first is based on reciprocity, a kind of mechanical equity. The negative simply says that the affirmative gets to defend one agent (in this case a nation, the U.S.), so the negative gets to defend one, too. The second kind of argument appeals to the notion of "competitive equity." Here the negative says that the affirmative enjoys all sorts of competitive advantages (they speak first and last, get to choose from a wide array of potential cases, and statistically win more often than the negative) and that international fiat simply levels the playing field somewhat. The third negative defense is based on the resolution. As noted in the introduction, the negative says that the affirmative might justify aid to Russia, but does not justify the U.S. as the aid donor. The argument is that the resolution divides ground, and by naming the United States as the affirmative agent cedes international agents to negative ground. The fourth defense is that competitiveness is enough of a ground divider: if the counterplan competes then clash is, by definition, produced. If it clashes it should be something the affirmative has to debate against. The final approach taken by the negative is to argue that we learn more if we allow international counterplans. This approach might be labeled, "literature checks abuse," or "ethnocentrism bad," but the gist of the position is that since there is research that can be done to debate the position, debate is better as an activity if we encourage such research, thereby broadening our understanding of the world. You might hear some other labels for any of these five basic negative defenses of the international counterplan, but the above categorization should help identify the basis of most negative arguments.

The affirmative who wants to win a debate on the illegitimacy of international fiat must not only defeat the negative justifications, but should also provide good reason to exclude international counterplans from consideration. First we will review the affirmative's defensive arguments, answers to the five negative approaches. Then we will offer some offensive affirmative arguments. reasons debate is better off without international fiat.

Reciprocity is a fairly weak negative argument. After all, much in debate is not strictly reciprocal. The affirmative is required to present and defend a topical plan. The negative has no such requirement. The negative gets the negative time-block, pressuring the 1AP- And it's just as easy to glibly say the reciprocal thing is for the negative to be able to fiat with the same agent as the affirmative. Using any other agent goes beyond what is reciprocal.

Similarly, the competitive equity argument is not overpowering. Basically, it is self-serving. There is no principled reason being offered by the negative, just an appeal that amounts to, "Give us a better chance of winning, please." After all, why not allow the negative to ignore fifty percent of affirmative advantages in order to restore competitive balance? Or let the negative run disadvantages without proof of a link? The reason these practices are not allowed in spite of some competitive imbalance is that the intellectual costs are thought to exceed the competitive gain. Yes, we want a fair came, but we also want a game that makes sense as policy analysis.

Resolution based ground division has a little more intuitive intellectual appeal. Why shouldn't the negative get to claim non-resolutional agents? One affirmative approach is to answer with a perspective that accounts for the role of the resolution differently. In the last decade or so, debate has largely shifted away from a resolution based model of theory. The role of the resolution, the affirmative should argue, is simply to generate the basic list of topical affirmative plans. Once a plan is deemed topical, the only question is its desirability as a policy. Whether or not a U.S. foreign policy change is desirable is a question that must be answered according to the logic of sound policy analysis. The resolution itself offers no guidance as to that logic. Those affmni6ves familiar with the litany of alleged "hypothesis testing horrors" can also drag that list out as reason to reject resolution based reasoning.

But even if the resolution is the basis for the debate the affirmative can claim that they have the right to define terms, and that just because the resolution can be read as a question of U.S. versus foreign action, the resolution does not have to be read that way. It is equally reasonable to interpret the resolution as a question about what action (if any) should be taken instead of as a question about who should take the action. If the affirmative can defend the notion that any reasonable interpretation by the affirmative enjoys presumption, then this approach might hold promise.

The "competitiveness divides ground" justification might seem like the negative's logical answer to a rejection of resolution based approaches, but here again, the affirmative should have a relatively easy time of it. After all, the legitimacy of a form of fiat is theoretically separate from the requirement that a counterplan be competitive. At least as a useful mental exercise, and perhaps in the debate, the affirmative might wish to ask why the negative gets any fiat. The basic answer is that counterplans are logical tools of policy analysis. In everyday life any course of action (policy) you are considering can only be judged to be worth doing relative to alternative courses of action. But this does not mean that all alternatives must always be considered.

The negative arguments based on improving our knowledge, the literature and learning based justifications of international fiat, are perhaps the most powerful negative arguments. To answer these, the affirmative needs a strong understanding of policy and debate theory. The most straightforward defensive argument is that simply because literature exists does not mean that it is best to debate it Non-topical affirmatives often say, :Well, you have cards," but that does not make their case topical and is usually unpersuasive. A more powerful affirmative observation is that the literature that exists is not written from a perspective that envisions an international counterplan. Analysts of U.S. policy often argue for certain policy changes precisely because other nations are not acting. There is no on point comparative literature. Furthermore, the affirmative should argue, all of the ethnocentrism and learning can be solved by allowing the negative to counterplan with a policy that has the U.S. request that Japan take action. With the request counterplan, we also get the benefit of discussing the likelihood that Japan honors the request by fiating Japanese action, on the other hand, the entire question of propensity for action as well as the question of U.S.-Japanese relations gets dodged by the negative, reducing learning.

In answering the literature and learning justification for international fiat, we found ourselves trying to turn the argument saying that an absence of international fiat might be better for learning and correspond more closely with the literature. Next we will elaborate on more such offensive arguments, reasons foreign policy debate is better without international fiat

The first, and broadest, argument is that accent counterplans, international or not are utopian. In the real world, all policy decisions must ultimately be made by a situated policy agent, an agent with limited power. Perhaps God could reshape any facet of the world, but from the perspective of a single policy making agent policies are justifiable based only on the resources at that agent's disposal So, in the ideal world, Southern states should have desegregated without being forced to by the federal government But in Congress, the argument was that civil rights legislation was necessary precisely because the states would not desegregate on their own. Urging the states to take action was an option for Congress to consider, but the "fiat of state action was not an option. Who would say that it was wrong for Congress to pass civil rights legislation because of the states counterplan?

This line of argumentation gains strength in the foreign policy context Why do we call it "foreign" policy? The answer is that this is the field of policy that concerns what actions our nation should take in light of actions beyond our jurisdiction, beyond our control. To fiat the action of foreign nations is essentially the equivalent of gutting- the basis for foreign policy analysis. As Professor John T. Rourke of the University of Connecticut puts it "Foreign policy is formulated by a decision-making process that occurs within two settings. One is the external setting that exists outside the state. Countries must deal with the realities of the world system.... Often this external setting severely constrains what countries can or cannot do and must or must not do."' To remove these constraints by fiating international action is to artificially change the foreign policy calculus.

Third, the lack of a principle grounding for international fiat leads to unprincipled policy analysis. The negative basically simply assumes that since other counterplans are legitimate, internationally fiated ones are as well. But where does this reasoning lead? If the case impact is civil war in Russia, why not fiat that the Russian government changes its policy to prevent the war? If we can fiat any action by any other nation, then all foreign policy is basically meaningless since the purpose of foreign policy is to deal with the actions of other nations. Some negatives will try to say that's different and invoke the "subject/object distinction": we don't fiat the subject (Russia?) just the object? This phrase, as you can see has next to no meaning and is just a self-serving artificial distinction. By pointing to potentially worse fiat abuse the negative seeks to justify their own.

Fourth, the counterplan is undecidable from the perspective of an agent taking an action. The counterplan argues that the U.S. agent would reject taking action on the grounds that the Japanese were already solving the problem. But from the perspective of the Japanese, action should be rejected because the U.S. was @y solving. Only by artificially pretending the counterplan happens first does the decision calculus tip in favor of the negative.

Fifth, the counterplan advocates moral responsibility, voiding any moral sense of the term, "should', or "should not". The judge is cast into the role of an idle spectator on the world stage, with no stake in the outcome, simply asked whether the world would be a nicer place if things were one way rather than another. Morality, in contrast, contemplates a specific action by a specific actor. Asking the judge to endorse an action taken by the U.S. government is asking whether or not she believes that action to be morally right. The same is true were the judge to be asked to endorse a Japanese policy action. But to be asked to choose between the two is to place the judge in some God-like position, above the constraints that create the dilemmas of human moral choice. Besides, if the judge is perched above it all, why not ignore disadvantages that also could be avoided by wishing things were different?

Executing the Affirmative Strategy

While we did discuss the fiat theory in some depth, in any given debate round the affirmative must have a balanced approach. It is best to vary the 2AC answers, including fiat, competitiveness, solvency, and disadvantages against the counterplan. And don't for,-,et that the best option is often to simply beat the net-benefit The key is for the 1AR and the 2AR to have viable choices.

As a practical matter, affirmatives should realize that winning a disadvantage to the counterplan or winning the fiat debate is often much more time consuming for the 1AR. Negative teams will have issued multiple answers to these arguments in the negative block- The 1AR might consider "keeping these arguments alive" in order to put pressure back on the 2NR, but if this is done at the expense of the competitiveness debate, the 2AR is put in the untenable position of having to win the round on weakly extended arguments.

One more note about the theory debate: if the counterplan is conditional, the affirmative needs to have a way to impact the fiat abuse argument. What if the affirmative wins fiat abuse but the only implication of that is that the counterplan drops out of the round? In that case the affirmative must still outweigh the disadvantage(s) with their case advantage. Again, beating the disadvantages is very important In this case, however, the affirmative can take solace in the fact that the negative's major way of reducing the case advantage is gone. The disadvantage will at least be easier to outweigh.

Executing the Negative Strategy

To successfully run the international counterplan, the negative. as we have seen must be well researched and well versed in theory. It is of the utmost importance that the negative be prepared with blocks against the theory arguments and against potential disadvantages to the counterplan. Having blocks gives the negative a prep time advantage and the 2NC can often use very little or no prep time. It is also important that both speakers understand the position and how the counterplan interacts with the disadvantages and case arguments.

Advanced planning and understanding also allow the negative to refine the counterplan text and tailor it to the specific affirmative. If you know that the affirmative has good evidence about specific U.S. expertise or technology, you can write into the counterplan text a plank that has Japan purchase or contract for use of the U.S. assets, thus dodging a potential affirmative solvency edge.

But before running the counterplan, the negative should consider whether or not they can successfully run the "request" version of the counterplan, having the U.S. request of Japan that Japan does the aid. This counterplan avoids all of the theory problems which saves time for the substantive arguments. Of course, you will need evidence that Japan is sympathetic to such requests, but on past topics many negative teams were successful with this strategy. Even if the probability is only fifty percent that Japan will comply, that's still a fifty percent reduction in the net affirmative advantage.

In the end, the negative should not lose sight of the purpose of running the counterplan. Usually it simply functions as an advantage take-out If the competitiveness is more complicated than that, then the counterplan might not be able to be run conditionally and you will need to be careful to take plenty of time to explain how the counterplan works to defeat the plan. You should also be prepared to answer tough cross-ex questions about how the government of your nation works.

Concluding comments

While this article attempts to survey the international counterplan issues in some detail, it is far from exhaustive. We did not, for instance, discuss counterplans by international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) or the United Nations. Nor did we discuss "consultation" counterplans, which have the United States seek and follow the advice of some other nation or organization before adopting the plan. Believe it or not, I also did not cover every possible theory argument. Instead, I hope this article created a framework for your own thoughts about international counterplans. You will be best served if you use the article as a springboard for your own work and discussions with your teammates and coaches.

1 International Politics on the World Stage, 5th Edition, 1995, p. 93