Russia - Open Thead
There are several papers completed on Russia.
1) "US-Russian Bilateral Cooperation A Preliminary 2008 Topic Evaluation" by Greta Stahl
2) "Increasing Bilateral Cooperation with the Russian Federation" - Suggested Controversy for the 2008-2009 CEDA Topic by Seth Gannon, Alex Lamballe, Calum Matheson, & Brian Rubaie.
1) "US-Russian Bilateral Cooperation A Preliminary 2008 Topic Evaluation" by Greta Stahl
2) "Increasing Bilateral Cooperation with the Russian Federation" - Suggested Controversy for the 2008-2009 CEDA Topic by Seth Gannon, Alex Lamballe, Calum Matheson, & Brian Rubaie.
Looking for input on the phrase "selective cooperation" with relation to Russia.
It has come up as a potential term of art, based on a CFR report. Here is the link to the report.
(http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Russia_TaskForce.pdf)
Any suggestions or comments are welcome!
RG
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i have posted a couple of comments on ndtceda.com--they are too long to be reposted here, so these are the links:
http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2008-April/074532.html
http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2008-April/074614.html
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seems that it would be difficult to prevent bidirectionality with the phrase "selective cooperation." if we cooperate a lot in one area, you can increase the "selective" aspect by limiting that cooperation. in another area where we don't cooperate, you can increase the "cooperation" aspect by doing more.
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I'm concerned that the CFR article you linked to doesn't ever define what selective cooperation is. My admittedly brief Google search on the term yielded a lot of results that never defined the term but merely used it in context, which could yield a lot of terrible topicality debates. If there is a clear definition of the term somewhere, I would be more persuaded, but I couldn't find it. A better idea might be to increase cooperation in a limited number of areas with a list style resolution.
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A few things that I think are common of "selective cooperation":
First, the direction of the debate and division of ground is somewhat clear.
Although moderates will fight for the middle, the distinction of "selective cooperation" is relatively clear to policy-makers (Suslov --
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5348
"Now, both sides face a crucial choice: Either Washington opts for selective cooperation in areas essential to US security, paying lip service to Russia's domestic situation, while "forgetting" about Russia in world decision-making - or both parties try to bridge the gulf, designing a cohesive global agenda. Should the United States choose the first course, things could end up badly for both parties."
This is also relatively clear in attempting to describe how countries should acclimate to new leadership (CFR report cited above): "The Task Force recommends that the United States pursue
‘‘selective cooperation’’ with Russia rather than seek a broad ‘‘partnership’’
that is not now feasible."
It is also fairly grounded within policy proscriptions. This goes beyond US think thanks such as the CFR. The International Peace Research at Oslo summarizes more support (http://www.prio.no/page/Publication_details//9429/47625.html?PHPSESSID=b8a30ac);
"Until very recently the Kremlin dismissed the possibility that Washington might seriously reevaluate the format and style of its relations with Russia.
What makes this kind of argument more convincing is that it is always so much easier not to take demanding steps that would require consistent follow-up, presuming that the ability of the West to influence Moscow is quite limited. It is in fact far greater than even the authors of the Task Force report admit, and Russia's dependency upon the EU energy market provides more instruments for a pro-active policy. It is not too late for President Bush to take a new look in Putin's eyes and re-evaluate the Russian leader's intentions.
It might appear ironic, but the main thesis of the Task Force report -- that the progressive curtailing of democracy in Russia leaves space only for limited and selective cooperation with the United States -- is entirely compatible with the recent course of Russian foreign policy."
Strategic partnership concerns are also fairly well divided (Eurasia Daily, http://jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2370862)
Two things spoil the prospects for "selective cooperation" for Moscow. The first one is the fact that the privilege to chair the G-8 in 2006 was granted to Russia as a confirmation of its role of "strategic partner," so the devaluation of this role logically leads to shrinking of this privilege.
The second problem with stepping back from partnership to cooperation is that the Russian political elite that appears so tightly united around Putin is in fact pursuing a variety of strategies of personal integration with the West (Kommersant, February 17).
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Some reasons I am not thrilled about a Russia topic
1. The starting point for a good topic needs to be good solvency. Good in that the cards are specific warranted reasons why topical plans are not only good but actually do solve. More importantly they are reasons why no conceivable counterplan does solve. Middle East was awesome because there were great cards that not only security guarantees would solve but that they were the only thing Iran would accept. Of course these assertions shouldn’t be uncontested but we need a rich solvency literature. I think a lot of us are acting on the assumption that “Russia = big and cool” so a) We should debate it, and b) Implicitly there must be a lot of literature. Admittedly my experience with the Russia literature is limited but it seems like a lot of it is harms oriented stuff. A lot of people gripe about how the US needs a broad new direction for its Russia policy or what the problems from low relations are, but few people want to lay out very concrete proposals “We should offer Russia X in exchange for Y” and write a lot of cards about why that would work. I could certainly be proved wrong about this but I’m worried about a repeat of China where finding a genuine solvency advocate was a difficult venture. Russia is great for lots of debate arguments but may still not make a good topic. Just remember we won’t be debating, “Resolved: Russia” but a specific topic that needs to solve.
2. The flip side of this is that the literature on plans that do solve will be about smaller proposals. I think as much as a topics goodness is related to the prevalence of good comparative solvency evidence, its badness is proportional to the number of small squirrel affs. I’ll be blunt, small affs that don’t link to stuff are bad. They are bad for debate, worse than critiques or anything else you can think of. They decimate this activity. And they would be very, very prevalent on a Russia topic, especially at the end of the year. We could write a narrow Russia topic but I think this would ruin even more so the possibility of a big aff solving since it would narrow the scope of permissible affirmative action. What I’m saying is that you should remember a topic isn’t just what debate wants it to be but rather it is what debaters will do to it in our worst nightmares. We should try to minimize the consequences of that during topic selection.
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3. Link uniqueness: I don’t think anyone would disagree that by far the worst part of Middle East topic was Afghanistan. I think a good portion of the reason is that it had no link uniqueness. We were already doing some of every aff right then. I think a Russia topic would see a lot of that as well. Disadvantages are contrived lies but the less they have to contrive at the link and uniqueness level the less we’ll see of really ridiculous crap. This isn’t defining but I think it is clear negative compared to something like healthcare that has very clear uniqueness at the link and impact levels
4. Politics links: They’re pretty good for Russia but totally unbelievably awesome for agriculture and healthcare. This should guide everything because without the politics DA there is no value to life.
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It seems like all the specific areas listed and all the negative ground lacks uniqueness for DA's. For almost each one, the paper explicitly says we're cooperating with Russia now, or cooperation is increasing.
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I think Dylan's concerns are very valid. Knowing what the best affs are in the literature is essential to crafting a good resolution that can encompass them. After reading the work done on Russia, I'm uncertain what those are. Yes, there are a number of areas where people discuss the prospects of expanded cooperation with Russia, but that alone isn't enough for a good topic.
My recollection of the high school Russia topic is that there were some very specific proposals in the literature related to certain things. But oddly enough, there was no negative literature responding to many of the proposals. And the proposals that had the most balanced debate in the literature were the arms control proposals (de-alert, START III, NMD), which would probably be better debated under an arms control topic.
I think the health care, arms control, and agriculture papers do a particularly good job of presenting the specific proposals advocated in the literature. And I think it is relatively predictable what types of affs those topics would ultimately include.
With Russia, I'm not confident that cooperation is a good enough unifying mechanism. Because really all it functions to guarantee the negative is relations bad and Russia is evil (red dawn, red spread, etc.).
I think crafting a Russia resolution that forces the aff to undertake a big significant policy change that has good literature would be a difficult task for the topic committee. In my mind, it presents the same conundrum that Europe did. There are some good affs in the literature, but there's no common theme between the affs.
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Here are some thoughts on Russia in relation to Arms Control that I posted to edebate
http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2008-April/074894.html
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About the Russia topic....
Is no one concerned about a massive overlap from last year's topic?
For instance, some teams negative strategies for Afghanistan affs were solely Russia DAs. Russia permeated nearly all Iran debates, and it found its own place in Syria debates as well.
How many more Iran strikes debates are we going to have next year? It seems you can't avoid it with a Russia topic.
Are we just going to change one international relations term of art with another? I don't want to have to change my T blocks to say "Selective cooperation is not quid pro quo."
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i posted another rant too long for this cite: http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2008-April/074907.html
as for iran: yes, there are russia disads, but this could be very different--russia was not the target of the resolution, just tangentially involved. the disads and affs on this topic will be quite different.
the topic paper rubaie, lamballe, gannon and i wrote does not use the phrase "selective cooperation," which i don't think is wise. we aimed for a broader verb (cooperation) limited by the word "bilateral" in some important respects. the areas will limit the action of the plan, or could even include verbs specific to the areas. this shouldn't be rehash of "constructive engagement."
iran strikes will not be particularly linked to russia--no topical aff in our version of the paper could either strike or stop strikes on iran ("cooperate with russia to strike iran" is not a viable aff). this concern seems to apply much more to the arms control area, although some debate about iran is probably inevitable on any topic--it's an omnipresent issue these days.
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yet another edebate post
http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2008-April/074926.html
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I am concerned that the central controversy in the paper does not make for the topic that its authors are trumpeting. The paper mainly discusses the divergent strategies of the U.S. & Russia. Can anyone speak to whether research is PREDICTIVE rather than DESCRIPTIVE (my fear given that the paper claims that the scholars are dedicated towards “understanding Russia”) of the status quo?
The paper does not seem to present clear evidence that the U.S. and Russia SHOULD cooperate on these issues regardless of how intuitive this may seem to the writers. The sources cited in the paper are also a bit underwhelming in demonstrating a depth of literature on this topic. Is the National Interest the only interested party in cooperation with Russia? And no offense to Spiece but he is both the only person using the phrase “bilateral cooperation” and hasn’t been cited in any other document related to nonproliferation efforts. I am not an expert on this topic or research but I found very little QUALIFIED evidence on the question of cooperation either in the controversy paper or a Google Scholar search. I think the Lexis test (newspapers/newswires, etc.) sets the bar a bit low. And I would venture to say that many scholars are probably adopting a wait and see approach both with the U.S. (who will be the next President) and with Russia (is Medvedev Putin’s puppet, etc.).
I agree that the nature of the relationship between the United States and Russia has changed and I agree that there are people debating whether Russia will be friend or foe. I am not convinced based on this controversy paper that cooperation between the two nations makes for a great debate topic.
I am concerned that we are making the same mistake made with China in that we assume that large impacts automatically makes for a great debate topic. This is probably based on my reading of the paper as well; that it is more rhetorical flair and bluster about nuclear war and our survival as a species (“This is the Big One”) than substance.
I would also remind people that we debated Russia enough last year. We debated the major nonproliferation issue, we debated the internal politics of Russia, we debated oil and regional hegemony, we debated Russia’s monopoly over gas and it’s impacts on Europe/U.S., we debated Russia’s relationship with Afghanistan, and the list goes on. I guess that leaves the door open for space and CBW’s but I’m still left wanting for change.
Finally, debate is mostly for debaters and we should strive to have a topic that speaks to everyone’s interests. Keeping recent discussions in mind would be useful and I think selecting Russia throws the proverbial finger towards those people who feel disenfranchised with the community right now.
I am not saying that we should never debate Russia again. I am saying that Russia can wait.
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I critiqued the Russia topic in a post on edebate
http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2008-April/074986.html
Advocating agricultural reform as an alternative.
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