Arnav Mahendra is a Public Forum debater in his sophomore year at Mira Loma High School in Sacramento, CA. He has broken at every tournament so far this season. He and his partner were ranked as high as 5th in the nation.

2022 Nocember Public Forum: The United States and Great Power Competition

A new month, a new topic. The topic for November/December has been released, and is as follows:

Resolved: The United States’ strategy of Great Power Competition produces more benefits than harms.

There are a lot of things to break down with this new topic. Let’s get into it!

Defining Key Terms

The only obscure term in the topic is Great Power Competition. The Defense Acquisition University defines Great Power Competition as the contest between the United States and its adversaries in a range of aspects, such as military, government, economy, and technology. This essentially means that the United States competes with their adversaries to influence the affairs of the world in the areas outlined. They are also competing one on one, trying to elevate their economies, innovation, and militaries to be better than their opponents.

But who exactly are their opponents? The answer is China and Russia. These two countries are the most competitive with the United States in terms of geopolitics. Due to opposing beliefs and the current status quo of Great Power Competition, China and Russia are regarded as adversaries to the United States in most aspects. For example, the United States foray into space exploration was met with equal competition by the Russians. In this regard, Great Power Competition extends into every aspect of the government.

This brings us to the first revelation about the topic: almost anything can be ran on it. Yes, that means you can run arguments about anything from overfishing to space exploration. If it is associated with the federal government, it’s fair game. However, make sure to keep in mind that some arguments will be stronger than others, and despite the broad scope of the topic, there will still be a limited set of arguments that can feasibly be run.

When did Great Power Competition Start?

The timeline of great power competition is a topic that is up for debate. It will come up when debating the validity of empirics. For example, if someone wants to bring up examples from the 1900s, a team can respond by saying that GPC started in 2017 due to the US documents regarding it being released then. Other teams will argue that GPC started right after World War 2. Teams will have to be able to define the timeline if it is brought up, as defining it inadequately means that your opponents can do whatever they want with the round. Your empirics can be completely invalidated by the opponents if you allow them to control this aspect of the round. Since this is an empirics based topic, that would be catastrophic for your argumentation.

The Alternative

Almost every round you debate on this topic will have you grappling to define a world without Great Power Competition. The reason for this is logic: there is no reason for a judge to vote for any side if they do not know what the alternative to their vote is. This is where defining an alternative world comes in: both sides should define what a world without GPC looks like. If you are the negation, you want to define it as a positive world filled with multipolarity(this term will come up a lot in your research). If you are the affirmation, you want to define it as a world in which Chinese and Russian leadership causes a host of negative impacts. This does not necessarily have to be phrased as a contention; most teams run it as an overview at the top of their rebuttals. This argument provides a lot of necessary context so that judges know not only what they are voting for, but also what they are voting against.

With all of these universal items out of the way, let’s get into the argumentation for each side!

The Affirmation

The affirmation centers around the idea that the United States power is preventing a bunch of terrible things from happening all around the world. Think Ukraine, Taiwan, etc. That leads us to our first contention:

1. Conflict Prevention

It is almost certain that you will hear this contention in some form throughout most of your rounds on this topic. The idea of this contention is that Xi Jinping(the leader of China) wants to take Taiwan immediately, but that GPC is the only thing stopping him. He fears competing with the United States in a direct war, and the threat of that is the only reason he has not invaded Taiwan. Absent GPC, nothing stops him, and he invades Taiwan, which brings with it a tremendous humanitarian impact.

This argument is a good argument because it is intuitive and easy to understand on lay. However, as the topic has progressed, negation teams have gotten better and better at responding to it, so it might not be the best idea on flow judges. It is also susceptible to being turned by saying that GPC is the only reason Xi wants Taiwan in the first place. However, most lay judges will vote off of the most cohesive and understandable argument, which is this one.

2. Alliances

This argument is a more nuanced version of the argument outlined above. Because of that, less teams know how to respond to it.

It centers around the idea that the US formed key alliances like NATO and the UN for the sole purpose of competing with Russia, and that these alliances have done a lot of good. Absent GPC, the US would have had no motive to build these alliances, and hundreds of millions of lives would not have been saved.

This argument is a great argument because it is true. There is a reason the US is viewed as a founding member of many of the largest alliances in the world. The argument is difficult to respond to and easy to understand on any type of judge. I definitely think that this argument is an argument every team should be running on affirmative.

3. Healthy Competition

This argument is another one of the more stock arguments on this topic. A lot of teams will be running it.

The argument is as follows: Great Power Competition creates just that: competition. China and the US are always trying to be better than each other, so they are constantly innovating to solve problems that matter, like pandemics and climate change. That means that green tech and pandemic preparedness are increasing due to GPC, which saves millions of lives.

This argument is another argument which affirmative teams have to be careful running. This directly conflicts with the negation argument of Cooperation, so in a round where both teams are running directly opposing contentions, the round can get quite messy. If teams are confident in their ability to clear up messy rounds, this is a great contention because of its impacts. However, it definitely works better on tech judges. Regardless of if teams are running this argument or not, they need to have something about competition cut in order to respond to the cooperation argument on the other side.

4. Economic Alliances

This argument is very similar to the argument of military alliances. However, there is a key difference. This argument is about the United States forming economic alliances in order to maintain its status as a world power, and demonstrate superiority over China and Russia.

Since the US wants to demonstrate that it is the best world power, it makes economic contributions and forms economic alliances with developing countries in order to appear better than their competitors. The incentive for this is competition, so GPC is the only world in which this occurs. This has taken hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the developing world.

This argument is a great argument, and is best run in combination with the military alliances argument to form a larger alliances argument which creates a great narrative for lay judges. It also has good weighing so that you can succeed on flow judges as well. Overall, the argument is well rounded and can be run on any type of judge. The opposing team will read warrants for why US economic intervention is bad, so any affirmation team must be ready to refute this.

5. Cyber Defense

The thesis of this argument is about our adversaries attacks on our digital systems.

It goes as follows: GPC has caused the US to be more cautious and defensive with their cyber systems to be able to prevent a potential attack, without GPC the US has no incentive to protect their cyber systems. Since the nuclear weapons are linked to the cyber system, an unprotected attack would lead to a terrible nuclear scenario, causing extinction.

This argument is decent at best. The link chain is insecure, and the argument is best used in a tech case as a third argument to distract the opponent from the remaining two strong contentions. It can be easily turned by claiming that without GPC, the adversaries would have no incentive to attack the United States cyber systems. Even without this obvious turn, the argument is weak and should only be read in very specific scenarios.

Overall, that encompasses the affirmative side of the topic. These 5 arguments are some of the most common arguments on the topic, so debaters should have responses to them and know the general argumentation in order to succeed on the topic. However, as mentioned before, there are certainly different arguments that can be feasibly run on the topic due to its large scope. In further research as the topic develops, it’s possible that a new argument could be found.

The Negation

The negation on the topic has multiple strategies. The first is claiming that GPC helps US hegemony, but US hegemony is bad, and China and Russia are better. This strategy is rare, but teams who have experience from past topics about US hegemony will most likely do better utilizing this type of strategy. However, the much more common type of strategy is to say that US hegemony is good, but is being ruined by GPC. This is a strategy that a lot of negation teams will be reading. Assuming the negation team is using the far more common second strategy, here are some of the common arguments:

1. The US Supports Autocracies because of Great Power Competition

Remember the affirmation argument about alliances with countries from above? Turns out, there’s an easy enough way to turn the argument(🤣). The negation argues that the countries the US is alliancing with are actually autocratic, and not democratic. This means that they are supporting terrible dictatorships.

The argument goes as follows: Because the United States wants to compete with China and Russia by any means possible, it allies itself with countries that it otherwise would not, such as Turkey. The sole purpose of these alliances is to gain an ally against their competitors. However, in allying, they give their stamp of approval for human rights abuses to continue to occur in the country. This means that dictatorships and autocrats can continue to slaughter their people by the millions.

This argument is great, because it directly counteracts the affirmative argument on alliances. The debate can get pretty messy, but if you are capable of clearing up a somewhat messy debate between two similar arguments, you should definitely run this on every type of judge. The refutation on this argument is little more than the affirmative contention, which means it is easy to defend your case.

2. Cutting Out Cooperation

Once again, we have a negation argument that is the exact opposite of an affirmative argument we talked about above. This time, it is about cooperation vs the competition affirmative argument. The argument is as follows: due to Great Power Competition, the United States and its adversaries do not want to cooperate with each other on existential threats(the same ones the affirmative is going to cite) like climate change and pandemics. Due to this, each country keeps all of its technology to itself, and refuses to share it with each other. Since solving climate change and pandemics requires cooperation, this dooms us to extinction.

This argument is another great argument if you know how to clear up a messy debate. In essence, both teams will have the same impact, but different links(ways of getting there). If you are good at resolving these links, then you can run this argument in response to the competition argument on the affirmative. This argument works well on any type of judge, as long as the debate is sufficiently cleared up.

3. GPC trades off with counteracting bigger threats

This argument is fairly unique. It disregards Russia and China, and defines two bigger threats, North Korea and Iran. It states that in focusing on GPC, we are leaving the nuclear states of North Korea and Iran out of the picture, and this is dangerous as we allow them to proliferate unchecked. This will lead to extinction.

This argument talks about the framework that GPC uses to define the threats against America, which is called the “2+3”. The “2” represents China and Russia, defined to be bigger threats than the “3”, which represent North Korea, Iran, and general terrorism. The argument relies on this framework in order to demonstrate the lack of focus on North Korea and Iran, which it says will cause catastrophic consequences.

This argument is overall a great argument to run, especially on lay/parent judges. It is simple enough be comprehended by any judge, and the responses to it are overall not great. It turns into an argument of whether China and Russia or Iran and North Korea present the larger threat to overall security in the US, at which point your case should do the explaining for you. I believe all negation teams should be running this argument.

That concludes the negation part of the topic analysis. I am leaving it intentionally short, because the negation has a wide amount of ground it can use in this topic. These are the 3 most common arguments, but feel free to find your own.

Conclusion

The topic of Great Power Competition offers a broad scope of argumentation on both sides; almost anything imaginable can be run. The arguments outlined here are a very small portion of the argumentation on the topic. Teams should be wary of new strategies, and not shy away from implementing them themselves. I wish you good luck in your tournaments and further research!

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