Hegemony Supplement - Michigan 2024 HHIRS

Heg Supplement---HHRS
Thanks to Elliot Barringer, Mia Chen, Thomas Guo, and Haddie Schedler for their hard work on the file.
This is meant as a supplement to the Heg Good/Bad stuff already released in other files. There are some new scenarios / updates to multipolarity, sustainability, etc.
Heg Bad
Impact---Iran---2NC
*Also Sustainability
Heg unsustainable. Current strategic rivalry with Iran proves that attempts to maintain dominance exacerbates conflict and fuels broader global instability.
Njdeh Asisian, 22 – A native of Middle East with extensive knowledge and experience in international relations, regional affairs. (Njdeh Asisian, “Iran, China, and the Future World Order: Unipolarity or Multipolarity?,” Air University (AU), 3-15-2022, pg. 6-8, Available Online: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/AUPress/Display/Article/2966903/iran-china-and-the-future-world-order-unipolarity-or-multipolarity/, Accessed: 7-1-2024)//ilake-mc
Based on the NSS, the United States is actively engaged in a strategic rivalry with Iran, Russia, and China. Such rivalry revolves around the zero-sum nature of power, influence, and resources. “[Further,] pairs of states regard each other as significant threats to goal attainment. There are two main types of dyadic situations at this end of the continuum. Dyads encompass either roughly comparable states or circumstances in which one of the rules is much more potent than the other.”15 The strategic rivalry is intensified by the weakening international system and dominant power. Among the intense conflict zones around the world, perhaps the most intense is where Iran and the United States face off against one another in the Middle East. There is a dyad. One direction is between equal powers (US-Russia and China), and the other is between unequal forces when one is more potent than the other. In the US-Iranian strategic competition, the United States is powerful, Iran less so. Two different events signal the end of a hegemonic era and a return to power politics: (1) the appearance of the new powers that want to ensure their interest within the international system, and (2) the fact hegemonic power is not able to maintain hegemonic stability. (It is essential to mention that some scholars attribute hegemonic stability to nuclear power parity, while others credit stability to the distribution of power among states.16) I use “hegemonic stability” in the context of a power capable of maintaining relative peace by containing challenging forces on the scene that the system of hegemonic stability has weakened. We are facing the fact that there are strategic rivalries erupting all over the world. Some powers are trying to challenge US hegemonic power, such as China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey and to some extent Brazil and India. Haass has described this era as a “trend towards disorder that has been a function of structural changes in the international system.” Further, he described diffusion of capacity that presents challenges such as “the actual and potential spread of nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems, terrorism, a spike in the numbers of refugees and displaced persons, a chaotic Middle East, a Europe under siege, a precariously balanced Asia-Pacific, mostly ungoverned cyberspace, an inadequate response to climate change, a growing rejection of free trade and immigration, and the potential pandemic that could cost many millions of lives.”17 Ian Bremmer has called this era one of “Geopolitical Creative Destruction.”18 Creative destruction is an economic theory introduced by the famous Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. He contended that the opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation. . . that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, destroying the old one, and creating a new one.19 Both Haas and Bremmer are conveying the same message. Haas talked about the “difficulties of protecting the unipolar system if the United States cannot impose order. . . . [N]o country can contend with global challenges on its own given the very nature of these challenges.”20 Haas describes the world based on the assumption that the United States will assume the CEO position in close relations with other powers to maintain global law and order while US power goes unchallenged. However, it seems Haas was not concerned about the future institutions of the new order. For his part, Bremmer accepted the idea of a unipolar world while paying closer attention to forming the new order’s institutions. Many people may ask themselves why the US global (unipolar) position has weakened. There are many explanations why we are witnessing the gradual deterioration of the old order: Japan’s economic malaise and crises in Europe including the 2016 Brexit vote; each complicated by the 2008 economic collapse that limited US financial power.21 The question is, what type of world do we intend to build? There are at least two options on the horizon: unipolar versus multipolar global systems. The United States, as the only superpower, is trying to preserve the world order in a manner wherein the United States maintains economic and military hegemony at the global level (unilateral system). However, other forces favor the multipolar system, which allows them to have an equal footing within the international system (multiple centers). For instance, the National Intelligence Council, a US government think tank, projects that “by 2025, China and India will have the world’s second- and fourth-largest economies, respectively. . . . [U]nless rising powers such as China and India are incorporated into this framework, these international regimes’ future will be uncomfortably uncertain.”22 It is crucial to understand Drezner correctly. He sounded alarmed in 2007 regarding incorporating China and India in US-led international organizations as the only way to preserve the status quo and US global superiority. In 2021, 8 China is not fully incorporated within those US-led international organizations. In contrast, China is taking entirely different routes by collaborating with Russia on economic, military, or security issues. India is indecisive at best, which eventually will damage the US position as the sole superpower sooner or later. It is essential to mention that China has agendas as a rising superpower. India’s economy is performing better, but India is not yet the next rival. Both countries have large merchant navies and ocean access, but at the same time they face severe strategic competition on the seas. Both countries’ naval power is not enough to protect them in the long run. Consequently, they have to solve two different problems. First, they have to increase naval power, which is not an easy task, and it will take decades to prepare adequate naval forces. Second, the United States Navy can potentially limit both countries’ economic growth by blocking merchant ships or their navies’ access to the sea. The question does not end at China or India’s unwillingness to be part of US-led international organizations: the United States cannot ignore Iran and its future within the global system. Iran plays a crucial role in providing access to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and vice versa. Consequently, the future of a unipolar versus multipolar global system will be determined in Iran. The battle is not about capital or resources; the primary struggle is land access to important population centers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This land access provides for the free flow of capital and resources into China, Russia, and India. In the Middle East, perhaps one of the most organized countries with some power capabilities is Iran (after Israel). US-Iranian relations have experienced many ups and downs and are mainly based on the center versus periphery problem. However, we see a new reality that has changed the nature of the US-Iranian relations for the foreseeable future. The rise of Iranian power has challenged the US position in the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, and therefore both sides have been locked in the strategic rivalry. This rivalry has two aspects: (1) the Iranian geopolitical posture creates a new world order, and (2) growing Iranian power may undermine the interests of the United States and its regional allies. To understand the root of this struggle, we have to consider local and worldwide events that changed Middle East history. At the regional level, we must understand the consequences of the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf Wars, and the Iraqi regime’s collapse in the overall regional balance of power. On the global level, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a significant game-changer in the region. The absence of the Soviet Union as a competing superpower allowed the United States to fill the power vacuum and created a new regional order. However, the United States’ regional foreign policy slights the Caucasus and Central Asia, while Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey have significant influence in the region.
Heg unsustainable. US policies of enemy identification and military dominance provoke counteractions which destabilize the region – causes Iran war.
GRAHAM E. FULLER, 7-1 – Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official and author of numerous books on the Muslim World. (GRAHAM E. FULLER, “Iran-Bahrain talks on horizon signal more sunset on US hegemony,” Responsible Statecraft, 7-1-2024, Available Online: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-bahrain-talks/, Accessed: 7-1-2024)//ilake-mc
Indeed, this situation has been part and parcel of a broader pattern of American policies globally that has routinely sought to identify enemies in various regions in order to establish and maintain favorable "security arrangements" in any area in question. In the Persian Gulf, Iran has long been designated the “enemy” of choice and Washington’s Gulf policy has been centered around rallying regional military and political opposition against Iran — heavily supported and encouraged by Israel.
Unsurprisingly, Iran has reciprocated in kind by lending support to various groups in the region as counterbalancing instruments against American power, as well as establishing a nuclear project. Never mind that a significant case can be made that the U.S. did not have to maintain on auto-pilot its anti-Iranian hostility for 45 years, but such a policy has served Washington’s regional strategic and military hegemony well. (Readers of history will know that once the United States has identified and declared another state to be on an “enemy list," it is exceedingly difficult to get off.)
Thus, a cornerstone of American Gulf policy for decades was the establishment of a military presence in the region in order to "protect the free flow of oil." Never mind that virtually every anti-American dictator in the region was happy to sell their oil to the world and the “free flow of oil" almost never needed protection.
The first deep hole in that American military and strategic "wall" was made by the Chinese who two years ago orchestrated an astonishing rapprochement long viewed as nearly inconceivable by pseudo-experts because "everybody knows” that Sunnis and Shi’ites are mortal enemies. The Beijing-engineered diplomatic rapprochement between the Saudis and Iran was the first stunning indication of major shifting geopolitical realities in the Gulf.
Now, with the prospect of Bahrain mending ties with Tehran, we can see more clearly the shift that the Chinese (and Russian) presence in the Persian Gulf is affording. Bahrain could never have undertaken such a shift without Saudi concurrence as well — which had itself just preceded Bahrain in de-demonizing Iran.
In one sense, much of this is reminiscent of the revolutionary turnaround in Turkish regional policy over three decades under the inspired leadership of academician and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who declared a new "zero enemies" foreign policy for a Turkey that would undertake to mend relations with all surrounding countries (that had long been hostile in the NATO or other contexts.)
Davutoglu was held in much contempt in Washington precisely because such a stance was seen to be undermining NATO policies of “enemy identification” used to justify the military alliance. (Indeed, there is virtually no independent European foreign policy today permitted to exist outside the structures of American-dominated NATO.)
But approaches such as Davutoglu’s striving for “zero enemies” has given pause for thought as to whether "intractable" hostilities in the region might not just turn out to be manageable after all, especially if one assumes countries have agency to alter negative or hostile postures.
Indeed, In this regard, one questions the very foundation of so much of American policy that is so heavily based on “identification of enemies" requiring ever-deeper military engagement and confrontation.
Meanwhile, the latest events serve to strengthen to some degree Iran’s legitimacy as a significant regional actor consistent with its new membership, along with Saudi Arabia, in the BRICS bloc—an organization very much part of the emergence of a new Global South.
Of course, there can be no millennium on the horizon with peace breaking out all over. In international relations, it is impossible to have everybody in full harmony with everybody else all the time and the total absence of conflict.
Yet it is certainly a worthy aspiration for states to make the assumption that hostility does not have to be automatic or reflexive, that states indeed do have agency and can make major decisions about whether to foster improvement or exacerbation of their relations with other countries.
But the United States, currently possessing the world’s most ideological foreign policy, at least since the fall of the Soviet Union (“global war on terror", “bringing democracy to the world via regime change," etc.), might well take a page out of this book in its own relations, with Russia and China for starters.
Diplomacy, a seemingly lost art in Washington today, was designed specifically to lubricate such tensions rather than exacerbate them. Yet exacerbation seems to be the course Washington often follows to maintain the vision of enemies that require American military solutions and American hegemony.
US heg bad – reinforces Iran's perception of American aggression which fuels regional instability.
Kelly Shannon, 24 – Dr. Kelly J. Shannon is a 2023–2024 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell national fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. (Kelly Shannon, “The United States needs a new Iran policy—and it involves regime change, but not the traditional kind,” Atlantic Council, 2-22-2024, Available Online: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/regime-change-iran-women-life-freedom/, Accessed: 7-2-2024)//ilake-mc
Ever since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran’s leaders have believed that the United States seeks regime change to roll back the Islamic revolution and restore US hegemony in Iran. Yet the United States has not pursued this as a policy goal, nor has US policy appeared to include direct interference in Iran’s domestic affairs. Instead, in recent years, US policymakers seem to have assigned Iran—and the Middle East more broadly—a lower priority than other areas like Ukraine, and have pursued a policy of containment toward Iran so that US attention could be focused elsewhere.
This policy has clearly failed. The Islamic Republic has become increasingly confident in its international behavior and domestic repression, bolstered by the belief that the West—especially the United States—is too weak to stop it. The result is that Iran today is a significant threat to stability, peace, and human rights in the Middle East. The October 7, 2023, attack by Iran’s client Hamas on Israel and subsequent attacks on shipping by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen underscore two important realities: first, the crucial importance of Middle Eastern stability to global affairs; second, a dire need for the United States to overhaul its Iran policy. If the United States does not change its approach to Iran, the Islamic Republic’s behavior and regional stability will only worsen.
The time is ripe for policy change. Despite harsh international sanctions, the clerical establishment has not moderated its behavior and flouts those sanctions, such as when it sells oil to China. Limited US engagement with Iran has also failed to rein in Tehran’s worst impulses. Despite the successful signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, the unilateral US withdrawal from that agreement during the Donald Trump administration incentivized Iran to continue enriching uranium. The lack of consistency between US administrations makes a successful return to the negotiating table on nuclear issues unlikely. Meanwhile, Iran continues to engage in hostage diplomacy and flagrantly violates the human rights of its people. Its missile strikes against Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan on January 15 and January 16 also indicate the regime’s increasing willingness to use military force against its neighbors and project power outside its borders, which risks further destabilizing an already unstable region.
The world has changed since US policy on Iran was last set. An influential bloc of countries—led by Russia and China—has arisen to challenge the US-led international order. Iran has gained important allies by joining this bloc. Tehran’s growing partnerships with Moscow and Beijing provide it with diplomatic support, an economic lifeline, and increasing military prestige through its aid to Russia in the Ukraine war. Quite simply, the world today is far less united in its condemnation of Iran’s behavior—and its support for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law—than in previous decades. US policy must adapt to account for this geopolitical shift.
Yet Iran’s domestic situation has also changed dramatically in a way that could benefit US policy objectives. While Iran faced multiple waves of popular protest over the past two decades, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising that began in September 2022 distinctly differs from earlier protests. While previous protests called for reform, many Iranians now declared that reforming the Islamic Republic is impossible. The current movement calls for nothing less than the end of the clerical establishment and the creation of a secular democracy. US policymakers should take note of this critical shift. Should a democratic Iran develop, it would solve most of the problems with Iran’s current behavior. A stable, democratic Iran would be greatly in the US national interest.
While the mass protests of 2022–2023 have died down, Iranian citizens, especially women, continue to defy the regime. The Iranian people are not likely to change their views on the theocracy, and the regime cannot survive in the long term in the face of such widespread domestic opposition. After four decades of an oppressive, corrupt, ineffective government, there is not much more for the Iranian people to lose but much to be gained by seeking radical change. However, the regime’s brutally violent crackdown on protesters and anyone who expresses the slightest hint of anti-regime sentiment indicates that mass protests alone will be insufficient to topple the government—the tactics of 1979 are not enough in the 2020s. Additional strategies are necessary, and international support will be critical to ensuring the success of any mass democratic movement in Iran.
The United States should, therefore, develop a new policy aimed at supporting the Iranian people in changing their government system. This must not be a policy of regime change in th

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