THW Grant India Permanent Membership on Security Council
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Burden of proof is shared.
Whiteflame and Misterchris must comment before accepting. (I will extend argument time to one week due to their greater debate ability)
Security council: The United Nations Charter established six main organs of the United Nations, including the Security Council. It gives primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security to the Security Council, which may meet whenever peace is threatened.
Information about permanent membership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_members_of_the_United_Nations_Security_Council
Con will argue that India should not be granted permanent membership to the security council.
Not only is India poor economically, it also abuses its military power in the local area instead of focusing on less morally ambiguous missions. Already, Pakistan notes that India has been terrorizing them across 20 wars, countering the Council's mission to keep peace.
The military history of Pakistan encompasses an immense panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2,000 years across areas constituting modern Pakistan and greater South Asia. The history of the modern-day military of Pakistan began in 1947, when Pakistan achieved its independence as a modern nation.
The military holds a significant place in the history of Pakistan, as the Pakistani Armed Forces have played, and continue to play, a significant role in the Pakistani establishment and shaping of the country. Although Pakistan was founded as a democracy after its independence from the British Raj, the military has remained one of the country's most powerful institutions and has on occasion overthrown democratically elected civilian governments on the basis of self-assessed mismanagement and corruption. Successive governments have made sure that the military was consulted before they took key decisions, especially when those decisions related to the Kashmir conflict and foreign policy. Political leaders of Pakistan are aware that the military has stepped into the political arena through coup d'état to establish military dictatorships, and could do so again.[1][2]
- India population is equivalent to 17.7% of the total world population.
- India ranks number 2 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population.
- "India has also long pursued a policy of silence on most of the other burning issues in international security which UNSC permanent members are often concerned with, from nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, to human rights violations in Syria."
- India continues to use colonial-era sedition law and arbitrarily restricts freedom. The unaccountable oppressive law counters its ideas of democracy, and the results are massive violence against woman in Delhi.
- Also notice how Con's source with Russia 2 only enhances my argument. While US will use powerful economic sanctions to prevent Russia's actions instead of direct military strikes, India will recklessly attack Pakistan. While India's economy loops back to hit itself in the butt in the foreign policy, US is able to retain its strong political power precisely because it is able to execute these economic sanctions. "The sanctions severely limit five major Russian banks' ability to obtain medium and long-term financing from Europe. The United States also restricted technology exports to Russia's deep-water Arctic offshore or shale oil production." Since Russia is having such a hard time recuperating, we can safely say the US prevented military attacks without costing a single life. Extend this argument.
Wiki
If this wasn't enough, India remains passive in the overall international security issues. It only seems to care about its own foreign policy than a worldwide view of what's important. As The Diplomat argues, "India has also long pursued a policy of silence on most of the other burning issues in international security which UNSC permanent members are often concerned with, from nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, to human rights violations in Syria." [7] India's seeming cowardly nature defeats its desire to be permanently on the UNSC. Without playing a meaningful role in the matter of interest, the other four countries could not prevent China's inevitable veto. In addition, India continues to use colonial-era sedition law and arbitrarily restricts freedom. The unaccountable oppressive law counters its ideas of democracy, and the results are massive violence against woman in Delhi. [8] Hundreds of thousands of migrant settlers had been displaced. The severe lack of reforms highlights that India is heavily backwards compared to other countries in the P5. The inability to support human rights is abhorrent and single-handedly destroys India's case at the permanent seat.
This is a frustrating one because neither side does a particularly good job spelling out what should be the standard for determining whether the UN Security Council should bring on another member. That should underpin this whole debate, but both sides just kind of assume that and move onto discussing whether or not India should be that country. Hell, neither side even bothers to mention that India has been a non-permanent member of the Security Council for 8 terms, meaning that there's a decent track record to suggest what India would do if it got permanent status. Trouble is that without it, neither side establishes a particularly objective reason to support their position. Pro wants it to be based on total GDP, representative population, and generally just being better than other countries on the Security Council. Con wants it to be based on GDP per capita, income disparities, its potential for military conflict and its willingness to act in the face of various abuses worldwide. No one ever gives me a solid reason to pick one or more of these. I can go through them and tell you who is winning each, but the practice seems pointless because I'm not sure which I'd pick in the end.
And it really doesn't help that both sides seem to shift strategies as the debate goes on. Most of Pro's R3 is focused on other members of the Security Council, with the aim being to show how they are all bad actors in their own ways. Con's R4 introduced several new arguments far too late, especially this point about just disbanding the permanent membership on the Security Council (might have been interesting to bring this up sooner).
Still, I'll work with what I've got. The only explanation I get for what the Security Council should be comes from Con's framework. Pro challenges it a couple of times, asking why certain elements should matter to a country going on the Security Council, but he misses what I see as crucial elements that Con keeps quoting. I say that Con quotes it, though honestly, there's little actual discussion of why the framework matters or what makes those particular sections more important. Despite that missing element, I have a hard time dismissing India's willingness to get involved fighting major human rights abuses worldwide, since that was a point that Pro kept leaving on the table. I'm told straight up at the start of the framework: "The Security Council's main purpose has been to establish peace, and security." Later, I'm told by Con that "India has also long pursued a policy of silence on most of the other burning issues in international security which UNSC permanent members are often concerned with, from nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, to human rights violations in Syria." That's never addressed, and none of Pro's points demonstrate that India would be committed to policies seeking the aims of the Security Council. That would have been enough by itself, since it has nothing to do with military or economic capabilities and everything to do with political will. I think this possibility of increasing or collapsing the size of the permanent Security Council could have been interesting to explore as well, particularly since each of these countries has veto power (really frustrating that that barely got mentioned), though while that also appears in the framework, there's little expanded discussion of it and I can't do anything with what I'm given.
Nonetheless, much as there are other arguments on the table that I think each side is winning, this is the only argument that appears to take any kind of precedence and it's cold dropped by Pro. I wish Con had pushed it more, but it's on the flow, and it stands out, so Con wins arguments. I also give him conduct due to Pro's forfeit.
Argument:
This was an interesting read - and a tip to both debaters: Please elaborate "what is the security council? What are its goals? Are new members being added? Etc etc" these kinds of foundational elaborations would vastly increase the quality of the debate. Next, I do indeed buy Pro's argument that a good majority of Con's last round arguments were new - and though I will still consider them - they will be minor points compared to the things mostly discussed.
Economy; So the argument goes essentially as follows - Con says that India is among the worst nations financially speaking, as it struggles with equity of income and so and so forth, Pro then argues that India is doing just fine making it to the top 5 in GPD earnings. So, for Con to win this, he has to demonstrate that the Security Council wants to establish equity of wages.... but it never does that - there are no sources from the SC declaring this to be its mission, its just not demonstrate by Con - and Pro actually demonstrates that the members of the SC aren't actually necessarily doing what's "right", so Con's appeal to humanitarian efforts kinda falls flat here. I see no reason why India's poor equity of outcome would prohibit its place on the council, and its rather high general GPD per capita would make it a good candidate as far as we've established. I'd say the point, though it is fairly close, goes to Pro here.
Miiltary: This argument goes that India has done some bad stuff, attack and perpetuate wars on Pakistan, and oppressed its people. Pro rebuts by arguing that not only have all of the other nations of the SC do that, but most still do it. Furthermore, that the attack on Pakistan was provoked. Con does point out that the mere fact that others in the SC do bad stuff that doesn't mean that they should allow others that do "bad stuff" to join the council... a couple of problems that stop me from buying that argument: Con establishes that these nations are supposedly leading by example, yet Con has demonstrated time after time that three of the five continue to lead in an oppressive, problematic way - so adding another nation would not change that- ESPECIALLY because Pro proves that India has done more to help a lot of the causes that Con points out than harm-unlike several other SC members. Furthermore, Con never establishes that India would continue to act in its ways, it is more plausible to me that India would simply change to fit the SC's guidelines than continue on - especially because nothing Con has shown would put India on the level of China or even Russia. It seems to me that this point does also go to Pro.
Overall, though I think both debaters were much to dogmatic in regard to what and who should be allowed into the SC, and very.... vague in regards to what the SC even is - overall I buy Pro's points much more - he's demonstrated that India should get a seat, it's economically prosperous generally, and has seemed to be fair, even helping stabilize the global economy according to Pro's arguments. Con's arguments were filled with assumptions regarding the humanitarian... and he never set that up (except for the last round, and not directly - but as previously mentioned - the new points by Con are not being considered majorly). So, overall - I give arguments to Pro - India should be granted a permanent seat in the SC.
Conduct: Pro forfeited a round
That may have been implicit in your argument, but I did not see you set that aside as an alternative framework and argue that it was preferable to Pro's. You argued that the P5 is problematic, but never established what makes a nation sufficiently powerful to be on the permanent security council, never established what specific perspective other nations would bring that would, as you put it, "balance each other's greed and powerlust out", and instead just said that India represents a large enough subset of the population to warrant their participation as a permanent member without ever really explaining what's gained by adding to global representation. If you're going to argue that there's a need for diversity of opinion and greater representation of the total population of the world, then establish what's gained by adding to it. Don't just assert that there's some greater balance without examining the value of having it.
I agree that Con didn't establish any basis for his points, either, but at least in his case, I have a clear means of seeing how it harms the current P5 in their ability to pursue given actions. Maybe those actions are bad, but I'm not given any reason to believe that. I'm just being told that India's addition to the permanent security council needs to have clear value. If that value is reduced or even made nonexistent by India's lack of will to take action, then it doesn't matter what they actually bring to the table, even if that is diversity and numbers of people being represented.
I defaulted membership to be available for all powerful nations that balance each other's greed and powerlust out. This was made crystal clear as the basis for SC membership, I made clear how and why India irrefutably qualifies as representing enough of our species and enough of global interest to compete with at least China and balance it out.
You are the one lying saying I didn't give a basis, Con never gave a shred of it.
That's a pretty vague critique. Considering that I agree with your side, I'm not sure what I'm confirming with my bias, nor am I very clear about what words I twisted.
your vote here has a lot of confirmation bias and twisting of words involved.
Mainly, if you're going to try other strategies (say, advocating for an end to the permanent Security Council), do it up front. You had points regarding the veto power that you could have used to build such a case early on, but you'd have to dig into it more to really get there. Also, emphasize why you have a framework in the first place. Even if it's not a great way to establish what the Security Council should do, it's the only clear option discussed in the debate. RM suggests some ways to determine who should be on the council, but they're never all that explicit and they seem a bit arbitrary (you expose yourself to that argument, but at least you have a framework for why your arbitrary choice should be preferred).
thank you for the vote and spotting the crucial human rights argument! I had difficulty making my mind up whether to keep things practical (why we're currently rejecting India) or keeping things more theoretical (why China is admittedly bad and maybe there's a more objective example of a good country than US/Britain).
Any other tips?
TY. Btw I don't really think the rivalry is twosided in terms of who is wrong, I actually think Pakistan is completely in the wrong but I said it was two-sided to neutralise your point and make you turn away from India vs Pakistan as that kind of was the only strong thing for you to build on.
Pakistan was founded on the idea that Muslim Indians couldn't coexist with Hindu Indians. That was the literal justification for the partition. It's also shat led Pakistan to fight within itself (as East Pakistan which included Bangladesh, even though it's on the other side of India, had a more peaceful outlook than West Pakistan). That's what most of India vs Pakistan has been about.
thanks for the vote, edge. Also Madman, you are CRUSHING me in the political topics haha. I think I'm pretty bad/mediocre at politics all in all.
I actually know nothing about this topic - so I can go in and vote with little bias in regard to the topic, I'll try to read through it and get a vote out by tommorow
Got coal’s debate to do first, then this one.
about a week or so left.
Didn’t say it was tedious, just a lot on my plate.
I just vote whenever I feel like it so I understand it's tedious.
Just remind me as this goes on. Got a bit of a backlog going that I’m hoping to blitz through this weekend.
It's complete, if you care to read.
I suppose Con side isn't quite as good as "substance" especially for my standard, but a lot of it's related to the simple logic of why status quo is happening
I have yet to see this substance but okay. I frankly think the SC is bullshit and should be abolished but if it's not, India absolutely has earned a seat at the table. The only thing you should have focused on is particular aspects of Nuclear treaty agreements that India refuses to be a part of. The rest of the 'military' stuff isn't worth bringing up.
Nicely done, madman.
Also funny note: I am actually also PRO on this topic but I found CON fun to argue because there's a lot of substance that you can use to twist it to your favor
sorry, I mixed up pro and con again. Silly me.
Be interested to see how this plays out.