Defining the January Public Forum Topic

The Public Forum topic for January 2016 reads Resolved: On balance, economic sanctions are reducing the threat Russia poses to Western interests. The topic is a relatively traditional Public Forum topic both in that it deals with international relations generally and international security specifically. The topic also manages to pack an immense amount of meaning into a few words. Though the topic only comprises thirteen words, every phrase in the topic contains potentially round-determinative implications. Accordingly, this Article is structured around interpreting each phrase in the resolution. For simplicity's sake, this article engages with each phrase in the order it appears in the resolution.

On Balance

Few phrases signify classic Public Forum Debate as readily as the phrase "on balance." The implications of the phrase, however, are less than immediately clear. Specifically, it is unclear what the topic requires debaters to weigh and balance.

One interpretation of the topic might be that debaters are required to balance sanctions: if the majority of sanctions have a net-positive effect on reducing the threat from Russia, the affirmative should win. The test under this interpretation is to determine which side controls the implication of the numerically highest number of sanctions. If two nation's sanctions support the affirmative and one nation's sanctions support the negative, the negative has lost the debate. Crucially, this remains true even if the negative wins that the single sanction produces more Russian aggression than the affirmative's two sanctions alleviate because this interpretation is strictly quantitative. A strategic negative might thus get around affirmative cases structured around a single, powerful example of sanctions by suggesting that the affirmative has not proved the "balance" of sanctions support the affirmative. The affirmative's case thus amounts to little more than cherrypicking, and fails to prove the truth of the topic.

Another interpretation of the topic might be that debaters are required to balance "the threat," instead of sanctions. To prove the topic, the affirmative need not identify a numerical majority of sanctions - they must only prove that the effect of the sanctions on the threat from Russia net-supports the affirmative. For an extremely reductionist example, if the affirmative proves that a single sanction reduces the threat from Russia by 20 ThreatPoints, the affirmative wins even though the negative might identify nineteen sanctions which only reduce the threat from Russia by 1 ThreatPoint apiece. Under this interpretation, the significance of the sanction takes precedence: even a single sanction from a single nation might be sufficient to prove the topic, if the sanction is large enough in size. This also seems to check against cherrypicking, because the size of the sanction makes selecting it non-arbitrary.

Whether the phrase "on balance" refers to "sanctions" or "the threat" is an issue that debaters will have to hash out in rounds. This argument might be especially valuable to deploy in situations where debaters do not have other responses to a case. When in doubt, it is always a safe bet to argue that the other side has not met their topical burden even if their case is true. This argument is also especially easy to make, because it mirrors the debate over cherrypicking that Public Forum Debaters regularly have in topics that involve disparate examples. However, typing the cherrypicking claim to a topical burden enhances the impact of the argument and converts it from a relatively whiney argument into a substantive reason to reject the opposing side's case.

Though predictable, it is worth noting that the phrase "on balance" appears to exclude impacts that do not readily fit into a cost/benefit analysis (or a substantially similar form of evaluation). For example, Public Forum's recent foray into deontological ethics during the reparations topic is all-but-foreclosed by the phrase "on balance," because deontological ethics cannot be "balanced" by definition. Debaters could not similarly levy deontological cases here - for example, that defense of human rights is a categorical imperative which sanctions achieve - because such cases eschew weighing by their nature.

Economic Sanctions

The debate over economic sanctions is complicated in part by the fact that the term does not have a precise delineation in the literature. While it is clear that some things fall squarely within economic sanctions - for example, freezing foreign financial assets - it is less clear whether other actions are "economic" sanctions. For example, Japan recently implemented the sanction of banning the sale of small arms to Russia. In some senses, this is an economic sanction - it extinguishes an economic interaction between Japan and Russia - and yet in others, it is primarily a military sanction. All military materiel has economic value (tanks aren't free), which means that every sanction that limits or terminates military support is in some sense economic.

There are thus several ways to interpret the phrase "economic sanctions." One way to interpret the term is to exclude mixed purpose sanctions; if the sanction has both an economic component and a non-economic component, it is not topical. Such sanctions could not be accurately characterized as "economic sanctions" - they are mixed sanctions with an economic component. Since the arms control sanction affirmative has particularly strong solvency evidence, development of this interpretation of the topic might be fruitful for the negative.

Because of the difficulty in delineating whether a sanction contains non-economic elements, another interpretation might suggest that "economic sanctions" are any sanction whose primary purpose is to do an economic harm. The primary purpose test - which this Article unabashedly borrows from analogous principles in law - has the benefit of a clearly established core of topical ground (e.g. asset freezing), but also falls apart at the margins (is it the primary intended purpose or the primary consequence of the sanction? Whose intent matters? Etc.).

Because there is no easy, intuitive interpretation of the phrase, it is likely that many judges will default to gut checking whether a sanction is economic or not. Debaters are accordingly advised to pick sanctions that likely pass the smell test, even if they do not pass a more rigorous degree of scrutiny.

Are Reducing

The most interesting part of this phrase is that it uses the present participle ("are reducing") rather than the past participle ("have reduced"). Since the present participle describes an ongoing effect, topical examples of sanctions likely must have a present, persistent impact on the Russian threat. Examples that are wholly contained in the past - for example, sanctions whose duration has ended - appear to be rendered irrelevant by the tense of the verb in the topic. This makes the empirical evidence underlying most cases extremely vulnerable: as soon as a nation lifts a sanction, it stops being topical because its effect is no longer ongoing. In other words, those sanctions may "have reduced" the Russian threat, but they no longer "are reducing" it.

The Threat Russia Poses to Western Interests

This phrase alone might be the grounds for a clever negative case: if Russia poses no threat to Western interests - say, because trade interdependence eliminates Russia's incentive to meaningfully harm Western interests - then there is nothing for sanctions to reduce, and the topic is false.

Similarly, if Russia poses a threat to some interest other than Western interests, the topic is false. For example, Russia may be a terrifying, violent threat to Ukrainians, but a perfectly peaceful actor when the West is involved. Thus, a generic argument about Russia's generally threatening nature is insufficient to prove the topic. Only threats which are tailored to Western interests are pertinent.

Conclusion

Champion debaters will tie each of their arguments back to the topic. Debaters who lose sight of the resolution may win their arguments, but will lose the debate. Thus, a cautious and meticulous analysis of the topic is a crucial step in preparing to debate the January topic.