If I haven’t said it before, talking about international geopolitics is annoying.
For this November/December, the NSDA has decreed the debate topic to be about military support that the US gives to Taiwan. And, just like last time the topic was on Taiwan (a proposed Bilateral Free Trade Agreement), 90% of the conversations are going to be about the relations between the US and China.
Of course, these are really important relations to talk about. However, I can’t help but fear for the way in which this discussion takes place. You see, us debaters love catastrophizing. We love taking small shifts in power dynamics and explaining exactly how that will lead to the destruction of the human race.
And since this topic involves the US military and relations with China, it’s pretty safe to say that every single team is going to discuss the probability of an intercontinental nuclear war. It’s the basic foreign relations issue, right?
More seriously, as I’m preparing to debate this topic, I’m faced more and more with the realization that by debating to win, I feel we’re losing sight of what it is we hoped to gain from debate. By focusing on the flashy global nuclear war and climate change arguments, we lose sight of the necessity of considering the real issues. This really became apparent to me when I realized that I was being punished for talking about the inherent unrealism of nuclear war, which was seen as not doing enough to win the round, but instead it was better to take the less realistic and clearly unreasonable stance of how my opponent’s position is what causes nuclear war instead. Forget realism, we’re playing to win.
I think this is why I want to debate this topic, even if I hate the way it will play out. As we step away from the goal of debate in order to debate better, I hope that the skewed argumentation leaves me still able to consider realism instead of simply all potentialities and their consequences.
